Brace yourself: Clean Bandit, Sean Paul and Anne-Marie have invented something quite spectacular

Clean Bandit release a 100% amazing new single tomorrow but the joyous event (and it is a joyous event — see below) is tinged with sadness following the departure of violiner Neil Milan.

Notes on Neil departure:

1. That's sad but everybody even­tu­ally reaches breaking point with 'Rather Be' and we respect his decision.

2. Journalism, as an industry, should hang its head in shame over the fact that nowhere on the web was news of Clean Bandit's violinist legging it from the band headlined Fiddler On The Hoof. 1

3. The berk's only gone and quit the band just before they release THE GREATEST CLEAN BANDIT SONG IN THE HISTORY OF CLEAN BANDIT.

Let there be no doubt about this: 'Rockabye' is, as all pop music should be, sim­ul­tan­eously abso­lutely brilliant and abso­lutely ridicu­lous.

In short — and it's not often you get to say this — it's a song "for all the single mums out there" that sounds like Ace Of Base fed through a Spotify Global Top 50 filter with Anne-Marie storming the chorus and first verse, strings chucked in, and Sean Paul sean­paul­ing his way across the whole thing, with artwork that features a giant baby with an eye for a head sitting on a building.

Obviously the Louisa Johnson song 'Tears' was a very special type of incred­ible but that song took a while to get going, only revealing its full majesty in the last couple of minutes. You know 'Rockabye' is going to be phe­nom­enal in the first 13 seconds, during which time Sean Paul manages to say the following things:

• "Call it love and devotion!"
• "Call it the mom's adoration!"
• "A special bond of creation!"
• "Hah!"
• "For all the single mums out there going through frus­tra­tion!"

Naturally Sean then takes the register — "Clean Bandit! Sean-da-Paul! Anne-Marie!" — and with everyone present the song can begin: the whole song's about a single mum working hard to give her son oppor­tun­it­ies she never had. By the third verse the baby is six years old (don't worry, the song's only about four minutes long) and the mum's still singing him lullabies, which is quite sweet in a way but you'd hope he can wipe his own arse by that point. Anne-Marie takes the first verse, Sean Paul the second and if this song were a com­pet­i­tion, which it's not, but it also kind of is, Sean Paul would win by a narrow margin for the line "you give the yout love beyond compare, you find his school fee and the bus fare". (Sean also adds both "bidda-bang-bang-bang" AND "rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye" to the chorus, which is exactly what you want in a Sean Paul guest spot.)

'Rockabye' was produced by Jack out of Clean Bandit along with Mark Ralph (Years & Years, AlunaGeorge) and Steve Mac (everyone) and it's just what 2016 needs, really. It's out tomorrow; the band's second album is out in 2017 and at this rate could be one of next year's best releases. Fancy that!