Not Many Experts

I felt the need to flog this dead horse just a little more. As has been painstakingly recorded, “Lights” is nothing special. In short, yeah, it’s a decent pop album, but the trouble with investing in a very precise and unvaried (perhaps gimmicky) style is that, in effect, you end up with 10 songs, 4 of which are very good, and the other 6 won’t be given the time of day by anyone with two ears connected to a brain. That said, this approach is bound to bring Ellie Goulding enormous success beyond anything that even the most optimistic bloggers imagined early last year. Bit of a depressing paradox; banality = success.

There’s a slightly uneasy feeling throughout that the whole electro-pop cliché has become far too forced. Ironically, it also brings the album some of its more original moments thanks to the exceptional production of Starsmith (see new version of “Wish I Stayed”), but it slowly becomes tired when laboured over the entire album.

Without sounding too presumptuous, “This Love” is going to destroy this year in commercial terms, “Wish I Stayed” and Starsmith’s stuttering chorus production has similar potential, and we always knew that “Starry Eyed” and “Under The Sheets” were decent pop songs, but…. beyond that? Quite literally, beyond that there’s very little to waste your seconds on, except 6 slightly inferior, but never bad, variations on a theme du jour.

I wouldn’t call it a backlash… In actual fact, all anyone really predicted was that Ms Goulding has a lot of talent. And she does, you’d be a fool to argue against that, however the emphasis of “Lights” is clearly fixated on commercial success over a full realisation of her enormous potential, and for that reason, “Lights” is bound to be forgotten. The debut album that never happened.

Adapted from something that I wrote here. Yes, I really am that lazy, and no, I wasn’t joking.

By the way, I hope you appreciate that I avoided the two stock introductions to Ellie Goulding reviews:

1. “I am very very clever and first wrote about Ellie Goulding in the year 150BC, here.”
2. “Due to recently being named the BBC Sound of 2010 and winning a Brit Award, there was always going to be a lot of hype surrounding Ellie Goulding. The question is, though, has she lived up to the hype?!?!?!?!?!”. Cue disappointing review in which they will probably conclude that, no, she has not.

If you are very well mannered, old fashioned or intrigued then you can buy the album here. I’ll be honest, I can think of a lot worse ways to spend £10 and at no point did I say it was a bad album; just disappointing. But you know… music’s subjective and all that so part with your cash and see what you think.

It’s more out of incredulity than necessity that this post has been forced to be written. Of course, Ellie Goulding is about to be tipped from the spongy environs of being everyone’s “next big thing” to the terrifying reality of actually being that big thing, which, as always, leads to an enormity of superfluous remixes. And how the blogs love them. Free music that they can legally share, all with names attached that will make the numbers on their traffic counter a bit bigger. But “Starry Eyed” is one piece of incredible pop music that doesn’t need to be poked around with by anyone who does not happen to be Ms Goulding. So far we have had efforts Penguin Prison, Theophilus London, Jakwob, Monarchy, Monsieur Adi, Max Vangeli, and Russ Chimes. Whilst many are “good” (is “good” good, or good enough?) and several of these artists are fantastic, I can’t help but feel that each has received a level of attention that is completely out of proportion. Ironically, “Starry Eyed” itself has been relatively cold shouldered by blogs in a culture of hype that is more interested in getting hits than playing the music that you love. Bleh…

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As you know, each year the BBC publishes a list of 15 artists who their panel of experts have decided are going to be haemorrhaging gold bullion by this time next year. Unsurprisingly, these longlists are always incredibly, even suspiciously, accurate. Take, for example, last year’s list; all of the artists who were named have gone on to have incredibly successful years. Of course, the exception to this rule is Master Shortie, who has gone on to make himself the target of unfair, but very enjoyable, jokes. Poor bloke. And why is this? Well, to a certain extent, these lists are a self prophecy; of course, if the UK’s music press and music labels think you are going to be successful, then they’re very likely to spread their money covered tentacles and make sure that you don’t prove them wrong! Unfortunately, what this all points to is the predictability of the music industry . If label bosses and press can get together at the end of any given year, and accurately (with the exception of Master Shortie again, sorry bud) predict what’s going to sell well over the next year, then it seems to demonstrate that it is the music industry itself that is deciding what music millions of people are going to be listening to.

Of course, if you are reading this, then, as someone who actively seeks out new music that isn’t being peddled to you by one of our Saab driving executives via their connections with radio or media, then you are already a step closer to circumventing the whole thing. That said, many of last year’s top 15 were artists who had been introduced to you by blogs a long time ago… But you are not in the same category as the class of music consumers who do just that… they don’t listen to music, they consume it. They consume anything that’s presented to them; the thing that a record company A&R has told Radio 1 is going to be huge, that Radio 1 has played to death, that all of their friends are talking about. In many cases, there’s little discrimination involved; they’re presented with bland, inoffensive, but vaguely likeable music, and they go for it. No effort, no risk involved.

I’ve already said that music blogs are by no means exempt from this condemnation in that the hype often outweighs the material. Sure, listening trends in the virtual world are from from perfect, and far from the influence of hype, but at least people who read blogs are being critical and considering the music that they are listening to. Where’s this all going? Well, a couple of places, really. Firstly, it’s just to urge you not to be one of those puppets and not to assume that 1000 hearts next to a track on hypem.com is undeniable proof that you are in the presence of 2009’s answer to “Stairway To Heaven”. More likely, Simon from Kent illegally downloaded Ableton Live, munched on some Class C drugs and had a hell of a time messing up MGMT’s hair. Secondly, I felt very much like it was necessary for my own ego to establish why I feel superior to people who, in my opinion, listen to awful music. Mission accomplished. And it feels good.

Thirdly… Thirdly and most importantly, though, was to try to see how predictable this whole predictable process is! I’ve been carefully concocting an immaculately organised Excel spreadsheet for a while now, attempting to predict the artists that the BBC are going to predict are going to be big. Crazy, right? Sort of, but if this list turns out to contain some of the BBC’s choices, then it will go some way to pointing out the insane pre-determined nature of the music industry. If it doesn’t, well, then I’ll be genuinely glad that the whole thing isn’t so predictable. In this effort, I also sought the enlightened opinions of Pretty Much Amazing, Sheena Beaston, The Stu Reid Experiment , Breaking More Waves and Too Many Sebastians who have made some additions to the list. I can’t ignore Neon Gold either, since this entire list is based on their seemingly endless wisdom. In a way, I guess, this is like a musical experiment, that could quite possibly go wrong. And if the names below are completely off target, then all you will be left with is one unfathomably brilliant “ones to watch for 2010” list. Everyone wins? Yeah, everyone wins unless I come out looking like a massive cock… (In this eventuality, I blame all of the other blogs, useless idiots!)

The criteria for the BBC’s list is simple: the artist must not have had a top 20 hit in the UK, have released an album yet or be well known from a reality TV show. I’ve divided the candidates into three categories: Outside Chance for artists who have created some hype that has not yet really been consolidated into much success yet, Good Possibility for the talented and hyped artists who have started to deliver great songs, and (Almost) Dead Certainty for those artists who the BBC are very likely to include.

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