That’s about the size of it, that irresistible thought. Cornershop returned this year with a lovely album rooted in friendly funk and Punjabi lyrics I don’t understand. There is nothing bad about The Double ‘O’ Groove Of – unless it’s a 10-song celebration of George Osborne’s dynamic economic skills and the joys of drowning kittens. I don’t know, I don’t understand.
Junior cuts to the chase: “Is she Indian?” She doesn’t stick around for the answer; just plays ring-a-roses with her sisters before finishing with the splits.
From the steampunk intro (“I like the start”) to the little synth wiggle (“I like that bit”) to full recognition at the bridge (“Oh, I LOVE this song”), ‘Beat Of My Drum’ pushes Junior’s buttons. She has hand signals (polite ones) for each letter of the chorus and even past the point of attention she’s still mouthing the words as she sketches a picture of Ben and Holly.
So we’re pleased with Nicola’s ‘Freedom 90’. Sure, there’s a scent of ‘We Are Your Friends’ but I’m in no mood to give Simian Mobile Disco any credit after those run-of-the-boring-mill albums and James Ford’s stewardship of those crappy Arctic Monkeys records. So there. It’s unfair, yeah, but so is life. That’s why this squiggling flash of pop magnificence got to No.27 in a land where Taio Cruz has had two – count ’em, TWO – No.1 singles. Doubleyou. Tee. Eff. Questionmark.
Now this one’s all about ESP. Junior has her own special routine for this, a kind of backwards chicken dance that involves swinging her elbows behind her then bringing them forward in a clap. It’s either that gauche chap in the opening credits to The Young Doctors or it’s uncannily Jagger, and she’s not even seen the video. I can only assume it’s some freaky spiritual dancing osmosis from learning ballet at Dartford Grammar School’s Mick Jagger Centre. Seems plausible.
They’re a bit plain, aren’t they, Maroon 5? Adam Levine’s an ultra-buff Mick Hucknall leading an anonymous Simply Reddish collection of assured nobodies, turning out sleek germ-free pop-soul you can admire but never love. Um, except Simply Red are light years better, but the cold-eyed professionalism’s there anyway. I do like this one though, obviously; it’s so… so… VIP area. Slinking about behind a velvet rope while Christina glows like an amazing neon Stevie Nicks.
To quote the great philosopher and sage Aristotle, this is dubstep’s Sweet Female Attitude. A commercial repackaging then, except for it not fuelling any commerce. All that WUB WUB BRRRR has been coaxed into a cute little ditty that has something of the Sugarcubes if they’d locked Einar in a box like they always should have.
This year’s Björk and Bragi are Megan James and Corin Roddick, who come from Edmonton (Canada, not the Tottenham Ikea), and have some sort of shared history in fringed and floral electropop bands. James’s hiccuping vocals carve a bubbly tune out of Roddick’s popping electronics and it all has the icy clarity of Chairlift. And yeah, earlyish Björk. Lovely.
Junior claims to like it without much conviction but realises it “sounds like Daddy running in the snow and bumping his bum.” Again, lovely.
Soft, cuddly Cher. That’s not what we divvy shits signed up for. Still, it works and she keeps that fruity attitude in her vowels just in case we thought she was getting too silky. Frankly, I’d prefer some upfront rolling beats to boost the “FIGHTING… LIKE IT” bits in the verse – muscle it up, give it some brassy punch – but otherwise ‘With Ur Love’ is compact and sweet, a pop song crammed with ideas.
Junior’s pleased to see it beat Surkin: “This gets *thumbs up*. The one before gets *thumbs down*. I like the sound.” Mind you, Junior 2 says, “I don’t like this one, I like the one when we went to swimming.” If you don’t know what she’s talking about, you weren’t there. I don’t think I was.
Quite what Posner’s doing there though, I’m not sure. “First date, first base, second date, second base, third date… heeheehee…” Heeheehee? HEEHEEHEE? The least we expect is “third date, hefty kick to the balls from a size 5 Reebok hi-top”. Sort it out, Cher.
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK ME, who chooses the year-end Top 20s – you or Junior? Well, there’s a long and a short answer to this. Short answer: me. Long answer: Junior’s getting more influential because she’s fast becoming the captain of the stereo, but no, really, it’s me.
That’s how young Gallic techno revivalist Surkin can sit pretty in the Top 20 of the year without Junior really liking him. I should know, I asked, and all I got in return was a shrug. Which goes some way to enforcing a French stereotype but isn’t a ringing endorsement for a banging retread of some jumping house that sounds like it comes from a time when I was young enough not to put my back out to it.
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of six-year-old-friendly pop to come in the final 19. You know this place.
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?”
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.”
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!”
In the leading pack of life’s crushing disappointments is the discovery that the default hottest girl group in the land’s new single is not a cover of Duran Duran’s brilliantly lumpenly funky quasi-career-killer. Mollie could’ve done a “No-“, then Rochelle could’ve done a “No-“, then Frankie, Una and the other one could’ve joined reedy forces on “NOTORIOUS”, and it could’ve all descended into Chic meets the Sex Pistols meets Red Hot Chili Peppers chaos. Just look at what you could’ve won.
Instead, “My résumé says I’m a bad girl”. It’s no “Who really gives a damn for a flaky bandit?”, is it? Where it pulls it out of the fire though is with the fruity electro pulse and vocals put through the ringer – it’s mechanised. The Saturdays are only bad girls, notorious, because they’ve been programmed to be so. It’s svengali’d by computer, a Space Odyssey Malcolm McLaren. Not a terribly wholesome, erm, whole but a functional thrill.
It’s brought here by mistake, the lucky conjunction of the girls appearing on So You Think You Can Dance? and Junior and I happening to be watching it. While I continued my ongoing study of career trajectories of girl groups, Junior copied every single dance move they made. One beat behind, but accurately. Recent clips from Rihanna and Lady Gaga have got me in a panic about just how knowing young girls can get. They sponge it up. Normally – to the odd sulky “awww” – I’d switch over, but there’s little overtly sexualised about The Saturdays’ robotic choreography. Thin end of the wedge though.
Jukebox Junior 