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Tag: Robbie Williams

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010: “I guess every superhero need his theme music…”

    Before I head into my Top 10 songs of the year, here’s a recap of the previous 90. Click the links to see the blocks of videos and commentary for each group of ten:

    PART 1: 100-91

    100: “LOVER, LOVER” by JERROD NIEMANN

    99: “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU” by THE THERMALS

    98: “MIAMI 2 IBIZA” by SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA vs. TINIE TEMPAH

    97: “STOP FOR A MINUTE” by KEANE & K’NAAN

    96: “FIRE WITH FIRE” by SCISSOR SISTERS

    95: “KING OF ANYTHING” by SARA BAREILLES

    94: “THE RABBIT” by MIIKE SNOW

    93: “I WANT THE WORLD TO STOP” by BELLE & SEBASTIAN

    92: “MELANCHOLY HILL” by GORILLAZ

    91: “ANIMAL ARITHMETIC” by JONSI

    PART 2: 90-81

    90: “THE GHOST INSIDE” by BROKEN BELLS

    89: “HARD TIMES” by JOHN LEGEND & THE ROOTS

    88: “HIGHWAY 20 RIDE” by ZAC BROWN BAND

    87: “MORNING SUN” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS

    86: “NEIN, MANN!” by LASERKRAFT 3D

    85: “MADDER RED” by YEASAYER

    84: “SOMEONE ELSE CALLING YOU BABY” by LUKE BRYAN

    83: “WHAT PART OF FOREVER” by CEE-LO GREEN

    82: “EGO” by THE SATURDAYS

    81: “HOLLYWOOD” by MARINA & THE DIAMONDS

    PART 3: 80-71

    80: “WATER” by BRAD PAISLEY

    79: “FOR THE SUMMER” by RAY LaMONTAGNE & THE PARIAH DOGS

    78: “LITTLE WHITE CHURCH” by LITTLE BIG TOWN

    77: “SHINE A LIGHT” by McFLY feat. TAIO CRUZ

    76: “DO WAH DOO” by KATE NASH

    75: “ONE LIFE STAND” by HOT CHIP

    74: “PRAYIN’” by PLAN B

    73: “THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME” by MIRANDA LAMBERT

    72: “NIGHT AND DAY” by CHIEF

    71: “BETTER THAN TODAY” by KYLIE MINOGUE

    PART 4: 70-61

    70: “I NEED A DOLLAR” by ALOE BLACC

    69: “GOD & SATAN” by BIFFY CLYRO

    68: “MY OWN SINKING SHIP” by GOOD OLD WAR

    67: “BANG BANG BANG” by MARK RONSON & THE BUSINESS INTL

    66: “HANG WITH ME” by ROBYN

    65: “AMERICAN SATURDAY NIGHT” by BRAD PAISLEY

    64: “DO YOU LOVE ME” by GUSTER

    63: “RIDE” by NAPPY ROOTS

    62: “CRASH YEARS” by THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

    61: “HEARTBEAT SONG” by THE FUTUREHEADS

    PART 5: 60-51

    60: “DYNAMITE” by TAIO CRUZ

    59: “HERE LIES LOVE” by DAVID BYRNE & FATBOY SLIM with FLORENCE WELCH

    58: “JUST THE WAY YOU ARE” by BRUNO MARS

    57: “HANDS TIED” by TONI BRAXTON

    56: “SMOKE A LITTLE SMOKE” by ERIC CHURCH

    55: “CLUB CAN’T HANDLE ME” by FLO RIDA feat. DAVID GUETTA

    54: “CARRY OUT” by TIMBALAND feat. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

