Category Archives: North America

➤ 20 gay kisses in pop videos that made it past the censor

Posted on 7 Nov 2010 | 3 comments

❚ CENSORSHIP! OH DEARIE ME! Digital Spy reports this weekend that the lavish video for Firework — the single currently No 4 in this week’s UK chart by American singer-songwriter Katy Perry — has been censored for British television channels. The ludicrous widescreen promo, which they say “plays out the song’s message of self-belief” (yuk), shows fireworks shooting from Perry’s chest, and from the bodies of prancing extras. More shocking, apparently, are the pyrotechnic depictions of a mugging, a cancer patient, a woman giving birth and two men kissing. The two-second “gay kiss” has been pixelated, presumably to save embarrassing the children, in a version of the video directed by Dave Meyers for delivery to TV channels under a cross-promotional deal with Deutsche Telekom. The European telecommunications group recruited fans from all over Europe to appear in the video when it was shot in Budapest.

It’s all too much. Why, this weekend too, fansites have been twittering that Katy Perry and BFF Rihanna got into an argument over Katy’s new hubby, the amoral buffoon Russell Brand (double yuk). The only good news is that Katy has at least vowed never to strip for Playboy.

Katy Perry, Firework, pop video, censorship,gay kiss,

Fireworks in Firework: British TV viewers see only a pixelated version

According to the star herself, Firework is influenced by Jack Kerouac’s novel about male bonding, On the Road. Digital Spy’s reviewer Nick Levine even accords the song the accolade of being a “straight up self-empowerment anthem”. Pass the sickbag, James.

OK, OK, boys and girls. In Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s immortal words, relax. For any TV viewers feeling deprived of the knee-trembling kiss in the Perry video, which is of course viewable in full 1080p HD on YouTube, there’s plenty more where that came from. The web is replete with more pop videos flaunting gay kisses than mum and dad might wish for. The following links round up the most notorious from both genders — four are viewable only behind age-restricted gateways. And because it’s so darn funky, Shapersofthe80s has thrown in the Pet Shop Boys’ most notorious Bruce Weber video for Being Boring, which contains naughtiness on any number of levels, but you’re going to need gimlet eyes to spot the gay kiss. You’re very welcome to propose your own favourite pop kisses. Thanks to Jobe, we’re up to 20 vidz now.

Lady Gaga, Telephone, pop video, gay kiss

Lady Gaga: a jailbird’s perk in the video for Telephone

Lady Gaga, Stephen Gately, Boyzone, Blink-182

Pop smackers: Lady Gaga in Lovegame, Stephen Gately in Boyzone’s Better, two vamps in Blink-182’s I Miss You

♫ Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful

♫ Lady Gaga’s Lovegame

♫ Lady Gaga’s Telephone

♫ Blink-182’s I Miss You

♫ Peter Doherty’s Last Of The English Roses

♫ Black Eyed Peas’ I Gotta Feeling

♫ Yehonathan’s On a Hot Summer Night

♫ Adam Lambert tongue-diving in concert

♫ Tatu’s All the Things She Said

♫ George Michael’s Outside (uncut)

♫ Matt Alber’s End of the World

♫ Kylie’s All the Lovers

♫ The Strokes’ Juicebox

♫ Paul Oscar’s International

♫ Madonna’s American Pie

♫ Scissor Sisters’ Filthy/Gorgeous

♫ Boyzone’s Better

♫ Pet Shop Boys’ Being Boring — a film by Bruce Weber

Pink, Raise Your Glass, gay kiss, pop video
♫ In at No 19 (thanks, Rob): Pink’s Raise Your Glass — “Don’t be fancy, just get dancey”!

♫ And one more makes 20 (thanks, Jobediah Ingram): Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s Same Love

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➢ Read on in the New York Times:
For Gays, New Songs of Survival

“These artists represent a new wave of young (and mostly straight) women who are providing the soundtrack for a generation of gay fans coming to terms with their identity in a time of turbulent and confusing cultural messages.”

➢ Elsewhere at Shapers of the 80s… Update Nov 2011 – Firework falls out of UK chart after 58 weeks

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➤ Why Lady Gaga “gets it”, Pixie Lott doesn’t, and the jury is out on Rihanna

Posted on 3 Nov 2010 | 1 comment

❚ WE LIKE POPJUSTICE BECAUSE it’s a website that confronts the heavyweight issues in a field some people regard as lightweight, namely, pop music. With some frequency PJ puts its finger on how our tiny minds work. Today it defines “the best pop music”…

Lady Gaga, Brit Awards

Gets it: Lady Gaga, winner at the 2010 Brit Awards

[From PopJustice, Nov 3, 2010]

THE BEST POP MUSIC OFTEN SUCCEEDS by striking the right balance between trying just hard enough and looking like it’s not trying too hard. Lady Gaga turned things on their head slightly by very publicly and very unashamedly trying extremely hard and — in a world where there is no shortage of overstylised clubkids attempting to posture and preen their way to pseudo-avant garde popstar notoriety — she actually made it work.

Clearly Gaga is a cut above the rest in every respect: combined, her songwriting, style, collaborations, vocals and vision put her in a different league to almost every other popstar of the last twenty years. But her ascent to whatever and wherever she is now is an interesting case study in what happens when the right sort of person (and it has to be the right sort of person, with the right sort of tunes) strikes the right sort of pose…

[Here PJ discusses a Swedish upcomer called Viktorious who seems to “get it” in the same way Gaga does.]

