I have to say that the popularity of Badly Drawn Boy surprises me somewhat. I was very impressed by the first couple of singles, 'Once Around The Block' in particular, and bought "Hour Of Bewilderbeeste" on the strength of this. However, most of the rest of the album seemed comparitively awful - directionless, tuneless, and lazily slung together, and I think I've only listened to it in full about twice. More recently, 'Something To Talk About' was an amazing single, but the accompanying album "About A Boy" once again was sorely lacking in the decent tracks department, and a quick listen to "Have You Fed The Fish?" on the listening post suggests that the third album might well be exactly the same. So I'm having a little difficulty understanding how he's come to be so popular - he's clearly quite capable of writing stunning songs when he puts his mind to it, but crams his albums full of under-realised filler, and I'm surprised that more people aren't openly critical of that fact. Is it hype or a safety in numbers thing, and are people frightened to criticise someone who is 'acclaimed' by large numbers of journalists? Or am I missing the point entirely?
I don't see what the fuss is about, either. I too liked "Once Around The Block", but he basically used up all of my goodwill with that song, as I can't stand anything else of his. I've hear his albums far too much in the shop I work in. I think it is almost a safety in numbers thing, you've got David Gray for those who think that BDB is "daring", and after him you've got, I don't know, Craig David or something. I just feel that people aren't looking for artists who are better than these three, they're settling for what the Mercury Music Prize hands to them. I could name tons of songwriters who are out there doing fantastic work that I dearly love, some of them are English(just pre-empting those woh may think all I do is rave about foreign artists, which I know I do) like Scout Niblett as an example, and David Tibet of Current 93 as another. I'm listening to Sachiko Kanenobu right now, a Japanese folk artist from the late 60s, and she could show Damon Gough a thing or two about how to actually engage your audience......
I'm going to pass on this one as well, I'm afraid. I can't see that he's done anything of any major worth, and my reasons for dismissal are much the same as those expressed above.
The thing with Damon Gough is that people tend to mention his wild, carefree, "let's do the show here and release the whole thing as a limited edition" type behaviour before they say anything about the music. Now frankly, there are plenty of leftfield mavericks in the UK with more imagination than him, and he's not the only artist around with Dylan-esque principles about artistic spontaneity. He just happens to be the only one getting mainstream coverage.
I've always wanted to like him because (besides looking like a friend of mine's brother) his attitude is quite endearing, but ultimately the music just doesn't cut it. And to back TJ's point up, all my friends who bought his album were left distinctly underwhelmed by it. I don't know anyone who was overly impressed. Who is buying this stuff? It's baffling.
He's obviously very popular with students, judging from the number of lookalikes I see every day. But I still can't understand how "Hour Of Bewilderbeeste" won the Mercury Music prize.
The NME once got a professor of Music from some Oxbridge college to review the albums of the year- he described Badly Drawn Boy as "Jamie Oliver Music" for "bedwetters", which sums him up for me. I like some BDB stuff, but I don't think he's great, and I can't argue with that definition... ;)
I saw Badly Drawn Boy on 'Later....' He sang a song in which he mentions the deaths of Lennon, Cobain, Buckley (Jeff not Tim) and someone else. Referring to other people in songs is very difficult because either it works (in the case of Frank Zappa and The Mothers being namechecked in Deep Purple's 'Smoke On The Water') or it doesn't. The choice of stars makes me wince because it reminds me of 4Music's 'House of Rock'. It's a case of, "Lets choose dead performers that the kids who go to Scream and Firkin pubs have heard of." It may not be bad as namedroppin' in rap where one rapper might go, "I got Ringo Starr givin' me beats he's from The Beatles and he beat their beats." It is also not as bad as the songs 'We Didn't Start The Fire' and 'Vogue' which are just a list of names. But for me it is still pretty bad.