SHAYNE WARD OMG FITT

my shayyyyne ward cover of his song breathless is here you. as leona lewis, a fellow x factor winner is still at number one, i covered the highest new entry, in at number 6. i struggled finding out what this actually was, seeing as the singles area in virgin and zavvi were very little help. i went with the uk top 40 highest entry from bbc, as it was the original inspiration for this project. counting downloads makes things so much more complicated for me to work out. for example, the new sugababes song is at number 85 through downloads , even though it isnt even out physically until next week. and according to the daily star i flicked through in the canteen at work, the official highest new entry is katherine jenkins , with rejoice ( written by gary barlow, apparently).for fucks sake, if people cant even make it as easy as possible for me to find out what songs are the most popular, why bother at all? GODSAKE. maybe the fact that the daily star chart section was sandwiched between extremely detailed 'im a celebrity' updates on the fit one from hollyoaks ' chest and badly taken shots of a distressed amy winehouse should have been a dead giveaway to seek out a more official source straight away. back to the charts though,i really hate the idea of digital downloads ( free ones are completely fine, ive looked into it and its FINE. no qualms). personally i like having some kind of token for my monetary support, be it a cd/ vinyl / complimentary dvd/ fold out poster of fit one from band on sofa. possibly this is because im massively into having material items to surround myself with, and the uk public are the ones who are in the right? in other recent music news, i heard a bit of the soulja boy song that they taught me how to do the dance to in the Metro. nice steel drums sample, lads. keep on dancing.
On to the song itself then. working it out on guitar, the chorus has a similar chord progression to the breakdown in the get up kids song 'a newfound interest in massachusetts'. anyone? or is this just another case of me making things up which are FACTUALLY INCORRECT.*
I felt very uncomfortable singing a love song which had references to having children, and what our children would look like.i fail to see how this song could make me feel in the mood for love, or summarise our relationship, as these are the two least likely things that i would want to think about when i would be engaged in said act. i would find this most offputting. in all fairness , this songs quite possibly geared towards a different market , besides myself. i probably still would though. nice stubble.

p.s ive realised ive drawn the album cover and not the single cover .damn these single and album track similarities. its a better shot , so you get a better impression of what he looks like on this one, as im sure you'll agree.

*see earlier post regarding poirot/ that new take that song . probably loads more.

seeing as our leona is still there...

I decided to do a cover of a song i think is fucking awesome. I implore you to legally download/ buy outright this song... as i think its one of the best pop songs of recent years. You can download this song here. From now on though, based on what greg states, every week when the person at number one stays for a consecutive week... i will cover the next highest entry in that week, and have it up in time for the next top 40 countdown. This leads me neatly onto a feature i will call:
SUGABABES AND ME: MY RECOLLECTIONS ( PT 1: THE BEGINNING)

When i was at school, we used to hang around in this guys house after school, partly because his mum worked 2-10 shifts and rarely came back before we had left. This gentleman only listened to 2 cds: the first sugababes cd, and the theme to Big Brother 1. On one occasion, too many people were sat on a bed. One beam of his bed broke. We ended up repairing this situation using:
- massive quantities of parcel string
- sellotape
- very coarse rope
-a jar of 2p coins in a sweet jar held under the beam in question as support.

Seeing as I havent been there for 6 years, I can only assume that is still the case. Updates as we get them.

ayo technology

having consumed vast quantities of both dutch style lager and 'the hits' over the past week, i feel that im in a good position to comment on what songs are being repeated on an hourly basis. to be fair , its probably on a two hourly basis. but first, i watched the documentary about east 17 reforming. which was fucking awesome. ive seen it before, but it was well worth seeing again. tony mortimer looks and acts exactly the same as the office era martin freeman. brian harvey is a very confused, difficult person to understand. his arguments against reforming the band were pretty sound. for a start:
- he doesnt like the music tony writes
- he wants to make 'proper music, like r' n b'
- he gets punched by tony
this is all completely fine. but then tony leaves the band, they are pretty screwed because he writes the all songs, and i was of the position that the music they made was r'n b ish anyway? the programme ended abruptly, and having done extensive research ( wikipedia) i await their charmingly entitled comeback single ' FUCK THAT' with bated breath. spring 2k8 yo.maybe im missing the point a bit though. brian harvey did manage to run his own head over with his own car while he was driving. suicide attempt, cry for help, drink/ drug abuse, whatever. the guys got talent, this being possibly the most implausible story for a serious injury i have ever heard.
i had a plan to compare the ever- revolving sugababes lineup ( now only containing founding member keisha) to that of Anton Newcombe's Brian Jonestown Massacre. But it didnt really compare very well, so decided not to mention it. Instead, im going to tell you about how awesome Amelle is and not give any real reasons for this. MY FAVOURITE SUGABABE EVA. Incidentally, Heidi drops serious points for being involved in an early incarnation of Atomic Kitten ( members of which went on to join Iceland, the frozen food supermarket).
which brings me on to my final point. ayo technology is fucking awesome. the backing track sounds like the sound of the SID chip on the commodore 64. it has timbaland, 50 cent and jt on it. and the lyrics are as follows:

Why don't you come over here?
You got me sayin
Why don't you sit down on top of me?
Ayo!!!! I'm tired of usin' technology
I need you right in front of me

I think its the first song ive heard about the perils of using social networking sites for romantic purposes, and the shortfalls of its lack of tangibility. anyway. im tired of using technology, so bye. ayo indeed.

leona lewis cover.

