A Cautionary Tale

Picture the scene.

Tony is in his sister’s room, looking for her straighteners so that he can perfect his emotional fringe. Suddenly, he stumbles on a caseless and seemingly-unloved Cdr on the bedroom floor, onto which is scribbled ‘RACHEL’S PARTY TUNES LOL’.

Filled with the sort of baseless incandescent rage that can only be fuelled by a lifetime of having Steve Lamacq tell you that ‘real music is better’, Tony picks up the CD and scoffs loudly (mainly stuff like ‘fake’, ‘instruments’ and ‘MADE BY MACHINES’).

However, Tony was feeling something that day which he had never felt before. During all his time under the oppression of the Whiley-Bowman-Lowe regime, our hero had never once felt intrigued. By anything. Never once had he felt compelled to investigate something for himself, always happier to live by the maxim, ‘If Edith says it’s amazing, it’s amazing.’

Entering unfamiliar territory, he placed the CD in his stereo and pressed play, at which point he was amazed to discover that 99% of the music on the disc was not complete shit (the other 1% was a 50 Cent song). Feeling cheated by a lifetime of Indie rule, Tony ripped down his Radiohead posters and raced to the shops to get a litre of budget vodka, shouting as he went, “Everyone! There’s a party at my house! But this time we‘re smiling!”

These are some of the songs he had heard.

Nelly Furtado - Maneater
This track spoke to Tony on many levels, mainly because it featured Nelly making a musical transition similar to his own (ie. STOP STARING AT THE FLOOR AND START MAKING USE OF IT). For eighteen months, the sound of Nelly ditching the sandals in favour of high heels has been a glitterball staple, inspiring dancefloor riots and, in some smaller countries, actual ones.

Booty Luv - Some Kinda Rush
Found four tracks in to the ex-Big Brovaz duo’s amyltastic debut album, this punchy little bugger uses a taut guitar line and lashings of distorted bass to accurately recreate the sensation of blood rushing through your inner ear at entirely the wrong speed.

Beyoncé - Crazy In Love
One of the best songs ever written.

Girls Aloud - Biology
Three of the best songs ever written.

Sophie Ellis Bextor - Only One
Quite clearly uses guitar, drums and rampant sax (aka Real Instruments) to form an entirely barmy up-tempo shakeathon about all the usual love issues (ie. You don’t really like me very much but - let’s face it - I’m the only person who actually understands what you’re banging on about half the time and, because of that, you need me.)

Sharam - PATT
YES.

The 411 - Dumb
This lot were a girl group who failed for two reasons:

:: Completely ungooglable name.
:: There were four of them. (Three is great, five is better, but four? Madness).

Anyway, this, their sort-of-breakthrough sort-of-hit (which was used on that trippy perfume advert featuring the most manly one out of ‘Sex and the City’), is brilliant. The perfect LBD track, it’s a tale of illicit slinkiness set to vaguely-Gallic plinkiness, with a chorus catchier than the common cold.

There were thousands more songs on the CD that Tony found, including several by the Sugababes. We might tell you about them one day. In the meantime, let this be a call to arms: stop trying to be cool and do some fucking dancing.