Brits 2015: Ordinary people

On Thursday night, the Brit Awards shortlist was announced, packed full of reasonable-sounding people making pleasant enough tunes, I guess. There's so much prospect of Sam Smith waltzing away with armfuls of prizes on the night - Best Okayish Album of the Year; You Could Probably Introduce Him To Your Mother of 2014; Brightest Hope of Smiling Photo Op With Whoever Wins The Election Probably At A Youth Club Or Something; he may even get the Look There's No Soul There At All Which Equals Success prize, the big one of the night.

Here's the shortlists in full:

British Album

Alt-J – This Is All Yours

Ed Sheeran – X

George Ezra – Wanted On Voyage

Royal Blood – Royal Blood

Sam Smith – In The Lonely Hour

British Single

Calvin Harris – Summer

Clean Bandit featuring Jess Glynne – Rather Be

Duke Dumont featuring Jax Jones – I Got U

Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud

Ella Henderson – Ghost

George Ezra – Budapest

Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk

Route 94 featuring Jess Glynne – My Love

Sam Smith – Stay With Me

Sigma – Nobody To Love

British Breakthrough Artist

Chvrches

FKA Twigs

George Ezra

Royal Blood

Sam Smith

British Female Solo Artist

Lily Allen

Paloma Faith

Ella Henderson

FKA Twigs

Jessie Ware

British Male Solo Artist

Damon Albarn

George Ezra

Paolo Nutini

Ed Sheeran

Sam Smith

British Video

Calvin Harris – Summer

Charlie XCX – Boom Clap

Duke Dumont featuring Jax Jones – I Got U

Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud

Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk

One Direction – You And I

Rita Ora – I Will Never Let You Down

Route 94 featuring Jess Glynne – My Love

Sam Smith – Stay With Me

Sigma – Nobody To Love

British Producer

Flood

Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory

Paul Epworth

Jake Gosling

International Female Solo Artist

Beyonce

Lana Del Ray

Sia

St. Vincent

Taylor Swift

International Group

5 Seconds of Summer

Black Keys

First Aid Kit

Foo Fighters

The War On Drugs

International Male Solo Artist

Beck

Hozier

Jack White

John Legend

Pharrell Williams

Critics’ Choice Award
James Bay

In a statement released shortly after the announcement of the shortlists, someone from the BPI apologised for the appearance of Lily Allen, Coldplay, Beck and Damon Albarn on the shortlists. "We reused an old form for typing these things up, and I don't think we quite deleted all the old items from the word doc - we did catch Duran Duran before we hit save, which is at least something."

The Brit Awards will be presented by Joe Pasquale and Bradley Walsh sooner than is comfortable for any of us. The best we can hope is that Taylor Swift will turn up.

The Black Crowes split

Upsetting news for people who never got out of 1996: The Black Crowes have split up. Guitarist Rich Robinson broke the news:

"It is with great disappointment and regret that after having the privilege of writing and performing the music of the Black Crowes over the last 24 years, I find myself in the position of saying that the band has broken up," Robinson said in a statement.

image: http://nme.assets.ipccdn.co.uk/images/article/1991TheCrowes_Getty85238532160115.jpg
"I hold my time with the Black Crowes with the utmost respect and sincerest appreciation. It is a huge swath of my life's body of work. I couldn't be more proud of what we accomplished and deeply moved by the relationships people created and maintained with my music.

"That alone is the greatest honor of being a musician. I love my brother and respect his talent, but his present demand that I must give up my equal share of the band and that our drummer for 28 years and original partner, Steve Gorman, relinquish 100 percent of his share, reducing him to a salaried employee, is not something I could agree to."

Financial markets are unaffected by the news; David Cameron claims this would never have happened if we just let him read everyone's emails.

Svengaliobit: Kim Fowley

Kim Fowley, the man who brought together Joan Jett and Sandy West to form The Runaways, has died.

Fowley had survived polio in childhood. He attempted a solo career, but it was as producer, writer and general mover-and-shaker that he made his name. He worked with everyone - Lennon, Modern Lovers, Helen Reddy, but The Runaways were his finest hour. After they stopped working together in 1977, Fowley tried to recreate the magic with a number of other acts, but never quite got the formula right in the same way.

