Two excellent new songs were recently made available as free downloads from their artists' websites. That "free" tag comes with the caveat of handing over your e-mail address, but neither is to be missed.
American actress and Boomkat singer Taryn Manning's voice is processed and distorted more than I've ever heard from her before on the new solo song she posted on her site, "Turn It Up" (stream above), as if she's singing over two aluminum cans and a string. Despite that--and maybe partially because of it--"Turn It Up" has been popping up in my head all day, equally inescapable at the gym, in front of the washing machine, down office hallways, or in the car with another song playing on the radio. The strength of its electro-pulsing production is a welcome surprise, while something about its chorus works in that ineffably addictive pop way, enough so to perhaps make "Turn It Up" my favorite song Taryn has been involved with. "Turn It Up" seems unlikely to wear out its welcome any time soon.
Heir to the playful Xenomania sound of Mini Viva's "Left My Heart In Tokyo" and V's "Hip To Hip," SoundGirl's "I'm The Fool" is a bouncy, youthful brush-off co-written by former member of the aforementioned British songwriting team Miranda Cooper. "I'm The Fool" harks back to that time when Xenomania so effortlessly made fun, innovative, girl-powered pop songs with off-the-wall lyrics that one didn't need to be seeking innovation to appreciate, traits characteristic of much of Girls Aloud's best output. SoundGirl, a new British girl group, seemed to be setting up "I'm The Fool" as their breakthrough attempt before announcing recently that it would be made available as a free download. Let's hope that was a considered strategic change rather than a last-minute panic based on a cool reception for "I'm The Fool"--we need someone delivering music like this.
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.)
It's kind of getting wordy around here, so, straight to the point, here's a great mood-lifting pop song from Nicole Scherzinger's new album. Like the album's lead single, "Poison," it's produced by RedOne, but, much as I love it--which is a lot, considering it's currently the song I keep going back to on a surprisingly enjoyable although not filler-free album--I hope it never gets the single treatment. It's best served as a little album track treasure.
As others have said, her current single, "Don't Hold Your Breath," is a fantastic pop song. I hope it's not too late for it to take off in the U.S.
Nicole Scherzinger's debut solo album, Killer Love, is out now in the UK and can be purchased here (physical).
Sweden is lucky enough to be home to several of the most interesting, refreshing up-and-coming pop acts of the moment, all of them quite different. Le Kid makes pure pop decorated with big dollops of kitsch. Sound of Arrows make dreamy electronic pop.
I've been remiss, though, in not mentioning a third such exciting act: Viktorious.
In his earlier musical life as a member of the group Sugarplum Fairy, Viktor Norén helped create indie-friendly rock. His current music sheds almost all trappings of that sound, though. Neither is the self-styled superhero trafficking in Sweden's boy pop sound beloved by pure pop fans. He's still too new for us to know for sure what's going to characterize his music, but so far, it's bold electronic pop that I can't think of anyone else in the Swedish music scene at the moment making.
With that reference to distinctiveness out of the way, I must confess that the song I'm posting today from Viktorious is a tweaking of his debut single, last year's "When We Were 10," that pushes him back towards a musical sound we're all familiar with. It's a sound that I so adore, though, that I can't help giving it its moment in the sun.
The sound in question? The surging pop production of Peter "Bassflow" Boström. No, I'm probably never going to stop singing his praises. In his remix of "When We Were 10," Peter takes us back to a sound anyone familiar with his work, be it his amazing Martin Stenmark remixes, Ola's "Natalie" and "S.O.S.", Charlotte Perrelli's "Hero," or any of his numerous other hits, will recognize. In the years since his reworkings of Martin Stenmarck's "Sjumilakliv" and "100 År Från Nu" took up frequent residence on Swedish radio, Bassflow remakes of pop-rock songs have become a popular way to entice P3 and Rix FM to play new singles. "When We Were 10 (Bassflow Remake)" is a great example of this little subgenre that can continue until the sun burns out as far as I'm concerned--it turns almost any song into a fist-pumping jolt of energy.
As for Viktorious, I'm very excited to see where he goes next. A new male singer who seems to be getting the electronic pop thing right is always welcome in my book. If you use Facebook, you can, as Swedish Stereo and #1 Hits From Another Planet have been reporting, download one free song each week from his website.
