It takes something special to beat Robyn’s masterpiece and this song is it. If 2010 is remembered for one artist, it should be Marina Diamandis. She’s one of the most interesting, creative and talented artists in music at the moment and seems to have a gift for writing sugary pop music with a biting satirical edge in their lyrics. This is her finest moment so far. Happy New Year.
Most artists are lucky if they release two great albums in their careers. Robyn's released two in one year. The first single from her "Body Talk" trilogy of albums, this is pretty much the perfect pop song. As well as being insanely catchy, its lyrics are brutally emotive, really setting the scene of a crowded club which seems as empty as country road at 4am. With icy synths, throbbing hooks and a driving melody, it's a beautiful piece of music. In any other year, it would be the best track of the year, but 2010 was not just any year…
Most of his fifth “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” requires four or five listens before you really start to get it, but the lead single is as instantaneous as they come. Underpinned by a booming King Crimson sample, the track zips through its five minutes. Completely brilliant.
The video is one big exercise in showing off. The lyrics are as subtle as a right hook from a night club bouncer. And yet it’s all saved by a soaring, whallop of a chorus. If it was written by anyone but N-Dubz, it would have been hailed as a brilliant anthem of tour burnout and song writing. A top track.
Easily the standout single from her “Rated R” album, this wonderfully playful track still sounds fantastic, nine months after it was released and played to death on the airwaves.
Hayley Williams may have endured a traumatic end to the year with her song writing partner and former boyfriend walking out of Paramore, but she’ll be best remembered this year for her star turn alongside B.O.B. A neatly crafted, wistful collaboration, Williams’ vocals make the song, which was one of the most played this year and yet it still sounds great.
The only new release from Florence & The Machine turned out to be an absolute belter. All the best bits from her “Lungs” album all compressed into one track. It was ornate, graceful, lavish and full of vocal yearning. Deserved more attention than it got.
Taking a break from abrasive, Nintendo sampling electronica, Crystal Castles suddenly went all hands in the air pop, with a little help from the Cure’s Robert Smith. And it really really worked. All cooing vocals and a stupendous chorus. One of these an album from now on would be brilliant.
#9: Professor Green Feat. Lily Allen - Just Be Good To Green
Professor Green’s reworking of Beats International’s seminal bit of reggae pop is one of the best uses of a sample this year. Powered by the catchy groove of the original and the vocal chemistry between Green and Lily Allen, this is a cheeky, lively bit of pop music.
The Mancunian duo’s debut single, which tells the story of a suicidal middle aged man being talked down from jumping over a throbbing 80s pop soundtrack, has one of the year’s most uplifting and irresistible choruses. The best thing they’ve done so far and more than likely, the best thing they’ll ever do.
For the next five days, two tracks will be knocked off the list, appearing at 1pm and 7pm (GMT), culminating in the Death By Airplay single of the year on New Years Eve.
Given there are people of acts who do kooky electro pop, it's pretty difficult to stand out. But Canadian singer Lights has something different about her. She's messier, less slick and she's even duetted with Bring Me The Horizon. She has a real pop art quality to her songs, like they've been built using paint and glue and ended up with this glittery, slightly wonky finish. It's great though. She's one to watch.
Last year so much was expected of Ali Love, but he let everybody down, badly. So did Dan Black, but hopefully Primary 1 will be able to pull off the "British Prince" tag in 2011. Sharp, funky and great live.
If you liked either Bat for Lashes or Florence and the Machine, then you should fall in love with Esben and the Witch. Covered in the same ethereal mist as those two, but with a real wickedness to their sound. It draws you in slowly, but utterly and completely too. Brilliant.
Heartbroken pop is so hard to do well. Most who try end up sounding like Pixie Lott and like they've been copying doing lyrics from livejournal. London's exlovers however manage to fuse earnest indie pop guitars with cooing harmonies and spine tingling choruses that are just completely irrestible.
They combine all the best bits of Britpop, shoe gaze and alt rock in their sound, with Pulp, Teenage Fanclub and Dandy Warhols being most pronounced in the mix.
Hopefully, their first album should be ready next year, it can't come soon enough.
A break from the usual as it's almost the end of the year. The next few blogs will look back at 2010, praising and panning those who deserve it. We start by looking forward, to next year, and the five artists worth getting really excited about. You get one a day for the next five...
Jamie Woon
In the loosest possible terms, Jamie Woon is a soul singer. But he's not about to do a Plan B and start offering out Marvin Gaye lite, no, Woon has his own take on the much mined genre. For his debut album, he's worked with king of dubstep Burial and his material has the same spacious grace that makes dubstep such a beloved sub genre. His debut single "Night Air" has the same delicious melancholia of Portishead and early Massive Attack, hauntingly beautiful and incredibly infectious. Hopefully his first record, due in March, will be full of more of the same.
Technically, you’d have to say Alesha Dixon runs a portfolio career. Once a member of girl band Mis Teeq, she’s best known these days for being a judge on Strictly Come Dancing. She’s also been trying her hand at TV presenting, column dictating and has been attempting since Mis Teeq’s demise to forge a name as a solo artist. So far with little success.
