never Miss a beat

I don’t blog every time that South London soulstar Jessie Ware bestows a new SoundCloud upon the world, aka the second greatest gift in the universe. (First greatest gift in the universe: Geri Haliwell judging on The X Factor - pray be Kofi Annan or George Michael at Judges Houses). That would be obsessive and creepy and a bit off. So that’s why I blog it every other time. *Oooh sorry my phone’s going… It’s Brixton Police, I’ll put them on hold*

In my defence though, Jessie Ware IS fucking amazing.

Evidence:

1. Jessie Ware has vocal chops. Sistah can sing. You know when you listen to Sybil’s When I’m Good And Ready and you clench your fist and scrunch your nose and channel that divatastic style of from-the-gut belting that says “I’ve just eaten a proper crunchy roast potato and YEAHHH OOOOH NO YOU NEVER GONNA GET IT” (sorry went a bit En Vogue there)… but then you discover that your fella/mrs/dog was in the same room as you the WHOLE time? Well, Jessie Ware doesn’t have that problem because she has a smashing voice. Trust me, I’ve road-tested it live (at two gigs in the same week).

This is Foxes. Well, this is actually a lady called… I can’t remember her name but I do recall someone saying she was from Southampton (I know that sounds like an unlikely “happening” place but then it is where the Titanic was born). There, that’s her in the picture. She seems really nice and objectively speaking she’s quite foxy (though definitely not a fox just to clarify if this visual evidence is insubstantial… you never know in these Twilight days) and I saw her live last week at a place called Camp near Old Street station which is impossible to find (it’s a door opposite the Sainsburys without a sign or anything, you have to ask hipsters standing outside Sainsburys who’ll laugh at you because you don’t know where it is even though there’s no sign) and she was bouncing around the stage in a sort of Middle Eastern floaty dress which made her look fun. When I said I was going to see Foxes, many confused people asked me if it was a band called Foxes from Brighton but it was blatantly not because they spell their name “Foxes!” with an EXCLAMATION MARK (!!!). Difficult to get that across when you’re having a verbal conversation in the office kitchen though without saying, “I’m going to see Foxes-without-exclamation-mark tonight.”

And it goes a little something like this…

Confession number 1: I don’t know what I’m doing.

Confession number 2: Nope… still don’t know.

Confession number 3: I get by on pretending I know what I’m doing and this blog is me blowing my own cover. Yikes.

Confession number 4: Nobody believes that I know what I’m doing anyway so we’re still at square one. WHOOPDE…oh crap.

Confession number 5: I read a book by Chuck Klosterman once called Sex, Drugs And Cocoa Puffs. I had no idea who he was but the reason I ordered it on Amazon was because I had a recommendation from a friend that it was excellent. OK that’s a lie. I was watching an episode of The OC for the third time to pick up all the details I may have missed the first two times and THANK GOD I DID (this moment changed my life and I’m not sure if for better or worse) because I paused on a scene where Seth Cohen is lying on his bed reading. I paused to see exactly what it was he was reading so that I could buy the book, read it and continue on my quest to make myself as identical to Seth, Marissa, Summer and… no on second thoughts not Ryan in his wifebeater becoming a cagefighter, not aspirational, no… as possible. I was 16. It worked. (Totally didn’t work. Though having lots of Bright Eyes and Modest Mouse on my iPod and owning a Death Cab For Cutie t-shirt definitely scored me some time with the “emo” corner in the school canteen once I got to sixth year.)

[Becoming Seth Cohen; The moment that changed my life]

Anyway. I’m telling you this because I bought the book. And then I read the book (rare). There was a chapter about how Chuck hated John Cusack because John Cusack (and Coldplay and When Harry Met Sally) had – via schmaltz and calculated manipulation – given women unrealistic expectations about “love” and, as a result, he has had terrible luck with the opposite sex. Another chapter was about how MTV’s The Real World was responsible for the anti-evolution of human beings into one-dimensional personalities. I’d never read anything like it. This music/film/sport fanboy genius making observations about life and mundanity using pop culture reference after pop culture reference - most of which I didn’t yet get but wanted to in order to understand Chuck. Chuck showed how the stuff we actually like immersing ourselves in could be more academic and insightful than any of the formulae I was having to memorise in school.

