Announcing...the first Love Machine clubnight!

I'mma let you finish, but we've just go to tell you about the greatest clubnight OF ALL TIME.



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The first ever Love Machine clubnight is happening at The Fly on New Oxford Street on Friday 16 October, and the third Friday of every month after that. It's a big pop party, with Love Machine DJs spinning two floors of the cream of current and classic popular music: Madonna to Mini Viva, Kylie to Calvin and everything in between.

Love Machine in numbers:
TWO floors of the best pop music of all time
FIVE Girls Aloud-flavoured shots for just £1 each all night
SIX hours of pop, from 8pm to 2am
A LOT of balloons all over the place
ONE free party popper to let off at midnight
AN UNDISCLOSED NUMBER of special guest performances and DJ slots to be announced
and only THREE pounds to get in before 10pm

If you're in London, you cannot possibly have anything better to do on that night. If you don't live in London, maybe you should. If you don't live in the UK, Easyjet is excellent value if you book in advance (but steer clear of Ryanair).

Give us your music requests in the comments!

That Eminem/Lady Gaga VMA award in full...

Eminem: "What has happened to my career. First Bruno's arse in my face, now I'm stood next to a woman with a dress made from a tablecloth over her face and a hat made of crepe paper. Somebody help me. Please. Why didn't Kanye run onstage to save me? Or any other superstar rapper/producer for that matter, although I can't think of any at the moment....."

Gaga: "You forgot about Dre"

Eminem: "Bugger, always doing that"

Gaga: "That's nothing, I forgot to make any eye holes. What an oversight. Or rather, undersight I suppose.  Can you give me a hand offstage, I can't see the way"

Eminem: "This never happened with Dido"

Gaga: "Oh I can't Stan her. Ahahahaha. Stan? Stand? Dido? Stan? Geddit?

Eninem: "If you make another joke like that I'm gonna punch you"

American Lady on left: "Maybe you should just poke her face."

Eminem:  "Somebody kill me"

How the hell can it be the same bloody band then?

We are sure there is much to be written about the historical pop context of bands changing their line-ups. There is probably a philosophical argument to be invoked about what constitutes the essence of a substance, without which it cannot retain its identity.

Ultimately though, it just reminds us of Trigger's broom in Only Fools And Horses:

Best.Headline.Ever

Sightings of Nick Lachey leaving an Acme store are currently unconfirmed.

Anyway, this is a very good excuse to remember Jessica's greatest song and video:



Oh no hang on, this is the right version:

Jessica Simpson: A Public Affair
by ocima7

Nostalgia corner: Mis-Teeq

Alesha Dixon: she can dance, she can sing, she can rap, she's not entirely unattractive. She's probably the pop star Love Machine would most like to take out for a pint.

She was also 1/3 responsible for Mis-Teeq's 'Can't Take It Back' which was all kinds of brilliant. We'd also forgotten just how good the video is.



If you're short of time:
2.23 Bra lands on the head of a judge
2.51 Alisha's brilliant rap
3.00 Anatomical diagram of a playa
3.16 "Hey!"
3.27 Unfaithful protagonist is pwned

There weren't any antics like that when we had to go and contest a speeding fine, we can tell you.

Is the Cheryl Cole single any good?

It's easy to forget that beatifically weeping national treasure Cheryl Cole also has a decent set of pipes on her.

While watching the live DVD of the Girls Aloud 'Chemistry' tour over the weekend (as Love Machine likes doing in its spare time), we remembered that we hadn't yet mentioned her new single 'Fight For This Love'. So to establish whether it's any good or not, we popped the track onto the Love Machine See-Saw and asked a couple of passing dogs to adjudicate as we weighed up the evidence. NB: the fulcrum is set at Alexandra Burke's 'Bad Boys'.



As you (and the dogs) can see, the arguments in favour are clearly more weighty, and therefore the song is officially Love Machine approved. So there you go.

Pixie - She Don't Give a Fuck

Who'd have thought Pixie was listening to Super Furry Animals B-sides when she was 5 years old?

(0:37)


(0:58)



Also, Love Machine was having real problems with this - thank god a tutorial was made:

Visitor - Love Machine Likes You

Right, this is going to veer dangerously close to actual journalism, but stay with me boys and girls.

