Tune in to me every day, I'm that hit you wanna play

With so many great songs flying around, it's tough to give an accurate representation of what I'm listening to based on just my individual song posts. Here's a quick rundown of some of the new songs getting frequent spins from me that I haven't mentioned on the blog yet:



Kylie Minogure, Aphrodite
Yeah, the whole album. It's really that good. Pop-dance bliss that's left me feeling like some giddy ten year old. Kylie promised euphoria, and she delivered. The title track, embedded above, with its martial drums backing empowerment anthem lyrics, is a standout, but the whole album is fantastic--possibly the best album I've heard in at least a few years. Preorder it already (out July 6, including in the U.S.).



Kent, "Gamla Ullevi"
The Swedish rock band's best single in years. The group's detour into a more electronic sound recently caught my ear, but it felt as if at the same time they'd lost the strong melodies to make those interesting-sounding songs truly worthwhile. "Gamla Ullevi," with its gunfire synths, earworm chorus, and catchy whistling, finally has the best of both worlds. Via Swedish Stereo.



Miley Cyrus, "Permanent December"/"Two More Lonely People"/"Scars"/"Robot"/"Take Me Along"
My picks for the best songs from the new Miley Cyrus. "Liberty Walk" may be seriously overrated, but that doesn't mean that infernally catchy electro-pop "Permanent December" (above) shouldn't be blaring out of cars all summer (heavy auto-tune or not), that the galloping "Two More Lonely People" isn't a perfect combination of Miley's electronic turn with what you feel are her more rock instincts, that "Scars" isn't an excellently made pop-rock song spiced up with a little more electro flavor that is a lot better than you'd expect a song with that title to be, that "Robot" manages to overcome Miley's vocals getting buried in the chorus to and "I'm throwing off the shackles of your pop production powerhouse to declare my independence" lyrics to actually really good, that "Take Me Along" isn't actually an excellent pseudo-ballad (emphasis on the pseudo, thanks to the production)--and doesn't mean that at least half of this album isn't worth your time and money.



Maroon 5, "Misery"
Speaking of blaring out of cars all summer...that's what I'm demanding happen for the new single from Maroon 5. "Misery" is begging to be played while you drive around in the sun for the next few months. It's a bit like a lighter, fluffier version of "Makes Me Wonder" or "If I Never See Your Face Again," but probably better. I love this group, but let's just take a moment: thank goodness for Mutt Lange. His production work is just so clean, so polished, so everything-just-where-it-should-be--there's workmanlike and then there's "I'm an effing professional/genius and I know what I'm doing, so just let me tweak your already great song in a million little ways you never could have thought of to make it so ridiculously appealing that RESISTANCE. IS. FUTILE." The man knows what he's doing.

Ed Drewett, "Champagne Lemonade"/"Parallels" (stream here)
Forget that whole Professor Green thing. Pop-R&B singer Ed Drewett (co-writer of the Wanted's "All Time Low") has been working with people like Cutfather and Paul Statham, with the best result so far being "Champagne Lemonade." Without hearing it in full quality, it's tough to fully judge, but the Calvin Harris-style production behind lyrics like "all because he buys you champagne, I buy you lemonade/Makes him something of a Casanova" is begging for summer airplay, at least on my headphones. Another demo on his MySpace, "Parallels," is by Cutfather and has a great ravey musical backing. The topline is a little simple, but maybe that's for the best given everything going on in the background.

05 Hitman (Remix) by poppostergirl

Jessie and the Toy Boys, "Hitman"
Popjustice introduced me to the new incarnation of Jessie Malakouti, this time backed by several mannequins. Though I still want to own Xenomania-penned "Who's That Man," the chorus of "Hitman" is going some way to making up for her moving on to new songwriters. Seriously, stick it out to the chorus (or skip ahead to it if you need to)--it's energy jolt kind of stuff. The clip of "Perfect Shade Of Red" over on Popjustice sounds great, too. Listen to more songs at her official site.



Brandon Flowers, "Crossfire"
Brandon is channeling second album Killers in both facial hair and music style. If you'd asked me about his new solo project ahead of time, neither would have been my first choice. Why, then, are both choices working so well for me? Maybe it just all comes down to a good melody...and someone pushing him away from the pervert-next-door grooming choices into just pleasant scruff.


Lolene, "Radio" (stream here)
As featured on Idolator and Pop Trash Addicts. Pop-dance that, to be honest, is a whole level above what I was expecting from this British girl being launched in the U.S. I always just saw her as (eek) one of those "Internet buzz acts." The sweet, fresh "Radio" implies she's certainly more than that.



Tove Styrke, "Million Pieces"
Swedish Idol contestant goes commercialized-indie-electro-pop for her debut release. On the first listen, "Million Pieces" starts off slowly, in a style a bit like a quicker Lykke Li's "Little Bit," but the poppier chorus is delivers and from the second chorus through the end, the song just gets better and better--it builds in just the way you'd hope a song from Tove would. Via Swedish Stereo.

