The televisual juggernaut that is Simon Cowell’s X Factor is a phenomenon that always manages to divide opinion. Love it or loathe it, the show dominates the popular consciousness and is almost inescapable to anyone who reads a paper or turns on a TV screen during the shows run. However, the latest controversy may be the show’s biggest yet.
The early stages of the competition are often the most entertaining due to the stark contrast between the more talented performers and the tone deaf wannabes that slip through to the televised rounds. In spite of this the X Factor post production team has decided to add a hefty dose of auto tune – software that masks vocal mistakes – to proceedings; thus giving performances a homogenous robotic twang.
It’s a move that’s seen both fans and critics of the show up in arms. However, adding a manipulated voice to a track is not always a bad move… In honour of the latest X Factor hoo-hah we’re compiling some of the best moments in vocoder history.
If you’ve already been hoodwinked by a spoof newspaper report or crafty practical joke this morning, this could well be the post for you. Yes, if you haven’t realised already, today is April 1st – better known as April Fool’s Day.
To celebrate we’ve compiled a list of suitable tracks. Ranging from the chirpy punk of The Offspring to the gritty trap of Public Enemy; Shazam’s April Fool’s list is guaranteed to brighten up your day – even if someone has just smeared black ink around your binoculars or switched the sugar in your tea for salt.
With her latest single, ‘Russian Roulette’, already flying up both the UK and US Shazam tag charts it looks like 2009 is going to be yet another successful year for Rihanna.
Her new album, ‘Rated R’, hits the shops on 23rd November and to celebrate the Barbadian warbler has hooked up with Nokia for a small scale secret London show on the 16th November. If you’re interested in attending all you have to do is go to the Nokia/Rihanna mini site and hand over your details…
In the meantime here’s ‘Hard’, another new track from Rihanna’s forthcoming album. Pitching up like a heavier version of ‘Live Your Life’ this record will be big!
This weekend saw David Haye defeat Nikolai Valuev to become Britain’s first heavyweight boxing champion since Lennox Lewis. Haye won the fight by employing a disciplined defensive strategy, bobbing and weaving to stay away from the huge Russian and overcoming a nine inch height, seven stone weight and eight inch reach advantage. Even though Haye did enough to win, in some rounds there were only one or two punches landed – something that wasn’t great for neutral spectators…
This lack of Rocky Balboa style pugilistic exchanges had nothing to do with Haye’s well thought out game plan, but can be squarely blamed on the combatant’s choice of entrance music. With Haye entering to the sassy disco strut of McFadden & Whitehead’s ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’, and Valuev entering to a turgid lip synched work out from Finish rockers Sunrise Avenue; the choice of entrance tracks blatantly failed in their job of getting the boxer’s adrenalin pumping.
Here we count down a few examples of what should have sound tracked the fighters entrance…
2009 has been a bit of a tipping point for disco. Hipper than hip bands like Friendly Fires and The Virgins have produced critically acclaimed albums that reference the once maligned genre while acts like LCD Soundystem, Aeroplane and Lindstrøm have continued to keep disco sounds on the radar’s of those in the know - and that’s without even talking about the omnipresent sound of Quincy Jones produced Michael Jackson numbers that have pepper the latter half of the year!
Continuing the trend for disco that does it for the kids not for the kitsch, Italian producers Crimea X are giving away a free track here on the Shazam Blog. Taken from their new EP ‘Chorne More’ available on Hell Yeah records, track ‘Liubov’ is sure to appeal to those who like the more discerning discofied sounds.
With Pendulum laying festivals to waste over the summer and Radio 1 playing Drum & Bass tracks on their usually conservative daytime schedules, it could certainly be said D&B is having its biggest dose of exposure since the genre’s glory years of the mid ‘90’s. A large part of Drum & Bass’ current crossover success has been down to Sub Focus, who like fellow Radio 1 supported producers High Contrast, Fresh and Chase & Status, earned his stripes on the fiercely hard to crack underground scene, before shaking up the charts with a run of catchy 174bpm singles. His previous songs ‘Timewarp’ and ‘Rock It’ were both big tracks with Shazam audiences in the UK. They even managed to break their way into Shazam’s UK Pre-releases chart and the national top 40 – something quite unprecedented for an underground dance act.
