11:52, Jan 24th 2010 – Simon Pegg tweeted a link (http://bit.ly/22se5w) to a video clip. I watched this clip. It featured people shooting each other, one after the other. Six in all. The background music was someone singing “mmm… whatch say…” through a Vocoder / harmoniser, over and over and over again. All-in-all, it should be very irritating. Should have been, but wasn’t. I’m guessing this is just one of the reasons Simon Pegg is making money from what he does.
Within the following week, my other half starts looking up songs she’s heard on the radio in the car. I ask her which ones – somehow she manages to describe “…mmm… whatcha say…” sung through a harmoniser.
What a coincidence! That sounds just like the music in the background of a video clip Simon Pegg sent me. And the other 178’335 people who follow him on Twitter. We ascertained this tune is, somewhat bizarrely, entitled “Whatcha Say” and is by a bloke called Jason Derulo. I decided I quite liked the tune.
Jan 31st 2010 – The Grammys take place in America. Probably Los Angeles – I don’t know because the whole thing passed me by.
Feb 5th 2010, probably about 09:00, because that’s the sort of time they usually have famous people on. A singer / songwriter called Imogen Heap was interviewed on BBC Breakfast. I was quite pleased because I’d heard of her although I couldn’t think of a single song she had done. It transpired Imogen had won a Grammy, not five days earlier. That’s jolly well done, I thought.
It transpired that Miss Heap is not particularly popular (perhaps in terms of chart success more than anything else) in her home country. She is, however, very well-known in America. Apparently, her music has been used a lot in film and TV over there and, in particular, was the track used in a very important scene in a show called “The O.C.”. I have vaguely heard of “The O.C.” but largely it has passed me by. The song in question is called “Hide and Seek”.
Well, guess what, they played a clip of this very well know track and it’s Imogen Heap singing “…mmm…whatcha say…” into a harmoniser.
What a total flipping coincidence! So it wasn’t by Jason Derulo at all. It is by a woman I’d heard of, yet not heard. But it didn’t seem fair to penalise Mr Derulo for coming second, so I bought both records. When I say records, I mean downloads.
Now I keep listening to “Hide and Seek” and I’m totally in love with it. Clearly I am way behind the rest of the world, especially America, but I attribute this to being middle-aged. It subsequently occurred to me that perhaps the video clip link, made available by Mr Pegg, had more significance than I first thought. Struck by this chain of coincidences, I did some research on the internet.
It seems the clip I watched was a parody of a season finale of a show called “The O.C.” – even more shocking was the news that this video clip was something of an internet sensation at the time. To be more specific, the time was April 14th 2007.
I dunno, you turn your back for a second and all this stuff happens while you’re not looking…
I consoled myself with the fact that Simon Pegg is clearly younger than me and had probably been to the big America for filming-type purposes where he was no doubt exposed to such media.
Then I thought, well just how much younger than me is Simon Pegg – after all, he has been around a long time now – he served his apprenticeship under Mr Coogan, starred in a (very funny and under-rated) sit-com about some Hippies (by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews) and got to play Kate Ashfield’s boyfriend in some film about dead people who aren’t actually dead. I could go on. I probably should mention he wrote some stuff too.
So I Googled him and…great, Simon Pegg is a mere two years younger than me. In fact it’s his birthday very soon, according to the Wikipedia anyway (so it must be true). So happy birthday for Sunday Simon. It’s a big one isn’t it? Yes, ha ha, now you’ll know the pain I’ve been in for the last twenty-four months.
So I’ve thus far calculated that I’m still a year out when it comes to being “in-the-know” (2010 minus two years equals 2008 and I need to get to 2007). Then it struck me – of course. Pegg lives in the big London. This will doubtless put him in touch, or at least closer proximity, with other people “in-the-know”.
That must be the answer; living in London reduces middle-age trend-ignorance by a whole year.
I think that’s why I wrote this. I’m not sure now.
Yes, the other question – what made Simon Pegg tweet a link to a three-year-old video clip? Did he know Imogen Heap was up for a Grammy? Did he secretly know she was going to win? And what about this Jason Derulo geezer? Where did he come from? Why now?
And well done to Imogen Heap for the Grammy. I know who you are now and I’ve bought one of your records. Sorry, downloaded one of your tracks.
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