I ♥ THE ♦ LIFE
Has anyone else noticed that the one distinguishing feature of the first 4 months of the new decade is a striking resemblance to all things mid-80’s? Take the new Goldfrapp album for example – I may listen to it on an i-pod but the music could have easily been played on a walkman 25 years ago – all Van Halen synths and Irene Cara hooks. At one point Alison Goldfrapp even coos “I’m on the hunt I’m after you” just like a floppy haired Simon Le Bon-Bon did when he was hungry like the wolf. The Van Halen/Duran Duran mash up is also repeated in the cover art – jumpsuits and twirly perms but close your eyes while you’re listening to Head First and you could be back in 1984. Mind you, if the Tories win on May 6th – you will be.
Everywhere you look in popular music in 2010 the 80’s are it. Isn’t all the hoopla over Gaga just a little bit reminiscent of the furore over Like a Virgin era Madge?
Isn’t La Roux really just Annie Lennox with a Something About Mary make over?
Empire of the Sun – A Flock of Seagulls with equally bad hair? Substitute the indie cred of Vampire Weekend with Talking Heads and who could tell the difference?
Of course it could be that I’m just getting old. When the We Are The World benefit single for Haiti was released a month or so ago, I could identify precisely 3 “stars” in the video: Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion and Michael Jackson. At least one of those is dead and another should be. I have also become one of those boring old farts who moans “Oh the original’s much better!” every time some new cover version comes on MTV Hit List, inevitably being sung by tattoo covered jail bait. Other symptoms of this condition include secretly watching The Secret Life of An American Teenager just because Molly Ringwald’s in it and inwardly cheering when I see someone from “my era” make a comeback.
Someone like Sade Adu. Not that Sade has really been away – she’s quietly been making quality albums intermittently for the last 25 years while the Nora Joneses have come and gone. The release of Ms Adu’s latest album, Soldier of Love, has inspired me to revisit some of her past glories though instead of dusting off the vinyl, I now cherry pick tracks off the net. Diamond Life came out when I was in my last year of school – a time when cultivating an interest in cocktail jazz while drinking cheap Spumante seemed like the height of sophistication. It’s just dawned on me now though that Diamond Life was to the 80’s what Back To Black was to the Noughties – the pop/soul/jazz crossover that appealed as much to Giles, the music snob pseud who bought his records in Notting Hill, as it did to Auntie Ngaire, who bought one album a year. At Christmas time. From Tesco. Sade circa 2010 still looks and sounds staggeringly good. Uncannily so as if time has not aged her one bit. One suspects she has a rather ugly portrait lying in an attic somewhere. Every so often a cleaning lady ventures up there, takes off the covers and dusts it off, wondering to herself why Sade Adu has a painting of Amy Winehouse in her attic.
♦
Italy however is not so much in the grip of an 80’s revival as a medieval one. The latest attempt to get legal recognition for gay partnerships was thrown out of the courts in the same week that the Pope’s big number two (pun intended) announced to the world that the paedophile crisis was the fault of homosexuals. Cardinal Bertone is either stupid or evil – quite possibly both. This is what he said:
“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true"
Who actually “told” him this recently? The Easter Bunny? I could argue that statistics the world over have proved that gays are far less likely to be paedophiles than say Catholic priests. Any idiot can use unsupported, unspecified “experts” and statistics to push their own agenda - blogs (even this one) are full of it. However bloggers don’t have the heft of the Catholic church behind them to make sure their hate campaign reaches the widest audience possible or the cloak of moral respectability which the institution still enjoys yet obviously does not deserve. But hey, complaining that the Pope and his cronies are bigots and homophobes is a bit like saying the world is round, oranges are… well orange and Liam Gallagher is a twat. It doesn’t actually get you anywhere.
Instead I’m going to buy a pair of those new old style trainers with the built in leg warmers and go Dancing with Myself or Dancing on the Ceiling. And as for the Pope & Cardinal Bertone are concerned, well, as Van Halen once said – “they might as well JUMP…”
To watch the video of Sade's Soldier of Love Click here:
To watch the video of Goldfrapp's Rocket Click here:
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