The Charts

My apologies on this, this is really more about current chart music than the charts themselves. It might well be the wrong place to put it but I didn’t want to put it in the music in general bit (as I'm working on another op on that) and Dooyoo wouldn’t add a pop category. I watched CD:UK last week, because my favourite band, the Cooper Temple Clause, played their new single “Promises, Promises” on it. Straight after Gareth Gates, who has started growing his hair so it looks ‘indie’, and according to his music company, is going for a new ‘edgier’ sound (of course, this is to fit with the wave of faked guitar ...  Read the complete review

Back in the days when you could get more than ten sweets in a ten pence mix up and people left their doors open without fear of being brutally murdered or robbed the music charts were born. In those ‘good old days’ the music charts were used to see how many copies of a song was sold, nowadays the charts are used to see which song is the ’best’ in that week. The battle for the number one spot is now getting ever so juvenile, in every newspaper you read stories about a group or artist moaning about another. For example, the battle for the 2002 Christmas number one between Girls aloud and One true Voice. Or you see pictures of scantly ...  Read the complete review

Supeficiality. It's the thing that I hate most in the world. I hate it with such a passion that when my friends start complaining about their weight or talking about some new celebrity miracle diet, I just lose it. Because I hate this world's obsession with the outside, with image, beauty over talent, image over creativity. This is why I love rock music so much, because it (most of it) is individual, creative, and a reflection of what is inside the artist's soul. Its their inner feelings, their emotions, their soul captured in a song. That makes it meaningful, that makes it beautiful. And I truly believe with every last breath of my being that that is what ...  Read the complete review

Is there any point in the music charts anymore. The big record companies gather around an Ikea table and carve it up. Whose turn is it to have their new boyband at number one. Whose turn is it to blood the new manic Indy band they have been holding back until fresher’s week, and those juicy grant cheques. It’s so contrived its embarrassing. If you look at the multiple charts in HMV theres one just for that moronic happy dance music. What concerns me about people that take that dross seriously is the constant listening of it. They et up in the morning to Radio One…..They stick it on the CD player. They put it on the factory radio. They go to ...  Read the complete review

This is really for the irish charts but the theory is the same, I assume. Do you ever wonder how the Charts work? I do. I often wonder about control and access to information and such paranoia-inducing topics. Living in ireland, and having lived in and around London for about ten years, I am familiar with the thought that I might well be doing, buying, saying, voting for and eating whatever it is that marketing departments, publicity and PR Companies, Government agencies and other assorted vested interests want me to while believeing that I am an independent minded anti-establishment-control type individual. In recent times I was looking into the ...  Read the complete review