Can’t help thinking M.I.A. has found her song and is sticking to it BUT I LIKE IT. I think I like it because of the reaction it draws out of Junior – she pulls the buffalo stance and a lightning flurry of rude boy gestures. Doesn’t M.I.A. do just that to all of us? She’s a Neneh with haphazard politicial bearings, and her songs are the Guardian Guide gone audio.
All this and “it sounds like a bad girl’s voice”. So Junior and I agree Maya talks it like she walks it.
Let’s speed this up a bit.
Jai Paul seems to release records accidentally, like murky pop burps. This is sunk in electronic flotsam and jetsam but there’s a bright doo-wop swagger in its sub(marine)-R&B coils.
Thumbs up from Junior even though she can’t hear the first half because her two-year-old sister’s tantrum is drowning it out. Junior 2 likes “the noise”. Jai Paul, I think, rather than her crotchety sibling.
The lyrics are no less rhyming-dictionary than Chris Martin’s worst un-excesses, but Fixers just seem to have better source material. Yeah, generally it’s The Beach Boys. “Waikiki” sounds a bit Beach Boys.
Only kidding. Absolutely everything about this sounds like The Beach Boys except for the bits that sound like Animal Collective trying to sound like The Beach Boys. All this is catnip to me. But it’s only at 13 because sometimes – particularly when I’m playing along on my air piano, like I did here – a dark thought will rear up that ‘Iron Deer Dream’ could be a good Scouting For Girls song. I know that’s a concept beyond natural brain patterns, but there it is. It’s out there.
With no such listening parameters or prejudices, Junior says she likes it. She likes “the noise”. We agree it’s quite dense, the inevitable result of splurging all your best choruses on one song.
Why didn’t you remind me I was doing this? One song a weekday before revealing the No.1 on the 21st. Another broken manifesto pledge.
Usher’s like one of those billionaires now who does whatever the blazes he wants when he wants. So he can do a big guest vocal on a Guettathon and then dial it right down for this shard of Buck Rogers R&B. He’s squawking the hell out of his falsetto – which Junior represents via a scale of rising hand gestures, like a Hello Kitty t-shirt-wearing Mariah Carey – and lets the beats and bass drag and drop like a picture editor.
It’s tortured spook-soul that months on sounds better and better. Junior 3 lip-synchs with a pained expression and a sprinkling of vogues, to properly channel Usher’s emotional experience. Junior herself says he sings like a girl.
Much like everyone else in the cosmos, British (Berlin-based, we’re obliged to say) DJ/Producer (we’re obliged to say) Scuba got caught up in a Twitstorm earlier this year. I forget what. Now he’s a mainstay of the DJsComplaining account. So, bless him and all that, but let’s just concentrate on the music – ‘The Hope’ is a grab bag of hard 90s house tropes, hovering, blasting and Josh Winking in what they’re already calling a thrill-ride. It’s as crisp as a Walker’s.
Junior the musicologist identifies some castanets. I bet even Scuba didn’t realise he put them in there.
Saint Etienne are eating themselves, singing about the joy and anticipation of seeing their favourite band, of seeing themselves. Self-mythologising, London-mythologising, pop-mythologising. They’re so far into their navel, they’re sending shivers up their own spine.
And mine. I mean, look at this place, constantly turning over the past. This kind of pop nostalgia is catnip. Obviously, Saint Etienne’s celebration of that pre-gig buzz could apply to bands now, but “maybe they’ll open with… a top five hit”? Does anyone think like that now? You probably know exactly what they’re going to play by aggregating setlist.fm stats.
This did nothing for the girls, who scrapped over a toy ladybird. Junior admitted she liked the beat, but she wasn’t captivated by the feeling or the propulsive synth wash. Perhaps she’ll get fuzzy about this in a couple of decades.
Most of the Bat For Lashes chat this year has been about her standing there starkers on her album cover heaving an also-threadless man about. What could be, uh, naked titillation is in fact making a more artistic point about stripping herself bare, no ornament, no facade, and expressing an openness in relationships too. As she explains to Andy Welch here in an absorbing interview.
