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One Direction, ‘Gotta Be You’

November 25, 2011

Andrew Loog Oldham’s going to sue over that intro.

As sincere boyband ballads go, this isn’t dead before it begins. One Direction are being handled with care – just the right combination of harmless fun and puppy-shagging-your-legness – which makes them a nice fit in the teen market. It’s better than a bunch of miniature Cliff Richards sitting on stools and pretending adolescence is one big chaste wallow in romance. Yeah, ‘Gotta Be You’ is undying-love slush but at least the chaps are only declaring it so they can cop a feel.

Let’s not concern ourselves with the “mess” they made upon the poor girl’s innocence.

It’s just pleasant pop to the Juniors, who say they like it, as Cowell always knew they would. Junior 3 twirls about then raises her hands in the air for each yearning chorus – feeling that EMOTION coursing through. Junior herself is interested in the details: “Who’s singing?” Well, there’s Liam and Harry, they do the heavy lifting. Zayn’s a bit more freestyle, Louis chips in maybe. She points at Niall: “What does he do?”

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Martin Solveig and Dragonette, ‘Hello’

November 22, 2011

Dragonette

Sort of like Neil Tennant, I’m looking back upon my year, forever with a sense of shame – I’ve always been the one to blame. Not sure how this slipped into the reckoning though, because it’s clearly a 2010 single, but it’s been a big hit with the girls this year. Which makes them the ones to blame.

This is moronic. Naggingly, chirpily, vaguely enjoyably so, but moronic all the same. The Juniors understand it at a primal level I’m not hearing, joyously bellowing “HELLO” whether they’re 6, 3 or 1 and I’m forced to get up and bounce as well. Like Metronomy, Dragonette are one of those bands I don’t really like reviving a synth pop I love. Tropes alone are not enough, kids.

Solveig goes BANG BANG BANG bang bang bang bang BANG BANG BANG BANG bang bang bang bang. I go, “Heavens, I should start a 2011 Top 20 countdown next week.”

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Dion, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’

November 14, 2011

Dion

My mum introduced me to Dion. His music, I mean – she’s not a close personal friend. She might have had trouble with his drug years, if her attitude to my teenage smoking’s anything to go by. I’m not sure how this squares with her and my dad bringing back container-loads of duty free fags for my brother (13 years younger), but let’s save that one for another day.

So my mum introduced me to Dion a few years ago when she bought me 1975′s Phil Spector-produced Born To Be With You after reading a feature in the Telegraph. Great decision – it’s a truly stupendous record – although she was more into the rock’n'roll Dion and his Belmonts. This Dylan cover comes somewhere in between. It’s from Wonder Where I’m Bound, a cash-in collection of folk-rock efforts originally released in 1969 but reissued this year, and has that familiar, easy Dion swing. Something in his Bronx brogue is enormously warm and comforting and the arrangement sparkles, in a Byrdsian way perhaps.

This place should become a bit of a three-hander now. It’s Junior’s blog of course, but Junior 2 (three and a half to Junior’s six and a third) is increasingly the one who’s most interested in what I’m sticking on the stereo. Well, they’re different types of engagement, I suppose. Junior is now aware of the pop world around her and knows what she likes – and more and more it’s not what I’m choosing. That’s only right. But Junior 2 wants to know all about what I’m playing: she wants to see the sleeves, she wants to exchange croons of “baby blue”, she wants to compare with the Dylan original. Soon enough she’ll decide on her own stuff. That’s only right too.

In the meantime I’ll vainly carry on doing what I’m doing, possibly more frequently.

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Rolf Harris, ‘Jake The Peg’

September 13, 2011

Rolf Harris

A renaissance man – painter, singer, writer, comedian, TV presenter, wobble board pioneer – Rolf bestrides post-war culture like a bearded colossus, the Ayers Rock of the art world, the panting Rolfaroo of blocky strokes and sad/absurd songs. See what I did there? I anointed Rolf the antipodean Zelig of modern artistic advance. Always twinkling in the fabric, twitching the curtains of the global stage.

Rolf’s way is to find the poignant in the ridiculous – or vice versa – from Jake’s God-given travails to Miss Given’s usually ignored presence in ‘Stairway To Heaven’. He walks a fine line, but he has Kate Bush’s trust (I can just hear him against a backdrop of falling snowflakes, can’t you?) and can still make a grown man cry with ‘Two Little Boys’, a pair of facts that buys him a pass to mess about all he likes and remain a respected figure even as he emotes over a poorly chinchilla on a vet’s operating table.

His wily reach spans generations, with ‘Jake The Peg’ enjoying a canonical place in our home decades after it was recorded. It’s the first track on Hello Children Everywhere!, a 3-CD compendium of Children’s Hour classics that pulls in moth-eared but magnificent turns from Pinky and Perky, Flanders and Swann, Morecambe and Wise and other non-duo based acts. Such sustained quality, and kids today get Mr Tumble. Or, just as often in my house, Rihanna.

‘Jake The Peg’ prompts enthusiastic singing and dancing – surely another skill Rolf can master – and, from Junior alone, a lot of awkward walking about using a child-sized broom as an extra leg. “Can I touch your leg?” asks Junior 2, in a rather forward manner. Her comic timing’s great but it doesn’t quite match Rolf’s delayed pay-offs, the rhymes you can see a mile off yet they still slay you when they drop. I’m laughing; Junior’s now tap dancing, her peg leg an Astairesque cane.

“…2, 3, 4…8, 9, 10…14…19, 20, 21… … to twenty-five!”

