pop culture

Ranking all of Kylie Minogue’s lead singles

With Kylie Minogue dropping her new track, “Say Something”, from the forthcoming album Disco, I thought it would be a fantastic time to do a quick little ranking of all the “singing budgie’s” lead singles. Now as Ru would say, let the best song…win.

15. Only You (featuring James Corden) – Kylie Christmas

I was in two minds if I should even include this from Kylie Christmas. Look it isn’t terrible and James Corden was actually bearable for once, but this was never going to be ranked above anything else considering it was from a Christmas album. Also how was “Every Day’s Like Christmas” not the lead single. That song has actually become a Christmas staple in the last five years.

14. Word Is Out – Let’s Get To It

If you want an indication of what Kylie thinks of this one, look no further than her greatest hits two disc collection Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection, where “Word Is Out” could only make it onto the expanded edition. A song that is incredibly dated by the new jack swing that was popular in the early 90’s, and also from her least successful album to date, it’s no surprise I’ve ranked it so low.

13. Hand on Your Heart – Enjoy Yourself

I feel bad lumping in another PWL single this early in the rankings, considering Kylie wouldn’t have a career without these early hits, but it’s also an indication of how successful her music has continued to be. Despite being released eighteen months after her first album, there isn’t much that is distinctive between the two. Would recommend checking out her acoustic version that was released on The Abbey Road Sessions, as it’s a perfect example of the profound lyrics that can be hidden in pop songs under all the noise.

12. 2 Hearts – X

Honestly if the pop quiz question was “What was the lead single off Kylie’s album X?”, I would have got. How was it not “Wow”. I was so close to just writing about “Wow” instead, as it’s the song I think of most from the album X. Then to find out that “2 Hearts” wasn’t even her song, but instead a cover from Kish Mauve, an British electronic duo. No one can complain though as “2 Hearts” went to the top of the ARIA Charts in Australia, and cracked the top ten in the UK.

11. Dancing – Golden
Sure Golden wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it looks like it was the move that Kylie needed to make at the time. I might have this ranked higher than most, due to seeing her perform it live last year at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl (it remains one of my favourite concerts). Honestly though with our pop princess turning 50 it made sense for her to be making a song that was a little more introspective, while still having fun singing about going out dancing.

10. Say Something – Disco

This was hard to place considering it was only released a few hours ago. One one hand I was expecting something a little more bolder from an album called “Disco”. On the other I already like it more than the previously discussed tracks. Time will tell on this one.

9. I Should Be So Lucky – Kylie

From the album that kicked it all of, this one is extremely repetitive, but I can’t knock it. A pure 80’s tune that went to number one in eight countries. It’s a little meh, and I’d admit I’d probably skip when playing a Kylie playlist on Spotify, but I’ve always got to respect where an artist started.

8. Into the Blue – Kiss Me Once

God it might have been a flop of an album, but this one is a 5/5 song. At the time it was compared to “All the Lovers”, so maybe Kylie was playing it a little too safe, but this is one of the few songs that can come on at work and lift my spirit’s.

7. Slow – Body Language

“Slow”’s minimalist production is able to perfectly complement Minogue’s seductive vocals on the lead single from Body Language, as she stepped away from the dance pop that had featured on the last two albums. One of her five Grammy nominations, Slow isn’t regarded as high as her other hits, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

6. Some Kind Of Bliss – Impossible Princess

This will be a shock for some that it’s ranked so high, but it’s a personal favourite of mine. Rankings are subjective afterall. This song is nothing like anything else on the album, so was it a mistake for this to be the lead single? Maybe. Still she had never done anything like it so good on her for taking a step outside her lane. If you don’t like the song, or even the album it came from, don’t complain too much, as I don’t think we would have got Light Years without the mixed reviews for Impossible Princess.

5. Better The Devil You Know – Rhythm of Love

Still a staple of a Kylie concert to this day, Kylie was moving on from Neighbours and it started to show in her music. The more mature sound might also be due to the influence of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, who Kylie was dating at the time. Listening in chronological order, you can hear the progression she is starting to make.

4. Spinning Around – Light Years

The song that turned Kylie’s career back around and cemented her in pop music history. “Spinning Around” was the first time she’d topped the charts in the U.K in a decade, with a song that defines the turn of the century. And then there is the video featuring the iconic hotpants. It was indeed a comeback, from an album that would be listened to all around the world after the Sydney Olympics performance.

