Songs you may have missed: Santa Claus edition

Hello!

I'm about to wrap up the blog for 2013, with just the annual Top 10s to come between now and New Year (unless something ridiculous happens like, say, Adele suddenly releasing a 24-track video album recorded on the moon with a backing band of hamsters on Boxing Day). So, for one last time, here's a round-up of songs you may have missed, interspersed with a few festive favourites.

1) James Brown - Go Power At Christmas Time
Not a sleigh bell in sight, but it's still a big shiny bauble of brilliance.



2) Busta Rhymes - Thank You ft. Q-Tip, Kanye West, Lil Wayne
Q-Tip and Busta have a long history of top-drawer collaborations, starting way back with A Tribe Called Quest's Scenario in 1992. Their latest, from Busta's forthcoming album E.L.E. 2 (Extinction Level Event 2), is no exception.

Based around a sample from Alicia Meyer's I Want To Thank You, it also features verses from Kanye and Lil Wayne who, frankly, sound a little intimidated by the competition.

And if you want more of the same, Busta and Q-Tip have just put out a free, collaborative mixtape, The Abstract and the Dragon, which is available here.




3) Disclosure - Help Me Lose My Mind (SOHN Remix)
If you thought Disclosure's Help Me Lose My Mind was minimalist before, wait til you hear what London-Austrian producer SOHN has done with it.

His hushed, stripped-back production makes a virtue of Hannah Reid's choral vocals, drawing you deeper and deeper inside the song as it unfurls like ink in water.





4) Kate Bush - December Will Be Magic Again
"Oh Saint NICK-o-lass, Up the CHIM-en-eee." Totally amazing.





5) Grouplove - Ways To Go
Grouplove are basically the indie-pop Scissor Sisters and this song, which has featured in an advert for GoPro cameras, looks like it'll be their breakthrough hit.

The video, in which a young Kim Yong-Un becomes a fan of the band and starts wearing Hawaiian shirts around Pyongyang, is a must-see:





6) Blood Orange - You're Not Good Enough (Holy Ghost bootleg)
Poor Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange, aka Lightspeed Champion) lost everything - even his pet dog Cupid - in a New York apartment fire this week. The letter he published about the devastation ("It's my life. It's everything I've ever owned... loved... it's all gone") will break your heart.

At one point, he talks about going back on tour to give his life a sense of normality. I'm not sure that's wise - but whatever works...

In the meantime, handing over some cash for the music he's made could help him get back on his feet. Thankfully, that includes such classics as Solange's True EP, MKS's Flatlines and Sky Ferreira's Eveything Is Embarrassing and this, his new single, remixed by DFA's Holy Ghost. It's terrific.





7) Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You
Next time someone tells you "well, of course, objectively speaking Fairytale Of New York is the best Christmas song ever written" put this on at full blast and tell them to get a grip.





8) Angel Haze - A Tribe Called Red
Furious, thrilling, magnificent.





9) Vance Joy - Riptide
This was a huge hit in Australia earlier in the year, and I can see it doing the same in the UK in 2014.

Jammed full of pop culture references (Midnight Cowboy and Michelle Pfeiffer to name a few) it also carries a shrewd lyrical observation in the chorus: "I love you when you're singing that song - and I get a lump in my throat cause you're gonna sing the words wrong."

Warning: Riptide is a little bit like the Lumineers' Ho Hey played on a ukelele, so steer clear if that's the sort of thing to make you want to rip apart a cushion.





10) Otis Redding - Merry Christmas Baby
"Santa came down the chimney
Half past three y'all
Left only my good old present
For my baby and for me
HA HA HA"

The sound of a man in the recording studio after one too many sherries.

Hmm, looking back at it, that's quite an eclectic mix of styles and genres. Well done for getting to the end. And have wonderful Christmas, one and all, wherever you are.

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Mariah Carey: Do we really need the hashtag?

Look, everyone: Putting a hashtag in your song title just smacks of #desperation. You might as well project the words "I have limited confidence in the artistic merit of this record" on the moon.

There's a reason why Radiohead never released a single called AOL KEYWORD: CREEP in the 1990s, and it's not because Thom Yorke's fear of computers had him convinced his teasmaid was sentient and hacking the Pentagon for nuclear launch codes (although that also happened).

It will come as no surprise to learn that will.i.am started the trend for hashtag titles with his recent single #thatpower, a song which has wreaked havoc my obsessively-alphabetized iTunes library. I can forgive Will, because he's 98% robot, but now it's spreading...

