EVERY time we publish a new Popjustice Almighty we think, ‘oh that was fun to put together, we must do these more often’.
Maybe for the rest of 2016 we will indeed do them more often.…
1. Abra
Whenever we see Abra mentioned we think it's going to be something about Abba which inevitably leads to slight disappointment but, in its own way, each mention brings its own joy because Abra's amazing and well on her way to becoming a huge popstar.
She has her photo taken with horses for a start, that's got to count for something.
There's loads of music on Spotify and her current song 'Cry Baby' is a jam and a half; she's playing in London next month, with a new EP out in a few weeks. (Complex did a brief but interesting interview a couple of months ago.)
2. Kloe
https://twitter.com/KLOEmusic/status/745003543841611780
Remember that new solo female artist with those great Soundcloud tracks that hinted at something incredible, and remember that brilliant EP she released last year, and remember how she signed to one of the majors? Trick question — that accounts for about 94% of all music. Kloe ticks all those boxes, of course, but she's much more than that too: this is a fully-formed popstar who's ready to explode.
3. Gryffin
Listen to this playlist and tell us Gryffin isn't the best remixy-type person out there. Go on, tell us. Send us an email. Tweet us. Get it printed on a t-shirt. Whisper 'Popjustice' to a pigeon and let the winged messenger flutter our way. Commission a neon sculpture spelling out the words 'GRYFFIN IS NOT THE BEST REMIXY-TYPE PERSON OUT THERE' at vast expense then fire that sculpture into the night sky. Go on. Do any of those things. Do all of those things. Just be aware you'll be wrong.
4. Dice.fm
You've probably seen Dice.fm floating around on social media over the last year or so and you may well have ignored it because CHRIST ALIVE buying concert tickets is boring and, sadly, so are new apps.
But we tried it for the first time a couple of weeks ago to see what it was all about and frankly it was amazing. It took us a total of about twenty seconds to buy tickets for a gig. So well done Dice.fm.
(You'll see above that we chose to screenshot the upcoming Sofi Tukker show — they're very good and if you're not doing anything on Friday, and happen to be in London, you should pop along.)
5. The return of the single version
Sia and Sean Paul. Years & Years and Tove Lo. Chvrches and Hayley. Troye and Alessia. We're big fans of adding a little extra something to an established song and, yes, you could say it's all about prolonging a song's life in the streaming era and, yes, you could also say something about it being a cynical attempt to revive interest from radio stations but ignore all that because single versions are BACK and they should be cherished.
666. 'Calum Scott'
Calum Scott, your success on Britain's Got Talent may be popular with the British voting public but so was Brexit and look how that's panning out. You will never, ever be forgiven for what you did to that Robyn song, even if your Wikipedia page does contain one of the best lines in the history of user-generated content: "Scott began singing in 2011 and won a local competition, Hull Daily Mail's Star search 2013, [after] which he joined a Maroon 5 tribute band, called ‘Maroon 4’."
That's all for now. Anything you'd like to see on a future Almighty? Let us know, we like finding out about stuff.
