The return of Leona Lewis and 10 more songs you may have missed

A semi-regular round-up of songs I've been too busy, lazy, stupid or myopic to blog about in the last week or so.

Today's page sees the long overdue comeback of Leona Lewis, a high school gem from Mark Ronson and a heart-warming performance by the Blur.

Enjoy!

1) Leona Lewis - Fire Under My Feet
It's as if Leona Lewis, owner of the world's most pointless umbrella, downloaded the blueprint for Adele's Rolling In The Deep and ran it through a cheap 3D printer.

The results are good - this is a perfectly-rousing slab of gospel pop - but you can't escape the nagging feeling that you've heard it, better, before.

The lyrics are bound to earn a few tabloid inches, given that Leona's new material has been very publicly trailed as a sideswipe at Simon Cowell, whose label she left last year. "Moving on to bigger things, I begin to spread my wings," she sings. "No longer in chains, I'm dancing over these graves."

A return to form, yes. But there's better to come on her new album.





2) Prince - Baltimore
A call for gun control in the US is the centrepiece of Prince's protest song, Baltimore - inspired by the death of youngster Freddie Gray in police custody.

"If there ain't no justice then there ain't no peace," chants the purple one over the sound of marching feet. It's a stirring, timely tune.





3) Lunchmoney Lewis - Bills
Lunchmoney, as well as holding a Guinness record for the worst stage name ever, has worked with both Nicki Minaj and Jessie J. This song sounds more like 1990s novelty abomination Scatman John, though.

A contender for song of the summer, with all the dumb joie de vivre that implies. You are never going to hear the end of it.





4) Mark Ronson and Mystikal - Feel Right
Set in a school talent show, and starring a marvellous mini-Mystikal, this video is a riot.





5) Chemical Brothers ft Q Tip - Go
It's unreasonable to expect the Chemicals to match the lunatic brilliance of Push The Button on this, their latest collaboration with Q-Tip. And so it turns out - Go has a brilliantly nagging bassline, and the duo still know how to build a crescendo, but the chorus falls sadly flat.

It's not helped by an abnormally uninspired Michel Gondry video.





6) Rachel Jane- Awaken
Born in Bristol and raised in Bath, 19-year-old singer/songwriter Rachel Jane is shaping up to be one to watch this year.

Awaken is one of the most surprising, rhythmically complex songs I've heard in ages. Beatboxing, tribal percussion, and drum and bass loops all get referenced in this primal, chanting track that rips up Florence's template and rearranges the pieces into something altogether more lissome.







7) Ed Sheeran - Photograph
Ed Sheeran raids the family archives for this touching little ditty.

Following the singer (who looks adorably like the Milky Bar kid) from cradle to stardom, it ends with the young Ed climbing on a rock and being asked by his father, "Are you at the top of the mountain?" - before cutting to Sheeran on stage saluting a festival crowd. Lucky bastard.






8) Lianne La Havas - Unbreakable (Jungle remix)
Jungle's shimmering, summery funk snuggles up to the supple new single from Lianne La Havas. A clever, thoughtful remix that elevates the original.






9) BenZel - Waiting.... ft Ben Abraham
Jessie Ware collaborators BenZel are in fact super-producers Benny Blanco and Two Inch Punch. Their new single is a stuttering, chaotic electro banger, drenched in pitch-shifted vocals.

Worth sticking around to the end to hear a sample of the common-or-garden soul track the duo ripped apart to make their record.







10) Lyza Jane - If It Hurts
Alt-pop singer Lyza Jane describes this video as "looking like Barbie's bad trip". She's not wrong.





11) Blur - Tender (acoustic with Jimmy Fallon)
You can't help but be buoyed by the irrepressible grins on Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn's faces during this performance. It's nice to know the band - whose Magic Whip album is much better than it has any right to be - are properly enjoying their reunion. Or this bit of it, at least.

And that's your lot for this week. More as soon as I can muster, I promise!

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A regrettable video from Everything Everything

Ah, Everything Everything. The only band on planet pop who could rhyme "wrong" with "automaton" and get away with it.

The couplet comes from their new single, Regret - possibly the catchiest thing they've ever done, powered by a Phil Spector drumbeat and Jonathan Higgs' swandive falsetto.

Produced by Stuart Price (hooray!) it distils a non-specific sense of paranoia into a lively, aggressive pop stomp.

"I wanted to make something that makes you get angry and want to do something about it, because that's how I was feeling," Higgs recently told the NME about their latest record. "Don't quiz me on the politics of Syria or Ukraine, I don't fucking know, but I do know it makes me feel wretched and confused and anxious without having to know who's right and who's wrong."

