Pop-Eye 14/10/01

What do Starsailor think they're doing? I mean that non-rhetorically, I'm just struck by the incredible - really incredible - gap between the huge amount of effort he's POURING into his voice (all that work to end up like Mike Scott) and the complete nonsense that he's actually singing. "Fever", on CD:UK on Saturday - can anyone tell me what this song is actually about, at all? They're singing it like it means something, and the 'kids' are buying it like it means something, but the actual plank of meaning has been entirely removed. Goodness knows I don't want enlightenment from a pop song but at least oh-so-facile teenypop has lyrics that aren't just emotive words strung together entirely at random.

Only 18 for The Streets? Should've been higher.

This clinches Kylie in the focus group incidentally.

Pop-Eye in boring pop week shocker.

Starsailor = NU-AOR.

In the immaculate words of a TV Times correspondent on Spitting Image many years ago, Starsailor should be quietly led away - or, better still, topped.

Dotmusic.com might be a better bet if only for James Masterton's faintly hilarious chart commentary: has there *ever* been a greater Order of the Brown Nose job than his euology for Michael Jackson this week?

BTW I don't think the Kylie record is very good, though it is a colossus next to You Rock My World.

Yes the year of 2001 started with Starsailor being shoved in our face from every direction. Yet its now pretty late in the day and my life has yet to be affirmed by their off pitch warblings. "Fever" is like something Rod Stewart might have written on a bad day. As insults go one can't really do better than that. "Good Souls" had a sort of everyman, Richard "Chris Rea" Ashcroft sort of feel to it, with some lyrics which were contrived to say the least. How could we forget that cringe inducing "higher than the government" line? It was plodding and ultimately never reached the sort of Verve like chorus it promised. And then things got very humorous. It's pretty surprising the video for Alcoholic doesn't begin with James Masterson reclined on a piano Shirley Bassey style. Afterall the intro is a pretty forgettable piece of loungecore crap. Then theres that immortal line which unfortunately featured on the snippet for MTVs exclusives. There are bad lyrics and then there are lyrics which Stereophonics fans will laugh at. "Don't you know you've got your daddys eyes and daddy was an alcoholic" is the lyrical equivalent of using a screwdriver to perform open heart surgery. All of the above are enough to make you want to stick pins in your feet, not to mention the Oscar scene at the end of the video where Masterson, like the fuckless guitar boy he is, stands whingey faced in the pouring rain, staring at the camera as if someones just stolen his copy of the NME.

This is my rant, give me yours.

Is *that* the fool's name? One letter changed and he'd be the Dotmusic charts commentator who seemed to regard the Top 10 entry of "Alcoholic" as a definitively great moment for the charts. It might, just, explain a lot.

em...........I just saw your first post Robin, or at least I think I just saw it. I must have subconsciously said that was his name. Its James Masters maybe or James something.

I linked to this newstory on my weblog, what a pathetic article on the rubbish Starsailor @ Worldpop.com - apparently this (pseudo) indie guitar stuff (cough) is on the way back. [James Walsh launches into Kylie - would amuse the pro-pop faction on ILE]

[I always hated those MM/NME news stories in the 90s when say about 4 to 5 guitar songs reached the charts at the same time - and this was hailed as a welcome rebirth of guitar music - utter rubbish theory when the music was risible and dire]

One of the disturbing things is that Starsailor got a 500 turn out for the launch of their album - on the back of NME support - it seems a certain section of the teenager audience are complete gullible fuckwits - that believe the gospel according to the NME - chapter and verse.

I rate Starsailor in ineptness and blandness on par with Shed 7, Stereophonics and Ocean Colour Scene.

I just downloaded this Starsailor song to see what all the hubbub was about: thanks, I needed a good laugh. Reminds me of that "Whose Line is it Anway?" show where the players are asked to sing about a topic (alchoholism, we suppose) in the style of a certain group (Coldplay at their indie-pishiest) and end up as a parody of the music's most risible tendencies. The most thrilling part of this song is that bit right at the end where my mp3 didn't download properly and the track takes an unexpected glitch direction for 1/5th of a second.

NYLPM on The Streets.

i think the streets along with 'do you really like it' and the dom perignon tune 'got myself together' are the worst garage tunes i have ever heard. although pied piper and dom perignon tunes are utterly embarrassing in how shit the mcing is, the tunes are ok, and instrumental versions would be ok, but the streets is unexcusable. the tune is so fucking bad it makes my head hurt: 'chilled' garage? 'this one aint for the clubs'???????? such a bad idea, so inevitable someone would try it.

the nyplm review doesnt seem to say anything about the music, concentrating on the words, and ive not heard any other opinions of it from around hwere but i am very surprised to see the praise being heaped on it here.

although the dom perignon tune.........probably the absolute depths, to my ears.

