A God-awful Small Affair

On the evening of February 12 a large portion of the US and those willing in other countries witnessed something, at the 54th Grammy Awards, that could be described in a number of ways. Caterwauling, certainly. Provacative, sure. Good, debatable. Minaj's exorcism routine and mini-film polarised critics between the bewildered and the appalled, and threw up all sorts of concerns for the potential of her upcoming second record. Combine this with an already intense backlash against the single and music video for Stupid Hoe and you'd be forgiven for believing that Onika Maraj had well and truly lost it. The use of multiple personalities and aliases in pop isn't an entirely new phenomenon: David Bowie had the Thin White Duke and Ziggy Stardust, Prince had Camille, Beyoncé had Sasha Fierce... but the use of alter egos in pop today seems to be employed in order to put aside two different stories. Whether this is in lieu of one interesting one or not, there's something inter...

Oh hype, you sexy animal. You give me easy opening paragraphs to write. You are carefully designated by the industry and the media to line pockets in the name of 'making someone big' or, to paraphrase The Voice (other talent shows are available), 'making dreams come true'. The thing is, giving someone the BBC Sound of... title neither carries any weight nor impresses critics. Past recipients indeed have acheived great commercial success - Jessie J, Adele and 50 Cent are now superstars - but the occasional cock-up has been made, too. The Bravery winning over Bloc Party and Little Boots winning over Lady GaGa, Florence + the Machine and La Roux, for example. Not one of the winners have garnered critical acclaim in abundance, either. When it gets as rock as Keane and as soulful as Corinne Bailey Rae you're never going to establish a real accolade for yourself. Maybe I'm just whining because Kiwanuka, a relative unknown, has won over Frank Ocean and Azealia Banks...

Ever since forking out the extravagant amount of £2 for her debut album in HMV I've been able to call myself a loyal Ladyhawke fan. The finest popstar to hail from New Zealand since...well, this is embarrassing. Philippa Brown broke through in 2008 with a whole range of excellently-crafted pop songs ( Magic, My Delirium, Paris is Burning ), but sadly none of them by her. She'd enjoyed relative success already as part of the Australian band Teenager but the idea of Ladyhawke as a popstar seemed to trigger more. Thus it was a nice day-after-birthday surprise to discover her return single, Black, White & Blue . The initial fear though was that Brown had decided to veer away from the pop tinges of her debut in favour of a kind of Garbage sound - indeed, Anxiety has been billed as a "straight-up guitar record": It's lot more rocky. The tone of it is definitely darker. It's still poppy and fun, but I listened to a lot of guitar rock when I was writing i...

It would probably be best if I avoided hip hop reviews altogether. Previous ones I've attempted have resulted in death threats (over the pointedly unfavourable take on that Bad Meets Evil album last year), cries of heresy (over Tyler the Creator's Goblin ) or general nonchalance. Admittedly, it's a genre I'm relatively new to - but my brief sojourns into the hip hop fanbases of the internet have left me with a sour taste. In a genre already packed full of posturing, bravado and widespread anger and prejudice, it's a dangerous playground where, inbetween nonsense catchphrases about 'swag', 'cray' and how You Only Live Once, some of the world's biggest douchebags have hipster-offs. A fan's hero can hold the interesting position of being hailed for his early work and defended for collaborating with Nicki Minaj, but said fan will likely 'throw shade' (see: insult) at other artists for incredibly similar pursuits. It's frustrations ...

Aww. Poor Ting Tings. From chart domination to laughing stock in such a short time. If they polarised critics between "aren't they annoying?" and "well I might as well listen to 'Shut Up and Let Me Go' since everyone else is" back in 2008, the only real element in their favour was mainstream coverage. In 2012, they stand as a band achieving only #23 in the album chart and #124 with its lead single. Not a great time to be a Ting Ting. And lo, the critics have attacked: Pitchfork gave the band a typically harsh 1.8, the Guardian a mere 2 stars and even the NME, who're usually quite partial to that whole kind of ironic-pop posing thing, a snooty (but not too snooty, since they were probably paid by their label not to be) 5/10. But is the backlash justified? Well, opener and single 'Silence' would appear so. Only 3:47 but feeling like 13 minutes, the track's hook is an 80s alt-pop riff that provides a dreary, heavy backdrop for Katie Wh...