Discopop Directory: Top 10 albums of 2016

Better late than never, here are my top 10 albums of the year just passed. As always, the rankings are based on my iTunes play counts - so these are the records I actually listened to, not the ones I appreciated on an intellectual level (nb: I don't have an intellectual level).

So, without further ado...

10) Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

Depending on your point of view, Radiohead either rediscovered the joy of melody on this, their ninth album, or simply released half a dozen forgotten songs from "when they were good". Who cares, though, when the results were this magical? Boosted by Jonny Greenwood's cinematic string arrangements, the album feels epic and intimate at the same time, from the low flying panic attack of Burn The Witch to the grieving melancholy of True Love Waits - a track written as a love letter almost 20 years ago, only to be released as Thom Yorke's relationship fell apart.



9) Tove Lo - Lady Wood

Tove Lo is the pop equivalent of Just 17's sex column. "Look at this smut," she says, patting herself firmly on the back. "Isn't it outrageous?"

That attitude is writ large throughout Lady Wood, from the title (fun fact: it's a euphemism for a clitoral erection) to the vagina in the logo. Meanwhile, Tove effs and jeffs her way through the album like a teenager trying to shock her parents, but her heart is in the right place. The confessional tales of lust, loss and desperation are relatable and cathartic - and she anchors everything in a dark, minimalist house production.

She may call herself a True Disaster, but this is a blemished pop gem.



8) Clare Maguire - Stranger Things Have Happened

Clare Maguire has been through the wringer and no mistake. Dropped by her label, she was drinking litres of vodka every day until a doctor gave her two weeks to live. Miraculously (and with a lot of hard work) she turned her life around and produced this spell-binding album of classic, piano-led pop.

She's at her best when she peers into the abyss - Channelling Nina Simone on the autobiographical opening track, Faded; and delivering the best lonely hearts advert of all time on Whenever You Want It: "I just wanna have someone who laughs at my shit jokes."

Don't we all, Clare? Don't we all?



7) Michael Kiwanuka - Love and Hate

Resolutely old-school, Michael Kiwanuka's second album riffs on Marvin, Isaac and Curtis but never descends into pastiche. It finds him world-weary and melancholy, after a crisis of confidence almost persuaded him to abandon music altogether. "But when you have all or nothing to lose, you just become fearless," he told Nothing But Hope And Passion.

The result is breath-taking: A psych-soul opus backed by opulent strings and a full choir. The opening track unfolds over 10 minutes, while the bluesy Black Man In A White starts like a plantation song before picking up a funky shuffle that never quite settles into a groove - a musical metaphor for Kiwanuka's sense of unease. It took a lot of people by surprise, in the best possible way.



6) Christine & The Queens - Chaleur Humaine

I came to this far too late but that was my own stupid fault. Chaleur Humaine is classy, delicate synthpop that embraces mystery and androgyny like nothing else on this list. Lots of mainstream artists get labelled "outsider pop" but Héloïse Letissier is the real deal.


Of course, I wasn't the only person to overlook it: In her native France, Héloïse released the album in 2014, winning a cupboard full of awards and receiving endorsements from Madonna and Elton John. That it took her to re-record some of the lyrics in English merely illustrates, in the year of Brexit, how closeted and unadventurous the UK can be, even in the resolutely liberal world of pop.



5) Nao - For All We Know

In a year we lost Prince, Nao made the best Prince album this side of Musicology. For All We Know is a lurching, off-kilter, pop-funk extravaganza, where the South Londoner autopsies love (requited and otherwise) in her gorgeous, high-pitched voice. A thoroughly impressive debut.



4) Shura - Nothing's Real

Imagine if Madonna ever experienced doubt or insecurity. That's Shura's debut album. Named in honour of a panic attack that altered her perception of reality, it follows an introverted wallflower as she navigates her way through crushes, infatuations and break-ups ("thought we'd get married and have kids and stuff," she sings of one particularly devastating break-up).

Where she doesn't lack confidence, though, is in the music. What's It Gonna Be, all staccato guitars and shimmering synths, it sounds like the theme to a 1980s teen film without succumbing to pastiche. Even better is the extended, bravura coda of White Light - the disco equivalent of 2001: A Space Odyssey's Star Gate sequence.



