celebrity

I’m Just Ken wins Best Song at critics choice award.

17th Jan 2024 — Leave a comment

but Ryan Gosling couldn’t have done it without Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and American Ferrara.

Ryan Gosling reacting to the news at the CCA January 2024

The 2023 blockbuster Barbie revived Cinema, set TikTok Trends and soundtracked our 2023 . It had us singing, dancing and crying all in one sitting.

Personally ‘I’m Just Ken’ sits pride of place in my frequent plays on Spotify, it is also one of the few songs I can proudly play on piano and I completely understand and truly believe it is deserving of the award. However not everyone shares this view and after seeing his reaction to the award perhaps Gosling himself  is amongst those on TikTok that do not think it was worthy of the win. Adversity to the award choose to highlight h the cruel parallels  between the meaning of the Barbie and a song about a man complaining he is not the protagonist in a woman’s story, arguing that ‘I’m just Ken’ , a song produced by a man, sung by a man, wining this award is considerably quite ironic. Perhaps they have a point and that is fine, I just don’t agree.

I’m Just Ken scene from Barbie July 2023

‘Dance the night away’ by Dua Lipa and ‘What was I Made for? ‘By Billie Ellish (Both from Barbie) were also nominated with many arguing that they should have won for the sole reason they were sung by a woman,  personally the gender of the writer behind a song should not factor whether it is a success, its success should be measured by its popularity, its relevance to the film and its resonance with the audience and although what was  I made for hits bulls eye, it was I’m just ken that had us bouncing, revving us up for a workday, creating kitchen dance routines and filming TikTok’s.

Fuel to this fire was poured earlier last week when host of Golden Globes Jo Koy made a pretty low-brow and rushed joke at the origin of the film comparing it to Oppenheimer which was ‘base doff a 721 paged Pulitzer prize winning book about the Manhattan project and Barbie is on a doll with big boobies” a childish and sexist reduction to what Gerwig’s creation actually depicts, its complexities too deep and expansive to cover in what is meant to be a music review… although Gerwig herself has offered a sympathetic response saying ‘well he’s not wrong she was the first doll mass produced with breasts’

Access Hollywood Jo Kay Golden Globes Speech 2024

‘I’m just ken’ allows Barbie’s ‘love’ interest a voice, giving him a narrative in a film that is supposed to be about female actualisation, empowerment and self discovery. It not only allows him power over his won story allowing him to just be ken rather than Barbie and Ken but also demonstrates how many men also struggle with their own identity, their own emotions rarely being taken seriously. it is his redemptive arc, allowing viewers to empathise with I’m, for that is the true definition of feminists, creating equality between men and women to better the situation, 

Produced by Mark Ronson and written by Andrew Wyatt ‘I’m Just Ken’ is a modern masterpiece, with 80s influences. On the surface a fun throw away song, an excuse for a comedic choreographed dance break and for Gosling to show-off his range. The whole weight of the song is in its own inability to take itself seriously, the duo paired with visuals becomes a distracting display of thoroughly refined dance moves taking away the attention from how ken is truly feeling, detached from reality, alone in his feelings and powerless in the face of an overshadowing figurehead for his own society, it is a truly feminist anthem. 

Murder on The Dancefloor Waltzes its way back to Chart Top Spot.

16th Jan 2024 — 2 Comments

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Return to the Charts

Sophie Ellis-Bextor Murder On The Dancefloor

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” has made a resounding comeback, thanks in part to Emerald Fennell’s 2023 gothic and glorious film, ‘Saltburn‘ .The film, featuring Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, has propelled the colourful track back to the number 8 position, over two decades after it reached number 2 upon its initial release.

The groovy track, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” delves into the themes of tumult, jealousy and doing what you can to set the groove with similar semantics being discussed in ‘Saltburn’ it is fitting that this song would soundtrack its final scene. Depicting a disturbing dialogue about desire, deceit and the class divide ‘Saltburn’ has quickly become a cult classic with Gen Z and millennials coming together to show their love for both the film and the track in a slew of viral TikTok’s.

“Saltburn”-themed videos featuring the track have amassed an impressive 4 billion views on the app. The track also experienced a significant surge in streams on New Year’s Eve 2023, with 1.5 million streams in a single day. Furthermore, in the first week of January, “Murder on the Dancefloor” claimed the top trending spot on The Hot 100, marking its first appearance on the list.

Perhaps this musical miracle holds a motto we should carry into 2024: we may plant seeds in the day that will only grow at night- Bextor herself put it poetically in a Newsnight interview earlier this month “You have to be open to the unexpected, and you can’t plan what happens next”.

Stick Season

24th Dec 2023 — Leave a comment

Stick Season, released a year ago, has seen a revival of folk/country music. It’s gripping chorus the backtrack to many viral TikTok posts. But is this all we are listening for?

Noah Kahan September 2021
Stick Season 2022 Spotify Noah Kahan

Around this time of year we reflect, we revisit the walls that broke our hearts and the faces that tried to fix them. We flick through photos to recreate pleasant days and find lost memories. We dream the days away and find that we would rather rest our head in this other worldly plain. There will always be blurred faces in the backs of our mind, always be those nights when you catch those wandering eyes and you question what if it had been more than kiss? What could be worse than this? Falling in love just to feel like you’ve missed. Something you didn’t have, something you didn’t lose, you learn to live with the decisions you choose.

Stick Season 2022 Noah Kahan Youtube

Our family figurines, just people in positions, we have placed them in to protect us from reality. The lives we lost because of something we found out, everything you’re doing all for someone else. People change because they have to, changed minds and changed lives we can live in our memories but we will not survive. There are the miracles of life and the joys of Christmas and summer but there is also the ‘season of the sticks’ a miserable time of year where life drags out the dirt you have tried to bury.

Noah Kahan June 2023

This song is evocative of campfire nights, of some distant life I am yet to have experienced but I am only really inspired by it’s chorus. There is talent and there is poetry but it feels lost to the rushed tempo, a racing mind too scared to settle on the thoughts that make it run, so it is clever in that sense but it feels undone, taking away the motional impact that a broken heart has, there is no time to settle with the pain, there is just the feeling of running away.

However, I am impressed and amused by the rhyming of sticks with exist and the verse:

‘ So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad
That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad
No and I’m no longer funny but I miss the way you laugh’

Covered by Olivia Rodrigo on BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge this song has truly got people talking, crying into the cuffs of their sleeves, singing along on drives through the country back to see old friends and family. There is so much pain in poetry but it can be beautifully to listen to as it unites us, an audible force in the face of adversity.

Emotionally intricate but rushed through, maybe we need to be braver and spend a little more time in the ‘Season of the Sticks’ to truly appreciate the warmth of summer.