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Song of the day – 602: Janelle Monáe

Song of the day – 602: Janelle Monáe
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I love this time of the year. This is the time of year that Tamsin Chapman posts her half-yearly round-up of favourite music, and I spend the next two weeks playing catch-up. 

Of course, if you’re don’t enjoy reading my tangential asides you might want to skip straight to the source and then return, preening your knowledgeable new feathers and smiling smugly to yourself as you check another one off the list, but… Ah, c’mon. Just for a day at least, can’t we pretend that we’re friends here at Collapse Board? That what we share is an enthusiasm and passion for music, the unceasing thrill of discovering the NEW, a wonder for sounds and an equal wonder for the way words can trip us into listening to the sounds? Can’t we do that? No? Ah, bugger you then. Here’s the link to Tamsin’s half-yearly round-up. Go off and gorge yourselves, music monsters.

The three of you left, well… think of this as the blog equivalent of comic books. You need to wait a day/week/month for each new instalment instead of grabbing the entire she-bang off the shelves but the anticipation makes the consuming so much sweeter: your imagination is allowed room to roam, you can start yearning. I never had anything against disco, ever. If my fellow (we didn’t call ourselves hipsters then) hipsters had something against ‘chart pap’, the invective was rarely aimed in the direction of Niles and Rodgers, Moroder… Gloria Gaynor even. Everyone loves to dance. Everyone loves to strut their funky stuff, white boy. Don’t they?

I mean, how could you love this:

And not love this:

AWESOME FRENCH POP MUSIC

OK. I’m being a little revisionist here. I’m not sure I was aware of the AWESOME FRENCH POP MUSIC at the time. Probably just as well. My libido might have gone into overdrive 20 years before schedule.

Maybe this should read… and not love this:

Ridiculous. My taste in music has always been centred around The Voice (I’m a former choirboy – and I have always appreciated individuality in voices, voices where you can hear the person singing) and The Rhythm. Yes, I like some Abrasion and Ambition (great song). Sure, I like Atmosphere (literally: sadly, my life revolved around that song for a good few months in 1980). So disco would often seem to be the highest art form: awkward disco of course being the finest kind of disco. And all this would explain why I don’t set much store by lyrics, despite being a writer and lyricist myself.

Likewise in 2013. How could you love this:

And this:

And not love this:

And indeed this:

>

Three days ago, I’d never heard of the lady: now, I find my friends on Facebook lining up to place a claim on being the first to hear her, and rightly so. Janelle Monáe is clearly Song of the Day of whichever day you want her to be Song of the Day of.

LESSON ENDS, except for a brief coda. This, in case anyone was wondering, is an Enemy of the People:

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