'Cause just when I think we're through, the memories come flooding back

The musical event you know you all were waiting for is finally here:



the studio version of the single from the combined New Kids On The Block-Backstreet Boys supergroup, the awesomely named NKOTBSB, has arrived.

With hooky synth staccato pulses and washes, a singalong chorus reminiscent of co-writer Claude Kelly's "In Your Head" for Jason Derulo but with less "seriousface intensity," lyrics that semi-function both in regards to a personal relationship and their relationship with the audience, "Don't Turn Out The Lights" takes up right where you would hope. It's a catchy pop song somewhere between mid- and up-tempo that won't alienate old fans but fits right into our post-RedOne pop universe.



There have been hints in the past few years that the two all-grown-up boy bands are capable of delivering songs that are both modern and in keeping with their earlier work. New Kids' 2008 comeback album The Block contained a surprising amount of songs that were not just relevant but actually good. I'm particularly partial to "Twisted," a synthy update of the boy band sound which surprised yet again by being a great Timbaland song right at that point where Timbaland's 2006 excellence was starting to fade out into the mediocrity faced by so many writers who suddenly have the whole world beating down their door.





The Backstreet Boys would take a little longer to return to electronic pop (and, once again most importantly, good songs), but they finally got there with 2009's This Is Us. It was still too full of filler, but, besides the enjoyable "Bigger"'s direct lift from their "I Want It That Way" past, it featured a few songs that put the group where they needed to be. Brian Kennedy twisted the joyful, synthy sound he brought to Chris Brown's "Forever" into something slightly more aggressive on "Masquerade," while "Bye Bye Love" was a floaty up-tempo song that danced between airy and insistent.

"Don't Turn Off The Lights" reunites the Backstreet Boys with "Bye Bye Love"'s Claude Kelly, but its other co-writers are a surprise: Emanuel Kiriakou and Jess Cates. Both are capable of good work, but I'd felt in the past that what they contributed to the Backstreet Boys counted amongst their forgettable pop-rock songs. Emanuel's contribution to The Block, "2 in the Morning," was one of its misfires (the world will never recover from "gotta know if you're mad at me/before Grey's Anatomy"). Further, in the past few years he's specialized in making ballads--including some great ones (David Archuleta's "Crush," for example), but I never would have expected him to have gone in this direction. I'm thankful to be this pleasantly surprised, though.

It's rare that your past musical tastes, modern chart trends, and your current preferences align. When it happens, there's a certain kind of joy that occurs, the kind that has you wondering if maybe you really should buy tickets to that tour you previously brushed off as you press repeat for the tenth time in a row. And really, nothing is better than that.

NKOTBSB's single "Don't Turn Out The Lights" comes out April 5 in the U.S. You'll be able to buy it from Amazon here (digital). "Don't Turn Out The Lights" will be followed by an album May 24 composed mainly of the two groups' old hits (though I suspect if "Don't Turn Out The Lights" did well they'd have more reason to record more new original songs).

(Hat tip to Robbie for alerting me to this important event.)

My only desire

Some pop songs are just transcendent.



(Video/song match is not ideal, to say the least.)

It's probably an overused word, to be fair, and in and of itself it probably shouldn't be taken to mean anything other than a way to say "brilliant," maybe hinting at a touch of class and an ability to draw out a bit of emotion--I'd say make you feel above emotion, like you've shed emotion and are just sort of free-floating--but that's far too cold a description for songs like this.

Swedish duo the Attic, gone from the music scene for far too long without an indication of when they'll return, specialize in dance music with pop appeal. Over the course of one and a half albums, several unattached songs, and multiple remixes, they've helped create more than a few special moments, but "In Your Eyes," a single from 2005, still stands as the song that makes me want to throw around words like "transcendent" and "transporting" with no regard for technicalities, only for the feelings those words stir up.

