Gaga and R Kelly conquer AMAs

Last night, Lady Gaga and R Kelly pulled off a brilliant, White House-themed performance of Do What You Want at the American Music Awards. A million miles away from the cringeworthy dry humping of their SNL show a week ago, it was spectacular, funny, and filled with pathos.

Note to pop stars: This is everything you want from an Awards Show performance. And, I'd argue, the first decent bit of promo Gaga's done for ARTPOP.


The rest of the American Music Awards were a bit dull, to be honest. Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake got most of the awards, and the performances were almost exclusively "the slow ones".

Katy Perry did a pretty but unspectacular Geisha version of Unconditionally; One Direction sang their ballad and TLC reminded us how bad choreography was in the 90s by revisiting Waterfalls.

Shy and retiring pop singer Rihanna did an admittedly impressive rock-orchestra version of Diamonds (with a neat nod to Diamonds Are Forever at the climax).


Oh, and Miley Cyrus performed Wrecking Ball alongside a lip-syncing kitten.

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Katy Perry's entire Prism album, and six other songs you may have missed

It's Friday, so it must be time for the customary round-up of new songs from the last seven days. This week's line-up looks like this:

1) Katy Perry - Prism
Officially out on Monday, Katy Perry's uploaded her third album to SoundCloud in its entirety, in a bid to combat the people who leaked it yesterday.

The release also coincides with the first swathe of reviews. They're mostly positive - but The Guardian, with depressing predictability, has written a sneering critique of the album's lyrics.

Alexis Petridis's article is based on the flimsy premise that, when Billboard called Prism "Katy Perry's most spiritual album to date", it was somehow suggesting she had consulted Deepak Chopra and M Scott Peck to create the most insightful and revelatory excavation of the human psyche ever to appear in popular song.

Thankfully, the co-writers are mostly Swedish (to paraphrase Petridis, the liner notes read like an IKEA catalogue) and the lyrics are, for the most part, totally unimportant. And, although nothing quite strikes you like Roar, it's a thundering collection of melodic pop.

Recommended tracks: Legendary Lovers, Walking On Air, Unconditionally.





3) Little Mix - Move (Alias Remix)
Good song. Good remix. Job done.





3) Eminem - Rap God
So this is what it sounds like to be reinvigorated. Eminem, on a six-minute lyrical rampage, proclaims "I'm beginning to feel like a Rap God," and actually sounds more deserving of the title than Kanye "Yeezus" West.

Lyrical gems include: "Got a fat knot from that rap profit / Made a living and a killing off it / Ever since Bill Clinton was still in office / With Monica Lewinsky feeling on his nut-sack / I’m an MC still as honest / But as rude and as indecent as all hell".

Phew.





4) James Blake ft Chance The Rapper - Life Round Here
From the video's YouTube description: "The video, shot entirely in black and white, tracks Blake and Chance as they cruise in a lowrider through an eerie forest inhabited by stallions and Somalian pirates." How can you resist?




5) Rebecca Ferguson - I Hope
"Interesting fact": The most-read article I wrote on the BBC News Website last year was this interview with Rebecca Ferguson. It wasn't spectacularly insightful, or even well-written. The public just have a huge reserve of affection for the Liverpudlian singer.

They're going to lap up her new single, I Hope, which arrives after an ugly and protracted spat with her former managers. Launching with a rollicking drum roll, you kind of hope it'll see Rebecca spitting with fury, like Rolling In The Deep vintage Adele.

She doesn't, of course, but the song is an urgent and uplifting and an instant classic.




6) Lady Gaga ft R Kelly - Do What U Want
This is only a 30-second clip but it restores my faith in Gaga's ability to write a straightforward pop song. The best ArtPop preview to date, not that that's saying much.




7) Bruno Mars - Gorilla
The Indian press is up in arms about this video, in which Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto stars as a stripper (SPOILER: Bruno Mars is seen "cavorting" with her at the end).

Pinto's representatives even issued a statement in her defence to the Hindustan Times, which protests: "Freida’s look in Gorilla is quite a departure from what we otherwise see. Apparently, when she was approached with this opportunity, she knew that this would be a reincarnation of sorts for her and she was quite thrilled to do it, being the risk taker that she is".

It's no Blurred Lines - there's a storyline to explain the raunchy bits - but I still wouldn't watch it at work, unless your boss is particularly easy-going.

And that's your lot. Have a great weekend.

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R Kelly is a sex genius, and six other songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of The Music Of The Internet, which may otherwise have escaped your attention over the last seven days.

1) R Kelly - Genius
"Tonight you're lying with a sex genius," purrs the ever-classy R Kelly from beneath the silken sheets of his circular waterbed. "We're both so freakin' hot, we don't wanna freakin' stop." Damn.

Things to ponder while you listen to this:
:: More than 10,000 people have signed a petition to have Ignition (Remix) made the US National Anthem
:: R Kelly's new album is called Black Panties.





2) Katy B - 5am
Katy is back where Katy should be: On the dancefloor, where "that beat's so sick, that tune's so ill". Also, the melody has a temperature and the bassline has a hurty elbow.





3) Kanye West - Bound 2 (live on Jools Holland)
The absolute best YouTube comment on this performance came in the form of a response to a cretin who accused Kanye of having "no talent" and "just speaking into a microphone whilst doing silly moves".

"You do it then," spat the reply. "I'm fucking serious... What's so good about speaking into a microphone? All that F1 drivers do is drive in circles. All that footballers do is kick a ball around. All that surgeons do is cut people open and remove stuff... It's not though, is it?"

I think Kanye might have written that himself. Presumably while a BBC employee ironed his carpet.




4) Prides - Out Of The Blue
Angular synth-pop, endorsed by CHVRCHES, with whom they share some DNA. Of course, we all share some DNA with CHVRCHES. We share 50% of our DNA with a banana. That's just science.




5) Katy Perry - Roar (Rock remix)
It's not clear if this is an official reworking or a clever bootleg, but Perry's Roar sounds surprisingly awesome with additional plank spanking. The best Blink 182 song you've never heard.




6) James Arthur - You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You
Helpfully abbreviated to YNTSLY by his record label, this is X Factor winner James Arthur's first "proper single" after last year's number one Impossible. With brittle horn stabs and a dustbins-in-a-hurricane drum track, it's a good effort in a post-Rudimental sort of way.

The only problem is his vocal - he starts off with such an almighty "I'm a proper singer" roar that there's nowhere left to go for the next four minutes. The result is a track that blusters instead of blowing you away.




7) Justin Timberlake - TKO
Bring the beatbox back! Posted late last night, this Timbaland-heavy single is the second release from JT's much-anticipated 20/20 Experience Volume Two.

If you think the scratchy, sinister groove is a little heavier than the singles from Volume One, you'd be right. "The songs that I released in March just reminded me of summertime," he told On Air with Ryan Seacrest. "The songs that are coming out this month felt a little darker so they made me feel like... the fall/winter collection."

And that's all for now... Have a great weekend, and send any tips for next week's roundup to the address at the bottom of the page!

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