Grimes is Go and 14 other songs you may have missed

After a week away and a major music festival, there's plenty of great music to catch up with in this edition of "songs you may have missed". 

I've included a few clips from Glastonbury, mixed up with songs that premiered during my self-imposed blog absence.

It all begins with the welcome return of the artist currently known to her parents as Claire Boucher.

1) Grimes - Go (ft Blood Dragon)
Written for (and rejected by) Rihanna, this is the most straightforward, bubbly pop song Grimes has ever released. She describes it as a "summer jam" and she's not wrong. It's available as a free download from her website right now.




2) Ellie Goulding - I Need Your Love (acoustic at Glastonbury)
Yes, she's a fully-fledged dance diva these days but I still maintain Ellie's voice is best suited to this sort of musical arrangement. Bring on the 2018 acoustic album.




3) Usher - Good Kisser (Disclosure remix)
Better than the original. Try not to think about the lyrics.





4) Craig David - Cold
Is it time for a Craig David revival? Are you missing the Flava? Are the crowd saying Bo Selecta? Who knows, but this song is 100% not shit.

5) Amy Milner - Have It All
Newcomer Amy Milner took my breath away with this luscious, dreamy piano ballad. It's simple - almost predictably so - but there's a moment where the backing vocals kick in that indicates a compositional genius at work.

Amy is unsigned right now but she's getting some support from BBC Intriducing in her native Sussex. One to watch.






6) Becky G - Shower
This sounds like a monster hit to me. Co-written by Dr Luke, it's got a "why did no-one think of this before" lyric ('you got me singing in the shower') and a "la-da-dee" vocal hook that will burrow into your grey matter and establish an independent republic. You have been warned.





7) Jurassic 5 - Improvise (live at Glastonbury)
Gutted I missed this one... Taking four MCs and make 'em sound like one.





8) Cate Le Bon - Sisters (live at Glastonbury)
Isn't it strange how the Welsh accent occasionally sounds French when you're singing?

9) Broods - LAF
It stands for "Loose As Fuck", and it contains a Spice Girls reference in the second verse. What's not to love?





10) Kelis - Friday Fish Fry (live at Glastonbury)
One of the few performances I actually got to see at Glastonbury this year was Kelis's feel-good, big band soul revue. A highlight in the sunlight.




11) Tiann - Devil's Touch
Subtle, melodious R&B that is - praise the lord - not at all dark and depressing. An refreshing antidote to the mopey soul of Banks and Drake and their "ilk".






12) Kiesza - Giant In My Heart
A companion piece to Arcade Fire's We Exist video, with a deep house soundtrack. Heartwarming.

13) Manic Street Preachers - Motorcycle Emptiness (live at Glastonbury)
This is magnificent. Why they were below Jake Bugg on the bill is a mystery and a crime.





14) Sam Smith - How Will I Know (Whitney Houston cover)
Thanks, Sam, for stripping every ounce of joy and vibrancy out of this song. Thanks a bundle.





15) Wolf Alice - Radio 1 Rocks, full set
London grunge-rock revivalists Wolf Alice recorded this blistering session for Radio 1's Rock week last month, but I've only just caught up with it.

All five songs in the set are magnificent but fast forward to the end for a brand new, untitled track which is a full-throated screamathon of brilliance.

PHEW! That was a lot to get through. Well done if you persevered to the bitter end!

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En route to Glastonbury

The waterproofs are packed, the sun cream is not. Glastonbury, I am coming to you.

From a news point of view, one person is going to dominate the headlines and that person is Parton.


Admist the work, I'm hoping to catch Jurassic 5, Wolf Alice, Chvrches, The Black Keys and Lana Del Rey. I suspect Rudimental will see a sales boost from their main stage set, but Arcade Fire - while incredible live - will seem strange and wonky on TV. Prince is not turning up, and Cliff Richard hasn't died.

My updates from the festival will be on Twitter - @BBCNewsEnts for the official stuff and @mrdiscopop for the nonsense. But I'll mostly be locked in a Portacabin writing web pages for the BBC website.

