This is amazing!

Emiliana Torrini

This is really cute, although it probably reinforces the base cultural stereotype that all Icelandic women are like Bjork, albeit at 80% strength. It also reminds me of this:

I've taken a while to get into Me and Armini, probably because it's a bit too subtle for my more brutal musical tastes, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that a colourful clip has reignited my interest. Which reminds me of a sobering moment over Christmas, when I was watching KylieX2008 with my 20 month old niece. 

I noticed that she was dancing along with intensity, but only, apparently, because the line of 8 men dressed in colourful space suits reminded her of the Wiggles, except for the amyl I imagine. This was of course a zeitgeist moment, because only a few months later K was hooking up with the Wiggles for the masterful Monkey Man (see below). 

Skip to 2:57 for the most exhilarating bit of pop I've heard this year. This makes me happy.

I had a very vivid dream this morning that Britney Spears was in some Lord of the Rings-style landscape, where she had 155 babies. It then unfolded that Lynne Spears was somehow capturing these babies in strange holding-camps. Unsettling. Thoughts?

So, so cute!!!!

Is this perhaps Kylie's sans William Baker vision?

Ha! How those smooth opening sounds and Ricky Martin long-sleeved man-tops take me back. Also amusing how the two other band-mates are systematically hidden behind the slightly more hot one. But I'm mostly struck by the marginally-too-aggressive lyrics. As in, there seems to be a lot of talk about subverting someone's autonomy. Lots of talk about "getting something".

I do occasionally watch the Today show in my zombie-wake-up window between around 7.10-7.40. It provides a safe "nothing" space, akin to those lost minutes in the shower when you're not quite ready to admit it's over and the trudge to work begins. I can't say I *enjoy* it though. In fact it's quite painful to watch, mostly because, since the days of Jessica Rowe, Today has been acting like the more serious aunt unsuccessfully trying to crack wacky jokes 'cause her zestful sister (Sunrise) was getting all the attention. 

It's also painfully conservative, with Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic playing the Mum and Dad role, as in the awful 9am with David and Kim, and Sunrise -- like the classic older guy newsreader, younger girl reader couple, which makes us feel more comfortable because its, like, nuclear. BUT, the most interesting thing is that Karl, it seems, has been "Koched". As in, at some point over the last few years, someone evidently decided Karl was too boring and serious, and asked him to act like David Koch. And now he's acting all alpha male, making wobbly sports commentary, vaguely sexist comments, acting all Dad-like when interviewing younger women, and making bad jokes. Very unpleasant. And I still haven't forgiven Lisa Wilkinson for her days on Beauty and the Beast, in which she apparently represented some kind of "new" feminism that even at the time seemed a bit shaky. I do sound full of bile.

And while briefly sidetracked on the topic of news, this is really cute. I have an odd respect for CNN guy Anderson Cooper -- even though he is kind of ridiculous (e.g. reporting from war-torn provinces in buff-chest revealing t-shirts, daredevil reporting etc.), I think he's actually pretty darn funny, and has a keen pop culture appreciation. As evidenced here. And how cute is Ellen when she loses, awwww.

I am completely gob-smacked by tonight's Four Corners interview with Marcus Einfeld, the $77 parking fine former federal court judge. Watching it reminds me of the lie-spirals I occasionally found myself caught in back in primary school, but on a terrifying scale. Most compelling, however, was watching Four Corners' reporter Sarah Ferguson ruthlessly pound him with straight-to-the-jugular questions... mostly, "do you regret not paying the parking fine?" Anyway, this reminds me of how much I love hardline ("fierce") ABC journalists, which I will now rate in order of admiration:

1. Leigh Sales

2. Liz Jackson

3. Sarah Ferguson

4. Ali Moore

5. Emma Alberici

Aside from being greeted by bumblebee#2 on the 96 ("buzzing along", with luxurious seating, a touch of French flair, and none of that Siemens teeth-grinding shudder), what also made me happy today was my wealth of new music. Particularly:

I'm loving Yes so far, but particularly this... No one does sentimentality like the PSB, and this definitely feels like a return to form. Even with some cutely naff PSB rhyming ("pain", "rain"), its polished yearning for the past gives me goosebumps. And I think working with Xenomania has been a really good move -- they haven't thrown away their sound, and it feels nicely fresh.

