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Annie's new album: it's extraordinarily good.

  • May 1, 2008
  • Popjustice

Here is the news: Annie's new album, 'Don't Stop', is a complete modern mas­ter­piece and you are going to love it. Most of it was recorded in the last twelve months with new recruits Xenomania joining estab­lished col­lab­or­at­ors Timo and Richard X, and the result is a mix of styles which won't scare Annie's existing fans but might actually give her some proper hit singles.

One of the future singles — probably the next one, after 'Girlfriend' — is going to be 'My Love Is Better'. It's unmis­take­ably a Xenomania track — similar in feel to 'Long Hot Summer' or 'You Freak Me Out' — which features guitar work from Alex Kapranos. Its chorus is a call and response session with Girls Aloud along the lines of:

Annie: My love is better
Girls Aloud: Than your love
Annie: My lips are wetter
Girls Aloud: Than your lips

And so on. One of the best songs on the album is another Xenomania track called 'Sweet' which has all the hallmarks of a sum­mer­time airplay smash. Along with the single 'Girlfriend', Richard X has also worked with Annie
on the incen­di­ary dance­floor anthem 'Songs Remind Me Of You', which was
ori­gin­ally demoed A MILLION YEARS AGO — so long ago, in fact, that it
was first played in a nitespot envir­on­ment at the Popjustice Christmas
party in 2005. 'Loco' is a sort of Blondie-esque belter whose chorus trills "you're so loco, everybody says that you're a no-go" — a lyric which is probably the only misfire on the whole album. Elsewhere, 'Heaven & Hell' is a jaunty summery number which sounds a bit like
Saint Etienne and contains one of our favourite lines from the album:
"tell me,  tell me what did I do wrong? Oh baby, I'm perfect".

Fans of cliche will appre­ci­ate the fact that this is (ahem) 'very much an album of two halves', and the flipside to the upbeat element is a series of atmo­spheric, clever and adven­tur­ous songs which give the album a really exciting edge. Annie describes 'When The Night' as her first power ballad, while 'Marie Cherie' is a song about a girl who, after being abused by her father, kills herself, and nobody notices she's gone… There's also a gothic 'n' ghostly elec­trobal­lad called 'Take U Home',
while 'Misery', featuring Frederik from Datarock, sounds like Sigue
Sigue Sputnik with a massive chorus of "it's been a long time since
you've been in my head … I wish that you were dead".

When we had a chat with Annie a few months ago she wrote us a track­list­ing which is obvously 'subject to change', as these things always are, but this is how it looked.

There's some wild and crazy bracket scrib­bling going on there, isn't there.

Anyway, 'Don't Stop' is an album which somehow manages to cover pretty much everything we love about pop music, and we've got a feeling it's going to tick quite a few of your own boxes, too.

  • Annie
  • Cher
  • Girls Aloud
  • richard x
  • saint etienne
  • xenomania
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CD sleeves to scare children with: The Guillemots' 'Falling Out Of Reach'

  • May 1, 2008
  • Popjustice
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Bryn Christopher — 'The Quest'

  • May 2, 2008
  • Popjustice
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Pop as in popular
  • 1
    New Music Monday: Griff's Black Hole is super, and massive
  • 2
    New Music Friday: Let's kick off 2021 with some KLF
  • 3
    The Top 45 Singles Of 2020
Further listening
Greatest hits
  • Sandi Thom's Real Tooting
  • Kylie Minogue interview: "I do like cosmic thoughts"
  • Madeon interview: "I say one funny weird thing and that becomes the headline."
Further reading
  • 1
    New Music Monday: Griff's Black Hole is super, and massive
  • 2
    New Music Friday: Let's kick off 2021 with some KLF
  • 3
    The Top 45 Singles Of 2020
  • 4
    New Music Friday: Mae Muller doesn't want to be dependent
  • 5
    New Music Friday: There's a big one from Royal & The Serpent
  • 6
    New Music Friday: Baby Queen takes the throne
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