Top 10 singles of 2017

So it's been... er, five long months since I last updated the blog. But I couldn't resist compiling my Top 10 singles of the year.

This year's list is extremely pop heavy, even for me, but the choices are determined by my iTunes play counts, which means they represent the songs I actually listened to over the last 12 months.

So here we go... in reverse order, with a playlist of the videos at the bottom of the post.


10) Lorde - Green Light

Max Martin called Lorde's comeback single "incorrect songwriting" but to my mind, that's a compliment. Green Light's awkward lurch from verse to pre-chorus encapsulates everything that's brilliant about Lorde - a pop star who's not afraid to embrace her weirdness (cf her performance at this year's MTV Awards).

Green Light isn't the best song on Melodrama, but there's something graceful about its clumsiness that kept me coming back for more.



9) Don't Kill My Vibe - Sigrid

Rae Morris made it into my Top 20 with the sublime Do It, a song about falling in love with her producer. Don't Kill My Vibe tells the opposite story - of how pop-star-in-waiting Sigrid Raabe was patronised and demoralised by an obnoxious studio boffin. Working with more sympathetic collaborators, Sigrid poured her scorn into this undeniable pop banger - and unwittingly set the scene for the song at number eight.



8) Praying - Kesha

Kesha could have come back swinging - she'd spent years in legal limbo, fighting her boss and mentor Dr Luke, who she accused of psychological and sexual abuse. But her response was much more compassionate than anyone expected.

The star doesn't hide her anger ("we both know all the truth I could tell") but turns it into a plea for redemption. "I hope you find your peace, falling on your knees, praying," she sings. If only we could all be so forgiving.



7) Little Of Your Love - Haim

AKA the song that saved Haim's second album. As Este confessed earlier this year, "There was a time where I was like, 'OK, why is every song I’m writing sounding like the theme from ‘Jurassic Park’?'"

Little Of Your Love broke that curse. Commissioned for (but not used in) the Amy Schumer movie Trainwreck, it relieved Haim of the pressure of following up their first album, allowing them to write a joyous, freewheeling True Blue tribute that's become a highlight of their live set. It also has one of the best videos of the year, which you can see at the bottom of this post.



6) Mistakes - Tove Styrke
Tove Styrke released two absolute corkers this year: Say My Name and Mistakes are cunningly detailed songs, employing multiple vocal layers and pixel-perfect production to embellish Tove's seemingly straightforward pop melodies.

Mistakes is my favourite of the two, thanks to that slap-back snare drum and a delicious portamento in the vocoder refrain. But it would be remiss of me not to mention Say My Name's "wear it out like a sweater that you love" lyric.


5) Lust For Life - Lana Del Rey ft The Weeknd
"My boyfriend's back and he's cooler than ever". Lust For Life is Lana's most radio-friendly single since Summer Sadness, and one in which she invites The Weeknd through the airlock of her interplanetary spacecraft.

It's a curious duet. Despite the chorus's demand to "take off all your clothes" the singers perpetually circle one other - mesmerised, rather than ravenous. But there's something beguiling about their soft-focus sensuality that keeps me coming back for more.



4) Hard Times - Paramore

A fluorescent, upbeat pop song about plumbing the depths of depression. "All that I want / Is a hole in the ground," sings Hayley Williams. "You can tell me when it's alright /For me to come out."

The counterpoint is the point. Taylor York's triangular, new wave guitar hooks and Zac Farro's creative drum fills make the bleakness of Williams' lyrics all the more stark. Radiohead, take note.


3) Bellyache - Billie Eilish
The best debut of the year? 15-year-old Billie Eilish fantasises about killing all her friends and going on the run - only to get an ulcer from the guilt.

Reviews rightly focus on the lyrics, but the music is equally ambitious - switching from peppy acoustic balladry to the gut-churning bass drop of the chorus. Billie Eilish is going places in 2018, and not just to escape the law.


2) New Rules - Dua Lipa

How often does someone come up with a new lyrical conceit for a break-up song? Almost never, that's how often. But Dua Lipa found a new angle with her step-by-step guide to avoiding your ex - and it became her proper breakout hit.

New Rules was the first single to really capture the star's witty, approachable Twitter persona ("It's so cold outside my nipples could key a car rn") but it also benefitted from a super-smart video; which saw Dua being supported by her girlfriends as she struggled to stick to the four-point programme.

