Songs you may have missed megapost

Oh man, it's been ages since I did one a "songs you may have missed" post, and the backlog is ridiculous...

For the uninitiated, this is a dumping ground treasure trove of songs I've liked, but failed to write about on the blog. That failure is a personal one, not a comment on their quality.

So saddle up. There are 12 songs to get through here and I've kept the write-ups short because, frankly, who reads this crap anyway?

1) Foals - What Went Down
Heavy like cadmium. Best thing they've done since Inhaler.




2) Miguel - Coffee (ft WALE)
Coffee is a metaphor for sex, you know.



3) Selena Gomez - Good For You (ft A$AP Rocky)
Recorded in 45 minutes. Will remain in your in your head for 45 days.




4) Nero - Two Minds
In which Nero finally realise that dubstep is a musical dead end.




5) Carly Rae Jepsen - E·MO·TION
Carly Rae Jepsen's new album is shaping up to be a masterpiece. Who;d have thought?




6) Mark Ronson - I Can't Lose (ft Keyone Starr)
All the melody of Snoop Dogg's Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can' Have None) with none of the misogyny. Result.





7) Years & Years - Foundation
In 2020, we're all going to look back on Years & Years' time in the spotlight and wonder "what was going on there?"




8) Fassine - Sunshine
Doomsday disco, darker than a House of Cards box set.




9) Shura - White Light
The video edit isn't as good as the full 7-minute masterpiece.




10) Rudimental - Rumour Mill (ft Anne-Marie & Will Heard)
Slinky and subtle. Sorely needed proof that Rudimental can make good songs without shoehorning in a drum-and-bass drop.




11) Gabrielle Aplin - Light Up The Dark
Recently added to the Radio 1 playlist, and a world away from her mawkish John Lewis advert. Like KT Tunstall and Sheryl Crow got together and cancelled out each other's most boring tendencies.




12) Meghan Trainor - Like I'm Going To Lose You (ft John Legend)
Gimmick-free balladry that suggests a longevity most of us never suspected Meghan Trainor had in her.

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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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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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Songs you may have missed - end of summer edition

A semi-regular round-up of songs that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks. This week's line-up goes a little something like this...

1) Eminem - Bezerk
This bears repeated viewing. Not just for the cameos (Kendrick Lamar, Kid Rock, Rick Rubin) or the footage of Billy Squier playing The Stroke (which Eminem samples) - but for the little nods to videos by the Beastie Boys, Pharcyde and even Back To The Future. Oh, and the song's not bad either.



2) Ellie Goulding - How Long Will I Love You
Ellie in drippy ballad mode this week, mooching around on the beach and bleating on about her brilliant boyfriend. Still, it's always nice to hear her gorgeous voice, stripped of all the parps and fzzbrts of her dance tracks.

NB: Ellie is also responsible for my favourite tweet of the week.

Of course. I do love boobs RT @blackngould: @elliegoulding remember your "RT if you love boobs" tweet?

— Ellie Goulding (@elliegoulding) September 11, 2013

3) Little Daylight - Glitter and Gold (Charli XCX remix)
Pop brat Charli XCX gets her sticky fingers all over this summer jam from Brooklyn's Little Daylight. She slows it down and slaps glitchy lo-fi handclaps all over the top. It's definitive.





4) Au Revoir Simone - Crazy
If it weren't for Arcade Fire, this would be the video of the week: Dream-pop trio Au Revoir Simone remaking Martin Scorsese's surreal, under-rated After Hours in the form of a three-minute pop video.

The band take on roles originally played by Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette and Linda Fiorentino, and make a brief appearance in person. There's a superb attention to detail - right down to the film grain - but I'm not 100% convinced by the song.




5) Miguel - Can't Sleep 2Gether
Pants-obsessed R&B pervmeister Miguel is at it again. "I can't sleep / You can't sleep / Let's can't sleep together" he squeals, over a slow, lusty guitar groove. He'd be better off with a good book.





6) Janelle Monaé - Dance Apocalyptic (Live on Letterman)
Now this is how you go about performing on a chat show.

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Britney Spears is surprised by a smurf and other songs you may havemissed

It's time for the semi-regular round-up of songs that appeared on the internet this week, but didn't warrant a blog post of their own because I am lazy.

1) Britney Spears - Ooh La La
A not-particularly-good video for a not-particularly-good song from the Smurfs 2 Soundtrack. Britney's kids are cute, though, and her "surprised face" is priceless.



2) Justin Timberlake - Take Back The Night
Earlier this week, Justin's 20/20 Experience broke 2m sales in the US - so now it's time to launch phase II.  Take Back The Night is the first single from 20/20 Volume 2, which is due in September. Sounding like an Off The Wall bonus track, it's light on it's feet and heavy on the brass. 



3) Miguel ft Jessie Ware - Adorn (Remix)
Miguel's Adorn is the slow jam of the year. And now it has added Jessie Ware. What's not to love?

It was a total pleasure working with @MiguelUnlimited on his already perfect 'Adorn'. Feel like the luckiest girl in the world x

— Jessie Ware (@Jessie_Ware) July 10, 2013

4) The xx - Sunset (Jamie xx edit)
Jamie xx's remix of his own single is a masterpiece in (you guessed it) pared-down sadtronica. The video's cheap but lovely, syncing the song to an old French TV show. Anyone know who the artist in the original video is?


5) Regina Spektor - You've Got Time
Regina has recorded the theme song for the TV show Orange Is The New Black, which is the latest series from the team behind Weeds. Based on Piper Kerman's prison memoirs, the first 13-episode season was dumped onto Netflix yesterday. Creator Jenji Kohan says she "listened to Regina's albums obsessively while writing the series" and asked her to compose the theme tune. She did, and here it is.