On the page, Chuck and I were friends. It didn’t matter that we weren’t friends in real life because in real life I’d find him funny but also intensely irritating. In real life, Chuck would be inescapable. But this way I could close the book when I’d had my fill. In real life I’d be petrified of him. Chuck’d think I was a chattering imbocile every time I’d open my mouth and nothing would come out of it except “D’you get what I mean about it being weird that Backstreet Boys are basically the same age as New Kids On The Block but they were the boyband for a different generation?”, “I’m not explaining this theory on why Whigfield matters well” and/or “Erm… I think, that… well… you… speak now?”. I was satisfied with the idea that Chuck lived in the reams of text; my entertaining mate who was always on form. I was more than satisfied, I was INSPIRED.

I decided when I was 21 that I was going to be the “FEMALE Chuck Klosterman”. Chick Klosterwoman, if you like (or not). I’d read music magazines since before discovering Chuck, mainly Q Magazine. The first time I bought Q, Dido was on the cover (SEE? I DON’T KNOW WTF I’M DOING). It was the combination of buying Q and reading Chuck that gave me bad ideas. Terrible ideas that came to fruition one very dark day when *FOR LAUGHS* my fellow law undergraduate friend turned to me and said: “Eve, forget this law shit… what’s your dream job?” And to the irreversible detriment of my parents’ aortas it all clicked, ”I’d like to be a music journalist at Q Magazine but like the female Chuck Klosterman of Q Magazine. Chick Klosterwoman if you like. Or not.”See, it’s all very funny until someone loses their mind and decides to go and do a very silly job because they’re infatuated with the idea.

And that is the story of my life.

Little Mix; (left to right) Babies are like this big innit?, I’ve never seen Star Wars but this light saber’s well rubbish, LobotomoiOUCH MY NECK’S BROKEN, I’ve been fuckin’ bovvered about this bullshit since I was yay high

People who read this blog might think it’s a cry for help and that I’m socially retarded. It’s not*. And I am.

(*It is. I’m likely not going to be alive by the time you’ve got to the end of this. I’ve had enough of the dreaded silence of online solitude and the philosophising about what it all means in my real life where I’m too busy to see most of the three-dimensional physical people I know/talk to my flatmate so I’m going to switch the non-gas oven on and eat non-stop breakfast until my heart bursts from the joy of unlimited Ricycles. That’s how Sylvia Plath did it, right? No, ok. Read on anyway.)

I spend my life on social networks firing off short snippets of nothing into a vast ether of nothing. You only live once. (I didn’t mean to come off sounding like Jean Paul Sartre for the Facebook generation there. I guess it just happened. *Updates Twitter bio*). I have been on Google+ for a few weeks. I was encouraged to join. My debut ‘post’ “WTF is this?” followed by my own comment on that post “IS THIS TUMBLR OR WHAT?” are both dated 12 Apr, 2012. So if I do some calculations that means I’ve Google+’d for a few weeks/a month. I was so uninspired by the tumbleweed silence that followed my admittedly open-ended questions (but they were QUESTIONS nonetheless, Googlers… is it too much to ask that you humour and/or ADORE ME?) that I didn’t reattempt a ‘post’ again until 10 May, 2012 (“I don’t have a fucking clue what G+ is” and “Wait, let me just. Nope still no clue”.) Being statements, these posts have not resulted in response either. Ah! One second… false alarm, just some Ricycles debris on my screen there.

I recall a flurry of excitement (some sort of faint din) about Google+ ages ago. Mainly people on Facebook were asking “Do I need Google+? Is Google+ worth a click? What if (dun dun DUN) I GET GOOGLE+?” and I chose to ignore them for a change (I’m being polite, I always ignore them… unless they’re asking about whether Ikea’s quiet on Bank Holiday Sundays in which case I answer YES! PRACTICALLY DEAD, then laugh with unbridled joy because someone I didn’t care much for at school will believe me and be resigned to eating weird Swedish herring to avoid the hell of the IKEA Marketplace; a sort of B&Q minus sales assistants and all products are named by Bjork).

Check out The Vagenda - a hilarious and thoroughly modern online magazine that needs to be on the newsstand. I did this piece for them about the Glamour Magazine guide to being 30 that was re-blogged by Huffington Post last week because I’m fed up of women’s magazines giving me stupid advice.