Not saying anything about the music because the music is more-or-less irrelevant: it sounds vaguely like garage because garage is what's around at the moment. The music does its job, which is to stop The Streets making a spoken-word record - but are you really suggesting Ambrose that the music is what's important or notable here?

Mind you I also like DJ Pied Piper so I'd better hear this Dom Perignon track soon.

well thats seems a bit of a weird way to look at a tune. some records i can ignore certain elements, ie the lyrics, even if they are awful, if the musics good, but i personally cant do it vice versa ie ignore the music for the sake of the lyrics and ....' the music is more or less irrelevant'????

i cant ever imagine feeling that way.

to be honest it seems as though the you are making a little too much of the relevance of the lyrics....i mean, its not shakespeare is it?

plus, i guess, its not like its a badly produced track. they didnt fail doing what they wanted to do.....i just think the idea of a 'chilled' garage track, and to be honest, i dont think you could call it anything other than garage, as much as you can define these things, is a really bad

What I'm saying is that the reason the backing music is 'chilled' i.e. competent background garage stylings - is that the centre of the record is the lyrics. Lyrics = content PLUS delivery - the centre of the sound on "Has It Come To This?" is not the beats, but the guy's voice and flow, which I find fascinating because he's resurrected the kind of almost-rap style that surfaced just post-punk (hence the Cooper Clarke reference - JCC is definitely the main comparison point I can think of for The Streets' B-Side, which is also much more 'musically' interesting).

I can ignore music as easily, maybe more easily, than I can lyrics. It's quite rare for a really bum note or flagrantly out-of-place sound to slip into a pop song, fairly common for a ghastly rhyme or stupid word to spoil things.

Masterton would be amused at that :).

I'm with Tom on The Streets: I like the words, I think they get the exact right balance between socio-realism and pisstaking, between the territory of their genre and flights of fancy. The balance between the lyrics - never entirely as depressing as they might be taken at face value - and the resonance of the title is fantastic to me. I don't see why I really should care that much about the music except that I don't think it's *bad* at all: average, definitely, but not as terrible as Ambrose seems to suggest.

"Has It Come To This?" has been pirate hit for long long time = it is garage. There's a lot of tunes floating around like this, right down to the chilled element Ambrose dislikes, although I can't think of any other tracks with such brilliant rapping ("turn off your phones" is possibly the strangely nasty put-down in pop this year).

I don't think saying "it's not garage" or even "it's not *really* garage" is particularly useful for the argument Ambrose and Tom are having. The issue is: "is it good or bad?". And it is very good - although all the people who find the backing music a bit disapppointing should get the Stanton Warriors bootleg of it which basically rolls the vocals over the top of one of Zinc's (better than usual) breakbeat garage tunes (this is included on their Stanton Sessions cd).

I walked into Winchester last Monday to buy the Pulp single. Smiths (unsurprisingly) not stocking it, but neither are the very much larger MVC, who claimed to know nothing about it. Shocker! Chart- performance wise, perhaps not though, it's higher than last single off TIH (Party Hard was just top 40 wasn't it?), and also not surprising because no one was interested after TIH anyway - Pulp were only immensely popular when they made glam-pop megahits which I don't think is that likely anymore, to be honest.
Starsailor: Why oh why is Alcoholic regarded as lyrical genius? It sounds like 'deep' student poetry, for christ's sake! I don't understand why his voice is meant to be so great, either. For all the effot he puts in, he still sounds utterly whiney and grating. (nb. sometimes this works, not over MOR). People will listen to this album while stoned and hail it as a masterpiece. Unsurprisingly, they're up for a Q award (cue obvious response - telling people like Westlife to 'go and write your own songs, then you'll be musicians'. Ugh. Absoloute drivel.

Another point re Starsailor: We already have one Paul Weller album entering the charts this week - we don't need another one!

Proof of how bad Starsailor are: we haven't even had people turning up going "A-ha an ILE consensus has developed Starsailor are bad therefore they are unfashionable therefore I will check them out".

(my kneejerk finga HAS been poised over that particular send button)

If only they were called StarsailXoR. They are admittedly the easiest target in the shooting gallery.

I'd have thought the most "humiliating defeat" would be the Super Furries only going in at 28. The poppiest track on their major label debut scrapes the top 30 - how long are Columbia going to keep churning out the flashy DVDs if they don't see a better result soon?

I'm surprised the Streets single didn't go in higher, given that it appears to be the only video MTV/Play UK want to show.

Tom, I kinda wanted to be that lone contrarian spirit, but REALLY now.

To be honest, I couldn't really care less about Pulp, and I wish to physically hurt those responsible for that turd that was 'This Is Hardcore', I hate that album. Hooray for Kylie though, I are hating Starsailor.