This week AILBHE MALONElives in fear of Marina and the Diamonds
* TRACK OF THE WEEK
Fear and Loathingby Marina and the Diamonds. The girl with the best enunciation in pop is back. Except it's kind of not her.
But it is. Marina's created a character named Electra Heart (not quite Sasha Fierce – more Ziggy). Electra is basically Marina in a blonde wig, and explores the idea of the American dream and commercialism and, oh dear, we know this sounds a bit arty farty, but hopefully things should make more sense in a few weeks. In the meantime, the video for Fear and Loathingpoints towards the creation of Electra via Marina cutting off all her own hair.
- So, after the embarrassment that was the video for Edge of Glory(in which Lady Gaga spent the video dithering like Rebecca Black over whether she should go up or down a flight of stairs), the pop queen has unveiled the video for new single, You & I. It's a wonderfully overblown affair, which culminates in Gaga as a mermaid having an, erm, grown-up cuddle with a man. Naturally, the fans were confused. Gaga responded: "Sometimes in love, you can't make it work. No matter what you do, there's this giant boundary between you and someone else. So that's what [the mermaid] is about, perceiving in your imagination that there's something magical inside of you that you can make it work."
- Right then, any questions? Oh dear, Katy Perry's in pop's bad books again. After angering Kathleen Hanna, Katy's since earned the ire of songwriting matriarch Linda Perry (ex-4 Non Blondes, wrote Xtina's Beautiful, etc). Linda says "she's great for what she does, but she's not reinventing the wheel, she's not giving substance, she's just giving microwave popcorn to feast on right at this moment . . . She's not looking to change the world musically, so all the power to her. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm saying it's not what I participate in. That's part of the reason why the music business is in turmoil." K-Pez, don't worry. Who doesn't like popcorn, eh?