Top 10 albums of 2018

Better late than never... These are the records that went on repeat at Discopop Towers^TM in 2017. Which was a week ago.

10) Muna - About U

When you're beaten and a friend unexpectedly comes to your defence. When you're silently hurting and someone notices. When you just need to be understood. That's what this album is, but songs.



9) Billie Eilish - Don't Smile At Me

Technically an EP, but longer than most Beatles' albums, so I'm allowing it.

Billie Eilish has a faultless ear for melody, a lean-closer voice and a bucketful of acidic lyrics. Everyone, including me, goes on about Bellyache, where she fantasises about killing her friends. But my favourite (because I actually lived it) is Party Favor, where she casually and callously dumps her boyfriend on his birthday. "I hate to do this to you on your birthday," she coos. "Happy birthday, by the way".


8) Wolf Alice - Visions Of A Life

Good luck summing this one up. Ellie, Theo, Joff and Joel sound like they've raided the musical pick'n'mix counter, grabbing handfuls of grunge and dream-pop and punk shoegaze and anything else that takes their fancy - Ellie even borrows Neil Tenant's deadpan vocal "stylings" on Sky Musings. But somehow it works. You can holler along to Beautifully Unconventional, you can spit at Yuk Foo, you can swoon to Don't Delete The Kisses.

"I think hummus is quite a good analogy for our album," Ellie told me in September. "You get all these different varieties but at the end of the day they're all hummus."

Told you it was impossible to sum up.


7) Kendrick Lamar - Damn

The fire, the fury, the blood, the piss, the faith, the doubt, the humility, the false humility, the Rihanna duet, the breezy, casual competence of it all. At this point, he's basically showing off.



6) Paramore - After Laughter

Paramore's technicolor fifth album completes their transformation into pin-sharp pop stars - but not, like, Katy Perry or anything. ("I can't imagine getting up there and playing a Max Martin song – at that point we might as well just stop," guitarist Taylor York told The New York Times in April).

Instead, they take their cues from the angular elbows and polyrhythms of Talking Heads and Cyndi Lauper, while Hayley Williams picks at the scabs of her depression in a procession of unflinchingly stark lyrics.

My favourite track is Rose Colored Boy - where she rages against an irritatingly glass-half-full acquaintance. "And oh, I'm so annoyed," she hisses, "'Cause I just killed off what was left of the optimist in me". Sad-dancing hasn't been this good since Robyn last released an album.



5) Lorde - Melodrama

Too clever for its own good, Lorde's second album suffers from a surfeit of ideas. When they work (the conspiratorial tongue click on Perfect Places, the submerged vocal samples of Sober) it's glorious. But other tracks threaten to collapse under the weight of their ambition. It's telling that the standout moments are the simplest: Liability and Writer In The Dark.

But you can't argue with Ella Yelich-O'Connor's facility with melody, nor her gothic, awkward, evocative lyrics - somehow cool in their lack of coolness.

"We're the greatest/ They'll hang us in the Louvre / Down the back... but who cares? Still the Louvre" is a stand-out, but my absolute favourite is "I'm closing my teeth around this liquor-wet lime".

A flawed masterpiece.



4) Dua Lipa - Dua Lipa

Was it groundbreaking? No.
Did it rewrite pop history? No.
Was it an unimpeachable collection of pop songs? Yes.

New Rules was the standout, naturally, but you get six other singles for your money, from the self-descriptive Hotter Than Hell to the ridiculously danceable Blow Your Mind (Mwah). And check out Dua's sultry, husky vocals on Thinking 'Bout You for proof that she's set to be the UK's finest pop star.


3) St Vincent - Masseduction

All seedy glamour, giddy highs and unsettling lows, St Vincent's fifth album is as sticky and messy as real life gets.

Over crunching programmed beats, her stories invariably deal with loss of control ("I cannot stop the airplane from crashing," she sings on the title track), with references to mood-stabilising drugs, and a soul-crushing break-up ("how can anyone have you and lose you and not lose their mind, too?" - Los Ageless).

Annie Clark's most personal album to date, it's also her most pop-fuelled. She's ably assisted in this by Jack Antonoff, who also produced Lorde and Taylor Swift's latest albums, but never surrenders her wit, her inventiveness or her fury.


2) Kesha - Rainbow

When life gives you lemons, make a defiantly bonkers hillbilly pop record.

Kesha may not have won her freedom from Dr Luke, the producer and label boss she accuses of drugging and sexually abusing her (claims he denies) but she was finally free to make the music she wanted.

Out go the vocoders and retrospectively creepy lyrics about being drunk and out of control. In come throat-shredding vocals and revelatory songs about resilience, compassion, independence and, er... dating Godzilla.

The back story makes it compelling, but it's the songs that keep you coming back.

1) Laura Marling - Semper Femina

Acres of newsprint were wasted discussing how Laura Marling wrote about femininity from a male perspective. For a start, she abandoned that conceit half-way through (although the record is broadly about female archetypes, from the wild child to the artist's muse). But worse than that, it steers your attention away from the mesmerising beauty of these songs.

The album opens with Soothing, whose prowling, sensuous bassline suggests all kinds of sex, until Marling kicks her lover out: "I banish you with love". On Wild Fire, she channels Lou Reed, while shaming a plonker who tells her "you're at your most beautiful when you don't know you're being watched". "Maybe someday when God takes me away," she drawls. "I'll understand what the fuck that means."

Musically, she's never sounded more relaxed. Under the watchful guidance of Blake Mills (Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple) she lets in all sorts of new musical textures - backmasked vocals, sweeping strings, even a guitar solo - that add to the dramatic acuity of her lyrics.

Beguiling and brilliant, it's the best album of her career.

Here's a playlist of tracks from the Top 10 albums. You can see numbers 11 to 20 below.

FYI: The next 10:
11) SZA - CTRL
12) Taylor Swift - Reputation
13) Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life
14) Stormzy - Gang Signs & Prayer
15) J Hus - Common Sense
16) Haim - Something To Tell you
17) Niia - I
18) Feist - Pleasure
19) Jessie Ware - Glass House
20) Jay-Z - 4:44

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 albums of 2016

Better late than never, here are my top 10 albums of the year just passed. As always, the rankings are based on my iTunes play counts - so these are the records I actually listened to, not the ones I appreciated on an intellectual level (nb: I don't have an intellectual level).

So, without further ado...

10) Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

Depending on your point of view, Radiohead either rediscovered the joy of melody on this, their ninth album, or simply released half a dozen forgotten songs from "when they were good". Who cares, though, when the results were this magical? Boosted by Jonny Greenwood's cinematic string arrangements, the album feels epic and intimate at the same time, from the low flying panic attack of Burn The Witch to the grieving melancholy of True Love Waits - a track written as a love letter almost 20 years ago, only to be released as Thom Yorke's relationship fell apart.



9) Tove Lo - Lady Wood

Tove Lo is the pop equivalent of Just 17's sex column. "Look at this smut," she says, patting herself firmly on the back. "Isn't it outrageous?"

That attitude is writ large throughout Lady Wood, from the title (fun fact: it's a euphemism for a clitoral erection) to the vagina in the logo. Meanwhile, Tove effs and jeffs her way through the album like a teenager trying to shock her parents, but her heart is in the right place. The confessional tales of lust, loss and desperation are relatable and cathartic - and she anchors everything in a dark, minimalist house production.

She may call herself a True Disaster, but this is a blemished pop gem.



8) Clare Maguire - Stranger Things Have Happened

Clare Maguire has been through the wringer and no mistake. Dropped by her label, she was drinking litres of vodka every day until a doctor gave her two weeks to live. Miraculously (and with a lot of hard work) she turned her life around and produced this spell-binding album of classic, piano-led pop.

She's at her best when she peers into the abyss - Channelling Nina Simone on the autobiographical opening track, Faded; and delivering the best lonely hearts advert of all time on Whenever You Want It: "I just wanna have someone who laughs at my shit jokes."

Don't we all, Clare? Don't we all?



7) Michael Kiwanuka - Love and Hate

Resolutely old-school, Michael Kiwanuka's second album riffs on Marvin, Isaac and Curtis but never descends into pastiche. It finds him world-weary and melancholy, after a crisis of confidence almost persuaded him to abandon music altogether. "But when you have all or nothing to lose, you just become fearless," he told Nothing But Hope And Passion.

The result is breath-taking: A psych-soul opus backed by opulent strings and a full choir. The opening track unfolds over 10 minutes, while the bluesy Black Man In A White starts like a plantation song before picking up a funky shuffle that never quite settles into a groove - a musical metaphor for Kiwanuka's sense of unease. It took a lot of people by surprise, in the best possible way.



6) Christine & The Queens - Chaleur Humaine

I came to this far too late but that was my own stupid fault. Chaleur Humaine is classy, delicate synthpop that embraces mystery and androgyny like nothing else on this list. Lots of mainstream artists get labelled "outsider pop" but Héloïse Letissier is the real deal.


Of course, I wasn't the only person to overlook it: In her native France, Héloïse released the album in 2014, winning a cupboard full of awards and receiving endorsements from Madonna and Elton John. That it took her to re-record some of the lyrics in English merely illustrates, in the year of Brexit, how closeted and unadventurous the UK can be, even in the resolutely liberal world of pop.



5) Nao - For All We Know

In a year we lost Prince, Nao made the best Prince album this side of Musicology. For All We Know is a lurching, off-kilter, pop-funk extravaganza, where the South Londoner autopsies love (requited and otherwise) in her gorgeous, high-pitched voice. A thoroughly impressive debut.



4) Shura - Nothing's Real

Imagine if Madonna ever experienced doubt or insecurity. That's Shura's debut album. Named in honour of a panic attack that altered her perception of reality, it follows an introverted wallflower as she navigates her way through crushes, infatuations and break-ups ("thought we'd get married and have kids and stuff," she sings of one particularly devastating break-up).

Where she doesn't lack confidence, though, is in the music. What's It Gonna Be, all staccato guitars and shimmering synths, it sounds like the theme to a 1980s teen film without succumbing to pastiche. Even better is the extended, bravura coda of White Light - the disco equivalent of 2001: A Space Odyssey's Star Gate sequence.



3) Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life

Back after a baby-having hiatus, Regina Spektor is on fine form. Her character studies and lyrical insights are sharper than ever ("All the lies on your resumé have become the truth by now," she sings on Older and Taller), while the sombre tone smooths out her quirkier tics. Not coincidentally, this is the first time she's written a record from scratch).

The stand-outs are many: The Grand Hotel is a baroque ballad that reimagines Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest as a portal to hell; while The Trapper and The Furrier is a scathing polemic about the greed of bankers and pharmaceutical companies that starts a capella and ends with an unrestrained scream. Best of all is Sellers of Flowers - a deep blue ink blot, lamenting the fragility of memory.

An absolute treat.


2) Solange - A Seat At The Table

On which Beyonce's little sister comes into her own. Recorded in New Iberia, Louisiana, where her grandparents were fire-bombed out of their house fifty years ago, it is informed by the dehumanising acts, large and small, black people face on a daily basis. That doesn't mean it's an angry album, although anger certainly rears it's head. Rather, Solange presents a poised, nuanced portrait of the pains and joys of black womanhood.

Musically, she's found her footing, too. Gone is the lightweight R&B of her debut album, in favour of deep, dreamy R&B grooves. You'll recognise the spirits of Minnie Riperton, Marvin Gaye, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Herbie Hancock and Isaac Hayes dropping by to pay their respects - but this is Solange's album, through and through.



1) Beyoncé - Lemonade

Remember when everyone thought Lemonade was a record about Jay-Z cheating on Beyoncé? Turns out "Becky with the good hair" is the biggest Trojan horse since, well, that horse in Troy.

Beyoncé's tale of betrayal masked a much bigger discourse on male privilege, white privilege, police violence, female empowerment, rejection, forgiveness, anger, scorn, pain, redemption... The list goes on.

The signs were there when she turned up at the Super Bowl dressed as a Black Panther and made a video in which she sat on top of a police car as it sank into post-Katrina floodwaters. Those are pretty bold statements, especially for an artist of Beyoncé's stature. Can you imagine Elvis or Michael Jackson putting their necks on the line so boldly. No, you cannot.

But here's the thing - the message goes nowhere without fantastic tunes. Luckily, Beyoncé delivered them by the truckful. Hold Up, Sorry, All Night, Freedom, Formation - Beyoncé could have sung, "Yes my name is Iggle Piggle" over those tracks and they'd still be classics. (Note to Beyoncé: Please release this record in 2017).

So there you go... I'm gutted there wasn't space for Chance The Rapper or Childish Gambino, both of whom signposted a way out of rap's current cul-de-sac, or for A Tribe Called Quest's comeback, which did the same thing by sounding exactly like a Tribe Called Quest album from 20 years ago. I thought Ariana Grande might get a look-in, but the album squandered it's promise with a bunch of cookie cutter dance bops that had the filthy hands of major label A&R all over them.

