My fav Little Boots album track of her new LP ‘Nocturnes’. Go get it, it’s amazing.
Will Brooke Candy ever be able to get mainstream airplay? If Azealia can, then surely so can Brooke. Also, LOVE a Catholic music video, see also David Bowie’s recent one, Gaga, Madonna etc.
MS MR great. Chvrches great. Combine on this little remixed ditty ‘Hurricane’ and you have something very different from the original but good in an entirely different way.
Hello double lovely pop ladies Marina off of the Diamonds and Charli XCX with this lovely FREE track ‘Just Desserts’. Amazing.
Pet Shop Boys - Axis - YouTube
YES to some new Pet Shop Boys stuff. I love how these guys have remained at the heart of electronic music over four decades now and are still able to produce classy dance tracks like this.
The perfect pop tune
It’s revision season right now for me, giving me an excellent opportunity to do a proper blog post for the first time on here for TIME. I take as my subject, how to build the perfect pop tune. I listen to a huge amount of pop music, and in my own subjective way I have developed a strong sense of what’s good pop, and what’s bad. And a lot of pop isn’t about the lyrics, it isn’t about the Voice, soz BBC. The words can be absolute dross about falling in love etc. etc., but as long as the sound of the song is good, you can forgive anything. So I thought I’d elaborate and identify the key features of what would be my ideal pop song. Good pop will have at least a few of these aspects:
1. Firstly, we must establish that all great pop tunes are bangers, rather than ballads, so I insist the BPM must be above 120 BPM. Soz Adele, you’re songs are lovely, but they don’t EXCITE me, and I want my pop to be EXCITING, to make me feel alive and happy.
2. The spaceship synth swoop. Obviously you always needs lots of synth, but one of the best noises to utilise is this one, which always works so well for Gaga: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I&t=1m53s
3. A repetitive handclap beat. Peps up literally any pop tune. Little Mix know this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOQDsmEqVt8&t=1m19s (see also anything produced by Timbaland)
4. A strong snare beat. Similar to the handclap and equally as good a way to drive a track onwards. Viz Nicola Roberts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_BG3n1q5KU&t=1m50s (or anything produced by Diplo)
5. Rapid repetitive beeps. Simply yet effective. Cheryl’s aware of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYT6rbxNn30&t=0m51s (any Calvin Harris track will have this)
6. A rave siren. Great for a the high point of the song. A chance for everyone listening to it to completely mental. Voiçi Iggy Azalea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6IAFUzmgSU&t=1m19s
7. Chopped up vocals. I don’t really mind fiddling about with a person’s voice in pop music in order to create a really good final song even if it’s less ‘authentic’, it certainly helps the overall song to match the vocal to the beat by directly cutting it in such a way, as the Saturdays do here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6YLi0GNBTk&t=2m11s
8. A sensible amount of dubstep. Not an excessive amount, but now that dubstep as an ‘alternative’ cool underground genre is officially dead, I’m quite happy for pop to strip its corpse for the best bits, as seen with Taylor Swift here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoKguSdy4Y&t=3m8s (Ellie Goulding is good for this too, Justin Bieber has done it too)
However, this is not a hard and fast guide. All these features are great. But there’s also a far more general feeling of, well, joy, that exudes from the best pop, which might have none of these features, but just be amazing by how simple, straightforwardly HAPPY it is. One Direction are able to do this. But the absolute queen of this is, of course, seen in the greatest song ever. Over to you Ms Jepsen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWNaR-rxAic
I swear all the best rap these days is coming from the girls and gays. Here’s Cakes da Killa’s song Goodie Goodies off his latest mixtape the Eulogy. Loved his last one Easy Bake Oven, looking forward to this guy blowing UP.
(Source: vimeo.com)
So much Indie rock coming out of B-town right now don’t really know what to do with it. Splashh’s ‘Sun Kissed Bliss’ will do nicely and it’s FREE from their Soundcloud.
Say Lou Lou are back with this track Julian which is a bit calmer than many of their current Scandi-pop fellows bangers, more Lykke Li than Loreen.
LOVE this track ‘Sleeping in Waking’ from Rina Sawayama. Amazingly, she only graduated from my Uni last year but she already sounds like a fully fledged popstar, reminding me of Jessie Ware. Big things to come methinks.
(Source: vimeo.com)
