Sade soldiers on

Ever since the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s, this country’s had a proud tradition of musicians breaking America. Of these though, it seems to me that Sade has always been the least appreciated. Even Leona Lewis gets more kudos, and even she’d admit that was all down to the backing of a certain Mr Cowell and a certain Mr Davis.

Sade had no such help.

I reckon it’s down to British audiences being more fickle than their American counterparts. I can’t remember where I read it now but I recall someone once saying that if you have a top 10 album in America, you’ve got a career for life. The sheer size of the place means you’ll have enough fans to sustain a decent living.

That just isn’t the case here. Also, fashion moves much, much faster in Britain, so if you take too long between albums or have a bit of a flop, it can be game over.

Sade has never had a flop but she’s not exactly been prolific either. Her new album, called Soldier Of Love, released on February 8th, is her first in 10 years, which is probably why there’s not been a great deal in the UK media about it.

It’s a different story in the States, where some of their biggest stars have been lining up to proclaim their excitement at its release. Check out these

“This is why I still have a blog, this is so much better than anything else out there..to be part of a moment like this…how much better than everything else is this?????!!!!!” – Kanye West

"Sade is one of the most elegant, natural, sensual and impactful voices of our time!  There is no one in the world like her who can touch the very spirit of any soul from any walk of life.  She is the essence of music, that which brings us all together.  She makes her own rules, everyone else just seems to follow. She is a priceless gift that illuminates and I’m so grateful for the way she has touched and inspired my life." -Alicia Keys

Sade is a seemingly timeless centerpiece of music. Her choice of lyrics and melodies brilliantly compliment her velvet tone. My dream is to go wherever she is and record her next album. – Pharrell Williams

"When it comes to sexy, smooth, elegant R+B music, Sade IS the standard.  I can’t wait to hear her new work." – Christina Aguilera

Not bad going, eh? Sometimes you just don’t appreciate what you’ve got at home.

Jay-Z wants wor Cheryl

Well, don’t we all? Turns out that Beyonce’s other half is more interested in managing her career Stateside though. According to a report in The Sun, the Jiggaman is a big fan of X Factor. Do you really believe that? No, neither do I, but you don’t go from being a New York street hustler to running a multi-million dollar empire without an eye for an opportunity and it seems as though Cheryl represents just that.

According to the man himself, "There is nobody in the US like her right now, and I would be very interested in helping her break the US market this year. Bey has seen her perform and she told me how impressed she was. I checked her out and I was impressed as well."

I’m sure he was.

But what does he mean about there being nobody like her in the US? They’ve got millions of nice-looking women with limited singing voices. Maybe he’s hoping the Geordie accent will prove a winner.

Power To The People

We’re into a new year now, and it doesn’t do to dwell, but I just wanted to say one more thing about this Christmas number one business. According to news reports, it seems as though X Factor producers are considering bringing the 2010 final forward a week to avoid a repeat of the humiliation they suffered at the hands of Rage Against The Machine (or, more accurately, the Facebook campaign which adopted Killing In The Name as its theme tune) a few weeks ago.

Really? You mean, it was as easy as that? In the grand scheme of things it’s a very small victory, some might even say pointless, but I for one am heartened to see democracy in action for a change. So why stop now?

They can bring X Factor forward a week but who’s to say there can’t be another campaign to stop the winner automatically going to number one, whenever their single comes out?

This one isn’t over by a long chalk.

Acting your Rage

Like many other people, I listened to the singles chart countdown live last night for the first time in years. Although I’d been tipped off about the result several hours earlier, I wanted to hear for myself the moment when Scott Mills announced that Rage Against The Machine were Christmas number one.

I hadn’t felt that good since Barack Obama got in.

Although I’m half-joking about the Obama thing (only half, mind), there are a number of similarities. It was a demonstration of people power, enabled by technology, overthrowing a greedy, backward-looking, anti-creative status quo. What wasn’t to enjoy? Quite a lot actually, given the amount of ill-informed nonsense and half-truths being spouted both in the media and elsewhere.

