Alt-J's matador metaphor and five other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round up of the songs I didn't have time to blog about this week.

Today's selection includes...

1) Alt-J - Something Good
Restrained but beautiful, the new single from Mercury nominees Alt-J is one of their more straightforward songs... musically, at least. On their Soundcloud page, the band say the song "documents the death of a matador", which in turn is "an analogy for the slow mending of a broken heart through fun distractions". Taking that into account, the video is both gory and meditative.



2) Missy Elliot - Triple Threat
Followers of Missy Elliot's twitter account won't have missed the fact she's got a new single out because she spent the start of the week retweeting every person who mentioned it in an unrelenting, 48-hour egowank. Fun for her, trying for the rest of us. A bit like the single, in fact.

Triple Threat is the better of two songs on the double a-side single, even if you have to slog through an entire minute of Timbaland "rapping" before she turns up. Love the string sample.



Nelly Furtado - Parking Lot
This is one of the stand-out moments on Nelly's sadly-underwhelming new album, The Spirit Indestructible. Gritty and funky, it's a tribute to her mis-spent youth, hanging around in shopping mall parking lots listening to hip-hop. If the piercing car horn sample doesn't give you a headache, the video will...



4) Chvrches - The Mother We Share
Chvrches (try typing that on an iPhone) are a synth-pop trio from Glasgow, who have stockpiled more tunes than a newsagent during a flu epidemic. You know, because of the cough sweets called Tunes? Oh never mind...




5) Bobby Womack and Lana Del Rey - Dayglo Reflection
Earlier this week, Lana Del Rey put out a cover of Bobby Vinton's Blue Velvet this week - but even her sultry black magic can't improve that damp towel of a song. Instead, here's her duet with Bobby Womack, which is getting a single release next month. Atmospheric.



6) Carly Rae Jepsen - This Kiss
Carly Rae Jepsen has daintily dodged the one-hit-wonder bullet by following up Call Me Maybe by releasing This Kiss, a perky pop song that is approximately 500% better than anyone was expecting - especially after that awful duet with Owl City. Nicely played, Carly. Nicely played.

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Ellie Goulding's naked shoulders and four other songs you might have missed

A semi-regular round-up of the videos and songs I didn't get time to write about during in the last seven days. This week's stars are...

1) Ellie Goulding ft Tinie Tempah - Hanging On
Hanging On is a cover of a song by harp-tastic indie band Active Child. Ellie describes it as "the beginning of my new journey" - but she had better put on some clothes before she gets on the bus.

I jest, of course. Ellie is in the buff because her new musical direction represents what she is really like on the inside, DO YOU SEE? The track (available for free here) is genuinely beautiful, though, until Tinie Tempah comes along to ruin it by rapping nonense like: "If there's too much on my plate, then I ain't finishing my Veg". Oh, do fuck off, Tinie.





2) Two Door Cinema Club - Sleep Alone
People seem to like this, and who am I to argue? The chorus soars, the drums rattle, the guitars go 'squeee'. But really its all about the coda, which takes off like a cola bottle rocket. That's some stadium-level songwriting there. (The song is also available as a free download until 19:00 BST tonight)

The lyric video is brilliantly cheap. I mean, end titles of Crossroads cheap. It also features a bum with a light shining through it. I'm sure they had their reasons.





3) Chemical Brothers - Theme For Velodrome
The Muse single stinks - but this piece of Olympic music is utterly fantastic. Like Kraftwerk before them, The Chemical Brothers are avid cyclists and - strange though it may seem - all that syncopated, electronic dance music is a perfect fit for the sport. This will be played before every event at the Velodrome at the summer games - which could make for interesting scenes. They don't drug test the spectators, do they?




4) Nelly Furtado - Spirit Indesctructible
This is the title track of Nelly's currently-delayed new album, which I spoke to her about last month. A testament to human endeavour set to the beat of Planet Rock, it's a delightfully uplifting song. The video also has a special dance to help you learn your vowels. All that's missing now is Elmo.




5) Plan B ft Labrinth - Playing With Fire
I've been listening to the Plan B album a lot this week. Fierce, intelligent and splenetic - it's one of the best records, lyrically-speaking, of this century.

If you've seen the Ill Manors film, you'll already know some of the songs, and the characters that populate them, already - but you don't need to be familiar with the plot to make sense of the album. It has its grisly moments (the sound of someone getting stabbed is brutally graphic) but Plan B hasn't forgotten that a powerful chorus can persuade people to pay attention. Playing With Fire is a perfect example of that.

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Godzilla Nelly Furtado strikes the Eastern seaboard

Yes, thanks to some particularly ropey green screen, Nelly Furtado is a giant monster woman, stalking through the skyscrapers of a thrumming metropolis. Don't be scared: She's just promoting her new single Big Hoops (Bigger The Better) and will retreat safely if you buy her single and feed her a cracker.