3) Regina Spektor - Remember Us To Life

Back after a baby-having hiatus, Regina Spektor is on fine form. Her character studies and lyrical insights are sharper than ever ("All the lies on your resumé have become the truth by now," she sings on Older and Taller), while the sombre tone smooths out her quirkier tics. Not coincidentally, this is the first time she's written a record from scratch).

The stand-outs are many: The Grand Hotel is a baroque ballad that reimagines Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest as a portal to hell; while The Trapper and The Furrier is a scathing polemic about the greed of bankers and pharmaceutical companies that starts a capella and ends with an unrestrained scream. Best of all is Sellers of Flowers - a deep blue ink blot, lamenting the fragility of memory.

An absolute treat.


2) Solange - A Seat At The Table

On which Beyonce's little sister comes into her own. Recorded in New Iberia, Louisiana, where her grandparents were fire-bombed out of their house fifty years ago, it is informed by the dehumanising acts, large and small, black people face on a daily basis. That doesn't mean it's an angry album, although anger certainly rears it's head. Rather, Solange presents a poised, nuanced portrait of the pains and joys of black womanhood.

Musically, she's found her footing, too. Gone is the lightweight R&B of her debut album, in favour of deep, dreamy R&B grooves. You'll recognise the spirits of Minnie Riperton, Marvin Gaye, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Herbie Hancock and Isaac Hayes dropping by to pay their respects - but this is Solange's album, through and through.



1) Beyoncé - Lemonade

Remember when everyone thought Lemonade was a record about Jay-Z cheating on Beyoncé? Turns out "Becky with the good hair" is the biggest Trojan horse since, well, that horse in Troy.

Beyoncé's tale of betrayal masked a much bigger discourse on male privilege, white privilege, police violence, female empowerment, rejection, forgiveness, anger, scorn, pain, redemption... The list goes on.

The signs were there when she turned up at the Super Bowl dressed as a Black Panther and made a video in which she sat on top of a police car as it sank into post-Katrina floodwaters. Those are pretty bold statements, especially for an artist of Beyoncé's stature. Can you imagine Elvis or Michael Jackson putting their necks on the line so boldly. No, you cannot.

But here's the thing - the message goes nowhere without fantastic tunes. Luckily, Beyoncé delivered them by the truckful. Hold Up, Sorry, All Night, Freedom, Formation - Beyoncé could have sung, "Yes my name is Iggle Piggle" over those tracks and they'd still be classics. (Note to Beyoncé: Please release this record in 2017).

So there you go... I'm gutted there wasn't space for Chance The Rapper or Childish Gambino, both of whom signposted a way out of rap's current cul-de-sac, or for A Tribe Called Quest's comeback, which did the same thing by sounding exactly like a Tribe Called Quest album from 20 years ago. I thought Ariana Grande might get a look-in, but the album squandered it's promise with a bunch of cookie cutter dance bops that had the filthy hands of major label A&R all over them.

Bat For Lashes' excellent The Bride (about a bride whose fiancé is killed on the way to their wedding) would have had a place if it wasn't so depressing to listen to, in a good way. And Frank Ocean's Blonde loses out for that godawful Facebook interlude. What a crock.

Anyway, let's not end on a sour note. Here's a playlist of the best tracks from those Top 10 albums. If you find something you like, why not buy it and single-handedly save the music industry?

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Songs you may have missed: Mini midweek edition

Here's a round-up of some of the better tracks you / I may have overlooked recently.

1) Beck - Wow
Sadly not a cover of the Kylie "classic", but very good nonetheless.




2) Years & Years - Meteorite
I'm including this single, taken from the Bridget Jones soundtrack, mainly (but not solely) because of Olly's quote on the press release:

"If there's anyone I'd like to be it's Bridget - a wanton sex goddess with a very bad man between her thighs."




3) LOOP - Losing My Mind
Very, very accessible pop from this London newcomer, who rather brilliantly stylises her name as "L∞P".






4) Tove Lo - Under The Influence (ft Wiz Khalifa)
The opening track from Tove Lo's second album, Lady Wood, is a textbook subtlebanger. Gone are Tove's sweeping dramatics, in comes a smooth and sleek house beat. Is this a good thing? I'll get back to you.




5) CAPPA - Next Ex
A song that wouldn't feel out of place on Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotions B Side album. Yes, it is that good.