The video rightly became a viral success... and not just for its gif-tastic choreography and themes of female solidarity. Someone "in the know" told me the pastel palette was deliberately chosen to reflect the most popular colour schemes on Instagram. How 2017 can you get?


1) Bad Liar - Selena Gomez
The way it interpolates Talking Heads' Psycho Killer. The way the lyrics spill out like an infatuated teenager's love letter. The line "just like the Battle of Troy there's nothing subtle here." The nuance in Selena Gomez's delivery - alternately awe-struck and assertive. The way she tries to deny her feelings ("you're taking up a fraction of my mind"). The melody in the chorus. The counter-melody in the chorus. The line "every time I watch you, serpentine".

The whole damn thing is perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

FYI: The next 10 would have been:
11) St Vincent - Los Ageless
12) St Vincent - New York
13) The Killers - The Man
14) Kendrick Lamar - Humble
15) Laura Marling - Wild Fire
16) Tove Lo - Disco Tits
17) Dagny - Love You Like That
18) Foo Fighters - Sky Is A Neighbourhood
19) Camila Cabello - Havana
20) Rae Morris - Do It

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Lana Del Rey gets busy with A$AP Rocky

Lana Del Rey has always had hip-hop elements in her songs, but she's never had a rap star contribute a verse... until now.

Yesterday, she unveiled two new songs: Summer Bummer and Groupie Love, both featuring A$AP Rocky (and on the former, Playboy Carti), and both continue the star's current hot streak.

Summer Bummer is, despite the bollock-awful title, my favourite of the pair. It starts off as a prototypical Lana Del Rey song, with barely-bothered lyrics like "hip-hop in the summer, babe... be my undercover lover, babe."

But then something interesting happens - after A$AP's verse (which he shares with Playboi Carti) the song starts to deconstruct, dissolving into digital noise, with Lana's haunting upper-register holler barely holding the song together.

Groupie Love is a more straightforward, string-drenched ballad, with a chorus that sticks like flypaper.


Speaking to Zane Lowe last night, Lana revealed she'd recorded a bunch of songs with A$AP Rocky but they're mostly just languishing in a cupboard somewhere.

"He travels a lot but sometimes he’s in town for a month and, when he is, I’ll come to the studio and hear what he’s working on and do background vocals on his tracks," said Lana.

"There probably are a lot of tracks somewhere that we’re both on over the years. We do 'em and forget em and if one's better than all of them, like this one, we try to put it out."

Lana then proceeded to FaceTime A$AP Rocky while he was on the toilet, which is a classy move.

Still, with these two tracks alongside Love and Lust For Life, her new album is shaping up to be one of the year's best releases. It's out next Friday on Polydor.

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Video: Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life

Take a look at this new video. Is that? Could it be? Surely it isn't?

Yes. Yes it is. Lana Del Rey is smiling.

And look. She's doing it again.

What next? Will Lana make an upbeat tropical house track? Will she escape the vintage VHS tape she's been trapped inside, like Reese Witherspoon in Pleasantville? Will there be a fierce internal battle between Happy Lana and Sad Lana? If Happy Lana wins, is her career effectively over? Do we, as fans, want to suppress Happy Lana in order to maintain our supply of gauzy, fatalistic doom-pop? What does that make us? Are we complicit in her unhappiness? Is all art exploitation?

While I pitch this idea to Woody Allen as a film script, you can watch the video. The song remains superb.



Update: As soon as I posted this video on Twitter, ace music writer person Jamie Milton replied with this video.

Harsh, but funny.

@mrdiscopop @LanaDelRey https://t.co/Y7lQyiBoHt

— Jamie Milton (@jamiemilton_) May 22, 2017

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Listen to Lana Del Rey's North Korea song

Last month, while driving home from the Coachella Music Festival, Lana Del Rey stopped to write a song about her "complex feelings" after "spending the weekend dancing whilst watching tensions w North Korea mount."

It went. A little. Something. Like this:

A post shared by Lana Del Rey (@lanadelrey) on Apr 15, 2017 at 2:39am PDT

Last night, she released a finished version of the track which may or may not be taken from her fourth-coming album, Lust For Life. It's no great artistic leap forward but Lana is medically incapable of writing an uncatchy song.

Lyrically, she likens the loved-up atmosphere of Coachella to the "socially-conscious" (smashed off their tits) punters at Woodstock in 1969. The hope and optimism for humanity is still present, she suggests, but the world is still pretty awful.

