Very good folk singer Lucy Rose has teamed up with very good folk trio The Staves for a new single Floral Dresses, her first material since 2015's very good album Work It Out. It might surprise you to discover that the result is very good.
A simply-strummed acoustic lament, it's a biting riposte to a lover who showers Lucy with gifts, but is somewhat lacking when it comes to basic respect.
I don't want to wear your floral dresses
And my lips won't be coloured
I don't want your diamond necklace
Your disapproval cuts through
"When I wrote Floral Dresses it really reminded me about who I was, and I always think that some of the best songs are the ones which can stand on their own with just one instrument," says Lucy, via press release. "The message is pretty clear and I hope other people will find comfort in it, and realise they are different but also the same as many people."
The video brings that to life - with various women singing Lucy's lines, hopefully ending with the same resolve to get up and leave.
Step aside, Katy Perry, you're not the only one with a new single today. The Staves are here, and they are... er, a little sleepy.
Tired As Fuck is a song they've been playing live for a while now, that's going to feature heavily on their upcoming North American tour. In an email to fans, the Stavely-Taylor sisters explained it thusly: "Tired As Fuck was a song written in the midst of a relationship breaking down. Lamenting (among other things) the lack of some sort of guidance in that kind of situation, but also accepting and resigning yourself to the fact that you have to soldier on. Keep going. There is no helping hand."
Sparse, sorrowful and tinged with the blues, the song eventually bursts into a killer guitar solo; while the video focuses (sometimes uncomfortably) on a close-up of Camilla, leaving in all the awkward pauses and asides that people normally edit out of videos. It's quite captivating in full screen.
Tired As Fuck is backed by another new song, Train Tracks and you can hear both tracks on a streaming servicenear you now.
Here are two phrases to strike fear into the heart of any pop fan: "This next one's about life on the road" and "We shot the video ourselves".
And here are The Staves talking about their new EP, Sleeping In A Car - a suite of songs about life on the road, promoted with a video they shot by themselves.
"These songs reflect the transient nature of travelling. Fleeting moments, like a slide show - reflections in car windows, street lights passing in rhythm, stolen phone calls, late nights. Feelings of displacement and a disconnect - living in some sort of alternate state of reality. But underneath it all is the feeling of adventure and making your own rules and how dizzying and freeing that can be."
"With the video for 'Sleeping In A Car' we wanted to make something that was honest, simple, unpolished and that represented how the song feels to us. No fuss. No ‘performance’. We filmed it ourselves over a few evenings. We were particularly tired at that time, so sleeping in a car wasn't too difficult. I think Jess was actually ill. If anything, this is an anti-video.
This being The Staves, of course, things are naturally a little more classy than your standard "it's so hard missing your mum / boyfriend / HP sauce / potted Ficus" tour nonsense. The song, produced by Bon Iver, stretches and grasps for the unknown, pushing the band's trademark harmonies into disturbing dissonance; while the video - literally a shot of Jessica sleeping in the back of a car - verges on the voyeuristic.
It's been a long time. I shouldn't have left you. Without a dope beat to step to.
So, yeah. With apologies (yet again) for an unplanned break in service, here are the songs I should have been writing about over the last seven days.
1) Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique - Love Is Free
Arriving a brisk five months after the single, the video for Love Is Free is actually worth the wait. It sees Robyn and Dominican rapper Maluca breaking the fourth wall in a video-about-a-video with some stunning, Technicolor set-ups. VG.
2) Fleur East - Sax
My eyes! My eyes!
3) Honne - Gone Are The Days
When the Sound of 2016 longlist came out on Monday, lots of people were surprised that London duo Honne hadn't made the cut. James Hatcher and Andy Clutterbuck (great name) met on the first day of university and have been making smooth, romantic electronic pop. Their new single comes from a 7-track EP that's due out in January.
4) Foxes - If You Leave Me Now
A bit of a tear-jerker this one - and undoubtedly the best vocal performance of Foxes' career so far.
She says: "This is a really personal song to me so I wanted the video to reflect that. I took a camera on the road with me for a couple of days, check it out."
5) Tinie Tempah - We Don't Play No Games
Interesting to hear Tinie going for a harder, bass-heavy track after the breezy summer anthem, Not Letting Go. This is the first track from his much-anticipated Uunk Food mixtape, which features cameos from Wretch 32, JME, J Hus and, essentially, everyone you've ever heard of in Grime.
6) A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It (live on Fallon)
Back together to promote the newly-reissued People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. This song never gets old.
7) The Staves - Make It Holy Brrrrrrr....
