Posts by "chris"
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Hard News: The non-binary council, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Yeah, It's looking like the people of the Maungawhau Subdivision dodged a bullet there.
Ms Chuang was charged with unlawfully accessing a computer system and later pleaded guilty. Judge Phil Gittos refused her bid to be discharged without conviction in the Auckland District Court and she was fined $1000 to be paid to the museum.
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Hard News: The non-binary council, in reply to Heather Gaye,
Indeed. People use the “on taxpayer time” line as an excuse to justify their prurient outrage. I wonder if they’d be so parsimonious if he wasn’t married?
I’m quite interested in the impact in less material terms:
The mana of a chief was integrated with the strength of the tribe.
Does the Chief’s loss of Mana, and them letting it slide, affect the Mana of tribe?
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Hard News: The non-binary council, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think it was pretty poor judgement to be doing it in the Ngati Whatua room.
Something I found to be kind of arty in the Herald’s account was:
She said a security guard once found her naked with Mr Brown in the Ngati Whatua room in the Town Hall
To me that reads as if it’s just her that was naked, what’s up with that? In all my years…
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Story, in reply to Rich Lock,
Thanks for the correction there.
singers from ‘Davenport
Heh, clearly bearing no relation to an English district in Devon. Sorry if I wasn't clear; by another colony's accent I was referring to the "tripping in the bæthroom" US twang which permeates much of Lorde's work, as opposed to say what OMC did in How Bizarre.
The impending end play is looking all the more fascinating on the back of the UK media being already engaged prior to The Love Club EP bombing there. I'd imagine EMI/VIrgin will have upped their game sufficiently in the interim.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Story, in reply to JacksonP,
It’s Ken Loach as pop.
Dizzee Rascal’s debut album ‘Boy in da Corner’, released in 2003 when he was just 17 has to date only sold about 58,000 units in the US, i.e. a number Pure Heroine surpassed in its first week. This got me wondering out how well Lorde has been received in the UK, Wikipedia isn’t giving up much, a chart position of 197 for the Tennis Court single and nothing else. Perhaps there has been some delay in release schedules or? I can’t find anything for Royals in the UK , despite its resounding success in numerous regions. It says:
The Tennis Court EP was released digitally in the UK on 7 June (due to the timezone difference) and physically on 22 June
But it got me wondering if perhaps a singer from the colonies, telling people how it isn’t, in the accent/ vernacular of another colony, might have difficulty tipping the relevance meter there;
Obviously someone may have access to better info on Lorde’s UK campaign, in which case I’m happy to be corrected…
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Hard News: Friday Music: Weird Auckland, in reply to Sacha,
Cripes. I’m not sure either of us are quite old enough to have missed that cut Sacha.
Another point I neglected to consider before posting above, was the striking contrast between Vaughan's:
You can still stand tall
and Yelich-O’Connor’s
And I’m not proud of my address
Regardless of the peripheral tangential blathering in the above post, when making a definitive reading, especially of a musical lyric, I’m no intentionalist.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Weird Auckland, in reply to Russell Brown,
Sorry, bit of a spiel...I needed a break from Stronghold Kingdoms.
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it observes that the ostentation of major label hip hop and other Top 40 pop isn’t terribly relevant to suburban teens in New Zealand, I can report that she and her friends aren’t really worth arguing with.
But Tom Beard pointed out something interesting. Which is that William DeVaughan’s 1974 hit ‘Be Thankful for What You Got’ embodies an almost identical sentiment to ‘Royals’:
I feel that this ‘senitment’ is perhaps open to further interpretation, beyond the material references, I’m mixed about whether they allign that closely. DeVaughan’s hit seems ostensibly to be about empowerment and being proud, regardless of one’s wealth, with the refrain:
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tallWhile bearing a superficial resemblance (note there’s no ‘I’ anywhere in DeVaughan’s lyric) Royals contrasts Lorde’s humble origins against the ostentation of the US music industry as a preamble to her aspiration to become a pop queen, in the chorus:
Obviously the author’s stated intention can’t be ignored:
It’s not so much a declaration of dislike for the stuff I namedrop, more calling ‘bullshit’ on it all. I thought it was time someone in popular music was saying what everyone my age was thinking: we don’t even have licenses, let alone Maybachs. I enjoy listening to music with really lavish, opulent stuff talked about, but purely on a shallow level; ”Royals” was me trying to get real.
But it’s difficult to overlook the fact that ‘bullshit’ is being called here by namedropping, with a degree of familiarity, the very products the lyricist is reacting against the namedropping of i.e I had to Google to find out what these products are.
Furthermore that the relevance of US Top 40 pop to suburban teens in New Zealand is difficult to dispute given the manner in which the respective countries’ charts mirror one another, relevant by virtue of charting and vice versa. And furthermore in Ella’s own words from that Vevo clip:
"I love rap music because it just makes me feel way cooler than I really am. I’ve always really liked Kanye and I met him on Jools Holland.
“He was wearing a grill on his lower teeth and I had this barely suppressed desire to rub the grill. I didn’t rub the grill."
The relevancy may merely be shallow, it may only make one feel way cooler, but that is 99% of pop music in a nutshell, arguably. As for Kanye, he’s been dropping those names for a decade:
This is not an image
This is God given
This is hard liven
Mixed wit crystal sipping
It’s the most consistentNever Let me down, 2004
Via his involvement on Maybach Music 2 with Rick Ross (2009), and later with Jay-Z:
I hit the club, ordered some Grey Goose
Switched it for Ciroc to give Puff’s stock a boostPrimetime, 2011
The sincerity of Royal’s critique of the namedropping ‘bullshit’ and our varying considerations of her perception of its relevance to a demographic are all the more problematic in light of the decision to cover West’s ‘Hold my liquor’ in a performance for 5000 Aucklanders, altering a number of the lyrics while sticking with:
Bitch I’m back out my coma, waking up on your sofa
When I park my Range Rover, slightly scratch your Corolla
Okay, I smashed your Corolla,Whether or not she procurred a driving licence in the interim seems less likely than the simple explanation that Ella is a complex individual prone to standard inconsistencies and desires:
What can you do with a million? Everything I want either costs $50 or $200 billion.
Yes the song does employ a critique of the rampant materialism of pop culture, but the thrust, that melodic climax that the verse builds up to three times over during the course of the song remains:
So that’s an alternate reading, personally I don’t and have never, as far as I recall, had any great urge to drive a Cadallic or any other kind of motor vehicle, but that sounds like a reasonable and realisable inclination to have, and doubly so given that this vehicle (Royals), expressing Ella’s own aspiration to reach the top, has in turn enabled her decree to manifest:
ooh ooh oh ooh
We’re better than we’ve every dreamed
And I’m in love with being queen -
The song’s placement was negotiated around late July, McDonough estimates, and the custom mix was helmed by industry vet George Drakoulias!
"Went from the station straight to Orange Julius
I bought a hot dog from my man George Drakoulias " -
Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to BlairMacca,
In fairness to the prosecution, Taina Pora complicated things by confessing:
An experienced detective warned superiors that a teenager was not telling the truth about his involvement in the murder and rape of Susan Burdett.
His concerns were ignored and the teenager, Teina Pora, was eventually convicted of the horrific 1992 crime – despite new evidence he didn’t do it.
“He appeared to me to be a stupid kid who wanted to big note,” the officer told TV3’s 3rd Degree.