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- Readers recommend: songs about showing off
We'd like you to suggest songs that shout: 'Look at me, mum!'
You don't get to be a pop superstar without knowing how to show off. A bit of showing off can be forgiven, given that successful musicians receive huge adulation. So this week, lets celebrate tracks that show off off the spoils of success, or some other good fortune.
At the other end of the popularity scale, there are musicians who claim to be "just doing it for ourselves, and if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus". They may believe that sincerely, but deep down they want people to hear it. And getting people to take notice often involves a degree of showing off. Even impecunious musicians can be adept and making the most of their assets.
Because it takes a degree of self-confidence to make music, to perform in front of an audience. That self-confidence can brim over into hubris, when musicians overestimate their ability to entertain. This can of course be ghastly. But we can forgive the most grotesque egotism if they deliver a fantastic performance, or if it's done with a wink indicating awareness of their own ridiculousness.
The toolbox:
* This week's collaborative Spotify playlist
* The RR archive
* The Marconium (blog containing a wealth of data on RR)
* The 'Spill (blog for the RR community)
* An explanation of how the word "dond" came to be used by RR people to second someone else's nomination
Please do:
* Post your nominations before midday on Tuesday if you wish them to be considered.
* Write a few lines attempting to justify your choices.
But please don't:
* Post more than one third of the lyrics of any song.
* Dump lists of nominations. If you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices.
Here are the results of last week's Readers recommend: children's songs.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Listen to Yuck's debut album: Exclusive stream
It's warm, fuzzy and sounds like it cost 11p to record. Yes, we really love Yuck's debut album
To say that Yuck's self-titled debut album sounds like it was recorded in a shed is potentially a diss on the acoustic qualities of garden-based storage units. This is no bad thing, however, for Yuck – five Londoners in thrall to the likes of Pavement and Teenage Fanclub – use their fuzz to glorious effect, softening the lo-fi production with a handful of sublime melodies (not to mention sweet harmonies from Daniel Blumberg and his sister Ilana). It's one of our favourite debuts of 2011 – let us know if you're equally giddy about them in the comments section below.
Yuck by Yuck is out on Monday 21 February
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Follow SXSW bands with our interactive artist pages
To celebrate the launch of our SXSW interactive pages, here are 10 artists worth following at this year's Texan get-together
It's amazing what you can get done at a hack day. Last week, the Guardian's developers teamed up with the likes of Google, Last.fm, Soundcloud, Amazon, MusicBrainz and YouTube to create an index of every band playing at SXSW. You can see it all here. Click through for each artist and you'll find an amazing interactive profile that pulls in YouTube clips, Soundcloud streams, Last.fm data and live dates. To start you off, here are 10 artists we think you should be keeping an eye on throughout this year's SXSW festival ...
Anna Calvi
We've been tipping Anna Calvi's epic, operatic songs since late last year. Her self-titled debut album mixes classical influences with Morricone, plus she can out-riff most of the SXSW bill.
Black Lips
After 11 years and five albums, the self-proclaimed "flower-punks" of Atlanta, Georgia, can still put most bands to shame with their raucous live shows. Not their first time at SXSW and no doubt their last, the Black Lips continue to be enthusiastic exponents of tripped-out garage rock with an unpredictable edge.
Cloud Nothings
Cloud Nothings are, in fact, just one 19-year-old called Dylan. Signed to Wichita, he makes poppy lo-fi punk that comes and goes in the time it takes to blink your eyes. So don't blink, and don't miss him.
Das Racist
Sometimes a band comes along to fill a void you didn't even know needed filling. In New York duo Das Racist's case, that void was crooked alt-rap that eschews standard hip-hop references in favour of three-minute songs about a mythical Pizza Hut and Taco Bell franchise. So now you know.
Diplo
The reputation of Diplo's sets alongside A-Track at previous SXSWs certainly precede him. His recent remixes range from Sleigh Bells to the Streets, so expect the globetrotting DJ to be on form at Austin.
