lyricist beauty in 20 words or less

• Muse - Absolution Tour DVD
  Featuring live action from their two-year Absolution tour, this DVD comes out today in time for Christmas..

• Nizlopi
  Free streaming of four songs from the upcoming Englishmen.

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After a year of ferocious gigging littered with national TV appearances, two-piece Nizlopi are transforming their upcoming single JCB into a nationwide marketing campaign. The cutesy animated video accompanying the track was created by award winning animators Monkeehub, who have even set up a mini-site for the track at JCBSong.co.uk. It seems to have paid off - the single, released on Monday, is second favourite pretty much across the board for Christmas number one at bookmakers.

But, and here’s the surprising part, the song is actually beautifully written. It dictates a story from the perspective of five-year-old Luke (the lead singer), and beautifully captures the innocent childhood of a working class little boy. The simplicity of the song and the childlike video do nothing but add to the experience.

I haven’t heard anything else from this album (the wonderfully titled Half These Songs Are About You), but if this song is anything to go by, it won’t be short of originality and inspiration.

Weary Conor Oberst talks of a doomy New Years Eve style countdown in the closing track of Bright Eyes’ experimental 2004 album Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. But the theme appears to be more positive - in some respects, anyway - the Easy/Lucky/Free title appears to point towards the opinion that there is nothing to be scared of when life is over.

However, a lot of the lyrics, such as the lines shown above, are aimed at life rather than death. There seems to be an ongoing theme of how life today is just full of meaningless tasks to fill up the time we have, rather than being Easy/Lucky/Free. Whatever the true, exact meaning, it is a beautiful if gloomy song, and the lyrics are truely poetic.

Coldplay breakthrough single Yellow’s emotional impact was characterised in the video produced for the song - which was one long scene featuring lead singer Chris Martin wandering along a dreary beach in the rain in slow motion. In fact, contrary to popular belief, this impact was neither planned nor thought out.

Drummer Will Champion’s mother had died in the week before the shoot, and consequently the rest of the band were at her funeral, with only Martin being available - I assume during the early Parachutes days they didn’t have the finances to cancel a video shoot at short notice! The video was also supposed to include a lot of extras on the beach, but due to the sudden downpour of torrential rain, the plans were changed.

But the song, in Chris Martin’s head at least, isn’t as emotional as one might think. Since it’s release in 2000, I’ve heard it analysed as being about cowardice, happiness, drugs (apparently ‘Yellow’ is a Bermudian slang term for marijuana!) and as being from the perspective of God. Yes, God. However, here is a quote from the mouth of the man himself: “It was simply because that word sounded nice, it just seemed to fit, no other reason.” He even revealed on a Channel 4 documentary that he was in fact sitting in a room, lost for inspiration while trying to think of a two-syllabled word to fit when his eyes landed on a copy of the Yellow Pages!