Top 10 albums of 2018

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

10) Muna - About U

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



9) Billie Eilish - Don't Smile At Me

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

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


8) Wolf Alice - Visions Of A Life

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

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

Told you it was impossible to sum up.


7) Kendrick Lamar - Damn

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



6) Paramore - After Laughter

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

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

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



5) Lorde - Melodrama

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

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

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

A flawed masterpiece.



4) Dua Lipa - Dua Lipa

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

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


3) St Vincent - Masseduction

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

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

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


2) Kesha - Rainbow

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

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

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

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

1) Laura Marling - Semper Femina

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Lorde's SNL appearance goes without a hitch

There were two excellent performances and one dodgy sketch from Lorde on this weekend's Saturday Night Live. The New Zealander delivered pitch perfect renditions of Green Light and Liability from her forthcoming second album, Melodrama, the latter performed while drowning in a merenguey wedding dress ("I wanted to look like an attic moth, no sparkle, swaddled and floating. something so sad about white," she wrote on Twitter).

Watch below.

how i spent my saturday vibes pic.twitter.com/z2LDydYwnX

— Lorde (@lorde) March 12, 2017

brought all of our things to place on the piano and make it feel like where we sat and wrote the song ❤ pic.twitter.com/ziJ7mMAv5e

— Lorde (@lorde) March 12, 2017

@lorde feat my best candles, lorrie moore's book 'self help', baby's-breath flowers, framed pic of robyn that sits on jack's piano, obama

— Lorde (@lorde) March 12, 2017

chill uneventful saturday evening vibes part II pic.twitter.com/2cg6zX8hQ5

— Lorde (@lorde) March 12, 2017

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Lorde, Louisa and the rest of New Music Friday: 10 March 2017

Here we are again. In a post-Ed Sheeran landscape, none of these songs have a hope in hell of charting but what are the charts really for any more? Just listen to this stuff on Spotify and get on with your life.

Louisa Johnson - Best Behaviour
It starts off with a Curtis Mayfield bassline and a distorted vocal sample. Then Louisa summons in a chorus of handclaps (never not a good thing), then the hook is played on a panpipe. One of the most unusual and brilliant songs ever released by an X Factor winner. 10/10





Lorde - Liability
A sombre piano ballad inspired by Rihanna's Higher - and which really highlights Bowie's influence on Lorde's new album. Contains the lyric "he made the big mistake of dancing in my storm". Amazing.




Nicki Minaj ft Drake and Lil Waybe - No Faults
Nicki is on fire in this rapidly-recorded response to a Remy Ma diss track. "Soon as I wake up keep an eye out for the snakes," she spits on the single, which precedes her fourth album later this year.




Steps - Scared Of The Dark
Astonishingly good. Imagine if this was our Eurovision entry.




Alt-J - 3WW
If you can imagine Fleet Foxes covering Massive Attack's Teardrop, you're well on your way to imagining Alt-J's new single. Complete with choir chants, strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra and guest vocals from Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, it's "quite the thing".




Astrid S - Breathe
A 100 carat electro-pop anthem, mined from the jagged fjords of Norway. Contains my favourite lyrics of the week: "Did you slip me a magic pill? You got me lifted like an astronaut, no helmet on and my lungs just stop. I forget to breathe when I'm with you".




Laura Marling - Wildfire
Laura's sixth (sixth!) album, Semper Femina, is out today and it's possibly the best thing she's done. Wild Fire is one of the standouts, but you should also investigate the jazz-infused Soothing and the gorgeous Nouel.




Charli XCX - Babygirl (ft Uffie)
Today sees the release of Charli's long-awaited Number 1 Angel. It might be a mixtape, but most artists would kill to have these 10 tracks as a single. Babygirl is a highlight - all chunky mid-80s Madonna basslines, with a funky rap verse from Uffie.




Stargate ft Sia and Pink - Waterfall
Stargate are the Swedish team behind Beyonce's Irreplaceable, Rihanna's Rudeboy, and the majority of Coldplay's last album. Sia is a songwriter of some repute. Pink is a pop star turned trapeze artist. Together, they have turned in a song that sounds exactly like you would expect based on their standard operating parameters. Not bad, just so-so.