Bat For Lashes' excellent The Bride (about a bride whose fiancé is killed on the way to their wedding) would have had a place if it wasn't so depressing to listen to, in a good way. And Frank Ocean's Blonde loses out for that godawful Facebook interlude. What a crock.

Anyway, let's not end on a sour note. Here's a playlist of the best tracks from those Top 10 albums. If you find something you like, why not buy it and single-handedly save the music industry?

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 singles of 2016

Hello strangers!

I'm emerging from blog hibernation to post my annual Top 10 list. Hopefully this will prompt a bit more posting in the new year... Fingers crossed.

As usual, my Top 10 is compiled using the play counts in my iTunes library, keeping me honest about the songs I actually listened to, rather than the ones that sound cool. So here they are, in reverse order...

10) Muna - I Know A Place
Brand new girlband Muna put on one of the best shows I saw this year, deep underground in London's Notting Hill - and this was the highlight: A great big exuberant hug for the LGBTQ community (lead singer Katie Gavin wrote a moving essay about the lyrics in Time Magazine, which is well worth a read).

Played live, it's one of those coming together moments, where the whole club - from the cloakroom to the drum riser - jumps up and down in unison. The recorded version loses some of that energy, but emerges as a terrific singalong, nonetheless.




9) Zara Larsson - Lush Life
When I first heard Lush Life, I thought it was Rihanna. But apparently she only does life-affirming pop songs for Calvin Harris these days, leaving an open goal of Zara Larsson to score one of the year's biggest breakthrough hits. Looking forward to the album next year...




8) Shura - What's It Gonna Be?
This would have made it into the Top 10 for the John Hughes-inspired video alone. But luckily What's It Going To Be is also a perfect happysad pop banger in its own right, so everybody wins.




7) Ariana Grande - Into You
I wished Ariana Grande's Dangerous Woman album had been a little bit more... well, dangerous. Imagine if she'd fully committed to the promise of the title track, recording a dozen dusky showtunes, draped over a piano like Michelle Pfieffer in The Fabulous Baker Brothers. It could have been a classic. But then we'd never have gotten this - a sexy, synthy prelude to an historic romp under the sheets.

For once, old cat ears sounded like she just might start purring.




6) Selena Gomez - Hands To Myself
"I mean I could, but why would I want to." It's the sort of line Lauren Bacall would have said to Humphrey Bogart in the 1940s, but in a pop song. Amazing.




5) Drake ft Kyla and WizKid - One Dance
Confession time: I can't stand Drake. His drowsy, monotonous voice is my own personal chloroform. And yet... and yet... One Dance is just so deliciously moreish.

Maybe it's Kyla's coy, come-hither hook; maybe it's that outer space piano; or maybe it's the sinewy, arabesque guitar line. But it gets me every time.



4) Grimes - Kill v Maim
According to Grimes, "Kill v Maim is written from the perspective of Al Pacino in The Godfather Pt II. Except he’s a vampire who can switch gender and travel through space."

Amazingly, it comes close to matching that description; while the visuals look like a Manga cartoon and a sweet shop threw up over Michael Jackson's Bad video. A signpost for the future of pop. In 2187.



3) Christine & The Queens - Tilted
A dance track about being so awkward, your feet won't do what you tell them. A work of genius in both the English and original French versions.




2) Justin Timberlake - Can't Stop The Feeling
Total fluff. A flimsy song for a flimsy film. But put Justin Timberlake in the same room as Max Martin and you're guaranteed some pop magic. Listen to the playful way JT elongates the word "aaaaaaand" in the chorus; Or the casual way they throw in a gargantuan sing-along hook in the last 20 seconds, forcing you to rewind and start again, just to get more of that exquisite sugar rush.




1) Solange - Cranes In The Sky
My favourite single of 2016 was, in fact, written in a hotel room in 2008. An essay on depression and escapism, it was kept in a drawer for eight years, until Solange dusted it off and used it as a template for A Seat At The Table. Like the rest of the album, it's an elegant, dignified response to harrowing experiences, and a truly exceptional song.

I couldn't resist it - and nor could my kids (which might explain the higher-than-expected placing in this countdown, to be fair).

It was a good year for singles. So, if you're interested, the next 10 would have been:

11) Beyoncé - Hold Up
12) Radiohead - Burn The Witch
13) Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman
14) The Chainsmokers ft Halsey - Closer
15) Rag N Bone Man - Human
16) Lady Gaga - Million Reasons
17) The Weeknd ft Daft Punk - Starboy
18) All Saints - One Strike
19) Lissie - Don't You Give Up On Me
20) Glass Animals - Life Itself

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 Albums of 2015

Happy new year! And now that 2015 is finally behind us, here is a "definitive" list of the year's best albums, as dictated by my iTunes play counts.

I'm afraid it's bad news for Adele.

10) Lana Del Rey - Honeymoon
The modern flourishes and hip-hop beats have been erased, allowing Lana to plunge headfirst into her oily black pool of languorous melodrama. The songs are stronger, the melodies more memorable, her vocals more confidently authored. And anyone who accuses her of being submissive isn’t listening properly. “The truth is,” she sighs. "I never bought into your bullshit.” Well, quite.




9) Wolf Alice - Our Love Is Cool
Wolf Alice were so confident in their debut album that they left off their best single - Moaning Lisa Smile. The fact you don’t miss it only validates their chutzpah. Four years in the making, My Love Is Cool mixes up the grunge-lite of their early EPs with ethereal, melodic rock and - on Freazy - blissed out psych-pop. A surprisingly accessible rock record.




8) Years & Years - Communion
Olly Alexander paints a depressing picture of 21st century romance, with lyrics like "I'll do what you like if you stay the night" and "Let me take your heart / Love you in the dark / No one has to see." But, to be honest, I didn't notice until I wrote this list. The words wash over you - but the music is crisp, smart and surprisingly deep.




7) Ibeyi - Ibeyi
French-Cuban twins Lisa and Naomi Díaz sing in a mixture of Yoruba and English, mixing deep soul with African tradition, Cuban jazz and electronic samples. It shouldn't work - but the result is one of the most textured, original albums of the year.





6) Chvrches - Every Open Eye
Juddering synth-pop with a soft centre, thanks to Lauren Mayberry’s songbird vocals, which somehow manage to convey strength and vulnerability at the same time. Every Open Eye is essentially a streamlined version of Chvrches' debut album, with value-addded stadium-ready choruses. Even the one where the bloke sings isn’t that bad.




5) Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
The best record, lyrically-speaking, of the year. It opens with Courtney trying to stop a suicidal teenager jumping off a building - only to discover he’s just admiring the view. Later, she trains an acerbic eye on people moving to the suburbs and buying organic vegetables. It’s like a Woody Allen film, set to sloppy lo-fi punk. In other words: Magnificent.




4) Carly Rae Jepsen - E•MO•TION
In the making of this album, Carly Rae Jepsen recorded and rejected songs with Swedish pop overlord Max Martin. That should give you an idea of the quality threshold. She beats Taylor Swift at her own game, crafting a hazy 80s wonderland, full of reverberant saxophones and ridiculous synth hits - but never puts her baby toe over the cheese threshold. The lyrics constantly subvert pop cliche ("I think I broke up with my boyfriend today - but I've got worse problems"), while Your Type is a more heartbreaking than 7.8 million Adele albums combined.




3) Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
Police violence, white fear, black hypocrisy, media manipulation, the devil's temptation, fame, sex, depression, income tax... Is there a topic To Pimp A Butterfly doesn't tackle? The year's biggest album - conceptually and musically - is initially hard to digest, but proffers fresh rewards every time you listen. Bonus points for extended use of jazz clarinet.




2) Janet Jackson - Unbreakable
A solid gold return to form after a run of hopeless misfires. What changed? Well, for the first time since The Velvet Rope, Janet has something to say - musing on the nature of love and loss after a decidedly dark decade. Broken Hearts Heal, her tribute to Michael, is philosophical ("Broken hearts live longer") without being cloying; while Lessons Learned is a nuanced examination of domestic abuse. Add to that the slinky No Sleeep and the Sly Stone tribute Gon B Alright and you have an album as classy as it is catchy. (Although you could trim off tracks 11, 12, 13 and 15 and never miss them).



1) Tove Styrke - Kiddo
Fierce, funny and irresistible - Kiddo is Swedish pop with the autopilot smashed to smithereens. Tove Styrke mocks her Swedish Idol background ("Hijack the idea of a girl that obeys / Ha-ha-ha-ha oh my / Laugh it in the face") and spits venom at the self-obsessed ("I hope you hit the ground hard when you fell for yourself.") If you like the kilter of your pop set to "off", this is a perfect package.

Well, there you go. If you'd asked me before I consulted iTunes, I'd have said Kendrick Lamar would be number one, and that Marina and the Diamonds or The Staves would creep into the Top 10. But there you go, the play counts don't lie. Turns out I really, really like the Tove Styrke album - and the Years & Years one is good for doing the dishes to. Take that, 2015.

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Harkive: A day in the life of my headphones

Today is Harkive day - when people all around the internet keep a 24-hour diary of their listening habits. It's for a running project by Craig Hamilton, which aims to track how our access to and experience of music is changing. You can read more about it (and interrogate the data) on the official Harkive website.

I'll be updating my day's listening below, if it's of interest.

07:15 - 07:37 Listening to Years and Years' Communion on a hot, sticky train carriage. Because I have borderline OCD, I'm rating the songs on my iPhone as I go. It's mostly 2 and 3 stars - but King gets a four.


10:35 Streaming The Letter by Joe Cocker on Spotify. I'm writing an obituary for the song's composer, Wayne Carson, for the BBC News website and need a quick reminder of how it goes. I seem to have chosen a live version by accident. It's brilliant.

11:15 A colleague announces that 1980s one-hit-wonders Musical Youth are coming back with a new single. We get a short blast of Pass The Dutchie from his phone. Age has not withered its beauty.

11:48 Watching a video by "soul -pop sensation" Seinabo Sey on YouTube / Vevo. "Pretend is a fascinating blend of Swedish noir pop with a slinky dancefloor beat," says an email from her record label. It's very good, but the recurring refrain of "knock on wood" makes me want to listen to Amii Stewart.


11:52 Watching a fantastically overblown performance of Amii Stewart's Knock On Wood. It's been dubbed off VHS by the look of it.

For some reason, when I first click on the video, I get an entirely different video - Collette Carr's Static - which is like a less commercial Ellie Goulding track.




12:04 The new Foals single is on Soundcloud. It is not my cup of tea.



12:07 Actually, it gets a lot better at the end.

12:09 Writing up an interview with Robyn and La Bagatelle Magique for publication later this week. The piece looks at how Robyn and Markus Jägerstedt finished off their recordings after the sad, untimely death of producer Christian Falk. Listening to one of Robyn and Christian's earlier collaborations - Dream On - for reference and "the memories". Beautiful song.


13:47 Another Robyn track on YouTube - Tell U (Today). A cover of the Loose Joints cut, recorded for an Arthur Russell tribute album. More research for the article.

14:05 Having lunch in a branded cafe chain. Their barely-audible soundsystem is playing such classics as Fleetwood Mac's The Chain.

14:58 I've been pitched an interview with up-and-coming urban act Little Simz for the BBC News website. The blurb is interesting: She's an unsigned London artist with BET nominations, who's been championed by Kendrick Lamar. I click on the Soundcloud link. The first line of her record is "I puked up on my sneakers indoors" and she's giving the finger in her profile picture. Reader, what should I do?



15:21 Watching a video that I can't tell you about because it is embargoed until tomorrow.

16:26 On the way home. Had planned to check out Apple Music to see what old bollocks Zane Lowe was spouting today - but it won't load on my phone. Instead, I've loaded up a playlist of current singles from my library. Chemical Brothers, Demi Lovato, Janet Jackson, Lianne La Havas.  

21:49 The kids are safely in bed - somehow having avoided watching any television or listening to their favourite songs (currently Little Mix and Bob Marley), although I have been subjected to the refrain from Let It Go approx 107 times, as it emanates from my daughter's Princess Elsa magic wand.

Now in the bedroom, reading Moonraker and streaming the new Tame Impala on the home stereo (via Apple Music). The selection was inspired by a tweet from my old 6 Music colleague Sinead.

Been listening to new @tameimpala non stop for a week now...pretty sure this will be my favourite album of the year. pic.twitter.com/7yF2bYxLJk

— Sinéad Garvan (@SineadGarvan) July 20, 2015

I'd quite forgotten that I blogged about the epic 7-minute opening track back in March. The rest of the record seems to be living up to its woozy, psychedelic promise.


22:50 I suffer from tinnitus, so I tend to listen to music as I nod off. Tonight, the sound of The Staves' second album (If I Was, on an old-school iPod classic) is being augmented by a tower fan, giving the music a certain windswept quality. I'll be asleep by track six. Nanite.

