A song I always felt was destined to become huge was a trance anthem called I Do Both Jay & Jane by La Rissa, who potrays bissexuality far classier than Lady Gaga's muffin bulging out from both sides of her leotard (such literal imagery makes me imagine shredded lettuce and tomatoe slices hanging out from there too). La Rissa's gloomy vocals focus on the identity of gender over the biology - Jay 'is rough and rugged' whilst Jane 'shines just like a nugget'. Honestly, with those descriptions I kind of have no sympathy for her not knowing which one to go for - rough and rugged guys are hard to come by and Jane just sounds like mousey non-entity in comparison. Sometimes I will say to a friend that 'girls have it so easy, it's like take your pick for a prick' and this song proves my point, although I can't really think of many Jay's I would go for myself - Jay from 5ive, Jay-Z, Jay Manuel (with paper pag), but then who? I would probably go for Jane Russel - she's old, has money, won't expect sex and won't be here much longer.
Above: if this really is the 1st or 2nd La Rissa vocalist, then she has the thinnest voice belonging to a non-Jackson black woman.
Anyway, the song came out in the US in 1999 and reached the UK in 2002 - it never became a crossover hit but is still well known in certain clubs, but clubs I would never set foot in if you get my drift. Released under the same alias, Somebody To Love Me obviously employs a different vocalist who sounds a bit like Plavkoff from Jane & Spoon. The follow-up was the final La Rissa single and sounds a bit like Lil' Suzy, but is less trashy than its predecessor and tellingly nowhere near as fun. Unless Janet Jackson does the honorable thing and gets some vocal training, this song probably won't be covered by anyone and will live on only for those in the know and lucky sexually-confused chavs in clubs I wouldn't piss in or on if Kelly Llorenna told me to. I Do Both Jay & Jane
One of my favourite remixes ever is the pulsating Erick More VocalMix of gravel-voiced Crystal Waters' 2nd mammoth hit single from the 90s, 100% Pure Love, a track that only narrowly escaped both the American Billboard Hot 100 top ten and being released as a Geri Halliwell single in 2005 (as good as it was). Her distinct, barren vocals have no frills which means her songs work extra hard to work their magic on you. She could really just be a content lesbian postwoman humming songs to herself, but thank the heavens she thought 'yes, I will become a popstar' as her signature hit Gypsy Woman might have been sung by someone as hideously talented as Ultra Nate - just imagine the travesty!
Below: logical Crystal told her internet sex-date via msn that she would be 'the woman discreetly standing behind the microphone on stage in front of all the gays wearing shades'.
Well, I do rate Waters' capabilities and her crispy two-tone expression exfoliates the ears with her blues and jazz influences, which proves an intoxicating proposition even music-lovers demmanding singers with the ability to sing could not resist. Her firm establishment as a dance legend was further cemented at the turn of the millenium with releases My Time and the ubiquitous Destination Unknown. She also worked with Janet Kackson pimps Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and Dallas Austin, but these results were sadly lacklustre and disappeared faster than the idea of Janet Jackson wearing a decent bra. The tribal Erik More remix perfectly suits Crystal's campaign for straight-talking sexual encounters, 'from the back to the middle and around again' sets her standards high and after 19 singles of various quality we are in no position ourselves to disagree. 100% Pure Love (Erick More Vocal Mix)
Well DP me with chainsaws, coming hot off her heels from the unforgettable UK #57 Hi-NRG flamenco-flutter Tonight Is The Night, Gina fucking G is back! She is back for the very first time since 2006, with 3 flashy new tracks and a remix on her re-rouged myspace profile: Reinvented is a sparse high-speed electro delivery every bit as good or bad as a La Roux/Little Boots/whomever-thinks-they-are-the-shit track, with a tumbling drum loop as she incredulously scorns a crap ex-lover; Friday has a faux-lesbian rock attitude that is more Mel C than Gina G, and doesn't offer much. Looking far brighter (and faring far more feminine than her new pic), she revives her vibrant pop promise on the glitzy Next To You, which is the best of this lot and up there with Undone - very cutesy and made up to the 90s. 'Kissing you is like candy, mmm delicious' is a classic Gina G lyric that brings back fond memories of her former excessive gidiness - 'my brother doesn't like ya, my sister thinks you're cool' being her adrenalised peak from album shade Rhythm of My Life. The nintendo-style influence of the backing track is utterly adorable, the perfect backing for Gina's gushingly coy delivery whereby she paints herself in a Super Mario Bros world, as Princess Daisy seeking her 'superhero' - her blushing articulation regarding the anticipation of some fit guy is like Shakespeare.
