music

[15] Foals, ‘This Orient’

Foals

Now for some light relief.

Oh, no, it’s Foals. All city lights and satellites, ‘This Orient’ is couched in romantic urban imagery and scuttles along busily, tight but dreamy, soaring through neon expanses. It’s a bit of a pop moment, with a lovely mix of a cappella bops and faked marimba – and later some crystal synth chimes to create an aural treat around an empty shell – and stands out on Total Life Forever for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong reasons that make it a better single than the more powerful ‘Spanish Sahara’. It works in my head, anyway.

Obviously, for a serious bunch of young men, their name is hilarious. Once Junior’s recovered from that and the hectic bout of dancing she chucks herself into for the first few bars, she comes to the only possible conclusion: “It’s some people dressing up.”

[16] Alexis Jordan, ‘Happiness’

Alexis Jordan

See, this is what needs to be done with perky X Factor contestants – hook them up with Norwegian ultrapop production doyens Stargate, who can conjure up the sort of inspired decision that slaps a pretty pop vocal over Deadmau5’s ‘Brazil (2nd Edit)’. What do you get? Trance&B. Come to think of it, last time we let Stargate loose on a UK talent show contestant we got a rubbish Hear’Say single. Let’s call that inexperience.

Over here we don’t care if you’ve come from America’s Got Talent or whatever. Look at Kelly Clarkson, who appeared to turn up in the UK bearing some semblance of cred. To us, Alexis Jordan is a cute little poppet with a knack to make “hurry, hurry, hurry now, quick, quick, quick” sound poignant. She’s come out of nowhere straight into our hearts. Bless.

Just ask Junior, who’s affected by those plangent synths. “There’s no such thing as ‘happiness’,” is her alarming response, until I explain it’s “being happy” and she concedes that happens quite often. You have to work for kids’ trust, you know. We consider why Jordan’s in such a hurry: “She wants to meet her friends.” It’s something like that.

[17] Mark Ronson & The Business Intl, ‘Bang Bang Bang’

Mark Ronson & The Business Intl

The first song to make a meal of ‘Alouette’ this year does it with every bleeding idea that occurs to it. Cheryl Cole’s ultra-mannered take is bewildered, this is just bewildering. Ronson has gone back to the 80s, but rather than plunder plinky-plonk synths like every other La Roux under the sun, he turns to that decade’s forgotten everything-goes ethos and finds something cogent in a mix of squirty electro, Prince soul, teeny bop and bouncy hip hop nursery rhymes. If this doesn’t prove the man has mad skillz then nothing does.

In fact, these are just the latest in a long line of ‘Alouette’ bastardisations. Junior’s reminded of another she learned on holiday in Corfu with frankly manic dance actions to go with it. She then adds some more jerky steps, seemingly filched off Go-Jos routines from early Top Of The Popses. We have a right old ball. And that’s Ronson’s bag.

[18] Uffie featuring Pharrell, ‘ADD SUV’

Uffie

I don’t know if the joke’s on them or us or the sucker MCs, but this makes me laugh anyway. Pharrell, with half an eye on Uffie’s “ghetto ass”, is like Roadrunner at a Haribo party, bouncing off the sonic walls and generally making a hepped-up berk of himself – “Wait a minute, what I say I gotta do again?” Of course this is meant to be a dig at ADD bling merchants, and we can all get behind that, but… but… It’s gone.

Uffie should be a hit around here, but Junior just shrugs and says, “My LeapPad’s running out.” Perhaps her attention’s slightly deficit too. Uffie should be a hit around everywhere, because she has a great care-less voice, a team of cracking French zonk-disco cohorts (Feadz, Mirwais, Mr Oizo etc), a few tunes, the looks and the looks-cool. But she took four years to make an album and along came Ke$ha to do it more obviously.

[19] Owen Pallett, ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’

Owen Pallett

That Owen Pallett – he can arrange my strings anytime. No, seriously, he’s really good. And when I eventually get around to committing my baroque pop masterpiece to acetate (the kids still use acetate, right?), it’ll be adorned with all the soaring beauty and heroic imagery of ‘Lewis Takes Off His Shirt’, starting off shy and polite before stripping off to bare its defiance. It will occupy that fey but assured territory between Miracle Fortress and Patrick Wolf, breathless with romance, stubborn in its grace. It will so.

And will Junior join our chamber orchestra? Her thumbs-up says, “Sign me up”; her mouth says, “It’s good. It sounds like violins”; her funnybone just shakes at the title.

