Charli XCX - Boys

"NO BOYS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO 💕” writes Charli XCX, below the YouTube clip for her new single, Boys. A clever attempt to subvert the male gaze, it's more eye-catching for the cast list than the direction - but the song is catchy as all heck.

In case you need help identifying the talent, here's a complete list:

Aminé	Jay Park	Shaun Ross
AG Cook	Jay Prince	Shokichi
Barns Courtney	Joe Jonas	Stormzy
Buddy	Joey Bada$$	The Fat Jew
Cameron Dallas	Kaytranada	The Vamps (Tristan & James)
Carl Barât (The Libertines)	Khalid	THEY
Charlie Puth	Laurie Vincent (Slaves)	Theo Hutchcraft (The Hurts)
Chromeo	Liam Fray (The Courteeners)	Tinie Tempah
Cobra Snake	Mac DeMarco	Tom Daley
Connor Franta	Mark Ronson	Tom Grennan
Dan Smith (Bastille)	Max Hershenow (MS MR)	Tommy Cash
Denzel Curry	Mic Lowry	Ty Dolla $ign
Di Casp (YouTuber)	MNEK	Vance Joy
Diplo	Oli Sykes (Bring Me The Horizon)	Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend)
DRAM	ONE OK ROCK	will.i.am
Fai Khadra	Poet	Wiz Khalifa
Flume	Portugal. The Man	Wstrn
Frank Carter	Prince & Jacob
Fred Macpherson (Spector)	Riz Ahmed & The Swet Shop Boys
G Eazy	Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend)
Jack Antonoff (Bleachers)	Sage The Gemini
Jack Guinness	Shamari Maurice

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FYI: The Mura Masa album is dead good

Mura Masa releases his self-titled debut album today and, as the headline above suggests, it's got more smashes than a bottle bank.

If you're not familiar with his ouevre, here's a potted biog: Mura Masa is 21-year-old Alex Crossan. He comes from Guernesy, and named himself after 16th-century Japanese swordsmith Muramasa Sengo. Being raised on a "small, isolated haven" halfway between Britain and France meant he wasn't swayed by prevailing music trends, and so he delved into the weird and wonderful delights of world music, which means his own productions are peppered with non-Western sounds like Trinidadian steel drums, African kalimbas and Indonesian gamelan gongs. It's trop-house with a genuine understanding of its roots.

More importantly, he makes dance music that's infused with genuine emotion, via collaborations with fellow outsiders Damon Albarn and Charli XCX.

Here's a sample of what you can expect.

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Kelis returns - and the rest of #NewMusicFriday: 17 March 2017

Here we go again...

1) TCTS - Do It Like Me (ft Kelis & Sage The Gemini)
This is an absolute monster. Kelis, as usual, turns everything she touches to gold.




2) Clean Bandit ft Zara Larsson - Symphony
Speaking of Kelis, this lifts the lyrical conceit of her 2010 song ("before you, my whole life was acapella, now a symphony's the only thing to sing") and runs with it. Being Clean Bandit, there are plenty of symphonic strings to hammer the metaphor home.

Not destined to dominate the charts like Rockabye, but a barnstorming pop song nonetheless.




3) Feist - Pleasure
"I was raw and so were the takes," says Feist of her new album, Pleasure. "Our desire was to record that state without guile or go-to's and to pin the songs down with conviction and our straight up human bodies."

It cetainly comes across in this single - which is simultaneously scratchy, lo-fi and utterly thrilling. Like all the best songs, it starts as a lullaby and ends like a riot.




4) Tinashe - Flame
Things haven't really taken off for Kentucky's Tinashe Jorgenson Kachingwe so far - but this song deserves an audience. "Tell me that you've still got a flame for me and we can let it burn," she trills over a discarded Carly Rae Jepsen beat. Recommended.




5) Kasabian - You're In Love With A Psycho
This made me do a big, affectionate chuckle on the tube this morning. The lyrics are deliberately preposterous ("I'm like the taste of macaroni on a seafood stick"???) but it's nice to have Kasabian back.




6) Pond - The Weather
If Kasabian have you in the mood for a bit of psych-rock, this dreamy, kaleidoscopic track from Perth's Pond fits the bill nicely. It will not surprise you to learn it was produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker.




7) Mura Masa ft Charli XCX - 1 Night
Neither artist's greatest moment, but a perfectly serviceable indie-pop jam for Side B of your latest mixtape.




8) Fenne Lily - What's Good?
Self-taught songstress Fenne Lily impresses on this achingly beautiful ballad: "Tell me why good things die," she pleads, her vocals quivering over a lonely, plucked guitar. "Stay the night - because I need this more than I knew. More than I'd like to". Heartbreaking.





9) Machine Gun Kelly feat G-Eazy and Kehlani - Good Life
As mindless and insubstantial as the film it soundtracks (Fate of the Furious), this will undoubtedly be a huge hit.




10) Linkin Park - Battle Symphony
I'm still mystified by Linkin Park's attempt to become OneRepublic. I mean, they do it well - but to what end?

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Lorde, Louisa and the rest of New Music Friday: 10 March 2017

Here we are again. In a post-Ed Sheeran landscape, none of these songs have a hope in hell of charting but what are the charts really for any more? Just listen to this stuff on Spotify and get on with your life.