    53: “SECRETS” by ONEREPUBLIC

    52: “RAISE YOUR GLASS” by P!NK

    51: “HEAVEN AND EARTH” by BLITZEN TRAPPER

    PART 6: 50-41

    50: “YOU MUST BE OUT OF YOUR MIND” by THE MAGNETIC FIELDS

    49: “THE SKY’S THE LIMIT” by JASON DERULO

    48: “TRIPPING DOWN THE FREEWAY” by WEEZER

    47: “ALL NIGHT LONG” by ALEXANDRA BURKE

    46: “TELEPHONE” by LADY GAGA feat. BEYONCE

    45: “MARCHIN’ ON” by ONEREPUBLIC

    44: “GRENADE” by BRUNO MARS

    43: “BREAK YOUR HEART” by TAIO CRUZ

    42: “THE FIRE” by THE ROOTS feat. JOHN LEGEND

    41: “CREDIBLE THREATS” by THE ONE A.M. RADIO

    PART 7: 40-31

    40: “THE HIGH ROAD” by BROKEN BELLS

    39: “WRITTEN IN REVERSE” by SPOON

    38: “PARACHUTE” by CHERYL COLE / “PARACHUTE” by INGRID MICHAELSON

    37: “WHITE NIGHT” by THE POSTELLES

    36: “I’M A PILOT” by FANFARLO

    35: “O.N.E.” by YEASAYER

    34: “A MORE PERFECT UNION” by TITUS ANDRONICUS

    33: “DANCE FLOOR” by THE APPLES IN STEREO

    32: “WE, MYSELF AND I” by SHAD

    31: “MY BEST THEORY” by JIMMY EAT WORLD

    PART 8: 30-21

    30: “THE BEST OF TIMES” by SAGE FRANCIS

    29: “ACAPELLA” by KELIS

    28: “SHE SAID” by PLAN B

    27: “IF WE EVER MEET AGAIN” by TIMBALAND feat. KATY PERRY

    26: “DANCE IN THE DARK” by LADY GAGA

    25: “YOU KNOW ME” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS

    24: “UNTHINKABLE (I’M READY” by ALICIA KEYS

    23: “NA NA NA (NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA)” by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

    22: “ALL THE LOVERS” by KYLIE MINOGUE

    21: “BUTTERFLY, BUTTERFLY (THE LAST HURRAH)” by A-HA

    PART 9: 20-11

    20: “I AM NOT A ROBOT” by MARINA & THE DIAMONDS

    19: “WE USED TO WAIT” by ARCADE FIRE

    18: “I FEEL BETTER” by HOT CHIP

    17: “ONLY PRETTIER” by MIRANDA LAMBERT

    16: “FEMBOT” by ROBYN

    15: “THIS TOO SHALL PASS” by OK GO

    14: “ALORS ON DANSE” by STROMAE

    13: “NO OTHER ONE” by TAIO CRUZ

    12: “RUNAWAY” by KANYE WEST feat. PUSHA T.

    11: “SHARK IN THE WATER” by VV BROWN

    And now: On to the Top 10:

    #10
    #10: “WAIT TILL YOU SEE MY SMILE” by ALICIA KEYS.
    It’s not often that a record as heavy on ballads as Alcia Keys’s fourth album is turns out to also be a fabulously exciting listen. But The Element of Freedom is, and this song, though regrettably not promoted as a single, is, to me, the album’s beating heart. It’s soft and understated in a way that Keys has never really been before, and that understatement is perfectly matched to the song’s theme of finding inner strength to face external opposition. It’s got a gorgeous build; and it feels like the deep breath you might take before jumping out of an airplane.

    #9
    #9: “HAPPINESS” by ALEXIS JORDAN (with DEADMAU5).
    18-year-old Alexis Jordan seemed poised to become a footnote to a pop-cultural footnote when she was eliminated from America’s Got Talent four years ago. And in another time, she probably would have. But now there’s YouTube. And Alexis Jordan has been nothing if not a prolific poster of videos of herself singing the day’s hit parade on the YouTube. Eventually, someone had to notice. But her debut single is way better than anyone might have expected based on the story of her career so far. Here, she takes an existing techno-rave song – “Brazil (2nd Edit)” by Canadian dj deadmau5 – and sings a sweet teenybopper song all over the top of it. A musical marriage made in the aisles of Old Navy.

    #8
    #8: “ONE IN A MILLION” by NE-YO.
    Libra Scale, the fourth album by R&B singer-songwriter-producer Ne-Yo sounds like everything a new Michael Jackson album should and would sound like in the best of all parallel universes. And it also sounds like the album Ne-Yo has dreamed of making since he first decided to be a performer. It’s sweet, stylish, sexy; and it has a great sense of humor too. It’s also got a narrative storyline about three guys who are given superpowers with the caveat that by accepting them, they can never fall in love. Michael would have been proud. The narrative structure isn’t new for Ne-Yo though. The first time I ever heard of him, he was opening for John Legend (when John Legend was touring Get Lifted), and his set was an adorable one-man play about trying-and-failing-and-trying-again to get the girl. Libra Scale is that little stage act’s apotheosis.

