General Music Thread

[Eric 0]

Classical music is lame

Girl bands? I love the Spice Girls. Passionately. But not for their music.

[Eric 0]

Is it bad that I like 30 Seconds To Mars???

Thought so! lol

No. They're alright; I recall their music videos being a little...strange.

We all have one embarrassing trait in our music taste. For me, it's a passionate love of M.I.A., specifically Galang and Bucky Done Gun.

[Jenson_Rules 0]

Oh MY GOD. I have just heard 30 sec previews of the songs from yes you guessed it, Girls Aloud's 5th album and they are absolutely fantastic. Pretty damn diverse album by the sounds of it. 80's sounding europop, typical club stompers, chilled out sassy pop, and even a drum n bass style tune. Can't wait to hear the whole thing. It's absolutely mental. Oh and not ONE cover or ballad. So impressed, I didn't think they could get any better yet Tangled Up is absolutely amazing! WOOO

Britney's, Sugababes and Kylie's new album's all sound generic and boring against this piece of pop masterpiece! None of you will like it but here are a couple of reviews....

[Jenson_Rules 0]

popjustice.com...

Ten important facts about the new Girls Aloud album

1. This is the sleeve for the promo -->

2. 'Girl Overboard' is a massive Euro rave-up extravaganza and should be a single unless there is a tragic event involving a girl falling off a boat or maybe if there is some sort of real-life version of the hilarious Goldie Hawn film 'Overboard' in which Goldie Hawn actually died instead of just amusingly lost her memory because then Radio One wouldn't play it due to 'concerns over the public mood etc'.

3. Every time it's been on in the office 'Sexy! No No No...' has been mercilessly skipped and after we'd finished listening to it the first time there was literally an argument over which song we'd listen to again first.

4. 'Fling' is sort of like 'Wake Me Up' from the year 2012.

5. There are NO BALLADS and NO COVERS.

6. "I can't speak French, so I let the funky music do the talking, talking now." That is a good lyric.

7. We've listened to it 180 times and it's only been in the office since 9am.

8. It's the best Girls Aloud album of all time and is better than the Sugababes, Kylie and Britney albums although we've just done a review for someone giving the Britney album 5/5 so we suppose that probably makes 'Tangled Up' a 6/5 album. Which our calculator tells us is 1.2. Which is 120%. "They've really given it 120%" etc etc.

9. It's out at some point in November and would make the ideal Christmas present for someone who likes amazing pop music.

10. There you go.

_______________________________________

4music...

The new Girls Aloud album has arrived. Who ever dreamed they'd make it this far? Not us, but we're damn glad they have. Well, without further ado, let's bung the CD on the stereo and scribble down the first things that come to mind, which we'll then rather grandiosely refer to as a Girls Aloud 'Tangled Up' track by track review.

1. 'Call The Shots'

You know this one, the second single that should've been the first. Unmistakably GA. Those trademark vocal swoops that make you feel a bit funny. Great vocal breakdown section from Nicola. Brilliant.

2. 'Close To Love'

A fast funky one, hooray! Kind of hard not to wish this was what the new Spice single sounded like. Two different but adjacent choruses - one of them featuring the album title shouted in a way you'll all join in with when they do it live (punching the air with your fist where appropriate).

3. 'Sexy! No No No...'

Still a bloody racket, but a bloody racket with a great intro. It's a lot better when you know there's another song coming straight after. Feels like the music they might use to cover a costume change during the live show. There's an idea.

4. 'Girl Overboard'

Another fast one. Get in! Very Gaydar. Very G-A-Y. Ooh, a nice break down section from Nicola again. This is so going to be a certain section of the fanbase's favourite. Like a disco version of Martika's 'I Feel The Earth Move'. Imagine that.

5. 'Can't Speak French'

Jaunty. Still NOT A SOPPY SLOW ONE. Keeps building, when will it ever get to the chorus? Oh, was that it? This one's a slow burner. Fantastic vocals but clearly designed to best show off the full gamut of Tweedy-Cole facial expressions and stylized poses. Comment from the office: "This one would be good with an 'Allo Allo' style video. It lends itself to berets."

6. 'Black Jacks'

Ooh, still no slow down. Stripped right back to stuttering guitar and drums and Blondie sweetness melody. A Motown beat chorus which also threatens to become Starship's 'We Built This City' and - OH GOODNESS - a Daphne & Celeste-style group chant. We've just burst with pleasure.

