Lopez Blogs

Red - Step Into The Light

• Well i won't lie to you Bryn (been watching Gavin and Stacey again!) it's been quite a nice but tiring weekend. Darren was feeling well enough to venture to the local pub. Hurrah! I was worried his healing operation wound would burst and get infected again, but it seemed to be ok.
• The DJ was on proper form last night, providing me with favourite after favourite. He even played this cheesy-esque new popstars winning tune above, which is quite adorable. Lots of Girls Aloud (The Promise and Untouchable), Saturdays (Up and Just Can't Get Enough), Alesha Dixon (Boy Does Nothing), Hazel Dean (Searching), Erasure (Stop), Pink (So What), heck even Katy Perry (Hot and Cold). Oh and apparently Poker Face, though to me it just sounded like a Sweet Dreams/Bimbo Jones remix of Pink rip off.
• (Alesha Dixon is the opening act for Enrique on his UK Tour. How aces is that?)
• (Red aren't really going to change the world, but i do like that song in a sub-par "Britannia High" sort of way. And I've finally decided I like BeFour's version of No Limits. Just for the crap dancing)
• The pub was so packed last night, that at one point one girl was standing so close to me, I could taste the odour of sweat on her and her hair was resting on my face! I mean for crying out loud, Darren and I don't get that close even when we do number 48 of the gay karma sutra (Yes we ARE that acrobatic :P)
• Had a nice Sunday planning our holidays for the year. On the cards are definitely Bulgaria, maybe Sweden or Portugal and then Las Vegas for Christmas, Los Angeles for New Years. Now if you need Darren and I, we will be on the corner of Hurst Street selling our bodies. Mine's going for a song :(

• I haven't really raved about Dancing On Ice as much as I should have this year, but it has been brilliant and Ray Quinn is just so glorious to watch on the ice. See him above skating to Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now (only quibble is they should've used Same Difference's version!). This week he pulled out some AMAZING moves to Do The Hop that were really quite stunning. Link coming as soon as it's on youtube... Dancing on Ice - where retired popstars reclaim their former glories (see Duncan James, Jessica Liberty X, Gareth Gates, Suzanne Shaw and er, Lisa Scott Lee. Well most of them anyway)...
• Oh I am adoring the animated Pet Shop Boys video. A - because I love it when popstars get animated and express themselves in different ways, and B - cartoon snogging always makes me smile. Oh and Depeche Mode's new single leaked this weekend. Wrong is not quite right with me yet, but i have enough history with DM that I will give it several more spins to see how I warm up to it :) Check out XOs views here...
• I've been rewatching The Tudors in preparation for the third year which must be starting soon - God, I do love this show, historical inaccuracies and all. The one things that irks me is the whole "you think you know a story but you only know how it ends" bit over the opening credits. Uh, no. I'm obsessed with that era of history, and most people know the Henry VIII story thank you very much.
• And finally, it's been a decent weekend for catching my favourite popstars perform on highly rated tv shows. The Saturdays did Just Can't Get Enough on some Comic Relief dance show, while Take That (just below the top 21 chart run down title) performed Up All Night on Ant and Dec (Ant's forehead looks freaking massive these days). And William of Young did his exquisite Let It Go on Dancing On Ice, which is shown just above this week's chart run down title. As much as I adore William, i did think "oh jeez, what have you done to your hair?!" when he first came on screen. Nice tux though. And Torvill and Dean as magnif as ever..

TOP 21 SONGS OF THE WEEK:

21 - Marit Larsen, The Chase (NE)
20 - Lenka, Trouble Is A Friend (NE)
19 - Jason Mraz, Dynamo of Volition (NE)
18 - Britannia High, Start of Something
17 - McFly, Last Song (NE)
16 - The Days, No Ties (NE)
15 - Darin, See You At The Club
14 - The Saturdays, Just Can't Get Enough
13 - Girls Aloud, The Loving Kind
12 - Same Difference, If You Can't Dance
11 - Annie Lennox, Shining Light
10 - William Young, Let It Go
09 - The Killers, Spaceman
08 - Lily Allen, The Fear
07 - Alesha Dixon, Breathe Slow
06 - Taylor Swift, Love Story
05 - Take That, Up All Night (VID)
04 - Kelly Clarkson, My Life Would Suck Without You
03 - Simon Curtis/Victoria Justice, On The Wings Of A Dream
02 - Pet Shop Boys, Love Etc.
01 - Sugababes, Every Heart Broken (4 Weeks)

BeFour are one of those happy happy acts that you will either love everything they do by or be left immensely cold by their chirpy pop stylings. Despite releasing a third album in less than 12 months, they have yet to hit the top ten in their native Germany and that is quite sad because i'm in the camp that finds their euro pop-dance grooves simply delightful. Think back to an era when Steps ruled the charts, when S Club were yet to smoke pot and when All*Stars were wandering around in the Land of Make Believe. It's music that plays to the lowest common denominator, doesn't take any chances and just aims to put a big smile on your face for the time that you spend listening to it. That isn't a criticism - far from it; it is music that has no pretentions. Approach it as such and your experience of it is greatly enhanced.

