Happy Birthday To Who? – Jimi Hendrix vs Mike Skinner

Happy Birthday To Who? – Jimi Hendrix vs Mike Skinner

Only eight years separates the death of one and birth of the other, but the music these musical innovators of sorts gave/inflicted upon the world is generations apart in both its style and content. While Jimi Hendrix is renowned by people who have never heard him play a riff as the Greatest Guitarist of All Time TimeTM, Mike Skinner, under the moniker of The Streets, brought garage music to a new breed of disaffected UK youths from within.

Even though he hasn't written a decent song for a good four years, this doesn't remove the impact Skinner had. While Eminem proved white people could rap, Skinner carried an undeniably British slant in his urbanised tales of youthful shenanigans. This saw his brand of garage, focusing on club sub-culture and wry reality, cross boundaries and find eager fans in indie circles and festival crowds. Plus, when he came back with Fit But You Know It and Dry Your Eyes, everybody loved him. We've all watched his smug face sitting near that swimming pool blubbering on, even if we wouldn't admit it now.
With Hendrix, anybody old enough will claim to have been at his legendary Isle of Wight performance, or at least known about the talismanic black guitarist by the time he arrived in London from New York in the mid-Sixties. While his unparalleled histrionics and inspired instrumental experimentation brought him the prestige he commands today, many of his most significant songs aren't even his. These include early breakthrough Hey Joe and Bob Dylan staple All Along The Watchtower – recently named the best cover ever by Jarvis Cocker.

However, the likes of Purple Haze and Voodoo Chile are iconic snippets of a psychedelic freedom that seems to personify a certain part of music's ongoing personality. Hendrix is as ingrained into musical mythology as James Dean is in film, a gifted man who died young but left the world with enough of his talent to be as vital 38 years after his death as the day he threw his burning, broken guitar into a baying crowd at Monterey Pop.

Hendrix never really had time to tarnish his musical legacy as he passed away just a year after hitting his popular peak at Woodstock in 1969. Skinner, on the other hand, has been busy ruining any positivity he garnered with his early releases. He has now rejected referencing urban life in his music (apparently he recently refused to be interviewed anywhere that was too built-up), which hasn't had the Dylan-goes-electric effect he may have wanted. Instead, his new album Everything Is Borrowed has been widely panned but is at least not as offensively dull as his television show. However, he is nothing if not ambitious and the next – final, apparently – Streets album is rumoured to be influenced by Lou Reed's Berlin. Well, good luck with that Mr Skinner, but happy birthday Mr Hendrix.

Happy Birthday To Who? – Jeff Buckley vs. Sarah Harding

Happy Birthday To Who? – Jeff Buckley vs. Sarah Harding

As unlikely a pairing as the calendar is likely to conjure up, November 17th marks the birth of one of indie's original tortured talents and one of pop's original torturous talent show winners. Solo artist Jeff Buckley's emotional artistry is far removed from Sarah Harding's disposable snippets of sassy singing as one fifth of Girls Aloud.

However, the girlband is currently enjoying a peak of cultural recognition to match their chart-conquering consistency. With more consecutive hits than a filmic French assassin, a member winning housewives' hearts every Saturday night and the likes of Chris Martin leading the flurry of praise for the group, it's suddenly more modish to admire the Popstars: The Rivals winners than the newest boys with guitars.

But isn't Sarah just the mouthy blonde one? Well, yes, but there's more going for her than it appears. She learnt to play polo successfully. Her brash barbs have left the likes of Paris Hilton squirming. She didn't marry Ashley Cole. Most importantly, tracks like Love Machine and Call The Shots are eye-twitchingly catchy. Yes, she's came a long way since I first saw her gyrating on a chair and shouting "who wants some then?" to a slimy nightclub crowd, pausing from their heckles only to guzzle down Cherry VKs. OK, she probably hasn't – but now she does that at the O2 Arena rather than a grotty dive in Peterborough optimistically called Faith.

Harding isn't likely to write anything to rival Grace any time soon, though. Or anything, for that matter. Jeff Buckley's poignant album is now 14 years old, but songs such as Mojo Pin are still painful comforts to troubled souls and drifting adolescents of all ages. His cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is deemed by many as the defining version of the song. Somehow, he possessed the rare knack of fashioning a sense of purpose into his desolate jumbles of anguish and loss, which makes them strangely uplifting in spite – or because - of all of their desertion. Lover You Should Have Come Over and its ilk provide a blueprint for a whole generation of singer-songwriters.

It comes down to mood, really. While undoubtedly superior, the late Mr Buckley wouldn't go down too well at a party, though Ms Harding and her chums do start to grate on the brain after more than five minutes. Really, it is likely that die-hard fans of either artist will never have heard of the other one. But for sheer gall, to do so fantastically well with such a minute amount of ability, Harding takes the plaudits. Happy birthday Sarah Harding.

Happy Birthday To Who? – Joni Mitchell vs. Sharleen Spiteeri

Happy Birthday To Who? – Joni Mitchell vs. Sharleen Spiteeri

There are only so many candles to go around, so it's nigh-on impossible to celebrate the birthday of more than one musical luminary on any given day. So, through a detailed, methodological process of unadulterated bias, I will seek to find out who is worthy of the music world's adulation on a particular date each week.

November 7th marks the day on which both seminal folk artist Joni Mitchell and Texas singer Sharleen Spiteeri were born. Both are spirited females who at different times in their career have moved from stardom to obscurity with frequent regularity. They are also joined by the fact they have both released an album this year that was largely ignored by the rational world and principally abhorred by those who heard it.

However, the resonance of past glories lives on. Mitchell played a key part in music's development, influencing countless peers in the 60s and 70s and sleeping with most of them. Her power as a performer peaked with the faultless album Blue in 1971, a landmark for singer-songwriters that included songs such as A Case Of You and River. Bob Dylan and Neil Young have played with her, Led Zeppellin and Sonic Youth have written songs about her and Prince and Kanye West have covered her. She has 20 records under her belt and has also regularly charmed with sniping comments such as calling modern music "a cesspool".

It is arguable that the various hits Spiteeri sung with Texas can be included in this melodic gutter, but undoubtedly tracks such as Summer Sun and In Demand were popular. In fact, it's odds on you're mum has hummed Say What You Want while doing the hoovering at some point. During the barren years of post-Britpop, everyone had to listen to something and Spiteeri did at fill the feisty Scottish girl role without being as face-achingly irritating as KT Tunstall.

Nevertheless, the closest she will ever get to legendary status is when she dressed up like Elvis for a video, although Ricky Gervais did immortalise her band in The Office. Apparently, fictional Wernham Hogg boss David Brent toured with the group in their early days, and even then they knew he was better than them.

If Mitchell's emotive, heartbroken soprano was representative of a female society breaking away from oppression but unsure where to go, Spiteeri's neat, anthemic pop was a symbol of a nauseating Nineties night out with Bacardi Breezers and bezzie mates in tow. Let's face it, Mitchell is an iconic trailblazer, while Spiteeri is more difficult to defend than a Rory Delap throw-in. There will be closer contests in the future, but in the meantime, happy birthday to Joni Mitchell.