7. 'Control Of The Knife'

Perky, fast dub. Girls Aloud don't even slow down for a traditionally slow musical genre! What does this remind us of? Oh yes, 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by St Etienne - but sped up. Bloody hell. Comment from the office: "Good trumpets."

8. 'Fling'

Crikey, what's this? They've gone a bit mental and a bit Rogue Traders (the pop group not the TV show where they confront builders for weeing in old ladies' sinks). Very camp. Very clubby. Very Sarah Harding. Anyone have a problem with that? Thought not.

9. 'What You Crying For'

Would it surprise you to know this is another one at breakneck speed? Sultry vocals spat menacingly over the sound of the future's ringtone. Great vocal breakdown again and room for a rave horn. We've decided this is like 'Love/Hate' off the first album. Classic GA.

10. 'I'm Falling'

Ballad time? No, drum & bass time. Crikey.

11. 'Damn'

Why slow down now, eh? Irresistible, rollicking modern guitar pop song that reminds us of the tracks Xenomania wrote for the criminally ignored Frank album (but that'll mean nothing to you, we're guessing - what with you criminally ignoring it and all).

12. 'Crocodile Tears'

And finally... well it's not exactly 'See The Day' but by comparison this is the ballad. Though it's still a fair old pace - moody, slightly aggressive. Not exactly Children In Need material. More "dreamy indie pop" according to the office. We need a sit down.

The Verdict

Best Girls Aloud album ever, by so many horses' heads they're gonna need to buy a stable and a whole lot of mane wax.

_________________________________

Daily Star...

GIRLS Aloud have produced a discotastic fifth opus that

[Rainmaster 7]

The Verve, Oasis, Gorillaz, Feeder, Foo Fighters, Queens of The Stone Age, Red Hot Chillis, Snow Patrol, Hard-Fi, The Zutons, Linkin Park, The Killers, The Offspring, that's just some of the stuff I listen to.

Then there's the older stuff, Pink Floyd, Queen, Rush, The Eagles, Crowded House, R.E.M, Fleetwood Mac etc.

Excellent stuff!

[monza gorilla 1]

Richard Thompson. Saw him on the telly box last night. Nifty. And a band I'd never heard of called Battles. Minty.

Talking of the foo Fighters, "isn't that Dave Grohl a nice chap", quoth Mrs Gorilla.

[Quiet One 15]

Richard Thompson. Saw him on the telly box last night. Nifty. And a band I'd never heard of called Battles. Minty.

Talking of the foo Fighters, "isn't that Dave Grohl a nice chap", quoth Mrs Gorilla.

Listen to Battle's "Mirrored". Excellent

[Jenson_Rules 0]

Review by the Guardian....

Alexis Petridis

Friday November 9, 2007

The Guardian

Girls Aloud, Tangled Up

Buy Tangled up now

Girls Aloud

On Girls Aloud's official website, a fan recently asked Cheryl Cole if she had ever considered an alternative career. Apparently so. Had fate not intervened in the young Geordie's life, and transformed her into the kind of pop star that Viz comic might have invented - impossibly beautiful, implausibly foul-mouthed - she was all set to become an embalmer. "I would have liked to have put makeup on dead people," she said, "because when I went to see my granddad who had died, they did a really bad job on him and I was only 14 and that made me want to do a better job for other people." Pop music's gain, it seems, was the mortuary slab's loss.

Quotes like that offer a salutary reminder of Girls Aloud's uniqueness. The current singles chart rather belies the notion that pop is mouldering in its grave - half the Top 10 is composed of manufactured pop acts - but Girls Aloud remain a manufactured pop band like no other, and not merely because one of their number abandoned her teenage dreams of putting makeup on dead people in order to join up. They have attained a remarkable blanket approval. Only the cloth-eared and inoperably snobbish seem immune to their charms. Tiny children scream at them; OK! and Heat magazine pursue them; the Arctic Monkeys declared them "the best"; Franz Ferdinand have borrowed their production team, Xenomania, to work on their next album. Ken Livingstone apparently believed they could improve diplomatic relations between Britain and China, which even their most ardent fan might consider is investing Something Kinda Ooooh with powers slightly beyond its facility.