6) Christine and the Queens - Sorry (Beyonce cover)
One of the absolute highlights of Radio 1's Live Lounge month.




7) Robyn - Dancing On My Own (Paul Andrews Streetlight Mix)
Calum Scott's miserable cover of Dancing On My Own is proof you can't destroy a good melody. But what if you took that melody and put it over the backing track to Journey's Don't Stop Believing? It would become invincible, that's what.

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Tove Lo is cool for the summer

She's not the perfect one (she's never been) but she has her moments. And here's one of them...

Subtler and slinkier than the power-pop of her debut album, Tove Lo's new single is a revelation, as the former infatuation junkie keeps her distance from a hapless suitor.

"I'm a cool girl," she sings, "Ice cold, I roll my eyes at you."

Apparently the song, itself called Cool Girl, was triggered by Rosamund Pike going totally nuts in David Fincher's latest film.

"I got the first inspiration from the Gone Girl movie," she told Rolling Stone. "She's sitting there talking about: 'He wanted a cool girl, so I ate pizza. I drank beer. I made a size two. I didn't give a fuck that he checked out other women.

"I was thinking about it, and it's really true. Why do we try to be someone we're not to make someone love us? Would you want to fake yourself for the rest of your life? That's fucked up. Even though she's creepy, I kind of thought it was funny that it's just very common to see that."

Listen below:

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The Billboard Music Awards were very good

Clothing averse pop star Britney Spears opened last night's Billboard Awards with an eight-minute medley of hits (not including her biggest hits, but she did Toxic so that's ok).

As always, Spears is teetering on a tightrope - will she pull it off or collapse like a souffle in a vacuum? - and the tension is delicious.

When she did a backflip during Touch Of My Hand I felt inexplicably proud of her.



Adele premiered her new video, Send My Love (To Your New Lover) at the ceremony. If you've ever wanted to see 10 Adele's super-imposed over each other with the opacity set to 40%, then this is the video for you.



Bieber, DNCE, Demi Lovato, The Go-Go's, Ke$ha and Tove Lo (ft Nick Jonas) also played - the latter being a short, but sexually-charged blast of power pop.


Bbut my favourite performance of the night was the simplest. With no flam or fanfare, Rihanna delivered a vocally-flawless, impassioned rendition of Love On The Brain, bathed solely in a feather boa and a green spotlight.

Breath-taking.


You can watch the whole thing on 4 Music later tonight.

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Tove Lo breaks some hearts (and beds)

Carnally-obsessed Swedish pop maven Tove Lo has been sharing her songwriting skills with Australian dance wunderkind Flume, and the results are predictably earth-shattering.

Their collaboration, Say It, is a sensual, spellbinding track in which Tove is torn between ending a relationship and staying for some amazing sex. "Bite me babe," she sings. "You make me love the pain / Break my bed to make me wanna stay."

Cor blimey.


The song premiered on Annie Mac's Radio 1 show last night, where Flume explained how the collaboration came about.

"I was in LA doing some writing and I went to see Kanye at the Hollywood Bowl. On our way back, we stopped off at a bar. I heard a track that she [Tove Lo] did, I think it was Habits — I wasn’t really familiar with her stuff but I really, really liked it.

"I was like, 'who is this, I need to figure it out', so I Shazam'd it. Basically, my manager hit her up the day after and she happened to be in LA too and she was down to write. So, all within about two days, we got together and wrote that track. It just happened, it was easy, it was natural."

Tove added:

"I was in LA for a few days between tours when Harley reached out to me about writing together. I've been a big fan of him for a long time so I pretty much ran over to his studio. He played me some ideas which one of them was the track for Say It, and I just started vibing melodies over it and we put together something we loved. It was so relaxed and fun and kind of a new way for me to write. Very excited for people to hear it!"

So there you have it.

Say It comes from Flume's second album, Skin, which is out next week. It also features the sublime Never Be Like You, which was released last month.

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A tale of two Toves

It's a good Friday when you get a new single from Tove Lo and Tove Styrke - officially pop's two best Toves.

First up is Tove Lo, who pops up on Close, the lusty new single by Nick Jonas. Ignoring the fact she'd eat him alive, their duet is admittedly a firework in a powder keg in a volcano.

You can tell Tove approves of the song as, unlike her recent duet with Years & Years, she bothered to turn up for the video.