Gold Panda
Bedroom producer Gold Panda occupies the same territory as Caribou and Metronomy as a purveyor of soundscaping electronica with an unmistakably emotional bent. The Peckham-born musician pipped the likes of Stornoway and Tinie Tempah to win this year's Guardian first album award for his debut LP Lucky Shiner – one to watch for sure.
Jamie Woon
James Blake might be the dubstep/pop crossover artist on most people's lips, but Jamie Woon is quietly buzzing away in the background. Will his ethereal songs cut it under the glare of the music industry spotlight?
John Grant with Midlake
Queen of Denmark was one of the Guardian's favourite albums of 2010, so we're looking forward to John Grant arriving in Austin with Midlake as his backing band. Expect things to get emotional.
Kurt Vile
Described by the Guardian's Paul Lester as "Tom Petty filtered through the warped imagination of Genesis P-Orridge", Pennsylvanian troubadour Kurt Vile represents exactly what Matador gets right: errant indie-pop with a haze of feedback, introspective lyrics and skewed pop hooks.
The Vaccines
The most hotly tipped UK band since the Drums (er, let's not mention them). Will the London fuzz-poppers crash under the weight of expectation or burn brighter than a Texas BBQ? Either way, they're a must-see band.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music: Tyler the Creator – Yonkers
Notching up 100,000 hits a day, Tyler the Creator's unsettling video is stark, sinister and scathing when it comes to Bruno Mars
Nineteen-year-old rapper Tyler the Creator, a member of LA rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, is unwell. In the video for his new single Yonkers – currently getting 100,000 hits a day on YouTube – he sits alone in a bare room, rapping frantically at the camera while a cockroach crawls across a hand scrawled with the word "KILL". The cockroach is not long for this world as he's chewed, swallowed and then vomited back up, before our hero's eyes turn black, blood pours out of his nose and he, er, hangs himself. It's a deeply unsettling video matched by stark, bass-heavy hip-hop at it's most lyrically sinister (Bruno Mars doesn't come out of it well, neither does B.o.B). Yonkers is taken from Tyler's second album, Goblin, which will be released in the UK by XL Recordings this spring.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Radio 3 is bringing back live concerts for its evening schedule. Thankfully
Performance on 3 will now bring live broadcasts to BBC Radio 3 every weekday night
As one orchestral manager put it to me, rather wearily, "It's funny how what comes around, goes around, isn't it?"
Indeed it is. Last night, Roger Wright, controller of BBC Radio 3, announced at the Association of British Orchestras' conference that from May, Performance on 3 would be moved back to 7.30pm from the 7pm slot it had occupied since 2007. And it would now focus (once again) on live concerts, rather than mainly pre-recorded events.
Sense of deja vu ? Anyone feel like saying, "I told you so?"
Back in 2007, hardly anyone thought that the reduction in live evening broadcasts was a good idea – even given the benefits it brought to the predictability of the late-evening schedule, which could proceed undisturbed by the variable finishing time of concerts. I certainly didn't, and wrote a piece to say so.
Still, Wright should be congratulated on bringing us these 46 weeks per year of live evening broadcasts (a larger number than the pre-2007 figure). There really is nothing like the feeling of eavesdropping on a great event – even if the presenters have to fill a bit while the piano is moved across the stage, or if the whole thing is a bit unpredictable or shaky. In fact, that's partly what makes it so exciting, and why the Proms live broadcasts in the summer are such a treat. Weekday evenings are, from May, going to be a better, brighter place.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - New music exclusive: Dreamend – Magnesium Light
It starts as a banjo strumalong and ends as a rock freakout. And the video boasts a scary mutant child. Nice!
You know Black Moth Super Rainbow, right? No? How about Graveface Records? Well anyway, the guitarist of the former and the owner of the latter, Ryan Graveface (probably not his real name), moonlights as Dreamend, eschewing the synth-pop of Black Moth Super Rainbow in favour of a sinister take on American folk. Magnesium Light – taken from the cheerily titled album, So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite – starts like a Sufjan Stevens strumalong before morphing into a guitar-heavy freakout. The video – Dreamend's first and a Guardian exclusive – features what looks like the worst day trip ever, complete with terrifying mutant child.