Then Lana describes what she would give up (everything) in order to go to heaven and sit next to God, going: "WTF, God?"

It's better than my description makes it sound.


Oh, and if you'd like to squint at some handwritten lyrics while playing the above video, then you're in luck.

New song: Coachella- Woodstock in my mind https://t.co/I4JJ8CP2e6 pic.twitter.com/s8cplnW9QI

— Lana Del Rey (@LanaDelRey) May 15, 2017

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Three weeks off - what did I miss?

Huge apaologies for the (latest) break in blog posts. It was a double whammy of work deadlines leading into a family holiday. But I'm back once again like the "renegade master" ("tired father of two"). And here's a round-up of what I listened to in the break.

Paramore - Hard Times
Paramore have really been through the wringer - with an ever-changing line-up and all sorts of legal demands from former members. It got so bad they nearly packed it all in: "Two years ago I asked Taylor (York, guitarist) if we could start a new band," Hayley Williams told The Guardian. "I was so sick of this crap. I said we should just try something new, give it a new name."

But, as she's done many times before, Williams clung on and turned the bad times into a rollicking radio hit. The aptly-named Hard Times takes its cues from Talking Heads and Blondie, all clipped guitar lines and arch vocal stylings. It is an utter triumph.





Lana Del Rey ft The Weekend - Lust For Life
Of course, in Lana Del Rey's world, "lust for life" translates as "drifting woozily over a moonlit graveyard" but what a song. What. A. Song.





Katy Perry - Bon Appetit
Plans for Katy Perry's political album have been shelved in favour of this ode to oral sex.






Kendrick Lamar - DNA
Kendrick's new album, DAMN FULL STOP, doesn't move me in quite the same way as To Pimp A Butterfly - its lyrical and musical introspection makes it a much tougher listen. But DNA is a standout, with Mike Will Made-It's starkly simplistic beats focusing your attention on Kendrick's densely-layered lyrics.

The video, in which he takes possession of Don Cheadle's body, is also worth watching.





Goldfrapp - Systemagic
The lyrics are some old bollocks about the moon - but the song is vintage Goldfrapp, with Alison's ethereal vocals the chocolate sprinkles on Will Gregory's synth cappuccino. (Sorry, I'm all out of metaphors).





Ardyn - Together
Ardyn are twin brother and sister Rob and Katy Pearson, who hail from Gloucestershire. Their new single was written in a caravan on a keyboard purchased from Lidl; and it's messy tangle of strummed guitar and dark-pop harmonies is an absolute delight.





Haim - Right Now
Haim's comeback song is very emphatically not a single (that comes next week, fact fans), which is a relief as Right Now feels very much like track nine on a 10-track album. Great video, though.






Tove Styrke - Say My Name
Tove Styrke's second album, Kiddo, was my favourite record of 2015 - and now she's back, with a typically quirky take on Swedish pop. Her girl power lyrics have transmuted into something altogether more sex-obsessed, but her wayward lyrics are still superb: "Say my name - wear it out like a sweater."





Dua Lipa ft Miguel - Lost In Your Light
A steamy banger, in which Dua and Miguel tussle over lyrics like "let me ride in your love all night". Phwoar.




Harry Styles - Sign Of The Times
According to Cameron Crowe's Rolling Stone profile of Sir Harry Stylesworth, this song is written from the perspective of a mother who, while in labour, is told she will die if her baby is to survive, which is quite a thematic departure from, say, Best Song Ever.

I'm still ambivalent about the song. Depending on my mood, it's either a brave attempt to write a power ballad that mixes the best bits of Life On Mars and Purple Rain, or a Stereophonics cast-off that outstays its welcome.




Royal Blood - Lights Out
This is going to KICK OFF at the Pyramid Stage come June.




Kygo ft Ellie Goulding - First Time
Yet another midtempo EDM song that wimps out at the chorus. Note to producers: A squiggly synth line is no substitute for a melody, and we're onto your trick now.




Ride - All I Want
I wasn't expecting much from the Ride reunion. The Stone Roses aside, I was never that keen on shoegaze indie; and Andy Bell's stint in Beady Eye didn't exactly set the world alight. But this is, somehow, rather brilliant.