Tove Styrke - the more alternative Tove of the two Toves - also appears on a collaboration, in this case with wave-making producer Big Wild.

She's added vocals to his instrumental hit Afterglow and, like Sophie Ellis Bextor on Groovejet, improved the track ten-fold.

Just take the opening lyric: "How cool would it be to have diamonds on the soles of my feet / Cause I've worn these sneakers since I was 13."

Superb.

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New music Friday comes up trumps

Imagine how narked Låpsley must be this morning. She spent two years slaving over her debut album, Long Way Home, slowly building her profile, eventually making the Radio 1 playlist and scoring an all-important Live Lounge slot the day before her record hit the shelves.

The stars were aligning perfectly, then Kendrick Lamar pops up out of nowhere, releases an album of cast-offs and steals all the headlines. Damn you, Lamar. Damn you to heck.

Of course, in the era of streaming, no-one needs to decide between Låpsley and Kendrick's albums. We all have them both. And while they couldn't be more different musically, both artists have a lot in common DNA - attention to detail, a flair for drama and a unique voice. Oh, and they're both fans of the oboe (Låpsley used to play one in Liverpool’s Sefton Youth Orchestra, Kendrick put an oboe solo on To Pimp A Butterfly).

If you need a primer, here's Låpsley's heartwrenching new video, Love Is Blind:


Amd her stately cover of Zayn's Pillowtalk (I love those 1990s Steve Silk Hurley synth strings):


And Kendrick's entire Untitled Unmastered album:


And if that wasn't enough new music for you, Years & Years have released a sexed-up version of the former number 22 "hit", Desire. This one features Tove Lo, and there's a lot of heavy petting in the video. Good grief.

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Lots of people released surprise songs for Christmas

It wasn't just The Beatles who had a Christmas surprise up their sleeves. All your favourite artists (and Green Day) sent out free gifts over the festive break. Here they are, for anyone who wasn't using Twitter to avoid their relatives...

LCD Soundsystem - Christmas Will Break Your Heart
James Murphy says: "'Christmas Will Break Your Heart," is another one of those songs which had about 75 lines of lyrics, though we've knocked down to 8 to keep the suicide rate in check."




Tove Lo - Influence
Tove says: "2015 started off in silence with my vocal chord operation and slowly gaining back my voice. I wanna thank you for being so supportive and giving me so much love during this time... by giving you a little taste of what’s coming. Enjoy my new song "INFLUENCE" [she means Influence]. First song I wrote this year after the surgery. Let’s get ready for 2016 together."






Radiohead - Spectre
Thom Yorke says:

Last year we were asked to write a tune for Bond movie Spectre. Yes we were ...........

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) December 25, 2015

... It didn't work out ... but became something of our own which we love very much ....

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) December 25, 2015

.. As the year closes we thought you might like to hear it. Merry Christmas. May the force be with you ... https://t.co/BXN8MQKJyQ

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) December 25, 2015

The Weeknd + Future - Low Life
The Weeknd says: "Merry Xmas"





Miley Cyrus - My Sad Christmas Song
Miley says: "Out nowwwwww on SoundCloud!!!"




Timbaland - King Stays King mixtape
Timbo says: "Aaliyah.. This is for you baby." [NB: This features an actually fantastic, unreleased Aaliyah song called Shakin']




Grimes - Fifteen Minutes To
Grimes says: "We have found this song long time ago but we had decided to keep it hidden till now, cuz someone else found it and kindly share it to us."

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On her good days she is charming as...

Tove Lo's Queen Of The Clouds is a monumental pop album, and Moments is one of its standout, er, moments. An autobiography in song form, it sees the Swedish singer discuss her suburban upbringing ("I was safe, I was fine") and the dawning realisation that she was a bit different from her parents.

"I love freaks," she sings, "I'm rough around the edges, memories and baggage" but (and this is the hook) "on my good days I am charming as fuck."

The song is as tempestuous as the lyrics, with hammering snares and blustery harmonies. And the video, which has just been released, matches it for raw power.

It tells a separate but parallel story of Tove going on an epic bender after being dumped. Using the combined mediums of pills, broken glass, gunshots, laughing, crying, drowning and - yes - interpretive dance, it "takes the meaning of this song to its most extreme," said the star on Facebook.

Brilliant stuff.

