Some more Jam

Earlier this week, we promised some extra quotes from our BBC series on songwriters.

First up, here's Jimmy Jam on writing one of the key tracks from Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation 1814".

"Someone like Janet, who is a really good lyricist, comes up with great ideas, great melodies. Many times we will create a track for her and just give it to her and she’ll come back a couple of days later and go, okay here’s what I’ve got.

But I remember when we were working on Rhythm Nation, there was a song we did called Living In A World They Didn’t Make, which was very personal to her and she just couldn’t figure out lyrically what she wanted to do.

It was funny, because we were actually in the process – this was ’89 – we were in the process of building our second Flyte Time studios in Minneapolis and I remember Terry walked in with a bunch of carpet samples and drapery swatches and he said, "what do you think of these?"

And we said, "Terry, hold on a minute, we need a lyric, we’ve got this concept for a song, Living in a World They Didn’t Make – it’s about kids, how they basically have to pay for adults’ mistakes", blah, blah.

And Terry sits down and 10 minutes later, he’s got the whole song written and just hands it to Janet and he says, "is that what you’re thinking about?", and she said, "yeah."

Then he said;
"OK, now what do you think of this carpet sample?!"

More next week!

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I'm sick and tired of your gamesYou know you've got shit for brains

Believe it or not, those are the actual words of Suzanne Shaw's new song about Darren Day.

What on earth possessed the woman to wash her dirty linen in public like this?

And since when did she become a cockney?

"Who do you fink you are saying you don't do fam-laaaay?" she enquires, in a voice that would make Kat Slater think 'blimey that girl's common'.

There's no arguing that Darren Day is a class-A cheating scumbag fuck, but this song almost makes you feel sorry for him.

Listen to the whole debacle here
(via www.suzanneshaw.co.uk
who appear to have nicked it off of Scott Mills)

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Madonna's new album: "Defying Gravity"

I bet she's taken up yogic flying.

Ananova - Madonna works on new album

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No Doggs allowed

Snoop Dogg says he might
shorten his name to plain old Snoop to 'shed all canine references from his moniker'.

Erm, surely Snoop is a canine reference? Or is he planning to come back as a private detective?

The Nintendo DS is getting a Rumble feature, which should make using the stylus a hell of a lot more challenging...

MTV comes up with the lamest excuse yet to get the words 'Britney' and 'Breasts' into a headline.

Sad faces all round: the voice of Tony The Tiger has passed away.

No link for this one (it was on teletext), but U2 have given $23m to charity. That's about one-third of the profits from their last world tour - so it won't break the bank - but it's nice to see Bono put his money where his mouth is.

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Who the hell are you?

How does it feel to be the lead character in the world's most successful sitcom, yet have no-one recognise you in the street?

That's the dilemma Nancy Cartwright explores in her one-woman show, "My Life As A Ten-Year-Old Boy."

Nancy is the voice of Bart Simpson (and Ralph Wiggum, and Nelson, and Chucky from the Rugrats), and its massive fun to hear her break into character, as she does throughout her act.

Trouble is, on the evidence of the opening night, Nancy is only as good as the material she's given - and her show desperately needs the attention of The Simpsons' crack team of writers.

She relies heavily on crowd-pleasing script recitals, and seems more interested in self-promotion than giving an insight into her peculiar talents.

By far the most telling moment comes when she reveals, with a generous helping of jealousy, that Hank Azaria joins most Simpsons readthroughs by speakerphone because he's "off in Italy, or Paris, or Broadway in Spamalot getting 11 Tony nominations." Ouch.

But it was a pleasant surprise to find that Cartwright was one of the voices behind Animaniacs - Warner Brothers brilliant, but largely unloved, TV series of the mid-90s (do a Google search and you might find ten or so woeful sites from the dawn of the internet).

Indeed, Cartwright's character Mindy still shuts down the Discopop PC every night as she squeaks "OK, I love you - Byebye!"

Bless.

NancyCartwright.com

Riverside Studios

Daws Butler (Nancy's mentor and the voice of Hukleberry Hound)

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I've just been busy, okay?

So here's why Discopop Directory has been so sparsely updated for a week or three... We've been putting together a series on the world's greatest pop writers for the BBC's news website.

But it's all done now, and there should now be adequate time to bitch about Britney and Coldplay over here instead.

If you're interested, the interviews with Richard X and Guy Chambers are on the BBC website now. Xenomania, Cathy Dennis and Jam&Lewis get profiled over the course of the week.

There's plenty of choice quotes left over, so maybe we'll put some of them up here in the next couple of days.

To whet your appetite, here's a surprising admission from the nicest man in pop^TM, the irrepressible Mr X.

"I always wanted to be in a girl band - like Girls Aloud. They could always do with a sixth member. And that could be me.”

BBC Entertainment - The Hitmakers: Richard X.

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