As one more side note, you have to appreciate a male singer signed to a major label who upon embarking upon a solo career outside of his indie-sounding rock group makes this one of the first photos he shares of himself online:
...with the caption "To celebrate the International Women‘s Day, here is Viktorious as a woman. Not just any woman, probably the best woman ever. Madonna, Like A Virgin. Looks pretty good, right? So if everything goes to hell, Viktorious can always become a drag queen. That‘s good to know!"
There's nowhere to purchase the Bassflow Remake of Viktorious's "When We Were 10" yet, but you can buy the original version here (digital).
Will Tyler Hilton ever release his second major label studio album? Heaven knows I'm probably the only person who's never seen One Tree Hill to still be interested. Since 2004's The Tracks of Tyler Hilton, Tyler seems to have gone from EP to EP with a constantly dangled promise of The Storms We Share, said next album, always just out of our reach. I can't say I blame him or his record label--given the difficulty the young-guy-with-guitar model is having finding traction on top forty radio, the amount of time invested in this album seems unlikely to be compensated with mainstream success; digital EPS are a way of periodically making a guaranteed small amount from fans without having to spend much money on promotion.
That's a shame, though, because The Storms We Share contains some road trip-ready pop-rock songs. It may forsake the dance beats currently dominating the charts and may shy away from arena-ready blistering guitar solos, but it doesn't lack for energy. Albums like these run a risk of getting bogged down in introspective ballads, but the opening salvo of "Sunset Blvd.", "So Young," and "This World Will Turn Your Way" quickly assures listeners that Tyler is just as capable of writing soaring uptempo songs as he is slow songs about love and broken hearts. "16th Summer" ups the ante one more, with the hardest guitar sound we're probably going to get from Tyler. Even there, though, the licks are bookends to a big strummy chorus more concerned with a singalong melody than keeping the rocker vibe of the song going. That's no complaint, though; Tyler is best when giving himself over to gentle pop-rock hooks he's so good at making.
Most of the slower moments share those same strong hooks, though how they reframe them varies from the fuller, lusher sound of "Someday" to the sparser "Say It Like A Lie." There's nothing all the way to either end of the spectrum, though--The Storms We Share is never totally stripped back nor heavy on obvious studio work but instead opts for a "produced organic" sound somewhere in between. "I Believe In You" does a good job of showing off the benefits of that approach, with rushing waves of music eventually hushing for one of my favorite studio tricks for pop-rock groups: a two-thirds point emotional climax where a quiet repeated phrase is met with and overlapped by the singer also singing a second melody on top (see also: McFly's "Falling In Love").
Perhaps my favorite song, though, is the unassuming but excellent "Ain't A Thing," co-written with Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood of Lady Antebellum. Mid-tempo, it finds Tyler assuring an ex "you ain't a thing without me" through a quietly, irresistibly catchy chorus. As confident as Tyler's boasts are, though, there are enough hints that he was on the receiving end of the break-up to prevent the song from coming across as overly brash--instead, it's either the strutting break-up anthem we all wish we could honestly sing or a crushed heart putting on a brave show, depending on the listener's emotional state at the time. If you listen closely, there are signs of "Ain't A Thing"'s country heritage, but a twangless delivery from Tyler positions "Ain't A Thing" solidly in pop-rock territory.
It feels like damning with slight praise to say that The Storms We Share is the best mainstream pure pop-rock album I've heard in several years; the competition hasn't exactly been fierce. Still, if there isn't room for songs this strong sung by the rare man who has just enough grit in his voice to give them weight and not so much as to be abrasive, then something is truly wrong with America's current musical climate.
Tyler Hilton's album The Storms We Share is not yet available, but in the meantime, you can buy his most recent EPs on iTunes internationally here. The Ladies and Gentlemen EP, for example, contains four of the songs on the version of the album I heard: "Sunset Blvd.", "I Believe In You," "This World Will Turn Your Way," and "Keep On."
(On a totally personal, frivolous note, I'd like to dedicate a sentence to how much I love "Kiss On" from The Tracks of Tyler Hilton: A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT.)
I'm officially on board the Sky Ferreira bandwagon.