So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite is out now on Memphis Industries
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - The Strange Powers of Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
Are the Magnetic Fields worthy of a cinema-released documentary film, Strange Powers? Listen closely and the answer can only be a resounding yes
For the last decade and a half I've been hoisting the tag "modern genius" upon the shrugging shoulders of Magnetic Fields man Stephin Merritt. Yet even I wondered if they were really worthy of a cinema-released documentary. Thankfully, my concerns were dismissed within the first few seconds of Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.
Over the opening credits played Epitaph for My Heart, a track from the band's 69 Love Songs album, which I carried on my person for about three years after its 2000 release, devouring it like a bottomless tub of Chunky Monkey and proclaiming it the best album since Revolver. Despite playing it so often, a line leapt out from this dolorous slab of heartbreak that I'd never noticed before: "Cupid put too much poison in the dart." It's a muffled gem of a line, and an example of why the Magnetic Fields are considered important enough to document on film, why they're widely considered a band you're either obsessed with or have never heard of, and why their concerts are often full of people laughing at all the lyrical gags as though they've never heard them before. Because, often, they haven't; Merritt's words unravel fresh nuances of misery and hilarity with each performance, and reward repeated study.
Inevitably, given Merritt's private nature, Strange Powers – filmed over a decade by fly-on-the-wall directors Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara – is as notable for what it leaves out as what it includes. It's fascinating to follow the Magnetic Fields' stylistic retreat from the guitarless beginnings of Distant Plastic Trees through The Charm of the Highway Strip and Get Lost (records that sound like brilliant folk, pop, disco and country songs fed through a rivet-welding machine) to the largely effect-free acoustic material of 69 Love Songs and beyond, but there's no hint of Merritt's numerous side-projects – particularly the 6ths, wherein he gets indie notaries to sing his songs to make what are essentially tribute albums to himself.
The footage of Merritt writing in techno-thumping gay bars and of Magnetic Fields recording sessions is priceless – it turns out these grand, otherworldly songs are all recorded in Merritt's New York apartment, with a cellist peforming in a shower cubicle and manager-cum-cohort Claudia Gonson playing weird toy instruments or whatever she can find in Merritt's kitchen drawers. But there's no mention of Merritt's hyperacusis, a hearing condition that inflicts painful feedback whenever Merritt encounters loud noises such as applause or "women in gay bars". Let alone the revolutionary politics he keeps under wraps because, as he explained to me a decade ago, if he were to mention what he'd like to see happen to our Queen he'd never be allowed in the UK again.
The reason the Magnetic Fields make for great documentary material is that they are a band with many layers. It's there in the tragi-comic twists of Papa Was a Rodeo (a maudlin tale of lost childhood that concludes: "What a coincidence, your papa was a rodeo too."), domestic violence romp Yeah! Oh Yeah! and I Looked All Over Town, which documents the outcast anguish encountered when, by accident of birth, you happen to be a circus clown. And it's there in the paradoxes of Merritt's impenetrable personality: these bright melodies delivered in his beleaguered baritone; his choosing to perform a ukelele dirge called Smile, No-One Cares How You Feel on US breakfast television.
Strange Powers enlightens but doesn't saturate the Merritt myth. Like its subject, it leaves plenty for the intrepid new Magnetic Fields fan to uncover. And, if there's any justice, it will convert ignorants to obsessives.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Music Weekly podcast: Brit awards 2011 reviewed
It was a year of firsts for the Brit awards 2011. It was the first time the ceremony was held at the O2 Arena, the first time the riot police were called in (twice) and the first time in recent memory that the lifetime achievement award was dropped. Tinie Tempah and Plan B both gave big performances and went home with awards, while Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling pipped the more obvious pop choices (Take That and Katy Perry) to take home the award for British album and best female solo artist respectively.
But what did our critics make of it? Your pod host Alexis Petridis is joined by Rosie Swash, Grace Dent and Caspar Llewellyn Smith to discuss last night's proceedings. Were the winners worthy? Did the performers hit the right notes? And did James Corden make you laugh or groan? Let us know your verdict on the Brits 2011 below.