More recently, he tried his hand in the movies as well as keeping his hand in the music world.

Clem Burke issued a statement:

"Kim was a great and often misunderstood individual. When Blondie first came to Hollywood Kim was one of the legends we wanted to meet. We did meet him at the Tropicana motel and became friends. I had the privilege of sitting next to Kim at a screening at SXSW of the Runaways film. When it ended, I turned to Kim and told him he was the hero of the film. He seemed happy to hear that."

Fowley had recently been receiving treatment for cancer. He was 75. And he co-wrote this, with Joan Jett:

Embed and breakfast man: Emmy The Great

Emmy The Great's S EP is getting closer... it's due out on the 27th. Here's one taste of it:

Davedeedozybeakymickandtitchobit: Trevor Ward-Davies

Trevor Ward-Davies, bassist (and 'Dozy') with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick And Titch, has died.

In many ways, Ward-Davies was the key member of the band, having signed up various members of other Salisbury bands to join a group that was first The Beatnicks, then Dave Dee And The Bostons, and finally Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick And Titch. The new name, and the comedy nicknames, were added to the mix by the managers - Ward-Davies became Dozy after he attempted to eat a wrapper rather than a chocolate bar. In the 1960s, that got you a nickname. In 2015, you'd just get a 'U okay hun' meme.

He suffered for his art, getting teeth knocked out during a performance on Ready Steady Go. The band enjoyed four years of solid success, including the number one Legend Of Xanadu before Dave Dee headed off for a solo career.

Ward-Davies had sometimes provided lead vocals on album tracks, so it wasn't a total stretch for the band to carry on as the slightly easier to type Dozy, Beaky, Mick And Titch. They continued to work and tour, splitting for a while in 1972 and reforming in the 80s, gently moving from creating new material to becoming an early fixture on the nostalgia circuit. A second wind reunion saw Dave Dee return to the fold, staying with the band until his death in 2009.

Trevor Ward-Davies was 70; he died 13th January, 2015 after a short illness.

Amputee time: First amongst others

Once again, a piece on Viktoria Modesta describes her as

Viktoria Modesta: the world’s first amputee pop star

It's still not right, though.

And not just because it might be a little early to describe Modesta as a popstar.

A letter in the current Private Eye reminds us of Victor Moulton, drummer with the Barbarians, who had lost a hand to an accident with explosives.

Ella Fitzgerald had her knees amputated below the knee in 1993, although this was pretty much after she had stopped performing in public. Sarah Bernhardt, arguably the prototype popstar, had a leg amputated after an onstage accident and carried on performing.

Over in New York, Isle is building a career which is just as solid as Viktoria's.

Tony Iommi carried on in Black Sabbath despite having lost part of his finger.

Now, you could argue all these cases are edge, or obscure, or not-quite-pop-star enough, or maybe even not amputee enough.

But... what about Rick Allen? Continued drumming for Def Leppard after losing an arm in a car crash, drumming his way onto Hysteria and selling over 20 million records.

It's great that Viktoria is doing well, and the support for her is to be welcomed. And, yes, although she might not be the first, pulling together a list of amputee pop stars shows that she's still amongst the first, nearly 100 years after Sarah Bernhardt. But if one of her main messages is about visibility, probably doesn't help to write the other pioneers out of history.

Taylor Swift rises to the surface

You might think that Taylor Swift fans registering votes for Shake It Off as best song of 2014 in Triple J's end of year poll as 'sabotage'.

Others may think it's simply a correction.

Embed and breakfast man: Allo Darlin

Allo Darlin went to KEXP and did a live set. It's lovely, and it's here:

Sam Smith is right

Sam Smith, talking to Chaka Khan, reveals a terrible truth about modern music:

Even when you meet them. I won’t name names, but some of these pop stars are just awful. And they have not even had half the success that you’ve had and yet you’re so humble and kind.

Yes, they're awful and arrogant and based on very short-term success, modern pop stars. You're right, modern pop star Sam Smith. You're so right.

Sarah Brightman is actually doing this space thing

There was, a couple of years back, a bit of murmuring that Sarah Brightman was going to go into space.

