David Guetta has a lyric video for his collaboration with Emeli Sande

This one starts like its going to be really boring, then gets really good around when Guetta goes medieval on a piano around the one-minute mark.

It's called What I Did For Love, and is getting the lyric video treatment a rather lazy eight weeks after David Guetta and Emeli Sande plugged the song on X Factor (that's them in the picture above, posing backstage with some cables).

The lyrics, as if lyrics really matter in a song like this, are all about the self-destructive things people do to prop up a relationship on its last legs. "It hurts, that I remember every scar," sings Sande, "stitch myself up, then I do it again".

A very respectable 6/10.

David Guetta - What I Did For Love (ft Emeli Sande)

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Be-bop Beyonce and five other songs you may have missed...

Is it the weekend again already? If so, it must be time for a round-up of the music I forgot to write about because I was too busy listening to Janelle Monae.

In no particular order, then, this week's guest stars are...

1) Emeli Sande - Crazy In Love
Skiddly dee-bop-a-be-bop: Emeli Sande goes all scat jazz on this Beyonce cover, and we have Baz Luhrman' Great Gatsby soundtrack to "thank" for it. Sande trades the rump-shaking sexogroove of Bey's signature song for a mischievous can-can, but it kinda works.




2) Pet Shop Boys - Axis
The Pet Shop Boys severed their ties with EMI last year after the disappointing Elysium album but, if this honking great dance track is anything to go by, the break-up did them a world of good. A furious, pulsating electro groove, Axis is either the best song Kraftwerk never released, or the incidental music from an episode of Airwolf.



3) Kelis - Jerk Ribs
Forget Solange, Kelis is the most thrillingly experimental R&B artist around. She embraced dance music two years before Rihanna and her mates started sucking up to David Guetta and Calvin Harris, but paid the price of being an early adopter (IE she got dropped by her label).

Undaunted, she's showing everyone the way again: Mixing soca, afrobeat and classic Stax soul in this rousing ode to her upbringing in Harlem. It should be a mess, but it's gloriously life-affirming. Plus, the song is a free download. YES!





4) Daughter - Get Lucky
"Cut them and they bleed cobwebs" said the NME of perma-frowning London trio Daughter. They're being a little harsh - the band's music is mopey, but ultimately uplifting. Their Live Lounge cover of Daft Punk's Get Lucky is a case in point, layering broody guitars and brushed snares over a hushed vocal from Elena Tonra. Who, it has to be said, sings it better than Pharrell.




5) The Wanted - She Walks Like Rihanna
"She can't sing, she can't dance, but who cares – she walks like Rihanna!" This is utter bollocks, of course, but you've got to admire their gumption.




6) Icona Pop - I Love It (Live on Jimmy Fallon)
I Love It may be more than a year old now, but it's currently gobbling up all the competition in the US. Icona Pop's car-crashing revenge anthem hit the Top 10 for the first time this week, and they celebrated with this syn-drum heavy performance on Jimmy Fallon.

Bizarrely, the song STILL has no UK release date, after being pushed back about three times. Presumably they're having trouble getting playlisted at a certain national radio station - which is a great shame, because this officially the best pop record of the 21st Century (and, yes, that includes Call Me Maybe).

And that's this week's pick of the crop. Any suggestions for future editions, you can always drop me a line via the email at the bottom of the page.

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Bruno Mars sings The Little Mermaid and other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of songs I didn't have the time or inclination to write about over the last week. It's like a mini Friday mixtape composed of YouTube videos.

1) Bruno Mars - The Little Mermaid medley
Impossible to dislike: Bruno Mars performs Part Of Your World and Under The Sea for Radio One's Live Lounge. He also did one of his own songs. I'm not posting that.




2) Katy B - Danger EP
Mercury nominee and 'Easy Please Me' hitmaker Katy B is readying her second album for 2013 - but she gave fans an early Christmas present today, by posting a free EP on her official website. With a pretty stellar line-up of special guests, it features Jessie Ware, Wiley, Diplo and Iggy Azealia. Stuffed full of sub-bass, soulful vocal licks and 8-bit video game FX, it's already stuck in my head like a meat cleaver.

3) Biffy Clyro - Black Chandelier
This is the first "proper" single from Biffy's forthcoming double album. Due out in early 2013, the 20-track set was originally going to be called The Sand At The Core Of Our Bones / The Land At The End Of Our Toes. Thankfully, someone sobered up long enough to notice this sounded like the dialogue from a particularly bad episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, and had it changed to the much more compact "Opposites".

