Cosmetic surgery

Instead of writing something useful today --- perhaps about the Q Awards (Oasis and Corinne Bailey Rae won, so it was clearly a load of old shite) or the mucky photos of Marcia Cross out of Desperate Housewives (Why, God? Why?) --- I've instead been tinkering around with the playlist tools at Last FM. As a result, if you look to your left and scroll down a bit, you can see the ten most recently played tracks here at Discopop Towers. And there you will discover that today I have been mostly listening to the Radio One Live Lounge album. So there.

Isn't the internet a marvellous waste of time?

Tweet

Polite notice about the future of pop

Alesha Anjanette Dixon from out of Mis-Teeq has a new single out today. It is very good.

The song is called Knockdown and it is written by Girls Aloud's hitmaking production gurus Xenomania. "They" are very good, too.

The video, which you can see here, features a wonderful selection of hats. Les Chapeaux, as they are called in Romania or whatever, are so in right now, fashion fans.

Observant viewers may recall that I have slagged this song off before, but it turns out I was wrong. It's a proper little grower and no mistake. You'll be singing it in your bath or alternative body-cleansing appliance before the week is out.

The problem is, people aren't buying pop music at the moment. Why? Because they are fools. Yes, your Razorlights and your Corrine Bailey Raes are all very lovely and mellow - but kids are going to need something to dance to at hilarious retro discos in the year 2018, and You're fucking Beautiful simply will not do.

In addition, Alesha is super ace and the saviour of pop music. But her last single only went to number 14 and, with record companies being what they are (global corporations with responsibilities to shareholders who'd rather see a man spanked by seven midgets in a banana boat than go to a pop concert), if this song doesn't go top 10, she's out of a job. Which is shit, obviously.

So it is up to you, the seven readers of Discopop Directory, to purchase this pop gem forthwith. It is in shops of the traditional high-street variety and the spooky electric ones too.

To help persuade you, Alesha has recorded a little video message for the world's best pop website, and I have nicked it wholesale reproduced it here in full.



International viewers may need to look at the following video for context.



Also, international viewers may need to move to the UK to buy the single. But it's worth it. Honest.

Tweet

Confessions on a dancefloor

In between offending the church and the continent of Africa, Madonna is apparently interested in the artform of popular music.

To that end, she and producer Stuart Price (aka Jaques Lu Cont, aka Les Rhythmes Digitales, aka The Thin White Streak Of Piss Duke) have been telling InStyle magazine their top 10 party tracks. Here's the list.

1. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
2. Cerrone - Supernature (mp3)
3. ESG - Dance
4. Gwen McRae - All This Love That I'm Giving
5. Yarborough & Peoples - Don't Stop the Music
6. George Benson - Give Me the Night (mp3)
7. Destination - Move On Up
8. Tyrone Brunson - The Smurf
9. T-Connection - Do What You Wanna Do
10. Giorgio Moroder - Evolution (mp3)

Classics one and all (except, perhaps, The Smurf which I've never heard in my life).

Meanwhile, if you want to support Madge's bid to kidnap small children from third world nations, you can now buy her personalised Christmas Tree ornament, which allows you to celebrate the birth of Jesus and one of the world's formeost blasphemers all in one! Nice work.


[via Madonnalicious]

Tweet

A quincentennial retrospective

Cripes! This is the 500th post on Discopop Directory! It's taken just under two years to collect together this barrage of nonsense, which means I've just about stuck to my original target of writing at least one post every weekday. Hooray for me! The second, secret, reason for writing the blog - to help me get a job writing about music for a living - has also paid off. So, hooray me twice!

It all started off with this post about roller coasters which was, to use the correct journalistic terminology, shit. But, bit by bit, things improved and eventually some people started reading this bolognese of mind-spaghetti and pop meatballs that I keep cooking up. Some of you have even stuck with me despite tortured metaphors like that one.

So what have been the highlights? Well, my favourite posts have been these:

10 The one where I succumb to Big Brother (Aug 2006)
9 Cat Buckaroo! (Apr 2005)
8 A very scholarly and erudite examination of the Nintendo Wii (Sept 2005)
7 Food that has its name printed on it so you don't forget what it is you're eating (Dec 2004)
6 Vaguely pornographic animated graphic of Nadine from Girls Aloud that I made while mrsdiscopop was having a bath (Feb 2005)
5 The one where my ipod gets depressed (Aug 2005)
4 First mention of Nelly Furtado's Maneater, roughly twenty years before it came out (Jan 2006)
3 I interview one of my musical heroes - Jimmy Jam (May 2005)
2 Totally unbiased top 10 singles of 2005 (Dec 2005)
1 Are the Pet Shop Boys secret Nintendo fans? (July 2006)

I'm ace, me.

