If music be the food of love...

Sometimes in life, you may get a sudden urge to do something that you know that you will ultimately regret.  You know that you have to be up early in the morning, yet somehow you still have that final pint.  You know that you are not capable of putting up that shelf in the living room, yet somehow, you allow yourself to drill into your wall and store your valuables on it, no matter how wonky it may be.  You know that you shouldn't say anything snarky to your boss, yet somehow you do tell him that his trousers make him look like a clown.  A stupid, stupid clown.

Well, somehow, I found myself in one of these situations earlier today.  For reasons that I cannot fathom, I found myself doing something that I knew I would not enjoy, that I knew I would regret soon after, and that I had no good reason to do.  I watched the YouTube video for Cher Lloyd's Swagger Jagger.

Now, I know that most of my friends are total culture vultures, so you have probably all already seen the 'music' stylings of Miss Lloyd, but if any of you have not had the pleasure, then please do take a look at this link.  You will certainly not be disappointed - provided of course that you watch it hoping to see your doom.

A Jagger.  Not swaggering.

A little backstory for those of you who have no idea who Cher Lloyd is.  During the last series of X Factor, we saw the emergence of Cher - a seventeen year old girl who was determined to push the already flimsy boundaries which designate the show as a singing contest, by instead choosing to rap incomprehensible lyrics over songs that, for very good reason, previously contained no rapping - into the minds of the general public.  Looking much like a brittle version of her mentor Cheryl Cole wearing clothes that she had selected at random from a big pile of garments that would suit no one, she somehow managed to survive until the latter stages of the competition despite seemingly everyone in the world not liking her.

However, she has had the last laugh by signing a contract to make 'music', and as a result we have all been treated to Swagger Jagger.  Featuring such timeless lyrics such as 'You can't stop lookin' at me/Starin' at me/Be who I be/You can't stop lookin' at me/So get off my face', and a chorus that uses the tune to O My Darlin' Clementine (yes, really.  The tune that nowadays must surely be most associated with those teddy grabbing machines at the seaside), this is the first foray into the public market by a girl who wants to be taken seriously as a 'music'ian.  I may have only alluded to it so far, but I think I would be confident to admit that I think this song is one of the worst things that I have ever heard.

And being at the age now where you start to notice yourself doing little things that only a few years earlier you would consider to be for 'old people', my immediate thought upon hearing this monstrosity was "The music of today!  We had proper music back when I was young."  It may seem a terribly stereotypical thing to think, but in fairness, it is completely true.  When I got into music in the mid nineties, Brit Pop was just unfurling its wings, Oasis and Blur were battling for the charts, the Foos were just forming, The Prodigy running riot, and we were seeing the best work of bands that are still in demand nowadays - just ask those at Glasto who saw Pulp or Radiohead.  None of these felt the need to inform us that their swagger was in check at any point, or to... no, in two lines, I have pretty much harvested the entirety of the lyrics to Swagger Jagger.  I came to the confident conclusion that this was not a case of me being old before my time, and actually the standards of music nowadays are remarkably lower than they used to be.



Cher Lloyd - Aparent love child of
Cheryl Cole and Russel Brand

 However, as I started the long decent from my high horse - I'm a big man, I need a big horse - one phrase started to niggle.  One little concept which crept into my mind, and wouldn't leave.  And despite knowing that it was a bad idea, and I would regret it, I let it grow.  This one line became many lines - or should I say became a long line of repetition, and everything started to change.  How could I hold the music of my era above the 'music' of Cher Lloyd when I was able to lose myself in the phrase 'Boom boom boom, let me hear you say way-oh!'?

And this phrase grew.  It became 'Let me be-ee your fantasy'.  It became 'I luv u baby' (complete with text speak, long before anyone had a mobile that didn't require it's own trolley to move.)  It became 'Let's get ready to rumble', 'I wanna be a hippy' and even 'You get my bodyshakin''.  It became a backdrop of songs could have been written by a toddler with a casio keyboard, to sit behind the masterpieces such as Wonderwall and Song 2 that remain classics today.  They may have been absolute tosh, but we all listened to them.  And equally today, for every reality TV show twit wearing so much hairspray that their management won't even let them have candles in their dressing room (because that's what the lighter's for) releasing dross that could well be Outhere Brothers album tracks for all we know, we have an MGMT or a Coldplay or a The xx who are making good music to different degrees of success.

I guess the moral of the story is that today's 'music' is pretty crap, but so was the music I used to listen to and when you balance things up, most of the music that was released then, and is released now, actually has a lot of merit.  Except for Cher Lloyd's Swagger Jagger.  That's just shit.