Above: Gina G's imeasurably kitsch image was years ahead of celluloid sirens such as Rita Hayworth who waited until the 1940s to shoot such inconic photographs.
My heart swells when I think of Gina G: Next To You is simply divine, and like she sings, 'don't get me started' is my own pre-nuptial demand for her to follow this through and give me a fucking album! As on her best Fresh! cuts, I can honestly say I get the same feeling with Next To You, that this pop princess' heart is pumping ecstatically and is ready to strut her stuff at Pride celebrations all over the UK. Such a driven performance is well worth investigating for curious casual fans. These tracks are marvelous to have, and even if she can't realistically chase after the Motiv8 dream, she has hooked me back in with her effortless charm as if it were 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001 or 2005 and 2006 again.
The disdainfully understated ripples of off-the-pedestal melancholy on ABBA's Should I Laugh Or Cry are an unequivocal indication of how sophisticated and regal their sound had circumstancially evolved to become: sure their songs were now so brittle that commercial success was drying up and leaving all the wrong stains, of which the public did not want to see (their two in-band marriages ending in divorce, the girls getting older, etc), but their final album The Visitors is a triumph of discreet beauty, solemn introspection and traumatic fantasy, pulled off with stoic dignity, and musical and lyrical grace. Like clouds of thunder breaking, Frida's lightning-bolt vocal reverberates as if stirring through the stagnation of curdled tears. The title track and Under Attack are peculiar 'anthems' - lacking the world-concquering charge of Take A Chance, they are world-weary, alienated and by the very definition of pessimistic narcisism; highly glamourous. Agnetha may have shone vividly on the triumphantly miserable The Winner Takes It All, but Frida bravely steps up to the demands of material that is even darker and emotionally obscured - the frosty When All Is Said And Done is sung with focused grit and may have been 'part 2' to TWTIA's 'part 1' (the same thing could be said for Frida's One Man, One Woman and Agnetha's Knowing Me, Knowing You), but her glass-cut vocal shreds away the misery, a convincing militant campaign of wounded aggression ploughing through their internal collapse. Her tremoring vocal is almost livid, lamenting ruefully that both parties are 'slightly worn, but dignified and not too old for sex', and grimaces the need for 'humble pie' whilst sounding about half a pill from a nervous breakdown.
Below: both freshly single girls fight over the presumably well-endowed camera man's attention...
So the songs on this album are absolutely miserable: the twee 2 For The price of 1, with ironic soft-rock porn guitar, magnifies the joyless sexlife of ordinary people having an open relationship, but has the charm of someone ugly not believing their luck when they manage to pull a drunk person at a bar - one can laugh but is sure glad it's not them. The whispered, jaunty chorus conveys the pathetic promise of 'discretion assured'. The poignant and pensive grown-up lullaby Like An Angel Passing Through My Room is carefully crafted, and sees Frida lying in an empty bed with the other side still slightly warm - I can just imagine Frida singing this whilst smoking a fag and half-heartedly checking to see if her purse is still there. Head Over Heels was a badly chosen single, a disquieting cautionary mid-tempo narrative that is typical of what is on offer here - marking the identity of a femme fatale leading to some sort of 'heels to the ceiling' corruption, the theme of separate lives in a relationship throughout the album is one giant lump in the throat which makes it so stark and unique. With the guys writing the lyrics and the girls singing them, it's tacitly palpable that every word is being frought over: the songs sympathetically mediate their difficulties.
Above: Frida was more than ready for ABBA to split, chosing to persue her ambition to become a lesbian P.E teacher.
