The dog days of January have traditionally been a fallow period for the British music industry. Recent years, though, have found the press cycle dominated by what seems to be becoming an annual ritual in lieu of major news or high-profile releases. The BBC's annual "Sound of..." countdown is a poll of critics, industry figures and other such shadowy "tastemakers" that throws up a handful of names (this year, a longlist of 15 nominees and a main top-five list) - the "new" acts who will capture the public's imagination over the next 12 months. In practice, its choices have had mixed success: Keane and Adele (winners in 2004 and 2008 respectively) have carved out multiplatinum careers, but memories of The Bravery six years on from their triumph are, thankfully, faint and distant.
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Over the years, though, the poll has metamorphosed from an haphazard eccentricity into a bigger deal entirely - at least in terms of capturing disproportionate column inches for the artists lucky enough to be included. And as it has become more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, so its contradictory blend of artistic legitimacy and PR-led hype has become more uneasy. Are the artists it showcases there because they are singular talents deserving of recognition, or because it is common industry knowledge that they have had a ton of major-label money invested in them, with a spot in the BBC list just another cog in the wheel of the promotional campaign?
Despite its increasing influence, the Sound of... poll seems to be in a bit of a muddle as regards its own purpose. According to a leading critic who participates each year: "They make it very unclear in the nominations process about whether you're meant to choose people you like but have limited appeal, or people you hate who will do well."
The underwhelming quality of the acts bears this state of affairs out. On the 2009 shortlist was Dan Black, an entirely reprehensible hipster parody whose signature song was a smugly awkward indie-boy rendition of the Notorious BIG's Hypnotize over an instrumental of Rihanna's Umbrella. In 2010, the poll was won by Ellie Goulding, a singer-songwriter so bereft of personality or point that she was eventually reduced to releasing a saccharine cover of Elton John's Your Song in order to gain a foothold in the public consciousness. And this year, the UK's so-called musical cognoscenti have bestowed upon us tedious landfill indie (The Vaccines), an Annie Lennox tribute act (Clare Maguire) - and, perched at the top of the list, a professional Essex cheeky chappess by the name of Jessica Cornish, aka Jessie J.
The Jessie J machine has been a long time grinding. She's put in the hours plying her trade as an industry songwriter-for-hire - though despite her biography trumpeting that she's written for Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, her only notable work in this capacity to date is a co-writing credit on Miley Cyrus's Party In The USA. No matter. With almost indecent haste after she was announced as the poll's winner, the publicity machine went into overdrive (almost as though it had been planned all along). Suddenly, she was ubiquitous; strategically placed stories about being bullied at school began to spread across the tabloids, accompanied by pictures announcing her Wacky and Unique Fashion Sense (which appears to consist of dressing like a Primark version of Nicki Minaj). And now witness the chart performance of her debut single, Do it Like a Dude. Having peaked at an unremarkable No 25 in the UK charts, it was on its way down. Then began a rebound, as the poll's shortlist began to dominate the music press. In the week of her win it rocketed into the top five.
The hype surrounding Jessie J hype may appear contrived, but it has nothing on her music. Do it Like a Dude is a deliberately in-your-face introduction to her - but instead of thrillingly brash, it comes off as a spectacularly obnoxious and ill-advised blunder through the minefields of gender and race. Jessie J mistakes phallocentric essentialism for gender subversion. After all, as statements of female empowerment go, boasting that you can be like a man is hardly the most galvanising. When pop stars from Ciara (Like A Boy) to Beyoncé (If I Were A Boy) have used putative gender-swaps to sing about the nuances of social expectations of gender - and 10 years after trailblazing rappers such as Lil' Kim and Trina fantasised about avenging themselves on men in improbably physical ways, this song feels both inadequate and regressive.
Even more problematically, Jessie J's reference points for masculinity are markedly Afro-diasporic: the song was apparently written with Rihanna in mind, but an Essex girl gunning that she can "do it like the man dem, man dem" in a sneering tone sounds ignorant at best. Whether her appropriated patois is meant to indicate that she can be as good as black men or to mock their signifiers is anyone's guess.
Do it Like a Dude is also a red herring. Jessie J makes no further attempts at hip-hop swagger on its accompanying album, Who You Are. Sadly, this doesn't mean that this collection of 13 tracks gets any better. She has an astonishing knack for hijacking the worst tics and idiosyncrasies of other successful female artists, like a reverse magpie: thus, we end up with an artist who combines the bland sunniness of Natasha Bedingfield and the grating mannerisms (and harsh vocal timbre) of Katy Perry, with Lily Allen's mean streak thrown in for good measure.
