You'll regret saying all those things you said

I give up. Abandoning his previous husky-voiced balladry and pop-rock, Dutch singer Jim returns with a new single and new style. "Feel You Love" is a RedOne ripoff with a level of shamelessness not heard since Cascada's "Evacuate The Dancefloor," only with the budget RedOne-style beats made even more stop-start. It is incredibly cheesy, I'm not sure I'd introduce it to any of my friends, and the music video opens up with a shirtless male model and ends with a couple undressing each other--because jumping on the sound-of-the-moment bandwagon wasn't desperate enough, apparently...



...and yet every time it comes on, I find myself fighting the impulse to jump up and down, hands in the air. I'm surrendering to the stupid, mindless giddiness, no longer able to resist: if you're looking for cheap fun with minimal risk of negative aftereffects later, a sort of counterpart to Enrique Iglesias's "I Like It," "Feel Your Love" comes highly recommended.

Jim's single "Feel Your Love" is available on iTunes internationally here.

Mijn beeld van liefde is zo vaak kapot gemaakt

Why didn't anyone tell me Dutch singer Jim had a new single out?



Boy, I love his voice. If you're not already familiar with Jim or haven't been won over by his previous work, "Door Jou" isn't the place to start, but I really like it; uplifting gentle pop-rock is a subgenre I have a lot of patience for, and Jim did it nearly unbeatably with "Fenomeen," a track from his last album which was one of my absolute favorite songs of the year it was released. I'd be thrilled if the album from which "Door Jou" comes ends up featuring some electro-pop edge like the also fantastic "Altijd" from that album, too. If I'm speaking of Jim songs I love, there's at least one more that I can't leave out: his 2003 debut single "Tell Her," a precious (gasp!) ballad that owes much of its emotional edge to that voice of Jim's. Watch him perform it while looking almost unreasonably pretty below.



Though I enjoy "Door Jou," I'm pretty sure I could tell you how it came about: Jim's people saw the unbelievable success Dutch singer Jeroen van der Boom had with his cover of David Bisbal's "Silencio" and went out and found another track written by Colombian hitmaker Kike Santander. I say "unbelievable" not for any reasons related to the song itself--I adored "Silencio," a 2006 single from David's most recent studio album and, though less dancey, a worthy successor to songwriter Kike and David's earlier hits together like "Ave María" and "Bulería"--but because I'm under the impression that Jeroen somehow ended up gaining a lot of credibility with his cover of it. Anyway, the result here is a cover of Cristian Castro's "Azul," but in this case, unlike with David and Jeroen, I like the cover version a lot more; I've never loved "Azul" as much as I wanted to and, in addition to the advantage of Jim's voice, the Dutch language lyrics just feel as if they fill out the vocal part of the song more completely to me.

Jim's latest single "Door Jou" can be purchased from all countries' iTunes stores here (digital).

In other news about male European singers who took second in the first season of Idol in their countries to some other male singer, it looks like Darin is properly releasing the anti-bullying song "What If" as his next single. It's been known for a while now that he filmed a video for the song, but I just always figured it was a tie-in with some campaign or something; now, though, "What If" is officially listed on the singles release list.

Next up: maybe that '80's Danish song, Swedish pop-rock, or Swedish/Finnish dance.

Nothing gonna stop the way that I feel

Can I just reiterate how amazingly fantastic Dutch singer Jim's "Fenomeen" is? And how thankful I am to PopSound for alerting me to his latest album?

(On checking, that link has expired, but you can listen to a preview here by clicking on the song's title.)

Yes, I know, this must be at least the third time I've mentioned it here, but it's exactly the sort of song I love and would post with incredible enthusiasm if I'd "discovered it" and that would be all over the radios if I ran them--it absolutely has to be a single and has to do well. I guess you'd call it pop-rock, though guitars aren't as prominent as they are in, say, your average McFly song, and it's got other things you might notice first--piano or percussion, for example--so, though I guess it is pop-rock, you don't hear it an instantly think "guitars!" Not that there'd be anything wrong with that. Anyhow, it's super-catchy and I love it. Wikipedia says the next single is "Doe maar gewoon" which is a great song as well (and one I'm really looking forward to hearing a single edit of), but why they'd go with that instead of "Fenomeen," which just seems more instant, catchy (catchy throughout, importantly), and "radio sounding," baffles me. (Just watch "Doe maar gewoon" light up the radios then.)

