It's not enough to say that I miss you

Some things I'm loving in Blog World at the moment:

Pop Trash Addicts has introduced me to the Veronicas' latest single "Untouched." I loved the first three singles from their debut album but was left cold by "Hook Me Up" the first time I listened to it. "Untouched" may very well have THE BEST STRINGS IN POP THIS YEAR, though--they are fantastic.

Chart Rigger's J'ason D'luv and Moogaboo count down their favorite ten songs of the year. I like or love a lot of the songs on them--I was going to list all of the ones I really like, but a.) that would just go on and on, and b.) I don't want to give too much away about my final list, do I? If I can ever manage to settle on an order for everything, that is...

Speaking of year-end music countdowns, The Zapping is in the middle of its album and singles countdown; the most recent installment includes McFly, Magnus Carlsson, Måns Zelmerlöw, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Kylie Minogue, and more. A great read, and I'm really interested to see what the top ten are!

Adem has an epic list of his favorite songs of the year and goes through the top ten music videos of the year (rightfully including Fergie's "Clumsy" video).

CFB Goes Pop's Alyson and Claire have counted down their favorite ten songs of the year--check out their lists for Serebro, Puffy Ami Yumi, Avril Lavigne, Jodie Foster, and Barbie and Ken (come on, you've got to be intrigued by that line-up!).

Another great year-end countdown (I'm such an addict!) over at Dirrrty Pop plus the fantastic "Kiss The Bride" from Christophe Willem's (he of "Double je") album over at Into The Grove.

#1 Hits From Another Planet counts down the best singles and albums of the year, too. From Montt Mardie to Girls Aloud, Patrick Wolf to Ola Svensson in the space of a few lines--I love that about the site.

If I'm addicted to year-end countdown lists, I'm just as addicted to reading about how people's music taste came to be, or at least grew and developed, and Thnairg just covered how his taste went "international" in a really interesting recent post.

Pop Unlimited is back!

Digital Technique has featured about a million and a half songs I like since it restarted, some I knew but many I didn't. Boy bands with some traditional Irish instrumentation in their music? Christina Milian? Girl group cover of "Video Killed The Radio Star"? Got it all and way more.

Robyn deservedly wins the award for best comeback of 2007 over at Don't Stop The Pop.

XO offers prescriptions for failing popstars, mostly suffering not just from lack of commercial success but also lack of quality in recent years.

You Don't Know Pop is making me feel even worse about the prospect of seemingly endless freezing cold for the next few months (much as I'm loving the weather for this week!) by featuring an ultra-summery remix of a Supersister song. Luckily, Troy's also written about Darius, which makes me VERY happy, so I can't complain too much!

Phew--more of these later! That's only about half.

J'étais sans toi

Greetings from alternately rainy and far too hot North Carolina! I feel so out of the music loop, but the ocean and beach are helping make up for that (even if I've already managed to burn horribly). Here's what I've managed to learn, mainly from MTV:

• I'm not hugely excited by Justin Timberlake's new music video--or rather, even after watching Making the Video, I still don't understand it (what's the whole spy plot about?)
• More video news: Nick Lachey's new video for "I Can't Hate You Anymore" is nothing exciting, but, even though the song is pretty similar to "What's Left Of Me," "I Can't Hate You Anymore" is an improvement. I'm holding out hope that, after getting these emotional issues off his chest in this album, Nick could go on to be a good male popstar (we could use some more in the U.S.), even though it's probably more likely he'll fade out of the public eye.
• I tried to watch Jessica Simpson and Fergie's new music videos, but since it was TRL playing them, I only saw about a minute of each and cheering covered up the audio for fifteen seconds on either end.
• Lance Bass is coming out. I could have sworn my sister told me this months ago, so it can't be very surprising, but good for him.
• I saw a commercial for Stefy's song "Chelsea" on MTV, which was exciting--I don't expect the song to break records, but I'd like to see it do well. UPDATE to say that I just saw TRL preview a clip of the video, which probably means it's been floating around on YouTube for weeks, but the more publicity, the better.
• Hugely belated congratulations to Darren Hayes for getting married!
• We met the brother of one of the boys on So You Think You Can Dance (the one who danced to "London Bridge" last night) at the beach, which is the closest I've come to meeting a celebrity...unless you count seeing the runners-up in Trading Spaces's million dollar home contest.

Onto today's post...only one song, and I'm not hugely excited about it, but it's all right (and I didn't bring my music collection with me, so I don't have many options).

Thierry Amiel was the runner-up to Jonatan Cerrada on the first season of Nouvelle Star. He's released one album so far and has another scheduled to be released this November. I don't own his first CD, so I may be mistaken in my judgement that most of the songs on it seem a little boring--maybe it was an attempt to prove that, though he lost to Jonatan, he was the better and more serious artist. His music is distinctively French; it doesn't follow the typical mold that, say, most U.S. pop songs do.

Sans toi--Aha! Another moment for my French skills to shine. I'm going to tentatively guess this title translates to "Without You." I hope so, because that's what this song feels like--the chorus seems like Thierry's crying out (not in anger, but not really regular sadness either--maybe desperation?) after being abandoned. It's not a ballad--it has too much energy for that. The chorus is easily the best part of the song, but the rest does an admirable job building up to that chorus cry-out.

To buy a hard copy of Thierry Amiel's CD, Paradoxes, go here; to buy a digital copy, go here.

Next up: probably Norway, but definitely back to English. I should be home on Sunday or Monday, so regular updates should return then.

thierry amiel nouvelle star