The benchmark for Dixon should be Cheryl Cole. They’re both more famous for judging other people than their own output and despite being background members of girl bands, have to become the only members of their outfits to have solo careers.
Dixon however is nowhere near as shrewd choser of a pop song as the Colemeister. All her tracks so far have been about as exciting as a paving slab. Sludgy ballads with emotional lobotomies. Even “The Boy Does Nothing”, her rattlely upbeat number that had a video covered in ballroom dancers (see dancers, making the connection, people can be so forgetful you see) was an oddly empty track. Her biggest hit “Breathe Slow” went from being pedestrian to passable when it was remixed by Cahill, but she’s yet to have a proper big hit. And she won’t get one either, if she keeps picking tracks like new single “Radio.”
This as cold and neutered as pop songs get. It’s supposed to be love lorn, it’s supposed to be a tribute to emotional turmoil. It’s neither of those things, the lyrics are clumsy and it is incredibly one paced. Written by Chipmunk collaborator Emeli Sande, it lacks any tangible heart or soul, with Dixon pleading with listeners to turn off the radio. She only needs to say it one or twice before most will oblige.
Even when compared with Dixon’s early career in Mis Teeq, this feels like a let down. Mis Teeq only had one or two decent tracks, but they were feisty and likeable with Dixon providing a streetwise, bolshy vocal to supplement her bandmates. Now she just sounds wounded all the time, lacking any musical personality or authority, drifting from ballad to ballad, photocopying a vocal performance, forever destined to under whelm.
Dixon’s constant presence in the public eye will buy her more time with her record label, but this just isn’t good enough.
Normally, introductions to a single are packed with details about the artist's past endeavours and future plans, but, you'd imagine, most people are pretty up to date with the background of this particular artist, and, well, it's difficult to have future plans when you're dead.
If you've just escaped from a padded cell however, Michael Jackson was a pop singer who sold a lot of records and spent a lot of money. Check him out. He made some decent records.
Key word there, "Was", as in no longer, not anymore, dearly departed and very much missed. Jackson died in 2009. Yet he's still making records apparently, with the mystinfingly successful Akon. They've done a duet. Yes, a duet, they've called it a duet. To emphasise this, Akon even shouts "Akon and MJ" over the hammy synthesised strings that start the song. This is Jackson's record label saying "This is real, this is genuine, we've got Derek Acorah in and apparently Michael's fine with it."
The track itself is non description blandness of the worst kind, much like many of Jackson's later releases. Akon does his stereotypical pleading whine over the top of a sickly sweet backing track, while bits of Jackson float in and out, cut and pasted with the skill and delicacy of a five year old making a collage.
It's cringe worthy in the extreme and goes well beyond homage territory and into downright exploitation.
When artists die young, it's only natural that people want to know more about them and find lost treasures. Take Nirvana or Jeff Buckley, who's careers both ended with only meagre back catalogues built up. There's a need and clearly a market for releasing whatever you can find in those cases.
Jackson though is different. He made albums for forty years and has more than enough material released with his living approval for this to be completely unneccessary. Tracks like this, should be left alone, on the cutting room floor where they belong.
Scraping the barrel? That's much too dignified for what this is. If it flops, as it deserves to, then hopefully this will stop any future plans. If it succeeds? Jackson may be the new Tupac.
To everyone who's not a signed up fan, N-Dubz are a bit of a joke. They (And by they, you're usually talking about Dino "Dappy" Contostavlos and Richard "Fazer" Rawson, not Tulisa) dress like they've been left in Urban Outfitters with the lights off, make headlines for the wrong reasons all the time and yet both are keen fishers and love flying model planes. They make hip hop for pre teens. Hormone hop, if you like.
Hormone hop is though a profitable place to pitch yourself though, N-Dubz have shifted over a million albums so far and are just about to release their third, entitled "Love.Live.Life."
They've been working with Salaam Remi on their new record, which is quite a coup and perhaps a sign they're looking to be taken a bit more seriously. Previously Dappy and Fazer had produced the albums themselves and it's a surprise to see them handing over control to a third party. Remi has an excellent track record though, he's worked extensively with Nas, a rapper even non rap fans love and was the first person to work with Amy Winehouse, producing her debut album.
The band have talked up a sonic change, especially as they're being geared up to have a big go at the US market this time round. They want new fans, older fans and to see their albums in the hands of adults who aren't just buying it as gifts for their children.
Their comeback single "Girls" doesn't show any sign of a change though as it starts in the way every N-Dubz seems to, with a blast of "Na na....niiiigghhhh" giving way to a garage band beat.
Lyrically, it's no more refined either, with the opening line of "Girls, I fuck wid dem, I dan't usually fall in luv wid em."
Remi has had some effect though, especially when you compare this track to their early stuff. When Dappy and Fazer controlled everything, the tracks were a lot more theatrical and dramatic, with big crescendos and very clearly defined choruses. "Girls" is a much steadier track, with the beat being allowed to develop as the song progresses.
