kaiser chiefs

[6] Chaka Khan, ‘I Feel For You’

I see the lilac lothario is flavour of the month again after last week’s Brits performance. It was pretty good, yeah, but it doesn’t take a superhuman effort to make the Kaiser Chiefs and Coldplay look ordinary. What a disgrace those awards are. What exactly are they rewarding? Marketing campaigns, that’s what. I mean, no one’s bought that Jack Johnson album, but we’ve all seen it advertised a million flipping times.

Anyway, back to Prince. I’m making a big deal of his writing credit here because I feel a bit guilty about ‘When Doves Cry’ not being in this chart. No, I don’t know why either. Chaka’s performance is great, but it’s the song and the Melle Mel rap that make the record.

I’m also a big fan of the abstract drawing of a slimline soul diva on the single cover, a world away from cuddly Chaka. Junior squealed at the song, bouncing up and down on her baby booty.

The Fatback Band, ‘I Found Lovin’’

Welcome to Junior’s second year. At Christmas we learned that she’s a dab hand at ripping off wrapping paper, and then eating it. The presents inside were barely a distraction. She said goodbye to 2005 at about 7pm on New Year’s Eve, giving her parents the opportunity to tear into the alcohol that was still knocking around the house. We had Hoegaarden, buck’s fizz and of course champagne, and slagged off NYE telly. Jools Holland’s thing was ok, I suppose, if you like KT Tunstall, Goldfrapp and the Kaiser Chiefs. We can take or leave all that around here.

‘I Found Lovin’’ was an inspired present for me from Junior’s mum. A 1983 picture sleeve 7”, in fact. It’s an old favourite, and always the first record played in the pub after we’d come in from the football. Junior’s Uncle Paddy has been waiting for a re-release of it for some time, so he’s going to be all jealous.

Junior hums along to it, from the mat where she’s throwing around the toys, old and new. If I was starkly honest with myself, I’d say she was humming because the first signs of teeth are bothering her, but instead let’s say that she was getting lost in its rare groove and faint fragrance of Kronenbourg in plastic glasses.

[3] Girls Aloud, ‘Biology’

“The way that we TALK, the way that we WALK”. Junior finds this frustrating. Are they teasing her? She’s still laughing at me standing by the stereo, but it’s a CD so I’m not even trying to be the superfly DJ. Those new-fangled CD decks are just cheating anyway. You don’t get the chance to hit the stylus arm by mistake, and you never need to balance a 20p coin anywhere to stop it jumping.

I could be the muso about this song’s unusual structure. Girls Aloud and Xenomania eschew your standard verse-chorus arrangement to fling in a load of highs and “can you see the join?” splicing. It shows ambition that a lot of modern pop lazily avoids, whether you like the record or not, and it’s a gamble. They don’t get the Number Ones you might expect, and perhaps they don’t appeal to “the kids” as much as they do to the pop scholars.

Pop scholars: Paul Morley, Paul Gambaccini, writers at Stylus and Pitchfork, the NME to satisfy the occasional whim, and hey, me. And Junior. Will she be defending this sort of stuff when all her friends are into the 2018 equivalents of Sum 41, the Kaiser Chiefs, the Killers and 50 Cent? Don’t fail me now.