From Hanson to Marilyn Manson

Sometimes, in the great interconnected world of pop, you hit a roadblock. Sometimes, two artists seem so far apart that you just think you're never going to get there. Sometimes, you think that the web is broken, or, at the very least, that there are some roadworks and the diversions lead you through a single track road to the point where you just can't face pulling over to let another tractor past so you give up and go home. Sometimes, you just get far too carried away with your mixed metaphor.

This is not one of those times.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce that we have discovered a link between golden-haired, toothy "family-band" legends Hanson...

And the gothy, metal-plated toothed, walking freakshow Marilyn Manson...

"But how?" we hear you cry! We won't lie, readers, it was looking like it was going to be a long and tortuous journey. At least, it was until we saw on the horizon, the bright lights of...

Yes, the grand city of Tulsa, Oklahoma helped to make this one an unexpected doddle. The city (famous of course for its booming oil industry, its concentration of art deco architecture and the "prayer tower" of Oral Roberts University) is the place which the Hanson brothers call home (well, at least in their early years. For all we know, they might live in California or live quite happily in their condos in Boca. We just don't know/we're too lazy to find out).

Tulsa's legendary status on the world stage was cemented way prior to Hanson roller-blading their way onto the pop scene in 1997, however. In 1963, Gene Pitney immortalised the city in his paean Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa which reached number 5 in the UK pop charts. Give it a listen, if for no other reason than the frankly ludicrous orchestration which kicks off in the background which at the start suggests Gene managed to confuse Tulsa with Hawaii.

Gene Pitney had never had a number 1 hit in the UK, until the wonderful Marc Almond swooped in in the early part of 1989 with a devastating quiff and leather jacket combo to duet with Pitters on Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart. Despite an absolutely amazing vocal performance by both men, the song remained unreleased in the US, allegedly because the lyrics seemed... well... a little bit too gay to be radio friendly. Which is ridiculous... Clearly. I mean, just look at the last 10 seconds of the video. You really mean to tell me that people got camp from that?! Ridiculous.

Anyway, Marc Almond, will probably most likely go down in pop history as being the vocalist of the amazing 80s synthpop duo Soft Cell. The Cell had a litany of brilliant singles (of which our personal highlight is Say Hello, Wave Goodbye) but their place in the pop pantheon is principally earned by their wonderful reinterpretation of the Northern Soul classic Tainted Love, which, incidentally, is by far the most inventive use of fire-breathing dancing galactic bodies that we've ever seen in a music video.

At this point, it's a breeze. As much as we'd love to permanently strip it from the record books, Marilyn Manson decided that he would give Tainted Love a whirl in the name of a movie soundtrack and, in the process, earned his highest charting single to date in 2002. We think that the less that is said about this cover version the better, but in the interest of journalistic integrity (which, of course, we have in spades...) we'll just let the video speak for itself.

Subtle, isn't it?

Anyway, there you have it. The bright lights of the big city of Tulsa have proven to be a shining beacon in the marshy terrain of the pop web. It really is an amazing world, isn't it? When you can go from the downright-amazing MMMBop, to the downright-less-than-amazing Beautiful People and pass Gene bloody Pitney on the way. Brilliant.

Hanson - Gene Pitney - Marc Almond - Soft Cell - Marilyn Manson

So until, next time, we'll leave you with undoubtedly one of the best songs of the 1990s. But don't thank us...

Thank Tulsa

An Ambitious Return

We'll get right down to it. This is the new single by Joe McElderry, it's called Ambitions.

It just happens to be a cover version of a song by Norway's very own Donkeyboy. If it's of any interest, you can take a look at that version here. Joe's version, by and large, is along the same lines as the original so there's not too much contextual added value to be had here.

The bigger issue is whether this cuts it as the first "proper"* release of Joe's career. It's certainly a risky move: a vocal which is delivered almost entirely in falsetto and a track which has more than the faintest whiff of danceability about it. It's pretty much the last thing we expected to kickoff the album campaign, and for that, we can do very little but applaud. Undoubtedly, after the "Rage" fiasco a point needs to be proven and, in our humble opinion, Joe is more than deserving of genuine success from this campaign. Ambitions, with any luck, will go ahead and give him just that. At the end of the day, this is interesting, bold and very likeable

Sadly, though, we have real reservations about this being the first introduction to Joe's bona fide pop career. More specifically, we just wonder whether the less pop-savvy members of Joe's target demographic are going to "get it". Let's face it, it's all very well for people like us on the blogosphere doffing our caps at SyCo's bold decision to give Joe a comparatively heavyweight single with origins in a relatively obscure (yet undoubtedly prodigious) Skandivanian pop act, but, is it going to appeal to the cooing mums and teenage audiences which Joe so naturally appealed to on the X Factor? There's just a danger that this isn't quite what those groups in particular are looking for.

