Snap, Crackle and Popstars

Anyone who is following the still-hilarious Calvin Harris on bloodyTwitter will have seen that this morning he got sent possibly the greatest thing we've ever seen:



That's right - Calvin Flakes. And check out the headphones on the bird thing. Incredible.

Obviously, that got us here at Love Machine thinking about whether this concept could be rolled out into the rest of the world of pop music. Naturally, the answer is yes - Kellog's and Nestle, just send us the cheque in the post.

We give you:

ALPHABEETABIX



SPECIAL K(YLIE)



RICE PIXIES



AND FINALLY...

CRUNCHY NUTINI CORNFLAKES



Brilliant.

We're rockin' our hips like yea. Just FYI.

Remember these guys?



We feel like we know them quite well, having watched this video literally far-too-many times. We've actually given them names and invented back-stories for them, but we won't go into that here. Anyway, we feel that they would definitely approve of this excellent handbag house remix of Party In The USA:

[audio:mileycyrus-partyintheusa-cahillclubmix.mp3]
Download here

OK so it's not as good a job as The Freemasons or Sidechains would have done, but frankly we'll take whatever we can get.

Why can't popstars just make sure every song has a four-to-the-floor beat, funky bassline and plenty of swooshes in the first place, to save people like poor old Cahill from slaving away adding them later? Lazy.

Poor old Basshunter

So, every day you wake up with a hot girl who brings you a cup of coffee with a smile on her face (never quite gets the amount of milk right, but nobody's perfect)...



...you've spent Christmas together with only the slightest tiff when you ate the last Quality Street then snored through the Queen's Speech...



...you're just about to take a break from cavorting with bikini-clad models on a boat to propose to her...



...when there's suddenly one of the most brilliantly unexpected moments in pop video history:



Is this the end of Basshunter's increasingly insane story arc? What precedent does this set for future surprise pop endings? Will we start to see things like Pixie Lott bleeding to death after catching her nails while executing a Pixie Handclap?

Anyway, just when we thought we couldn't possibly love Basshunter any more, we found his version of Jingle Bells:



"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the jingle-bass"

Leighton Meester's new single is very good

The debut single from Leighton Meester is noteable for two reasons:

1. She looks like this:



2. She is one of the stars of Gossip Girl, which is one of those American TV shows about beautiful people having emotional crises which we obviously can't stand but watch with our girlfriend just so we can have quality time together. And if we watch the odd episode on YouTube because we were out, it's just so we can keep up with the plot. And Chuck really is quite dreamy.

Anyway. Against all our expectations, her first proper single 'Somebody to Love' is really quite good. Robin Thicke (who is apparently a famous R&B man in America) supplies the main melodic bit, freeing up Leighton to do a sexy talk-singing bit in the verses which is fine with us. The song slinks elegantly along with a nice electropop groove, and the chorus isn't exactly 'Goodbye Mr A' but is still catchy enough.

Good grief that was a terrible description. Probably best to just listen here:



Oh, and she's already had a leaked sex tape - is there anything not to love about the girl?

We just like the attention, really

Checking our e-mails on the bus home from the first Love Machine clubnight, we were surprised to see we had an e-mail from SyCo Ltd, the entertainment company which keeps Simon Cowell in teeth whitening treatments.

Had he heard already about the success of our Cheryl shot, and wanted to invite us to see her perform on the following day's X Factor?

No :(

The following user(s) have broken your terms of service by uploading copyrighted material they neither own the rights to nor have permission from the owner to distribute and/or transmit. Namely, "Happy" from the album Echo by Sony BMG recording artist Leona Lewis...

Oh.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Much like an ASBO, we are seeing this as a badge of pride rather than a deterrent.

Anyway, we've found a much better version which we really should have used from the beginning:

Our Brilliant Club, A New Brilliant Gaga Track

Well, what a fun time was had by all at the inaugral Love Machine on Friday. Huge thanks to everyone who came down. Some general observations:

-Cheryl was the biggest selling Girls Aloud shot
-The remix of Cheryl's single sounded even better than we were expecting on a club PA and after 10 of the above drinks
-Natalie Portman's Shaved Head (who were a late additon to the line-up for their first UK DJ set) have a lot of electropop remixes, including one genius robot version of ABC by the Jackson 5
-Sound of Arrows and Bright Light, Bright Light were both there and, we can only assume, thought it was the best night of their lives
-Balloons and Party Poppers are brilliant, but tying balloons is way harder than it should be
-Erasure's A Little Respect, after 21 years, is still getting better with every listen
-The new Lady Gaga track, Bad Romance, is going to be pretty big

Speaking of the latter, it is now up to listen to on this fansite: http://gagadaily.com/2009/10/today-bad-romance-radio-premiere/

There is no doubt that Gaga is now in the realms of the properly huge, era-defining popstars, despite, incredibly only having been active in the UK for a year - Love Machine got a text from their Aunt last week:

"Hi is lady gaga the controversial one?"