6) Mr Hudson - Fred Astaire
After his Big Kids project failed to take off, Mr Hudson is back as a solo act, and his voice is as captivating as ever. Fred Astaire is a classic, stylish soul groove but, irritatingly, video director Rankin keeps interrupting it for snatches of dialogue. NB: Contains bottoms.


7) Rhye - The Fall (live on Jimmy Kimmel)
This is simply beautiful.

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Chvrches go postal, and five other songs you may have missed

Right then - it's been a hectic week. We put together more than a dozen BBC reports from the Venice Biennale in just 48 hours. You can see the main report here if you like a bit of contemporary art over your luncheon.

In the meantime, tons of great new music ended up on the internet. Here's the best of it.

1) CHVRCHES - Gun
This is utterly, utterly brilliant. The Glaswegian synth trio faltered a little with their last single, Recover, but Gun is as explosive as the title suggests. It starts innocently enough, with a shimmering little riff, but within 30 seconds the band have taken the safety off and unleashed a hail of choruses (I counted three).

"Hide, hide..." threatens Lauren over a rat-a-tat rhythm. "I will be a gun - and it's you I'll come for".

It's a blast. It should go to number one with a bullet. You can't muzzle this band. [that's quite enough of that - tortured metaphor ed]





2) Jagwar Ma - Man I Need
As Popjustice has noted, 2013 is the year of the longsong takeover, which was set in motion by Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Jagwar Ma upped the ante with their last single, The Throw - a seven-minute Screamadelic house epic that won them celebrity fans like Noel Gallagher and The xx.

This follow-up goes even further, nudging 10 minutes on the album version - a psychotropic sound rush only a few seagulls short of The Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows. The video edit is more manageable if you're in a hurry.





3) Katy B - What Love Is Made Of
I have no idea why this upbeat, sexy club track requires a downbeat, sexless video that rips off The Fast And The Furious, but that's what it's got. Weird.




4) Money - Bluebell Fields
Read the reviews of this debut single from Manchester quartet Money and one word keeps cropping up: "Lovely". To put it another way, critics love them but they're hard to pin down. You know when you break an egg into a bowl to make an omlette and a tiny bit of shell falls in, and every time you try to fish it out, the bugger gets pulled back in by a gloopy string of albumen? That's what describing this band is like. Look at the knots This Is Fake DIY ties itself into in their write-up. It's probably best just to let the music speak for itself.




5) Diana Vickers - Cinderella
I have a lot of time for Diana Vickers, a pop singer who's not content to settle for formulaic production-line nonsense. Remember the totally deranged whooping on My Wicked Heart?

Her new single isn't quite so brave (Vicko's playing it safe as she relaunches her career on a new label) and the Cinderella metaphor is particularly awful: "For you, I would lose both of my shoes". But it's a solid effort with a catchy chorus and Diana looks lovely in the video, so who's complaining?




6) Miguel - Adorn (live on Jools)
Sadly, Miguel doesn't try to kick any of the audience in the face during this BBC Two performance. Nice coat, though.

That's it for this week... See you on Monday.

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Two must-watch performances from the 2013 Billboard Awards

So, the Billboard Awards took place in Las Vegas last night. They were mainly memorable for the moment R&B crooner Miguel made the ill-advised decision to try a running jump over the audience.


OUCH.

Crotch/face collisions aside, Taylor Swift took home a entire wardrobe of awards, while One Direction got three. Madonna was named top touring artist, and Justin Bieber was booed, probably because his prize (the "Milestone award") was completely made up.

But the main event was Prince, who turned up in a space helmet made of hair to receive the Icon Award. He celebrated with a blues-rock version of Let’s Go Crazy, complete with bass solo from his new band 3rd Eye Girl.

There’s a school of thought that says Prince is at his best when he remembers he’s an incendiary guitar player. This would appear to be the proof.

Prince - Billboard awards 2013

(NB: If this video gets taken down, there’s a studio version of the swampy 2013 remake of Let’s Go Crazy over here).

At the other end of the scale was Taylor Swift’s highly-choreographed performance of 22. Starting backstage, climbing over tables and through clothes racks, the singer arrived on stage via the medium of a bicycle before a pyrotechnically-enhanced finale. It’s a little High School Musical but the production values are astonishing.

Taylor Swift - Billboard Awards 2013


There’s a full list of Billboard winners on the magazine’s website.

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Introducing R&B "sensation" Miguel

I was just about to blog about James Morrison and Jessie J's wet fart of a duet out of sheer desperation when someone sent me this... Consider it a lucky escape for everyone involved.

The song in question is by US R&B singer Miguel and it is his new single Girls Like You. Essentially a cross between Prince's unfettered libido and Kid Cudi's downbeat atmospherics, it features an incredible reference to noughts-and-crosses strategy game Connect Four that shouldn't work, but ends up winning you over.

Miguel - Girls Like You


Here are five quick facts about Miguel, one of which is totally untrue:

:: Miguel's full name is Miguel Jontel, which trips very pleasingly off the tongue, does it not?

:: Miguel has written songs for Usher and Mary J Blige, and won a Grammy nomination for his solo song Finding My Way Back.

:: Miguel's favourite board game is not Connect Four but Hungry Hippos.

:: Miguel turns 25 next week and will be celebrating with a birthday party, with presents and such.

:: If he was forced to get a tattoo at gunpoint, it would say "don't shoot".

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