Ten Things We Learnt From The NME Awards

1. Alex Turner will regret all of this one day.

2. Indie musicians are like those people who sit there at parties, refusing to acknowledge the existence of anyone other than the people they deem to be as cool or cooler than themselves.

3.Therefore they will not laugh at any joke unless it is made by Noel fucking Gallagher.

4. The Philip Hall radar wasn’t really switched on this year.

5. Ronnie Vannucci from The Killers is really into his drumming. Imagine the face he pulls when he orgasms! Actually, DO NOT DO THAT.

6. The View are from Scotland but speak fluent Spanish at all times.

7. INDIE LOSERS! Get your hair cut, you’ll never get a job looking like that. Treat yourself to a nice short back and sides like that young man from Hard Fi, then no one will hilariously mistake you for a member of the Bay City Rollers or whatever.

8. Brandon Flowers does not like jokes about Biggie Smalls. Slate Tupac all you want, but dare to take the B.I.G.’s name in vain and you will be given a heavy dose of Brandon’s “I Am Not Laughing” face.

9. Nicola Roberts is not comfortable with Sarah Harding’s drinking.

10. And if that’s the result of Joe Mott saving Sarah “from a BOOZE HELL!!!” etc., can we suggest that he sticks to his day job? Or at least give up the day job and then not become a drink counsellor? That would be amazing.

Turning Oblivion Into Money

Think it’s just M.I.A. who’s prepared to go to extreme lengths (like giving bird flu to a load of turkeys) to make her new record more marketable? Think again! Here, HYG goes back into the archives to look at some of the other crazy stunts and campaigns that have accompanied your favourite chart smashes.

Busted - ’Year 3000’
Few people know this but James Bourne actually built a time machine just before this song’s release, based on something he’d seen on Blue Peter. Sadly, upon arrival in the year 3000, he failed to spot the SIGNIFICANT CHANGE in people’s living habits, brushing off the fact that everyone lives underwater in the future with little more than a lyrical shrug.

Pet Shop Boys - ‘Being Boring’
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe took up being boring for a week to promote this 1990 single. Unfortunately the stunt backfired when the public failed to buy the record because they thought the boys were boring. It got to number 20 :-(

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
To publicise the launch of their smash hit album, the Manics held a giant car boot sale in their native Blackwood. Everything did go, except some of Nicky Wire’s dresses, which met a “muted” response.

T.a.t.u. - All The Things She Said
Became lesbians.

Girls Aloud - No Good Advice
To promote their second single, each of Girls Aloud became counsellors for two weeks. The twist was, they’d signed a secret agreement to only give bad advice. Management were left red-faced when Nicola told more than 30 people they should “probably” take the easy way out.

The Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen
Famously, the Pistols got on a boat and had a party to publicise this single. They did this because it is exactly the sort of behaviour the Queen hates, making it in turn both SUBVERSIVE and REBELLIOUS. But did you know that lead singer Johnny Rotten once wrote a letter to the Queen, intoning that he “actually quite likes her” and “it’s mainly Malcolm’s idea”? Shock horror!

So while M.I.A’s elaborate stunt might pose the biggest threat to the public’s wellbeing, it is far from being the first time someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to shift records.

Personally, we’re looking forward to seeing Patrick Wolf do a few nights working in casualty to promote ‘Accident & Emergency’ because, well, can you imagine what his gold lameé scrubs will look like?

Ten Things About Mika That We Learnt Last Week

1. Last Week, Mika went to the top of the official chart on downloads alone.

2. That is to say, downloads, and a massive wave of hype.

3. Mika has been described as looking like the lovechild (tabloid for ‘bastard’) of Jake Shears and Leo Sayer. This is interesting, because Mika is better looking than Leo Sayer to precisely the same degree to which he is uglier than Jake Shears.

4. Mika was born in Lebanon in 1983, and lived in Paris for eight years. But don’t worry, Daily Mail readers, he’s not actually foreign - he’s lived in London since he was nine.

