In memoriam Radio 1 (1993-2004)
So. Farewell then, Radio 1 not sucking.
I heard the latest signings, JK and Joel, the other day. They were reading out readers’ messages to their boy/girlfriends and encouraging listeners to listen out for the alarm that would announce the competition tickets for what is, in effect, the Radio 1 roadshow. So I turned over and listened to Stray FM instead. Well, obviously I didn’t (apart from anything else, I was in Cambridge, not Yorkshire), but I might as well have done.
Still, they did play Britney’s new record, which basically redeems them. Incredibly, it manages to be even better than I’d hoped, incorporating something that sounds like a sample from ‘Night Boat to Cairo’ and a breakdown that threatens to turn into ‘You’ve Got That Vibe’. The splendidly tautological lyrics are intact – I may be reaching, but I thought “I don’t need permission, make my own decisions; that’s my prerogative,� was a rather good characterisation of the strictly empty character of bourgeois individualism.
The video’s quite good, too, particularly the beginning (you can apparently watch it at Yahoo but I couldn’t get it to work. There’s also a really big version available to download). Incidentally, World of Britney is carrying a kind of spoof future timeline for Britney, including her having a child called ‘Justice’, which would be pretty awesome. Oh: while listening to ‘My prerogative’ again, I’ve just noticed what appears to be the bass line from ‘Red Right Hand’, which was unexpected.
I’ve also been listening to Dizzee Rascal’s Showtime, which is excellent. He’s not as happy as he might seem from ‘Stand up tall’ and ‘Dream’, but he is still rapping very well indeed: I particularly like the line, “There’s so much drama in the LDN, it’s kind of hard trying to find legal money to spend,� which reminds me of a post I’ve been planning to write for ages about Jay-Z and Kanye West’s detournement of Biggie Smalls (originally inspired by an interesting criticism of the de-politicisation of hip-hop). The track from which that comes, ‘Imagine’, is probably the best on the album; like ‘Stand up tall’ it reminds me vagueley of something that was happening in UK dance music in the early/mid 90s but I can’t for the life of me think what (the closest I’ve come so far is Dreadzone, but I surely can’t be thinking of that).
“Respect the music.� That was your. Catchprase.
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