4) St Lucia - September
80s-obsessed, Pitchfork-approved pop outfit St Lucia are being tipped for big things in 2013, but they need to sort out their self-indulgent intros if they're ever going to get daytime raido play. Their new single, September, takes more than 2 minutes to get to the chorus, and another 80 seconds before it really kicks into gear. But if you have the patience, it's a great song.

5) Emeli Sande - Clown
"Success is impatient. Your audience is waiting." Clown is about Emeli Sande's struggle not to be restyled and remoulded when she was shopping for a record deal. "I was going for all these meetings and people were looking at me like 'What do we do with you'?" she says in the YouTube introduction to the song. "I feel the video reflects that". With her album clocking up its millionth sale this week, Virgin must be pretty glad they allowed her to stand her ground.

Sande is off to "break the States" in the new year, but she won't be forgetting her fans in the UK. Earlier this week, she teased the prospect of a new EP on her Twitter account.

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The inescapable Emeli Sande is inescapable

Do you think there's a big Olympic computer in Stratford that has "book Emeli Sandé" as a default option?

There she was at the opening ceremony singing plaintively over a simple piano motif, and there she was at the closing ceremony, singing plaintively over a simple piano motif. Her quiff seemed to have flopped a bit in the meantime - presumably because they'd locked her in a cupboard to stop her doing a runner.

The big Olympic computer isn't stupid. Emile's catch-in-your-throat vocals tip buckets of emotion over any scenario, no matter how grandiose or ridiculous. And, yes, that includes supporting Coldplay. So it's no big surprise that Naughty Boy has snared the Aberdonian singer for his debut single, Wonder.

If you don't know Naughty Boy, he's a South London producer who started making music in his garden shed, and now owns a state-of-the-art recording studio with tea and coffee making facilities and everything. Over the last few years, he's been shuffling faders for the likes of Chipmunk, Cheryl Cole and Tinie Tempah. All the while, he's been sneakily working on his debut solo record – a concept album called Hotel Cabana.

As far as I can work out, Naughty Boy doesn't actually feature on the album. According to the blurb, the record will feature a "stellar cast" of guest stars, whose names are being kept under wraps (although eyepatch enthusiast Gabrielle has already blabbed that she's on a forthcoming single called Hollywood). But if the rest of the album matches the anthemic, soulful debut single, we're in for a treat.

Naughty Boy ft Emeli Sande

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Big tune: A*M*E - Find A Boy

What's that rumbling noise? Oh, it's the new single from A*M*E and, once you've secured any breakable items in your near vicinity, you are going to like it a lot. Here is all the information that is germane.

1) A*M*E is pronounced "Amy"

2) That's her above, wearing a horse on her head.

3) She is just 17 (if you know what I mean).

4) A*M*E was born Aminata Kabba in Sierra Leone, but was forced to leave because of the brutal and bloody civil war.

5) That's not really relevant to the music - it is just a FACT for you to DIGEST.

6) A*M*E's new song is called Find A Boy. The extended mix has been banging about the internet for a couple of days but the newly-released radio edit is much, much better.

7) Find A Boy was co-written by Emeli "your mum probably likes her" Sande.

8) A*M*E's music is what I would call "dark pop" - IE you can sing along to it, but it might leave you feeling a bit spooked if you are on your own in a bad neighbourhood at night and you are being followed by a weird cat-pig on the devil's motorbike.

9) A*M*E says "90% of my inspirations are from the 90s". Cowabunga, dude.

10) I saw A*M*E play a club show in London's trendy London last month. To say that she is spectacularly charismatic would be like saying Danny from The Script is somewhat annoying.

Got the picture? Good. Then, without further ado, allow me to present Find A Boy "in full".

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A tiny note about Emeli Sandé

It's a small thing, but the moment when drums drop out on the second chorus of Next To Me's new single is a proper pop moment, and one of the reasons why Emeli Sandé is just a little bit more exciting than her contemporaries.

That is all.

Emeli Sande - Next To Me


If you are keen to hear more of this sort of thing, there is an album sampler available on YouTube. For a "deep" and "insightful" interview with Emeli, click on this link.

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Emeli Sande goes widescreen

The video for Daddy, the new single from Emeli Sandé, is as vivid and dramatic as the song's nosediving string section.

