Momus

Quora Answer : What is your favorite band that no one has heard of?

Apr 4, 2014

Momus is the UK's best, and most criminally underrated, singer / songwriter. And has been for 30 years.

He's still going strong after over 20 albums with records that mix music-hall comedy with synth-pop with plundered folk-samples and experimental electronica and always, always have earworm tunes. (Think Serge Gainsbourg collaborating with the Pet Shop Boys remixed by Aphex Twin) His lyrics range from comedy to sexually explicit to poetic to fiendishly intellectual (often at the same time). His wordplay is masterful and he peppers his songs with dozens of references (often weird juxtapositions of pop culture and obscurantism).

It's kind of impossible to do justice to his career with a couple of tunes. But here goes ....

Here's a 2014 collaboration, to show he's still got it.

Here's a couple of years ago, in full on Al Bowlby, "chap" mode :

Here's erudite lounge from the 90s :

Here's when he lost his hard-drive :

He's pretty pissed off with mortality :

He likes lurve, in a slightly creepy way :

He likes Art :

He groks technology :

He'll basically do what the fuck he likes, in song :

He's pretty pissed that no-one actually likes him :

Quora Answer : What musical artist is the least classifiable into genres, and the most hard to define?

Feb 21, 2018

My favourite (and I'd argue, Britain's best) singer / songwriter - Momus - wins this category hands down.

No-one else comes close for a mind-blowing range of invented genres that mix and match influences of everything from electropop, mediaeval music, experimental sound-collage, chip-tunes, music-hall and lush easy listening, into a single integrated aesthetic that's very broad, but also weirdly consistent. Always incredibly weird, incredibly tuneful, incredibly perverse, and an incredible smart-arse :

Quora Answer : What is your favorite song about computers?

Oct 11, 2019

Momus has some good ones :

Datapanik

Handheld

The Age of Information (more about the internet (which is a big computer), though somewhat in that 90s naive optimism vein)

AFK (Away from the Keyboard)

Quora Answer : What is your least favourite song by your favourite musician?

Jun 12, 2017

Momus always has a dangerous undercurrent of misogyny. But it's usually balanced by wit, deeper empathy or even just some kind of vicious cleverness.

In this utterly charmless and pointless song, though, there's nothing. It's just a mindless ditty with no redeeming features whatsoever. "She's intelligent", sneers Momus, disdainful that this might have any value at all when weighed against the fact that "she's an elephant".

Horrible, horrible low point from one of the greatest "pop-music" / "song-writing" artists ever.

Quora Answer : Aside from "Yesterday" by The Beatles, what other famous songs were there where the composer literally dreamed the melody?

Apr 7, 2018

Momus says that he dreamed the first verse / chorus of Lovely Tree

Not exactly in the same league as Yesterday in terms of "fame" though.