Is it enough of a departure to win over any new fans? No, it's not. The lyrical posturing is still there, as is the clunking hip hop cliche of singing about batting armies of girls away. The beat and structure might be subtler and a little more elegant, but love them or hate them, this is still N-Dubz and they won't have anyone reappraising them just yet.
It's hardly unusual for hip hop tracks to have collaborators all over them or to borrow a famous pair of lungs for their choruses, but Bobby Ray Simmons Jr or B.O.B to you and me, has made more use of guest vocalists than most.
His first track "Nothin On You" featured the vocal talents of rocketing soul singer Bruno Mars in its gentle litlting hook and his second release and breakthrough hit, "Airplanes" crossed over into a whole new market, thanks to Paramore's Hayley Williams heartfelt chorus.
Both singles did superbly, with "Airplanes" in particular sticking around in the charts for nigh on three months.
Third time out, B.O.B has turned to a more experienced man to supply the chorus. Weezer frontman and famous mental person Rivers Cuomo, who's approaching his twentieth anniversary in the music industry, sings the catchy as you like chorus of "Magic".
It's not a bad track, full of bouncy keyboards and it's got a hook that's very hummable. Cuomo is at his poppy best, with the charm and enthuiaism that make Weezer such a likeable rock band all over this track.
It has a summer party feel to it and is the kind of track you'd think Travie McCoy would be proud to put his name to.
The trouble is for B.O.B, the best and only memorable bit in this song is the chorus. The rap, which is delivered at a ferocious pace, is rendered forgettable by the track's glossy production and as a result, it'll pass most people by.
This isn't the first time this has happened. "Airplanes" might have stuck around for a long time, but that was because of Williams' vocal and the impact of Paramore's ever widening fanbase. B.O.B's verses served as nothing but build up, with his rhymes reduced to bum notes against William's earnest vocal delivery.
On each one of his releases, B.O.B has basically been reduced to a guest artist on his own song. He lets his collaborator become the track's focus and dominate the listener's attention, so whether his words are worth listening to or not, they're buried in the background.
B.O.B needs to strike out on his own next time round and see the public responds.
He was due to do so on his next track single "Don't Let Me Fall", which is a solo track in its album version, but guess what? It's being remixed as we speak to feature rising star Heather Vesey. Someone said once that if you something isn't broken, there's not much point in repairing it. Chances are, B.O.B's label have been guided by the same logic.
If you read the lyrics to "Airplanes", you'll learn of a man craving to go back to a time when he wasn't famous. If he's not careful or he runs out of luck in finding collaborators, his wish will be granted.
Rihanna is probably the finest pop star in the world at the moment. That's pop star defined as arena filling, every single a hit type pop star. There are better artists making better records, but as far as household names go, Rihanna rules supreme at the moment.
That's entirely down to her choice of songs, as she mixes it up with great aplomb, excelling in a variety of styles. She can do soulful ballads like "Take A Bow" and "Rehab" without making you reach for the sick bucket. She can do slick, posturing R&B superbly, especially "Rude Boy" and "Hard". And, most crucially, she pick you a hit, like, well, "Umbrella."
She also has an enviable work ethic, with two albums in the last two years. The promotional singles for her last record "Rated R" have actually bled into the build to her new long player "Loud" with both "Hard" and "Rude Boy" still a common site on many music channels.
Her new track, the first UK release from her new album, is "Only Girl (In The World)" and, once again, it's a sonic departure from her previous record.
Much of "Rated R" was hard edged poppy R&B, full of bite and swagger, with production from UK dance duo Chase and Status and Ne-Yo amongst others. It was fun, playful and packed with singles that seem to bait the listener, saying throughout "Am I supposed to be impressed?" It worked a treat, three million sales a treat, but it's not a vein that Rihanna has decided she wants to extend to two albums worth of stuff.
"Only Girl (In The World)" is built like a dance record. Or, more specifically, like the kind of track that ruled the Ibiza dancefloors in the early 1990s. It has something of Snap's "Rhythm Is A Dancer" or Urban Cookie Collective in its make up, with earnest vocals playing out over a pulsating keyboard refrain.
It probably sits best in Rihanna's back catalogue alongside "SOS" and "Pon Da Replay" and it's a little bit of a let down following on from her "Rated R" stuff. She had an aloofness to her image that was worth pursuing and this sounds a little needier, keener to please and to played on every sticky dancefloor on a Saturday night.
"Only Girl (In The World)" actually feels a bit retro, which, for a girl who was always quietly challenging in who she worked with and songs she released, is a something of a disapointment. This track could have been recorded by any number of acts, including people like Cascada. Though it's still a decent tune and won't have people switching their car radios off, it doesn't have the bite of "Hard" or the playful teasing quality of "Rude Boy" and suffers for it.
Most musicians are pretty lax about letting younger artists raid their back catalogues for inspiration, so it takes something to bring a band to the brink of legal action against a young pop starlet. But get ready, it's all set to be the Red Hot Chili Peppers vs Diana Vickers in a court of law soon.
