Sandi Thom

Mordecai

Has anyone heard her song? I quite like it, but one thing annoys me and it's going to make me sound really cool: she says "I wish I was a punk rocker. I wish it didn't bother me, but it should be "I wish I were a punk rocker." She doesn't use the subjunctive and it ruins the song for me.

Just thought I'd share.

eskimo

From the moment I saw her on tv she reaked of pretentiousness and commercialism and that aspect of her is just repulsive since she's marketed on the basis that she's anything but commercial (could she be any more of a walking contradiction?!). I do turn up the song when it comes on the radio though!

aidan_walsh

You shoudl get in touch with the Spell Czechs, a small group of people here on boards who I think would be right up your anus, er, alley.

sceptre

Maugham and Fowler said that the subjunctive was pretentious and a bunch of arse (paraphrased). Fowler often had a point. If he'd spoken Portuguese, where for some oddball reason they've revived the future subjunctive in a big way, he'd have crapped out an egg (English generally uses the present indicative instead and that's a good thing). I vote for keeping the pluperfect subjunctive, the inverted subjunctive, anything involving an omitted modal verb and dumping all the rest - that would include letting Sandi Thom off with not using the boring past subjunctive.

Summarised: Get over it I'm afraid, were it to mostly die, I wouldn't cry. The Spell Czechs might (no idea whether they're also the Grammar Czechs).

Haven't listened to the album yet. I'm assuming this will be moved to the English forum before I come back and say whether it's spiffingly fantastic (as they probably tend to say in Tooting) or complete bollocks (as they probably tend to say down the road)

Mordecai

This person seems to like the sunjunctive
http://englishatcase.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_englishatcase_archive.html
but seems a complete obsessive and bore, so ignore it. I just like a little subjunctive from time to time and I can quit whenever I want.

dohboy

Great article by Charlie Brooker on Sandi Thom in the guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1793784,00.html

Supposing ... Sandi Thom is the musical antichrist

Charlie Brooker
Friday June 9, 2006
The Guardian

I've not heard that Sandi Thom single all the way through yet, but I've seen the TV ad about six billion times, and the short, poxy burst on that is more than enough to convince me that if her sudden rise to stardom WASN'T the end result of a shrewd marketing campaign, the implications are terrifying. Because to believe the official story - that thousands of people voluntarily subjected themselves to this **** online, then recommended it to their friends - is to lose your faith in mankind completely.

There's a simple way to settle this once and for all, and that's for the huge crowd of people who apparently watched Thom's inaugural bedsit webcasts to step forward and make themselves known. Come on. Hands up. I want to see your faces. And then I want you smacked to death with brooms. You people are the enemies of fun. Your bland emissions pollute the atmosphere, threaten the environment. For the sake of humanity, you must be stopped.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Sandi Thom genuinely touches some people. Whoever they are, I can't relate to them. Woody Allen once marvelled with horror at "the level of a mind that watches wrestling", and I'm the same with Sandi Thom fans. All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like music but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.

There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content". And it's everywhere, measured out by unseen hands, mechanically dangled over the replicants' flapping gobholes; flavourless worms for android hatchlings.

Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take Angels by Robbie Williams. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, Angels is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official theme tune for thick people's funerals.

Anyway, back to Sandi Thom. As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just heard I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Bollocks in My Mouth) on the radio, and the real braintwister is the lyric, in which she yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, sung in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.

Wait. It gets worse. I've just looked it up on Napster - oh Christ. I didn't realise how far this had gone. The B-side is a cover of No More Heroes by the Stranglers. "Whatever happened to the heroes?", she warbles, knowing full well she's replaced them. She's the musical antichrist.

This is too creepy to be mere coincidence. Someone's messing with us. The replicant kings are trying to mangle our minds. Plug your ears. Block the signal. Final phase. They're taking over.

tinka

i cannot stand that song. in fact every time it comes on the radio, which is more often than i care to mention, a mad scramble to turn it off ensues.

Garret

"Smile - It Confuses People"


just makes you wanna hate her, no?

Oriel

Sounds more like "I wish I was a prawn cracker"
Listen again...