(The answer was yes)

The last time Love Machine got a music-related text from that Aunt, it was about James Blunt. That's the scale we are talking now.

Bad Romance, one of 8 new songs to be featured on a rerelease of her album, The Fame Monster, is certainly going to solidify her position and almost certainly expand it - it's basically Poker Face Mk II with the Gaga heavy 4 to the floor beat, some yodelling, a rappy verse and a melodic chorus. Well done Ms Gaga.

Huge thanks to everyone who came down on Friday - details of the next one to come very soon........

Tonight's Love Machine clubnight in numbers

100 balloons
1 massive helium canister
200 party poppers
A huge number of sweets
6 hours of music for £3
2 stolen roadsigns
1 Cheryl Cole remix which is so good we can't quite believe it

We've also got the first EVER UK DJ set from so-hot-right-now US crew Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, to whom we mean no offence by billing them below some sweets.

Plus Love Machine DJs and guest DJs Talia (Popstarz) and David Oh (Show Me The Monkey), not to mention happy hour until 10pm and £1 shots all night.

See you tonight!

Knowing You No More - A-Ha

Word reaches us on the pop grapevine (the BBC website) that A-Ha have decided to call it a day after 25 years of synthpopmaking.

The good news is that they have said the split will allow them to pursue "other meaningful aspects of life, be it humanitarian work, politics, or whatever else"

May we be the first to champion Morten as the first President of the United States of Europe.

Obviously we will now be paying tribute to A-Ha at the greatest club night of all time, but for the meantime, as we grieve together, some A-Ha Facts for you.

-Take On Me was originally called 'The Juicy Fruit Song'

-The band's first album, 'Hunting High and Low' sold 11 million copies worldwide. This is 10.9 million copies more than the Fratellis 2nd album sold, and 11 million more than the Fratellis 2nd album deserved to sell.

-The Living Daylights is absolutely brilliant and doesn't get the credit it deserves as one of the all-time top Bond themes. It certainly knocks that Alicia Keys/Jack White monstrosity into a massive Norwegian cocked hat.

SING THAT BLOODY CHORUS LOUD AND PROUD (and check out the synthflute solo)


-A-Ha played to the largest paying audience ever in 1991 at Rock in Rio - 198,000 fans. The combined scream when they all tried to hit the high note in Take on Me is thought to have killed several dogs and initiated the melting of the polar ice caps.

-2000's 'Summer Moved On' features Morten setting the world record for the longest held note in a UK hit song, at 20 seconds. In 2005, The Crazy Frog tried and narrowly failed to beat this record.

Their last concert will be held here in Oslo, Norway, at the Spektrum Arena on December 4. See you there.

And in the meantime, enjoy probably the definitive version of Take On Me:

You Want to Know Why This is so Bad - You Want Love Machine to Show You

On the face of it, Mariah Carey's new version of I Want to Know What Love Is, is almost too easy a target. She's taking on an absolute undisputed classic which will be almost impossible to top. There are rumours her voice isn't what it was after her lamentable X Factor performance last year (nb. does the song really say, 'and I'm gon' fart like a whale each time you let me down' at 1:24?) and she hasn't done a decent song for years.