All that activity means the blog will be silent for a couple of days - but to keep you going here's a new single from Sia.



And a new single from The Saturdays (and Xenomania!)


And the quite impressive opening of Jay-Z and Beyonce's joint "On The Run" tour.


See you next week!

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Glastonbury 2013: A top 10 from behind the scenes

Let's face it, there are worse jobs in the world than reporting on Glastonbury. Saturday may have been a 22-hour slog that combined mud, blisters and sunburn with a 4:30am start and 11 interviews - but I had an absolute blast.

So, here are my top 10 (and a half) moments from a busy weekend. I even got to watch some music.

10) Liam Gallagher liked my t-shirt.
Thanks, Liam, but Beady Eye are still shit.


9) A never-ending supply of Haribo.
Seriously, they were everywhere: Scattered in the dressing rooms, littering the production offices, propping up the catering tents. On Saturday, when the sun came out, they all started to melt and coalesce into one giant mecha-Haribo. I have come to the conclusion that the festival is secretly run by Gummy Bears.

8) Catching Aluna "AlunaGeorge" Francis scoffing a bag of crisps just before the band's inaugural Glastonbury set (but after she'd joined Dizzee Rascal - aka "the grime Black Lace" - on Friday evening).





7) Rudimental, whose tiggerish levels of bounciness led to one of the best shows of the festival. Imagine a Basement Jaxx gig played by James Brown's band. They're that good.


6.5) This slurry tank.

6) Hastily applying sun cream and running out the door to speak to Two Door Cinema Club. As the interview progressed, the cream started to melt and run into my eyes. Ever the professional, I kept the recording going for 10 minutes as my face streamed with tears. "Are you ok?" asked Alex Trimble after we finished. "Sorry," I replied, wiping my eyes. "It's just that I'm your biggest fan."




5) Watching Bruce Forsyth take over the Avalon field ("if you're good I'll play for two hours. If you're bad, I'll do four-and-a-half") then recording the best vox pop of all time.



Actually, I'm lying. That's only the second-best vox pop of all time. On Saturday afternoon, Colin Paterson was interviewing people on 5 Live when a woman walked past with the lyrics to Wild Horses tattooed on her arm.

"You must be going to see the Rolling Stones," he said.
"No, I'm gonna see Chase and Status."
"But you have their lyrics tattooed on your arm?"
"No, mate, that's the Susan Boyle version".



4) Speaking of The Strolling Bones - I've never been a big fan, and I would never have paid real money to see them, but they totally won me over. Music aside, the most amazing thing about their set was that almost everyone put their cameraphone away.

It also became clear why the band were reluctant to let the BBC broadcast their performance: The Stones' live show is designed for a stadium audience, low on subtlety and high on arm-waving, gurny-faced aerobics. Shrunk down to TV size, they were ridiculous and camp. In person they were spectacular.





3) The inestimable Lizo Mzimba, BBC Entertainment Reporter, former Newsround anchor, all-round gentleman and semi-professional Howard-from-the-Halifax-adverts impersonator. As the Rolling Stones took to the stage, he was broadcasting to News 24 from a platform overlooking the Pyramid Stage. 10 minutes later, the final chord to Paint It Black rang out and the audience erupted. But not for the Stones. No, they were chanting "Li-zo, Li-zo, Li-zo".

Lizo's notoriety produced another incredible moment later that night, when a slightly "refreshed" Dan from Bastille came across him interviewing the Stones' fans.

Right of the photo, BBC News today = my reaction from seeing childhood news idol @lizo_mzimba behind the camera pic.twitter.com/1tShSDAtnv
— BASTILLE (@BASTILLEdan) June 30, 2013

2) The Staves. Not only do they have the voices of angels, but they are bloody lovely people. My task for the weekend (self-imposed) was to follow them band around and document their Glastonbury experience for the BBC website.

It wasn't a difficult job - they're funny and friendly and supremely talented. Crouching next to them, holding a microphone to Jess's guitar as they performed In The Long Run in perfect three-part harmony for Radio 4 was literally breath-taking.



