Rihanna unlocked at Project Lightyears

A few days ago we reached 35,000 views at www.ProjectLightyears.com and decided it wasn’t fair to keep Rihanna locked up anymore, so we released her. Click here to download your free copy of our acoustic cover of We Found Love.

Thanks to everyone who’s been sharing our content on Facebook and Twitter – it means a lot to us.

If you haven’t seen the video yet and are still trying to decide whether it’s worth taking the time to download the free stuff we’re basically lobbing at you, here’s what it sounds like:

The truth is out there…

I’m in the wilderness, in search of inspiration.

This is a pretty common path for artists and writers – look at Bon Iver, for example, who recorded his debut album For Emma, Forever Ago in a shack in Wisconsin; or the poet Lord Byron, who once underwent an eight-year self-imposed exile in Europe (although in truth I think that was mainly a voyage of rapacious sexual deviance – stuff that he couldn’t get away with in England. I hasten to add that is not my aim here).

Anyhow, I’m currently in a very remote part of Scotland. I’ll spare you the precise geographical details but, in short, there are more sheep within a ten-mile radius of my cottage than there are franchised coffee outlets. And for a Londoner, that’s quite a shock.

I’m here on a trip somewhere between a mini-break and a creative sabbatical, and I’m about to finish a demo of a song which I’m hoping will end up on the new album. It’s a track called ‘Seventeen’, and it’s about that time in your life when you and your friends all start learning to drive… specifically the moment when somebody passes their test, inherits a crappy old car from their parents and turns up at your house with the engine running – and your tiny teenage minds are all overwhelmed by the strange combination of not knowing where to go, but simultaneously knowing you could go anywhere. A-ha, you see – a metaphor for life.

But enough of all that pretentious nonsense – I’d better get back to finishing my vocal track. There’s a chicken outside the window, and the look on his face says: “That last note was slightly sharp”. Typical bloody chickens. Always sticking their beaks in.

What would you do with £148 million…?

The lucky winner of last Friday’s EuroMillions lottery, Adrian Bayford, netted nearly 150 million quid – and has announced he’d love to spend some of that money re-uniting the original line-up of Guns ‘N’ Roses.

I think this is brilliant. It would never happen of course (the original members probably don’t need the cash and, quite simply, all hate Axl just a bit too much), but I love the fact that he came up with the idea in the first place. Most lottery winners come out in the press with the usual ‘I’ll buy a new house for my parents, and maybe start a charity’ spiel, but Bayford’s just gone straight for the bonkers, and I think he should be lauded for that. If more people with absurd fortunes started spending their money on ridiculously pointlessly wonderful things, the world would probably be a happier place.

So my question to you folks is this – what mad thing would you with 150 mill?

Taking Adrian Bayford’s musical pipe-dream as an inspiration, I’ve come up with my top three Mental Things I Would Do With A Gigantic Fortune:

1) Build my very own Keyboard Roller-Coaster for use at gigs. You know, for solos and that. Time for a solo, get on the coaster. Boom.
2) Hire legendary film composer John Williams for a month and get him to soundtrack everything I do with an epic string section.
3) Pay Nicki Minaj to stop. Just that – stop. I don’t care how much money it takes, as long as she stops.

Porn is rubbish without a soundtrack

Already read Fifty Shades Of Grey? Finished both the sequels? Bought the t-shirt and the S&M pottery set and the EL James celebratory dildo?

Well, now you can buy the album too.

According to Yahoo News, James has curated an album of 15 classical tracks due for release this autumn that she says helped inspire her during the writing process. EMI Classics – the label behind the record – have called it ‘the perfect accompaniment to the Fifty Shades reading experience’ (they’ve obviously never heard of KY Jelly). This nugget of news pricked my ears because, as you know, I’ve written a novel about The Lightyears that also has its own soundtrack (erm, no, that’s not a plug. What do you take me for? It’s just a relevant comparison). ‘Course all the material on our album will be original, but hey ho. I’m not showing off or anything. I mean, EL James is way too busy being questioned about her sex life on Oprah to write pop songs.

