iFFY The Bad Man

1 Sep

A bit of ‘Forget You’, a slice of Bruno Mars – this is the most immediate radio-friendly song I’ve heard in ages. It’s ridiculously so. Also he’s super cute – swoon!

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Information is lacking – I think he’s just being launched in the States and hopefully will be out over here on Island next year. He’s from Miami, moved to Harlem as a teen and developed a passion for hats. I guess you can’t have everything.

Selena Gomez

22 Jul

The whole Disney doing music with pretty young things escapade has pretty much passed me by as I was too old for High School Musical which is when everything really blew up. Jonas Brothers-wise I only care about my hope that Nick never returns to his ‘trying to squeeze a poo out’ acting face as Marius in Les Mis. Miley though admittedly did raise the game dramatically with the absolute excellence of ‘See You Again’ and then the not quite as good but still ace ‘Fly On The Wall’.

Selena Gomez, despite her fabulously pop star name, has never quite made it into my musical radar. She’s a beautiful china doll but the only real interest I had with her was the decision to curiously name her pop outfit ‘Selena Gomez and The Scene’.

Regardless of her background – if you were a the two seminal pop albums of our time (State of Mind & Come and Get It) then you need to hear her new single.

‘Love You Like A Love Song’ is furiously icy and robotic. Selena however reckons it’s ‘talking about how crazy you are about someone whenever it’s the beginning. It’s the honeymoon stage if you will.” Of course we all know that frigid pop music is the best kind particularly when it’s paired with a video that must have been storyboarded when someone was completely high. In contrast her last single ‘Who Says’ was warm and bubbly but absolutely diabolical.

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COLDEST GIRLFRIEND EVER.

Jess Mills

21 Jun

Jess Mills‘ first slice of chart power came earlier this year when she was the featured vocalist on Breakage’s Fighting Fire. I think this type of thing is described as post-dubstep or some nonsense, but let’s all be honest here… this is stone cold trance.

Jess was a member of a slightly blogged up group called His Girl Friday which is an awesome name for a group and should be reused immediately. Now she’s hanging out with this Mr Breakage and making songs that don’t sound like much else at the mo. I think it’s the spaced out echoey effects on her vocals that really get me.

Her new single ‘Live For What I’d Die For’ is out August 1
Jess Mills - Live For What I'd Die For by Jess Mills

And make sure you listen to her awesome cover of The Cure’s ‘A Forest’. It’s a joy to hear a Cure cover that isn’t in the bossa nova style for once and instead sounds like something you might be sliced to death by a serial killer too. Love.

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p.s. Florrie can bore off already

Emeli Sande – Heaven

10 Jun

Emeli was the female voice on Chipmunk’s Diamond Rings, Wiley’s Your Woman and is someone who pretty much everyone on the urban scene has been telling me is going to be huge for the next year.

Heaven is her debut single and a pretty powerful opener. I can’t do better than the press release which says it has ‘lavish strings, bombastic horns and trip hop beats’. It’s like a more pumped up version of Yasmin’s Finish Line. Poor amazing Yasmin.

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No time to write anything else as I’m off to Liverpool to see Nicola Roberts play Radio City Live. Scream!

More from Mr Disco Pop.

Josh Osho – Redemption Days

6 Jun

THIS IS BIG (I have completely lost the ability to write so apols).

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Those soaring strings. That huge, uplifting chorus. “Redemption Days” should be a killer of a radio hit this summer. It’s the type of song, like Aloe Blacc, that should run across the board, from Radio 2 to The Hits to Kiss.

I expected Josh to be late 20s with his deep, rich voice, but instead he’s only 19. Born in South London I’ve been told he’s had a pretty awful life so far (there is a strong chance that I’ve confused this with a film I watched last week), but now with Wu Tang Clan producing his debut album and Ghostface featuring on this, his debut single, things might slightly be on the up (!) This is also the best thing Ghostface has done since this gigantically epic piece of pop.

If anyone has seen my vocabulary please send it back.

Call Your Girlfriend

3 Jun

This is amazing

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Pretty much everything about this makes me happy.

Dancing on her Own – wearing Spice Girl shoes – nicking a man and dishing out love advice.

I’m in the States this month and am so, so tempted to do an internal and go see the Katy Perry / Robyn show. The combination of the big release moments in ‘Dancing on my Own’ and ‘Firework’ would probably be so intense I’d explode or at very best throw up. Being made to throw up is exactly what pop music in 2011 should I think make you do. Awesome.

La Di Da Di Daaaa

2 Jun

Carly Simon’s ‘Why’ is a proper, proper tune. Written by Nile Rodgers no less, Carly released it to celebrate my birth in 1982 to little effect in the States. Here in the UK though we loved her new strutting abilities, got on board with the disco and took it top 10. I’m going to try this walk out on Oxford Street next week.

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After a bit of, looking back, bloody amazing ‘you say Glamma, I say Kid’ action in the 1990s, it hit #10 again, and now 11 years later it’s back in the form of ‘Don’t Know Why’ by new Mercury girlgroup Soundgirl.

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Commercial radio is all over this song, and rightly so – it’s a shame it doesn’t look like the BBC are going to follow. Three school friends, the girls are 14, 17 and 18 I think and look like a really convincing, colourful, new girlgroup – a far cry away from the overstyling of Parade. Another absolute sound of summer 2011 for me.

As one YouTube commenter said: My speakers dont go loud enough!!!

Down With The Crumpets

2 Jun

Summer’s here – it’s crying out for a hit and this should do exactly the job LDN did a couple of years ago.

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I’m properly obsessed. This is Rizzle Kicks – Sylvester (!) and Rizzle. Both 19 from Brighton, the pair were signed to Island earlier in the year and are getting set for their first major release on June 12th. Horns!

(I have no time to blog, I have an awesome new job but time zapping!)

Runaway Love

10 Apr

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“Like Janis Joplin if she’d swapped the Southern Comfort for a flat white and a Francois Truffaut boxset, Alice’s brand of rock’n’roll is rowdy and raucous, but pinned down by a super chic sophistication.”

Alice Gold’s official biography is filled with a large amount of singer-songwriter guff as above. She’s been touring with Noah & The Whale, The Dears and The Bookhouse Boys – the whole set up is very credible snoozeworthy singer songwriter. I don’t become very excited when songs are ‘written after a heady weekend at Camp Bestival’ either.

So for now I’ll just take her exceptional debut single for what it is without worrying about the rest of it. It’s just a gorgeous song from a girl with a brilliant pop star name that slots nicely into a playlist next to Shivaree’s spine-tingling ‘Goodnight Moon’.

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Dionne Bromfield Grows Up

6 Feb

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It’s amazing what difference a year and a half can make. Remember Dionne Bromfield? Dionne is Amy Winehouse’s god-daughter and first appeared in summer 2009 signing to Amy’s own Island Records imprint Lioness Records. Back then she was a really cute little girl with a great soul voice, a covers album and a future promising great things.

That future has come quickly. Now 15, she’s just released the video for ‘Yeah Right’ the first single from her 2nd album. Newly confident and beaming with pop star qualities, Dionne looks classy and sounds great in this sassy girl-power anthem. Sounding like a Ronson production, the song has got quite a Duffy feel to it and is good, but not jaw-droppingly so. It’s enough though to suddenly totally reposition Dionne as an artist with serious potential. ‘Yeah Right’ also sees the UK debut of adorable US rap youngster Diggy Simmons – the son of Run DMC – and the pair look super cute together, even if they are bitching at each other!