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Tove Lo's set off her Timebomb

Timebomb is one of the best songs on Tove Lo's debut album, Queen Of The Clouds, so it's good to see it get a single release.

The track's all about one of those relationships where infatuation and irritation are inseparable - Tove tripping over her tongue as she rants: "I couldn't decide if you were the most annoying human being I'd ever met or just the best thing that ever happened."

The video plays that scenario out for real, with actual couples filmed fighting out their differences while Tove rends her clothes asunder on a beach. Here she is to explain.

#TIMEBOMB the video tells the story of loves that can't last because people around won't let them. And still they fight to stay together. That is also beautiful. And painful. In my heart I believe everyone should be able to love whoever they want. I wanted to shine some light on that in this video. Never take it for granted.

I wanna thank Emil Nava and his whole amazing team, all my peeps and mostly the incredible couples who all dared to be so vulnerable on camera. When you watch this, I hope you feel it as much as I do. Xx Tove

Watch below. The end is a bit saucy but you'll not get sacked for watching it in the office or anything.

Tove Lo - Timebomb

You can also see the video on www.weareatimebomb.com/ - a Chat Roulette sort of site, where you're paired up with a stranger to witness the video unfolding.

"It could be the most annoying human being you ever met, or just the best thing that ever happened," says the blurb.
"After the video ends only a photo will remain of your time together. You can both share the photo wherever you want!"

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A tiny Jessie Ware concert, and other songs you may have missed.

A semi-regular round-up of all the music I couldn't squeeze onto the blog in the last seven days.

Here's this week's selection...

1) Jessie Ware - Tiny Desk Concert
The brilliant Tiny Desk series on US radio network NPR requires musicians to play a no bells and even fewer whistles acoustic set in their offices.

Jessie Ware is the perfect artist for this sort of thing. Her gorgeous, complex alto is enough to keep you captivated, even when the backing track disappears.

She performs Say You Love Me, Wildest Moments and Champagne Kisses. The best 15 minutes you'll spend all week.





2) Rihanna - James Joint
Released in celebration of cannabis enthusiasm day 20 April (420 in American calendar-speak) this is a brief interlude from Rihanna's forthcoming LP.

Suitably laid back and hazy, it's easily the best thing she's released this year.






3) Raury - Fly
Written immediately after news broke that police officer Darren Wilson was not being indicted for murdering unarmed teenager Mike Brown, Raury's heartfelt, complicated plea for a peaceful revolution was a sucker punch to the gut when it premiered in January.

It's even more powerful now that it has a video, which takes an animated trip through the highs and lows of black history in America.





4) Wolf Alice - Bros
Sadly not a tribute to Matt, Luke and Ken, the new single by Wolf Alice is instead a sentimental ode to childhood best friends.

It's been re-recorded since the 2013 original, much to the anger of fans, who seethed on Soundcloud: "Another great song completly ruined by the record business".

I think both versions approach perfection.







5) Natalie Imbruglia - Instant Crush
A Mad Men-inspired video for Imbruglia's acoustic take on the Daft Punk / Julian Casablancas track. What's not to love?





6) Hudson Mohawke - Ryderz
Hudson Mohawke sounds like a Hoxton clothing brand, but actually it's Scottish producer Ross Birchard. He's the backroom boffin behind many of Kanye West's more sonically adventurous productions. In fact, it was to his studio that West fled after this year's Brits to finish off All Day.

He's got his own album, Latern, coming out very soon and this song - which samples D.J. Rogers' Watch Out For The Riders - is one of its many highlights.







7) Chemical Brothers - Sometimes I Feel So Deserted
Back after a break of five years and sounding exactly the same as they did in 1998, here are the Chemical Brothers doing a song that goes bleep and bloop with the sort of computer generated visuals that make stoned people think they're in hyperspace.

Their eighth album, Born In The Echoes, will feature vocals from St Vincent (hooray!), Q-Tip (huzzah!) and Beck (Beck!).




8) The Go Team! - Ya Ya Yamaha
This Record Store Day exclusive is described as "a French girl on a motorcycle song," whatever that means.

All I know is that it's bloody racket, and all the better for it.





9) Sia - Fire Meet Gasoline
Starring Heidi Klum and Game of Thrones' star Pedro Pascal, this video tells an age-old story: Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy murders someone with a rock, boy shows girl the murder weapon, boy and girl have sex, boy and girl burn a house down.