3. All The Lovers – Aphrodite

How is it that so many times the song that is last recorded for an album, is one of the best. Three years on from X, pop music had changed dramatically, but Kylie still had another hit left in her. It’s a strange song that fits so well as an album opener, but also as the concert closing song.

2. Confide In Me – Kylie Minogue

“Confide In Me” is such a leap from all of her previous work, but a leap that was successful unlike “Some Kind Of Bliss”. One of the best songs of the 90’s is ironically nothing like what the average punter would think of, when Kylie Minogue would come to mind.

1. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – Fever

I’m sure it’s no shock that this is number one. Her most well known song. Everyone knows the song’s pulsing baseline. Everyone can recite the “la la la”. It took the music made on Light Years to a new level. Right now sitting in the middle of her career, it’s a peek that she wasn’t able to get back to again. It’s one of the highest selling singles of all time, and one that lives up to its title, when people really can’t get it out of their head.

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How They Could Make Big Brother Australia Even Better In 2021

As we approach tonight’s finale of Big Brother Australia, I thought it would be a good time to discuss some changes that could be made next year. Don’t get me wrong, unlike the majority I’ve loved the refreshed format. They’ve taken the best bits of the North American format and mixed it with some things we’d usually see in the UK / former Australian show and made a new BB fit for a new era. That’s not to say there hasn’t been some issues along the way, which I want to get into. 

 

First of all, the first episode was promoted as fast paced and exciting. It was so fast that it kicked off with an eviction. I get why they did it. They wanted to show the audience up front that this would be something new. It was night 3 for the housemates, but we had only been watching them for ninety minutes. Instead of kicking off the action straight away, I’d love to see at least the first episode, maybe even the second episode too, with no nomination comp and no one going home. That would give time for everyone to get an intro package and for us to see some human interaction. More time getting to know the HMs would mean how people nominate and vote further in the game would make more sense. And the intro packages don’t have to be drawn out like the old BB. I’d suggest watching how they get it done in America. Every person gets a very short package, but enough to learn a few quick things about them. In this year’s show only Kieran, Dan, Marissa, Allan, and Angela got intro packages while meeting Sonia, and a few got them featured later on. I’d say most of the evictions in the first half of the game, I wasn’t emotionally invested because I didn’t know them at all.

 

Another change that could make the game even more strategic would be introducing the Power of Veto, that is featured in the North American Big Brother. It would work pretty similar to the advantage that Sarah found this season. Either the show can have the nomination comp winner put three people up and the POV winner would be forced to remove one, or each week two people would be nominated and the POV winner would then have the choice to use the advantage or not. Of course like the North American version, if the POV is used there will be a replacement nominee. By adding in an extra comp in the first half of the game that would mean someone would only go home every second episode. For example in the Sunday episode there would be a nomination comp and the nominees revealed. Then in the following episode the audience would see the POV then the eviction. This would be another change that would also give more time to see the cast interaction, outside of the game play. 

 

This season we saw at times when the person would win the challenge they’d head straight to Big Brother and lock in who they’d nominate. If they were given at least 30 minutes to talk with people they could confer with their alliance, and they people who feel are in danger could plead their case and try to sway the nomination away from them. 

 

My last point on the comps would be that they need to be changed up. I’m glad to already hear Sonia has stated in an interview that they’ve taken that feedback on board, but I was shocked how many times this season we saw a comp that took strength and endurance to win. Even when we finally got a comp with a puzzle, they had half their body weight attracted to them. So we need to see comps next season that can be won by using your mind. Two that I’d suggest from BBUS is the facemash comp where three faces are put together and the fastest to get them all right wins, and the comp that’s been featured in recent seasons where colours flash up on the screen and then a question like “what was the middle colour shown” or “what colour came before blue” would be asked. Then there are comps that really can just be random chance. Sometimes simple is still exciting. Like whoever gets the hockey puck closest to the object. Is it exciting TV? No. But the exciting TV could come if someone random like Kieran would win. 

 

Okay enough about the comps, the last two things that need to improve would be editing in more fun moments. If this can’t happen in the main show, then give us a side show with the best moments we missed. It could be put on 7Two on a Friday night, or 7Plus would work just as well. Whatever it would take to see them having some more fun. Looking at the cast it’s clear we need a more diverse group. The show promoted that things would be the most diverse cast yet, and while they did a good job, I think they can push themselves to improve. It doesn’t mean just looking at age and race, but really digging in and finding people that are really from different worlds of life. If you have a large group on your season, called the “Alphas” then your cast wasn’t too diverse in the first place. 

