Tune In Tuesday: New Kylie and Cheryl

She's back!  The Golden Girl!  Aphrodite herself, Kylie!  Her new single "Time Bomb" is destined to be a MASSIVE (club) hit in the US!  But hey, maybe she'll tour here again to promote it!  I missed her "Aphrodite: Les Folies" tour (money issues), so I'd love to make up for that!

And that's not all!  Fellow British chanteusse, Cheryl (formerly Cheryl Cole formerly Cheryl Tweedy) has returned, post-divorce, post-getting-shitcanned from the X-Factor, with "Call My Name."  (And she's wearing the UGLIEST pants ever!)

If only these Brit Girls had a chance of striking it as big over here as Brit Boys One Direction and The Wanted!

Tune In Tuesday - My Favorite Songs EVER! Vol. 1

This is a new feature. It won't be weekly or anything, although there will probably be another one next week, but I've decided to showcase my absolute favorite songs of all time. Hopefully, they will be diverse and interesting. They're probably all gonna be hella gay, though. None moreso than my inaugural feature...

Kylie's debut international single, " Should Be So Lucky!" Prior to this song's release, she'd been a beloved soap opera star in her native Australia. I get the impression soap operas are a lot bigger deal in other countries. On the show Neighbors, Kylie played Charlene, a mechanic (!) opposite heartthrob Jason Donovan who played Scott. The couple was so dear to the Australians that when they finally tied the knot on TV, it was treated in the press almost like a real royal wedding! Jason Donovan also launched a successful musical career and shared a duet with Kylie, "Especially For You" which appear on both their albums.DAAAAAAAAAYUMMMM! That is MAYBE the scariest mullet ever!

Kylie appeared at a live benefit, and although not technically a singer, she sang "I Got You Babe" with one of her Neighbors co-stars. When the audience demanded an encore, she asked the band if they knew the Little Eva classic "The Loco-Motion." She sang it and a recording of it was released as a single, spending seven weeks atop the Australian pop charts... the highest selling Australian single of the year! (I've read that it was the highest selling Aussie single of the decade, but... I dunno, that sounds fishy.)With that song's success, her record label arranged for her to travel to England to work with British producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW) who'd produced the hits "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" by Dead Or Alive and "Venus" by Bananarama. The producers... forgot she was coming. So while Kylie waited in the lobby, they slapped together THE FINEST PIECE OF POP MUSIC EVER. Kylie recorded the song in less than an hour and left. The rest is history!

I Should Be So Lucky


The song debuted on the British charts at #9 but quickly rose to #1, where it remained for eight weeks! In Australia, it became the highest selling single of 1988. It hit #1 in many countries and in Japan was named "Record of the Year!"
Her debut album followed. Her second single "Got To Be Certain" debuted at #1 in Australia and made it to #2 in England. She followed that with a newly SAW-produced recording of "The Loco-Motion" which was also a massive hit and her first major hit in the US, hitting #3 for two weeks. "I Should Be So Lucky" was released here as the follow-up to "The Loco-Motion" but only made it to #28 (#10 on the Dance Charts).

Kylie wasn't able to replicate the success here of another SAW-production, Rick Astley, but her debut album is a frothy, bubble gum pillow fight! I can listen to it from start to finish... except I always rewind and listen to "I Should Be So Lucky" like 40 times in a row! It may not have been as successful here, but it's still one of her signature hits that she performs on nearly all of her tours!

Throwback Thursday 09-30-10 You Give Me... Funky Love, Funky Love!

I have this weird predilection toward... I'm not sure how to put it... I get obsessed with pop artists that aren't really huge. Well, I mean, of course Madonna is massive and Kylie... not in America, but everywhere else. But there's something about certain singers that I L-O-V-E but that aren't that notable. Maybe I'll do a series and discuss them all. But today, I am focusing on my favorite singer, circa 1991, Cathy Dennis!
Cathy's first US hit was as the featured vocalist on a track by D-Mob a.k.a. producer Dancin' Danny D, "C'Mon And Get My Love," which reached #10 on the US Pop Chart and #1 on the Dance Chart. It was part of a wave of club music that was blowing up in the mainstream. It was a fantastic summer party song!