If I was working for Kylie's team, I would be very worried that I've decided not to buy her new remix album. I AM her core audience, and if I turn my back it's a very bad sign, unless she can win over some of the more vapid drones on her forums. But I did download this... I initially loved Boombox because I thought the lyric was "give me OCD", which would have been *wicked*, but I think it's actually "give me your CD". Oh well. But hearing K mouth the words "Let it drop, make it rock", as improbable as that is, has a certain magic to it. I really, really want her to be hardcore. The lyric also formed one of the best bits of KylieX2008, in the first section of the following, before Can't Get You Out of My Head:

Then there's Jenny Wilson which I'm still getting my head around, Animal Collective and Fever Ray, courtesy of Elanor, but that's not for here. All of which provides a pleasant buffer from boring things like divisional restructures, standard deviations and plumbing.

More Roisin Murphy...

The Sarah Ferguson look...

Mia Farrow meets doillie...

Dynasty...

Bowie...

Air France v. Shirley Temple...

NEWSFLASH: Miley Cyrus' real name is Destiny. Destiny Hope to be exact. Which adds a new twist to the best lyric of 2008: My best friend Leslie said/ Oh, she's just being Miley...

Actually, See You Again needs to be acknowledged as one of the watershed moments of 2008, announcing as it did that tweenpop was where musical excitement was *happening*. Although the greatness of See You Again stems from the way in which it seems so very inappropriate for tweenpop, namely the slightly been-around-the-block lyrics, such as:

I've got my heart set on you and I'm ready to wait/ I have a heart that will never be tamed...

I've got a way of knowing when something is right/ I feel like I must've known you in another life/ Cuz I felt this deep connection when you looked in my eyes...

Does that sound like 15-year old speak? To be fair the chorus does ("the last time I freaked out, I just kept looking down... the next time we hang out, I will redeem myself..."). But the effect of this alternating old-young-old-young verse-chorus pattern is to set up an uncomfortably predatory vignette (to steal your dancefloor observations, Catherine). Here it is one more time...

New Jenny Wilson!

What a pleasant surprise. Love and Youth was the soundtrack to my restless 2008, and a very fitting soundscape to accompany protracted crises about getting older, lack of direction, indecision, deadening of the soul etc. Its talk of 'crazy summers' led me toward my bizarre and slightly ill-conceived European adventures, and brief parting from The Government. But what seductive lyrics for anyone of a romantic disposition:

Anyhow, I know the truth. It's what they call Love and Youth.

Sold my bed, no need to sleep these nights/ Walking round in search for stars these nights/ The sky is perfectly brown instead of black/ Let my shoes lead me forward, please bring me some luck.

Crazy summer/ Hot breeze/ Don't care about what people said.

Then the summer comes/ Hey, ain't that the roughest time the roughest of times/ Sun bleached hair/ No matter what you've just got to have fun...

See how easy it is to stitch these into a narrative leading all the way to Stockholm? (strategically ignoring any irony) Very easy. I love L&Y's breeziness, humour, but also its edge of melancholy -- anyone who has the time to write a concept album idealising love and youth is presumably writing about it from some distance. And it's just so romantic! As in romance in the unformed, unfocused way -- the romance of what might happen next. In Sweden.

Let my shoes lead me forward...

So back to my pleasant surprise that there's something new out. Have to pick it up tomorrow, but I have to say I'm actually a bit weirded out by the single, The Wooden Chair. At this point it's hard to separate the music from the imagery, but as a package its pretty full-on. For one thing, the clip's very Judy Garland TV-special (as in severe and draggy), with none of the lightness of Let my shoes lead me forward. The song's growing on me very, very quickly, but it's also quite severe, particularly the dramatic chorus (which for some reason reminds me of mid 90s Des'ree crossed with Jenny Morris. Don't ask why). But how very, very exciting!