Steel Banglez - Money
While Stormzy and Skepta make great strides in broadening Grime's horizons, this single relies on the same old stale tropes we've heard a million times. It's a shame, because the production - from one of London's hottest young musicians - is on point.



Goldfrapp - Ocean
"We wanted to sort of bring the synths again," Alison Goldfrapp told Billboard about this new track. And, oh boy, are the synths back. This is huge - recalling the tougher moments of Black Cherry and Supernature, with a shade of Depeche Mode darkness. Not a single, but a stunning song nonetheless.

There's also a Clean Bandit single due out today, but it hasn't appeared yet. It'll probably turn up on Greg James or Zane Lowe's show later this afternoon. Radio, eh?

Update: The Clean Bandit single is out next week. As you were.

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Praise the Lorde

Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (that's Lorde to you and me) is back with a new single, and it's something of a corker.

Called Green Light, it's slightly disorientating on your first listen - the shift from the sadballad verse to the house piano bridge to the arms-akimbo glitter cannon chorus is somewhat odd. But stick with it, you'll be honking your horn every time it comes on the radio.

I've written extensively about the song over on the BBC, so I won't bang on about it here any more. Here's the video. Don't try this at home, kids.

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Songs you may have missed: The comeback edition

Woah - where did the last three weeks go?

Well, mostly I was in bed fighting off an horrific viral infection. Then it was the Brits (Adele won a few, you may have heard) and now I finally have some time to write my poor old neglected blog.

To make up for lost time, here's a mega "songs you may have missed" post, with six word synopses for every song. Buckle up and get ready.

1) Beyonce - Formation
Impressive visuals. Impressive lyrics. Underwhelming song.




2) Lorde - Life On Mars
Dignified and understated. A perfect tribute.





3) Rihanna ft Drake - Work
Rihanna's BOGOF offer. Warning: contains nipple.





4) Tinie Tempah - Girls Like (ft Zara Larsson)
"Tell JK that I'm still Rowling."




5) Dua Lipa - Last Dance
Is Dua Lipa Kosovan for "two lips"?




6) All Saints - One Strike
A genuinely perfect comeback single: 9/10





7) Pet Shop Boys - The Pop Kids
Nostalgia never sounded more contemporary.




8) Halsey - Colors
Stay tuned for the shock twist.





9) The 1975 - The Sound
Desperate, shallow, cringeworthy. Trying too hard.






10) Lissie - I Will Always Love You
Stop you in your tracks amazing.




11) Little May - Remind Me
Melodic indie direct from Sydney, Australia.




12) Little Mix - Black Magic (Brits performance)
They deserved to win best single.




13) Katy B, Craig David, Major Lazer - Who Am I
A ballad. A big, ballbusting ballad.




14) FKA Twigs - Good To Love
Rick-Nowels co-write. Possible breakthrough single?



15) Usher - Chains (ft Nas and Bibi Bourelly)
Unflinching, powerful call for police reform.





16) Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom EP
Harder, darker, dirtier. Welcome back, XCX.





17) Jake Bugg - On My One
Scratchy bluegrass from, er, Nottingham.





18) Icona Pop - I Want Someone Who Can Dance
"Not someone I can talk to."

Phew. Well done if you made it this far. And do let me know if there's anything I missed.

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 singles of 2015

Usually, my Top 10 is a breeze to compile. I look at the songs I listened to most then write them down in order. This year, there were dozens all clustered around the same score - either evidence of a very good year or a totally banal one.

I will say this, though - the Top Five completely took me by surprise. I'd been preparing to write about Kanye's All Day, The Weeknd's Can't Feel My Face and Missy Elliot's WTF (Where They From?) in this list. In the end, they fell just short of the countdown - which proves something, although I'm at a loss to explain what it might be.

10) Demi Lovato - Cool For The Summer
The year's best Katy Perry song in a year where Katy Perry released no songs. Rip-roaring vocals and a terrific guitar riff from the "Sexy! No No No" schools of rock. Could have done without the gratuitous - and grammatically awkward - swear word in verse two.




