I am an idiot. You already know it, I already know it, everybody knows it. Anyway, last week I consolidated my own opinion of myself by crashing my car. It's the first time I've had an accident in my four years of driving, and I felt like a moron as the figurative car crash that is my life became a literal one.
Anyway, while I have a nervous wait to determine whether my warhorse of a Vauxhall Corsa is going to battle through to drive me around once more, I have the company of my Dad's car to see me to work what feels like every day of the week. While it is a more than adequate replacement for my humble steed, there is one problem - the lack of CD player.
My CD collection makes car journey's infinitely more tolerable. It's much more fun driving for hours at a time when you get to choose what you listen to, especially when your music taste doesn't reflect the taste of the majority of radio stations. So to have to listen to Radio 1 - or anything else for that matter - isn't my idea of fun. In fact, now I've been familiarising myself with the Radio 1 playlist for a week or so now, I thought I would give you my opinion on the acts and songs that are heavily represented on the airwaves.
Obviously a station like Radio 1 plays music that the young British public will enjoy. Apparently at the moment, the young British public enjoy quirky female artists (Lady GaGa, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj), plainer female artists (Beyoncé, Adele) and generic boybands (JLS, The Wanted). Outside of these main characteristics, you can find a few other songs that stray away from the cut and paste, cross-genre music of 2011. I honestly couldn't tell you who is singing what until a DJ tells me, everything sounds that similar.
The Wanted - Glad You Came
You wouldn't believe me if I told you that The Wanted are just five young men who really wanted to start a boy band, would you? Well, good, because they formed through a mass audition. The song's main melody sounds like it belongs in Ibiza, which is no bad thing. Unfortunately it's ruined a little bit someone saying that he's glad you came and his universe will never be the same. It's all very touching, but it detracts from what could be an absolutely massive dance track.
JLS - She Makes Me Wanna (featuring Dev)
This track is hilarious because the 'Oh's' that back the chorus and bits of the verses sounds like someone is just pressing a button with it on over and over again. I genuinely chuckled to myself on the way home from work when I heard it first. That may have been the sleep deprivation though. It sounds like a part time DJ has got at it somewhere between the mastering and the release of the track and sabotaged it, and that thought pleases me.
Nicki Minaj - Super Bass
I'll level with you. Nicki Minaj scares the shit out of me. I'm not sure what it is, but seeing photos like this one does nothing to banish the fear I have. My opinion of the song itself is one of indecision. The verses make me angry and I think it's a mixture of the lyrics and their delivery. Then I make it to the chorus and I almost believe that I should like this song, because the melodies and vocals all seem to come together. Unfortunately I cannot hear that 'boom ba da boom bass' at all, and as a result I am hesitant in committing myself to having any positive feelings for the song.
David Guetta - Little Bad Girl (featuring Taio Cruz & Ludacris)
I am failing to understand why David Guetta has re-released his two year old album with a few extra songs on it, with this one being one of them. Move on, it's not 2009 any more.
Beyoncé - Best Thing I Never Had
I am of the opinion that Beyoncé is at her best when performing faster paced, upbeat and quite frankly massive tunes (see Crazy in Love, Single Ladies and Glastonbury 2011). This song does nothing but reaffirm my opinion. While her voice cannot be denied, this song is a bit flat and I'm still baffled by the lyrics 'You showed your ass and I saw the real you'. I had no idea she had been to Barnstaple on a Saturday night.
The Strokes - Machu Picchu
This is the diamond in the rough. It's easy for me to say that, what with me being the skinny jeans wearing, guitar playing indie boy, but it is refreshing to hear something this good on the radio. I can guarantee that the guitar riffs will be stuck in your head for a few days, and you won't be able to stop yourself from doing renditions of Julian Casablancas's vocal during the middle part of the song.
So, what have I learned from nearly two weeks of Radio 1? Well, it could be a mixture of things. It's probably a mixture of me getting old, being out of touch and being stuck somewhere between the years of 1977 and 2005. It's either that or Radio 1 is getting a bit rubbish. I'm prepared to stick my neck out and say it's the latter, but I would cheating myself in many ways. Whichever way you look at it, I want my CD player back, and I won't stop using it until I hear Sonic Youth on the radio.
Sunday, 31 July 2011
Thursday, 14 July 2011
How I Met Your Mother And The Time I Became Obsessed With It.
Words are bloody annoying aren't they? Every now and again, I sit down at my computer and write a load of words out in a row. I only know what 83% of the words mean, I just put the rest in to sound clever and perspicacious.
