Spinning Around

Amerie - Gotta Work
Horns! Drums! Lyrics about making a bit of an effort! If Beyonce had been similarly keen after ‘Crazy In Love’, we might have had this instead of all the dreadful songs she released instead. Brilliant.

Alanis Morissette - 8 Easy Steps
The fuss over her BEP cover made us revisit one of her previous finest moments. This is amazing proto-Avril pop rock, and features the immortal line ‘I’ve been practising my ass off’.

The Tigerpicks - Crazy Juices
This song sounds a bit like Fischerspooner might if they were forty years younger. It’s a high-NRG hands-in-the-air BANGER and ever so slightly bonkers. There is a ‘piece’ about the band further down the page. Scroll to it if you wish, or if you are lazy click here.

Dragonette - Take It Like A Man
Still.

Vicky Nolan - Look Out Your Window
Gorgeous coffee-table strum which is nowhere near as boring as that description makes it sound.

Timbaland - Shock Value
We’re still listening to Tim’s latest epic (but not all in one go). Amazing songs on this album include: Release, The Way I Are, Time, One And Only, Apologize, Come Around. If he’d used those songs as the backbone to the album and put in some of the less-amazing-but-still-good ones, like Give It To Me, around them, it would have been SILLY GOOD.

Covered In Lumps

Remember that awkward moment watching Dogma when you had to concede to yourself that, actually, Alanis Morissette might have a sense of humour after all? The uncomfortable realisation that safe, boring, what-the-fuck-is-she-whinging-on-about-now Alanis might actually be a bit cool. Well, she’s only gone and bloody done it again, hasn‘t she?


What follows is a link to Alanis doing a parody of the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘My Humps’. We have absolutely no idea why she’s done this; is it an ironic (wahey!) post-feminist critique of a woman’s world blinged senseless by hip thrusts and lady lumps, or a nice cheeky way of getting Alanis back onto the Internet and into people’s heads and thoughts? Whatever, we’re very glad she made the effort.

As unexpected covers go it’s quite a one, turning the guffawing idiocy of the original into a plaintive ballad that, as well as exposing the full dismal extent of the lyrics, finds time to address some of life‘s great questions, like “what you gonna do with all that breast, all that breast inside that shirt?” in a beautiful and sensitive way. It’s really quite good.

Sadly there is no reprise of the bit where the guy raps with all the flow of an eight-year-old at a school party (“I met a girl down at the disco / she said hey / hey / hey / yeah / let‘s go“), but you can’t have everything can you?

See the Morissette here.