Charles Connolly

Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙚𝙩 𝙄𝙩 𝙂𝙤 – 𝙐𝙣𝙤𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙

Charles has a black Sabbath…

Unnecessary stress comes to us all. Doesn’t it? You know it does. Why, right now you could be reading without taking it in. I said, right now you could be reading without taking it in. Sometimes a little repetition can help things sink in. But I know; you’re stressed. You’re thinking about other things. You’re worried. You’re concerned. I know how it goes. It happens to all of us. All in different ways. Completely understandable. And usually it’s completely pointless. I had an unnecessarily stressful day on Sunday. A Sunday that should have been pleasant, positive and maybe even exciting. Before I continue, I am fully aware that many of you are going through REAL stress of a serious nature. I bring you my nonsense not to tread on or water down your life-goings-on, but to briefly take your mind off it all. A diversion of a kind. Despite being grounded and level-headed, I am prone to nerves. Nerves from the littlest thing. I think too much. I think too much into everything when I should just ride the wave. Here’s my Sunday. It all started with breakfast. It was the best bit of the day. It was before my mind had started to work. Dopey in the best way. That Sunday feeling. Then I made a quick plan for the day. The plan was thus:

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙖𝙩𝙨 – 𝙀𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙣𝙤𝙧 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨

Charles goes on a day-day…

The focus of late has been on England. Okay, Britain, if you wish. All right then, the Ewe Kay. The Far West of Europe…? Call it what you will, it has been in the press and on the tongues of most, this past week or so. Due of course, to the nature of all things royal. Yesterday gave me such immense pride. It was a sombre and unbelievably moving affair. A day to remember for the rest of time. Truly a fine end to a fine era, on a scale never witnessed before. For more crownly thoughts, have a read of last week’s review, here. For now, though, I would like not to run away from England quite yet. I wish to go back to a time when the Queen still reigned. Or more precisely, Saturday the 6th of August.

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙚𝙩 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙂𝙤 – 𝘽𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙇𝙤𝙬𝙧𝙮

Charles something something (for want of a better something)…

Another week, another review. Another plod through the same old words in a different order. Sorry to put you all through this ordeal every week. I suppose it could be worse. Death is worse. Yeah, my reviews/articles/musings are better than death. There we go! And who says I’m not a positive optimist?? As opposed to the negative variety… The Easter weekend left me with good vibes. It treated me to family I have not seen in over two years. It also treated me to something else I have not experienced in quite a while. A hangover. This ghastly, heavy, HEAVY feeling. I have tried the English cure of “Plink, plink, fizz”, and I have also tried the American cure of “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz”. Those who know, know. Those who don’t: accept your fortunate lack of pointless knowledge and move on. My brain, however is chock-full of pointless knowledge. Nothing useful whatsoever. I think to an extent, it is what makes me, me. I may have listened to a LOT of songs over the years, and I may ADORE music in general, but I am far from any kind of trained music theorist. There is probably a better term, but like I say – I know nothing useful. Who wants to read that kind of in-depth jargon anyway? It would bore the panties off me. And so I turn to imagination. Usually, anyway. Today, My imagination is snoozing. Deeply. Where it is normally a lithium-charged sparkler, right now it is little more than a twitching twig close to decomposition. I am useless to you now. Lobotomies are us!

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙚𝙩’𝙨 𝙇𝙞𝙫𝙚 – 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙔𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙒𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙥𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙧

Charles celebrates life…

Last week, I spoke of standards. But this past week on the New Artist Spotlight has been anything but standard. You all know how volatile it has been lately, what with our petition, Spotify being bad and only getting worse, and the ongoing suspension of our founder’s Spotify curator account. The scammers continue to spam our inboxes and social media profiles, yet continue to get away with it. We are all quite used to this now. We take it in our stride, despite being constantly perturbed by it. As artists must, we go on. Last Tuesday I published my weekly review. Nothing out of the ordinary there. It had been a perfectly normal Tuesday – business as usual. As night fell in London, I checked my phone one last time before bed. At the top of my Instagram feed was a post from the familiar face of a known NAS artist. He was looking good, healthy, cool, and sharp in a suit. “I’m guessing he has a new release coming soon, then”, I thought. But as I stared at it, my mind started to curl like the red cellophane fortune teller fish we all had as a child. Under his image lay dates. Not release dates. Then an impossibility dawned on me as the colour drained from my face. It was unfathomable and inconceivable to actually realise and believe. But it was in fact true. Kyle M. Watson had died. He was my age.

