One out of Friends is engaged to one out of Snow Patrol

Even if it was Matthew Perry, it'd still be a dull story. It's Courtney Cox and Johnny McDaid.

Friends continues to be repeated every fourteen seconds on Comedy Central, and Snow Patrol songs seem to be persistent as well.

The Four Nations

The grim attempts to force us to have fun connected to the Olympics grind on. (I've checked, by the way, it really is the Olympics we're hosting and, sadly, not the Laffalympics - the hope that we might get to see Yogi Bear and Muttley racing each other to climb to the top of Big Ben was the one piece of hope to which I was clinging.)

So, as part of the kick-off, there's going to be big concert with a band representing each of the home nations. The line-up has just been announced:

The gig will feature acts from all four nations of the UK, with Duran Duran representing England and Snow Patrol appearing for Northern Ireland.

Stereophonics will represent Wales and Paolo Nutini will play for Scotland.

Holy plodding ponies; if Damian Green's two-hour waits at Heathrow don't put people off coming to the UK, this is going to.

Three of the grimmest acts ever to find their way into the back of a Transit Van and Duran, who are great but hardly a shining example of 21st Century English music.

Let's hope the sportspeople aren't being picked on the same basis, otherwise Team GB is going to consistent solely of badminton players and Daley Thompson.

Gary Lightbody on the block

Talking to BBC News, Gary Lightbody from Snow Patrol says he had trouble with this album:

For someone with a continuous drive to create music, Lightbody was shocked to find himself suffering a crippling bout of writer's block last year.

"Oh God, I never want to go through that again," he grimaces. "You've done the thing that you do every day of your life for 16 years and suddenly it's removed from you.

"I just couldn't write a single word. I was terrified. I couldn't pick up my laptop, my notepad, or anything, for fear that I was going to sit there and stagnate.

"I was actually catatonic for most of it."

It must have been terrible; imagine having to write a record and not being able to come up with a single idea for it.

Judging by the new Snow Patrol album, he's still suffering from it, too.

Gordon in the morning: Bad teacher

Gordon Smart has had a bit of a chinwag with Gary Lightentertainment out of Snow Patrol:

Snow Patrol: U2 taught us to be rock stars

What exactly did those lessons cover? It can't have been how to be interesting on stage. Maybe it focused on arranging your tax affairs?

"When U2 took us on tour in 2005 and then the subsequent three years on the 360 Tour, they showed us the virtue of a show compared to a gig.

"Even when we were playing bigger gigs around Chasing Cars and Eyes Open, we were still turning up for gigs like we had just fallen out of the student's union at 3am.

"We didn't really think about stage presence. We would work out the set list five minutes before we went on stage in the same clothes we had been wearing in the pub.

"U2 showed us the approach we should be taking. There should be a show, a spectacle."

Really? I suppose you probably need something to lift your songs when they're taken from their natural home (being laid over Ellen Pompeo looking worried), but if you're plodding through Chasing Cars, no lasershow known to man is going to wake the audience up, is it?

Q Awards 2011: Those winners in full

So, as we've just heard, the Q Awards took place yesterday, organised by a 25 year-old magazine and, apparently, a panel of 70 year-old judges. In between the sniggering at how funny being gay is, they managed to give out some awards to the sort of people who appear on the covers of the magazine.

Here's the winners in full:

Best Act In The World Today presented by First Drinks Brand: Coldplay
Greatest Act Of The Last 25 Years presented by BlackBerry: U2
Best Album: Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Q Best Male Artist presented by Merc: Tinie Tempah
Q Best Female Artist presented by Nivea Visage: Adele
Q Icon: Noel Gallagher
Q Classic Songwriter: Gary Barlow
Breakthrough Artist: Ed Sheeran
Best New Act presented by Orange Amplification: WU LYF
Q Innovation In Sound: Kaiser Chiefs
Q Inspiration presented by YouYou Mentoring: Fatboy Slim
Q Next Big Thing presented by Nivea Visage: Lana Del Ray
Best Track presented by Q Radio: Adele - Rolling In The Deep
Best Video presented by Q TV: Jessie J - Do It Like A Dude
Best Live Act: Biffy Clyro
Q Classic Song presented by Zippo: Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
Q Outstanding Contribution To Music: Siouxsie Sioux
Q Hall Of Fame: Queen

The prize for Bon Iver is interesting; in this context it looks like the sort of CD someone would buy going to university to put on top of their pile in the hope that people might think them cooler than the rest of the bundle would suggest.

