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Sandi Thom has Facebook meltdown after BBC Radio 2 refuse to playlist her song

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Radio Two you say? Is that the pop station now?

I’m sure @mikethep will back me up here. When we were young Radio Two (or the Light Programme) was the rubbish easy listening station with wall-to-wall Mike Sammes Singers, the Boston Pops Orchestra and Sing Something Simple.

Now it’s “Shove it up your arse Radio 2 because I am done!’

Honestly, the language on young people today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt7n9hxt0Cw

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Comments

  3. Parade of the Pops, Bob Miller and the Millermen, Jack Jackson’s Record Roundabout (isn’t it),Variety Bandbox, Go Man Go, Pick of the Pops, alright? What was the question again?

  6. I’m lost for words

    When Sandi sang that she wanted to be “a punk rocker with flowers in her hair” I believed every word of it. Turns out all she wanted to be was a corporate puppet selling millions of records.

    I feel cheated. Time to post an embarrassing youtube rant I think

  9. I had no idea that ‘artists’ wrote songs specifically to meet playlist criteria – maybe she needs to employ an old style ‘record plugger’.

    I wonder at what point in your career you get such a sense of entitlement ?

  16. THE BASTARDS! It really is suitable for Radio Smooth Heart FM Digital Gold.
    Listen with you ears. Open your heart but try not to bleed over my new shagpile.

  18. I can’t make a judgement on the song — it certainly does sound like the kind of pap you’d expect to hear on Ken Bruce — but for me ‘earthquake’ has a too-depressing association. I hear the word ‘earthquake’ and immediately think of death tolls and homeless people. ‘Bomb’, ‘flood’ and ‘tsunami’ all work in enough other contexts for it not to be a problem, but ‘earthquake’? No.

    • I get the whole Al Jolson thing, but I still wonder what the point was. Why was it thought necessary (regardless of whether it’s offensive or not) to black up?

      Cool for Cats, now…what a dreary show that was. I have no particular memory of watching it – maybe I pleaded with my parents not to force me to stay up.

      • Isn’t it a clumsy reference to the “real” minstrel shows in America?

        They were a hugely popular art form in the USA for centuries. The transition to British telly as light entertainment was simply a watered down lame adaptation.

        We find it offensive now, sure, but I don’t remember many people commenting on it either way at the time. Other than the kids hating the music, that is.

  25. A cartoonist bleats:

    “I’ve just heard that my cartoon isn’t going to published in Private Eye. Or the New Yorker either, where apparently the Acting Executive Assistant Managing Editor (Content) has had the gall to ban my cartoon from the building, threatening to have anyone who ever so much as mentions its existence tasered repeatedly by security. It’s impossible to be a success in this industry without their support. It’s a great cartoon It is. It really is. It’s funny, it’s topical, it hasn’t got any funny labels dangling over people’s heads so you can recognise who they’re supposed to be. None of that. Just top-quality satire in a line-drawing format. It’s fucking perfect for them to publish. What more do they want from me? Well you can shove it up your arse, Hislop. Shove it up your arse too, New Art-Farty Yorker. I’m done with all of you. It’s all so fucking unfair.”

    Why do so many indie musicians believe they are entitled to have their ‘oovers taken seriously? It’s pop. It’s pap. It’s not a calling. It’s not a career. You may quietly hope for success, critical acclaim, fame and fortune but you can’t expect it. It’s not your birth right because you have decided, flying in the face of all the evidence, that you have Something Relevant To Say . Success is a perk that is bestowed – almost as arbitrarily as the lottery – upon only a tiny handful of people who have the same hobby as you do. Yes, I said “hobby”. Like crocheting tea cosies or making a 1/32-scale model of Rochdale town hall with toothpicks. But not as interesting.

    • I resemble that remark. Take it back at once. Just put the record back where you found it. NOT in the musicals section. It’s out of the Exotic Records box, between Mrs Mills and warren Mitchell.

      Jeez, I go out for a day to raid the chazzas in foreign lands and all and sundry start mauling me minstrels.

      • That reminds me.

        A few (actually many) years ago my sister-in-law came round while I was out and my wife let her look through my records with a view to getting some taped. Result? dozens of them were put back in the racks in the wrong places, upside down and back to front.

        Trauma ensued.

        It has never been forgotten and is still remarked on from time to time along the lines of: “So that dozy cow is coming round, is she? Just don’t let her into the music room” .

        What’s wrong with people?

  29. I agree with her – Radio 2 has played the Feedback File precisely zero times and I’m perfect for ’em the bastards. What wrong with these people !!