5. Mika says that his “thing” is creating “huge-sounding pop songs”. Big round of applause for Mika and his thing, it’s about time someone did, etc. etc.

6. When Victoria Newton says that Mika “topped all the critics’ lists of who will be the name of 2007“, don’t for one second think that includes her or her list.

7. Despite his “angular face” (thank-you, Victoria), Mika is actually quite good-looking, but not as good-looking as a lot of people seem keen to make out.

8. That’s you, Paul Smith.

9. ‘Grace Kelly’ is actually rather brilliant, when you look at the evidence. Seriously, FUCK OFF now.

10. We like Mika because in his video he dances in exactly the same way as we dance in our bedroom, except he does it in front of a camera with a bloody big striplight in his hand, and loads of “supporting artists” running everywhere. This is the best thing we learnt about Mika last week.

Ten Things About Amy Winehouse That We Learnt Last Week

1. Amy claimed in an interview last week that she "doesn't have a drink problem" and has "given up drinking".

2. In the same interview, Amy also said that she enjoys regular cups of tea, afternoon walks in the fresh air, and riding a unicycle to church.

3. According to Radio 1, she's "the one with hair like Russell Brand but bigger".

4. Well done to Amy's publicists if that's how far they've got with her.

5. Last week, Amy released 'You Know I'm No Good', which is nowhere near as good as some of the songs on her album but is still CONSIDERABLY better than anything HMV deemed worthy of their 'new release' shelf space.

6. While we're on the subject, how is 'A Moment Like This' a new release?

7. Notice how Amy's "people" put a rap on the radio version of her new single. This is to trick children into not hating her.

8. FYI, record so-called companies, speeded-up chipmunk vocals work better these days, get with the times, etc.

9. Amy's hair is not the only thing about her that is bigger than Russell Brand. See also: eyes, waist size, talent.

10. Last week, Amy "scored" her first number one album (of many to follow), because Gary Barlow ran short of spare change and had to stop buying copies of Beautiful World for FIVE BLOODY MINUTES. This is the best thing we learnt about Amy last week.

The Hip Young Gunslinger Albums Of The Year 2006

While you carry on recovering from the all-round amazingness of our singles of the year list, chew on this: our only-slightly-late-but-definitive-apart-from-the-one-obvious-omission, Hip Young Gunslinger Albums Of The Year 2006!

The Hip Young Gunslinger Albums Of The Year 2006

10. Nicky Wire - I Killed The Zeitgeist
9. The Strokes - First Impressions Of Earth
8. Nelly Furtado - Loose
7. Girls Aloud - The Sound Of Girls Aloud
6. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
5. Panic! At The Disco - A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
4. The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
3. Lily Allen - Alright, Still
2. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
1. V/A - Digital Penetration

Wow! Look at that, ten fantastically sparkly records that all got heavy rotation on hyg’s walkman phone this year (we swing it round by the handsfree when a good song comes on).

Some pointers about the list:

• Unusual for us to endorse something like Nicky Wire, but he’s in there just because anyone who hasn’t heard his album really needs to. It’s, er, it’s… yeah.

• Nelly Furtado is too low down and P!ATD too high, maybe you should swap them, but they both more than deserve their places, especially Panic!, who royally exposed Fall Out Boy for the godawful mess they truly are.

• Re: Girls Aloud: Sound Of The Underground, No Good Advice, The Show, Love Machine, Something Kinda Ooh, Biology. Proving once and for all that Girls Aloud have released far more good singles than Razorlight have.

• The Flaming Lips album is not their best but it is still bloody good.

• In a year (well, the first three months of it) so dominated by their arrival - “Fastest selling debut ever!!!!”, “Victory for real music!!!!” Etc. - only churlishness would prevent us from handing Arctic Monkeys the award for album of the year for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.

• That, and the fact that Digital Penetration shits on it.
  
