Current obsession: Serge Gainsbourg

I've only just got into Serge Gainsbourg. Gasp! This man must be one of the world's most influential musicians, and was responsible for Je t'aime... moi non plus, Bonnie and Clyde and Comic Strip. What's taken me so long? Especially as I visited his grave in Montparnasse Cemetery a few years ago. I always assumed he was an eccentric singer beloved by a few, but when I was the amount of flowers on his grave I realised he was actually an eccentric singer/director/writer beloved by many. My bad.
Language has probably been a big barrier, as much of Serge's oeuvre (check me out) is in French. Some people claim they don't listen to the lyrics, but words/language get me all excited. And I've been learning French. I've perpetually been learning French for years now, and I'm getting quite good. Recently I've been able to listen to songs in French and just about understand them. Do I feel smug? Of course I do.
I've been getting well acquainted with Serge and have discovered that Love On The Beat is a fantastic album. Apart from Lemon Incest. That's not a cultural difference - a sexually provocative duet with your 12 year old daughter is just wrong. Don't start telling me it's ambiguous. I know the video makes you feel uncomfortable too.
All this Serge-ing has made me wonder what else I've been missing out on because I've been stuck in my English-speaking world. There's a lot of other worlds out there - French-speaking, German-speaking, Spanish-speaking etc - full of music I haven't yet heard. I might not understand all the lyrics, but does that really matter?

Current obsession - Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode (hereafter referred to as the Mode) are clearly brilliantly amazing. And it seems that I've only just realised this. My bad.
Maybe it's because the Mode are not as popular in the UK as they are in Europe. There are indie clubnights across the UK throwing nights dedicated to bands like the Smiths or Joy Division. But if you want to spend all night bopping to Personal Jesus and Just Can't Get Enough with other Modeheads, you'll have to go to France. Or Russia.
From Marilyn Manson to Nouvelle Vague, The Mode have been well plundered. And 'thanks' to Popjustice, Hilary Duff''s new Personal Jesus-sampling single Reach Out entered my ears. While the original uses Christian imagery to draw parallels between religious ecstasy and sexual ecstasy, Hilary simply implores a sexy man hunk to 'reach out and touch me'. Like, ewww! I know Jamelia did something similar a couple of years ago, but she's exonerated because her version (Beware of the Dog) is better. And everyone involved with Hilary Duff looks like they're phoning in, apart from the stylist.
Let's put all the covers and samples aside, and spend a few minutes remembering how brilliant Depeche Mode are. I'm sure you already know they are, but it's nice to have a reminder. Here's Everything Counts (In Large Amounts), in which the Mode explore consumerist greed.

Current obsession: Lady GaGa

I've tried keeping this to myself, but I really have to tell you that I think Lady GaGa is rather good. I've been reluctant to share on this one because she has enough self-created blog buzz. And she made a guest appearance on 'The Hills', which makes me go 'ewwww!'.

But Let's Dance is a brilliant pop song. There's something that elevates her above the usual pop moppet (poppet?). She's Williamsburg without being a Williamsjerk. She's an Italian-American girl, and is therefore the new Madonna. Plus she looks like an escapee from a Stanley Kubrick film.

Current obsession - Action Biker

I was on one of my regular YouTube daisy chains when I found Stockholm lovely Action Biker. My starting point was When I Grow Up by the Pussycat Dolls (did Britney Spears not make the final edit?) and somehow ended up with luscious electro loveliness. Action Biker is Sarah Nyberg Pergament, and she sings like Francoise Hardy, makes beautiful lo-fi electronica and looks like she stepped from a street style webiste. She also performs with Kevin Wright as The Dreamers. She is proof that Sweden is a wondrous paradise, along with Dala horses, IKEA, The Knife and so on.
Below is the video for ICA Lappis, which not only looks amazing but is also a song about shopping in the Swedish equivalent of Spar. There's also a live video on YouTube where she sings on stage while making brownies. Performance baking = winner.

Current obsession - Bjork

Bjork is one of those people I accidentally forget about, so when I delve into her music I rediscover how amazing she is and get all excited.
Bjork is amazing because everything she does is amazing, from the Sugarcubes through all of her solo albums. I've been told that Dancer in the Dark is also amazing, but people always suffix that with 'but it's really depressing', so I haven't watched it. Bjork is kooky, uncomprising and when she sings, the angels are probably weeping. Everytime I hear her hit the lyric 'emotional landscapes' in Joga, I get a little shiver. Really, I do.
For some people she's a global superstar, but for a lot of others she's that crazy lady who wore a swan to the Oscars, bellowed It's Oh So Quiet and attacked a reporter at Bangkok airport. I realised that the young son she was shielding from media intrusion during that incident is now a man, which is a scary reminder of the relentless passage of time. And why do fashion and gossip journalists always drag up the swan dress as an example of the worst crimes against Oscar style? She looks amazing! Well, apart from the glittery, flesh-coloured body stocking beneath. She's Bjork, of course she's going to dress theatrically. Remember the 30,000 square feet of fabric she wore for the Athens Olympics opening ceremony in 2004 (pictured)?
Bjork herself is not a one-woman powerhouse of creativity, and it's all the energy of collaborations that make her AMAZING. From those Michel Gondry videos to the Reactable man it's all so amazingly brilliant. For a Bjork album produced by Timbaland, 2007's Volta doesn't sound as good as I imagined in my head. I'm ready for the seventh Bjork album, whenever that may be. Not for quite a while, I suppose. She's still touring the sixth one. And the shows are amazing. Amazing!