Here’s a few:

• “Both Joe and RATM are signed to Simon Cowell’s label, so he wins either way” – This simply isn’t true. Rage Against The Machine are signed to Sony, whereas Joe is signed to Syco (Cowell’s label), which is a subsidiary of Sony. To suggest Cowell will make a penny out of the RATM sales is a red herring. But even if he did, would it actually matter that much? The protest wasn’t about corporate fat cats making money (they always have – you may as well throw away just about every CD you own in that case), it was about the British public being robbed of one its great festive traditions, namely the battle for Christmas number one.
• “The people who joined the Facebook campaign are just as much sheep as those who bought the X Factor single” – This is a particularly fatuous argument. By this logic, any group of people who come together for whatever common purpose are sheep. I’m going to knowingly invoke Godwin’s law here and ask whether those who opposed the Nazis were sheep? A bit extreme, I grant you, but the same principle.
• “The RATM song is rubbish/Joe’s song is better” – I’ve been doing this long enough to know there’s no point arguing with people’s personal taste. In this case it doesn’t even matter though because the relative merits of the two songs is beside the point. I’d have bought four minutes worth of babies crying if I thought it had a chance of making Christmas number one this year. Killing In The Name was chosen to represent this campaign precisely because it’s angry, loud, and sweary – everything an X Factor Christmas single isn’t.

• Joe’s worked really hard for it” – Oh please. He’s a nice enough lad by all accounts but he won a karaoke competition on telly and then spent just under a week promoting his single. If you think this is hard work, you don’t know you’re born etc… And don’t appeal to my sympathy. Even Joe had the gumption to acknowledge that the campaign wasn’t aimed at him personally.
• “It’s stupid and cynical” – Oh really? How stupid? It worked, didn’t it? And how cynical? As cynical as inducing people to pay, week after week, to tell you which is their favourite singer, so that you can then sign up the eventual winner, get them to record a bland and uninteresting cover version, and then have people pay you all over again to own it?  Year after year after year? Now that’s cynical.

Happy Christmas.

Rage Against The X Factor

It’s funny what getting older does to you. By now you will probably be aware of the Facebook campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to Christmas number one ahead of the X Factor winner’s single. It’s no pipe dream either. The last I heard the two were neck and neck with the bookies.

I was 17 when Killing In The Name was first released and didn’t think much of it at the time. Like a snooty kid who thinks laughing at farts is “so immature”, I thought it was unsophisticated, juvenile, and banal.  I also didn’t like the sort of idiots who jumped up and down to it at indie discos (I still don’t). Of course that kid (yes, ok, it was me) later learned to lighten up and realise that farting could be very funny indeed in the right context.

Similarly, thanks to this story, I recently had cause to listen to RATM for the first time in years and… you can guess what’s coming next… I thought it was fantastic.

Anyway, I suppose this is all by the by. The point is that if you’re sick of the Christmas number one (not so long a great British pop culture institution) being not just a foregone conclusion but both inevitably bland and uninteresting and a means to line the pockets of a certain high-trousered gentleman who doesn’t need any more money, you really should buy it.

I just have and it’s the first piece of music I’ve paid for in more than four years.

Corinne’s Comeback

Now that we’re drowning in a sea of British female musical talent, it’s easy to forget that not so long ago there was precious little to get excited about from a Y chromosome perspective. So dire was the situation that for many years the Brit Award for Best British Female was jokingly referred to as ‘the Annie Lennox award’.

And the less said about Dido the better.

Joss Stone and KT Tunstall paved some of the way for the current crop of stars but it was the double whammy of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse in 2006 which really got the ball rolling. Just three years later five of the 12 Mercury Music Prize nominees (including the eventual winner) were women.

Good stuff.