The more I listen to the song, the more I like it. The lyrics are particularly fun, as Nelly namechecks some of her favourite rap songs from her teenage years. I've copied out and annotated the first verse below, just in case you're as big a nerd as me.

Hey hey hey, what's the scenario [A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario]
The boy keeps passin' my by [Pharcyde - Passin' Me By]
I said no diggity, no doubt [Blackstreet - No Diggity]
I thought I told you I was fly [Sugar Ray - Fly]
Yeah he and all of his friends they
They got that hair like Hi-Five [A reference to R&B smoothies - Hi-Five]
I don't wanna talk about sex [Salt-N-Pepa - Let's Talk About Sex]
Wanna express myself tonight [Salt-N-Pepa - Expression]

I originally thought the last line was a Madonna reference, but Nelly set me straight when we spoke last week (you can read the interview here). Half a dozen more songs get a shout out in verse two, but I'll let you work them out for yourselves.

Nelly Furtado - Big Hoops (Bigger The Better)

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An update on songs by Rita, Nelly and Lana

This isn't one of those music blogs where we tease you with new material then lose interest and leave you hanging. Oh no. Nosiree.

Here are some updates on our most popular* posts of the last few weeks.


:: On 24 February, I mentioned a song by Rita Ora called Party and Bullshit. It now has a video where Rita is seen HAVING FUN A PARTY but does not wade through a swimming pool of bullshit. Disappointing.

It also seems the track, which is her debut single in the US, has been re-christened How We Do (Party). Ho hum.

Rita Ora - How We Do (Party)



:: On 10 April, I posted a clip of Nelly Furtado's comeback single Big Hoops (Bigger The Better). I noted that the song sounded incredible, despite the heavily distorted audio in the video Nelly had put on her website.

The full song is up on YouTube now (and on iTunes if you live in certain "territories"). It's still very good, but I miss the distortion.

Nelly Furtado - Big Hoops (Bigger The Better)



:: On several occasions, I have mentioned popular and totally authentic chanteuse Lana Del Rey. Her demo recordings have been kept as secure as a wig in a hurricane, which means that, with a bit of creative Googling, you can pretty much download an alternate mix of her entire debut album (hint: National Anthem comes out particularly well).

The one I'd been waiting for was album highlight Dark Paradise and, as if on command, it popped up on Soundcloud last night. Thanks, internet.



* read more than once

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A very distorted clip of Nelly Furtado's comeback single

Let's face it, the wheels fell off the Nelly Furtado train about five years ago. Maneater was amazing. Promiscuous was amazing. Even the one Chris Martin wrote was amazing. But then she went and did an (admittedly very good) Spanish-language project and a half-assed greatest hits album and everyone basically lost interest.

But... BUT Nelly has just posted a clip of her new, Darkchild-produced, single Big Hoops on YouTube.

Sadly, the lyrics aren't a plea for an adult-sized edition of the popular corn snack, Hula Hoops (although could someone sort this out, please?). No, it's a song about having big earrings like Pat Butcher off EastEnders.

A weighty subject, and one worthy of serious discussion, I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway, it turns out that the lyrics don't matter one jot because the beat is so gigantically, colossally propulsive that it will knock you backwards like a sucker punch from a kangaroo. Have a listen, then get ready for the full song in a matter of days...

Nice to have you back, Nelly.



Nelly Furtado - Big Hoops (Bigger The Better)


If you are affected by the issues raised in this video clip, Nelly Furtado has provided further insight into the lyrics with the following blurb on her YouTube channel.

Half-child,half-woman. Those big jeans and hoops unstoppable but even more unstoppable the swagger. Becoming the myth. Mythical poster creature. Hair gel hardened under a mound of fresh bun. Gold hoops borrowed from older sister. White Sox jersey borrowed from a friend who's a boy with a crush on you. Oh but the swagger. The Bigger The Better. Waiting to be invited into the cipher. Look at me. On this street. I took the bus down and I've got my Big Hoops on.

"A mound of fresh bun". The mind boggles.

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Christmas catch-up: Nelly Furtado

The worst part of any interview is when you're obliged to ask an artist about the recording of their new album, because they always say something bollocks like this: "I feel like this is me as an artist, as a woman, maturing and growing as an artist" (this is a real quote).

Obviously, this is the first bit you cut out when you start writing the story. And this is also why artists constantly whinge that the media mis-represents them - because they GENUINELY BELIEVE THIS STUFF MATTERS.

Luckily the internet has cut out the middle-man, and now artists can share these sorts of insights with their fans, at nauseating length.

