Ciao and welcome back dear reader!! Buon Natale e Buon Anno! (Why does everyone that visits a foreign country feel compelled to use the few words they learned during their stay when they return? No idea.) Anyway - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we hope you had a lovely time and enjoyed the holidays! As you probably know, if you are one of our regulars, LHNA spent their holidays in Venice and Milan, sightseeing on vaporetti, making videos on ships with bunny masks (see picture above; don't ask further questions), opening champagne bottles outside shoe stores and doing their best to avoid firecrakers. Parenthesis - really, those people for whom NYE is just an excuse to hang around crowded places with their "mates" so they can throw firecrackers AT people, snigger when they yelp and jump and enjoy the fact that they're SCARING them: you're a teenage deliquent, fuck you, you're more sickening than that James Blunt video with those freaky technicolor bimbos - parenthesis closed. Phew, that was a lot of hatred I had stored for them there. Don't let this nonsensical intro stop you from relishing our comeback, I really AM getting closer to saying something music-related.
THE DARK SIDE: During our stay I a) watched more MTV than I probably ever have since I was twelve, and b) listened to more bad music than I probably have since...well, my mother's womb possibly. I'm thinking those two are probably related. The reason I indulged in such masochism is this: MTV Italy happens to be the only channel there that occasionally has something in English. The experience was certainly eye-opening. Realizations: Hype Machine world is definitely not MTV world. Coldplay have a lot to answer for. Emo is still alive in Italy. I miss good old Britney. There was a time when MTV music awards didn't make me cringe. And people sure listen to a lot of crap.
Top 10 horrors I had to witness on MTV:
1) Katy Perry hosting (and performing at) the MTV Europe Music Awards. Practically the most untalented, brainless, unfunny, revolting, sleazy without even being hot, manufactured bimbo to come out of the music industry after Paris Hilton. I liked Paris more, for the record.
2) James Blunt's video for 'Love Love Love'. I was truly shocked. I really didn't think a song or video could be more horrific than "Beautiful". And I don't mean this in a trying-to-be-funny way. This video really makes me scared about the world we live in.
3) Speaking of things that make me scared about the world, there was this Italian ad for ringtones.... I won't even go into it because you won't know what I'm talking about, but believe me, vomit-inducing, scary shit.
4) This. Id est, Estonian singer Kerli Koiv's "Walking On Air". Song lyrics: There's a little creepy house in a little creepy place/ Little creepy town in a little creepy world/ Little creepy girl with her little creepy face/ Saying funny things that you have never heard/ She has a little creepy cat and a little creepy bat/ Little rocking chair and an old blue hat/ That little creepy girl oh she loves to sing/ She has a little gift an amazing thing/With her little funny eyes of hazel/ With her little funny old blue hat/She will go and set the world on fire/ No one ever thought she could do that
5) Are we human or are we dancer? Enough nonsense. Please.
6) A 30-minute interview with Tokyo Hotel. Because they're one of those bands it's considered ok to hate, I'm not gonna go on about it. I really do wish teenagers these days had slightly smarter people to look up to, though.
7) New Oasis song/video. So boring that I'd rather watch another 30 minutes of Tokyo Hotel saying nonsense into the camera than listen to the whole song. On the other hand, we did have tons of fun trying to find other such thought-provoking lyrics as "Love is a time machine up on the silver screen". (You know... love is a rabbit chewing grandma's knickers; love is a blue fat alien dancing in your brain; love is a cucumber in a wheelchair etc.) Deep stuff... deep stuff.
8) Kanye West live at the EMAs. Thank God Estelle saved his American boy's ass by coming onstage and singing with him, because Love Lockdown was simply horrifying. Some people should be told that they can't sing, no matter how big they are. Oh yeah, someone should notify the manager of the Ting Tings that their sales are decreasing with every live appearance as well.
9) A two-hour documentary about Britney Spears' life. I really like the girl and feel sorry for her, and actually thought her first album was good pop music (too bad she didn't actually write any of it). But, my God, she depresses the hell out of me. Hearing her answer questions about her life was painful; hearing her trying to justify herself just made me want to step into the TV and give the girl a damn hug. MTV!! Did you really need to air this depressing stuff on Christmas Eve????
10) Coldplay wannabes polluting the music scene. The same Coldplayish guitar riffs every other song, same Chris Martin-inspired (French revolution and all that) jackets every other video. Yawn.
