One year ago yesterday we featured La Roux's Kitsune-released single 'Quicksand' as a Popjustice Song Of The Day. She was already signed to Polydor and, when 2009 rolled around, Polydor pulled out the stops and she became Literally Quite Successful.
For the 2009/2010 version it's Neon Gold releasing the teaser single and the single's by Ellie Goulding (and is brilliant), with Polydor due to kick things off properly next year.
The video for 'Under The Sheets':
There aren't really lots of Ellie Gouldings - it's done with special effects.
Well readers it's four months since Girls Can't Catch first unveiled their now classic 'Keep Your Head Up' video, with its croquet-on-a-rubbish-dump theme. At the time it seemed ridiculous - now, of course, the band are seen as visionaries.
We have three points to make here, all on the topic of Girls Can't Catch.
1. 'Keep Your Head Up' was on Coronation Street the other day. Have you noticed that Weatherfield seems to somehow be a magnet for amazing pop music? Whether it's the Rovers jukebox or the Underworld factory radio, they're always banging out brilliant tunes. What's their local radio station called, and can we listen online?
2. Excuse our language here but when the bastard is 'Echo' coming out, it's still v good.
Marketing ideas for this single: 1. Team up with various local newspapers (Liverpool Echo, Dorset Echo, Basildon Echo etc) to basically carpet-bomb the entire country with some sort of tie-in thing on week of release. 2. Release a CD single which features the same version of 'Echo' ten times, with each track slightly quieter than the first. 3. Get Mr Eko from Lost to be in the video. 4. Do a special version about ex-EastEnders actor Michael Greco. 5. That's all we've got.
3. It's nice to see Jess from the band is keeping busy.
Here's a photo she tweeted at us last Saturday night.
Alphabeat's new album 'The Spell' isn't out in the UK until next year but in it's out on Monday in Denmark, and the Danish iTunes Store are offering up thirty second preview clips of all the tracks. Clicking here should take you to the page in question, but you'll need to change country to get to the Danish iTunes Store.
We've had a few weeks to get to know this album and we do love it, but one thing you'll immediately notice from the clips is that band's current single, also called 'The Spell', isn't their only nod to the early-to-mid-90s Euro dance scene. In fact (have we mentioned this before somewhere? It all seems strangely familiar) all traces of the sound that made the band popular have now gone, which is a brave move that mostly works in the band's favour. The melodies are all in place, for example, and the production does capture some of the whooshes of excitement you'd get from a Haddaway or Corona single. Some of the lyrics are great but in many places are utter drivel which, to be fair, maybe adds to the 90s pop authenticity.
What doesn't feel quite right is that such an abrupt change in style leaves one wondering what Alphabeat really sound like, if they actually have a sound, or whether they'll just hop from album to album being inspired by different genres each time, sticking to sets of influences so strongly that each LP almost seems like a concept album. Perhaps that's no bad thing, but before long fans will want to feel like they're really getting to grips with what the band are like. As it currently stands, after the 80sisms of the first album and the 90s 'bent' of this one we're expecting a full on 2000s revival for album three. Album four will be influenced by the 2010s but album five is where things will get interesting: it'll be released in the late 2010s but will actually be influenced by the 2020s.
If this reads like a negative review it's not - we've been hammering this album and love loads of things about it. It's just that sometimes when it's on we're not sure exactly what it is we're listening to.
We7 is a music streaming service. The service they provide is pretty good - they were behind the Rihanna widget yesterday, for example - and their catalogue isn't exhaustive but it manages to cover at least most bases.
Sadly, they also send out press releases like this.
It'd be fairly opportunistic at the best of times, and what is the world of PR without a bit of opportunism thrown in, but chucking out a press release only after the mainstream press have already started running stories about the similarity (and by that we mean several weeks after everybody else noticed the resemblance, debated it then moved on) seems lazy, disinterested and almost cowardly to boot.
Mind you, while it might be a pretty dire ambulance-chasing PR effort it's not as if anyone could take offence at this. It's not like We7 are doing something in properly bad taste simply to promote their service.
No, for an example of that, let's have a look at an email We7 sent out over the summer.
Check out the date and time that email was sent. We'd take a guess and say that Michael Jackson's body was literally not even cold when they sent that out.
Ke$ha is performing at a sophisticated showcase (trans: FREE BOOZE FREE BOOZE FREE BOOZE) in London next week and we've got ten pairs of tickets to pass on so that you, the Popjustice viewer, can see this talented new singer (FREE BOOZE FREE BOOZE FREE BOOZE) perform her wonderful songs (FREE BOOZE).
If you want to come, send an email to
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and tell us what position you think this single...