From a purely selfish point, we could just say "yeah? Well screw them. SyCo has put effort into making Joe a credible male solo artist by giving him genuinely interesting material to work with". The danger with that is, pop music bloggers on the Internet are fairly low down the pecking order of "people Joe McElderry needs to impress". But, we suppose, that's the thing about taking a risk: there's always the danger that it doesn't quite get pulled off. For the record, we absolutely hope that it does. Ambitions is a brilliant, clever single, which deserves to be the track which removes Joe from any clouds which the Christmas Number 1 debacle may have cast over his future prospects.

So with that said, we'll just put forward this question and leave it out there for consideration: is releasing Ambitions a stroke of genius? Or is it a single which is just too risky at this stage in Joe's career?

Frantic for ANTICS

So, tumbling across our email inbox the other day, we encountered a very pleasant e-mail from a lovely chap by the name of ANTICS. ANTICS kindly supplied us with a couple of his "tunes" for us to peruse and we found ourselves more than faintly impressed by what was on offer. ANTICS is a solo artist hailing from Battersea which immediately puts him in great company, with pop luminaries such as the So Solid Crew, Simon Le Bon and Dannii Minogue residing at various points in the area (or, at least, that's what Wikipedia tells us and that's NEVER WRONG!).


Anyhoo, ANTICS kindly supplied us with a couple of tracks to listen to, our favourite of which was Headspace which you can listen to and comment on in the handy player below:


  ANTICS - HEADSPACE by AnticsUK


Our favourite thing about Headspace is the unashamed Saturday Night Fever vibe that the track is rocking. ANTICS clearly has a great instinct for making solid pop/dance music. He's got a commanding beat supporting solid vocals and great lyrics. Which, at the end of the day, is pretty much "job done" isn't it? Clicking on the handy little downward arrow will let you download a copy of the track and we very much hope that it will sit as nicely alongside your popular music collection as it does ours.



There are more tracks available on ANTICS' MySpace page which will give you a more comprehensive idea of what he's all about. Superstar is undoubtedly a highlight, which takes things in a very different direction to Headspace. Certainly, ANTICS is a work in progress at this stage; whilst the dance vibe is there throughout there are hints of more versatile leanings in tracks like This Love. Nonetheless, these early glimpses show genuine promise and we certainly look forward to seeing how things develop from him from here. And not just because the novelty of writing someone's name in CAPS LOCK clearly won't wear off for a while.

My Wicked Heart gives Diana Vickers a turbo-charged pacemaker

Diana Vickers has just unleashed her third single upon the world which is going to form the basis of the "deluxe version" of Songs From The Tainted Cherry Tree. We'll get into the ethics of that particular marketing wheeze some other time, but for now, let's focus on the positives, shall we? My Wicked Heart received its first play on Radio 1 this afternoon and it goes a little something like this...



That's pretty much 3 for 3 on the "awesome single" front for Vickers, really, isn't it? Seriously, it's like everyone involved just thought "fuck it, I don't think it sounds quite big and brassy enough it. Get a raft of trumpets in here, stat!" It definitely pays off. This is a playfully fun single, in contrast to the more pensive Once and The Boy Who Murdered Love and firmly puts to bed any lingering doubts we may have had that Diana Vickers is becoming a licence to print money.

This song doesn't so much have "a hook" as it has an entire fishing tackle shop. Whether it's the infectious bass at the start or the infectious brass or the impish "ooops" in the chorus, everything about this song screams likeability. And just when you think the whole thing can't get more catchy, Vickers breaks out a "la,la,lai" middle-eight and exclaims "whoops-a-daisy!". Just take a moment to reflect on that, people. The phrase "whoops-a-daisy" is included in one of the month's best new tracks. Amazing.

This is a phenomenal single which shows Vickers at her pizie-ish best. It's perhaps not entirely original. A few listens has suggested more than a fleeting nod to tracks like Work by Amerie, and we hope we're not totally remiss in observing that the guitar has a Creep-ish timbre to it. Yet, despite that, there's no point in denying that My Wicked Heart *works*. At times, Diana's voice has genuine power behind it, rather than retreating into the naif whisper which we all know is so divisive. When seen alongside Once and Boy Who Murdered Love, this single continues the masterclass that the folks at RCA have been giving on hiding the negatives and accentuating the positives.

After The Boy Who Murdered Love failed to really make any sort of impact on the charts, Diana's team had to be worried that the momentum that was built with Once was dying off. But credit to everyone involved for ripping away the shirt of this project and giving it an adrenaline boost right in the aorta. This track, for our money, is a critical smash. We sincerely hope that it proves to be a commercial one, too.

