Bitter Fingers Radio Volume 19: Fresh Jams

In: New Music| Radio

24 Apr 2012

photo (2)_2

I’ve done a new radio show with fresh jams and fresh jingles. If you’re the sort of person that likes either your jams or jingles fresh, then you have come to the right place my friend.

This is what’s in it.

In this latest installment of Bitter Fingers Radio, Mark Higgins presents a delightful collection of indie-pop, electro and just plain great songs. Boy’s latest LP Mutual Friends is the Featured Album, Curiosity Killed The Cat are offered up as an Innocent Pleasure, Lauryn Hill gets told to pull her finger out, there’s another antipodean choice from Tim Dickinson and a fairly Epic Last Song to see the show away. Get nice.

Here’s a well formatted tracklisting you can enjoy.

1. Friends – Mind Control
2. Field Music – A New Town
3. Boy – Little Numbers
4. Grimes – Colour Of Moonlight (Antiochus)
5. Team Me – Show Me
6. Curiosity Killed The Cat – Down To Earth (12” Mix)
7. Todd Rundgren – Intro
8. Boy – Waitress
9. Bleeding Knees Club – Nothing To Do
10. Ford & Lopatin – Emergency Room
11. Amanda Mair – Doubt
12. Lauryn Hill – Doo Wop (That Thing)
13. Sébastien Tellier – Cochon Ville
14. Joywave – True Grit
15. The Chemical Brothers – The Private Psychedelic Reel

Well I think we can all agree that was very well formatted.

The thing about Marina and the Diamonds, right

In: Music Video| New Music

14 Mar 2012

So Marina’s got a new album coming out, and this is one of the songs on it. It’s very good. Electra Heart is the name of that LP and it’s some rotten concept album about a subject I can’t be bothered to research because let’s just have the tunes, shall we (more on that later, rant fans).

Primadonna does a rather fine job as lead single, particularly given that it was helmed at the production rudder by Dr Luke and Diplo and somehow managed not to sound like Pon De Floor or Katy Perry, which is more than can be said for Nicola Roberts and Jessie bloody J.

What I like about this song is the variance in Marina’s voice between quite deep and threatening and really bloody annoying. It’s a fine line to cross. The Queen-esque guitars towards the end are a nice touch as well, and the general pop glow and sheen means it’s almost certainly one of the better tracks on the album.

The decision to leave the popbanger that is Radioactive off that album and relegate it to a deluxe edition is utterly bizarre to me, though. It is an excellent song, and I imagine ever so slightly more excellent than 40% of the tracks that made it onto the album. Here is what Marina had to say about this exclusion.

The ‘Standard’ edition is kind of like a purist’s version of the concept. The ‘Deluxe’ version is for tracks that did not fully adhere to the sound or vision but that I really loved anyway. “Radioactive”, “Sex Yeah”, “Lonely Hearts Club” and “Buy the Stars” + the videos for “Radioactive” and “Primadonna”.

Perhaps as an artist it’s important to have a “vision” for your album, a reason to make it. I’ve never really understood this, but as someone that doesn’t really value lyrics that’s probably understandable. Why you can’t just put your ten best songs on an album, I don’t know. That’s why we have double albums and bonus tracks – whether it’s a vision or an inability to self edit.

Anyway bollocks to that, let’s have a little rave.

In a rare non-George Michael related post, here’s Amanda Mair

In: Music Video| New Music

22 Feb 2012

The thing that you need to understand about Amanda Mair is that she makes very good pop songs. Once you’ve got that sorted you’ll be fine and can go back to making your dinner or whatever else you might be up to.

The song above is called Sense and aside from being 500% amazing is also going to be her debut single here in Blighty, with a release date in early April. The album is out in June and will almost certainly contain the following two songs as well:

Those songs are very good.

Amanda is but seventeen years old, and hails from Sweden which has a pretty good track record when it comes to decent pop music.

I am absolutely in love with the music Amanda is making and am very excited to hear what she might be doing this year.

Hey so this new Kavinsky track is pretty choice

In: New Music

8 Feb 2012

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a good song.

Thanks Kavinsky. Thavinsky.

“David Austin, the biggest star of 1984″

In: Innocent Pleasures| Music Video

9 Jan 2012

There are a number of things about this video that are excellent. Let’s go through them, together, like we used to. Like a family.

  • This video is taken from Cheggers Plays Pops. Never mind sodding Top Of The Pops, when are we going to get a complete re-run of all the tapes of that? Just think of the gold lying in wait.
  • George Michael is referred to as “George from Wham!”, something that while entirely accurate sounds wonderfully basic today.
  • “With Turn To Gold, please welcome Mr. David Austin, the biggest star of 1984″
  • THE BIGGEST STAR OF 1984.
  • CLAP CLAP. CLAP CLAP. CLAP, CLAP CLAP CLAP HEY.
  • That shirt
  • That HAIR
  • Backing vocals by “George from Wham!”
  • That sax solo
  • “What’s your pleasure / Can you find the treasure?”