1) Katy Perry hosting (and performing at) the MTV Europe Music Awards. Practically the most untalented, brainless, unfunny, revolting, sleazy without even being hot, manufactured bimbo to come out of the music industry after Paris Hilton. I liked Paris more, for the record.
2) James Blunt's video for 'Love Love Love'. I was truly shocked. I really didn't think a song or video could be more horrific than "Beautiful". And I don't mean this in a trying-to-be-funny way. This video really makes me scared about the world we live in.
3) Speaking of things that make me scared about the world, there was this Italian ad for ringtones.... I won't even go into it because you won't know what I'm talking about, but believe me, vomit-inducing, scary shit.
4) This. Id est, Estonian singer Kerli Koiv's "Walking On Air". Song lyrics: There's a little creepy house in a little creepy place/ Little creepy town in a little creepy world/ Little creepy girl with her little creepy face/ Saying funny things that you have never heard/ She has a little creepy cat and a little creepy bat/ Little rocking chair and an old blue hat/ That little creepy girl oh she loves to sing/ She has a little gift an amazing thing/With her little funny eyes of hazel/ With her little funny old blue hat/She will go and set the world on fire/ No one ever thought she could do that
5) Are we human or are we dancer? Enough nonsense. Please.
6) A 30-minute interview with Tokyo Hotel. Because they're one of those bands it's considered ok to hate, I'm not gonna go on about it. I really do wish teenagers these days had slightly smarter people to look up to, though.
7) New Oasis song/video. So boring that I'd rather watch another 30 minutes of Tokyo Hotel saying nonsense into the camera than listen to the whole song. On the other hand, we did have tons of fun trying to find other such thought-provoking lyrics as "Love is a time machine up on the silver screen". (You know... love is a rabbit chewing grandma's knickers; love is a blue fat alien dancing in your brain; love is a cucumber in a wheelchair etc.) Deep stuff... deep stuff.
8) Kanye West live at the EMAs. Thank God Estelle saved his American boy's ass by coming onstage and singing with him, because Love Lockdown was simply horrifying. Some people should be told that they can't sing, no matter how big they are. Oh yeah, someone should notify the manager of the Ting Tings that their sales are decreasing with every live appearance as well.
9) A two-hour documentary about Britney Spears' life. I really like the girl and feel sorry for her, and actually thought her first album was good pop music (too bad she didn't actually write any of it). But, my God, she depresses the hell out of me. Hearing her answer questions about her life was painful; hearing her trying to justify herself just made me want to step into the TV and give the girl a damn hug. MTV!! Did you really need to air this depressing stuff on Christmas Eve????
10) Coldplay wannabes polluting the music scene. The same Coldplayish guitar riffs every other song, same Chris Martin-inspired (French revolution and all that) jackets every other video. Yawn.
THE BRIGHT SIDE: Yes, as you can guess from the picture above, it's about the much-advertised "Pitchfork500", which kept LHNA good company during the holidays. I don't care if you think that Pitchfork was good 5 (or more) years ago and now it's crap - this really is a must-read. I haven't agreed much with PF lately myself, I don't think every Animal Collective album is genius and I think Vampire Weekend are boring. But the fact is all best-songs-ever lists I've seen always have three things in common: They include about a thousand songs from the usual suspects (Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Radiohead etc.). They generally stick to the philosophy that Older Is Better, suggesting that musically not much happened since Nirvana. (The 2000s are practically absent from most tops - and we are, after all, only one year away from entering a new decade) And, of course, a last great problem is that there really isn't that much variety. Where's twee in all these anthologies? The most you'll get is a mention of The Vaselines or Belle & Sebastian. Where's fabricated mainstream pop in the last two decades? Or has there really been nothing good after Madonna or Prince? Also, doesn't at least one Of Montreal song deserve to be on EVERY FUCKING LIST there is? Now say what you will about PF, but this book has all these things. There's twee and there's pop and there's Of Montreal. There's Eminem, there's My Bloody Valentine, and there's Minor Threat and there's Bright Eyes. And yes, there's Radiohead, Bowie and The Rolling Stones, but there's also Kylie and Justin. And there's also Modest Mouse. And there's also The Decemberists. And for that you should read this.
Sorry! If we kept them up or re-linked them we'd risk losing our blog! The only reason we were able to repost it is because Firefox remembered our history, otherwise we would have lost the entire post (see our post on the subject) .
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