Without wishing to appear overly interested in HMV's pricing policy, how amazing is this: six of the best albums of all time for £18, all in.
The Response Of Various Age Ranges
30+: "Some of my original vinyls have worn out and my 'Very' CD box snapped, unfortunately, so making the albums available at this price point will allow me to replace certain albums cheaply. It's even cheaper than purchasing at iTunes - plus you get the high quality CD and the artwork will be worth having, too."
20-30: "I kind of missed these albums when they were originally released but this is extremely good value so I will purchase each these albums from HMV at this bargainous price - plus you get the physical product as a backup."
20 and under: "Sorry but £18 is £18 more than £0, and I'd have all the plastic bits left over once I'd put them into iTunes, so I shall torrent them thank you very much."
Amazingly* of course with every day that passes, the 20 and under agegroup creeps further and further into the other age ranges. It's the same with magazines. Entire generations growing up without any interest in physical music or magazines. It's a wave that surges through popular culture. In publishing the teen magazines go first, then the mags for those in their twenties. Before long the only people who ever remember buying a magazine will be 45 years old, leaving just Uncut and Top Gear. Then those will go, leaving The Lady as last mag standing. WHICH IS EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD BE - THE LADY IS BRILLIANT.
* Not amazingly but what can you do (answer: nothing)
It's sort of a band/collaration/musical happening, called Monarchy. Basically it is Neon Gold and Starsmith, two parties you're either looking forward to hearing more from in 2010 or already bored of hearing enough of in 2009, depending on your general outlook. Edit: It's not, it's someone else.
To go with the new thing there also happens to be a song. This is due to it being all about the music man.
The song is called 'Gold In The Fire', happens to actually be quite good, and was sent to Popjustice and approx 300 other 'blogs' earlier today.
"An amazing result for Alexandra Burke, and a slightly less amazing but nonetheless rather impressive (saleswise) result for Robbie. Overall, though, what an amazing result for the power of an X Factor live final: the Number One single is outselling the Number Two single two to one, and the Number Two single is outselling last week's Number One by a similar margin."
"Just as 'Man In The Mirror' became an anthem as a world mourned Michael
Jackson, so fans have flocked as one to a particular Boyzone tune. 'No
Matter What' looks likely to storm the Top 100 on Sunday."
"Michael Buble in the Top 10 isn't an ideal scenario - can someone please sort for Sunday, cheers."
"Bad news for Mr Hudson - we're going to let him finish this
album campaign but Estelle's 'Shine' is one of the greatest Kanye-hyped
but ultimately underwhelming Brit comebacks of all time. 'Huddo' looks
likely to enter the Top 30 alongside Editors and Lostprophets."
"X Factor viewers also show that they have incredibly good taste: of the Robbie songs featured in Saturday night's X Factor, it's 'No Regrets' (as performed rather well by Joe) which re-enters the highest, poking its head into the Top 80."
"Leona's 'Footprints In The Sand' also looks likely to make a reappearance in the lower reachces of the chart in the wake of Saturday's X Factor. How much higher do you think it would be if it went by its proper title, 'I Per-romise Yoooooooooooo'?"
"You wouldn't want to be the one who had to tell Dionne Bromfield that her single was struggling to make the Top 100, though we suppose she is definitely more of an 'albums artist'. Speaking of albums: good news for Editors, Chipmunk and Shakira in that order, along with some extra congratulations for The Saturdays, while it looks like Taio Cruz will have to prove himself with another single before too many people stampede towards his album."
Over the weekend a posse of furious Shayne Ward fans got together to protest outside Manchester radio station Key 103. They're not happy with the way Simon Cowell has managed Shayne Ward's career.
Here's what happened.
Now we know what you might be thinking. "There are only sixteen people in this video, surely that's not enough to convince Simon Cowell to make another Shayne Ward album." You're right to have your concerns, but a new Shayne Ward album is not an impossible dream.
There are two options.
