I know it's foolish to do so but....

B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
...I can't stop being wound up by the sheer idiocy of Petridis:

"With most of the major American urban producers intent on proving they would work with anyone who stumped up the cash, the usual chart-slaying hip-hop or R&B single of the year was not forthcoming. In its place, there was an unusual one: Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, a remarkable, eerie meditation on mental illness performed by two men who, in at least one photograph, dressed in Clockwork Orange makeup and vast nappies."

On what fucking planet were 'Promiscuous Girl' and 'My Love' not massive?

Who edits this stuff?
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
I have no idea who Petridis is, but he's at least half-right: Neither 'Promiscuous Girl' nor 'My Love' are very hip-hoppy, and they're more "pop" than "r&b" too (unless you count r&b as "anything that swings, with singing rather than rapping", which is too vague a description for my linking--'Fergalicious'? 'My Humps'?? Sugababes' 'Easy'???). This sounds a bit conservative perhaps, but I believe genre-tags should lead the imagination in a certain direction, not being huge umbrella labels.
 
G

gumdrops

Well-known member
gnarls are so so so overrated. crazy was brilliant and quite sublime but the album only had one other equally good song on it (smiling faces). the rest was totally skippable. but theyre the R&B/soul act its okay for indie and rock fans to like so of course theyre going to get in all the end of year charts/round ups .
 
G

gabriel

The Heatwave
petridish = music editor of The Guardian (uk newspaper). now he's got a fucking fashion column as well on saturdays! his taste in clothes is perhaps even worse than his taste in music
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I failed to get ANY of the hype-feeling over "Crazy", the whole thing seemed warmed over, from the generic bass rhythm (wasn't that on a Gorillaz single about 5 years ago???) to the dull drums, and the bland classic soul vocal performance. I think production pop-R'n'B continued to deliver the goods this year, not in a revelatory innovative way, but in terms of pop thrills it was still unrivalled. And Cassie's "Me & U" above all else had unparallelled depth, spaciousness, and perverse lyrical content, it sat in my head like nothing else except Scott Walker and Burial this year...

Petridis is a cock, pure and simple, he never goes against the grain of anything, just feeds the same old same old, his lazy reviews endlessly pontificating on non-musical critic-projected contents, and he's endlessly got a chip on his shoulder about what critics on the Internet (ie- bloggers) have to say.
 
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B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
gabriel said:
petridish = music editor of The Guardian (uk newspaper). now he's got a fucking fashion column as well on saturdays! his taste in clothes is perhaps even worse than his taste in music
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I agree up to a certain point, tho I think some of the stuff he likes is alright. It's more that he gives the impression of being absolutely fucking clueless about, well, everything to do with music.
 
MankyFiver

MankyFiver

Well-known member
well im not someone who is that aware of pop or r'n'b but the gnarls barkley track is in my conciousness cos it was everywhere and day to day people connected and referenced it as i went about my boring life, so petridish is right in that it was the standout track

it hit a resonant point who cares about the sonics, its the common emotion
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I don't buy that argument at all. It was a big pop track, perhaps the biggest selling in this country, but there's no fucking way I like it. Indeed, I can't personally work out WHY people liked it so much. I heard the pre-hype on it and thought, yeah, better check this out, and when someone pointed it out, I'd already heard it many times before, not even noted it. So I guess you are correct, it must have hit some point of commonality, (or been amazingly well pushed by people in the know,but even so, not enough to achieve that ind of success). Just sounds like a retro styled soul/rn'b (in the old skool sense) singer over some lame arse productions to me.
 