The latest culprit is Mariah Carey, whose new single is cumbersomely called #Beautiful. It arrives a couple of months after her "comeback", Triumphant, flopped spectacularly in the US, so I guess the hashtag can only help. Indeed, #Beautiful was trending on Twitter last night after its radio premiere - although I'd argue that was inevitable, given that the song is an almighty return to form in the guise of a sexy, throwback duet with R&B crooner Miguel.

Perhaps Mariah could retrofit some of her other songs so they can appear up-to-date with the latest trends in technology. We have a few suggestions:

:: Vision Of Lolz
:: <3Brkr
:: All I Want For Christmas is YouTube
:: Shake It #FF
:: (You've Got Me Feeling) Emoticons

(Sorry)



PS: Caitlin Moran wrote a ranty column in this weekend's Times about the proliferation of hashtags on TV. My favourite is BBC One panel show Would I Lie To You, which insists on people Tweeting the word "#Wilty".

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Stop everything. This is amazing.

100% guaranteed to put a smile on your face: Mariah Carey and The Roots perform All I Want For Christmas Is You on schoolroom instruments. Is there any song that can't be improved with a kazoo? (Hint: no).

Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

How can we start a petition to get Jimmy Fallon broadcast in the UK?

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Biffy Clyro return, and four other songs you may have missed...

It's been a busy week at Discopop Towers (we were off to the Olympics on Tuesday, for starters) so the pile of new releases has been growing and growing, like a fairytale beanstalk of music.

As I work my way through, here are five of the tracks that stand out.

1) Biffy Clyro - Stingin' Belle
Bagpipes? Check.
Ball-breaking riffs? Check.
Unusual time signature? Check.
Removal of shirts? Check.
It's Biff-o-clock.



2) Mariah Carey - Triumphant (Get 'Em)
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from Mariah's comeback single, but Triumphant is surprisingly catchy. While the younger generation of R&B stars are rubbing themselves up against David Guetta like dogs in heat, Mariah is sticking with 'Get Your Number' hitmaker Jermaine Dupri for an old-school soul jam. There is also rapping.



3) Air Traffic Controller - You Know Me
Boston's Air Traffic Controller are the brainchild of singer-songwriter Dave Munro who used to be... yes, an Air Traffic Controller. Stick with what you know, kids. Stick with what you know.

You Know Me is a jangly indie version of Opposites Attract. Dave and bandmate Casey Sullivan sing through a shopping list of their differences, but in the end they declare: "a lot of folks can sing in harmony, but no-one will ever know me like you know me". Awwww.




4) Amelia Lily - You Bring Me Joy
Her boyfriend brings her joy; Amelia Lily brings us an exceptionally dull video. There is no justice.



5)Parade - Light Me Up
The much-predicted (by me) girl band resurgence of 2012 has failed to materialise. War Of Words have split up, the Girls Aloud reunion continues to be rumour, and Oh My! are more "Oh No!". So congratulations to Parade for persevering with the whole idea, and for doing it independently after they were dropped by their record label.

Light me Up is a frothy pop track, where the melody cruises slightly ahead of the drum loop, giving everything a propulsive thrill. Produced by Tim Powell (Round Round, Call The Shots, Sweet About Me) you can download it for free. It's worth it, too.

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Terrible song, great rap

If you are a collossal hit-making R&B superstar like Mariah Carey, you will sometimes find yourself with a song that needs a bit in the middle. The problem is that middle bits are really hard to write. You have to introduce a new melody, deliver a cunning lyrical twist, or develop an existing musical motif in an unexpected way. And then you have to resolve that modulation by coming crashing back to the chorus for an epic finish.

Such a mammoth task can derail even an accomplished songwriter - the syncopated orchestral phrases that appear out of nowhere in The Beach Boys' God Only Knows are mystifyingly bad, for example.

So what are the Mariahs of this world do? In the "olden days" you could get away with a blistering axe solo, or a massive freak-out on the drums. Those things are considered passé now, so in their place we have the laziest idea of all time: the guest rap.

On occasion, this can be a great thing: Kanye blabbing on about Ribena and "Lan-dan blokes" like he's Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins is a fantastic addition to Estelle's American Boy. At other times, a rapper will fill up the required 16 bars with some old nonsense about his "massive gun" and excuse himself politely, with little or no impact (hello, Busta Rhymes).

But what happens if the rap turns out to be better than the song its part of?

