Internet hears death throes in corner; remembers Twitter Music

Twitter Music - which attempted to change the way we... which wanted to... well, which happened - is coming to an end.

Naturally, the death was announced through Twitter:

Later this afternoon, we will be removing Twitter #music from the App Store. If you have the app, it will continue to work until April 18.

— Twitter Music (@TwitterMusic) March 21, 2014

But don't worry, because this isn't an end, right? No, there's plans. All kinds of plans. They obviously can't tell you too much about them because they don't really amount to much ("only have 140 characters to describe them"):

We continue to experiment with new ways to bring you great content based on the music activity we see every day on Twitter.

— Twitter Music (@TwitterMusic) March 21, 2014

This basically appears to be pulling together tweets that mention iTunes or Spotify. It's not quite the new world they were expecting, is it?

The Voice: A quick observation

Kylie quits The Voice is the new 'Brucie quits Strictly'.

Supplementary: Nobody seems keen on running 'Ricky Wilson quits Voice; delivers blow to the BBC' stories.

Orange Juice: Why Twitter is an amazing place to be

This alone would be worth excusing that bit yesterday where everyone was pushing a Vogue cover like it was worth looking at:

There was a time before all new albums automatically received four stars. Sounds' Dave McCullough lets rip in 1982: pic.twitter.com/EPe5gTKz1w

— bob stanley (@rocking_bob) March 19, 2014

But the response is jaw-dropping:

@rocking_bob Re' Dave Mc? Poor Old Soul' fact!!!@@!!!!!-Edwyn,

— Edwyn Collins (@EdwynCollins) March 21, 2014

You might want to compare and contrast this with the Stereophonics' Mr Writer; it'll allow you to measure the actual distance between an artist and a hack.

Amy Lee no longer encumbered by record deal

There's been a bit of a spat between Amy Lee and her label for the last few months - Lee mostly claiming she'd been shorted on Evanesence royalties. But now? She is free:

Today, for the first time in 13 years, I am a free and independent artist. I have wanted this for so long and I am so happy. CHEERS!

— Amy Lee (@AmyLeeEV) March 19, 2014

Today, for the first time in 13 years, I am a free and independent artist. I have wanted this for so long and I am so happy. CHEERS!

— Amy Lee (@AmyLeeEV) March 19, 2014

What's interesting is the attitude of Blabbermouth commenters under the line.

Some worry that she's not independent enough:

Joe Franklin · Top Commenter · Owner-Operator at Force Ten Productions
Fair enough, but unless she records and produces the music herself and sells CD's out of the trunk of her car, she'll never be truly free and independent.

What's that? She's going to drive around a car? Surely she should build a trolley from wood she grows herself and... oh, hang on, I'm trying to take the piss out of Joe's comment, but I think he's about to trump anything I can come up with. Because someone says this:

Conner O'Reilly · Top Commenter
Joe Franklin There's this thing called the internet nowadays where artists can sell their music directly to the fans, no car trunk required. Crazy concept, I know!

... and Joe responds thus:

Joe Franklin · Top Commenter · Owner-Operator at Force Ten Productions
Did she code the website herself?

FAIL!

"What's that? She did? Oh... but was she using a computer that she'd made herself from components? Yeah, but if she didn't power the electricity herself she's not independent, right," concluded Joe using a laptop he carved out of wood with his own teeth.

Still, the 'you're not really DIY' attacks were mild compared with some other opinions delightful Blabbermouthers chose to share. You might be able to spot a theme:

Fred Frenzel · Top Commenter · Works at Minnkota Enviroservices
You mean nobody wanted to sign a washed-up pregnant lady whose music isn't that good to begin with? I shan't believe it!

Charlie Meister · Top Commenter · University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Maybe this is good news. It really only makes a difference if they put out an album more than once every 5 years. That said, I suppose there's an allowance here for child rearing. Can't wait to hear what's next.

Loco Ono · Austin, Texas
"I'm free to do anything". Porn.

Brian Nallick · Top Commenter
If she's married to a therapist she really doesn't even need a job. Those dudes make the $$$

Brian Oswald · Top Commenter
More like, "Nobody wants to work with me, but I'm too conceited to blame myself." Without a record company, you would be playing state fairs and bars. Go shit out your kid and shut up.