MankyFiver

MankyFiver

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
I don't buy that argument at all. It was a big pop track, perhaps the biggest selling in this country, but there's no fucking way I like it. Indeed, I can't personally work out WHY people liked it so much. I heard the pre-hype on it and thought, yeah, better check this out, and when someone pointed it out, I'd already heard it many times before, not even noted it. So I guess you are correct, it must have hit some point of commonality, (or been amazingly well pushed by people in the know,but even so, not enough to achieve that ind of success). Just sounds like a retro styled soul/rn'b (in the old skool sense) singer over some lame arse productions to me.
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im sure you dont care if it was a big pop track or not, but that was its point, and of course you dont have to like it, but it resonated for lots of people and when so many tracks are pushed why did this hit the spot for so many people? admittedly it does sound like that blueboy track from a while ago where they samples some female soul singer (sorry cant remember the track)

but it had all the hooks and was interesting in its structure and after a few listens you were singing " who do you , who do you , who do you , who do you think you are!"

but of course you didnt :)
 
D

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
The other week on the Guardian website he did a review of Jerry Lee Lewis which they listed on their graphical link as "Catastrophic Alexis Petridis reviews Jerry Lee Lewis", before changing it an hour or so later to "Catastrophic: Alexis Petridis reviews Jerry Lee Lewis".

I was sad enough to save the original image cause it made me laugh, and was gonna post it to cheer you up, but I seem to have lost it.

Thing is, he was relatively OK writing about Air and Basement Jaxx back at Mixmag ten years ago, but when it comes to pop he seems peculiarly joyless. That article is a total bloody mess.

But, anyway, who doesn't like Gnarls Barkley's Crazy? It's bloody amazing. I can't say how, but it's just instantly memorable and eerie.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"he's endlessly got a chip on his shoulder about what critics on the Internet (ie- bloggers) have to say."
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I think that you must have said that yesterday which makes it quite nice timing that in today's review of Josef K he twice has a go at Morley.
I thought that Crazy is great and it did stand out to me, I first heard it on the radio when I was in a shop and it immediately grabbed me.

"admittedly it does sound like that blueboy track from a while ago where they samples some female soul singer (sorry cant remember the track)"
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Do you mean Remember Me that sampled Woman of the Ghetto? Never really noticed a similarity myself.
 
R

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
Ah, dear old Petridish, slagging off Morley like Pardew knocking Ferguson...

He wants to be the Woodrow Wyatt of pop (I ALEXIS, the Voice of Reason, not like those nasty blogs that are so pretentious and difficult to read) but since he is demonstrably useless at looking inside other people's heads or minds he ends up even more of a buffoon.

Still I must thank him for the 20,000 or so extra hits my blog received after he showed Girls Aloud my piece on them, which provoked the following classic response from Cheryl "I'm Not A Tory Honest" Cole:

"Worra loada fookin shite! He sounds fookin mental!"

Great publicity!
 
J

John Doe

Well-known member
IdleRich said:
I think that you must have said that yesterday which makes it quite nice timing that in today's review of Josef K he twice has a go at Morley.
I thought that Crazy is great and it did stand out to me, I first heard it on the radio when I was in a shop and it immediately grabbed me.


Do you mean Remember Me that sampled Woman of the Ghetto? Never really noticed a similarity myself.
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I thought AP made a real arse of himself in that Josef K review (which I read on the train going into work this morn). As far as I could work out he seemed to think pop music's whole legitimacy resided in sales - and he seemed completely nonplussed that Josef K (and that whole tendency in punk/post-punk to reject commercial success) could have a vision of pop as meaning something other than the fame/money/exposure thang.

I mean, he was so stupid I found it baffling. No one can be that blind, narrow minded and daft, surely?
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
gek-opel said:
I failed to get ANY of the hype-feeling over "Crazy", the whole thing seemed warmed over, from the generic bass rhythm (wasn't that on a Gorillaz single about 5 years ago???) to the dull drums, and the bland classic soul vocal performance.
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I'm totally with you on this one. It's also an awful dance-floor track--stiff as hell; it has a terrible white-boy-playing-soul soulless feeling about it. I give you that the lyrics are nice though.
 
M

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
The version they did of Crazy on Top Of The Pops did the tune justice though, I was well glad they did that, I knew there was a good version screaming to get out.
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
mistersloane said:
The version they did of Crazy on Top Of The Pops did the tune justice though, I was well glad they did that, I knew there was a good version screaming to get out.
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Yeah, this version is much better. I still can't help feeling it's pale in comparison with the soul classics though.
 
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