Snap, Crackle (Fizzy) Pop: Weekly Update - 21st June 2009

EDIT 26th June 2009: So sad to hear about Michael Jackson passing. Kinda makes me wish it was his greatest publicity stunt ever and that he would come back as good as he ever was. Gone Too Soon indeed :*(

I had a whole pre-amble written today how someone at work pissed me off royally by stating (during an epic whining session) that they thought they were done learning all lifes lessons (It was much longer than this and I deleted it by mistake!) Uh, excuse me? If you think you have learnt all lifes lessons by your thirties, you are either too freaking arrogant for words or too stupid to know any better! The great thing about life is you are constantly learning and evolving and growing. Good grief. I said as much, and then of course the people pleaser in me felt incredibly guilty and full of remorse for being so candid. Of course I had just heard that I didn't win an award for my dementia work, so it was a great time (it's a honour just to be nominated etc etc :P) to unburden on me. But that's not really why you came here today is it? Probably want to know what music has been gently fingering me into submission this week? Well read on my pretties, read on...

THE WEEK THAT WAS (WELL D'UH):

• The obsession with Elouise continues. Tragically at the last minute, I was unable to make her show in London, but I imagine that it was as shiny and shimmery as the black and white bits of Girls Aloud's The Promise video. Only she did it all herself, with an eight piece band and performed for 90 minutes. How amazing is that? It feels like the end of an era - the end of Elouise being on the periphery of blog buzz to the start of something bigger. She's busy working with Steve Anderson (Kylie) and Terry Ronald (Girls Aloud) on some epic sounding tunes that take her sound to the next level. Until those appear, be sure to check out the summery pop of Since You've Been Gone and Miracle Man on her myspace.
• (Simon Curtis really needs to come to the UK and put on a full live showcase. I'll sponsor it :P)
• I've been all Abba related this week. I've spent copious amounts of time perfecting the perky pop hit in waiting (it just needs someone to cover it and give it a more modern edge) Second Best To None and devastatingly heartbreaking ballad Story of A Heart (album out this week!) on the piano and they do sound quite good. Even if I do say so myself :P Plus I dug out my old written-by-Benny-&-Bjorn Gemini cds and fell in love all over again with Just Like That. And on a particularly gloomy morning walk to work in the rain this week, Happy New Year popped up on shuffle. Only Abba can make supposedly uplifting songs sound so positively traumatic...
• I'm quite excited about the return of Preston from the Ordinary Boys as a solo artist. I always thought that had the Ordinary Boys been marketed as a proper pop act rather than an indie band, they would have been perhaps significantly more successful than they were. Like a more ska McFly if you will. So solo Preston looking fairly handsome with a proper dancey pop song is quite a mouth watering proposition. His first single Dressed To Kill is out in August, but you can check out a full song entitled Teenage Zombie on his myspace...
• Mariah is back with Obsessed. Much like Kylie's 2 Hearts, I have gone from thinking "oh dear" to thinking "oh well, it's quite ok I suppose isn't it". I have accepted that Mariah will probably never make an album that makes me fall in love with her as completely as I was in the 90s, so it's all on Whitney now...
• While Love Takes Over is a decent enough summer song (I do quite like it), I think that it should probably swap chart positions with Sophie Ellis-Bextor this week and the vastly superior Heartbreak Makes Me A Dancer (which frankly hasn't become any less appetising since it leaked on line last June...)
• Talking of last June, Lily Allen's Fuck You isn't any less brilliant than when it leaked back then either. It's now an official single in Europe (with a dirt cheap, slightly wanky vid) while England gets 22. Oh. I wanted Who'd Have Known...
• Dolly Rockers = 1 part Spice Girls + 1 part Arctic Monkeys lyrics + 1 part Bananarama. Ergo, Gold Digga is, uh, solid gold pop.
• Julian Velard called me a nerd on twitter. I knew I worshipped him for a reason. Well, being insulted (though he redeemed himself by crowning himself King of the Nerds) and the rollicking piano-pop tunes he puts out. I absolutely must draw your attention to his brillo cover of Hot n Cold on his myspace, as well as a rather brillo blog he has written about the difficulties in getting his album The Planeteer out to the masses...
• The more I hear the pop-by-numbers JLS single "Beat Again" and see the literal interpretation of the lyrics dance moves, the more I fall in love with it. It's bloody brilliant. And I love JB's fashion sense in the vid too...
• Finally, the Greek season finale was aces. Especially the line "Oh paging Dr Grey. No you're worse, you're Joey Potter. No, you're the F word. You're Felicity!" which elicited a "you bitch" from loveable but lovetorn Kasey Cartwright. And a Felicity-esque cliffhanger too. Bring on August 31st!
• Finally, part 2. It's taken 10 years for me to admit it, but Big Brother this year is actually unwatchable. Though I reserve the right to get sucked back in at any point :P

TOP 21 SONGS OF THE WEEK:

21 ~ Le Kid, Mercy Mercy (NE)
20 ~ Alesha Dixon, Let's Get Excited
19 ~ Same Difference, All Roads Lead To Heaven
18 ~ Pet Shop Boys, Did You See Me Coming?
17 ~ Take That, The Garden
16 ~ Mr Hudson, Supernova
15 ~ Dan Black, Symphonies
14 ~ Marina & The Diamonds, I Am Not A Robot
13 ~ Alcazar, From Brazil With Love
12 ~ Industry, My Baby's Waiting
11 ~ JLS, Beat Again
10 ~ Mans Zelmerlow, Home
09 ~ Little Boots, New In Town
08 ~ Freemasons ft SEB, Heartbreak Makes Me A Dancer
07 ~ Dolly Rockers, Je Suis Un Dolly
06 ~ Jason Mraz, Try Try Try
05 ~ BWO, Right Here Right Now
04 ~ Jordin Sparks, Battlefield
03 ~ Elouise, One Night Only
02 ~ "Abba", Second Best To None
01 ~ Benny Andersson Band, Story Of A Heart (2 weeks)

Back next week, then some more regular posts coming (July mixtape, half year wrap up, the tens...)