The new Muse single has a riff that sounds almost uncannily like Britney Spears' "Do Somethin'".
Honest. It's pretty much the same. Although it is a much better song, which makes up for it…
Category: Music
Reviews, comment and Pete Doherty Suicide Watch all come under this category.
Embrace – “World At Your Feet”
It's terrible. Diabolically awful.
You're the first in my life
To make me think
That we might just go all the way
And I want you to know we're all hanging on
There's worse to come:
They'll come and yes they'll try
To break us down
But we know that we'll never lose
If we keep moving forward and don't look back
Now, I thought the worst metaphor we were going to get was the title, but this is just taking the mickey now.
And then, to cap it all off, there's the chorus:
With the world at your feet
there's no-one you can beat
yes it can't be done[Embrace, "World At Your Feet", the official England World Cup 2006 song.]
You probably expected it from the title (I mean, come on) but there is absolutely zero excuse for lyrics like that. Compare World in Motion…
Express yourself
Create the space
You know you can win
Don't give up the chase…[New Order, "World In Motion", the official England World Cup 1990 song.]
Now, doesn't that just beat the crap out of the Embrace song?
OK, so it's not exactly Dylan, but actual anthems don't need to be. "World At Your Feet" is not anthemic; it's Coldplay-lite with louder guitars and without any of the lyrical talent. As an anthem, it is a failure; as a song, it is a disaster. The FA should be ashamed. Shoulda given it to the Kaiser Chiefs, shouldn't they?
Funnily enough, this is possibly the first time in ages that I've agreed with the majority of posts on a BBC Have Your Say thread. Guess the song really is that bad.
PDSW1: For Pete’s sake
Yes, the NME's favourite junkie has been arrested again. But before he was, he did manage to produce an amusing BBC headline:
That headline describes exactly what I think of him. "For Pete's sake" indeed.
[And yes, that is IE7 on Vista. It's just what I was using at the time. Crappy airbrush circle added in MS Paint; oh the shame.]
Opportunities?
New Beatles graverobbing album for Cirque du Soleil. Cirque are cool. The Beatles were the best thing ever to happen to rock music, but after three Anthology sets and god knows how many bootlegs, do we really need more archive material unearthed?
On the other hand, McCartney and Starr did a wonderful job with "Let It Be Naked", so if it's with their approval we can only hope. Others may think differently.
YouTube throws up so many wonderful things
For example, the original Soft Cell "Sex Dwarf" video, which most people think is completely unavailable; as banned by local Trading Standards and in piss-poor third generation French VHS quality (for no obvious reason; the video isn't as nasty as, say, NIN 'Broken Movie'.) Oddly, the video release version of "Sex Dwarf" isn't on YouTube, although an Old Grey Whistle Test performance with more listenable audio is.
It's nice that there's a place on the Internet where we can watch this stuff on demand, because otherwise it's a trawl through godawful file sharing outlets hoping we'll find a .mpg – videos are somewhat rare, especially ones like "Sex Dwarf" that weren't even properly released on VHS. Plus, YouTube allows us to find stuff like this, which you'd normally never see even on the best of DC++ hubs. I love it.
Embrace picked for England World Cup song
So once again, barring either hell freezing over or the second coming of Jesus, the only decent official England football song will remain World in Motion – which was an accident anyway.
No surprises there, but they could at least have picked someone like the Kaiser Chiefs who would hopefully have produced something fun. Even the awful pun ("World At Your Feet") suggests it's going to be a toecurler, but we can only live in hope that one of the unofficial singles is bearable. Especially since England, as usual, will probably survive to the quarter finals and then get knocked out on penalties, meaning for prolonged exposure to the song.
But then, football in Britain is wrong, and has been for a long time – concerned only about itself and not about the people that blindly fund it. And when they look at things pop-cultural, it invariably gets it wrong – and how (backing something completely unmemorable against Three Lions in 1996, just as the most obvious example.) There are many more important things to complain about in British football – like how our ticket prices are a lot higher than continental Europe's – but this is just the most obvious example. Oh, New Order, where art thou?
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 