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2006-06-17T09:48:08Z

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Sandi Thom: You're 15 minutes are up...,

2006-06-16T15:33:04Z

'Smile It Confuses People', is a mediocre album at best, and a powerful example of the power of PR at worst.

As a pop-psuedo/folk package all (why have people been comparing her to Joni MItchel and Janis Joplin? WHY?), the songs are pleasant enough, but none have any sustainability. None have contagious musical hooks, or inspirational lyrics, or even challenging chord combinations.

With the exception of the debut single, all the tracks are painfully.., blah. Every track features hand clapping. Every track also features background 'jingle bells'. MOST tracks feature foot stomping as backing track. All of which combines to create a homogenous sludge that is the aural equivalent of eating plain celery. Celery by itself is mostly forgettable. Almost nutrition-less, it merely gives your mouth something distracting to do until you can find a flavourful acompanying dip, or better yet, figure out what real food to chew.

The official webpage maintains that Mz Thom wrote, the entire album herself. If that is true, (and the 'truth' of her as an artist is something I'll explore in just a moment,) then she is soley to blame for the identikit sound, and worse the intensely hakneyed lyrics which STUFF every song. As for her 'authentic' debut single "I wish I was a punk rocker", well I shall get to ~~dissecting~~, deconstructing that later on. So with flat packed songs, lyrics similar to five year old poetry, and slightly less than mediocre vocal talents, Thom may well be a one hit wonder. Which brings me nicely to the hit single itself.

Now for the deconstruction...

[chorus:]
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In '77 and '69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

Excuse me? Punk rock and flowers have never EVER been a done deal.
If anything the birth of Punk was to be the antithisis of all things 'hippyfied' which wearing flowers in your hair defiantely is...,

Why 77 and 69...? Well quite simply they vaugely bring up nostalgia and more importatnly they make the chorus rhyme correctly. Also, notice how they are numerically backwards?

Summer of '69 is the same. Byran adams would have been a mere ten years old in 1969, so couldn't have gotten into all the teenage hi-jinks described in the song. It's faux nostalgia, but it sure sells records.

[Verse One]
When the head of state didn't play guitar
Not every-body drove a car
When music really mattered and when radio was king

How was radio king? And is she talking about 77 or 69 here? Because TV was definately saturating most of the UK market in 77. Which president plays guitar? Did she use guitar simply because the Clinton-eseqe saxaphone wouldn't have fit the rhyme?

When accountants didn't have control
And the media couldn't buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything.

Oh I bet she wishe's she had some hindsight on THIS particular verse. So what made computers scarey exactly? Who didn't know everything? I don't know anyone who knows everything now. Google is not God people. Wikipedia is not the end all be all of knowledge. Well all still read geniune paper and glue books. The death of the "book" has been trumpeted almost as much as the dead of popular music, yet things still keep on keeping on pretty much the same...,

[chorus]

[Verse Two]
When pop stars still remained a myth

Eh? Oh you mean when they only had managers instead of P.R. companies? Riiiight.

And ignorance could still be bliss

Ignorance is never bliss. Ignorance is nearly always damaging, unless you happen to be the kind of bovine personality who likes to spout utter cow excrement like 'Ignorance is bliss'.

And when God saved the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale

The song "A Whiter Shade of Pale", was released in 1967. Written and recorded by the British group Procul Harem, and a better LSD anthem there is (arguably) not. Also see how that sentence makes absolutely no sense at all? There is no tangible connection between the National Anthem of the United Kingdom and a trippy 60's pop song.

My mom and dad were in their teens
And anarchy was still a dream

Whose dream? Is she saying we live in anarcy now ?

And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail.

.., or a (..., what was that little invention now....? ) oh yes a TELEPHONE !
God forbid that as a species we learn to communicate better, and over greater distances!

[chorus]

[Verse Three]
When record shops were still on top
And vinyl was all that they stocked

Audio cassettes were patented by Philips in 1963.

And the super info highway was still drifting out in space.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), The grandaddy of what we now ferer to as the'internet' was created in 1958. Besides, which without the internet, and a fake P.R. story, no-one would have heard this drivle, and so I wouldn't have to write this piece.

Kids were wearing hand me downs
And playing games meant kick arounds
And footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face.

I know nothing about the history of football (and this one exception, I am blissfully ignorant) so I cannot comment on this one.

[chorus]

[Ending refrain]
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care

Do not care about what precisely?
I know plenty of people who care about differnt issues.
Care enough to go on marches, vote, join action groups, send / orgnaize petitions, boycott unethical trade... I could go on but you get the point..,

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

Merciful End Of Song.

The lyrics to this are of course ripe for lampooning. The first time I ever heard it, I thought to myself that the line was "I wish I was a bank robber with flowers in my hair", which is actually a better line, but there you go.

And let's not forget her dubious 'struggling artist' credentials.

Permit me to quote from the official webpage:

It was during the cold, short days at the start of 2006 that Sandi Thom had her Eureka! moment. Instead of driving to gigs up and down the country with her band in her clapped-out car, as she had done for years, the singer from Scotland resolved to try a different approach. She bought a webcam, and announced a run of 21 shows to be performed on consecutive nights during February and March in the basement of her flat in Tooting, South London. The audience capacity in the flat itself was limited to just six people. But the half-hour shows were to be broadcast, free of charge, via her website at www.sandithom.com. The first night, 70 people tuned in to watch, the next night it went up to 670. And by the middle of the second week she was performing to a peak audience of 70,000. By then, the suits from every major record label had visited the flat to see the show for themselves.

Now, we all know this is an utter LIE. A spinning of falsehoods, a stretching of the truth. In Short. P.R. Bumpf. Allow me to quote from Wednesday May 31, (2006) Copy of the guardian:

Thom has been compared to Janis Joplin and KT Tunstall and, according to the reams of press cuttings that accompanied her rise, was penniless and struggling until she secured a £1m deal with RCA Records by webcasting 21 gigs from her Tooting basement. But amid accusations that the webcast stunt was part of a contrived PR campaign, a Cambridge-based PR company yesterday confirmed it had been working with her since last June to boost her profile ahead of the release of her single I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair),

And being caught out was the death knell of her popularity. British people love the underdog story and HATE feeling like they've been duped.

One week after the 'singer from nowhere stormed the charts', the single is no longer number one. This could simply be because people got sick of the insipid excuse for a song and simply stopped buying it, OR, it may be that the entire P.R. Stunt just left a sour note in the minds of the record buying public. Only the album sales will tell.

first entry

2005-09-28T10:27:17Z

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Those who don't *do*, *review*

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Sandi Thom: You're 15 minutes are up...,

first entry

Those who don't do, review