This is, sadly, what has happened to Mariah on her latest single - Up Out Of My Face. It is a complete disaster until we hear from up-and-coming Motown signing Nicki Minaj (that's her above, telling you how many donuts she'd like you fetch from the shops).

She sounds deranged. She looks deranged. Her rhymes are deranged... and clever, and sharp, and funny. She totally upstages the megastar standing next to her.

Well done.

Up Out My Face

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What's going on with Mariah?

Did you see Mariah Carey singing Hero on X Factor this weekend? Every time she bellowed out a big note, there was a strange, atonal, whistling noise in the background. You can hear it at 2:42 ("Lord knows") and 3:09 ("you'll find a way") in the following video:

Mariah Carey - Hero (X Factor)


I can think of only three possible explanations:

1) Mariah's dog, Jack Jr, was singing along while hidden under her frock.
2) Someone in the production team was boiling a kettle backstage
3) Mariah has a tiny pinhole perforation in her neck, which is letting out a piercing boiling kettle-type noise when air is passed through it at high velocity.

I reckon it's definitely number three. What about you?

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New video: Mariah Carey

Single three: I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time. Dreadful title, but the best song she's released from E=MC2 so far. Not that that's saying much.

The video, unsurprisingly, is boobtastic.

Mariah Carey - I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time

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Mariah's Bye Bye video

Best bit: People who ask Mariah for her autograph have their faces blurred out. Because of the shame, presumably.

Worst bit: The godawful lyrics ("this is for my peoples who just lost they grandmothers")

Mariah Carey - Bye Bye

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That Mariah Carey video "in full"

You can catch this flick up on youtube (youtube)

Mariah Carey - Touch My Body


Scalextric! Yay!

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Mariah vs 30 Rock

Here's a sneak peak at Mariah Carey's new video, Touch My Body. It features Jack McBrayer (who you might know as the delightfully clueless Kenneth from 30 Rock) in a series of clichéd r&b clinches.

Nice to see Mimi poking fun at her own image. If only she'd put the same amount of effort into the dreary song...

Mariah Carey - Touch My Body (preview)


And, just for kicks, here's my favourite Kenneth moment...

Kenneth on the Conan O'Brien set

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Janet and Mariah - First listen!

So, Def Jam were showing off the two female jewels in their crown today with playbacks of the new Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey albums.

Label Boss Antonio "LA" Reid seemed very excited about both of them, although that is his job, and mentioned plans for six singles from Mariah's That Chick, which hits the stores in April.



First up, though, was Janet's Discipline. If you've heard the single, Feedback, you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the album. It's crisp, danceable R&B lavished with Janet's trademark velvet harmonies.

The stand-out track was probably Tonight, a bubbling club track which can only be Jackson's response to Rihanna's Don't Stop The Music. Reid mentioned that some of the tracks weren't finished - and this one sounded like it was missing a sample somewhere in the mix. Once that's added, this could be Janet's biggest dance success since Together Again.

Love, Love, Love and This Can't Be Good saw the lyrical return of the sweet singer who first raised her head on Let's Wait Awhile - all coy and bashful while falling head over heels in love.

But the sleazy siren of 20 YO is also present. Title track Discipline is a gruseome plea for fetishistic S&M sex - with Janet referring to her lover as "Daddy" while asking to be tied up and disciplined. Given that her father is a well-documented control freak who used to beat his kids, this is more than a little uncomfortable.

Speaking of family connections, there's long been a rumour that Janet and Michael will team up again (as they did on 1996's Scream) this year. Well, nothing I heard today confirms that rumour - but there is a track called Rock With You that appears to sample the single of the same name from Off The Wall. Could the finished version feature guest vocals by the former King of Pop? I genuinely hope not.

The remaining two tracks, Rollercoaster and Greatest Ex Ever, didn't really set my world alight - but you never know what'll happen on repeated listens.

The main thing seems to be that Janet is back on form, vocally and lyrically. The record is very safe and commercial, although I'm not sure where they'll go for the third single (Tonight surely has to be the second). But as a first step towards career rehabilitation Def Jam have made a strong play for their newest diva.



Their old diva (in terms of contract, not age, of course) is Mariah, who is riding high after the 7xPlatinum-selling Emancipation Of Mimi.

We got to hear 10 tracks from the follow-up, That Chick, which I have to say sounded more polished and commercial than Janet's effort.