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Glee Cast, ‘Don’t Stop Believin”

April 15, 2011

Rachel off of Glee

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing callow record buyers that those Top of The Pops compilations were the real deal. I was duped once – but only once – when I sifted the sales racks in WHSmith and found an LP of glittering pop hits by (and the memory might be fuzzy here) the likes of “The Jam”, “Soft Cell” and “XTC”, for just two quid! A bargain even before you factor in the laughing lady with the Farrah Fawcett hairdo, pulling a t-shirt down over a bare bottom half. I already had a sharp ear back then and it took me one intro to realise there was something fishy about this album. A bit of further investigation, and I never played it again.

I’m sure a relisten now would reveal ample competence on the part of the session players, but no bite, no star quality. Like I say, you fall for it once.

Or we all fall for it all over again. At least Glee’s brazen about it, but still their covers – despite extraordinary production values and belting performances – lack the edge of the originals; after all, they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. The thing about ‘Don’t Stop Believin” though, is, for once, it sounds like a different song from Journey’s teasing anthem. The a cappella ‘pianos’, the girl/boy exchange, even the relative brevity make a successful pure pop transformation.

Why talk about it now? Junior requested it: “This is my favourite.” “I like it too,” piped three-year-old sister, and they do both have an alarming handle on the lyrics. And a routine. Sometimes I question the wisdom of working full-time and leaving my daughters at the mercy of a mum who’s determined to indoctrinate them in all manner of apple pie pop culture. Then I realise it’s ace.

But again, why talk about it now? The Music Diary Project revealed that I don’t share music enough. A good 90% of my listening is through earphones on a commute, and while that’s great for wallowing in my favourites and discovering new stuff without distracting input, half the fun of music is communal experience – talking about it, listening together, arguing, preaching and, yeah, dancing like loons. That’s why I started Jukebox Junior. I need to find more time.

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1991 Top 20 Singles

November 18, 2010

That’s what we’re doing at the moment, spending a couple of weeks transferring the 1991 Top 20 Singles from the old blog. Click on that link back there, and we’ll return to the front page with the 2010 countdown at the end of the month. Triffic.

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1972 Top 20 Singles

August 6, 2010

We’re back. So soon. I wanted to give Junior a few months’ break after all that intensive listening and arduous holding-up of records, but she already misses the breakfast song.

So – if you’ll have us – we’ll be back next week in September, reliving 1972. You didn’t live it the first time round? What is this, kids’ day out? One change: Junior doesn’t want to wave singles for the camera anymore. Something had to give.

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The Top 50 Best Singles of the 00s

January 20, 2010

Yeah, everyone else has done theirs already, but we like to think we’ve taken extra care over our chart. We haven’t been lazy. Nearly there now. Might even start tomorrow. Or Friday. Definitely Friday. Definitely not next week.

A note from our editors: we have reserved the right to utterly – and unabashedly – renege on previous opinions. Like, you know, the No.16 single from 2006 might be in it while the No.3 isn’t. Feelings CHANGE, man, and sometimes we may have been wrong. OK, not wrong as such – overcome by the vapours, maybe.

See you then.

UPDATED UPDATE: Monday, then. Monday the 1st. Let’s stick to something we can manage. All my proper work will be done and the full chart will be worked out, not just guessed. Ho hum. Anyone still reading?

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The Rolling Stones, ‘Tumbling Dice’

September 15, 2009

The Rolling Stones

As Beatlemania strikes for the fourth time – yes, fourth: there was that first one, then the chronological single releases in the 80s, then Anthology, now these rather comely remasters – it seems only fitting to gad about playing Stones records.

But what would The Beatles be like if they were still around today? Notwithstanding some high profile deaths, would we be dismissing them for not having had a Top 10 hit since ‘Got My Mind Set On You’? Would we be saying, “Oh, but you have to see them live to understand. Not that they’ve performed since that rooftop gig in ‘69”? Would we be suggesting their last great peak was when Linda supported an addled Lennon on guitar duties in the early 70s?

Mick Taylor was the Stones’ unsung hero as 60s turned to 70s, initially stepping in when Brian Jones was seemingly not fit for the job, and then way too dead for the job. But the man on Exile On Main Street’s ‘Tumbling Dice’ is still Keef, a trademark riff boogie-ing the song along. It’s an easy, devastated rocker, bang-on cool in its barely glued swagger, and the touchstone for all those would-be Stones. Just pick up Primal Scream’s Give Out But Don’t Be Give Up and jump to ‘Call On Me’. “Carbon-copy” implies a laborious step between the two.

Charlie Watts would be pleased in his dotage to hear Junior praising the drums. She goes on to join the gospel backing for the “baaayyy-beh”s, and she and her sister give it the full lungs for the fading “got to roll me”s, swept up in the ecstatic cyclone of soul-soaked seedy rawk.

Partners in crime:

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TV On The Radio, ‘Crying’

August 24, 2009

TV On The Radio

A month-long gap is inexcusable of course. Anyway, my excuses are holiday, seasonal lack of exciting releases and a nagging sense I should be searching for a new job. I have your sympathy now, don’t I?

This is a single from a couple of months back, from an album about 10 months back. Topical. It’s the only obviously Princey song from TV On The Radio’s reputedly very Princey Dear Science, funking along with a guitar riff that could cut your hair. Still, while the album might not be massively Minneapolitan, it’s completely bloody amazing and the global critical consensus says, “Here, here.” Everyone’s jumped on board now, possibly because it’s the most accessible thing TVOTR have done; there’s a sense of relief they’ve shipped out challenging for tuneful, but even though the sound was murkier on Return To Cookie Mountain, it was really no less melodic. You just had to try a little harder. Maybe no one wants to try a little harder.

We didn’t try all that hard here, mind. No chance Junior could keep still in the car seat as TVOTR hit their groove, but we reserved our critical faculties for Kyp Malone’s name. Surely no one’s called Kyp? “Harvey at nursery’s middle name is Kyp.” I’ll take her at her word.

Smoke me a Kyp:

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