Mary J Blige's London Sessions continue to impress

Mary J Blige loves London. She loves London so much that the "J" now stands for "jolly good". And the latest track from her London Sessions album is jolly good, too.

But here's the strange thing - even though Therapy was written with Baron Samuel Terence Mountjoy Smithington III (pictured above), the bluesy, doo-wop and backing track sounds much more American than anything else she's previewed from the record.

Lyrically, too, her stiff upper lip has started to wobble. "Why would I spend the rest of my days unhappy... when I can go to therapy two times a day?" sings Mary, in a most unbecoming manner. She sounds far too excitable for polite society, wailing and cussing like a lady's maid having an attack of the vapors. Tsk Tsk.

Good song, though.

Mary J Blige - Therapy

Therapy is one of those "instant gratification" tracks, so you can own it today if you pre-order The London Sessions on iTunes. Or just listen to it on YouTube like I just did.

Tweet

Songs you may have missed: Christmas release schedule special

This is the part where a dozen songs are gathered into a list and presented for your listening pleasure.

With Q4 in full swing, this week's selection is jam-packed with songs from major artists hoping to make you part ways with your Christmas pay packet. Starting with...

1) Taylor Swift - Out Of The Woods
"To all my wonderful UK fans, I realize that you are not able to get Out of the Woods due to a new strategy my record label is working on in the UK," said Taylor Swift on Tumblr, after her single was released in every other country except Britain.

Britain, coincidentally, was where she'd spent the previous week on a huge promotional tour, talking animatedly about the single she was releasing next week, suggesting the label hadn't bothered to explain their new strategy to her, and had simultaneously failed to mention that the new strategy was pulled from a big red folder called "how to entirely balls up your biggest artist's release schedule and piss everyone off in the process".

Still, thanks to the internet, you can hear it anyway. Well done, everyone.





2) Take That - These Days
The newly slimmed down Take That take a detour back to their boyband roots with this discoriffic Get Lucky tribute.

The best bit of this release was a knife-twisting Radio 2 interview where Howard brushed off the "tragic" loss of Jason Orange, saying: "Jason is the better break dancer, he's always been fantastic, but if I was gay I could never be his boyfriend because he's a bit annoying, and a bit too deep for me."

Ouch.





3) Calvin Harris - Slow Acid
A worrying sign that Calvin wants to be taken seriously. Luckily, this is only a pre-order wish fulfilment track and not an actual single. About as exciting as a damp flannel.




4) McBusted - Air Guitar
It's hard to hate a song that so clearly states: "Don't take me seriously, I'm just having a laugh" - but it's equally hard to love it.

That said, McBusted have turned in a solid fanbase pleaser that tips its hat to Crazy In Love (yay) and Brian May (hmm). Destined to enter the charts at number one and drop to 23 the next week, but in the best possible way.





5) David Bowie - Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)
Indebted somewhat to Scott Walker, this seven minute epic is the first track (!) on Bowie's 89th greatest hits collection, which comes out in time for Christmas. If James Bond caught Ebola, this would play over the title sequence.





6) Alesso ft Tove Lo - Heroes (We Could Be)
It feels cruel to put a song called Heroes under the previous entry. Nothing is going to fare well by comparison to Zavid Bowie's masterpiece, but that's pop for you.

This song, an entirely perfunctory EDM track, is presumably the reason why Tove Lo's debut album has been delayed in the UK. Which is fair enough, I suppose. In all likelihood, this'll creep onto the Radio 1 playlist and give her profile a boost while she's off in the US doing promo.

But if 2015 isn't Tove Lo's year in the UK I am going miffed. Miffed, I tell you.





7) Mary J Blige and Disclosure - Right Here
As previously raved about on these very pages, this collaboration is an absolute belter.

It now comes with a video that makes a huge deal about Mary J Blige actually deigning to visit London. Come on, Mary, it's hardly Aleppo.





