Robyn beats Lil' Wayne.
Man, this blog loves Robyn.
Good luck to both of them at the Grammy's.
Showing posts with label pop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pop. Show all posts
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Well, we know my entrance music
Apparently if I'm ever an MMA fighter, I should walk down to the ramp to 50 Cent.
Here's "Ayo Technology" as a victory video.
Here's "Ayo Technology" as a victory video.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Hilarity abounds: tATu wins!
In a tight fought battle, where many of the reading/viewing public claimed to be voting under duress, tATu were dubbed the lesser of two evils winning 4 - 3.
Here's "All the Things She Said" for a victory video.
And because I don't want to alienate any of my dozen or so readers, here's Prodigy (from Mobb Deep, not from England) with "Mac 10 Handle" to apologize for last week.
Here's "All the Things She Said" for a victory video.
And because I don't want to alienate any of my dozen or so readers, here's Prodigy (from Mobb Deep, not from England) with "Mac 10 Handle" to apologize for last week.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Depressing British Band Battle in Bizzaro World: tATu vs. In Extremo
OK, so you may remember a battle a little while back that pitted Sisters of Mercy against The Smiths.
This is a rematch, sort of.
I found really questionable covers of both bands' songs and have decided to put those videos into the ring. Why? Because I couldn't think of a better battle for this week and both videos are fucking hilarious.
The Main Event
In the blue corner, from Berlin, Germany, a band that has produced what may be the most fuckdickulous video in the history of music videos, IN EXTREMO.
In Extremo were founded in 1995 when two separate bands, a Rammstein-esque Krautrock act called Noah invited a group of neo-medieval folk musicians called Corvus Corax on stage for horribly ill-conceived jam session.
After the session, they were so pleased that Noah vocalist Michael Rhein suggested they make it a permanent arrangement, creating the world's first industrial band to feature lutes, bagpipes and something called a schawn. All seven of the band members took on ridiculous pseudonyms, Rhein dubbed himself "The Last Unicorn," and they decided to go by the collective moniker In Extremo. (It's Latin for In the Extreme.)
According to the band's MySpace, they played their first gig as In Extremo on March 29, 1997 in front of 1,000 people at the Leipzig Town Hall Market. Apparently there's not a lot to do in Leipzig in late March.
I really try not to put bands up here just to rip on them, but these guys are ridiculous. On the other hand, they're so ridiculous that they're just a little bit aweseome. I feel like if I went drinking with the members of In Extremo, it would end poorly.
Here's their cover of "This Corrosion." If you thought the video for the original version was silly, which it was, you should probably be sitting down for this one.
The Competition
In the red corner, from Moscow, Russia, everyone's favourite schoolgirl faux-lesbians, TATUUUUU!
I don't really feel like I need to give a backgrounder on tATu to anyone. There's not really much to say.
Back around the turn of the millennium, two 16 year-old-girls from Russia released an album of strange dance music in phonetically sung English. This was fairly unremarkable, in fact, the Romanian group Cheeky Girls did pretty much the exact same thing at the exact same time. What differentiated these two girls, known collectively as tATu and individually as Lena and Yulia, was that they were a lesbian couple.
Several things happened as a result of their declaration of sapphic love.
One, men around the world got erections.
Two, the sold a boatload of records.
Three, the Religious Right got very upset and condemned tATu as part of the gay agenda.
Four, some gay groups pointed out that while there was a lot of hand holding and caressing, it never seemed to go any further, and that it was possible that Lena and Yulia weren't lesbians at all, and that this was all a giant publicity stunt.
As it turned out, the gay naysayers were right. At the height of their fame, Yulia got pregnant. Shockingly, Lena wasn't the father. The girl's were forced to come clean and admit that they weren't lesbians, they hadn't been ostracized by their families due to the love that dare not speak its name, and that the whole thing was thought up by child psychologist-turned-post-Communist Maurice Starr Ivan Shapovalov.
A few interesting facts about tATu.
They represented Russia in the 2003 Eurovision song contest.
The ditched Shapovalov in 2004, saying he was more interested in manufacturing scandal than in helping them pursue their artistic vision.
They still exist, and are apparently continue to sell records in Russia.
Here's their cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?" Morrissey called their version of the song "magnificent" in an interview with the UK's Word magazine.
Comment to post, since I'm late getting this thing up. I'll extend the deadline to midnight on Saturday.
This is a rematch, sort of.
I found really questionable covers of both bands' songs and have decided to put those videos into the ring. Why? Because I couldn't think of a better battle for this week and both videos are fucking hilarious.