8) The Palms - Push Off
Two of the members of Terraplane Sun are now performing as The Palms (I'm assuming this might mean something to somebody). Their debut single, Push Off, is a subtly groovy indie jangle that sounds like Jake Bugg and Foster The People slammed into each other.
9) Sofia de la Torres - Colorblind Cruisin'
Spanish songstress Sofia de la Torres has been on the verge of major success for a couple of years. Will this song be the one to push her over the top? Who knows - but it's a pop song so steamy it's de-crease your dungarees.
10) Selena Gomez - Hands To Myself
This is a weird video-advertorial, in which Selena and various Victoria's Secret models lip-sync to one of her songs. Everyone looks lovely, but the video is a bit of a dud. Still, nice song.
11) Dave Grohl vs Animal - Drum Battle
YES! YES! YES!
12) Jones - Hoops
Fans of Jessie Ware: Here is your new favourite artist.
The Staves, currently on tour with Florence + The Machine, have just uploaded a disturbing video for their new single, Steady.
Shot entirely on 16mm film it sees the sisters (Emily, Jess and Camilla) witnessing eerie visions of their own deaths in a remote, abandoned apartment.
There's something particularly creepy about seeing someone standing over their own lifeless body, singing "I was never here". But I suppose that's the point.
The video also gets a special citation for excellent acting by an orange.
When I spoke to them earlier this year, the band described how they arrived at the intricate arrangement of the Bon Iver-produced single.
Jess: Mills [Camilla] came up with the Steady part of the song and straight away I loved it and thought, "oh we have to work on that"... A year later, we eventually did.
I'd had a piece for ages that was completely disconnected to that song, that suddenly fit – which is the verse I sing. It's the bit that goes "Rabbit in a snare" – that was a totally different song. It was a nice moment when they both fused together and it was like, "I think this is legal!"
And then, in the studio, we were like “it needs another section, too”
Emily: I love songs that have got sections.
Jess: So that song’s really nice for us to perform, because Mills starts the song, then passes the baton over to me, then we all come together and Em takes the end section. It was a song of many sections fused together.
The Staves' new single is not, Jessica has pointed out, an ode to dentistry.
Instead, Teeth White is "a bit of a two fingers up to people," she told the Nottingham Post (where else?).
"It's about the frustrations sometimes aimed at the industry, and the difficulty of moving at someone else's pace." her sister Emily added. "And it's also about being girls and not getting the credit we'd get for the music if we were male."
It's also a bloody good song - a rollicking, Beatles-y stomp that's one of the highlights of the band's second album, If I Was. And now it has a video, filmed in a swanky Parisian nightclub for what were presumably unimpeachable creative and financial reasons.
Here it is: A semi-regular round-up of songs I haven't managed to blog about, from pop powerhouses to rejuvenated indie icons, And ending with two chancers who can't believe their luck.
1) Rihanna - American Oxygen
Rihanna's latest song was teased in a promo for the new basketball season (obviously) which you can see below. It's a meagre 30 seconds, but we'll take what we're given from the Bajan pop queen.
2) Carly Rae Jepsen - I Really, Really Like You
Look, if Tom Hanks agrees to appear in your video, you don't say "no". Even if he insists on "being you". Even if he doesn't really understand how to lip-sync. Even if the climactic dance number is borderline humiliating. Just roll with the punches. It's Hollywood, baby.
3) Marina and the Diamonds - Forget
Congratulations to the hair stylist on this video. Marina looks incredible.
And in "good news" news, the release date of Marina's third album FROOT has been moved forward to 16th March. That's 10 days, people!
4) Madonna - Ghosttown (live)
The best song on Madonna's new album is also her best song in a decade. Easily.
Even the slightly wobbly vocal on this live performance can't rob it of its charm.
5) MIA - Can See Can Do
"Some people see planes, some people see drones" - a typically provocative lyric from MIA, who's back for the first time after 2013's Matangi.
There's no word on whether this is a single or just something she's knocked off in the studio, but it sounds like filler to me.
6) Everything Everything - Distant Past
There's a bit in the mid 8 where this threatens to turn into the Crossroads theme tune - and, what with this being an Everything Everything single, I half suspect it's deliberate.
Otherwise, it's business as usual. Ridiculous falsetto, polyrhythmic drum lines and lyrics like: "Two thumbs, I cross the Rubicon".
It's nice to have them back.
7) The Violent Femmes - Love Love Love Love Love
It's 15 years since the Violent Femmes released new material - and 32 since their ode to onanism Blister In The Sun - but they sound undiminished on their return. And is that an oboe solo??
Recorded on New Year’s Eve in Hobart, Tasmania, its the lead track on a 4-track EP that's coming out on Record Stay.
