'Cause I know love would have no meaning without you in my life

A mini-South African pop music news update (though some of the news is pretty old):

NKD just released their self-titled second album yesterday. I don't know of anywhere that ships internationally selling it, but I'm not sure if I'd buy it anyway. After the trio of former Idol contestants got off to such a good start with the poppy and often Swede-penned songs on their debut, the underrated What's That Noise, they started talking about going acoustic for this new album. Their version of Amy Pearson's "Don't Miss You" is much inferior to Amy's version. Still, I am interested to hear what their latest single, "Step Right Up," sounds like in hopes it'll revive my true interest in them. If the album cover is anything to go by, they've lost a lot of their financial ability to or interest in making themselves a quality girl group. At least we've got songs like "What I Believe," "Quicksand," "Forget Forgetting Me," "Shooting Star"...I'm just going to make myself depressed if I keep thinking about how good they used to be. It was so nice to have a South African girl group that wasn't just going for cheap and (the bad kind of) cheesy.

Quick side note: the pop industry in South Africa isn't that big and, as a result, there is a lot of using songs from other countries that goes on. Sometimes this comes in the form of just buying songs written by foreign songwriters, but other times it moves into somewhat ridiculous recycling of songs. Afrikaans artists in particular have a tendency to end up covering Eurovision and national final songs, in addition to Scandivanian artists' work. At times, the results can be surprisingly good (who would have guessed Arash's "Temptation" would work so well as an Afrikaans language boy band song?), but other times it just becomes...silly.

David Fourie, no stranger to covering songs from Sweden, is apparently working on a new album. The Afrikaaner former Idol contestant has released (as far as I know of) two albums so far, one of which included a version of Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy" that I love to a degree that confuses everyone around me. He also did an Afrikaans version of Fame's "Vindarna Vander Oss" which was the version I ever heard of that song. Anyway, I've yet to figure out whether the fact that I smiled at the news he's recorded a version of Velvet's "Take My Body Close" for his new album was a matter of "what on Earth...?" laughing at or if I'm kind of pleased by the idea. Probably both. Maybe it's affection from nostalgia, but his covers seem to actually have a bit of effort put into them and be pretty well-done, at least compared to those of other artists (though I'm under no illusions that Swedish pop fans will enjoy his version). He better keep the dance style, though, or else we'll have to have a talk.

Apparently Jacques Terre'blanche released "Set Me Free" (which I wrote about maybe a year ago) as a single. Perfect choice. I'm still mightily suspicious of the fact that MOR-y South African artist Mark Beling supposedly wrote this Phixx-esque song, but it's still great. Also, world: he did the dance version of "I Won't Forget" before Belgium, thank you very much (though that's not the version you'll hear in the video in that post and though the song, presumably in a version simiar to that you'll hear in the video, was originally for short-lived British boy band 365). The Colour Red, his latest album, was surprisingly good, with some nice dance-oriented experimentation--we're not talking "import it now" good or anything, and certainly nothing to compete with the best of Sweden's Idol boys, but it had some good songs. I do wish he'd take some decent promo pictures with his shirt on, though.

Another South African girl band also made up of former televised singing contest participants, Jamali, has a...well, I'm not sure if I should call it a cover or interpolation or what. "Re-interpretation" might be the best description. Anyway, they've got a re-interpretation of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" called "Love At First Sight" on their latest album (listen to a clip here). I'm frankly shocked at how much I love it: it's an adorable sweet little pop song in their hands. Totally post-worthy, so I may do just that in the future (I've been meaning to for a while now). All you other South African artists, take note: how to do a pop cover version right.