What Jessie J brings to the table herself is empty, glib songwriting with all the depth of a puddle. Big White Room is an abominable acoustic ballad about "going crazy". Unable to remotely convey any sense of this in words, Jessie J essays a series of truly execrable stutters and senseless vocal runs. It gets worse when she tries to Say Something Important. On Rainbow, for instance, she sets up a dichotomy between a rich son of privilege in the first verse, and a "mummy in the ghetto" in the second. The conclusion this seer of social commentary comes to? "What I'm saying is we're all alike, we're the colours of the rainbow." It may well be the most staggeringly stupid song you hear this decade.
For sheer hypocrisy, though, the sententious cant of Price Tag comes close: here, Jessie J rails against a money-obsessed music industry full of "low blows and video hos". Why yes, that would be the same music industry to which she has enthusiastically contributed and of which she is entirely a product. Moreover, this would be the same woman who sanctimoniously finger-wags in interviews that: "If you steal music I can't then give you more, because I'm not proving to the label that I'm someone that's going to earn them money for them to keep me."
Jessie J is also fond of ostensible self-empowerment anthems, though tellingly only seems to bring them to detailed life when they hinge on putting other people down. Otherwise, she brays empty couplets such as: "You're as old as you feel you are/And if you don't reach for the moon, you can't fall on the stars." One begins to suspect that Jessie J doesn't really think much of self-empowerment anthems as a concept, so lazily empty are her own takes on them.
On top of Jessie J's unconcern with details that would actually flesh out her songs come her faux-spontaneous ad-libs on L.O.V.E., which smugly inform us that "I actually wrote a song about love, and it's completely honest!". It's a song that, for all the world, seems filled with the belief that the sentiments it expresses aren't as generic as any of the other love songs its writer seeks to decry - and, indeed, forgets that it's the fourth love song to crop up on Who You Are.
Over the album's course, it becomes apparent that Jessie J's entire modus operandi is a particularly cynical one: she sets her sights on a normative Everygirl aesthetic that singers such as Allen and Bedingfield, for all their faults, actually seem to inhabit. But - in case Price Tag didn't flag it up sufficiently - Jessie J's own contempt for the form and misguided attempts to compensate with overwrought, grating delivery make this one of the most wretchedly bad albums 2011 is likely to throw up. A fitting winner for that poll, then.
Alex Macpherson is a regular contributor to The Review. His work can be found in The Guardian and New Statesman.
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
How green is the expo nursery?
Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery
An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo
Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery
Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape
The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides
All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality
Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country
Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow
Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site
Green waste is recycled as compost
Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs
Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers
About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer
Main themes of expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.
Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
MATCH INFO
Euro 2020 qualifier
Croatia v Hungary, Thursday, 10.45pm, UAE
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
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Expert input
If you had all the money in the world, what’s the one sneaker you would buy or create?
“There are a few shoes that have ‘grail’ status for me. But the one I have always wanted is the Nike x Patta x Parra Air Max 1 - Cherrywood. To get a pair in my size brand new is would cost me between Dh8,000 and Dh 10,000.” Jack Brett
“If I had all the money, I would approach Nike and ask them to do my own Air Force 1, that’s one of my dreams.” Yaseen Benchouche
“There’s nothing out there yet that I’d pay an insane amount for, but I’d love to create my own shoe with Tinker Hatfield and Jordan.” Joshua Cox
“I think I’d buy a defunct footwear brand; I’d like the challenge of reinterpreting a brand’s history and changing options.” Kris Balerite
“I’d stir up a creative collaboration with designers Martin Margiela of the mixed patchwork sneakers, and Yohji Yamamoto.” Hussain Moloobhoy
“If I had all the money in the world, I’d live somewhere where I’d never have to wear shoes again.” Raj Malhotra
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
Directed by: Shaka King
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons
Four stars
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Fines for littering
In Dubai:
Dh200 for littering or spitting in the Dubai Metro
Dh500 for throwing cigarette butts or chewing gum on the floor, or littering from a vehicle.
Dh1,000 for littering on a beach, spitting in public places, throwing a cigarette butt from a vehicle
In Sharjah and other emirates
Dh500 for littering - including cigarette butts and chewing gum - in public places and beaches in Sharjah
Dh2,000 for littering in Sharjah deserts
Dh500 for littering from a vehicle in Ras Al Khaimah
Dh1,000 for littering from a car in Abu Dhabi
Dh1,000 to Dh100,000 for dumping waste in residential or public areas in Al Ain
Dh10,000 for littering at Ajman's beaches
Sam Smith
Where: du Arena, Abu Dhabi
When: Saturday November 24
Rating: 4/5
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