8) Conor Maynard - Talking About
Let's face it, Conor Maynard is a shit pop star. But if this came on the radio, and someone told you it was the new one from Disclosure, you'd probably be quite impressed.
Well played, sir.
9) Alabama Shakes - Don't Wanna Fight (live on SNL)
The new Alabama Shakes single has been compared to Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved and James Brown's Cold Sweat - which is pretty impressive company - but frontwoman Brittany Howard hinted at another inspiration on SNL, wearing a pair of earrings bearing Prince's lovely face.
Now, where can I get a pair of those?
10) The Staves - Make It Holy
I've run out of ways to gush about The Staves, so let's just accept I like this a lot without any further adjectives.
11) Joywave - Somebody New
Coming out of Rochester, Joywave are making uplifting indie-pop in the vein of Friendly Fires and Passion Pit.
Their new video will please anyone who used to play Tony Hawk games on the PS2, although what it has to do with the song is beyond me.
12) Kid Cudi - Love (ft Ratatat)
Things have been quiet on the Kid Cudi front for quite some time now, so this upload caught fans by surprise on Tuesday night.
An unreleased track from last year's Satellite Flight album, it's an uplifting hug of a record, as Cudi sings: "Don't be so down, come on young homie / You'll be OK, you'll find real love".
Writing on Soundcloud, Cudi says: "Hope it brings you some peace if you have a lonely heart out there. byeeeee :)"
13) Electro Velvet - Still In Love With You
The UK's Eurovision for 2015 is by a Mick Jagger impersonator and a woman who couldn't convince a single person to turn their chair around on The Voice. So that augurs well.
The song itself is an odd fish... basically will.i.am's Bang Bang without the production values. It seems content to repeat its derivative four-bar hook a dozen times without any modulation or progression - which isn't necessarily a bad tactic when you're trying to make a lasting impression in three minutes. But you're left with the overwhelming feeling of "is that really it?"
And that's this week's supplement. Tune in for more tomorrow.
Ah, The Staves. Dreamy and uplifting and heavenly and yada yada yada. We all know the music's beautiful. What no-one ever mentions is that they're fucking funny.
On stage, the Watford sisters bicker wonderfully between songs. Emily and Camilla tease their sister Jessica for wearing a gown that looks like "Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat... if you were watching him on a black and white TV". Jessica responds by breaking into Coat of Many Colours, after which Camilla drily announces: "Ladies and gentlemen, my sister. The bell-end."
"Joke's on you, cos you're stuck in a band with me," her sister replies. "I'm an inescapable bell-end."
At which, Camilla leans into the mic and whispers: "Inescapable bell-end: The new fragrance from Jessica Stavely-Taylor."
But don't worry, there's no Kinks-style brouhaha here. This is all good-natured banter, and one of the main reasons to catch The Staves live.
The other is the music. Did I mention it was dreamy and uplifting and heavenly? Well, those caressive harmonies are as sublime as ever. And the material from the band's new album, If I Was, gives the band an excuse strut their inner rock chick, too.
Spit-flecked single Black and White is strident and sonorous; while the Beatles-y Teeth White carouses around a choppy guitar groove. Jessica even gives it some windmill as she leans back into those power chords.
Bon Iver's Justin Vernon (who produced the new album) makes a surprise appearance to harmonise on the hymnal Make It Holy, wearing a fetching denim shirt. "Literally words can't express what that guy means to us," says Emily as he takes his bow.
The set is peppered with older material too ("all the megahits," Camilla calls them). Mexico, Winter Trees and Wisely and Slow are met with roars of approval. But it's the new stuff that shows how far The Staves have come. Multi-layered and structurally complex it's a genuine evolution from a band with talent to spare.
"So we made a new album," Camilla deadpans. "Pre-order the shit out of that. It's important, apparently."
SETLIST
Blood I Bled
Steady
Open
Mexico
Horizon
Black and White
No Me, No You, No More
Let Me Down
Pay Us No Mind
Eagle Song
Damn It All
Make It Holy
Teeth White
Winter Trees
Watford's favourite harmonisers The Staves have just surfaced with a brilliantly back-combed video to their new single Black and White.
Starring the Stavely-Taylor sisters as employees of an incestuous TV newsroom, it's a cross between Sidney Lumet's Network and Will Ferrell's Anchorman - only the soundtrack is better than in the former, and the meteorologist is marginally less dense than in the latter.
Black and White is the lead single from the band's Justin Vernon-produced second album, If I Was. If you pre-order it today, you'll get an "instant grat" download of the song tomorrow. So get clicking.
Good news
The Staves' second album is fantastic. Q Magazine's four star review calls it "evocative and inventive", praising Bon Iver's production for "enhancing the sisters' dovetailing voices".