Man, THAT was an unfortunate hairdo! Dancin' Danny D is the director/rapper on the song and he would produce and provide vocals on Cathy's solo debut single, "Just Another Dream" from the album Move To This. It was widely rumored that it was Rick Astley doing the "Just Another Dream" echo on the song, but it wasn't. Sounds like him, I suppose, but not him.

Thank God she made friends with a straightening iron before she filmed this! The Funky Love, Funky Love arm swirl is still my go-to dance move of choice! This single made it to #9 on the Pop Chart and #1 on the Dance Chart. She soon followed it up with "Touch Me (All Night Long)" which soared to #2 on the Pop Chart and once again #1 on the Dance Chart.

Girl never met a turtleneck she didn't like! She even wore turtleneck catsuits! She must have been BURNING UP when she performed live on MTV's Spring Break edition of Club MTV!

She broke it down and showed her sensitive side on the next single, "Too Many Walls."

"Too Many Walls" made it to #8 and is actually her one song that I hear the most frequently today. I never hear the dancier songs, but this one will come on when I'm like grocery shopping or waiting to get a haircut. Guess ballads are timeless!

I didn't realize this, but a fourth single was released from Move To This, "Everybody Move."

She must've found a buy one get ten free Catsuit sale! "Everybody Move" barely made an impact, unfortunately. It only made it to #91 on the Pop Chart and #41 on the Dance Chart. This is probably because this was right when Nirvana and Naughty By Nature arrived and pop music was shifting toward hard rock and rap and away from dance.
She released a follow-up album Into The Skyline featuring the single "You Lied To Me" which unfortunately flopped. It made it to #32 on the Pop Chart and #12 on the Dance Chart. To be honest, as enjoyable as the song is, it sounds identical to her earlier hits.

She never had another hit in the US, although she performed better in the UK. What's funny is that "Touch Me (All Night Long)" was a bigger hit in the US than any of her other songs in the UK, but she continued cracking the Top 40 over there for well into the late 90s. I wish I'd known, because music from like 1993-1997 in the US SUCKED SWEATY GORILLA BALLZ!!! Hootie & The Blowfish, Better Than Ezra, Sister Hazel, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Fastball... explain to me how those aren't all the same band! Anyone? ANYONE?! Man, I woulda killed everyone in all of those bands to hear some fresh new Cathy Dennis goodness!

Interestingly, she has proven MUCH more successful as a songwriter. She's written some of the biggest, awesomest hits of the last ten years or so:

Never Had a Dream Come True - S Club 7 (2000)

Natural - S Club 7 (2000)

Can't Get You Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue (2001)

Come Into My World - Kylie Minogue (2202)

Toxic - Britney Spears (2004)

I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry (2008)

Last Name - Carrie Underwood (2008)

Paranoid - Jonas Brothers (2009)


There were a lot more, but most were only hits in the UK or weren't singles. Recently she wrote several songs recorded by Heidi Montag. Look... they can make ANYONE sound good! I will own up, this song is on my iPod and I listen to it frequently!
Fanatic - Heidi Montag (2010)

SEE!!! It's pretty damn good! You can't tell who's singing! Sounds like a robot! So ugh!

But seriously, to this day, I stick a Cathy Dennis song into every party mix play list I make! I still love those songs! They're great, classic dance songs! And when I dance to them, I always do the Funky Love Funky Love arm swirls! All together now...

Tune In Tuesday 06-08-10

Kylie

Fuckin'

Minogue

Aphrodite

The new album: 07/06/10

Featuring the single, All The Lovers.

You're welcome!

Party Like It's 2009 (Everybody Dance Now)

Apparently a decade ends in the '9 year and not the following '0 year, so this decade is actually ending in just a few weeks. I'd have thought there would have been more mention of that. I remember a few years ago when VH1 was still making the entertaining-beyond-comprehension "I Love The..." series, that I always felt that the last year or two of a decade were completely incongruous with the preceding years. It was like they were more set up for the decade to come than a continuation of the former, at least when it comes to pop culture.

