web analytics

Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Hallelujah

  • Big in the UK: Cooking the Charts with They Might Be Giants

    This is the sort of thing that probably wouldn’t happen here. I just don’t think Americans take their pop charts quite as personally or as democratically as they do in the U.K. Earlier this summer, a brand of kid’s shoes put out an ad featuring “Birdhouse in Your Soul”, the 1990 major label debut single by They Might Be Giants. The duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh have, since they started recording original songs onto a standard answering machine in the early 80s, become the godfathers of nerd-rock, and now that their original fans (like me) are pushing middle age with mortgages and children, the band have found renewed success recording four albums of “children’s music”, and performing alternate shows for grown-ups and kids on tour. The idea of sticking TMBG’s loving ode to the nightlight into an ad for kids’ shoes might’ve been genius if it weren’t so self-evidently perfect.

    I don’t know how it’s working out for Clark Shoes, but it seems to be doing well for They Might Be Giants. The song re-entered the British Top 100 pop songs late last month. Of course, songs featured in popular ads often get enjoy a run on the pop charts here as well – just as Sara Bareilles, Yael Naim, or Phoenix – but those successes seem more like happy accidents. In the case of “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, a strange populist cause – okay, a facebook group – has formed around keeping the song on the charts and trying to advance it to the top spot. That said, after four weeks, the song has only gone so far as #70 (on the chart dated 8/21; the song falls back to #72 on the 8/28 chart).

    But that’s not to say it couldn’t eventually succeed. This isn’t the first instance of the Brits attempting to cook their pop charts. See also: Buckley v. Burke. In 2008, after Alexandra Burke won the TV talent show The X-Factor, a campaign by apostles of the tragic 90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley attempted to thwart Burke’s cover of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” from making its predicted number one debut over that year’s Christmas sales week by urging fans to download Buckley’s own version of the song.

    It’s a Brand New Record for 1990!

    The campaign failed, but just barely. Buckley’s song charted at #2 behind Burke’s. Still, the TMBG song, while it may linger on the chart for as long as the ad airs, probably won’t reach those sorts of heights. For one thing, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” isn’t being pitted against another version of itself, or even another song. Moreover the Alexandra Burke debut was a one-off event sales week; it was also a holiday week, and it’s a holiday week that The X-Factor has annually co-opted for just this eventful purpose. So Buckley v. Burke was framed as the classic battle over artistic legitimacy between a tragic rock icon and a freshly minted “mass-produced” pop idol for the very soul of the pop chart.

    As a fan of both Burke and Buckley (although, when it comes to “Hallelujah”, count me in with Team John Cale), I, frankly, prefer not having to choose sides. They Might Be Giants‘ Elektra debut record Flood was essentially the first record of 1990, and “Birdhouse In Your Soul” was instant classic that still makes me giddy and giggly every time I hear it – even more so now that I’ve got two kids singing along with me.

    Here’s the original video from 1990:

  • Big in the UK: “All Night Long” by Alexandra Burke

    Hey all, remember Leona Lewis? You know, the 2006 winner of the Simon Cowell-headed British talent search show The X-Factor (which Cowell plans to bring to the U.S. later this year)? The British Mariah? “Bleeding Love”? Can it be that “Bleeding Love” is only three years old? Can it be that only two albums into her kid-tested, mother(-and-Cowell)-approved career, and despite an appearance on the soundtrack of one of last year’s most talked-about movies (the song “Happy” featured prominently in ads for Precious), she’s already adrift in has-been territory? There are a lot of plausible explanations – lack of raw talent, not one of them – for Lewis’s premature fade-out. The fact is, she’s sorta boring. And, despite the rubber-stamp of Cowell, who’s ever harping on the virtues of currency and relevance, Lewis is really neither. She’s a pretty cipher with a voice, now lost in a crowd of Autotuned provocateurs.

    Two years later, in 2008, Cowell anointed another pop starlet, then 20-year-old Alexandra Burke – The British Beyonce, maybe, maybe, fingers-crossed maybe? – as that year’s X-Factor winner, beating out stiff competition from crowd favorite Diana Vickers (who’s done quite well on the UK charts since then) and biracial boy band JLS (whose J.R. Rotem-produced single “Everybody in Love” has been flirting with American radio playlists for the last several months without quite breaking). Burke’s winning performance, yet another cover of Leonard Cohen’s revered but oft-abused 1984 classic “Hallelujah”, a song that, due to an intimately overwrought mid-90s cover, fans of the tragic singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley regard as a sacred religious text. Angry at the blasphemy of a common pop singer’s – nay, a common reality show competitor’s -performance of the song, British Buckley fans declared a sort of download fatwa against Burke the week her single version of “Hallelujah” was released, urging the rockist faithful to download copies of Buckley’s version in order to keep Burke’s from debuting at number one on the charts. Not only did the Buckley campaign fail, but Burke’s single sold a record-breaking 100,000 plus downloads in its first week.

    Compounding the irony: Alexandra Burke didn’t really care for the song. As is the case with many (most) Idol winners, that first single sailed on the ardor of a television audience; it’s success had little to do with the direction (specifically, a penchant for Euro club bangers) Burke would take on her debut album. Overcome, released in the U.K. late last fall, boasted collaborations with producer-of-the-moment RedOne (who, she’s said in a recent video blog that she is back in the studio with) and her first non-X-Factor related single, “Bad Boys” featured a guest spot by the reigning king of the club-ready (read: irresistibly empty) rap, Flo Rida. Her latest, which stormed the British Top 10 earlier this month is a great little retro-disco flavored number called “All Night Long”, featuring Miami rapper Pitbull. It seems only a matter of time before Cowell launches Burke here in the States (maybe he’s saving her for the American X-Factor debut). Given that Europe and the U.K. are already three singles deep into Overcome, it’s likely that if and when the album does show up here, it will, like Taio Cruz’s just-released Rokstarr, be a reconstruction of the British album – more a “greatest hits so far/what you’ve been missing” set than a proper debut.

    So here’s what you’ve been missing. For the video of “All Night Long”, Alexandra Burke invited a bunch of pals over to her place (presumably) for a night of music-fueled debauchery, armed them all with video cameras (a la Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” video), and reports back with the results, crayola sunglasses, metallic sequined eyelids, alterna-drag queens and all. Pitbull appears poolside in what appears to be a pre-taped address to the freaky, freaky congregants.