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Charli XCX: An apology

Dear Charli XCX,

I am writing to offer sincere apologies after your album "True Romance" was omitted from my Top 10 Albums of 2013. It was supposed to be number four, just behind Beyonce and just ahead of Vampire Weekend. But I forgot.

I would like to assure you that I have already taken myself to one side and had a stern word about this incident; and will be donating up to £2.25p to a charity of your choice in recompense. In addition, I have included the write-up which should have gone into the original Top 10 below.

I apologise to you and your family for the distress you may have suffered as a consequence of this oversight.

Best wishes,
Mark

4) Charli XCX - True Romance

Pop singers have to walk a tricky tightrope between familiarity and innovation. Charli XCX bounds across it like a kangaroo.

True Romance is distinctive, sophisticated, ambitious and ever-so-slightly weird: Bubblegum pop chewed by a goth princess. On the Take My Hand, Charli is the bad-influence best friend ("Why you gotta go to sleep? Don't go to sleep. Let's go out!"); on Set Me Free, she's broken and vulnerable ("I am just crushed in the velvet. My heart is locked in a box".)

But, crucially, she's never less than convincing. What's more, the album is flawlessly sequenced - to the extent that I Love It, her number one hit with Icona Pop, isn't even missed.

By December, Charli had already started work on the follow-up. "I like working really fast," she told me. "That's the best way to write a song. The best ideas are the first ones that come into your head - so why bother thinking of any more?"

I can't wait to hear what she comes up with next.

PS: You can read the full Top 10 here.

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 albums of 2013

Squeaking in at the last possible moment, here's my countdown of the Top 10 albums of 2013 (as played in our house). The usual terms and conditions apply: It's all based on iTunes playcount, so Kanye West's brilliant-but-abrasive Yeezus album doesn't get a look-in, while Lissie's happy-days rock opus Back To Forever does. It's as simple as that.

So, in reverse order....

10) Chvrches - The Bones Of What You Believe

And on the seventh day, Chvrches built a gleaming Jenga tower of emotive synth-pop. And verily, it began to wobble every time the beardy bloke wrestled the microphone out of Lauren Mayberry's hands. (Seriously, dude, let it go.)

Putting aside the po-faced muso moments, The Bones Of What You Believe is a gargantuan collection of anthemic pop. It even went to number 12 in the US, meaning Mayberry had to employ a "hamster carer" while she was off on tour. And they said success wouldn't change them...



9) Everything Everything - Arc

Dialling down the annoying vocal somersaults of their debut seemed to lose Everything Everything a few fans, but to me Arc is the far superior record.

Take Duet, for example, which appears to be a love song between 007 and a Bond Villain ("of all the dead volcanoes on Earth you just happened to retch and roll through mine"). Armourland, meanwhile, is the sound of Timbaland's interrupted dreams fed through a ZX Spectrum. But, crucially, the melodies are more coherent and the songs more songy.

It was all intentional, too. After hearing their debut one too many times, singer Jonathan Higgs thought to himself: "I wish I'd shut up. Every song was kind of 'woo-ah-woo' and I got tired of it."



8) Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

When many would have settled for Get Lucky x12, the Francobots went conceptual. Random Access Memories is an eccentric labour of love. A tribute to the men who inspired them: From Giorgio Moroder, narrating the story of how he invented disco, to Nile Rodgers, whose choppy guitar lines give the album every ounce of its soul.

But the masterstroke was employing Paul "So You Wanna Be A Boxer" Williams, to write and perform Touch. Inspired by a book about life-after-death experiences, the song is purportedly about a robot that's becoming human. But I defy you to hear a man who survived chronic, crippling alcoholism singing, "If love is the answer, you're home" without tearing up just a little.


7) Lissie - Back To Forever

Free-wheeling, open-chord rock with – YES! – guitar solos aplenty, Back To Forever is a great big sloppy kiss of a record.

Packed with mammoth choruses (Further Away) and rock-solid radio hits (Sleepwalking) it made a virtue of Lissie's easygoing southern charm, even when she was furiously ranting about US environmental policy on Mountaintop Removal (better than it sounds, I promise).

Radio 2 quite rightly played the crap out of it... And so should you.


6) Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady

Janelle Monae sheds pop songs like the rest of us shed skin flakes. The Electric Lady is every bit as audacious and inventive as her debut, its impact only slightly dulled by familiarity.

Eagerly cherry-picking from R&B, hip-hop, doo-wop, film scores and swooping torch songs, Monae's ambition and control of her material can be summed up with one fact: She got Prince to agree to a duet then relegated him to backing vocals. Astonishing.


5) Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience (Part One)

"You could liken my chemistry with Timbaland to Marty Scorsese and Robert De Niro," said Justin Timberlake, taking self-importance to epic proportions as he promoted his 20/20 "Experience". Like Scorsese, he struggled with brevity, turning in an album stuffed full of seriousface 8-minute "jams" about his luxuriant sex life.

So I set about it with a pair of electronic scissors and created a pared-down 42-minute edit. Suddenly, the sprawling R&Boreathon became a taut pop classic (if I do say so myself).

The best bits: Timberlake channelling Lionel Ritchie's All Night Long on Let The Groove Get In, and the vocal hat-tip to N'Sync's Dirty Pop on Strawberry Bubblegum.


4) Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City

Giddy and playful, Vampire Weekend's third album saw them ditch the collegiate robes and grow up a little. But only a little.

Unbelievers is an utterly daft, summery pop song about going to hell at the hands of Christian fundamentalists; while Diane Young finds Ezra Koenig mucking about with an autotune to create the unlikeliest hook of the year.

Musically, it was more reflective without straying too far from the Vampire Weekend "upper west side Soweto" formula (they've never met a harpsichord they didn't love) but Koenig also hinted it was the "end of a trilogy". 

At the Q Awards, he told me the band hadn't worked out "phase two" yet "but whatever comes next, I'm sure it's gonna be different." 

I can't wait.

3) Beyoncé - Beyoncé

No matter how brilliant your record, there's always someone waiting to pour a bucket of scorn on it. In Beyonce's case, it was second-rate gossip website Mediatakeout, who claimed her whole "surprise album" plan was hatched because Sony thought the record was a dud and wanted to bury it. How wrong they were.

Instead, Beyonce got the best reviews of her career with a suite of slow, complex, introspective songs that rely on atmospherics as often as they do killer hooks. And, for once, a self-titled album kept it's promise of revealing the person behind the persona: Beyonce sings about marital difficulties and miscarriage with the same startling honesty she uses to describe her "pink skittles". (Don't ask).

Oh, and did I mention there were 17 videos? 17 VIDEOS!


