Smint

Nelly great songwriter, fantastic eclectic personality but I can't listen to her nasal voice for too long without jarring.

They were much much higher than our European neighbours despite having the same circumstances - Covid, Russia/Ukraine etc.. Anyhow I bet they won't go down by much, the ghastly energy companies will be raking it in. Anyway, better news tonight, Dominic Raab is standing down as an MP at next election. Must know that he stood no chance of not being ousted by the Liberal Democrats and wanted to avoid an embarrassing humiliation. One odious bully gone! :w00t: :w00t:

Was intrigued who Ms no.24-only was and wasn't one who I voted for so looked through the Top 40s from last year, found her pretty easily in the end - and on a meh song in my opinion. Didn't realise she was that popular on Buzzjack as we are getting to the higher numbers.

Massive climb for Fiona Apple. I absolutely adore her first three albums (four if you include that excellent unofficial Jon Brion version of 'Extraordinary Machine') but do find 'Idler Wheel' and 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters' pretty difficult to get into. Favourite songs include 'Get Him Back', 'Oh Sailor', 'Sullen Girl', 'Limp', 'Paper Bag' and 'Never is a Promise'. I saw her live in London once at the Apollo Victoria- one of only 5 times she's performed in the UK. Very intense memorable performance.

I don't follow Northern Irish politics much but do know that Sinn Fein nowadays have a message of hope rather than the utterly miserable outlook of the DUP.

Albums just aren't regarded in the same way as they were in the past where they would have buzz and gather reputation around them month after month even if you weren't a massive fan of a particular artist. You can't really get a chart to measure something that the general public aren't generally interested in - well you can but it's not going to mean much. Times change and all that sadly.

I'd check out "To Bring You My Love" album - regarded as one of her strongest especially 'Down by the Water'. If you love 'Man-Size' you'd love a lot of the rockier ones on that but it does showcase her art rock/electronica a lot too. My favourite album of hers is definitely 'Is this Desire?' - captivating and hypnotic journey into a tortured lonely soul, although it's an extremely bleak, raw album in parts so may not be the best for starters - check out the two singles 'Perfect Day Elise' (video above) and 'The Wind' though as they are fairly accessible. All of her albums are very strong though and she tends to change style for each era coming up as authentic each time. She's not really commercial (apart from maybe 'Stories from the City Stories from the Sea') but great with coming up with hooks.

Well I mean Chlamydia's bad and all that but bit of an insult to associate it with Darren "Ninth Rate Dan Wooton wannabe" Grimes. And back to Rishi apparently Brexit is a success as we may be able to get cheaper beer and sanitary products this summer. Whoopee bloody doo! :nocheer: Let's not mention the skyrocketing fuel bills compared with EU and the fact that many countries won't trade with us due to the red tape.

Lol if Darren Grimes is the answer to something, what the hell is the question?

The worst at that Nat C conference was Douglas Murray describing German Nazi rule as 'mucking up' beautiful wonderful nationalism. This whole conference though seemed to be very aggressively aimed at trying to split the Tories and basically say that any moderates shouldn't belong in the Conservative movement dismissing them as Liberals. It's not an election winning strategy so you wonder why they do that - until you realise that these people aren't "playing" culture wars. They're actual far right bigots who want to silence, harm and possibly more to minorities and those who don't measure up to their ideal citizen - an ultra nationalistic, heterosexual, child producing, "Christian", compassion free, climate destroying bigot.

Either never released in UK or didn't chart here (difficult to tell) - HIM didn't start to have hits here until 'Buried Alive by Love' made no. 30 in 2003. I absolutely love the string of HIM hits they had here and their "And Love Says No" compilation. A bit cheesy yes but great goth, melodic pop rock. 'Funeral of Hearts' is my favourite if I had to pick one. Great that they made the US only 1966 Neil Diamond hit 'Solitary Man' into a UK Top 10 too. Of course most of their hits were when UK single sales were through the floor and downloads weren't yet counted.

Oh loved 'Sour' and was hoping that Olivia would enter much higher. Really captured the second year of the pandemic for Mr.