I can’t wait to see the next episode of Girls because a) I’m not jealous of Lena Dunham and b) I’m not jealous of Lena Dunham and c) I’m not jealous of… Oh look there’s only one reason why anyone wouldn’t want to watch the next episode of Girls. The only reason why Girls (a show about city-dwelling girls in their mid-late 20s) has got so much backlash from city-dwelling girls in their mid-late 20s is because they’re not the city-dwelling girls in their mid-late 20s who are currently enjoying the success of Girls. Namely they’re green with envy. Lena Dunham is the writer, director and starring character in Girls and she’s smashed it (well she has so far… most of us have only seen one episode FFS, all this premature commotion is like bleedin’ LANA DEL REY ALL OVER AGAIN). I mean, apparently she’s “privileged” so doesn’t deserve to be loved. Who gives a… shit, looks like you’ve got something on your shoulder there.

It’s hard when you’ve ached, when you’ve dreamed that YOU and YOUR friends would make the perfect Sex And The City: The College Years (I’m tiring of this description) style sitcom and you just didn’t beat Lena Dunham to it (I only got the first episode of mine written) but you sooooooooo could’ve done a better job. Sorry to burst your bubbles but… just don’t go down this road. Envy is no catalyst to female empowerment; spiteful jealousy between women is to the promotion of feminism what Sectarianism is to the safety of Glasgow City Centre. Credit where it’s due: the pilot of Girls was simply so heart-warmingly hilarious I could watch it again and again and again. Hold me, kiss me, squeeze me, Girls. I have not felt this in love since The OC.

[Girls: it was interesting searching for this image in Google]

I am nothing if not fair, though. So let’s look at the things you’re all criticising Girls for:

1. Girls is shit because I don’t like any of the girls in Girls.

Since when do you have to like a TV character to judge that there’s a good TV programme in front of you? Have you even seen The X Files. Plus, I didn’t think the girls were that hideous. Actually (shhhh) I know these people. All of them.

2. Lena Dunham is a self-indulgent, pretentious prick.

Lena Dunham is writing about what she knows. Which FYI is the opposite of pretentious. Also, this is TV, not Nobel Prize Literature. It can afford to be a little self-serving and inward-looking. Also, HELLO! We’re all self-indulgent! It’s 2012. You found out about this post on Twitter; a social network where you’re sometimes (in my case almost every time) being self-indulgent. Not necessarily in a bad way – a lot of your collective self-indulgence entertains me massively (thank you by the way, I don’t say that enough). I think if this is your beef then Girls might be smarter than you.

3. Girls is racist because there are no Black people in Girls.

Riiiiiiiiight.

4. Girls is not funny.

YOUR MUM. Let me expand. Main character Hannah during the pilot episode sits down opposite her parents and requests two years’ worth of additional allowance so that she can write a book based solely on the belief that: “I think I might be the voice of my generation. [Pause] Or at least A Voice. Of A Generation.” This is precisely what I was getting at in point 2: this is Lena writing about what she knows. This is self-awareness. This is saying, “Hey I’m a narcissist, but I know I am, and aren’t we all in a way, and isn’t everyone so lost now, and hahaha.” This made my heart burst… But no, you’re absolutely right, not everyone has the same sense of humour. Let’s put an episode of Who’s Been Framed on… Girls is not funny? It’s too funny.

There are also some whisperings about how it’s not feminist enough and is thus a massive disappointment (presumably for not nailing such an easy subject matter…) What’s not feminist enough is this RIDICUMULOUS BACKLASH that will cause feminism to implode (I am prone to a bit of exaggeration).

Did you know, Jessie J’s album is called Who You Are. Think about it: Who. You. Are. WHO YOU BLOODY ARE – the inverse of that big life question, WHO THE HELL ARE WE? It’s “deep”. It’s sort of fundamental – not just to us, but to Jessie J’s whole Ting. Twenty-four year-old Jessie J is all about inner strength (voice muscles), being proud (talking loudly over Will.I.Am), overcoming difficulties (gammy legs, etc)… she’s the human equivalent of a self-help section in Waterstones set to radio-friendly R&B. She is promoting IDENTITY, innit? She burst onto the scene in 2010 so sure of her identity (Mystic Meg goes cagefighting in Pineapple Dance Studio) and she wanted you to be sure of yours too (by buying her records, aka Descartes for the MP3 generation).