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙚𝙩 𝙈𝙚 𝘽𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙚 – 𝙀𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙮, 𝙈𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙚𝙪𝙧 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙣𝙚

Charles realises the importance of length…

What a stupid week I’m having. Quite absurd, honestly. There is no crisis and nothing terrible has happened. For which I am most fortunate. I speak of home problems. Not “problems at home”, as people say, but problems with the home itself. The good thing about renting, is that you don’t have to fork out yet more money when something goes wrong. The bad thing about renting is everything else. At least this is how I had come to think about it. This week, however, has shown me that there is in fact nothing good about renting. It is, as we English say, “a mug’s game”. So! With this in mind, I will relay to you my stupid saga. Several weeks ago, my shower decided to drip profusely, to the point where I decided that many litres per hour was too much to ignore any longer. Within a couple of days a plumber arrived to fix it. He barely spoke any English – but of course. I tried to explain the problem by miming with sound effects, and at last he seemed to understand. Much noise and mess later, he uttered a noise. He proudly showed me how the thermostat knob was no longer stiff, and gestured for me to try it for myself (perhaps to prove that he didn’t have something up his sleeve). I declined the offer and took his word for it. Baffled by why he was showing me this, I then politely asked, “and the drip?”. His reply was a look, as if to say I had stripped in front of him and done a little dance. I repeated, complete with miming and sound effects. “Ah okay okay. Noh. Repless repless”. What he meant was, it couldn’t be done (he couldn’t do it) without replacing the whole shower mixer (I now learn this is what it is called, for it mixes hot and cold – clever). Days passed, and he arrived again. He did the job very swiftly and that was that. Weeks passed, but now the tap itself was dripping. I ignored it as it wasn’t that bad. However, by this point, my kitchen sink decided it was full, and refused to drink anymore. Oh what joy. They ask if I can do 8am the following day. I ask if 10am is possible. All is arranged for 10am.

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙈𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙚 𝙆𝙡𝙚𝙞𝙣 – 𝙁𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙠 𝙅𝙤𝙨𝙝𝙪𝙖

Charles analyses the situation…

There has been an increasing rarity of something in my reviews lately. Please don’t all shout at once: “Rap! Death Metal! Brevity!”… I know, I know. I’m more talking about something that used to be quite common in these parts. But has only come up maybe three or four times this year. We’ve had plenty of the rock, the indie, the alternative, the folk, the classical, the soul, the pop, the prog, and even the reggae. So, what am I talking about? What is missing? It’s something that is actually relatively common. But rarely of a high standard, because it’s bloody hard to do well; notoriously so. It has to sound polished. It has to sound classic. It usually has to sound professional (but there can be a certain charm when it’s not). It can be peaceful, but usually it’s sad; and it can be heart-wrenching. I’m talking about ballads.

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Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙈𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝘽𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙢’𝙨 𝙈𝙤𝙣𝙤𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙪𝙚 – 𝙆𝙚𝙡𝙚 𝙁𝙡𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜

Charles isn’t yet brave enough…

Hands Up who’s sick to death of Spotify…? Who is absolutely fed up with everything it has become in recent years? The way it is less a music listening platform, and more a social media platform…? Oh, but it goes so much deeper than that. It ain’t just an ugly interface. Sorry, you can all put your hands down now; I saw “y’all”. Spotify has become a fully-fledged greed machine. It has no scruples or morals of any kind. It does not care about a single artist. It does not care about the music industry. It does not care about music. It is (only recently) trying to look like it is doing something about HAL (A.I.) – but even that is all a ruse. It is widely known (though not officially proven) that Spotify is not only adding HAL music to its own editorial playlists, but actually making fully HAL playlists, to the extent that there isn’t a single human-made track on such playlists (again, not proven, but known). Spotify has been punishing innocent independent artists for quite a while now, having whole artist catalogues removed due to one song unknowingly having been placed on a rogue bot-playlist (a playlist that is streamed automatically by robots in order to accrue streaming royalties). The artist did nothing here. And Spotify gives no warning. Because Spotify too is run by robots. Everything is automatic, and humans have little or nothing to do with its running. This is art, baby! And what about royalties? What does the artist get in return for someone listening to their song once? Let’s just say it would take about 300 plays of that song to buy the artist a Mars bar. So, not very much.

