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MUSIC
February Issue 2010 www.seren.bangor.ac.uk
Music Editor, Aaron Wiles, brings you what’s hot and what’s not in music this month.
Alicia Keys Love Is Blind
By Aimee Robyn Carter.
Justin Bieber One Time
I’ve had Alicia’s new album on This fifteen year old is an expert in repeat for days now, and it is very love apparently. good. Although it’s hard to pick a Daisy Dares You favourite, I am gonna have to go Number One Enemy with this one. I’m not your number one enemy, Esser because I don’t have any feelings Work It Out towards you. The fact Chpimunk is Had a playlist created for me which featured doesn’t help, Aaron dare had this in it, I haven’t got it out of you to turn off. my head since. Iyaz -
Timbaland Can You Feel It
Replay
This song came from nowhere and Timbaland’s latest album seems to went straight to the top of the have been released without anyone charts, and I am still struggling to noticing, and although it’s a bit of see why. a dodgy one, there are a few good tracks on it, this being the best. Jedward -
Alphabeat Hole In My Heart
Under Pressure
The second single from their new album expected in March, it’s classic Alpheabeat and just plain good pop, plus it has a cool video.
Seriously, why are they still in existence? This song is so awful, like the worst it can get, ever.
Rated & Reviewed
This Month: emmielouli
Track
Lady Gaga
Times played
Slumdog Millionaire
77 68
Simian Mobile Disco
60
Alanis Morissette
54
Gossip
35
RIhanna
33
La Roux
31
Ladyhawke
29
Kinnie Starr
28
M.I.A
28
Wiles’ comments:
Well, I have to say that I am quite the fan of your music collection. Lady Gaga at the top is already a good start, other artists such as Gossip, La Roux and Ladyhawke confirm to me that you have taste! Well done!
Music Taste Rating: 9/10
How has the first half of your UK tour been? It’s been good; we started in Norwich about 5 days ago. Have you been there before? Yeah the place we played is called the Waterfront actually, that particular club is the first place we ever played in the UK like 6 years ago. Really? Yeah, I remember people there were very honest. Like halfway through the middle of our show, people are usually like “awesome” or “play that song” or, you know, “f*** you” or like whatever it is. Like some guy between songs just yelled “I’m going to get a bag of chips!” and we were just like “really? oh okay”, and then so he left and I was like “guess the guy went to go get a bag of chips”, so then he came back WITH a bag of chips and I wasn’t expecting him to come back! But yeah, it’s been a good tour, we’ve been to London, Sheffield, Birmingham and one other place but I can’t remember. I don’t know, it’s tough on tour sometimes days blend into one, sometimes things a r e tough to remember.
K
e$ha is the h o t t e s t new female artist to cross the water. Her first single ‘Tik-Tok’ has broken records in America where it hit number one and stayed there for six consecutive weeks whilst also setting the highest download record for a female artist. January saw the release of her debut album Animal, which you may be surprised to know took seven years to produce, with over two hundred tracks being recorded and just fourteen making the final cut. The 22 year old who is now known to ‘brush her teeth with a bottle of Jack’, has produced an album with songs that show different sides to her. Bold songs such as ‘Blah Blah Blah’ and ‘Dinosaur’ catch your attention and keep you singing snippets for a very long time! The album features quite a lot of heavy bass, which means songs such as ‘Animal’ and again ‘Dinosaur’ just make you want to dance. Ke$ha’s style reminds me a lot of 90’s Euro dance (such as 2unlimted), revived, updated and relived. It is has been compared to Lady GaGa, however Ke$ha’s music seems to reflect the end of the night where you remember nothing and you dance like no one is watching. This looks to be the aim as many of the songs involve being drunk. Ke$ha uses her p a s t
A cold afternoon in Liverpool saw Seren sit down for a chat with the band that made that video, you know, the one with the treadmills, it was quite popular. Ahead of their new UK tour and the release of their third album, we find out what took them so long to get out new material, and what they have planned for the future.
When was the last time you were here in the UK? We did do one small show a few months ago in London but that was before the record came out and it was just a sort of like “hey UK how you doing? We’re still here” type of show but before that we were touring on our second record a lot actually in the UK and that was probably about two and a half years ago. Yeah, because this is like the first album since Oh No and that was five years ago. Yeah, you’re right that was five years ago, yeah, basically what ended up happening with that was we made that record Oh No in Sweden, with this producer called Tore Johansson who did like Franz Ferdinand and the Cardigans.. We recorded that record and it took a year for the label to put it out, so we started touring 6 months before and then ended up touring for two and a half years. Then as we were getting ready to stop touring and make our third record we put out this video (that we had done about a year prior) just on YouTube because we thought our fans would really like it and that’s the one of us dancing
experiences to help her write which becomes very clear during ‘Party At Rich Dude’s House’, where she comments on throwing up in someone wardrobe, turned out to be Paris Hilton’s wardrobe to be exact. Certain songs on the album are there to be laughed at when you listen to the lyrics, the most obvious is ‘Stephen’, a grade school teacher whom Ke$ha sings about having a crush on. It is quite c r i n g e worth and brings a sense of Jimmy C a r r where y o u think, ‘Can you
on the treadmills. We thought that about 600,000 people would watch it because that’s how many people watched our first dance video, A Million Ways. On the first day we got like a million views and the second day we got another million views and it just kept on going like that, and that tacked on a whole nother year [yes, he actually said nother], so the two and a half years of touring plus the year it took for our record to be recorded and put out, plus six months for us to come home after and write songs we actually liked and then put them our is how you get to five years between records. I was going to ask about the video, it’s everywhere. Yeah the video has crept its way into modern culture you know, a lot of different avenues. You know it’s been on the Simpsons? We looked on Wikipedia last night and there is actually a list of what it’s been used on.This show called Las Vegas had one whole episode is based around meeting up and wanting to learn how to do that dance which is kind of ridiculous but fun. really say that?’ I feel the highlights of the album are ‘Blah Blah Blah’, ‘Dinosaur’ and ‘Boots and Boys’. ‘Blah Blah Blah’ is confirmed as the next single due to impressive commercial circus following the inital release of the album, it’s definitely worth a listen. ‘Dinosaur’ is one of my favourite because she plays on the words dinosaur and it amuses me, it’s an amusing song and unfortunately more often than not, women will experience this situation. ‘Boots and Boys’ is another of my favourites because it reminds me of the things I love most throughout the world; boots! I think there is at least one song that would grow on anyone who decides to give the album a go. It’s fun and bubbly and will really put you in a good mood!
Stacey Marie
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