Ibibio Sound Machine - The Chant
Fronted by London-born Nigerian singer Eno Williams, Ibibio Sound Machine smash together West African funk and British electro-pop in a way that will make your jelly shake right off its plate. The Chant has just been added to the 6 Music playlist, and rightly so.



DNCE ft Nicki Minaj - Kissing Strangers
Ridiculous. Good. But not ridiculously good.

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The best and worst of new music Friday: 24 February 2017

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.

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Fall back in Love with Lana Del Rey

For someone so laid back she can barely finish her senten... Lana Del Rey certainly maintains a prodigious work rate. Love, released at midnight last night, is the first single from her fourth album in six years.

I drafted an article where I called it her best single since Summer Sadness, but then I took a minute to listen to Ultraviolence, Ride, High By The Beach and West Coast (to name just a few) and realised she's never had a truly duff record.

Love, however, lifts the hazy fog that settled over Lana's more recent records. The crisp, minimal production works in support of a gorgeous melody, as Lana sings about the generation coming up behind her:

Look at you kids with your vintage music
Comin' through satellites while cruisin'
You're part of the past, but now you're the future
Signals crossing can get confusing

To begin with...all you need is 'Love' https://lana.lnk.to/LOVE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P9zYSBK7Blw

A post shared by Lana Del Rey (@lanadelrey) on Feb 18, 2017 at 3:13pm PST

Love was written with Rick Nowels - one of female pop's greatest catalysers, responsible for everything from Belinda Carlisle's Heaven On Earth to Lykke Li's Sadness Is A Blessing - who was credited on all but one of the tracks of Lana's last album, Honeymoon.

The same will be true for album number four, rumoured to be called Best American Record, while a press release says there are other special guests "TBC". (If The Weeknd isn't one of them, I'll eat my hat).

"I made my first four albums for me," says Lana, "but this one is for my fans and about where I hope we are all headed".

Listen below.



UPDATE: Here's the video.

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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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Lana Del Rey's aching Daniel Johnson cover is a revelation

It's easy to form the impression that Lana Del Rey is an artist with one string to her bow. A rare, gorgeous and string - but one that's in danger of snapping the more she plucks it. [alright, that's quite enough - tortured metaphor ed]

But her cover of Daniel Johnson's Some Things Last A Long Time is a revelation. Over a simple guitar and ominously bowed cello, she delivers a subdued, naked vocal that sounds much more fragile and human than her usual femme fatale persona.



The song is taken from the upcoming short film Hi How Are You Daniel Johnston. A surreal biopic of the beloved cult musician, it's set up as an imaginary meeting between the Daniel Johnston of 2015 and his younger self in 1983, as he was making his album Hi, How Are You.

According to Rolling Stone, Del Rey donated $10,000 to the film's Kickstarter fund in 2013, making her an executive producer of the project. It's released on Friday, and you can watch the trailer below.

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Bird-watching and boy-watching with Lana Del Rey

"Pink flamingos always fascinated me," sings Lana Del Rey at the beginning of her new single, Music To Watch Boys To.

Presumably she is ruminating on the birds' grey feathers, which only turn pink because of canthaxanthin, a naturally-occurring pink dye they absorb via their diet of brine shrimp and blue-green algae. But sadly, the song doesn't expand on the science, or Lana's burgeoning interest in ornithology.

Instead, she goes on to sing in her familiar, louche style about being single and ogling boys.

The video is typically impressionistic and dreamy, with the singer reclining on a lawn-chair and wearing flower bloom headphones as she - yes - watches some boys.


The album, Honeymoon, is pretty decent, too. Don't be put off if you didn't like Ultraviolence. It's much more even (although there's still nothing as good as National Anthem).

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Songs you may have missed: Songs I may have missed edition

Oh lordy. Two weeks off and so much good music to catch up with. Here are some of the highlights, accompanied by a desultory 5-word review.

1) Lana Del Rey - High By The Beach
The template has been refined.




2) Chvrches - Leave A Trace
The creation of a star.




3) Hailee Steinfield - Love Myself
Amazing songs deserve better visuals.





4) Disclosure ft Kwabs - Willing & Able
One to sink into deeply.





5) Dmitri Vegas & Like Mike ft Ne-Yo - Higher Place
Luscious, lilting late night anthem.





6) Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love
Generic dance music video ahoy.




7) Duran Duran - You Kill Me
Spot the clunky Bowie reference




8) Krept & Konan - So Long
Samples SWV's Rain. Is good.






