Songs of 2015

It might a forced tradition, but here is my fourth installment of my favourite songs of the past year.  A blog is a useful way for me to keep a history of what I liked at particular times. It is a bonus if this provides you with some recommendations.

The thing that surprises me with the list is how few "new" acts have made it onto the sheet.  I have a preference for new artists but this year it seems professionalism and favourtism have triumphed.  Other explanations are that there's been less good "new" acts, or I've just been a bit lazy.

Songs all listed below, but for convenience, here's the songs on a YouTube playlist and here's the Deezer playlist link too.

Public Service Broadcasting - Go!
Brilliant use of space-race recordings with superb musicianship.  The album is great, but the mania of the controller whose voice is sampled in this wins as the standout track.




Laura Marling - Gurdjieff's Daughter
Pure class, this song is beautifully layered and also strangely upbeat.




Father John Misty - Holy Shit
The greatest drummer turned front man since Phil Collins?  FJM's launch in 2015 was bold, arrogant and fantastic.  Very weirdly, but this is a favourite song of mine when running.



John Grant - Disappointing
It's taken me a while to get into John Grant, and even the latest album isn't a consistent winner with me.  But he has a habit for writing outstanding songs.  This is an absolute favourite of mine for the year.  How arrogant, yet fantastic, is this set of words: 
"Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Prokofiev,
Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Vysotsky and Lev"

 

Courtney Barnett - Depreston
"Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit" is a must have album of the year.  I'm not usually smart enough to pay attention to lyrics, but her's are just super smart.  This song is beautiful, and actually about house hunting (it could have been an angrier song in my opinion!)

I love it, if only for this couplet:
"If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuilding"








Sufjan Stevens - No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross
Just beautiful.  Absolutely beautiful.  This blog is named after one of his songs and I'm happy to have him back in my life!





Ezra Furman - Lousy Connection
Everyone should buy this album.  I adore the energy, the message, the sax, the harmonies, everything!






FFS - Piss Off
For those not aware, this is the "supergroup" formed of Franz Ferdinand and Sparks.  Direct and to the point, it's a great song to sing in the car (with the windows down).



Stornoway - The Only Way Is Up
More than just a cover, this is a great recording.  Love it.





Jeffrey Lewis - Outta Town
For me, this is the most romantic song of the year.  It absolutely makes me think of how my boys and I fall apart without my wife around!





Bop English - Dani's Blues
It came out early in the year, but the riff in this song has not moved once. 



Slaves - The Hunter
Just to finish off with some real energy.  In contrast to "Holy Shit", this song has been on my running mix all year and allowed me to dig deep for energy.  All songs should be written with this energy.



And there we go.  No particular favourite, and not in any order, but a useful document of the year that has flashed by so quickly.


PS
For completeness, here's the links to the last few years:
2014
2013
2012

My Master's Voice

When I was an amorous teenager, I wrote a lot of bad poetry, songs and once the sketch of a novel, with tales of heartache and unreturned crushes. Essentially, I spent much of my teenage years (and my twenties!) wallowing in the belief that it fueled my creativity - and that my experience was unique.

I'm not sure why, but I had flashbacks of sitting in my bedroom, listening to REM whilst writing dubious verse as I considered the departure of my manager, friend and mentor, Andy Coulthurst, as MD of Motors.co.uk.  I suspect the following will make him (and possibly you) highly uncomfortable.  But I'm no longer the cowardly seventeen year old that would let opportunity pass him by, today I want to celebrate it!

In particular, I wanted to highlight the importance of a good mentor.  Someone who provides you with a new way of thinking, pushes you to new limits and helps you enjoy the journey.  

It's not always been nice words, I remember once being mentored with the following gem: "when I see you playing fantasy football at your desk, it makes me want to throw your computer through the fucking window!".  It took me a while, but I eventually realised the lesson was to be conscious of how you are perceived in the workplace.  I also no longer play fantasy football.

From each of my mentors, I have copied things in the hope that I can come near to their standards.  For Andy, it will be his boundless enthusiasm, energy and ability to always conjure new ideas.  I must no longer retreat within myself when things get hard, and fight negativity with positivity.  A true salesman's ability to move on from rejection to the next opportunity.  (an approach that would have been much more advisable as a teenager than the drawers of poor poetry I accumulated)

So whilst it might be weird to write poems about your colleagues (another mentor once told me that), I think it's fitting to remember Andy with a bad poem.  Enjoy and feel free to judge, I don't care!

My Master's Voice

"Brilliant" he said, every time.

And, for him, it always was. Can it now be for me?

From his energy I'm fully charged, 

For the next challenge on our path.

We conquered Vegas, on the front row,

of our International Leadership Conference.

The most willing and driven of servants,

In focused pursuit of our shared dream.