She is actually going to go into space:

Itar-Tass quoted an unnamed Star City representative as saying Brightman would arrive on Wednesday and start her training the following day. The training routine typically runs for weeks. Brightman is due to be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule on Sept. 1 in the company of two professional spacefliers.

It's possible that I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper was a true story. Or something.

Surprise: Michelle Keegan reckons she can have a go at being a pop star

Since the length of metal pipe put paid to any chance of a return to Corrie, Michelle Keegan is considering her options and it seems like her people are testing the idea of some sort of pop career by talking to The Sun:

"A fair few record label people are interested in singing her already and she's thinking long and hard about it," an insider told The Sun.

"[People] will be surprised to hear how good her voice is," they added.

It's not entirely clear why people would be "surprised", as if 'playing a barmaid' and 'being able to hold a note long enough to be autotuned' are two states that it is impossible to imagine existing in the same person.

That doesn't, of course, make it a good idea.

After all, Keegans famous in one field trying to shift that into a chart career don't have the greatest track record, do they?

Doowopobit: Curtis Lee

Curtis Lee has died.

He had a short career, helping launch the Dunes label with the Phil Spector produced Pretty Little Angel Eyes. A top ten hit in the US, he then stalled outside the top 40 with a follow-up, Under The Moon Of Love. Five further flops more-or-less made it clear he'd be better off dropping music and heading back to the family building business.

Curtis Lee was 75; he had been unwell with cancer for some time.

Justin Meh-bier

http://superpainfulmind.tumblr.com/post/107776755064

With thanks to the lovely people of Tumblr.

This week just gone

As this is the first one of the year, here's the ten most-read pieces of content for the whole of 2014:

1. RIP: Jon Fat Beast
2. That last Mark & Lard show
3. Simon Bates dumped by Smooth radio
4. KT Tunstall reckons she knows why people think she's gay
5. Video: Le Prince Miaou
6. Liveblog: Brits 2014
7. Aremnia's Eurovision entrant is kinda transphobic
8. Jo O'Meara not sorry about being boorish, racist
9. Scott Stapp gets married
10. Noel Gallagher's secret gay past

And the most popular 2014-published content:

1. RIP: Jon Fat Beast
2. Simon Bates dumped by Smooth radio
3. Liveblog: Brits 2014
4. Aremnia's Eurovision entrant is kinda transphobic
5. Liveblog: Eurovision
6. Allan Jones leaves Uncut
7. Terry Christian has interesting thoughts about disabled people
8. It's hard to believe how popular cassettes are
9. Why is there a U2 album on my computer?
10. Alfie Boe is a bit of an asshat

These were the interesting releases back in a week before Christmas:


Emily Barker - Photos Fires Fables

Download Photos Fires Fables



Various - Lead Kindly Light: Pre-War Music and Photographs from the American South

Front Porch Step plans to open his own doors

Now, if you want to hear a risible story about a musician investigating potentially dodgy goings-on between celebrities and children, forget Brian Harvey and think instead of Front Porch Step. He's investigating, erm, himself.

Mr Step - or Jake Mcelfresh - has been accused of sniffing round young fans on Tumblr. His reaction to the claims is this:

In response to the claims, Mr. Mcelfresh has said he is suspending his spring tour across the United States, along with dates in Canada and Britain. “I am taking the appropriate time to assess these very serious allegations against me and I am not taking them lightly,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook. “Until I can do that in a complete manner with all the information I have at my disposal, I will not be continuing with any current touring activities for the time being.”

I suppose, given that he has a stage name, he might be able to come out with findings that discovers that it was the other guy what did the bad things.

But let's just take a moment to pause and appreciate the work he's done there - putting out a statement which suggests he might not know if he's been sending sexual messages and photos (and encouraging reciprocity) until he goes through his emails and IMs, while taking some sort of moral high ground over the way he has "all the information" at his disposal. Hey, you guys, suggesting he tried to get 14 year-olds to send him photos - you don't have all the information that Front does. Because you can't access his sent texts file. Classy.