    #7
    #7: “ON TO THE NEXT ONE” by JAY-Z + SWIZZ BEATZ.
    In which Jay-Z not-so-politely refuses to participate in any kind of – what do you call it? – oh yeah: recession. Jay-Z is and promises to remain a hip hop stimulus package unto himself. Yes, it’s true that he also released, simultaneously with this song, a single called “Young Forever” which was essentially a remake of a beloved 80s synthpop song by the German group Alphaville, and yes, you’d think that I would have fallen hard for that, and yes, I admit the sheet amount of nasty language in this song makes me cringe some, but I find every other thing about it highly addictive. And the video: who knew Jay-Z was a closet Goth (with an enthusiasm for basketball and Damien Hirst?)

    #6
    #6: “SOLDIER OF LOVE” by SADE.
    A new album by Sade? Enough said, really.

    #5
    #5: “WAITING FOR THE END” by LINKIN PARK.
    “I know what it takes to move on. I know how it feels to lie. All I want to do is trade this life for something new, holding on to what I haven’t got.” I never expected to fall as deeply in love with a Linkin Park album as much as I have with their latest, A Thousand Suns, a sort of concept record inspired by, of all things, the creation of teh atomic bomb. They had me at the Oppenheimer quotes that open the record. It must be my thing for post-apocalyptic fiction. At any rate, I love this song. “The hardest part of ending is starting again.”

    #4
    #4: “FUCK YOU” by CEE-LO GREEN.
    It’s every great bubblegum song from the 60s and 70s wrapped up in one great big four letter word. Is it gimmicky? Abso-effing-lutely. But it’s also deeply catchy and tremendously good-natured in the way that Top 40 pop rarely is these days. No surprise, really, with Bruno Mars on board as a co-writer. And the whole “Life Stages of the Lady Killer” video is, y’know, kinda heartwarming.

    #3
    #3: “SHAME” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS & GARY BARLOW.
    Imagine Justin Timberlake and JC Chassez getting together 20 years after “Bye Bye Bye” to hash things in sweet, folky harmonies. “Shame” is the story of the greatest boy band bromance ever speculated about. The song was the single released in conjunction with Robbie’s recent solo greatest hits retrospective, and it was released right as Robbie set his solo career aside to re-join his old pal Gary, and the rest of the 90s-era British boy band Take That. The video, which finds the two singing the song at a country bar karaoke night, plays on all the stereotypes about boy bands, and gets enticingly Brokebackish toward the end. Will it go there? It… just… might… (FTR… they’re both openly straight, even though most of the men in their audiences aren’t.)

    Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow – Shame
    Uploaded by EMI_Music. – See the latest featured music videos.

    #2
    #2: “DANCING ON MY OWN” by ROBYN.
    High, double-edged drama in the wake of a bitter break-up. On one hand, here’s Robyn surreptitiously spying (err… stalking?) her ex with his new girl at the club. On the other, here’s Robyn dancing in the face of his rejection. Is it a moment of devastating weakness, or a moment of defiant strength? “I just came to say good-bye. I’m in the corner watching you kiss her.” That part where the beat drops out as she starts into the final chorus is just gut-wrenching. It’s the centerpiece of my favorite album of the year.

    #1
    #1: “POWER” by KANYE WEST.
    This year, Kanye West has become to hip-hop and maybe even popular music in general what Sarah Palin has become to politics. His is a presence to which attention must be paid. Always. Like Palin, he’s mastered the art of the provocatively self-serving tweet. Like Palin, he has a knack for saying really dumb things in really public ways. And like Palin, he is impervious to the valid criticisms and well-deserved attacks from the many many many many people for whom the mere mention of his name causes cringing, growling and gnashing of teeth. He revels in the outrage directed his way – “screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it” – and rather than defend himself against media missiles, he grabs a hold of them and turns them into weapons of offense. He’s almost certainly a narcissist, but he’s done what most narcissists fail to do – he’s made himself an object of our own sympathetic admiration. This year (and last), Kanye West has said and done things to make a fool of himself. But this year, he also made one of the year’s best and most fascinating records in the form of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Deal with that, you can almost hear Sarah – I mean Kanye – say, with an obnoxiously self-satisfied wink.

