Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Music

Gratuitous Girls Aloud references

  • Pop perfection

    I went to see the Taylor Swift tour film last night. It’s one of the greatest live music things I’ve ever seen, and if you’re even vaguely interested in pop music it’s definitely worth a trip to the IMAX. Swift is a fantastic songwriter, an incredible performer and the sound and staging of the show are as good as it gets.

    I’m well aware that I’m going to sound like an old woman saying this, but I am one so that’s how it’s going to come out. I think I enjoyed the tour movie more than I would have enjoyed the gig. It’s not just the ridiculous cost of tickets (the cheapest ones I saw were £300) and the travelling to Edinburgh, which is the nearest stop on the tour to me. It’s that an awful lot of people who go to gigs are awful, and have become more so since the COVID lockdowns. It’s not an original observation I know but it does feel like a lot of people forgot how to behave in public, and as a result gigs – particularly big gigs by famous people – are often ruined by shitfaced people loudly talking to their friends or worse, FaceTiming them and loudly yelling at the same time.

    The other factor is the venues themselves. Football and rugby stadiums were built for football and rugby, not music, and they are places where sound goes to die. Unless you’re down by the front the wind carries a lot of the top end away, and your view will be of faraway screens. While the staging of Swift’s show (and of other big-gig masters such as U2) is built for big spaces and does a good job of spectacle, the view and sound and experience you get from the not-cheap seats isn’t close to what you get from the cosy seats of the IMAX. And yet while Swift tickets sold out in seconds for Edinburgh, the IMAX in Glasgow last night was only half full.

  • Achtung Vegas

    U2’s Achtung Baby is the greatest album ever made. Okay, maybe not to you, or to most of the Earth. But to 19-year-old me – the album was released the day before my 19th birthday – it was the most amazing and important record I’d ever heard, and it was followed the year after by the most amazing tour I’ve ever seen: Zoo TV. I know every note The Edge plays, and what guitar pedals he used to get each sound. I can hammer out every beat of Larry’s drums and know every word and every note of Adam’s basslines off by heart.

    I’m not such a fan any more; I fell out of love with U2 around the late 1990s and while I’ve seen them a few times since – they remain a superb live band who do interesting things in arenas – I don’t experience the same fierce joy they used to give me. Bono’s increasing Sinatra-isation of his vocals when he does the songs live is a particular irritant for me, and the band have long passed the point where the new music matches the highs of the old. But nevertheless, when U2 announced that they’d be playing Achtung Baby in full in The Sphere, a new and exciting venue in Vegas, part of me really, really, really wanted to go. I can’t possibly afford it – the affordable (and that’s a relative term) tickets went fast so the cost of show, hotel and flights would have been way past £2K, which is madness to go and see a show. But I still really want to go. I mean, look at it!

    Pictures don’t do it justice; you really need to see the video to appreciate the scale of it. And that’s where reality comes crashing in (assuming you can hear anything because of the constant whooping of audience members as the visuals change) because the videos demonstrate that, as my brother put it, it’d be great if it were soundtracked by the U2 of 1991. But it’s not. It’s soundtracked by the U2 of 2023.

    U2 2023 isn’t U2 1991. It’s a different band not just because drummer Larry Mullen Jr is absent, recovering from back surgery. It’s a different band because the fire and energy of 1991’s U2 isn’t there any more, and because Bono’s voice isn’t what it used to be, and because a band that was once hungry and vital has mansions around the world and hangs around with presidents. Despite the big screen and the equally big revenues, playing a Vegas residency means exactly what it’s meant from the residencies of Elvis to those of Britney Spears: the creative well has run dry. Sure, there’s new music. But it’s not great music.

    This happens with every band, or at least the ones who keep going; REM avoided the same fate by splitting up. I suspect U2 never will; as long as there’s breath in Bono’s body and a crowd to play to, he’ll perform. But they’re not the band they used to be, and can’t be – any more than I can be the person who fell in love with Achtung Baby more than 30 years ago. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, but perhaps some things are best left as memories.

  • We are trickster gods

    This superb piece by Niko Stratis is a must-read about the no-point-in-reading news stories telling you that some old rich guy or other thinks trans women are icky and probably murderous.

    We are trickster gods, barbed and poisonous, waiting to rip the seams of the tender fabric of this gentle world. But we are never the interviewer, never the storyteller, rarely the writer and seldom real.

