Posted by admin on 18 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: anthems, events, news, politics
There were red faces galore the other night at the Swiss TV channel SRG during the Germany-Austria Euro 2008 match. Someone had the bright idea of subtitling the national anthems. Unfortunately, that someone was using an outdated lyric book, as the German anthem came with the words, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles… (Germany over all)”. Yep, [...]
Posted by admin on 06 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: news, tip, tribute
Superbus - Heart of Glass - Live -Generation 80Uploaded by Channel_Zero
A perfect pop band (Superbus) playing a perfect pop tune (”Heart of Glass”). It doesn’t get much better than this on a rainy Friday. But what about the words?
Posted by admin on 05 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: RIP, news
My, my how times change. This item covered in journals such as Forbes and the International Herald Tribune, no less, is an indication of two things. The first is the importance of words. The second is the increasing number of women in armies around the world. The story they are covering is the announcement of [...]
Posted by admin on 28 May 2008 | Tagged as: events, news
If you’re fast, you can probably catch the music biz chat show that goes out live from the pretty island of Malta. Thursday at 19.30pm GMT (20.30pm Europe) you can watch the latest edition of new music industry TV chat show “Let’s Talk Music”, co-sponsored by SongLink. Hosted by Tony Moore, this week’s show is [...]
Posted by admin on 30 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: news, protest
The New York Times ran a short piece about the then 16 year-old Gail Renard who snuck into the bed-in organised John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Montreal in 1969. At one stage, she witnessed some 50 people sing “Give Peace a Chance”. Choirboys included Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg as well as Petula Clark. [...]
Posted by admin on 23 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: anthems, news, politics
If you’re a regular reader, you are probably aware that I have come to the conclusion that most anthems are dark, mean-spirited affairs. When they’re not calling for the spilling of blood (Ireland, France), they are stomping on other people (like the infamous sixth verse of “God Save the Queen”). It looks like someone in [...]
Posted by admin on 16 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: Eurovision, news, protest
I sometimes wonder if there’s a large book with complaints one can make about Eurovision entries that people pull out every year. French MP Jacques Myard is complaining that France’s Eurovision is partly in English. Post-modern dandy Sebastien Tellier’s “Divine” is in English (of sorts). Almost predictably, a number of politicians have taken it upon [...]
Posted by admin on 10 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: news
Britain’s Jarvis Cocker, formerly singer of Pulp, is to make an appearance at the Brighton festival on May 23. He is programmed to “explore the function of the lyric in popular song” (as it says on the website). Jarvis will start from the position that ’song lyrics don’t really matter’! From here he embarks on [...]
Posted by admin on 04 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: gadgets, news
Here’s something that I have basically being saying for a good while: the lyric sites are by and large spam. You’ve probably checked sites for lyrics and noticed that they often same very basic level of information, a few words. There is very rarely any information about who wrote the songs, nor who the publisher [...]
Posted by admin on 19 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: events, news
I can’t resist a plug for the TV series “Vermist/Missing”, taken from the film of the same name directed by Jan Verheyen. It will debut on Belgium’s VT4 channel every Tuesday from March 25 at 9.30pm. I wrote the track that plays out over the end, “Waiting”, with the series composer Steve Willaert. It’ll be [...]