Don't say it hasn't happened to you, too.




10) Tove Lo - Elastic Heart
Earlier year, Tove Lo had to cancel a bunch of performances to have vocal surgery - and doctors warned her she may never sing again.

After coming round from the anaesthetic she "couldn't say anything for five days," the singer told Billboard. "I almost choked on a spring roll because I wasn't supposed to cough! My voice started coming back a little; it sounded very different at first, which is scary."

But judging by this Sia cover, her voice is better than ever. Welcome back, Tove!





11) Young Wonder - Sweet Dreaming
Irish electro-pop duo Young Wonder have been biding their time while they piece together their debut LP. Rather than rush out a half-finished record to capitalise on the success of their eponymous 2013 EP, they've spent 24 months getting it just right.

The delicate production buoys Rachel Koeman's overlapping vocals to create something people are going to be very, very fond of.






12) Jones - Indluge
A gentle love song that's as wickedly indulgent as clotted cream.






13) Adam Lambert - Ghost Town
I've never warmed to Adam Lambert's music - whose lack of originality runs in direct proportion to the intensity of his eyeliner.

But teaming up with Max Martin seems to have solved all of that. Ghost Town is unexpected and unusual, combining guitar-pop and house beats with a surprisingly catchy whistled hook.





14) K Stewart - Keeping You Up
KStewart says she's influenced by Mariah, Whitney and Christina - but thankfully it's only the restrained, pop-centric moments she's interested in, as evidenced on this bubbly, 90s-style slice of harmonic pop.

Self-released on her own imprint Cherry Jam Records, it is one amazing remix away from being the sound of the summer.

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Two pop songs that may be of interest

The Veronicas' album might not be out yet in the UK, but in a parallel universe (Australia) they're already on to single number three.

Cruel seems pretty generic after the icy chills and hot thrills of You Ruin Me and If You Love Someone, but as a balls-out pop song, it does a pretty good job.

The video sees the leather-clad sisters kidnapping a no-good ex-boyfriend and subjecting him to a humiliating punishment in the desert. But then, isn't that the plot of every Veronicas video?

The Veronicas - Cruel

Meanwhile, over in Sweden, emotional whirlwind Tove Lo has been "lending" her vocal talents to indie-pop outfit Urban Cone.

Come Back To Me has the relentless urgency you'd expect from the woman who brought us Habits (Stay High), and it's interesting to hear her voice in a more acoustic / organic setting.

That said, it's a minor track compared to her solo work or the Alleso assisted "We could be hero-oe-oe-oe-woah-ooooahs".

Here is a lyric video.

Urban Cone - Come Back To Me (ft Tove Lo)

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Bodyrockin' with Tove Lo

It's always strange when a pop star I admire releases a song I dislike. I start to reassess our relationship... Why are they beholden to this thing that, to me, seems so meagre? Were the other songs, the ones we agreed on, just a fluke? Is this the beginning of the end?

I've been faced with that situation for a couple of weeks as Tove Lo - indisputably the best new pop star of 2014 - started the teaser campaign for her new single, Talking Body. A giddy song about falling in love, its lyrical conceit is basically a single entendre version of "if I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?"

"If we're talking body
You've got a perfect one
So put it on me
If you treat me right
We fuck for life
On and on and on".
That "fuck" feels gratuitous, doesn't it? And I'm not saying that in a prudish way - Tove deploys the f-bomb brilliantly on some of her other songs ("on my good days I am charming as fuck", from Moments, being my favourite example). Maybe she's trying to capture that first-flush, head-over-heels, I-am-so-horny-right-now frisson of a new relationship - but the lyric is too clinical. It's missing the cheeky allure of, say, Prince's Erotic City, which says the same thing with a much bigger twinkle in its eye.

Anyway, the video comes out today and, while Tove and I may not see eye to eye on the song, the visuals are pretty stunning. It's a one-take sex and crime fantasy that's X-rated in places, but justifiably so in the context.


Tove Lo - Talking Body

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 Albums of 2014

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

10) The Black Keys - Turn Blue

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

The Black Keys - Gotta Get Away



9) Banks - Goddess

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

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

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

Banks - Drowning




8) Jack White - Lazaretto

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

Jack White - Would You Fight For My Love




7) The Pierces - Creation

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

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

Luminous, grown-up pop.