A lot like the song, actually--on paper, the lyrics read as ridiculously clichéd, trite platitudes that must have been set to paper in the course of two to five minutes, depending on how quickly Michael Feiner and Eric Amarillo can write. Brought to musical life in "In Your Eyes," though, they manage to accomplish that sneaky pop trick of surpassing denotations and even connotations to become beautifully evocative. Evocative--another one of those wonderful flowery words we semi-lazy writers love to use to make our writing sound much deeper than it actually is; with a million possible shades and gradations of emotions to evoke, how is the unclarified word "evocative" supposed to mean anything?

Sometimes that lack of clarity is just what is called for as a descriptor, though. The Backstreet Boys' "I Want I That Way" is incredibly evocative, even though I've heard different people find different emotions and derive different storylines from its conflicting words. The songwriters even played with lyrics that give the song a much more logical throughline before eventually settling on the much less clear but much more evocative version we all know and love.

"In Your Eyes" is, in straightforward words, a synth-filled electronic song with an uptempo backing beat, midtempo topline, and second person lyrics about feeling at home and loved in "your" eyes. None of those words, though, captures the gentle reassurance and life- and love-affirming beauty of the song as well as so-called overused-to-the-point-of-meaningless words like "transcendent." At this point, it's practically a cliché to write about how clichés may be cliché but still have truth to them, but, like a series of ever-reflecting mirrors, I've got to say right back that redeeming the cliché may be cliché, but, every now and then, it's still needed. There's a reason we come back to certain words over and over again--they're the only real match for the beauty we find in some music.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over here trying to figure out how to work "effervescent" into my next review...whether or not the song actually involves any emission of bubbles.

(This post is half-inspired by Chart Rigger's D'luv and Moogaboo reminding me how much I love All Saints' "Pure Shores." Talk about evocative--the word "dreampop" instantly captures the song better than a post of, oh, say, similar length to this one could.)


(Edit: see more about "Pure Shores" at J. Mensah's.)

'Cause my heart is breakin' not fallin' this time

Apparently recovered, Brian Littrell joined the other three Backstreet Boys for a performance of their new single, the Max Martin-penned "Bigger," on Jimmy Kimmel.



As I've hinted at before, I love the song. That doesn't mean I don't have reservations about it as a single, though--much as it would make me happy to hear it on the radio, I'm not sure if there are enough nostalgics around and that its sound will appeal to today's radio programmers for it to make it into the upper half of the top 40. I'd be happy if they could get a hit the size of New Kids on the Block's "Summertime," though I'm not really expecting even that.

Speaking of Backstreet Boys single news, the new Jennifer Paige (you remember her--"Crush," an intoxicating, vaguely exotic late '90s teen pop song) single, "Beautiful Lie," co-written by Carl Falk, is a duet with Nick Carter that sounds pretty good. There's a strong electro-synth beat beneath it, but it's definitely not in the current electro-pop trend--it's more just pop.

I think I wanna stay single, maybe we're better apart

You can never know for sure how you're going to react to a song. I mean, yes, I would have probably predicted that the Backstreet Boys doing a song kind of like Chris Brown's "Forever" would win me over, but given that when the buzz around the Claude Kelly-penned "Bye Bye Love" started--up-tempo, possible single contender--I had hopes of a Backstreet song like "The Call" or "Get Another Boyfriend" (admittedly probably misplaced hope, but they're the songs I think of when I think of backstreet doing full-on uptempo well), the considerably gentler actual result could have felt like a let down. The lyrics may reject an old lover looking to restart the relationship--"see, I don't want a girl that only wanna comeback 'cause some other man broke her heart"--but the vocal melody and delivery is much more casual, less pressing and insistent; the song doesn't turn its rejection into a musical attack.



The point of all this is that "Bye Bye Love" doesn't have the attention-grabbing advantage of storming the pop barricades with all guns blazing, even if it does live up to the up-tempo promise in its "Forever"-reminiscent synths. As a result, on the first play, over poor speakers, I thought it was good but wouldn't have any sort of sticking quality.

