Reports of an alarming nature reached me today: Robbie Williams is holed up in a studio in New York once again with Take That. I know many Take That fans who were upset when he left the band nearly 15 years ago, and I know that many of them will now be hoping that anything will happen to stop him returning.
Despite his protestations, the only thing that pushed Robbie out of Take That was his ego. He believed he was better than the other members, and whilst Robbie loved the Angels and Take That became another mere memory in the history of boy bands, his commercial success perhaps proved his theory right for a few years. But nobody expected Take That to make the comeback they did and Williams felt it hardest. The band have undeniably moved on leaps and bounds since the days where their videos saw them writhing around in waterfalls on tropical islands, and Gary Barlow's undeniable writing talent combined with the other three lads' charisma and vocal ability has won them new fans and drawn back their old. With multi-date sell out shows at Wembley Stadium this summer and three other sell out tours under their belts since their 2005 comeback, Robbie will have had no choice but to question his decision all those years ago.
In comparison, Williams' last album Rudebox was critically panned and even his long serving fans couldn't get behind the record. His last tour ended as Take That kicked off their reunion and he has since been hidden away in the depths of Los Angeles. So should he be allowed back into the group who he has, in the past, so publicly spurned? In my opinion, the answer is no. Take That have proved they can survive without him and sustain their position as credible musicians. Would Robbie be trying to fit back in with them if his own solo career wasn't flopping about the bottom of the charts like a dying fish? Most likely not. The Take That: For The Record documentary that bought about the band's reunion in the first place saw Robbie snub the opportunity to meet with his former co-members and his attitude towards a couple of the band suggested he would rather have Gary Barlow's face tattooed on his chest than ever rejoin the group. Nothing has changed in this period apart from a role reversal in stakes of money and success. It was Robbie's perpetual desire to be as famous as possible that lead to him leaving the band and it is this that once again drives his attempts to rejoin it. I'm sure that the success of Williams' comeback album later this month will ultimately determine whether his efforts to mend his broken bridges with Barlow will be followed through, but whatever the outcome is, the band would be fools to even consider taking him back.
Monday 28 September 2009
Wednesday 23 September 2009
Dress Me, I'm Your Mannequin
Celebrating 25 years, London Fashion Week closed yesterday with a celebrity laden Burberry show. As much as I love my fashion, I do find myself pondering over some of the outfits that are paraded down catwalks by various designers – is it art or are they just taking the p*ss? Many people argue that they are simply ideas for ready-to-wear collections to be inspired by, but some are so extravagant (one designer this week sent his models out with big balls of hair covering their heads so they resembled It from The Addams Family) that I don’t see how it can be adapted in any reasonable manner.
Luckily there are still some fashion houses out there that like to showcase more wearable pieces, whilst still maintaining a bit of an edge. Here are some of my favourite pieces from the past few days (nb: no copyright infringement etc intended with my using of any of these images!).
Luckily there are still some fashion houses out there that like to showcase more wearable pieces, whilst still maintaining a bit of an edge. Here are some of my favourite pieces from the past few days (nb: no copyright infringement etc intended with my using of any of these images!).
Burberry
Perhaps the most clamoured over show of LFW, Christopher Bailey’s Spring/Summer 10 collection didn’t fail to disappoint. Showcasing a palette of neutral hues and silky, draped material, the Burberry name has moved on a long way since simply being all about check.
Luella
The sweetheart of English fashion was all about the pastel colours this season, which suited her heart shaped designs and girly-girl cuts perfectly. Taking a lead from Marc Jacobs’ NY fashion show earlier this month, Luella added a noticeable accessory of an oversized bow in each model’s hair.
House of Holland
Helmed by quaffed maestro and Aggy Deyn’s BFF Henry Holland, HoH is perhaps best known for it’s slogan t-shirts (Fancy A Ride Sass And Bide, anyone?) but each time his catwalk shows manage to demonstrate that the brand is so much more than that. Renowned for bold patterns and stand out colours,Holland’s most recent offerings provided us with some great ready-to-wear pieces that still encompassed the elements he is best known for.
Erdem
Floral patterns have reigned supreme this year and Erdem are seemingly determined to have it continuing to do so in the next as well. Lace was also a big feature of this show and solidifies the feminine outlook this upcoming collection provides.
The depressing thing is that by the time I’ll be able to actually afford any of these pieces, the designers will be showcasing their Spring/Summer 2011 collections…
Monday 21 September 2009
Band To Watch - The Checks
Great things to have come out of New Zealand...
1 - Lord of the Rings/Peter Jackson (we all know they are one and the same really)
2 - the All Blacks Rugby team
3 - Flight of the Conchords
4 - Ernest Rutherford - only one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, don't you know
5 - Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Show fame. Techincally born in UK but raised in NZ... can't afford to be picky about these kinds of things as the list is pretty slim pickings at the minute.
That's about it.
But not anymore!
The Checks are the latest New Zealand import to hit our conscious minds and I'm pretty damned confident in saying that we're all the better for it. Having supported Oasis, Jet, The Killers and Muse on various international tours, the band are already accustomed to playing big audiences - they are just yet to find one over here.