Bad news
It's been delayed until 23 March. "It is completely out of our control (and to be honest with you, almost beyond our comprehension)," said Emily, Jessica and Camilla in a grovelling email to their fans.
Good news
They're making up for it by giving everyone a new song, called Steady. "It was one of the first songs we demoed when we went out to Wisconsin," the sisters inform us, "and Camilla broke not one, but TWO drum sticks during the recording! Rock n roll."
Rhythmically complex and everso mournful, Steady is a song to swoon over - and further evidence of the band's development from the bare-bones acoustics of their debut. Best of all, it's available now if you pre-order the album, If I Was, on iTunes.
PS: The Staves recently posted the following photo to their Facebook page. I await their synthpop album with baited breath.
PPS: Every time I listen to Steady on Soundcloud, it auto-plays this thrash metal track next. What are the algorithms trying to tell me?
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:
I wrote about The Staves' crisp, autumnal new single Blood I Bled when it premiered a month ago and age has only improved it - like a fine wine, a mature brie or Morgan Freeman's face.
Today, the band unveiled a video "inspired by an amazing trip to India". It doesn't feature Emily, Jessica or Camilla at all (unless there was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo that I blinked and missed) but it is a beautifully evocative film clip, full of sorrow, joy, euphoria, humanity and beauty. And dancing.
One of those rare instances where an entirely unrelated set of images enhances a song endlessly.
Last Christmas, after The Staves' triumphant, rapturous gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, Emily Stavely-Taylor told me two years of touring the band's debut album, Dead & Born & Grown, had taken its toll. "Playing those songs is like having sex with someone you've fallen out of love with."
So, after wrapping up that show, the band decamped to Wisconsin to dream up the magic all over again. Sitting at the mixing desk was folk-pop troubador Justin Vernon - who they'd befriended while on tour with Bon Iver. Here is the proof, lest you think this is all an elaborate ruse.
The first fruits of their collaboration is an EP called Blood I Bled, the title track of which appeared online today. Vernon upends a whole bag of tricks over the sisters' pin-point harmonies: Strings, handclaps, a brass section and, naturally, a banjo. But crucially, he does nothing to dilute the band's spine-tingling vocals.
In ambition and structure, it sounds like Eagle Song, the billowy, polyharmonic closing track from their debut record, but now it has added oomph. Or, at least, as much oomph as a mournful mid-tempo folk ballad can muster.
Simply beautiful.
You can pre-order the Blood I Bled EP on iTunes. And to pass the time until the 28th of October, when it'll appear in your library like a less spectacularly-unwelcome U2 album, here's a picture of Emily, Jessica and Camilla when they were little 'uns. Awww, bless.
So, a few new tunes cropped up during Glastonbury - which means that at least two music industry PRs weren't in Somerset over the weekend. Or maybe that the interns got left in charge of the YouTube password for a couple of days. Either way, here's what we missed.
1) Franz Ferdinand - Right Action
Franz Ferdinand are a band who seem chronically incapable of finding a new sound. Right Action has the same scratchy riffs and laconic lyrics of Holiday from the band's first album. But, after four years away, it sounds fresh again. Expect to see them relegated from Radio 1 to 6 Music, though.
2) Robin Thicke - Give It 2 U
Hey, ladies, here's the follow-up to the sex pest anthem of the summer. Robin is no more enlightened than last time round. "Girl, I got a big dick for you," he sings. What a charmer.
3) AlunaGeorge - Bad Idea
At the end of this radio rip, Lauren Laverne says of AlunaGeorge: "I remember we had them in for a session after just releasing one single. I was like, 'how hard can it be? Just do that 10 times and then you've got your album'. I said it ironically, but they sort of have just done that".
Well, that's massively uncharitable, given how adventurous the band have been with their R&B template. This song, a b-side to the re-released I Know You Like It, ups the tempo and goes for a more frothy vibe than the band have pursued in the past. I really like it.
5) The Staves - Icarus
Look, I'm not going to stop droning on about how brilliant The Staves are until you all agree with me. So why not just submit to their charms now and get it over with? Icarus is taken from the special edition of their album Dead And Born And Grown, which comes out on 15th July. And this video finds the Stavely-Taylor sisters traipsing around the world with an acoustic guitar and a lot of hair, doing singing and stuff. Gorgeous.
6) Duke Dumont ft MNEK - Hold On
The follow-up to chart-bothering club classic 100% is an altogether darker affair. Guest vocalist MNEK drowns in echo as he pleads "don't let go of what we had" over a late-night house groove with spooky "WooOOOooOOooh it's a ghost" backing vocals. It's absolutely gorgeous.
