Covers are AMAZING

I have always adored covers - i don't know why... Perhaps because they give a new, a second chance to songs, perhaps because they remind us that there are many ways to see things, there are many ways to listen to a song. Often people think that good covers are reinventions of bad/mediocre/unknown songs. The cover that I have over here however is so NOT that... 30 seconds to Mars (indie American band that i didn't know but are fronted by Requiem for a Dream hottie Jared Leto) are covering Lady gaga's bad romance. And it's amazing. Stripped from the exuberant campness and theatricality of gaga, bad romance remerges as an epic, melodic ode to lost love, grief, despair and bad romance.

Enjoy... even without the classic roar 'ga ga ou la la'...

Things aren't always what they seem to be..

When I first sew this young man in Jonathan Ross's show -I think he was probably wearing the same suit- I was immediately convinced by my preconceptions that I will definitely hate his music as much as I disliked his attitude. To be a bit more specific: my first thoughts were that he is an alcoholic, or at least a drug addict, or a Portsmouth football fan, or Pete Doherty's second cousin, he writes cheap hip-hop music, wants to be famous, wears a suit because he is on a Friday night show in BBC and most likely I will never recall his name or his music.
When he opened his mouth, two things happened: 1. My mouth dropped, I could not match the voice with the image and 2. I felt he could be the male version of Amy Winehouse. Although I haven't heard anything else form his work, this song stayed with me easily.

Blogger's block

I am pretty sure that every single blogger in the universe has written a post on not wanting / not being able to write a post. I am not so sure this is an interesting topic for others to read but we all keep writing it anyway. Perhaps it makes us feel less guilty - for not having posted anything for a long time (like it does for me ) or perhaps it makes us stop seeing the previous post that has haunted our blogs for as long as our block has gone on. And also it buys us a bit of time, to think of something more, something new and interesting and posting it swiftly after our non-post.

So I will start thinking later tonight and I am sure I will come up with something really to cool very very soon.

Queen of the damned?

I went to see lady gaga live in Belfast last week and i've been trying to write something about it for a while. The truth is I am not sure how i feel about lady g anymore, so I don't know what to write about her.

On the one hand she is clearly different from other popstars: she can play the piano (amazingly even), she can sing like a jazz singer, she is sexually liberated |(like only one other popstar-madonna), she writes her own songs, songs that are about her relationship with her alcoholic father. In the show she proclaimed herself as the queen of the freaks, the little monsters, her fans that she says she loves so much. She said repeatedly that she knows how to feel the odd one out, or feel like an idiot even, and she likes for her little monsters to feel at home with her, in the monster ball.

Now this is highly commendable, especially in a time and age where appearances is the one thing where people care about the most. To have a popstar, a member of the cultural elite of our times tell people that it doesn't matter how they look like is something.

On the other hand, there is no other way to put it: gaga is a shallow popstar. She has rilke tattooed on her arm, and dresses as if she comes directly from a fashion museum, but she is shallow. She writes and produces overwhelmingly shallow pop songs, with pop lyrics. The only thing that saves her is that her shallow lyrics are very sexual, something that is fairly oddball for a female song-writer.

And then it is her show: a weird mixture of theatricality, over the top-ness, wardrobe malfunctions (or not) combined with out of place personal confessions (about her alcoholic father for example and about how she loves us, the little monsters). Such combinations make the show look more mismatched than eclectic and make gaga look more schizophrenic and undecided than brilliant.