I KNOW I shouldn’t ... but I just can’t stop tuning in my car radio to Wirral’s Buzz 97.1 and its mega-bland mix of middle-of-the-road pop.
Really, I cannot bear to hear the simpering vocals and cod-philosophical lyrics of James Blunt come across the Buzz airwaves one more time.
And after I heard Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ‘69” for the 300th time this morning while on the road, I made the decision to re-tune for good.
Then The Kooks’ “Naïve” came on so I stayed with Buzz until I got to work...
Hmmm. Don’t know what to do now. Buzz is bland all right, but it does, on balance, play the best selection of driving music.
Well, the sort of driving music I like, anyway.
And I need that mix of music because I've a lot of driving to get through each month. How I hate the M53.
What first got me stuck on Buzz was its constant playing of The Coral’s “In The Morning” a few months ago.
Until then, being an old fart, I’d never even heard of The Coral, or “Wirral’s own Coral” as the DJs like to remind us.
(I do wish the station’s jocks would stop saying ‘I’m lovin’ it’, by the way. That’s so annoying.)
Anyway, all I ask is that British singers should sing in British accents. As The Kooks do. As The Coral do. As The Kaiser Chiefs do.
As Morrissey does, too, and Paul Weller, and Billy Bragg, The Proclaimers and Madness – in fact, all our best pop artists sing in British accents about British things.
The trouble is they are in a minority. Most recording artists from these shores do not sing in native accents. Instead they caterwaul in fake American drawls. Why they do that, I don’t know.
All the dreary mainstream singers, including Mick Jagger, Elton John, Phil Collins, Sting and George Michael sing under the delusion that they are Yanks. So do those idiots, Son of Dork.
So does Richard Ashcroft, which is a disgrace considering his home town of Wigan has a very distinct local accent of its own.
Why the fake the American tones, guys? Are these musicians really so ashamed of their own country?
Or are they no better than the pub karaoke merchants, dreaming that they are performing at Caesar’s Palace in Los Vegas?
The Beatles – the biggest British stars in the pop firmament – sang mainly in a northern English idiom rather than an American style, though even they went a bit US-sounding towards the end.
Yet the popular music stars of previous decades, such as George Formby and Gracie Fields, who both sold millions of records around the world, never tried to turn themselves into ersatz Americans. So why should more modern singers?
I blame the likes of Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton in the 1960s for the start of this lamentable trend.
The Stones didn’t merely try to sound American … but also black, as did George Michael in later years.
Why a middle class surburban white boy from southern England, such as Jagger, would want to pretend that he had just crawled out of a Louisiana honky-tonk beats me.
And it is nonsense to suggest that the very act of picking up a microphone or a guitar should somehow transform a person into someone born in the USA.
Now, I have nothing against American performers – particularly those such as Bruce Springsteen who have something authentic and of great artistic merit to say about their nation’s culture in their songs.
But if you are British, why not sing about the things you know – i.e. British things.
Otherwise, your lyrics just don’t ring true when you perform them. Look at the ridiculous James Blunt’s song “Wisemen”.
In a very American accent he sings his wise men having a “semi by the sea”. Now that is a very British expression, so why is he singing it in an American accent? It makes no sense, creatively.
Then again, the song itself makes little sense. As with Blunt’s big hit “You’re Beautiful”, the words of “Wisemen” are pretentious and straining for a rhyme, which is always a sure sign of immature song-writing.
I’ll leave the final word on James Blunt to Luke Pritchard, frontman and songwriter of the quintessentially British-sounding, Brighton-based group The Kooks.
Luke says: “James Blunt has inspired this awful rebirth of the singer- songwriter. All that ‘Oh, it's so hard for me in my life’ stuff – that’s not art, it’s self-indulgent crap.”
PS In the next blog … no more low life. My visit to the posh sections of New Brighton society.
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"Sir" Johnny Vino wrote...
James Blunt rhymes with. Anyway, elsewhere, I have taken your views on board. Toodle pip, comrade.
Posted by: "Sir" Johnny Vino | April 18, 2006 6:03 PM