Coldplay, the lovable nerds of the music industry.

Coldplay's "Atlas" (not to be confused with the classic Etta James song "At Last" which I foolishly keep typing by mistake) was released earlier this month, recorded for the soundtrack of the greatly anticipated second installment of the The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. Granted, it is no "Yellow" or "Fix You", not even close, but it does hold a certain dreamy, mesmirising quality which we can only speculate will capture the dramatic, adventure-driven essence of the movie it is written for.

This is the first we have heard from Coldplay since last July, and I for one am slightly disappointed by the shocking lack of promotion or press the band have received in their return to the British music scene, perhaps overshadowed by the storm of excitement brewing around fellow Brit musicians Arctic Monkeys and their latest record AM.

Admittedly, Coldplay are and always have been regarded as the softer, weedier schoolchildren in the playground who nobody would ever like to admit being friends with - most demonstrate a level of acknowledgement and respect but the band has never upheld a reputation quite cool enough to hang out with the popular kids of Britpop, the likes of The Verve, Suede, Blur and Oasis. By no means are they disliked - devotees who display the utmost admiration and respect for Coldplay, myself included, stand proudly in their millions, and the band have performed and sold out all over the world.

And yet a smudge of animosity towards Coldplay still exists, with others utilising the label of "guilty pleasure" - all you need to do is type 'I hate Coldplay' into your search engine to discover vast collections of merchandise with such words printed on them in all their glory - badges, posters, t-shirts, the latter of which I should mention are also available for babies and small children, if you so wish for your hatred of Chris and the gang to spiral down the family tree from generation to generation. Let's not even get started on Noel Fielding's feelings.

But as a band I grew up listening to, not through a choice of my own, but of my Dad's, I have always loved Coldplay and to be perfectly honest, the opinions of other people have never been an issue. So with no hidden agenda or plan to convert you in mind, I have written a list of reasons why Coldplay aren't actually that bad really, and maybe (just maybe) they might start to gain a little of the respect they wholeheartedly deserve.

1. Coldplay write songs for the masses, appealing to a wide audience without turning their backs on their alternative fan base who have followed religiously since the band's formation in 1996, unlike other artists who have shaped their sound to become more radio-friendly e.g. Eminem, Biffy Clyro, Muse, the list goes on.

2. Many consider their music to be depressing and melancholic, but by listening to the lyrics you might be surprised to discover the majority of their songs are rather uplifting and optimistic in the messages and stories they deliver to their audience. Mylo Xyloto is an album which holds the power to brighten my mood at any time of day in most circumstances.

3. They know how to put on a show. As a live band, they are visually and audibly breathtaking; I only wish that I could speak from personal experience. Unfortunately I have never been to a Coldplay gig and must rely on hearsay, but consider the fact that they have been Glastonbury headliners three times and it makes perfect sense.

4. They write their own music; music is an art to them. Lyrics hold far greater power when they are genuine and actually bare a certain level of significance to the person who is singing them, and this is something Coldplay capture impeccably.

5. They have grown as a band, but not to the extent that they no longer sound like themselves. Beginning with the rockier, edgier tone of Parachutes, Rush of Blood To The Head and X&Y, moving onto the darker yet somehow pop-pier sound of Viva La Vida, and contrasting with the lighter and brighter sound of Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay clearly demonstrate how they have matured and developed over the last decade and a half.

6. We might wince at the likes of Bono and Thom Yorke forcing feeding us about the plights of ending poverty and stopping war, but Chris Martin and co. enjoy getting involved with and raising the awareness of such charities as Oxfam and WaterAid without shoving it down the throats of their audience.

7. Coldplay are respectful towards the work of other people and their preferred musical genres, and very rarely do we hear of them speaking negatively about fellow musicians. As a band they are open-minded and understand that every artist has their own unique way of producing music, and their own unique idea of how music should sound and what it should say to its audience.

8. The band have managed to bag 7 Grammy Awards and 8 Brit Awards during their 17 years in the music industry. Rolling Stone even voted them 4th Best Band of the Decade, and Rush of Blood To The Head was also selected as favourite album of all time by the listeners of BBC Radio 2.

Not bad for a bunch of soft weedy school kids.

RIP Mick Deane

Today I woke up to the very sad news that Sky News cameraman Mick Deane has been shot dead whilst covering the violent protests in Cairo, Egypt. Deane had worked with Sky News for fifteen years and has been described by his colleagues as a "brilliant journalist" who was "as brave as a lion".

