En route to Glastonbury

The waterproofs are packed, the sun cream is not. Glastonbury, I am coming to you.

From a news point of view, one person is going to dominate the headlines and that person is Parton.


Admist the work, I'm hoping to catch Jurassic 5, Wolf Alice, Chvrches, The Black Keys and Lana Del Rey. I suspect Rudimental will see a sales boost from their main stage set, but Arcade Fire - while incredible live - will seem strange and wonky on TV. Prince is not turning up, and Cliff Richard hasn't died.

My updates from the festival will be on Twitter - @BBCNewsEnts for the official stuff and @mrdiscopop for the nonsense. But I'll mostly be locked in a Portacabin writing web pages for the BBC website.

All that activity means the blog will be silent for a couple of days - but to keep you going here's a new single from Sia.



And a new single from The Saturdays (and Xenomania!)


And the quite impressive opening of Jay-Z and Beyonce's joint "On The Run" tour.


See you next week!

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Big tune: Jhené Aiko - To Live and Die

Jhené Aiko has been a name to drop since she provided guest vocals for two songs on Drake's Nothing Was The Same last year. Her subsequent EP, Sail Out, sold a quarter of a million and she scored a number one on the R&B charts with its lead track, The Worst.

The Drake connection is a good indication of what you're in for: Stoned soul, stormy emotions and gramatically-incorrect phrases like "please don't take it personal". What stops her from being another imitator is a sweet, tender falsetto that imbues her songs with a heart-rending fragility.

Ahead of her appearance at this weekend's BET Awards, Aiko has popped a new single on the internet. To Live & Die is the first release from her debut album, Souled Out, and it features Cocaine 80s, who are apparently a hip-hop crew of some description.

Caught in a musical tug-of-war with an indecisive partner, the 26-year-old delivers her lyrics just behind the beat, creating a palpable sense of apprehension. "Love side, hate side, never in between," she sings. "Live forever for love - or you can die today".

The song was premiered last night by DJ PupDawg, who helpfully spoiled the mood by putting his "tag" all over the top of it. If you can ignore that, it sounds like a hit.

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Remix ahoy: Coldplay's Sky Full of Stars

It's a solid gold fact that Coldplay songs instantly become 20 times better when someone shoves a drum machine, two rave synths and a stick of dynamite up their backside, strikes a match, lights the fuse, retreats to a safe distance, records the results and hands them over to Dave Pearce.

It's another solid gold fact that putting crowd noise underneath a song makes it more exciting by a factor of a million (conservative estimate). The KLF never mentioned it in "The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way)" but they did it on every single one of their songs. Look at the liner notes to The White Room, and it's right there: They sampled crowd noise from live albums by U2, The Doors and - if you can believe it - Haircut 100. It works. Every time.

So imagine a Coldplay song that's been given an explosive rave enema AND had the sound of an enthusiastic audience slapped all over the top of it. Well, you don't have to imagine it, because someone has done it for you. Here's the Hardwell Remix of Sky Full of Stars:


Disappointingly, this turns out to be a live recording of a DJ playing the song to a crowd of tanked-up holiday revellers. The studio version of the remix is precisely 25% less brilliant, but an improvement on the original, nonetheless.

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Zola Jesus rises again

Four years ago, I wrote a solitary blog post about Zola Jesus (Nika Danilova to her mum) noting that she made music in the vein of Florence and the Machine, without any of the recognition or fanfare.

She's released a couple of albums in the interim, sadly without much to show for it, but her new single made my ears prick up like Bugs Bunny when he spots the sexy lady rabbit from the Cadbury's Caramel advert. It turns out Zola recently signed to Mute Records, home to Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode, and some of their gothic pop stylings have rubbed off on her.

Dangerous Days, the lead track from the forthcoming album Taiga, is sideways synthpop, that manages to be angelic and sultry all at the same time. Can you even have sultry angels? What would that look like?

The good news is you can get Dangerous Days for free by sending Zola an email (or, rather, donating your email address to her record label) on her official website.

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Put away those "one-hit wonder" stickers, the new Icona Pop single is really good

Need I say more?

The song in question is called Get Lost and, even on this poor-quality radio rip, it's exuberant and intoxicating and (yes) shouty.

Icona Pop - Get Lost

Debuted live on Thuesday night, the song was played on Swedish radio this morning and is apparently available on Swedish iTunes later this week.

Asked by a fan if it was going to come out in the rest of the world, they said: "We promise, just have to start somewhere. And it will be on spotify!"

The band also provided a sample of the lyrics written with a pen on a scrap of paper. How 20th Century:

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Songs you may have missed: Time pressure edition

Hey there... I'm knee-deep in Glastonbury preparations right now. Interviews to transcribe, features to write, schedules to be finalised, wellies to be de-stinkified. So this week's "songs you may have missed" column comes with the bare minimum of commentary. 

But that's not to say I don't have some corking tunes to embed. So here they are:

1) The one where Alt-J sample Miley Cyrus
Not as bad as it sounds.




2) The one where OK Go play tricks with perspective
If only they wrote songs as well as they made music videos.



3) The one where Coldplay pretend to be buskers while clearly miming to a backing track
Try to watch this without cringing.



4) The one where Sinead O'Connor sounds reinvigorated
Unexpectedly brilliant.



5) The one where Duke Dumont hopes to score a third successive number one
He's got more bangers than a butcher.




6) The one with Beth Ditto and some Belgian guy
Key lyric: "I'm over-thinking everything. I'm drinking everything."




7) The one where Tove Lo makes her US TV debut
Bare of foot, husky of voice, tousled of hair. I love her.




8) The one by an artist called "Potato Potato"
Clicked on it for the name, stayed for the song.





9) The one with Jess Glynne in the back of a pick-up truck
She's lucky she didn't break her neck.




10) The one with Lana Del Rey and an awesome guitar solo
One of the six good songs on Lana's new album.

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