People win prizes, pt 293

Last night, James Blake won the Mercury Prize for best album of the year; and Chvrches won the Popjustice Prize for best single of the year. Understandably, they were both quite pleased.

.@Popjustice Woooo!! Thanks to everyone who voted/argued!!! A new career high point. #HappyChvrches #TwentyQuid pic.twitter.com/VUv9DEuXJu

— CHVRCHES (@CHVRCHES) October 30, 2013

But a lot of people who aren't James Blake and Chvrches are annoyed. They wanted other artists to win instead. Artists like the Arctic Monkeys or Disclosure or The Saturdays (!) but mainly David "Zavid" Bowie. Somehow, though, I doubt David is weeping into his chamomile tea this morning (he's too busy playing with his life-sized David Bowie puppets and making prank calls to Iggy Pop).

Personally, I reckon both sets of judges got it right.

What we have here are two odd-but-brilliant records that could only have been made in the UK. Both artists needed a helping hand to reach a wider audience and, crucially, they're both as good on stage as they are on record (one YouTube commentator argues that Blake's live vocals are "a mixture between a unicorn and Jesus").

If you read this blog regularly, you've probably heard them before. But just in case you clicked the wrong link on Google this morning, here's what you've been missing.

James Blake - Retrograde (live)


Chvrches - The Mother We Share (live)

BONUS: Putting this post together, I stumbled across another live performance of The Mother We Share, which completely tears the song apart and rebuilds it from the ground up. It's utterly beautiful.

Chvrches - The Mother We Share (Billboard session)

Pop music is amazing, isn't it?

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Superb, free Ellie Goulding remix

Today's track is a magical, heart-wrenching MP3 from Ellie Goulding and Active Child. Here's a 15-point history of how it came to be.

1) A man called Pat Grossi (top right, ginger) learns to play the harp

2) Pat changes his name to Active Child and makes an album of plinky-plonky indie

3) It gets great reviews but is bought by approximately seven people

4) One of those people is "Starry Eyed" chanteuse Ellie Goulding (top left, woolly jumper)

5) Ellie gets to track two and thinks "Oh, I quite like this song"



6) Ellie decides to cover Hanging On for a laugh

7) It ends up setting the direction for her second album, Halcyon

8) She calls it "the beginning of my new journey", like an X Factor contestant

9) Then Tinie Tempah ruins everything by "contributing" a rap about his indigestion medication



10) Active Child is impressed enough with the non Tinie-Tempah bits of to record a duet with Ellie

11) It is called Silhouette and is replete with surging strings, ghostly harmonies and a tooting clarinet



12) After it appears on an EP, Californian knob-twiddlers Shoe Scene Symphony get their hands on the song and tart it up with a wheelbarrow full of synths

13) It sounds like it should be on the Hunger Games soundtrack

14) Instead, they make it available as a free download

15) "et voila"

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New music from Katy B and Disclosure

New music from Katy B is always welcome. New music from Disclosure is always welcome. So to get both on the same day is quite a treat.

Katy's track is a gently-strummed acoustic ballad with a mournful, hushed vocal about the polar ice caps. Oh, alright then - it's a banging dance track about falling in love in a club. "I like you a little bit... More than I should," she demurs as synths spiral around her like jetstreams.



Disclosure, meanwhile, have uploaded a brand new, throbbing late-night dub to Soundcloud. Called Apollo, it's largely instrumental and sounds like it'll go down a storm on their DJ sets.



Hopefully, the appearance of the new track means Disclosure's Mercury-nominated debut album Settle is due for a deluxe edition. I've already had put together a tentative tracklisting in a previous blog post, in case anyone from Island Records needs a head start. You're welcome.

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Angel Haze remixes Same Love

In case you missed this last week (because I did), here's US rapper Angel Haze putting her own spin on Macklemore's pro-gay, pro-acceptance, anti-bigotry anthem Same Love.

The original is, rightly, being hailed as an important milestone. The lyrics challenge rap music's default position of homophobia ("If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me / Have you read the YouTube comments lately? / "Man, that's gay" gets dropped on the daily"). Sometimes the lyrics are a little simplistic - but its heart is in the right place and it deservingly won the clunkily-titled "best video with a message" award at this year's MTV VMAs.