1. Increase required fan input to meet costs
If you take in recording, manufacturing, marketing and other associated
costs for an entire campaign (because of course they won't be happy
with just two single releases from the album and will no doubt campaign
for a third 'for the fans') at usual Syco standards let's say you could get the whole thing
done for £500,000 without fans moanin' and wailin' about Shayne not having enough money spent on him. This means that each of the sixteen fans pictured above would need to pay £31,250 for this to break even. Perhaps this could be deemed good value with the use of 'super deluxe edition' albums including a postcard and a badge.
2. Scale down costs to meet demand If you take those 16 fans and assume they'll each buy an album, three singles on every (remaining) format and a DVD re-release next Christmas, you're looking at taking around £30 from each fan, putting the budget for the entire campaign at somewhere in the region of £480. This is certainly doable, it just requires some tightening of belts.
If the Shayne Ward fans could let us know which option they wish to pursue we can get onto Syco and try to get this project moving.
The last few weeks have been very exciting in London, because wherever you go there seem to be Frankie Goes To Hollywood posters stuck all over the place.
It is a bit like being in Ashes To Ashes - fortunately if you turn on the radio it's clear you're back in good old 19[INSERT LABORIOUSLY CONSTRUCTED 'JOKE' BASED ON VARIOUS CURRENT POP TUNES SOUNDING LIKE SONGS FROM OTHER ERAS, PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER].
Much as we'd like the Frankie flyposting to be for fun it's actually all in aid of a new greatest hits album.
We like the way Frankie Goes To Hollywood pop up every few years with a greatest hits album and 'brilliant new remixes'. They did it in 1993, six years after the band's last hit single, then they did it again, seven years later, in 2000. After gaps of six years then seven years, mathematics fans might have been expecting a Frankie repackage after an eight year gap so really this 2009 set of reissues is a year overdue. Which might explain how stale some of the 'Relax' remixes are. Like most remixes to have come out around the various Frankie retrospectives, they can't avoid the fact that the three key Frankie tracks, and the ones which are usually wheeled out to promote these albums, exist in total perfection by means of their original versions, and that any subsequent variation or dicking around is a waste of everybody's time. In most instances, and this is the really amazing thing about the production on songs like 'Two Tribes', remixes created in the present day invariably somehow sound more dated than the original 80s recordings. All these people who've done the new mixes - Scott Storch, Chicane, Spencer & Hill - obviously did their best, but their time would have been far more constructively spent picking up litter or doing some gardening for the elderly.
Anyway here's the 'Frankie Say Greatest' tracklisting.
CD1
1) Relax
2) Two Tribes
3) Welcome To The Pleasuredome (Escape Act Video Mix)
4) War
5) The Power Of Love
6) Ferry Cross The Mersey
7) Is There Anybody Out There
8) Tag
9) Born To Run
10) Rage Hard
11) Warriors Of The Wastelend
12) Watching The Wildlife
13) Happy Hi
14) The Waves
15) Relax (Chicane Radio Edit)
16) Two Tribes (Hibauska)
17) Relax (Lockout)
CD2
1) Relax (Sex Mix)
2) Two Tribes (Annihilation)
3) War (Hidden)
4) Welcome To The Pleasuredome (Fruitiness Mix)
5) Rage Hard (Freddie Bastone Remix)
6) Watching The Wildlife (Hotter)
7) Relax (Scott Stoch)
8) Suffragette City
9) Our Silver Turns To Gold
10) Get It On
It would be funny if they released a greatest hits without 'Relax' on it, wouldn't it. ("No" - Universal Music)
Some of the songs are good - we like the title track, 'Parachute' and 'Don't Talk About This Love', but to these ears at least half this album is mediocre or worse. It brings us no pleasure at all to say this but this album is everything certain people said it would be - and everything we wrongly believed nobody would let it be.
"An amazing result for Alexandra Burke, and a slightly less amazing but nonetheless rather impressive (saleswise) result for Robbie. Overall, though, what an amazing result for the power of an X Factor live final: the Number One single is outselling the Number Two single two to one, and the Number Two single is outselling last week's Number One by a similar margin."
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