  

PS. The Robbie Williams album has been left off this list as a statement about people not buying it, and not - NOT - because we forgot all about it. Just call it number zero. Yay! x

The Hip Young Gunslinger Tracks Of The Year 2006

We've spent the whole, ooh, however many days there have been since we wrote this, entirely soaked in gin, sniffing the insides of glowsticks. This, however, is not the reason for it being posted so late in the year. We just wanted to see if anything really amazing came out before we put it up (honestly) so we wouldn't be made to look like fools by some crazy-good Christmas singles. Luckily that isn't the case. Thanks Leona!

Enjoy then, The Hip Young Gunslinger Tracks Of The Year 2006

10. Balloon Factory - Dandi Wind
Okay, so it may be from 2005, but most people heard it this year as it featured on the sensational Alt Delete compilation, Digital Penetration. Coming over like the sound of Lil’ Chris losing a fight with a load of angry drum machines, fewer tunes this year were as mad, bad n’ rad as this one.

9. Weekends And Bleak Days (Hot Summer) - The Young Knives
Witty, catchy and a firm follower of the basic rule that The Only Good Indie Is That Which You Can Dance To, this track popped its punchy little ass out of speakers way back in early summer. Strange trips to Ibiza and disappointing follow-ups came next for The Knives (as no-one is calling them), but if our summer had been just half as glorious as this song’s shouty refrain was, well, we’d probably all still have fucking excellent suntans.

8. We Are Your Friends - Justice Vs. Simian
The method: take a four-year-old song by a rapidly-growing indiedance concern, rip out its shouty chorus, frantically mess about with its bassline, add bleeps, add a bit of your own tune, lose the brilliant bit where the bass guitar inverts and goes all bouncy and stuff after the chorus, and repeat for well over four minutes. The result: conquer dancefloors worldwide anyway. It’s easy when you’re this good.

7. Over And Over - Hot Chip
The first time we heard this, we had no idea how good it was. We had notions of it being “average” and “overhyped”. This went on for a couple of weeks at least, making it even harder in hindsight to fathom what the flaming fuck we were on about. It’s a sledgehammer of a song, a dancefloor destroyer of the highest order. To hear the bassline at the start of the intro and not start running around dancing like a loon meant only one thing: you were clearly no good at figuring out songs just from hearing basslines in their intros.

6. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
Ever since Zane Lowe put this on his advert and we heard some guy singing it to his kid on the bus, we knew this was going to become something more than the slice of unfathomably cool 21st Century Soul it already was. And it did. Radio, Television, dads on buses; you couldn’t move this summer without hearing that most gigantic of choruses somewhere, and for once that didn’t matter. Everyone knew it, everyone loved it and it spent nine whole weeks at number one without ever being shit! Mighty.

5. Rehab - Amy Winehouse
Until Rehab, genius wit and raconteur Ms. Winehouse had somehow found herself lumped in with the grotesque “female jazz revolution”, typified by droning fools like Katie Melua et al. Not anymore. Anyone who saw her early interviews will have known she was a cut above the rest, and this year she proved it to everyone else. With the help of Mark Ronson she created a sexy slice of modern Motown that was not only a cracking song, but also further underlined the uselessness of shit revivalist groups like The Pipettes (you’re allowed to do old music, just do it new and better, like this). It’s not 168 seconds long, but it might just be the perfect pop song.

4. Maneater - Nelly Furtado
In times of need, when you don’t know who to trust, always remember this mantra: loose shirts, sandals and “a world feel” = bad; low-cut tops, tight jeans and “Timbaland producing” = very, very good. Nelly Furtado knows this. She knows this now, anyway. As does anyone else who had the immense pleasure of spending the summer being repeatedly beaten around the head by this most devastating of pop-attacks. Of all the tunes on the list, none was met with more shock and awe than the one that marked the (re-)birth of this star.

3. Sheila - Jamie T
We don’t know a lot about Jamie T. We know that he washes his hands before he goes to the toilet instead of afterwards because “technically, my dick is clean. It’s the world that’s dirty”. We know he’s fond of the phrase “Brap!” and that he can play the guitar. Ultimately though, we know surprisingly little other than the fact that, in Sheila, he’s created one of the most startling, original and downright brilliant songs of the year. A tale of London and the lives it holds within it, pinned together by the tragic story of the title character. Funny, angry, happy, sad, vital and throwaway, this song was at times as varied as the rogues gallery it portrayed. Above all else, it was mesmerising. We hear he’s pretty young too.