Directed by AG Rojas, who also put together Bounce for Calvin Harris and I'll Take Care Of You for Gil Scott-Heron, it pulls a lot of the same tricks as the Rihanna video in the post directly below this, but with a lot more subtlety and class.

The song's not bad either.

Emeli Sandé - Daddy

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Wretch 32 and Emeli Sande on Jools Holland

Proof that UK hip-hop and soul is properly coming of age... The new generation of artists can genuinely "cut it" live (see also: Tinie Tempah, Labrinth and Jessie J). Here's a sublime selection of clips from Jools Holland's current series.

Wretch 32 ft Josh Kumra - Don't Go


Emeli Sandé - Heaven

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Five great things about Emeli Sandé's Heaven

1) Heaven contains the best, and most restrained, use of a gospel choir since Blur's Tender. 


2) When people sneer "this sounds just like Massive Attack's Unifinished Sympathy", Emeli will arch her eyebrow and say, "of course it sounds just like Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy. Unfinished Sympathy is fucking brilliant. I love it so much, I even copied the bit in the video where Shara Nelson walks down the street in a black overcoat. I am not mucking about here."

3) The unconventional chord change on the line "the day it always lasts too long". It lifts the melody and adds an unexpected air of optimism.

4) Angel wing tattoos.

5) The fact that Emeli Sandé has dozens of other equally amazing songs.

In summary: I like this song a lot.



Emeli Sandé - Heaven

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Good song alert: Emeli Sandé - Heaven

I am always amazed that more artists don't recognize the value of a crescendo. You know what I mean: that moment when the strings swell, the vocals soar and your tummy does a little wobble that in other circumstances would be an indicator of the onset of typhoid.

Adele gets it. Gary Barlow gets it. Coldplay get it, and use it to distract you from their inability to write a memorable melody. Kanye West gets it, samples it, and beats you over the head with it. The Kaiser Chiefs used to get it, but Tesco stopped delivering to their postcode in 2007.

Someone else who gets it is Emeli Sandé. I was waxing lyrical about her demos just last week, and now she's gone and finished one of them. It's called Heaven, and if you've been waiting 20 years for a sequel to Massive Attack's Unfinished Sympathy, your patience has finally been rewarded.

This is very, very good indeed.

Emeli Sande - Heaven


Heaven is released on 14th August.

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One to watch: Emeli Sandé

How's this for a striking lyric: "When his lungs collapse, there'll be no more breathing. I will gently close his eyes."

It's from Kill The Boy, the latest single from up-and-coming singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé. It also contains couplets like "I walk around with murder in my eyes / I'm going to turn my baby blue", and "I walk around with a bullet on my tongue / Killer written on my face."

As far as I can tell, she's not a psychopath and this is not a Charles Manson-style murder fantasy. Instead, we're in the same territory as Rihanna's Unfaithful, where the singer believes dumping her boyfriend might genuinely cause him to collapse on the floor and die. Talk about having an inflated sense of self worth.

Emeli Sandé - Kill The Boy


Emeli (I presume it's pronounced Emily) hails from Scotland and has spent 23 years on the planet you call Earth. She studied medicine at university before she chucked it all in to become a singer. Suggested headline for broadsheet writers: "From eye charts to the pop charts". You can have that for free.

Pop fans may have heard her already. She sang the hooks on Chipmunk's Diamond Rings and Tinie Tempah's Let Go. She's also worked with Magnetic Man and Cher Lloyd, and written for The Saturdays and Cheryl Cole.

With that pedigree you can make a fair guess that her solo material has an urban / dubstep influence - and her demos (which Virgin kindly played to me the other day) would prove you right. Emeli's songs are full of clattering drum patterns and squashy mid-90s synth pads. But, underpinning it all is a beautiful, nuanced soul voice.

Kill The Boy isn't all about shocking lyrical imagery, for instance. Emeli infuses it with a tenderness and regret that suggests a deeper, personal turmoil behind the break-up. Taken in conjunction with songs like Daddy, about addiction in all its forms, it indicates an artist with wider emotional range than her younger peers like Katy B or Yasmin (who I also love).

So, Emeli's already been added to my "sound of 2012" longlist. A couple of her demos and early acoustic sessions are floating around on YouTube. Here are two of my favourites.

Emeli Sandé - Easier In Bed


Emeli Sandé - Daddy (acoustic)

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