I wish I was punk rocker
Charlie Brooker is a genius. I could read his rantings all day. His latest was in a regular feature entitled "Supposing...", this particular one was "Supposing...Sandi Thom is the musical antichrist."
A bit of background, then. Sandi Thom came onto the scene a few months back, when I saw a report on BBC News about a woman in Tooting, South London who would webcast gigs from her basement flat. She was getting some stupid number of people watching, the record company took notice, and she has now released her first single "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)", which went to number one, knocking off Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" (which was the longest running number one since Wet Wet Wet's "Love is All Around" in 1994). Admittedly, "Crazy" left the number one spot because the band intentionally deleted the single, saying they were a bit tired of hearing it, but still, a new number one. Now, it has emerged that this was, though true, a huge marketing strategy by her record company, who apparently released the song last year to sales of about 7. I highly suggest you look up the God-awful lyrics as well. They are about dreaming for a long-ago time, '77 and '69, to be precise, when "revolution was in the air". Truly disgusting.
Charlie Brooker on Sandi Thom:
"I've not heard that Sandi Thom single all the way through yet, but I've seen the TV ad about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if her sudden rise to stardom WASN'T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this shit online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.
There's a simple way to settle this once and for all, and that's for the huge crowd of people who apparently watched Thom's inaugural bedsit webcasts to step forward and make themselves known. Come on. Hands up. I want to see your faces. And then I want you smacked to death with brooms. You people are the enemies of fun. Your bland emissions pollute the atmosphere, threaten the environment. For the sake of humanity, you must be stopped.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Sandi Thom genuinely touches some people. Whoever they are, I can't relate to them. Woody Allen once marvelled with horror at "the level of a mind that watches wrestling", and I'm the same with Sandi Thom fans. All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like music but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.
There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.
Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take Angels by Robbie Williams. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, Angels is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official theme tune for thick people's funerals.
Anyway, back to Sandi Thom. As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just heard I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Bollocks in My Mouth) on the radio, and the real braintwister is the lyric, in which she yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, sung in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.
Wait. It gets worse. I've just looked it up on Napster - oh Christ. I didn't realise how far this had gone. The B-side is a cover of No More Heroes by the Stranglers. "Whatever happened to the heroes?", she warbles, knowing full well she's replaced them. She's the musical antichrist.
This is too creepy to be mere coincidence. Someone's messing with us. The replicant kings are trying to mangle our minds. Plug your ears. Block the signal. Final phase. They're taking over."
A bit of background, then. Sandi Thom came onto the scene a few months back, when I saw a report on BBC News about a woman in Tooting, South London who would webcast gigs from her basement flat. She was getting some stupid number of people watching, the record company took notice, and she has now released her first single "I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)", which went to number one, knocking off Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" (which was the longest running number one since Wet Wet Wet's "Love is All Around" in 1994). Admittedly, "Crazy" left the number one spot because the band intentionally deleted the single, saying they were a bit tired of hearing it, but still, a new number one. Now, it has emerged that this was, though true, a huge marketing strategy by her record company, who apparently released the song last year to sales of about 7. I highly suggest you look up the God-awful lyrics as well. They are about dreaming for a long-ago time, '77 and '69, to be precise, when "revolution was in the air". Truly disgusting.
Charlie Brooker on Sandi Thom:
"I've not heard that Sandi Thom single all the way through yet, but I've seen the TV ad about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if her sudden rise to stardom WASN'T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this shit online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.
There's a simple way to settle this once and for all, and that's for the huge crowd of people who apparently watched Thom's inaugural bedsit webcasts to step forward and make themselves known. Come on. Hands up. I want to see your faces. And then I want you smacked to death with brooms. You people are the enemies of fun. Your bland emissions pollute the atmosphere, threaten the environment. For the sake of humanity, you must be stopped.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Sandi Thom genuinely touches some people. Whoever they are, I can't relate to them. Woody Allen once marvelled with horror at "the level of a mind that watches wrestling", and I'm the same with Sandi Thom fans. All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like music but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.
There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.
Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take Angels by Robbie Williams. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, Angels is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official theme tune for thick people's funerals.
Anyway, back to Sandi Thom. As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just heard I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Bollocks in My Mouth) on the radio, and the real braintwister is the lyric, in which she yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, sung in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.
Wait. It gets worse. I've just looked it up on Napster - oh Christ. I didn't realise how far this had gone. The B-side is a cover of No More Heroes by the Stranglers. "Whatever happened to the heroes?", she warbles, knowing full well she's replaced them. She's the musical antichrist.
This is too creepy to be mere coincidence. Someone's messing with us. The replicant kings are trying to mangle our minds. Plug your ears. Block the signal. Final phase. They're taking over."