Like many it really got me thinking about the ways in which journalists like him put their lives at risk so that we in the UK can be made aware of what is happening in and around the world. We manifestly see news correspondents on the television but it is so easy to forget that there are several others behind the camera, who are too demonstrating great courage by working in such dangerous conditions.

These men and women are there by choice, but it is the selfless reasoning behind the choice they have made which I find to be even more inspiring. They have a job to do, as Mick Deane did, and they do it bloody well.

My thoughts go out to Mick Deane's family at this difficult time. Rest in peace.

Filming at gigs - isn't it better to live in the moment?

A band you love and worship have announced they're going on tour, and like any crazed fanatic, you are up at the crack of dawn on ticket release day to ensure you and your mates will be there to see it. It's a stressful procedure; you have a thousand and one tabs open. You've prayed more times in one morning than you ever have in your life that your computer can withstand the pressure and won't inconveniently crash. The refresh button has been pressed so many times that it feels as though your index finger has undergone an intense workout and is starting to ache from all the clicking.

But in being successful you feel a huge wash of relief, happiness and excitement - it's not long before your friends are jabbering down the phone about how much they love you. Before you know it, you're on your way to the venue about to witness a truly magical music experience.

Only to stand there throughout the entire thing with your camera in the air, watching the gig through a tiny screen.

The ongoing debate of whether or not you should film at gigs is perplexing if anything, but it's understandable why people do it to a certain extent. (I've even been guilty of it myself on one or two occasions). While you're in that moment there is nothing you want more than to freeze the picture, so you can hold onto the feeling and experience of being there and feeling so alive. Recording on your camera or mobile offers you that opportunity, and in filming the gig you are awarded the privilege of reliving it again and again, without having to depend upon your own hazy recollections.

And yet, in looking back at your videos the next morning, you realise that your attempts were a total waste of your time, and rather than watching through a small screen, you should have saved your battery and watched the gig itself. The quality is lost, the sound isn't the same and your memories are tainted by what you are seeing on your computer the next day rather than what you saw with your own eyes the night before. Which leads me to question: why bother?

Most musicians tend to ask the same. NME posted a great little video on their website this week, in which several artists gave their opinions on the issue.

While most stated they didn't mind it, they unanimously agreed that it is more important to "live in the moment" and "just go and experience the gig" rather than film it on your mobile.

Yannis Philippakis, lead singer of Foals, brilliantly added: "it's part of the wider temptation of go round an aquarium taking photos instead of looking at the fish." Witnessing something through the lenses in your eyes is far greater than seeing it through the lens in a camera.

Essentially, in the words of Johnny Marr, "you should put your phone down, because you're being a dick."

"Music is art, and art is for all"

Today's post is a sort of continuation from a small piece I wrote a couple of months ago called "Age isn't a number in the world of radio", discussing the ongoing battle between ageism and the BBC. Older fans of Radio 1 have recently been banished and booted out in the hope of lowering the age of the average listener, and in all honesty it's a bit bloody unfair.

The notion of music in terms of what it represents and how it moves and influences us has always been a topic of interest to me, and I find it so fascinating that in its unknown abundance of power, it can quite easily change the way in which we think and communicate with one another.

But before I go off on a tangent and begin waffling about how music is more than just noise and sound etc. etc., I'm going to avert your attention to a matter of contention which has infuriated me a little this afternoon. Said matter relates to an article written by former Labour MP Tom Watson in this month's edition of NME, which is released tomorrow, who has stated he is "still cringing at the thought of Gordon Brown listening to Arctic Monkeys."

Watson, who discusses the relationship between musicians and politicians in his piece, further conveys that "we all squirmed when David Cameron tried to pose as a Radiohead fan. It just doesn't wash. Don't even go there with The Jam and The Smiths."

But if anything it proves he's a goddamn human - with excellent music taste. No individual should be subjected to judgement or bullying in relation to the bands and artists they listen to, and to base these judgements upon a person's occupation is even more ridiculous. David Lister stated in an article in The Independent earlier this year that "music is art, and art is for all". In essence, both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have just as much right to enjoy the music they love as any other person.

While it may not seem like it sometimes, politicians are people as well.

I would like to know who in the heck Tom Watson thinks he is to judge and discuss who and what other people listen to. He may be convinced he's one of the cool kids but his little whinge has merely proven that he is an immature and narrow-minded moron.

Fifteen minutes till the fame game ends.