The two tracks in question are the Chilis classic 1991 track “Under The Bridge” and Vickers’ new single “My Wicked Heart.” The choruses of which are so similar, it’s borderline laughable. Vickers hasn’t helped herself with her response to it either, admitting she’d listened to it the day before and had noticed the similarity. There’s only one dignified out of this for Vickers, and that’s handing over all the royalties from the track to the Chilis. Either that or lose it court, owe costs and look really stupid.
This is out of step, because, in her fledgling pop career so far, Vickers has actually made some pretty smart choices. She’s worked with Guy Sigsworth, who’s half of Frou Frou with Imogen Heap on some of the tracks from her debut record “Songs From The Tainted Cherry Treee” as well as Ellie Goulding, Nerina Pallot and Starsmith. She’s made the impression of someone who wants to follow more in the vein of Goulding and Florence Welsh than of Leona Lewis or Alexandra Burke, but thus far, she’s only succeeded in putting out watered down, smoothed out versions of the people she’s worked with. And this has never been more evident than on “My Wicked Heart.”
Even if you leave aside the plagiarism, this is one of the weakest singles released this year. It goes nowhere and does nothing. There’s never any momentum created and Vickers not so subtle attempt to channel a bit of Florence Welch’s taste for the bombastic, never sparks even the smallest speck of feeling. At least Burke and Lewis are slick and efficient in what they do, Vickers is just hiding behind a smokescreen of pseudo indie to distract from the fact her songs aren’t good enough. Even the horn section, chucked in half way through the track, can’t stop this sounding like a pompous bit of dirge.
There’s no point comparing it to “Under The Bridge”, that is a beautifully written, heartfelt pop song that will move people till the end of time, subtle drug references and all. This is a shoddy, half arsed piece of fluff, lacking in momentum and merit.
It doesn’t matter who you work with or how you dress, you’ll get nowhere if you churn out sub standard songs and this is a prime example of that.
For someone who’s often said the media make her life difficult, Cheryl Cole has been at best naïve, and at worst, very cynical, in the songs she’s chosen to release thus far.
Her first single outside of Girls Aloud, “Fight For This Love” was a righteous sounding pop song that told the listener that love with worth fighting for. Parallels with her personal life, were and remain, indisputable. So after her split with Ashley Cole last year and her many statements about her hatred of media intrusion, you’d think she might have chosen songs about subjects that could be less directly linked to her former husband. She hasn’t, especially as she’s picked the same songwriter who penned “Fight For This Love.” Wayne Wilkins, who’s also written for Natasha Bedingfield and Michelle Williams.
His latest creation, “Promise This”, the lead off single from her second album “Messy Little Raindrops” is a lot more low key than “Fight For This Love.” It doesn’t have either the instantaneousness of that track, which, whether you loved or hated the content, had a chorus that took hold in your brain like chewing gum to an oversized trainer. It’s also much less brash, less in your face.
The track is built like a classy piece of electro pop, much more low key than her previous work which had Will.I.Am’s bolshy, attention seeking production all over it. This is much less aggressive and more refined, with layered electronics and a gentle nagging bassline. It’s more nuanced and actually much much better. Comparisons are, of course, far and wide, with names from Kate Bush to Madonna in the mix. The best way to encapsulate this track though, is it’s the kind of thing Tori Amos might have written if she’d had an arena tour booked and really needed a number one hit.
“Promise This” also has some bizarre bits of French in the bridge, with Cole repeating the words “Alouette uette uette” which translates as “Skylark lark lark” throughout the track. Whether this is an attempt to be abstract or just what happened to fit the instrumental is unclear, but given Cole hasn’t given been too fussed in the past about making people look for deeper meanings in the songs she picks, it’s unlikely this is a deeply veiled dig at someone. To be fair, Cole and her bandmates told us not two years ago they couldn’t speak French, so it’s no surprise that this dabble en francais ends up with something quite so nonsensical.
This track is, for want of a better word, promising. It hints Cole may actually have carried through the nouse that made Girls Aloud such excellent choosers of songwriters into her solo career and she might end up selling records for other reasons then her likeable media persona. Names linked with her new album include Starsmith, Ne-Yo and Australian geniuses Nervo, all of which bodes pretty well.
Let’s hope her second album is full of songs about the first world war, ham sandwiches and Morocco, anything but more non-subtle references to her marriage. The tabloids’ appetite might be never ending, but for those of us who actually like music, enough was, quite a well ago, enough.
Victoria Louise Lott. Nicknamed Pixie by her friends. Discovered after singing for record impresario L.A Reid and an arena filling pop star in waiting. Her first song “Mama Do”, a mix of neutered Winehouse soul pop and Pussycat Dolls sub sass went straight to number one. And ever since then she’s been trying to establish herself as a sort of less interesting Mariah Carey, which is hard to imagine, but think about it, all sludgy ballads and slick uptown doo wop, just like early Mariah.
Her debut album’s done quite well though, 600 000 selling well and her label think she’s got what it takes to make it Stateside. So they’re re-releasing said debut album “Turn It Up” as “Turn It Up Louder” (Do you see what they did there? Do you? It’s very clever) with a bunch of new tracks, much like the Saturdays did just weeks ago. To go with this new release, Lott has a new single out, bizarrely titled “Broken Arrow.”