2) Haim - Days Are Gone

The hardest-working band of 2013, Haim had to piece together their debut album while honouring a never-ending schedule of tours, TV shows and festival appearances. Not that they minded too much: "What's a day off? I don't give a fuck," Este told Rolling Stone. "I will do this until my tits are at my knees."

Days Are Gone finally arrived in September and it is something of a triumph - all hair-tossed pop hooks and nimble-fingered bass guitar. 

Someone recently described it to me as "Fleetwood Mac welded to Phil Collins' 1980s drum machine". I couldn't have put it better myself.


1) Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Pre-release, I was allowed to listen to Reflektor once, in the basement of a posh London club, while I was force fed parma ham. Regular readers may recall it didn't go well – I described the record as an "awful, trebly mess".

Turns out it was nothing of the sort. Unexpectedly lithe and funky, Reflektor has more hidden depths than a subterranean volcano. At times, the band don't quite seem in control of what they're doing – there's a scrappy tempo-change on Here Comes The Night that sounds like they're freewheeling down a hill on an unfamiliar bike - and it's all the more thrilling for it.

The album's dancefloor undercurrents were inspired by the Haitian carnival, midwifed by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and endorsed by pop royalty. "There was this amazing day when I was working on the lyrics to the song Reflektor [and] I met Grace Jones," singer Win Butler told Mojo. "She was on the beach playing with her grand-daughter. I played her an early version of Reflektor and she started dancing immediately.

"I'm like, 'All right! Grace Jones is dancing to our song – we’re definitely doing something right!'"

Recommendations don't come any stronger than that.

So that's this year's countdown. I've put a playlist of tracks from the Top 10 below which should keep any New Year's Eve Party in good spirits for an hour or two... See you in 2014!



UPDATE - JANUARY 2014: I belatedly realised that I'd forgotten to count Charli XCX's True Romance when I was compiling the chart. You can find out where she would have come in the Top 10 by visiting this page.

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 Singles of 2013

Right then: The best singles of the year. And what a year it's been. The singles chart was as vibrant and exciting as the albums one was disappointing and lacklustre. There was a lot of "mid-tempo" and a lot of twerking, but you won't see any of that here. As usual, the top 10 is compiled from my iTunes playcount because, otherwise, I simply can’t be trusted to tell the truth. So, here we go in reverse order:

10) Vampire Weekend – Diane Young

In which Ezra Koenig - a man whose name represents the worst Scrabble rack of all time - does his best Buddy Holly impression over a frenetic surf guitar line. With a vocoder. Fast, thrilling, and utterly, utterly undanceable, it is nonetheless a great song.

Koenig claimed the real Diane Young was "about 5 foot 10" and "fairly attractive". But she's really just a homonym for "dying young", which was the song's original title until the band decided it was too gloomy.

9) Demi Lovato – Heart Attack

It takes a brave composer to write lyrics in 72-point bold type capitals; and it takes an even braver singer to perform them that way. But Demi "Tomato" Lovato pulls it off – conveying a sense of frailty at the same time as she bellows out the chorus with the sort of force that could capsize a battleship.

Yes, it might be pop by numbers - but the maths is flawless.

8) Justin Timberlake – Mirrors

Great song, but I still don’t understand what he's doing with a pocket full of soap.

7) Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know?

Sleazier than Robin Thicke frantically rubbing himself through an overcoat, Alex Turner's ode to obsession marked a stunning return to form for the Arctics. Built around a swampy guitar riff Do I Wanna Know was lascivious, sordid and constantly on the cusp of... well, you get the picture.

6) Katy Perry – Roar

With a chorus two times bigger than an elephant (and thrice as nimble) Perry was the leopard-print victor of the year's biggest pop battle (turns out that obedient Applause is no match for a feral Roar). It's just a shame the rest of Katy's album was such a dreary therapy-speak borefest.

5) Little Mix – Move

All great pop songs should pull the rug out from under your feet and, on Move, Little Mix sent carpets flying like Aladdin [please stop – tortured metaphor ed].

It's all there: The stomach drop when the first bridge fails to resolve into a chorus; the "iknowthatyouwannastaycoolinthecorner" mid-section, the bum-rattling bass. A clever, brave single by a manufactured pop band that, for once, are in complete control of what they’re doing.

4) Haim – The Wire

Danielle Haim sings like she's got the hiccups and it's glorious. But on The Wire all three Haim sisters got the chance to shine. Each of them admits they bottled it when some guy told them "I love you". Poor some guy.

3) Zedd ft Foxes – Clarity

A tidal wave. A supernova. A bloody great pop song. Yeah, so the lyrics are mostly nonsense ("A clock ticks 'til it breaks your glass and I drown in you again??") but, oh my God, that chorus is a force of nature.

2) Lorde – Royals

They say a genius is just the first person who dares to say something everyone else is thinking. By that token, Lorde's decision to write a lyric that said: "Hold on, every single bloody recording artist on the planet, I've suddenly realised I don't care about how many diamond chains you own, ok bye" made her the biggest pop genius in 2013.

1) Duke Dumont ft A*M*E - Need U (100%)

It sounded like a classic the first time I heard it, and it still sounds like a classic now. An snappy, irresistible nugget of handbag house it was arguably responsible for a major 1990s revival in 2013, so we can hold Duke Dumont responsible for next year's inevitable Whigfield comeback. Until then, I defy you not to dance to this.

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Music from the Harkive

I am being harvested for science. Or rather, my music habits are being collected for an academic study. And yours can be too.

Harkive is the brainchild of Craig Hamilton, who's doing an MA in Music Industry Studies at the City of Birmingham University. For the next 24 hours he wants you to tell him "the story of how, where and why you listen to music".

Why? Well, it's not particularly clear. But think of it as a census of music consumption. And imagine how different the same study would have been just 100 years ago: where every entry would essentially read "Went to church, heard some hymns".

You can contribute on email, Twitter (#harkive), Facebook or a myriad of other routes. Details are here and my diary will be updated throughout the day after this full stop.

00:00 In bed, listening to Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Mosquito album, via iPod plugged into HiFi system. I started listening before midnight, so all the best tracks are finished. I fall asleep to music most nights due to tinnitus. 

08:42 BBC Breakfast is doing a "bit" about the Proms as I eat my Shreddies. There's a montage of Nigel Kennedy; the Last Night; Maverick Sabre (Imagine! A rapper at the Proms!); and some truly off-putting opera. They also show a clip of the Doctor Who Prom, which looks like "fun".