Переслать - What makes a great protest song?
In this extract from his new history of the genre, Dorian Lynskey looks at the ingredients needed to make a great protest song
The phrase "protest song" is problematic. Many artists have seen it as a box in which they might find themselves trapped. Barry McGuire, who sang the genre-defining 1965 hit Eve of Destruction, protested: "It's not exactly a protest song. It's merely a song about current events." Bob Dylan told his audience, shortly before performing Blowin' in the Wind for the first time: "This here ain't a protest song."
There are good reasons why the term is regarded with suspicion. Protest songs are rendered a disservice as much by undiscerning fans as by their harshest critics. While detractors dismiss all examples as didactic, crass or plain boring, enthusiasts are prone to acting as if virtuous intent suspends the usual standards of musical quality, when any music lover knows that people make bad records for the right reasons and good records for the wrong ones.
It makes sense to treat protest songs first and foremost as pop music. Many are artistically brilliant, because pop thrives on contradiction and tension. Electricity crackles across the gap between ambition and achievement, sound and meaning, intention and reception. So the best protest songs are not dead artefacts, pinned to a particular place and time, but living conundrums.
The inevitable difficulty of contorting a serious message to meet the demands of entertainment is the grit that makes the pearl. In songs such as Strange Fruit, Ohio, A Change Is Gonna Come or Ghost Town, the political content is not an obstacle to greatness, but the source of it. They open a door and the world outside rushes in.
Extracted from 33 Revolutions Per Minute by Dorian Lynskey, published by Faber & Faber Ltd on 3 March at £17.99. To order a copy for £13.59 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Brit awards 2011: Rebrand gives manufactured pop the elbow
Musicians apparently allowed to vote alongside record company executives and industry figures for the first time
This year, we are reliably informed, the Brits seeks to reposition itself. After years of selling itself to the public largely on the unscripted incidents of the past – Jarvis Cocker's stage invasion, John Prescott's dousing and so on – while rather disingenuously doing everything in their power to ensure nothing of that kind ever happened again, the BPI is playing the "all about the music" card. Musicians were apparently permitted to vote alongside the record company executives and industry figures for the first time. The lifetime achievement award has gone, the better to focus attention on the best album gong. In fairness, the sense that they were running out of people to give the lifetime award to has been hanging around ever since they used it to honour the musical, rather than philanthropic, achievements of Bob Geldof.
This year a certain worthiness has definitely crept into the winners' enclosure. Manufactured pop has been given the elbow, with only Justin Bieber flying the flag for weenybop. Winsome singer-songwriter Laura Marling unexpectedly triumphed over Cheryl Cole, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was declared a better album than Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, the pop-rap of Tinie Tempah's Pass Out beats the massed ranks of Cowell-assisted stars to best single. On one hand, you can't argue with a lot of the choices, particularly if you take into account what else was nominated. Pass Out is a great single. Plan B is a fantastic pop star. You don't have to love Arcade Fire to admit that theirs is a better album than Katy Perry's, which surely counts as praise of the faintest stripe imaginable. On the other, it's hard not to be struck by the sense of an event straining for a credibility it will never achieve. You can't imagine music press delight at the best album award going to cosy acoustic band Mumford & Sons, whose leader, Marcus Mumford, was witheringly nailed by writer David Quantick as "the Michael McIntyre of folk".
And of course, there's an argument that, at least for the people who tune in to watch it on ITV, the Brits is no more "all about the music" than it is all about animal husbandry: what they essentially want is a live-action version of You've Been Framed, interspersed with Rihanna or similar singing in her knickers, some fireworks and a quick shufti to see if (a) Robbie is still talking to the rest of Take That and (b) Jordan and Peter Andre have come to blows. Thus it is that the most prominent sound at the Brits isn't winsome indie-folk or homegrown pop-rap, but the thud of an event falling between two stools.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
 | Эта мулатка пахнет ванилью! Испанские куклы Paola Reina в блоге Подарки с улыбкой. |
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