One of Us was the album's only notable international hit single, peaking at number 3 in the UK, and plods away chirpily, as if chipping away at what once was, and is not a million miles away from Fernando. The frigid Cassandra is an acoustic ballad and definite highlight, with an alert and tall chorus burning from the same candle as I Had A Dream. Soldiers is another brave face on despair. I Let The Music Speak says it all and might have been a great album title - 'let it be a joke' is only wishful thinking, but ironically for the listener they created one of the most captivating albums of all time, for all the wrong reasons is the bittersweet uncertainty. Slipping Through My Fingers is soothing and carefully sung almost as adoring as earlier ballads, but 'a sense of guilt I can't deny' is refreshingly honest - they are letting us all down easy.
Above: newspapers weren't to know they would never reunite, hence the subtlety.
ABBA's sense of drama and theatrical approach solidifies to mezmerizing effect, and one feels the chills on all of Frida's vocals in particular. They pull off sounding avidly depressed and serious without ever appearing absurd and ridiculous: it really is an album about fighting to keep hold of one's esteem and sanity, but crucially without the comforting crutch of youth's vanity. The pervasive restrain is as tense as it is beguiling - they do chirp up sporadically, adding subtle warmth and charm with their innate flexibility that never vanishes. The Visitors certainly was not their most appeasing album, but it is a good argument for being one of their best and most brutally honest.
A Diva Incarnate first: rap! Whilst my knowledge of rap music may be limited to pausing Nelly and The Game videos with a roll of toilet paper at hand, I do actually like some of the stuff. I will breifly qualify myself, referring to albums in my collection by Q-Tip, the Beastie Boys, Missy Elliot and of course the legendary fluid skills of Lady Miss Kier Kirby on her Deee-Lite albums. Limited, yes, but not completely ignorant or in refusal to enjoy good music.
Above: Estelle grinds in vain as Busta demonstrates what he learned in prison.
Anyway, I have always had a not-so-soft spot for the beefy flamboyance and masculine artifice of Busta Rhymes, his size, witty deliivery and particularly his extroverted videos. Did I mention I like his size? What I love about some rappers is their unspoken employment of epicene campness and exagerrated homoerotic bitchiness; whether any would freely admit to this rationally or otherwise. Busta released his 8th album, Back In My BS (Back With My BBD would have been a better title), back in May to a mixed responce, and it is only now that I have paid any attention after seeing his marvelous new single, World Go Round, which features wannabe Estelle and is actually the album's 4th release! Squidgy, glistening Guetta-esque dance beats from Jelly Roll asphyixiate the distinctive sample from Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), with Busta's rapid-fire style dominating (just the way I like it) enough to give you bruises in all the right places. Estelle's chorus is curious: at first it is unremarkable but it develops into a middle-8 that gets song up in the air, almost as high as Busta can get my legs; just remember to bring a wheelchair and an ice-pack for afterwards - did I explain I like his size?
Here she goes again, yet another formulaic 'fierce' video from BK fetishising her thighs, ass and anything else that shakes when she coughs or chokes on Jay-Z. The song in question, Sweet Dreams, is fairly excellent and written by the same team ex-bandmate Michelle Williams worked with on her amazing rnb infused dance tracks Hello Heartbreak, Till The End of The World and Private Party (which are all better coincidentally). Although many artists employ much the same producers, this just feels like Beyonce, yet again, gaining value at the expense of others - to record a track that could very evidently fit on William's floptastic classic Unexpected (even deliberately claiming ownership of the sound by performing the producer's trademark 'turn the lights on' signiture by herself) is almost like sleeping with a friend's ex and refusing to have an abortion.
Below: Bouncey's hunger for food and fame is so great that she deep fried her own limbs for a small snack between song-stealing crusades, and now uses state of the art posthetic forearms to take things 'to the next level' she told Heartless Bitch magazine, also admitting she could probably solve world hunger if she amputated her thighs or at the very least had some lipo (from her nose).
Her current album is completely disparate (even needlessly separated into 2 discs as if to hype up how distinct each disc containing songs she has a vanity credit on is), souless and without any sense of fun that is truly connected with her airbrushed persona - her agenda is just an exercise of fame and money, to look the part as much as possible. I can't deny the execution and labour she puts into her dancing is often quite staggering, but to gasp for reverence and adulation so blatantly and at no matter what the cost is to others (however tame or crass) is a massive no no (my friend gets a laugh whenever he calls her 'a talentless whore' in his own faintly smirking fashion).