Higgs has also directed the glitchy video, in which a cult leader and his followers descend into madness.

"I wanted to show people in the throes of ecstasy and pain, finding something strong in their faith, and becoming more and more extreme in their emotions and behaviour," he said, via press release. "It's supposed to be a look into the minds of extremists and what if feels like to really believe something, regardless of how deep or dark it goes."

The main character is depicted as a horrifying a head of teeth - torpedoing any chance of being seen on The Box at 9am. But you get the impression Everything Everything were never aiming for Olly Murs-style chart dominance, anyway.

Everything Everything - Regret

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Britney and Iggy: Haunted by the ghost of Charli XCX?

Iggy Azalea ditched Charli XCX for the follow-up to Fancy, but the British star casts a shadow all over the track.

Pretty Girls – leaked at the weekend, and officially released yesterday – rides the same rhythmic pulse as Fancy, and co-vocalist Britney Spears’ bratty sing-speak is a pure lift from XCX’s pop-punk stockpile.

It’s also Spears’ most engaged vocal for years – as she delivers a sassy lecture on her enduring allure: "Every time I walk out of my house it's like, 'Hey baby!'” she deadpans. “They don't see me rolling my eyes".

Produced, like Fancy, by the Invisible Men, the track was co-written by Little Mix. Yes, that Little Mix. Who’d have thunk?

Iggy Azalea and Britney Spears - Pretty Girls

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A spurious documentary about TV theme tunes

This Saturday, BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a documentary called "The Lost Art of the TV Theme". Presented by Rich Morton - a comedian who makes his own pastiche TV themes - it posits that today's programmes are blighted by "generic music which would defy most people's attempts to hum it".

According to the blurb: "His suspicion is that programme-makers in the 1980s - perhaps as a result of squeezed budgets - stopped commissioning specially-written music and turned instead to cheaper alternatives, such as adapting instrumental extracts from pre-existing pop records."

Never mind that the entire programme is based on a "suspicion" (never a great start for a documentary), the premise is obviously ridiculous. Restricting myself to the 21st Century, here are just eight instantly memorable (and original) pieces of TV themery.

















And let's not forget The Wire, Mad Men, Big Brother, Game of Thrones, True Blood, Firefly, Downton Abbey, Veronica Mars, 24, QI, Brooklyn Nine Nine... The list goes on.

The one thing I'll concede is that (BBC and Netflix shows aside) theme tunes have been drastically shortened since the heyday of Dallas and Dynasty - thanks to increased advertising minutes eating into the shows' running times. But there's something fantastic about the brevity of (for example) the 30 Rock theme, which telegraphs everything you need to know about the programme's quirky, quickfire wit in a brief 18 seconds.

The Lost Art of the TV Theme airs on Saturday at 10:30am.

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Leon Bridges' new single is utterly beautiful

Leon Bridges has more buzz than a beehive right now, and deservedly so. His music feels like it belongs to a different era, and his voice will send Sam Cooke shivers down your spine.

Hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, his songs are pure heart and soul - simple in their delivery, but devastating in their impact.

Case in point is his new single, River, in which the 25-year-old sings: "Oh I wanna come here and give you every part of me... but there's blood on my hands and my lips are unclean."

The backing track is barely there - a muted guitar strum, a lonely tambourine, and an unusually subdued gospel choir - so it's all about Bridge's whisky-scorched vocals, which aim straight for your gut.

Leon Bridges - River

River is the closing track on Bridges' debut album, due out in June.

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You take the high Rhodes

Pop newcomer Rhodes is not, as I assumed, named after the Fender Rhodes electric piano - one of the most iconic keyboards of all time (if you've heard Stevie Wonder, you've heard a Rhodes piano).

No, it's the actual surname of David Rhodes, a moody and mysterious songwriter from Hitchin in Hertfordshire. He's been hanging around on the fringes of success for a year or so now, working with members of London Grammar and Noah and the Whale as he plots his breakthrough.

And his new song, Close Your Eyes, is one of those "head above the parapets" moments. Like a less whiney Sam Smith, it looks set to prop up playlists on both Radio 1 and Radio 2 this summer.

It starts small: "Maybe I am just as scared as you", sings David, curled up and timid - before an astonishing vocal riff lifts him into a soaring chorus. "I'll never let go. You're right beside me, so just close your eyes".

Expect this to soundtrack at least one X Factor montage by August.

Rhodes - Close Your Eyes

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