9) Robin Thicke - Back Together (ft Nicki Minaj)
He's still going? Sadly, yes.




10) FKA Twigs - In Time
Uncompromising but compelling but bonkers.





11) Odesza - Light (ft Little Dragon)
Wispy, hypnotic and bloody brilliant.





12) Little Mix - Black Magic (live on the Late Show)
Bring back TOTP. Tomorrow, preferably.




13) The Dead Weather - I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)
Potential new TOTP theme song.

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New from Lana Del Rey - Honeymoon

It's hard to believe that Lana Del Rey is prepping her fourth record in as many years. But here we are, four short years after Video Games, listening to Honeymoon, a prelude to the album of the same name.

Detractors will say that the high turnover leaves no room for reinvention and, true enough, the song touches on all the familiar Del Rey tropes. But this noir melodrama, with its tale of tortured romance, is more innovative than it seems. The orchestral overture and meandering structure are ambitious and nuanced; and the song challenges you to swim into deeper waters before drawing you under with its melodic undercurrents.

Drown in its pleasures below.

Lana Del Rey - Honeymoon

The song was co-written by Rick Nowels, who's been collaborating with Del Rey since her debut. The award-winning writer/producer sought her out after hearing early demos on YouTube and speaks very highly of her to this day.

"She is a one of a kind artist and keeps growing," he told Idolator last month. "She's such a natural writer and singer and has a real vision for who she is and what she wants to put out into the world. I think she will be a future legend."

If you're not the sort of person who reads liner notes (and how could you be in the iTunes era?) you might not know that Nowels has been the catalyst for some of the best female pop of the last three decades. I've put together a short playlist of his best bits below.

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Eleven songs you may have missed (and one you definitely haven't)

This is the first "songs you may have missed" post since Christmas so in all likelihood these are songs you may not have missed. But there's always time for a good music megapost so let's begin, with...

1) Rihanna - FourFiveSeconds
About bloody time, pop's most elusive pop star is back, collaborating with Kanye West and Sir Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft on a surprisingly attitude-free, stripped back acoustic pop "number".

It's good. So good, in fact, that it's going to appear on both Kanye and Rihanna's new album. Which is going to cause havoc with my iTunes library. HAVOC.




2) Sia - Salted Wound
The 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack is shaping up to be superb, even if the film looks like a turkey. We've already heard Ellie Goulding's saucy Love Me Like You Do and The Weeknd's even saucier Earned It, now it's the turn of Sia - who takes a different tack altogether.

Her harp-assisted ballad Salted Wound is full of remorse and doubt. "Give your heart, and say come take it," sings Sia, "and she will see you're a good man." It should be a fitting accompaniment to Christian Grey's more introspective scenes.






3) Kelly Clarkson - Heartbeat Song
Is it me, or does this sound like Shania Twain?





4) Shura - Indecision
Feather-light synth pop from London's hotly tipped Aleksandra Denton. This would make a perfect Track 7, Side B on an "I like you" mixtape.






5) Prince & 3rdEyeGirl - Marz
Prince apparently thinks this throwaway rock track is dynamite. He's following up an SNL performance of the song with this YouTube video - which appeared days after he deleted his YouTube account. Strange chap.





6) Alex Winston - We Got Nothing
Alex Winston's wonky pop curio Sister Wife is one of my all-time favourite under-rated tracks. Catchy as all heck, with a killer lyric about polygamy and jealousy, I have played it to death over the last four years.

She's been in limbo for a while, but this sumptuous new single - on the influential Neon Gold label - hints at a slightly more mainstream, but no less hook-laden direction.







7) Jessie Ware - Jealous (Labrinth cover)
Stick around for the bit where she chucks in the chorus to Chaka Khan's Through The Fire. Beautiful.





8) Bearson - Pink Medicine
Bearson is a Norwegian producer who works in the "tropical house" genre (no, me neither). This hypnotic little song is a little too glitchy to be chill-out and a little too chilled out to be danceable. But I like it, for some reason. There's a free download available here if you like it, too.







9) Lana Del Rey - Brooklyn Baby (Yuksek remix)
WARNING: If you or your family are sensitive to the effects of synthesized saxophones, please seek advice before streaming this song.





10) U2 - Every Breaking Wave (single remix)
I wonder if anyone actually listened to Songs of Innocence when it gatecrashed our phones last year? I certainly couldn't be bothered... but it turns out that at least one of the songs is worth four minutes of your time.