7) Gallant - If It Hurts
NYC Newcomer Gallant has the sugar-sweet vocals of D'Angelo, but backs them up with muted indie guitars and scrunched up drum loops. He's been working with William Orbit and Felix Snow - who handles production duties on his new single, If It Hurts. If you like this, you should also check out his magnificent cover of Ke$ha's Die Young on Youtube.
Phew! That's quite the run-down. Stay tuned for more.
Let's face it, there are worse jobs in the world than reporting on Glastonbury. Saturday may have been a 22-hour slog that combined mud, blisters and sunburn with a 4:30am start and 11 interviews - but I had an absolute blast.
So, here are my top 10 (and a half) moments from a busy weekend. I even got to watch some music.
10)Liam Gallagher liked my t-shirt.
Thanks, Liam, but Beady Eye are still shit.
9) A never-ending supply of Haribo.
Seriously, they were everywhere: Scattered in the dressing rooms, littering the production offices, propping up the catering tents. On Saturday, when the sun came out, they all started to melt and coalesce into one giant mecha-Haribo. I have come to the conclusion that the festival is secretly run by Gummy Bears.
8) Catching Aluna "AlunaGeorge" Francis scoffing a bag of crisps just before the band's inaugural Glastonbury set (but after she'd joined Dizzee Rascal - aka "the grime Black Lace" - on Friday evening).
7)Rudimental, whose tiggerish levels of bounciness led to one of the best shows of the festival. Imagine a Basement Jaxx gig played by James Brown's band. They're that good.
6.5) This slurry tank.
6) Hastily applying sun cream and running out the door to speak to Two Door Cinema Club. As the interview progressed, the cream started to melt and run into my eyes. Ever the professional, I kept the recording going for 10 minutes as my face streamed with tears. "Are you ok?" asked Alex Trimble after we finished. "Sorry," I replied, wiping my eyes. "It's just that I'm your biggest fan."
5) Watching Bruce Forsyth take over the Avalon field ("if you're good I'll play for two hours. If you're bad, I'll do four-and-a-half") then recording the best vox pop of all time.
Actually, I'm lying. That's only the second-best vox pop of all time. On Saturday afternoon, Colin Paterson was interviewing people on 5 Live when a woman walked past with the lyrics to Wild Horses tattooed on her arm.
"You must be going to see the Rolling Stones," he said.
"No, I'm gonna see Chase and Status."
"But you have their lyrics tattooed on your arm?"
"No, mate, that's the Susan Boyle version".
4) Speaking of The Strolling Bones - I've never been a big fan, and I would never have paid real money to see them, but they totally won me over. Music aside, the most amazing thing about their set was that almost everyone put their cameraphone away.
It also became clear why the band were reluctant to let the BBC broadcast their performance: The Stones' live show is designed for a stadium audience, low on subtlety and high on arm-waving, gurny-faced aerobics. Shrunk down to TV size, they were ridiculous and camp. In person they were spectacular.
3) The inestimable Lizo Mzimba, BBC Entertainment Reporter, former Newsround anchor, all-round gentleman and semi-professional Howard-from-the-Halifax-adverts impersonator. As the Rolling Stones took to the stage, he was broadcasting to News 24 from a platform overlooking the Pyramid Stage. 10 minutes later, the final chord to Paint It Black rang out and the audience erupted. But not for the Stones. No, they were chanting "Li-zo, Li-zo, Li-zo".
Lizo's notoriety produced another incredible moment later that night, when a slightly "refreshed" Dan from Bastille came across him interviewing the Stones' fans.
2)The Staves. Not only do they have the voices of angels, but they are bloody lovely people. My task for the weekend (self-imposed) was to follow them band around and document their Glastonbury experience for the BBC website.
It wasn't a difficult job - they're funny and friendly and supremely talented. Crouching next to them, holding a microphone to Jess's guitar as they performed In The Long Run in perfect three-part harmony for Radio 4 was literally breath-taking.
The sisters were originally at Glastonbury for three low-key shows across three days - but then they got a call from Ben Mumford, who wanted them to do this.
Watching that from the crowd, I felt like a proud uncle at the biggest nativity play of all time. They were justifiably over-the-moon afterwards - and it couldn't have happened to three nicer people.
1)ISLANDS IN THE STREAM.
THAT IS WHAT WE ARE.
NO-ONE IN BETWEEN.
HOW CAN WE BE WRONG?
SAIL AWAY WITH ME.
TO ANOTHER WORLD.
AND WE RELY ON EACH OTHER.
A-HA.
FROM ONE LOVER TO ANOTHER
A-HA.
A-ha-mazing.