And yet, last week the chink in Jessie J’s invincible identity armour was exposed; Jessie J had initially declared herself “bisexual”, her unofficial biographer outed her as “100 % lesbian” and Jessie then retaliated by declaring this utter lies (she’s blates “110% lesbian” like, it’s her girlfriend I feel sorry for). The press felt duped. WHO WAS JESSIE J? Nobody knew any more. She must have lied to us because she certainly hadn’t had a stroke (RECENTLY) like that guy who “WOKE UP GAY” on BBC4 so how could things have changed? SHE WAS JUST NOT WHO SHE SAID SHE WAS (at least, 50% or 45% or 70% - who knows – of her was now up for debate… let’s do a pie chart to keep track of where we’re at with Jessie J’s Damian Lewis:Courtney Love fancying probability ratio).

Thing is though, the uncertainty of Jessie J’s sexual orientation is not really the problem here – the problem is that Jessie J has just never been that interesting. Let’s get something straight (LOL): Jessie J is not for me. She is not your average popstar… she’s the average popstar. Jessica Cornish (the “J”, anybody?) has a voice that’s pure transatlanticism, her melodies make nice adverts, her vocabulary is textspeak cliché, her statement pop is meaningless (anyone know what SUGASUGASUGA’ has to do with “Doing It Like A Dude”? What is “MANDEM”?), her look and behaviour is designed to be inoffensive and “edgy”, which is the most offensive of all… She is ultra earnest and highly pleased with herself like some sort of careerist goth Maria Von Trapp babysitter, holding our hand through life with an uplifting, singalong manifesto, “Just wanna make the wurrrrld dance/Forget about the prooiiice tag” (which, by the way, is 0.99p in iTunes… “k-chang k-chang”). 

Question:

WHEN THE EFFING JEFFING HECK DID IT BECOME SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE TO STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD AND TELL THE WOMAN ON THE OTHER SIDE THAT SHE REMINDS YOU OF “AN UGLY ABHORRENT HORSE” YOU ONCE “ACCIDENTALLY” HAD SEX WITH.

Anyone? PLEASE. GO ON TELL ME, I BEG YOU I AM LOSING MY RAG AND I’VE HAD A MIGRAINE FOR 96 HOURS AND I THOUGHT WE LEARNED ABOUT THIS SORT OF THING WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN AND I’M STRUGGLING WITH THE WILL TO LIVE. I need someone to EXPLAIN this to me because frankly I’m now thinking it’s all game, I mean EVERYTHING is game. Total anarchy, I can just walk out my front door right now, go into Budgens and start spilling out the bile that’s (not) in my head at everyone I come across. They made a film about this; it’s called Liar Liar with Jim Carrey and it’s not funny. WHY? Because this saying things uncensored at random individuals shtick is juvenile. Because in life it’s still sensible to bite your tongue every now and then and have some bloody manners. Believe it or not, not every single thought that comes out of our human heads is a diamond-encrusted, Eureka winner that needs to be broadcast out a megaphone and shared with every man and his dog (and dogs have more manners than internet trolls). Actually, the real skill is being able to tell which are the kerching thoughts and which are the thoughts that belong beneath a pile of manure in the furthest away farm on the Land of Zog. 

Oh shut up, Eve… this is Twitter, it’s different, it’s online, it’s not in the street, it’s not real life, you’re taking it all too seriously, wahwahwahwahwah. You’re right. It’s online, it’s not happening in the street (it wouldn’t happen in the street because that would involve looking someone in the eye). It’s unlikely that right now on your high street there’s a selection of politicians, journalists, authors, popstars, actors, talking animals and Star Wars bots. Absolutely, it’s not your street… IT’S YOUR DREAM STREET THAT YOU NOW HAVE ACCESS TO DUE TO THE BEAUTIFUL TWITTER INVENTION (something else fun and wonderful you can all start DESTROYING for all of us who were having a perfectly nice time). It’s the street where you can converse with all the people you’d never meet in your life and tell them exactly what you think about them (because that’s your human right to do that, isn’t it?). What’s more, the Twitter street is an even more public place than your street because it’s a street everyone in the whole world can fit on AND the surveillance on it is like nothing CCTV has ever seen. Everything you say publicly on Twitter can be viewed around the world for the rest of time by anyone. So, yeah you’re right; it’s not like going out in your street and spewing obscenities at passing strangers (or specific people you’re trolling down with an @), it’s infinity times worse than that (I.D.S.T. IF DESTROYED STILL TRUE).

Well thank you, heavens. Jessie Ware is going to have a new single and it’s called 110%. It has nothing to do with Masterchef, The Apprentice, X Factor or any other show where contestants give that much of themselves. It has everything to do with breezy, summer R&B… think Kelis’ Millionaire but like SAF LANDAN.