Louisa Johnson - Best Behaviour
It starts off with a Curtis Mayfield bassline and a distorted vocal sample. Then Louisa summons in a chorus of handclaps (never not a good thing), then the hook is played on a panpipe. One of the most unusual and brilliant songs ever released by an X Factor winner. 10/10





Lorde - Liability
A sombre piano ballad inspired by Rihanna's Higher - and which really highlights Bowie's influence on Lorde's new album. Contains the lyric "he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm". Amazing.




Nicki Minaj ft Drake and Lil Waybe - No Faults
Nicki is on fire in this rapidly-recorded response to a Remy Ma diss track. "Soon as I wake up keep an eye out for the snakes," she spits on the single, which precedes her fourth album later this year.




Steps - Scared Of The Dark
Astonishingly good. Imagine if this was our Eurovision entry.




Alt-J - 3WW
If you can imagine Fleet Foxes covering Massive Attack's Teardrop, you're well on your way to imagining Alt-J's new single. Complete with choir chants, strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra and guest vocals from Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, it's "quite the thing".




Astrid S - Breathe
A 100 carat electro-pop anthem, mined from the jagged fjords of Norway. Contains my favourite lyrics of the week: "Did you slip me a magic pill? You got me lifted like an astronaut, no helmet on and my lungs just stop. I forget to breathe when I'm with you".




Laura Marling - Wildfire
Laura's sixth (sixth!) album, Semper Femina, is out today and it's possibly the best thing she's done. Wild Fire is one of the standouts, but you should also investigate the jazz-infused Soothing and the gorgeous Nouel.




Charli XCX - Babygirl (ft Uffie)
Today sees the release of Charli's long-awaited Number 1 Angel. It might be a mixtape, but most artists would kill to have these 10 tracks as a single. Babygirl is a highlight - all chunky mid-80s Madonna basslines, with a funky rap verse from Uffie.




Stargate ft Sia and Pink - Waterfall
Stargate are the Swedish team behind Beyonce's Irreplaceable, Rihanna's Rudeboy, and the majority of Coldplay's last album. Sia is a songwriter of some repute. Pink is a pop star turned trapeze artist. Together, they have turned in a song that sounds exactly like you would expect based on their standard operating parameters. Not bad, just so-so.



Steel Banglez - Money
While Stormzy and Skepta make great strides in broadening Grime's horizons, this single relies on the same old stale tropes we've heard a million times. It's a shame, because the production - from one of London's hottest young musicians - is on point.



Goldfrapp - Ocean
"We wanted to sort of bring the synths again," Alison Goldfrapp told Billboard about this new track. And, oh boy, are the synths back. This is huge - recalling the tougher moments of Black Cherry and Supernature, with a shade of Depeche Mode darkness. Not a single, but a stunning song nonetheless.

There's also a Clean Bandit single due out today, but it hasn't appeared yet. It'll probably turn up on Greg James or Zane Lowe's show later this afternoon. Radio, eh?

Update: The Clean Bandit single is out next week. As you were.

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Charli XCX says she has enough songs for three mixtapes!

"My record was supposed to come out a while ago, and I know some of my fans were upset at that," said Charli XCX, as she unveiled her new mixtape live on BBC Radio 1. "So I really wanted to do this for them."

She premiered three songs from Number 1 Angel, which is out on Friday. First up was 3 AM (aka Pull Up), a giddy love song co-starring everyone's favourite featured artist, MØ. It was by far the most chart-bound of the songs we heard.

Next out of the gates was the EP's opening track, Dreamer, a drawling, trap-pop collaboration with BBC Sound of 2017 appointee (and After the Afterparty co-writer) Raye. Finally, Lipgloss was a glitchy 16-bit bubblegum tune featuring a guest appearance from Chicago MC Cupcakke.

"I write all the time," Charli told Mistajam. "What's great about the mixtape [is] I got to work with so many artists that I love. It was cool to come together and be able to write really quickly with girls who I am so in love with, as artists, and put it all out.

"We did so many more songs, there could kind of be three mixtapes. But that might be excessive."

Would it, Charli? Would it?

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The new Charli XCX video will twist your brain grapes

Charli XCX features on the new single by Japanese production legend Yasutaka Nakata and, true to form, it's bloody weird.

To get you up to speed: Nakata is to J-pop what Grimes is to the western equivalent. He's scored eight number one albums in his home country, mostly with girl band Perfume, by splicing madcap synth tunes (think Sonic the Hedgehog soundtrack) with dizzying, chopped-up vocals. It's an acquired taste, to be sure, but much more palatable than the juvenile nonsense that permeates most J-pop.

His latest tune, Crazy Crazy, is even more accessible, thanks to Charli's peerless pop instincts input (the chorus, in particular, is a bubblegum masterpiece). Co-vocals come from Japanese model-turned-singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, who is one of Nakata's most prominent protégées.

The video is as bizarre as the tune is hyperactive, with the three musicians' faces pasted (badly) onto the bodies of nubile models, who perform the song in a practice studio.

"I hope everyone enjoys the weird world we created in this video!" Nakata told The Fader. "It presented a few challenges — it was very hard to perform only using my face, so I tried to vary my expressions as much as I could."

Watch it below. But fair warning: You may need to listen to Adele for an hour afterwards to unscramble your brain.

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New Music Friday: Timberlake, Dua Lipa and the rest...

THERE'S SOME NEW MUSIC. AND IT'S FRIDAY. IT MUST BE NEW MUSIC FRIDAY.

Here are a few brand new "jams" to spread on your musical toast.