Now with this decade, it's kind of hard to classify it already, since we're still in it and don't have the benefit of hindsight. There was no "grunge" or "gangsta" or "New Wave" or anything distinctive. There were a few semi-movements, like the "Latin Explosion" which consisted of like five artists. But still, nothing big enough to classify the entire decade by. CLEARLY, Lady Gaga is this biggest thing this year...
...and while there was certainly a lot of dance pop in the '00s, her style is a lot different... you can tell, because now everyone is copying her style and you can recognize it, "Ke$ha sounds an awful lot like Lady Gaga." (You think her parents actually named her "Ke$ha?" You should never have punctuation in your name, except a hyphen. And even that isn't for everybody.)


It seems as if when every decade ends, we gravitate towards more dance-y pop music. I mean, the '90s SUCKED as far as music is concerned... let me rephrase that, the '90s SUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDDDDDD as far as music was concerned... I remember being IN the 90s and realizing that! Thankfully, by the end of the decade, the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys came along and began the healing process. I'm not going to say that all the ensuing pop stuff was actually good... I have a real problem believing that LFO's "Summer Girls" even really happened. I mean seriously "William Shakespeare wrote a whole buncha sonnets?" REALLY? That ACTUALLY happened? HOW?! But anyway, it may not have BEEN Shakespeare but I'd listen to that crap before I'd ever listen to Hootie & The Blowfish or Alice In Chains or Nirvana or The fucking Goo Goo Dolls or... well, we could be here all day. Yep, in my book Mandy Moore trumps Kurt Cobain. Take that, Good Taste! ("I'm craving for you, I'm missing you like candy!" Missing you like candy? What does that even mean? Don't care! Doesn't bother me one bit!)

But as rotten as the '90s were, the '70s TRULY sucked on a whole different level! It was like the suckiest decade EVER for music! I Googled it and the year I was born, 1974... SHUT! UP!!... among the top songs were "The Way We Were" by Barbara Streisand, "Seasons In The Sun" by Terry Jacks, "The Streak" by Ray Stevens and "Sunshine On My Shoulders" by John Denver. So now you know exactly when elevator music was invented. There were a few bright spots like "Love's Theme" by the Love Unlimited Orchestra and "Dancing Machine" by the Jackson 5, which eventually led to the glorious wonder of DISCO!
Donna Summer was like Madonna before Madonna. She ruled the Earth by the end of the decade... even the biggest rock band around, KISS, released a disco album, Dynasty, and had a disco hit with "I Was Made For Loving You"... not surprisingly, most KISS fans' least favorite KISS song. (Seriously, you think that's worse than "Lick It Up?" That just SOUNDS gross.)
The ironic thing is I was scared as all hell of KISS. I had nightmares of Gene Simmons coming to my house, clinging to the windows and sticking out that scary ass tongue. Who knew that the makeup made him LESS scary than he is in real life?!

Then came the 80s and apparently, according to those dipshits at Cominskey Park, Disco died. Except not really. Okay, so the Village People never had another hit, but dance music lived on... Madonna, Cyndi, Michael, Duran Duran... people were still grooving... they just didn't use the dreaded D word. But by the end of the 80s, synthesized dance pop was back in vogue, thanks to a production trio from England, Stock Aitken and Waterman, the GENIUSES who gave us...

KYLIE!!!

And RICK ASTLEY!!!
Quick aside, the FIRST time I ever went to a gay bar, in New Orleans, I drove past and "Together Forever"(Together Forever and never to part! Together Forever we two!) was playing on their giant video screen and I realized, "I'm HOME!"

I actually LOVED music in the early '90s... C+C Music Factory, Marky Mark, Cathy Dennis (who went on to be much more successful as a song writer than a singer, penning "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" by Kylie and "Toxic" by Britney among others)... then Nirvana came along and ruined everything.

Then, like I said, pre-fab pop groups and singers came along and rescued us from that noise.

Ahhhh, sweet relief. (Although, I will attest that at some point, we all owned that first Matchbox 20 album... and loved it. It's not something to be proud of, but it is a sad fact. We also all tried to decide who was cuter, Rob Thomas or the guy from Third Eye Blind... ADMIT IT!!! P.S.- Rob Thomas.)