Child rearing. Doing porn. Being a wife. Below the line on Blabbermouth, there are no limits to what a woman can achieve, are there?

Kylie, we need to talk

Back when we were nine or ten, we thought it was bloody hilarious to say "sexercises" - we'd wiggle our fingers and chant "sexercises, sexercises, we are doing our sexercises".

We had no idea what it all meant, but it was bloody hilarious.

When you were ten.

Hang on, here's a press release from Warner Brothers:

In what can only be described as the hottest workout video ever, Kylie introduces her fans to the hot and steamy world of "Sexercize."

Oh. But it's not just twitching fingers, is it?

If one video isn't enough to satisfy your cravings for the world's raunchiest workout, let your fingers do the walking to...

Oh, Kylie.

Coming later this year: Kylie launches viral video for new single Milk, Milk, Lemonade, Round the corner chocolate's made.

John Mayer has a dodgy ticker

Terrible, terrible news from the world of people with more money than sense. It turns out when John Mayer was wasting his money buying expensive watches, he was really wasting his money as they weren't even the expensive watches they claimed to be.

Yes, they were two-faced watches. Forbes talks about it like it matters:

Yesterday, the news broke that pop star John Mayer, an avid watch collector, is suing a well-known watch dealer based in Los Angeles – a longtime “expert” in vintage and ultra-high-end timepieces – over seven very expensive timepieces sold to him, which Rolex confirmed as containing “non-authentic” components. Meaning the dials, which are the most important components of sought-after vintage timepieces. After months of trying to sort the situation out personally, Mayer now seeks to recover $656,000, the price of the seven watches allegedly containing non-original components.

You spent over half a million dollars on watches. That's probably the crux of the problem here, not whether one of the springs came from a Timex.

A surprised and baffled Mr Mayer said "hang on... look, there's the time on my phone. I don't really need a watch at all, do I?" before rushing off to finish the deal he's working on to buy Tower Bridge from a man in a trilby and car coat.

Jesus dropped from Chris Evans show

Eliza Doolittle turned up to do a tune or two for Chris Evans, and ended up changing some of the words. The Christian Post is outraged:

Doolittle had to change her lyrics from "Sometimes I wish I was Jesus, I'd get my Air Max on and run across the sea for you" to 'Sometimes I wish it was easy to get my Air Max on and run across the sea for you."

"It was weird because I'm not being blasphemous, I just meant 'I wish I could run across water and see you,' but maybe wishing for the power of God was blasphemous enough for them," Doolittle told the Daily Mail in a recent interview over the issue.

It's not clear why this has suddenly become a thing - the show was on at the end of November last year, but never one to object to an unlikely resurrection, an ex-Archbish has piled in:

Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has spoken out against the radio network's decision, saying he is "totally appalled" over the incident. "I'm not surprised the BBC is behind this because their attitude tends to be to dumb down the Christian message."

Is it worth pointing out that the same programme featured - as Chris Evans' show does every day - a couple of minutes of spiritual reflection in the Pause For Thought slot? Probably not.

Is it even worth asking Carey to explain why removing a lyric that hooks one of the miracles held sacred by Christians to a pair of expensive plimsoles in the context of a weak love song is "dumbing down" a Christian message, while including that lyric in the song, presumably, isn't?

And, naturally, it turns out it was Doolittle's label which pushed for the lyric change. Perhaps Carey was just taking the Mail's story on faith alone?

(Side note: Interesting that the Christian Post seems to be unaware that Carey is no longer head of the Church off England.)

Alesha Dixon creates a stink

Alesha Dixon has released a perfume (surely we've used up all possible smells of toilet water by now?). Fair enough, but not sure about the Manchester Evening News claim here:

Pop star Alesha Dixon launches new perfume at Trafford Centre

The Trafford Centre bit is fair enough, but... is she a pop star?

Her last album was three and a half years ago, and got to the giddy heights of, erm, 84. She hasn't troubled the Top 10 singles list since Breathe Slow back in 2009.

Fair enough, she was a pop star once, but not for the best part of half a decade. And I doubt if even the most generous perfume company would be launching a brand off the back of The Boy Does Nothing so late on.

