Here is the "prettified" version of Marina and the Diamonds' new video

Notorious gargoyle Marina Diamandis tweeted on Monday that her record company had delayed her new video because she "looked ugly".

"So, someone at my record label wont let me release the video bc I look ugly in it apparently," wrote the pop star. "We need more $/ time to paint out ugly parts."

Now, let's be blunt: Marina is a total babe. Even though, as she let slip in the Sun this week, she's been wearing a wig for the last 12 months because someone broke all her hair off.

Perhaps in the original cut of the video there was a giant booger hanging out the end of her nose. But I imagine that, when the record label said "you look ugly", what they meant was "you are not showing enough cleavage". Because that is what they always mean.

Anyway, the booger has been removed, the cleavage has been enhanced and the throbbing goiter on Marina's neck has been airbrushed out. Now we can all sit back and enjoy the completed version of the video, safe in the knowledge that the music industry's attitude to women is as depressingly primitive as it was in the 1960s.

Marina And The Diamonds - How To Be A Heartbreaker

Tweet

Cheryl Cole, Thom Yorke... and three other songs you may have missed

It's a run down of some songs that have been on put the internet this week, in no particular order. Roll on the tunes...


1) Cheryl - Screw You
Yes, Screw You a song about having your heart broken and coming back fighting but it is definitely not autobiographical. Even though all the lyrics have a direct parallel to Cheryl's life, she didn't write them and the whole thing is a merry coincidence. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. HAVE I MADE MYSELF UNDERSTOOD?

OK, then. You can watch the video.




2) Atoms For Peace - Default
Atoms For Peace is the Thom Yorke's new project, featuring producer Nigel Godrich and Flea from Back To The Future III.

They came together as a live band a couple of years ago and, according to Yorke, "discovered loads of energy from transforming the music from electronic to live, and so afterwards, we carried on for a few days in the studio and decided to make it a loose, on-going thing - Immersed in the area between the two... electronic and live."

If comparisons are necessary, and they are, Default walks a similar path to Everything In It's Right Place from Kid A - a complicated, skittering song with a menacing swell of keyboard noise.





3) Ke$ha - Die Young
I don't hate this, and that alone makes it noteworthy in the cannon of Ke$ha. Best bit: "I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums" [massive thump on the kick drum]. All songs should do this.




4) Night Engine - I'll Make It Worth Your While
A PR emailed me about brand new London quartet Night Engine earlier this week. Instead of exclaiming "Huw Stephens has tweeted about them!" or "they've played two sold out gigs in a shit pub in Shoreditch!", she explained in 100% ACCURATE terms what the band sounded like: "Talking Heads jitters, Bowie style ice cool and Funkadelic groove."

This is the song in question. A toe-tapper, as my Granny might say.




5) Foxes - Echo
The best video about the romance between a grown woman and a crash test dummy you will see this week, and that's a guarantee.

Tweet

Rihanna premieres Diamonds

After a break of almost 48 minutes, Rihanna has come back with a new single from her seventh (SEVENTH!) album. Diamonds was written by Sia and Rihanna, and production duties come from Stargate and Benny Benassi.

A bit of a slow-burner after all the stompy stompy business on Talk That Talk, Diamonds is basically a power ballad in a party frock: A piano-led, midtempo love song set to the muted thud of a kick drum. "You and I are beautiful like diamonds in the sky," sings Ms Fenty, in one of her best vocal performances to date.

You can listen to a radio rip below. Or, if that disappears, the hi-quality version is available to stream on Rihanna's Soundcloud page.



So that's very good and all - but where does this single rank in the all-time top five of singles with Diamonds in the title? Allow me to illustrate.

Janet Jackson & Herb Alpert - Diamonds


PS: You can download a poster of the lyrics to Diamonds on Rihanna's new website - Rihanna7.com.

Tweet

Review: Lana Del Rey at the Roundhouse for the iTunes festival

Oh Lana, where shall we begin?

The music: That was beautiful. Your acoustic re-arrangements of the Born To Die album tracks were sublime. The four-piece string quartet made the music soar, but not in the frightening, off-key way your voice did when you went for the high notes.

The stage banter: "Could I have more reverb in my ears"; "No, we don't have time for that one". It was like Billy Crystal at the Oscars. ON CRACK.

The choreography: Off. The. Chain. Remember that bit when you walked over there and waved at a guy, then walked over there and fiddled with your hair, huffing and puffing as if the gargantuan effort of it all might make you swoon? They can't teach that kind of stuff at ballet school.

The songs: Video Games, National Anthem, Summertime Sadness. They are all still brilliant. If you'd played for more than 40 minutes, maybe you could have done Off To The Races and Diet Mountain Dew, too.

And the singing. Oh, the singing. You know in La Vie En Rose, when Edith Piaf is dying of emphysema and her voice is all over the place, like a ragged sock in a tumble dryer? I enjoyed your impersonation of that. And I liked how you followed it up by saying, "You love it when I go a little bit jazzy."

But here's the thing... It might seem like I'm being negative and critical and, basically, a total bastard - but I really, really enjoyed myself.

Those songs, those arrangements, and even those languid, buttery vocals cast a bewitching, stupefying spell over the audience. I doubt another artist in the world could have pulled it off, but you managed it, you gauche pop superhero in skinny blue jeans.

Enigmatic, phlegmatic, idiosyncratic, melodramatic, hydromatic - why, it was greased lightning.

Set list
Blue Jeans
Body Electric
Born To Die
Summertime Sadness
Million Dollar Man
Video Games
Radio
Without You
National Anthem

You can watch the whole gig on iTunes now. Which is where this fantastic picture comes from...

Tweet

A*M*E and an ode to Nintendo

Judging by the number of times A*M*E says "play the gameboy" in this video, I suspect that her mum's been kidnapped by Bowser.

But before we get to the song (which is a bloody good pop tune) here is your cut out and keep guide to A*M*E and how she got to be where she is now, which is on this blog.

A*M*E - Play The Game Boy


That's out on Guy Fawkes Day, fact fans.

Tweet

New Music: St Lucia - September

St Lucia is a band. Or rather, St Lucia is the stage name of Jean-Philip Grobler (try gargling that with your tea), and some of his mates from Brooklyn.

They're signed to Neon Gold Records - the label that launched Passion Pit, Ellie Goulding and The Naked & Famous - which should give you an idea of the sonic territory St Lucia operate in: Blissed out cerebral pop with a cool breeze of 80s synths.

What I like about Jean-Philip is that he fully acknowledges his debt to 80s pop, rather than wearing it as a badge of hipster ironic cool. Here he is talking to The Deli Magazine earlier this year.

I started making music when I was about 11 or 12 years old... I was really into Boyz II Men, Michael Jackson, Sting and Phil Collins. I was making these pop songs, I suppose in a sense similar to what I'm doing now, and at all times I had about three albums planned out that never came to fruition because, well, I was at school.

Seriously, which music fan didn't do this as a child? My first album, created when I was about eight, was called "The Ruby Rubik's Cube" - which, I have to say, seemed pretty awesome at the time.

After dabbling in alternative rock, and joining South Africa's Drakensberg Boys Choir School, Grobler remembered his love of big chunky 80s keyboards and sunny pop melodies. Which brings us to today, and St Lucia's new single, the appropriately-timed-and-titled September.



And if you liked that, you should check out Before The Dive, from the band's eponymous EP, which is available on iTunes now.

St Lucia - Before The Dive

Tweet