Formed in 2003, the five piece rock outfit debuted at a friend's birthday party and after a succession of wins on student and regional radio station band competitions, have continued to develop under an umbrella of acclaim from industry veterans Michael Stipe and Jonathan Poneman (aka the great Nirvana discoverer). Yet despite such successful progression and recognition from the big wigs, the band remain unsigned and most recently released their second album, Alice by the Moon, under their own record label, Pie Club Records. You can hardly accuse them of not being dedicated to their cause.
Citing The Rolling Stones and Jack White as two of their influences, the band present us with a combination of heady electro rock threaded with a few strands of cheeky pop. The Checks are everything that the English music scene is raving about at the minute, so it surely won't be long until their sound infiltrates our northern shores and checks into a music venue near you.
www.myspace.com/thechecks
Song to listen to: You and Me
1 - Lord of the Rings/Peter Jackson (we all know they are one and the same really)
2 - the All Blacks Rugby team
3 - Flight of the Conchords
4 - Ernest Rutherford - only one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, don't you know
5 - Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Show fame. Techincally born in UK but raised in NZ... can't afford to be picky about these kinds of things as the list is pretty slim pickings at the minute.
That's about it.
But not anymore!
The Checks are the latest New Zealand import to hit our conscious minds and I'm pretty damned confident in saying that we're all the better for it. Having supported Oasis, Jet, The Killers and Muse on various international tours, the band are already accustomed to playing big audiences - they are just yet to find one over here.
Formed in 2003, the five piece rock outfit debuted at a friend's birthday party and after a succession of wins on student and regional radio station band competitions, have continued to develop under an umbrella of acclaim from industry veterans Michael Stipe and Jonathan Poneman (aka the great Nirvana discoverer). Yet despite such successful progression and recognition from the big wigs, the band remain unsigned and most recently released their second album, Alice by the Moon, under their own record label, Pie Club Records. You can hardly accuse them of not being dedicated to their cause.
Citing The Rolling Stones and Jack White as two of their influences, the band present us with a combination of heady electro rock threaded with a few strands of cheeky pop. The Checks are everything that the English music scene is raving about at the minute, so it surely won't be long until their sound infiltrates our northern shores and checks into a music venue near you.
www.myspace.com/thechecks
Song to listen to: You and Me
You're not Meryl Streep, love
Apparently tired of solely winking and playing quiz master Weakest Link matriarch, Anne Robinson has reprieved her role as host of Watchdog. Whether this is a last ditch attempt made by the BBC or Robinson personally to increase their popularity is yet to be revealed. For her roles in both shows she is paid an incredible £2 million a year, which, considering The Weakest Link has nowhere near the amount of viewers that it used to, is completely unfounded. Yet apparently a few million in the bank is not enough to drag Robinson out of bed in the morning and recently turned diva when she demanded the BBC to cover the costs for her own personal hairdresser and make up artist before she would appear on Breakfast television - to promote her own show. Presenting them with a bill of £550, she refused to appear unless her demands were met - and despite their dismay, the BBC obliged.
The big question is, why? Robinson is not a high profile star, far from it. It's not as if Mariah Carey was rocking up; it's an aging British television presenter who continues to raise herself on a pedastal despite the fact the viewing public dropped her from it a long time ago. We're in the middle of a recession for crying out loud and Robinson has the nerve to stamp her feet like a petulant child. Could she not fork out the £500 from her own wage packet? Oh wait, I forgot to consider the fact that first-class flight prices to the Bahamas have increased so she probably needs to scurry the cash away to cover the additional cost. Millions of women go to work every day with a hair cut they had hacked in to shape three weeks ago, and make up they hastily slap on ten minutes before they run out of the door - why should Ms. Robinson be any different? Are her hands incapable of working before 10am? Yes, yes, she's going on television but a swab of lipstick is a swab of lipstick and it's going to look rouge whether she puts it on personally or whether a twenty-something 'artist' does it for her. Surely the £9,000 she spent on plastic surgery a few years back and the botox injections she has on a regular basis would mean she wouldn't need a whole lot of make up and styling? Money well spent, apparently.
If I refused to set foot in public every morning until someone had pencilled on my eyeliner for me, my friends would give me a slap and tell me to get a grip. This is exactly what the BBC should have done. In a time when they are under continual scrutiny for various money cock-ups, ageism rows and politicians demanding the scrapping of the license fee, they should be doing everything in their power to create positive PR, not tales of mockery such as this. I'm sure Chris Moyles, Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross who all recently took pay cuts as the Corporation whined it needed to cut back on costs will soon have something to say about Robinson's blase attitude to money and the BBC's hypocritical spending choices.
Tuesday 1 September 2009
A Little Less Conversation
David Cameron (yes, I am going to quote a politician) recently said that too many twits...make a twat. Whilst he should have perhaps been referring to some members of our current government, he was actually talking about the latest fad in the already over-saturated market of social networking - Twitter. If people stopped to think about what he actually said and got over the fact that he said 'twat' on national breakfast radio then perhaps we'd all realise he has a rather good point.