Ranking it as the third best song of 2014 (!!) Rolling Stone called Every Breaking Wave the "emotional centrepiece" of U2's 13th album, saying it's "stark, shimmering" melody recalled With Or Without You.

To be honest, Joey Tribiani's not going to be staring out a fake window to this one any time soon... But this stripped-back radio remix of the song is surprisingly affecting.






11) Tobias Jesso Jr - How Could You Babe?
Officially endorsed by Adele, this is about as old-school as pop gets in 2015. Tailor made for Radio 2 and fans of sweaters, it recalls Elton John back in the Yellow Brick Road days.





12) Rae Morris - Love Again
As previously noted on these pages, Rae Morris is rather brilliant - with a husky voice like Ellie Goulding and a percussive thump worthy of Florence and the Machine. I interviewed her last week and, pleasingly, she let slip that her first ever gig was S Club 7.

If that's not enough to recommend her, try out this song: Love Again, one of the standout tracks from her debut album, Unguarded, which came out on Monday.

And that's a wrap. What an oddly diverse bunch of songs, eh?

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Here is an excellent remix of Lana Del Rey's Brooklyn Baby

Semi-reclusive, underrated British musician Tom Vek occasionally pops up with excellent remixes of likeminded artists such as Metronomy, Bombay Bicycle Club and Alt-J.

Now, he's turned his attention to Brooklyn Baby - Lana Del Rey's viscious skewering of New York socialites - and given it new life.

Reframing the maudlin, string drenched ballad with a shuffling drum pattern, it doesn't quite reach the heady heights of Cedric Gervais' reworking of Summer Sadness, but it's definitely going onto my ever-expanding "Lana Del Remix" playlist.

Lana Del Ray - Brooklyn Baby (Tom Vek remix)

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Monsieur Adi remixes Lana Del Rey's Brooklyn Baby

And the results are spectacular.

That is all.

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Video: Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence

Instagram filters ahoy as Lana Del Rey "unleashes" the incident-free video for Ultraviolence, the title track to her number one album.

The faded polaroid aesthetic is starting to become a little predictable but Del Rey's recent cover interview with Rolling Stone shed some light on her preferred colour palette, with the suggestion she has the neurological condition Synesthesia - where the senses get mixed up meaning that, for example, you experience sounds as colours.

In one passage, the singer explained how she would gave directions to album producer Dan Auerbach in the studio. "I would explain things to him in terms of colours and touchstone words," she said.

"My word for the record was 'fire,' you know, blue fire, when a flame gets so hot it goes from red to blue. And I told him I wanted everything to sound like it was in the key of blue. And I think at first he was like, 'What the fuck?'"

Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence

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Songs you may have missed: Time pressure edition

Hey there... I'm knee-deep in Glastonbury preparations right now. Interviews to transcribe, features to write, schedules to be finalised, wellies to be de-stinkified. So this week's "songs you may have missed" column comes with the bare minimum of commentary. 

But that's not to say I don't have some corking tunes to embed. So here they are:

1) The one where Alt-J sample Miley Cyrus
Not as bad as it sounds.




2) The one where OK Go play tricks with perspective
If only they wrote songs as well as they made music videos.



3) The one where Coldplay pretend to be buskers while clearly miming to a backing track
Try to watch this without cringing.



4) The one where Sinead O'Connor sounds reinvigorated
Unexpectedly brilliant.



5) The one where Duke Dumont hopes to score a third successive number one
He's got more bangers than a butcher.




6) The one with Beth Ditto and some Belgian guy
Key lyric: "I'm over-thinking everything. I'm drinking everything."




7) The one where Tove Lo makes her US TV debut
Bare of foot, husky of voice, tousled of hair. I love her.




8) The one by an artist called "Potato Potato"
Clicked on it for the name, stayed for the song.





9) The one with Jess Glynne in the back of a pick-up truck
She's lucky she didn't break her neck.




10) The one with Lana Del Rey and an awesome guitar solo
One of the six good songs on Lana's new album.

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Cheryl gets remixed and 10 other songs you may have missed

A round-up of the songs that slipped through the cracks over the last seven days. This week's selection starts right here.

1) Cheryl Cole - Crazy Stupid Love (Handbag House bootleg)
Scottish remixer Iain Macleod, aka Handbag House, was impressively quick off the mark with this one, uploading his remix of Cheryl's comeback single about 15 hours after it got it's first radio play. He hasn't done a bad job, either.