One track in particular is set to make big bucks, and that's Bye Bye - a torch song for people "who lost they grandmothers". I guarantee that Simon Cowell will be sick of hearing badly-realised auditions of it by the end of the year.

Lyrics were never Carey's strong point, mind you, so her paean to loss is summed up with not-very-insightful Hallmark platitudes like "I'd give the world to see your face" and "Life goes on". Profound, eh?

Still, at least it's better than when she desperately attempts to prove how bang up to date she is. In Touch My Body, she purrs to her lover: "If there's a camera up in here then I best not catch this flick on youtube (youtube)". Not exactly the sexiest boudoir come-on you've ever heard, is it?

But there are plenty of good tunes to counter the awesomely bad lyrics. Migrate, about a night out with Mariah while she wears jeans ("yeah, they fit", she informs us) is sure to be a candidate for heavy MTV rotation, although I hope to god they excise T-Pain's hopelessly strained vocals. Lovin' You Long Time, meanwhile, is a strutting uptempo number very much in the style of It's Like That.

So, what have we learnt from this listening "event"? Well, I wasn't overwhelmed by the music - despite (or perhaps because of) the fact it was played so ear-splittingly loud that it felt like I was being punched repeatedly in the ears by a cyberman. Both artists have turned in a tuneful, competent set of R&B songs, but I'm not sure that any of them have the charisma or vitality to compete with the Rihannas and Beyonces of this world.

Both albums: 6/10 (scores may go up or down after further listens at levels tolerable to the human ear).

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The Grammys: In pictures

I really have very little to say about the Grammys. I watched the 2-hour synopsis of the ceremony last night, and even that seemed like extended aural torture.

U2 clearly had to restrain themselves from killing Mary J Blige as she systematically ruined their one decent song.

There was general confusion, and the air of a ramshackle last-day-of-term show, for the the 'tribute' to Sly and the Family Stone. Sly himself looked particularly discombobulated, probably because of the industrial amounts of coke he's shoved up his nose over the last 35 years.

Stevie Wonder did his joke about taking his glasses off, the better to see a pretty lady (again(. And Madonna displayed her gusset for the all world to see (again).

As is par for the course at these ceremonies, mediocrity was heavily rewarded. Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", for instance, was clearly not the record of 2005. Nor was U2's "Sometime You Can't Make It On Your Own" the song of the year. And what is the difference between those two awards, anyway?

I could ramble on about this for days, but in the end the awards make little or no difference. Especially 'Best Polka Album'. What we're really here for are the frocks - so let's take a look:



Stefani: Hollabump girl



Kanye: Tells it like it is
(In all seriousness, this man needs taken down a peg or two. We used to beat up the cocky kids like him at school. And we were the nerds.)



Sting: "I'll fight you for that mushroom vol au vent"



Madonna: GUSSET!



Joss Stone: "Does anyone know how to get superglue off your chin?"



Jamie Foxx: Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum



Mariah: She's got the horn(s)



Fergie: Face or fish? You decide.
(Oh, alright, it is a fish. Sturgeon, I think.)



Missy: Cool as ice-cream, and the only deserving award-winner of the night (best video for Lose Control)



Beyoncé: Prom queen (again)



Macca: "Help! I've dislocated my hip."

Grammy Nominees: Full list of winners

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Superficial

You may not have noticed, but I've been trying to increase the volume of original writing on the site over the past month. The idea is to create a flurry of opinion, criticism and erudite discussion, rather than just a bunch of links.

So far, it's been going rather well - that Nelly Furtado review from last week has tripled the number of visitors to the site. But sometimes there just isn't anything to get me fired up.

Perhaps that's because I've been listening to the Go! Team album on repeat. Its so relentlessly upbeat and bouncy that I can't help but walk around with an uncharacteristically sunny disposition. Even the rumour of Mariah Carey duetting with Janet Jackson isn't enough to wipe the smile off my face, even though the resulting song is sure to make dogs claw out their own eardrums in an attempt to make the high-pitched whining stop. Not to mention the video, which will be like witnessing a slow train crash.

Anyway, even if Jermaine Dupri manages to finally put an end to Janet's career there's plenty of other good music on the horizon. Radio One have been putting their Live Lounge to good use once again, getting those Arctic Monkeys in to perform their number one single and (taste-makers look away now) a cover of Girls Aloud's Love Machine.

This is good news. If Arctic Monkeys are to claim Oasis' crown as the biggest rock band in the UK, it can only be a positive development that they love pop music and don't throw a big girly tantrum every time someone else comes up with a good tune. Yes, Liam, we're talking to you. You twat.