We heard about a band called Visitor. They had but one song on their myspace, called Los Feeling. It was all very mysterious, but the tune was good, oh yes, the tune was good. They then announced a gig. So Love Machine braved Hoxton on a Wednesday night (we put ourselves in this kind of peril for you, dear readers) and went to see them play live.

Love Machine arrived and saw this on the stage:



And we got very, very excited indeed.

Unfortunately, when 2 men arrived on stage to play, they didn't use it. It belonged to another band. We were quite upset. (note to Visitor: please get one of these. Thanks)

But then the music started, and lo it was good. It was slap bang in the middle of the Pet Shop Boys and The Killers with a bit of Keane thrown in, especially in the vocal department, and as Keane are brilliant, this was a good thing.

Love Machine took one of the best live photos ever during the second song, and was very pleased with themselves but got home and realised it hadn't saved. So instead of a photo of Visitor playing, here is a picture of Jordin Sparks playing live at Universal Studios in Florida.



If you take Jordin, and all of her backing band, and replace them with a mental image of 2 men, one playing synthesizer and the other singing, you can see what Visitor looked like. The stage was a lot smaller too.

Visitor played 5 songs (perfect). They were all good, but the 2 standouts were Los Feeling, which was genuinely goosebump-inducingly epic, and Too Far Gone, which included the line 'It's a Sin' (not sure where we've heard that before), and had a brilliant 'bang-bang' bit before the chorus kicked in. Go to their myspace to hear both of them. It was epic, without being overblown with consistently great melodies, which is what it's all about. Keyboard man played keyboards, sang a bit and got quite excited, particularly when he wore a gold jacket for the last song (note to Visitor #2 - wear the gold jacket for the WHOLE GIG). Singer man sang very well indeed. The whole thing was a definite success, especially as they were on at 9pm sharp and Love Machine was tucked up in bed by 10.30pm.

In a further twist, (journalism alert #2) we decided to send Visitor some questions to answer. Here is what they said:

We saw your performance at Gold Dust the other night, it was very enjoyable indeed.

1. Was this your first gig? And is it true you have 'risen from the ashes' of another band? What's the story?
It was our first proper gig, yes.  We can confirm these rumours as fact.  The story as it were, is that we came to a crossroad.  We realised to achieve what we wanted to achieve, and to make the music we wanted to make, it just had to be the two of us.

2. Are you aware of the bands The Pet Shop Boys or The Killers or did you come up with your sound purely coincidentally?
We're fans of both on some level, however I would say they're just two influences amongst many.  If we literally sound like The Killers and The Pet Shop Boys, then I would say that's a massive compliment, but a coincidence.

3. What are your favourite Pet Shop Boys and Killers songs?
Pet Shop Boys; their cover of 'where the streets have no name' (AMAZING CHOICE - Ed).
Killers would be Jacques Lu Cont's Mr Brightside remix for sure.

4. Which place in the world would you most like to visit?
Mexico

5. Do you think you will do a roaring trade in badges which say 'Visitor' and thus can help people gain entry to places that they wouldn't otherwise be allowed?
That's plan b.

6. Are you considering entering the Olympics in 2012, if yes, please state which activity.
By 2012, we'll not be in any sort of condition to participate unfortunately.

7. Was Los Feeling supposed to be called Lost Feeling and there was a cockup in production, or is it aimed at the lucrative Spanish-speaking market? If the latter, wouldn't it have been better to have done the whole song in Spanish?
Good question.  It was neither. There’s a very good reason why we have
named it what it’s called. Let’s leave it at that.

8. Our other favourite from the gig was Too Far Gone. It is a monster tune. What is that song about? Is it about broken booze Britain and the growing abuse of alcohol in this country?
Too Far Gone is a tribute to confusion and mistake making. It’s about all of us; the very fabric that holds us together slowly unravelling in drunken unison. We're all a little bit "too far gone."

9. How many songs have you got written, ready to roll as it were, and do you have a song as good as Love Machine?
I would say we have 7 more that we are very happy with. We're more or less using our time now refining the album, to make it as good as it possibly can be.

10. Who is your favourite Saturday?
So far this year we have a feeling it will be Saturday on the 12th of September (Follow this up in a week - Ed).

Thank you Visitor, and keep up the good work!

Thank YOU Love Machine!  Vx

This is the new Leona Lewis single

This (this) is the new Leona Lewis single. It is called 'Happy'.