Though she's had enjoyable tracks before, I'm taken aback by just how much I'm won over by the young American singer's delivery of the songs on her new As If! EP. Even on a frothy, messy trifle like "99 Tears," Sky holds the whole thing together by--well, perhaps not force of personality yet, but through the emotions that slip through. Just listen to the surprisingly grown-up way the sometimes-Lolita sings "don't you know that" and "karma karma" in the song's bridge. It's a small detail, but it's the sort of thing I mean when I refer to someone as a good singer: not necessarily technical range (though supposedly Sky has that, too) but the capability of inducing surprising little shivers down your spine with what they convey through tone.
"99 Tears," produced by Greg Kurstin, is a fun listen, but for my money, the two standout tracks on the EP are "Traces" and "Haters Anonymous." "Haters Anonymous" is the sound of Bloodshy & Avant messing around with skittery electro again, though this time they've melded that upgraded "Piece of Me" sound, channeled through Sky muttering about Internet commenter culture in the verses and a robo-voiced middle eight, with a surprisingly innocent-sounding big poppy chorus.
"Traces," co-written by rising singer-songwriters Neon Hitch and Colin Munroe, leaked in low quality months ago, but what a difference crystal-clear audio makes. A song I previously disregarded has revealed itself to be one of those big emotional electronic mid-tempos I so adore, the kind where you feel dragged down by the heaviness of each deep, measured beat. It's the sort of song to make you forget all about Sky's interview persona and fall head-over-heels for this girl who shouldn't have fallen in love with a boy.
I've felt let down recently by a usually reliable singer who, despite a couple of great singles and a pair of enjoyable tracks, delivered an album that even her special pop voice couldn't stop from feeling soulless. I'm not ready to give up on her--I never will--and the plethora of Sky songs we've heard have varied too greatly in quality for me to count on her as pop's next great thing, but there are moments on As If! that indicate Sky could, if given the chance, develop into something special. Let's hope the commercial stumbling blocks she's faced so far don't stop that from happening--the world may need another great popstar sooner than we think.
As of tomorrow, residents of the U.S. will be able to buy Sky Ferreira's As If! EP here (digital).
There are a bunch of things in the music world that need to be discussed--the new Britney album, some new Eurovision songs, finally having the studio version of Danny's "Catch Me If You Can"--but with the Melodifestival final starting in less than two hours, Sweden's national selection for Eurovision has to take priority.
Half the time I don't know what I truly feel about any given entry until I have a gut reaction to how it ends up ranked. As of right now, though, I'd be happiest with a Danny win. I have a rising concern about the Moniker, though, and I'd certainly rather see Eric Saade take it instead of him.
In terms of solely my personal preferences--ignoring the odds of any of this actually happening--I'd be most pleased by a victory for Danny (in my top three favorite songs for this year as well as my favorite song and my favorite performance package of the entries remaining), Eric (there's still a missing ingredient for me, I'm frustrated that better similar entries in past years have been rejected and this one might win, and in the unlikely event that Danny should end up seriously challenging him the detachment I feel from Eric's entry would intensify, but when the song and presentation are taken together it's tough to deny that it averages out to be one of the night's best entries), Swingfly (a messy on-stage presentation, but the song is a lot of fun and gives me that rush of joy I wish I got from "Popular," even if I'm not sure that it's actually better in the long run), or Linda Bengtzing (she's had better songs and better performances but I love her and her infectious enthusiasm and enjoy "E det fel på mig"). I'd be fine with Brolle winning as well. After that, my enthusiasm would drop off precipitously, but it wouldn't feel like the end of the world if Sara Varga won. Despite its great production and great singer (though, truth be told, she's using a side of her voice here that I don't hugely enjoy), Sanna's song still leaves me cold. I like "The King" a good bit (yes, really) but feel like the Playtones' performance is a black hole for charisma. Any of the aforementioned choices would be better than the remaining two, though; Nicke Borg or the Moniker winning would leave me distraught.
Still, we should be in for a great show. Though songs I loved were lost along the way to Globen, I'm actually pretty happy with the line-up we'll be facing. Yes, two of the songs that would have made the best impression internationally were lost in Andra Chansen last week, but this year's final nevertheless includes mostly enjoyable songs that, even if they wouldn't make for great Eurovision entries, make for great entertainment.
