eurovision: a history of crime May 23, 2008

a few years ago, the bbc stopped trying to make eurovision cool. thank god. now we can start enjoying it again.

they’ve streamlined the voting which is quite annoying and has contributed to a decline in my ability to count to 20 in every european language and to verbalise the words ‘united kingdom’ in 25 different languages. 

they used to spend about four hours trying to connect by cb radio to gruff foreign presenters floating somewhere off the coast of depressing old finland, and that was half the entertainment…

you could get the atrocious and frankly superfluous singing out of the way early and settle in for the real event. playground politics implemented at nationwide level – all prejudices, past, current and future grudges displayed for all to see and guaranteed to have your dad hopping mad in front of the tv. jingoism, disguised as patriotism, at its very best.

1981 – bucks fizz – making your mind

well, jay left early on and was replaced some faceless woman. mike nolan had a car crash, cheryl baker became a tv presenter and bobby g, who knows…none of their subsequent achievements matched the then risque ripping of skirts to reveal…shorter skirts. bucks fizz are one of my earliest memories and this may explain a lot.

1982 – bardo – one step further

wait – the girl was a crackerjack presenter? never knew that. god i love this footage – its eurovision, the fast show’s channel 9 and 70s spanish holidays (which you could still go on until about 1990) all in one. love how standing back to back and a few badly timed power grabs passed for a dance routine back then. oh and the obligatory leg in air ending.

1983 – sweet dreams – never giving up

i didn’t realise i remembered this until i saw it today. carrie grant from fame academy! i’m assuming she had a makeover by the time she met david. apparently the blonde girl still sings and the limahl lookalike is now a welsh radio presenter. sooo smashie and nicey.

1984 – belle and the devotions – love games

i forgot this one too. thanks to the football hooligans that ruined most of the uk’s european activities throughout the 80s, this lot were booed offstage. back when that used to be an insult, kids. i’m sure for no other reason…cough…no actually they had some other hits. umm…

1985 – vikki – love is

she was channelling princess di back in 1985, but now is called aeone and writes tv and film scores. she looks kind of nuts now. she did also almost get flattened by meatloaf once but i’m sure there’s a lot of people with that particular claim to fame…

um…lots of hair rock…and then…

1990 – emma – give a little love back to the world

really cheesy effort for 1990 by a 15 year old welsh girl called emma booth. she looked exactly like all the older girls at my school at the time, who also had backcombed hair par excellence. but, significantly, they spent their spare time working out whether thunderbird or super strongbow got you pissed faster, instead of swaying around in shoulderpads singing about the environment with people two or three times their age.

1991 – samantha janus – a message to your heart

yeeeeeowch. it was a good job she could act wasn’t it? i suppose she slunk back to sylvia young’s theatre brat camp for a few years after this – its terrible what they get some of those kids to do in the name of celebrity. thankfully, a few years later she was surprisingly funny as mandy in fab 90s sitcom game on, and her career was back on track. until that ended. but now she’s in eastie, which let’s face it, is as good as it’ll get.

i can’t bear to include michael ball, sonia and frances ruffelle….

1995 – love city groove – love city groove

ok, at the time we thought this was going to win. all of a sudden, the 70s were over because lets face it, in eurovision world they got a 15 year extension. cool britannia was in full swing, britpop (which i admittedly hated) was all over the place, and we dared to enter a song which wasn’t sung exclusively by and for white people. it fell on its arse. eurovision was not ready.

1996 – gina g – just a little bit

this is not as bad as i remember. its terrible what nostalgia can do to you.

guilty pleasures March 9, 2008

ok so i’ve just been watching z list music acts covering their ‘guilty pleasure’ songs.

i’m not sure how embarrassing liking terence trent d’arby is, i mean he’s not exactly milli vanilli, but i enjoyed craig david the most. of course thanks to bo selecta many people now in fact feel embarrassed to listen to craaaaaig daaaaavid.

anyway, here are mine. none of them fit with the rest of my music collection. i make no apologies.

further proof of my bad taste can be found in the songs i turn down on my ipod, songs i use to annoy people on the tube and songs i used to taunt old people on the bus.

download here

a-ha – you are the one

well, back in junior school you didn’t like certain type of music, you either like it or you didn’t. perhaps unsurprisingly there was something melancholy about the norwegian boys. good job they weren’t from finland.

belinda carlisle – i get weak

MOR rock has never been my thing but there’s something i like about belinda. this has always been my favourite of hers.