Above: LaToya and LaTavia's ill-faited project Anjel might not have released anything but their formation would have at least served a purpose to provide even just a little consolation, having been wiped clean off the slate. Listen out for the potent line 'we made sacrifices like you, we didn't even finish school', which really says a lot about Beyonce if you ask me.
Like being locked inside KFC, BK can't help herself - after the second album from Destiny's Child, she co-write and co-produced the follow-up, which did have 2 very cracking singles, but overall the production sags in a way that no step machine could ever fix. Her hunger for an Oscar is almost terrifying; literally screaming throughout a performance of Listen at the Academy Awards ceremony defies belief - yes, we know you want it more than anything, but that doesn't mean you deserve it. Calm down, have fun, and make music you can put all that desperation and passion into properly - stop designing the outcome, it saps out why people might want to listen to music or watch a movie in the first place. I miss farrah!
Beyonce's less than perfect spirit: ex-bandmates dissed disgustingly on Survivor; stealing If I Were A Boy from BC Jean and initially giving herself a writing credit; Father Mathew Knowles manages Destiny's Child and Mother Tina styles them all in curtains, and Beyonce is groomed for solo stardom from the outset (best clothes, best close-ups, and singing lead vocals on all tracks despite Kelly being the better singer); original members LaToya Luckett and LaTavia break free from Mathew Knowles management and are fired, and find out when a new video premiers without them in it, subsequently gagged from badmouthing Beyonce to the press; Mathew Knowles manages Kelly and Michelle's initial solo forrays and steers their careers as far away from Beyonce's mainstream catering direction as possible (MOR and gospel!); Beyonce pretends she is a one woman En Vogue in the Diva video; and even the so-feirce-it-is-shit name 'Sasha Feirce' is pretty much ripping off forehead-billboard Trya Banks; and why be such a bitch to your bandmates and then use girlband iconography throughout your music videos and so-called film career?
Incase you did not know Whitney's new album is called I Look To You, I shall break the news that this is indeed the front cover for it. She looks proper glam, like a Pointer Sister scrubbing up real good when it counts, or a tranny taking their passport pic. Whitters actually looks the most like she did on the cover of her debut album ever since that time 24 years ago. However, the lead single has changed from the gentle 'huff and puff' ballad I Didn't Know My Own Strength to a song called Calling You Tonight, which is probably about giving booty calls to rappers half her age.
Mariah's drag impersonation of Eminem clearly wants 'the white one with the skin condition' to bite back and get her some easy press for her bitchin' new single Obsessed. No doubt she will shrug blankly at how 'insanely hilarious' her new video is whilst being interviewed from her bathtub, but as I was expecting comedy Mariah to actually be insanely hilarious, apart from a few shopping scenes the overall effect is rather sedate. And she looks like David Gest, not bloody Eminem:
The song itself is another typsy club song with Mariah's sassy vocals gnarling seductively - there is no stumbling to the bar this time (as in her 'first round' banger Migrate), but the pervasive vocoder actually helps convey her judgement affected by something other than diet avion. I give the song a (Hepetitis) C and the video a C also.
Nothing says 'I miss my dead brother, so leave me alone to grieve' more than a rush-release of a song recorded 7 years ago. Let's face it, a celebrity family in ruins had most of the poor ones poised to decide when they could tastefully sprint out the starting blocks and recieve the most me-me-media exposure using an emotive ballad, autobiography or job as 'E! News Live' correspondent.
And so it is LaToya who puts her pride aside by dedicating her 'new' single to the memory of Michael. In fairness, her vocals are dignified and (if a little maudlin) the song is eloquent and silly enough to make stupid people cry and feel sorry for her. She has the trademark frayed-tremble Jackson singing style, but also has a quality missing from, say, Janet's quiver. Most forum users are drowning in their own ejaculation mess to quickly accuse her of tasteless self-promotion, but this is the sort of thing Michael would have loved - she needs to shoot a video with him smiling down from the sky at her, sending down a CGI rainbow from his sequined glove for her to give him a hug before he vanishes, with a close-up confirming a well-timed tear treacling down.
Above: 'It was so many years ago' shows LaToya has every right to milk his death, no matter what anyone says; Only a face transplant could give her a better shot at a hit single - go for it Toy-Toy!
