Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
Okay, this one needs a little backstory. Every week for Newsarama, I do a top 10 based on… Well, whatever’s in my head as the deadline approaches, really. This week, based on the plot developments in a particularly popular superhero comic, I decided to do one about the brothers and sisters of superheroes, characters whom have a tendency to become supervillains. In discussing this idea with Newsarama’s boss, I said “I don’t know how we can do this without spoiling [this week’s superhero comic in question].” “Don’t worry,” he replied, “we’ll work something out.”
Here’s how the story is presented on the front page:
The best part is, I wrote the story, and I don’t know what all of those “[Spoiler]”s are replacing. I think it’s “Top 10 Sibling-Superhero Super Villains,” but I could be wrong (Wait, I just checked the URL; it’s “Top 10 Villain-Superhero Sibling Rivalries”).
Is it wrong that I find this quite as amusing as I do?
In support of my latest piece at Time, here’re the notes I made for myself while looking up possible quotes/sources this past weekend. This is how my Time pieces start, with text files like this: Continue reading “Process, Recessed”
And talking about Carole King (I was, last entry, really), here’s what’s probably my favorite King song, and it’s all about the sound of the chorus, really; the lyrics are pretty trite, but the way it all sounds – the build of the melody, the thudding momentum pushing forward, the way that the chorus pretty much falls apart at the end… I love it so much, and wish that it belonged to a better song, if that makes sense. Same with the fade out, starting at 2:33. Why couldn’t the rest of the song be that good…?
One of those beautiful, mellow pop songs that makes you think of long summer nights and lazy smiles with the people you love. Whenever someone complains about the prefabricated nature of the Monkees, I always want to play them this song and say “If this is what comes out of the whole deal, then you can build a million boy bands.” Not that all of them have Carole King songs to sing and such wonderful production to back them up, of course…
For years now, one of my favorite Beatles songs has been “I’m Down,” which was the b-side to “Help!” and, I thought, something that was just structured so unusually and so un-Beatley that I wondered where it came from.
And then, last night, I realized that it’s just a rip-off of (another of my favorite songs) Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say?”:
It’s all in the drumfills, really (No, seriously; somehow, the drums made the connection for me before I even got to the call-and-response-ish vocals or the electric piano similarities). I’ve always loved the Beatles’ shameless folding in of whatever they were into at any given moment, and I can’t work out if the connection between these two songs make me love “I’m Down” less, or even more…
More proof, I think, that I have no taste, and also that – even if you don’t like the Bee Gees as vocalists (They overused the falsetto, I think; sorry), they were amazing songwriters: The Take That version of “How Deep Is Your Love,” which I unashamedly adore, and prefer to the original. It’s more 1990s easy listen-y in its arrangement, sure, but nonetheless, there’s a relaxation and calmness to it that I find weirdly appealing here… Plus a video that features the death of the band’s lead singer and songwriter, in what was – at the time – their farewell single. More boybands should have such a sense of humor.
And here’s the original, for those who’d rather have the classic version:
Continuing, for a second, my recent trend of pop-related reminiscence, this was the band that won Popstars for the first year it ran in the UK (called “Hear’Say,” with a misplaced apostrophe that was once seriously suggested as the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to punctuation and its downfall), and their first single, rush-released to tie-in with the end of the series. When you listen to it now, it’s stunningly dull and as generic as you’d expect from five strangers thrown together by a TV contest covering a song written for anyone to perform, but at the time the excitement about this took it to the top of the hit parade, as the kids used to say.
There’s something to be said for the collective desire of the record-buying public to want something to be a success, purely because they’d had the smallest of parts in making it happen, isn’t there?