    …After the run of Cooper news, it was announced that legendary guitar player and songwriter Carlos Santana went on a baffling on-stage tirade about trans people. This wasn’t the result of a poorly planned question, by all accounts this was unprompted. When I saw the news first, it was in Billboard, and it was in their “Pride” section.

    I ask you, what “Pride” do we take away from this knowledge? There is no value gained here certainly, and I am not surprised that Santana doesn’t like trans people because I am rarely surprised by such facts anymore. There is no easier path to a headline than making baseless comments about trans people into whatever microphone will have you.

    Stratis’s piece makes the well-worn but still important point that right now, trans people are among the most talked about and least listened to group in society: publication after publication uses us for outrage marketing by asking famous people whether they hate trans people and love JK Rowling, or the famous people do it themselves because they have a product to push. But the voices you never hear over the shouts of the supposedly silenced are those of trans people. Far too much media is about us, without us.

  • T time

    I was delighted to be a small part of BBC Scotland’s new podcast, The Rise and Fall of T in the Park. It’s about more than just the festival itself; it’s about the impact it had on the Scottish music scene and on Scotland as a destination for touring bands. I’m in there talking about TiTP being my very first festival, and what it was like for a small town band to play one of the tents after winning a place in the T Break competition.

    The first four episodes are live now, and the remainder will go live on 18 July. I hope you enjoy it.

  • Not cancelled

    Earlier this week, the singer Lizzo released a record containing a word she didn’t realise was a slur against disabled people. When disabled people told her on social media that it was derogatory, she effectively said “Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” and re-released the song with the word changed.

    If you believe the endless pieces about cancel culture in the press, you’d expect Lizzo to be on the receiving end of ongoing abuse. But that’s not what happened. The very same fans and disability advocates who had criticised her thanked her. This, by writer Hannah Diviney, is typical:

    Thank you so much for hearing us Lizzo and for understanding that this was only ever meant gently and being open to learning, it honestly means the world.

    Had Lizzo been a famous comedian or an opinion columnist, I suspect things would have been very different: they’d have used the slur deliberately and then rather than apologising, they’d have doubled down on the offence and planned their lucrative “I’ve been cancelled!” tour and media appearances. But Lizzo is a member of multiple marginalised groups, so she did what the comedians and columnists usually don’t: she listened, realised she’d made a mistake and apologised.

    In other words, she tried to be a decent human being.

  • Dreams that glitter

    I’m really sad to read about the death of Sarah Harding, who has died of breast cancer aged just 39 (please, please, please get yourself checked out whether you’re male, female or neither). Her band, Girls Aloud, were one of the finest pop bands we’ve ever had: they had the same crying-on-the-dancefloor thing as the best ABBA songs and made some of the most anthemic, life-affirming and joyous bangers you’ll ever hear. I have never wanted to be in a band as much as I wanted to be one of Girls Aloud.

    RIP, Sarah.

  • SausageFest 2021

    My talented musical pal Becci Wallace made this. It’s funny because it’s so very true.

  • I’m braw*

    I’m delighted to be featured as today’s Woman of the Day by Braw Gals In Music: Jordan’s Instagram/Facebook/Twitter has highlighted some incredible women and non-binary people, and I’m very proud to be included.

    * Braw is Scots for fine, good or excellent.

  • It’s okay to cry

    Glaswegian musician and producer SOPHIE has died. She was an extraordinary talent and this is a very sad loss.

    Munroe Bergdorf:

    Our community has lost an icon, a pioneer and a visionary bright light. Heartbroken. SOPHIE you will be missed.

    “Thank you for sharing your talent with us. I hope we get to meet again one day. Rest in peace sister.

    Inevitably the transphobes are already all over this on social media, sharing their joy at the death of a young woman and being hateful to the people mourning her.

  • Say a prayer for the lost and lonely

    My band released a Christmas EP last year, and I think the closing track is even more appropriate this year. It’s called A Christmas Prayer.

    The lyrics are:

    I hope you have a good one
    I hope your christmas is fun
    I hope you’re with your family
    and there’s something for you under the tree
    and I hope you thank your lucky stars

    Say a prayer for the lost and lonely
    pray for the battered and the bruised
    raise your glasses and remember
    the ones that didn’t make it through

    I don’t believe in a god up there
    but I offer up a Christmas prayer
    to fill every aching heart with love
    fill every hateful heart with love
    fill every broken heart with love
    fill every empty heart with love

    I hope you have a happy Christmas and that 2021 is better for all of us.