DEFAULT EARWORMS

Have you ever had an earworm that lasts more than a few hours – or more than a few days – or even more than a few months?

IRELAND’S BIGGEST YOUTUBE HITS

Yikes, I’ve been a terrible blogger this year. Sorry. Will definitely try harder in 2013. In the meantime, here’s a feature I recently dug out from the bowels of my MacBook, which was commissioned for a magazine but never published. (Grrr). It’s from two years ago, so my selections probably aren’t very up to date – but it was fun to hear their backstories. Merry Christmas!

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IT ONLY TAKES five years to become a cultural phenomenon. Nobody is more aware of that than Steve Chen, Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley, the three former PayPal employees who founded YouTube in 2005. These days, YouTube is as much an integral part of the internet as Google, Facebook and Wikipedia; it has made stars out of keyboard-playing cats, lightsaber-wielding teenagers and was even where one of the world’s biggest popstars, Justin Bieber, was first discovered.

But that doesn’t mean that our little kooky corner of the world wide web has been forgotten about; Ireland’s internet stars are just as noteworthy as their international counterparts. Here’s a selection of rising and established YouTube stars; and nary a Riverdancer in sight, either.

CURRENTLY…

I’m a bad blogger, please forgive me.

LISTENING TO:

CURRENTLY…

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:

CURRENTLY…

Sorry I’ve been crap at blogging lately. I’ll try to be better. Here’s a short one to keep things ticking over… recommendations always appreciated.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:

Yuck – ‘Yuck’

Very taken by Yuck’s album… like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, it’s totally derivative but the songs are GREAT. Bits of the Pixies, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Great name, too.

FAVOURITE BEATLE

“It’s like this: you’re either a dog person, or a cat person.”

“So McCartney’s a dog, and Lennon’s a cat?”

“Yep.”

“That makes sense. But what does that make Ringo and George?”

“George is a kitten.”

“But kittens grow into cats…”

“… a permanent kitten. And Ringo……?”

“… yeah?”

“He’s one of those horrible hairless Sphynx cats that no one likes.”

MISCELLANEOUS

Another catch-up post. Apologies. I really just want an excuse to prove that I can spell ‘miscellaneous’.

The past few weeks have been a bit crazy for me, but I’ve managed to get to a few gigs and listen to a few albums (behaviour becoming of a music journalist, I’m sure you’ll agree), and even got to the cinema for the first time in months.

POLL: DOES BILL CULLEN WEAR A WIG?

Settle an argument here, folks (yes, it started in the pub). I maintain that Bill’s ‘luscious’ locks are only partially his own, and that there’s definitely a hairpiece of some sort going on there. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way it looks real. And have you ever seen it look dishevelled or even slightly DIFFERENT? Yet several of my buddies have scoffed at the notion. What’s it to be?

MY SPACEBOOKITTER

I couldn’t fall asleep until a ridiculous hour last night, and for some reason ended up wandering around the deserted social network graveyard that is my MySpace account. I never use it anymore, but it was fun reading back through the messages (once I’d spent a good ten minutes cracking the password).

MISCELLANEOUS

Hi folks. Sorry I’ve been a bit rubbish at posting lately. House-hunting, work, and life in general have been getting in the way. I’m working on finishing my ‘Albums of the Noughties’ series and that should be up over the next week or so. In the meantime, I’ve been to some gigs over the last few weeks that I’ve enjoyed.