Phwoar. Sorry. But ‘Laura’ backs it all up, as unadorned as it is beautiful. There’s a glumness about it, but just listen and it’s a lovely pep talk to a cautious pal – and that chorus, that word in fact, hits like a graceful steam train. A hook so refined.
It prompts some interpretive dance from Junior, which seems right for Natasha Khan. There’s a touch of the aesthete about her, however good a straight-up popstar she could make. Junior 2 wants to dance on the table. She drinks in lyrics, you see.
I’mma party, I’m gon dance, put your hands upon my body
On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body
I’mma party, I’m gon dance, put your hands upon my body
On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body
I’mma party, I’m gon dance, put your hands upon my body
On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body
I’mma party, I’m gon dance, put your hands upon my body
On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body
I’mma party, I’m gon dance, put your hands upon my body
On my body, on my body, put your hands upon my body
Well, you get the idea with that. We’re no strangers to inanity here at Jukebox Junior, so we recognise a direct, concise message and appreciate the ease of the singalong. Junior responds the only way that makes sense – big fish, little fish, cardboard box – Junior 2 does a pointy routine and Junior 3 screws up her face and lip syncs. Which is a bit alarming. Must we feed this filth to our kids? In a tense, lucky escape they seem to think every word is “party” so it’s just bop-about nonsense.
Which it is, I suppose. And yet, and yet, that quasi-classical synth refrain suggests something deeper, that Wiley is satirising the booty bounce as he tumbles through existential quandary to existential quandary in a Grimeception nightmare.
We did the ‘Saturday Night’ dance to this cute pelting kitten of a dance-pop frippery. Well, if we’re getting picky I think we did the Macarena, but you know, details. Either way, 18 years on – EIGHTEEN YEARS ON – plundering Whigfield is fair game, or even long overdue. And this is a promotional song for Red Bull so it’s not exactly bearing any standards for purity of art.
In fact, Charli – one of the planet’s leading blogstars – doesn’t even sound as if she’s particularly arsed, coming on like the sulky teenager I’m looking forward to Junior being in (oh God) six years. Blogstar, blogstar. It’s a different stratum of pop, isn’t it? Amazing popstars, loved by daytripping indie boys, barely getting within a whiff of Reggie’s Top 40 cologne. Maybe Charli, Robyn and Solange are just rubbish popstars after all.
Junior’s now moved onto the funky worm and declares ‘I’ll Never Know’ “fabulosa”. It’s everyone else who doesn’t know.
Junior is 7. When we started our year-end countdowns on 7 December 2005 she was five months old and our No.20 single of the year was Gorillaz and De La Soul’s ‘Feel Good Inc.’.
In 2006 it was Secret Machines’ ‘Lightning Blue Eyes’
In 2007 it was Bat For Lashes’ ‘What’s A Girl To Do?’
In 2008 it was Hot Chip’s ‘Ready For The Floor’
In 2009 it was LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Bye Bye Bayou’
In 2010 it was Lykke Li’s ‘Get Some’
In 2011 it was Surkin’s ‘Ultra Light’
And now it’s Regina Spektor, exhuming a song from a decade ago and slapping on a bouncing, pop reggae rhythm track that you’d have expected to see Rockmelons fail to have a hit with in 1993. So it’s all about history today.
“I know this song,” says Junior, turning sharply to the stereo and draping her hair in her apple strudel and custard. “This is the best song ever,” projects Junior 2 (aged 4), hearing it for the first time. By the second chorus she knows all the words because she’s got a brain like that. Junior 3 (aged 2) just wants to get down and dance with her sisters. With every daughter we produce, this blog gets more complicated. That’s why I take six-month breaks – not laziness. No.
Spektor’s never been more than a kooky distant blip on my radar but What We Saw From The Cheap Seats is a deep-pile, affecting album and this is its shining pop moment. It also makes me want to hang out on Lexington and claim, “I love Paris in the rain”. I just love Paris when I’m not throwing up the previous night’s dinner from that place near Sacré Coeur. So that’s nice.
Jukebox Junior 