Perhaps it's too early to scoff at Brian Harvey

The news that Brian Harvey has been "carrying out his own investigation into child abuse" has, predictably and understandably, generated a lot of hilarity online. You can see why - a man who once pointed a finger of suspicion at a potato for attempted murder, and who has been behaving somewhat erratically since his career stalled in the early days of the Blair administration. It's full of yuck-yuck potential.

But it's worth remembering that both Stella Creasy and Simon Danczuk think that he's worth listening to - and neither are dupes:

Danczuk has led calls for an inquiry into allegations of abuse, and was put in touch with Harvey by his constituency E17 MP, Stella Creasy.

Danczuk told BuzzFeed News: “It’s the first time I’ve met him. He came across to me as a really thoughtful person. The reason we were meeting up is to discuss some work he’s done around child sex abuse. He was sharing the information that he had gathered.

“He feels quite passionately about protecting children and really wants to make a contribution. We know that showbusiness is an industry that’s had a number of abusers within it.

“He’s providing a number of leads that I’m keen to follow up and that’s exactly what I’ll do. I’m pleased he’s done the work he’s done. We had a good chat. I’d be happy and keen to meet him again.”

By the nature of the their role, MPs are often besieged by - shall we say - overenthusiastic, overimaginative amateurs. If Danczuk is happy to encourage further contact from Harvey, he must think there's something there to be taken seriously.

Tesco blinks

Rather overlooked in the news of Tesco's contractions on many fronts yesterday was the offloading of Blinkbox, its electronic music/books/movies service.

Tesco had bought into Blinkbox during the height of its imperial expansion, on a vague theory that because it flogged CDs and DVDs it should be selling digital equivalents. It started to make a bit more sense when Tesco launched the Hudl tablet, but in the end it's decided that it's a distraction from selling bread and cheese.

New owner is TalkTalk, although it's not yet clear how keen they were on the content business, and how much they just wanted to get their hands on the Tesco phone and broadband customers. (Obviously, they were part of the deal. You can't buy anything related to telecommunications without it coming as part of a bundle.)

Listen with No Rock: XCX/Ora together at, erm, last

I'm not totally convinced that Rita Ora brings anything to a Charli XCX single that wasn't already there, but for what it's worth... here's what happens when they collaborate:

Sia sighs

Sia says she's not surprised that some people have knee-jerked and yelled "paedophilia" after she launched her Shia LeBeouf/Maddie Ziegler wrestling video for Elastic Heart:

I anticipated some 'pedophelia!!!' Cries for this video. All I can say is Maddie and Shia are two of the only actors I felt could play these two warring 'sia' self states. I apologize to those who feel triggered by ‪#‎ElasticHeart‬ My intention was to create some emotional content, not to upset anybody.

Oh, won't someone think of the children?

The required apology - for giving more attention to Shia LeBeouf - is yet to be forthcoming.

Canadian copyright cops apparently less bothered about other people's copyright

Canipre, the dreadfully-named, self-appointed copyright industry authority in Canada, appears to be lifting content for its website without attribution, observes Michael Geist:

Yet what Canipre does not say is that a blog associated with the company may have been engaged in copyright infringement for many months. The blog – copyrightenforcement.ca – is run by Barry Logan, the company’s Managing Director, Operations (I received an email from Mr. Logan last year that listed the site as his blog address). In addition to posting releases from Canipre and information about the TekSavvy case, the site has posted dozens of full-text articles from media organizations around the world.

For example, last week it posted the full text of a 1200 word article on TV piracy from the Wire Report, an Ottawa-based telecom publication. The article resides behind a paywall limited to subscribers and is listed as “exclusive content.” In fact, reposting full-text articles from other sources is a regular occurrence on the site. Posts in December feature articles from the Huffington Post Canada, Business Insider, and CNET. Earlier posts include full-text articles from the Hollywood Reporter, StreamDaily, Reuters, the Canadian Press, Global News, Vancouver Sun, and the National Post. Some of the posts include articles that strip out reference to the author (Chronicle Herald, CBC) and others include no attribution whatsoever. The site also uses photos from the articles, often without attribution.

Of course, it might be that copyrightenforcement.ca have got all their paperwork in place and just don't bother to mention it on their website. It's possible. But Canipre do have form for taking material and reusing it without permission. When caught using material without the proper licence last time, Logan suggested it was a good thing because it showed, somehow, that the "system worked". Perhaps he's just trying to prove that again?

