A very eccentric but equally affable middle-aged gay guy at our gym, who often gets in trouble by the management for wearing too-tight shorts and showering with his cubicle door wide open, told me how much he enjoyed the video for Madonna's new song Girl Gone Wild.
Upon seeing the video it seems obvious why my gym colleague has such fondness for this clip, however, personally, it seems like Madonna is hitting the same old notes with little in the way of innovation. The Mert and Marcus designer music video seriously sexes up Madonna's grey image, almost in ways where one feels uncomfortable watching a 54 year old woman gyrate and grind promiscuously. That's not necessarily because an older woman's sexuality is in any way threatening, it's just that it's preferable to respect your elders and not see them degrade themselves by thrusting their groin repeatedly at a camera.
At best, the video seems like an inferior sequel to Vogue, but at worst, it seems like Madonna is ripping off Geri Halliwell.
They say that if you live long enough, the same kind of music that was popular when you were a kid will once again get recycled for a new generation that doesn't know any better.
Fever is a new Canadian rave melody that would have been a monstrous success back in the '90s. As it stands, the likelihood is it will be just as monstrously successful in 2012.
Now that the Americans adore this type of music in a way that they didn't when grunge was a big deal, the world is B. Traits and Elisabeth Troy's oyster. For everyone else, it's a reminder of simpler times.
Spiritualized is a British alternative band that was very successful in the late '90s. They come from an era where trying to tell stories and provoke meaning through the medium of music videos was more common than what it is today. Spiritualized will release their seventh album Sweet Heart Sweet Light next month. Hey Jane is its lead single.
Hey Jane is a long music video. It's also very adult in nature, not to mention violent, though not in a thoughtless way. It may be an idea to skip five minutes into the video, and if you're not put off by what you see, you might consider watching the whole clip to see how things go so wrong.
Ben Drew, aka Plan B, has ditched his lucrative Hall & Oates inspired sound and returned to his hip-hop roots. Unlike his previous album The Defamation of Strickland Banks, which greatly profited the singer by selling in excess of a million copies, Plan B's new album Ill Manors sounds more polemical in nature, packaged to lose fans with its angry narrative and aggressive beats.
With an appropriately ghetto music video to boot, Ill Manors is assembled to court the attention of a young British music market turned on by images of dilapidated social housing and the thuggish kids that reside in them.
The trouble is Plan B's now a multi-millionaire performer cashing in on the riots and violence that frames contemporary British youth culture. On closer inspection of the music video one can detect a fleeting glimpse of British Asian actor Riz Amed joining in the mayhem: the same Riz Ahmed that graduated from Oxford University and then studied acting at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama. Furthermore, the video is directed by Yann Demange, a guy whose film school education was sponsored by the wholesome Disney Corporation.
Ill Manors is about as phony as any other manufactured pop music product, however, one must give respect to Plan B for abandoning a successful formula that has served him so well and instead embracing a riskier strategy. Ill Manors is likely to prove very successful, even if the end product is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
Also, it's good to hear politicised music back in the British charts again.
Last night a really nice song came on the radio called Safe & Sound. When the DJs announced the song was Taylor Swift's latest release for some kids movie called Hunger Games, there was a national sense of shame. We music-snobs felt violated for having been lured into a false sense music security only to have the rug pulled from under our feet. Even if Taylor Swift had recorded the greatest song in the world, her saccharine brand image is too contrived for us to take seriously. It was wrong of the radio station to have done that to us and they knew it too. Before we could run to the shower and scrub ourselves clean of having enjoyed a Taylor Swift track, the radio presenters redeemed themselves by playing a great song titled Hold On by an upcoming American blues band called Alabama Shakes.
Whereas Taylor Swift is all about making money by writing songs for crappy Hollywood franchise movies that appeal to young American girls lacking good taste, Alabama Shakes look like the kind of band that hasn't even heard about the concept of money. Their rootsy sound and folksy American image is most appealing to a drab British audience like us. Lead singer Brittany Howard started the band while still in high school in Athens, Alabama, where she invited a bunch of musically inclined misfits to join her in after class sessions to see if they could create cool songs together. And damn, was she right.
Brittany Howard and co. has pricked up the ears of music prognosticators here in Britain. Her voice is perhaps the most remarkable weapon in Alabama Shuffle's laudable sound arsenal, redolent of Janis Joplin's androgynous drawl, effortlessly oscillating between tender and hardened tones.
Alabama Shakes' album Boys & Girls will come out April 9th 2012 and they made their first television appearance last month on an American show called Conan (I'm guessing this programme has nothing to do with a fantasy barbarian figure that trawls the fictional continent of Cimmerian).
Alabama Shuffle is too unfamiliar and broke to create proper music videos for their songs right now. To be honest, music like this shouldn't have polished videos and hopefully the band will never commission soulless promo directors to come up with one when they eventually hit pay dirt. For now, the music works fine in lieu of any expensive visual accompaniment.
The risks associated with investing in films are too numerous to mention. The most intimidating aspect is that great amounts of money get used up within a short period of time. The eventual product will then either make or break in the first weekend of release: all that time and money having only a small window of opportunity to sink or swim.
The moneymen involved in film investment need to be tough figures. They also need to be extremely wealthy. Film investment is a rich man's game; best suited to those with more cash than sense, people for whom losing millions over a weekend is merely a round of drinks.
But let's be honest, not even the very richest in society is comfortable investing in unsafe investments. And if we're being totally truthful, contemporary cinema is simply too damn expensive for only a few rich people to invest in. Therefore, the huge Hollywood tentpole movies are derived from big corporate conglomerate investments and faceless financial institutions wanting to spread out their investment options.
Ever since 1948 when United States Supreme Court forced the Hollywood studios to sell off self-owned theatre chains and abolish antitrust monopolies, corporate conglomerates have been big players in Hollywood. For conglomerates, the risk-sharing nature of film investment seems palatable. For example, should any of the pricy films put out by Sony Pictures this summer flop, the balance sheets can be offset by its music, videogame and electronics divisions. But in this era of austerity, the big conglomerates are demanding more reliable profits from its film sectors. As a result the Hollywood studios are increasingly putting out more franchise films: brands that lend themselves to sequels, reboots, merchandise and spinoffs. The risk-averse nature of Hollywood means that this year will see familiar reboots (The Amazing Spider-Man), branded concepts (Battleship), spinoffs (The Bourne Legacy), sequels (Men in Black III), remakes (Total Recall) and television serial adaptations (Dark Shadows).
