Panda Pops

STRUM-THING BEAUTIFUL

Perhaps we're a little late jumping on the Alexis Strum love train, but we can only advise you to go here and watch the video for 'Bad Haircut'. It's an awesome song, and has an awesome video to match. If there's any justice in the world, she's going to be huge, and who here wouldn't want to say they spotted her first?

posted by Steve @ 7:40 pm 3 comments

THINGS WE LEARNT AT THE GIRLS ALOUD CONCERT

• The average crowd at a Girls Aloud gig consists of small girls and gay men, as expected, but also a surprising number of heterosexual people who did not have kids in tow, and still looked like they were having the time of their life.


• Despite knowing that you don't have cash to spare on merchandise, and reiterating this fact to your friends, as soon as you see the merchandising stall you will whip out your Visa card and buy yourself a poster, a tour programme, a keyring, a mug and attempt in vain to buy Cheryl Tweedy.


• Triple 8 have been working hard in all their time off, since they were performing a track that was apparently on the original version of their album that was knocking about when they were having Top 10 hits before Sparx and Hairy David buggered off.


• There's something quite wrong about seeing cute little Jamie from Triple 8 singing raunchy lyrics.


• We still would, though.


• Cookie are probably our second favourite girlband now, having ousted Sugababes. Sorry, but 'Do It Again' pisses all over 'Hole In The Head', which is the best Sugababes song post-Siobhan. (Not the best Sugababes song ever though, and if we were including songs from the One Touch era it would be a closer contest, but we're not, because they seem to want us to forget that there ever was a pretty, pale, talented redhead in the band who left because the other two were bullying her and then released an amazing solo album that approximately six people bought.)


• The people at Blink TV have no taste, because when they were doing a montage of what they clearly believed to be Really Attractive Men, they did individual shots of McFly and forgot to include Harry.


• Girls Aloud are amazing live.


• No, really, they are.


• There is absolutely no reason for them to have not been singing live in all their PAs to date, since they're clearly more than up to the job.


• It's okay to have one small section of the gig where you're clearly miming at least part of the time, if that also happens to be the section where you're performing the almighty 'No Good Advice'.


• 'No Good Advice' is made a million times better by restoring the legendary "your shit might show" line.


• It's made a million times better than that by having a cheeky three-second burst of 'My Sharona' in the middle of it.


• 'No Good Advice' wouldn't be the same without the tambourines. So it's a good job they remembered to include them. Hurrah!


• I've got a fist full of love that's coming your way.


• Contrary to what you might expect, a Girls Aloud cover of 'Teenage Dirtbag' is not cringe-worthy, but is in fact absolutely fucking amazing, and doesn't suffer at all from having the lyrics revamped slightly. In fact, "his girlfriend's a bitch/She's got an attitude" is better than the original lyric.


• All those times in the early stage of Girls Aloud when people used to claim Nicola was rubbish and pointless, and a few lone voices stood up for her and said she was brilliant and that this would be obvious if she was just allowed to sing occasionally - well, we were right, and the haterz were wrong, so screw you.


• Sarah is clearly the biggest show-off in the group.


• But she's also the best singer, so that's okay.


• Kimberley is the weakest singer, but has still improved massively over the past six months.


• If Girls Aloud can do pretty much their entire show live without a single bum note, we want to know what Britney's excuse is.


• I'm just a love machine.


• Despite being the best thing that Girls Aloud have ever recorded by a country mile anyway, 'Graffiti My Soul' improves by a gazillion percent when performed live.


• In fact, despite this sounding like a very "indie" thing to say, it's not until you hear them live that you realise just how amazing and intricate Girls Aloud's songs are.


• The girls are slick: when Kimberley was too engrossed in her dancing to remember to sing one of her lines in 'Love Machine', Nadine picked it up within about a second. Good girl!


• We so would, all of them, but in the following order: Cheryl, Kimberley, Nicola, Sarah, Nadine.


• Nicola looks stunning in a brown minidress and gold hotpants.


• It is actually possible to forget that 'I'll Stand By You' was ever a Pretenders song in the first place.


• Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper own us.


• Louis Walsh is still a cunt, though.


• The fierce look on Kimberley's face in the split second before the lights went down at the end of 'Sound Of The Underground' is one of the most brilliant things we have ever seen.


• This show must be released commercially, or we'll cry.


• There should be another show scheduled where everyone who has ever said Girls Aloud were rubbish must attend, and at the end be forced to admit that they were wrong. Simon Cowell in particular should eat a Michelle McManus-sized portion of humble pie.


• I want to do it all over again.

posted by Steve @ 7:35 pm 1 comments

AUSTRALIAN NEWS, BAD AND GOOD

We'd like to begin this post by offering our warmest get-well-soon wishes to Kylie Minogue who, as we're sure you've heard, revealed this morning that she has breast cancer. By all accounts, she has been diagnosed early so there is a good chance she can make a full recovery. We'll be thinking of her, along with her friends and family, during this difficult time and we wish her all the best in fighting it.

To move on to something slightly cheerier yet equally Oz-related, people who read our blog circa October 2003 will remember just how obsessed we are with Neighbours star Natalie Bassingthwaighte, partially because she has a fantastic surname, and partially because she plays evil Izzy Hoyland, one of the best soap villains in recent memory. Imagine, then, our unadultered glee when we made our daily visit to the Popjustice website and discovered that she's releasing a single. Naturally, we consider this to be the turning point that will rescue the world of pop for all involved, and we will be doing our utmost to find out everything about it and report back in due course. Watch this space (assuming we actually update when we promise to, which to be honest, is not something with which we have a blemish-free track record).

posted by Steve @ 9:13 am 2 comments