2. The Neon Plastix - On Fire
This song sounds a bit like what would happen if Franz Ferdinand and Fischerspooner got together on a collaboration, except it’s nowhere near as horrible as that would be. In fact, it’s quite sublime. Another cut from the Alt Delete Digital Penetration compilation, this also got a release this year as a double a-side with the equally delightful Dream. It embodied everything New Rave was about; it was fast, tight and sexy, with a chorus you could build empires on. It even featured an old-school piano breakdown so euphoric that rave veterans everywhere were seen weeping into their neon hankies, convinced it was still 1992 and that the past 14 years really had been nothing more than just a bad comedown. They were wrong, The Neon Plastix were right. The war was won. Send word to the battlefield.

1. Atlantis To Interzone - Klaxons
In a year so dominated by new rave there was only ever going to be one winner. From the moment that first siren sounded, anyone who heard this song was gripped. A three-minute moon buggy ride through some quite ridiculous terrain, it was also a track that divided all who encountered it. You either got it or you didn’t, but as Jamie Reynolds put it, “whether you like it or not, new rave is something that happened this year”, and with this track he and his bandmates provided the rallying battle cry for a whole new generation of glowsticked messmakers to go and get “MDMA-zing” all over the place. Klaxons, bells and vinyl scratches so brutal it sounded like they were actually trying to squeeze lemons into your earholes were all part of what made up this record’s genius, and the truly lunatic video merely confirmed what those who’d heard the tune already thought: this is a fucking brilliant band.

Honourable Mentions
No place for them on the list, but two other tracks get major ‘props’ this year. Firstly, The Streets’ Prangin Out, not least for becoming the dark and dirty anthem of choice for anyone who’s ever sweated out their own body weight in chemical guilt, but also for the remarkable act of making Pete Doherty actually seem vaguely relevant, if only for 38 seconds. Skinner, we salute you. The second one is Standing In The Way Of Control by The Gossip, because, well, HAVE YOU FUCKING HEARD IT?

Bo! De Toilette

You may have noticed that, in the latter half of the year, the whole country has gone absolutely fucking crazy for celebrity biographies. From Kerry Katona’s “story of love, survival and celebrity” (we can only assume she’s talking about Bryan McFadden with that last bit), to Pete Doherty’s mum blathering on about what a disappointment he’s become (as if anyone needed that pointing out), it seems like we just can’t get enough of this wonderful snuff.

But what about celebrity fragrance, last year’s mega trend, how’s that going? Well, the good news is that none of the celebrities lost any money! Hooray! In fact, the only bad news is that there are now so many scents to choose from it’s becoming rather difficult to guarantee that you get the right one for you. That’s where we come in. With the Hip Young Gunslinger Celebrity Fragrance Buying Guide to Christmas 2006, we’ll take you through six of the top smells so you can pick the one that‘s gonna suit you best. You won’t have to spend hours getting light-headed in Boots; we won’t have to research an article about celebrity biographies. Everyone’s a winner, so let’s get on with the show!

Beyonce - True Star
First up it’s Beyonce, with exactly the sort of zesty, feisty scent you’d expect from everyone’s (everyone’s) favourite R&B songstress. Full of passion and attitude, this fragrance says you’re one lady who’s not to be messed with, but be careful - slap too much on and it’ll only say to people that you’ve got a vastly-inflated sense of your own importance, that you treat your friends like strangers, and that you’re the kind of person who takes the brilliant new job in accounts while urging your colleagues to stick it out the best they can working on reception; so moderation is the key. Can also cause incessant shouting.

