She’s Passive On Pills, He’s Vicious On Booze

Cristina “The Lie of Love” – Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this song is how as it details in rather blunt language the ennui and inertia that has set into its characters’ loveless marriage, the music avoids feeling excessively melancholy or melodramatic. Instead, it affects a state of pensive resignation rather like what I imagine the characters themselves would be feeling as they drift further apart while refusing to break it off completely. (Click here to buy it from Ze Records.)

Mini-Pops “Cruel Summer” – Long before there was Kidz Bop, the rotating cast of children in the Mini-Pops sang covers of contemporary pop songs, yielding hit records in the UK and Canada in the early 80s. From what I have heard, the Mini-Pops generally lack the surreal wtf-ness of Kidz Bop – the lyrics of the songs are generally age-appropriate, there are no adult singers, individual kids sing the leads, and there no huge choruses of extremely excited children belting out the choruses – but there’s a certain charm to their recordings all the same, akin to seeing a really good, high-budget talent show at an elementary school. This version of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” is all the more amusing to me in light of this news story from yesterday. (Click here for a rather informative Mini-Pops fan site.)