Family Jukebox
When recently looking through old emails and internet activity for something completely different, I rediscovered evidence of something that I had forgotten about.
A year before being signed up to Stylus and The Singles Jukebox, I wanted to be part of the format so much that I corralled my brother and sister into joining me in discussing every new UK chart hit each week and giving them marks out of ten. The twist was that we did this in what you would now call sort of liveblog format, over MSN. I don’t have much of it still stored in email, but I can treat(?) you to an example below. It doesn’t feature my sister because she really couldn’t be bothered with it often. Also we decided that we needed half marks for some reason. So, let’s go to June 2005 and a previously unheard new hit at #12…
M says:
well, this guy is a whiny pussy
I says:
generic pleasant acoustic intro
I says:
‘my life is brilliant, my love is pure’????
M says:
something about his voice is annoying the hell out of me.
I says:
that it sounds like Damien Rice only much worse?
I says:
and is singing terrible lyrics?
M says:
well, probably.
I says:
oooh, stirring strings!!
I says:
that’s a great idea
M says:
yeah, i’m amazed no one else has thought of it before
I says:
here they come again
I says:
I imagine that this hasn’t even needed radio-remixing to sound this lifeless
M says:
it’s going all quiet at the end, too
M says:
HOW ORIGINAL!
I says:
to be fair, when have we disliked anything just for being unoriginal?
M says:
let me have my hypocracy
M says:
which i can’t spell
I says:
yay!
I says:
marks?
M says:
3.5
I says:
3.5
(If you’ve forgotten the lyrics in question, we were discussing James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”, which didn’t become a massive thing until a few weeks after this).