1) Justin Timberlake - Can't Stop The Feeling
Perfectly acceptable stop-gap between "proper" albums. Not his finest work.

Also, anyone who's ever sat awkwardly in a room while an artist cues up their new material will know how unrealistic the video is.




2) Dua Lipa - Hotter Than Hell
This is a song about "a really horrible relationship - one that went off the rails," Dua told me earlier this year. Don't worry, though, this isn't a gruelling trudge through her emotional wreckage. No, it's a total banger.

Note the "unusual choice for the YouTube "hero image".




3) Jake Bugg - Love, Hope and Misery
This is really good. Like a Paolo Nutini ballad, only more nasal.




4) James Blake - Radio Silence
After appearing on Beyonce's Lemonade, James Blake has Beyonced his own album, and this is my favourite track (initially, at least).

Meanwhile, there's a big interview with James over on The Guardian today, which features one of the most name-dropping paragraphs in pop history.

It reads: "Madonna called his music 'the kind of thing that makes me jealous', and told him so over the phone while he was in the studio with Kanye West, who has publicly called him 'Kanye’s favourite artist'. Joni Mitchell, one of his heroes, gave him career advice after a show. He has been covered by Lorde and sampled by Drake. Listen to artists including Jack Garratt, Låpsley and FKA twigs, or the melancholy, nocturnal end of hip-hop, and you hear echoes of Blake everywhere."

James's response to all of this? "That's nice."




5) Gallant - Bourbon
"I love in cold blood," is a fantastic lyric. The whole song is fantastic, to be honest.




6) Ariana Grande - Into You
Ariana's new album is shaping up to be very good indeed.




7) Charli XCX - Explode
This is taken from the Angry Birds movie, but don't hold that against it. Charli's best work often comes on movie soundtracks - Boom Clap, Kingdom, etc, etc.




8) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dark Necessities
This has a really dramatic slow building intro, then Flea jumps in with a trademark slap-thonk bassline and it's business as usual.

Anthony Kiedis' most ridiculous lyric this time round: "You're like ice cream for an astronaut".




9) Skepta - Man
"Upset because your wife is a fan / She done with the little boy / Now she wants to be with a man."

Skepta is on show-stopping form right across his new album, Konnichiwa. Not for the faint-hearted.

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Songs you may have missed: The comeback edition

Woah - where did the last three weeks go?

Well, mostly I was in bed fighting off an horrific viral infection. Then it was the Brits (Adele won a few, you may have heard) and now I finally have some time to write my poor old neglected blog.

To make up for lost time, here's a mega "songs you may have missed" post, with six word synopses for every song. Buckle up and get ready.

1) Beyonce - Formation
Impressive visuals. Impressive lyrics. Underwhelming song.




2) Lorde - Life On Mars
Dignified and understated. A perfect tribute.





3) Rihanna ft Drake - Work
Rihanna's BOGOF offer. Warning: contains nipple.





4) Tinie Tempah - Girls Like (ft Zara Larsson)
"Tell JK that I'm still Rowling."




5) Dua Lipa - Last Dance
Is Dua Lipa Kosovan for "two lips"?




6) All Saints - One Strike
A genuinely perfect comeback single: 9/10





7) Pet Shop Boys - The Pop Kids
Nostalgia never sounded more contemporary.




8) Halsey - Colors
Stay tuned for the shock twist.





9) The 1975 - The Sound
Desperate, shallow, cringeworthy. Trying too hard.






10) Lissie - I Will Always Love You
Stop you in your tracks amazing.




11) Little May - Remind Me
Melodic indie direct from Sydney, Australia.




12) Little Mix - Black Magic (Brits performance)
They deserved to win best single.




13) Katy B, Craig David, Major Lazer - Who Am I
A ballad. A big, ballbusting ballad.




14) FKA Twigs - Good To Love
Rick-Nowels co-write. Possible breakthrough single?



15) Usher - Chains (ft Nas and Bibi Bourelly)
Unflinching, powerful call for police reform.





16) Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom EP
Harder, darker, dirtier. Welcome back, XCX.





17) Jake Bugg - On My One
Scratchy bluegrass from, er, Nottingham.





18) Icona Pop - I Want Someone Who Can Dance
"Not someone I can talk to."

Phew. Well done if you made it this far. And do let me know if there's anything I missed.

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Britney and Iggy: Haunted by the ghost of Charli XCX?

Iggy Azalea ditched Charli XCX for the follow-up to Fancy, but the British star casts a shadow all over the track.

Pretty Girls – leaked at the weekend, and officially released yesterday – rides the same rhythmic pulse as Fancy, and co-vocalist Britney Spears’ bratty sing-speak is a pure lift from XCX’s pop-punk stockpile.

It’s also Spears’ most engaged vocal for years – as she delivers a sassy lecture on her enduring allure: "Every time I walk out of my house it's like, 'Hey baby!'” she deadpans. “They don't see me rolling my eyes".

Produced, like Fancy, by the Invisible Men, the track was co-written by Little Mix. Yes, that Little Mix. Who’d have thunk?

Iggy Azalea and Britney Spears - Pretty Girls

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Songs you may have missed: A double Madonna edition

I took a mini-break from the blog last week to help the kids survive the school holidays. OK, to help my wife survive the school holidays.

But plenty of great music found its way into the world in my absence. Here is a 15-track summary of that music.

1) Madonna - Ghosttown
The best video Madonna's made in over a decade, for her best single since Sorry.

