Top 5 Songs of 2011

Well, that's pretty much the end of 2011 then. Not really a great year for music if you ask me. I'll tell you why I think that. This post was going to be called "Top 10 Songs of 2011" but when I had a think about it I couldn't even come up with 10 songs that really blew me away this year. That's terrible isn't it? On a more positive note though, the songs that did impress me were really so good and some unlike anything I had heard before.

The power of Youtube, Facebook and Twitter as music discovery tools was proved to me this year by the fact that I heard three of my top five songs online months before I heard them anywhere else. So here they are................


5. "Someone Like You" - Adele

Hard to have avoided this song in 2011. Her performance at the 2011 BRIT Awards showed what a good song is all about. Here was this girl, backed only by a piano, singing about her heartbreak over an ex-boyfriend whilst that heartbreak was being played out live in front of our very eyes as we watched her deliver a perfect performance on the verge of breaking down. Afterwards she explained why she had cried at the end of the performance saying, "I was really emotional by the end because I'm quite overwhelmed by everything anyway, and then I had a vision of my ex, of him watching me at home and he's going to be laughing at me because he knows I'm crying because of him, with him thinking, 'Yep, she's still wrapped around my finger'. Then everyone stood up, so I was overwhelmed."

4.  "A Real Hero" - College (ft. Electric Youth)

I'm technically cheating with this song because it was actually released in 2009 but I only discovered it this year as I'm sure 99% of the other people who heard it. The reason we all heard the song this year was because of the film "Drive". It soundtracks the final five minutes of the film but stands on it own as a brilliant electro-pop anthem.

3.  "She Loves Me" - Willy Moon

I wrote a bit about Willy Moon earlier in the year and I'm a big fan of his already. The Guardian have his debut song "I Wanna Be Your Man" at No.26 in their top songs of 2011 but it's his follow-up song that I can't get out of my head.

2. "Video Games" - Lana Del Rey


Young Lizzy Grant has split the music-loving Internet down the middle with opinions over her music, her history and her lips flooding every social media avenue in the past four months. However, despite what anyone says, it's hard to deny that this is a genuinely class song. Almost 13 million views since the video was posted on Youtube in August has made Lana Del Rey somewhat of a household name for those with an Internet connection.

 
1. "212" - Azealia Banks (ft. Lazy-Jay)


I heard them play this song last week out the back of the Amersham Arms in New Cross to a packed dance floor and the place went berserk. Credit has to be given to this Lazy-Jay fella for laying the foundations for Miss Banks's potty-mouthed tour de force. I'm going to put my neck on the line here and say that she's going to be a one-hit-wonder. But what a hit.

Stay tuned for Johnny Bottles' "Summary of 2011 in 12 Sentences"

The Bo Diddley Beat

Bomp, Ba-Bomp-Bomp, Bomp-Bomp!

Following on from my recent review of Willy Moon, who's song "I Wanna Be Your Man" is based on this classic Rock & Roll rhythm, today we're going to learn about "The Bo Diddley Beat"


In 1955 Bo Diddley released a song called, funnily enough, "Bo Diddley". The song was under two minutes long but would go on to shape the music we listen to today. It's hard to comprehend now but when people first heard this song it was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Bo used his electric guitar to play Rock & Roll over an African juba beat. He said he first heard the beat in a church in Chicago. But variations of it were to be found in several places. The children’s game hambone used a similar rhythm, and so did the ditty that goes “shave and a haircut, two bits”. This now distinctive "Bomp, Ba-Bomp-Bomp, Bomp-Bomp" was massively innovative and would be used in countless songs for years to come.

Next time you see Westlife on TV don't change the channel. Take a deep breath and listen until about two thirds of the way into any one of their songs. Up to this point you will have noticed four men in white/black/grey sitting on four evenly place stools in the centre of the stage. Small dark-haired lad singing mostly, tall dark-haired lad doing his bit, two blonde lads looking contemplatively to the side. But any second now we'll see what we've been waiting for. A momentary pause in the music, a single beat of a drum and the four lads with undoubtedly rise in unison from their stools. What you just witnessed was the infamous key change. A musical device adored by pop song writers the world over. The key change creates an excitement in the song through the sense of tension and release. In "Bo Diddley" however, there is no chord change whatsoever. This song gets it's excitement from the rhythm of the drums and guitars. It was so catchy it became known as the Bo Diddley Beat.


On 20th November 1955 Bo Diddley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan wanted Diddley to play a song, "Sixteen Tons," but without telling Mr. Sullivan, Bo played this ground-breaking song anyway, which didn't go over well with the host. Afterward, in an off-camera confrontation, Mr. Sullivan told him that he would never work in television again. Bo Diddley did not play again on a network show for 10 years.


The Bo Diddley Beat became one of Rock & Roll's bedrock rhythms. Some of the more famous uses of the rhythm include;

• "Not Fade Away" - Buddy Holly/The Rolling Stones
• "His Latest Flame" - Elvis Presley
• "Desire" - U2 
• "Faith" - George Michael
• "I Want Candy" - The Strangeloves
• "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree" - KT Tunstall
• "Movin' On Up" - Primal Scream
• "Born To Hand-Jive" (From the musical Grease) - Sha Na Na
• "Mr Brownstone" - Guns 'N' Roses
• "Rudie Can't Fail" - The Clash

 
 

New Music: Willy Moon

I suffer from a terrible  inner conflict when it comes to music. I listen to music from the 50's  and I wish that I was alive back then to be part of that scene. I listen to music from the early days of Rock and Roll and envy people who got to be part of the music and the energy that went along with it. My conflict arises when I realise that people are still making music today, believe it or not. The problem is that music is at it's most exciting when it's new and raw. Music is constantly growing and developing so the energy that teenagers felt at a Chuck Berry concert in 1958 will be extremely diluted if we were to listen to it in a nightclub in 2011. We get our "high" now from the booming hip hop beats and basslines that lie under all of today's floorfillers. If listening to Little Richard on a dance floor nowadays can only really happen at my cousin's wedding how do I get that euphoric feeling that the teenagers of 1958 felt?

The solution to my inner conflict?........Willy Moon.

Willie is one cool cat. He's got the moves, he's got the sharp suit and he's got the voice. His first song, "I Wanna Be Your Man" is to the rhythm of the classic "Bo Diddley Beat" and in true 50's Rock and Roll style it's all over in 1 minute and 49 seconds. For me, what makes Willie Moon stand out from the crowd isn't the fact that he jives and shimmies to a Buddy Holly-esque song, it's the mixing of that classic sound with the ultra-modern production on the track. The song is transformed from a fairly simple surf rock song to a fairly addictive stomper of a song by the backing beat of hip-hop style breaths and claps which give the song a driving rhythm.

His second song, "She Loves Me" continues with juxtaposition of old and new sounds. This song has the surf rock guitars again but now accompanied by an Electronica sound with the vocals cut up synthetically to give the song a great hook on the chorus.

Personally, I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Willy Moon playing live. Should be interesting to see how he gets on. And if it all falls through he can always be a stand in for the lad in Crystal Swing.