There is no talk of guilty pleasures or so-bad-it's-good about their records. Girls Aloud currently find themselves in a difficult position not because their fickle weenyboppers have deserted them, or adverse publicity has dented their image, but because they and Xenomania have to follow up 2005's Chemistry, a concept album about celebrity that set boggling new standards for daring in contemporary pop. It's a tough call, and Tangled Up's pre-emptive singles have augured ill. Sexy No No No is nothing if not bracing, but someone carelessly forgot to pack a tune amid the fuzzy guitars and synthesizers, distorted vocals and Sympathy for the Devil-esque whoops. By contrast, Call the Shots has a chorus that only anterograde amnesia could wipe from your brain, but its structure and production seem a bit commonplace coming from the people who made Biology, an audacious three-minute pop single on which the chorus didn't turn up for a full two minutes.

Thus Tangled Up begins disappointingly, with the sense that, having set the bar high, all concerned are now craning their necks to see the bar and wondering how it got up there in the first place. Girl Overboard and Close to Love's conjunction of rock guitar and thumping house beat seems familiar, and previous Girls Aloud albums have dealt in the un- expected. Enter Can't Speak French, a prime example of Xenomania's ability to throw wildly disparate musical elements together, an ability they seem to reserve for Girls Aloud, possibly because it fits so perfectly with Cole and co: these ideas shouldn't work but they do, just like the notion of a reality TV-birthed band making thrilling and ground-breaking albums. Here, you get a peculiar, loping rhythm that can't decide whether it's swing shuffle or glitter stomp, topped off with an ungainly synthesised bassline and intricate jazzy guitar. As ever, you get the distinct impression that lyricist Miranda Cooper may require surgery to get her tongue out of her cheek: "I'll let the funky music do the talking," runs the chorus, over a beat that couldn't be more cumbersome and unfunky if it tried.

From then on, Tangled Up is a riot. The melodies are uniformly fantastic and there's something relentless about the way it pelts you with audacious creativity and improbable juxtapositions: Black Jack's c#cktail of glorious Northern soul-inspired chorus and belligerent terrace chant ("come and get stuck in!"); What You Crying For's unlikely debt to techstep drum'n'bass; the clattering rave breakbeat and sampled scrape of fingers down guitar fretboard that powers I'm Falling. Fling - on which a Girl Aloud divertingly announces her Chuck Berry-esque desire for "a bit of ding-a-ling" - offers a kind of nuclear-powered punk-funk that leaves virtually every NME-sponsored early 80s revivalist looking hopelessly pallid.

You're left pondering an album that by any standards seems pretty irresistible. It's witty, diverse, experimental and viscerally thrilling: what more do you want pop music to be? Frankly, the sort of person who claims they find nothing to love here is like the sort of person who claims to hate the Beatles: they're either posturing or they're an idiot. Either way, you should pay them no mind.

[jordan 0]

Rock, Pop, Classical & All types of dance... I love it all. Im a musical slut!

[dribbler 6]

On Girls Aloud's official website, a fan recently asked Cheryl Cole if she had ever considered an alternative career. Apparently so.

I just had to laugh at the first line (the only bit i read). Why the hell couldn't this dumb bitch have done the world of music a favour and not inflicted so much pain?

She is to music what Harold Shipman could have been to Help The Aged.

[LabradoRacer 2]

How many of you actually buy the official music CDs?

[Eric 0]

The Verve, Oasis, Gorillaz, Feeder, Foo Fighters, Queens of The Stone Age, Red Hot Chillis, Snow Patrol, Hard-Fi, The Zutons, Linkin Park, The Killers, The Offspring, that's just some of the stuff I listen to.

Then there's the older stuff, Pink Floyd, Queen, Rush, The Eagles, Crowded House, R.E.M, Fleetwood Mac etc.

Excellent stuff!

Some good stuff in there. And I know of another place on you that has some good stuff in it.

How many of you actually buy the official music CDs?

Me. I buy the CDs, then I upload the songs fromt he CD to my iTunes account and have it in two forms. CDs are better for long car rides because iPods run out of their charge quickly, and also I don't have an iPod adapter in my car. Also, an MP3 or MP4 cuts a lot out of the song to condense it, so there's a lot of little things you won't hear on an iPod that you will on a CD.

[elgo 1]

How many of you actually buy the official music CDs?

I used to buy Linkin Park's cds,but I don't do it anymore...their last cd sucks a little...

And appart from that,no.From all the songs of a cd I usually like 2,3 songs???Well,if it's a group that I really like,maybe 7 or 8 or all of them.And it's a big disappointment to spend 15

[freaky2 1]

I buy CDs. Or I used to. My new obsession are manga books so now I waste my money on them instead than on CDs. It's all the bands' fault of course. There has been nothing good for ages now. Even so, I like the CDs I have, from the first to the last.

[goferrarigo 0]

How many of you actually buy the official music CDs?

