Happy Hottest 100 Day

Australia Day for me is more like Triple J Hottest 100 day. If you are unfamiliar with the Triple J Hottest 100 it's a massive annual music poll which counts down the one hundred favourite songs of the previous year on Australia Day each year. 1.26 million votes! All over the world! 152 countries participated! Even Mark Ronson voted! Wow! Exclamation mark!

In alphabetical order of artist/band names these are the songs I voted for:

Gorillaz - Superfast Jellyfish {Ft. De La Soul & Gruff Rhys}
Janelle Monae - Tightrope {Ft. Big Boi}
Joanna Newsom - Good Intentions Paving Co.
Kimbra - Settle Down
Kyu - Pixiphony
Mark Ronson & The Business Intl -  Somebody To Love Me {Ft. Boy George & Andrew Wyatt}
Patrick Wolf - Time Of My Life
Robyn - Dancing On My Own
Washington - Underground
Yves Klein Blue - Walk On The Wild Side {Like A Version}

 These are the songs that really stand out for me in 2010. They are the songs that helped to make my year what it was. Some define specific events and some define whole series of events of my life in 2010. I saw Yves Klein Blue do Walk on the Wild Side just before jumping up on stage and dancing with them during Getting Wise (one of my most beloved live show experiences ever with my number one Australian music crush, Michael Tomlinson), I saw Megan Washington front and centre and snatched her setlist after the end of her beautiful performance, I saw Kyu in the boiling heat of the Worker's Club beat their chests like drums and scream amazing harmonies, and I can never forget dancing in my bedroom to Mark Ronson in my best Boy George getup. Most of these songs I've listened to while driving, with the window wound down all the way, the radio up way too loud, with me singing my heart out. There were so many other songs I wanted to include. Kanye, Sia, Cloud Control, Cold War Kids, the list goes on. I really had a hard time whittling down my shortlist to just ten songs, but there they are, my favourite songs of 2010.

There were a few surprises. Kanye West's Monster was only number 88! How on earth did that happen to such an amazing song with an amazing ensemble of guests? Nicki Minaj's verse alone is clearly deserving of top ten status. At least Runaway came in at fourteen. M.I.A.'s XXXO just missed out, coming in at 101, and there were no other M.I.A. songs. Ridiculous.

As disappointing as it is, I'm not surprised that barely any of the songs I voted for made the list, although I was surprised that Superfast Jellyfish by Gorillaz didn't make it. Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. just got into the top ten at number ten with Somebody To Love Me, which is probably my favourite song of the year. A lot of really great times come to mind when I hear it, and from the first time I heard it I fell in love with it. Just great music, great guest vocals, great lyrics, great everything. Ughhh, just such an amazing song.

One of the highlights was Big Boi coming in at 77 with Shutterbugg, which is not one of my favourite songs, but features some of my favourite funniest/worst lyrics of the year: "I'm shitting on niggers and peeing on the seat." I'm very happy that Washington got multiple songs in there, same with Gorillaz, Mark Ronson & The Business Intl. and Sia. It was also good to hear some songs from a bit earlier on in the year that I'd sort of forgotten about like Darwin Deez and You Got the Dirtee Love by Florence and Dizzee Rascal.

But anyway, the Hottest 100 top ten songs of 2010 are:

10. Mark Ronson and the Business Intl. - Somebody To Love Me {Ft. Boy George and Andrew Wyatt}

9. Art Vs. Science - Magic Fountain

8. The Wombats - Tokyo, Vampires and Wolves

7. Cee-Lo Green - Fuck You!

6. Adrian Lux - Teenage Crime

5. Boy & Bear - Fall At Your Feet

4. Birds of Tokyo - Plans

3. Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Dance The Way I Feel

2. Little Red - Rock It

1. Angus & Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane

The Hottest 100 for me marks another year of music gone. Makes me wonder what 2011 will bring to me in terms of music, emotions, events, people etc. Fingers crossed for the Golden Ticket!

Won't Let The City Destroy Our Love

The video for Patrick Wolf's next single The City has been released! Yayyy! This song makes me so much more excited for the new Patrick Wolf album, which will officially be called Lupercalia. The City is such a beautiful, high spirited song with a great sense of assurance, and I'm predicting the new album will project that same sort of vibe.

The film clip is a collaboration with Australian born director Kinga Burza, who has worked with artists such as Marina and the Diamonds, La Roux, Kate Nash and Katy Perry. The film clip makes me want to play with Patrick on the beach, with his understated James Dean-esque outfit choices (something we haven't seen much of from him) and his attractive model friends/extras. It's a bit of a reinvention and new direction for Patrick, and it's all so romantic and exciting. I can't contain my enthusiasm and eagerness for more songs from Lupercalia, which shall be released in May 2011.