The sisters were originally at Glastonbury for three low-key shows across three days - but then they got a call from Ben Mumford, who wanted them to do this.


Watching that from the crowd, I felt like a proud uncle at the biggest nativity play of all time. They were justifiably over-the-moon afterwards - and it couldn't have happened to three nicer people.

1) ISLANDS IN THE STREAM.
THAT IS WHAT WE ARE.
NO-ONE IN BETWEEN.
HOW CAN WE BE WRONG?
SAIL AWAY WITH ME.
TO ANOTHER WORLD.
AND WE RELY ON EACH OTHER.
A-HA.
FROM ONE LOVER TO ANOTHER
A-HA.

A-ha-mazing.

There were plenty of other memorable moments: Jessie Ware threatening to climb the rafters; meeting Kenny Rogers in his dressing room; Haim being mobbed everywhere they went; Chris O'Dowd actually running away when I approached him with a microphone; and the shower in my caravan running out of water, which left me with no choice but to rinse off the soap suds with a bottle of mineral water straight from the fridge.

There's nowhere on earth like it, and nowhere I would rather have been.

Next year, we've worked out the headliners will be Kanye West, Fleetwood Mac and Prince, with Billy Joel doing the Sunday Afternoon "legend" slot. See you there.

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Glastonbury: A top 10 from behind-the-scenes

Working at Glastonbury is hard going - 18-hour days, 20 bands to interview, 20 live inserts on 6 Music and Radio 2, covering the death of a politician, and producing eight or nine other radio segments across the weekend.

But let's face it: I'm a lucky pup. I get to see and do things that only a privileged few will ever experience. The lack of sleep is a small price to pay.

So... Here's my top 10 moments from the behind-the-scenes at the world's muddiest festival.

10) The Joy Formidable. Not only did they ROCK the John Peel stage, but they started a rumour that Beyoncé would have a "giant inflatable clitoris on stage as a symbol of female empowerment". We didn't broadcast much of that interview...


9) Jo Whiley getting her umbrella stuck in a door, but still looking inconceivably glamorous.

8) When the MC on the West Holts stage implored everyone to lower their flags, and everyone obeyed.


7) U2... I didn't get to see any of their set, but this stripped-down version of Stay was a highlight of the TV coverage. It's not one of their best-known songs, but it was a subtle and tender moment in a blustering "biggest band in the world" headline set.

The song's subtitle, Far Away, So Close, reflected the general feeling that U2 had fumbled their big moment - thanks in no small part to the weather.

U2 - Stay (Far Away, So Close)



6) Watching Jimmy Cliff at the side of the West Holts stage as he got ready to perform. The 63-year-old reggae star limbered up by spinning his arms like a human windmill, dressed in a chain-mail tracksuit with gold lamé shoes. And what an incredible set he delivered...


Jimmy Cliff - World Upside Down



5) When Plan B went AWOL 30 minutes before a live interview on Radio One. We had to scramble the emergency phone lines to find another guest, ringing anyone who might have their hands on a pop star. Kaiser Chief Ricky Wilson eventually came through (and was brilliant on air) but not before Steve Lamacq wandered past, laconically noting: "It's ironic that you need a Plan B for Plan B".


4) Sneaking out into the audience for 15 minutes of Elbow - just as they performed my favourite song, Mirrorball. Guy Garvey gave the most affable performance of the weekend, holding the crowd in the palm of his hand with some perfectly-judged bandinage between the songs. I got to be part of his "reverse mexican wave", a beautiful moment of communion between band and audience.


Elbow - Reverse Mexican Wave / Neat Little Rows



3) Standing next to Beyoncé as she waited to speak to BBC TV. She was totally buzzing from her spectacular set on the Pyramid Stage, glowing like a gorgeous R&B firefly.

We were stood as close as the first "W" and the final "E" of this sentence and, if she hadn't been ushered onto the set, I might have gone all Alexandra Burke and started weeping like an idiot. The interview was incredibly sweet, though. As Olly Richards said on Twitter afterwards: "Beyonce seems lovely. I bet she & Jay-Z just sit at home being brilliant and not feeling a need to make it a big thing."