9) Alessia Cara - Here
An "anti-party anthem"; a "loner anthem"; an "anthem for introverts". The critics' were united - this wasn't just a song about socially awkward teenagers, it was a rallying cry for like-minded souls. Never mind that Alessia Cara is the least introverted pop star this side of Lady Gaga. She just didn't like this one party. Still, with lyrics and melody this good, who's scoring points?




8) Lianne La Havas - What You Don't Do
A simple, sublime love song. "Those three little words are overused," she sings, before smiling: "You don't need to show it - I already know it." Gorgeous.




7) Major Lazer ft MØ - Lean On
It's great to see that a left-field, obtuse pop song like this can still have a global impact - even after it's turned down by Rihanna. Lean On needed a few listens to "bed in", but once I'd fallen under the spell of the lilting rhythm and MØ's unflinchingly positive lyrics (essentially a hipster re-write of the Neighbours theme tune) there was no turning back.




6) Disclosure ft Lorde - Magnets
This slinky story of boyfriend theft is the absolute highlight of Disclosure's ho-hum second album - and here's why. "Lorde was involved with every aspect of the song as opposed to just doing the lyrics and melodies and then leaving the rest to us," Guy Lawrence told Spin. "It was like someone challenging us, someone saying, 'We can get that extra ten percent.'”




5) Janet Jackson - No Sleeep
Janet's six year hiatus gave her a clean slate with the prudish US public, and it didn't hurt that her comeback single was an understated masterpiece. Jam and Lewis's silky-smooth groove recalled That's The Way Love Goes while the lyric - about ruffling the bedsheets with her beau - proved Janet could still sing about sex without using words like "moist".




4) Carly Rae Jepsen - I Really Like You
A 21st Century update of I Should Be So Lucky, with added glitter cannons (courtesy of former Cardigans writer Peter Svennson). The video starred Tom Hanks, for some reason.




3) Little Mix - Black Magic
HEY!

Little Mix's venture into "proper" girlband territory (80s pastiche, Motown pastiche, Jason Derulo duet) hasn't been a resounding success - but this song gets everything right. Predictable yet surprising, it transcends the appropriation of Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun to become the most likeable single of the year. Then the "falling in love" coda kicks in and you think to yourself, "why am I grinning?"




2) Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta
I was disappointed that The Weeknd's Michael Jackson rip-off tribute Can't Feel My Face didn't make the Top 10 - but at least this contains an allusion to Smooth Criminal. It is neither as incisive nor as powerful as Kendrick's other big hit of 2015 (Alright was adopted as the rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement) but King Kunta sounds much better at parties.




1) Carly Rae Jepsen - Your Type
Move over Sam so-called Smith, this is the saddest pop song of the year. I might be married with two children, but it transports me straight back to 1995 and being infatuated with someone who didn't know I existed. There's something in Carly's delivery - resigned, but hoping her pleas will make a difference - that breaks your heart in two, and then into smaller and smaller fragments with every chorus. It's not the most original or complex song on this list but I found myself singing it at top volume, by myself, in the car at midnight. And that, pop fans, is the ultimate seal of approval.

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Disclosure play SNL with Lorde and Sam Smith

Over the weekend, Disclosure were the musical guests on Saturday Night Live - which opened with a touching, bilingual declaration of support for the people of Paris.

The duo performed two tracks from their current album, Caracal, aided by guest vocalists Sam Smith and Lorde, who make an interesting comparison.

Smith was laid back and suave - his trademark falsetto apparently requiring no effort whatsoever. Lorde, on the other hand, bubbled and broiled, her performance summoned from the pit of her stomach. Both were incredible, although you get the impression Lorde's song came from somewhere much more personal than Smith's.

Disclosure helpfully uploaded both tracks to their Vevo channel so you can decide which you prefer.

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Video: Disclosure - Magnets (ft Lorde)

In which Lorde dances like a stop-motion marionette, giving me flashbacks to The Exorcist.