Probably like you, i just d/l the music i want.... but very few good songs have come out so...

[Eric 0]

I hate people who illegally download music and hope they all die now.

Bands have to drink their own p**s and eat their own Sh#t to make it this far, and then they don't even get paid cuz of damn 12-year-old nerds with pimples eating their face.

[Eric 0]

I'm listening to an album called Punk Goes 80s.

Today's alt rock bands do 80s cover.

There's a few others like it, Punk Goes Metal, Punk Goes 90s, Punk Goes Pop. I own the last two, not the first since I can't find it. All of them are pretty rad.

[goferrarigo 0]

I hate people who illegally download music and hope they all die now.

Bands have to drink their own p**s and eat their own Sh#t to make it this far, and then they don't even get paid cuz of damn 12-year-old nerds with pimples eating their face.

I only D/l hindi music and Bollywood has loads of cash; one CD not in their pocket will not make a difference...

[Eric 0]

I only D/l hindi music and Bollywood has loads of cash; one CD not in their pocket will not make a difference...

Yeah, but it isn't just your one CD. The fact is, so many people do it that it does make a difference. And the type of music doesn't make a difference; Hindi musicians work as hard as rock musicians as rap musicians as pop musicians as whatever. Yes, I do realize that can be argued, but just go with it. Someone somewhere made the song good enough for you to want it, and that person deserves the money. As a musician, I realize it's not easy to make it...none of my bands got beyond the garage and a few gigs here and there, and illegal d/l-ing p**ses me off.

[LabradoRacer 2]

<br />Probably like you, i just d/l the music i want.... but very few good songs have come out so...<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I must have downloaded not more than 12 songs. I don't listen to music. Just catch what's on VH1. that's it.

[goferrarigo 0]

Yeah, but it isn't just your one CD. The fact is, so many people do it that it does make a difference. And the type of music doesn't make a difference; Hindi musicians work as hard as rock musicians as rap musicians as pop musicians as whatever. Yes, I do realize that can be argued, but just go with it. Someone somewhere made the song good enough for you to want it, and that person deserves the money. As a musician, I realize it's not easy to make it...none of my bands got beyond the garage and a few gigs here and there, and illegal d/l-ing p**ses me off.

the difference in India is that most of the music we get comes from movies... And most ppl watch the movies in cinemas so they do get paid...

[Jenson_Rules 0]

I buy cd's that I really want and I know I will like. Otherwise I just download torrents. Last CD I brought which is pre-ordered is Girls Aloud 'Tangled Up'. Before that it was Mark Ronson's album! I prefer CD's but don't buy them very often!

[dribbler 6]

How many of you actually buy the official music CDs?

Me, always. MP3 files are not of the same quality. Plus, it's all about the tactility and aesthetics of a collection.

Us slightly older ones will remeber the thrill of having to save our money in order to buy an album on vinyl or latterly an audio cassette. Because i would have to wait months before i could buy another, i would play that album to death and end up knowing it better than my mother. it's only then that you could truly know a piece of music, only then that you were qualified to make an in depth critical evaluation. Albums, grow with you, change shape and meaning. They have a flow, a pattern. Some songs have a flavour because you know what song is coming after. That, to me is what owning an album is all about.

These days, people upload, give it five seconds and cast it aside. It's indicative of our throw away society and the ghastly media machine that feeds it.

I buy cd's that I really want and I know I will like. Otherwise I just download torrents. Last CD I brought which is pre-ordered is Girls Aloud 'Tangled Up'. Before that it was Mark Ronson's album! I prefer CD's but don't buy them very often!

'Figures.

[LabradoRacer 2]

To those with an iPod/iTunes account, do you share your songs with pals? If yes, I think that's also a form of piracy ,isn't it?

[Eric 0]

the difference in India is that most of the music we get comes from movies... And most ppl watch the movies in cinemas so they do get paid...

Yeah, but they aren't making ALL the money they deserve. Think of it this way: your income is $100,000 per year. And you get $80,000 before taxes because someone illegally took your money. Are you gunna be like "oh, oh well, whatever"?

To those with an iPod/iTunes account, do you share your songs with pals? If yes, I think that's also a form of piracy ,isn't it?

Nope, I don't share songs. I pay for my songs on iTunes, and if someone wants the same song, they have to pay for it on iTunes, too.

Same with all the places I legally buy music for my phone. I don't share any files at all.

I will admit I used some P2P Internet TV thing once, until I found it was illegal, and then I deleted the program.