More notable, though, is that there's a totally made-up category which seems to exist solely to give a prize to Snow Fucking Patrol for Chasing Cocking Cars. It seems that it's been sponsored by Zippo - Groucho, Harpo and Chico presumably wanted nothing to do with such a soiled rag.

To extend the Q-as-freshers-CD-pile, Chasing Cars would be the track they've packed in the hope that they might get a person they find sexually attractive back to their room.

Interesting that a prize sponsored by Blackberry was won by U2. I'm sure it's just a total coincidence, but it looks a little suspicious that the same company sponsors both the prize and the winner. Maybe that's the synergy we hear so much about.

Decade Null: Most played

God, it was a rotten ten years, wasn't it? The most-played tracks in the UK in the last ten years:

1. Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
2. Shine - Take That
3. I Don't Feel Like Dancin' - Scissor Sisters

T in the Park: Blur might not turn up

NME is reporting that Blur might not turn up for their T in The Park headline slot tonight:

Festival chief Geoff Ellis made the announcement on the Main Stage at the Scottish festival this afternoon. He explained that guitarist Graham Coxon was in hospital and that the situation was being monitored.

They've rejigged the line-up a little; Snow Patrol will go on an hour later than planned in the hope that Graham Coxon will be back in time for a slightly later start.

Otherwise: can you imagine hoping for a Blur set, and having to make do with Snow Patrol instead?

T in The Park: Like Oxegen, but slightly different

Hey, if the idea if Kings Of Leon and Snow Patrol headlining Oxegen wasn't exciting enough, the announcement of headliners for T In The Park is going to make you wear out your caps-shift and 1 keys.

Yes, it's Snow Patrol and Kings Of Leon!!!!!!

Along with Katy Perry.

The festival's boss Geoff Ellis revealed the names to the Daily Record, in response to internet rumours about the line-up.

"We're delighted. Kings Of Leon are the hottest property at the moment. We're ecstatic at having locked them in. Snow Patrol are Scotland's biggest band at the moment," Ellis told the newspaper.

The Kings Of Leon are the hottest property right now - it's so true, especially if you don't think about any of the other bands a bit like them who sell more records. And it's lucky that despite being so hot, they've got plenty of time available in their diaries to play seemingly every field in the nation.

It's all SO BLOODY BRILLIANT.

[This post sponsored by Concerned Citizens For A Less Cynical No Rock And Roll Fun]

Oxegen reveal headliners

Taking on board the criticism of an anonymous poster yesterday that the cynicism on this blog can become wearing, I'm going to approach the announcement of the headliners for the 2009 Oxegen Festival with nothing, nothing, but enthusiasm:

The Kings Of Leon!

The Killers!

Snow Patrol!

You'd certainly have to agree, there isn't another festival taking place at exactly the same time that could pull together that exact same line-up. And so many guitars, so many, many men with guitars.

Apple hooks up with Snow Patrol

In a bid to make the prospect of a new Snow Patrol album even more thrilling, Polydor and Apple are launching a superspecial iPhone app, reports Music Week:

The application, which will be downloadable online, will enable fans to access a raft of extra content including artwork, behind-the-scenes images and lyrics via the touch screen of their handsets, marking the first time a music artist has made use of the iPhone’s extra capabilities.

If you think that sentence suggests a tenuous grasp on the technology underpinning the marketing idea, you might be right. Music Week continues:

The popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch homescreen applications has shot up in recent months as consumers look for ways to customise their handsets.

You don't think, perhaps, the increasing popularity of apps "in recent months" might have more to do with, erm, the launch of the apps store on July 10th and them suddenly becoming available, then?

Meanwhile, Bruce Houghton at Hypebot has worked himself up into a state:

if labels allow Steve Jobs to control content delivery vehicle then only iPhone and iTouch users will experience all that an artist is trying to convey. New album cover applications must be multi-platform and open source or the music industry risks a repeat of Apple's pre-mp3 stranglehold on music sales.

Apple had a pre-mp3 stranglehold on music sales? Back in 1997? Or does Houghton mean "before mp3 stores became widely available, because the music industry was too afraid to sell files that weren't wrapped up in DRM?

Apple weren't strangleholding the market while the music industry prayed for a more open standard - the industry deliberately chose to ignore an option that would have handed back a little more control to the customer; if Apple strangled them, it was consenual erotic asphyxiation.

Houghton does have a point - it would be much happier for everyone if this new stuff was available in an open format instead of being tied to a single brand or store, but for that to happen, the record labels would have to accept that their extra-value material would be published in a way that people could take it and use it and share it on without payment. It's hard to see why, given the current mindset of the big labels, they'd invest cash in developing stuff designed to persuade people to buy an official download only for the exclusivity to evaporate in the same way that of the original song had, too.