500% brilliant.

Incidentally, this track is available on the following commerical releases:

Greatest Hits Of The ’80s CD6
Non Stop Summer Party CD4
Original Best Of Sunshine CD2

GET ONE OF THEM BOUGHT

The top five songs by Wham!

In: Music Video| Top Five

6 Jan 2012

In a move that was as inevitable as it is unnecessary, I’ve decided that it’s about time I did a “blog post” featuring my five favourite songs by the popular beat combo that was Wham! and you can read it by running your eyeline across this sentence and all subsequent ones.

The thing about Wham! right, is that aside from knocking out more chartbangers than anyone could conceivably know what do with, was that they also made excellent use of an exclamation mark.

I suppose this is unrelated but if we had to rank bands that use exclamation marks it would probably go:

1. Wham!
2. Oh My!
3. Panic! At The Disco
4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
5. !!!

Might do a top five of those at some point. Anyway here’s some massive songs by Wham! that I’ve put in an arbitrary list, seeing as they’re all 500% excellent.

5. Bad Boys

Just wrap your ears around the slap bass on this. Somewhere, probably in the eighties, Mark King was preparing a lawsuit with a well-callused thumb.

Imagine having a boogie down your local leisure centre/working men’s club to this rad jam. Go on, imagine it.

4. I’m Your Man

“If you’re going to do it right, right, do it with me” would look good as anyone’s epitaph. (Some excellent tambourine action from George in this one, as well.)

3. Young Guns (Go For It!)

The first (but by no means least) example of a well parenthesed song title from the boys from Wham! there. Even being called a sucker in the second word of the song (and then again in the ninth word) can’t offend the listener such is the wonder that is YG(GFI!) as literally no one has ever called it.

Also, it sounds a bit like Rapture by Blondie, v. good, would listen again.

2. Freedom

There are a number of big questions one can ask oneself these days regarding entropy, how long after going out of date it’s okay to drink UHT milk and who you ring to get more recycling bags at the council. None of these come anywhere close to the question of which is better – Freedom by Wham! or Freedom ‘90 by George Michael.

Well obviously it’s Freedom but some people just won’t be told. POP TRIVIA: the video for Freedom ‘90 was directed by popular film director David Fincher, but as far as I can tell he didn’t decapitate Gwyneth Paltrow for that one.

1. Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)

Hey everybody, take a look at me. I’ve got street credibility. And so does this song. There aren’t many chirpier songs about going on the dole, and there certainly aren’t any better. I wrote in slightly more detail about this track in that blog I did about this track a while ago, so you can go read that if, for some reason, you are in need of more reasons why it’s one of the best songs in the history of the universe.

Those were the top five songs by Wham! Please feel free to go about your business as you were.

Azealia Banks – 212

In: Music Video| New Music

5 Jan 2012

In news that may well shock you, I was slightly off the pace when it came to Azealia Banks (I think I was listening to some Human League b-sides), but after hearing a heavily – and I mean heavily – edited version of 212 on the wireless yesterday it has infected my head.

She’s come third in the annual BBC Sound of 2012 poll, and in doing so joins such luminaries as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Klaxons and Florence And The Machine. Out of those artists I think we can confidently put Banks down as the rudest of the lot.

If you’re one for clean language, this track is probably not for you. If, however you’re one for excellent beats and the potential for even more excellent animated GIFs –

RAD

– then you’re in luck.

There’s been a number of comparisons to Nicki Minaj – preseumably because they’ve both got sweary mouths and do some rap – but this is about eighty times better than anything Minaj has put out, that verse on Monster aside. It’s the most exciting pop track I”ve heard in a good while and if I wasn’t listening to whatever Phil Oakey decided was the best thing to back Keep Feeling Fascination, it would have been very high on my Quite Good Songs Of The Year show.

In short: rude, excellent, hyped, donks all over the shop.

Bitter Fingers Radio Volume 18: Quite Good Songs Of The Year

In: New Music| Radio

5 Jan 2012

London Fields Radio

YES I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE PUT THIS UP IN 2011 but I had some very important Christmas dinner to be eating/wine to be drinking/merry making to be making merrily. And it’s here now so don’t go getting shirty with me – there are more rad jams in here than any one person can really handle, so go easy with it.

Ignoring the fact that it’s 2012, here are what I consider to be some of the very best Quite Good Songs of 2011 in an easy to digest package (when I say digest I mean listen, just go with me on this). 2011 had hundreds of songs I enjoyed, so I’ve put them through the sieve and reduced them down into a delicious reduction of music. And now you can place it tenderly in your lugholes, if that’s not mixing metaphors to a frankly upsetting level.

