Sunday, July 16, 2006

Here I go, just me and the radio

This is Shannon Noll. He was runnerup on the first season of Australian Idol. He makes pop-rock. Lots of it. And it all tends to blur together after a little while, I've decided.

All I Want is More--no, Shannon, we do not want more. This song will probably be enough for today. Maybe I'm being unfair; I've only been listening to his music for a day, so perhaps if I listened to it some more it would grow on me. I was a little put off by the song opening up on the word "and"--did I miss the song's beginning? What happened? Shannon's voice has a little bit of a rough edge to it, and the guitars are somewhat stronger than they were on yesterday's song. This is the sort of song designed to either be played while driving fast down the highway, or maybe be playing during a movie wherein said fast driving is occurring. It's probably more rock than pop, but it's still worth a look if you like your guitars but don't really care about credibility.

To buy Shannon Noll's first album, That's What I'm Talking About, or second album, Lift, you can go here.

Instead of spending lots of time on Shannon, let's look at some other sites featuring songs by Idol finalists.

Popsound, though written in Dutch, is featuring (South African) Idols finalist David Fourie. The song's in Afrikaans, but it's really good; nice and bouncy, with a little bit of guitar, but lots of good electronic effects.

Into the Groove has a gorgeous mid-tempo song by an Idols finalist from Holland, Jim Bakkum.

As mentioned earlier, Tip Tip Pop recently featured Christina Christian and a nice Latin-y song.

Finally, because I can't wholeheartedly endorse today's Idol contestant, here's a song I'm currently adoring.

Every Girl I've Wanted--Don't Stop the Pop introduced me to Jon, who was on a non-Idol TV singing competition in Denmark. This is the Jon vs. Musikk version of Jon's single "Every Girl I've Wanted," and it's perfect summery dance goodness. At some point while listening to this song, the thought crossed my mind that one could make a comparison between it and O-Town's "Liquid Dreams," because both compare the traits of the girl they love to the traits of celebrities. But really, the two songs aren't anything alike; for one, Jon doesn't sound creepy about it. For another, this song has handclaps, swirling background electronic effects, and maybe a hint of sort of "ethnic" flair (Latin?). Just try to listen to it without smiling.

To buy Jon's first album, This Side Up; second album, Today Is A Good Day (To Fall In Love); or any remixes, you can go here (physical format) or here (digital format).

Next up: not pop-rock! Onto the second season of Australian Idol.

(Apologies to Shannon Noll if I was overly harsh...it just took forever to upload his song.)

6 comments:

Paul said...

you were not overly harsh on shannon noll, it was rubbish. But i quite liked the Jon song - and it did make me remember Liquid Dreams which was a great pop song...but then they went rubbish (O-town)...they always just made me want to listen to BBMak...

Poster Girl said...

BBMak! Maybe we need a comeback from them, now that it's all about writing your own music and playing your own instruments. There's no reason, say, the Kooks should be more credible than them. How was their second album?

Paul said...

BBMak should so make a comeback. I sporadically dig out their second album as it was pretty much a wonder. There were some great power pop songs on there like Staring Into Space and Get You Through The Night. They also did a great track for Disney's Treasure Planet cartoon called Always Know Where You Are which was marv in the extreme. Look out for a blog on them sometime this week...

Anonymous said...

Really amazing! Useful information. All the best.
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Anonymous said...

Pffft. What information? This is just a biased bias from someone who couldn't write songs so just wanted to rip off someone else's instead. All I Want Is More is a champion song. All the best to Shannon Noll

Poster Girl said...

The "useful information" comment was spam, just so you know--not actually a compliment.

I guess I wasn't clear with my post--I like "All I Want Is More" (that's why I posted it), but at the time, it was the only Shannon Noll song I found I liked. That's what happens when I try to "digest" an album in a day--I jump to conclusions about it. Now (a couple of months later), my opinion about it has changed.

I really don't like to be negative about artists here; there's no point to it, especially if it's not considered criticism, which this post wasn't--I'd go back and edit it, but I don't like to change posts more than a day or two old.

I don't normally write comments this long, but I've been feeling bad about this post for quite some time now--as I said, I really don't like to insult (it's better just to not post the songs), and that's what I did in this post--so I thought I'd just leave a comment instead. Consider my words retracted! Lift isn't my favorite album of all time (I don't even know what that would be), but I was far too quick in judging it.