Album Reviews

Someone e-mailed me to ask what the hell I'm on about in my album reviews.

Let me explain briefly..........

I come from a generation that read Melody Maker, NME, Sounds etc and saw the emergence of music journalists as people who thought they had some great literary prowess or poetic turn of phrase. My view is shut up with the bollocks and tell me if the album is any good or not.

I explained that the likes of Paul Morley (and in her day as an NME scribe Julie Burchill) wrote such pretentious bullsh*t that I just gave up on their nonsense and took to reading reviews online. They would use ludicrous epithets, similes and metaphors to describe songs like they were mythical beasts or legendary masterpieces and something more than just - well - a song.

They would also do this really annoying thing of writing "it's as if they're trying to say...." and put their own interpretation on everything. They would suggest that some cheesey pop song was about the struggle of the Suffragettes or neo-classical philosophy when it was actually Lionel Richie singing about Dancing On the F**king Ceiling.

So I decided to write the same sort of thing - as pretentious and surreal and utterly pointless as the real thing. I thought I was getting carried away and just being silly until last week I saw a review by the one and only Paul Morley - of Brian Ferry's album.

I am so jealous. It is more ridiculous, pretentious and mental than anything I have come up with.

Please note - this is EXACTLY word for word as it appears on the liner notes for the CD..........
"Well aware of the lateness of the hour, the brightness of the day and the fullness of time, because ultimately there's no hurry - and a void to fill - the surefooted Ferry heads out into the black colossal brevity of the fourth track. With just the correct amount of transcendent grace he sings the song - which is just a song - and much more than a song, as if to say 'wherever I've been, whoever I've been, whoever I met - and it might have been me, it might have been you - whatever I've seen, whatever happens next - because it means a lot to me....It's been an absolute pleasure' "

Is there a word that's a level up from c**t?