    “Power” was the first song to be released from the album, arriving almost half a year before the album itself, and it’s a toweringly tacky piece of self-aggrandizement – a sonic pyramid of tribal chants and handclaps, mushroom cloud basslines, and arena-rock guitar heroism (and yes, that King Crimson sample) – but tucked into it, right at the end is this challenge: “Do you have the power to let power go?” Early in the song, he likens himself to a superhero, but like Superman, by the end of the song, he seems to come to understand that in order to experience life and love on any kind of real level – to be a real person, and not just a really wealthy, powerful man who can get himself all the “light-skinned girls” he wants – he has to give up his superpowers and concede some level of weakness, vulnerability, mortality. “This’ll be a beautiful death,” he sings, and instead of flying like Superman, he’s “dropping out the window, letting everything go.”

    In a year when we saw firsthand, repeatedly, how the petulant whims of a single Senator could hold up progress on even the most popular and uncontroversial of legislative initiatives, West’s “Power” feels, strangely (since it’s coming from West), like a refreshingly sincere confessional on the moral limits of self-indulgence, from someone who seems to live life at the extremes of self-indulgence. Well played, Mr. West.

    And that is all! This has been a great year for music, and it was painful tying to even make a list of “only” 100 great songs. Let’s hope 2011 can be even half as awesome. Happy New Year, folks! This is Paul’s Inner Casey Kasem signing off. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for your beers.

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 8: #30-21 “Louder than god’s revolver, and twice as shiny!”

    What better way to spend your blizzard? Part 8, baby!

    #30
    #30: “THE BEST OF TIMES” by SAGE FRANCIS.
    An intimate conversation between a man and his 13-year-old self. “Don’t listen to them when they tell you these are your best years… and when you think you got it all figured out and then everything collapses – trust me kid – it’s not the end of the world.” With Kanye West putting Bon Iver on his record, and The Roots collaborating with Dirty Projectors and sampling the Monsters of Folk, this was the year where hip hop and indie rock finally met on a Run DMC/Aerosmith type scale. But no one took that meeting to a greater extreme than Sage Francis who enlisted a pack of indie titans including Chris Walla, Mark Linkous, and Jason Lytle to concoct the “beats” for his latest album Li(f)e. Here, he’s accompanied by French avant-garde/post-rocker Yann Tiersen.

    #29
    #29: “ACAPELLA” by KELIS.
    It’s hard to imagine this is the same woman who sang “Milkshake” in 2003. Then again, it was hard to imagine the woman singing “Milkshake” was the same one who sang “I Hate You So Much Right Now!” in 1999. Which I suppose is the point of this song: People change when life changes. The life change here being, specifically, motherhood, which Kelis dramatizes in various guises in this gorgeous video. I especially love her jungle huntress and her desert wanderer personae. The sadly somewhat overlooked Flesh Tone, Kelis’s debut album for the will.i.am label, was a surprise gem of a dance pop record in year packed to overflowing with great dance pop records.

    #28
    #28: “SHE SAID” by PLAN B.
    I think this might just be my favorite video of the year. That jury has rhythm! Those bailiffs are funkayyy. And Plan B’s hyperspeed “defense testimony” at the song’s center is a perfect sonic counterpoint to his pleading blue eyed soul vocal everywhere else. And the strings! Holy sh*t, the strings! How is this guy not getting airplay here?

    #27
    #27: “IF WE EVER MEET AGAIN” by TIMBALAND featuring KATY PERRY.
    “What’s your name, whatcha drinkin’, I think I know what you’re thinkin’. Baby what’s your sign? Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.” Just a great, fun pop duet to get stuck in your head for days, and, really, better than anything on Katy Perry’s (literally) cotton-candy scented album.

    #26
    #26: “DANCE IN THE DARK” by LADY GAGA.
    This is THE shoulda-been single from The Fame Monster. How this one got passed up for the immediately catchy but ultimately sorta lame “Alejandro” is just beyond me. “Tell ’em how you feel, girls.” Any song that can somehow mournfully-defiantly-joyfully link Judy Garland, Sylvia Plath, Marilyn Monroe, JonBenet Ramsey, Liberace, and Princess Di – and actually make absolute sense in the process – has to be some big flowery, exotic kind of awesome.