This track is one of the worst you’ll hear this year. It’s boring, it’s pedestrian, it’s whiny and it is violently off putting from start to finish. It’s the kind of ballad Leona Lewis would reject for being too drippy.
Throughout the track she sounds like she’s permanently in tears. And not good heartbroken tears that drip poetry all over sad songs, the kind of tears little boys cry when they’re told they can’t have an ice cream. Whiny, cellophane like tears that induce irritation rather than empathy. Her diction is appalling; most of the words seem to blend into each other, making it pretty difficult to decipher exactly what the words are. At least with Mariah you can hear every word clearly.
What exactly is a broken arrow anyway? It’s not particularly great symbolism. Most people don’t own arrows or if they did it’s unlikely they’d compare them to their lovesick hearts. Unless this was written for the last Robin Hood movie and rejected (you wouldn’t bet against that though) then it all seems a bit silly.
Pixie Lott is the Netto of pop stars. Compare her to Robyn. Actually that’s not fair; there are very few pop stars that are as talented as Robyn. Ok, compare her to Katy Perry, even the new stuff and it’s like comparing champagne with Skol lager. She’s so sub standard it’s almost embarrassing. And this track is the worst thing she’s ever done, which takes some doing.
When Mark Ronson first started to be noted as someone other than a guy who DJed at gold plated parties, he initially tried to make it as a sort of Timbaland esque hip hop guru. When this didn’t work, he put his headphones back on and helped produce some incredibly successful albums, including Amy Winehouse’s “Back To Black” and Lily Allen’s “Alright, Still.” Credited with bringing something remarkable from both those artists, he stepped out in the spotlight again with “Version” his covers album which basically took 12 songs that were perfectly fine as they were and added some brass to them. Luke warmly received, but with some famous names appearing as guest vocalists, it sold quite well and quickly became coffee table fodder. He went away again after that and produced Adele, Estelle and Christina Aguilera, clearly becoming the go to guy if you want to sound like you’ve listened to a lot of motown records but have roughly 20 times the budget of the Supremes. Now he’s back with a new album “Record Collection” with, get this, all original material and another slew of guest vocalists, including former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall, Boy George, once golden soul man D’Angelo and the View’s Kyle Falconer, who guests on new single “The Bike Song.”
What Ronson wants, what he desperately craves, is to be a tastemaker, a link for the public at large into the artists he loves. He tried it with Daniel Merriweather and one reasonable ballad aside, that didn’t work. Now he’s trying something slightly different, to take artists on the outskirts of the mainstream and bring them to wider attention and to take a few faded icons and restore them to glory. So why he’s chosen Falconer as the man to help him to do this is bizarre. The View were never any good, never. They had a couple of minor hits, but their second album (Yes, that’s right, they’ve released two albums) “Which Bitch” bombed so spectacularly they were lucky not to be dropped and Falconer’s drunken mess of a voice, which had charmed some people for precisely ten minutes, was reduced to a muddy wheeze. Even on “The Bike Song” in which he is charged with the simple task of saying “Gonna ride my bike until I get home” and with Ronson’s admittedly impressive way of cleaning up his voice, it’s still borderline inaudible. The rest of it is passable, in a sort of expensive advertising campaign way, sounding jaunty without ever making you think at all. Even when kooky rapper Spank Rock turns up things don’t really motor. It hums along, efficiently, but predictably. Meshing together the hip hop beats of Ronson’s early days with the layered cushioning of his later work, it’s got elements of Primal Scream, Beastie Boys and Groove Armada thrown in, without any of the spark and danger of those acts. On this and the early clips from the record, it just feels like Ronson is trying so desperately hard all the time. Trying to be cool, trying to be the kind of musician that critics talk about on late night review shows while still being played in supermarket check outs. It’s not working at the moment.
Sporting his new bleached haircut, Ronson actually now has much in common with another man with scarily blonde hair, Mr Hudson. He’s mates with the right people, he’s got half decent taste in music and ultimately, his future is behind the controls, not in front of the mic. Whether it’s enough for either of them to be just a producer is doubtful, but it’s where they’re both better off. There’s no shame in making other people sound good, it’s a skill few people possess, both men should be proud of it and strive to keep bringing the best out of the artists they work with.
Ronson‘s latest, along with the whole of his last record, is expensive lift music. He’s better off producing, helping to craft the rough cuts of bolshy boys and girls into shape. He should worry less about being famous and remember that people are still writing and talking about Phil Spector, Dr. Dre and Tony Visconti, and, if Ronson produces a few more records as good as “Back To Black” they’ll write about him too. If that comes off, this will at best be a footnote.
Most female R&B stars can be lumped into two categories. There’s the warblers with the big entourages and earnest sounding heartbroken ballads. See Mary J.Blige and Whitney. Then there are the sassy queens with their finger wagging, ice cool pop, like Beyonce and Ashanti. And occasionally there the ones who come seemingly from outer space with music that sounds like nothing else. These artists include Lauren Hill, Erykah Badu and now Janelle Monae.