(more…)

Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙝𝙖̃ 𝘿𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙖 – 𝙅𝙤𝙖𝙤 𝘼𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙝𝙖

Charles is just being nice…

I’m a bad man. Rotten to the core. Cruel and sadistic. Horrid horrid horrid. This is what everyone says about me. Okay. This is not what everyone says about me. At least, not to my face anyway. Then why say it here? Because sometimes we have thoughts. Irrational thoughts. Absurd and fictional thoughts, based on absolutely nothing. It was also a punchy way of starting the article. Ahem. Negative thoughts of oneself can easily creep in when surrounded by negative, bad and ugly. Take last week’s article, for example. I decided not to comply. I decided not to embrace a thing called HAL. I decided not to see the potential positive effect of it on art. While I won’t be changing my stance any time soon, this negativity can lead to heavier things. If one sees only doom and gloom, one feels only doom and gloom. And it is easy to slide down the slippery slope of “I’m no good”. These days, I would have said my thoughts and views are pretty balanced. Also, these days I think I’m pretty comfortable with who I am, and what I’m like. Am I bad? Am I mean? Am I cruel? Am I dishonest? Am I a criminal? No. Am I perfect? Pahahaha! No. Very far from it. While being in a generally healthy state of mind, I could always be better. We all could. But I’d just like to give the good guys a pat on the back for being so good. While we could all be better, just think how much worse we could be? All those liars and fakers and cheaters out there. We could be like that. We could be going around, spitting on grannies and tripping up children. I saw you, laughing at the idea of the kid falling over. I chuckled too. Because it’s funny. Okay, the kid isn’t laughing, but we mustn’t lose our sense of humour. Stifle that natural laughter, then help the kid up. For most of us, good enough, is good enough. Don’t try to be a positive drone. If it ain’t natural, it ain’t natural.

(more…)

Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 (𝙛𝙚𝙖𝙩. 𝙀𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙮) – 𝙎𝙖𝙣𝙤 𝙃𝙞𝙡𝙡

Charles is only pretending…

It’s been a while since I wrote about love here. Used to do it all the time. Writing, I mean. And it’s always tricky. Well actually, it wasn’t ALWAYS tricky. At the beginning it was quite easy, because it was new. But after a while, there is little more I can say on the matter. Admittedly, most of you will either not remember my earlier articles, or will not yet have joined the New Artist Spotlight community at the time they were published. Shall I just rehash one of my old ones, then? I mean, that’s what everyone else does these days, right? The thing is, I don’t like doing that. I never do that. I never do that with anything. Newness is “like my thang”. The funny thing is, we do it in songs all the time; this love-ad-nauseam doohickey. Admittedly less so these days as I think young people have been too anxious to learn how to love. Probably far too much like hard work. Okay, so I won’t concentrate on the very young ones (as if I ever did). Do we maybe just take love for granted? It’s a big old thing, don’t ya know. Love, I mean. We’ve all heard the stories. We’ve all been through it. It’s either beautiful and tragic. Or starts one way and ends the other. Actually, usually. “She’s the one” – how many times have I told myself that?? We so desperately want THAT one to be THE one. We all want the happily ever after. Some genuinely get that. Lucky sods. But more often than not, it just ain’t the way. Bit of a bugger, if you ask me.

(more…)

Welcome all to 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗹𝘆’𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗿, a series of weekly reviews by Charles Connolly – an artist in his own right. Here, Charles delves into the greatest brand new singles brought to you by the best unsigned artists on our electrifying and eclectic set of 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙩𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 playlists.

𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙄𝙨 𝙅𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙏𝙤𝙤 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨! – 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙖𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙚𝙡 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙮 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙟𝙚𝙘𝙩

Charles finds his soul…

Every ten years a decade passes. Every decade brings change. Some decades more than others. Good change, bad change and arguable change, but change nevertheless. While there are many different kinds of change, I will not focus on forced change, such as war, for war is not worth talking about. I prefer the lighter side of life. So… In the last century, which decade has brought the most change? Again, excluding those where war has been the changing factor. I can only really talk about the Western World here, as that is all I am really familiar with. Which has been the most changing decade? Some might say the noughties (00s) due to the rise of the internet. It certainly did change the world; there’s no doubt in that. Some would say the 60s because, THE SIXTIES!! I mean, just EVERYTHING changed, right? Well I can’t argue that it was a revolutionary decade. But more so for the young. The older ones were still living part two of the 50s. How about the 80s, then? With its big hair and technological advancements? Well it certainly wasn’t like anything before. And then there’s the 20s. These 20s, rather than those 20s. The 2020s. The now. BIG change. The problem is, it feels like all this current change is negative change. Which, like war, is not worth talking about. For me, the answer is…….. The 70s. The change didn’t feel as forced or rebellious as the 60s. The change didn’t affect just the young. And seemingly pretty much every aspect changed, almost by the year.

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