But then 'Game show judge launches perfume' isn't quite such a compelling headline, is it?

Garageobit: Gary Burger

Gary Burger, lead singer of The Monks, has died.

An American band who formed in Germany (all the members were GIs), they threw in "wacky" elements like banjos to keep themselves entertained as they slogged round the German toilet club circuit.

There was a look, too: vaguely Monkish robes and roughly Monkish haircuts:

“We didn’t like it that much, the haircut,” Burger chuckled [in an interview with The Current]. “You had to shave the thing almost every day, or else you’d get a stubble like a guy gets after a day of not shaving. So we all had electric razors—it was a funny sight, you’d see us all in our room shaving our heads.”

Here's the group on German TV in 1965:


The band only recorded one album, but were held in great affection; they'd started to reach a 'rediscovered' period in their story. Burger appeared on the fifth collection of the Minnesota Beatles Project, which uses covers of Fab Four songs to raise funds for local schools.

Gary Burger was 72; he'd had pancreatic cancer.

Journeys to the past when the future was the destination

I suppose, to be fair, the C86 movement were never likely to be confused with the Futurists, but even Bobby Gillespie in his most Byrds-drenched, pre-Bourbon incarnation would have raised a surprised eyebrow at the idea that C86 would get a three CD expanded reissue in 2014.

The extra tracks include some interesting stuff, including a supposedly never-previously-released North of Cornwallis track, but it seems to have stretched the defintion of C86.

But wouldn't you rather all this effort was put into making a C2014?

Roll forward a few years, or perhaps just don't roll back as far, and we find ourselves at a week-long return of The Evening Session, a show which has been revived more often than Beau Geste. This time (probably every time) it's to celebrate Britpop.

Oh, Britpop. It's like Jeremy Bentham's corpse - now that all the life has gone, you're just left with a weird artefact that serves little purpose other than to be occasionally kidnapped and paraded up and down the street, missing the vital pulse that interested everyone in the first place.

Lamacq added: For me, this is the week 20 years ago that the musical tectonic plates shifted. On the Tuesday, Oasis played live on Radio 1 for the first time and on the Friday morning we heard the news of Kurt Cobain's death. It was as if one scene had announced it had arrived, as another began to lose its way."

Steve, you're better than that. I don't think a single person, on hearing the news of Kurt's suicide, thought "that's kind of epochal, what with Oasis having been on the wireless a few days back."

Jo is actually more honest:

Jo Whiley said: "I will always jump at the chance to work with Steve. He is my radio 'other half' and we did fight the Britpop wars together after all. It was a great time to be a DJ on UK radio but, as ever, when you're in the eye of the storm, you are blissfully unaware. It's only in hindsight that you appreciate what a privilege it was to live and work through such an exciting time for British music."

Who'd have thought it was the more excitable one of the pair who remembered that a lot of Britpop shibboleths are coloured by red, white and blue tinted hindsight?

Steve and Jo will be trotting the 'half a pint of cider before the show' anecdote for the 1,000th time as part of a big Britpop disinterment across the BBC.

Kiss unhappy at induction process

Next month, Kiss get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - they're told about the fire escape procedure, get to meet their line managers and get given a swipe card that lets them get into the stationery cupboard.

But they're not happy.

They're annoyed that only some Kiss people are being allowed in:

“We have continuing issues with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, starting with the fact that they chose to only induct the original lineup when that’s hardly the case with other bands,” [Paul Stanley] said from Los Angeles.

“In the Grateful Dead’s case, (they) also inducted a writer who never played an instrument,” said Stanley, referring to Robert Hunter’s inclusion when the band was inducted in 1994. “Or they’ve inducted rap artists, or they’ve inducted people who have been in the band for seven years as opposed to ... 25 years or 20 years — whatever their criteria of this week is.”

It does seem, on the face of it, to be unfair. But on the other hand, it's a pop museum and a band who are mostly known these days for squeezing every merchandise cent they can from their fanbase. I suspect the human rights agencies won't be taking many calls on this one.

Word back up

What's this? The Word podcast has sprung back into life, two years after the last emission.

Grim news from SXSW

Horrible news from SXSW in Austin overnight, as a car has ploughed into a crowd waiting outside the Mohawk club.