BUT SERIOUSLY

THIS IS RUBBISH

Incredibly, the overriding thing that makes this cover bad is that it's actually too restrained. Not something we ever thought we'd say about Mariah. If Leona had done this, it would have got the balls out treatment, with 2 key changes, a drumkit from hell and a choir of descended archangels. Mariah's version is insipid and limp, there's that terrible minimal R&B production and her voice, out of her immediate comfortable range,  is just horrible. As ever, let's put it to the Love Machine test:



0:29 Fingerclicks....bloody fingerclicks

1:16 Horrible horrible chorus. She sounds a bit like this (1:37)


2:28 Change this lonely liiiiiiiiiiiaaahhoohahahahahiiiiiife

2:32 WHY ISN'T THERE A MASSIVE SNARE DRUM IN NOW. At least there's a gospel choir

2:58 At last a sort of crap drum kit but it's only got 41 seconds to do anything

3:04 SOMEONE'S GETTING STRANGLED HERE

3:15 AND ANOTHER ONE

3:23 Kettle's boiled

Leona's Stop Crying Your Heart Out had better be preposterously enormous and brilliant, that's all we're saying

Dionne't call me (a) baby

Putting Amy Winehouse in charge of overseeing your child's personal development seems about as good an idea as letting Uffie house-sit when you're on holiday, but it seems to be working out for Dionne Bromfield. When Love Machine was 13 we were busy playing Sensible Soccer on the Amiga and being too scared to talk to girls, but Dionne has just made her TV debut performing on Strictly Come Dancing with her godmother (godmother!) Amy Winehouse.



There's no denying that she's pretty bloody good, but we don't really see the point of putting out a motown covers album. C'mon love keep up, JoJo had knocked out amazing songs like this by the time she was 13:

Pop songs reviewed by YouTube commenters

Social Networking is, apparently, the future - print media is dead, blogs are old hat, and old hats are probably back in style because fashion seems to go in cycles like that.

So rather than reviewing singles, it seems like it would be far more meaningful to pick a sample of comments from the relevant Youtube videos. Let's give it a go.

The Saturdays - Forever Is Over




Taio Cruz - Break Your Heart




Mini Viva - Left My Heart In Tokyo




Brilliant.

Uff and Ready

We've been big fans of young Uffie for a long time here at Love Machine.

For those of you who don't know who the ruddy hell we're talking about, Uffie is a 21-year-old Paris via Miami rapper/singer, who is signed to the so-hip-it's-literally-painful French record label, Ed Banger - home to the godfather of French dance music, Mr Oizo - remember this ? Awesome.



Young Uffie has been around for a couple of years and has divided opinion on whether she is the future of twisted pop and the new Madonna or a talentless scenester who gets attention because she's quite cute, has often filthy lyrics (a la Ms Battaglia) and had a DJ boyfriend who produced her records (she is both).

We saw her at Get Loaded 2007 and she was a bit rubbish but still brilliant and we couldn't really work out why. See the above paragraph.

Anyway, she has finally decided to bring out an official video, but for a song which first came out about a thousand (2) years ago, Pop the Glock. Again, it is brilliant, but terrible at the same time. If we think about it much longer our heads might explode so just watch the video and see what you think......



Do you think the people in the video are full-time cool people?

Can you get paid for that sort of stuff? If you can, then they should be earning the most money and should be ruling the world.

Pop Star Pets - The Gift that Keeps on Giving

After the amazingness of Katy Perry's pet cat Today's Sun via GQ reveals that Robbie Williams has a pet poodle....called......Poopette.

Incredible.

Another one same time next week.

Kaci Battaglia - The Time Has Come

We have resisted writing about this tune until now. Keen followers may have noticed it striding high on top of the scientifically-proven-to-always-be-correct Love Machine for a few weeks. We wanted to wait until there were confirmed UK release details. None have been forthcoming. We can wait no longer.

THIS IS THE BEST POP SONG OF THE WHOLE YEAR AND WE ARE COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY OBSESSED BY IT

Where is our checklist?

-Massive sounding: YES
-Vocal performance: HUGE
-Fit but you'd be slightly scared: YES
-Swearing: EXCELLENT
-What Womanizer would have sounded like if Britney had really, actually, properly meant it and still had some hunger (not burgers) left: YES

It needs no further explanantion, just watch it. JUST WATCH IT.



Expect to hear this at least 5 times at the best club night of the year

Get a pound off if you come in that swimsuit (ladies only).

2 pounds off if it's raining

R Kelly is very good at sex

We find the problem with a lot of modern R&B is that there's too much subtlety; too many layers of meaning to be stripped away to unravel the enigma of the artist's poetic soul. No such beating about the bush (not that kind at least) for R Kelly on 'Number One Sex':



"Can't nobody mix chop and screw it like us / All over the living room hittin it like us"

Well R Kelly, ever heard "those who talk about it most do it least?"

At least the girl in question seems to be legal this time. Are we allowed to say that?