Co-starring Terence Howard (Iron Man, Empire), it depicts the Queen of Pop one of the last survivors of a nuclear apocalypse. Which finally explains why she has the face of a 30-year-old Drew Barrymore.





2) Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck
More mellifluous than the previous releases from Florence's upcoming third album, this still finds the singer wracked with doubt. "Did I drink too much? Am I losing touch? Did I build this ship to wreck?" she hollers over the deceptively upbeat, glockenspielly backing.

The video, directed Vincent Haycock, follows the narratively-driven clips for St. Jude and What Kind of Man, and was filmed at Florence's house.





3) Brandon Flowers - Still Want You
It seems like Brandon's having a lot of fun with his new solo album.

I mean, A LOT of fun.

The second single from The Desired Effect is a wonky rock/gospel hybrid that hammers home its chorus with a bejangled mallet; while the video finds Brandon in a playful, flirty mood - looking eerily similar to Bryan Ferry doing David Bowie on Stars In Their Eyes.






4) Shura - 2 Shy
I championed this Janet Jackson sound-alike a couple of weeks ago, and now it has a moody and windswept (and largely unnecessary) video to accompany it.





5) Michael Calfan - Treasured Soul
This has been bubbling around on specialist dance shows since the start of the year, but it's getting a proper release in time for the summer. A soulful, uplifting dance anthem, it's powered by steel drum hook that owes a huge debt to Duke Dumont's I Got U. Which is no bad thing.





6) Chloe Black - Cruel Intentions
I wasn't a big fan of Chloe Black's last single, 27 Club, in which she revealed an ambition to die young, at the same age as Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin. It was a terrible, attention-seeking lyric with a casual disregard for those tragically curtailed lives.

Her new single seeks to make amends ("I won't try to defend all of my crazy") and suggests the London-based singer-songwriter could be this year's Lana Del Rey. Distinctive and dramatic.






7) Clean Bandit ft Marina and the Diamonds - Disconnect
Premiered live at Coachella, this is apparently from Clean Bandit's "eagerly anticipated" second album, which is coming out later this year.

As Marina later noted on Twitter, her stage outfit made her look like Ali G.





8) Ty Dolla $ign - Drop That Kitty (ft Charli XCX)
Aggressively mediocre.





9) Kiesza - Sound of a Woman
It's ballad time in Kiesza world, which means less dancing, and more emoting. Bah.




10) Mark Ronson ft Mystikal - Feel Right
Live on the Ellen Show, this is a peach of a performance.




11) Snoop Dogg - So Many Pros
Produced by Pharrell, this creamy-smooth jam finds Snoop drawl-singing an ode to the "pretty people". Progressive it isn't, but the funkadelic chorus (featuring vocals from The Gap Band's Charlie Wilson) is delicious.






12) MO - Preach
Like SWV combined with Little Mix, while never reaching the peaks of either. Now on the Radio 1 playlist, where it's a refreshing change from James bloody Bay.





13) Lykke Li, Kanye West and Lil Wayne - Never Gonna Love Again
Eminem's producer has mashed up Lykke Li's Never Gonna Love Again with Lil Wayne and Kanye' Lollipop remix, for no reason other than he could.

It works surprisingly well.







14) Charles Hamilton - New York Raining (ft Rita Ora)
Here's a stunning, Selma-esque video to accompany New York Raining, Charles Hamilton's collaboration with Oscar nominee Rita Ora.

Set in a monochromatic 1960s New York, we see Charles amongst a group of civil rights protestors, joining arms as they square off with police. Rita stays clear of the politics, preferring to gaze wistfully through a rainy window.





15) Madonna - Bitch, I'm Madonna
We finish back where we started - with Madonna back on form, despite the creative disarray of her Rebel Heart album.

This is how you do a chat show performance in the YouTube age - playful and self-deprecating while cramming in tons of "content" and some killer dance moves. It's just a shame the song is so cringeworthy.

So there you go. Seems like I was the only one who had a quiet Easter. So spare a moment to remember the PR people who had to manage the YouTube uploads and email out the links. Let's hope they had tons of chocolate to compensate.

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Brandon Flowers is back and nine other songs you may have missed

So many good songs, so little time to write a blog. That's what the semi-regular "songs you may have missed" feature is all about...

In the words of Will Smith: "Here we go, here we go, here we here we go, yo."

1) Brandon Flowers - Can't Deny My Love
Working with Haim producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Brandon has produced a single that could have come from the soundtrack to St Elmo's Fire or Top Gun. It's that good.




2) Ed Sheeran and Rudimental - Bloodstream
In which Ray Liotta plays the washed-up frontman of hair metal band Black Glove (a nod to Spinal Tap's Smell The Glove?) He stumbles around his mansion, shooting bottles with a rifle, jumping off balconies and getting rather too friendly with his horse. It sounds more fun than it looks, unfortunately.




3) Charli XCX - Famous
Like Ed's video above, this was created for the YouTube Music Awards - which is odd, as it viciously rips into selfie-obsessed internet culture.

It starts innocently enough, with a Charli XCX wannabe dancing to Famous in her bedroom. But when her battery dies, she gets sucked into a nightmarish netherworld populated by grotesque, faded pop stars (including a scabbed-up version of Charli herself) all preening and posing into their phones.

It's like an episode of Black Mirror with a really perky soundtrack..





4) Florence + The Machine - St Jude
Florence's last video culminated with the singer crawling through the broken glass and twisted metal of a car wreck. This picks up the narrative, with Florence walking through the afterlife.