The Pierces - The Devil Is A Lonely Night





6) Tove Lo - Queen of the Clouds

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

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

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


Tove Lo - Moments




5) Katy B - Little Red

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

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

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

Katy B - 5AM





4) Ed Sheeran - X

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

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

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

Ed Sheeran - Don't




3) Taylor Swift - 1989

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

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

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

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

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

Taylor Swift - Out of the Woods





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

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

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

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

Chvrches - Dead Air




1) Jessie Ware - Tough Love

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

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

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

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

Jessie Ware - Say You Love Me

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

See also: Top 10 Singles of 2014

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Discopop Directory: Top 10 singles of 2014

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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



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

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



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

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

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



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




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

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




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

Truly exceptional.




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

Repressed anger has never sounded so beautiful.



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tove Lo has cancelled her London show

SAD FACE EMOTICON HERE. Tove Lo has had to scrap her show in London this week because her vocal cords are distressed.

Now, I'm not a doctor, but I think she should reconsider her grape-eating technique.

Anyway, it's not all bad news, because the Swedish singer has left us with a brand new video by way of compensation. Confusingly, it's for Over - a track from her year old Truth Serum EP, rather than a new single from her (exquisite) album Queen Of The Clouds.

According to the blurb, the video was shot by noted fashion photographer Rankin on London's Hampstead Heath. "Watch the fearless singer brave the elements as she treks across the Heath," the blurb continues, "before ultimately submerging herself in Hampstead's ponds for an emotional climax."

The water looks disgusting. I hope she scrubbed her armpits with Dettol afterwards.

Tove Lo - Over

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Songs you may have missed: Christmas release schedule special

This is the part where a dozen songs are gathered into a list and presented for your listening pleasure.

With Q4 in full swing, this week's selection is jam-packed with songs from major artists hoping to make you part ways with your Christmas pay packet. Starting with...

1) Taylor Swift - Out Of The Woods
"To all my wonderful UK fans, I realize that you are not able to get Out of the Woods due to a new strategy my record label is working on in the UK," said Taylor Swift on Tumblr, after her single was released in every other country except Britain.

Britain, coincidentally, was where she'd spent the previous week on a huge promotional tour, talking animatedly about the single she was releasing next week, suggesting the label hadn't bothered to explain their new strategy to her, and had simultaneously failed to mention that the new strategy was pulled from a big red folder called "how to entirely balls up your biggest artist's release schedule and piss everyone off in the process".

Still, thanks to the internet, you can hear it anyway. Well done, everyone.





2) Take That - These Days
The newly slimmed down Take That take a detour back to their boyband roots with this discoriffic Get Lucky tribute.

The best bit of this release was a knife-twisting Radio 2 interview where Howard brushed off the "tragic" loss of Jason Orange, saying: "Jason is the better break dancer, he's always been fantastic, but if I was gay I could never be his boyfriend because he's a bit annoying, and a bit too deep for me."

Ouch.





3) Calvin Harris - Slow Acid
A worrying sign that Calvin wants to be taken seriously. Luckily, this is only a pre-order wish fulfilment track and not an actual single. About as exciting as a damp flannel.




4) McBusted - Air Guitar
It's hard to hate a song that so clearly states: "Don't take me seriously, I'm just having a laugh" - but it's equally hard to love it.

That said, McBusted have turned in a solid fanbase pleaser that tips its hat to Crazy In Love (yay) and Brian May (hmm). Destined to enter the charts at number one and drop to 23 the next week, but in the best possible way.





5) David Bowie - Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime)
Indebted somewhat to Scott Walker, this seven minute epic is the first track (!) on Bowie's 89th greatest hits collection, which comes out in time for Christmas. If James Bond caught Ebola, this would play over the title sequence.





6) Alesso ft Tove Lo - Heroes (We Could Be)
It feels cruel to put a song called Heroes under the previous entry. Nothing is going to fare well by comparison to Zavid Bowie's masterpiece, but that's pop for you.

This song, an entirely perfunctory EDM track, is presumably the reason why Tove Lo's debut album has been delayed in the UK. Which is fair enough, I suppose. In all likelihood, this'll creep onto the Radio 1 playlist and give her profile a boost while she's off in the US doing promo.

