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Tuesday, April 8, 2008
I am all nostaligic today - I just watched a rerun of Friends (is that show ever NOT on?) where Phoebe marries Mike and it was all very snowy and lovely and romantic, and now my cockles have been sufficiently warmed. So my post about the BWO hits collection turns into something rather...longer.... (plus PPG wrote everything I wanted to write about it yesterday!)
FIRST STEPS OF POP:
FIRST STEPS OF POP:
It may seem weird to be writing about Steps in a review of a BWO greatest hits collection, but I think if it weren't for Steps my BWO obsession would not have been quite as big and forgiving as it turned out to be. Put it this way - without Steps, I probably would have loved BWO as much as I do now, but not have appreciated them as much. Because for me, Steps kickstarted this era of pop where cheesiness was embraced, the songs were hugely enjoyable and everyone had bright coloured clothes and smiles on their faces - Steps, S Club, A Teens, et al. Steps hit upon a formula and didn't change it for the four years they ruled the charts and concert arenas. Had I been blogging then, I probably would have written as much about them as I do about Simon Curtis now. It was a simpler time for pop - Steps would pull classic sounding songs out of nowhere, pick cover versions that on paper sounded horrific yet somehow worked and put it all together to a dazzling dance routine and disco beat. They would premiere a dance routine on CD:UK on a Saturday morning and by the time the gay clubs played it that night, everyone would drop all pretensions of cool and perform step perfect routines. Then of course H & Claire royally shafted everyone (though the singles were quite good) and pop went cool. Girls Aloud and Sugababes, along with Liberty X showed that pop could be considered en vogue by hipper than Jesus type magazines as long as there were some electro beats and "oh hasn't art inverted itself" type references they could work in. I lapped it up along with everyone else, but there was still a Steps shaped hole in my musical world...
BWO - from Prototype to sheer Pandemonium:
BWO - from Prototype to sheer Pandemonium:
Luckily Bodies Without Organs came along in 2005 (it may have been earlier but this was when i first heard about them) - thanks to an article Mr Pete "Popjustice" Robinson wrote for some mag called Where Do Broken Charts Go? The article suggested that if Rachel Stevens couldn't make it huge in the UK then going off piste for some pure pop might be wise, and so I checked out BWO. They seemed to take the best of Steps and merge it with the best of "cool" pop for their own unique sound, that I always like to think is what Steps would've come back with if they hadn't all ruined their careers. Each album yielded a multitude of singles that all feature on Pandemonium - from the pulsing beats of tracks like 16 Tons of Hardware, Chariots of Fire and Give Me The Night to ballads that are treacletastic like the heavenly Open Door, We Could Be Heroes and my favourite Destiny of Love. Even their more "unassuming" songs like Let It Rain, Living in A Fantasy and Sunshine In The Rain peel away pretension for just lovely languid melodies. Latest single Lay Your Love On Me is not as instantenous as say Temple of Love or Save My Pride, but is just as insidious and the hook is soon lodged firmly into your frontal lobe. And as PPG points out, neither of the new tracks (Barcelona and Bells of Freedom) is as kick you in the crotch fantastic as would first appear, but after several plays with me, I can say I am perfectly happy with them as greatest hits add ons. A couple of gripes though- It's too soon after Fabricator was released for this. Would it have killed them to wait til August or September and cash in on the Christmas market? I wanted at least another single from that album...
- And talking of which, they left off ace singles like Rhythm Drives Me Crazy and Save My Pride (both from Fabricator) only to bung a couple of album tracks (which could easily have been singles if they weren't so rushed with this whole thing) from said album on... It bugs me as much as when Steps left You'll Be Sorry off their Gold album. I like my hits albums complete and chronological. Thank god for the age of the mp3 then, eh??
OTHER BITS OF PURE POP NEWS I THOUGHT OF WHILE WRITING THIS POST:
- Claire from Steps had the hugest mouth ever. She could probably fit three whole wagon wheels in there without much effort.
- Having said that, her patented nose wrinkle in all Steps videos was as legendary as the Cheryl Tweedy-Cole wink is now.
- The two leaked Jesse McCartney songs are quite ace. One is like Leaving and one is a bit Prince-esque, only sadly not in a brilliant Simon Curtis "Bones" way. But still ace.
- Smudge as I now call Same Difference have pushed back their single release date yet again. It was next Monday and now it is "some time in May". Oh my. I fear, i really do....
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