Tweet

Film previews: Borat and Sixty-Six

Sacha Baron-Cohen is either the most brave or the most stupid person on the planet. While "interacting" with the American public in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit the Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, he is variously threatened with physical assault, arrest, lynching and a floppy plastic fist. It's a credit to him (and his producers) that he never once chickens out or breaks character.

The film is little more than an extended TV sketch (and some of the scenes are straightforward remakes of Borat's appearances on Da Ali G Show) but it holds together surprisingly well. There is just enough story to give the film some structure and, unlike the majority of comedy films, it keeps up the laugh quotient right to the bitter end.

Some of the scenes are a little close to the bone - don't take your gran - and Baron-Cohen seems a little old to be so fixated on his anus as a source of humour (poor little Isla Fisher). But you will laugh as often as you bite your knuckles in discomfort. We like!

Sixty Six, on the other hand, is a film you can take your gran to. Set in 1966, it's all about Eddie Reuben, a young Jewish kid who is looking forward to his Bar Mitzvah. In fact, he's looking forward to it just a little too much - booking caterers, drawing up seating plans and otherwise indulging in behaviour that would see him branded a "big girl's blouse" if he was at school in my day (Nowadays he'd probably be called the only gay in the village, or something equally "hilarious").

But Eddie's hopes are dashed as his family succumbs to financial crisis and his big day is continually downscaled. Worse still, he discovers that the Bar Mitzvah is planned for the same day as the World Cup Final. All the guests say they'll turn up if England don't qualify - but we all know how that story ends...

Bizarrely, this is based on the true experiences of director Paul Weiland. He was persuaded to turn his miserable childhood into a film after making an after-dinner speech about his "disastrous" Bar Mitzvah at his 50th birthday party. That's probably because his guests included people like Richard Curtis, Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham-Carter and half of the UK's film industry. (Luckily, the party didn't clash with any majot football fixtures.)

The film itself is a jolly little British working class comedy, with plenty of laughs amidst the angst. Newcomer Gregg Sulkin is note-perfect as Eddie, and the supporting cast includes such phenomenal talent as Helena Bonham-Carter, Catherine Tate and Eddie Marsan.

It's made by the people behind Bridget Jones and About A Boy, and it shares their superb sense of pace and comic timing. Unfortunately, it also mimics their descent into saccharine sentimentality at the conclusion. So, if you do take your gran, make sure she doesn't bring along any Murray Mints, in case she ends up in a diabetic coma.

Both films are out on 3 November. So now you know.

Tweet

What are the celebs up to today?

Cripes! It's only a collection of juicy gossip and "interesting" links to help you while away your Tuesday afternoon...

:: Moby hates my guts! Well, sorta. He's launched an attack on all journalists, because some of them had the audacity to suggest his album, 18, sounded just like his other album, Play (it did). "These are the same journalists who love Oasis - and every record they make sounds the same," he whines. But I hated 18 and I hate every Oasis record ever made. So suck on that, tiny bald rave vegan! [musicroom.net]

:: To be honest, though, I actually quite like Moby. The video for his new single, New York New York, is hilarious, he did a fantastic end-of-Glastonbury set in 2004, and his Greatest Hits album looks like a great set of songs. Do you see how magnanimously I rise above criticism? There's a lesson in that somewhere.

:: Watch the Space Shuttle launch, from space. [link]

:: Celebrity fit club. Looking foxy today are Rachel Bilson in a wedding dress, Hugh Jackman in an expensive flasher's coat, and Scarlett Johansson in a fantastic pair of tube socks. Click on each picture for more.


[sources: Perez Hilton, Just Jared, Jedroot]

:: Girls Aloud's Something Kinda Oooh went into the charts at number five on downloads sales this week, ending a run of poor placings for the band (all their singles have been top 10, mind you). The CD single, out this week, contains a Megamix of their hits, which is only going to strengthen the arguments of people who say their songs all sound the same. Those people are wrong, of course.
[Download an MP3 of the megamix]

:: Tyra Banks has been exhibiting the kind of crazed behaviour we normally associate with Tom Cruise on her TV show. I think, by the end of the clip, she may have actually wet her pants. [via youtube]

:: Someone out there is more obsessed with Nintendo's Wii than I am. He's gone to the trouble of creating a hand-drawn animated commercial for the darned thing - and it's actually very, very good. Considering how lackluster the publicity for the console has been, perhaps the marketing team should give this guy a call.

Tweet