by Stuart Heritage
Nerina Pallot
Everybody’s Gone To War
14th Floor
Nerina Pallot is a woman with balls. Her debut album never got released, but she knuckled down and went on tour with Bryan Adams anyway. She ran out of budget recording her second album, so she re-mortgaged her house to pay for some more studio time. Respect. And now she’s finally getting her just desserts: new single Everybody’s Gone To War is all over radio like Johnson’s Holiday Skin on an Essex wannabe’s décolletage. And rightly so, because it’s how Sheryl Crow would sound if she had a bit of grit – rather than Mac mascara – in her eye: equal parts spiky rhythm guitar, soaring chorus and a slightly lumpen lyric about the futility of warfare. How can she fail? Everybody loves a survivor. Especially one with an extensive TV advertising campaign behind her.
Here come another barrage of singles reviews from Matt Willis, Ordinary Boys and Lady Sovereign, Primal Scream, Sandi Thom and The Feeling, all after the jump…
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by Stuart Heritage
Welcome one and all to the hecklerspray Eurovision liveblog 2006. We’ve spent the last month tearing through the Eurovision betting odds of each country; and now that Eurovision is finally here, we’re going to be liveblogging the arse off it.
Eurovision is now just a matter of minutes away, and all of the Eurovision stars are preparing to show Europe that they can be just as spangly and incomprehensible and crap as anyone else in this goddamned continent. Lordi are strapping their prosthetic noses on, Daz Sampson is going “What did you learn? What did you learn?” over and over into a mirror like Robert De Niro at the end of Raging Bull, that Maltese bloke is furiously tweaking his annoying soulpatch and the Greek Eurovision hosts are visibly questioning if this was really the right career choice for them.
And us? Why, we’re only vaguely certain that we’ll be able to get all the way through the Eurovision Song Contest without a) bursting into tears or b) trying to pop our eyes with an unfolded paperclip…
So here we go! Liveblogging Eurovision 2006! Yee-ha! Don’t forget to place a Eurovision bet if you haven’t already, and don’t forget that the most recent stuff is going to be on the top. Ready? This won’t be pretty…
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