Bodies Without Organs have apparently signed a deal with EMI to be launched in the UK! This is obviously very exciting because seeing BWO videos on TV would be fantastic, but it is also a little worrying because as much as I adore them I know there is no chance of them being successful in the UK. I would be fooling myself if I believed otherwise. On the other hand, when Alcazar last released a single, although it wasn’t a huge hit, it didn’t ruin them or the song at all for me and allowed to place This Is The World We Live In at the very top of my top 100 singles of 2004.
Some less shocking news is that James Blunt is this week’s no.1 single and album. This isn’t shocking because both the single and album have been hanging around the top ends of the two charts for months already and at the moment he is everywhere. However, it is quite surprising in some other ways. For one, it is very unusual for songs to rise up so gradually to the no.1 spot, and it’s quite a feat for an artist who was unknown a few months ago to have dethroned Coldplay from the album chart top spot. Sadly I can only see his success as being very bad news for the music industry. Although it’s nice to see that when a song enters the charts far from the top, all hope is not lost that it will be a success, he is going to inspire record companies to look for the dullest, most sincere boys and girls with guitars to sign up, make dull but sincere guitar (or perhaps, to be quirky, piano!) based albums which they will then promote by TV advertisement until everyone is sick of the sight of them but somehow, bizarrely compelled to buy the CD. As if it wasn’t bad enough with all the Didos and Katie Meluas of the past few years, James Blunt shows that it is going to get worse – much worse! The only good thing about this is that eventually it will get so bad that someone will have to rebel. Although it will probably be some hyped-up rock group telling us all how original they are, when chances are anyone with a memory longer than a year will call them the new Rooster.