    #25
    #25: “YOU KNOW ME” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS.
    A great big ballad on the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and newly single. “I’ve been doing what I like, when I like, how I like. It’s joyless.” I love this song’s big arrangement, but I’d also love to hear it acapella with all those doo-wop-op-op background vocals.

    #24
    #24: “UN-THINKABLE (I’M READY)” by ALICIA KEYS.
    A dark atmospheric ballad of a forbidden affair’s “moment of honesty”, this song topped Billboard’s R&B charts for 12 weeks this summer, and was named Billboard’s #1 R&B song of the year. All for good reason. Given the Keys’ engagement to producer Swizz Beatz before his divorce was even final, the song has an autobiographical truth to it, but this gorgeous video puts the song in a social/historical context. Probably a good move.

    #23
    #23: “NA NA NA (NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA)” by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE.
    Without question, my favorite song title of the year, even though I had to “fact-check” it to make sure I had the appropriate number of NAs. The song is as frantic and obnoxiously fun as its title: “Shut up and let me see your jazz hands!” You’ll also notice that the song racks up 3 bleeps in the first verse. The word there is “drugs”. We’ve apparently come a long way since Huey Lewis. They do also bleep out a spoken f-bomb during singer Gerard Way’s little mid-song monologue, but the actual swear word is covered by lazer shot sound effects.

    #22
    #22: “ALL THE LOVERS” by KYLIE MINOGUE.
    Probably the happiest sounding song of the year. Every time I hear it, it makes me smile. Every time I see the video, it makes me smile real big. Kylie’s Aphrodite is one great big adorable pop record that sounds like everything I loved about 1983. And how can you not love a video like this? A white horse on a city street. A white balloon elephant in the sky between the skyscrapers. And a great big Christmas tree of beautiful, copulating, near naked human flesh with Kylie Minogue on top. She swoons, the whole tower swoons, I swoon too.

    #21
    #21: “BUTTERFLY, BUTTERFLY (THE LAST HURRAH)” by A-HA.
    “These stained-glass wings could only take you so far…” Earlier this month, the trio that brought us “Take On Me” in the 80s (and many great – however neglected – singles since) played their last shows. a-ha is kaput. And with this song, they don’t wave good-bye so much as shrug off their 25+ years together.

    In the Top 20: There will be Kanye, I promise. (Or is that a threat?)

  • PAUL’S TOP 100 OF 2010 – PART 2: #90-81 “Ich will noch ‘n bischen tanzen…”

    And the countdown continues…

    #90
    #90: “THE GHOST INSIDE” by BROKEN BELLS.
    Broken Bells are the non-singing guy (Danger Mouse) from Gnarls Barkley, and the singing guy (James Mercer) from The Shins. Here’s the second single from their self-titled debut album. The video, starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks is a sci-fi movie on the dangers of deficit spending. In order to get herself to a fabulous resort planet, space traveling hottie Hendricks pawns all her limbs (and probably compromises her position on the repeal of DADT) and still ends up on a deserted island planet in an intergalactic middle-of-nowhere.

    #89
    #89: “HARD TIMES” by JOHN LEGEND & THE ROOTS.
    There are only two covers included on my list this year, and this is the second of them, from one of my favorite records of the year. For Wake Up!, John Legend and the Roots, inspired by the political engagement they saw during the 2008 elections, recorded a passionate set of socially conscious soul songs from the late 60s and 70s, many of them long forgotten like this one originally performed by Baby Huey and the Babysitters.

    #88
    #88: “HIGHWAY 20 RIDE” by ZAC BROWN BAND.
    Tearjerker alert! Tearjerker alert! Are they a jam band? Are they outlaw country? Are they southern rock? Are they sentimental cornballs? They’re a little bit of all of the above. With a great big beard!

    Although they’d already scored a few big country hits (which also had some mild crossover pop success) from their 2008 major label debut The Foundation, it was with their performance at this year’s Grammy Awards that made the band not just the latest country thang, but actually a previously implausible contender for greatest band in the world. This, the fourth single from The Foundation showed up shortly thereafter and became the band’s third Country #1, and fourth Top 40 hit a year and a half after the album’s release.