The plot sees our (pure) heroine mercilessly dispatching a two-timing, low-life, abusive love rat. But she's not seeking revenge, she's a cold and calculating boyfriend killer - as she revealed on Twitter:

one of my life goals has always been "to one day play a hitgirl who pretends to seduce then burns alive douchey boyfriends"

— Lorde (@lordemusic) September 29, 2015

She expanded on the theme on her always-entertaining Tumblr page, writing: "The most important detail is the girlfriend's black eye. Watch it with that moment in mind. That's the point the whole video hinges on. [It] takes it from being 'an affair narrative' to 'dude's girlfriend hired Miss Ella the hitgirl to "seduce" him then take him the FUCK out.'"

Fantastic.


Describing the song on her always-entertaining Tumblr, Lorde said: "I'm super proud of this one. In my head it's dark electric blues and greens, and it moves like liquid."

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Big song alert: Disclosure + Lorde - Magnets

Last time Disclosure teamed up with Lorde, they performed a slightly wonky mash-up of White Noise and Royals at the Brits.


So it's a relief to hear that their first studio collaboration is a little bit more confident. Magnets is a space-age love song, with Lorde singing that she's gone "past the point of no return" in those silky, sulky vocals of hers. But don't worry - her dry humour hasn't evaporated. "Pretty girls don't know the things I know," she drawls in the second verse.

Speaking about the song to Rolling Stone, Howard Lawrence said: "That's the most equal collaboration on the record. She turned up on her own, no management or bodyguard. You can really hear her sound - she has this sassy yet vulnerable thing."

Magnets premiered on Zane Lowe's Beats1 radio show last night, where Lorde gave an update on the follow-up to 2013's Pure Heroine.

"The challenge for me as a songwriter is, 'How do I tell all these friends that I've made around the world how I'm feeling, while still making something they can listen to and relate to going to college and leaving home or whatever?'" she said, adding: "I think I just hit on the sonic blueprint of it, which is exciting."

You can hear Magnets via the Spotify player below, or on Apple Music.


If you don't subscribe to either of those services, there's a preview on Disclosure's Twitter feed.

Track six from CARACAL is MAGNETS, feat. the absolutely incredible @lordemusic http://t.co/WeQ2148DNx https://t.co/DrVgv3d9C1

— Disclosure (@disclosure) September 23, 2015

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Disclosure's video trilogy reaches its conclusion

As you might know, Dancefloor dabblers Disclosure have been releasing a "mini movie" to coincide with their new album, Caracal.

Split into three parts, the cinematic story began with a young girl smuggling a mysterious "ink" through a dystopian police state. The second installment, which was also the official video for Omen, basically ditched the narrative for a series of shots of a sweaty Sam Smith.

The final video, picks up the thread again, with Mariella captured and interrogated by a mysterious stooge with a pocketwatch. Then she turns into Howard Lawrence, the youngest Disclosure brother, after which... oh, I don't know. It's a load of old nonsense. But the song, Jaded, is up to the band's usual high standard.

Disclosure - Jaded

So that's all well and good. But what we REALLY want to hear is the track Lorde recorded with the brothers' Lawrence. A clip of it leaked yesterday and it sounds more than promising.


Voice Recorder >>

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 Albums of 2014

2014 wasn't a great year for albums, truth be told. Or maybe I bought the wrong ones. Anyway, here are the 10 best CDs that found their way onto my iTunes library, sorted by the number of times they were played (with my trademarked Excel formula to weight the albums by release date).

10) The Black Keys - Turn Blue

Neither as sleazy nor as catchy as 2011's El Camino, Turn Blue saw The Black Keys take a long, dark road-trip of the soul after Dan Auerbach's very messy, very public divorce. Along the way, they delved into psychedelia, 60s beat music, 70s disco funk and - on the pleasingly daft closing track - solid gold drivetime pop hooks.

The Black Keys - Gotta Get Away



9) Banks - Goddess

Oh, but this album is so gloriously, deliciously IN PAIN. Banks uses music like primal scream therapy, howling her distress over an array of sawbuzz synths.