What I think Toy-Toy should have done was had a face-swap with her dead brother in order to selflessly fulfill his duties at the O2, and then sowe back her own face in time for the 2020 release of a new album.
Update: LaToya has already began a promotion campaign centered on her theory that her brother was murdered - MSN.COM got the ball rolling beautifully with the misleading headline link 'LaToya 'Murdered'' (I turned down my music and suddenly my heart started racing - I think that was a low blow from them indeed).
The romantic poetic eruption of Myléne Farmer (the most visionary artist in pop, providing lyrics and production) and Laurent Boutonnat (providing music) intoxicates two very different albums sung by teenage starlet Alizée: 2000'sGourmandses and Mes Courants Électriques...from 2003. The first single to be spawned from the now legendary arrangement was Moi... Lolita, a sultry continental club song with foreboding verses, spiralling piano keys and compulsively swift chorus. The young popstar's vocals are mature beyond her years, exuding a similar expressive quality to her mentor, but have more abandon that Farmer understands well enough to pen such an intriguing, well-crafted song and not keep it for herself.
Below: a typical outfit for the singer promoting her debut single; dressed like the computer game character Chun-Li shooting Japanese schoolgirl porn: Alizée's debut collection is a sweetly concieved affair, sung by the singer in a husky and unassuming manner throughout. The closing misty ballad A quoi rêve une jeune fille is poignant and paralyzes one with its haunting melancholy: an emotive chorus of church bells is tinged with festive pathos and suddenly one is powerless to resist the curse of human sentimentality. The emphatic album slice Vendi Vedi Vici is a thorny electronic dancefloor cut that sounds triumphantly paranoid. The title track could almost be 90s dance maestro's K-Klass breaking into the studio, with dizzy piano keys keeping Alizée's rhythm definately a mystery: her beguiling vocals sung elegantly on the album's penultimate track prick more than a bleeding fingertip. The ghostly single number 3, Parler tout bas, has the singer in a one woman choir and sounds like the Marie Fredriksson-penned Little Girl from Roxette's 2001 Room Service album. Elsewhere, L'Alizé is a similar punctuated parade to Lolita and was chosen as the second single.
Above: Alizée dresses like a less smutty Jessica Sutta, but sadly discarded Sutta's offer to record shabby club songs after the success of Moi Lolita throughout Europe; here she famously performs I'm Fed Up! on German TV using her innate alienation from rhythm to celebrate the single reaching 33 there that week.
Such a sustained sugar rush was refined as if using the same font, only this time in italics, on her sophomore album, an unequivocal bequeathal (with similar rich and wrestling textures) from Farmer who followed it up with her own Avant que l'ombre... album of 2005. The first single from Mes Courants Électriques...was the pluckyI'm Fed Up! - upright and deliberately going against the grain of its namesake sensiment, using studied violins (like forrows on the foreheads of spectators), as if adding masterful strokes to a gloriously mischievious painting (probably a nude one - what are those French like, etc). The next single I'm Not Twenty! is a double spread of creamy, alluring verses and an aggresively rousing chorus. 'Get over your fame' might be sung politely given the angelic melody, but her discriminating moodiness matches the victorious instrumentation compelling her vocals as if they are mere spontaneous consequences of its staggering orchestra.
Below: 'Having fun is just fine' sighs Alizée as she puts on a brave face wearing more clothes than she is used to:
There are no conclusions to Alizée's songs here, perhaps this is merely the language barrier, but her vocals often cast haunting shadows and make me feel something that shall always leave me guessing and that is the most any pop star can ever ask for.
Above: the acid-house imagery proudly fronted by Livin' Joy's second vocalist Tameka Star who declares war on fat people with no motivation throughout the album's 11 tracks.
Throbbing 90s house music did not pound harder than the triple-penetrating beats of Livin' Joy, with their razor sharp, chic and sleek singles that littered the European charts between 1995 and 1997. The legendary act was also catapulted across the Atlantic with moderate, lengthy chart damaging singles Dreamer (UK #1 and 7 weeks in the top 40) and Don't Stop Moving (UK #5 and 12 weeks in the top 40), but scavenged a further 3 UK top 20 hits, as it was in Europe where they left their most impressive skidmarks. As a 4-hit-wonder dance act, they join the Real McCoy, Corona and La Bouche, as towering leaders in their game of 'vagina and a disco beat' shananigins, in the elite few who went as far as releasing a whole album to remember them by. Above: Robinson's ultra-fierce performance in the Dreamer video could make even Grace Jones wet herself - here, the American singer gets some beauty sleep before an early dentist appointment in the morning.