    #87
    #87: “MORNING SUN” by ROBBIE WILLIAMS.
    “After a long and sleepless night, how many stars would you give to the moon…” The third single from Robbie’s latest solo album Reality Killed the Video Star (he’s since re-joined his former bandmates in the British boy-band Take That), this weepy ballad follows Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road all the way to Strawberry Fields and back again.

    #86
    #86: “NEIN, MANN!” by LASERKRAFT 3D.
    a.k.a. The German theme song for Paul Lorentz at any given wedding reception. Don’t be daunted by the language barrier – the video provides black-lit hand-drawings as “subtitles” over the actors’ faces. It goes roughly along these lines:

    Verse 1: A friend says “Hey, let’s get out of here. The DJ sucks and he’s just playing electro music and not even David Guetta”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: “No man. I don’t want to go yet. I want to stay and dance.”

    Verse 2: A hottie approaches: “Grab your coat and say goodbye to your friends. I want to take you where the night never ends. You and me, we should be dancing in the sheets.”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: “No man. I don’t want to go yet. I want to stay and dance.”

    Verse 3: Bouncer: “Really, dude, you should go. The bartender wants to go home. The dj’s falling asleep at the decks. Seriously, go.”

    German Paul Lorentz reply: See above.

    I like that German Paul Lorentz in the video has a belly like real-life Paul Lorentz. I also like that tick-tock-with-the-tie dance move that he does. I need to use that at my next wedding reception.

    #85
    #85: “MADDER RED” by YEASAYER.
    “Never gave a thought to an honorable living, always had sense enough to lie. It’s getting hard to keep pretending I’m worth your time…” Yeasayer’s neo-psychedelic ode to justifiable feelings of family man inadequacy is appropriately doleful, but not especially apologetic. It’s a domestic drama done up in exotic, futuristic colors. It’s hipster ear candy that sounds a lot like something the Thompson Twins would have done in 1982. It’s also got a real music video, but the video’s really gross and it’s, frankly, distracting from the song – which really is lovely. Thus this live version.

    #84
    #84: “SOMEONE ELSE CALLING YOU BABY” by LUKE BRYAN.
    If we were living in the 1970s, we’d call this pop/rock and it’d be a song by Eddie Rabbitt or Firefall or England Dan and John Ford Coley… But it’s 2010, so we call it country and it’s by a guy who was likened to a cross between Elvis Presley and Gomer Pyle when he appeared at the center of a challenge of the Donald Trump reality show Celebrity Apprentice. That appearance would help push his single “Rain Is a Good Thing” to #1 on the country charts. This song – an inducement to just break-up with the poor guy already – was the follow-up to “Rain”.

    #83
    #83: “WHAT PART OF FOREVER” by CEE-LO GREEN.
    Apparently this ran over the closing credits of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen any of the Twilight Movies. But I LOVE their soundtracks (so far). This song was co-written with a group called Oh, Hush, who appropriately enough, have never posted a band photo or identified their band members who, according to their facebook page, are various male and female superheroes. Here’s a live performance of the song from George Lopez, featuring Cee-Lo’s super-awesome all-girl back-up band.

    #82
    #82: “EGO” by THE SATURDAYS.
    Five hotties with superpowers, British accents, and a flair for public revenge. “Don’t tell me that you’re done as far as we go – You need to have a sit-down with your ego.” Did I mention hotties? With superpowers? And British accents?

    The Saturdays “Ego” from Robin van Calcar on Vimeo.

    #81
    #81: “HOLLYWOOD” by MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS.
    Welsh singer-songwriter Marina Diamandis parties it up in a fake White House with cake and cheerleaders, fake Mariylns, fake Elvises, and… wait… is that a fake Barack in there too? At a time when it seems you can’t watch or read the news without hearing some politician talking about things being rammed down throats, it’s sort of refreshing to hear someone sing about “puking” up “American dreams.” And when she confesses she’s “obsessed with the mess that’s America”, it sounds genuine and even sort of affectionate. Sorta like my obsession with the mess that’s European pop music.

    Coming up in the next block: one sad song about the summer and one happy song about the summer, one song about a shotgun wedding, and one about wedded bliss.