Surely there must be a reason this sort of music faded out from the British charts? Not cool enough? I find it hard to believe there isn't a huge pre-teen market for this relentlessly cheerful brand of pop. The lead off single Live Your Dream is probably the type of music the A*Teens would be making if still together - or something (as I suggested here) that Same Difference could work their magic with. Happy Holiday literally clears the grey from the skies with it's devil may care summer vacation whistling and slightly rave-esque backing track (which does grate a bit as you get towards the end but then luckily it finishes!) Two songs in and i'm in danger in being overwhelmed by bleeps and beats. Then Listen To Your Heart comes along with a sweet little melody and everything is ok again. Nice plinking piano in the background of the chorus too and I do like mushy songs about being true to yourself, etc. It makes me feel all glow-y inside!

Apart from the single, there are two clear stand out tracks hiding in the middle of the album. The title track, We Stand United, is one of those anthemic pop tracks that seems to work on every level. More feel good factor is baked right in with a lush harmonic chorus that may be a tad sickly sweet but by golly it sure does feel so right when you are listening to it. The other track I shamelessly love is the could-have-been-a-disaster SMS. I mean, remember when Clea did Download It and it was dreadful and no-one did? This infuses a great Liberty X type pop song with cutesy sound effects that probably won't age well. However, in the here and now (woohoo! My least fave steps song) it works well and I suggest in the future they could change it to "i'm sending you an SOS" to make it more topical. Clea can hardly change download it to "free with the sunday observer" now can they?

Zabadak perhaps shows most clearly the influences of other groups like Abba and Ace of Base in the music with some quite amusing bass vocals from the boys. A cover of Give It Up is a cheerful winner if only for the complete lack of cynicism in it's delivery and the album closes with the only ballad - the quite lovely You Gave Me Life that can now replace Il Divo and G4 songs as the mothers day tune of choice. The delivery is quite dreamy in a Never Had A Dream Come True sort of way, and the writers will probably score big when Simon Cowell steals it for Westlife at some point in the future. It may sound at times like i've been harsh on this album - and for sure, it's not a perfect piece of work and at times a little repetitive. But in terms of an unabashedly shameless pop effort, you could do a lot worse.

LINK: BeFour's website

On my 5am drive (how fucking ridiculous) to St. Helen's (near Liverpool geography fans), I finally got to hear the brilliant Same Difference single. Woohoo. Only rather disappointingly it wasn't the Same Difference single because that hasn't actually been released or promoted yet. However, Simon Cowell could learn a thing or two from the aces brand new single from BeFour ("Live Your Dream") because here is why it is the perfect song for my favourite sibling duo not marred by eating disorders...

Now I believe this is from the film Horton Hears A Who and possibly something football related as they are dressed in nice footie outfits on the cover of the single. I can't really tell because despite singing in English, BeFour's website is in German. Oh well. I embrace cultural diversity :) Anyway, there are several key reasons why this is the perfect song for smudge...

• The video concept is deliciously cheap, so would probably match the average budget allocated to a Girls Aloud video. Plus Sean and Sarah would look adorably cute fingering their Minority Report-esque computer screens...
• The half hearted attempt at shuffling to what one can only presume is meant to be a dance routine would be massively surpassed by SD with a cheesy dance routine, if only because they aren't jaded enough yet to look like they can't be bothered...
• It's a brilliantly catchy pop song that isn't overly reliant on lyrics about love or canoodling, so there will be no embarrassing moments where their "dream dates" are superimposed into the video to remind us they only share a sibling type love...
• It's already boy/girl divided so it suits them perfectly and has words like dreams and magic in it, which - i don't know about you - to me seems like it's right up Sean's alley. Somewhere i'd quite like to be :O
• It's like a slightly tinnier A*Teens track with absolutely no pretensions, which in a nutshell is exactly what Same Difference are.
• Having said all that, I can reveal that the b-side to Breaking Free (The Miracle) is very very good indeed and bodes well for a potential album. Hurrah, etc.

Other notable songs from my journey:

• Sinitta ~ So Macho (it is with a tiny bit of pride but mostly shame that I remember prancing round the living room for my sister and her friends to this song in my youth...)
• BWO ~ Lay Your Love On Me (I'm sure I am hearing the lyrics wrong, but i think in the second verse they sing "I don't plan to join the peace corps/but i drop my pants and bring fruit cake"???)
• Charlotte Perelli ~ All By Myself (Proof that Hero isn't the only popular song title she's pilfered and not gone down the covers route...)
• Rachel Stevens ~ Crazy Boys (The best single that Rachel never released mainly because apparently number 10 positions are only classed as success if you are Robyn...)
• Play ~ It's The Hard Knock Life (A million times cheesier than Gwen's Annie sampling Rich Girl, but oh a million times more satisfying and popalicious...)
• Sheena Easton ~ What Comes Naturally (Wouldn't it have been nice for Leona to have done something a little bit gutsy like this for her album. Better in Time and Bleeding Love are nice though...)

Talking of Leona, tomorrow I will be discussing some overlooked alternatives to the rammed down your throat girl from sarf landon...