Interestingly, though, frontman Ben Haggerty asserts his own heterosexuality within the first four lines. Angel Haze makes no such caveats. Her opening salvo is stark and brutal: At age 13 my mother knew I wasn't straight / She didn't understand but she had so much to say / She sat me on the couch, looked me straight in my face / And said, 'You’ll burn in hell or probably die of AIDS'.

With more raw power than a nuclear plant, the full seven-minute version will take your breath away.



Same Love is part of the rapper's 30 Gold project, where she's freestyling over other people's tracks every day for a month on her Soundcloud page. Her acoustic version of Wrecking Ball is highly recommended, while her take on Jay-Z's Tom Ford is better than the original.

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Fab Macca's celebrity friends and five other songs you may have missed

It's that time again: A bunch of songs from the last seven days that you may not have seen, or that you have seen but I forgot to blog about along the way. Either way, here's this week's Bo Selection.

1) Paul McCartney - Queenie Eye
Meryl Streep, Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Jeremy Irons, Tom Ford, Sean Penn, Chris Pine: All of them dancing awkwardly to Paul McCartney's new single.

Like the title track of Sir Paul's new album, New, this is a pleasant return to a sort of Beatlesy instrumentation and chord progression - although the production by Paul "turn up the drums" Epworth is strangely neutered.




2) M.I.A - Yala
I was very excited to interview musical provocateur M.I.A. earlier this week (the interview is going up on the BBC soon) - and she didn't disappoint. The interview covered the NSA, Wikileaks, the SuperBowl, Hindu mysticism and the wonders of Sade's farm - from which M.I.A. borrowed a cow for her Bring The Noize video (no, really).

MIA went on from our interview to speak to Zane Lowe and premiere her new song YALA - You Always Live Again. It's been interpreted as an attack on Drake's YOLO, but she told me that was nonsense. "It's not an anti-Drake song, it's just an alternative concept," she sighed. "People find offense in anything."




3) Kelly Clarkson - Underneath The Tree
Today is officially 2 months before Christmas Day, so what better time to enjoy Kelly Clarkson's first ever Yuletide single? It fits snugly into Phil Spector's sleighbell-tastic template, although it's no All I Want For Christmas Is You.




4) The Internet - Dontcha
Fancy some mid-90s acid jazz vibes? The here are Odd Future-offshoot The Internet to help you out. Equal parts Brand New Heavies and Solange, Dontcha has one hell of a slinky bassline. Niiiice.




5) Svē - Talking To The Walls
Svē is an unsigned artist from Brooklyn, who majored in songwriting at college and recorded this single "in bedrooms and closets". It doesn't sound like it. Talking To The Walls is a stunning, slow-burning pop ballad, whose chorus will fling you out of your socks. Very, very impressive.




6) Jungle - The Heat
Mysterious London duo Jungle were recently named NME's New Band Of The Week - but don't let that put you off. The group don't let anyone see their faces, but the music can do the talking just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Their new single is a slippery twist of funk, and the video is sublime. Expect big things.

That's it for this week. Congratulations if you got this far.

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Five best bits from Little Mix's Move video

Little Mix's Move is a hair-tossing, lock-and-popping, body-rocking, pop video extravaganza.

Or, as one manic YouTube commenter put it: "OMG IT IS JUST OMG AAAAGG I LOVE TGIS SONG AND THE CLIP YOU ALL ARE BEAUTIFULL AND YOUR VOICES ARE THE BEST YOU ALL ARE MY INSPIRATION!"

Here are five of the best bits.

1) Jade checks her cuffs, James Bond-style, before the vocals kick in

2) Leigh-Anne makes a horlicks of recreating the Janet album cover

3) Expert hair tossing moment from Jesy

4) Erm, not sure what's going on here

5) The Big Dance Finish

And, without any further "ado", here's the whole thing. As you can see, it is at least 100% OMG*.

Little Mix - Move

* OMG may go up or down. Your blood pressure may be at risk if you're a hormonal teenager who's invested too much of their self-esteem in the vagaries of a manufactured pop group.

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