February

End-of-year reviews are ten a penny, aren't they? What would be good is if they started in an arbitrarily-chosen month - say February - and continued in a similarly errant fashion until the person writing it stopped for some reason. Maybe, even, after February. With that in mind, here is everything - everything - that happened in February.

February saw the release of will.i.am's epoch-shattering opus 'THE (The Hardest Ever)'. As with almost all of the will.i.am 'oeuvre', and indeed most of all he ever utters, the piece was somewhat esoteric, destined to only be understood by will himself and the future generations he will no doubt come to inspire. It's kind of weird, really, that a man so sure that he is an innovative, futuristic trailblazer continues to make music that's almost exclusively derivative and generic. Wearing ludicrous spacesuits while livetweeting television programmes they're a part of does not, unfortunately, make a person Buck Rogers. (Actually he was from the past, wasn't he? You get the idea.)

Fortunately will has always had a back-up plan: if the time-traveller schtick won't wash then you can instead try and convince people that you're British. And so he did. Why else would he afford space to olden-days luddite Mick Jagger on the groundbreaking 'THE' alongside such forward-thinking artists as Jennifer Lopez and himself? In fact why, otherwise, would he allow Cheryl Cole to appear in the background of the videos of some of his solo releases (in selected territories)? And why would he be so willing to spend extended amounts of time with Jessie J and Tom Jones?

As it turned out the UK totally and utterly respected these attempts at absorbing himself into their culture, rewarding him with not one but two Number One singles in 2012, and that's just so far. In fact the country was endeared to him so much that his endeavours culminated with his selection as one of its Olympic torchbearers. Indeed, the people of Taunton's hearts swelled with pride as he paraded through their town with the flame, tweeting as he went, quite literally sending one message as he did the same with the embodiment of another.

#TWEETtheTORCH thank you coca.cola for this once in a life time experience to come to taunton and #runthetorch... twitter.com/iamwill/status…
— will.i.am (@iamwill) May 21, 2012

So inspirational.

Perhaps the most concise encapsulation of just how British will became in 2012 comes from the fact that by December he was capable of transfusing the nationality to Britney in his latest genre-transcending creation, 'Scream & Shout'.

Of course, this had all been done before by Madonna in her Mockney-marrying period. You know, Madonna - the one with the cones? No? Oh.

Don't worry, that last sentence was a very complicated 'bit of whimsy' (technical term) that was intended to highlight the fact that in 2012 people seemed to stop caring about Madonna's new material. In fact '2012 people' is almost an accurate description of' those in the UK who've actually heard 'Give Me All Your Luvin'.

This apathy was underlined, funnily enough, in February by the nation's favourite Radio One. For whatever reason (there were probably two main ones), they controversially snubbed the aforementioned 'Give Me All Your Luvin'', leaving it off their playlist.

Except it wasn't controversial at all. The media ruckus that some fools predicted might ensue didn't - they saved that for Robbie - and the world continued turning.

And that was everything that happened in February!

Let's Have A Look At What Songs Are Being Played On The Radio At The Moment

Not that you didn't know already, but there's a thing on the internet called Compare My Radio. What it does is collect all the plays of songs that radio stations across the UK have made in the past 30 days and puts them into charts for the sort of people who like that sort of thing. Let's have a look at what it says at the moment.

Synchronicity!

All of Azealia's plays were, unsurprisingly, for '212'. It's some radio edit. But what of the yet to be released and seemingly hoped to be forgotten 'Shady Love' with the Scissor Sisters? Well that's had just one play in the last month. Oh well.

'Interesting'!

Madonna's first single from 'MDNA', 'Give Me All Your Luvin'', is only her seventh most played song on UK radio in the past month. Admittedly there are a few other versions of it with alternate names further down that take its tally ahead of some of the Top 6 but we can gloss over that. One of those in the Top 6 is a new song however, 'Masterpiece', which is also in the UK Airplay Chart Top 40. Funny that, because it's better. A glance further down the Compare My Radio list will show that second single 'Girl Gone Wild' is nowhere to be seen at all. Again, 'funny'.

Political!

