I call upon the sane and rational...

In the Guardian today there is a story about the race for the Christmas number one. Turns out that Alexandra Burke (Winner of TV "talent" contest X-Factor) has released a cover of the Leonard Cohen track Hallelujah despite the fact that the only cover of Hallelujah is by the one and only Jeff Buckley.

In the name of fairness I actually hied myself over to Youtube and listened to Ms Burke's version and what did I find? That it sucks so much there's a chance I may hunt the bitch down and strangle her with piano wire.

And in case you think I'm overreacting I present to you the same choice I have just made.

Firstly (and in order not to make you biased by making you hear the better version first) I give you Alexandra Burke's version.



And here is Jeff Buckleys version.



Light dawns and the choice becomes clear. Alexandra Burke's version makes you want to kick a kitten across the room in an apoplectic rage and Jeff Buckley's version sets your emotions in gear and can easily reduce a grown man to tears.

So I call upon the sane and rational of the world to go out and buy a copy of Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley in order to send a message to the world of music moguls that states categorically "Talent is more important to the people than soulless, ball-less tripe put together in order to make Simon Cowell and the rest of Satan's little horde rich."

And finally to end this little screed I would like to point you in the direction of the guardian story where a spokesman for Sony BMG (who represent Ms Burke, Mr Buckley and the songs original composer Mr Leonard Cohen) said that the company hoped Burke would take the top spot but conceded:

"Obviously it would be brilliant if Jeff got to No 2."

Which goes to prove to me, and probably to you also, that Sony BMG doesn't have any idea about what qualifies as good music and is only interested in stealing money from the pockets of teenagers. What do teenagers know about good music? About as much as the Burkes at Sony BMG do.

Daddy don't do pop music...

Or so I thought until the other day when I got in his car and found, for once, he wasn't listening to some blowhard on Talksport witter on about a game where eleven grown men chase an inflated pigbladder around a field, instead a tune I recognised as being modern was bouncing out the speakers and he was tapping his fingers along to the tune.

My first reaction was that I was hearing The Voices again but no, my old man was listening to pop music. Amy MacDonald to be more precise. Which kinda stunned me more as she's exactly the type that I expect my old man to call Teenyboppy Shite.

I remarked that it wasn't like him to listen to music made after the death of Elvis in 1977 and I hadn't ever expected him to listen to pop music unless he was at a party and had no other choice. He said, and I quote... "It's not pop music. It's Amy MacDonald."

"It fuckin' is pop. It's in the charts now." I replied, knowing this to be true as I had read about it the day before in the music section of The Guardian. "It's blatantly pop. It couldn't get more poppy if it tried." I continued.

"It's Scottish music." The bearded one retorted.
"Balls man..." I said.

"Scottish music is some choocter bampot droning on about the Misty Blue Hills of Tyree while more choocter bampots shag the haggis behind him... It's Highland weirdies singing about their long lost love o'er the sea and the boat that they fucked off in... It's small poofy looking Frenchmen on Shortbread tins, See You Jimmy hats and cacky tacky Kiltie dolls in plastic tubes... In short, it's everything Scotland should be stamping out as it perpetuates the worldwide view that all Scots are Ginger haired, wear kilts and fuck sheep when in actual fact we were the nation that gave the world such wonders as anesthetics, Brownian motion, pneumatic tyres, the decimal point, the Kelvin scale, Logarithms, Paraffin, TV and the ability to communicate globally using the telephone." I spat, getting quite riled at the thought of foreigners perceptions of the Scottish race in this day and age.

The very same night I downloaded a copy of Miss MacDonald's album* and must say it was surprisingly good. The girl can sing that's for sure.

* Amy, should you read this and think me evil for not purchasing a copy of your album rest assured that if you want payment for it whip me off an email and I'll arrange to meet up with you to give you the cash.