 

Lastly let’s not have the players play in a game and vote each other out, but let the country decide who wins it all. If they are playing the game, either have a jury of the last seven or nine people voted out come together and decide who wins. They’d need to be shown the comps and footage from the eviction room, but it will mean the group has the final say, not the nation who doesn’t know everything that has happened. 

 

In saying all that, I’ve loved having the show back this year. It needed a change, but at the end of the day it’s still Big Brother. A group of people enter a house and we watch their every move.

I’m not a failure, I’m just a work in progress

So the last time I posted on this blog was in September of 2016. Over those two and a half years I’ve kept on paying for the domain name in hope that one day I’d get back to it. Well today is that day.

In that time I’ve been both busy and not so busy. At times I was studying. Other times I was still continuing my long quest of self discovery. Scrolling back down to see some of the posts I made in 2014 and 2015 make me both happy and sad (nice Kasey Musgraves reference that I’ve managed to shoe-horn in within the first 100 words). On one hand some of the posts show how much I’ve been able to grow. On the other the posts also expose some of the emotions I was feeling at the time I’m still feeling right now. I’m constantly fighting myself in my head to remind myself that I’m not a failure, just a work in progress.

With all that said, it’s so much easier to say I’m a work in progress without putting the work in. That’s probably been my downfall in a lot of aspects of my life. Not putting the work in. My mental health suffered for so long because I expected everything to get better on its own. Even when I read my last post, all about mental health I stated: “…in the long run I’ll be fine. Everything will all work out somehow”. I know now that to be not true. (more…)

the failed cover letter

A few months ago I applied for a job I knew I had no chance of getting, but I went for it anyway. My low expectations were well thought out, and meant I was not disappointed in any way. Here’s a terrible cover letter a used in my application.

As you can see from my resume, I have very little experiance and no degree. I have Kanye to thank, in part, for that. See ‘The Collage Dropout’ lead me to believe you could get anywhere in life without a degree. I was once talking about this in class in reference to myself, when a teacher jumped in and said only “creative types” could get away with not having a degree while having a career.

I also have myself to thank for why I currently don’t have a degree. While I was meant to be studying in the final years of school, I was too busy focusing on what was happening in the entertainment world.

TRUE STORY: One time while on Twitter in class I broke the “news” that Josh from ‘Big Brother’ 2012 would be leaving due to his brothers death. I was so proud of myself at the time.

No degree aside, I feel like I would be a perfect fit for the job of Staff Writer at Buzzfeed. I’m young, and would never fit the typical mould of a journalism student, just as Buzzfeed doesn’t fit the mould of your typical website. I feel like I have a knowledge and grasp on pop culture that others my age wouldn’t (knowledge is important as time is money, money is power, power is pizza, and pizza is knowledge. If knowledge comes after time, money and PIZZA it must be important. Lastly I believe that I am highly motivated to get results and get things done. As someone who has posted content online for the last two years with varying degrees of success, I know how it feels like not get the views or clicks you were hoping for. Every time this has happened, I’d pick myself up and try harder next time.

Lastly I’d like you to know I realise there is a very slim chance of me getting this job. To quote Jeff Probst: “(Contestant) has 0.00% of winning this game”. He has said this a fair few times before a season of ‘Survivor’ will start in interviews to press. The funny thing is a few times the people he thinks have no chance, have so much determination that they win the game. Maybe that will be me. The one that nobody expects to achieve anything gets to accomplish great?

I’ll end this letter with that reference to the greatest reality television show of all time, and with myself thanking you for even giving this letter any of your time.

Spoiler Alert: Are we losing grip what what a spoiler really means?

Furious 7 has now became the fifth highest grossing film of all time. Only James Cameron’s Titanic and Avatar, Marvel’s The Avengers, and the final Harry Potter film stand in its way. So a lot of people have gone to see Paul Walker’s final movie. I have also seen the action film, but took a long time to do so.

In the three weeks between the films release and getting to see it, I was on social media constantly, and if anyone had mentioned parts of the film, well that’s my own darn fault for one, not seeing the film soon enough, and two, being stupid enough to go on sites that may reveal things about the plot when I hadn’t seen it yet. Luckily I wasn’t spoiled, and I was able to enjoy the film for what it was, but recent events have got me thinking: have we lost track of what a spoiler really means?