...will reach in the UK. (It's the Ke$ha single, FYI.) Winners will be picked at random - closing date is tomorrow (Thursday), 6pm UK time.
Robbie Williams' Electric Proms concert last night was really brilliant - lasers, 'No Regrets', 'Video Killed The Radio Star' accompanied by Trevor Horn and even a little bit of 'Rudebox' as the show neared its close.
One particular moment sticks in the mind: between songs, Robbie talked about his grey hair and said to the audience, "we're getting old, aren't we?". On one level the 'we' bit was a fairly clever if clunky psychological trick aimed at getting the audience on side, because 'we' are all in this together, aren't we? But the 'we' comment was also interesting in light of Robbie's X Factor appearance, which had proved divisive in terms of Robbie and his audience. Last night was an instance of Robbie communicating directly with his audience, bypassing a chattering media which really wants him to fail (like most artists he's much more use to the tabloids when he's on his knees) to access a fanbase which, having grown up and now started to grow old with Robbie, really wants him to succeed.
Anyway it was just a small moment so we probably shouldn't read much into it, but the theme of artists being able to swerve the critics continued when we got home and the show was being screened on TV. As well as taking the impact out of any negativity likely to appear in the following morning's reviews, providing an almost instant screening of the performance was simply a great idea for people who couldn't get tickets for the show.
It was an idea which went down less well with a certain broadsheet newspaper reviewer.
The 'Mowgli's Road' video we mentioned yesterday went live on YouTube about five minutes ago.
She doesn't actually have arms and legs made out of paper - it's a special effect.
ALSO
Here is a free MP3 download thing of the 'Russ Chimes' mix of the song. It's not going to change the world but there are worse ways to spend five minutes and nine seconds. 'On the phone to O2 because they are incapable of implementing a working billing system' being one of them.
We don't half get sent some rubbish. Try this for an opening gambit.
Britney Spears might be trying out threesomes, but New York electropop trio Whore's Mascara is taking it to a whole other level in the brand new video for their 80s-inspired single, "Monogamous."
You will already be thinking, 'do you know what, this doesn't really sound like it's likely to be very good'. Brace yourselves.
Whore's Mascara seem harmless enough but they're at the less awful end of a really boring subset of pop music.
You'll find a lot of it in London - this pop music which situates itself in the tiresome world of 'seedy sexual perversion' and 'glamour' and 'debauchery' which always seems to roughly translate as 'once saw a gig at Madame Jojo's, friend of a friend knows Jodie Harsh'. The emails they send you always start off with phrases like 'HEY BITCHES', their styling is usually terrible but the photos themselves tend to be above average, the singers can never actually sing, and in their heads these bands are thinking "WOO THIS IS LIKE SUBVERSIVE PUNK ATTITUDE WITH A GLITTER BALL FOR ITS HEART" and all you think in response is, 'it's 2009, this isn't novel or confrontational or interesting, you are a very, very bad Scissor Sisters tribute act, your songs are utterly without merit and in popstar terms you're very much the wrong side of 25, have you thought about getting a job'.
» It opens with some REPORTED SPEECH: "'take a breath, take it deep, calm yourself' he says to me". Quite good.
» It's actually about playing Russian roulette. There is talk of bullets and triggers and so on. Considering radio edited out a reference to Russian roulette in Lady Gaga's 'Poker Face' we're not sure how well this will go down.
» It is all quite tense. "You can see my heart beating, you can see it through my chest, I'm
terrified but I'm not leaving, I know that I must pass this test." There's chat of life flying towards you and so on.
» Just when it's all starting to make sense and you're over the fact that it's a ballad and not a massive balls-out techno monster, it ends with a gunshot.
» It's all very odd. It sounds like it might end up becoming rather good though.
The song has just premiered live across the world - here's that widget thing we mentioned earlier. Click inside to hear the track.
1. Big ballad first single thing 'Happy', as previously reviewed here on Popjustice using words like 'amazing'.
2. A big ballad version of Oasis' 'Stop Crying Your Heart Out' which is ridiculous, gets the full 'Run' treatment and is everything you'd expect it to be (X Factor choir at end, etc).
3. Various other songs whose tempos run from 'low-' to 'mid-'.
'Echo' does, however, feature Leona 'letting it all hang out' a bit. 'Naked' is one upbeat tune, for example, but the one track which hits you like a bloke in a bookshop is 'Outta My Head'. It's a 132 beats per minute techno wobbler about clearing off and leaving someone to get on with things: "I keep taking you back but I don't know why I do - you keep breaking me down so I'll find somebody new, alright?". Sounds alright to us, yes.
Here's your exclusive first listen - turn it up loud.
This is not a word we use very often, but: amazing.
» It's called 'Russian Roulette'.
The
is a rather splendid affair involving the following: