Something Comes Along to Intervene
by Scott Hardie on May 23, 2010
I've been enjoying "Meddle" and "Remedy" by Little Boots, two great electropop songs with catchy hooks, perfect for summer. But I didn't really take her seriously as an artist until I heard "Stuck on Repeat." It's pop music on acid, like Kylie Minogue produced by Captain Beefheart, and the unlikeliest hit song of the year. Even its lyrics can be interpreted as a deconstruction of pop music. Whether it's listenable as a song depends on your taste, but I think it's a work that demands attention.
Two Replies to Something Comes Along to Intervene
Scott Hardie | March 12, 2017
I was thinking about this song again recently (it came to mind when the similarly meta-textual "Hook" came on), and two more thoughts occur to me:
1) I neglected to mention that Little Boots writes, records, and mixes her own music, usually on her own laptop (with occasional remixes by guest producers). She's the Real Deal that most pop artists aren't. That's impressive, and so is the fact that she was 23 when she made the above songs.
2) This mix of "Stuck on Repeat" deliberately breaks the rules of music, pitch-shifting the melody and making other "mistakes" to sound wrong to the ear. And that's the point, really: The self-aware lyrics are about trying in vain to escape from a loop of the rising-and-falling chord progression of traditional pop music. This song is more clever than I gave it credit for.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
In Love, in Tampa
Last night we took in a special show by Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman for Valentines Day. Kelly is a huge fan of both and I was happy to take her to see them. I did not start the evening as a Palmer fan, but I was one by the time it ended. Go »Sinners and Losers
Last week, Katherine Harris publicly denounced the first amendment, calling it "a lie" and said that we were supposed to be a nation of religious law. She also said that not to vote for a Christian is to vote for sin. (link) Apparently in Florida that gets you elected: Yesterday she enjoyed a landslide 50% victory over her competitors in the Senate Republican primary despite a bumbling campaign. Go »21 Days
Any advice for what to do with my last three weeks of living single? Kelly will now move here on February 4, due to various factors. This, it goes without saying, rules. Go »No News is Good News
Yesterday I spent eight hours in a hospital waiting room in Tampa while my mother underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff. She's recovering well, but the harm inflicted on me by eight hours of cable news has yet to wear off. It happened to be Fox News Channel, but that's irrelevant; all news is boring when you're in the hospital and are stuck watching it at length, because the newscasters only repeat over and over the breathless update that they have nothing more to report and here are the things they don't know yet. Go »Great Weekend
Some people love going fishing all weekend; others prefer a romantic getaway. The perfect weekend for me these days means getting enough sleep and writing a FIN post from start to finish, since getting even one of those is a rarity. But this weekend, I put everything else aside and did both. Go »
Jackie Mason | May 30, 2010
[hidden by author request]