09:30  Headphones on for the commute. I've asked my iPhone for a genius playlist, triggered by Michael Jackson. It imaginatively selects subsequent tracks by the Jackson Five and Janet Jackson, who smoulders her way through That's The Way Love Goes. A stone-cold classic. 

13:45 I'm on jury service this week, so I'm not as plugged in as normal. Still, it's lunchtime and I've taken the opportunity to have a look at other people's Harkive diaries. Talia Kraines from Heat radio just posted this mash-up of Solange's Losing You and Say My Name by Destiny's Child. Not quite as mindblowing as I'd hoped, but a welcome distraction from my limp, wet tuna sandwich.




17:05 Court has finished and the sun is out. I need something peaceful and mellow, and my current band crush is The Staves. I cue up In The Long Run on the iPhone and listen to it twice on repeat. Then I decide to embed it on the blog and end up listening to a live version on Soundcloud, too. I love the finger-picked arpeggio that underpins the melody and make a mental note to look up the fingering online. I make a further mental note to buy a guitar.

17:25 Hit shuffle. Get Demi Lovato's Heart Attack. RESULT!

17:38 Back at home. I'm going to start trawling through my inbox for submissions to the blog. This might not be pretty.

17:40 "My name is Sam Dickinson and I am a soul singer based in Newcastle and will also be going on a small UK Tour this summer. [My] album is currently available for pre order on iTunes and immediately went into the iTunes top 200 on pre orders, higher than Alicia Keys' pre order for her new record".

Hmmm... I'll ignore the fact that Sam should have hyphenated "pre-order" and listen to his new single, the "soul-infused" Learn To Wait.


17:41 It's fair to say Sam can sing. It's just a shame he had to sing this.

17:46 Next up, it's Lady Lykez - a very exciting female rapper (it says here) from London. Her song is called I Love My Butt and, awful title aside, it's got a slinky groove that's reminiscent of Missy Elliot's She's A Bitch.

"Arse so fat it's like a tank engine," she notes. "No vegetarian, I got a lot of meat". Funny and refreshing. You can hear it here.

17:54 "FIVE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BEN CARON" screams the next email. At least one of those things should be the name of his new single, and where to hear it. But no, apparently it's more useful to know whether he prefers Vodka or Gin.

17:56 Instead, here's Cleo Sol, a British soul singer who's been hovering on the edges of greatness for a while now. She's been called "the UK's brightest star" by Tinie Tempah, and her new single is a sexalicious swing that incorporates elements of Aaliyah's More Than A Woman, The Fugees' Ready or Not and Kendrick Lamar's The Recipe. I listened to it twice in a row, then downloaded it.



18:05 This is the last one. The band is called SPC ECO but you pronounce it Space Echo, which instantly makes you think "Oh, please fuck off".

Spack Echo are a new project from Dean Garcia, who was the main impetus behind 90s indie-goths Curve. For Spook-E=cow he's teamed up with Rose Berlin who, the press release reveals, "recently completed a BA Sculpture (with first class honours!)"

Delusional Waste is wispy, dreamy, dronepop with vocals thinner than water vapour. It passed through me like a double espresso.


18:20 To be honest, those were better than the usual rubbish that gets filtered into my inbox. But it's back to my own choices again. And it's MKS O'Clock (other times that are MKS O'Clock include 09:00, 10:00, 14:25, 17:33, 23:07, 11:11, 11:12, 11:13, 11:14, 11:18, 11:16, 11:16.5, 11:16.55, 11:15.551, 01:23, 11:17, 11:16.01, nighttime, daytime, hammer time).

18:52 Playing The Last Of Us on the PS3. It has a soundtrack by the majestically-named Gustavo Santaolallo, who won an Oscar for his Brokeback Mountain score. 

20:00 - 22:30 We are out with friends in a local pub. The local pub is playing "Anonymous Pub Background Ambient Classics" by "Various Artists" over a PA that is hidden in a tree. I Shazamed some of the tracks. They included I'm Easy by Jazzy Lee - an entirely shit version of The Commodores' classic; and Zombie by Elena - a cover of the Cranberries' IRA protest song, as delivered by an automated telephone banking system voice-over artist.

23:48 Bedtime. Tonight's soundtrack is Stevie Wonder's Innervisions. Plenty of records capture a cool Californian breeze - but only Living For The City clings to you like a night gummed up with oppressive urban heat.

And that's 24 hours in the life of my auditory-cognitive nervous system. It was interesting to write it all down - I hope it was at least partially interesting to read.

PS: Thanks to everyone who looked at this page before 22:00 and didn't point out that my iPhone had auto-corrected the phrase "most nights" to "moist nighters".

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Is viral marketing killing new music?

Last week on The Voice, a contestant turned up who said he was Jessie J's biggest fan. "I've been following her," said Lem Knights, "for about eight years."

Eight Years! I'm sure most people thought this was a mistake... Jessie's only been irritating our eardrums for, what, 24 months? But no. Lem first found the pre-fame Jessie Cornish on her YouTube channel, warbling away in her bedroom. She's been posting updates for years - announcing her record deal, previewing new material, and experimenting with eyelash technology.


This is increasingly the way new acts surface - Nina Nesbitt, Ed Sheeran and Gabrielle Aplin all built up loyal fanbases through home videos before going pro. It's great marketing... as long as it works.

Look at Azealia Banks. The loud-mouth NYC rapper has been releasing what feels like a track a fortnight for the last 18 months. Her approach to quality control is as consistent as her management, which seems to change with the frequency of a traffic light. And so fatigue has set in, even amongst the most easily-excitable music blogs.

If Azealia had put an album out after the extraordinary 212 hit radio last January, it would have gone gold in a week. Now, we've all moved on to Taylor Swift.

Azealia Banks - 212

The thing is, music websites and PR teams love this constant stream of "content" because it makes them feel they're doing something: Here's a shoddy remix! The album artwork will be revealed on Thursday! We're having a Google Hangout... whatever the fuck that is!

Personally, I think all this pre-amble deadens the senses. This week, I wavered over buying Charli XCX's debut album because I'd already heard 75% of the songs on a mixtape or an EP or a free download. When I finally succumbed, I discovered that even her slightest, sketchiest songs work better in context. True Romance is genuinely great: A quirky, rhythmic pop symphony.

As Becca Nicholson said in The Guardian: "By not rushing out an album until now... [Charli] seems to have found the time to iron out the creases that made her seem like one of a dozen similar acts." But by showing us her naked baby photos along the way, she's lost the opportunity to burst onto the scene fully-formed, as a bona fide pop star.

