Paloma Faith - Never Tear Us Apart

So this is the new John Lewis advert.



Spyke

With the X Factor Live Shows just around the corner then it must mean one thing - John Lewis have got their Christmas advert ready.  After the huge success of Ellie Goulding's cover of Your Song after it became featured on their advert I wonder if this year that fortune could fall upon Miss Paloma Faith.  I've become quite fond of Paloma over the past few months and her new album 'Falling To Grace' with incredible lead single Picking Up The Pieces.  The song just works so perfectly and I imagine on a cold winter's night when your sat by the fire (watching the X Factor) this advert will make you feel all warm inside.

The track was originally a #24 hit in the UK all the way back in 1988.  It was released by Australian Rock group INXS but you may have heard other versions of it along the way - as it really is one of those songs that everyone's heard of but very few actually know what it's called or who sings it.  One way or another Simon Cowell has a knack for getting these classic songs back into our charts.

You can download the song from Monday.

Here's the original:

Justin Bieber - As Long As You Love Me

This is rather good...



McLovin

As the proud owner of more than one Justin Bieber album, I have absolutely no qualms about my fandom of the teen idol. I don't find him a particularly charismatic presence (surely someone this popular should be a little more charming, right? He got this monotonous dead-eyed blandness thing going on in interviews already...maybe it's his way of coping with it all, who knows?) - ANYWAY - as a pop phenomenon, he's had more than his fair share of fantastic singles so far, with As Long As You Love Me the latest slick and polished addition.

After half-watching the video one lazy afternoon and not being particularly impressed with the song, it took a certain Mr. Craig Scott to convince me to give it another listen. And then another. And again and again everyday for the past week. Turns out it's a bit of 'grower'.

First things first though: the lyrics are mind-numbingly banal and were probably knocked together on someone's lunch break while they were concentrating harder on the content of their sandwich. It's inexcusable that the lyrics should go 'I'll be your platinum, I'll be your silver, I'll be gold' for the sake of a (barely there) half rhyme. It's like saying 'I'll be amazing, quite good AND also very good'. In that order! (I'm not really a stickler for dodgy lyrics if the melody is strong, but these are embarrassingly clunky).

Once you get over JB's imagining himself starving, homeless and broke, the subtleties of the production start to win out. Coming from Rodney 'Darkchild' Jerkins (he of 'The Boy Is Mine', 'Say My Name' and 'You Rock My World' fame), he resists pop's current trend of basically throwing the kitchen sink all at once. Removing the beat from the first chorus works really well (almost 'Hold It Against Me'-esque), while Big Sean's rap adds a welcome tempo increase towards the final third of the song (something that Craig also drew my attention to).

Possibly my favourite part of song is how the word 'love' is cut, spliced, dissected and staccato-ed out of all recognition in the chorus. It really irritated me at first; an example of production-overload, distorting something just for the sake of it. But since realising it makes him sound like he's singing (brace yourself) 'as long as you la-la-la-la-la-la-laaa! la-la-la-la-la-la-laaa!-la-la-la-la-la-la-love me, love me!'*, it endeared me to the song even more. Somehow, they've made a hit single with a chorus constructed entirely around the first musical phrase (or 'solfege', according to wiki) anyone ever learns to sing. Which the more you think about, the more amazing it becomes.

*That's right I counted the la's - 46 per chorus, stat fans.