Here is my cover of the song here.

And my picture makes our Leona more like Andrew WK. Which in no way is a bad thing.

After the drink-addled haze of my first post, im in a better position to comment on what this project is all about... so....

The rules i'm following for this entire project are inspired from the Dogme 95 movement of film makers, who aimed to distill film making into its simplest form, cutting away all the effects and post production editing that modern facilities provide, by imposing a set of restrictions to be followed by those in the collective. I have wanted to do something using this kind of restriction for a long time, but only recently after getting into making music on the Gameboy enforced by the restrictions of only 4 tracks have I found an outlet for this. So for this project the aim is to:

Buy commercially and produce a version of whichever song is at number 1 following the UK Top 40 countdown before the next weeks number 1 is announced, regardless of how finished this is, for the next year.

This song will consist only of:
-A backing track composed on gameboy, comprising 4 channels of 4 bit sound.
-2 vocal tracks , one for lead vocals and one for backing ( preferably in one take, and without any effects on the vocals. but as heard on the Leona Lewis cover, I am probably going to need to cover it in reverb and have a second swing at it.)

Along with this, I am going to draw a picture of the singles cover, and I am only allowed one attempt at this.

My aims for this project are still slightly garbled, and lacking a lot of focus, but I suppose what im trying to do is make music that seems popular to the majority appeal to myself by drawing attention to my own limitations and mistakes, as opposed to making something that is massively airbrushed , or Pro-Tools has been used to strip any kind of warmth from. When I see bands live, i don't generally watch to see how closely they resemble their recorded output, i watch to see the knowing glances between guitarists as one of them hits a duff note, or how everyone will swivel 90 degrees to cast scorn on a drummer who has missed literally one beat in the entire set. Its these mistakes which make us human, and so im hoping that I can learn a lot from listening to the most popular song in the UK that week, and trying to find out why I would find it appealing. Its going to be a long year.

game on

oh, and ive finished my leona lewis cover. all i need is a scanner for the picture, and jacks webspace, and im done. tommorow .

im going off to listen to something which isnt going to be played absolutely everywhere for the rest of the year.

rule da worldz

the first four piano chords in the take that single are the same as the theme tune for poirot. ive not looked into it, and im unlikely to do so. so, based on this assumption alone, its no wonder that they are doing so well, with those kind of influences behind them. i fucking love the early poirot stuff. DAVID SUCHET OMG.

keep bleeding

so, i bought the leona lewis single from virgin today, cost me two pounds, which i was quite pleased with. i should probably say that i bought it from zavvi. but no. its a bad name. i spent about 10 minutes milling purposefully between the upstairs aisles before eventually finding where the singles are kept. its not very big at all. started listening to it when i got back after work, and its pretty awesome when you strip it all back. the hammond organy sound is boss and im particularly smitten by the beepy, popping percussion sound running throughout, and the crunchy drums are pretty sick. decided i would need to make some changes, so i got rid of about the last 30 seconds of her running through scales on my version. i cant and never will be able to do anything involving more than one octave in a song. the chords running throughout caused a bit of problems, so i pretty much stripped it back to the 4 chords running through the entire song. keeping it pretty straight up. i have never really heard of this person until over the weekend, but looking at the album sleeve she looks very attractive, and has a very nice voice. i only hope my biro drawing of the singles cover with her on it will do her justice. we can only hope. tommorow im going to finish the vocals, record them and hopefully have everything up by wednesday.

the beginning.

my sister dropped me off in kettering station today after a weekend spent drinking, listening to bad cover bands, watching the hits on freeview and commenting on the new song by Leona Lewis, and how it isn't 'actually that bad really, if im being honest' when i realised that pop music can be the most wonderful thing ever if executed correctly. So, throughout that two and a half hour journey back to Sheffield, i thought of a plan.

the thing that bugs me is the fact that no one really cares about whats popular in the whole mainstream, top 40 anymore, whether it be down to people downloading music, having it on their fucking phone to annoy people with on buses, or just being disheartened by the whole x-factor/ celebrity love kitchen situation that it finds itself in. i think this is really sad. as a child, we used to have the radio on a lot, and when there was a song I really wanted to hear, i used to just wait for what seemed like days before it came on, and then end up only recording half of it because id not pressed the buttons down right or just pressed play on the tape or something.. but i digress slightly. the fact of the matter is, that you can pretty much hear anything you want, whenever you want, anytime of day using the internet, and i think thats killed the whole communal listening idea that radio provided. and i cant remember the last single i bought that was in the chart. so, my plan is as follows:


for the next year from this day forward, i will listen to and watch every video that is in the top ten that week,buy every new single that is at number one in the UK Top 40 chart, and with this single i will strip it down, and rework it into a song composed on little sound dj using the gameboy, record this with myself singing, and place it for free download on here. the reason im using a gameboy for this is for the simple reason that its restrictive. you can only have up to 4 different channels of sound playing at one point, so i will have to be economic with what i keep in each song. so its going to be how i interpret each pop song that the public sees as being the most worthy of their hard earned cash, each week, for the next year. so, im going to get on with transcribing bleeding love by leona lewis, and ill let you know how it goes before the top 40 countdown next sunday.