There were plenty of other memorable moments: Jessie Ware threatening to climb the rafters; meeting Kenny Rogers in his dressing room; Haim being mobbed everywhere they went; Chris O'Dowd actually running away when I approached him with a microphone; and the shower in my caravan running out of water, which left me with no choice but to rinse off the soap suds with a bottle of mineral water straight from the fridge.
There's nowhere on earth like it, and nowhere I would rather have been.
Next year, we've worked out the headliners will be Kanye West, Fleetwood Mac and Prince, with Billy Joel doing the Sunday Afternoon "legend" slot. See you there.
The Staves have just uploaded the video for their next single, fan favourite Winter Trees, to YouTube. A hand-crafted stop-motion animation, it features dozens paper bunnies trapped in a flood. In other words, Watership Down: The Ecological Disaster Edition.
Here's what the band have to say about it all: "We are currently in Boston doing some radio shows with some good people and it is FREEZING. White winter trees most definitely covered with snow.
"And on that note, we are thrilled to share with you our brand spanking new video for our new single, Winter Trees (see what we did there? Smoooooth). Thanks to Karni and Saul for using their talents to create such a beautiful story. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do."
As 2012 disappears in the rear view mirror, I've tackled my iTunes library to see which albums I listened to most. There are a few surprises (I don't remember listening to this much Michael Kiwanuka) and some glaring omissions (Emeli Sande - presumably because she was on TV so often it rendered the album redundant).
But I am glad to say the Frank Ocean album didn't make the top 10 because, let's be honest, it's patchy and inconsistent and that Forrest Gump song is utter balls.
10) Jack White - Blunderbuss
Where would rock be without failed relationships? From Fleetwood Mac's Rumours to Amy Winehouse's Back To Black, other people's tragedies have inspired some of pop's best songs. Jack White is no exception - his break-up from Karen Elson fuelling his first solo album. It is by no means a coincidence that it's his best work since The White Stripes' Elephant.
"When they tell you that they just can't live without you," he sings at one point. "They ain't lyin', they'll take pieces of you". The lyrics on this album prompted one newspaper to write a hysterical rant about White's supposed misogyny. Admittedly, it seems cruel that he made his ex-wife sing the backing vocals, but there's more to this album than a crude hatred of women. Blunderbuss is blistering with hurt, fury and cynicism - and it's all the better for it.
9) Scissor Sisters - Magic Hour
"You may not hear this on MTV," sings Jake Shears on Best In Me. "No big deal. Fine by me." Sadly, he was right - programmers on radio and TV never really threw their weight behind this album, leading the band to announce they were going on "indefinite hiatus" at the end of the year. If Magic Hour proves to be their swansong, at least it was a good one. Highlights included the Neptunes-produced Inevitable and the sleazy Shady Love, featuring Azealia Banks.
8) Alt-J - An Awesome Wave
Proving that singing like Kermit The Frog needn't necessarily be a handicap, Alt-J walked away with the Mercury Prize in November. An Awesome Wave is one of those records that makes awards committees feel smart, with its intricate pararhythms, lyrics about maths, and a capella interludes. But it wears it lightly, burying all the trickery beneath some gorgeous tunes, in particular the hit single Tessellate. Which is about interlocking body parts, of course.
7) Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again
Poor old Michael Kiwanuka. A winner of numerous hyperbolic "sound of" polls in January, his profile seemed to flatline around Valentine's Day. He probably prefers it that way, though. Home Again is shot through with a sunny spirituality that megastardom would have destroyed... Listening back to the album this morning, I was struck by how the sepia-tinged Al Green grooves would have been the perfect soundtrack to the summer. If only we'd had one.
6) Grimes - Visions
Grimes is Canada's Claire Boucher, and Visions is her third album. It sounds so completely unlike anything else that critics all seemed to come unstuck trying to review it. "The sound of an internal war," said the NME. Pitchfork described it as "post-internet" and if you can work out what this reviewer (who actually uses the vomit-inducing phrase "wet dream pop") is on about, I will give you £10.
The Onion's AV Club got it right for me, calling the album "a cryptic blur of impressions" - capturing the way Boucher's floaty, ephemeral vocals and echo-drenched electro beats slowly coalesced into a work of sublime, unhinged genius.
5) Marina & The Diamonds - Electra Heart
Marina went off to LA to construct this album with top-flight songwriters like Greg Kurstin and Rick "Belinda Carlisle" Nowles and, by God, did it produce results. The first 30 minutes of the album are flawless - the best "side one" of the year.
Electra Heart was initially touted as a "concept" - something to do with American femme fatale archetypes - but, as Marina later confessed, all it's really about is "being young and being in love with someone who doesn't love you". It's the female counterpart to Jack White's break-up album - but with monstrous godzilla pop hooks destroying everything in their path. Awesome.