Musically, this is a much more subdued, hymnal track than we're used to from Ms Welch. I kind of prefer it to the empty bluster of the first single, What Kind Of Man.





5) Teleman - Strange Combinations
Teleman are a London three-piece that formed out of the ashes of indie band Pete and the Pirates, but don't hold that against them.

This song - recorded in one day as part of the Speedy Wunderground series, sounds like Alt-J have been eaten by Kraftwerk. It even has (what sounds like) a stylophone solo.

You can pre-order it on vinyl if that is your "scene".




6) Marian Hill - Lips / Wasted
This came via recommendation from Heat Radio's head honcho Talia Kraines, who saw the band at SXSW - a festival I am either too uncool or too nerdy to attend.

The upstart Philadelphia duo make the kind of twisted, harmonic R&B that made AlunaGeorge so exciting three years ago. I'm not sure these songs, from the band's new Sway EP, have a similar chart potential but they make a great listen.







7) Nero - The Thrill
When was dubstep the big new thing? Three years ago? Four? Now that every song incorporates its one signature sound ("wub-wub") that it was once fresh enough to be considered a genre of its own.

Anyway, here are prime wub-wub exponents Nero, who have wisely gone for an expansive, festival-friendly breakbeat banger to announce their comeback. Rave klaxons at the ready...




8) Shamir - Call It Off
Shamir's daffy On The Regular rightly earned him places on the various "Sound of 2015" polls at the start of the year. But I was intrigued to see how he'd follow it up... It was one of those records that was so unique, so individual that it whiffed of being a one-off.

Well, the whiff was wrong. Shamir's new single much less self-concious and a little more straightforward, without shedding the androgynous originality of his previous work. He also gets turned into a puppet for the video, for which he earns 10 extra points.




9) Rhodes - Turning Back Around
Because what the music industry is lacking right now is an earnest young man singing about his feelings.

Still, if that sort of thing is your bag, this is a really high-quality bag.




10) Sinkane - Young Trouble
I'd never really paid much attention to Sinkane - now on his third album - until this supple reggae track turned up on the 6 Music Playlist last week. Although it sits right in that Bob Marley groove, it also incorporates pedal steel guitar from Jonny Lam, making it sound fresh and dusty at the same time.

Very likeable and immensely listenable... I've just ordered his album.

And that's your lot for this week. Hope you found one new favourite in there.

As ever, send any tips to the email at the bottom of the screen, or track me down on Twitter.

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Charli XCX shakes it off, punk-style

Bless you, Charli XCX. This is barrels of fun in a scrappy school concert kind of way.

Charli XCX - Shake It Off

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Doing it and doing it and doing it well

"I wanted it to be like this badass Barbie Thelma & Louise-esque video," Charli XCX told Buzzfeed of her new Rita Ora-featuring video, Doing It. "So we robbed a store with toy guns, rode a bucking bronco, and nearly crashed a pink pickup truck through the desert."

Sounds amazing, right? But Charli would have been more accurate if she'd said: "I wanted it to be like Lady Gaga's video for Telephone if it had been shot for £10 and half a Twix (the biscuit half)."

That's not entirely a criticism, though. Charli XCX's videos often make her seem brattish, but here she comes across as a teenager goofing off with her best friend on Vine.

It is, frankly, adorable.

Charli XCX - Doing It (ft Rita Ora)

Hopefully, this single, which has just been added to Radio 1's C list, will chart higher than Charli's last single, the snotty-nosed Break The Rules, which stalled at number 35.

Ms XCX is also preparing to tour with Katy Perry, and belatedly releases her new album, Sucker, in the UK next month. So that's nice.

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Charli XCX has teamed up with popular The Voice host Rita Ora

Charli XCX might not be able to sort out a release date for her album (it's just been pushed back in the UK again) but she is keeping herself busy, recording a new version of her album track Doing It with everyone's favourite underwear refusnik, Rita Ora.

As you might expect, it's a blindingly colourful, whip-smart pop song. Rita's girly vocals are a great counterpoint to Charli's poshly drawled vowels, and the song's gossamer-thin lyric ("Friends like a team in a circle / We're together, we're so alive") makes more sense as a duet between two BFFs.

Those of us holding out hope for Charli becoming a "proper" pop star in 2015 will be pleased to hear the single's just been added to Radio 1's playlist. Everyone else can just get used to it.

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 singles of 2014

When I sat down and totted up my iTunes play counts for this year's Top 10, I had to double check my numbers. I had fully expected Clean Bandit's Rather Be and Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud to be among my most-listened-to songs of 2014 and, while both came close, the data doesn't lie.

So, the following singles are the ones I've compulsively added to iTunes playlists over the last 12 months and they represent the soundtrack to my year, free of self-censorship, editorialising and Sam Smith.

10) Charli XCX - Boom Clap
It's safe to say Charli XCX had low expectations for Boom Clap. She sent it to Hilary Duff. She bunged it onto a film soundtrack. She wrote the lyric "the beat goes on and on and on" and couldn't be arsed to change it.

But the track sparkles - partly because, for once, Charli isn't trying so hard to come across as a teen rebel. From the masterfully concise intro to the honey-drop "la la las" in the final chorus, it's a great big hug of a song.

Oh, and the lyric "you're the glitter and the darkness in my world" couldn't be a better fit for The Fault In Our Stars and its skewered tale of young love.