Anyway, aside from having to put them together to make something entertaining, words can be downright cruel. Take the word 'obsessed' for example, like every other word in existence, it's just a few sounds that are put together to form a meaning. In this instance, the word 'obsessed' means "to dominate or preoccupy the thoughts, feelings, or desires of (a person); beset, trouble, or haunt persistently or abnormally." That sounds perfectly legitimate, doesn't it? No, it doesn't, because rather than seeing that definition when someone says to you 'oh, he is so obsessed with her,' you can't help but picture a young male sat in his bedroom rocking back and forth on his bed in front of a wall that is plastered from head to toe in various photos of the aforementioned woman. And a few candles.
Despite it's connotations though, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of an obsession over something. While you might not know it, everyone has an obsession of some sort. The Sun's obsessions are women, famous, attractive women such as Cheryl Cole. Liam Gallagher's is The Beatles, which is why he has been trying to sound like them for about 15 years. I've had many obsessions, including The Cribs, Scott Pilgrim and Pavement. However, these have all been put to one side for the last two weeks for my latest one, How I Met Your Mother.
By the time you have finished reading this, I will have watched 136 and indeed every episode to date of the American sitcom, all in the space of two weeks. That's 9.7 episodes, or about 3 hours and 20 minutes of time well spent each day, with a full time job thrown in the mix as well. It's amazing what the end of university life and the prospect of living in rural Devon for the foreseeable future can do to the human spirit.
Because this is my new obsession, I have obviously started talking about HIMYM to anyone I converse with for more than five minutes. I've heard people say that it's not that funny, and they are immediately wrong. It just takes a certain amount of getting to know the characters first. In other words, it's like real life. Of course, a show can't be consistently funny for well over 100 episodes, but it's a testament that there are that many. If there were that many episodes of a UK sitcom such as The Inbetweeners, I'm pretty sure the world we live in would be a much less happier one than it is now. And cruder. And more stupid. And Incongruous.
I could talk about the show for much, much longer, but that would be interminably boring for you. That's the thing with obsessions, you should never let anyone know too much about yours. It's one thing to know a person's interests, but to have to be told every single detail is a bit too much. In the last two weeks I've shared many laughs and some actual tears while viewing the made up lives of some fictional characters. Is that a bit sad? Yes. Do I need a life? Yes. Am I bothered? Not one bit. I can honestly say that the two weeks that I spent watching How I Met Your Mother have been two of the most fun weeks I've had in a long time.
In all seriousness though, I am going to leave the house tomorrow. I promise.
Anyway, aside from having to put them together to make something entertaining, words can be downright cruel. Take the word 'obsessed' for example, like every other word in existence, it's just a few sounds that are put together to form a meaning. In this instance, the word 'obsessed' means "to dominate or preoccupy the thoughts, feelings, or desires of (a person); beset, trouble, or haunt persistently or abnormally." That sounds perfectly legitimate, doesn't it? No, it doesn't, because rather than seeing that definition when someone says to you 'oh, he is so obsessed with her,' you can't help but picture a young male sat in his bedroom rocking back and forth on his bed in front of a wall that is plastered from head to toe in various photos of the aforementioned woman. And a few candles.
Despite it's connotations though, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of an obsession over something. While you might not know it, everyone has an obsession of some sort. The Sun's obsessions are women, famous, attractive women such as Cheryl Cole. Liam Gallagher's is The Beatles, which is why he has been trying to sound like them for about 15 years. I've had many obsessions, including The Cribs, Scott Pilgrim and Pavement. However, these have all been put to one side for the last two weeks for my latest one, How I Met Your Mother.
By the time you have finished reading this, I will have watched 136 and indeed every episode to date of the American sitcom, all in the space of two weeks. That's 9.7 episodes, or about 3 hours and 20 minutes of time well spent each day, with a full time job thrown in the mix as well. It's amazing what the end of university life and the prospect of living in rural Devon for the foreseeable future can do to the human spirit.
Because this is my new obsession, I have obviously started talking about HIMYM to anyone I converse with for more than five minutes. I've heard people say that it's not that funny, and they are immediately wrong. It just takes a certain amount of getting to know the characters first. In other words, it's like real life. Of course, a show can't be consistently funny for well over 100 episodes, but it's a testament that there are that many. If there were that many episodes of a UK sitcom such as The Inbetweeners, I'm pretty sure the world we live in would be a much less happier one than it is now. And cruder. And more stupid. And Incongruous.
I could talk about the show for much, much longer, but that would be interminably boring for you. That's the thing with obsessions, you should never let anyone know too much about yours. It's one thing to know a person's interests, but to have to be told every single detail is a bit too much. In the last two weeks I've shared many laughs and some actual tears while viewing the made up lives of some fictional characters. Is that a bit sad? Yes. Do I need a life? Yes. Am I bothered? Not one bit. I can honestly say that the two weeks that I spent watching How I Met Your Mother have been two of the most fun weeks I've had in a long time.
In all seriousness though, I am going to leave the house tomorrow. I promise.
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