Nelly Furtado has a new album out this year (yay!) and the recording process is being catalogued in detail on Nelly's YouTube channel. Here are the first three instalments - they are in black and white to emphasise how "real" and "important" everything is.







If you sit through those videos, what you discover is that Nelly is recording with Salaam Remi (yay!) Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins (yay!) and DJ Genius (who's that?)

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Curricular activities

Sometimes, my job is just too good to be true. In the last week, I've interviewed three of my favourite singers - Alison Goldfrapp, Nelly Furtado and Lykke Li. Although I'm the world's worst inquisitor, asking banal questions that drag on for minutes at a time, all three were polite and professional enough to provide interesting answers.

First up, here's Ms Goldfrapp, talking about the band's recent tour and why she and Will Gregory let their deal with EMI Records lapse.



The Nelly Furtado interview went up on the BBC News Website today. It's probably the one I'm most proud of - because it took a simple idea (tell me about the songs on your greatest hits album) and provoked half-an-hour of thoughtful reminiscing from the artist. It wasn't supposed to, but that's what happened. You can click this link to read it. Or you can just look at this picture of Nelly Furtado's midriff instead.


Finally we come to Lykke Li, who was an absolute sweetheart, wrapped up against the biting London chill in what can only be described as a leather duffel coat. The interview won't be broadcast for a couple of weeks - but here's a sneak preview, where she talks about her plans to bring a huge percussion section on the road with her next year.


If you want to hear more from Lykke, she was on 6 Music's Nemone show earlier today, where she revealed her new album will be called Wounded Rhymes. The listen again page is here, and Lykke appears about 95 minutes into the programme.

And here ends the biggest name-dropping session of all time.

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Nelly Furtado vs Nelly Furtado

Which of these two Nelly Furtado medleys best promotes her forthcoming Greatest Hits collection?

EXHIBIT ONE: The Official trailer

Songs performed: Maneater, I'm Like A Bird, Powerless (Say What You Want), Say It Right, Turn Off The Light, Promiscuous, Broken Strings, Free.
Estimated Budget: $15m
Phwoarr factor: 8/10 (minus one point for James Morrison)
Sample YouTube comment: "So much better than Cheryl Cole"

EXHIBIT TWO: Some blokes from Leeds

Songs performed: Maneater, Promiscuous, Say It Right, Turn Off The Light, I'm Like A Bird, Free
Estimated Budget: $1.50
Phwoarr factor: 2/10 (plus two points for sexy bathroom scene)
Sample YouTube comment: "That is a beautiful unicorn t-shirt"

I'll be interviewing Nelly Furtado in a week or two. If you have a burning question you'd like me to ask, leave a comment below or contact me on Twitter. Keep it clean.

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Nelly Furtado raids the dress-up box

No-one seems to have noticed in this country, but Nelly Furtado's Spanish-language album Mi Plan is really very good. If you can find a copy, I suggest giving it a spin - the record's ebullient carnival rhythms sound fantastic in the summer sun.

Luckily, Nelly has sold enough copies in the rest of the world to justify the release of four singles, each of which have had amazing / barmy videos.

The latest is Bajo Otra Luz (Under A Different Light), whose title gives Nelly the excuse to put on lots of "hilarious" costumes so that we see her under a different light. Clever, eh?

Among the highlights are:

Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz


The Terminator


A confused / foxy cavewoman


Lenny Kravitz


Mel C


That last shot is actually Spanish hip-hop star La Mala Rodríguez (me neither), who provides a talky bit in the middle. Good for her.

Nelly Furtado - Bajo Otra Luz

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Top 10 albums of 2009

Hello again!

Hope you had a great Christmas and new year. There's been plenty of new music round here at Discopop Towers, but that can wait til next week. Until then, here's our summary of the best 10 records of the last 12 months. 2009 wasn't a vintage year, to be perfectlly honest. But the top 3 make up for all of that.


1) Florence and the Machine - Lungs

Like all the best records, this is a slow-burner. For me, the epiphany came the first time I played the CD over real speakers, and Florence's epic, gothic drums punched me right in the heart. There's plenty to admire here: Attitude as firey as the 23-year-old's big red barnet, shockingly visceral lyrics, and, on Kiss With A Fist, a healthy obsession with the White Stripes' Hotel Yorba. Ironically for an album called Lungs, it will take your breath away.

2) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz

Everyone says this is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' disco album, but that does it a grave disservice. It's Blitz isn't about the carefree hedonism of Sister Sledge - it's about a seedy night out at the wrong end of town, ripped stockings, smudged mascara and all. Singles Zero and Heads Will Roll snog your face off on the dancefloor, while Dull Life breaks out the guitars for a brief opportunity to mosh or pogo or any of the other grandiose terms you use to describe "jumping up and down". The end of the record captures the comedown, too, with Runaway and Hysteric the perfect soundtrack to the guilty regret of a rainy Sunday morning. If you can stand Karen O's voice through the hangover, that is.

