Guess you better go and get your armor

There's been a lot of buzz, and often deservedly so, around some up-and-coming British female pop artists. There are, though, some new female American singers who have songs that have caught my ear lately. They don't share much in common beyond the fact that they're women, American, and making pop, but I've been meaning to write about the songs for long enough that I'll take any sort of gathering principle, flimsy as it may be, as the basis for a post.

I've mentioned Kimberly Cole's "Superstar (Smash It)" before. Featured in the TV show Dollhouse (though there with an actress pretending to sing it and Kimberly appearing as a backing singer), the song is vaguely Britney-esque--maybe just to say that it's up-tempo pop created electronically with some nice deep pulses and floatier effects on top of those melding with a catchy if sometimes very processed vocal part.



If "Superstar (Smash It)" is in some distant way a bit like a Britney song or two, Kristinia DeBarge's "Goodbye," based on a sample of Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)" (a song your average American will know quite well from sporting events), shares a similar proximity to some of the things Rihanna has done. It feels like it has slightly less edge than Rihanna's work--even, say, "S.O.S.," which is maybe its closest cousin--though part of that may be a function of Kristinia's voice being much more "average" in its tone than Rihanna's, but it sounds great playing on American radios and is very much a welcomed force there.



The niche Kaci Battaglia seems to be trying to carve out for herself is one a bit akin to the one Willa Ford chased in the Britney, Christina, and Mandy battle of the late '90s, though Kaci's "Crazy Possessive" isn't in that Cheiron-mimicking style. It, too, is one of the songs you could maybe push into that "S.O.S."/"Womanizer" style (which there really needs to be a better name for) and even uses Britney's line "I got your crazy," though Kaci positions herself as the supposedly more aggressive, less clean-cut option in comparison to "Goodbye." The thing is, though, that I actually think the censored version is a lot catchier than the original version (which I could have sworn I heard at some point but now can't find to confirm that fact). Anyway, "Crazy Possessive" is totally ridiculous (and totally different from her earlier material), but I've also had way too much fun listening to it recently.



Out of all these songs, though, Brooke Hogan's (yes, the daughter of Hulk Hogan and she of one previous album) "Rough Me Up" (featuring Flo Rida) is the closest to "Womanizer." It could even be by the same producers--I've yet to read anything about who created it. I'm not sure if the American public can ever be sold on the idea of Brooke as a popstar, but from the sound of it in the below video clip, I'll be buying the song the day it comes out--I love it and it's the sort of music that would make me welcome having her around the fringes of the music scene.



Jessica Jarrell is, at fourteen, the youngest of these singers, but her "Armaggedon," featuring a welcome mix of piano and strings in addition to the usual electronic production, is great. It's the least "club song" sounding out of all these tracks, though it's got some speed to it--it's just mixed that speed with some ballad elements. I wasn't too sure about some of the vocal processing in the chorus the first time around, but I've since grown to accept it.



Cheating a bit to include a singer who's already fairly if not unshakably established, we've got Jordin Sparks and her new Ryan Tedder-penned "Battlefield." Yes, it sounds like Ryan Tedder--think Leona Lewis's "Bleeding Love," Beyoncé's "Halo"--but there are enough tweaks to the formula (including making the song more mid-tempo than we're used to from Tedder) and the parts of the song (including the key line of the middle 8, "Better go and get your armor") add up to something good enough on its own that I've been playing it off and on today. I've been pretty excited for Jordin's new album and "Battlefield" does nothing to change that.

Time for you to shine

Do you remember former A*Teens' member Sara's Sara Love project? It's been abandoned, but at least it left us the great trashy urban-electro-pop-R&B "Glamour Bitch."



Had Sara not abandoned her Sara Love identity for an acoustic singer-songwriter sound, I can imagine Swedish singer Anniela's new single "Strip-teaser" sounds like something Sara might have done. It's not yet out, but you can listen to a clip of it here. The song was released earlier by Greek group Crush5, but this version sounds like it will be much better.

This post has been sitting in draft for a few days now, so I've been scooped by several other blogs when it comes to several artists. Kimberly Cole is one of them. Check out The Beat Review's write-up of this American singer's music. "Superstar (Smash It)" is the song I should be most drawn to, given that it comes from the school of modern electro-influenced female solo artist pop, but I'm surprisingly drawn to several of her more mid-tempo songs even more.

Also on the scooped front: Haffi Haff (check out Scandipop's write-up and, while you're over there, the Velvet interview, too). It's probably been far too long since I last wrote about a song from Iceland. If you watched the country's national final in 2008, you might have seen Haffi Haff participating with "The Wiggle Song," an electro-squiggly song which, though interesting in theory, wasn't as good as Eurobandið's "Fullkomið líf." He's back now with some image revamping (the emo hair has been ditched) and a song written by the same man who wrote the song that beat him back in 2008--Örlygur "Öggi" Smári, maker of Iceland's best dance-pop (he's also responsible for Páll Óskar's successful comeback in 2007)--and Malta's Gerard James Borg (of many Maltese national final entries). If you were disappointed that Öggi set aside dance-pop in favor of pop-rock in this year's national final, you might be extra-pleased to hear Haffi Haff's "Give Me Sexy," which is electro-dance-pop that is schlager-fan friendly but not schlager and with just a bit of (cheesy) edge to it.

Margaret Berger, the Norwegian singer of brilliant electronic songs like "Samantha" (epic), "Will You Remember Me Tomorrow" (musical electro sunshine, even if not lyrically so), and "Robot Song" (which many have rightly pointed out Röyksopp and Robyn's "The Girl And The Robot" bears similarities in concept to) has a potential new single, "Lost In London," that might be coming out this fall (news from Popjustice and Margaret's MySpace). Great news. Now, if only Linda Sundblad would give us any sort of new music update...and Selma, too, if I'm really dreaming...

Don't Stop The Pop recently interiewed Swedish pop princesses Agnes and Rosanna; the interviews are worth your time.