Lopez Blogs

Doing an online Christmas card of seasonal goodness is all well and good, but sometimes you miss out on blogging about all the amazing pop stuff going on throughout the month of December. So I thought I would catch up on some of the essential pop brilliance hitting our ears as I speak... and to keep it festive, let's start with something a little bit holiday spiritish!

Look! It's Sean and Sarah in festive message shocker! How exciting. Yes, they could have at least made a bit of an effort with the photo, but at least they made up a nice poem clearly designed to entice people to buy their lots of fun "Pop" album. That peaked at #22. And actually therein lies the problem. More than most new albums out that week, S'Diff were a victim of the collapse of Woolworths - still you can't get their album at Amazon until January due to distribution problems. I choose to believe that they could have easily gone top 15 had it not been for the economic climate... Anyway, it looks very much like there WILL be a second single from the giddy album and it very much looks like it will be If You Can't Dance. I am very very pleased by this indeed. While I might have gone for Better Love Me or Turn It Into Love, i am fairly in love with this Scissor-Sisters-Meets-Alphabeat-Remixed-by-Pete-Hammond frisky little number. It's the musical equivalent of the shirt, bow-tie and black waistcoat with jeans look of the party season - instantly vintage as soon as you happen upon it, but effortlessly brilliant without even trying. Let's hope it chalks up another top 13 hit for them :)

• View Same Diff performing If You Can't Dance live...(incredibly the choreography for the chorus is EXACTLY the same as when they performed this similar number!)
• The most amazing X Factor performance ever (All I Want For Christmas Is You) and the same song performed less than 500 metres from my house!!

As i have mentioned a million and one times before, Spectacular is coming and is going to make such a star out of my beloved Simon Curtis, that he will be sweating gold in 2009. Nickelodeon are wisely ramping up the hype for this movie, which will air early next year - here are some very valid reasons why Simon and the movie will rock those High School Musical socks right off your feet...

1. The promotional picture above is very Dreamgirls in it's execution. This is very good because just like Dreamgirls, where Beyonce was the star and Jennifer Hudson became the breakout act, the same thing will happen here. Simon will be huge!
2. So fret not that Simon is in the background, because he is also wearing an outfit very similar to Mark Owen in the Shine video. And Mark Owen is rocking all over the new take that cd. So another positive yet totally unrelated thing.
3. Remember Richard Marx? Ask your grandma. Anyway, the producers of the movie do because the two songs available for preview on the Spectacular official myspace are quite rocky Richard Marx-esque. This is not necessarily a bad thing. My spidy senses tell me that the Simon songs will blow these out the water in an amazing Britannia High/Same Difference sort of way.
4. In the picture below, Simon gets the honour of not only spooning the gorgeous and amazingly named Victoria Justice, but also gets the Nickelodeon splodge in his perfectly tousled hair. Poor Gerard Nolan gets what looks like the dribble of Perez Hilton's mouse behind him :(
5. The choir in the movie is called Ta-Da. This is brilliant for several reasons. It was very nearly the name of the boyband in my gestating for 2 years novel. It is also the name (avec hyphen) of the much maligned but quite smashing Scissor Sisters album. Frankly I would've killed to be in a choir called Ta-Da at school.
6. On the character description page of the Spectacular website, Simon's character is described as an amazing performer. This is of course true in real life. What is far more important, is that Simon is wearing the same outfit that Sean does in the All I Want For Christmas video in the Same Diff bit above. Coinky dink? Je ne pense pas.
7. As much as I am looking forward to this movie, I am looking forward to it enabling Simon to release the fantastic Alter Boy album. I have been harping on about it for 2 1/2 years now, it's about time it was foisted on the world :)
8. There is no number 8.
   

More Pop Essentiallity

• Thanks to Poppostergirl, I am completely aware that Sweden now has it's very own David Archeluta, only much less nauseating. While I lick my wounds from poor JLS not winning X Factor, and get more and more annoyed with Alexandra (does she really think she has the right to dictate what Hallelujah is really about? Hmmm...), Kevin Borg is an idol I can get behind. At least for a while. Cute as a button and singing some derivative of Glenn Mediros' Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You, it's a decent winners song and the type of treacly number i sometimes enjoy. Here's to a more diverse debut album...
• Want to hear an amazing version of Hallelujah that isn't the Jeff Buckley version? Thanks to a tip off from Ruthiepoos you can :)
• It's rubbishy and annoying and possibly the worst thing on the radio at the moment, but I can't help but get sucked into Peter Kaye's Geraldine's Christmas number. I'm just off to watch the follow up to his tv special from earlier this year. I'll report back on that and the Britannia High finale on Sunday (along with a review of MY christmas number ones of the millenium!)
• Went to see Inkheart t'other night. While it's not quite as charming and magical as Stardust, it's certainly rather enchanting and comes quite close at times. Unbelievably I sat on a cheese and onion quiche from Morrisons (i know, the box was still there) and then got catapulted twice by the woman behind who felt the need to pull on the back of my chair everytime she heaved her hefty frame up out of her seat. Lovely. None of this detracted however, and again - while no Take That Rule The World - the final song is quite elegant.
• More best of lists at D'Luv, DanUSA and DanUK. Hurrah! A round up of the best of the lists is at poppostergirl!!
• Best wishes to the lovely Adem who is proper poorly sick in hospital with some sort of hideous throat ailment :( Get well soon buddy!