3) A Camp Colonia

A cheery record about rape, pillage, divorce and war in the Belgian Congo. The work of former Cardigan Nina Persson, her husband Nathan Larson and Atomic Swing's Niclas Frisk, Colonia was inspired by 60s girl-pop and the works of Adam Ant. Brilliantly, it manages to sound nothing like either of them. Instead, it's a sumptuous, orchestral, alt-rock album, encompassing bittersweet ballads (Stronger Than Jesus), regal waltzes (The Crowning) and glam rock stomps (My America). A towering achievement.

4) Temper Trap - Conditions

For my money, the only decent guitar album of the year. Aussie quartet Temper Trap are essentially Coldplay with a decent rhythm section. That means (a) their songs aren't hopelessly twee and (b) they occasionally have songs you would consider dancing to. Both of these are good things, of course, especially when combined with haunting falsetto vocals and chiming, spacious guitar lines. I wish I'd written more about them over the last 12 months, to be honest.

5) Lady GaGa - The Fame / Fame Monster

In 2009, the best singles, the most deranged outfits, the stupidest videos, the unlikeliest rumour, the most ridiculously censor-baiting awards performance, the highest heels, the tallest piano, and the best overarching artistic-visual concept all belonged to New York's Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Sadly, her album was a bit hit and miss after all that - but there's a great 10-track "The Fame - Redux" playlist on my iPod, ready to be depolyed any time I fancied a 40-minute dose of demonic space age artnoise. The addition of Bad Romance and Alejandro from The Fame Monster created the year's most note-perfect pop record. It's all in the quality control.

6) Passion Pit - Manners

Yes, the lead singer bears a resemblance to Rory McGrath (look him up) and yes, they rely a little too often on the kids' choir from the Sesame Street theme tune - but this record is one big bundle of happy, poppy fun. Sadly, you're more likely to have heard Passion Pit's colourful electronica on advertisements than on the radio, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check it out.

7) Regina Spektor - Far

Like a lot of fans, I was initially disappointed with Regina's follow-up to Begin To Hope. The Jeff Lynne-produced tracks, in paticular, lackied the fanged bite of her earlier, spikier songs. Once I got over the lack of yelping and lo-fi tin shack recordings, however, there was a rewarding, multi-textured album waiting to be discovered. Laughing With has a beautifully observed lyric about how athiests suddenly start praying when things go wrong. The hip-hop tinged Dance Athem Of The 80s is the dippy story of a night "Walking through the city / Like a drunk, but not". In the end, the addition of string sections and radio-friendly production didn't ruin Regina at all - they grounded her eccentric musings in the real world, making this album all the more potent.

8) Little Boots - Hands

Little Boots has a tendency to let a creative writing exercise get in the way of a decent lyric - shoe-horning references to Fibonacci and Pythagoras into the pun-o-rific Mathematics, for example. On the other hand, New In Town - Amazing; Earthquake - Amazing; Meddle - Amazing; No Brakes - A-ma-zing; Remedy - Amazing x5,000,000; Stuck On Repeat - Amazing^{10000000000000000}.
In summary, then: Not bad.

9) La Roux - La Roux

Elly Jackson's voice is so shrill they use it to cut diamonds. Ben Langmaid's synthesizer has two sound settings "80s synth" and "80s steel drum". Yet, together, they made an album of surprising depth and emotional power. Jackson's expressions of heartbreak and emotional fragility gave the dayglo pop some much needed light and shade - particularly on the weepy bedsheet ballad Cover My Eyes. Yes, the 12 tracks kind of blended into one another - but sometimes, just sometimes, a pop album should sound homogenous. Otherwise, it could be any old vocalist belting out any old nonsense over a faceless producer's meaningless beats (we're looking at you, The Saturdays).

10) Nelly Furtado - Mi Plan

Because Nelly Furtado makes better Spanish albums than Shakira does English ones.

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Nelly Furtado stands around a bit

After yesterday's dynamic and spectacular Lady GaGa video, whatever we wrote about today was destined to seem a bit flat by comparison. Nonetheless, Nelly Furtado could have made a bit of an effort. Cue up the next three minutes, in which you will see the Candian singer

1) Standing in a kitchen looking mopey
2) Using Google Mail
3) Pretending to be asleep

Things pick up a bit at the end, when Nelly (she's, like, a bird) giving her boyfriend a big slap. But nothing here is going to help its criminally ignored Spanish-language album, Mi Plan, into the top 100 for the first time.

Shame.