2013 has seen the official birth of the media hate figure, and like selfies and the norovirus (the former abundant in egotism, the latter infested with germs), they are absolutely everywhere.

They are on your television, on your radio, in your newspaper and your magazines. They are the ones who jumped the queue to fame, the ones who took Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes” and chose to haggle for an extra thirty seconds. They are the ones who are willing to face hostility and belligerence from British public at whatever cost, all for the sake of that brief, unique flash under the spotlight.

Like the norovirus – their vulgarity is copious. Like the selfie – well, nobody’s seen quite that much vanity seen Narcissus discovered himself.

Current Queen of the media hate figures exists in the form of Katie Hopkins, who this month riled viewers of ITV’s This Morning by declaring that she would not allow her children to play with others who had “the wrong name”. Her comments sent the British public into an indignant frenzy, with the interview reaching a staggering 11 million views on YouTube.

“I am only saying what everyone else thinks”, she said.

Samantha Brick stimulated outcry on a similar scale in 2012 after writing a piece in the Daily Mail about being hated by other women “for no other reason than my lovely looks”. The article, which stocked up 1.5 million hits on the Mail Online website, saw Ms Brick whining about the detriments of her beauty as though they were on a par with physical deformities. Almost 5000 readers took to the website to share their thoughts on Brick’s egotism with the majority labelling her “deluded” with a “forgettable face”. 

But despite her narcissism it is crucial to acknowledge the true, underlying purpose of Ms Brick's article. It is, after all, her responsibility to produce pieces which not only promote the paper she is writing for but herself as a journalist. The writing world is a dog-eat-dog industry and working for a publication like The Daily Mail means you must fight tooth and nail for your place among some of the most controversial journalists in the country. It is, therefore, the big sell which lies at the forefront of her priorities, whether she believes herself to be good looking or not.

Let us of course not forget Liz Jones, the despondently cynical shrew who confessed in a 2011 Mail article to stealing sperm from two of her partners to get herself pregnant. The purpose of the article was to warn other men about the "dirty tricks" women can play on their boyfriends or husbands (as if men need another reason to think all women are psychotic, cheers Liz).

This piece is not the first of hers to have ruffled a few feathers, but it is for this reason that she has achieved such a successful career as both a columnist and editor. Like Samantha Brick, we don’t read her work because we like or agree with her, but because we are so engrossed by what she has to say.

And yet one tumultuous bout of public animosity still isn't adequately satisfying. These three love-to-hate figures have each scored book deals to have their tactless, brutal viewpoints bound, published and sold across the country. Katie Hopkins launched "The Class Book of Baby Names" shortly after her appearance on This Morning, which reached 10 million hits in just four days. Samantha Brick's first memoir, "Head Over Heels in France" hit book stores in April, while Liz Jones has released three autobiographies, among other books, disclosing her personal life onto paper.

These are women who know what they are doing and will stop at nothing to get what they want, regardless of who gets hurt in the process. In spite of the backlash, they are nearly always successful. But fads never last, and as with every fad the public will get bored of you.

It's called fifteen minutes of fame for that reason alone, and in retrospect, to waste it on cynicism is a bit damn foolish.

But who am I to judge?

"Books are the stepping stones of imagination".

I've loved books for as long as I can remember. As a child, my parents and I would read Shirley Hughes, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Lyn Wendon, Michael Rosen and Val Biro, the latter of which visited my primary school when I was six and kindly signed my 'Gumdrop Goes To School' book for me.

Books have always been a huge part of my life and I simply adored the way in which they would teach me new things and open up my imagination. Reading gave me the encouragement to write my own little collection of short stories, which I would jot down in a purple notepad and hide underneath my pillow. My stories would be about daft little adventures which I could only wish to be a part of - a girl called Jenny who was forever on holiday, travelling from place to place, hotel to hotel, never having to go to school. Georgina who lived with her family in a village on top of the trees in a forest (the technical impossibilities in this one were astonishing). My favourite and the most ridiculous of the lot was about a girl called Amber, who for her birthday had S Club 7 visit her house and announce that they were going to be moving in. (Judge all you want, S Club 7 were undeniably brilliant). 

Until I was about eleven years old I always thought I was going to be an author, and I had a plan that my brother would illustrate the stories I'd written because he was, and still is, so brilliant at drawing. We would become a dynamic and unstoppable book-producing team, creating beautiful and enchanting universes, magical creatures, and fantastically bold and enthralling characters. Reading was just what I did, and unveiling the depths of an author's creative mind is what fed me the passion to formulate and explore my own.

