Inescapable, inexplicable, infuriatingly addictive and an irrefutable pop phenomenon. She is Lady Gaga and she has come to take your children. If this were true, I’m sure it would be a fair trade but in reality, her goals are much, much higher. A fashion and style icon, Gaga has made her two years in the public eye seem like a special kind of Chinese water torture. Chances are you’ve either succumbed to her spell, or fighting the effects with all the strength you can muster.

If you were a teenager in the 80’s you’d be getting a sense of déjà vu right about now. Gaga is for all intent and purpose Madonna: The Next Generation and she has on her side something Madonna never had when it counted – the internet. She wields it with purpose and confidence, and she doesn’t have to worry about Playboy releasing some old cash-strapped nudie shots. Search the internet, look around your magazine shelves and all mystery is rendered null and void. Gaga has taken over-exposed to new meanings, to where, perhaps for the first time in pop music, the focus isn’t on what a pop star isn’t wearing, but what she is.

Nominated for a record 13 awards in the 2010 MTV Music and Video Awards (which she will undoubtedly walk away with most, if not all), Gaga has infiltrated our television screens, our internets and our daily lives. You’ve probably lost friends and family, succumbing one by one to her call, to join her junior Manson family, or what she adoringly calls her ‘little monsters’. At this point, it still would take almost heaven and earth to make the staunch plastic pop hater/serious music fan drop their guard and pay attention. And when it does, like it did to yours truly, it’s something that demands further investigation and even perhaps a certain amount of respect.

Having been able to defend against Gaga’s earlier, inferior efforts, it was her worldwide top 10 hit, “Paparazzi” that broke through the mental shields, but it evoked negative and rage-filled behaviour. No matter which part of the globe you were on, “Paparazzi” was like an airborne virus that followed you everywhere. As soon as it was identified who the object of my derision was, she quickly became “that fucking Lady Gaga”. I’d as sooner set fire to my record collection than be caught listening/watching/purchasing one of her records, but then on October 25, 2009, something unexpected happened — “Bad Romance”, Lady Gaga‘s sixth single was released and I lost my entire record collection in a freak ‘unexplained’ accident.

There are few things greater in recorded music than the all-encompassing pop song. It’s like music’s version of Excalibur — wielded only by the worthy (with ego and talent in abundance), able to cut through the airwaves with such power that the effects are seismic. There have been only a handful in the last decade (that at best I want to be aware of. I do not need to be made aware of more) that leave you in a state of ‘oh-my-fucking-god-what-was-that?-oh-shit-i’m-listening-to-pop-music-and-i’m-liking-it’. Of those that I wish to out myself for liking, Kylie Minogue’s 2001 worldwide chart hit “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” is one, and of course, there is Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. Both have that intense, almost dizzying drug-like rush that takes over your nervous system and holds you transfixed, and before you know it, you’ve become a pop junkie looking for your next hit.

Lady Gaga – Bad Romance – Radio Edit by cisnegro

From bitter hater to obedient pawn is the ultimate goal of the artist who wants their face on everything and music heard everywhere. They love the lovers, but they love the haters who become lovers even more. Even if you fall prey and end up feeling used, she still wins. There’s no denying the power of Gaga and there’s no denying “Bad Romance”. What is it about songs whose lyrical pull is ‘want’ over ‘need’? The dreamy allure of Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” reads as an almost lyrical bookend to Gaga’s desperate and doomed romance. If Kylie aspired to be pop’s impossible princess, then Gaga is pop’s tarted-up coke whore, but no matter how you dice it, both are attractive propositions.

“Bad Romance” on the surface is a rather grotesque little ditty. As soon as we’ve bypassed Gaga’s operatic scene-setting warble, she’s already preparing herself for a trip to the STD clinic. How else can you possibly read “I want your ugly/I want your disease”? Clearly how bad this romance is or could be is established from the get-go. From then on in, she drops the shock for a little celluloid fun, throwing in some Hitchcock references and making what appears to be an allusion to the 1953 film “From Here To Eternity”. “I want your drama/The touch of your hand/I want your leather studded kiss in the sand”. The imagery instantly brings forth that of Burt Lancaster in iconic embrace with Elizabeth Kerr in the beach, albeit with weird biker overtones.