The Main Event
In the blue corner, from Berlin, Germany, a band that has produced what may be the most fuckdickulous video in the history of music videos, IN EXTREMO.
In Extremo were founded in 1995 when two separate bands, a Rammstein-esque Krautrock act called Noah invited a group of neo-medieval folk musicians called Corvus Corax on stage for horribly ill-conceived jam session.
After the session, they were so pleased that Noah vocalist Michael Rhein suggested they make it a permanent arrangement, creating the world's first industrial band to feature lutes, bagpipes and something called a schawn. All seven of the band members took on ridiculous pseudonyms, Rhein dubbed himself "The Last Unicorn," and they decided to go by the collective moniker In Extremo. (It's Latin for In the Extreme.)
According to the band's MySpace, they played their first gig as In Extremo on March 29, 1997 in front of 1,000 people at the Leipzig Town Hall Market. Apparently there's not a lot to do in Leipzig in late March.
I really try not to put bands up here just to rip on them, but these guys are ridiculous. On the other hand, they're so ridiculous that they're just a little bit aweseome. I feel like if I went drinking with the members of In Extremo, it would end poorly.
Here's their cover of "This Corrosion." If you thought the video for the original version was silly, which it was, you should probably be sitting down for this one.
The Competition
In the red corner, from Moscow, Russia, everyone's favourite schoolgirl faux-lesbians, TATUUUUU!
I don't really feel like I need to give a backgrounder on tATu to anyone. There's not really much to say.
Back around the turn of the millennium, two 16 year-old-girls from Russia released an album of strange dance music in phonetically sung English. This was fairly unremarkable, in fact, the Romanian group Cheeky Girls did pretty much the exact same thing at the exact same time. What differentiated these two girls, known collectively as tATu and individually as Lena and Yulia, was that they were a lesbian couple.
Several things happened as a result of their declaration of sapphic love.
One, men around the world got erections.
Two, the sold a boatload of records.
Three, the Religious Right got very upset and condemned tATu as part of the gay agenda.
Four, some gay groups pointed out that while there was a lot of hand holding and caressing, it never seemed to go any further, and that it was possible that Lena and Yulia weren't lesbians at all, and that this was all a giant publicity stunt.
As it turned out, the gay naysayers were right. At the height of their fame, Yulia got pregnant. Shockingly, Lena wasn't the father. The girl's were forced to come clean and admit that they weren't lesbians, they hadn't been ostracized by their families due to the love that dare not speak its name, and that the whole thing was thought up by child psychologist-turned-post-Communist Maurice Starr Ivan Shapovalov.
A few interesting facts about tATu.
They represented Russia in the 2003 Eurovision song contest.
The ditched Shapovalov in 2004, saying he was more interested in manufacturing scandal than in helping them pursue their artistic vision.
They still exist, and are apparently continue to sell records in Russia.
Here's their cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?" Morrissey called their version of the song "magnificent" in an interview with the UK's Word magazine.
Comment to post, since I'm late getting this thing up. I'll extend the deadline to midnight on Saturday.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Heads Up MMV Nation! Former Winner Robyn Coming to Town!
What's up y'all?
This is an emergency broadcast to let those of you who haven't seen the new edition of Eye know that Battle Two Winner Robyn will be in Toronto at the Phoenix on Monday. I'm still slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I'm totally fucking going. You all should to.
This is an emergency broadcast to let those of you who haven't seen the new edition of Eye know that Battle Two Winner Robyn will be in Toronto at the Phoenix on Monday. I'm still slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I'm totally fucking going. You all should to.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Battle of the (Sort of) Reformed Pop Tarts: Robyn vs. Rachel Stevens
Sixteen year-olds aren’t known for their judgement.
I’m not saying this to harsh on the young’uns, I’m just pointing out the obvious. I was 16 some time ago, and I did some dumb shit. So did most of my friends. Sixteen year-olds do things like dress up like goths, experiment with bisexuality and heroin, convert to Islam and go through weird flirtations with Neo-Nazism.
The nice thing about being 16 is you can do all this dumb shit, then basically write it off to youthful indiscretion. Nobody will hold your old Skrewdriver records or kufi against you in the long term. You were 16. You were “finding yourself.” It’s all good.
Imagine what the world would be like if you were branded by your adolescent idiocy for the rest of your life? That’s kind of what life’s like for pop stars. They make one stupid decision when they’re kids, cut one dumb, treacly single, and are branded as a cheesy teen-pop star for life. That’s why so many of them live out the rest of their lives in miserable obscurity. It’s better to walk around as a nobody than live out the rest of your life as Tevin Campbell or one of the guys from Another Bad Creation.