8) Jess Glynne - Real Love
While we're on the topic of Mary J Blige, Rather Be hitmaker covered one of Mary's oldest and best songs in the Live Lounge earlier this week. She's really giving it some welly in the YouTube player freeze-frame, isn't she?





9) Jessie Ware - 12
To celebrate the release of her brilliant, downbeat, second album this week, Jessie Ware gave everyone the gift of a free download. 12 is a demo, recorded with Rhye's Robin Hannibal, that didn't make Tough Love's final tracklisting.

"This is a song for my [husband] Sam and I hope you like it," she wrote. "Play it late and go kiss someone x"





10) Embody ft A*M*E - Give Me Your Love
Everybody's favourite asterisked artist pops up on this topical deep house track. OK, it's not as slap-you-in-the-face terrific as Need U (100%) but if you can't dance to this your soul is dead. Oh, and it's a free download.





11) Paperwhite - Pieces
Naming yourself after one of Amazon's Kindle devices isn't going to help your search engine results, but you really should delve deep into Google to hear more from this Brooklyn dream-pop act.

Brother and sister Katie and Ben Marshall sound like they've digested the first 20 volumes of Now... That's What I Call Music to conjure up this blissful 80s throwback anthem. That bubbling marimba line is lifted directly from Lionel Richie's All Night Long, and the chord changes and the harmonies sound like vintage Scritti Politti.

If you only listen to one of the songs on this list, make it this one.





12) Will.i.am and Jimmy Fallon - Ew!
There's a recurring segment on Jimmy Fallon's US chat show, in which he and a guest dress up as teenage girls and lists the things that make them sick. Fallon plays Sara ("and if you're wondering, that's S-A-R-A, with no H, because H's are ew!") while guest stars have included Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift and Lindsay Lohan.

It's ridiculously silly - the sort of thing Trev and Simon would have done on Going Live 20 years ago - but it's gained a Wayne's World-esque cult following. And so there is now a novelty single, produced by Mir.i.am, the teenage alter-ego of will.i.am. Naturally, it's the best thing he's done for years.

BLIMEY - that was quite a list. Hope you found one new favourite in amongst there. More again next week.

Tweet

Nicki Minaj erased from history and 10 other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of songs that slipped through the cracks. The late September collection sounds a lot like this.

1) Jessie J and Ariana Grande - Bang Bang
Amazingly, there are still radio stations that won't play pop songs with a rap breakdown in case it "alienates" their listeners. Never mind that Jay-Z is 44, and Grandmaster Flash is pushing 60 - apparently there are people who cannot comprehend a musical genre that originated five decades ago. It's like a 1970s radio station refusing to play Born To Run because the saxophone solo might remind people of the jazz era.

It doesn't help that the record labels pander to this nonsense, which is why a Nicki Minaj-free version of Bang Bang exists, despite her verse being the only respite from three minutes of sub-Aguilera screeching.






2) Queen + Michael Jackson - There Must Be More To Life Than This
Started in 1981, finished a couple of weeks ago, this track will feature on the upcoming compilation Queen Forever.

Queen's sessions with Jackson allegedly faltered when the King of Pop objected to Freddie Mercury inhaling vast amounts of cocaine in his living room. On the basis of this track, it does sound like Jackson was a little overwhelmed by the moustachioed rock legend, with his fragile, quivering vocals no match for Mercury's bravura performance.

A Jackson-free version of There Must Be More To Life Than This surfaced on Mercury's 1985 solo album Mr Bad Guy. This re-dub has been produced by William Orbit who adds strings, guitars and a bombastic coda that recalls The Beatles' Hello Goodbye.






3) Brika - Options
"Sometimes love isn't enough to stop trains and planes like in the cinemas".

This stripped-back, tabla-powered song is pop at it's most elegant and groovesome. I love it to bits.






4) Hozier - Do I Wanna Know (Live Lounge cover)
A real stand-out moment from Radio One's More Music Month, transforming Arctic Monkeys' rollicking rock stomper into a lachrymose lament. Soul-stirring.