Beyoncé chats to the BBC after her Glastonbury performance



2) Everything about Janelle Monae. The pin-sharp choreography, the stunning voice, the monochrome stage set (everything was black and white, right down to the string section's instruments)... even the bit where she brought out an easel and started painting in an unexpected tribute to Rolf Harris. Possibly the most gifted and individual performer of the weekend.


Janelle Monáe - Tightrope



1) Interviewing Robert "Kool" Bell of Kool & The Gang. Our chat ended like this...

Me: "You're on stage at the same time as Beyoncé. Do you feel any competition? Who's going to be more funky?"

Kool: "It's interesting that they've put us on at the same time, but I think we have enough people out here. And we gonna get down".

Me: "How do you get down?"

Kool: "We get down... on it."

There were other moments, too... Getting to stand in the wings as Cee-Lo played his set. Having to ask The Vaccines to write their names on a piece of paper, because I kept getting them wrong on air. And the backstage catering, which was of an unfairly high standard compared to the falafel vans on the main site (a special shout-out to whoever made the sticky toffee pudding).

I have an amazing job.

If you listened to our coverage on 6 Music, thank you! And if you missed any of it, here's a round-up of everyone I saw and spoke to at the John Peel stage - which was my main home for the weekend.

Glastonbury 2011 - From the John Peel Stage by mrdiscopop

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Next stop: Farmville

There will be a short break in service while I report at, then recover from, a large music festival in the middle of England. You might hear me if you tune in to 6 Music... but not during Adam & Joe (*pouty face*)

Sadly, work commitments mean I won't get to see Beyoncé's headline set on Sunday night. I think we can all agree she's going to own Glastonbury, though. And here's why... Even when she dashes off an obligatory Destiny's Child number, she's 20 times the performer you or I or "Chris Martin" will ever be.

Beyoncé - Say My Name (live)


Amazing.

If you're festival-bound yourself, I'm mainly reporting from the John Peel tent (highlights: DJ Shadow, The Joy Formidable, Noah And The Whale, Example, Robyn, Foster The People). If you see someone holding a 6 Music microphone with the manic expression of a feral lemur, come over and say "hi".

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Glastonbury 2010: Highlights in video

The BBC coverage largely stuck to the Pyramid stage this year, but that's hardly surprising given the quality of the acts on the bill.

Still, if you could be bothered to sit through the Editors for the eightieth year in a row, there were some gems to be found. Here are my totally subjective highlights.


And the highlights in video included:



Scissor Sisters and Kylie - Any Which Way


Mumford & Sons - The Cave


Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song


Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls


Muse and The Edge - Where The Streets Have No Name

Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered


Marina and the Diamonds - Mowgli's Road

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Glastonbury 2010: The view from the sofa

Another year, another weekend spent in front of the television going "why didn't I buy tickets for this?" Next year I will be tweeting up a storm from Worthy Farm. Mark my words.

Until then, here's a lazy person's view of what they saw on the television this weekend when they weren't treating picnic tables with Ronseal.

Gorillaz flopped. They just don't have the rousing, sing-along choruses of, say, Blur. Or U2.	When The Edge plucked out the opening riff to Where The Streets Have No Name, Muse's spine-tingling Glastonbury set reached its zenith.	Stevie Wonder brought mile-wide grins to everyone’s faces. Superstition, Uptight, Signed, Sealed Delivered. A masterful, remarkable end to the weekend.
In a massive breach of security, Kylie Minogue rushed onto the stage during the Scissor Sisters' set.	Thom Yorke gave us his best Bjorn Borg impression during Radiohead's "surprise" set.	Hot Chip must have built a nest under The Other Stage. How else do they get onto the bill every year?
Shakira presented her bottom to the world like a Baboon in heat.	Marina and the Diamonds did a very good Hammond organ version of Mowgli’s Road while dressed in a comfort blanket.	Phoenix looked very, very French and were very, very good.
Paloma Faith did something totally unpredictable and mad involving balloons.	At one point, the normally calm and measured Mrdiscopop exclaimed: “Kate Nash is as talented as a bucket of sick”.	Snoop Dogg looks like he’s wasting away. Someone should feed him a Bonio.