I didn't know the way it would have me half-hopping, half-dancing around the kitchen a few minutes later, happily jumping from foot to foot and hip to hip as I listened to it for the second time. Or mumble-singing the chorus while doing summer cleaning a few listens later. Or returning to again and again.

A song like "Masquerade" has more presence, maybe calls out for attention more, but "Bye Bye Love" has me continuing to marvel how the group that hasn't made more than a handful of worthy songs over the past two albums seems to getting it right on more songs out of the candidates leaked in advance of their upcoming album than altogether over the last eight years.

Turn and walk away tonight

Songwriter update (because yes, I am a total songwriter nerd-in-training):

Jessie J (pictured), the British singer that Worrapolava has championed, was signed a few months ago. That's not news. What is news is that she's had Dr. Luke and Claude Kelly (working together, Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You," Britney's "Circus") writing for her.

Claude Kelly (in addition to the songs mentioned above, Leona Lewis's "Forgive Me," Lemar's "If She Knew," Linda Teodosiu's "Love Sux") has also been working with Jordin Sparks, who, in addition to working with Lucas Secon (the Pussycat Dolls' "Hush Hush," Sarah Connor's "Under My Skin," Martin's "Show The World") on that song I posted about earlier this year, has apparently gotten at least one song from Ryan Tedder (Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love," Timbaland feat. OneRepublic's "Apologize") too: Popjustice revealed last week that the lead single for her second album is a Tedder-penned song called "Battlefied." Check out PJ's post for details.

Moving back to Claude Kelly for a moment, as I mentioned earlier, he's also done several songs with the Backstreet Boys recently. A video of him talking about them was posted, but it's since been set to private. In it, though, he mentions "Bye Bye Love" (an up-tempo club-friendly song which features the line "I think I want to stay single, so bye bye love," as revealed earlier), "Don't Try This At Home" (which they sang a cappella at a sound check; it's a "heartbreak record"), and "What I Know Now" (he calls it a "pop urban hybrid;" listen to a non-BSB featuring demo here). He's also working with Wynter Gordon and, somewhat surprisingly, American Idol's Jason Castro.

Ryan Laubscher, the main man behind Alex Roots, has clips of demos for several artists on his official site (click on "Music"). The most noteworthy ones in terms of artist names that I hadn't previously heard elsewhere are Amy Pearson's "Contagious," the title track from her second album (it's more upbeat and electro/dance than I was expecting); Tina Barrett's (formerly of S Club 7) "I'll Be Your Woman;" Alex Roots's "Prisoner" (which sounds like it could potentially be epic in its final form), and Christophe Willem's "Si je tombais" (there's a Pixie song, too, but the full version of that has been on his MySpace, and I think it might just be a demo available for purchase).

Fred Ball of Pleasure (see: his work with Bertine Zetlitz, his producer project Pleasure's "Out Of Love") has done "forthcoming" work with Sophie Ellis-Bextor (that he'd co-written a song with Ina Wroldsen, lately of work with the Saturdays, called "Synchronized" was already known, so this could be referring just to that or to more), Little Boots (not sure whether it's songs we've already heard or not), and Paloma Faith (whose name is popping up all over the place).

Speaking of Ina Wroldsen (as mentioned above, she was the glue that held the Saturdays together in terms of songwriting), I only just found out that she co-wrote the song Lucas Secon (who also co-wrote it) has had listed as Pixie Lott's second single for ages, before we even found out what the first single was, "Gravity." Her recent work also includes a song for Lindsay Lohan called "Stuck" (though given the limbo that project's in, I wouldn't hold your breath to hear it), songs for Leona Lewis called "Thank You Thank You" and "Your Heart," a song for Kat De Luna called "Break Me," and a song for Hayden Panettiere called "Top Up."