The Hitchcock references are easily and readily picked upon “I want your psycho, your vertigo shtick/I want you in my rear window, baby you’re sick”, all of which probably flew over the heads of her teen audience but add to the suitably sinister feel of the track. Regardless of its filmic quality, the line “I want you in my rear window” is the most lyrically subversive Gaga has come up with to date, something that makes “Love Games“ “I want to take a ride on your disco stick” sound cheap and tacky. Which it is. If some hot little blonde thing came up to me in a nightclub and said “I want you in my rear window” my jaw would hit the floor faster than my drink.

If you were to make a career out of studying pop songs with a focus on Ibiza-styled dance anthems (and why would you?), you would notice “Bad Romance” is nothing special. A synth-driven track with a driving oompa-oompa beat that lyrically builds from little verse to little verse to soft build into BIG CHORUS and then repeat. What sets “Bad Romance” apart from the rest is its transmutability. You could take this song and turn it into almost anything. Check Youtube, there are bound to be covers of “Bad Romance” done death metal, done country, as a piano ballad, or even emo hate-rock style. Interpret it any way you like and it would still sound like a hit. But it’s that soaring, anthemic chorus that shoots “Bad Romance” into the upper reaches of the pop stratosphere. The slow swell of the pre-chorus becomes this goose-tingling euphoric moment as the track reaches its “I want your love and I want your revenge/You and me would make a bad romance” climax. Even the drama-filled bilingual middle eight where Gaga is grabbing for whatever she can raises the tension level to a point that’s almost impossible to climb back down from.

A song has its most power when it has a direct line to your consciousness. Some songs will speak louder and clearer more than others, and this is because you understand exactly what is being said, because you’ve either felt it or are living it in real time. There’s nothing like being stuck in car with someone who’s playing The Fame Monster over and over while you’re actually going through the nuclear fall-out of a “bad romance”. You relate to everything you’re hearing. You want to go completely Hitchcock on the person that is making you to feel this way, yet even in the midst of all the insanity, this song oddly becomes your moment of solace. Gaga wasn’t selling something new, she just expressed it in a way that hadn’t been said before. And she made bad romances sound like fun, which I can honestly assure you, aren’t.

“Listening again to everything The Hold Steady recorded. Is this the greatest American band now? They just got me through a rough month.” Bret Easton Ellis, Twitter Nov 2009.

Twitter is hardly, and should never be considered, the barometer of cool. No matter who you are, twitter props amount to nothing more than a brief fart in a swift breeze — you’re unlikely to hear it and it sure ain’t gonna stick around long enough for you to smell it. And Easton Ellis old chap, what have you done lately? Record company press releases make me laugh. Sometimes they do a band the greatest injustice and then sometimes I’m just too lazy to rewrite them.

Lauded by fans, critics and other creative minds for the “scope, depth, truth and heart” (I believe in music circles they call it “Blue Collar Rock”) that they bring to chronicling the American rock myth, The Hold Steady recently put the finishing touches on the follow-up to 2008′s twitter-approved Stay Positive, titled Heaven Is Whenever. Produced by Dean Baltulonis, who engineered the band’s debut Almost Killed Me and produced their second album Separation Sunday, Heaven is Whenever finds The Hold Steady soldiering on in ever familiar ground. Singer Craig Finn revealing that the album is about “embracing suffering and finding reward in our everyday lives” (really, Craig? Really?).

Recorded in several smaller sessions spread out over a long period of time, the songs on Heaven Is Whenever received the benefit of being road-tested on the band’s recent tours including the UK shows last September. As Finn says this allowed them to “see what was working and what wasn’t. I believe this record benefits from us working at a more deliberate pace.”  Following the release of 2008’s critically acclaimed Stay Positive which gave the band it’s highest Billboard chart position to date, and a Top 15 album in the UK, The Hold Steady toured relentlessly, playing to some of their biggest audiences to date.

Speaking via the wonders of the impersonal record company Q&A, this is what Tad Kubler and Craig Finn had to say about the forthcoming album.

How is the new record different from ‘Stay Positive’?

Tad: I think this is a much more dynamic record than anything we’ve done. I feel as though the last four records, with the exception of the odd track here and there, have been pretty much loud rock albums. This album is sonically more diverse. And I really believe it exposes new elements of the band that we hinted at on other records but weren’t able to fully realize until this one. Rather than just concentrate on changes in instrumentation, we made changes to the song writing process. And this helped everyone to experiment not only with their own instrument and where they should play, but where they shouldn’t. This record doesn’t feel as dense. It feels more spacial. We weren’t trying to get a dozen different ideas on a song.