ABC News is reporting two dead; five critically injured.

It appears the driver was being pursued by police before he drove into queue. KVUE reports:

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said officers initially tried to pull over the driver at a gas station on the Interstate 35 service road. The driver fled the wrong way down Ninth Street, which is a one-way street, and turned onto Red River, hitting pedestrians at a "high rate of speed." Officers say the driver is in custody.

Lily Allen agrees with 'docile pop rubbish' attack

Someone on Twitter said the new Lily Allen work was "docile pop rubbish".

You might expect Allen to object; instead, she agreed:

Lily responded to the claims by agreeing that her label has forced her hand for most of her comeback so far: "What you've heard so far, yes. All I can do is do my best, the labels and the radio stations won't play the better stuff."

She then teased her new album by telling him: "Keep the faith."

Which is charmingly honest, but does raise the question of why she's doing work that's so poor the label will get behind it in the first place.

That's an odd question to be asking, although one that we probably should be asking more often.

Embed and breakfast man: Warpaint

Warpaint do Conan; do Love Is To Die:

All music careers crash off the rails at some point

One Pound Fish man has been indicted for fraud:

A banking court in Lahore has indicted ‘One Pound Fish’ singer Shahid Nazir for fraud. The singer has been summoned by the court on April 9.
The banking court heard the case pertaining to a cheque worth Rs 6 million, signed by Nazir, which bounced. The case had been filed by a private leasing company in Lahore.

At current exchange rates, six million rupees is roughly 36,000 one pound fishes.

Kylie: Young woman had sex shock

The Daily Star is regurgitating already vomit-flecked stuff from The News Of The World ("The Sun On The Sunday") about Kylie.

It's shocking. Prepare to be shocked:

Kylie Minogue's girl-next-door image shattered by sex revelations in explosive new book

There was a period when Kylie was known as SexKylie, so this is the sort of shock right up there with discovering that cheese, for all its tasty solidity, was once milk.

The Star seems aware that this is a yawning chasm in their story, so try to rationalise why this might be a shock:

The pint-sized pop star, who is well-known for her innocent girl-next-door image, is said to have been naughty between the sheets long before her highly-publicised romance with Michael Hutchence, who is said to have "corrupted" her.

The "revelation" is simply that she had sex with someone, so the Star is hoping that 'woman had sex with someone before the boyfriend she met when she was 20' is some sort of surprise. (Apart from anything, surely this is going to generate another Jason Donovan lawsuit?)

It basically all boils down to a tatty book from a tatty little man, Sean Smith, who has got a tattier little man Paolo Marcolin to "tell-all". (It's a 'two teenagers having sex at a party' story - which, a quick search of Google will reveal, is a thing that has never happened anywhere else, at any point before or after.)

And how much weight should we give to Mr Macrolin's testimony?

"We lay on the floor. It was freezing but I had enough alcohol in me not to notice. I was really enjoying myself because Kylie was so nice," Paolo added.

So Marcolin was too drunk to notice it was freezing, and yet he noticed it was freezing.

Sean Smith - who, let's not rush to judge as some sort of grubby smut peddler, perhaps a man with stained trousers and smelly fingers - appears to have some sort of justification for trying to make money and headlines out of a fairly typical thing for a teenager to have done:

"For someone so careful about her private life, Kylie can be astonishingly indiscreet. It is as if, every so often, she gets the devil in her."

Even for a screaming moral vacuum, this is disingenuous. His own tale suggests that this isn't true - let's just look back at Paolo's quote:

"My hands were wandering a bit. Out of the blue, she said, 'Do you want to go somewhere even more private?' Of course I agreed. It sounded great to me.

"She had no idea where she was going but eventually took me to the opposite side of the house. There were a few people catching taxis, so we walked round the corner to be out of sight — or so I thought."
[...]
However, the pair soon realised that they were getting frisky in full view of the other party guests and headed to a small workshop underneath the house where they allegedly began having sex.

So, given that Kylie - without, at this stage, some sort of judging role on Saturday night TV to worry about - twice moved somewhere further out of public view hardly screams of indiscretion. Sean Smith seems to be saying that simply by having someone else present to have sex with Kylie's leaving herself open to having it discussed.

