Shirley It's Time For The New Year

Love Machine is finally recovering from the barrage of enormous roast dinners over Christmas and, as you do at this festive time of year, listened to Pa Love Machine set the world to rights on what 'proper music' is.



As is so often the case, Pa Love Machine turned out to be pretty much bang on with everything.

-The Cheryl Cole album isn't very good apart from Fight (Fight) For This Love and Three Words, which are both excellent
-Paul McCartney is still brilliant live and has written quite a few good tunes in his time (even with Wings)
-Gary Barlow is, and always was, a genius
-And Shirley Bassey's new album, The Performance, is bloody brilliant

In particular, this song, written by Richard Hawley, is an absolutely stunning track - a songwriter with experience and mastery of his craft, and a vocal performance nothing short of breathtaking by ol Burley Chassis. Sometimes you have to let the old gits show you how it's done. Let's all hope we get a bit more pop with this sort of depth and real emotion in 2010.



Happy New Year from Love Machine

x

Merry Christmas from Love Machine!

Is This The Funniest Story of the Year? Oh No It Isn't etc....

Amy Winehouse has been quiet of late, 'working hard' on her new album (much like the Klaxons) so it really is fantastic to see her pop her head up just before the end of the decade which, in column inches at least, she has dominated.

She halledgedly did the following last night:

-Kicked a theatre manager in the groin at a pantomine starring Anthea Turner, Mickey Rooney and Bobby Davro
-Kept shouting 'he's fucking behind you'
-Yelled out 'fuck Cinders, Prince Charming, marry me'
-Called the Ugly Sisters 'bitches'
-Told Anthea at half time, 'I love you, Anthea, sticky-back plastic, I love you'
-Made children cry
-Was carried out kicking and screaming by her two minders

Rumours that she was just upset that regular Prince Charming, Ben Adams of A1, was too ill to perform have not been confirmed.

In amongst the outrage from the tabloids, we really have to point out the following:

-The Ugly Sisters are bitches
-Dionne Bromfield's parents really couldn't have chosen a better godmother
-This story is absolutely hilarious in every respect

Well done Amy and all of us at Love Machine hope you have a crack-ing Christmas

Alicia? I hardly knew 'er

So - Alicia Keys. Maybe it's just us, but we're always surprised when we realise just how huge she is in the US because she never seemed to make it properly massive over here. Mentally we had her chalked up as a bit of an also-ran, but she has actually sold over 30 MILLION RECORDS worldwide. To put it into context, that's roughly more 29,930,000 more than Pixie Lott.

Anyway, as if to prove a point to us (although she surely has better things to do), she's suddenly become very conspicuously incredible.

Exhibit A: A duet with Beyonce called 'Put It In A Love Song'. It starts with "Yo B?", "What up A?" and somehow gets better from there:



Exhibit B: A really, really, really good single called 'Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart'



You think that's bad? Try sleeping with my wife etc etc

Exhibit C: A brilliant piano version of Empire State Of Mind. We're not normally fans of taking a perfectly good song and going all slowjamz, but this really does add something to it.



Well done Alicia.

Girls Can't Catch have a new SINGLE...single...(single)

(See what we did there?)

We saw Girls Can't Catch supporting Sophie Ellis-Bextor and The Saturdays at what was probably the best gig we've ever been to. We weren't, if we're honest, entirely convinced. However, they did play an excellent song called 'Echo' which will - a mere six months later - be their second single.



The official video is quite dramatic (several rungs up from croquet in a rubbish dump) but embedding has been disabled. Why do people do that?

Your cut-out-and-keep Girls Can't Catch FAQ:

Are they 'The New Girls Aloud'?
No, there are only three of them.

When the promotional dust settles are we looking at a Saturdays or Girl Thing situation?
We don't know, but if we were a betting blog we'd say that in the absence of much serious competition they'll probably do ok.

Which is 'the fit one'?
According to YouTube commenters (the voice of reason in our increasingly reactionary society), it's Pheobe. But we can't be bothered to work out which one she is.

So there you go. While writing this articles, we remembered the 'fact' that a duck's quack doesn't echo. A bit of Googling found out not only that the fact is actually a myth, but also that some scientists in Salford have spent way too long investigating with the help of a duck called Daisy.

Best line: "Daisy has been eaten by a fox, but her daughter lives on."

It's A Crime

We don't know who Vikki Stone is but we take our Santa hats off to her for this effort...

One foot in the rave

The return of 90s dance and rave tunes in a new guise is something you'd never have seen coming a couple of years ago (Little Man Tate covering Mr Loverman, anyone?) but makes total sense now it's with us.

Truth is, the early 90s was such a golden age for pop/dance crossover that if you nick the chorus it's very hard not to make a good song. Calvin Harris' 'I'm Not Alone' borrows heavily from 'Madagascar' by Art of Trance, and even Tinchy Stryder's tedious rapping is more palatable when paired with Olive's 'You're Not Alone'.

Dizzee's 'Dirtee Cash' takes the trend a step further by not using a sample so much as playing out the whole of 'Dirty Cash (Money Talks)' by The Adventures of Stevie V and rapping over the verses. As ever Mr Rascal is judging the public mood perfectly: fresh from releasing 'Holiday' in July, 'Dirtee Cash' is the perfect soundtrack to the pre-budget report:



Next logical topical step: Haddaway's 'What Is love' with added sleighbells for Christmas. Make it happen, Dizzee.

Anyway, just when the 90s dance revival was going so well, someone had to go and ruin it by taking a great song and making it all serious and boring:



Candi Staton would be turning in her grave if she was dead.