Craig: I think Heaven is Whenever has a bit more open space. I see it as being less anthemic and more complex. Each time we make a record, I think it gets more musical. We have had the opportunity to grow as musicians and performers.

We understand you had a sonic vision for making this record.  What was that vision and how do you feel you and Dean made that come to fruition?

Tad: I wanted to see if we could accomplish a couple things on this record. The main objective being not to make the same record as the one previous. I love Boys and Girls and Stay Positive. But they have a very similar feel and sound. I wanted to make sure this one was not only unique, but that it seemed the next logical step in the progression of the band.

One thing we’ve never really tried was writing in the studio and using the studio itself as an instrument. In the spring of 2009 I started to compose this score for a film a friend of mine was doing. He gave me a couple of scenes to work from and I built music around the dialogue and mood of what was happening on the screen. As I was creating these big soundscapes, it occurred to me that given the cinematic scope of Craig’s lyrics, I could apply what I was doing for the film to my songwriting for the band. So rather than simply come up with cool guitar riffs as I had in the past, I’d need to start thinking on a much larger scale. Dean was the conduit between me and the technology and he was incredibly patient. I came up with a handful of songs, writing mostly on piano and guitar. Then had Bobby come in and play some drums. Galen came in and played some bass. Then while we were on tour, Craig started to put lyrics down as quickly as he was writing them. We turned the back lounge of the bus into a make shift vocal booth where we could also overdub guitars. These songs gradually became the demos for the new record. And we continued writing. It allowed us to work at a pace that was dictated almost solely by our creative output. We just hit record whenever we thought we had something worth putting down. So when we wrapped up our touring commitments for Stay Positive, the process began. The wonderful part about working with Dean is that we both like to construct songs and take chances in search of what works and what doesn’t. Start off with a solid foundation or skeleton for the song, and then continue to build on that. We called it rock legos.

What are the album’s main lyrical themes?  Do any of the old characters show up?

Craig: The lyrics speak a lot about struggle and reward. Its about embracing suffering and understanding its place in a joyful life. I think that some of the characters from old records are there, but I don’t name them by name.  I think it continues to examine the highs and lows that we’ve looked at on previous records.

Musically speaking, what do you feel the overall sound of the new record is?  How does it differ from past releases?

Tad: I feel like this record is pretty evocative from a musical standpoint. There’s a lot more melody. It’s more sonically diverse and dynamically expansive than any of our previous records.

Would you say this is an especially guitar heavy record?

Tad: Kind of. I think this is a guitar heavy record. But I would NOT say this is a heavy guitar record. There are a lot of guitar tracks on this album. But I tried to vary the way I played each take. Switch up the amp/guitar combination. Change the tone somewhat drastically. Use a capo to alternate chord structures. Use alternate tunings. I wrote a lot on piano for this record and that helped me think of ways to play things differently on guitar. And rather than turn everything up, I had a tendency to turn things down. I played a lot of acoustic guitar on this record. Sometimes it’s nice combined with an overdriven electric track. Adds some depth and warmth to the tone.

What were your biggest inspirations, musical or otherwise, on the album?

Tad: I listened to a lot of musical scores for inspiration on this album. I’ve become an enormous fan of Gustavo Santaolalla. Terence Blanchard, who you’ll know from Spike Lee’s films, has such an amazing way of creating tension through music. I love Jon Brion’s stuff. I’m always swept off my feet when I listen to a Calexico records. Joey and John are such incredibly talented people. I read an article on Tuscon’s Wavelab Studios recently and was so impressed by the enormous sounds they get out of that place with very little gear. While making a record, it’s easy to get caught up in “We need this piece of gear” or “These guys used this on their album”. I feel like the most interesting sounding records are made by using what you know and knowing how to use what you have. It’s not just about capturing a performance. I like to hear the character of the recording come through in the songs themselves.

One thing I was really conscience about during the recording and especially mixing, I wanted this album to sound more contemporary than our previous records. If for no other reason than it would be different. But being a band that has a very traditional sound, I thought this album could benefit by using some methods that weren’t around when many of the people that inspired us were making records. I wasn’t concerned about keeping within some of those traditional recording methods.

Craig: I think my biggest inspirations are traveling and walking. That’s where I get a lot of stuff. I really like walking around new places.

Is there a specific story running through the album?

Craig: No, there isn’t. Its more like an overall theme.

Were songs fully formed when you went into the studio or did a lot of writing take place as the recording went along?

