Amazing: The Bird & The Bee have got a new album coming out and it's all covers of Hall & Oates songs (except for one track which is brand new).
THE BIRD & THE BEE IN BRIEF: A 'chanteuse' called Inara George along with a chap by the name of Greg Kurstin who's basically one of the world's Top 10 pop inventors. The pair first bonded over a shared passion for jazz NO WAIT COME BACK then went on to do some songs that weren't in fact jazz and actually sound like big pop, like last year's 'Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future' album (Spotify link) and the single 'Love Letter To Japan' which could quite easily have been a fairly popular Little Boots or Lily Allen song.
ANYWAY the new album is called 'Interpreting The Masters Vol 1: A Tribute To Daryl Hall And John Oates' and it's out towards the end of March.
The first song, 'Heard It On The Radio', isn't a Hall & Oates song
at all. Instead it's a warm and brilliantly observed 'Yesterday Once More'-style 'homage' to Tunes Of
The Past and for that reason is a very good song to kick off this
tribute album. You'll already have guessed this if you're familiar with
Greg's work but 'Interpreting The Masters...' isn't one of those terrible 'LOL remember the 80s' efforts; instead it's a passionate fan latter to the greatest songwriting duo of the 1980s whose names weren't Tennant & Lowe or Morrissey & Marr or Stock & Aitken or (GET ON WITH IT - ED)
Tracklisting:
1. Heard It On The Radio
2. I Can’t Go For That
3. Rich Girl
4. Sara Smile
5. Kiss On My List
6. Maneater
7. She’s Gone
8. Private Eyes
9. One on One
We have listened to this album approximately three times so far and are currently on the fourth lesson. It's rating quite high in the listenableometer.
Radio 1 announced the new Top 10 last night, as they do every week near the end of the Reggie Yates Show. Unfortunately the whole thing was in the wrong order. Here's how this week's Top 10 should look.
1. Example - 'Won't Go Quietly'
Despite its eye-wateringly bad video 'Won't Come Quietly' is one of the best singles of 2010 and you can take that to the pop fact bank.
2. Glee - 'Don't Stop Believin''
Make the most of this, readers, there are three weeks left until you will never need or want to hear the Glee rendition of this song ever again until you are dead and in the ground and therefore incapable of hearing anything at all although, even when you're six feet under you'll probably still be able to detect the distant annual thud of X Factor Big Band week as it vibrates through the afterlife.
3. Alicia Keys - 'Empire State Of Mind (Part II)'
It would be better if 'Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart' was in the Top 10 but it's not so we'll just have to make do with this. It says something quite complimentary about 'Empire State Of Mind' that even when you've taken out the best bits you're still left with a song that's better than Most Other Songs. Imagine, for example, if you took all the good bits out of 'Playing With Fire' by N-Dubz featuring Mr Hudson! It would sound like this.
4. Owl City - 'Fireflies'
Do you know what's worse than Owl City sounding quite a lot like The Postal Service? People saying "Owl City sounds like The Postal Service". YES THANK YOU WE HAVE EARS.
5. Journey - 'Don't Stop Believin''
Quite a good song. Marginally better than 'Starstrukk', marginally worse than 'Fireflies'.
6. 3OH!3 feat Katy Perry - 'Starstrukk'
A song that was invented for the benefit of morons but turned out to be alright in the end.
7. Iyaz - 'Replay'
This is clearly an amazing song and if anyone attempts to tell you otherwise you have our permission to call them a massive bastard but it is only at Number 7 in our rundown of the proper Top 10 and that is due to the extreme badness of his next single, 'Solo'.
8. Timbaland feat Katy Perry - 'If We Ever Meet Again'
Here's an oddity - a song which involves Katy Perry but whose video features someone other than Katy Perry pulling the video's most ridiculous faces. The guilty party here, of course, is Timbaland, whose endless 'cat done a whoopsie' facial contortions must surely be part of some elaborate audition process for a 2010 bigscreen 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em' remake.
9. JLS - 'One Shot'
The good bit (where it goes "HNRRGH NRGHRHGRN NRGRHRNN NRGRGHRNN" and sounds like it's about to all go off) should go on for longer and by 'longer' we mean 'the entire song'.
10. John & Edward feat Vanilla Ice - 'Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)' The song at the heart of this is brilliant but everything around it is 100% shit, dragging the whole thing down. Imagine a nice birthday cake, but imagine it put in a sack with a dead dog and a brick then chucked in a river. That is what this song is like.
And that, readers, is what this week's Top 10 should have looked like.
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Let's clear up any confusion about Daisy Dares You
Story filed Monday, 08 February 2010
Sometimes when a new artist comes along it is difficult to really get your head around what they're 'about'.
Obviously the most important thing is that you like the songs, and whether or not you tap your toe to a tune shouldn't really have anything to do with whoever's responsible for bringing that song into being. But after you've decided you like that first song it gets to a point where you're wondering whether it's worth investing more time in the artist. Will you be interested in hearing another song from the act, for example? How about checking them out live, or purchasing a t-shirt?
With some new artists you'll know at first glance whether they're up your street but with others it can be less easy.
Imagine, for example, you're a really cool teenager like those teenagers in Skins. Your diary reads like an issue of Platform, except it's an issue of Platform that won't even be published for another eight months because you're so cutting edge, and it's not even a diary, it's a BLOG, and it's not even a blog because it's a brand new type of journal known only to you and your small group of friends. Except it's not a group, it's a network, and it's not small, it's so big that Facebook looks small in comparison thanks to all those parties and events you're involved with. So you're quite a happening young person, and you come across 'Number One Enemy' by Daisy Dares You and you think to yourself, "well. This is certainly a catchy tune that I will find myself humming from time to time. But how does Daisy Dares You fit in with my lifestyle? I don't want to get involved with this artist if she is too pop or if she is not credible enough".
We've all been in that sort of situation. It's not easy. Fortunately sometimes record labels can give you a helping hand and RCA have done a great job with Daisy. One quick glance at the sleeve for 'Number One Enemy' and any doubt about whether this is A Real Artist can immediately go out of the window. There are three key points here.
1. A small detail that you might miss at first glance so let us just point it out: there's a massive red guitar in shot. This subtle, almost subliminal signifier tells us that there is more to Daisy Dares You than you might think. She doesn't just sing pop songs - she can hold guitars as well. This makes her ideally placed for a job in a music shop if this pop career doesn't take off but of course it will due to her collection of incredible songs and general 'artistry' so there's nothing to worry about there.
2. There's hole in her stockings (a bit like that Amy Studt song 'Ladder In My Tights'
except not as good) to show that you can dress her up as much as you
like you evil conformist BASTARDS but her personality just can't help but come through because she's
a little bit alternative and a little bit kooky and yes she might be
signed to a major but she's indie in spirit you know, why not join in
her gang etc etc etczzzz.
3. The most important factor here: an old typewriter font has been used for the song title. This is useful because it lets us know that she is PROPERLY alternative and 'traditional', like those bands that people used to write fanzines about during the days of PUNK etc. It should be noted however that Daisy Dares You is not threateningly punk rock. If she was threateningly punk rock her sleeve would look like this.
And that, we think you will agree, is just too confrontational. Nobody needs this sort of font-related aggression on a Monday morning.
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