Yes I saw that too - I actually thought at the time that the elderly would be the worst affected as many would forget to bring ID (and not have energy to go back and return to poll station) or would have let their passports or driving licenses lapse. And even though I'd prefer a few less Tory votes, it's not nice for anyone at that age to be in that position. Although he said it for the wrong reasons, I'm glad that JRM finally said something sensible.

Looks like Sunak is now officially in the Theresa May stage of premiership (but unlike her, he has a huge majority) with no authority now following the 1000+ seat loss at the local elections. Where do you start, there was a conference filled with Johnson groupies like Dorries and Patel at the weekend making snide comments about Sunak (although their man appears to prefer his millions to actually doing any work), Liz Truss is about to start a diplomatic catastrophe as someone in Taiwan has asked her to give a speech, bear in mind the sensitivities with regard to China and finally and even worse Suella Braverman gave a speech tirading against elitists and going on about Keir Starmer and penises at some Q Anon ultra nationalist right nutjob foreign funded whackjob fest. Absolutely vile stuff from vile self obsessed charlatans.

Yep the earlier hopeful buzz tended to be a false dawn. Not good looking good for the more progressive choice - tbh not too surprised since it's Turkey but thoroughly depressing.

Meanwhile in Turkey, the counting for the General Election shows that ultra right wing homophobe President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK party (AKP) are neck and neck with nore progressive opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and could well enter a runoff if neither get over 50% of the vote when counted. There are already calls of foul play as Erdogan's mob are demanding several recounts of key votes which have been called in Kemal's favour. It would be nice if just once a right wing tyrant went down without cheating their ass off but looks like that's too much to hope for nowadays.

Can't really see Echo or Julian having songs big enough to be covered for Eurovision. OMD more of a case with Enola Gay, Maid of Orleans but Atomic Kitten's Whole Again was co-written by two OMD members including Andy McCluskey so he wasn't completely ignored. Sonia should have been ignored if it wasn't for the fact she had a Eurovision runner up! Come to think of it - a bit strange that there was just a John Lennon cover but no Beatles or any other of their members. Were they hoping that Paul McCartney would have made a special appearance (as rumoured) but that fell through?

And yesterday Trump got an hour "townhall" style interview on CNN where in an audience made up of allegedly undecided and Independent voters he told lie after lie about January 6, the 2020 election result being rigged, building the alleged "wall" and also found time to call the anchor a "nasty person" and mocked the victim in the sexual assault court case that he was found guilty of yesterday. All to applause and laughs from the audience. Very ugly stuff.

He does the best he can with the budget he can. Sadiq Khan has tried to keep prices down and there has been some good holds but at the end of the day if the Government grants are low then it will have to come from fares. Covid would have decimated those from 2020 onwards and still not back to full capacity nowadays with the hybrid/Work from Home arrangements.

I feel sorry for the Northerners as living in London transport is excellent (albeit pricey but that's Tory Britain for you) - moving further afield I regularly get the train down to Surrey, Bristol, Brighton etc too and never really have trouble (apart from the strikes). Real North/South divide there.

Rail privatisation a rounding success isn't it - why the hell can't Labour back nationalisation?

I think the "suitability" question was answered years ago and the fact that none of his Republican rivals dare criticise him when found guilty of sexual assault speaks volumes. What with De Santis failing to impress (thankfully as he's even worse in some ways) it means he'll be the nominee and promoting violence against minorities at every turn (hate crimes sky rockets during Election campaigns). 2024 will be very scary.

Rosalía would have been huge on this list if people realised she was eligible - very impressive for an artist who doesn't record in English. I did the same leaving FKA Twigs out - forgetting about her Ty Dolla sign feature. Halsey has done very well for herself considering her traumatic upbringing.

Funnily enough when we get another Slumdog Millionaire inspired hit recharting ('Dog Days Are Over') we get MIA on this who was a victim of Super Bowl selective blame culture as per Janet Jackson.

Wow Jessie J Top 100. Thought she was hated on here but guess has a few fans. Few of her first singles were good but then got dreadful 'It's My Party' in particular wad ewwww... Her attitude was a bit annoying too.