Lopez Blogs

Shayne Ward. Shay. Wardy if you will. I spotted him fairly early on in the X Factor and as the show progressed I started to think that here was a good looking lad, with a strong vocal, nice sense of style and actually could do a variety of styles week in week out on the live shows. This could be one reality star who could follow in the footsteps of William and Girls Aloud rather than Michelle McManus, Hear'say and Steve Brookstein. Who was always really just Will Young's pervy uncle to me...

So what's gone wrong? An interview in this month's Attitude proved that Shayne is a thoroughly nice guy who is aware that this could all disappear in a moment and so is just enjoying it for what it is. Which actually made me want to go and shake him... because Louis Walsh is what went wrong. I got caught up in the hype of That's My Goal as tends to happen when you follow a show like X Factor religiously. But then No Promises came out and the album was one westlife ballad after another. Stand By Me - the new single and video (in which he wears the same white shirt, jeans and blazer he has worn in his previous two videos!) - is yet another ballad that could be sung by Ronan Keating or Westlife. Shayne needs to desperately assert himself (a la Will Young), show a bit of variety in future recordings, bare his chest more and remind us of what made him so entertaining on the X Factor...

Looking more like a bunch of 1880s gay cowboys waiting to jump, hogtie and have their wicked way with you than the smart skinny tie mormon missionary boys we were introduced to a couple of years ago, B-Flo and The Killers talked to NME this week about their sophomore album - allegedly due the same day as Ta-Dah by the Scissters - and of course has attracted lots of bloggy interest...

I utterly adore the Killers. SomebodyTold Me and All These Things I've Done (just incredibly spine tingling live) are two of my favourite songs of recent years. The interview says that this album will not be as indebted to British influences as Hot Fuss was, but will be more of a love letter to America, inspired by wide open spaces and, er, Bruce Springsteen. (Brandon certainly seems to have borrowed his tunnel of love era style....)

The boys love of their homeland comes across in the interview and apparently the album promises to be bigger, more expansive, a little less full of itself and a little more human. Like Keane the recording sessions have been steeped in the band's adjustment to fame and all the baggage that brings with it. Luckily however, its not all serious soul searching...

B-Flo is still a delicate pretty fleur and -despite practising mormon status - the interview contains some delightfully catty sniping at Fall Out Boy/Panic! At The Disco... Can't those crazy kids just wrestle it out already??

Here is NME's guide to the completed album tracks:

WHY DO I KEEP COUNTING? ~ Concerned with Brandon's fear of flying, it's a sprawling mini-epic reminiscent of Bowie as much as Springsteen, opening with a twinkly synth part and culminating in the soaring climax of "If i only knew the answer, I wouldn't be bothering you." (thezapping note: I love a soaring climax!)

BONES ~ Possible first single with a definite Queen flavour running through it. Very catchy summery feel with Brandon saucily urging us to "Feel my bones/its only natural". Topped off by a brass section that will sound fantastic at next years festivals.

WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG ~ The album's most Springsteen-esque moment with lyrics relating to "A beautiful boy/he doesn't look a thing like Jesus but he talks like a gentleman was supposed to/When you were young!." Another possible single.

UNCLE JOHNNY DID COCAINE ~ The closest thing to classic Killers. Its blasted around a relentless dark and twisted guitar riff and almost sounds like 70s era Iggy Pop.

READ MY MIND ~ Almost unrecognisable as the Killers, this is a slow stately 80s mega ballad with Brandon delivering an impassioned vocal - perhaps his best to date. Definitely an anthem in waiting.

SAM'S TOWN ~ A raucous guitar intro gives way to a synth heavy verse before settling into a big singalong mantra at the end. Its a nastier sounding song than the others, but unbelievably catchy. Our ears may have deceived us, but we're sure there is a violin in there somewhere too.

If we're going to talk about summer, i should just say that i have been MISERABLE the past two days by being attacked by the worst hay fever ever (mobile phone predictive text = gay fever). My eyes were practically swollen shut on monday and itched like heck...add that to constant sneezing (8 in a row DOESN'T give you an orgasm) and i was not a happy bunny. But i digress...

Ten years ago this very day, 2 monumental things happened. One would have a huge impact on pop music, the other a huge impact on my life. On June 28th 1996, Ginger, Posh, Sporty, Scary and the other one did their first live British tv performance of Wannabe on GMTV. Now i have searched youtube for it, and can't find it sadly because if the video was marvelous in its dodginess then this was classic if only for poor Geri "I wasn't a natural dancer" halliwell doing some sort of karate kick dance for the camera. Of course they went on to have massive success that i won't bore you with writing about here cos its well documented. And certainly from 1996-1998 they totally ruled the world of pop selling more singles and albums than Girls Aloud could dream of.

Now I totally missed the summer of spice because on June 28th 1996, I flew off to new York to work at Rotary Sunshine Camp in Rochester. To say it was an experience that changed my life would be somewhat of an understatement. I had never worked with kids with disabilities before so coming to a camp run especially for them was somewhat of an eyeopener. AAnd luckily I loved it. Due to someone leaving (a hushed up pregnancy!) I was able to become Musical director for the camp and organise the evening entertainment and weekly play. It was incredibly frustrating, funny, rewarding and unforgettable all in one go. By the time the summer had finished, I had made some great friends, drunk far too much in the field across the road (really my first experience with binge drinking - not pretty. Once I was at a party for Tara Trojanowski's birthday that August, and decided to die my hair blonde. Some other drunk girls helped me and then said to wash it off in the shower. instead i passed out in the shower and was only discovered the next morning when the bleach had caused most of my hair to fall out! Mortifying!!), totally changed my music tastes (somehow before this summer i hadn't realised that there was music that people loved that didn't make the UK or US top twenty!) and made me change my career options from studying English to studying Disability policy - something i still do for work 10 years later. I could write millions of stories about that summer and the two more I went back for, as well as the countless trips i made after 1998 to keep up with friends. But thats for another day...

So i totally missed the summer of spice and came back to Gary Barlow having a solo number one, Robbie Williams doing some drugged up cover of Freedom and of course the Spice Girls ruling England. I didn't succumb to their charms until 2 Become 1 that Christmas and then loved them and got live the summer of spice when i went back to camp in June 1997 just as they were breaking the states...

First up - Lily Allen... I must admit I was deeply sceptical when i first saw Lily Allen being interviewed on tv. Sure it was nice to see a young female singer who wasn't trying to be either Slaggy Aggy or one of the pouting blonde girl group clones. But i wasn't convinced that the music would live up to the hype. What a surprise then to discover LDN (mp3) ~ its a proper summer single that sounds like it was concocted (LOVE that word) in a haze of yellow pollen and metropolitan exhaust fumes. And how delightful that the album lives up to that infectious witty first outing - especially the insanely catchy Alfie which contains my favourite use of the word twat since Brian Kinney said "I'd rather have my tongue superglued to a lesbians twat" on the US Queer as Folk...
MP3: Alfie