Perhaps Sean hasn't noticed, but it's Paolo who is being indiscreet. It might be a bit much to claim that Kylie had the devil in her, but she certainly seems to have made room for a bit of a Judas.

Fly sprayed: freesheet to close

Sad to hear The Fly, which built the most-read-music-paper quietly off the back of a listings freebie for the Camden Barfly, has closed; mostly a victim of HMV's collapse:

A statement on the magazine’s website read: “After nearly 15 years of pioneering new music journalism, the owners of The Fly are officially closing the magazine as a result of current market conditions surrounding publishing. We offer gratitude and wish well all the staff and contributors that have allowed us to deliver the UK’s longest serving monthly free sheet. To the multitude of artists and musicians that have graced our covers, the advertisers and sponsors who have supported us and our loyal readers, we salute you.”

It added that “ownership of the digital and online brands will now pass to the magazine’s longest-serving member of staff, editor JJ Dunning”, suggesting that the brand may survive online.

Dunning had been tweeting on Friday to see if anyone wanted to help him keep the Fly alive; there's a difficult question about whether a print product is viable without anywhere to distribute it.

(Although... maybe it'd fit well with the Stylist/Shortlist stable, don't you think?)

Bookmarks: Slowdive

Slowdive are back together. And giddy, to judge by the Penny Black Music interview:

We're not all better musicians. Neil and Simon are probably better musicians. Rachel is a better mother. Christian and Nick are just better human beings. Any new record that we create will probably follow the same pattern as the previous ones. Neil will have songs and ideas, and we will work around those. Sometimes Neil's ideas will be fully realised, sometimes they will take some work. We are considering branching out into dubstep, but only for $10. Or a pizza. Or failing that All You Can Eat BBQ Rib Night at the Sizzler.

How does this make any sense?

You can spend £6.99, and get all the songs on Dean Wareham. Fair enough.

Or, you can spend 34p more, and get all the songs, plus, all the songs put onto a small plastic disc, in a package of some sort, all printed and professionally presented; driven from a factory to a storage unit; picked from that unit and put into a box; and then driven to your door.

I'm not sure how that makes any sense.

On a related note: is it just us, or is everyone finding the Amazon site running really flakily over the last couple of weeks? I'm having to stop pages as they hang half-way through their loading cycle just to get the whole thing to load in.

This week just gone

Google-peepers: The ten most surprising 'nude' or 'naked' popular search subjects from the last year:

1. James Blunt
2. Cerys Matthews
3. Miss Kittin
4. Germaine Greer
5. Madonna (really, you need to search?)
6. Simon Hayes
7. "Kid on Nirvana cover now"
8. Swindon music
9. Seth Lakeman ("Fullfrontal")
10. Dolores O'Riordan fake

These were this week's interesting releases:


Blood Red Shoes - Blood Red Shoes

Download Blood Red Shoes



Eagulls - Eagulls

Download Eagulls



Laibach - Spectre

Download Spectre



We Are Scientists - TV En Francais

Download TV En Francais



Nick Waterhouse - Holly

Download Holly

Crimean separatists get their own pop star support

You'll recall a couple of weeks back Eurovision winner Ruslana got a role in the new Ukraine government.

That doesn't mean that the entire world of Eastern European pop is supporting the smaller nation. Oleg Gazmanov, a Russian pop star, has appeared at a Moscow rally supporting the campaign to attach Crimea to Russia.

This is Oleg:

Looks more like one of those doctors who appear with their shirts off in airplane in-flight magazines: "Dr Smith is sixty but still takes his shirt off in magazines".

Oleg's official biography says that he likes his music to "unite people of different nationalities", although it turns out he's just as okay with that being done at gun point, too.

This is the song that Oleg performed at the rally, with what the uploader insists is an English translation of the lyric...

Gentleman Offices
Under the taut nerve chord of faith
I sing this song to those who give up careers
Life is not regretting his chest substituting for Russia her!

Those who survived in Afghanistn, his reputation did not make a muck of thsoe who did not make a career of Soldiers' blood.

I sing the offices who took pity mothers, returning them back to the living sons!

Officers, offices, you heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Gentlemen, Offices, both to save your faith?