As an album, Goddess is as dark and foreboding as a graveyard, but her melodies beguile and her honesty disarms: When she disses a boyfriend by reminding him she's "the girl who made you soup," it's so awkwardly specific it can only be drawn from real life.

Then, just when you think she's getting too miserable, she pulls out a filthy sexballad like Warm Water. This is what a femme fatale with a broken heart sounds like.

Banks - Drowning




8) Jack White - Lazaretto

It sounds like every other Jack White album, but it sounds better than every other Jack White album.

Jack White - Would You Fight For My Love




7) The Pierces - Creation

After achieving commercial success with the glossy soft rock of 2011's You & I, The Pierces smudged their mascara, consulted a shaman and revisited the backwood gothicism of their earlier records. The result is an album that retains You & I's soaring choruses while sending shivers down your spine.

Allison and Catherine's sisterly harmonies are worthy of Agnetha and Frida - but can you imagine Abba ever singing a lyric as sinister as: "Held down by the devil's hand / Dressed up like a gentleman"?

Luminous, grown-up pop.


The Pierces - The Devil Is A Lonely Night





6) Tove Lo - Queen of the Clouds

Not out in the UK until this month because Tove's UK label hate us, but available on import since September. SEPTEMBER.

It's worth the wait, though. Tove Lo plays pop like her life hangs in the balance. "I've always wanted my music to have that desperation," she told me last April, "where you just want to strip your clothes off and run down the highway".

I haven't quite gone that far, but it's been close. Timebomb, Not on Drugs and Moments ("on my good days I am charming as fuck") have hooks so thunderously bombastic I have literally started air drumming on the bus. There is no higher praise.


Tove Lo - Moments




5) Katy B - Little Red

Dance music doesn't produce solo artists of longevity or substance, but Katy's astute combination of underground sonics and pop structures made the "difficult second album" seem effortless. Best of all, she knew it. The opening track painted her as Queen B, easing a newcomer into the rituals of the night: "Keep your jacket on my friend, don't sit down / There's so many things to do round here, let me show you around".

But while her debut was so in thrall to clubland it should have come with a complimentary strobe light, Little Red offered a few glimpses of what happened off the dancefloor: Katy nervously waiting for a date to arrive on All My Lovin'; or succumbing to guilt on the magnificent Crying For No Reason.

The result is a rare thing: A club record that sounds just as good at home.

Katy B - 5AM





4) Ed Sheeran - X

Ed Sheeran spends most of x singing about getting his leg over but, incredibly, you never recoil in horror or throw up in your mouth. Not even once.

Maybe it's his sincerity, maybe his humility, maybe it's just that these are bloody great pop songs. Gossipy, confessional and instantly memorable, the upbeat ones bounce and the weepy ones are suitably blubsome.

Occasionally he turns out a lyrical clunker ("put your faith in my stomach" is the year's least romantic come-on) but even those makes him more relatable. No wonder x became the biggest album of the year.

Ed Sheeran - Don't




3) Taylor Swift - 1989

Right, let me get a few things off my chest here.

First of all, Bad Blood is the most horribly misjudged song of the year. A diss track, supposedly about Katy Perry, it's pathetically petulant and paints a particularly unflattering portrait of its author. It has been excised from my library, otherwise this album would be languishing at number 10.

Secondly, why all the shouting? Almost every chorus is emphasised by T-Swift screaming the hook: "We never go OUT OF STYLE"; "Are we in the clear yet, IN THE CLEAR YET? GOOD." All you had to do was STAY (STAY) STAY (STAY)". It's almost as if she's worried the songs won't stand on their own merits.

But, of course, they stand 50 feet tall. The lyrics are funny and knowing, the production is enthusiastically bright, the hooks are harder to dislodge than a tapeworm.

1989 sounds nothing like the year it was named after, but Taylor Swift defined pop music in 2014.

Taylor Swift - Out of the Woods





2) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part One - Various Artists

Asked to contribute to the last Hunger Games soundtrack, Lorde handed in a diverting cover of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World. For Mockingjay, Part 1, she was given complete creative control of the whole album.