Current obsession - thecocknbullkid

I just listened to The Cock n Bull Kid (can't bring myself to type it as one word again. Why not? Because that's just silly.) I'm probably about a million years behind Hoxton, but wow! Isn't she just wonderful? Like an East London Santogold with a Casio keyboard, produced by the equally wonderful Metronomy.
Her new single On My Own (released on 7 July, release-date fans) is deceptively plodding at first listen, but those mosquito chords crept inside my brain. It's a bittersweet, end of the affair reminisce. And it is quite wonderful.
There's also an MTV2 ready video, in which she stamps on a cake. Video looks good, but a needless waste of a cake, I say.

Current obsession - N.E.R.D.

Pharrell and chums have returned with Everyone Nose, a ruckus of reggaeton about LA club girls snorting cocaine in the bathroom. Through hundred dollar bills. It's parping, rude and features a chanted refrain of 'all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom!'. It's all punctuated by mock sneezing, which may or may not be lifted from At Chu, a non MySpace track by Panama pop star, Demphra.
I loved Everyone Nose when I first heard it a few months ago (look at me! I am soooooo effin' cool because I trawl MP3 blogs!) but also pondered what radio shows and music channels would play this. It's about casual drug abuse without any apparent retribution. Well, Pharrell warns the coked-up lovely falling off his arms that 'I won't blow your high talkin' bout your life and how it is all wrong / just know if you go outside and see the sun rise that all the stars are gone'. Not quite the cocaine blues, is it?
But now the video is Out There (I caught it on The Hits when channel surfing) I remembered that N.E.R.D. are global superstars. Thanks to iPod adverts, Jason Nevins remixes, all those Neptunes production credits and Pharrell's rent-a-rapper skits, N.E.R.D. don't need mainstream media. Their third album, N3RD, will shift units.
The video includes a lot of glimpses of licentious club kids covered by the tantalising 'removed by request'. Which of course makes some people head to the internet to find the uncensored version and gawk brief shots of girls snogging. Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan appear, but not together. Looking out for them is like Where's Wally?

Current obsession - Lykke Li

I love Lykke Li. Maybe it's because I believe Sweden to be a wondrous paradise where the trains run on time, the elderly are respected and so on.
She just seems so lovely and untainted by trends: she can sing and write songs that are a bit kooky, but not too kooky. I haven't seen her live, but she strikes me as the sort of young lady who whips out a melodica mid-set. I fell in love when I first heard Little Bit (a restrained, I'm-not-in-love-if-you're-not-in-love song) last year. When debut album Youth Novels had a Swedish release in January, I had to snaffle it up. It's patchy, but the beautiful moments are beautiful. Perhaps with a little more time spent with Peter, Bjorn and John and she'll hit the songwriting nail on the head for the second album. Because Sweden is a wondrous paradise where you don't get dropped if the first single doesn't 'perform' chart-wise, you get nurtured. (That's how it looks from the outside.)
Here is a video of Lykke singing I'm Good, I'm Gone, with about half of the Stockholm music scene (or STHLM, if you're cool like that). Including Robyn. Yeah!

Current obsession - Yelle

Today, I adore Je Veux Te Voir by Yelle. It's an energetic hollaback at the misogynistic output of French rapper Cuizinier, and makes me feels that all those French lessons I had were worthwhile. There's something disarming about such a sweet-faced girl half singing, half MCing through lyrics such as 'on voulait voir des pectoraux, des mecs montés comme des taureaux.'
The video is almost embarrassingly hip and fashion-forward, especially as she's in clothes straight from a Jean-Charles de Castelbajac catwalk. (FYI, the blue and white frock is my favourite.) But she also released a cover of cheese anthem A Cause des Garcons and featured alongside comedy duo Fatal Bazooka on Parle A Ma Main, so it's all swings and roundabouts for the fledgling fashionista.
The lyrics are crude, but lots of hip hop has been objectifying women for years (not ALL hip hop, of course). But the video features Yelle cavorting in a gym like an American Apparel model, presumably for the viewing pleasure of an implied male gaze. Is this post-feminist empowerment? Is this post-ironic? Is it post-anything, or just a bit phwooaaaar? I don't know. She looks more like a cute girl trying to be sexy.
There's also an earlier cut of the video taking up space on the internet where Yelle resembles Jayne Middlemiss presenting The O Zone. It's true!

Current obsession - Robyn

Today I just want to gobble down Robyn's fifth (and surely final from the album) UK single, Who's That Girl. Because not only is this pop triumph warbled by Robyn, it's produced by The Knife. The Knife! A Swedish duo so good they deserve an exclamation mark - and I'm not just saying that because Pitchfork told me to.
Who's That Girl has been around since 'Robyn' was released in Sweden in 2005, but it still sounds like the future. Between the cardboard box drums and spaceship synths it feels like 2011, at the very least. The synth lines and beat would fit comfortably onto The Knife's 'Silent Shout', but where many of that album's tracks span out sexually adrogynous swooshes and swirls, Robyn's lyrics tame the production into a concise four minutes. She plays out her frustrations with the feminine ideal, concluding that the ideal doesn't exist in reality and she'll do what she wants, on her terms (sample: 'good girls are sexy like everyday / I'm only sexy when I say it's ok').
Robyn's yelping and white girl rap (please see Konichiwa Bitches) may not be to everyone's taste, but I'm glad she's tearing down those boring old ideas that young women in pop should be sexually available, permanently glossy and passive. Bravo Robyn, for her awkward beauty.