David Beckham - Instinct
Next up we’ve got one for the men, with a suitably spicy and sporty fragrance being offered up by the DB stable, perfect for a relaxed yet sensual evening spent wearing a black shirt. Be careful if you’re married or in a relationship though; this scent is actually so pleasing to the nose that literally every girl you meet will request your continued acquaintance. Unfortunately, this includes the ones who are willing to do things such as, say, wank a pig off to ‘further’ their career.

Sarah Jessica Parker - Lovely
This versatile fragrance smells just like it sounds and can be worn by either men, women, men who look like women or, indeed, women who look like they used to be men. It’s what we call “a solid all-rounder”; soft and light.

Paris Hilton - Just Me
A vague yet unsubtle scent. Recently discovered that over-application can push designated drivers well over the legal drink limit, even if they haven’t touched a drop of alcohol. Avoid.

Britney Spears - Fantasy
Britney’s fragrance is a delightfully bouncy, smooth and well-rounded one. A reminder of long summer days gone by, with a hint of lost innocence. However, as with new pal Paris Hilton’s scent, there is cause for concern - certain wearers have reported a loss of coordination and severe bouts of shockingly poor judgement.

Calum Best - Calum
FELLAS!!! Do you like going out? Are you “one for a right laugh”? Do you sleep with different women on a regular basis? If you think yourself a bit of a “swordsman” and would like to increase your “pulling power”, you might think about slapping a bit of this stuff on before you go out. Trust us when we say, a liberal dose of this and you’ll be knee-deep in slut before midnight! As an added bonus, the fragrance actually masks the smell of souls being destroyed! Yours and hers! Truly exceptional.

So there you have it, a random snapshot of some of the celebrity fragrances currently on the market, and no time for a mention of J-Lo’s range (stinks like a fat arse with an attitude problem). Use this guide wisely and you’ll be an olfactory hero this Christmas, don’t and you… won’t. It really is that simple.

PS. Sorry about the lack of special guest as had been promised - we spent the fee on old copies of Smash Hits and a load of Gin.

HYG x

The HYG Calendar Club!

Calendar news now; and the start of a short new series where we name the best - and shame the worst - celebrity calendars right up until they actually become useful. Using this guide will help you decide on and save up for the calendar that’s right for you, so you can impress Calendar Club temps everywhere with your slick buying skills and avoid making a ridiculous idiot of yourself when it comes to actually hanging the thing up in January.

And what better way to kick off the guide than with Girls Aloud, who are well on their way to becoming seasoned players of the calendar game? Last year’s GA calendar was a triumph of what they call ‘class‘, ‘style’ and ‘sex-appeal’ in a world inhabited by ridiculous SOAP BABES and HUNKS, and made full use of two very important things, posh frocks and Nicola’s legs (is that three things?) to become one of the best-selling pop calendars of 2006. It featured, amongst other things:

• A Caravan!
• A Motorbike!!
• A MASSIVE Wicker Chair!!!

Which of course made it absolutely brilliant, but what about this year’s effort? We’ve seen the 2007 version and, well, pour me a Daiquiri if we’re not going camping, Thelma. It’s like they’ve locked Kitsch and Camp in a room together, plied them both with stacks of red wine and told them to do what comes naturally, and this is the result. Sailor suits? Check. ‘Kinky’ Police outfits? Check! Top Hats? Check!! TOP HATS!

This might all be amazing if we didn’t fear for the blow it could deal the band’s already-shaky grip on Credibility. GA suffer enough from fools who know nothing about anything repeatedly shouting that they’re a novelty act without trussing them up and making them wave truncheons about. Honestly, the whole thing brings to mind The Great Holly Valance Calendar Debacle of 2004 (June that year was a very grave month for Ms. Valance’s dignity).

It’s not all bad. Some shots do recall past triumphs, and if we’re honest, we’ve always wanted to see Sarah Harding being made to look stupid, but on the whole this calendar is a quite bizarre addition to the Girls Aloud ‘canon’ of ‘work‘. Recommended if you’re the kind of person who buys dressing-up kits from market stalls, but best avoided if you think for one second that you have the kind of respectability that’s worth holding onto. Hmm.