The result is surprisingly cohesive, the nailbiting intensity of the film mirrored perfectly in the grungy, brooding music. Meltdown - by Lorde and Pusha-T and Haim and Q-Tip (!) - is a gothic call to arms; Chvrches' Dead Air chillingly depicts a disappeared population; Tove Lo's Scream My Name reflects the heroine's steely torment: "I'm dirt, I'm ice... I can take bullets to the heart".

The quality and the tension rarely dip - although Jennifer Lawrence's spellbinding The Hanging Tree should really have been on the track list.

Chvrches - Dead Air




1) Jessie Ware - Tough Love

Jessie Ware's second album is pinch yourself dreamy. A slow-burner, but one that goes from tugging at your heartstrings to snapping them in two.

Listen to the restraint with which Ware sings, "Say you love me to my face / I need it more than your embrace", then imagine how it would have sounded if pop music's other Jessie had wrapped her acrobatic tonsils around it. Horrible, that's how.

In fact, Ware's instincts are flawless throughout. She references Sade, Prince and The xx, and is never afraid to make unexpected choices. She favours subtle, unfolding grooves over obvious pop arrangements. And every song is structured around the ebb and flow of those flawless vocals. Or, to use her own words, "I thought it would be great to show people what it's like when I attempt to sing like a dolphin."

It's not the most exciting or original, album on this list. But it's by far and away the best.

Jessie Ware - Say You Love Me

And that's another year wrapped up, except for the honourable mentions: Paolo Nutini - Caustic Love; St Vincent - St Vincent; Royal Blood - Royal Blood; George Ezra - Wanted On Voyage; Prince - selected tracks from Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum; Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence; Lykke Li - I Never Learn. I heard U2 had an album out, as well, but for some reason I couldn't find a copy in the shops...

See also: Top 10 Singles of 2014

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 singles of 2014

When I sat down and totted up my iTunes play counts for this year's Top 10, I had to double check my numbers. I had fully expected Clean Bandit's Rather Be and Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud to be among my most-listened-to songs of 2014 and, while both came close, the data doesn't lie.

So, the following singles are the ones I've compulsively added to iTunes playlists over the last 12 months and they represent the soundtrack to my year, free of self-censorship, editorialising and Sam Smith.

10) Charli XCX - Boom Clap
It's safe to say Charli XCX had low expectations for Boom Clap. She sent it to Hilary Duff. She bunged it onto a film soundtrack. She wrote the lyric "the beat goes on and on and on" and couldn't be arsed to change it.

But the track sparkles - partly because, for once, Charli isn't trying so hard to come across as a teen rebel. From the masterfully concise intro to the honey-drop "la la las" in the final chorus, it's a great big hug of a song.

Oh, and the lyric "you're the glitter and the darkness in my world" couldn't be a better fit for The Fault In Our Stars and its skewered tale of young love.




9) SBTRKT ft Ezra Koenig - New Dorp, New York
The best-sounding single of the year, throbbing with mystery and possibility - even though it's just a bass drum, an elemental bassline and a few sound effects.

Ezra Koenig delivers a dream-state vocal, listing the sights of Staten Island and "flag slappin' Manhattan", although what he's actually on about is anyone's guess.

It's just a shame the rest of SBTRKT's album didn't live up to this promise.



8) Katy B - Crying For No Reason
AKA Katy B's secret weapon. A Guy Chambers co-write, Crying For No Reason is a "proper" ballad about the damage caused by buried emotions, with a hat-tip to Madonna's Frozen in its clattering drum fills.

Katy's delivery makes the song indispensable. "I never faced all the pain I caused," she sings with tangible anguish. "Now that pain is hitting me full force".



7) Prince - Breakdown
Twelve months ago, I would never have expected a Prince single to feature in this Top 10. But here he is, reinvigorated by those hit-and-run London concerts, delivering his most devastating ballad since The Beautiful Ones.

Apparently an autobiographical account of his former excesses - "I used to throw the party every New Year's Eve / First one intoxicated, last one to leave" - it's also a love letter to the person (higher power?) who set him free.