Xenomania (Girls Aloud) are keeping busy, with news coming out over the past month that they'll be working with Leona Lewis, and Shayne Ward, both of whom are British X Factor winners.

The most recent X Factor winner, Alexandra Burke (pictured), appears to be working with some big names for her debut album: RedOne (Darin's "Step Up," Lady GaGa's "Just Dance") Stargate (Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable," Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music"), Brian Kennedy (Rihanna's "Disturbia," Chris Brown's "Forever") Timbaland (Nelly Furtado's "Maneater," Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack;" possibly just met, but maybe worked with), the Freemasons (remixes of Beyoncé songs, Kylie Minogue's "The One"), Claude Kelly, Savan Kotecha (Britney Spears's "If U Seek Amy," Shayne Ward's "No U Hang Up"), Soulshock & Karlin (Alesha Dixon's "Breath Slow"), and probably some people I've left out. In other words: big budget, brand name songwriters--taking Alexandra to major international success is obviously what her management is aiming for.

Do you remember the brilliant Dolly Rockers' song "How Did I End Up With You?" I posted a week ago? Popjustice wrote about it shortly after (and posted a clip of the studio version) and revealed (well, clued me in) that the songwriter behind it and the majority of the project is Ray Hedges.

On the subject of girl bands promoted on PopJustice, Girls Can't Catch's debut single "Keep Your Head Up" is written and produced by Chris Braide (the Saturdays' "Chasing Lights," D-Side's "Invisible"). The live version has shown the song so have a lot of potential, but the clips of the studio version we've heard so far are lacking punch; they sound like demos. Hopefully there's still time to improve the production on them.

I'm sure I forgot something I meant to mention, but that'll do for now.

I need you, baby, to stay with me tonight

Oh, boy, someone in their camp is going to be in trouble...following up "Bigger," four more demos--some full, some partial--have hit the Internet. One of them is "Masquerade," the Brian Kennedy-produced song which leaked as a demo (without them on vocals) a while ago and which I liked the chorus of even before the group ended up considering doing the song. The final version--what we can listen to of it--wasn't quite as amazing as I imagined their version would be, but it's good update: no, it is in fact amazing: up-tempo urban-influenced pop with electro and touches of piano...and a really catchy chorus and post-chorus (with the post-chorus doing that modern electro urban sound-meets-pretty that Brian Kennedy does so well). It's closer to what they need to come back with as the lead single, though I'm hoping their work with Claude Kelly is going to deliver the proper smash. Listen to all the songs on this channel.



"Fallen Angel" is also good.



Here's the full version of "Bigger," complete with those final fifteen seconds.



Edit: attempting to keep any of these videos working would be a futile exercise, so the links probably will be gone soon/are already gone.

But you don't care--you keep sticking around

I can't believe it--the new album is months and months away. The process of recording is still going on. I'm used to, say, Ciara or Cassie tracks leaking everywhere at anytime, but when was the last time we got a before-the-CD-is-even-put-together leak of a Max Martin co-written song?

And yet, somehow, a demo--demo, not final version, but featuring the boys' voices--of "Bigger" has appeared on YouTube.



(Yes, I'm deliberately not mentioning the group's name here yet because, despite not posting a link to the song itself, I'm worried the takedown notices may come without bothering to check that closely for something big like this. The video labels them, anyway.)

I'm a little too shocked to even evaluate it properly at the moment. I will say, though, that, though it's obviously not done yet, I can't believe just how pop (old school pop) it is...and that's a good thing. First single? Maybe best not--but it might just be exactly what I was hoping Max would give them.

First off, I can't keep a promise, no one to count on at all

I would do a post like the one below for the upcoming Backstreet Boys album if it wasn't for the fact that there's no way I could ever gather all the information on my own. When somewhere else is doing it better than you could and saving you the time, what would be the point? Read through the list of songwriters they've worked with here and watch them performing a bit of the Max Martin-penned "Bigger" a cappella at a sound check below. Apparently in its studio version it's up-tempo, though I'm not entirely sure how reliable that fact is. The production style is what's going to be make or break on this, but I'd be lying if I said that when this clip hit the Internet a few weeks ago my hopes didn't jump. I know it's too much to hope that it'll be dressed up in the classic Cheiron style, but hopefully it'll be a more pop-friendly format than the Max songs on Never Gone.