5) Mary J Blige - Whole Damn Year
The second track to emerge from Mary J's London Sessions album is an Emeli Sande / Naughty Boy collaboration, and sounds almost exactly like you'd expect - a break-up ballad in the classic soul template, with a killer vocal and an sucker-punch lyric.

"It took a whole damn year to repair my body," groans Mary J Blige. Ouch.






6) Hugh - One Of These DaysA lolloping, laid-back, smooth-as-peanut-butter groove from London newcomers Hugh.

Apart from being impossible to Google, the four-piece take pride in their melting pot of influences - Soul II Soul, Grizzly Bear, Beach House, Young Disciples. You can hear them all in this track, the opening number from their forthcoming EP.





7) Prides - Out Of The Blue
Hardcore synths, pop melodies and a vowel-chewing Scottish accent? No, it's not Chvrches, but hotly-tipped newcomers Prides. You may have seen them at the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games while you were waiting for Kylie. They were impressive then and they're impressive now - with the 18-months-in-the-making video for Out Of The Blue, one of the tracks that got them noticed last year.




8) The Knocks - Classic (feat. Powers)
The Knocks are great. Powers are great. Together they are classic (do you see what I did there?)

The video, for reasons that are never explained, is a tribute to Machiavellian time-sink computer game The Sims.




9) Jessie Ware - Kind Of, Sometimes, Maybe
I'll be honest. I haven't listened to this, in the hope that there'll be a few surprises on Jessie Ware's album when it finally comes out next month.

But if you're the impatient sort, this Miguel-assisted duet is bound to be a beauty.





10) FKA Twigs - Two Weeks (Live on Later)
FKA Twigs delivered a brilliant, blistering rant about being labelled "alt R&B" in The Guardian last month.

"When I first released music and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like: 'I've never heard anything like this before, it's not in a genre,'" said Tahliah Barnett. "And then my picture came out six months later, now she's an R&B singer. I share certain sonic threads with classical music; my song Preface is like a hymn. So let's talk about that. If I was white and blonde and said I went to church all the time, you'd be talking about the 'choral aspect'. But you're not talking about that because I'm a mixed-race girl from south London."

It's an excellent point. This sounds nothing like R&B. It sounds like the future. And, now that she's been on Jools, I finally know how to dance to it.





11) Breach - The Key (ft Kelis)
Speaking of mis-labelling, Kelis's new album, Food, has been labelled "Alt R&B" - I think on the basis it was produced by a white man from an indie band. Rubbish - it's classic soul with a modern twist, and one of my favourite records of the year so far.

The Key began life as a reworking of Rumble, one of the first singles from the album. But Kelis liked it so much, she jumped into the studio with Breach (aka Ben Westbeech) and re-recorded the vocals. It takes me back to the singer's ahead-of-its-time dance album Fleshtone. In other words, it is excellent.

And that's all for this week. Thanks for tuning in!

Tweet

Right here, right now: Mary J Blige and Disclosure team up

Earlier this year, Mary J Blige did a guest turn on the US version of Disclosure's F For You. Nothing out of the ordinary there - the star power undoubtedly helped get an unknown band onto America's notoriously risk-averse radio stations - but it turns out the collaboration was also the start of a genuine musical love affair.

Earlier this week, Blige announced The London Sessions, a new album of 10 songs recorded over a month in the UK capital with Disclosure, Sam Smith and their regular collaborator Jimmy Napes.

"Our idea was to become part of London," she told The Guardian. "To really embrace the culture — to really live in it. Not that I haven't been here before, but I've never had the chance to really soak it in the way I have this time.

"The music is free over here the way it used to be in the States," she added. "Artists are just free to do what they love... The music is living and breathing — you can hear that from Adele's last album. It was massive — a big deal. But she did what she loved."

The first fruits of the partnership popped onto YouTube about an hour ago, in the form of a track called Right Now. It's everything you might have hoped for, harking back to the early days of Blige's career, when she single-handedly invented hip-hop soul - that mix of hard, urban beats and textured, careworn harmonies that signposted the way for everyone from TLC to Beyonce.

