daily planet

Solange, ‘Sandcastle Disco’

Solange

There’s no rush to leave 2008 behind – and besides, until we choose a new year or set up the crazy vinyl-ripping device that’ll allow us to dive into those dog-eared 7”s, we have no new project – so we’ll clear up a few songs that might have made the Top 20 if they’d been good enough or I’d actually heard them in the first place. Kicking off, Beyoncé’s self-styled crazy sister.

It’s a smart enough metaphor: she might look all strong and fortified, protected by drawbridge and moat (and archers in the battlements), but really she’s just made of sand; “don’t blow me away”. Metaphors alone won’t sell a pop song, though, so it’s lucky that Sol’s brought a sweet melody, shuffling beats and some earworm “ooo-ooo-ooo”s along for the ride. Not that they helped – the perfectly formed ‘Sandcastle Disco’ washed away with the tide before it could even crack the top 150.

So Solange’s valiant attempts to distance herself from big sis actually bore fruit – no one gave a stuff about her. It’s a pity, because this track has the pop nous to be an instant hit with Junior, who’s “ooo-ooo-ooo”ing to perfection by the second chorus and bopping like a deely in the car seat. I’m certain she’d like the whole album too, with its mild psychedelic soul and sunny tunes, and perhaps we’ll make an effort to find out. It’s the least we can do for poor Sol-Angel.

Oh, happy new year, folks.

2008 Top 20 Singles?

Halfway through the year, always looking for delaying tactics and ways to ramp up the tension for the year-end countdown, here’s a minor indicator – the Top 20 Most Played 2008 Singles on my iPod thingy.

[1] Martha Wainwright, ‘Bleeding All Over You’
[2] The Ting Tings, ‘Great DJ’
[3] Laura Marling, ‘Ghosts’
[4] Alphabeat, ‘Fascination’
[5] Fleet Foxes, ‘White Winter Hymnal’
[6] Coldplay, ‘Violet Hill’
[7] The Ting Tings, ‘That’s Not My Name’
[8] Death Cab For Cutie, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’
[9] MGMT, ‘Time To Pretend’
[10] Lykke Li, ‘I’m Good, I’m Gone’
[11] Coldplay, ‘Viva La Vida’
[12] Santogold, ‘L.E.S. Artistes’
[13] Portishead, ‘Machine Gun’
[14] Vampire Weekend, ‘Oxford Comma’
[15] Laura Marling, ‘Cross Your Fingers’/’Crawled Out Of The Sea’
[16] Hercules And Love Affair, ‘Blind’
[17] The Shortwave Set, ‘No Social’
[18] Goldfrapp, ‘A&E’
[19] H ‘two’ O featuring Platnum, ‘What’s It Gonna Be’
[20] Foals, ‘Red Socks Pugie’

Admit it. You’re astonished.

The Ting Tings, ‘That’s Not My Name’

As the 1969 Top 20 hobbles to a thrilling conclusion, we’re hop-skip-jumping all the way to the present and a record that Junior went loopy for when it appeared on one of those new-fangled MTV channels last week. We’re even a bit slow off the mark here, as it’s been toppled from an unlikely chart summit by hit machine Rihanna, but it’s still the breakthrough smash of the year – a grand departure from its achingly hip, limited 2007 run.

You’ve heard the comparisons – Blondie (yes, the cool-eyed Katie White is indeed blonde and, in a slightly darkened room, stunning), ‘Mickey’ (the star-jumping rhythm and lairy rap-song straight off Toni Basil’s much mis-(or not)-construed 1982 chartbuster), The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’ (that rhythm again, really, also massaged for Girls Aloud’s ‘No Good Advice’) – but, like the best pop puffery, ‘That’s Not My Name’ blends influences to form a monster that stomps, jerks, twitters and rocks in its own nation-enslaving way.

We’re mad for it right now, pure victims of hype if you see things through those spectacles. Sometimes there’s no hype without fire. As the record builds to its multi-layered, full-rocking coda, Junior’s reaction is a spinning, leaping, head-shaking frug from dining room to living room – pop star in infancy.

And while we’re sojourning in 2008, here are some of her other recent pop moments:

– “She’s got hair like me” to Diana Ross gamely keeping it all together in the ‘Chain Reaction’ video
– “Black and gold, black and gold, black and gold – that’s your favourite, Daddy” (not sure who’s feeding her these lies)
– Sticking her hand in the washing machine for the nth time one day, she’s told to leave it alone before defiantly reaching in again and pulling out the new Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan album

For Junior, music is everywhere.

Stevie Wonder, ‘Happy Birthday’

A short postscript. Played this last Tuesday for Junior’s half-birthday, but shelved any review. Today, of course, it’s Martin Luther King Day, the result of Stevie’s schmaltzy yet warming musical campaign. Was the day inaugurated purely on the strength of this song’s message? Or is that apocryphal?

