BATTLE OF THE CHEAP LAZY VIDEOS

Pixie Lott is a gurning stage school brat with little-to-no personality and (we predict) the career longevity of a male X Factor winner. Natalia Kills is a pretentious, idea-devoid automaton who has based her entire career on that of another mostly idea-devoid (but infinitely more talented) pretentious idiot.

These are almost entirely negative opinions on two pop non-entities. If you don't like them, you don't have to read our blog. You can go to a different corner of the internet where your feelings aren't hurt. This may seem a bit like bashing a puppy (Lott and Kills aren't exactly the most popular and universally loved pop people, so we're not exactly being controversial here). But we thought we'd just get our feelings out of the way straight off the bat.

Nevertheless the two (no doubt lovely) ladies have both just released music videos for serviceable pop songs. Let us elaborate: "Kiss The Stars" by Pixie Lott is her least hateful song since "Boys & Girls". It's a derivative, lazily produced, "Teenage Dream"-knockoff-meets-Ke$ha-bonus-track. But it's catchy. It's *shudder* fun. It has a rather nifty glimmery chorus that makes us want to dance. Well done the song. Natalia Kills' "Kill My Boyfriend" is similarly brain-wormy. It starts off all sunny and Lily Allen-ish but goes all Jekyll & Hyde by bursting into a Blackout-era Britney pre-chorus. It's genuinely chilling (she actually wants to kill her boyfriend... it's not a metaphor), made all the spookier by how upbeat the music is. We think both of these songs are solid 3 out of 5s on the mainstream manufactured pop scale. They will do. They are fun to listen to. They do not offend us or hurt our ears.

HOWEVER.

The videos that have just been released are both cheap, boring, unoriginal tat. Probably not the fault of either artist: after all, Pixie Lott - who is supposed to be the UK Pop Princess - just released her Difficult Second Album to the sound of people not giving a shit (it charted at 18 and then disappeared); and Natalia Kills who was supposed to blow up, GaGa-style, is yet to have a hit in any major music market outside of Germany. We're sure both of their respective record labels are hesitant to throw moneys or ideas (which cost money) at something high-concept and expensive[-looking]. So, no, we're not surprised. But REALLY.

Firstly: in Pixie's case. The stylist really should be fired. That floppy semi-bob is horrendously lank looking and the clothing is the kind that even the most low-rent Germanotta-impersonator would shun. The concept for the MV itself is basically September's UK "Cry For You" video (an infinitely better song) crossed with Katy Perry's "E.T." video (the floating in 'space' bits). It is so sub-Little Boots it doesn't even make sense in the context of 2012. Like... who is this going to appeal to? It's not strange enough to appeal to the self-consciously edgy tumblr kids who liked Rihanna's "We Found Love" with its washed out hipster imagery and abundance of coloured smoke and ribbons. It's not sexy enough (at all, actually) to appeal to TEH LADS. Someone's thrown in some half-arsed Madonna Blond Ambition nods (the ponytail, the flat jazz shoes). But why? It doesn't make sense, the dancing dodecahedron people look like they've been cut and pasted out of a 90s Billie Piper video (actually that reads like a compliment: it's not). It's a mess. Yes, we get that the song uses SPACE metaphors so the video is set on a strange alternate plane of reality (in space), but come on.

How this could have been saved: if someone slapped Pixie Lott until she stopped doing that awful, cheesy, Musical Theatre, amateur Saturday stage school grin DURING EVERY SUNG LINE (we do not endorse violence against women or people of any kind, jsyk); the green eye shadow was aborted; the concept was completely overhauled and changed to people having a food fight in a school canteen dressed as 90s high school kids from cult films, intercut with footage from fun at a roller derby, climaxing with a romantic kiss. That would be fun, simple, cheap, relevant, trendy, humorous, self-aware, visually enticing. Not necessarily the most original idea, ever. But it wouldn't hurt our eyes and it might help the single succeed.

Secondly: Natalia, Natalia, Natalia. The greatest criticism levelled at you is that all you do is follow in Germanotta's shady footsteps. Your songs are actually of a high quality. Someone in the studio has managed to hide the fact that you can't actually sing in tune VERY WELL. Your styling is often on point. In previous videos vaguely-original imagery has been deployed. WHERE HAS IT GONE WRONG? Lady GaGa already did a video about killing your boyfriend. It was called "Paparazzi" and it also featured sunny, brightly-coloured morbidity, lots of sunglasses and strange, sterile, 50s-inspired domesticity, all Stepford-like. Except that video had a budget a bit larger than your average Morrisons advert.