Even more strikingly, it sees Disclosure step up their game in terms of production. The Bo Selecta bleeps that scattered their debut album have been sacrificed in favour of a subtle, spare groove that's 100% in service of the melody.

On this evidence, we're on the cusp of the first essential Mary J Blige album since 2001's No More Drama.

Mary J Blige - Right Now

Tweet

Cheryl gets remixed and 10 other songs you may have missed

A round-up of the songs that slipped through the cracks over the last seven days. This week's selection starts right here.

1) Cheryl Cole - Crazy Stupid Love (Handbag House bootleg)
Scottish remixer Iain Macleod, aka Handbag House, was impressively quick off the mark with this one, uploading his remix of Cheryl's comeback single about 15 hours after it got it's first radio play. He hasn't done a bad job, either.

The image at the top of the page, by the way, is from Cheryl's video shoot earlier this week. The promo is due to "hit the streets" (be uploaded by a record label intern) on Monday.




2) Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
The Ellie Goulding to Kimye's Wills & Kate, here's Lana Del Rey with the title track to her second album. The usual adjectives apply: haunting, gauzy, hazy, woozy, ethereal, dreamy, etc, etc.





3) OneRepublic - Love Runs Out
"Love Runs Out was originally going to be the first single on our album but I couldn't crack the chorus" Ryan Tedder told me earlier this year. "It gutted me because I had it marked on the board as 'first single' for six months."

It's a good thing he kept working on it, as it would have been a shame to lose this gospel-pop gem.

"I'll be your light, your match, your burning sun," he sings over an insistent piano rhythm, that harks back to Moby's Bessie Wright sampling hit Honey.

4) Ella Eyre - If I Go
Ella's trying out the old Lionel Richie "Dancing On The Ceiling" trick for this video - but she's overlooked one crucial detail. While Lionel had a tightly controlled afro, her shaggy lion's mane always falls in the direction of gravity, giving away the secret of the optical illusion (it's a rotating box).

Amazing song, though. What. A. Voice.




5) Klaxons - Show Me A Miracle
A cross between an ITV Chart Show ident and one of those internet cat videos. In other words, awesome.





6) Sam Smith ft Mary J Blige - Stay With Me
There's a mutual love affair going on here. "Working with Mary J. Blige is one of the biggest highlights of my career so far," said Sam Smith after recording this live band duet.

"I remember holding her album in my hands in the car when I was a young boy. To meet your idols is a magical thing, but to work with them is truly a dream come true."

Blige was no less gushing, saying: "Sam's true soulful voice is the first of this kind I have heard since Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson and all great soul male voices."

Oh, Get a room, you two.




7) Banks - Drowning
Banks sings her latest ballbreaking R&B ballad in a room full of mirrors. No wonder she's got a tortured mind - it must be a nightmare cleaning off all the fingerprints.

8) Kylie - Sexy Love
I can't really recommend the song, which is so bland and generic it might as well be a Tesco own-brand Rich Tea biscuit. But the video features Kylie doing the hoovering, and you can't argue with that.





9) Jack White - Lazaretto
The blues in black and white.




10) Neon Jungle - Louder
With two bona-fide top 10 hits under their belts, Girlband-with-attitude Neon Jungle have taken the shock decision to release a ballad. "It's still got energy and power," they insist, "but in a more subtle way".




11) The Ting Tings - Wrong Club
No, wait... Come back. This is a return to form, although it never reaches the heady heights of Great DJ or That's Not My Name.

As Fraser McAlpine noted on Twitter, they're up all night to get Lucky-y.

And that's it for another week... Stay tuned for more on Monday.

Tweet

New Disclosure music keeps coming

You don't hear it much these days but one of Disclosure's first tracks, back in 2011, was a sublime and funky remix of Q-Tip's Work It Out.