[20] Lykke Li, ‘Get Some’

Lykke Li

TESTING, testing, one, two, one, two – in the place to be. Here’s the first of the last words on the year, starting in November because there are 20 working days until Christmas. We worked it out.

The entire internet was Lykke-ablaze a few weeks ago when this one surfaced. Which is odd, because I don’t remember everyone going doolally over Youth Novels in 2008 – or perhaps Junior, her mum and I were all so doolally about it ourselves that we inhabited our own remote doolally island far from the doolalliness of the hoi polloi. Whatever the case, everyone loves Lykke now and well they might: ‘Get Some’ hits all the right buttons; you know, the ones marked “voodoo”, “tribal”, “freak-blues” and “really rather rude”.

Junior’s too busy doing some sort of shimmy to pay attention to Lykke Li’s frank suggestions for her partner. A relief, because I don’t really want to explain all that. I’d have to look it up, for a start.

1991 Top 20 Singles

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.

[1] Rod Stewart, ‘You Wear It Well’

Rod Stewart

Or, ‘Maggie May (Pt II)’. That shouldn’t sound uncharitable – Lord knows there was plenty of mileage left in Rod’s 1971 No.1 even after its six minutes had passed, its pace picking up as it faded, the Faces still sieving gold dust. Here once more, acoustic and electric guitars combine with mandolin to create a rough-hewn folk ambience that, along with Rod’s ever-lived-in voice, basks in an autumn sun. It possesses none of ‘Maggie May”s mean spirits, instead delivering love and cheek – “You wear it well/A little old-fashioned, but that’s all right” – and warm, swinging violin. If anything, it’s more relaxed than its ancestor, breezy and affectionate.

Junior is mildly intrigued that Rod is Nanny’s favourite singer, until she points out, “No one’s singing.” This is the extended intro version from a greatest hits set, bizarrely including ‘Interludings’, the brief pluckings that precede ‘You Wear It Well’ on Never A Dull Moment. They fit, of course, drawing out the stop-starts before the song kicks off all in a rush, as if Rod’s suddenly weary of the shilly-shallying. Junior’s too moody to say anything more, but on a better day she’d bounce with the bonhomie. You could never get bored with this. Tire of ‘You Wear It Well’ and you tire of, well, The Black Crowes. I know, just imagine.

So that was a mere 38 years ago. Next up, a mere no years ago. Now. 2010. THE Top 20 Singles of This Year, coming your way on 29 November (or slightly earlier, and we may republish the 1991 Top 20 first because it’s stuck on the old blog). Clear?

[2] Elton John, ‘Rocket Man’

Elton John

“This is for boys,” is the reaction from Junior. I think she’s speaking about astronauts being a young lad’s preoccupation, which means she’s forgetting the half-hour’s footage of space shuttles taking off she made me play her on YouTube a few months ago. And the increasingly complex questions she asked me, questions I then increasingly met with outlandish cod-science dressed up as wisdom – parenthood in a nutshell.

Space is mainly for boys. Actually, I’m trying to write a comic novel about space travel. Think Red Dwarf, with laughs. Kate Bush covered ‘Rocket Man’, of course, and she’s for boys. Come on, you know it’s true. Elton’s ‘Rocket Man’ is all about space, but not just space – it’s also about… space. The missing line after, “Burning out his fuse up here alone…” Listen, there’s a missing line. With or without it, it’s gorgeous, stately and lonely.

[3] Al Green, ‘Let’s Stay Together’

Al Green

I thought we were tearing through 1972 too fast, and soon it would be 1973 and we’d be faced with ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree’ before you can say, ‘Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?’ Yes, I thought that. In any case, you can’t just steam in to talking about Reverend Green. You need to take it easy, kick back into the smooth groove, feel the warm embrace of the horn section, take your top off then put it back on when you realise you don’t share Al’s physique.

Things took a jarring turn when I played this, because Junior slapped her hands over her ears and refused to listen. She wanted Lady Gaga. “But,” I protested, “Al Green’s one of the greatest soul singers.” “No, he’s not,” came the smackdown.

Perhaps he’s not. I rather think he is, though; he sounds like he means it and can make you believe it, believe anything. Whether that’s the sign of a trickster, I don’t know, but his performance on ‘Let’s Stay Together’ is imbued with a conviction its lyric doesn’t quite share – if everything’s so tickety-boo in this relationship, why make a promise to keep it going? It should mosey on regardless.