How this could have been saved: if someone had had more than 50p to work with. The video shouldn't have been so literal or staid or featured that cheap and very dated effect where a popstar is multiplied in the same shot as if there are 3 of them walking around. It should have featured Kills as a savvy, talented bounty hunter rolling around town apprehending FTAs (read Janet Evanovich novels and then you'll know). Cheap, fun, watchable. All they would have had to do would be film Natalia with a variety of guns breaking into people's houses and places of business and kicking/punching/handcuffing them until she finds herself in a crack den where her partner/lover (seen earlier) is seen making out with a prostitute. Then she shoots him in the face.

If anyone wants to hire us for video concepts, enquire at the usual email address.

Sigh.

Cherry Tree or whatever that record label are called, must have been convinced that when they launched Lady GaGa, they could easily do it again. I mean after all, a little competition is healthy, right? And every major female popstar has had contemporaries who reached her stratosphere and enacted vaguely parallel career paths. Madonna had Cyndi, Tiffany had Debbie Gibson, Britney had Xtina, so Germanotta should have a pop frenemy right? Someone who could at least replicate her success in the early days, even if she (or they both) fell by the wayside later on.

That was us imagining that Cherry Tree Records have a soul. If we turn our cynical dial up, we imagine they just wanted to make more money and signing a 'quirky chick' who made melodic euro dance pop and made high budget videos full of outré (for the pop world at least) references just seemed like good business sense. It couldn't fail, right?

Something struck us whilst one of Natalia Kills' songs came on shuffle the other day. The song in question was "Break You Hard", which isn't going to change your life, but is an enjoyable, frivolous little pop ditty anyway. Suddenly we forgot what we were listening to and for a split second thought it was "Paparazzi" by that other lady. How far, exactly, had Cherry Tree taken this whole thing? Maybe none of it is intentional. Maybe Natalia Kills is a visionary genius who's just been unlucky with the comparisons. Maybe not.

We've discussed this sort of thing before, but Natalia Kills seems like she only would have existed in a post-Germanotta world. And even though we've gone off Ms. GaGa so much that we don't even wanna see her next tour (especially if it has a cringe-inducing hackneyed and forced plot like the last one) she has blazed a trail for a new era in female popdom and Ms. Kills feels like a product of that.

Anyway, Cherry Tree must be scratching their heads and wondering why the whole Natalia thing hasn't taken off, worldwide. "Mirrors" is a mighty pop song, right? Certainly as catchy as "Just Dance". And "Wonderland" is as mad and euphoric as "Poker Face", even though they don't sound anything alike, they are similar quality-wise, surely? So why the flops?

It probably has something to do with a lack of charisma. This video is all good and 90s. We like the 90s. We like 90s-styled stuff. But Kills lets the styling wear her, instead of the other way round and instead of commanding the video, simply inhabits it. Also: a song like this needs at least the most cursory of dance routines, but nothing happens in this except a bit of posing and casual flailing. Is this really the song that will make Natalia a star and household name, or will that never happen?

Hmm.

It's taken us a whole month to get round to writing about this mostly because for ages it wasn't on Youtube and we hate embedding videos from Myspace. Don't ask why. It just don't look as sleek. And we're vain.

Anyway, this is the video for Natalia Kills' first proper single: "Wonderland" (apparently "Mirrors", "Zombie" and "Activate My Heart" were all buzz singles). The song is a weirdly beguiling mix of soaring melody and oddly noisy and noodly production and the video is... the video is...

The video is disappointing. Not that we held out hope for a masterpiece, from Natalia Kills. She is, after all, in the infancy of her career, doesn't command a huge budget, and from what we can tell, is not as smart as she'd like us to think (to put it politely). We're disappointed because the teaser trailer made it seem like something to be excited about. Here are the things that don't do it for us:

1. The flashing words: yes, yes, all very Barbara Kruger, but 'IT'S ALL LIES' is clumsy and awkward and cringey and the kind of thing people would put on their emo Bebo profiles before Myspace got big (yes, that long ago).
2. The 'censored' bits: there is an uncut version that was also hosted by Myspace video but doesn't seem to be on Youtube (to be honest, we haven't searched extensively) that showed what was beneath the concealments and apart from a rather striking and shocking frame right at the end, it was mostly just a load of cupcakes with medicinal pills stuck in them. Yawn.
3. The lack of a proper dance routine: perhaps Natalia is just not very competent, dance-wise, or perhaps she just prefers not to (which is lazy). Who knows. The odd thing is, she indulges in routines in her live show, so why not in her video? We are bored of up-tempo synthpop songs with no dancing in the video (Katy Perry we are looking at you also).

Other than that, it's all slightly less boring than her last video, but just as visually slick. So... well done? We're not sure where this is going any more, to be quite candid, so we'll wrap it up.

We're paying attention...

