Bing Crosby to challenge X Factor for Christmas number one
Bing Crosby is going to challenge the X Factor for the Christmas number one spot with a remake of his classic seasonal hit White Christmas.
Bing Crosby. Throwing down a challenge from beyond the grave, is he?
Despite selling millions of records, the late singer - who died 33 years ago - never released a number one single.
You don't actually release a number one single, do you? You have one; you release a single you might hope goes to number one. But still, carry on:
But his classic Christmas hit has been reworked into a duet with the opera star Bryn Terfel.
Ah, so when the Telegraph says "Bing is challenging", they mean that the moneygrubbers who own the copyright in his recording are besmirching the memory in a bid to make a few quid. Perhaps they couldn't fit that in the headline, though.
Who can make sense of this mushing together of variegated ingredients? Step forward HMV's Csarther Christmas, Gennaro Castaldo:
HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said: ''Last year we saw how the internet and social media could be used to great effect to determine the Christmas number one.
''People might assume the same will happen again, but I think it's unlikely we'll see such a co-ordinated campaign for a while, so it's entirely possible that a more conventional song will top the charts this Christmas - and what could be more traditional that a wonderful cover of a festive classic."
Well, given that most years the number one at Christmas has nothing to do with Christmas, and - if you don't count Band Aid - the only real traditional Christmas song that has been number one at Christmas was Boney M's cover of Mary's Boy Child - probably anything might be more traditional. To be honest.
Les Paul - the man, not the guitar - has died at the age of 94.
Starting out with big bands in the 1940s, it was Bing Crosby who inspired his approach while Django Reinhardt influenced his style.
Although best known for the guitar which bears his name, Paul's real gift to modern music was multitracking - cooked up using a tape machine gifted by Bing. It allowed him to play most of the tracks and his then wife Mary Ford to sing most of the vocals on the hits they had together.
It took Gibson a long time to accept Paul's designs for a solid body guitar, and even when they did take him up it was as a me-too product to compete with Fender.
Although Les Paul went into semi-retirement in the 1960s, he was actually still playing live until recently. Troubled by arthritis, Paul had to develop his style to cope: something he did successfully, as he explained to CNN:
"If you only have two fingers [to work with], you have to think, how will you play that chord? So you think of how to replace that chord with several notes, and it gives the illusion of sounding like a chord."
Les Paul died earlier today from the complications of severe pneumonia.
The delightfully nuts "are you the butler" knockabout Bing and Bowie take on Peace On Earth and Little Drummer Boy is being recreated for a single featuring Aled Jones and Terry Wogan. While might be somewhat eclipsed by the Colbert/Willie Nelson version, it's got to be better than the X Factor winner trumpeting to number one, surely?
No, not that Gordon. This is Sting, who has come out on top of a survey to find the world's worst lyricists, part of a rash of not-really-news surveys that have been causing mild discomfort and intimate itching this last couple of days:
The schoolteacher-turned-rock star topped Blender's list of the worst lyricists, thanks to lines that betray "mountainous pomposity (and) cloying spirituality," the music magazine said.
It's not often that we see acclamation for Sting that we feel able to throw our weight behind, but they do have a point.
To be fair to Sting though, he did have the decenc... yes, yes, I'm about to be fair to Sting. I do, sometimes, do balance, you know... he had the decency to at least make his dullness flip the usual career path - he started with the sort of "doo-doo-dah-dah" will-this-do-isms that usually mark a songwriter's descent into keeping going merely to pay the mortgage and ended up writing the sort of shameful overblown stuff that most people start out with. "I've been up, I've been down/I've been lonesome, in this godless town/ You're my religion, you're my church/ You're the holy grail at the end of my search" is a lyric for a sixteen year-old boy who's just formed a band called Scarlet Stigmata, not a man who played Zarm in Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
The top five in full: 1. Sting 2. Neil Peat 3. Scott Stapp 4. Noel Gallagher 5. Dan Fogelberg
Better luck next year, Pete.
Elsewhere, someone did a search to discover The Greatest Video of All Time, ever. It was won by Bohemian Rhapsody, voted for by the same people who think that it's been downhill all the way for air travel since Montgolfier stopped doing his balloon trips.
Sure, it was the "first" pop video - even although it wasn't - but it's not actually any good, is it? It's what happens when you're unable to get past a bag full of ideas and a bunch of new vision tricks and instead of choosing, elect to use the lot. There are better videos of a similar vintage - Rat Trap, for example, which was more than a performance video and a couple of cross-fades. And, really, BoRap isn't even the best Queen video - better than the promo for Radio GaGa? I don't think so.
Still, the top five in full:
1. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody 2. Michael Jackson - Thriller 3. Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River 4. A-Ha - Take On Me 5. OK Go - A Million Ways
Yes, we double-checked, and it does say that the video for Cry Me A River has only been bettered twice in the last forty years. We've just watched it again to make sure we didn't miss anything, but it does seem to be exactly as we remembered it: a mean-spirited, self-aggrandising, spiteful ending; most of it like a car advert for one of those brands whose names you can never quite remember, with - for no reason at all - a smattering of Lionel Ritchie's Dancing On The Ceiling treatment bunged in to the middle.
Elsewhere again, 6Music attempted a spot of self-promotion with a list of the worst duets - although we'd rather they tried to build their audience by not shunting Gideon Coe off into the middle of the night, to be honest.
Their top ten:
1 Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder – Ebony and Ivory 2 Arthur Mullard & Hilda Baker – You’re the One that I Want 3 Mick Jagger & David Bowie – Dancing In the Streets 4 Bing Crosby & David Bowie – Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth 5 Renée & Renato – Save Your Love 6 Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson – The Girl Is Mine 7 Elton John & Pete Doherty – Children Of The Revolution (Live 8) 8 Puff Daddy & Faith Evans – I’ll Be Missing You 9 Elton John & George Michael – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me 10 Band Aid – Do they Know It’s Christmas? TIED WITH 10 Girls Aloud & Sugababes – Walk This Way
Now, there's much to agree with here, but the appearance of Mullard & Baker's Travolta & Newton-John cover seems to have missed the point that it was a joke. And in what way was the Bowie and Crosby cover bad?
Not to mention, of course, that in return for a bit of Christmas fluff, viewers to Bing's 1977 special also got this:
[thanks to Michael M for the worst lyricist survey]
Richards was, effectively, one of the first American Idols, owing her fame to victory in a singing competition organised by Bob Hope. Taken under Hope's wing, Richards carved out a niche dubbing singing voices onto film parts for other actresses. She also appeared in her own right, often singing opposite Hope or Crosby. One of her appearances with Crosby, in the Lemon Drop Kid, gave her a theme tune. Silver Bells, a duet with Bing, remains a festive staple in the US. Her singing career came to an end after her fifth marriage to Edward Swiedler in 1966. Unlike her first four, which had ended in death or, more often, divorce, the marriage to Swiedler proved durable.
Richards was 84; she died of heart disease in Florida.
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