The image at the top of the page, by the way, is from Cheryl's video shoot earlier this week. The promo is due to "hit the streets" (be uploaded by a record label intern) on Monday.




2) Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
The Ellie Goulding to Kimye's Wills & Kate, here's Lana Del Rey with the title track to her second album. The usual adjectives apply: haunting, gauzy, hazy, woozy, ethereal, dreamy, etc, etc.





3) OneRepublic - Love Runs Out
"Love Runs Out was originally going to be the first single on our album but I couldn't crack the chorus" Ryan Tedder told me earlier this year. "It gutted me because I had it marked on the board as 'first single' for six months."

It's a good thing he kept working on it, as it would have been a shame to lose this gospel-pop gem.

"I'll be your light, your match, your burning sun," he sings over an insistent piano rhythm, that harks back to Moby's Bessie Wright sampling hit Honey.

4) Ella Eyre - If I Go
Ella's trying out the old Lionel Richie "Dancing On The Ceiling" trick for this video - but she's overlooked one crucial detail. While Lionel had a tightly controlled afro, her shaggy lion's mane always falls in the direction of gravity, giving away the secret of the optical illusion (it's a rotating box).

Amazing song, though. What. A. Voice.




5) Klaxons - Show Me A Miracle
A cross between an ITV Chart Show ident and one of those internet cat videos. In other words, awesome.





6) Sam Smith ft Mary J Blige - Stay With Me
There's a mutual love affair going on here. "Working with Mary J. Blige is one of the biggest highlights of my career so far," said Sam Smith after recording this live band duet.

"I remember holding her album in my hands in the car when I was a young boy. To meet your idols is a magical thing, but to work with them is truly a dream come true."

Blige was no less gushing, saying: "Sam's true soulful voice is the first of this kind I have heard since Luther Vandross, Freddie Jackson and all great soul male voices."

Oh, Get a room, you two.




7) Banks - Drowning
Banks sings her latest ballbreaking R&B ballad in a room full of mirrors. No wonder she's got a tortured mind - it must be a nightmare cleaning off all the fingerprints.

8) Kylie - Sexy Love
I can't really recommend the song, which is so bland and generic it might as well be a Tesco own-brand Rich Tea biscuit. But the video features Kylie doing the hoovering, and you can't argue with that.





9) Jack White - Lazaretto
The blues in black and white.




10) Neon Jungle - Louder
With two bona-fide top 10 hits under their belts, Girlband-with-attitude Neon Jungle have taken the shock decision to release a ballad. "It's still got energy and power," they insist, "but in a more subtle way".




11) The Ting Tings - Wrong Club
No, wait... Come back. This is a return to form, although it never reaches the heady heights of Great DJ or That's Not My Name.

As Fraser McAlpine noted on Twitter, they're up all night to get Lucky-y.

And that's it for another week... Stay tuned for more on Monday.

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John Mayer covers Beyonce's XO and 10 other songs you may have missed

This is the bit where I round up all the songs I didn't have time to write about over the last week (and it's been a busy week - with trips to Leeds and Bradford and Manchester - so I didn't have time to write about much).

So, without any further ado, our cover stars are...

1) John Mayer - XO
XO is the most songy song on Beyonce's Beyonce, so this strummed acoustic cover was guaranteed to work from the off. Beautifully understated, with none of the bombastic grandstanding of the original.





2) Sam Smith (or is it?) - Stay With Me
My erstwhile colleague, Radio 1's Sinead Garvan, had a shocker while interviewing Sam Smith at Radio 1's Big Weekend last week. If you haven't seen it already - here's the video. Sam's face is priceless.


Maybe that's why he's smiling from ear-to-ear when he takes to the stage. Or maybe it's the incredible reaction. Either way, it's a lovely, inclusive performance.




3) Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud (Live on Later...)
"Playing a brand new never before heard song on jools tonight," tweeted Ed Sheeran last Friday. "It's my favourite track on the album."

It's easy to see why. This is a superbly-crafted, heart-on-sleeve love song. The sort of thing you'd have expected from Tracy Chapman or Paul McCartney at the peak of their powers.

Yes, it's really that good. Even Jools's boogie-woogie piano can't ruin it.