What is the point of Twitter? Not being able to make sense of all the fuss as an outsider, I joined at the tail end of last week after reading a Giles Coren column in which he declared he had signed up. If Coren can get past the communicative debase-ness of it all then so can I - or so I thought. The difference between Giles Coren and I is that he has thousands of people actually vaguely interested in what he has to say each week. I, unfortunately, do not.
If you're a celebrity or figure in the public eye, then Twitter is a great way to promote yourself. Twitter allows people to feel they are actually connecting with the person they look up to. Celebrities post candid photos of themselves and a description of what they're doing each evening and you can get to feel like you've gotten to know them and their lives that little bit better. Official websites previously bridged the gap between fan and management company; Twitter bridges the gap between fan and celebrity. Ashton Kutcher is the most followed person on Twitter, with over three and a half million people signed up to his updates. As great as the guy may be, these millions of people don't watch his page so they can discover the website link to see his new movie trailer. They do it because he talks to the 'ordinaries'. Plain ol' you and me get the chance, if we type 160 characters witty enough to catch his eye, to (albeit briefly) converse with him. Street minion doesn't get the chance to be noticed by Hollywood A-Lister every day, don'tcha know.
But unless you want to fruitlessly pursue Kutcher/P Diddy/Lady Gaga/someone-who-will-be-richer-than-you-ever-will in the vain hope of a moments communication, then Twitter is all a bit pointless. Essentially a website that is equivalent to writing new Facebook statuses every two hours, surely it would just be simpler to update the original? Every man and his dog is on Facebook and when it comes to their internet domination in comparison to Twitter's, the latter is simply a small drop in a vast cyberworld ocean.
I currently have 5 followers. Not because I have no friends but because nobody else I know is on there. They've already realised that when the tool to keep those who give a damn updated on your latest movements is already in existence, you don't need another. You wouldn't buy another, cheaper, oven for no good reason if you already had an expensive and perfectly good one in your kitchen and the same logic applies here.
Twitter will last all the while our society's ridiculous obsession with celebrity lasts - which, at the rate things are going, means it won't be disappearing off our computer screens anytime soon. People join Twitter in order to make themselves seem more interesting in others' eyes - which is not only rather tragic, but ironic if going on Twitter is the only thing you have to occupy your time in the first place. At the end of the day the only people who gain anything from this website are the developers and tween girls whose days are made when Disney-star-of-the-moment takes ten seconds from their busy day to reply to their comment. Too many tweets undeniably make you feel like a twat, particularly if there is nobody watching.
What is the point of Twitter? Not being able to make sense of all the fuss as an outsider, I joined at the tail end of last week after reading a Giles Coren column in which he declared he had signed up. If Coren can get past the communicative debase-ness of it all then so can I - or so I thought. The difference between Giles Coren and I is that he has thousands of people actually vaguely interested in what he has to say each week. I, unfortunately, do not.
If you're a celebrity or figure in the public eye, then Twitter is a great way to promote yourself. Twitter allows people to feel they are actually connecting with the person they look up to. Celebrities post candid photos of themselves and a description of what they're doing each evening and you can get to feel like you've gotten to know them and their lives that little bit better. Official websites previously bridged the gap between fan and management company; Twitter bridges the gap between fan and celebrity. Ashton Kutcher is the most followed person on Twitter, with over three and a half million people signed up to his updates. As great as the guy may be, these millions of people don't watch his page so they can discover the website link to see his new movie trailer. They do it because he talks to the 'ordinaries'. Plain ol' you and me get the chance, if we type 160 characters witty enough to catch his eye, to (albeit briefly) converse with him. Street minion doesn't get the chance to be noticed by Hollywood A-Lister every day, don'tcha know.
But unless you want to fruitlessly pursue Kutcher/P Diddy/Lady Gaga/someone-who-will-be-richer-than-you-ever-will in the vain hope of a moments communication, then Twitter is all a bit pointless. Essentially a website that is equivalent to writing new Facebook statuses every two hours, surely it would just be simpler to update the original? Every man and his dog is on Facebook and when it comes to their internet domination in comparison to Twitter's, the latter is simply a small drop in a vast cyberworld ocean.
I currently have 5 followers. Not because I have no friends but because nobody else I know is on there. They've already realised that when the tool to keep those who give a damn updated on your latest movements is already in existence, you don't need another. You wouldn't buy another, cheaper, oven for no good reason if you already had an expensive and perfectly good one in your kitchen and the same logic applies here.
Twitter will last all the while our society's ridiculous obsession with celebrity lasts - which, at the rate things are going, means it won't be disappearing off our computer screens anytime soon. People join Twitter in order to make themselves seem more interesting in others' eyes - which is not only rather tragic, but ironic if going on Twitter is the only thing you have to occupy your time in the first place. At the end of the day the only people who gain anything from this website are the developers and tween girls whose days are made when Disney-star-of-the-moment takes ten seconds from their busy day to reply to their comment. Too many tweets undeniably make you feel like a twat, particularly if there is nobody watching.
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