One name tends to be overlooked in this analysis though and that’s Corinne Bailey Rae. Not as in-your-face and tabloid-friendly as Lily or Amy, or as artily strange and exotic as Bat For Lashes or Florence Welch, Bailey Rae’s 2006 debut was derided in some quarters for being bland and unchallenging  – a sort of UK version of Norah Jones. Americans aren’t as consumed by snobbery as we are though, and she picked up four Grammy nominations and a personal invitation to appear on Oprah.

She looked set for an unprecedented level of transatlantic success (remember, this was before Winehouse and Leona Lewis broke big across the pond) and then… nothing. Or rather quite a lot actually. Her husband Jason died from an accidental drug overdose and Corinne promptly disappeared from view. Not that she’d ever been especially comfortable in the limelight anyway.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend her first proper gig (“in front of strangers”, as she put it) in more than two years. It was an intimate affair in a beautiful little venue called The Tabernacle in West London. After a slightly ropey opening (maybe it was just me but the drums sounded off), Corinne and her band soon found their feet and, on occasion, really flew. It was mainly new material (her second album is out early next year), which is always a tough gig for both performer and audience, but she was among friends and visibly grew in confidence as the hour progressed.

Inevitably, some of the songs were about her late husband and it felt almost intrusive to witness her perform them. The lyrics of something like I’d Do It All Again (the title says it all) are so personal that I fleetingly wondered whether she might break down mid-performance. No chance. There seemed to be a new steeliness about her, no doubt born out of her tragic experience, which was evident not just in her stage presence but in the new material itself.

Corinne Bailey Rae was already the equal of her most talented peers. Now she might just be ready to move ahead of the pack again.

I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.

Jesus Lives?

25 years ago, a dance-pop group of very naughty boys called Frankie Goes To Hollywood released a single called The Power Of Love. If you’re too young to remember them, they belong to an era when genuinely hedonistic, subversive people made successful pop music. If you’re too old, imagine an S&M Gerry and The Pacemakers and you’ll be somewhere close.

Anyway, the video featured, believe it or not, a nativity scene (below):

Now I’m quite sure this piece of news isn’t exactly unrelated to their recently released Greatest Hits collection but it’s an interesting little nugget nonetheless. Apparently their record company is trying to track down the baby (well, 25 year-old adult as he would be now) who played Jesus in the video. All anyone knows is that he’s probably Israeli as that’s where the video was shot.

I’ve been asked to spread the word of their search and of course I’m happy to oblige in exchange for a reasonably pleasant lunch. So if you have any idea who and/or where ‘Jesus’ is, get in touch by emailing info@dawbell.com

Jamie Cullum on MSN Music

by Steven Wilson-Beales, MSN Entertainment

This week we’re launched a brand new section to celebrate the release of Jamie Cullum’s album ‘The Pursuit’ on November 9th. Featuring a behind the scenes Photosynth from his latest video I’m All Over It, there’s also loads of features racked up for your viewing pleasure. We’ve also asked Jamie to guest edit the MSN Music channel for the week so you can read about his favourite bands and, as he’s a self-confessed geek, his top gadgets. There’s also an interview with the man himself which was conducted here at MSN HQ. It’s true, Jamie Cullum is a really nice guy…

Jamie Cullum Special
Jamie Cullum Guest Editor on MSN Music
MSN Music

Exclusive Snow Patrol Webisodes

by Steven Wilson-Beales, MSN Entertainment

Calling all Snow Patrol fans. Just received these clips from their forthcoming DVD ‘Up To Now’ for your viewing pleasure. Hope you enjoy them.

We also have a pair of tickets to see Snow Patrol at Brixton Academy on Wednesday, Nov 4th. To win a pair just tweet me @stevewb.

Snow Patrol Website

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Oh Ye Of Little Faith

My raving days are well and truly over (I look like the bloke who’s come to pick up his kid and wandered on to the dance-floor by mistake) but I still enjoy the odd ‘choon’ when nobody’s looking. A little bird told me that this Alex M.O.R.P.H. remix of Sun To Me by Faithless is what all the kids are dancing to at this year’s fresher’s parties.