Almost 60 years ago, Soprano Elisabeth Schwartzkopf was pilloried for her appearance on Desert Island Discs - when seven of the eight records she chose were her own recordings (the eighth was the instrumental prelude to an opera recording in which she was the star.)
So imagine what people will say about Frank Ocean - who used his own radio show on Beats 1 to premiere his new single, Chanel 18 times in a row. Yes, eighteen.
While the song doesn't quite justify that level of exposure (and let's not forget, Frank will receive royalties for all 18 of those plays) it's still a fantastic listen - all muffled beats and lazy, looping piano figures. Lyrically, Frank continues to explore duality and gender fluidity, opening with the line: "My guy pretty like a girl / he got fight stories to tell / I see both sides like Chanel."
But the chorus does nothing to dispel the notion he's become a little bit pleased with himself, as he sings: "I got new money / And it's all cash / I got new bags / And they all collabs / I rubber band thousand dollar Delta gift cards."
Well done, Frank. We're all terrifically pleased for you.
A vintage week if you like Coldplay and songs that go Wzrrp-worp. Not so much if you're into anything else at all. Sort it out, "the music industry".
Anyway, here's a rundown of the week's best new ones. And the Coldplay one, too.
1) Billie Eilish - Bellyache
Why put all the big artists at the top, when someone new could do with a leg up? California's Billie Eilish recently signed to Interscope, and has a great acousti-pop sound that'll appeal to fans of Ellie Goulding and Aurora.
She wrote her first song at the age of four, about falling into a black hole and being happy to be there. Her new single, Bellyache, finds her plotting revenge on her boyfriend for an undisclosed transgression. It's fair to say things don't go well for him: "Where's my mind? Maybe it's in the gutter, where I left my lover".
2) Calvin Harris ft Frank Ocean and Migos - Slide
Ladies and gentlemen, we are living in a post-chorus environment.
3) Zedd ft Alessia Cara - Stay
"Alessia and I first met at rehearsals for the HALO Awards, where Alessia, Daya and I performed together," writes Zedd. "I've loved her songs before but realised that she's an unbelievable talent when we started rehearsing together, so I asked her if she was interested in making music with me."
The answer was a resounding OF COURSE I DO and the result is the best of this week's onslaught of producer+vocalist collabs.
4) The Chainsmokers ft Coldplay - Something Just Like This
The title is clunky, the beats are generic, the melody is pedestrian. No-one is doing their best work here (except, perhaps, the team that animated the lyric video).
5) Lana Del Rey - Love
Already covered extensively on the blog, this is very much business as usual while managing to be one of Lana's strongest-ever singles.
6) Ed Sheeran ft Stormzy - Shape Of You
One of the highlights of Wednesday's Brit Awards, this collaboration got an official release today as part of a Ed Sheeran remix package. The guy has sold nearly 2 million singles over the last seven weeks. What does he think this is, 1994?
7) Thundercat ft Kendrick Lamar - Walk On By
Thundercat played bass on most of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly album. Now the rapper repays the favour by adding a typically virtuoso verse to this melancholy R&B track. At the time of writing, its only got 2,000 views on YouTube. It deserves 100 times that.
8) The 1975 - By Your Side
A vocoderised cover of the Sade classic (Grammy-nominated for best vocal performance in 2002, but beaten by Nelly Furtado's I'm, Like, A Bird). Released in aid of War Child, this one of those rare charity singles that doesn't sound like it was knocked off in an afternoon.
9) Powers - Heavy
Powers are pop heavyweights Mike Del Rio and Crist Ru, whose credits include Kylie and Selena Gomez. They've just served up this calorific slice of pop that's equal parts Rocksteady-era No Doubt and Lady Gaga on a good day. Nice work.
2,000,002) Jason Derulo, Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla Sign - Swalla
A song about cum.
Sorry about that last one, but I refuse to suffer alone. Sometimes I wonder what did we do to deserve Jason Derulo? Whatever it was, I'm sorry and we won't do it again.
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?
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.
Remember at the turn of the millennium years ago when R&B was the dominant genre on the radio? Back in the days of Destinty's Child and Usher and Aaliyah - when every pop star worth their salt went to the Neptunes for a crossover track, and even Sisqo was taken seriously. It was a time of wild invention: From Beyonce speed-singing on Bills, Bills, Bills to Aaliyah sampling a baby gurgling on Are You That Sombody.