I remember Junior kicking her legs along to this, still buoyed by the superlative Scritti Politti tune. She wasn’t rolling over from back to front – because she did that for The First Time this morning – but she was happy. Her mother just rolled her eyes. My record selection can be a touch literal.

A worthwhile song, then, but one that accelerated Stevie’s wholehearted embrace of gloopy sentiment. It means most to me as a play-out to a sweet episode of Northern Exposure, no stranger itself to the gloop.

Laura Nyro, ‘Wedding Bell Blues’/Kelis, ‘Milkshake’

I thought we could compare ’60s girl and ’00s girl, and I could have palpitations about how Junior was going to turn out. If you know Nyro’s song, it’s likely to be from a cover version. The Fifth Dimension, or something. A somewhat desperate lyric now I think about it, but the yearning for the wedding day is nicely old-fashioned. Kelis, of course, is dispensing with formalities.

‘Wedding Bell Blues’ swings by at skipping pace, and Junior can’t help but sing along. This involves a brief hum every couple of bars but it’s more than, say, Shaun Ryder can manage. For ‘Milkshake’, we’re occupied with dad’s patented Leg Seesaw. This is more of a challenge for the old man now that missy has passed six months and weighs in at over 17 and a half pounds. One should never disclose a lady’s statistics, naturally, but we’re proud of the little baby rice guzzler.

Kelis has never again hit the peaks of her first album, but this song is nagging enough to be impossible to ignore. I hadn’t heard any Laura Nyro records at all until a couple of years back. Always assumed that she was a bit Uncut/Mojo po-faced and dull. Taking the plunge, I found her records brimming with blue-eyed pop soul. Go get some.

Did Bill ever marry the girl in the song? It all sounds dashed uncertain, and I’m not sure he’s a chap you can hang your hat on. Come the 20s, I’m going to be the scourge of Bills everywhere.

Scritti Politti, ‘The Word Girl’

You can call them Double G & the Traitorous Three (plus two). This is a timely indulgence, because I found out on Sunday that Green Gartside played his first gig in 20 plus years the previous night, in a pub in Brixton and under that assumed name. I reckon Junior’s mum would’ve let me go, if I’d known. Drat. On the upside, there will be more gigs and a new album to boot. It’s only been six years since the last record, so he’s clearly on turbo thrust now.

This is the first record I played today, on Junior’s half-birthday. A typically Scritti meditation on the meaning of words and their “abuse”, and the warmest dubby sound. Now, I’m never going to find fault in any of their work, and Junior seems no different. She windmills her arms, smiles and blows an appreciative raspberry. There’s no more reliable indicator of baby satisfaction. She seems comfortable in her six months, and in the breezy lovers’ rock flow.

I bought the Cupid & Psyche 85 album with the five pounds a lady gave me when I foiled the theft of her handbag. I was a 13-year-old vigilante warrior. I bought it on cassette, the cassette got chewed up; I replaced the cassette, this also got chewed up. Exasperated, I swapped this for the LP. And a couple of years back, I bought it on CD. That’s dedication.

The Jam, ‘Going Underground’

As a kid, I thought this was the start of some kind of Jules Verne adventure. Weller was standing proudly on the lip of a pit, a yawning chasm leading underground to the centre of the earth. A brass band was playing, the boys’ brigade was there, adding up to a fitting send-off for the brave mod explorer. I was a lad brimming with insight.

Jam lyrics continued to cause me problems. The reams of gibberish I must’ve sung along to ‘A Town Called Malice’, the dodgy copy I’d recorded off the Top 40. My mum had her own take on it, because she told me she didn’t like me playing the nasty record, but I had the last laugh when I secretly bought the 7”. In fact, I stuck it on a tape she asked me to make for her a year or two later. That’s a last, last laugh.

Junior dances to ‘Going Underground’, and laughs and points at her dad standing by the stereo again. She’s heard bad things about DJs somewhere. Might’ve overheard me slagging off Chris Moyles. Without pictures, she’s unperturbed by Bruce Foxton’s haircut and seems happy with the whole experience. She’s now braced to discover the Style Council.

Talking Heads, ‘Once In A Lifetime’

At some stage, scrabbling around for a theme, we were going to do Jukebox Junior’s Top 10 Greatest Singles Of All Time but, what with ‘Young Americans’ already gone and now this, I’m throwing them away cheaply. This would be Number Four. Probably.

Also, I should’ve done this on a day that Junior was wearing oversized clothes with huge shoulders – not an uncommon occurrence – and not when she’s in her just-right denim dress. All in all, I’ve made a right pig’s ear of it. Junior’s not quasi-autistic like her dad, fortunately, so she couldn’t give two hoots about the circumstances. She’s right there with David Byrne’s nervy, scratchy paranoid funk twitches, even clapping at “there is water at the bottom of the ocean”. She finds the sublime in the ridiculous.

This is so far ahead of its time, I’m surprised it wasn’t drowned as a witch. Music caught up 10 years later when rock bands found dance elements to their music and Paul Oakenfold got rich. Talking Heads never needed help.