“Cold War” is taken from her album “ArchAndroid” which is an album inspired by the 1927 film Metropolis. It tells the story of Cindy Mayweather, a messianic android sent back in time to free the citizens of Metropolis from oppression. Sci-fi inspired R&B soul sounds awful, this isn’t, it’s wonderful. Gloriously catchy, full of life and verve.
As long awaited reunions go, this is easily the dullest.
It ought not to have been. With hundreds of millions of words and column inches given over to the feud between Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, the first time they're musically together again should have been a Doherty/Barat esque bit of songwriting. All spine tingling double entendre. Instead of this, they've cooked up a drab bit of pop music. It's not terrible, it's something far far worse, it's smug.
Whilst this track was never going to be as good as the sum of its parts, you'd at least expect them to go all out. A big, lush orchestral production, with lyrics of betrayal and spite. Not this, a plodding bit of melancholia. They don't duck the option of exploring their history, but there's no real feeling, no anger, no hint at the resentment Barlow must have felt when Williams became the biggest pop star in the world or when Williams was cast out by Take That. They skirt around the issues, smiling coyly in a way that says "Look at us, haven't we done well" rather than lay their souls open. Even the drippy reference to feeling bad at seeing the other’s posters up in a toy shop, smacks as being what rhymed with the previous line rather than a genuine anecdote.
Musically its more Phil Collins than anything else. Predictable and sappy. Really not worth the wait.
It’s a well known fact that success in the X Factor is no guarantee of any kind of career, in the lasting more than four years sense. There are those who’ve excelled like Leona Lewis and Will Young. Those who did ok and then gracefully went away, like Shayne Ward and Rhydian and the utter failures. Steve Brookstein anyone?
Last year’s runner up Olly Murs has decided now is the time to unleash himself on the pop world, presumably because winner Joe McElderry is still being told by Simon Cowell and whoever else he has follow him around that he’d better do a Leona and wait till they’ve found at least four decent tunes before he actually releases anything. Murs, unfortunately, has been the recipient of less good advice as to pen his debut single, he’s teamed up with Claude Kelly, the man behind most of Christina Aguliera’s poorly received new direction and the odd album track for Miley Cyrus and Kesha. Kelly’s back catalogue is solid and unspectacular, a lot like Murs’ debut single “Please Don‘t Me Go.”
The single is a plodding, middle of the road stinker, with no spark, verve or even decent melody. It’s lilting pop by numbers, with Murs clearly deciding he doesn’t want to start out with a big ballad and would like to market himself as a sort of sub Jason Mraz, the kind of singer who can play Blue Peter, have a drink with the lads and not get bottled off at V Festival. He may well start wearing vintage hats, kooky trousers and start talking up how much he loves the Flaming Lips in interviews, but the whole façade is paper thin. His label have clearly made the decision that the success of singer songwriters like Mraz, Joshua Radin and Jack Johnson is the kind of thing he should be emulating, they’ve perhaps decided this because it’ll be cheaper than recording with a big orchestra and you can pass off all kind of naff rubbish off as easy going pop. There’s no urge to try new things or do anything other than the bare minimum. No-one will mind it, but no-one will love it either.
The prospect for Murs’ debut album don’t seem high either, with collaborators including Scouting For Girls and Preston, it’s going to be so middle of the road, it’ll be in the central reservation.
Murs probably falls in the middle category of X Factor hopefuls, he’ll do alright for a while and he’s definitely got more potential than McElderry, but that’s not saying much. It seems likely he’ll do a Leon and not a Leona.
When Katy Perry first arrived all those months ago, she seemed like the perfect pop star in waiting. She had an insanely catchy single in “I Kissed A Girl”, a track which stirred just the right amount of bile in the right wing press to score tonnes of publicity and airplay. She had an interesting back story. She was raised in staunchly Christian household and learned her trade as a gospel church singer (including releasing an album of gospel material under her real name Katy Hudson in 2001). She spoke of being inspired by Alanis Morissette, Shirley Manson and Joan Jett, and looked like she was ready to inject some life into a flagging pop scene. Which she did, a bit, getting famous in the process, meeting and getting engaged to Russell Brand and turning into the kind of artist record label talk about in their meetings with shareholders. After a brief spell away, she’s returned with a new record “Teenage Dream” and a new single, the title track, which follows on from number one hit “California Gurls.”
It’s not very good, “Teenage Dream” that is. Especially after the summery pop of “California Gurls” with its tongue in cheek lyrics and hyperactive sense of melody. “Teenage Dream” is a whopper of a comedown and a bizarre choice for a second single. Though you can see the logic in Perry’s record label deciding they need to convince those undecided about buying her album that she can do sensitive too, this track is just a plodding mess. It never gets going, with drilled percussion and borrowed keyboards that go from pedestrian to prosaic. Electronics buzz banally, things stutter and hum with the chorus coming and going without any kind of fanfare. It’s nowhere near as good as “Hot n’Cold” or “Waking Up In Vegas”, it’s not even as good as “Thinking Of You.”