Still, Houghton is clearly alarmed, even appending a message to the foot of his blog post:

SPREAD THE WORD: PLEASE DIGG, STUMBLE & EMAIL THIS POST

Yes! Email it to ten people, and instruct them to reply to you with details of the ten people they've emailed it to within the hour, or the music industry will DIE. It's a plan for a label to try a pilot scheme which basically involves tacking a couple of extra files onto a digital download. It doesn't quite require the caps lock urgency of a call to petition for a stay of execution for a prisoner to be killed at sun down.

Belfast Telegraph journalists spoil Snow Patrol's surprises

It's a harsh world. As if knifings, territorial wars, Piers Morgan and disease aren't bad enough, Snow Patrol are now having the name of their new album revealed against their wills. Lost In The Showbiz publishes a letter from their PR team - or, rather, a statement from Gary:

"Hello everyone
Well, in this world of instant coffee, news, messaging and everything else
is was bound to happen. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph we let slip the working title of the album then said not to print it until we had finalised it with each other (and put it on this very site). Those words were not heeded and they printed it anyway.

We’re sorry you didn’t hear it from us first but the album is indeed called 'a hundred million suns’. We will endeavour to make you guys the first to hear about everything else. It’s becoming increasingly hard but we’ll do our best.

Lots of apologetic love to you all. Gary.x"

Oh, my. How heartbreaking to think that the news of what the new Snow Patrol album will be called should slip out, rather than being subject to a proper announcement. We're given to understand that the band had planned to reveal the title in a remake of that time Thatcher flogged off BP and they had the abseilers uncover a massive board with the share price on. Clearly, Gary wanted to be able to see the slightly underwhelmed reaction when the world - as a whole - gathered to discover the name of the follow-up to whatever the last one was called.

And all because, erm, they told a journalist. Who probably wrote it down in a book. You just can't trust 'em, can you?

Irish music could be in trouble

An alarming headline from Gigwise:

Snow Patrol To Speak On Behalf Of Irish Music
At Stormont today...

Good lord, how did they land that gig? I mean, were they elected? Or was it an evil trick by Welsh music to make its rival across the sea look bad?

It turns out they're only talking on behalf of an Irish music project:

Lightbody is expected to show how the project, Oh Yeah, has helped Irish musicians across the country.

Oh Yeah was set up by Ash’s Tim Wheeler in a bid to establish a dedicated music centre in Belfast.

Which is a lot less alarming than it first appeared.

Feist tops Shortlist

In what we're contractually obliged to describe as 'the American version of the Mercury Prize', Feist's The Reminder has scooped the Shortlist Award for 2007. But amongst the people doing the choosing was Gary Lightbody, so we're not sure it's quite as flattering as it's meant to seem.

Legal snow

Mark McClelland's not-entirely-smooth departure from Snow Patrol has got even more complicated, as his attempts to get some cash out the band are now spilling over into legal action.

McClelland wants some of the spoils of the success he feels he helped create - which is fair enough, but if he gets, says 10% of the cash, shouldn't he also take ten per cent of the criticism of the band's mimsying, heartless waste of electronics?

Wire cutters

It's been quite a while since one of Nicky Wire's predictable but amusing attacks on his fellow musical toilers, but he's back on form for the V festival:

Of Snow Patrol he says: "They are utterly deplorable, there is something irredeemably shit about them, you can't quite put your finger on what it is.

"It's a desperate form of music, the endless repeated lines, over and over, the same drab fucking little thing on and on.

Even Snow Patrol fans might feel a little aggrieved at being accused of repeating lines endlessly from the You! Love! Us! You Love Us! You Love Us! Oh, You Love Us, Yeah You Love Us bloke, but Nicky is already moving on to The Killers:

[B]randing their second album "truly dreadful," adding: "There's no authenticity in that record at all, extremely false and calculated.

"People might like it, but people with brains don't."

And how do the 3AM Girls describe Wire in the piece?

He would be :

"the eye-liner wearing bassist"

Describing Nicky Wire as wearing a bit of eye-liner is like saying Danny La Rue sometimes wore heels, surely?

Snow Patrol prove they can get themselves arrested

Somewhere between their Live Earth performance and their scheduled slot at T in the Park, Tom Simpson got arrested. The Snow Patrol keyboardist had his collar felt on matters arising from a non-appearance in court at Glasgow.

Luckily, he was released in time for the band to appear at T - I say luckily, obviosuly that's from the perspective of someone who doesn't have to stand in a field watching them.