The Starsky to my Hutch, 

The Maggie to my Dennis,

I must now emerge from the chrysalis

He ordered me to build in his vision.

My tea is now stronger, my resolve firmer,

My energy unbounded, my accent northerner.

Ask me how I am?  And like my master

I'll always reply "Brilliant".

Outlook v Phill

I have a problem.  An addiction.  I'm a slave to my inbox.  Outlook is my Everest.  I yearn to silence it, to control it.  But (wifi permitting) emails continue to flow.  I hate to lose the fight, but I'm not smart enough to change the rules to even give me a sporting chance.

It started with a simple proposition.  If I could end the day with fewer emails in my inbox at the end of the day than at the start, then that would be a win.  This would mean that I stayed on top of my tasks (naively assuming my duties and emails were directly linked), but also I would not be one of "those people" who ignores other people's emails.  The tidiness of it appealed to the Virgo in me.

At a strategy session I was presented with a 2x2 diagram that starkly highlighted just where I was going wrong. My interpretation of it is below:

So the assumption that email represented my work duties was nuts.  Yes, I can hold my head up when it comes to  the important and urgent issues (most of the time).  But, I have definitely been guilty of putting off the important, not urgent for another day.  It's been easy to justify because I may have ended up sending a bunch of emails and even beating my inbox that day.

But my inbox is a myopic, self-centered little bastard who wants all my attention.  He also wants me to fail on my longer term tasks.  Even if I mark something as a "task" and move it, he knows that the lure of an unread email is too much for me.  In short, I am my inbox's bitch.

At this stage, you're probably expecting some insight into how I overcame this and became a better person, a better colleague, better boss, better husband, better father.  But I haven't overcome it.  I'm at the epicentre of it.  I'm slightly better than I have been in that I've acknowledged the problem.  I've even thought of things I might do to help counter it - mind maps of longer term goals, "black out" times from email, pre-defined filters.  But, I always end up being distracted by emails.

Once I've answered every email ever, I will be a free and productive man.  I will jump on Outlook's grave and celebrate, but after a few minutes I'll probably check my phone for emails.  

The thought of the silence terrifies me.

The Smartest Finger

Motors.co.uk launched it's new TV creative, Smart Finger, on Sunday.  I love the creative.  It's memorable, charming and looks great.  But more than that, it's smart.  I want to share some insight as to why.

In all honesty, I was a little nervous approaching the launch to our business. It could never be the seismic shift that our Carfuffle campaign was having never run national TV campaigns before.  The emotion of that launch was incredible, as was the impact to the business, and I guess I was worried about trying to recreate that.  But I was making the wrong comparison.  This campaign was different. It was built completely on insight (even more so than Carfuffle).  In other words, it was Smart.

Meet Smart Finger - not modelled on me!

Going into this campaign we knew what worked: how consumers responded to seeing our product on screen; which channels and programmes generated the best engagement; the need to communicate the benefits of the product; and requirement to make it enjoyable. You'd think with this that we'd be an easy client for our creative agency, Brave, to manage - but we were a pain.

The first problem is that we don't understand why other people don't find Motors.co.uk as interesting as we do.  I will never be able to rationalise this.  I simply hope that everyone will become a believer like me.

The second is that when asked to summarise why consumers should come to Motors.co.uk it takes my MD and I about 5 minutes to run through the many advantages of our site. Apparently it's not efficient to buy whole ad breaks listing the many ways in which we think people should visit.

We'd made the decision to move on from Carfuffle which was essentially a launch campaign introducing something new, but finding a campaign that would be as endearing to us was always going to be hard.  And this comes back to the emotion of the initial launch.  Could we ever fall in love again like we did with Mark, our headless chicken and Amy (feedback on the ad had a lot of people falling in love with Amy)?  But did we need to?  We knew what would work and had some great creative ideas to work with that would hit all of the areas perfectly.

Amy's ad was banned from Nickelodeon!

Mark astride his headless chicken

Then we met Smart Finger.  It was love at first sight.  

I expected this to be watered down over time as we poured over scripts and countless edits, but the attention to detail from Blac Ionica and the immensely talented pupeteers and model makers brought it to life.  Add to this Peter Serafinowicz's barking voice over and frantic 80s soundtrack, and the pace and urgency of the need to visit Motors.co.uk is brought to life.

"And the best thing about Smart Finger..." as our ad says, is that it empowers the consumer - they feel smart by using our site.  Hopefully this psychology won't be lost in the viewing.

Given what we've learnt in the last year, I always expected the ad to be intelligent and good.  But the energy and ambition that pours from the ad is the truest reflection of the team at Motors.co.uk.  Now, "get your smart finger out and find the right car for you at Motors.co.uk"!

Ok, when angry, he does look like me!