Dug graves on your souls wheezing!
What are we brothers have done - could not save them, and now they are forever in my eyes we look!

Once again the guys go, dissolving into the sunset
Russia called them both happened more than once

And once you leave, may, directly at the sky, and from above forgive us!

So where are you going? May, directly at the sky and from above forgive us!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

Officers, officers, your heart is under the gun!
For Russia and freedom to the end!

Officers, the Russians, let freedom shine,
forcing in unison sound of the heart!

I'm sure if you lobbed Paul Hardcastle's 19 into a machine translation it'd seem just as odd, but I really do love the way Oleg makes it clear that he's only endorsing the guns under the hearts of Officers (Russian), just in case there were any Officers (Polish), say, who were drawing strength from this.

Nice to see, by the way, that Russian popular TV not above forcing veterans of war into studios to provide a bit of backdrop for a musty old song.

Tina Barrett: Oh no, she isn't

Are Easter pantomimes even a thing? Apparently in Blackpool, where former S Club 7er Tina is about to play the Wicked Witch in the Wizard Of Oz.

Is The Wizard Of Oz a pantomime, come to that?

Anyway, the Blackpool Gazette sees this as quite a coup:

Barrett is a well known figure to millions, after becoming one of the biggest names in pop music during the late 90s.

A well known figure to millions, and yet...

Pop star prepares to turn all wicked

... not so well known that the Gazette is going to take the risk of using her name in the headline.

Factsmackdown: Is Radio 3 more expensive than BBC Three?

With BBC Three the latest service from the corporation to be led to the knackers' yard, there's a little campaign growing to close Radio 3 instead, on the basis that it has a smaller audience and is pretty expensive, too.

Is that fair?

Well, BBC Three costs £121.7million a year; BBC Radio 3, £54.3million. So if you're looking for a cost-saving measure, the TV station potentially saves more.

And if you take into account that Radio 3 has to support orchestras and the Proms out of its budget, while BBC Three is spending a chunk buying not-as-good-as-King-Of-The-Hill American cartoons, you might start to look at the value for money proposition here slightly differently. (I know, it's unfair to put the Late Junction sessions up against Seth MacFarlane and ask 'where would YOU spend the money', but that's pretty much what the 'close Radio 3 instead' campaign is doing already.)

Ah, but Radio 3 is enjoyed by far fewer people than BBC Three. (Judging by letters to Feedback and the Radio Times, Radio 3 might not actually be enjoyed by anyone.)

So, who is more expensively serviced?

Radio 3's annual £54.3m is spent pleasing an audience 2.2 million. That's £24.60 a person.

BBC Three's annual £121.7m brings delight to 13.2million. That's £9.21 a person.

On this measure, BBC Three is much, much cheaper.

Okay, classical music heads, I can hear you murmuring that a large chunk of that BBC Three audience is just tuning in for the EastEnders repeat.

And that 13.2million suggests that a portion of the audience tuning in are from outside the slice of 'young people who otherwise would be having sex or doing computer games or doing computer games in which they pretend to be having sex' that the channle is supposedly targeting.

But, on the broad measure of happy person per pound, BBC Three is much better value than Radio 3.

Game over?

Not quite. Because a Radio 3 listener listens for six hours and 25 minutes a week; a BBC Three viewer only watches for one hour 47 minutes every week.

Multiply this up over the course of a year, and you get BBC Three costing 0.17p per minute of audience engagement.

BBC Radio 3 costs 0.12p per minute of audience engagement.

In other words, the two channels, arguably at different ends of the BBC waterfront cost roughly the same, and it's peanuts, but depending on when you want to stop doing division you could argue that either is more expensive.

[Sources: About the BBC audience information, January-March 2013; BBC Annual Report expenditure 2013]

50 Cent to play live, broadcast event

Here's an inappropriate use of the word 'history' from ContactMusic:

50 Cent is set to make history at the South By Southwest festival in Texas next week (11Mar14) by streaming his concert on a mobile app he has invested in.

"Man streams gig over internet using proprietary technology". Remember where you were when you heard the news.

Steely Dan: Palmer wants more

David Palmer, who - up until 40 years ago was singer in Steely Dan - is suing for money he believes he is owed:

Palmer claims his work on the band's early tracks helped to give the act its signature sound, but insists he has been paid just over $8,000 (£5,000) in royalties from radio play.