Amy Winehouse, though, has cancelled, due to "exhaustion", although it's not clear if that's the sort of exhaustion you get when you spend all day in a bar, like the exhaustion that did for her Liverpool date.

Yes, Gary, please take your time

Some good news from Snow Patrol this morning. Gary Lightbody says they're not going to rush to get the next album out:

"I don't think there's any point of doing it this early. By the end of the summer people will have had enough.

"We've been at it for four years non-stop. We need a break and maybe everyone else needs a break too. So we're gonna take a good bit of time off and make the album at our own pace."

Let's hope 'a good bit of time' is sort-of like forever and a day.

Live Earth line ups unfurled

The line-ups for Live Earth have been squeezed out into the public domain - these are the US artists inked in for the New York gig:

AFI
AKON
ALICIA KEYS
BON JOVI
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
FALL OUT BOY
JOHN MAYER
KANYE WEST
KELLY CLARKSON
KT TUNSTALL
LUDACRIS
MELISSA ETHERIDGE
RIHANNA
ROGER WATERS
SMASHING PUMPKINS
THE POLICE

Presumably the idea is that by piling up so many artists in the middle of the road, people will have to leave their cars at home as they won't be able to get through.

Meanwhile, over here in the UK, Madonna, the Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters will be headlining (nothing like flying a load of US artists in to play Wembley to encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint, eh?)

Genesis are also going to be there, not quite filling the Pink Floyd at Live8 slot, along with Duran Duran, Keane, Snow Patrol, the Black Eyed Peas, Razorlight, Corinne Bailey Rae, Bloc Party, David Gray, Paolo Nutini, and Damien Rice.

Remind me: is the idea to try and save the world, or make us feel like it's not really a bad thing if we do drive ourselves into extinction?

Red Hot top band ever?

If asked to name the most popular band in Britain, you might take a while before suggesting the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But, apparently, it's them, Snow Patrol, and then the Beatles.

This is down to something called Popscores. The Sun explains:

A POP league table rating Britain’s attitude to acts is becoming an influential tool in the music biz.

The Popscores system checks the popularity and familiarity of artists with 5,500 people every month.

Top record labels, broadcasters and advertisers are now using the service — created by Entertainment Media Research — to help reach their target audiences.

Oh, good - a service which detects what's already popular and then allows the labels and music channels to ladle up more of the same. That's what we need right now.

What the Sun doesn't tell you is that Popscores is a self-selected panel; it's not clear that it bothers to weight the results to reflect the UK population or not. Net, blogs and rock & roll has looked a little more closely at the scheme:

Unlike Last.fm, MyStrands or Flickr, PopScores aren't compiled by digital tracking but by the old-school method of surveying a sample of 4,500 people, aged between 13 and 59, and presumably balanced in terms of UK region, ethnicity, income and so on. There are three key measures at present:

* song recognition;
* artist's name awareness (have you heard of Gnarls Barkley? then they have name awareness for you);
* informed awareness (did you know Gnarls Barkley was a US duo, rather than a bloke from Chipping Norton or a band from the Adelaide? then we're talking informed awareness).
* And I read somewhere, but can't find it now, that a fourth measure — intent to buy — will be added shortly.

Name awareness figures for an artist are always higher than informed awareness, but it's suggested (according to Music Week) that the narrower the gap between the two, the greater the sales potential. I don't know the basis of that suggestion, but if it's true then presumably the chart above would encourage the industry to seek to improve James Morrison's 'informed awareness' rating to exploit untapped potential. (I've heard of him, and what I've heard, including Pete Paphides memorable description of him in The Times article as "Chris Martin in a James Blunt wig", suggests that getting better informed isn't going to persuade me to part with cash — but I'm not as representative as 4,500 people.)

Which says it all, really - this is just a focus group using the internet to make it seem a bit more relevant than it actually is. If the music industry really wants to know what sells, it already has a copper-bottomed research method, called the Top 40, which provides a nation-sized sample. If they want to predict what will sell, a survey which claims the Peppers, Patrol and Beatles are the three key sounds isn't going to help.

Snow flurry

Mark McClelland, who was in Snow Patrol before Gary Lightbody told him they had creative differences, has prepared his riposte: Little Doses, which is a clunker of a name. (Does anyone else associate 'dose' with STDs? Just me then?)

He is aware that he'll be compared with the his former employers, but... well, he's setting his sights high:

"At first, reviewers will draw comparisons and take the Snow Patrol angle - and I can't help that.

"But once you've seen us play, you'll see we're a different proposition, we're a band in our own right. This is a new era; this is Led Zeppelin after The Yardbirds."

Well, to be fair, Led Zeppelin is an absolute clunker of a name as well.