You think I'm payin' the price but it's not costin' me

Random bits of music news:

Alcazar's new album, Disco Defenders, is tentatively scheduled for a March 11 release date (stolen from PopJustice).

The Backstreet Boys apparently have a Max Martin-written song called "Bigger" on their new album (which they hope to release this summer) *gets hopes up again only to see them crushed* (stolen from Cheiron Songwriters).



Danish songwriter Lucas Secon--of Martin's "Show The World," Sarah Connor's "Under My Skin," the Pussycat Dolls' "I Hate This Part," and much more--wrote on his MySpace a while ago that he'd be contributing to Jordin Sparks's new album. Jordin played clips of several songs that might end up on her new album on the radio recently and among them was an unmastered version of one of Lucas's songs, "Walking On Snow." From the sounds of the clip, I'm chomping at the bit to have the full song; like "No Air," it manages the remarkable feat of sounding refreshingly fresh while also making total sense in the current commercial music environment, though its pretty poppy electronic-pop-meets-pop-rock sound isn't musically related to "No Air."

Have you listened to Erik Hassle's new album yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

You heard what love can do to you

Dear person in control of the music at my local dining hall,

I love you. I know we've never met, but what obstacle can age or gender possibly be? If you're a girl or gay guy, I want to be your best friend and if you're a straight guy, I want to date you. Usually we just get some radio station piped in (usually country or oldies), but lately, at certain times, we're getting stuff that's infinitely better. The Backstreet Boys' greatest hits? Jesse McCartney (second) album tracks? New Kids on the Block's "Twisted"? It's like you're communicating to me via one of those high-pitched dog whistles--no one else understands or is even aware, but I totally get you.

Please write back. I need to know what your hours are so I don't accidentally walk in while "Ring Of Fire" is playing again.

XOXO,
Poster Girl

We're not what we used to be

My original thoughts on the Backstreet Boys album were going to be a lot more harsh, but I've decided to hold off on the final verdict yet--the album needs a few more listens. What I do know for sure, though, is what the best song on the album is, and it's what I'm posting today.

Something That I Already Know--as I said, by far the album's best song. Sort of like "Inconsolable" if it was good (though the way I'm listening to the album, "Something That I Already Know" flows into "Inconsolable," and whether it's because of that or because my standards have been lowered or because it's a grower, "Inconsolable" seems better than I originally thought)--I'd say it's the closest you'll get, style-wise, to their classic hits, though it's more a mix of those and the Never Gone sound than a pure throwback. "Something That I Already Know" is a very good ballad...but (and I could be wrong here) I don't see it holding up against their best stuff. Then again, not much music by anyone is better than Backstreet's best stuff. Or maybe I just need to stop comparing their old work to their new work and get over the fact that they've incorporated more pop-rock elements into their style now. Whatever--this is still a very good song.

To preorder the Backstreet Boys' album Unbreakable, go here (physical) or here (digital). It comes out October 30. If you're looking for something more uptempo, my first recommendation would be the "synthesizer-soaked" "Everything But Mine." On the ballad tip, "Unmistakable" is worthy of note, especially for that fantastic opening--slightly spacey minimal effect, piano and synth enter, then the vocals--"haunting" is a perfect description for it, and the use of the synthesizer (which, if louder and played up more, wouldn't sound out of place on something like, say, Omarion's "Ice Box") in what could otherwise be a typical ballad-with-pop-rock-influences (though that simple series of piano notes automatically sets this song out from the pack) is interesting.

Next up: either that Norwegian Idol group song or that Alejandro Fuentes song.