Nelly Furtado - Mas

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New music: Timbaland - Morning After Dark

This one has been floating around the internet for ages, but that doesn't make it any less brilliant. As usual, Timbaland has set the controls for sci-fi and created a deep space club track that sounds like nothing else in the charts. The lyrics are comfortably dumb: Timbo thinks a girl is "dope" (do people still use that word in 2009?) and that girl is astonishingly gracious for the attention of a portly multi-millionaire record producer.

In this track, the girl role is played by French-Argentinian-Italian-Russian-American artiste SoShy. If you're wondering why the lead track from Timbaland's much-anticipated Shock Value II, which features Rihanna, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, has guest vocals from a relative novice, here's her picture:



Nelly Furtado also contributes a verse which, in a genuine musical first, she performs entirely through her nose.

Timbaland - Morning After Dark

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New Nelly Furtado: Manos al Aire

I've been waiting to write about this for weeks but "this video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions". Yawn.

Manos Al Aire is the first single from Nelly Furtado's new Spanish-language album, Mi Plan. Albums recorded "in foreign" tend to sell poorly in the UK, so Nelly has come up with a cunning plan to encourage us to put aside our xenophobia and splash out on her new CD.

Here's the press release:



Do you see? Spanish and Portuguese have LATIN ROOTS, like what ENGLISH does. They are essentially the same, if you think about it properly. In fact, most Spanish words are just English words with an extra "os" at the end! Like your word "much" - it's "muchos" in Spanish!!! I can't think of any other examples right now, but I think it's a fairly safe bet you'll be able to understand all the lyrics on my record without even noticing you're doing it.

Also, our word for sandwich is "bocadillo", which is a vast improvement, I think you'll agree.

Nelly Furtado - Manos al Aire (with subtitles for idiots)

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Shakira and Nelly Furtado's teaser trailers

Two artists who are non-euphemistically "big in Latin America" are preparing new material for the summer, and trying out new ways of sparking our interest.

Shakira 'Shakira' Ripoll is hoping to build on the success of her Wyclef and Beyonce collaborations and score her first UK hit in 3 years with a single, She-Wolf, followed by an as-yet-untitled album in the autumn. For some reason, this is being promoted with a viral video of the hip-shaking Grammy winner eating people's faces.



There's no clip of the song - but Popjustice has heard it , and vouches for its quite good-ness.

Meanwhile, Nelly 'I owe it all to Timbaland' Furtado is about to unleash her first Spanish-language record (trans: about to have a flop album in the UK, where people who speak a second language are viewed with the same degree of suspicion as mothers who eat their own babies).

Here is her, rather less expensive, Youtube video:



While Shakira is trying something clever (it's an attempt to establish a narrative theme for her lycanthropic project) Furtado's trailer exists in a whole other dimension of crap. It's literally a 30-second music clip set to a cheap animation - sort of like an over-ambitious iTunes preview.

If this is how singles are being promoted now, what can we expect to see next? An exclusive first look at the typeface for Vampire Weekend's new record sleeve? A preview of the autotune settings Mr Hudson is using on his next album? Maybe Madonna could release her new single one note at a time, accompanied by a collectable magazine that builds up, week-by-week, into an exclusive partwork.

Actually. I'm copyrighting that last idea at the Post Office tomorrow.

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The Discopop top 10 singles of 2007

If you don't own these, you're probably a paedophile.

1) Amerie - Gotta Work


An updated, improved version of One Thing, Gotta Work stomps all over the dancefloor like a giant in hotpants. Using a sample of Isaac Haye's Hold On, I'm Coming, Amerie crafted a case study in melodic composition - there's not a single wasted note across three minutes and eleven seconds. Why this didn't get to number one, I'll never know.
:: Watch it on youtube

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2) Robyn - With Every Heartbeat

"Still dying with every step I take, but I don't look back," sings Robyn as With Every Heartbeat opens. It's the most emotionally honest, bitterly painful song of the year - if not all time. The bit where the string quartet kicks in will break your heart a thousand times over. Her acoustic performance of the song on Radio One probably drove several teenagers to poetry or that weird sobbing where you make a noise like Hannibal Lecter when you breathe in. But you can dance to it, too, which must turn school discos into a dangerous playground of tears and snot. Brilliant.
:: Watch it on youtube

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3) CSS - Let's Make Love and Listen To Death From Above

The best drunken come-on of the year, Let's Make Love sees Lovefoxxx making a stupid, Bridget Jones-style attempt to get a man into bed. The song doesn't record whether or not she was successful, but I definitely would.