Since then, the brothers Lawrence have largely steered clear of rap, even though it would seem a perfect fit for their luminous house grooves. Until today, that is, when they turned up as the producers on a new track by 17-year-old NYC rap prodigy Bishop Nehru.

A dreamy old-school "jam", You Stressin recalls the jazzier bits of Q-Tip and Common's back catalogue. In other words, it's dead good.



Meanwhile, the band have been in the US selling deep house back to the Americans. Here is a very watchable performance of Latch with bequiffed pop warbler Samuel Smith.


Meanwhile meanwhile, Disclosure have been busy in the recording studio with Mary J Blige. She's redoing Howard's vocals on F For You (poor Howard) presumably for a US release. It's coming out tomorrow, but they put a preview clip of the song in this horrible Facebook "module":

Post by Disclosure.

What's that? Have they scribbed all over Mary J's face with a Tipp-Ex pen? Of course they have.

UPDATE: Here is the full video for the Mary J Bligey version of F For You. Sounds like a lost C + C Music Factory b-side.

Tweet

What's the 411 point?

This week, Mary J Blige released a greatest hits album. As with many artists releasing such compilations this year, she's hoping to make it stand out from the crowd by employing a 'theme'. U2 chose their 18 favourite singles; Oasis selected the songs they feel best represent their career (basically everything they recorded between 1994 and 1995 and about two other tracks); and the Beatles released the sort of megamix album that was popular for about ten minutes in 1986.

Mary J, however, hit on a truly unique marketing ploy: She left off all of her hit singles.

Okay, that's not quite true, Family Affair and No More Drama are on there. But the rest? Oh, dear. Four dreary new songs, an unnecessary duet with Wyclef and a re-recorded version of My Life where she replaces all the angsty drama of the original with a "I've been to therapy and I'm okay now, really" lyric.

Of the hits she's chosen to include, we get the one where she ruins Stevie Wonder's As and the one where she ruins U2's One. We do not get the one where she doesn't ruin Aretha's You Make Me Feel (Like A Natural Woman) and there is no sign of actual classics like Everything, Love Is All We Need and Mary Jane.

Perhaps this is all a stunning admission that you can buy all her best bits off iTunes and burn your own CD. But, frankly, you'd be better off with Jamiroquai's album instead.

Tweet

The Grammys: In pictures

I really have very little to say about the Grammys. I watched the 2-hour synopsis of the ceremony last night, and even that seemed like extended aural torture.

U2 clearly had to restrain themselves from killing Mary J Blige as she systematically ruined their one decent song.

There was general confusion, and the air of a ramshackle last-day-of-term show, for the the 'tribute' to Sly and the Family Stone. Sly himself looked particularly discombobulated, probably because of the industrial amounts of coke he's shoved up his nose over the last 35 years.

Stevie Wonder did his joke about taking his glasses off, the better to see a pretty lady (again(. And Madonna displayed her gusset for the all world to see (again).

As is par for the course at these ceremonies, mediocrity was heavily rewarded. Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", for instance, was clearly not the record of 2005. Nor was U2's "Sometime You Can't Make It On Your Own" the song of the year. And what is the difference between those two awards, anyway?

I could ramble on about this for days, but in the end the awards make little or no difference. Especially 'Best Polka Album'. What we're really here for are the frocks - so let's take a look:



Stefani: Hollabump girl



Kanye: Tells it like it is
(In all seriousness, this man needs taken down a peg or two. We used to beat up the cocky kids like him at school. And we were the nerds.)



Sting: "I'll fight you for that mushroom vol au vent"



Madonna: GUSSET!



Joss Stone: "Does anyone know how to get superglue off your chin?"



Jamie Foxx: Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum



Mariah: She's got the horn(s)



Fergie: Face or fish? You decide.
(Oh, alright, it is a fish. Sturgeon, I think.)



Missy: Cool as ice-cream, and the only deserving award-winner of the night (best video for Lose Control)



Beyoncé: Prom queen (again)



Macca: "Help! I've dislocated my hip."

Grammy Nominees: Full list of winners

Tweet