Also getting played: most of the new albums from Example and Delays. Possibly more later on at least one of those, though. Oh, and Kevin Rudolf's "You Make The Rain Fall," after #1 Hits From Another Planet mentioned it.

Tell me how I'm supposed to breath with no air, can't live can't breath with no air

News break!

New music videos that really aren't worth embedding because they're not must-sees but may interest you if you like the song: Shayne Ward's video for "Breathless," probably notable mainly for the lovely shades of blue in it and for the fact that Shayne, despite wearing a suit for the "main" part of the video, finds another way to take his shirt off, and Maroon 5's video for "Won't Go Home Without You," notable mainly for making me wish they hadn't sold the chorus to "Nothing Lasts Forever" to Kanye West for that one song and could release that instead. Or "Not Falling Apart." If they wanted a ballad.

Another song from the upcoming Jordin Sparks album is out and about now, albeit with verbal tags and an annoying computer noise on it that I'm guessing aren't on the real version. It's called "No Air" and features Chris Brown. It actually feels like it's floating up among the clouds--I can't really describe it in words (though "refreshing" would probably be a good one), but it's definitely less...generic-sounding than "Tattoo" was. Radio friendly? Not sure, and I'm not sure that radio quality would capture this song's essence--it really needs that crisp clean sound. I've not made up my mind on it yet, but I could very well end up thinking it's great. If it didn't have those annoying tags, maybe even post-worthy, but at any rate, it's got me at least thinking about buying her album when it comes out November 20. (I'm sure YouTube has it, but if you're interested, you should definitely hear it in better quality than it'll be at on YouTube.)

Given that Robyn's now made reference to a video for it, it seems "Be Mine!" is the next single (though that's sort of what everyone already thought). Fantastic song--hope it does well.

Da Buzz's greatest hits album is out now. It features two new songs (excluding the already released singles "Take All My Love" and "Baby Listen To Me"). "Take A Chance," which might or might not be their new single (I'm not sure), is good, and you can make up your mind about the other new song by visiting You Don't Know Pop.

I should take it easy but I'm still gonna get around

WOAH at this album


and WOAH at this album.


They are both very good. In fact, so good and so layered that I'm really too immersed in them at the moment to engage in any other song at the level necessary to write about it. So, instead, some news:

Via the Cheiron Songwriter forum, clips of some songs from the new Enrique Iglesias album. I'm pretty excited for it, even if I'm not expecting to be knocked over by every song, and I like the first three songs particularly, as well as a couple later on. "Ring My Bell" sounded a lot better in the Tommy Hilfiger ad--hopefully the clip here was just poorly chosen.

If you're Swedish, you can buy the (live) acoustic ballad version of "Live Forever" that Magnus Carlsson performed recently on iTunes. His site also says that the countdown to the album has begun--did I miss the announcement of a release date?

Speaking of Swedish music, I really like the new Danny single, but why is it that the album Heart. Beats is so far only for sale on CDOn and Ginza, neither of which ships to the U.S.?

The Click Five are holding "listening parties" to preview the new album. I've not heard much of the entirely new songs yet, in full versions only "All I Need Is You" and "Mary Jane," which have been around forever. However, the "All I Need Is You" performance worries me.

Here's the version now, with Kyle singing.



Here's the version with the original lead singer, Eric.



This is why I shouldn't listen to live performances of not-yet-released songs--I'm going to always expect those Eric-sung high bits now; it has quite a different feel this way--it pops less. It's still good, but I don't know if it's good (note that I'm referring to what I imagine the studio versions would sound like). None of this is to say Kyle's voice won't work on songs (I hope it does, and I think it fits well with "Jenny"), but I wonder if maybe they should've scrapped some of the songs written when Eric was around...or maybe it's just my fault for "spoiling" them and now expecting them in a certain way. I'm having trouble explaining why the new version doesn't work as well for me, but it's less distinctive, less fun...I'm probably overthinking this way too much. And, knowing me, I'll love it once I get the album.

If you want to hear more, there's a Kyle-led performance of "Mary Jane" here and other assorted performances posted by this user, this user, and this user. Hopefully, there are some more fun upbeat tracks on the album--"Headlight Disco" (also watchable here, but you only get the beginning there) has an interesting title and, though it's difficult to judge anything at this quality, it sounds like it's got some nice synths (another written-while-Eric-was-around song, I think). I may be pinning most of my hopes on it.

I shouldn't doubt before I hear the album, but I'm so worried that they've gone "generic guitar band." Can a band crash from making probably my favorite album to making an album I don't even like that much? Hopefully not, but I'm fearing it.

(Shallowness: I like suits, but I'm fine with them not wearing them--did they have to switch to skinny jeans, though?)

Edit: I did some more catching up on video watching and they've stolen McFly's "doo-do-do-doo"'s for "Flipside" ;) Hopefully that's a good sign for the song! It sounds pretty good, too--all right, so my fears are being allayed somewhat. As long as there are at least some songs I like.

I love the title of this post (about Liberty X's breakup) over at Popjustice...

Next up: a Mexican or American group, or maybe something about the aforementioned albums.