GIVE IT A GO

LO, THESE ARE THE SONGS OF WHICH I SPEAK

1. The Death Set – We Are Going Anywhere Man
2. Marina & The Diamonds – Radioactive
3. Pete & The Pirates – United
4. SBTRKT – Pharoahs
5. The Sound Of Arrows – Into The Clouds
6. Summer Camp – Better Off Without You
7. Foster The People – Call It What You Want
8. Alice Gold – Orbiter
9. British Sea Power – Who’s In Control?
10. Kreayshawn – Bumpin’ Bumpin’
11. Big Black Delta – Huggin’ & Kissin’
12. AlunaGeorge – Analyser
13. Metronomy – The Bay
14. Joe Goddard featuring Valentina – Gabriel
15. M83 – Midnight City
16. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Garden
17. Friendly Fires – Live Those Days Tonight

Lovely stuff and another fun time at the Wilton Way Cafe – they’re ‘pon the Twitter, don’t you know. And London Fields Radio have a fancy new website as well! It’s all going off, clearly.

More Bitter Fingers radio musings to come in 2012 – watch this and all subsequent spaces.

I CAN’T STOP LISTENING TO SELENA GOMEZ

In: Music Video

31 Dec 2011

It’s a bit of a shame that I didn’t discover this song until it appeared on every other bugger’s Best Of The Year list, but now I’ve found it’s all gone a bit mental as per my midi hifi. I can’t stop listening to the bloody thing.

CONGRATUWELLDONE, SEL

The top five music videos where they’re driving a car, for some reason

In: Uncategorized

10 Dec 2011

Making a pop video! It’s a tricky old business. Not only have you got to look like you’re having a good time, or a thoroughly rotten time, or displaying some sort of emotion at any rate, but you also have to deal with “directors” and “producers” who seem to think that aside from miming your latest ditty you should also do some entertaining things as well.

For some reason, this often seems to take the format of pretending to drive a car. This is despite the fact that we know they’re not driving a car – they’re in a studio, after all, and there’s very little room for manoeuvring a dirty great automobile in those places. And yet, this baffling fake driving is a staple of promo shoots across the world.

Here, for some reason that I’ve yet to justify to myself, are the top five music videos where they’re driving a car.

5. Yelle – Je Veux Te Voir

In a video that doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense anyway, this is the least of our worries but it makes the list based on the sheer gall of the director just to put Yelle and her chums into a large yellow vehicle and have them move about a bit. Astonishing.

You didn’t get any of that nonsense in the original (and wonderfully cheap) video.

4. Missy Elliott – Get Ur Freak On

Admittedly the car-based shenanigans don’t occur until the end of the video (and technically for another song), but when they do it’s a mindblower. Once again, it’s a yellow type large car. There must be a deal going somewhere.

At least they made it look like it was moving in this one, but I don’t see any seatbelts and that’s not the sort of message you should be sending to the youth of today really. Or getting your freak on, really. They’re both evils of modern society.

3. Stereophonics – Dakota

Presumably pitched to Kelly Jones on the basis that he wouldn’t look as short if he was sat down.

2. Queens Of The Stone Age – Go With The Flow

Now we’re getting somewhere. Whilst it’s an animated car, at least they’re doing something other than Travel Scrabble while they’re on it. Using the steering wheel as a drum kit is a novel if slightly dangerous innovation, as well.

1. The Cardigans – My Favourite Game

A 500% amazing pop song.

Not only is the car ACTUALLY MOVING, but Nina Persson is showing a shocking lack of respect for the Highway Code by placing a large rock on the accelerator (which will affect the warranty, I might add). Also, her tattoo is coming off. She might want to have that looked at.

NOTE TO POPSTARS: UNLESS YOU ARE THE CARDIGANS, STOP DRIVING CARS IN YOUR VIDEOS

Older Entries

Welcome to Bitter Fingers - a blog about popular song. Written by the hand of Mark Higgins, it serves up the very finest in new music, radio shows, spurious comment and #1 jams.

  • Owen Duff: As a musician I totally understand her desire to keep within the concept of the album, and to be fai [...]
  • anmari: I remember Cheggers Plays Pop, and 1984 - can't remember the 'biggest star of 1984' though? [...]
  • Gabi: Gosh, I loved this post. I t really made me LOL. Brilliant!!! (from a Wham!/GM fan!). [...]
  • Peter: My favourite is M.A.G.I.C. by The Sound of Arrow. Makes feel like a child again. http://www.youtube. [...]
  • Grace: What about Nick Drake?? [...]
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