Pete Doherty: Still trying too hard

If you'd hoped that his latest spell in rehab might see Pete Doherty move on from sideshows and stunts, the news isn't encouraging:

"I've come up with some good riffs too," he said during an interview conducted at the centre. "Like simple bass lines and I'm trying to get this warlord's daughter to play drums for me but she's off the radar at the moment. So hopefully we'll have some new ideas when Carl next bounds into view in his bandana and leathers."

Yes. You can't just make a sodding tune, can you; it's got to have a sodding "warlord's daughter" involved, hasn't it?

Girl Band banned

Girl Band were meant to be slaying New York next week. Visa problems have put paid to that.

That's US embassy visas; not massive post-Christmas credit card bills.

Dears off the Deers; Deers resigned; now Hinds

Canadian band The Dears have been sending legal threats to Spanish band The Deers. Apparently it's not on to have a homonymic name.

The Deers have, therefore, become Hinds:

this is sadly the most official post we've ever made: we have to change our name.
we mean... they forced us to. we received an email from a canadian lawyer saying that our name created confusion with his band's name. and that name is not even deers (LOL). We tried our best, really, but we have no choice. so..
OKAY!!!! LET'S TAKE THIS WITH A SMILE :):)!!
deers are now...HINDS!! (charannn!!)
And we are still the same people, we are even the same animal!! UNBELIEVABLE! !!
We don't usually ask you guys for anything but PLEASE you'd really make this easier for us if you could share this amazing info.
LET'S HAVE AN AMAZING 2015!
sorry and thank you, HINDS 8)
PS: pppppfff... we screwed it up with the FB page two weeks ago.. sorry for the confusion haha
see you on tour ☮!!

We like The Dears - but, frankly, sending legal letters to try and protect a name which is just a single dictionary word? There's a new rule of band naming, guys, and it's 'if it would make a bad password, it's going to be a lousy band name'.

Calvin Klein has just turned into your grandma

I think we've all been there, when an older relative hands you a gift they've put a lot of thought into, but which reflects something you liked years ago and you've long since outgrown?

Gee, thanks, Uncle Calvin Klein. Justin Bieber doing underwear ads. Wow... [sotto voce Uncle Calvin must think I'm still twelve. Bless.]

Sidenote #1: According to our back-of-a-Wahaca-seed-packet calculation, Bieber is now 84% indistinguishable from Vanilla ice

Sidenote #2: Very much an object lesson in why adding yet another shit tattoo to your shit tattoos doesn't make the original shit tattoo any better

I collect, I reject: Johnny Ramone's guitar

Fancy owning a guitar once owned by Johnny Ramone? One is coming up for auction:

In very good condition, with various nicks and dings to body, and several areas of duct tape residue from Johnny’s guitar strap.

Mmm. Gotta love it when the duct-tape residue is in very good condition.

- This guitar is covered in gunk
- It's okay - that was Johnny's gunk
- Ooh, that adds a hundred dollars to the value right there

Sam Smith: "Don't worry, chums, it's only dolphins being kept in tiny tanks"

Sam Smith has found himself in the middle of a whirlpool after going to SeaWorld in Queensland.

Some of the criticism was, to be fair, misplaced, as people had assumed that he Australian theme park was connected to the American business which keeps orcas in tiny boxes for the entertainment of the paying public.

Sam issued a statement to reassure everyone:

Seaworld Australia and Seaworld America are two very different things. Please remember this guys x

So, that's alright, then, yes?

Well... no.

It's true they're not the same business, but they have the same problem, and simply because the Australian business doesn't have orcas doesn't mean they're alright.

For a start, they keep dolphins in captivity and make them perform for gawking lollygaggers - and that's never an acceptable thing. WDC are unequivocal on this:

Whales and dolphins are highly intelligent animals who want and need to live in complex social groups. In captivity they will usually have been separated from their families, often in cruel hunts and some when they are very young.

Wild whales and dolphins can swim up to 100 miles a day, hunting and playing. In captivity they have very little space and cannot behave naturally. A concrete tank can never replace their ocean home.