9) SBTRKT ft Ezra Koenig - New Dorp, New York
The best-sounding single of the year, throbbing with mystery and possibility - even though it's just a bass drum, an elemental bassline and a few sound effects.

Ezra Koenig delivers a dream-state vocal, listing the sights of Staten Island and "flag slappin' Manhattan", although what he's actually on about is anyone's guess.

It's just a shame the rest of SBTRKT's album didn't live up to this promise.



8) Katy B - Crying For No Reason
AKA Katy B's secret weapon. A Guy Chambers co-write, Crying For No Reason is a "proper" ballad about the damage caused by buried emotions, with a hat-tip to Madonna's Frozen in its clattering drum fills.

Katy's delivery makes the song indispensable. "I never faced all the pain I caused," she sings with tangible anguish. "Now that pain is hitting me full force".



7) Prince - Breakdown
Twelve months ago, I would never have expected a Prince single to feature in this Top 10. But here he is, reinvigorated by those hit-and-run London concerts, delivering his most devastating ballad since The Beautiful Ones.

Apparently an autobiographical account of his former excesses - "I used to throw the party every New Year's Eve / First one intoxicated, last one to leave" - it's also a love letter to the person (higher power?) who set him free.

If Frank Ocean had released this, it would have been everywhere. But Frank Ocean could never have hit those high notes in the coda.



6) Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
Speaking of Prince, here's a tribute act.




5) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat
By Lorde's standards, Yellow Flicker Beat is a minor single but there's something about her performance that draws me in. Maybe it's the killer hook, maybe I'm hypnotised by the frail hum that runs through the entire song - either way, it's murderously addictive.

As with Boom Clap, Lorde's song is a perfect marriage between lyric and source material (in this case, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay). If you can't imagine Katniss Everdeen singing "I made a little prison and I'm locking up everyone who ever laid a finger on me," then you're doing it wrong.




4) The Staves - Blood I Bled
The Staves really raise their game on this Bon Iver-produced song, the immaculate layering of their harmonies matched by the steady build of instrumentation from a single, hand-picked guitar to the soaring, astral strings of the closing moments.

Truly exceptional.




3) Jessie Ware - Tough Love
"Sophisticated" and "tasteful" are dirty words in pop but Jessie Ware proves they don't have to be. Tough Love has a surface layer of calm, but listen closer and you'll hear the strain in Jessie's voice as she confronts a no-good lover - "so you want to be a man about it, do you?" We never find out exactly what he's done, but the cheeky lift from Prince's Little Red Corvette suggests it's not just his eye that's been wandering.

Repressed anger has never sounded so beautiful.



2) Tove Lo - Truth Serum EP
Rarely does a pop act arrive as fully-formed as Tove Lo, whose dispatches from the front line of love are catastrophically honest.

The Truth Serum EP is an X-rated Mills and Boon potboiler, chronicling a relationship from the first heady rush of love to a devastated, drug-fuelled break-up.

Every track hits you like a hurricane - the pop hooks deployed like rock riffs as Tove excavates her darkest secrets. No wonder her mother was worried about her when she heard it.



1) Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
Let's face it, Shake It Off was more calculated than Fermat's Last Theorem. Co-written with not one, but two of Sweden's biggest hitmakers, it was stuffed with heard-it-before hooks, yawnsome self-empowerment clichés ("haters gonna hate") and employed the phrase "this sick beat" without any apparent irony.

But if Taylor's ambition was to write a stone-cold pop classic, she hit the nail on the head. Squarely. With a fucking jackhammer.

The melody is indelible, and the urge to dance like a dork is irresistible, thanks to that infectious drumbeat. Oh, sick beat. I get it now.

PS: The song would still be better if she sang "bakers gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake". And that's a fact.

And, because it's been a great year for singles, the next 11 would have been:

11) Banks - Beggin' For Thread
12) Tove Stryke - Even If I'm Loud It Doesn't Mean I'm Talking To You
13) Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
14) Gorgon City ft MNEK - Ready For Your Love
15) Clean Bandit - Rather Be
16) Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud
17) Beyonce - Partition
18) Kelis - Rumble
19) Ed Sheeran - Sing
20) Katy Perry - Dark Horse
21) The Veronicas - You Ruin Me

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Songs you may have missed: 2015 edition

After one of the most disappointing Christmas release schedules in living memory (was a U2 album really the best the music industry could come up with?) thoughts are turning to 2015

Rihanna's in the studio. Madonna's vampiring some of dance music's biggest names, and Katy Perry is undoubtedly planning something ridiculous for the SuperBowl.

But before all that, the record labels will use the January lull to sneak some new artists onto the radio, and to raise the profile of some established acts. And that is where this "songs you may have missed" begins...

1) Frank Ocean - Memrise
Hopefully a signifier of a follow-up to Channel Orange in 2015, this was given a low-key premiere on Frank Ocean's Tumblr over Thanksgiving.

It's so abstract it barely registers as a song, but you have to admire the levels of filth he crams into the all-too-brief 1'57" running time.

"I could fuck you all night long from a memory alone," Ocean croons. What on earth would his mother say?






2) Zara Larsson - Weak Heart
She's Swedish, she's gorgeous, she's riding a horse. What more could you ask for?





3) Ed Sheeran - Autumn Leaves (J-Kraken Remix)
Despite being rather heavy on the old bongos, this is a lovely re-tooling of Ed's Autumn Leaves. It even withstands the addition of pan pipes. Just.