The beginning of the '00s was pretty fun, Britney, Christina, BSB, *NSYNC or N-SYNC or N-Sync or 'N Sync... whatever, etc. Then of course came the backlash. Eminem, Avril Lavigne, etc. There was that whole "The" band thing with The Hives, The Vines, The Strokes, etc. Whatever happened to those guys? I loved The Hives!

And now it's time to dance again. You could go back to last year, "Closer" by Ne Yo, "Forever" by Chris Brown... now Gaga and all her imitators. Yeah, there's other stuff out there, but nothing as huge. So, get that New Year's Eve party mix ready and don't leave off "Love Game." Let's all take one more ride on that disco stick. (Dirty!)

America Loses Right To Refer To "American Football" As "Football!"

(Not really.) This blog could be subtitled "Australia Is The New Sweden," for those of you that recall my old Myspace blog about my love for that crazy Scandinavian country responsible for Swedish Meatballs, Swedish Fish, Ikea, awesome synth pop and Pippi Longstocking. Now it's those wacky, upside down, digeridoo-playing cobbers who have gotten themselves all in a lather over a certain pop trainwreck we like to call Britney Spears. Apparently, people were walking out of her "concert" in droves because they realized she was lipsynching. How sad is it, as a society, that we American's responded nonchalantly, "It's Britney Spears. That's all she does." Quick aside...
SOMEONE really needs to pull this girl aside and say, "Look, you know when you look in the mirror and see yourself? That's NOT what the rest of us see." Bitch has more muffin tops than Panera Bread! It's called a SHIRT! Try wearing one! It's been a long-ass time since "I'm A Slave 4 U!"
We must forgive the Australians for (gasp!) actually expecing singers to sing, seeing as how they are used to a higher caliber of pop diva.
Anyway, as for the title of this post, as we all know, (most of) the rest of the world refers to soccer as "football." Americans just made up a completely different game and stole the name. Kinda like how we just randomly made up our system of measurement. Seriously, it's like *I* came up with that!
I recently discovered, however, that what Australians call "football" is neither soccer nor American football, but rather RUGBY. I discovered this by way of something called the "Gods of Football."

Hell-O!

Ahem, yes, let me compose myself. The uh... hee hee... Gods of Football is an annual calendar featuring the stars... wooo, is it hot in here?!... of their Rugby League and Australian League Football... NAKED!!! It benefits breast cancer, so all I have to say is suck that, Tide in a pink jug! How many naked footballers do I get to see during that walk-a-thon? None? Awwwww, I'm busy that day. Darn it all!

This is my favorite, Kayne Lawton:

Those eyes are drool-tastic! He doesn't even have to get naked... wait, what am I saying?!

So SORRY, America! You had a good run with the name "football." You too, Soccer. But clearly, Australia is more focused in using "football" to its fullest extent, so hand over the moniker. I'm sure you'll come up with suitible replacement names. How about, "That thing you do after tail-gating?" Seriously, until I get to see Carson Palmer's ass, you've lost the rights to the name. Shoulda thought about all that first! That's what you get for poor planning. So anyway, I have a flight to Australia to catch!

(Once again, not really!)

So Now What?

I just realized that the new Superman/Batman animated movie comes out on DVD tomorrow, along with Madonna's new Celebration album and DVD and realized, whoops, maybe I quit my job too soon. Well... I mean, it was so not worth the aggravation, but oh yeah, that's how you get money. And don't give me that Christmas is just around the corner nonsense. Like I'm going to wait to get these! It wouldn't be so bad, but we have that vacation coming up, so I really ought not to be spending money on non essentials, but we all know I'm going to anyway.

Also, aggravating is DC Universe Classics Wave 10 is hitting Walmart right now. So far, I haven't found them and luckily, I only want four of them, so yay that's $60 versus $95. But, I mean... it's still $60. I went hunting for them last week and didn't find them, but I did find the large Gotham City 5-Pack for $55. The problem was, I only wanted the Lex Luthor figure that was included. I already have Batman and he's dressed in my favorite version of his costume (where his cape, cowl, boots and gloves are royal blue like on the Super Friends) and Superman. I don't have Catwoman, but this version was wearing a rather garish lavender catsuit, so I didn't really want her and I didn't want Two Face because I just don't really like him. So obviously, I couldn't justify paying $55 for just one action figure. But then again, I didn't have Catwoman and Two Face and even though I wasn't crazy about them, they'd still help fill out my collection. Oh! And I could put THIS Batman (with black cape, etc.) on my shelf with the other Bat-Characters and move THAT Batman over to my Justice League/Super Friends shelves and I could put this Superman with the other Super-Characters! So there was no waste at all!!! I could use all of these so I HAD to buy the set! I love my brain sometimes!

