Tinashe "up the duff" and 11 other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of songs I wanted to blog about until life got in the way.

This week's superstars include.

1) Tinashe - Player (ft Chris Brown)
Her early EPs were a major influence on the dark, brooding lasciviousness of Beyonce's Beyonce album. Now Tinashe is going for Queen B's crown with a straight-up, chrome-plated pop classic.

The first single from her forthcoming second album, Joyride, it suggests a major push for mainstream success. But one thing is niggling at me: The lyric websites all say she's singing "you got me all fucked up" in the chorus - but surely I'm not the only one who hears "you got me up the duff"?




2) Ellie Goulding - Something In The Way You Move
Simmering electropop from pop's huskiest songstress. Another indication that Delirious will be an album full of solid gold bangers.





3) Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson - Say Say Say (2015 remix)
A souped-up version of the 1983 duet, this swaps around Macca and Jacko's vocals, and is generally a funkier, more upbeat take on the original. Part of a reissue of McCartney's Pipes of Peace album, it has even been blessed with a new video.

Sadly, the single's b-side, Ode to a Koala Bear, has been left untouched.

4) KDA - Turn The Music Louder (ft Tinie Tempah & Katy B)
The backing track feels a little "my first sequencer" but Tinie and Katy lift this track way above the average. Fantastic video, too.




5) Eliza and the Bear - Lion's Heart
A spoonful of Mumford, a sprinkle of Coldplay, and a pinch of The Libertines. Mix it all together, throw in a trumpet and you have Eliza and the Bear's anthemic new single.

Just to reiterate every article that's ever been written about them: Eliza and the Bear are all boys, and none of them is called Eliza.



6) Foxes - Better Love
Windswept, widescreen pop. But even Rihanna would think twice about a music video where the star sits on a toilet (even if she's just painting her toenails).




7) Dua Lipa - New Love
Jessie Ware's silky melodies crossed with the percussive dissonance of Bjork - New Love is an epic introduction to 19-year-old Londoner Dua Lipa. It was produced by Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs), and Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow), in case that sort of thing matters to you.






8) Frances - Let It Out
Quiet, intense, fragile, beautiful. Frances is a shoo-in for next year's "ones to watch" lists.



9) Jones - Indulge
I missed this song when it came out in April, but it's become a firm favourite after London-born R&B singer Jones performed it on Jools Holland earlier this week. A dramatic, luxurious song about surrendering to love - I present both acoustic and studio versions, because I can't decide which I love most.







10) Bloc Party - The Love Within
Back from their second "hiatus" with a renewed energy, this song is a perfect balance between the shouty whirligig of Bloc Party's indie thrash and the throbbing electronica of Kele Okereke's solo material.



Petite Miller - Barbaric
This lolita-ish French singer is being talked about in all the right places - but I'm just not getting it. Can anyone enlighten me?



11) Olly Murs - Kiss Me
An interesting diversion into "not hateful" territory from pop's perennial hat-botherer and X Factor acolyte.



12) Janet Jackson - BurnItUp! (Ft Missy Elliot)
A lyric video, shot by the cast and crew of Janet's Unbreakable World Tour, this makes life on the road look like an absolute blast.

The tour pulls into the UK next March, fact fans.

And that's your lot... Enjoy the weekend!

Tweet

The Great Riff Barrier

Rock and Roll isn't dead, it's just feeling a little sick after drinking bad milk...

The mainstream music press is having conniptions at the moment because their precious guitar music isn't very popular in the charts. The Guardian even ran a boo-hoo readers' piece that contained the magic phrase "It would be great to have a proper movement like Britpop again" (it wouldn't). The overall jist was that Rihanna has single-handedly destroyed rock'n'roll forever and no-one can ever listen to "proper" records again. FYI: This was placed slap bang in the middle of 87 articles about The Stone Roses.

But the solution to rock's big slump is pretty simple: WRITE SOME GODDAMN RIFFS.

Maybe it's Radiohead, maybe it's Coldplay, but everyone's traded screaming solos for glitching electronic borescapes. Here are the most eagerly-received indie singles of the minute. They're both great songs, and the guitar work is fine, but no-one's going to be pumping their fist in the air shouting "DUR DURRR dur dur durrr da-durr-da-durr" like they do when the Keith Richards knocks out the first few bars of Satisfaction.

Alt-J - Tesselate


Bloc Party - Octopus


What's interesting is that dance music has totally appropriated the riff. I went to see Calvin Harris play some CDs in a tent the other week, and when he dropped Avicii's Levels, the entire audience sang the bouncy synth hook back to him.

Calvin Harris plays Levels


But there is hope on the horizon. Rock can reclaim the riff... and The Black Keys are showing everyone the way.

Inspired by the fuzztone squall of T Rex, their excellent El Camino album is rammed full of amped-up riffage. Their new single Run Right Back is a case in point.

The Black Keys - Run Right Back


That’s the ticket: Now, if everyone else could crank out some fretboard fingertwisters, we’d all be sorted.

PS - here's the Top 10 best-selling singles of the year so far. The closest you get to a guitar riff is the intro to David Guetta's Titanium :(

1) Gotye ft Kimbra – Somebody That I Used To Know
2) Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe
3) David Guetta ft Sia – Titanium
4) Nicki Minaj – Starships
5) Fun. ft Janelle Monae – We Are Young
6) Jessie J – Domino
7) Flo Rid aft Sia – Wild Ones
8) Emeli Sande – Next To Me
9) Rizzle Kicks – Mama Do The Hump
10) DJ Fresh ft Rita Ora – Hot Right Now

Tweet

Mystery pop star picture competition

Take a look at this still from a brand new pop video, and see if you can guess who the singer is...



If you said Lemar - you are wrong
If you said Idris Elba - you are wrong
If you said Cheryl Cole - you are very wrong
If you said Justin Bieber - you are wrong and 13 years old
If you said whassisname out of Bloc Party - you are right! Have a sandwich.

Here is the video, for Kele's not-at-all-bad debut single Tenderoni.

Kele Okereke - Tenderoni

Tweet

"Today I woke up in a basketball court"

Bloc Party are one of those bands who constantly defy expectations. Starting life as a jittering little indie band in the Franz Ferdinand mould, they blossomed into something altogether more captivating with the gothic chords and tribal rhythms of their second album Weekend In The City.

Last year, they signposted another new direction last year with the pulsing electronica of one-off single Flux - whose autotuned vocals and bubbling Giorgio Moroder bassline resembled nothing more than the world's most fucked-up eurodisco track.

Now they’ve got some new material, which was unveiled on last night's Zane Lowe show. Called Mercury, the single augments Flux's template with discordant brass stabs, sinister synth basslines and some fantastically cheap vocal samples.

With dramatic John Lydon-esque urgency, singer Kele Okereke rants about "bleeding gums", "scars on my shins" and "veins protruding" - suggesting that he's still preoccupied with the dual themes of conflict and social decay.

Unless I've completely misunderstood and he's actually talking about scurvy.

Either way, it is a huge track - one of those ones you'll stick on repeat just to make sure you didn't imagine it. Brilliant stuff.

Bloc Party - Mercury


Bloc Party - Mercury (MP3)

Tweet