The Second Serve // The Great Replacement Issue

It seems Joe Biden was doomed from the outset, according to the planets. And the vegetable patch.

On 11th July, internet astrologer Starheal predicted the President would be made to step down on Sunday because it was a Capricorn full moon – and “Capricorn rules the government and old age”. (Starheal also predicted back in 2020 that Kamala Harris would run for President this year, because it “coincides with her Saturn return”.)

Then on Jeremy Vine’s show last week, Jemima Packington – the world’s first and only “asparamancer” – made a similar prediction about Biden standing down.

Jemima (who also predicted Queen Elizabeth’s death and Brexit) tosses asparagus spears in the air, then formulates her predictions from the way they land. The asparagus not only told her that the 47th POTUS would be neither Biden nor Trump, but that “The next president of the United States is going to be a lady.”

It should be noted however that the asparagus previously told her that football was coming home. So take it with a pinch of salt. (And a squeeze of lemon.)

Katy Perry is truly in her flop era. Her new anti-bop Woman’s World hasn’t gone down as well as hoped – with reviews variously describing it as “unfathomably tepid”, “irritating at best”, “regressive” and “dated”.

The internet has still managed to squeeze a bit of fun out of it though. One TikTok spliced Perry’s track with the opening title sequence and dance scenes of the Barbie movie, only to find they match up perfectly. It’s sparked a cute little rumour online that Perry originally created the song for the movie, but had it rejected in favour of Lizzo’s Pink.

Is there anything to it? Possibly. But given that Perry’s song also syncs perfectly with this Loose Women promo, possibly not…

The Evening Standard had a nice follow-up to our Suella piece from Thursday’s mailout.

The ES writes:
“Rumour has it that Suella Braverman may become the latest politician to moonlight as a talk show host. According to esteemed gossip newsletter Popbitch, Braverman was spotted “haunting the LBC studios for a demo this week”. We put this to the former home secretary, who was mainly aggrieved by the word ‘haunting’, but did not deny that she is considering a side-hustle in broadcasting.”

As has since been reported: Suella Braverman is going to be acting as a replacement for James O’Brien on his LBC show tomorrow.

The Sugababes have become a byword for “replacement” in pop music – but how did that ball first get rolling?

Siobhan Donaghy was the first of the band to leave, thanks to some targeted hounding by Mutya and Keisha. Their preferred technique of torturing her, as observed on photo-shoots, was to bitch about Siobhan in their secret language Ava-Gab.

Mumbling phrases like: “Sivva-giv ovva-gorn ivva-gis avva-ga favva-gat cavva-gow.”

Which translates as: “Siobhan is a fat cow”

Boybands don’t always get their line-ups right first time so there’s often a floating ex-member who left before fame. But spare a thought for Charles Edwards. He decided to leave not one, but two of the biggest pop bands of the last 30 years.

Charles was a classmate of AJ and Howie from Backstreet Boys in Florida and was in an early incarnation of the band along with Nick Carter. As it was taking a while for manager Lou Pearlman to get the band off the ground, Charlie decided to walk away – he’d been offered a job teaching golf at Club Med, Bahamas.

When the Backstreet Boys went stratospheric, Lou attempted to repeat the trick, putting together N*Sync. He called Charles and asked him to join – which he did. But, once again, he got cold feet. This time leaving for a golf gig in Club Med, Caribbean.

N*Sync went on to sell 70 million records.

The last we heard of Charlie? His third band, Colourblind, hadn’t fared so well. And his mugshot was plastered on Radar Online for a minor offence in Florida.

In Issue 848, we asked:
“It’s quite common for stunt doubles to basically fill in as understudies for big-name Hollywood stars on set – but which A-lister went one step further? Not only did she have her stunt double do most of the work during filming, she also had her pose for the movie’s promo posters too (then had her features added on digitally in post).”

No doubt an extremely commonplace practice now – but a tip of the cap to Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde for this one.

Last week saw quizzes on the topics of Backmasking, Questions and the Impeach The President beat.

This week, we’ve got another set of quizzes for you. All you need to do is listen to the mini-mix, tweeze out the ten snippets and identify them – naming the titles and the artists.

Today’s quiz is slightly replacement themed too. These were all big hits for the artists you’ll hear, but were passed over by  other superstars first. If you can guess all ten of those, give yourself some extra points.

Monday’s Theme: Rejected Hits II

[Play it here]

Apple x Coconut – a Kamala XCX cut
[Listen on TikTok]

Super Mario songs as Italo-disco
[Listen on YouTube]

A playlist of songs where lyrics, line-ups or lead artists were replaced
[Listen on Spotify]