Love Her or Hate Her

We all know the song that plays as a part of the Chocolate cellphone commercial. "Love me or hate me/It's still an obsession/Love me or hate me/That is the question/If you love me then, thank you/If you hate me then, f*ck you..." The question is do you know the voice behind the song.

Name: Louisa Harman
Alter Ego: Lady Sovereign
Fans call her: Sov or S-O-V
Age: 20
Height: 5'1 (a self-described "big midget")
Record Company: Jay-Z's Def Jam
Inspiration: Ms. Dynamite

Her music has been described as "genre bending." Think Missy Elliot's hip-hop, Avril Lavigne's attitude (They both disdain miniskirts and cleavage.), and Eminem's rapping skills. These days, it's getting harder and harder to classify artists and their songs. Many of them can't be confined to the limits of just pop or rock. Thanks to downloading, cds are a dying art. Hence, artists are crossing all genre borders in an effort to revive the endangered media. Only time will tell if this move will appeal or alienate a wider audience.

Lady Sovereign (Sov) chats about the probabilities of her success in America here. She even has her own MySpace page which boasts of 80, 000 friends according to The New York Times. Sov is the first British artist to hold the number one spot on MTV's video countdown, TRL. She is just one of the latest British acts to invade the American music scene. There are a number of breakthrough artists such as Snow Patrol, Corrine Bailey Rae, Keane, James Blunt, and KT Tunstall. Some of the most successful music acts may very well be Coldplay and the Spice Girls.

According to Wikipedia, this movement dates back to the Beatles. The Yoko factor may have put a stop to the fab four, but the British tidal wave continues to head for our shores. Do Americans have an affinity with the Brits simply because they're foreign and by default, fascinating? I'd like to think good music is good music, regardless of who makes it. I never even knew that some of my favorite artists were British, let alone allow that fact to brainwash me into liking them. The songs have voices of their own.

Circus Act

Since we were dismissed early today, I was able to catch TRL on MTV. Christina Aguilera's new video premiered so, I was glad to watch that. The video was for Hurt, the same song that she performed at this year's MTV video music awards. One can't help but admire how Christina is constantly reinventing herself from a pop princess to being Stripped and then, Back to Basics. In fact, she co-directed this latest video of hers with Floria Sigismondi. Sigismondi previously directed Aguilera's music video, Fighter. She has also worked with David Bowie, Sarah Mclachlan, Sheryl Crow, Bjork, Incubus, Fiona Apple, and The White Stripes.

Whew! What a resume! Can you imagine the video now? Allow me to help out a bit more. The song is personal for Aguilera since it's about her tumultuous relationship with her father. Thus, the video shows Christina as a little girl with her dad and how they grow apart over the years. It's mainly set at the circus. It goes back and forth from the time Aguilera was a little girl, watching the show with her dad till the time she grows up and is the star of the circus.

While I was watching it, I couldn't help but notice how much attention the circus is getting in the media nowadays. In a recent episode of America's Next Top Model, the theme for the contestant's photo shoot was the "freak shows" at the circus. On MTV, you may stumble upon a Sweet Sixteen replay where the girl's birthday party theme is Cirque du Soleil. HBO aired the short-lived Carnivale. There was also a book and movie of the same name, The Invisible Circus. Hence, one has to ask, what fuels our obssession for circuses?

Yes, it's not everyday that we see a bearded lady or a contortionist, so when the circus comes to town, naturally, the cat is killed. However, I think it's more than that. It's the same reason why people are captivated with X-men. We can relate to them. In one form or another, we are outcasts, too. Perhaps, we don't have Tivo or we don't find forensic work as interesting as the rest of the world--things like that. Seriously, though, we may not be siamese twins or gigantically tall, but we do differ in our sexual orientations, races, cultures, religions, and more. That's what allures us to the "freak shows." They're us.