4) The Staves - Dead and Born and Grown
The Staves were my bandcrush of the year, even if everyone else ignored them (this album crept into the charts at number 42 for a single week). Three sisters from Watford, they perform bluegrass-inspired folk harmonies with unnerving clarity and beauty. Their debut album was produced by Ethan Johns (Laura Marling) and his dad Glyn (The Beatles) but all these veteran knob-twiddlers really had to do was sit back and let Staveley siblings sing. Uncluttered and beguiling, Dead And Born And Grown is like snuggling up under a warm duvet on a stormy night.
3) Regina Spektor - What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
At first it seemed underwhelming - Regina retreading old ground and even recycling old tunes (Ne Me Quitte Pas first appeared, in a very different guise, on 2002's Songs). But What We Saw From The Cheap Seats was one of those albums that kept calling me back. In particular, the heartbreaking ballad How, about fading memories of love, and All The Rowboats, written from the point of view of a painting in a museum. It's a subtle record, refining rather than reinventing Regina's style, but it will take root in your soul.
2) Jessie Ware - Devotion
People compared her to Sade. That was unfair. Jessie Ware's album had more blood and grit than anything Sade ever produced - from its rumbling sub bass, to the self-sacrifice in Taking In Water. The sensual Wildest Moments was my single of the year, while 110% is the best song about dancing on your own since Robyn's... Dancing On My Own.
One of the few R&B albums of the year to make any kind of attempt at melody, Devotion rivals Solange's Losing You in signposting where the genre should head in 2013.
1) Lana Del Rey - Paradise
What the top three albums on this list have in common is that the artist has carved out a sound that is instantly, undeniably their own. Lana Del Rey's debut album is equal parts 1950s torch songs, hip-hop insouciance, and the car crash scene from Great Gatsby. Half of the songs here wouldn't work if they were sung by a pitch-perfect X Factor melisma-meister - they need that louche, knowing wink that Lana delivers in her ridiculously affected drawl.
All the brouhaha about her "authenticity" seems ridiculous with the benefit of hindsight. In fact, the confidence and self-belief it took to construct Born To Die's noir pop aesthetic is more authentic than a million Jake Bugg albums. Oh, and the songs are amazing: Video Games, Off To The Races, National Anthem, Blue Jeans, Summertime Sadness. Brilliant work that reveals new secrets even on the 50th listen.
Hello there! Hope you all had a good Christmas. I certainly did, if the number of bottles in the recycling bin are any indication.
Anyway, with the New Year rapidly approaching, it's time for the big TOP TEN of the year. As usual, I've based mine on iTunes play counts (with a little arithmetic to make sure songs released later in the year don't suffer). It's by no means definitive - I seem to have completely ignored some of the year's biggest hits - but if you don't like at least three of the following songs, you're dead in the soul.
10) Cheryl - Call My Name
Old swan dive herself, giving it some welly on a Calvin Harris-produced bum-rattler. "How do you think I feel when you call my name?" she asked. If we used her marital surname, the answer was "very stroppy indeed".
9) Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know
Gangnam Style aside, this is the best pop lyric of the year. Over a plinky-plonky xylophone Gotye spends two minutes whining about being dumped when, all of a sudden, his ex pops up and says: "Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over". Ouch!
They'll be teaching this one at the Brit School for years to come.
8) Kanye West and Jay-Z - N****s In Paris
There's a reason why Jay-Z and Kanye performed this seven times a night on their Watch The Throne tour: They're egomaniacs. But this time, they're forgiven. "Paris", as the radio edit was called, is the sound of two mega-stars goofing off and accidentally creating a hit single. That shit cray, indeed.
7) The Staves - Mexico
The Staves beguiling harmonies are a honey trap. They sound like three chaste handmaidens but take a listen to the lyrics of Mexico, and they're asking to be rogered on their lover's bed. Well, I never.
6) Girls Aloud - Something New
I suspect this made the Top 10 out of sheer relief. That Girls Aloud came back and didn't fumble the first single was a miracle. Sure, Something New has clunky bits (the uninspired rap in the first verse) but it's essentially a distillation of everything that made the band great. Sexy, shouty, stylish, skinny and ginger.
5) Marina & The Diamonds - Primadonna
This isn't a pop song, it just sounds like one. Or so Marina would have you believe. But if we paid attention to every pretentious ambition a pop star had for their "oeuvre" we'd never listen to anything.
Primadonna makes this list for one reason: The bit where Marina's voice drops an entire octave as she sings "I know I've got a big ego / I really don't know why it's such a big deal, though." A moment of melodic genius that stops the song being just another Katy Perry knock-off. The remixes were great too.