4) Broods - Bridges

Not-entirely-unattractive pop duo Broods (see above) first released this single as a free download in 2013. But now that the New Zealanders have got a "proper" record deal in the States, the song's been given an expensively hazy Instagram-style video.

Shot around the Castaic Lake in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, it's a perfect fit for the song's moody electronic swoosh.




5) La Roux - Uptight Downtown
So, basically, the La Roux song that came out a fortnight ago was a "hey, we're back" kind of thing and this is the proper single that you'll hear on your radiogram this summer.

As many people have already noted, it sounds a lot like David Bowie's Let's Dance. But while Bowie was all "heyyy, let's party," Ellie Jackson is having really deep thoughts about her generation and stuff.

"It's kind of very loosely based on the London Riots," she told Triple J radio. "I grew up in Brixton where the first riots happened... It was interesting to see people of my generation try to at least get up and stand up for what they believed in.

"I think it's just the energy people would have liked to have seen from those riots and I kind of tried to turn a negative into a positive."







6) Foster The People - Best Friend
Foster The People's second album, Supermodel, hasn't exactly set the charts on fire in the UK, but they made the Top 10 in the US. Which is good news, because it means the band keep getting to make their excellent videos.

Directors Ben and Alex Brewer helm the latest clip, which takes a B-Movie look at fashion week. The models may be stick thin, but they have a voracious appetite... FOR HUMAN FLESH!





7) Miguel - Simplethings
Displaying the expert timing of a blacmange, Miguel has just released a video for a song he debuted in January.

But we can forgive his tardiness when the song, originally featured in Series 3 of Lena Dunham's Girls, is so gorgeous. "Laugh with me baby," he croons over an indistinct, sawtooth bassline, "I just want the simple things."





8) Katy Perry - Dark Horse (live at Radio 1's Big Weekend)
What does she sphinx she's playing at, etcetera...




9) The Pierces - Kings

The Pierces' new album, Creation, has just been given a highly-justified four-star review in Q Magazine, while the lead single, Kings, is on Radio 2's A-list... So things are looking up for the Alabama sisters.

The video, shot in the Los Angeles desert, has a tribal theme with Allison and Catherine slapping on the warpaint and going to battle. But this is no Braveheart - no-one's head gets chopped off and everyone stops fighting at sundown to have a nice bonfire.



10) Lana Del Rey - Shades of Cool
A little teaser for Lana's Ultraviolence album, which arrives in a fortnight.

All twangy steel guitars and brushed drums it shows more clearly than West Coast how she's moved away from the trip-hop trappings of her debut. The mid-point guitar solo (!) is hair-raising.



11) Prince - The Breakdown (teaser)
I finally got to see Prince play one of his Hit and Run shows in Leeds last week - and was utterly blown away. Thanks to his muscular, compact new band 3rdEyeGirl, he's ditched the Vegas vamp that's characterised his live shows since the Musicology tour ten years ago.

"If you haven't noticed there's been a turn towards the guitar these days," he said, as his fingers blurred over the neck of his Telecaster. He even nabbed Ida Nielsen's bass for an impromptu bass solo during a rendition of Alphabet Street - just one of half-a-dozen songs I've never heard him play before (I nearly died when he played the opening chords to Sometimes It Snows In April).

My official review is on the BBC site, and here's the peerless setlist. Surprisingly, one of the highlights was his newest song, The Breakdown.

Still no word on a UK release, but the song just got a teaser video on the 3rdEyeGirl Youtube channel.

And that's a wrap. Have a great weekend!

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Lana Del Rey makes Lana Del Rey video

In many ways, Lana Del Rey's West Coast is the perfect comeback: Familiar enough to be recognisable, with a few compelling tweaks to keep things interesting.

Like the rest of her second album, Ultraviolence, it was recorded with a live band while Lana sang into a handheld mic in the room next door (out of necessity, not because she forbids anyone to look directly at her, although I could believe that, too). And the song has really grown on me over the last couple of weeks - the tricky tempo changes and keyboard blips* slowly revealing a surprisingly adhesive melody.

The video, premiered today, is none more Lana. It's black and white - naturally - with lingering shots of open-top cars, scrawny men from the wrong side of the tracks (male models with temporary tattoos) and Lana taking long, languorous drags on a cigarette.

Watch, as they say, below.

Lana Del Rey - West Coast

* Which have been lifted wholesale from All Saints' Pure Shores, right?

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