You can of course just listen to it and form your own opinion, but we've fed it into the Love Machine and the analysis is as follows:

1. It is very good. Quite how good will only become clear when you hear it on Radio 1 for the hundreth time and either think "gosh this still sounds surprisingly fresh" as you (we) still do with Bleeding Love, or quickly switch over to Magic where there is at least a 65% chance of hearing a Lionel Ritchie track at any given moment.

2. It starts off sounding like Nothing Compares 2 U, but soon settles into more of a mid-tempo stomp. Aside: Sinead was really ahead of her time with the txt speak, eh?

3. The gist is that Leona's a bit miffed about something non-specific, but really just wants to be happy. Well, don't we all when it comes down to it?

4. There's a bit where she says "don't you love in vain, 'cos love won't set you free". N-Trance would certainly have something to say about that.

5. There's a bit where it sounds like she's saying "this rubber dog's a victim" but it's likely to actually be something else.

6. It's crying out for a key change at 3.18 but it doesn't happen.

7. There is however a great kitchen sink moment at 3.31 where some fireworks should go off in a video or something.

So there you go.

Stream it here: [audio:leonalewis-happy.mp3]
Edit: Removed :(

This Will Either Be The Best Thing Ever or The Worst Thing Ever

It's being reported from various sources that Gary Barlow is working with N-Dubz.

This can only go one of two ways. There is no middle ground here. It is like a deep gorge, with brilliance on either side but with the permanent threat of cataclysmic awfulness in the middle, into which one could fall at any moment. Below is a schematic diagram of the situation we have here.



The Cenozoic Lavas represent the possibility that they could create a 'Walk This Way' for the pop generation - the meeting of hip hop and pop in perfect harmony (don't mention the Sugababes/Girls Aloud version of that song)

The Basement Rock represents the Tom Jones hip-hop album produced by Wyclef Jean.

Together we pray:

PLEASE GOD DON'T LET GARY AND DAPPY FALL INTO THE CANYON. PLEASE LET THIS BE BRILLIANT AND NOT TERRIBLE. GARY. REMEMBER HOW HARD YOU HAVE WORKED TO GET BACK TO THE TOP AGAIN, REMEMBER TWELVE MONTHS, ELEVEN DAYS, IT WENT TO NUMBER 35 GARY, NUMBER 35.

Amen

A General Observation of Katy Perry Brilliance

We're probably late to this, but we feel more people need to know that Katy Perry has a cat. And it's called.......Kitty Purry.

Which is brilliant.

Well done Katy, new album soon please. Or release UR So Gay. Either will do.

Shock News - We Love the new Alphabeat Single

Yes, that's right, do not retune your wireless(internet connection)es. In a completely unexpected turn of events, Love Machine is shocked and gobsmacked to announce that it thinks the new comeback Alphabeat single is brilliant.

A spokesman for Love Machine, in between collapsing to the floor and raising their fists to the sky and praising the mighty god of pop music, said this.

"Yesterday was just a normal day, then I heard The Spell, the first single from the Danish band Alphabeat's forthcoming second album, which I believe is also called The Spell in a display of unequivocable synchronicity. It was as if the heavens had opened unto me as I heard the following:

1. A 4 second introduction consisting of the sound of SCRATCHING A RECORD just like they used to do at the start of songs in the old days (the early 90s) (NB THIS IS NOT ON THE RADIO EDIT ABOVE - those 4 seconds were obviously crucial to avoid the song impinging on Nihal's amazing chat)

2. A whoah whoah whoahing intro from Stine (may the Lord bless her new red hair) - strangely reminiscent of this (0:42)


and this (0:37):


3.  Quality early 90s keyboard vibes

4. 0:55 - CHORUS. BIG CHORUS

5. When is Anders going to sing?

6. Has he been fired?

7. It's OK, he's in - 'can you feel the power working baby girl/I think the spell is working uh-oh' - he's obviously become the shamen of the band

8. Speaking of The Shamen - TUNE:


9. Double chorus to finish. Not as good as the 7 choruses which finish 10,000 Nights of Thunder though. Hopefully the album version will have 8.

10. Fade out on the Ride on Time 'Whoahs'

The Love Machine spokesman then spake: "verily, the Alphabeat single is really good and bodes very well for the album. They have obviously been listening to a lot of early 90s dance records and as that is well overdue for a revival I think it they are bang on the pop money, as it were. I love them more than life itself"

Take a look in the mirror, readers, and ask yourself, are you as good as Alphabeat? I don't think you are.