Lyrically it’s boring in the extreme, with Perry dredging up Nicholas Sparks style tributes to a man who makes her happy. She’ll reward him by “going all the way tonight” and having “..no regrets” about it, which is nice for him, whoever he is.
The track’s principal writer and producer Dr.Luke has let himself down here. Having fashioned a reputation as pretty much the go to guy for a guitar driven pop song. He’s knocked out tunes for Kesha, Miley Cyrus, Jordin Sparks, Britney Spears and countless others. He’s responsible for turning Kelly Clarkson from trying to be Whitney Houston to wanting to front Skunk Anansie and for writing nearly all of Avril Lavigne’s latest offerings. A master at turning in cheeky, bombastic pop rock, this isn’t up to his usual standard.
This is hardly a blow for pop music. Perry was never offering anything particularly original, it just so happened she’d met the right people, chosen the right songwriters and created a persona just wacky enough to win column inches, but never strange enough to push eyebrows up. She can, however, do much better than this.
If there’s one word that sums up pretty much everything about Manchester based electro duo Hurts, it’s poise. They just have so much of it. Watch them perform live and you’ll see a show more choreographed than the longest running West End show, visuals sparkle behind the band as they play, usually backed by an opera singer to accentuate the already pretty enormous choruses.
Both of the duo nearly made it as part of Duran Duran aping act Daggers, but now it’s just the two of them, Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson have clearly decided that in their second attempt at bandom, they will do things their way. Their way is one of exactness and decadence, with lavish videos, sharp suits and videos that look more like fashion adverts than new band promos. Slicked hair and stilted poses meet with the mournful bits of the eighties, only smoother and with better lyrics. If you come across them by accident, as many will, then it’s impossible not to be swept along by their songs.
New single “Wonderful Life” is a completely enchanting and enthralling track, mostly because it really shouldn’t work. Telling the story of a man’s attempt at suicide on the Severn Bridge over a bombastic backdrop, straight out of the Ultravox back catalogue, should be a recipe for complete and total disaster. But it’s not. It’s graceful throughout, with a swirling instrumental section and an chorus the postman will have no trouble humming. Whether you’re hearing it for the first or fifteenth time you can’t help be spellbound by it, every nuance is arresting, challenging and invigorating. It’s brilliant.
Hurts will either have a long, sustained career of classy pop songs or burn out in glorious, decadent failure. Each one will be just as fascinating to watch.
It’s really difficult to whip any kind of feeling verging on real emotion when you’re talking about the Saturdays. That’s because they’re just fine. They package decent pop songs quite nicely, without ever doing anything daring or interesting, never opting for singles that critics drool over, a‘la Girls Aloud. Opting for safe, mostly successful choices every time. A classic five girl line up, each member possessing with a voice indistinguishable from the others. Happy to do interviews till their tongues drop off, nearly all in relationships with high profile gentleman, it’s a record label’s dream. They’re also clearly happy to go along with whatever their superiors tell them to do, given their choice to release a new “mini album” this summer. Said album is just a repackaging of tracks that appeared on their 2009 album “Wordshaker” with one new track “Missing You” tagged on it to avoid trading standards getting in touch.
“Missing You” itself is a pretty drab track. It would desperately like to be written by Robyn or Annie, but lacks any real sentiment. It’s slick, it’s polished, but its instantly forgettable. Slower than the tracks that the Saturdays do best, especially last year’s James Bourne penned “Forever Is Over” which was a real zinger of a break up song. It seems to be more a case of put something out, anything, than really releasing something they love.
Why bother with all this mini album business? Their profile seems high enough as it is, but doubtless their record label felt that going a year without an album was too much of a risk and they sold the idea to the girls on the basis they’d be forgotten if they didn’t. You’d imagine the conversation went something like this:
Record Label: We’d like you to put out a new mini album, mainly with tracks from your last album.
The Saturdays: But that seems silly, surely people already own all the songs?
Record Label: Details. People won’t notice.
The Saturdays: They might.
Record Label: They won’t.
The Saturdays: What if they do?
Record Label: We’ve covered all the bases, we’ve given it a different name, something like….(picks up a newspaper) Headlines. That’ll do.
The Saturdays: We’re not sure about that.
Record Label: It’s better than Wordshaker.
The Saturdays: True.
Record Label: Right. I’m glad we’re all agreed, I’ll book the studio now.
The Saturdays: Can we at least record some new stuff?
Record Label: One track. That’s it. I’m pretty sure we’ve still got some tracks left over from the Pixie Lott sessions, we’ll use one of those.
The Saturdays: Can’t we make a new album?
Record Label: No, too expensive. Plus all the good songs written in the last year will be on Kylie/Sophie Ellis Bextor/Sugababes new albums.
The Saturdays: Then why can’t we just not release an album this year?
Record Label: Because the public will forget you.
The Saturdays: They won’t. Our fans love us.
Record Label: Your fans are mostly ten and under, that’s the second most forgetful demographic, after the over 70s, we can’t risk you being forgotten.
The Saturdays: I’m sure you’re wrong, people remember the bands they like.