Recently, Popjustice wrote a piece slating Natalia Kills and exposing her to be 100% style and negligible substance. Well, we hate to be douchey about this (we love it) but we've sort of felt like this about her all along. We wrote a thing about her music video for "Mirrors" in December claiming that we couldn't work out whether she was a visionary (but misunderstood) genius, or a very-well calculated and cynical copycat. Well we decided on the latter, as, it seems, did everyone else.

But the plot thickens. Just as we've written Natalia off as someone who, like fetch, will never happen, and, who, like Cady Heron, is just a less hot version of Regina George (Germanotta), she releases the teaser trailer for her new single, "Wonderland".

And it looks incredible. Genuinely dark and disturbing (as opposed to the kind of lame, boring 'dark and disturbing' that is generally used to describe kids' films, when the studio wants to market it to teenagers and young adults and parents, too), visually striking, other complimentary and left of centre adjectives... the song sounds pretty good too.

We'll wait for the full thing to form a full judgement, but... this, we like.

Evil GaGa?

Recently Radio 1's chart blog, which is actually very well written, very funny, very clever and very readable, had this to say about the Nicole Scherzinger single/video/package:

"There's a latin expression which fans of the old TV show The West Wing will be aware of, and it's kind of relevant here so...

It's post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means something like "after this, therefore because of this". And it refers to the assumption people make when something happens after something else. So if there's a dramatic drop in the sales of washing machines, but a huge rush to buy chocolate, you could make a reasonable claim that there was a trend to do less washing and eat more chocolate. You could even extrapolate that people were choosing to eat less crumbly, flaky chocolate, and therefore had less need to wash their clothes after eating than they had in the past.

It would be total codswallop, but SOMEONE would believe it."

Anyway, the basic thrust of it, is that Nicole's "Poison", which is not only identically themed to Britney Spears' superior "Toxic", but has a similarly-themed video directed by the same man, could be interpreted as copycat and 'influenced by'. It's not, or at least, probably not, and to suggest so, one would have to take the theory to its logical conclusion and declare, not just all pop, but all art, unoriginal and bereft of ideas. Sometimes, different creatives teams behind popstars (writers, A&R, video directors) have similar ideas, and it's not because they're unoriginal, it's because they have one vital thing in common: they are human beings.

Anyway, what does this have to do with Natalia Kills, we hear you ask? Well, a similar thing is applicable here. If Natalia Kills had appeared and released this music video for (un)guilty pleasure, "Mirrors", in 2007, before anyone knew who Stefani Joanne Germanotta was, we would be hailing her (or at least the people behind her) a creative genius, taking razor-sharp pop culture references and melding them into a dark reverie/postulation on the over-exalted modern values and myths tied to fame and beauty and death. But this is not the case.

We've already explored these themes with GaGa, and exhausted them to the extent that she, herself, has abandoned them in search of 'deeper', less wilfully shallow ideas. This is unfortunate for Natalia Kills who may (you never know) have come up with these ideas all by herself. If she did, she must be heartbroken that now everything she does will be measured against GaGa, without having ever had anything to do with her. Well, that's one theory.

The other is, that if this had been unleashed into the world pre-GaGa... well... it wouldn't have been. This couldn't exist without pop culture's current most ubiquitous person. Before being signed to Lady GaGa's label, being managed by the man who kickstarted Lady GaGa's career and hooked up with some of Lady GaGa's producers, Natalia Kills was a rapper (she actually had a minor UK hit as Verbalicious if you can remember it) and had roles in - deap breath here - Casualty, Coronation Street, Doctors, Blue Murder, No Angels, Silent Witness, Tripping Over and Cape Wrath. So was this her plan all along? Is this a concept borne of a creative genius? Or just a label's attempts at recreating past successes.

Either way, pretty but dull music video.

The Sound of Arrows are good at remixes...

So this is quite good (albeit in a very post-GaGa sort of way)...

When popstars undergo drastic image overhauls, or, how major labels approach restyling popstars in a post-GaGa pop landscape...

These are the same person.

Is this quite good or really terrible?

Perhaps a few years ago we would have immediately labelled this 'fantastic', seen it shoot up our iTunes most played list and awaited any 'Natalia Kills' release with great anticipation. But for some reason this leaves us utterly cold. In a post-GaGa, post-Good Girl Gone Bad, post-808s and Heartbreak landscape, this just feels like another attempt at melding mainstream pop sensibilities and aesthetics with something more sinister and left-of-field. In other words another jump on the bandwagon. It's not bad, and it's already stuck in our head (usually a good sign) but with things like this we can't help but feel a bit cheap and used. Like we've already been there and swore we wouldn't go there again. Disappointed, maybe.

How do you feel about it?