Meanwhile Radio One's less hip uncle, Six Music (or "BBC we only allow songs by white men with guitars plus the occasional bit of Stevie Wonder if you're very lucky" as internal memos probably don't refer to it) has put Belle and Sebastian into the studio to go wild - albeit politely and within tolerable noise levels. They perform an acoustic version of their new single, which is fantastic and should be bought in actual bucketloads.

You can hear both the Arctic Monkeys and B&S on the ever-fantastic Mr Red Penguin's MP3 Heaven.

Finally, something I never thought I'd see, or be interested in seeing: One-hit-wonder Lisa Loeb prannying around in a thong. She looks surprisingly young and pert for someone who had a hit single 12 years ago... But knowing that fact makes me feel ridiculously old, which has put the dampener on my rosy disposition.

I must head off and listen to the Go! Team again...

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Vision of Lard

When people told Mariah Carey she'd be massive in 2006, she wasn't supposed to take it literally...

(via the bosh)

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April fools lasts 'til December

Let it be remembered that Mariah Carey is a world-class diva. She held up Live 8 for what seemed like forty-two minutes because no-one would bring her water, oblivious to the fact that lack of water was the principal reason for Live 8 in the first place.

Quite brilliantly, it turns out that the high-pitched one actually has a servant on hand at all times to lift her cup to her lips. The sheer humiliation of this job was captured on film when Mariah turned up for a signing at HMV on Oxford Street a couple of weeks ago:



It's the look on the flunky's face in that last shot that amuses us the most.

With this ritual debasement in mind, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Mariah's staff don't really like her. And now they've got their own back...

For the past couple of months, Carey has been dining in France (presumably with her knife and fork roadies). Feeling a little sheepish at her lack of French, she must have asked her 'help' for a suitable phrase to thank her Parisian waiters. The bon mot they taught her is: "Ce repas etait si excitant que je me suis fait dessus".

And the translation? "That was such a thrilling meal, I've pissed myself."

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That's entertainment

If your male friends mysteriously start signing up to be escorts, this is why.

Popjustice are banging on about the new tATu video (right click and select 'save target as' to download it to your hard drive). Personally, we think it's trying just a little bit too hard. Why not go and look at the "Joining A Fanclub" video from Japanese girl band Puffy Amiyumi instead? It's cheaper, sweeter, and the song's better, too.

Heidi Klum will host the German version of America's Next Top Model. German stylists have already begun to stockpile hair clippings in case she needs a weave to rival Tyra's.

This boring blog article about Mariah Carey is much enlivened by the bitchy gossip in the comments field. "More butterflies! Mariah loves butterflies!"

Oh, and if you're in London, Goldfrapp are doing an in-store performance and album signing session at the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street on Monday. See you there!

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Feline fantasy

From today's Independent:

"[Christopher] Walken thinks it would be great if actors had tails. 'A tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell if they're annoyed. You can tell whether they're scared. They bush their tail. If I was an actor and I had to play scared in a movie all I'd have to do is bush my tail. I think that if actors had tails it would change everything.'"

Read the full interview

Also, for those of you who complained that you couldn't see the pictures of Mariah Carey's clothes falling, try here instead (Not safe for work. Or your sanity, we should imagine.)

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Haircuts, Wardrobe malfunctions, Divorces and a Moustache

That handsome young specimen on the left is Will Young, with a freshly shaven head. The hat is gone, long live the number two crop!

Will's standing with the winner of a national photography competition, sponsored by Mencap (he's an ambassador for the charity). More photos and info over at Mencap,org.uk

Mariah Carey has done a Janet on German TV. Thankfully, no photos are in existence.

Update: 14/7/05. The internet does what it does best - distributes pictures of fleshy ladybits. We will not be held responsible if your eyes burn when you click on this link

Snoop Dogg is bucking all celebrity trends by vowing to cancel his divorce and give marriage a second go.

No, it's not a telephone exchange, it's synth-god Giorgio Moroder working on the equipment that produced Donna Summer's 16 minute dirt-fest "Love To Love You Baby".

Much Music has a bizarre tribute / shrine to his music running this week. Worth a look, if only to see more pictures like this one.

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Let me be mimi

100%-not-mad Mariah Carey is changing her name to Mimi.



In a letter to fans on her website, she explains that she now feels "free and unashamed to be who I really am". (i.e. someone else).

Oh Mimi! Mariah changes her name

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