I tried to impress you, but you threw it back in my face....

Sometimes when I sit down to write a blog post, I really do mean to keep it short and simple. I want to write something snappy, and then put the laptop away and spend my evening doing something completely different, like talking to my girlfriend. Or, more realistically, having failed to put the laptop away, I'd like to be able to spend my time doing something other than hunching over yet another overly-long and complicated posting.

I've tried. I really have. But I just don't seem to be able to do it. Once I get started, I just have to sit there until whatever is on my mind has finished pouring out of my head and into the computer.... and then I spend a bit of time shifting stuff around so that hopefully what has emerged is a little bit more readable than a stream of consciousness ramble. Before I know where I am, it's past midnight, C. has gone to bed, and another relaxing evening at home has bitten the dust.

Not that I'm obsessive, you understand.

That's why I'm starting to love Fridays; I get to hand the keys of the blog over to someone else to write a bit of content for me, and all I have to do is to do a bit of judicious cutting & pasting.

(except this week, obviously - cutting and pasting apparently not enough for me now)

Anyway.

This week's list should be a treat for all you music connoisseurs out there, as our guest editor is something of an expert in the subject. If he went onto mastermind (and he may - he's been of Fifteen to One, after all), I think his specialist subject would be "Pop Music".

Without further ado, I am proud to present......

The Man!

The Myth!

The Legend!

Earworms of the Week - Guest Editor #3 - Lord Bargain

10. Coldplay – Everything’s Not Lost

In difficult times, you need slow, sad songs for company. There’s no point listening to a happy song if you’re feeling rubbish, and so over recent weeks Coldplay have been excellent company to me in some pretty hard times. And there is nothing better for comfort than this gem, tucked away at the end of “Parachutes”.

9. KT Tunstall – Other Side Of The World

I have this song in my car. I can play it at any time I want to, just at the push of a button. Why, then, is it far more exciting, and I turn it up much louder than I ordinarily would, when I hear it on the radio? How does that work?

8. Climie Fisher – Love Changes Everything

I think this is one of the best pop tunes of the last 20 years. Full stop.

7. Akon – Lonely

Only that it seems to follow the Crazy Frog on TV adverts pretty much every time. I think there’s a half decent song in here somewhere trying to get out, and it is clearly catchy, but, well, it’s just tat, isn’t it?

6. Roxy Music – Oh Yeah (On The Radio)

I went to a barbecue on Saturday night with some friends. One of them bet me that I couldn’t identify every single song off the triple “Driving Rock Ballads” CD from the first two notes. Now, spotting “Drive” by the Cars, or “I Want To Know What Love Is” or “Walking In Memphis” isn’t that hard, but to get this quite impressed the crowd. The fact my dad used to love Roxy Music and so I grew up with this song clearly helped….

5. Crazy Frog – Axel F

Oh come on. Don’t try and pretend that you haven’t heard this song as much as anything else in the last week and, whilst unbelievably irritating, it does get stuck in your bonce. I wonder that if 30 seconds of “Speed of Sound” had been played in every advert break on every TV channel for the last month whether that might have got to no 1 instead….

4. Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc

Lots of TV and radio airplay for this one. I actually can’t really decide whether I like it or not. I think it is a good tune, but am still undecided as to whether it is genius, or silly cartoon nonsense.

3. Tony Christie – I Did What I Did For Maria

A tragic song of brutal bloody revenge as a man takes murderous revenge on the cold-blooded killer of his wife. It is told as the husband wakes on the morning of his execution and recounts the shooting of this psychopathic villain and his subsequent death.

And all this from a man last seen trying to find his way to p*ssing Amarillo.

2. Coldplay – Speed of Sound

From time to time, and it doesn’t happen very often, I will turn on the radio, or one of the music channels purely in the hope that if I listen long enough I will get to hear a certain record. And this has happened with “Speed of Sound”, I have found myself listening on the off chance it’ll come on….

1. Brother Beyond – The Harder I Try

On Wednesday, I managed to convince a colleague of mine, who is the same age as me, that in a previous life, before I joined the industry I am in, I used to be the lead singer of Brother Beyond. Being able to sing this song, and all the words to their follow-up single (“He Ain’t No Competition”, don’t you know), as well as knowing the name of their albums and even that my stage name was Nathan Moore, he believed that I was an ex-pop star. It took a Google search to realise I was having him on…

---
Thanks m'lud (although I hope that's the last time we see that bloody frog in this list). For those of you who have been wondering what's been in my head this week... mostly Coldplay, as you might expect. I'm seeing U2 on the 18th June though, so I really need to start listening to some of that soon, I suppose.

---

If I disappear without a trace after this post, then allow me to humbly suggest that you point the dark finger of suspicion towards Mr. Mark Reed a.k.a. Retro-Boy.... who is in Nottingham today to pick up an award for being a genius, or something, and who I will be meeting later on for a beer and a pizza**.

Unless we take an instant dislike to each other, Mark will also be next week's guest editor....

---

Have a nice weekend kids - I'm off Llama walking in the Northamptonshire countryside..... I will reveal why I am doing this when I return on Sunday....

---

** Lord Bargain will also be in attendance this evening, so if I do go missing, then I suppose it would only be fair of me to suggest that he may also be implicated....or at the very least have some explaining to do

...Or it could just have been a dodgy pizza.