We like popstars who get it. We like loads of popstars who don’t get it, too, but the ones who get it are our favourites. Success does not always come their way but they always make pop a little bit more interesting than the others.

And this is where the knife goes in. PJ has three lists of stars who “Get it”, headed by Gaga, those who “Don’t”, headed by Pixie Lott, and a third option where “The jury is out”: Rihanna.

➢ Read PopJustice’s full list of Gets and Don’t gets, Nov 3

Pixie Lott, PopJustice

Uh Oh, doesn’t get it: Pixie Lott, chart-topping pop princess

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➤ Classics of 80s graffiti revived by campaigning collective in New York

Posted on 28 Oct 2010 | Leave a comment
graffiti, Subway Art History,Joan of Arc, Hand of Doom, Martha Cooper ,Henry Chalfant

Joan of Arc at a warehouse along a Brooklyn canal: the graffiti collective Slavery is paying homage to a 1980 work that read “Hand of Doom”. © Robert Wright for The New York Times

[From the New York Times, October 26, 2010]

❚ ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN LOST in the last few weeks around the southern reaches of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn could be excused for experiencing a powerful Koch administration flashback. On the wall of a brick warehouse there, a huge mural unfurls itself, a loving, seemingly spray-by-spray re-creation of one of the more infamous pieces of graffiti ever to ride the subway: a 1980 work by the artist known as Seen that covered the length of a No 6 train car with the ominous phrase “Hand of Doom”.

It is the work of a newly formed collective of (mostly) former graffiti writers in their 20s and 30s, who have embarked on an unusual citywide campaign to summon 50 or more of the most famous pieces of old-school graffiti out of the history books and back onto the streets. The project, called Subway Art History, is unusual not only because the artists are making the pieces with the permission of businesses, schools and other perhaps nostalgic owners of blank vertical space, but also because of the nature of the pieces themselves. They are expressions of homage in a subculture that has almost always been defined by fierce competition, intense striving for originality and a kill-the-elders attitude toward the past.

“In graffiti it’s like a teenage thing: No way am I going to become my father, no way am I going to make anything that looks like anyone else’s. — Then, of course, you become your father,” said a 32-year-old former graffiti writer who helped form the collective.

➢ Read Graffiti of New York’s past, revived and remade
— in the New York Times

❚ View video — 25th anniversary of Subway Art, bible of the graffiti movement, by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant:

➢ The book: Subway Art, bible of the graffiti movement

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2011 ➤ Sade comes home to tour UK but even a cheap seat will cost you £158 !

Posted on 14 Oct 2010 | Leave a comment

Sade, Soldier of Love,BabyFather,O2 arena,European tour, American tour, first UK tour in 18 years,highest selling British female,Rich List,Kylie
❚ BRITISH FANS GET TO SEE the soul singer and former Blitz Kid Sade Adu live on her first UK tour in 18 years at three dates in 2011: Manchester’s MEN Arena on May 27, then Birmingham’s LG Arena May 29 and London’s O2 Arena May 31. Tickets go on sale officially from Oct 18, though today you can find £134 Upper Tier seats at MEN on sale with £24 booking fee through Stereoboard.

The 70-date global tour starts in Europe at Nice on April 29, reaching Dublin on May 25, and continues through North America from June 16. Since its February launch the group’s sixth studio album Soldier of Love has sold 3m copies, while the British website for “the band Sade” claims Sade is the highest selling “British female artist” of all time (not quite the same thing), with sales of 57m albums worldwide — so as a solo singer Kylie might dispute this with her 40m albums and 60m singles. Earlier this year Kylie just pipped Sade in the Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated fortune of £35m, against her rival’s £30m.

➢ Official Sade VIP Ticket packages priced from £399 / Euro 399
➢ 2010, Comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’
➢ VIEW ♫ ♫ video for the single BabyFather
➢ More links in sidebar at right

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1925-2010 ➤ Tony Curtis — for ever hot

Posted on 30 Sep 2010 | Leave a comment
Some Like It Hot,Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis , Jack Lemmon

Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, 1959: Marilyn Monroe as Sugar, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon disguised as Josephine and Daphne, two jazz musicians on the run from the mob in the Roaring 20s

❚ “THE PERFECT FILM COMEDY” — Some Like It Hot was voted the best comedy film of all time by the American Film Institute. Hilarious in every way, the whole movie is finely scripted, subtly acted and lovingly directed by Billy Wilder. He elicited performances from Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon that set a benchmark for all cross-dressers who followed. Today, after a Hollywood career spanning more than 120 films, blue-eyed Tony died peacefully, a star.

Some Like It Hot, Tony Curtis,Cary Grant

Glorious pastiche: Curtis in his other role as a Cary Grant lookalike in Some Like It Hot

Marilyn: “You own a yacht? Which one is it? The big one?”
Curtis/Grant: “Certainly not! With all the unrest in the world, I don’t think anybody should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve.”


Daphne: “How *do* they walk in these things?”
Josephine: “It must be the way the weight is distributed.”
[Enter Marilyn]
Daphne: “Look at that! The way she moves! Just like Jello on springs. I tell ya, it’s a whole different sex.”

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