Sometimes, when you disappear from the Internet for a while, you miss things.
Big things. Important things. Like, say, the fact that DARIN IS RECORDING A NEW ALBUM WITH AWESOME PRODUCERS.
What finally clued me in to this fact was a tweet from him today saying he was recording with Anders Bagge (who has done so many songs that his discography quality varies) and Johan Kronlund. Even better news is that a month ago he apparently was recording with Niklas Bergwall (formerly of 2N, the production team behind Kate Ryan's hits) and LO-FI-FNK. Seriously, let's just repeat that: Darin is recording with Lo-Fi-FNK.
I'm sure this was covered on blogs a month ago, but since I only just found out now, I need to emphasize how awesome that is. Lo-Fi-Fnk are the kind of cool but pop-friendly electro pop duo that Sweden seemed to be producing every other day a few years ago, but they're one of the best. I've been eager for new material from them, but I had no idea they'd moved into producing for other people as well. Their version of "Want U" is probably a good indicator of their sound, though it's a little less boyish than Boylife, the album that preceded it. So you can hear that sound, I've embedded "Steppin' Out" from that album as well. Darin recording with them is the sort of slightly left-field but smart choice that reaffirms my faith in him as a popstar (not that it needed to be reaffirmed).
I'm so glad Darin had his big ballad moment. I love Tony Nilsson and I loved their work together; "You're Out Of My Life" was one of my favorite singles of last year and much of the Lovekiller album contained big, lovely, '80s-styled pop songs.
Still, it's time for something different and this news about his new album collaborators couldn't be more welcome. Lo-Fi-Fnk and Niklas Bergwall (definitely worth getting excited about in his own right--I enjoy almost everything he does and most of what he does is dancey pop) certainly indicate a change of direction. I literally don't think I could be more excited.
A quick note: all my support in today's Melodifestival second chance round goes to Loreen...which means she will lose her first duel and I'll be left bereft for the rest of the show. If Loreen should fail to advance, I'd like it to go to Love Generation, but really, they're a distant second. I do genuinely enjoy all four of the songs in the top bracket, though--just don't try to remind me of that fact immediately after Loreen gets knocked out.
I'm much less picky about the second bracket. I'd be happy with anyone besides the Moniker...which means he'll probably win (I think there's actually a good chance of that happening, too, which scares me).
As always, you'll be able to stream Melodifestivalen starting at 2 PM EST here.
Your problems don't exist when music feels like this.
Songs are posted only for promotional purposes (I love them and want others to know about them, too)--if you like them, please "go out and buy the record"! If you are an artist, represent one, or are a songwriter/producer and would like your songs removed, I'll gladly do so (just let me know).
American actress and Boomkat singer Taryn Manning's voice is processed and distorted more than I've ever heard from her before on the new solo song she posted on her site, "Turn It Up" (stream above), as if she's singing over two aluminum cans and a string. Despite that--and maybe partially because of it--"Turn It Up" has been popping up in my head all day, equally inescapable at the gym, in front of the washing machine, down office hallways, or in the car with another song playing on the radio. The strength of its electro-pulsing production is a welcome surprise, while something about its chorus works in that ineffably addictive pop way, enough so to perhaps make "Turn It Up" my favorite song Taryn has been involved with. "Turn It Up" seems unlikely to wear out its welcome any time soon.
Heir to the playful Xenomania sound of Mini Viva's "Left My Heart In Tokyo" and V's "Hip To Hip," SoundGirl's "I'm The Fool" is a bouncy, youthful brush-off co-written by former member of the aforementioned British songwriting team Miranda Cooper. "I'm The Fool" harks back to that time when Xenomania so effortlessly made fun, innovative, girl-powered pop songs with off-the-wall lyrics that one didn't need to be seeking innovation to appreciate, traits characteristic of much of Girls Aloud's best output. SoundGirl, a new British girl group, seemed to be setting up "I'm The Fool" as their breakthrough attempt before announcing recently that it would be made available as a free download. Let's hope that was a considered strategic change rather than a last-minute panic based on a cool reception for "I'm The Fool"--we need someone delivering music like this.
(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).
(digital).