That’s why I’m always amazed when teen popsters manage to salvage any sort of grown up career, let alone a respectable one that’s based on nostalgia.
But wouldn’t it be interesting if we were to take two recovered '90s teenyboppers put them head-to-head to find out who’s done the best job of distancing themselves from their shameful past.
Yeah, let’s do that.
The Main Event
In the red corner, with a shame factor of “Show Me Love,” from Stockholm, Sweden, ROBYN!
Here’s the backgrounder on Robyn.
She was raised by weird experimental actors in Sweden, “discovered” at age 13 and spirited away to work with weird Swedish Sven Gali Max Martin, the man who would later be responsible for most of Britney Spears’ early output.
At 18, after experiencing some commercial success in Sweden, Robyn was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Her single “Show Me Love” was an über-hit pretty much everywhere on the planet in the summer of 1997. I worked at a movie theatre in the summer of 1997 where I was forced to hear “Show Me Love” about a dozen times a shift. The song is still intrinsically linked in my brain with the smell of stale popcorn and harsh grease-cutting chemicals.
Later the same year, Robyn was booked as an opening act for the Backstreet Boys, but had to pull out due to “exhaustion.”
Unfortunately, it’s hard to take the child of two members of an experimental theatre troupe and force her to be the new Tiffany. Robyn eventually rebelled against her masters, first by writing ballads about abortion (hers), then by covering obscure ‘60s soul records, then eventually by making weird electro stuff where she sounds like a cross between a hyper-sexual Björk and Missy Elliot re-imagined as a tiny Nordic girl.
In 2005, the idiots at Jive Records eventually said “fuck this” and cut her loose. Since then, she’s been releasing shit on her own Konichiwa Records label. She only just got North American distribution, but she’s been doing a pretty good job of getting noticed in Europe, so we could see a full-fledged comeback before long.
I’m not going to front. I think post-2005 Robyn is the fucking balls. I don’t want to bias the electorate, but I like this girl a lot. So much so that I really had to debate which video I wanted to put up as an example of her more recent work. Eventually I chose “Konichiwa Bitches”, just because I think this song/video let’s your really know where this girl’s head’s at.
OK, now for the competition.
In the blue corner, with a shame factor of S Club Seven, from London, England, Raaaay-CHEL Steee-VENS.
OK, before we even get started on this one, let’s just go ahead and admit that Rachel Stevens is more poppy, more tarty and considerably less overall reformed than Robyn. She didn’t go from Swedish proto-Britney to some sort of weird acid casualty. Instead, she went from being one-seventh of the worst musical act in human history to maker of aggressively sexed-up dance tunes and future gay-scene icon.
For those of you in need of a history lesson, Rachel Stevens was a remember of S Club Seven, the worst musical group in human history. They were sort of a mixed-gender 1990s version of The Monkees. Except, where The Monkees made music that actually wasn’t that bad, S Club Seven made music that was so bad it has no Earthly purpose other than to torture terror suspects. . You can’t like it ironically, you can’t like it in spite of yourself, You can’t even put it on at a party and have girls giggle and dance with youthful nostalgia. You can only use it to hurt people.
Here’s a refresher.
After the cancellation of Viva S Club, the final S Club series, all of them dropped off the face of the Earth for a few years. In 2004, Rachel Stevens re-emerged as with “Some Girls,” a song so intense that the song alone, never mind the video, gave me a fairly serious erection. Rachel is hot. She’s kind of like Kylie Minogue multiplied by the power of Teagan Presley. She’s not doing anything deep and profound, but she makes ladies dance seductively whenever her shit is played. I appreciate that.
This is the video for "So Good" off the album Come and Get It, her second post-S Club outing. You know how all the Britney/Hillary/Lindsay types are going for this new "more grown-up" electro sound. This is what their shooting for. Now you can see how much they fail.
OK fools. All that's left is the voting process. You shouldn't need a Google account to post now, but if you do email me at cpdart@gmail.com and I'll try and figure it out.
UPDATE: It goes without saying that the deadline for voting is Friday at Midnight.
I’m not saying this to harsh on the young’uns, I’m just pointing out the obvious. I was 16 some time ago, and I did some dumb shit. So did most of my friends. Sixteen year-olds do things like dress up like goths, experiment with bisexuality and heroin, convert to Islam and go through weird flirtations with Neo-Nazism.
The nice thing about being 16 is you can do all this dumb shit, then basically write it off to youthful indiscretion. Nobody will hold your old Skrewdriver records or kufi against you in the long term. You were 16. You were “finding yourself.” It’s all good.