When it fell apart, it fell apart bad. From about 2003, Missy Elliot and Eminem started expressing a fascination with British club drug Ecstasy (it makes you dance, it makes you fall in love, it makes you have panic attacks - yay drugs!). But, aside from Missy's 4 My People, they never experimented with house music which, at that time, was still a minority interest in the US, popular in the urban gay scene but ignored elsewhere.
Will.i.am changed all that - teaming up with David Guetta for I Gotta Feeling and opening a floodgate of crap that swept up Rihanna and Ne-Yo and Nicki Minaj and pretty much everyone else making chart-orientated R&B. And that's how it's been for the last four or five years, unless you were Alicia Keys and her magic piano.
But something changed at the end of 2012, when Frank Ocean looked down his kaleidoscope and pronounced "I have been listening to Marvin Gaye and I wish to become him, only more conflicted about my relationships". Then Solange popped her head round the door and said, "Is that so? Well, I'm going to put out an EP of rump-shaking R&B that's so devastatingly great my sister will scrap an entire year's worth of recordings and look like a twit."
And so they did. And each of their albums had monochromatic sleeves, which was probably a coincidence but you never know.
As a result, R&B got a massive kick up the bumparts. Now everyone is making seedy, soulful grooves with unsettling bass notes and fantastic tunes. Even the new Jason Derulo song isn't 100% hateful, despite being called Talk Dirty. But the latest singles from Drake (Hold On We're Going Home) and up-and-coming LA singer Banks (Waiting Game) are even better. Check out all three of them below.
So welcome back, R&B. We missed you a lot.
Now, if someone could just make the 21st Century End Of The Road, that'd be perfect.
I'm currently listening to Frank Ocean's new album Channel Orange, which was stealth released on iTunes overnight, and which is streaming in full on his official website this morning.
So far, I'm about a quarter of the way through and it's already feeling pretty special. The lazy easy comparison is Prince - not because anything sounds like Raspberry Beret, but because of the dizzying roulette wheel of pop culture references. It's the same trick that made The Beastie Boys or Beck or Outkast sound so fresh - cherry-picking a billion unconnected influences to create a sound that's irrevocably, unmistakably yours, and yours alone.
What's particularly refreshing about Ocean is the way he's constantly set his own agenda. I'm not just talking about the massively over-analysed note posted on his blog last week, in which he talked about his love for another man ("I don't have any secrets I need kept any more"). But also the way he gave away his first, aborted album online for free; the way his name doesn't appear on the cover of Channel Orange; the fact that he's built up a massive buzz without a flashy music video or an all-consuming media blitz.
In other words, people are excited about Frank Ocean's album because they're excited about the music - and that can only be a good thing.
Intrigued? Check out his performance from Jimmy Fallon's chat show last night (his first ever TV appearance) and, if you've got time, have a listen to the album on his website. As he says in the lyrics to Sweet Life, "the best song wasn't the single".
Speaking to The Quietus last November, Frank Oceanhad a good old moan about being labelled an R&B singer.
"It's not about genre," he said. "I think so many genres have rubbed off on each other... it's just dated. It's played out, it's over, it's done. Stop."
Ocean had already proved his point on Nostalgia, Ultra, the debut album he released (for free) online last year. The record sampled Radiohead, Coldplay and The Eagles. The Eagles sued him, Coldplay booked him as a support act.
Truthfully, his music leans towards pop and R&B more than anything else - but what sets Ocean apart is his lack of boundaries. His new single, Pyramids, is a 10-minute, multi-tempo trip through the senses, culminating in a deliriously woozy guitar solo. It's like Prince on Prozac.
Radio might not play it - although I suspect there's a decent edit point around the 4'30" mark - but Pyramids is causing a Pharaohld (fair old) storm online. Ocean uploaded the track to Soundlcoud over the weekend. It's already been streamed 350,000 times.
Click below to make it 350,001.
PS: Those of you paying attention to the artwork will have noticed that the "Pyramid" of the title in fact refers to carnal stirrings in Frank's trouser department. What a perv.