When nu metal thundered to a halt in the early noughties, there were a lot of casualties. Korn have faded to almost nothing, Limp Bizkit became a joke (whether they were ever anything else is debatable), Deftones are still great, but on a much smaller scale and bands like Taproot, Adema, Papa Roach, Ill Nino are, well, pretty much dead. The one band though who came through the transition without so much as a worried glance, were Linkin Park.
And came through spectacularly. Even now, ten years on from their debut “Hybrid Theory” which yielded a Thriller aping seven singles, they're one of the biggest bands in the world. To go with the band there’s their own travelling festival, the accompanying tracks to the Transformers series, easily the world's biggest franchise and albums that sell by the ocean liner load. Their last album, 2007's "Minutes To Midnight" shifted over five million copies and they moved from the world's arenas to football stadiums. After a brief hiatus to dick around with side projects and have children, they're back, with a new album "A Thousands Suns", their second on the trot with uber producer and saviour of Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin.
All the talk from the band that precedes their new single "The Catalyst" is of reinvention. New starts, new directions, experimentation, trying new sounds for the first time and seeing where it takes them. Bands often talk like this. Most of them are lying. Judging by "The Catalyst", Linkin Park definitely are.
That's not to say they're deliberately misleading everyone, but this is not their “Berlin” or “Kid A”. Experimentation to the California sextet clearly means chucking a few more keyboards on the track and a few more sound effects. “The Catalyst” is still a big. Stomping. Rock Song.
To give the band their dues, the vocals are more distorted and the guitars may be secondary to the electronics, but the Park (as someone, presumably calls them)'s lyrics of alienation and betrayal are still there, the mournful bridge after the second chorus is present and correct, and Bennington's familiar soaring vocal power towers over the track. It works. All Linkin Park’s songs work. They’re carefully put together creations, test tube fostered stadium rock. The riffs are just simple enough for thirteen year olds to figure out on their first Squire guitars, the lyrics speak of pain and suffering without ever being too grimy or specific and the chorus is stickier than a theme park bin.
There are flecks of something new, especially the lack of guitars, but you can’t call it a departure. Maybe there’s more experimentation to come from the album, that’d be a turn up though. They discovered a long time ago what they do well and they wouldn’t have ditched the rapping that graced their first two albums with so much consummate ease if they didn’t really care what people thought. Whether they worried about alienating anybody is something only they know, but this is no big departure or break with the past. This is a song to be sung by thousands in fields and stadiums for the next two years. That’s what they do.
McFly have managed to pull off the most difficult of tricks, that of maintaining a large fanbase for more than two or three years dishing out sugar coated pop. Adored by hoards of young girls and boys and grudgingly nodded to by sneerers as they write their own stuff, the four lads have enjoyed charmed lives, headlining the UK’s biggest venues and ruling the charts with single after single.
But now they’re the elder statesmen of pop and they don’t like it. Who would? It’s a horrible title. Their fanbase is also aging, and they need a fresh injection of interest. Which this new single will certainly bring. Especially given their last two records have been inspired by bands like the Who, Queen and The Jam, their new creation, “Party Girl” is one hell of a sidestep.
The band have been off in the States working with Dallas Austin, a man who pretty much invented the term super producer. He's worked with everyone from Jacko to Gwen Stefani and clearly knows his way round a hit single. What he seems to have done for McFly is turned everything up, told them to put their guitars down and see what they can mine from the last two years of pop. From this, you get “Party Girl.”
It’s a good track, especially after you've got over the initial shock that this is the same band that recorded "Five Colours In Her Hair" and "All About You.” The guitars are gone and they’ve been replaced with banging colourful synths and a sleazy bassline. It’s Scissor Sisters meets Green Day, it’s Paramore remixed by David Guetta, it’s…actually a lot like early Savage Garden, when the Antipoedean duo were first around, with “Break Me, Shake Me” and “Tears Of Pearl” Aggressive vocals smashed over fist pumping electronica.
Austin has clearly been working in pop production for too long to ignore the current trends, and there's plenty of Red One, Space Cowboy and Guetta all over this one. The distorted vocals, the euphoria laced synths and the driving rhythm actually make it a track that would sound more comfortable coming out of festival speakers than a teenage girl's bedroom. It is, as always with anything Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones pen, insanely catchy.
What this new direction will gain McFly will be interesting to see. You can’t imagine Delphic or Klaxons fans going out to grab their new album, nor can you imagine that they’re suddenly going to be booked at Creamfields, but for Radio One listeners who liked the sound of La Roux, Ellie Goulding and Hadouken and wished they had something you could play in city centre nightclubs, this might be it.
Others will do poppy electronica better, but it’s gratifying to see a band like McFly trying new things.
Hi. I'm Tom Goodwyn. And I miss reviewing singles.
So, I'm going to start again. Write here on this very page.
Normally I'm the music writer for the Oxford Times (you can find my stuff here http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/music_and_books/). I also write reviews for Loud & Quiet and occasionally for some other people.
The way this blog/webpage/assault at the Pulitzer Prize is going to work is I'm going to pick a track to review every week. It'll be one that's currently all over the radio, youtube and music TV.
