Stop everything and watch this

Haim playing Selena Gomez's Bad Liar with a fork and a spoon, in Radio 1's Live Lounge, is the only video you need to watch today.


They also did a passable version of their own single, Want You Back, without the aid of kitchen utensils. If you have time for a second video, this is also a 10/10.

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Demi Lovato: Sorry Not Sorry

Here it is. Sorry Not Sorry: The song that Swish Swish aspired to be... A fierce riposte to [persons unknown] that rises above petty payback with a wry sense of wit.

"I'm on fire and I know that it burns," sings Demi Lovato in full-on foghorn mode. "It'd be nice of me to take it easy on you but... nah."

"A lot of people hear this song and they think it's about an ex-boyfriend," the singer told Amazon Music, "but it's actually a song about the haters."

Actually, I'd argue it's a song about realising that haters are simply acting out their own inadequacies, and learning to take pride in your own achievements. Which is a great lesson for us all, is it not?

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Video: Sigrid - Plot Twist

Is anyone enjoying the business of becoming a pop star more than Sigrid is right now? If they are, I can't think of them...

Sigrid's glee at performing permeates her live shows (check out her Glastonbury appearance for proof) and that exuberance bursts out of the new video for Plot Twist, too.

"Plot Twist is about finally getting over someone," says the Norwegian teen star, via press release, "but we decided we wanted the focus [of the video] to be on me having a good time with my best friends.

"We filmed it in Bergen where I've lived for two years now, and it was the best day!"

A big round of applause to filmmakers Sigurd Fossen and William Glandberger, then. Capturing a natural performance in a pop video is notoriously difficult but they've managed to convey every Kilojoule of her kooky energy.


PS: Bonus points for putting the title of her song on her scarf.

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Dua Lipa colour co-ordinates her slumber parties, and so should you

The best new track on Dua Lipa's eponymous and epochal debut album is New Rules, a song about trying to keep your distance from a boyfriend who's bad for you. In the lyrics, Dua sets out four commandments to avoid falling back into his arms.

One, don't pick up the phone
You know he's only calling 'cause he's drunk and alone
Two, don't let him in
You'll have to kick him out again
Three, don't be his friend
You know you're gonna wake up in his bed in the morning
And if you're under him
You ain't getting over him

It's a quirky, and funny take on the break-up song, and now it's got the video it deserves; with Dua's girlfriends doling out the advice through the medium of a heavily-choreographed, colour-coded slumber party.

"These are the kind of rules you tell to your friends and they would tell to you," she told me at Glastonbury. "So, with the video, I wanted to show unity between women and girls.

"I think it really tells the story of women looking out for each other."

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Kesha turns pain into empowerment on Praying

By all reasonable standards, Kesha's comeback single, Praying is remarkable. Not just her vocal performance (I can't remember the last time a pop single was delivered with such conviction) but also in it's message of forgiveness.

By now, you know the story. Kesha established a reputation as the hard-partying, heavy-drinking wild child of pop through unapologetically brash songs like Tik Tok and Die Young. But behind the scenes, all was not well. In 2014 she sued her producer and label boss Dr Luke for unfair business practices, accusing him of emotional and sexual abuse. He counter-sued for defamation and breach of contract. The state of those court cases is, at best, unclear but the upshot is that Kesha is still contractually bound to Dr Luke's Kemosabe label.

If you ever wondered how difficult women find it to work in the music industry, this is the test case.

Still, with Dr Luke having stepped away from Kemosabe, Kesha is free to release music again via the label's parent company Sony. And all that pain and anguish pours into her new single, Praying.

It opens with the lines, “You almost had me fooled / Told me that I was nothing without you,” which recalls the text of her original complaint against Dr Luke. It alleged he told her, “You are not that pretty, you are not that talented" and "you are nothing without me".

Amazingly, though, the song isn't a straightforward attack, or even an attempt to tell her side of the story. Instead, it is a prayer for his soul.

"This song is about coming to feel empathy for someone else even if they hurt you or scare you,” Kesha wrote on the Lenny Letter website. “It's a song about learning to be proud of the person you are even during low moments when you feel alone. It's also about hoping everyone, even someone who hurt you, can heal.”

Co-written and produced by Ryan Lewis (of "Macklemore And" fame), Praying is a ridiculously overblown companion piece to Christina Aguilera's Beautiful - but Kesha's vocal saves it. Her unfiltered, bruised honesty will stop you in your tracks, even if you've no idea about the context.

Top tip: Listen to it before you watch the video which, while stunning, is a total distraction from the song.

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Liam Payne's new single is better than Liam Payne's last single

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call "damning with faint praise".

Get Low is a collaboration with pop alchemist Zedd, which accounts for the sudden uptick in quality. The German DJ's lightness-of-touch keeps the song afloat with a brisk and uncluttered production that'll drift out of a thousand car windows this weekend.

Lyrically, Get Low doesn't plumb the depths of Liam's hopelessly clumsy Strip That Down: A song about sex that makes Carry On Camping seem intellectually sophisticated. But it still contains the following stanza:

I like the way you take me there
I like the way you touch yourself
Don't hold back, I want that
When the water come down, I'ma get in that
Frankly, if I were Liam's missus, I'd rather go bowling.

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