Incidentally, in case you haven’t heard, last week Fifty Shades was officially tagged The Best-Selling Book Of All Time in Britain. A lot of fuss has been made of this, mainly because it’s also universally considered to be very badly-written. And this bugs people. But why the big fuss, I say? History has shown time and again that the products that shift the quickest units are rarely masterpieces. Susan Boyle’s ‘I Dreamed A Dream’…? Fastest-selling album ever by a British woman. Who has the most entries on the ‘best-selling singles of all time’ list, aside from Elvis? Katy Perry. This is just the way the world works (although if you’re one of the 1.5 million people who bought ‘The World According To Clarkson’, I’m going to have to ask that you never, ever talk to me or attempt to look at me in any way).

Finally on this subject, I peeked over the shoulder of a poker-faced Kindle reader on the tube the other day and totally busted them reading Fifty Shades. This felt a bit like catching someone with their hand down their pants. My personal feeling is that Boris ought to pass a law stating that, if you’re going to read this book on the underground, you’re also legally required to wear a t-shirt bearing the declaration: ‘I’m reading porn. I’m pretending not to, but I am absolutely READING PORN’.

And, hey, if you fancy a slice of literature you won’t have to pretend you aren’t watching, check this out. I done this, I did.

Brand-new free track unlocked at Project LYs

That’s right – you thought only Our Lord God could unlock Paradise, but you could not be more wrong.

Thanks to your 30,000+ views at www.ProjectLightyears.com, we’ve now reached our third target and have unlocked our acoustic cover of Coldplay’s “Paradise” from the album Mylo Xyloto.

Click here to claim your free copy.

And once again, thanks so much for your part in helping to spread the word. As I mentioned in my recent blog, the band’s now getting lots of new traffic from places like Turkey, Albania and Mexico, which is rather exciting. And we’ve booked in a session later this month to knock out some early previews of songs for the new album… so watch this space!

A big hello to our new Turkish fans!

Isn’t the internet amazing?

Last week I noticed a spike of interest in The Lightyears – via Twitter and Facebook – from Turkey. The magic of YouTube analytics means you can chart these trends very precisely and, after a minute or two poking around our stats, this is what I discovered… at the time of writing, our cover of David Guetta’s Titanium has racked up 20,277 views – 4,907 of those are from the last thirty days and, of that number, 3,197 are from Turkey. That’s at least ten times more than from any other single country in the month just passed.

Now, look – I know statistics aren’t really that interesting, but my point here is that the internet truly is a wonderful global tool for reaching new fans. I’ve no idea what spiked this, but it seems like the folks in that part of the world really do dig sensitive acoustic re-imaginings of massive dancefloor anthems. So there you go. And if you’re reading this from Turkey, greetings from The Lightyears and… Dinlediğiniz için teşekkürler! (You gotta love Google Translate).

Oh, and after Turkey, it would appear we’re most popular in Albania. Which means it’s finally time to book that seventy-five date tour of Fushë-Krujë.*

*yes, I did Google that.

Exclusive preview of new Lightyears track

As you know (because I don’t stop banging on about it), I’ve just written a book.

The book is called Mockstars and it’s The Lightyears’ origin story – a true(ish) tale of debts, mugs and rock ‘n’ roll. We have a vision for this book, and it’s never been done before… on top of publishing the novel, The Lightyears will be releasing an album of original material that accompanies the story and deals with many of the same themes (incidentally, plenty of novels have soundtracks – that’s old news – but as far as I know no band has simultaneously released its own novel and album… please correct me if I’m wrong though!).

I wrote a great deal of material for the album at the same time as writing the book. At the risk of sounding like a ponce (and possibly inadvertently using the word ‘visceral’), this was a really exciting and inspiring process for me. Sometimes I’d get writer’s block and think ‘Hmm – I need some other piece of art to inspire me’… and lo and behold, I’d trundle off and listen to one of my new demos, and my writing flow would pick right up again.

We’re currently in the process of taking the songs I’ve written, combining them with material from the rest of the band, working through it all and shaping it into an album. Mockstars makes direct references to these songs, songs which will soon, and rather excitingly, actually exist ‘in the real world’. It’s a multimedia jamboree.

The very first track I wrote for the book was called ‘Blinded By Light’. It’s a song that deals with the major themes in the novel – friendship, growing up, dealing with change and pursuing your dreams in the face of adversity. We’re still working on our full-band version of ‘Blinded By Light’ but, as a special treat (it is Friday after all), I thought I’d publish a wee clip from my original bedroom demo. This doesn’t feature any of the other Lightyears (oh, for a world where that were always the case) but you’ll get the general idea.