Unfortunately I can't embed the video, so here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

You're The Only One I Want

I was hanging out with a friend yesterday and we were talking about Kate Bush's album The Red Shoes. I realised I've barely done any blog posts in over a month now and I have decided that Kate Bush is the perfect person to blog about.

Kate Bush is an amazing lady. She's not only an amazing singer song writer, she is also a spectacular performer (which is evident in The Line, the Cross & the Curve, which I will get to a bit later). She puts more emotion into her songs than in any other songs I've heard by other artists before. You can just tell that she cares about her music and what she's singing. The only tour she's ever done, Tour Of Life, was ambitious and was a template for modern pop concerts. She was a pioneer of the big theatrical style of concerts today and she was the first performer to wear a radio mic so she could sing and dance freely. Kate Bush is incomparable to any artists of her generation and to artists of today. To put it plainly, she's spectacular.

I have often brushed Kate's later work aside, assuming that it's not as good as her earlier work from when she was more in the limelight after the success of Wuthering Heights, but I was definitely wrong to do so. For the past week or so I have been a little bit obsessed with her 1993 album The Red Shoes. There's so much contrast, light and shade. From fun, quicker paced songs like Rubberband Girl, Eat The Music and one of my favourites Why Should I Love You? to the beautiful, slower songs like Moments of Pleasure, The Song of Soloman, and another one of my favourites You're the One. And then there's something with a bit of both in a song like Top of the City. Her lyrics are always pretty great, but on this album they are out of this world fantastic. I really just can't get enough of this album.

The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1993) is pretty much a series of film clips for The Red Shoes album with bits of dialogue in between to string them together that was inspired by the the 1948 film The Red Shoes. It has some pretty great choreography, particularly in the opening scene, where Kate and a male dancer are moving as one in Rubberband Girl.

There's also some great visuals including a floor that is covered completely with fruit, a mirror that gets smashed releasing a gush of water (this reminded me of Titanic when the windows cave in), and a scene in which a character is running down a tunnel that eerily reminds me of a recurring dream I had as a child where I was walking down some sort of creepy never ending dark tunnel (surely there's some fucked up interpretation for that one).

The short film gets a tiny bit silly at times, sometimes even a little kitsch and often over the top. It's also a bit strange, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Kate Bush. Some could almost find it a bit pretentious and gratuitous, but I have too much respect for Bush to think that. Kate herself described it as "a load of bollocks" but I actually enjoyed it. I think it was fun, and a short film provided a good platform for Bush to showcase some of the great songs from her album, and they are very good songs.

The film doesn't have a lot of dialogue, but I particularly liked this monologue said by Kate's character:
I can't go on. I'm torn between what I was and what is to become of me. In these shoes every step I take is laced with madness. They fill me with pain and confusion, with thoughts that are not my own. I have danced their dances. I see streets and buildings I know so well, although I have never been to these places. Together we raced with wild horses til they dropped, we have leapt from cliffs into the raging waters below. And together we tripped from a stage into the pit. I see me falling. I feel my fear. And yet I was never here. These shoes are all anger and passion. I am possessed. And I no longer have the strength to fight them.

Of course it's hard not to love purely talented ladies. Kate Bush is certainly fits that discription.

Kate Bush - Why Should I Love You?

If I Could Have A Second Skin

I very much enjoy dressing up. In fact it's probably one of my favourite things. I dislike when I haven't been to a dress up party in a while and I substitute that by getting dressed up in my bedroom when I'm bored. Around two years ago I even made a friend have a certain themed party so I could go as a certain amazingly talented yet completely tragic crack whore singer. Last month I threw a Virgin Mary costume together from sheets and tablecloths about twenty minutes before I left my house for Christmas Brinner (which wasn't even dress up, any excuse). Another time I spent a few days gluing hay to the insides of a Wizard of Oz Scarecrow costume I had made. I get pretty into it... sometimes if I've had a bit to drink I'll even get into character, as shown in a tagged video of me on facebook, waving a flask of vodka around singing If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz, and, luckily not captured on video, my awful Amy Winehouse impersonation.

Right: A certain amazingly talented yet completely tragic crack whore singer. Left: Miscellaneous oriental lady aka Mulan (I took some liberties, okay?)

 

 

 I've noticed that the majority of my costumes and costume ideas happen to be quite female oriented, and I've never really thought much of this, especially considering the fact that if a girl goes to a dress up party as something more male oriented no one really blinks an eye. And why should they? It's called a dress up party for a reason, and I will dress up as whatever I like (as long as the theme permits, of course). At one party I even got mistaken for a girl on more than one occasion.

My friends and I as the Wizard of Oz gang, me as the Scarecrow. Unfortunately some of us didn't put in as much effort as others (ahem, the cowardly lion).

Dress up parties are just so good, ugh! I'm already planning my 21st theme two years in advance. I do not miss any opportunity to dress up. So I think if you're having a party it should be a dress up party and I should be invited. That's all. Thanks.