If Frank Ocean had released this, it would have been everywhere. But Frank Ocean could never have hit those high notes in the coda.



6) Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
Speaking of Prince, here's a tribute act.




5) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat
By Lorde's standards, Yellow Flicker Beat is a minor single but there's something about her performance that draws me in. Maybe it's the killer hook, maybe I'm hypnotised by the frail hum that runs through the entire song - either way, it's murderously addictive.

As with Boom Clap, Lorde's song is a perfect marriage between lyric and source material (in this case, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay). If you can't imagine Katniss Everdeen singing "I made a little prison and I'm locking up everyone who ever laid a finger on me," then you're doing it wrong.




4) The Staves - Blood I Bled
The Staves really raise their game on this Bon Iver-produced song, the immaculate layering of their harmonies matched by the steady build of instrumentation from a single, hand-picked guitar to the soaring, astral strings of the closing moments.

Truly exceptional.




3) Jessie Ware - Tough Love
"Sophisticated" and "tasteful" are dirty words in pop but Jessie Ware proves they don't have to be. Tough Love has a surface layer of calm, but listen closer and you'll hear the strain in Jessie's voice as she confronts a no-good lover - "so you want to be a man about it, do you?" We never find out exactly what he's done, but the cheeky lift from Prince's Little Red Corvette suggests it's not just his eye that's been wandering.

Repressed anger has never sounded so beautiful.



2) Tove Lo - Truth Serum EP
Rarely does a pop act arrive as fully-formed as Tove Lo, whose dispatches from the front line of love are catastrophically honest.

The Truth Serum EP is an X-rated Mills and Boon potboiler, chronicling a relationship from the first heady rush of love to a devastated, drug-fuelled break-up.

Every track hits you like a hurricane - the pop hooks deployed like rock riffs as Tove excavates her darkest secrets. No wonder her mother was worried about her when she heard it.



1) Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
Let's face it, Shake It Off was more calculated than Fermat's Last Theorem. Co-written with not one, but two of Sweden's biggest hitmakers, it was stuffed with heard-it-before hooks, yawnsome self-empowerment clichés ("haters gonna hate") and employed the phrase "this sick beat" without any apparent irony.

But if Taylor's ambition was to write a stone-cold pop classic, she hit the nail on the head. Squarely. With a fucking jackhammer.

The melody is indelible, and the urge to dance like a dork is irresistible, thanks to that infectious drumbeat. Oh, sick beat. I get it now.

PS: The song would still be better if she sang "bakers gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake". And that's a fact.

And, because it's been a great year for singles, the next 11 would have been:

11) Banks - Beggin' For Thread
12) Tove Stryke - Even If I'm Loud It Doesn't Mean I'm Talking To You
13) Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence
14) Gorgon City ft MNEK - Ready For Your Love
15) Clean Bandit - Rather Be
16) Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud
17) Beyonce - Partition
18) Kelis - Rumble
19) Ed Sheeran - Sing
20) Katy Perry - Dark Horse
21) The Veronicas - You Ruin Me

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Update: Here's Lorde on the AMAs

When I wrote my AMA super-post yesterday, there was no way to watch Lorde's super-creepy performance of Yellow Flicker Beat. Now there is, thanks to the star's official Vevo channel. If only every artist was so enlightened.

Watch below, and try not to have nightmares.

Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat (live at the AMAs)

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Songs you may have missed: A Lorde (and S Club) special

So it was back to work this week after a very generous (although partly-unpaid) 12 weeks' paternity leave. I won't say it was easy to leave the kids behind but on balance my wife has the harder job.

Anyway, the cogs of the music industry machine continue to turn despite my domestic arrangements. Here's a round-up of the songs I heard this week and couldn't find time to write up. NB: They're basically all by Lorde.

1) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat (Kanye West Remix)
Intense.



2) Charli XCX ft Simon Le Bon - Kingdom
This one's from Lorde's hand-picked soundtrack to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.