Captive whales and dolphins have been trained to perform tricks, day after day, for food as a reward instead of behaving naturally. When not performing, they are often kept in holding tanks smaller than show pools. Confining animals together that may not get on can result in stress and aggression with no possible escape.

Sea World Australia also has polar bears - and ZooCheck isn't impressed with that:

Polar bears have long been known as a species that is especially prone to the development
of abnormal behaviour patterns in captivity. These usually manifest themselves as
stereotypic pacing, head turning and swimming patterns. Stereotypies are prolonged,
repetititve, apparently purposeless behaviours that do not occur in the wild. They are
usually associated with substandard conditions and poor welfare.

Even zoos with the largest budgets have difficulty keeping polar bears free of stereotypic
behaviours. Sea World San Diego has not been able to stop the development of stereotypies in their polar bears despite spending millions of dollars on their polar bear
exhibit. Sea World Gold Coast Australia has had the same experience.

The Calgary Zoo in
Alberta and the Central Park Wildlife Centre in New York have put polar bears on prozac
to reduce abnormal behaviour patterns.

So, yes, Sam Smith. It's a very different thing, except in the ways that matter.

Countryobit: Little Jimmy Dickens

Little Jimmy Dickens, novelty country singer, has died.

His act was pretty much based on being four foot eleven; but it was an act that served him well - he had his first country hit in 1949, and was still working just before Christmas with a Grand Old Opry performance.



Jimmy Dickens was 94; he died January 2nd following a cardiac arrest.

Madonna finds a way to make her terrorism comments worse

For Madonna, it's not enough merely to compare the leaking of so-so music a little early as terrorism; oh no, she's gone a step further:

Madonna is defending herself against criticism after she posted Instagram photos of Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela that were altered to look like her own image on her new album.

Madonna’s cover for the album Rebel Heart is a closeup of her face with black string on it. Her social media posts show the faces of King and Mandela doctored to make it appear as though they have similar string on their faces. Some considered the posts offensive.

That's right, she's taken an image of a man who was assassinated, and another who spent decades in prison for his political beliefs, drawn on their faces, and is using to promote her "terrorism-victimised" record.

(That's leaving aside Mandela having actually committed what the State saw as a genuine acts of terrorism - proper terrorism, like blowing things up, rather than merely taping a few songs off the radio.)

“When I repost these images i am saying YES! These people are all Rebel Hearts in one way or another from Martin Luther King to Jesus to Nelson Mandela to John Lennon. YES! Lets [sic] celebrate them! The world needs more people like them. I hope to one day accomplish. 1 100th of what these Rebel Hearts have accomplished.

“As I Said in a previous post “I walk in the footsteps of Giants” and i will continue to do so G*D willing. They are my guiding light. #rebelheart #livingforlove.”

Now, obviously including John Lennon on the list is delightful in its own way - bracketing 'man who sat in a mansion writing songs about not having anything' with Martin Luther King makes it clear this is 'history' of the sort that Nike does sometimes to sell its plimsolls; that Madonna would include a man who was killed by a fan makes her overwrought wailing about victimisation ever more ridiculous.

McCartney goes West; internet goes stupid

The Paul McCartney/Kanye West hook-up came out on New Years Day, bringing together, at last, the man who did Give Ireland Back To The Irish and the man who did George Bush doesn't care about black people.

Presumably the recording session breaks were filled with conversations about how easy it is to go from being a threat to the establishment to being a national teddy bear.

Anyway, the thought of Macca and West coming together brought out the wry side in a lot of people on Twitter:

Okay, not the best joke of the season, but funnier than anything in Mrs Browns Boys. Fair enough, that's a pretty low bar, but given that the tweet wouldn't have been worded in quite that way if, erm, :/ had really not known who McCartney was, the joke is obvious, right?

Apparently not, as Buzzfeed's Brian McManus managed to miss it:

Yesterday we told you about Kanye’s New Year’s Day surprise collaboration with Paul McCartney, “Only One.” Today on Twitter, some Kanye fans are wondering just who this Paul McCartney fella is.