According to Wikipedia, the hook "is probably a reference to the Canadian band Death From Above 1979, as evidenced in the song's video where band members are shown wearing elephant masks (a reference to the "elephant heads" on the cover of Death From Above 1979's album You're a Woman, I'm a Machine)." So now you know.
:: Watch it on youtube

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4) Rihanna - Umbrella

In which 19-year-old Robyn Rihanna Fenty transformed from a vaguely-interesting Barbadian R&B lady into a globe-straddling pop behemoth before our very eyes. This despite the fact her singing voice is more nasal than an anteater, and that the opening rap from Jay-Z is the very definition of "phoned in". But this record is so amazingly catchy that it has changed the way we pronounce the word umbrella for the rest of all time.
:: Watch it on youtube

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5) Girls Aloud - Call The Shots

If Rihanna mangled her pronunciation of umbrella, Cheryl Tweedycole put the word "now" through a primeval torture device in Call The Shots. Seriously, it ends up being seventeen syllables long or something. But I love this song, and anyone who says they don't love it too it is lying through their dirty mouth.
:: Watch it on youtube

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6) Groove Armada - Song 4 Mutya

Despite the lyrics, Mutya almost certainly doesn't know all the words to Prince's Hot Thing, but this pop song, full of meaty synths and New Order guitar lines, sounds exactly like the sort of thing the little purple man would have written for one of his filthy protegés in the mid-80s. The video is a crock of shit, though.
:: Watch it on youtube (but it's probably best not to waste your time)

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7) Beyoncé and Shakira - Beautiful Liar

Two of pop's shoutiest ladyfolk have a volume competition over a slinky, arabesque beat. The video contains several scenes of wiggling. It is altogether smashing.
:: Watch it on youtube

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8) Girls Aloud - Sexy! No, No, No...
Nadine has a "d-d-dirty mind", she helpfully tells us in this hymn to sexual caution. Coincidentally, two years ago she used the lyrics of Biology to advertise her "dirty brain". We, the public, demand more information about this inner pervert.
:: Watch it on youtube

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9) Siobhan Donaghy - Don't Give It Up

It is a terrible crime that, despite having released one of the most inventive albums of the year, Siobhan Donaghy is now dying from Aids (on stage in a crappy "reinvention" of Rent, fact-fans). This song, equal parts Kate Bush and Bjork, is absoulte nonsense - but very beautiful, stately nonsense with an ethereal vocal. No doubt it was deemed "too demanding" for the cretins that listen to Radio One. If only she had put "The" in front of her name, they might have paid attention.
:: Watch it on youtube

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10) Nelly Furtado - Say It Right

One of those songs that sits unloved and overshadowed on its parent album before revealing its true glory as a single. A slinky little minor-key ballad, its one of Nelly's more atmospheric songs, although I've never really paid attention to what it's all about. According to the internet, however, the lyrics go: "From my hands I could give you something that I made / From my mouth I could sing you another brick that I laid". Nelly Furtado is nuts, isn't she?
:: Watch it on youtube

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PS: As ever, the top 10 list is put together using my iTunes play counts and a bit of maths(!) to even out the bias towards songs that have been around all year.

PPS: Honourable mentions also go to The Klaxons - Golden Skans, White Stripes - You Don't Know What Love Is, Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control, Take That - Shine, Mark Ronson - Stop Me, The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name, Kanye West - Stronger, Arcade Fire - Intervention, Timbaland ft Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado - Give It To Me, New Young Pony Club - The Bomb.

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It's been a while, so what has been happening in the world of pop?

:: Rihanna went to number one with her Umberamella. You can stand under it, apparently.

:: Avril Lavigne did not get her waps out for Blender magazine, but they made it look like she did. Avril is not offended, because they paid her in whisky and cupcakes. So that's alright, then.

:: Cheryl Tweedy called Lily Allen a "chick with a dick" after heavy provocation from Gordon Ramsay on his not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be TV show the F-Word. How does she know? Did Ashley Cole [rest of joke deleted on advice of lawyers]?

:: George Michael told Parky that smoking spliffs is, like, totally awesome dude. "Nobody ever came home stoned and beat up their wife," he argues. And they say dope dulls the mind...

:: Beth Ditto got her top off at a concert and people went a bit bananas. It is best not to search for pictures on the internet unless you have a very happy relationship with jam roly poly.

:: Bjork's Volta album was not the return to form we'd all be promised. Instead, it sounded like two cats fighting over a washing machine.

:: Lily Allen wrote a love letter to Cheyl Tweedy on the myspace. "I may not be as pretty as you but at least I write and SING my own songs without the aid of autotune . I must say taking your clothes off , doing sexy dancing and marrying a rich footballer must be very gratifying , your mother must be so proud , stupid bitch ." Ouch!

:: A probably not very legal collection of rare Madonna and Nelly Furtado tracks went online at Only VIP Media. Get them while you can.

:: Michael Jackson is trying to put a stop to an auction of his personal effects which, claim the owners, include paintings of young naked boys. What’s this? Michael Jackson - the cuddly, friendly Peter Pan of Pop - likes pictures of young men all in the buff and nudey? I don't believe a word of this villainous claptrap.