Imagine what the world would be like if you were branded by your adolescent idiocy for the rest of your life? That’s kind of what life’s like for pop stars. They make one stupid decision when they’re kids, cut one dumb, treacly single, and are branded as a cheesy teen-pop star for life. That’s why so many of them live out the rest of their lives in miserable obscurity. It’s better to walk around as a nobody than live out the rest of your life as Tevin Campbell or one of the guys from Another Bad Creation.
That’s why I’m always amazed when teen popsters manage to salvage any sort of grown up career, let alone a respectable one that’s based on nostalgia.
But wouldn’t it be interesting if we were to take two recovered '90s teenyboppers put them head-to-head to find out who’s done the best job of distancing themselves from their shameful past.
Yeah, let’s do that.
The Main Event
In the red corner, with a shame factor of “Show Me Love,” from Stockholm, Sweden, ROBYN!
Here’s the backgrounder on Robyn.
She was raised by weird experimental actors in Sweden, “discovered” at age 13 and spirited away to work with weird Swedish Sven Gali Max Martin, the man who would later be responsible for most of Britney Spears’ early output.
At 18, after experiencing some commercial success in Sweden, Robyn was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Her single “Show Me Love” was an über-hit pretty much everywhere on the planet in the summer of 1997. I worked at a movie theatre in the summer of 1997 where I was forced to hear “Show Me Love” about a dozen times a shift. The song is still intrinsically linked in my brain with the smell of stale popcorn and harsh grease-cutting chemicals.
Later the same year, Robyn was booked as an opening act for the Backstreet Boys, but had to pull out due to “exhaustion.”
Unfortunately, it’s hard to take the child of two members of an experimental theatre troupe and force her to be the new Tiffany. Robyn eventually rebelled against her masters, first by writing ballads about abortion (hers), then by covering obscure ‘60s soul records, then eventually by making weird electro stuff where she sounds like a cross between a hyper-sexual Björk and Missy Elliot re-imagined as a tiny Nordic girl.
In 2005, the idiots at Jive Records eventually said “fuck this” and cut her loose. Since then, she’s been releasing shit on her own Konichiwa Records label. She only just got North American distribution, but she’s been doing a pretty good job of getting noticed in Europe, so we could see a full-fledged comeback before long.
I’m not going to front. I think post-2005 Robyn is the fucking balls. I don’t want to bias the electorate, but I like this girl a lot. So much so that I really had to debate which video I wanted to put up as an example of her more recent work. Eventually I chose “Konichiwa Bitches”, just because I think this song/video let’s your really know where this girl’s head’s at.
OK, now for the competition.
In the blue corner, with a shame factor of S Club Seven, from London, England, Raaaay-CHEL Steee-VENS.
OK, before we even get started on this one, let’s just go ahead and admit that Rachel Stevens is more poppy, more tarty and considerably less overall reformed than Robyn. She didn’t go from Swedish proto-Britney to some sort of weird acid casualty. Instead, she went from being one-seventh of the worst musical act in human history to maker of aggressively sexed-up dance tunes and future gay-scene icon.
For those of you in need of a history lesson, Rachel Stevens was a remember of S Club Seven, the worst musical group in human history. They were sort of a mixed-gender 1990s version of The Monkees. Except, where The Monkees made music that actually wasn’t that bad, S Club Seven made music that was so bad it has no Earthly purpose other than to torture terror suspects. . You can’t like it ironically, you can’t like it in spite of yourself, You can’t even put it on at a party and have girls giggle and dance with youthful nostalgia. You can only use it to hurt people.
Here’s a refresher.
After the cancellation of Viva S Club, the final S Club series, all of them dropped off the face of the Earth for a few years. In 2004, Rachel Stevens re-emerged as with “Some Girls,” a song so intense that the song alone, never mind the video, gave me a fairly serious erection. Rachel is hot. She’s kind of like Kylie Minogue multiplied by the power of Teagan Presley. She’s not doing anything deep and profound, but she makes ladies dance seductively whenever her shit is played. I appreciate that.
This is the video for "So Good" off the album Come and Get It, her second post-S Club outing. You know how all the Britney/Hillary/Lindsay types are going for this new "more grown-up" electro sound. This is what their shooting for. Now you can see how much they fail.
OK fools. All that's left is the voting process. You shouldn't need a Google account to post now, but if you do email me at cpdart@gmail.com and I'll try and figure it out.
UPDATE: It goes without saying that the deadline for voting is Friday at Midnight.
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