My, My, My Delilah

20-year-old Delilah is shaping up to be one to watch in 2012. Her first single, Go (the one that reworked Chaka Khan's Ain't Nobody into a spooktastic moodyfest) was rush-released in September due to popular demand.

The follow-up is called Love You So and it's a macabre masterpiece, slowly drowning in minor key strings and apocalyptic drums. Delilah has a beautifully understated, hushed vocal style. The effect is to make lines like "I'm pointing a gun at my oldest friend" eerily chilling, where lesser singers would oversell the sentiment.

Very good all round. And there's a polar bear in the video.

Delilah - Love You So


Interesting fact: Delilah's real name is Paloma, but she had to choose a new stage name after Paloma Faith became famous. It would clearly have been better if Delilah had changed her name to "Paloma Hope", persuaded Cher Lloyd to change her name to "Paloma Charity" and formed an entirely dreadful supergroup.

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Nicola Roberts and a CGI biscuit

When you watch Yo Yo, the new video by Nicola Roberts, you will notice a lot of empty white space in the frame. I can only assume that the director's original intention was to add a CGI character - EG a happy chocolate chip cookie - but ran out of money before work could be completed.

Because I am a caring, sharing type of person - I have taken a couple of stills from the video and photoshopped in the missing character, who shall henceforth be known as Gary The Biscuit. I think you will agree it is a complete triumph.

Here is the unfinished* version of the video. The song is quite brilliant, by the way.

Nicola Roberts - Yo Yo


* Obviously, this is actually the finished version and I am being "humorous".

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Someone told Bruno Mars how to get to Sesame Street

This little video of Bruno Mars and the stars of Sesame Street exists in the same universe as Olly Murs' X Factor performance with the Muppets - but is precisely 9,074 times less irritating.

Bruno Mars - Don't Give Up


Doesn't that make you feel a whole lot better?

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A Mini-me video frenzy

The fifth single from Noah And The Whale's album Last Night On Earth is going to be Give It All Back. A semi-factual account of the band's formation, the song recounts their "nervous and awkward" first gig at a school assembly, back when they were called Devil's Playground. It's a scene many will find familiar...

I still remember the sixth form concert where my first group made its stage debut. As this was 1991 we had co-ordinated our wardrobes, having earlier decided that blue suede waistcoats and white cotton shirts were 'bodacious threads'. Our closing number, an ambitious syncopated funk number, was widely discussed for days afterwards. And by "discussed", I absolutely mean "ridiculed".

For the video to Give It All Back, Charlie Fink and Co. have recreated their first performance using a special rose-tinted lens that makes their tentative steps onto the stage look incredibly accomplished. In fact, inter-cutting the child actors with the current line-up kind of makes the adults look bad at their job.

Noah And The Whale - Give It All Back


While the kids-version-of-adult-band thing is very cute, this isn't the first video to attempt it. For example...

Queen - The Miracle


Michael Jackson - Bad (Moonwalker version)


There have got to be more. Can you name any?

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Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis cover Serge Gainsbourg

Admittedly, this post is more for the headline than the music - but just take a minute to let that sentence sink in: Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis have covered Serge Gainsbourg.

Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis – Ballade de Melody Nelson


Fans of pervy French lounge pop will be pleased to know that this comes from an album of Gainsbourg covers, produced by his son Lulu. Also featuring are Rufus Wainwright, Iggy Pop and Scarlett Johansson, who turns in a listlessly romantic performance on Bonnie & Clyde.

Scarlett Johannson and Lulu Gainsbourg - Bonnie & Clyde


The album, From Lulu To Gainsbourg, is available for pre-order on Amazon. Me, I'm off to spend the day watching Vanessa Paradis videos on Youtube. I always loved that album she did with Lenny Kravitz in the early 1990s, in an unashamedly non-ironic way (yes, even the inexplicably faithful cover of the Velvet Underground's drug anthem Waiting For The Man).

Vanessa Paradis - Natural High (live 1994)

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FOX QUIZ... IT'S A FOX QUIZ!!

Competition time: There are nine foxes illustrated below, but only one of them is amazing new synthpop artist Foxes. Which is which? Only you can decide.

Clicking on the correct picture will take you to a free download of Foxes' new single, Youth. One of the others will take you to a video of a penguin attacking a human man.

Every picture hides a prize. Everyone's a winner, "etc".



Foxes is 22-year-old Louisa Rose Allen (no relation to Lily but you can see why she's ditched the name) and she's just been signed up to very-good-at-spotting-female-talent record label Neon Gold. Youth comes out as a 7" vinyl in January - and if you can't be bothered with clicking on all those images, here's the video for the b-side Home.

Foxes - Home

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