The wanton whiplash Hi-NRG of Dreamer features the collosal vocals of Janice Robinson, an earthy singer whose smouldering sexuality was the type of uber-fierce femininity drag queens dream of. Her rapturous, lover-dissing lyrics hissed famously a change in fortune, the tireless rapid fire of 'here we lie all alone am I dreaming / your heart's smooth my soul is unbelieving', using her vocals as a formidable weapon, which has never been matched and at once created a unique proposition of which would become Livin' Joy's trademark style and pace. Italian producers, and brothers, Venturi and VianiVisnadi oversaw acts including Alex Party (Don't Give Me Your life), Simply Red and 2 Unlimited remixes, and even another bald black dance diva Alison Limerick (the ambientPut Your Faith In Me and accompanying remixes).
Above: Tameka's ferocious anti-impotence campaign was so scary that her no-nonsense 'keep it up' refrain from Don't Stop Movin' has resulted in the world's population growth epidemic.
When Robinson abruptly balted after the mammoth success of Dreamer, Tamek Star was her divisive replacement. Whilst Star's delightfully out of control slit-throat vocals were unable to topple her predecessors, her qualifications as a writer were very much evident on Don't Stop Moving, a gasping '110%' workout mission that almost equals Dreamer for sheer adrenaline and militancy. She starts to drain on the rest of the album where her 'get off your ass and achieve bitches' shtick is a bit like being face fucked by a life coach shoutting as she comes across like the Hitler of dance.
Above: Despite overcompensating with aerobic cliches, TamekaStar was simply outshone by, and could not compete with, Janice Roninson's natural instinct for transsexual prostitute glamour, broken down into wigs, pvc, feathers and ripped torsos belonging to rent boys unseen in this video breakdown of Dreamer.
However, Star does deserve credit for her ridiculous abs and contrived 'mmm hmm, girlfriend' neck-snapping - she practically gives herself a high five on the slightly dark Be Original album cut, whilst those beats keep slicing away ferociously. Highlights include the dead-eyed single Where Can I Find Love (UK #12), which would be funny had she sung 'am i looking for love in all the wrong websites?' instead of 'places', but the straights do love their dogging. Fans left drooling for Robinson can take consilation from two of her early solo singles, both produced by the Visnadi bros, the Morroder-esque Children and a certain Sweetest Day of May.
Above: Robinson's first solo video presents her heavenly voice with a budget that probably stretched only far enough for a razor to shave her head in order to maximise record sales with a bald black female dance singer - the track itself triggers an agony only dance can remedy.
Going steady, Follow The Rules really does feel like a self-help lecture, spearing its way to number 9 in the UK, but gnaws away at my ears (the fact that Star is credited with producing her own vocals is rather telling, her style is often far too histrionic, as if she thinks she is better than a mere makeshift dance singer). Rumours fly around forums like spare cocks in a gangbang, that Star and her producers fell out. After the album campaign was laid to rest, a sophomore effort was indeed recorded and an Australian-only single Just For The Sex of It was a very 1998/9 Euro-pop affair that would certainly have been a minor UK hit had it been released, and not being miles off from another hit single at the time called Sex On The Beach or even the Tamperer featuring Maya. Their familiar rampant Italo-disco sound was more reinforced rather than reinvented elsewhere: the galloping Love Yourself is another soap-box anthem but has an impressive momentum that just builds and builds as piano keys are splattered like flies on a registration plate.