4) Ronika - Marathon
Plucky pop archivist Ronika released her debut album, Selectadisc, earlier this year and it's still a pleasure to listen to when the mood for an 80s disco revival hits me.

Marathon isn't the strongest track on the record but the video's a lot of fun.





5) Kate Pierson - Mister Sister
Unbelievably Kate Pierson of the B-52s has never made a solo album UNTIL NOW. Believably, the album features "input" from definitely-not-spread-too-thin songwriting person Sia.

The first single is a spritely new wave "transgender anthem" called Mister Sister. The lyric video features Fred Armisen off of Portlandia doing some amusing business at a table.





6) Slow Knights - Without You
Slow Knights is a side-project of Scissor Sister Del Marquis. His new single has vocals from Rod Thomas, aka Bright Light Bright Light, and part-time actress Bridget Barkan.

It's a midtempo "my world would end without you" love ballad, which would make a really good track 12 on a mixtape.





7) Låpsley - Falling Short
Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Låpsley, aka Holly Fletcher, landed on the BBC Sound of 2015 longlist last week and it's easy to see why. A cross between London Grammar and the xx, she makes minimalism mesmerising.





8) Charli XCX - Breaking Up
I know Charli XCX is all lip curls and punk attitude these days but this song just reminds me of Shampoo.





9) Hippie Sabotage - Waiting Too Long
Fresh from the success of their Habits (Stay High) remix (which, despite being unofficial, broke Tove Lo in the UK and US) Hippie Sabotage have uploaded this song to Soundcloud.

Appropriately enough, it sounds like the comedown from Tove's narcotic advenures. Meandering, drowsy and melancholy - it suggests interesting things from the band in 2015.




10) Listenbee - Save Me
If you liked Waves or Prayer In C, this is going to be right up your street, into your driveway and peering through the kitchen window.

Listenbee is a new singer from NYC, signed to Kiesza's label, and that's about all I can tell you. She opened her Facebook and Twitter pages just 6 days ago. Before that... nothing. Mysterious.





11) Leo Kalyan - Full Circle
"With your eyes closed, the sounds are enough to make you feel like you’re flying," said influential pop blog Pigeons and Planes, and who am I to disagree?





12) K Michelle - https://soundcloud.com/nxnnyxsets/08-k-michelle-something-about-the-night">Something About The Night
This was recommended on Twitter by the one and only Nicola Roberts - aka the only member of Girls Aloud with a modicum of taste.

You may remember K Michelle for her Missy Elliot-featuring single Fakin' It in 2009 but, let's face it, you probably dont't. This song is head and shoulders above that formulaic number, though. And the video - a six-minute mini biopic of Billie Holliday - will take your breath away.

And that's all we have time for. Hope you found something you liked.

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Can Charli XCX turn it back around?

It'll be interesting to see what happens to Charli XCX's career in the UK after Break The Rules flumped into the chart at 35 and disappeared without a trace.

To be honest, it wasn't her best effort - replacing Boom Clap's carefree abandon with a petulant lyric and sneery video - but the goodwill from Fancy and Boom Clap should have carried her a little higher up the charts.

It's not even a "young people don't buy music" problem: The video for Break The Rules has a disappointing, if not abysmal, 8 million views. Boom Clap has 84 million, while Fancy racked up an unbelievable 349 million (!).

I hope the poor performance is an aberration, because Charli is one of the thrillingest, killingest pop stars we have, as anyone who's seen her live show can attest.

Charli herself doesn't seem too flustered, telling Seventeen Magazine: "I'm going to build an empire. I'm always writing for someone else. I want to be someone who has her fingerprints all over the pop charts."

And, while she's contributing to the Hunger Games soundtrack and collaborating with Giorgio Moroder, that seems entirely possible.

But the proof will come when her album, Sucker, "drops" on the unforgivingly competitive date of 16th December (26th January in the UK).

To tempt you into purchasing a copy, she's just uploaded the new song Gold Coins to Soundcloud. Written with Robyn and Icona Pop collaborator Patrick Berger, it's pop with balls. Massive shiny balls.

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Songs you may have missed: A Lorde (and S Club) special

So it was back to work this week after a very generous (although partly-unpaid) 12 weeks' paternity leave. I won't say it was easy to leave the kids behind but on balance my wife has the harder job.

Anyway, the cogs of the music industry machine continue to turn despite my domestic arrangements. Here's a round-up of the songs I heard this week and couldn't find time to write up. NB: They're basically all by Lorde.

1) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat (Kanye West Remix)
Intense.



2) Charli XCX ft Simon Le Bon - Kingdom
This one's from Lorde's hand-picked soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.

Charli talked about it to Pitchfork earlier this week, using the following words: "I worked with Rostam [Batmanglij] on that song. We went to the Miley Cyrus show in LA and got really wasted. Then we went back to his house and I sat on top of his piano, and we wrote Kingdom. We sung it into his phone.

"I remember thinking in the morning, 'Ugh, this is going to be the worst thing ever,' but it was really good. So when Ella [Lorde] reached out to me about the soundtrack, I decided to send her that song even though it’s really different than my usual shit. She was really complimentary about it."

So there you go.



3) Lorde - Don't Tell 'Em (Radio 1 Live Lounge cover)
Intense.





4) S Club 7 - Greatest Hits medley (from Children In Need)
A greatest hits medley featuring four songs isn't really worthy of the title but it's interesting to see what S Club look like in their mid-to-late 30s.