4) Little Mix - Wings
A fanfare. Some handclaps. Someone says "shhh" when they really mean "shit". Then it all goes a bit Aguilera. There's an almighty bridge, an astounding chorus. And, what's this? A second chorus. Incredible.
Admittedly, the lyrics aren't perfect. Girl Bands have been peddling the whole "you're beautiful on the inside" line since TLC's Unpretty with diminishing returns. But Wings is saved by that almighty military breakdown in the outro. Best pop moment of the year.
3) Alunageorge - Your Drums, Your Love
If anyone is going to save R&B from drowsy bore kings The Weeknd and Drake, it's AlunaGeorge. Mixing spaceship sound effects with the palatable bits of dubstep and chuffing great pop hooks, they should be getting a call from Beyonce's "people" any day now. This reached a wholly unimpressive number 50 in the charts last October. Seriously, what is wrong with you people?
2) Lana Del Rey - National Anthem
A cautionary tale about a wealthy man who seduces a young ingénue ("you tell me to 'be cool' but I don’t know how yet"), only for her to turn the tables in the second verse ("You said to 'be cool'... I said to 'get real'"). A love story for the new age, it should be the theme to Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby.
1) Jessie Ware - Wildest Moments
Wildest Moments is about a girl who threw a cake in Jessie Ware's face at a wedding.Honestly.
"My nightmare of a best friend," Ware called her in this interview, explaining: "I never fight with people, but me and her fight. That's my girl, Sarah, and that’s what Wildest Moments is about."
A ballad with drums the size of boulders, and a heart that's even bigger, Wildest Moments is neither the most obvious, nor the most original, song on this list. But it is absolutely the best.
A semi-regular round-up of videos and songs I haven't had the time or inclination to write about during the last seven days... This week's cover stars are.
1) Ke$ha - Die Young
A great chorus let down by a "rap" that is the sound of a thousand nails on a thousands blackboards processed by a broken auto-tune box.
I particularly like how, in the narrative of the video, the produce placement results in Ke$ha's downfall. "We made it South of the Border" she texts on her shiny new phone - leading the cops straight to her door. Idiot.
2) The Staves - Dead & Born & Grown
This is the title track of the Staveley sisters' debut album, which is out on Monday. I beseech you to buy it (here's a link) - you'll fall in love with it slowly, but irrevocably, and that's a guarantee.
3) Josh Kumra - Waiting For You
You might not know his name, but you'll recognise the voice from Wretch 32's number one single Don't Go last year. Josh Kumra's solo debut is very much in the Ben Howard / Ed Sheeran sensitive-boy-with-a-guitar "genre" - but the sumptuous backing vocals and insistent drums will win you over despite it all.
4) Two Door Cinema Club - Sun (Alex Metric remix)
With their roots on the Kistuné label, Two Door Cinema Club have always been up for a good old club makeover. Their new single is no exception - Alex Metric takes a rather weedy track and soups it up with scratchy hip-hop loops and laser-blast synths that can only be described as "twiddly".
5) Icona Pop - I Love It (feat Charli XCX)
I'm massively behind the curve here, because Icona Pop have been cropping up on my Twitter feeds and pop alerts for months and I never quite got round to checking them out. What did it take to spark my interest? A computer game...
I Love It, which originally premiered in May, features on the excellent soundtrack to racing game Need For Speed: Most Wanted, produced down in Guildford by Criterion Games (creators of the Burnout series, for racing fans). It sounds INCREDIBLE in surround sound, as does the woofer-straining Killsonik remix of Calvin Harris's We'll Be Coming Back.
Sadly, the song isn't out in the UK yet... So you'll have to buy the game if you want to hear it outside the confines of YouTube. My PS3 ID is (somewhat predictably) mrdiscopop if you fancy a race over the weekend.
I spent an entire evening watching videos of The Staves on YouTube last week. It taught me two things:
1) Lots of The Staves' songs are played on just two guitar strings. 2) I should never, ever try to sing harmonies.
The band's debut album, Dead & Born & Grown, is released in November, around the time they support Bon Iver on his European tour tour. Those of you who've heard the band's two EPs will already know what to expect: Impeccably sung, beautifully strummed, blissful campfire folk (Advisory: one of the tracks contains whistling).
The sisters have just released the video for their latest single, Tongue Behind My Teeth - or as the video would have it "Lengua Detras De Los Dientes". It's a Spanish-themed, guns-ahoy, Spaghetti Western-fest with the trio sporting Stetsons and shooting up a caboose.
Basically, it's a music video version of that film Wild, Wild West - but without Salma Hayek or the big metal spider.