It may have only been around for less than a month but it looks like the only people currently prepared to play 'iLL Manors' are the apolitical BBC. It's a shame, because it's an important song. For once we have a multi-platinum popstar talking about some of The Things That Matter in a very considered way. It's a brilliantly incisive, insightful and coherent record presented as an angry-at-the-world, stream of conscious diatribe that only needs to be held against the assorted efforts of Barlow and co for it to be obvious just how much it's been lacking. Mainstream musicians don't seem to have much to say for themselves these days, even if some think they do; Plan B is a much needed exception. This would make for a very exciting - and possibly - sound the hyperbole siren - iconic Number One single.




Nostalgic!






As far as songs about music go, Saint Etienne's new single 'Tonight' is up there with the best. Detailed ruminations on it are available on request, but one of the main things to be taken away from it is its incredible wistfulness, especially the "wish it could always feel this way, and life would never be the same" line that couldn't be any more poignant: you don't necessarily realise it while you're living it, but pop is a moment in time. (Not that pop ever actually ends, but you get the idea.) Unfortunately radio stations have decided that it's just TOO amazing to be played regularly, and as such have rationed it to only six plays in the last month. A wise decision, you'll surely agree.

A Song Hasn't Been Added To The Radio 1 Playlist

And that song is Madonna's 'Give Me All Your Luvin''.

This is what is going to happen next:

• The mainstream media will pick up on it.
• Mail Online will run a piece questioning whether Madonna has 'lost it'. It will feature sexist overtones, 600x800 pixel photos of her 'veiny arms' and 100 sniping comments from the likes of 'Barry, Ex-Pat in Spain'.
• The Guardian will run a counter-piece asking if this has anything to do with ageism and more specifically sexism - Brian May and Mick Jagger are currently on the A List, so why hasn't Madonna been added? Her last two comeback singles went straight to the A List after all, and that's quite a rare occurrence. It will also have a dig at the Mail article. Comments will flood in complaining that 'The Guardian should only cover stories on real musicians, like Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin'. Or something.
• A Radio 1 spokesman will offer up a line about 'demographics'.
• Mail Online will realise that a) they don't like the BBC and b) ageism aimed at females is, bizarrely enough, one of the sticks they've used to beat them with in recent times. Then they will experience cognitive dissonance when remembering that c) they don't like Madonna either, before settling on their original editorial stance.
• The Guardian will then run another, more light-hearted piece, listing other occasions on which Radio 1 has 'snubbed' older artists. 
• Some people will suggest that maybe it wasn't added because 'it isn't very good'.
• Cliff will chime in.
• It will be discussed on Loose Women.
• Radio 1 will add it to their playlist next Wednesday.

Remembrance Wednesday: Mad Donna - The Wheels On The Bus

Yes, your eyes do deceive you. Madonna has never released a cover of 'The Wheels On The Bus'. Mad Donna, on the other hand, has.

Who exactly was behind Mad Donna is unclear (there's some nonsense on their background here), yet whoever it was, they had an inspired idea: to get a Madonna impersonator to sing a nursery rhyme over 'Ray Of Light'. It went a little like this:

It was released in April 2002 (by comedy dance label All Around The World, no less) - either around the height of the whole bootleg 'thing', or three years after the point 'Ray Of Light' was still ripe for parody, depending on your generosity. Regardless, it was a time when any song with just a modicum of promotion could reach the Top 40, and 'The Wheels On The Bus' duly went in like a bullet at Number 17.

This prompted a rather bizarre Top Of The Pops performance. The gimmick now had to be represented physically, and how could that be easily achieved? With a 'band' made up of four Madonna lookalikes, performing to a largely uninterested and mainly baffled crowd.

Following that the track managed another two weeks in the lower reaches of the Top 40, a fortnight that, unsurprisingly, represented the last the world was to see of Mad Donna. If you're hankering for more, there was a b-side, 'Hush Little Baby', set to 'Don't Tell Me'.

It's not as good. Anyway, as you might have noticed 'The Wheels On The Bus' didn't exactly set the wheels (!) of a lullabye-set-to-not-quite-contemporary-pop-hits fad in motion (although another Madonna appropriation, Mad'House's 'Like A Prayer', did go on to be a bigger hit later in the year). Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you (it's a good thing), but legacy or no legacy it did get a 3/10 from Drowned In Sound, and that's two points more than Calvin Harris got for his debut album, so it's swings and roundabouts.