You could argue that this only matters to people (like me) who hoover up blog posts, buzz tracks and viral videos. But those people are the same ones who choose what you hear on the radio. Has Charli XCX's elephantine gestation cost her daytime exposure on Radio One? Quite possibly.

Charli XCX - Nuclear Seasons


Of course it's tempting for artists to release new songs the minute they're finished (all that instant adulation on Twitter!) but I prefer the stealth approach... Because if no-one had praised Jessie J's vocal acrobatics, would she have made the jump from talented bedroom vocalist to "ambulance siren doing scat jazz"?

I like to think not.

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 albums of 2012

Happy New Year!

As 2012 disappears in the rear view mirror, I've tackled my iTunes library to see which albums I listened to most. There are a few surprises (I don't remember listening to this much Michael Kiwanuka) and some glaring omissions (Emeli Sande - presumably because she was on TV so often it rendered the album redundant).

But I am glad to say the Frank Ocean album didn't make the top 10 because, let's be honest, it's patchy and inconsistent and that Forrest Gump song is utter balls.


10) Jack White - Blunderbuss

Where would rock be without failed relationships? From Fleetwood Mac's Rumours to Amy Winehouse's Back To Black, other people's tragedies have inspired some of pop's best songs. Jack White is no exception - his break-up from Karen Elson fuelling his first solo album. It is by no means a coincidence that it's his best work since The White Stripes' Elephant.

"When they tell you that they just can't live without you," he sings at one point. "They ain't lyin', they'll take pieces of you". The lyrics on this album prompted one newspaper to write a hysterical rant about White's supposed misogyny. Admittedly, it seems cruel that he made his ex-wife sing the backing vocals, but there's more to this album than a crude hatred of women. Blunderbuss is blistering with hurt, fury and cynicism - and it's all the better for it.



9) Scissor Sisters - Magic Hour

"You may not hear this on MTV," sings Jake Shears on Best In Me. "No big deal. Fine by me." Sadly, he was right - programmers on radio and TV never really threw their weight behind this album, leading the band to announce they were going on "indefinite hiatus" at the end of the year. If Magic Hour proves to be their swansong, at least it was a good one. Highlights included the Neptunes-produced Inevitable and the sleazy Shady Love, featuring Azealia Banks.



8) Alt-J - An Awesome Wave

Proving that singing like Kermit The Frog needn't necessarily be a handicap, Alt-J walked away with the Mercury Prize in November. An Awesome Wave is one of those records that makes awards committees feel smart, with its intricate pararhythms, lyrics about maths, and a capella interludes. But it wears it lightly, burying all the trickery beneath some gorgeous tunes, in particular the hit single Tessellate. Which is about interlocking body parts, of course.





7) Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again

Poor old Michael Kiwanuka. A winner of numerous hyperbolic "sound of" polls in January, his profile seemed to flatline around Valentine's Day. He probably prefers it that way, though. Home Again is shot through with a sunny spirituality that megastardom would have destroyed... Listening back to the album this morning, I was struck by how the sepia-tinged Al Green grooves would have been the perfect soundtrack to the summer. If only we'd had one.



6) Grimes - Visions

Grimes is Canada's Claire Boucher, and Visions is her third album. It sounds so completely unlike anything else that critics all seemed to come unstuck trying to review it. "The sound of an internal war," said the NME. Pitchfork described it as "post-internet" and if you can work out what this reviewer (who actually uses the vomit-inducing phrase "wet dream pop") is on about, I will give you £10.

The Onion's AV Club got it right for me, calling the album "a cryptic blur of impressions" - capturing the way Boucher's floaty, ephemeral vocals and echo-drenched electro beats slowly coalesced into a work of sublime, unhinged genius.



5) Marina & The Diamonds - Electra Heart

Marina went off to LA to construct this album with top-flight songwriters like Greg Kurstin and Rick "Belinda Carlisle" Nowles and, by God, did it produce results. The first 30 minutes of the album are flawless - the best "side one" of the year.

Electra Heart was initially touted as a "concept" - something to do with American femme fatale archetypes - but, as Marina later confessed, all it's really about is "being young and being in love with someone who doesn't love you". It's the female counterpart to Jack White's break-up album - but with monstrous godzilla pop hooks destroying everything in their path. Awesome.



4) The Staves - Dead and Born and Grown

The Staves were my bandcrush of the year, even if everyone else ignored them (this album crept into the charts at number 42 for a single week). Three sisters from Watford, they perform bluegrass-inspired folk harmonies with unnerving clarity and beauty. Their debut album was produced by Ethan Johns (Laura Marling) and his dad Glyn (The Beatles) but all these veteran knob-twiddlers really had to do was sit back and let Staveley siblings sing. Uncluttered and beguiling, Dead And Born And Grown is like snuggling up under a warm duvet on a stormy night.



3) Regina Spektor - What We Saw From The Cheap Seats

At first it seemed underwhelming - Regina retreading old ground and even recycling old tunes (Ne Me Quitte Pas first appeared, in a very different guise, on 2002's Songs). But What We Saw From The Cheap Seats was one of those albums that kept calling me back. In particular, the heartbreaking ballad How, about fading memories of love, and All The Rowboats, written from the point of view of a painting in a museum. It's a subtle record, refining rather than reinventing Regina's style, but it will take root in your soul.





2) Jessie Ware - Devotion

People compared her to Sade. That was unfair. Jessie Ware's album had more blood and grit than anything Sade ever produced - from its rumbling sub bass, to the self-sacrifice in Taking In Water. The sensual Wildest Moments was my single of the year, while 110% is the best song about dancing on your own since Robyn's... Dancing On My Own.

One of the few R&B albums of the year to make any kind of attempt at melody, Devotion rivals Solange's Losing You in signposting where the genre should head in 2013.




1) Lana Del Rey - Paradise

What the top three albums on this list have in common is that the artist has carved out a sound that is instantly, undeniably their own. Lana Del Rey's debut album is equal parts 1950s torch songs, hip-hop insouciance, and the car crash scene from Great Gatsby. Half of the songs here wouldn't work if they were sung by a pitch-perfect X Factor melisma-meister - they need that louche, knowing wink that Lana delivers in her ridiculously affected drawl.

All the brouhaha about her "authenticity" seems ridiculous with the benefit of hindsight. In fact, the confidence and self-belief it took to construct Born To Die's noir pop aesthetic is more authentic than a million Jake Bugg albums. Oh, and the songs are amazing: Video Games, Off To The Races, National Anthem, Blue Jeans, Summertime Sadness. Brilliant work that reveals new secrets even on the 50th listen.

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