Saruman

I love that song.. the rest of her stuff is probably crap but thats a good song.
I even like the LDN song (not her!). Sounds like an eastenders character singing island type music with a summer beat.. even though its a dark song it sounds happy

Amazotheamazing

Did she not hire a pr company to persuade the papers she was some huge underground hit? Either way, she deserves to wind up on celebrity in the jungle or whatever.

Mordecai

The song is completely false and fake in its aspirations, the world wasn't innocent and all about the music ever, but I like how it sounds. Sometimes, music-intense-people can forget that people like to listen to songs that they like to listen to, not that they agree with necessarily.

Stompbox

Its shit!

Robbo

It's music for people who actively hate music.

Oh, and quoth Holy Moly

Joining the debate on music's answer to the question no-one was asking, Sandi Thom.

Last year, a singer called Rachel Fuller did webcasts from her studio. Then, in December, she hosted a live music webcast called "Basement Jam".

A DVD showreel of the webcasts was produced in January this year - a copy of which ended up with someone in Sandi Thom's camp. And the rest, as they say, is hyperbole.

Sandi Thom is the audio equivalent of **** with knives. Holy Moles, it is your duty to buy Nelly Furtado's 'Maneater' RIGHT NOW.

DerekD Goldfish

Fantastic article from Charlie Brooker he may be my new hero.
Also since when did "Punks" wear flowers?
its the kind of bland drivil that along with the likes of James blunt and KT Tungstal makes me think the human race deserves to be exterminated

John

DerekD Goldfish wrote:

its the kind of bland drivil that along with the likes of James blunt and KT Tungstal makes me think the human race deserves to be exterminated

Sterilisation for those that buy these records would suffice for me

Jimi-Spandex

It's songs like these that make me want to rip off my skin and jump into a vat of salt.


Not to be overly dramatic or anything. It just annoys me to no end.

olly

i know its already been covered, but in all honesty what kind of a punk rocker has flowers in their hair!!!!!
:mad: man i hate that crap!!!!!

RE*AC*TOR

I thought that initially, but then i listened to the lyrics.

Its a reference to 1969 and 1977 - two so-called revolutions. '69 was the hippie era (flowers in your hair - although that might have been '67 really) - '77 was a musical revolution - punk.

The point the song is trying to make is that we live in apathertic times. As oppoosed to those two eras.

Its still fairly crap thought.

Dudess

Saruman wrote:

I even like the LDN song (not her!). Sounds like an eastenders character singing island type music with a summer beat.. even though its a dark song it sounds happy

Lily Allen - Keith Allen's daughter. She's class - stuff is really reminiscent of late 70s/early 80s ska/reggae. Lyrics are really funny and witty. She's totally natural - unlike that contrived muck that is Sandi Thom. Awful, awful stuff. It's just so bland and unremarkable. I made that comment about Jack Johnson a few months ago and a couple of other posters got really uppity about it. Sorry, but it's true - there's too much of the likes of Jack Johnson, KT Tunstall and James Blunt sanitising the charts. About as edgy as a spherical sponge.

mmmbop babe

It would be a great song..............if u were deaf!!!

Undergod

DerekD Goldfish wrote:

Also since when did "Punks" wear flowers?
its the kind of bland drivil that along with the likes of James blunt and KT Tungstal makes me think the human race deserves to be exterminated

Thank you. The woman is getting her subcultures all muddled up.

I wish I was a beatnik with bling around my neck.

Angus MacGyver

The song is a disgrace with terrible lyrics. Punks with flowers in they're hair, yeah right love. Let me get this straight, she wants to live in a time where computers are "scary" even though she launched her career over the internet. Confused little girl.

Spug

I have been searching for an appropriate forum to express my feelings towards this song, and Eureka! I have found it......

ARGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Ahh that feels better.

I hate it! I seldom use such a strong word, but I really do. Sandi Thom is tuneless, and the lyrics are complete drivvel. She makes me realise that van gogh wasn't that crazy.

I think I am going to find a forum where everyone loves her now.....;)

Bye

Spug