But if 2015 isn't Tove Lo's year in the UK I am going miffed. Miffed, I tell you.





7) Mary J Blige and Disclosure - Right Here
As previously raved about on these very pages, this collaboration is an absolute belter.

It now comes with a video that makes a huge deal about Mary J Blige actually deigning to visit London. Come on, Mary, it's hardly Aleppo.





8) Jess Glynne - Real Love
While we're on the topic of Mary J Blige, Rather Be hitmaker covered one of Mary's oldest and best songs in the Live Lounge earlier this week. She's really giving it some welly in the YouTube player freeze-frame, isn't she?





9) Jessie Ware - 12
To celebrate the release of her brilliant, downbeat, second album this week, Jessie Ware gave everyone the gift of a free download. 12 is a demo, recorded with Rhye's Robin Hannibal, that didn't make Tough Love's final tracklisting.

"This is a song for my [husband] Sam and I hope you like it," she wrote. "Play it late and go kiss someone x"





10) Embody ft A*M*E - Give Me Your Love
Everybody's favourite asterisked artist pops up on this topical deep house track. OK, it's not as slap-you-in-the-face terrific as Need U (100%) but if you can't dance to this your soul is dead. Oh, and it's a free download.





11) Paperwhite - Pieces
Naming yourself after one of Amazon's Kindle devices isn't going to help your search engine results, but you really should delve deep into Google to hear more from this Brooklyn dream-pop act.

Brother and sister Katie and Ben Marshall sound like they've digested the first 20 volumes of Now... That's What I Call Music to conjure up this blissful 80s throwback anthem. That bubbling marimba line is lifted directly from Lionel Richie's All Night Long, and the chord changes and the harmonies sound like vintage Scritti Politti.

If you only listen to one of the songs on this list, make it this one.





12) Will.i.am and Jimmy Fallon - Ew!
There's a recurring segment on Jimmy Fallon's US chat show, in which he and a guest dress up as teenage girls and lists the things that make them sick. Fallon plays Sara ("and if you're wondering, that's S-A-R-A, with no H, because H's are ew!") while guest stars have included Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift and Lindsay Lohan.

It's ridiculously silly - the sort of thing Trev and Simon would have done on Going Live 20 years ago - but it's gained a Wayne's World-esque cult following. And so there is now a novelty single, produced by Mir.i.am, the teenage alter-ego of will.i.am. Naturally, it's the best thing he's done for years.

BLIMEY - that was quite a list. Hope you found one new favourite in amongst there. More again next week.

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Video: Tove Lo - Talking Body

Here is a lyric video to promote an album you can't buy in the UK for three months, even though it's available every other "territory" from Australia to Timbuktu.

Talking Body is written and produced by the same team that created Tove Lo's Habits (Stay High) and it shares that song's quiet-loud / pulsating-gyrating DNA. In other words, it's very good (if a little sweary).

Tove Lo - Talking Body

At this rate, there'll be a video for every track on Queen Of The Clouds before the CD gets within spitting distance of Amazon's warehouse in Marston Gate.

I'm not complaining, I just don't see how that helps Tove sell any records over here.

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New from Tove Lo - Thousand Miles

You know the drill by now: Tove Lo is from Sweden. She is responsible for half a dozen excellent pop songs, including the chart-bothering Habits (Stay High) and Girls Aloud's swansong, Something New. She is a bit of a wildchild, and peppers her interviews with quotes like: "I once set another girl's hair on fire accidentally".

Her album Queen of the Clouds is out next week if you live in the "rest of the world" but - GRRRRR - it isn't even on the schedules for the UK, which means it'll probably be out sometime in 2015 (even though she's playing the Electric Ballroom in November - double grrr).

Of course, you could do what I just did and pre-order it from Amazon's French site (it cost £14.49 once all the taxes and shipping costs were counted but, trust me, it's totally worth it).

If you're not up for all that hassle, Tove's just uploaded a new song called Thousand Miles to YouTube. It's taken from "THE PAIN" section of her album and she describes it like this: "There's no good way to end things - cause it's ending, you know? Passion comes with pain. Here's Thousand Miles, the song that brings me to tears and still lights that string of hope that 'maybe we'll make it'".

It is, inevitably, quite good.

Tove Lo - Thousand Miles

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