Curiously, Palmer only sang lead on the two tracks he did because ABC records executives insisted; he also provided some of the high notes and backing vocals on other tracks. It's not clear how much he's after.

Eurovision 2014: A Sash for Europe

Carrying the UK's hopes of a place in the lower tenth of the board at Eurovision is Molly Smitten-Downes (and really, you must take a cottage on the Smitten Downs this summer, they're relatively unspoilt).

The BBC is keen:

A BBC statement described Children of the Universe as "an anthemic, uplifting track specifically written with live performance in mind".

Oddly, having watched the first performance yesterday on the BBC Red Button, I'm not sure I'd recognise the song from that description.

To be frank, despite having heard it yesterday, I'm not sure I'd be able recognise the song again.

Smitten-Downes isn't entirely new to the limelight:

Had a top 10 hit in 2008 when she sang on Sash's Raindrops (Encore Une Fois)

Yeah. 2008. The slightly dodgy and pointless remake that seemed to exist purely because it was a pun.

She also sang with Basshunter. On an album track.

Anyway, here's the song:

Warning: you won't be able to get it out your head now. But don't worry, you won't even notice it's there.

R&Bobit: Duffy Power

Duffy Power, one of Larry Parnes' stable of first-wave British rockers, has died.

Power was born Raymond Howard - the stage name was half Parnes' coinage, and perhaps not quite as on the spot as the monickers he came up with for Tommy Steele and Billy Fury. (It was an attempt to meld Duffy's existing nickname onto a fame halo from the recently deceased Tyrone Power.)

Power marked himself out as different from the others in style, as shown when he joined in the BBC's Pop Goes The Beatles project in 1963:

The story doesn't have a happy ending - alcoholism, drugs and mental health problems rather than a long career of success - although there have been rediscoverings and even, belatedly, an album of new material in 2012, the first for around 40 years.

Duffy Power died 19th February 2014; he was 72.

Brits 2014: Corden's defence

James Corden was on Channel 4's The Last Leg on Friday and, while perhaps his shaky grasp of judicial proceedings needing to take place in public is forgivable, his attempts to defend this years Brits deserve a closer bit of attention.

First, he was asked about Alex Turner's toe-curling speech at the end. Corden - as ever - was upbeat and positive; last year, he pointed out, the Monkeys picked up a prize without a word, and everyone complained about that. "You're damned if you do..." reckons James.

Up to a point. That point being if you assume that there's only a binary position between making no noise, and making a noise. On this basis, if Turner had come on stage and had a yodel, Corden would have been satisfied.

Actually, it might have been better if Turner had yodelled. Because it's not that he had said something, it was that he had nothing to say of any value. Sure, the NME might have thought we were being summoned to the ramparts, but the rest of the world just saw some drunken rambling where the lights were on, but flickering in a way that suggested a rewiring was due soon.

Secondly, James tried to parry the claims that it was all a corporate bunfest by pointing out that there was that Billie/B*Witched/Steps Abba medley thing a few years back. He seemed to be suggesting that if you used that as a measure, this year's event was hardly corporate at all. Which was an interesting argument, although one fundamentally undermined by there having been a special award invented this year to persuade One Direction to turn up, and that the sole criteria for the award was 'having sold a substantial number of units in key overseas territories'.

On the plus side, he did seem to indicate he won't host again.

This week just gone

The most-read stories from February:

1. Liveblog: The Brits
2. NME circulation figures continue to struggle
3. Brits 2014: Afterthoughts
4. NME mistakes drunken ramble for call to action
5. Beck kind of a dick about being called a dick
6. Some tiny royalty cheques
7. When Benny Hill met Michael Jackson
8. Buzzfeed quiz tells Shirley Manson that she's Kim Gordon
9. Chris Moyles surprised to find pretending to be a car salesperson is illegal
10. Panic At The Disco cause venue collapse

These releases were kind-of interesting:


Wild Beasts - Present Tense

Download Present Tense



Suede -European Tour Live



Reverend And The Makers - Thirty Two

Download Thirty Two



Notwist - Close To The Glass

Download Close To The Glass