Emma Gulseven takes this week’s singles and gives them some uptown top
Shabby-Rankin’.
CHAMPAGNE Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé/Telephone A review of Lady Gaga's music is a
little redundant. It's not really the point - apoint, perhaps, but only
as important as the rest of it - the "I would rather die than have my fans
see me out of a pair of high heels", the silver glitter lobster head
accoutrement ("hat" is just too banal), and the stupendous videos.
Lady Gaga is never "out in the club, sippin' that bubb'", so
thankfully she sets the video in a hypersexual, hyperviolent "Prison For
Bitches", in the Pussy Wagon she shares with girlfriend Beyoncé, and in
the Diner in which she poisons all the customers. Beyoncé's 8-bar vocal is a
lesson in solid-gold guest spots (cf Luda,
below) and with Darkchild producing, LG achieves another ludicrously danceable,
ludicrously memorable pop classic.
PROSECCO Cheryl Cole/Parachute It is super-kind of JLS to lend Beat Again to Cheryl Cole to recycle into
Parachute. The song displays an interesting juxtaposition of punchy musical
arrangement and romantic, soft lyrics; the negative of the insipid "Fight
For This Love". Cheryl Cole has managed to extricate herself from her
girlband mould but mainly via the Hello!/celeb scandal route, which is
depressing. This song is good, she's doing well, but is it unfair to have
expected something a bit more... amazing?
BUCKS FIZZ Michael Bublé/Cry Me A River Bublé shoots his big-voiced, string-arrangemented, Bond-themed wad over an
American standard. It is very accomplished and, like Mayer (below), Bublé is a
well-oiled business machine. There are six versions of his current album
available. SIX versions. But Bublé is essentially completely bland. He has the
sort of face that you would need to have tattooed onto your own face to stand
even the smallest of chances of remembering what it, he, and you looked like.
This is not the worst song ever to be recorded.
SCHLOER John Mayer/Heartbreak Warfare John Mayer is outlandishly famous in America. Here he attempts to rub
our faces in it by releasing the longest 4 minutes and 30 seconds you will ever
experience. It's as if he wants to prove that he is so outlandishly famous, he
can walk into a recording studio, decide to record 4 minutes and 30 seconds of
him doing Phil Collins doing a Bono, send that recording to his record company,
force them to mass produce it, and then release it as a single over here. All
this on his say so. And why? Because John Mayer is outlandishly famous in America.
SODASTREAM Justin Bieber/Baby Very strange set-up - pop child sings uncomfortably grown-up lyrics ("I'll
buy you anything, I'll buy you any ring" even though all he should be able
to afford is a Claire's Accessories trinket, the little arsehole) set to slick R&B
tunes with respectable collabos, eg Ludacris. Ludacris is a master of the
rent-a-rap, sure, but it's weird hearing him reminiscing on his first love when
his current solo effort How Low Can You Go is about his real first love: ladies' massive bottoms jiggling about. Anyway,
this is absolutely and irredeemably hideous and should be avoided at all costs,
even to the extent of removing the tiny hammer bone that makes noises happen in
your ear.
Shabby Ranks is back and grading
this week's singles via some sort of arbitrary scale.
CONCORDE Broken Bells/High Road It should be a version of aural hell: trendy indie singer yells over a really
hip producer's beats while a stylophone buzzes in the background. Actually,
Danger Mouse is so good, that he crafts him out of The Shins and the strange
noises into a big old enjoyable mess. Imagine that White Town of Your Woman
fame would love it. Oxymoronic summary: Childishly sophisticated.
BOEING 777 Goldfrapp/Rocket Goldfrapp ditch the hippy forest robes and launch into a song that comes
directly from a straight-to-video 1986 Judd Nelson film. It's the tune playing
when he realises what he has to do to win the girl back by passing his cycling
proficiency and begins training to do it. Which is good, but does make you
think that Goldfrapp are a trifle over-praised. Oxymoronic summary: Sharply
gormless.
HANGLIDER Gabriella Cilmi/On A Mission Two years ago, Shabby saw Gabriella at a corporate schmooze affair singing that
Sweet About Me thing. And from the moment she stepped on stage, we knew. Oh, we
knew, alright. We knew we had to get three more bottles of Becks and a prawn
vol au vent. She may now be using Joe Jackson's synths, one of Pink's choruses
and shouting a bit more but really not much has changed. Oxymoronic summary:
Movingly ineffectual.
PAPER PLANE Robbie Williams/Morning Sun Robbie's problem has never been a lack of a pithy phrase. “How do you rate the
morning sun?/How many stars do you give the moon?” His problem is a searing
neediness that leeches into his every breath. Oddly, given Robbie's addictive
nature, this orchestral ballad that's not as good as his last effort, is a
tribute to Michael Jackson. The beerhunter? No? Right. Move on. Oxymoronic
summary: Soaringly earthbound.
BALLOON A Fine Frenzy/Happier Folky ditty that starts off sweet and jaunty, like Sarah Mclachlan singing an
Erin McKeown number. It then veers off into the middle of the road, where it
gets hit at top speed by a full on nasty Corrs backing, wailing singing and
some kind of fucking bagpipe. The song never stood a chance. And it was so full
of promise. Tragic, really. Oxymoronic summary: Girlishly masculine.
Shabby Ranks puts this week’s
singles in some sort of order so you don’t have to.
He’d have stiffed the Stereophonics one for Charlie Winston’s I Love Your
Smile if it’d been the Shanice song and not some earnest Blunty folk-a-drivel.
Anyway…
AIR CHIEF MARSHAL Los Campesinos!/Romance Is Boring The Welsh 40-piece return after - what? - three weeks since their last
album? Anyway, the best part of a month seems to have put some meat on their
bones and toughened up Gareth's voice. He still uses a MASSIVE AMOUNT of words,
sarky asides ("Sure there are things I could do if I was half-prepared
to" - that's ennui, that) and (possibly) a xylophone, but this is taut,
none-more-indie stuff and fiercely catchy. A bit like their other records then,
only more compact. Beano.
AIR COMMODORE Dum Dum Girls/Jail La La Feel the glossy production on this little beauty from Sub Pop. It could be
the new Usher single. As it happens, it's a thoroughly loveable stick of lo-fi
indiepop rock, printed through with "Can we be the new Primitives,
please?" Bet the drummer gets tired.
FLYING OFFICER The Courteeners/You Overdid It Doll Who gave The Courteeners sequenced beats? What have they done with the
drummer? Why has Liam Fray got that haircut? Is it 1994? God, maybe it is. In
that case, we'd like Ace Of Base back, and China Black and Whigfield. Any
amount of processed pop could knock this sort of convictionless rock into a
cocked hat. It's not that You Overdid It Doll is a terrible record (yeah, it is
a bit); it's that it's so polite when all along we thought these lads were the
saviours of rawk (we didn't).
OFFICER CADET Timbaland featuring Katy Perry/If We Ever Meet Again Teddy bear-faced producer Timbaland sounds even more beautiful all autotuned
up like that. It's like a nightingale serenading a courting couple on a balmy
summer's evening, but lo! What's this? It's Pat Benatar de nos jours Katy
Perry, here to get all unlovely on our asses with her subtle 4 Non Blondes coo.
Somehow these seemingly unmatched croons dovetail gently, over soothing cheap
synths, to create a delicate flower of a clunking soul-free mess.
WORKING THE TILLS IN THE NAAFI Stereophonics/Could You Be The One No.
Emma Gulseven takes this week’s singles and gives them some uptown top
Shabby-Rankin’.