When I moved up to senior school I decided I didn't want to write fiction anymore, and I turned my interests to writing non-fiction. My magical stories and poems were discontinued and instead I fell in love with writing in a style suitable for newspapers, magazines and blogs like this one. In spite of this, my passion for reading was still strong, and I had become sucked into the Jacqueline Wilson teenage stereotype. Oddly I was never drawn to Harry Potter, but I had since become a fan of Lemony Snicket's works as well as Louise Rennison and Meg Cabot. In the words of my English teacher, "trash fiction".

A few years later, I chose to study English Literature at A Level, and then again for my degree at University. Literature was the only subject I was really any good at, and in truth selecting it had become a natural instinct. The irony was, I had started to hate books.

Reading had quickly become a chore. A piece of homework. A murky scribble on my To Do list continually put off time and time again just because I simply did not want to do it. It was heartbreaking, because something which I used to love so much had so rapidly become something I had grown to loathe. I wasn't enjoying being told what I had to read and how long I had to do it. Literature should offer the freedom to enjoy a book at a pace you find comfortable, without the overwhelming pressure of a deadline hanging over you. But sadly that's not how an English degree works - you have a target to meet and if you fail to meet that target, you get left behind.

So at the start of this summer holiday, I finally decided enough was enough, and I set myself a mission to fall in love with books again. And while it's a shame that re-reading my collection of Shirley Hughes and Michael Rosen would not be in my best interests, the beauty of imagination is that it is not an age-restricted privilege. The novels I read as an adult can be just as magical and enchanting, if I open my mind a little and give them the chance they deserve. With an alteration in my attitude, reading can and will become a hobby I learn to love again. 

All it will take is the right book to get me there.

July

It's July and can you believe the sun is shining?! ☼ ☼ ☼

This past month has been a bit up-and-down. A few weeks ago I decided to get a nose piercing, which has now gone after I accidentally knocked it out a week later. One Friday I had arranged to go for lunch with my best friend, and to cut a long story short, it concluded with me sat on a bench in the local piercing shop with a needle going through my nose. I had been contemplating having it done for a long while but I was finally plucking up the courage to go ahead with it - as spontaneous as ever - although from past experience, that's usually the best way to go about it. It was my tenth piercing so I thought by now I'd have adjusted to the pain a little more, but that was definitely not the case. It was still as painful as the first.

As you would expect, neither my parents nor my grandparents were particularly happy but I did receive the "I suppose you're twenty now and it's your nose blah blah blah" speech. And amidst all the chaos it ended up falling out six days later when I was washing my face and had forgotten it was there. I spent about half an hour trying desperately to fix it before acknowledging I looked better without it anyway.

It was also my best friend Alice's birthday last Thursday and like me she chose to go to the zoo to celebrate, because let's face it, there is no better place to spend your 20th birthday than surrounded by crowds of screaming children and animals that can kill you. We saw everything from giraffes, lions, hippos, penguins, otters, parrots, and all in all had such a fantastic day. My friend Rachel and I decided it would be a great idea to go into one of the little tunnels inside the meerkat enclosure, before realising it was full of kids and impossible to move around without flattening one of them in the process (the kids that is, not the meerkats). We both got into a bit of a fluster trying to escape, to the extent that at one point I forgot I was inside a tunnel, tried to stand up and cracked my head on the ceiling. Ouch.

The tennis came to a climactic end yesterday and what a way to finish with Andy Murray becoming the first British Men's Singles Champion in 77 years! 

Watching Wimbledon over the last couple of weeks has been the only thing keeping me from going mad with boredom, and to have it draw to such a fantastic close really was pretty special. It was also incredible to see Marion Bartoli become the Women's Singles Champion on Saturday afternoon; both her and Sabine Lisicki put in an amazing effort but in the end it seems the best woman won. 

More good news to report because somehow, I don't know how, I managed to get a 2:1 in my second year of Uni which is an absolute miracle. My organisation with assignments this year has been nothing short of shambolic because I'm hopelessly slow and picky when it comes to essay writing. I can spend so long composing half a sentence that I end up running out of time and all my other assignments start piling up around me. But regardless of that, I passed, and I'm very very happy. :). 

(Look this paragraph even gets a little smiley face, that's how happy I am). 

And finally, it's my fantastic Mum's birthday today so HAPPY BIRTHDAY Ali Keeler you nutter, have a super day in the sunshine xxx

Nats. X