billy joel – tell her about it

one of my first tapes was billy joel, except my mum kept nabbing it. i love how steve in sex and the city is a billy joel fan and i love how he asks the russian if he ‘knows any billy joel’ to play on his thousand dollar piano.

kylie minogue – hand on your heart

most girls my age were kylie fans but lets face it this was more to do with neighbours than her singing voice, which is terrible. like a cat singing through a funnel.

lisa loeb – stay

sensitive 90s twanging bypassed me, mainly, but i loved reality bites. its so worthy and look-at-me-i’m so-understated…but i love it.

phil collins – two hearts

the soundtrack to buster featured the four tops and this song was written in a similar vein to ‘loco in acapulco’. but they had to let phil sing it cos he was the main character. liking phil has never really been cool but loads of people do, anyway.

robbie nevil – c’est la vie

sunny ‘things aren’t so bad’ pop that was huge in the late 80s. i usually hate these songs but this really reminds me being about ten.

talk talk – it’s my life

sounds like it should have been in a john hughes movie. just sounds so 1985.

talking heads – once in a lifetime

back in the good old days on mtv europe, this used to be part of the intro for mtv’s greatest hits, along with inxs. i loved the early 90s mtv – 3 from 1, pulse with swatch, party zone, yo mtv raps, soul of mtv…fruit of the loom ads and ads for frightening german techno compilations…

soup dragons – divine thing

i can’t relate to wanting to be the indie girl the soup dragons are singing about cos she was probably had that mousy hair gone pink from trying to dye it red, doc martens and lumberjack shirt. so not me. but i almost wish i could stand to dress like that for the sake of this song.

stone roses – she bangs the drums

a friend who was into the whole madchester scene pointed out that it was all quite dancey. so i listened again. i now have a grand total of 15 baggy anthems on my ipod. well they did play them at the hacienda.

whitesnake – is this love

80s hair rock is the staple playlist of o’neills and chicago rock cafes the nation wide. i hate it. but not this.

whatever bitch January 15, 2008

as long as the world keeps turning, girls will do each other down. fact.

top 5 mean girls

1. heather chandler (heathers) – so mean they made her drink bleach.

2. regina george (mean girls) – so mean she found herself under a bus.

3. benny (pretty in pink) – so mean people wished they would shrivel up and fall off

4. tom tom (13 going on 30) – so mean she aged really badly

5. taylor vaughan (she’s all that) – so mean she got dumped by a reality tv star

download here 

702 – where my girls at

finger waggling late 90s style. its a good job 702 had the attitude cos they sure as hell didn’t have the vocals. they inexplicably survived into the 00s.

blondie – rip her to shreds

the original bitch bash from deborah harry, who was old enough to know better even then.

blu cantrell – girl please

blu taunts beyonce about her former relationship with jay-z. i’m pretty sure she won’t be the last, especially if they have/do get married. mya has also reportedly bumped uglies with joe camel but he was apparently only one of many…

brandy and monica – boy is mine

teen bitch anthem. apparently these two were not particularly fond of each other in real life either.

destiny’s child – fancy

after letoya and latavia were ousted, and farrah proved a liability, the trio let rip on their third album and this one was clearly aimed at anyone who thought they were better than the queen bee and her army of skanks.

isyss – oh no she didn’t

isyss were a marginally successful group who can best be described as ‘sub destiny’s child’. edit: oh ok they were a bit better than that but fell foul of the early 00s music industry download panic.

lucy pearl – don’t mess with my man

well, with the recent controversy between dawn robinson and her husband this seems relatively tame. if en vogue can be compared to the original destiny’s child, dawn is beyonce, terry is kelly, maxine is latavia and cindy is soooo letoya.

michelle – you don’t know michelle

….i’m going to go with electro. i don’t really know how to describe this. like a cross between freestylers, deejay punk roc and 80s hiphop girls carmen.

mokenstef – he’s mine

i could never quite get my head round this one. you know someone has slept with your man but instead of dumping him you focus on her? sack him!

salt-n-pepa – i’ll take your man

…and they would. you didn’t mess with salt and pepa in the 80s. or spinderella for that matter.

teedra moses – you better tell her

apparently too cute to fight. again, why stick with a man with other women on the go?

toni braxton –  he wasn’t man enough

not content with having dumped the man, toni’s needling his new girlfriend. oh we’ve all done it…