After all the saucepans-in-a-cement-mixer bedlam of Drummer Boy, Alesha Dixon has gone for the more playlist-friendly Raveballad option on her new single, Radio. The video was filmed on same the trailer park set The Sugababes used for About A Boy. And we all know how well that story ended, don't we?
"In painting, as in everything else, there is a fatal tendency to become accustomed to one's faults."
Those are the words of British author John Collier. They got me thinking about how musicians often become consumed by their worst personality traits. Sting, for example, will no longer record a song unless it's in an obscure time signature from the Byzantine era. His last album was entirely written in π+2(16/72), and played on an Tambur owned by a Sumerian monk.
But it works the other way round, too. Once an artist grows accustomed to a fault, they can tame it and incorporate it into their music.
While recording You Really Got Me, The Kinks wanted to capture the distorted buzz of their live shows, so they slashed their amps with a razor blade. In doing so, according to musicologist Robert Walser, they recorded "the track which invented heavy metal".
More recently, T-Pain's entire career has been based on the deliberate mis-use of autotune. One mistake with the settings became an artistic statement, hugely distinctive and widely copied.
Nostalgia for the ramshackle technology of yesterday also affects the way music is recorded.
I'm not talking about Lenny Kravitz buying The Beatles' mixing desk so he can suck John Lennon's spirit out of it like a voodoo priest of tedious soft rock. Instead, listen to the way Norman Cook turns the crackle of a vinyl record into a percussion track on Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me.
My favourite example comes from The Roots, on their 1999 album track Step Into The Realm.
?uestlove and Black Thought say the song was inspired by their youth, when the only musical "instruments" they owned were tape recorders. They would tape the instrumental sections of their favourite songs onto cassette, several times over, so they could practice rapping. Often, the only suitable sections were on the fade-out, so the music would disappear into the distance when they reached the loop point - then jump back in at full volume on the first beat of the next bar. When they came to record Step Into The Realm, they recreated the effect by sampling and fading their own instruments.
In the words of Scott Adams: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep". But as the methods of creating music become ever more precise and digitised, I wonder what mistakes will inspire the artists of the future?
This is one of the best pre-rehearsed chat show moments of all time. Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake and the freakin' Roots with a four-minute hip-hop masterclass.
You would not get this on Graham Norton.
Now, Justin, stop mucking about AND GET BACK IN THE STUDIO.
According to The Independent, Lykke Li is the most-blogged about artist of the last 24 hours, so you're probably already aware of the free download on her website. But seeing as it's fantastic, I'm going to add my voice to the chorus of approval.
The two-track EP is a teaser for the Swede's new album, which is due out next year. Judging by the lead track, Get Some, she's become a filthy saucebucket since we last heard from her. Instead of the breathy love songs of Youth Novels, Lykke is instructing a man to take off his pants while declaring "I'm a prostitue, you're gonna get some" over a lusty, tribal drumbeat.
This Christmas, Florence And The Machine is releasing yet another version of her admittedly-quite-good debut album, Lungs. This third (fourth?) repackage comes with exclusive artwork, new sleeve notes, one new song, that abomination with Dizzee Rascal, a pendant, some remixes, some live tracks, a clod of soil, a breath mint, five stamps, a lithograph of Florence's GCSE art project, a ticket stub, a fairy's tear, a moonbeam, a wheel of brie and, for one lucky recipient, Florence's actual lung.
It's all very exciting, but why not save yourself all that clutter and buy Zola Jesus's new album instead? It sounds exactly like Florence and The Machine AND she promises not to turn up without provocation or invitation to every festival in the universe singing You Got The Bloody Love until the original loses every atom of its power.
Here are two of Zola's songs. They are quite literally embedded below.
Those are the words of British author John Collier. They got me thinking about how musicians often become consumed by their worst personality traits. Sting, for example, will no longer record a song unless it's in an obscure time signature from the Byzantine era. His last album was entirely written in π+2(16/7