Below: Comeback single Just For The Sex of It was a bit of a limp black dick, it slapped you around a bit but never brought a 'joyful' tear to your eye, with no full facial in sight. Australian gays soaked up its trashy brilliance and made it a top 100 smash. Ready For The love is formulaic and desperately revives the pulse of Dreamer, which feels like an old lover pounding away at you just for the sake of it, I mean just for the sex of it (yawn). The funky, heavy bass of I Only Wanna Dance almost wants to be Basement Jaxx but sounds work in progress and out of date even for 1999. Lookin' Fine is another run-of-the-mill Z-snapper, this time yanking inspiration from Don't Stop Moving. Tameka finally does her trembling voice justice on U R My Livin' Joy, which is like a lost Dina Carrol disco flirtation - stripped of their asphixiating beats, cooing vocals fawn over a sleeping muscled black basketball player, not even giving a moments thought to steal from his wallet (true love, y'all). Overall these unreleased songs invariably sound in hurried competition, only Love Yourself proves worthwhile in these high stakes, but develping their sound might have been worth finding more time for as proven by U R's contentful seduction.
Britney's new video, Radar (Love Song To A Horse), has made its debut on the internet, focusing attention on the blonde singer lusting after a horse and who are we to judge.. Best of all is her lyric 'think I can handle that animal in the hay stack' where a scrolling close-up from her binoculars pervs on Red Rum Jr.
Above: Britney in a rare smiling-and-walking song perfomance.
After 'trouser snake', and various black music producers, body guards and back-up dancers, Britney is now getting her formidable fill using horses! Now we know the real reason PETA accused Spears of mistreating the elephant from the Circus video.
Shave you hair, lose your kids, flash your gash: it's only now that I am in awe and not in a good way.
I am pinching myself - the new Gala song released to youtube (far below) You & Me is a bit of a sentimental love anthem. Those cooing 'doo-doo-doo-doo's are going to be my life support machine this summer - like all healthy relationships, it just stabs you in the heart making it impossible to live without its devastating control. With her gorgeous whispers, I never expected something so gushing from Gala but it has lit a flame inside me that I know is not going to burn out. Because her androgynous image is something I marvel at endlessly (scroll right to see her in the Diva Incarnate banner above), it makes me wonder who gave her the inspiration: they must be the most gorgeous girl/boy on the planet.
Below: Gala on the set of her self-financed Tough Love video. I shall suggest nothing about her Prisoner Cell Block H fantacies! As it finishes (around the 2 minute mark), Gala yelps beyond her wildest dreams just when the track sounds like Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie & The Banshees as well as those rusty-sounding vintage New Order disco fiascos. Fireworks explode outside her lights-out New York apartment and this track makes the metaphor a shared experience - her visceral performance in the video is utterly transfixing as she revels in her romantic euphoria.
Above: who wouldn't look this smug with cheekbones Madonna would trade a surplus African orphan for?
I never saw this coming from her: I was secretly disappointed by the rawness of the song Tough Love and really had to analyse it in order to appreciate its good points, but with You & Me she makes it as easy as Freed From Desire with a track that wounds you with its beauty and brings you to your knees with it's romantic impact and sheer sincerity.
Above: her 2.40 nourishing yelp makes the 12 year wait for Gala's re-surfacing worth every second. In the video, her movement shadows a striking resemblence to her iconic animation in the Freed From Desire video, a song which has sold 6 million copies worldwide to date (more than fucking Cher's Believe).
Tough Love EP available June 1st (French iTunes only) and full album September 6th. Expect a 57 page review any day whenever I get my hands on the files!
A song I always felt was destined to become huge was a trance anthem called I Do Both Jay & Jane by La Rissa, who potrays bissexuality far classier than Lady Gaga's muffin bulging out from both sides of her leotard (such literal imagery makes me imagine shredded lettuce and tomatoe slices hanging out from there too). La Rissa's gloomy vocals focus on the identity of gender over the biology - Jay 'is rough and rugged' whilst Jane 'shines just like a nugget'. Honestly, with those descriptions I kind of have no sympathy for her not knowing which one to go for - rough and rugged guys are hard to come by and Jane just sounds like mousey non-entity in comparison. Sometimes I will say to a friend that 'girls have it so easy, it's like take your pick for a prick' and this song proves my point, although I can't really think of many Jay's I would go for myself - Jay from 5ive, Jay-Z, Jay Manuel (with paper pag), but then who? I would probably go for Jane Russel - she's old, has money, won't expect sex and won't be here much longer.
Above: if this really is the 1st or 2nd La Rissa vocalist, then she has the thinnest voice belonging to a non-Jackson black woman.