To celebrate the release of Sub Focus’ new album, which is currently Zane Lowe’s album of the week on Radio 1, we are giving away an exclusive Sub Focus track for free. That’s right, for FREE!
Entitled ‘Smooth’, the track is a lush, liquid Drum & Bass record that shows off Sub Focus’s penchant for rolling bass and strong melodies perfectly.
To download the track in wav. Format simply click here
Sub Focus’ self-titled debut album is out 12th October on Ram records.
It appears that Australia just won’t stop feeding us irresistible electro-tinged bands. Following Van She, Cut Copy and Midnight Juggernauts, the latest are Sydney’s teenagersintokyo. Their new single ‘Isabella’ is released through Back Yard Recordings on October 5th and is a brooding mix of eerie synths and lead singer Samantha Lim’s ethereal vocals. To hear it and check the dates of their forthcoming UK tour head to their MySpace.
Shazam HQ was put through the important, but ever so slightly annoying, rigmarole of a company fire drill this morning. Whilst waiting to return to the office we began listing songs that could fit the situation and suddenly realised how many great songs have been written by pyrophiliacs – that’s lovers of fire for the uninitiated.
Other notable tracks could have been: Kasabian – ‘Fire’, Sean Kingston – ‘Fire Burning’, The Prodigy – ‘Fire’, Jimi Hendrix – ‘Fire’, Deep Purple – ‘Burn’, Billy Joel – ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, Ash – ‘Burn Baby Burn’, Johnny Cash – ‘Ring Of Fire’, The Cult – ‘Firewoman’, Talking Heads – ‘Burning Down The House’, Ferry Corsten – ‘Fire’, The Pointer Sisters – ‘Fire’…. We could carry on.
As you would imagine, quite a bit of music arrives on our doorstep each week here at Shazam Towers. However this week we have been totally enraptured by Harmless Records’ new ‘Disco Discharge’ compilations, which have dominated the Shazam office stereo to an extent where certain members of the team have been pushing to get a glitter ball installed in the office.
Delivered in four editions, the new series is divided into ‘Classic Disco’, ‘Disco Ladies’, ‘Euro Disco’ and ‘Gay Disco & Hi NRG’. All feature the full 12″ or long album versions for DJs and disco fanatics alike who would normally scour eBay for hours and pay fortunes for the original vinyl pressings. Among classics by Cheryl Lynn, Cerrone, Sheila B Devotion and A Taste of Honey, Disco Discharge has unearthed a ton of rare and unreleased gems from the likes of Gloria Jones’ (of ‘Tainted Love’ fame), Free Enterprise and Boy Town Gang’s uncut full length version of ‘Cruisin’ The Streets’ that features some very un office-friendly moans of ecstasy.
They say never to judge something by it’s cover. But when you chance upon a sleeve such as this, it’s hard to resist and think you have struck gold. This striking green “unripened” version of what would become the seminal “The Velvet Underground & Nico” LP, also has a very interesting back story. Found as a test pressing in a New York yard sale and purchased for 75 cents, the new owner discovered he’d bought a “lost” early version of the album (allegedly sent back by Columbia Records with a note saying “You have got to be kidding”) and then he sold it on eBay for $25k.
The version I discovered in a London record shop is a cleaned up CD pressing of this. And to be honest, you can perhaps see where Columbia could have been coming from. Stand outs from the studio version (“Venus In Furs” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song”) suffer, as it’s seemingly before John Cale mastered the use of jarring electric viola and the mixes lack the clarity of the famous version. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Femme Fatal” are pleasing slightly altered from the original, with Nico’s trademark drone going different places to what you’d expect. But all in all, never judging something by it’s cover is sound advice (!)