Tad: I had the idea very early to write and record in short bursts. Let our creative output determine the pace at which we worked.  I wanted to try and be recording all the time as we were writing. That way we could go back and listen to see if we had stumbled across something we may have missed while we were just playing. You also hear certain things when you listen in a different context. I came up with “Our Whole Lives” by listening back to a guitar track just a few seconds at a time.

I didn’t want to be overly rehearsed going in. I wanted everyone to be open to trying anything at any time and I felt the best way to accomplish that was to not let anybody get too comfortable with the arrangement or structure of the songs. (“The Weekender” is a perfect example of this – it was really difficult to get any kind of handle on that track until we did a rough mix). We even changed the keys of songs pretty frequently, which constantly opened up options for different chord voicings. And because we really only loosely rehearsed what would be the skeleton of the song, the possibilities were limitless in terms of what the track would sound like when it was finished. We never got too used to hearing something one particular way. We continued to track and build on what we initially had until Dean and I thought the song sounded complete.

Craig: We mostly had things fully formed when we hit the studio. But Tad had done a lot of demo recordings and we recorded a lot in the space. We definitely recorded way more music for this record than for any previous records. There are some songs that came easy and others that we did a lot of re-working.

What’s the significance of the title “Heaven Is Whenever”?

Craig: It comes from a line “Heaven is Whenever/We Can Get Together”. I think it has to do with the way that love can help us rise above our modern struggles. It also speaks to how I feel about our shows, the communal aspect of the audience and performer. Making the album taughts us all that patience and hard work is reward in the end.

Craig’s mentioned in the past that making an album teaches you something about yourself, what did making Heaven Is Whenever teach you?

Tad: Because we recorded this record over the course of six months, I don’t know if I can even begin to explain what occurred in that period of time. Personally, I could squeeze a novel out of it. Or at least a screenplay. And if I think of it in terms from when I first wrote the music for what would eventually become “Sweet Part of the City” to the time we finished mixing “Slight Discomfort”… You’ve got to be kidding… It would have seemed so much more appropriate to title this fifth album Almost Killed Me.

How do you think these new songs will translate live?

Tad: I think it will be great. I never get too concerned with that. I think regardless of the decisions we make in the studio, we love playing music and that translates above all else. You get a bunch of people together at a rock concert looking to have a good time, the rest takes care of itself.

Craig: I think they will go over great. Its always exciting to play the new ones for people just as they are hearing the new record. I am really looking forward to touring.

Heaven is Whenever is due for release May 3 on Rough Trade in the UK and May 4 in the USA on Vagrant Records with select UK dates already announced for June.

The B-side is every music geek/fan’s favourite thing to debate over. It’s the one place where an artist is allowed to record whatever they see fit, and the one place where a fan can expect the unexpected and be surprised, or wonder how long it took to throw that piece of junk down and never play it again. Many a great B-side should’ve been an A-side, and vice versa, but what makes a great B-side and what are the best B-sides ever?

An obvious disclaimer here is that these are my (check the name at the bottom of this post) favourite B-sides. This is not a list of the 10 greatest B-sides ever (despite what the paragraph above may suggest), nor have they been voted on by the Webcuts community. Far from it. The definitive over-argued lists are out there if you really want to find out and you’re more than welcome to list your own favourite B-sides in the comments box below. Be my guest. No, really.

There are certain rules about what counts as a B-side. In my world (and it ain’t everybody’s world), a B-side is the opposite of the A-side, also known as “the flipside”. This entails turning/flipping the record over. So goodbye CD singles, you sucked the fun out of the B-side forever and don’t even get me started on download only tracks. There’s no 12” singles or EP tracks included either. This list is based purely on the 7” single and the 7” single only, which coincidentally just celebrated its 60th birthday this year. Happy birthday, the all-magnificent 7″ single. Also, no remixes or live tracks. It has to be something that the band recorded in the studio. Okay?

Just to stress what I said above, this is not a list of the greatest B-sides ever. They’ve already been discussed and there’s no mystery to be found in evaluating old Beatles or Smiths B-sides. I never bought those records at the time, so they never had any impact, and to me “How Soon Is Now“ was just track 5, side 1 of Hatful of Hollow. No moment of “oh wow, they put this on the B-side?” to be found there. This is purely a quick round-up of singles that I once bought and had that exact described “oh wow” moment, which is really what all great B-sides should be judged upon.

With that said (and of which I‘ve meandered far too long already), here, in no particular order, is my rather 80s-centric selection…

1. Duran Duran – “Khanada” (B-side to “Careless Memories”)