A b-side turned album track, "Altjid," is excellent as well, more fast electro-poppy than radio-friendly pop-rock.



And, while you're grabbing Jim stuff, get his lovely/fantastic mid-tempo ballad "Tell Her" (his voice really makes the song something special; it's so "aww" worthy in sound and lyrics), which is embedded above (in a video which does, to be honest, feature Jim looking pretty cute) and which introduced me to Jim when Into The Groove posted it, and the more mid-tempo, "edgier" "This Love Is Real from his earlier albums (there's a live video of it here which does nothing to show the song due to the low audio quality but does prove that Jim looks pretty nice with his new close-cut hairstyle as well; I suppose if you actually want to hear the song, you can listen to the same live performance at full length and better quality but from further away here).

(P.S. I'm still in love with that cover art [well, from a distance, at least; I can't make out his facial expression, so final approval is "pending" at the moment]--it's very tempting to try to hunt down a nice physical copy just to have it. "Vrij" means "free," by the way.)

If you say it loud enough, the party gets ferocious

I was going to write about Mandoza and Danny K's collaboration album today (probably), but I was distracted by something I heard on Danny K's second solo album. In real life, I'm one of those people who can't read a trivia book without asking whoever's near me "Did you know...?" every minute. Consider this post the blog equivalent of that.

My laugh-out-loud moment of yesterday: hearing the chorus of Danny K's "Soopadoopa" which--surely deliberately--mimics (I don't think "samples" or "remixes" is the right word, since it's not actually using the original music) "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins in the service of an urban-influenced track. That music and the lyrics--oh wow. If I'd been on a chair, I would have fallen off laughing.

That said, a minute and a half into another song, I skipped back to "Soopadoopa"--I had to hear it again. Make of that what you will.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that this maybe the most ridiculous idea ever executed in pop music...and yet, though I'm not (yet) ready to give it my "ridiculous but brilliant label," I think I'm infatuated. Everyone else in the world would probably think it's the worst idea ever, but seriously, the guy just turned "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" into a song about "dope" DJ's--how can you not love that?

In fact, for now, this is temporarily (very much so) my "greatest. thing. ever." I start to shake with repressed laughter ever time it comes on, but I love it.

On a more serious note, I'm pleased to say that J23 seems to be a big improvement over Danny K, although to be fair I haven't given his first album its due time-wise; I'll have to try revisiting it--but J23 has more songs with instant or close to it appeal for me.

While I'm being random, things I've been meaning to mention forever:

Bosson's next album is coming out June 11. "You" remains top-quality and "What If I" and "I Can Feel Love" were pretty good, too, so I'm glad we're finally getting an album.

D'NASH's second single, "Dondé estás," is a cover of a song previously sung by Swedish singer Pontus Assarsson, then called "In A Different Story," which explains why I've sometimes seen that name in parentheses after D'NASH's title for it. While we're on the topic of former Fame Factory contestants and covers, I've also got a version of "Cannonball" (sung by NKD) performed by Emma Karlsson, who--I think--released it as a single, though I'm not sure who recorded it first; given she's actually Swedish and that I think she's the same person as Emma Varga, I'd guess Emma did, but her MySpace makes it sound like it was released to radio this February...she could have recorded it earlier, though. She's also recorded "Shooting Star." Her versions are more rocked-up.

I'm really liking a lot of the songs posted over at Popsound, like the new single and b-side by Dutch singer Jim, whose song "Tell Her" Into The Groove introduced me to.

Next up: probably Mandoza and Danny K.

(Note: you may be asking "So then wasn't Jibbs's 'Chain Hang Low' a work of genius? Shouldn't you like that, too?" No--that left out any catchiness in the verses. It was pretty much rap. This song is more R&B or "urban" pop and keeps the hook going throughout. And there's a greater sense of fun around this one, while still maintaining the posing needed to sell the song.)