Enjoy… and do let us know what you think in the comments section. Thanks guys!

ps. if you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the video readings from Mockstars at Project Lightyears. I’ve embedded one below for anyone who’s feeling a bit lazy.

I wish people would slag us off more often

Today I found myself reading an article on the NME website that conscientiously archived all the best and most vicious put-downs in music (only in the NME, right?) – because there’s nothing more entertaining than egotistical rockstars slagging each other off.

This got me thinking about how being trashed by people is kind of a badge of honour in rock ‘n’ roll and, in fact, about how disappointed I am with the paltry number of put-downs The Lightyears have attracted in our careers so far (and if that isn’t an invitation to internet trolls, I’m not sure what is).

I suppose there was the time the London Metro wrote us a bit of a dud review after the INDY Awards and said we looked like McFly wearing The Libertines’ old stage outfits – but then, that might have been worth getting all worked up over had it not been basically entirely true.

Oh, and I was subjected to a fairly vicious attack in the LYs comments section back in 2010 when one of our songs was being used on a T-Mobile advert and some poor chap, infuriated by the ubiquity of the ad, let leash with something along the lines of ‘I hope you end up under a bus, you floppy-haired wanker’. I wrote him a witty riposte (eruditely correcting his grammar, obviously) and, lo and behold, the bugger came back the next day and apologised. That’s not supposed to happen on the internet! That’s the whole point, you can say what you want and there aren’t any consequences (well, unless you’re Daniel Thomas).

And while we’re on the subject of the T-Mobile song, I recently learned that ‘Come With Me’ popped up on the stereo in a hospital operating theatre earlier this year and, a minute or two into the song, the surgeon – looking up from (as I imagine it) the gaping chasm of some poor fella’s mutilated bowels – commented: ‘They sound like S Club 7 on speed’. Again – not really rude, ‘cos it’s basically true.

Anyhow, I thought I’d save you a bit of time and cherry-pick the five best insults from the NME’s list (expletives coming up, folks – cover the little ones’ ears):

Bono on Chris Martin:
“[He’s] a completely dysfunctional character and a cretin. But he happens to be a great melodist.”
– Wins points for… being so polite.

Johnny Borrell on The Kooks:
“That record is the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard. It sounds like the band are literally rolling over, sticking their arse in the air and begging Radio 1 to f*ck them.”
– Wins points for… Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You’re black.

Paul Weller on Freddie Mercury:
“He said he wanted to bring ballet to the working classes. What a c*nt.”
– Wins points for… succinctness. And if only you had half Freddie’s talent, Paul, you might have got away with it.

Liam Gallagher on Radiohead’s album ‘The King Of Limbs’:
“Them writing a song about a f*cking tree? Give me a f*cking break! A thousand year old tree? Go f*ck yourself!”
– Wins points for… sheer idiocy.

Noel Gallagher on The Kaiser Chiefs:
“I did drugs for 18 years and I never got that bad as to say, ‘You know what? I think the Kaiser Chiefs are brilliant.'”
– Wins points for… the opposite reason to his brother.

Chris Lightyear published in Body Gossip book

In late 2010, The Lightyears wrote and recorded the soundtrack to two short films by Body Gossip, a campaign aiming to challenge society’s unrealistic and narrow beauty ideals. On September 6th, Body Gossip are releasing their first book, with a foreword by Gok Wan, and it features a story by none other than me, Chris Lightyear. And it’s about my bum (or lack thereof).

My article is called ‘Does My Bum Look Small In This?’ – but if you want to read it yourself then, by George, you’ll just have to pre-order a copy from Amazon. And in the unlikely event that you need convincing, there are naked people on the cover. Boobs, and arses, and all that. So there.

Body Gossip is run by the amazing Ruth Rogers and Natasha Devon. Find out more on the BG Facebook page.

As you probably know, I’ve been honing my writing skills over the last few years while working on my debut novel, a semi-fictionalised re-telling of the story of The Lightyears, entitled Mockstars. We recently released three readings from the book at Project Lightyears, and here’s the one where I try (and fail!) to impress an A&R Man from a major record label: