Popjustice
  • Home
    • Briefing archive
  • Features
  • Playlists
  • Get Popjustice emails
  • About Popjustice
    • About
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Contact
    • General contact details
    • Submit music
  • Forum
Recent Posts
  • Congratulations to Charli XCX and Lorde: winners of the 2024 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • The 2024 Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • The 2023 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • Fine, let's do a Substack then.
  • The 2022 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: shortlist
Hello! In theory you should only be seeing this if you're using a mobile or tablet. How's the site looking? If anything's wonky click here and tell us so we can fix it. Thanks! x
Popjustice
  • Briefing
  • Features
  • Playlists
    • New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit
    • Big Hit Energy
    • 21st Century Pop
    • 2018% Solid Pop Music
    • Full archive
  • About
    • About Popjustice
    • Contacting Popjustice
    • Send music
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Forum
  • The Briefing

New Music Friday: it's a rollover week for the Dua Lipa remix, with Louis Tomlinson at the bottom and various songs in between

  • December 1, 2017
  • Popjustice

Song of the last week:
Dua Lipa — 'New Rules' (Initial Talk mix)
There are plenty of good songs out this week, but there's nothing that feels worthy of Song Of The Week, so we're activ­at­ing an unpre­ced­en­ted SONG OF THE WEEK ROLLOVER.

Wrong of the week:
Louis Tomlinson — 'Miss You'
It's quite an achieve­ment for 'Miss You' to be one of the year's worst singles — after all, 2017 is a year that's already thrown up three other Louis Tomlinson releases. But here we are with a written-to-brief, no-redeeming-features med­it­a­tion on life as Louis Tomlinson delivered in the style of a Son Of Dork CD single bonus track.

The lyrics reference drugs, drinking, going out and fake smiles because hey, guess what, sometimes being a famous person isn't everything it's cracked up to be! It's sometimes quite bleak!! Sometimes when you are in one place and other people are not in that place you miss them!!! Nobody has ever mentioned this before!!!! Except actually yes they have, they've done it quite a lot actually, and they've managed to artic­u­late it a lot less charm­lessly than this!!!!!

Combined with the single's sound, its artwork (Louis spotlit in a sea of faces, what could it all mean etc etc) suggests that having wafted aimlessly between genres since June Louis is now going for a 'Life Thru A Lens'-era Robbie Williams approach and, well, good luck with that.

Either way this is a fitting way to round off a year of releases which kicked off with a hil­ari­ously softball interview in which Louis basically admitted he was a pointless and aimless popstar with no real ambition to be a solo artist and no way of explain­ing why he was even bothering to release music.

Additional notes:

  • The Alan Walker mix of the Ina Wroldsen single is great, though we regret to inform you that Alan Walker still sounds like the founder of a small chain of Kent estate agents, who retired in the mid-2000s and left the business in the hands of his two sons but can't help dropping in on the office uninvited and attempt­ing to reor­gan­ise the filing system because, you know, the way he used to do it just made so much more sense.
  • The Prettymuch and French Montana single is the first Prettymuch release to make you think "yes, this is what a boyband should probably sound like in 2017-slash-18".
  • Hey, the Kiesza track is really good!
  • For some reason DJDS and Empress Of have covered Lana Del Rey, but the results are rather pleasant.
  • 'Hot' on the 'heels' of her Eminem col­lab­or­a­tion, Beyoncé has now turned up on an Ed Sheeran remix. All it needs now is for Ed to guest on an Eminem song and the circle will be complete.

Subscribe to the playlist on Spotify
Subscribe to the playlist on Apple Music

  • Dua Lipa
  • Louis Tomlinson
Previous Article
  • The Briefing

New Music Friday: Dua Lipa at the top, James Arthur at the bottom, various songs in between

  • November 24, 2017
  • Popjustice
Have a read
Next Article
  • The Briefing

New Music Friday: MNDR and Le Youth 'head up' a funsize Q4 of Q4 edition

  • December 8, 2017
  • Popjustice
Have a read
Further listening
Greatest hits
  • Lou Pearlman interview: "Once in a while we get it wrong"
  • The full-length actual Mutya Keisha Siobhan interview
  • We Will Not Forget: The Popjustice Calvin Harris Christmas Countdown
Further reading
  • 1
    Congratulations to Charli XCX and Lorde: winners of the 2024 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • 2
    The 2024 Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • 3
    The 2023 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Shortlist
  • 4
    Fine, let's do a Substack then.
  • 5
    The 2022 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: shortlist
  • 6
    2021 Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize: Laura Mvula wins
Est 2000. Still going.
Socials

 Spotify
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Instagram
 Soundcloud

'Quick links'

About Popjustice
Contact Popjustice
Sign up for the newsletter 
Submit music
Est 2000
Twenty Quid Music Prize 

Playlists

21st Century Pop 
New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit 
2018% Solid Pop Music 
The Sound Of Popjustice 
Playlist archive

© 2020 Popjustice Ltd. Scrolled to the bottom now you're here
  • Privacy, Ts & Cs, cookies etc
  • Corrections

Input your search keywords and press Enter.