Paul Cattermole is the highlight, dancing like a drunk uncle at a David Brent lookalike competest.





5) Nicole Scherzinger - Run
Intense.





6) Lion Babe - Jump Hi (ft Childish Gambino)
Possibly R&B's best-kept secret, Lion Babe have been on the Discopop radar since 2012. They've been quiet for a while but this song, the title track to a forthcoming EP, suggests they're getting their ducks in a row for a major push 2015.

Sample watch: The chorus uses a vocal hook from Nina Simone's interpretation of Mr Bojangles.





7) Ariana Grande - All My Love (ft Major Lazer)
Also from the Hunger Games soundtrack. A total racket, but in the good way.






8) Calvin Harris - Outside (ft Ellie Goulding)
Do you think Calvin regrets giving all his best material to Rita Ora?





9) Taylor Swift - Shake It Off (Tesher remix)
This is magnificent - reframing Taylor's pop hit as a dark and dirty club hit. If Lorde had written Shake It Off, it would have sounded like this.

Sample-watch: The backing track is based around the intro to Justin Timberlake's What Goes Around (Comes Around).





10) One Bit - Won't Hold Back
Superlative sunset grooves from Radio One's "Most Played New Act of 2014". For fans of Disclosure and Holy Ghost!




11) Fergie - LA Love
Featuring cameos from Hilary Swank, Chelsea Handler and Ryan Seacrest. Hardly Liberian Girl, is it?




12) Chvrches vs Bleachers - You Can Go Your Own Way
Featuring the worst live sound mix you have ever heard in your life, this is nonetheless a brilliant cover version. Lauren's vivacious vocals really bring a new dimension to Fleetwood Mac's kiss-off classic.

And that, readers, is that. Happy listening!

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Kylie covers Bette Davis Eyes and 11 other songs you may have missed

Here you go - 11 songs that Discopop Directory forgot from the first week of October.

There are some real gems in this female-heavy edition... but I'm a little pushed for time, so its one-paragraph synopses only.

1) Kylie - Bette Davis Eyes
Recorded for Radio 2's Sound of the 80s, it's hard to imagine a better-judged cover version.






2) David Guetta ft Sam Martin - Dangerous
David Guetta is responsible for so many identikit Eurodance musical obscenities that it's easy to forget he also made Titanium and I Gotta Feeling. This new single sees him plunder the Daft Punk sample bank, and it's really rather magnificent.





3) Beyonce and Nicki Minaj - Flawless (live)
Amateur (ie shit) footage of this live collaboration has been floating around for a while, but Beyonce uploaded a professional version two nights ago. It's quite something.






4) Fiona Apple - The Container
An unreleased track dusted down for the opening titles to new US drama The Affair (starring Dominic West and Maura Tierney) this is the best adult pop theme song since Regina Spektor's You've Got Time.

6) Tove Styrke - Borderline
"I'm borderline happy and I'm borderline sad, I'm borderline good and I'm borderline bad" - a bubbling, scandipop gem from music's second-best Tove. Warning: May cause earworms.






6) Charli XCX - London Girls
Equal parts Toto Coleo, Joan Jett and Girls Aloud's theme song for Freaky Friday, this is a riotous teaser for Charli's forthcoming album, Sucker. Oi!





7) Jessie J - Burnin' Up (fr 2 Chainz)
"It's an uptempo love song that uses fire as a metaphor for lust," explains lyric website Popgenius, with unprecedented levels of insight. Personally, I'm more intrigued by Jessie's reference to "subliminal sex".

And by intrigued I mean repulsed.





8) Karen Harding - Say Something
Getting kicked out of the X Factor at the judges' houses stage last year was the best thing that ever happened to her. Co-written by MNEK, like everything else these days.





9) Oh Land - Head Up High
First single from the cheekbonally blessed Danish singer's forthcoming album, Earth Sick. Synthalicious.

10) Ibeyi - River
Signed by XL Recordings, nu-soul group Ibeyi consists of French-Cuban twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz, daugthers of the Cuban percussionist and Buena Vista Social Club member Anga Díaz. (I copied this directly from Stereogum, spelling mistakes and all, so blame them if the facts are wrong).

Judging by this Google image search, the twins were tragically born with conjoined hair, which much make their concerts interesting to watch.




11) RKCB - Elision
Fans of Jungle will get a familiar thrill from the hushed electro-funk of this track, courtesy of LA production duo RKCB. Lovely late-night stuff with impressive use of the "stereo field", for music nerds.




12) Cheryl - Only Human
I haven't been bowled over by the singles from Cheryl's fourth album but this - a pre-order giveaway - is a vast improvement. Spiralling of melody and fulsome of bass, it's one of the best things she's done across her entire solo career.

OK - that's your lot. More of the same next week.

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Kasabian cover Fancy - and it's a 10/10

This is quite something: Kasabian doing a lush, laid-back cover of Iggy Azalea's Fancy in Radio 1's Live Lounge.

Perhaps understandably, they concentrate on the Charli XCX moments, particularly the "let's get drunk on the mini-bar" section.

The session was all part of the station's More Music Month, which involves a Live Lounge every day of September, so expect more of his sort of thing in the next 29 days.

Kasabian - Fancy

And if you liked that, it turns out the Leicester lads have a knack for a kooky cover. Check out this mash-up of Good Vibrations and... er, the Sesame Street theme tune, performed for Australia's Triple J last month.

Kasabian - Fancy

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