Nadine Coyle finally gets on with it

If, five years ago, you had said that the members of Girls Aloud were all to take a break to pursue individual projects, you probably would have fallen off your chair if anyone had suggested that Cheryl Cole's solo debut would have been more hotly anticipated than Nadine Coyle's. I mean, let's look at the facts here: Nadine is, and always has been, the powerhouse vocalist of the group. Cheryl, on the other hand, has been known to produce vocals like this:



But, as we roll ever onwards towards the end of 2010, Cheryl's Three Words campaign has solidified her as a bona fide headliner, whereas Nadine's solo album and first single appears to have had a journey analogous to the exodus in order to see the light of day. Now, however, the first single from the album has finally been unveiled and the (probably extremely tedious) Cheryl vs Nadine chart war can finally get underway. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Insatiable



I think it's firstly extremely important to note that Nadine has wisely chosen not to stray too far from her pop roots. As MuuMuse has judiciously pointed out, Nadine hasn't got an urban bone in her body, and so it's very wise for her to be producing something wholly and unashamedly "pop" for this first single.

For some reason the first few seconds of the song reminds me of Echo by Girls Can't Catch. Anyway, that's probably not important.

No, the key thing here is that Nadine has made sure that the production has gone completely balls-out on making this sound like heavyweight stuff. The big and brassy backing track with the relentless production trickery could, in the hands of less-experienced vocalists, completely overshadow the song. Thankfully, Nadine produces a competent vocal which means that never comes to pass, and the focus is fittingly upon Nadine, the solo artist, and not on Nadine, the person who selects an overly aggressive backing track and can't keep up. In its own right, Insatiable is a great solo debut for Nadine. It's sufficiently distinct from her Girls Aloud oeuvre to avoid the "playing it safe" criticism, whilst, equally, she hasn't felt the need to reinvent the wheel and be seen as anything other than an amazing pop singer.

However, as sad as it is, comparisons are inevitably going to be drawn with Cheryl's solo debut (and, indeed, her forthcoming single Promise This). And this is where the Nadine solo campaign may well run into problems. Yes, Insatiable is a very good start. It's by no means a modern pop masterpiece, but it's a very competent effort and sets out the album's stall quite nicely. The problem is, it just doesn't have the vitality or (and please shoot us for saying this) the X Factor that Fight For This Love did. Insatiable, as good as it is, isn't an immediate hit. Indeed, there's little about it which screams "number 1 hit" in the way that Cheryl's debut absolutely did. We're writing all of this in full awareness that it's unfair to levy a comparison at two artists who, aside from being in the same band as one another, are actually producing completely divergent material. But, as unfair as it is, it is inevitable, and if you're going to judge the "Cheryl and Nadine solo experiment" on the basis of a comparison of Insatiable and Fight For This Love then, frankly, it's not even a competition.

It's extremely harsh. Insatiable, as we've said throughout, is a great pop song. Hopefully, it's a taster for even bigger and better singles to come from the album campaign. But one thing's for certain, it's not a song which is going to supplant the judgement that Cheryl Cole is the solo superstar of Girls Aloud.

So underrated I could Scream

Apologies for the recent silence on The Pop Web. We've been fairly busy with this thing called "life" (electric word, that). Anyway, we're returning with what we feel is a bit of a pertinent observation.

Kelis' Scream is phenomenal.

In the absence of some kind of "official video" we'll highlight the song via a rip which has been made available on popular website "youtube".



The album Fleshtone has produced some of the most interesting pop moments of the year so far, with the obvious highlight being Acapella. This latest single sees Kelis teaming up with the man with the most crowded Google Calendar in pop, David Guetta. Guetta's intervention in the pop world has produced some decidedly mixed results over the past couple of years, with him working absolute wonders for Kelly Rowland, and kicking I Gotta Feeling into the stratosphere of amazingness. Sadly he is also responsible for keeping Akon in the spotlight with the intensely irritating Sexy Bitch. You can't, as they say, have it all.

On this effort, however, Guetta's undoubted talent at the producer's desk and his ability to capture the pop zeitgeist blend perfectly with Kelis' stunning vocal. The song starts off delicately enough, with everything kicking off in the best possible way at precisely 45 seconds. The backing track, which, frankly, could be the standardised international symbol for "put your hands up" is absolutely irresistible and the switch in Kelis' vocal from the delicate, sensitively delivered verses to the disinterested, authoritative delivery of "You can't back down, lost in a crowd" works perfectly. The song oscillates perfectly between the emotional and the "oh fuck it, let's just get something down that'll sound amazing in a club at 2 am."

Our favourite lyric? "Big city's got you on the ground/ Afraid to fight? Don't make a sound/ So let's get to it/ Now you'll prove it/ Push back/ Scream and shout." This is a perfectly-pitched contribution to the world of pop and, frankly, deserves to capture more imaginations than just ours.

So be prepared for this to probably completely miss the top 40 on that basis alone :-(.


Disclaimer: we have no journalistic basis for assuming that David Guetta uses Google Calendar. Other diary/calendar software packages, are of course, available. It's just that we look at him and think "that looks like a young fellow who uses Google Calendar and probably benefits from the many great features embedded within it". If this is not the case, then we do, of course, sincerely apologise.