The vacation is complicating the job hunting process, because I watched Flipping Out and this guy they hired, on his first day, asked for a day off. To go see Buffett. Which, quick aside, if someone gave me a Buffett ticket, I'd go to my job and say, "Hey, can you please schedule me an extra shift on this day so I don't have to go to a Buffett concert? Thanks!" But anyway, so we leave on Oct. 7th, which is... holy crap, next week! So yeah, I don't want to apply for a job and then be like, "Oh p.s., I'm leaving for a week. That's cool, right?" Not only that, but we're going to Memphis the first week of November. Oh here's another aside. So David said he wanted to leave on Saturday, Halloween. I was like, "So we're gonna miss Halloween?" And he was like, "Oh, I thought it would be fun to spend Halloween night in Memphis." WHY THE F!@#$ WOULD IT BE FUN TO SPEND HALLOWEEN NIGHT IN MEMPHIS?! We don't know anything about the city nor any person living there! That makes no sense whatsoever! I don't even have plans yet, but I still want to be home to give out candy at the very least! Also, I SO FREAKING LOVE my costume idea! So someone invite me to a party.

So curse you, my jet-setting lifestyle! Also, it would probably help if I had SOME clue as to what I want to do. I can't get a real job with my awesome 12 year-old degree in Creative Writing which of course I never did anything with... well, except for this. Maybe I should print these out and attach them to my resume. "You see it's a play on words! Fantasy! Get it?!" I'd LIKE to go back to school, but don't know how financially prudent that would be. I could get a part-time at the same time, but do I really want to go back to being 21 again? I read Texts From Last Night and the answer is no. (Check out http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/ ... Hey! Hey! Finish reading this first!) I mean, I have a home life now. Do I really want to spend days in class and nights... doing whatever someone will give me money to do? (Seriously, I saw that Busken was hiring and considered it.)

I'm not really driven. I envy people who knew all along what they wanted to do with their lives. Well, I kinda knew, but didn't have the patience to stick with it. Hard work. Boo. Also, I started out at art school, but it was impossible to get into any classes! I went two years without being able to take Basic Drawing I because it filled up so quickly! But now it's like, even if I do get into a program I like, will I REALLY be able to compete with all the fresh-faced 21 year-olds who are so much hipper and more in touch with current fads and trends... I realized how behind I was, watching that Windows commercial where the 5 year-old girl creates a Power Point slide show and realized I was less savy than a 5 year-old! I don't know how to do anything except download songs and order clothes. And toys.

So maybe I should wait to get back from the trip (Chicago/Napa/San Fran) to start hunting. Or maybe I should apply now and hopefully do interviews when I get back. Now the question is... apply where? Oh well, not going to let it bother me now. And no matter how lost I am right now, it doesn't remotely compare to how fried, frustrated and stressed I was at work. (See, how I can't even use that place's name anymore?)
On to cheerier topics, the "real" vacation is California, which we've been planning for about four months now. We're stopping in Chicago for one night to see Kylie on her first (and probably only) U.S. Tour! Perez posted her set list, which looked like she had written it with her feet. People kept asking, "Why isn't she doing Can't Get You Out Of My Head?!" "Why isn't she doing Locomotion?!" I had to log on and translate her chicken scratch. There were a lot of abbreviations which people weren't able to decipher. (But seriously, how hard is it to figure out that "Devil" refers to "Better The Devil You Know?") Harder to figure out? L.A.F.S. I had to consult my iTunes library and figure out that it was "Love At First Sight." Oooo! Maybe I could get a job as one of Kylie's backup dancers! I just... need a whole new body. A rhythm. So, guess I should keep looking.