Charli talked about it to Pitchfork earlier this week, using the following words: "I worked with Rostam [Batmanglij] on that song. We went to the Miley Cyrus show in LA and got really wasted. Then we went back to his house and I sat on top of his piano, and we wrote Kingdom. We sung it into his phone.

"I remember thinking in the morning, 'Ugh, this is going to be the worst thing ever,' but it was really good. So when Ella [Lorde] reached out to me about the soundtrack, I decided to send her that song even though it’s really different than my usual shit. She was really complimentary about it."

So there you go.



3) Lorde - Don't Tell 'Em (Radio 1 Live Lounge cover)
Intense.





4) S Club 7 - Greatest Hits medley (from Children In Need)
A greatest hits medley featuring four songs isn't really worthy of the title but it's interesting to see what S Club look like in their mid-to-late 30s.

Paul Cattermole is the highlight, dancing like a drunk uncle at a David Brent lookalike competest.





5) Nicole Scherzinger - Run
Intense.





6) Lion Babe - Jump Hi (ft Childish Gambino)
Possibly R&B's best-kept secret, Lion Babe have been on the Discopop radar since 2012. They've been quiet for a while but this song, the title track to a forthcoming EP, suggests they're getting their ducks in a row for a major push 2015.

Sample watch: The chorus uses a vocal hook from Nina Simone's interpretation of Mr Bojangles.





7) Ariana Grande - All My Love (ft Major Lazer)
Also from the Hunger Games soundtrack. A total racket, but in the good way.






8) Calvin Harris - Outside (ft Ellie Goulding)
Do you think Calvin regrets giving all his best material to Rita Ora?





9) Taylor Swift - Shake It Off (Tesher remix)
This is magnificent - reframing Taylor's pop hit as a dark and dirty club hit. If Lorde had written Shake It Off, it would have sounded like this.

Sample-watch: The backing track is based around the intro to Justin Timberlake's What Goes Around (Comes Around).





10) One Bit - Won't Hold Back
Superlative sunset grooves from Radio One's "Most Played New Act of 2014". For fans of Disclosure and Holy Ghost!




11) Fergie - LA Love
Featuring cameos from Hilary Swank, Chelsea Handler and Ryan Seacrest. Hardly Liberian Girl, is it?




12) Chvrches vs Bleachers - You Can Go Your Own Way
Featuring the worst live sound mix you have ever heard in your life, this is nonetheless a brilliant cover version. Lauren's vivacious vocals really bring a new dimension to Fleetwood Mac's kiss-off classic.

And that, readers, is that. Happy listening!

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Songs you may have missed: Haiku edition

A round-up of songs that escaped the full glare of the Discopop Directory spotlight - but are still worthy of note.

For some reason, I decided to write Haikus about each of this week's entries. The results are poor, to say the least.

1) Royal Blood - Happy
When Pharrell hears this
He might well reconsider
His entire career




2) Selena Gomez - The Heart Wants What It Wants
The spoken intro's
Excruciating candour
Will make your skin crawl





3) Take That - These Days
Truncated trio
Should have called up Nile Rodgers
For this turgid song





4) LoneLady - Groove It Out
The next six minutes
Should be irresistible
In toe-tapping terms





5) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat (from The Hunger Games)
Armageddon still
Has the best theme song, but this
Is acceptable





6) Ekkah - Last Chance To Dance
Strap on your hotpants
And sashay to the dancefloor
Before it's too late




7) The Pierces - Devil Is A Lonely Night
Belinda Carlisle
It's almost like you never
Went away at all





8) Kendrick Lamar - I
Kendrick did a great
Freestyle over Shake It Off
But this isn't it




9) Ella Henderson - Yours
Ella, oh Ella
Wrote an ode to her fella
The song is stella(r)




10) McBusted - Air Guitar
Danny, Dougie, Tom
Harry, James and Matt. Looking
Quite old now, frankly





11) Jose Gonzalez - Every Age
Existential angst
Is one way to describe this
Although hard to spell




12) Ludacris - Good Lovin' (ft Miguel)
Butter smooth slow jam
Too good to spoil with bad jokes
Like all the above

Well, that was unedifying. At least the songs were good, eh?

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