New Music Friday: Eves Karydas at the top, Raye at the bottom, various songs in between

Song of the week:
Eves Karydas — 'There For You'
Eves used to be known (and made some extraordin­ar­ily good tunes) as Eves The Behavior, which was a far better popstar name if we're all honest with ourselves because Eves The Behavior sounds like a thing and a concept and a big idea and Eves Karydas just sounds like a person, and there are lots of people. So many people. Mind you, what a person Eves Karydas is. This elegant and bold new song is her first single on Island, and Island did a pretty good job this year of con­vin­cing everyone that Sigrid was the future of pop 1 so hopefully they'll do exactly the same with Eves.

Wrong of the week:
Raye — 'Decline'
A lot of people — not least Raye herself — have worked very hard to get this artist into just the right place for a big pop moment to happen. It hasn't really happened yet. Will it happen with 'Decline'? If it did, it would be something of a hollow victory. It's hard to tell if 'Decline', a cut-and-shut job that involves the chorus of an early 2000s hit, is the sound of everyone going hell for leather to finally make it all work, or if it's really just the sound of everyone admitting defeat.

Additional notes:

• Taylor Swift must be holding back the really good songs so that the album seems really exciting on the day it's released. Right? That must be what she's doing. Yes. It's all fine.
• Sia's 'Santa's Coming From Us' is the first track to come from her upcoming Christmas 'LP' but 'Snowflake' and 'Underneath The Mistletoe' are the album's real secret weapons.
• The lightly idio­syn­cratic, Fred Ball-produced 'Say It To My Face' sees Madison Beer con­tinu­ing to lay the found­a­tions for a pretty exciting 2018.
• 'Lemon' is quite good and everything but if this is Rihanna's only Q4 moment Christmas is cancelled.

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