    Don’t you just want to see Sandi right now desperately trying to turn the FB clock back. By all means have a emotional uncontrolled rant but why do it on social media – its not like you can’t figure what will happen.

  31. Trendily misspelling your name twice is a good start but may I suggest what she is lacking is an enigmatic middle initial? And maybe calling herself ‘blind’ too. Blind Sandi P. Thom. There ya go. Sorted.

  32. Her song about being a Punk Hippy mixup has long been my least favourite song, so i dread to think what this sounded like. Setting up a camera, to cry on q is a bit obviously her attempt to get a bit of momentum behind the clip,…her ‘Mylene Class moment’, to kick start a wave of sympathy and magic her up the charts and a second bite of the apple. I really hope she finds gainful employment in another field.

  34. According to Wikipedia Radio 2 made one of her singles their record of the week in 2008. It still failed to dent the top 100.
    She should sell the clip as an ad for max factor or whoever made her eyeliner as it remains wholly unsmudged at the end of the video.

  35. I thought it was (unintentionally) funny.
    posting when riled up would seem to be the equivalent of drunk texting. Necer a smart move.
    Boo hoo, they didn’t like her song. Time to write another, better one. Or not.

    • That’s a good article.

      I have to admit to feeling a bit sorry for her. Assuming it’s not a marketing job (and it’s a bit of a weird one if so), it’s basically someone crying in public because their career is terminally fucked.

      Her immediate point of objection is clearly daft and entitled, but you wouldn’t want to change places with her, would you?

    • Yes, interesting but hardly surprising – it was ever thus. Same in publishing, incidentally – same committee-based decision-making relying on the initial enthusiasm of one person. I used to shock would-be writers to the core by telling them that their publishing chances relied to a large extent on what side of bed I got out of in the morning. Like most exaggerations, a lot of truth in that. To get to market all popular culture has always had to negotiate a bottleneck caused by the taste and moods of a very very small number of people.

      However. It’s ironic that most new and unknown music I listen to these days comes to me out of the vast sausage machine that is Spotify and its ‘curation’, rather than anything. I can’t think of anything more irrelevant than the Radio 2 playlist. All Ms Thom’s stuff is on Spotify, she now lives in the States and may well be able to keep going (if she wants to) with live gigs, selling records at gigs and downloads. An awful lot of other people seem to.

      An anagram of ‘Singer Sandi Thom’ is ‘hit song in dreams’. Fact.

  37. First of all. I do feel sorry for her, but I wish she kept that to herself, I think w=she’ll regret it. Maybe if she didn’t write songs just to get on the Radio 2 playlist but did something that chimedwith personal feelings she would feel less exploited.

    • Oh, no doubt it was a daft thing to do.

      Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age. I just felt bad this morning after scoring some zingers off a person who probably woke up this morning wondering what the hell the rest of their life is going to look like.

    • Me too. From now on she’ll always be a punchline. At one time she might have phoned someone, thrown a queeny strop at them and woken up the next day calmer and a little wiser. Now it’s on social media for all time.

  39. The absolute crux of the matter here is that the song is fucking shit (I’ve lost the eloquence app and reverted to Hounslow hooligan).

    Cliff and Quo have a greater qualitative gripe than Ms Thom (Yorke?)

    Radio 2 needs a tune and a melody and a riff the milkman can whistle. That has none of them.

  41. Going back to my OP, I guess the point I was making was this:

    Back in September 1967 the BBC Light Programme was split into two new radio stations – Radio One and Radio Two (the Home Service became Radio 4 and the Third Programme morphed into Radio 3 at exactly the same time)

    The government was dragged kicking and screaming into the reorganisation of the BBC because it had just scuppered the enormously popular pirate stations (Radio Caroline etc) and was clearly feeling the pressure to provide some kind of alternative outlet for “the kids”.

    Unlike most western countries (notably America) we’d never had a dedicated pop music station in the UK before and for a while all went well. All the latest groovy pop music went to Radio 1 for the kids, while the mums and dads got Radio 2 for their inoffensive, yawn-inducing, easy listening MOR stuff.

    Believe me, that’s really how it was. This state of events was frozen in my memory for over 40 years. English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, as the great Viv Stanshall said.

    Fast forward 30 years and things really have changed. Radio 1 has now become a cacophonous, virtually unlistenable haven for dance, techno and hip hop, while the music it once played has moved over to Radio 2.

    This is exactly how it should be of course, The Radio 1 “kids” of the 60s and 70s are now today’s Radio 2 “mums and dads”. So it was quite a shock to read the Sandi Thom story and find stuffy old Radio 2 at the heart of a controversy over such lightweight, ephemeral pop music.

  42. There’s a great link in that Guradian heart-bleeding story:

    http://comparemyradio.com/artists

    Search for your favourite pop combo! Beatles acolytes will be greatly reassured to find they were played 19 times in the last thirty days – thirteen of those “with Billy Preston”, and none on national radio. Unless Rock FM 2 is national? (one play). Their timeless legacy lives on! Useless US Beatles copycats The Beach Boys barely manage 770 plays, at least 34 of them on national radio. Pathetic! Useless one-hit-wonders and Beatles clones the Kinks scrape into the ratings with just over 900 plays. So yay for the loveable moptops – still Number One In Are Haerts!

    Captain Beefheart manages 4 plays, on BBC 6. Result.

  44. According to Wikipedia:

    “She signed a record contract with the record label Viking Legacy, where her mother was director who released her début single, “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)” in late 2005. The song failed to garner major airplay or sales and release of her début was delayed. ”

    It eventually went to number with all the attention she got on MySpace (remember that?). Now she is getting attention on YouTube with her viral video. Get over yourself lass. You are no Rebecca Black – 85m hits and counting .

  46. This has raised some interesting stuff about Radio 2, but I could only watch a minute of that video and was sorry I had seen that much. I’m going to be very sanctimonious. I don’t know anything about Sandi Thom, but for a website where we are reminded from time to time about mental health issues, there doesn’t seem to be much sympathy here apart from ewenmac above. If someone I knew had posted something like that publicly, I would be alarmed – wouldn’t we all really?

    Mental problems don’t just make people sad and wistful in a nice way you can feel sorry for- they can make people behave in very difficult and erratic ways in private and public. They can even effect people whose work you don’t like.

    • I hadn’t considered this. I suppose that, like most people, I had assumed it’s an artist throwing a tantrum.
      She’s still playing Worthing tomorrow although the venue has been downsized and the seating plan is only showing about a third of seats sold. I won’t be doing a Nights Out about it. I’m seeing The Waterboys at Portsmouth instead.

    • Mental-health issues? Really? Where do you get that from? All I see is a 32-year-old woman who doesn’t get that she’s not 18 any more and – as Eamonn Forde says in his piece – is teetering between the denial and anger stages of grief for her once-but-no-longer promising career as a pop star.

      Shit happens.

    • Just as well I did some background checking up on her before adding my own piss-take comments. Her tweeting and retweeting would suggest she’s milking the publicity as much as possible and is basking in the reflected glory of those who applaud her while quite happily sticking it to those who think she’s made herself look like a bit of a tit.

      A quick look and her latest tweet reads:

      “What an absolute thrill to be invited on ChrisMoyles show this morning. What a top bloke. Can’t thank you enough”

      Apparently a last minute choice for he show. Funny that.

      • Wonder if Moyles had a guest already booked for this morning for his radio show but that guest was bumped at the last minute to make way for Sandi Thombsucker.

        Waiting expectantly by computer screen for bumped guest’s YouTube meltdown recounting through tears, sniffs and F-bombs the sheer unfairness of one man’s decision to choose someone else’s self-promotion over theirs.

    • Couple of choices open here, then: caring counselling from an understanding and sympathetic mentor coupled with suitable pharmacological treatment, or a big smack in the kisser with a live baby octopus.

        • I just heard that ianess didn’t like the bleeding heart comments.

          I wanted to make this message so people realise how much it hurts because I apparently can do no right

          I wrote a post that is insightful and topical and fits the Afterword’s format and there is no reason why ianess shouldn’t like it.

          I am done with this website. I am fucking sick and tired of having to sit on the edge of my seat waiting for these people to come back and tell me their verdict of my posts.

          That is it. I’m done. I have better things to do with my life and time and this is utter bullshit. See you later Afterword forum. Go shove it up your arse because I really don’t care anymore.

          Om shanti.

    • I don’t think it’s sensible to pathologise all undesirable behaviour. I’m sure many of us on here have experience of dealing with disappointment and rejection in a way that we later regret, and I think that’s all we’re seeing here.

  48. You can tell her how much you liked her video yourself if you like, and take a friend. She’s playing Camden’s cozy Jazz Cafe next Tuesday, which I happen to know because I have just received an email saying ‘ here at The Jazz Cafe next week, we’ve got a limited number of 2 for 1 tickets available!’

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