To me a spoiler is when something is revealed about a television show or movie ahead of it’s release date. I’ll use my beloved reality show Survivor as an example (yes, Survivor is still on TV. Fifteen years strong!). Survivor films it’s seasons well in advance, sometimes taking up to eight months to air after the events actually happened in some deserted South Pacific island. In the past the order of when people are voted out have been released before the season even starts. That is a spoiler! When I see tweets about the episode after it has aired in Australia, that is not a spoiler, as I can’t expect the world to stop for me. Even though it does suck when I have been stupid enough to go on Twitter straight after the episode aired on the East Coast of the United States, it’s nobodies fault but mine.

The incident much like the second example I explained happened to my sister when she posted about the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy on Instagram, a good 48 hours after the episode had aired. Half a dozen people screamed “spoiler” and that she “ruined it”, but what was she meant to do? Wait a week? A month? A year? That’s ridiculous!

As I said, stay away from social media if you actually care about seeing something before you hear it from someone else. It’s called social media for a reason. People are always going to be talking. So if you don’t want to spoil shows for yourself, and you don’t see it straight away, it might be best to stay offline.

2K15: What I’m Looking Forward To In The Pop Culture World

Films

The Force Awakens (December)
The hype for this film is massive. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the amount of press and speculation about a film in my life time. The first thought I had when another trilogy was announced was, if this goes bad, it’s gonna be really bad. As in, Star Wars fans take things super seriously, and something tiny could ruin the film for them. But so far, everyone has been super positive about it, which is a good sign.

Age of Ultron (July)
The first Avengers film took me by surprise. At the time I hadn’t seen any of the five Marvel films that had proceeded it, but I absolutely loved it. And as most sequels go, this one will be bigger and better. On the flip side, some sequels are terrible, but that won’t be the case with this one. With the incredible Joss Whedon in charge we have nothing to worry about. Plus he has been taking inspiration from The Empire Strikes back, only the greatest sequel of all time.

Music

Songs of Experience (Probably not even 2015, more like 2018, because this is U2, right?)
The most hated album of the year was one of my favourites, and ever since Bono mentioned a follow up, I’ve been wanted more from U2.

untitled 7th Kanye album (some time soon)
All through out 2014, there was meant to be a new Kanye West album. We got to end of the year and we had nothing. Now in 2015, it’s looking like a full album will be coming sooner rather than latter, now that a new single “Only One” with Paul McCartney has been released.

TV

Game Of Thrones (April)
The worlds most downloaded show is back again. While I like shows with shorter seasons like Thrones (10 episodes a season), the ten month gap is painful. Luckily the wait is close to over.

Parks & Recreation (January)
NBC’s last decent comedy is nearly over, and they will be missed by many. Blink and you might miss the final season as it will be all over by the end of Febuary. Then all we will have is our memories Lil Sebastian (RIP Lil Sebastian).

Boy

“Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth.”

Does it make anyone uncomfortable seeing a sixty year old interviewing 5 Seconds Of Summer and trying to act young and hip to fit it. Just No!

I understand you are “experienced” in what you do, but there comes a time when you just aren’t suited anymore.

And there is more than one that is holding on. Holding on while they can, while someone with more of grasp on the year 2014 is waiting in the shadows.

Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’

A few of my favourite tracks on ‘1989’

.01 Welcome To New York – Taylor is so on point here in saying how inspirational New York can be. Ryan Tedder’s work on this one isn’t lost, and it’s a great introduction to what Taylor called her first “documented” pop album. To those saying that it’s no Sinatra or Jay-Z anthem, I don’t think she was ever trying to out do the greats. Also love the shout out to the LGBT community.

.03 Style – This is almost like two songs have been put together, as the first minute of the song is a snooze fest, while the chorus is one of my favourite moments of the album.

.04 Out Of The Woods – Easily the best track of the album. Got me and many other super excited for 1989. One of three tracks Taylor did with Jack Antonoff, lead guitarist of the rock band Fun, and he has helped her take her synthpop ventures to the next level.

.07 I Wish You Would – This is about Harry, right? Because when ever I listen to Taylor I automatically think it’s about a recent ex-boyfriend, but it’s not always the case. Every song on 1989 can’t be about Harry right?

.08 Bad Blood – It is well known by know that this is a dig at once friend Katy Perry, not a former boyfriend. She took things even further by including a picture of Grammy next the the song lyrics in the album booklet. For the record Grammy count is Taylor Swift 7, Katy Perry 0.

.10 How You Get The Girl – Feels like a mix of the old Taylor with the new Taylor. Nothing bad about that. More low-key than some of the other tracks, but after a few listens I came to appreciate it.