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Top of the rank like Pearl and Dean

It seems the well of new music has dried up because everyone is off at Glastonbury (except me, I'm off to the theatre tomorrow because I'm all cultured and shit).

In the meantime, please enjoy this "blast from the past".

Betty Boo - Doin' The Do


That's 20 years old. TWENTY!

If you were born today, Betty Boo would have as much cultural and musical relevance to you as Doris Day and Vera Lyn had to me when I plopped onto the planet in 1974.

Oh, and if you are slumming it in Glastonbury, the current rumours are, in order of aweseomagicality:

1) Thom Yorke & Johnny Greenwood on the Park Stage tonight.
2) Biffy Clyro will be on the Park Stage tomorrow at 6:40pm.
3) Kylie is joining the Scissor Sisters on stage tomorrow.
4) Tinie Tempah will guest with the Gorillaz tonight.

In the past, the perennial Glastonbury rumour was always that Michael Jackson had died. Somehow, these "surprise" guest appearances don't quite live up to that... RIP Mr The King Of Pop.

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Very late Glastonbury sofa update

So, after a 13-hour shift on Thursday, I went out for a quick drink -- and was almost instantly called back into work to co-ordinate the BBC's Michael Jackson coverage. This included, frighteningly, having to decide at what point the Beeb would declare the King Of Pop dead (11:52pm, if you're interested - not until we'd received verification from three separate, reliable sources).

I also had to write an appreciatiion of his music at four in the morning. It may be the most pretentious, least lucid thing I've ever committed to print. And, thankfully, a sentence about a snare drum "cracking like the whip that Michael was, presumably, flagellating himself with" was removed by the sub-editors.

After that all-night extravaganza, I had to go to Wimbledon, where I promptly fell asleep during an otherwise thrilling Hass / Cilic five-set epic. And then I spent the weekend recovering on the sofa, to the soundtrack of the BBC's Glastonbury coverage.

Highlights included:

Karen O's headdress (pictured)

Little Boots and her quite posh teeth

The crowd deserting the Pyramid Stage when Dizzee Rascal finished, leaving Crosby, Stills and Nash playing to precisely nine people

Blur being ever-so-slightly giddy with emotion

Also, Blur's general amazingness - in complete contradiction to my memory of them live

Although Tender was a bit ropey until they brought the choir out

Friendly Fires bringing a Brazilian carnival atmosphere to Somerset

Lisa Hanningan looking coy and beautiful

The audience not knowing any words to Born To Run except the "woah" bit

Bruce Springsteen actually emitting steam (pictured). If only he'd been singing I'm On Fire.

Jason Mraz being such a perfect fit for a sunny Glastonbury that his limp, anaemic music miraculously sounded warm and joyous.

I heart Sausages

Jack White playing the drums

The Specials being... well, Special

There's no point in going into the bad bits because (a) the whole point of Glastonbury is that it caters to thousands of different, diverging tastes, and (b)
something that works brilliantly live can come across completely flat on TV. I suspect Florence and the Machine's set fell into this category.

But, my overall highlight was little Emiliana Torrini playing an acoustic set in the BBC encampment. I could watch this again, and again, and again, and again. And you should, too.

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There was this festival in Somerset...

...at the weekend, I don't know if you heard about it. Glasto-something, I think it was called. Apparently some of the biggest names in music were there; Shakin Stevens, Neil Diamond and The London Gospel Community Choir.

But the best performance of the whole weekend wasn't on any of the festival's seventy-three stages - it took place in a little tent, in front of a camera crew for BBC Three. The artists were Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris, who did a funky acoustic strut to their single Dance Wiv Me, which is out this week.

Here it is in full.

Calvin Harris and Dizzee Rascal - Dance Wiv Me (acoustic)


Oh, and Jay-Z was quite good, too.

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Glastonbury tickets available on eBay

But how can you be sure they're genuine?



Here's the link if you're brave enough...

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