Brian even manages to reproduce two Tweets which are sodding identical, like a man still expecting to be soaked the third time the clown throws an empty bucket at him:

It's even got the same poorly-chosen emoji, Buzzfeed. It was a laboured joke.

Trouble is, a depressing but not surprisingly large chunk of the internet followed Buzzfeed's line, as if we'd all drunk so much on New Years Eve we'd forgotten how the internet worked. Because if people are online and really want to know who someone is, they don't type his name into Twitter, they type it into Wikipedia or Google.

The only people who really try to find out background details about people by sticking names in Twitter are your gran and Ed Balls, and both of them would be far more likely to be asking who Kanye West is.

But beyond the anger of those with an inability to spot a joke came the counterwave - unfortunately, still comprising people who were unable to spot a joke, but with a different angle:

@epstein @GreatDismal Yup. Most famous 40-50 years ago. Like fans in 1964 not knowing Ray Miller Orchestra of the 20s.

— Insufficient FUN (@shoulderroll) January 3, 2015

It's a spirited defence of young people, but manages to add being spectacularly wrong to not noticing the gag.

So let's at least allow the possibility that some of the people going 'who iz McCartney Beatle lolz' might, genuinely, not know who he is. Would that be justifiable because it's like someone in 1964 not knowing the Ray Miller Orchestra?

While it's true that McCartney and Beatlemania might have peaked a few decades back, it's not like he then went and lived under a rock - he did the Superbowl show in 2005; he headlined Live8; in 2009 he did a benefit gig in New York which raised three million dollars. It's fair to say he has something of a profile.

Indeed, it's that profile which is the reason for Kanye West wanting to work with him - it's not like West stumbled across the Wings theme from Crossroads and thought 'I need to find this person and work with him'; the attraction is that it is Famous Beatle Man McCartney. West is relying on people knowing who he's working with. Otherwise it'd be like having your photo taken with Prince Charles only Prince Charles has his back to the camera - it might as well be anyone. West's calculation is that his fanbase will know who the man is, otherwise it'd be pointless.

But beyond that: is it unfair to expect people to be at least aware of McCartney? Ray Miller might have been a mystery in 1964 partly because he'd not left as big a crater in popular culture as McCartney has - working a time when even radio fame didn't spread very far, and recorded music was less popular than sheet music; and on the far side of a world war which fractured and remade a lot of the culture, even someone passionate about big bands might have struggled to have much contact with Miller's work.

But in a 21st Century with Spotify and YouTube and never-ending channels of Gold and silver memories, it's harder to imagine someone growing up without having come across something Beatley - if, for example, you genuinely don't know roughly what the Abbey Road album cover is, a lot of modern culture will be inexplicable to you.

Whether you like The Beatles or not, the band and its members are surely on the list of shared assumptions of things you know in modern Western Anglophone culture - like Shakespeare and Star Wars and Dickens and Mark Twain and Elvis.

Frankly, not knowing who McCartney is would be the mark of someone culturally inept.

Which is, of course, exactly the point the Kanye fans were making with their jokes in the first place.

Shayne Ward's heart is in the right place, kind of

Shayne Ward has given an interview to Attitude, in which he sort-of says the right things, but not quite:

I get called gay all the time. Normally, from a jealous boyfriend of a girl who’s a fan or a group of guys in a pub shouting at me because I’m a pop star. It doesn’t bother me. I am very thick skinned and can handle situations very well. Plus half of the idiots shouting abuse are probably hiding in the closet and fancy me as well. Ha! I’ve always known I was straight thanks to my brother’s collection of magazines. I love boobs. If I were gay my family are amazing and wouldn’t shut out anyone. They’d never have a problem if any of my family said they were gay. Only welcoming arms full of love!”

First of all: Shayne, honey: your last top ten single was in 2007, nobody is doing anything because you're a "pop star".

It sounds all vaguely positive, though: I don't mind if people call me gay, and even if I was, my family wouldn't mind.

Except, leaving aside the complete erasure of the possibility of bi or pansexuality from his world, there's something problematic about the suggestion that being called gay is something that requires "a thick skin". And the "they're calling me gay because they're probably gay" is hardly very socially aware when you come to it.

But mostly, it's the pop star thing.