:: Paris Hilton really is going to jail. In the words of Kermit the Frog: "Yayyyyy!"

:: Cheryl Tweedy 'remembered' (was told by a journalist) that Lily Allen has recently called her bandmates ugly and vile and husband Ashley Cole horrendous. "I can't stand people who give it but aren't prepared to get it back," she told The Sun. “I left school a long time ago and have no time for this." "Are you writing this down?" she probably did not add.

:: Germaine Greer read an article I wrote on the BBC website, likening Serbia's Eurovision-winning performance to a slow-motion lesbian porn film. "Shame on him," she wrote in The Guardian. I hold my hands up, Germaine. I've never seen a lesbian porn film. Have you?

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Noo choons

Hello there. I'm still a bit ill, so sorry about the infrequent posts of late.

In the meantime, here's some new music that other blogs have posted - thus saving me all the effort.

The Fray do an oh-so-amusing live version of Shakira's Hips Don't Lie. Listen once, then destroy. [MP3 on Chris' Pix]

New Beyoncé material never seems to stop coming. Here's her new duet with Jay-Z [Fetch Me Some Music], and her new duet with Shakira [Ali's Blog]. Yummy.

Rozonda Thomas (aka Chili out of TLC) has got a new single. It's called Straight Jack, it features Missy Elliot and it is so-so. [MP3] [via Hops Mp3 Thing]

Popjustice has a 45-second clip of ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena's collaboration with Groove Armada. It's not exactly I See You Baby, but it's a vast improvement on Buena's duet with George (spit) Michaels. [Popjustice]

Another leaked track from Mark Ronson's covers album, Version. This one is a funked up version of The Jam's Proper Green. Ace. [MP3 on Fluxblog]

Finally, here's the video for the Timbaland / Nelly Furtado / Justin Timberlake collaboration that's been going round for ages. It's lost some of it's lustre after repeated listens, but I'd still shake a leg to it if (a) I went to clubs any more and (b) I wasn't about to collapse into a pitiful heap of wheezing and phlegm.

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Gig Review: Nelly Furtado

Nelly Furtado has two distinct public personas. One is the hippy chick who combines her Portuguese musical heritage with a love of pop and hip-hop to produce gems like I'm Like A Bird (the bird, in case you're interested, is a cultural magpie). The other is the globe-straddling promiscuous girl - a hip-hop disco queen who, coincidentally, eats men.

Both Nellies were on display last night at the Hammersmith Apollo, but it was fairly easy to work out which one was the real deal.

The show began with a couple of tracks from her Timbaland-produced Loose album. The bass shook the floor as Nelly took to the stage but she seemed oddly disconnected. Stood atop the third tier of her set, the singer was impassive as four dancers cavorted like escapees from the Mickey Mouse Club at the bottom of her staircase.

The problem, in part, is that Nelly isn't what you'd call a groovy dancer. In fact, she moves a bit like your Auntie Brenda at a barmitzvah. On crutches.

...The true Furtado, as we are soon to find out, is a musician first and foremost.

After the opening salvo of uptempo numbers, she saunters off-stage to change into a stunning backless black ball gown and launches into a six-song set of smoochers. Given the chance to sing, rather than shimmy, she suddenly takes control of the stage.

An acoustic cover of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy gets the crowd singing along and the pint-sized popstrel dons her own guitar for a stripped-back version of Hey Man. She also premieres a new song, Stars, which she says will be filmed and made available on youtube for fans to download. How very modern.

Having let her musical juices flow (quite literally - a man appears to mop the stage with a towel), the Canadian-born singer is more confident on a second set of dance tracks. A remixed version of I'm, Like, A Bird and a foot-stomping rendition of Forca see her running about the stage, climbing up the rafters and, eventually, indulging in a bit of choreography. By this stage, the crowd is on their feet, too.

She's joined by percussionist / rapper Socrates - who earlier delivered a blistering support slot - for the encore which ends with the musical behemoth that is Maneater. It's the one point where the old Nelly and the new Nelly seem perfectly in sync, as she draws the thumping dance track into an extended sing-a-long before indulging in an impromptu spot of drumming.

If she can reconcile those split personalities to similar effect on her next album, Furtado will finally achieve her long-held promise.





Setlist:
Intro - Afraid
Say It Right
Turn Out The Lights
Powerless (Say What You Want)
Do It
Wait For You
Showtime
Crazy
Try
Stars
Hey Man
All Good Things Come To An End
SexyBack (performed by Jasmine and Socrates)
Give It To Me
I'm Like A Bird (remix)
Forca
Promiscuous

encore
Party
No Hay Igual
Maneater

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Mrdiscopop's Top 10 Albums of 2006

Here it is, folks. An entirely "surprising" list of the best albums that have been troubling the Discopop Towers "ghettoblaster" over the last twelve months.




1) Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
I haven't written nearly enough about how much I love Regina Spektor on these here pages. Every single track on this album, her major-label debut, is magic. As an added bonus, she is stark raving bonkers. One song is about her illicit relationship with biblical strongman Samson. Another discusses how Regina only ate tangerines for an entire month. What marvellous nonsense, eh? Think Tori Amos or Fiona Apple, but with tunes that stick in your head for months, instead of making you think "oh, she's a really accomplished musician, isn't she?".





2) Nelly Furtado - Loose
It's not consistent - there are far too many Timbaland songs that sound like a good beat in search of a melody - but seven or eight of the tracks on Loose are actually perfect. Quite how Nelly transformed from being a bark-eating, yoghurt-knitting world music aficionado with no fans into a globe-straddling pop strumpet is anyone's guess, but who cares? Just sling on your dancing trousers and turn this album all the way up to 10.





3) Gnarls Barkley - St Elsewhere
On first listen this comes across like cats fighting in a dustbin but, with perseverance, it reveals its magnificence like a saucy lady in the Moulin Rouge. Gnarls Barkley are labelled a hip-hop act, but they're far too eclectic and inventive to be filed alongside Nas or 50 fucking Cent. Songs like Who Cares and Transformer are frenetic, majestic and affecting all at the same time. And it's a concept album about mental illness. Yipes!





4) Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
While Gnarls Barkley are just singing about being barking mad, Muse are the real deal. On this album, they're constantly banging on about spaceships, conspiracy theories and a strawberry pony called Helen (I may have made that last one up). But Matt 'spoons' Bellamy sings about it all with such conviction that you kind of accept it. Plus, they've largely ditched the 12-minute axe solos and made tight little poperas that literally explode from your speakers. Warning: Do no listen to this album on a motorway or you will accidentally start going far too fast for your own safety. I know this to be true.





5) Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
Put this album on and you could be forgiven for thinking it was a lost classic from the heyday of Atlantic Records. Except, of course, that the lyrics feature such delightful couplets as "What kind of fuckery is this?" and "You don't mean dick to me". The lady with the potty-mouth is Amy Winehouse, and here she puts Christina Aguilera and Joss Stone in their places by concocting an album of soul standards that sounds fresh and real, rather than a faded facsimile of the real thing.





6) Pet Shop Boys - Fundamental
I have never liked a Pet Shop Boys album before, but this one is superb. Back together with producer Trevor Horn, the PSBs find their form after a very long fallow period. Lead single I'm With Stupid had great lyrics and a so-so melody, but the rest of the CD towers above it - with heart-rending ballads Luna Park and I Made My Excuses and Left the stand-outs. But shame on them for shunting the superior Richard X collaboration, Fugitive, onto a bonus disc.





7) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium
A caveat: This top ten placing is only for the tightened-up, 14 track version of the Chili's double album I put together after sifting through the 38-million songs they puked up halfway through the year. Each of those 14 songs is lifted above the ordinary by John Frusciante's breath-taking guitar playing. Nearly all of the tracks on the album (even the ones I don't like) feature some new sound, clever effect or moment of heart-breaking virtuosity. Damn him.





8) The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
The White Stripes, but with discipline, Jack White's side-project proved to be a formidable lesson in classic blues rock. There aren't any major surprises or innovations here - just the sound of four musicians playing their tiny little hearts out. Could do with a haircut, though.





9) Beyoncé - B'day
In which Beyoncé spends the best part of an hour shouting at someone (Jay-Z?) for cheating on her. Whatever personal crisis inspired this album, and no-one's spilling any beans, it was worth it for the music. For the first time in her career, the thunder-thighed scream queen has turned in a CD you can listen to without your finger poised over the skip button. And it was all done and dusted in a week. Kate Bush, take note.





10) Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds
Like Nelly Furtado's Loose, this album is permanently smudged with Timbaland's mucky fingerprints but - unlike her album - there isn't a standout track that overshadows the rest. But there are several gems, from the filthy S&M anthem SexyBack to the tender, Coldplay-esque I Think She Knows (which should have been a full song, rather than a 2-minute interlude). The quality only drops towards the end when Timbaland absconds from production duties - presumably because he eventually needed a bit of a kip.



And that's 2006 done and dusted... And the best thing about it all was that a big"wig" in charge of the record industry suddenly twigged that bloated 80-minute epic albums were all a bit rubbish and issued an edict that all CDs should fit onto one side of a D90 casette (note to youngsters: a cassette is an ipod with moving parts that can hold a laughable 90 minutes of music). Thus, and henceforth, all of the albums above - bar the Chilis - clock in at well under an hour. This is quite literally a-mazing and should be celebrated with a balloon.

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