Blur - What price a BRIT Award?

The news is out: Blur are this year's proud recipients of what I've always thought stood as one of the best BRIT awards to get - the Outstanding Contribution to Music award. It's this award that you could always count on to go toward real, inarguable talent - acts that had made a genuine impact on the last few decades of pop music.

But do Blur deserve the award? Without a doubt, yes. If Oasis can win one, then Blur have every right to one too. But the real question: Is the time right for them to win it?

This morning I saw an interesting question posed to the BRIT awards official account - why not Depeche Mode to take the award? And it made me think - yes, Blur are a brilliant, era defining band, but set up against a band with a whole ten years extra of experience, recording history and no messy breakup/hiatus under their belt, do they still deserve the award as much?

To this date, Depeche Mode remain the act with the most UK top 40 singles but without a No. 1 - they forever seem to be the band on the cusp of real, true recognition. Looking over their twelve studio albums, the praise and acclaim received by them is near universal. Their impact and influence, as synth-pop pioneers, cannot be underestimated. Where would pop music today be without the likes of Personal Jesus and Enjoy The Silence?

Maybe the BRIT awards comitee thought it was too soon after fellow synth-poppers Pet Shop Boys nabbed their award, or maybe Blur were always the group in sight. We'll probably never know. But do Blur have the consistency that Depeche Mode have always maintained? Twenty-one years since the release of their first album, Leisure, what does the band leave as their legacy?

Leisure, like the band's catalogue, is patchy. There's No Other Way is brilliant, one of the defining Brit-pop tracks, but what lies beyond? Parklife and The Great Escape are genuine treasures, albums brimming with classic singles, but fastforward to the late 90s and already Blur were dimming, shooting out on their last two great singles: Tender and Coffee & TV. After that, they never recaptured any of their past glory, or charm.

I defy anyone to have not shed a tear to the beautiful string-laced refrains of The Universal at least once in their life. It's perhaps this song more than any other that stands testament to just how good Blur could be when they wanted to be. But looking at both Depeche Mode and Blur in the 21st century, Depeche still feel vital, alive, releasing music with genuine merit - Blur meanwhile seem left to trade on the successes of their past.

That said, if they kick off with Girls & Boys on that BRIT awards stage, I'll be loving it just as much as the next person...

The Ultra Girls head up north & booty-shake to Nicki Minaj

This week sees the amazing Ultra Girls following up their stunning support slot for Kylie Minogue with the release of their infectious debut single Girls Will Be Girls. Seeing it in a live setting at London's O2 Arena, it sounded even more epic - the girls also took the opportunity to showcase some of their other tracks including Birds and the Bees, Gonna Stay, IOU for Love as well as their inspired Blur/P!nk UltraMashUp.

Next week the girls will be heading up north to Preston's 'Lava Ignite' and Newcastle's 'Liquid' for a couple of under-18s club shows.

They also feature in today's Daily Star Playlist feature where they talk about their backstage antics while on tour with Kylie.

Laura reveals: "It could have been embarrassing if Kylie had caught us listening to her tunes so we had booty-shaking competitions to Nicki Minaj. We really enjoyed Kylie’s show."

Properly amazing.

The Ultra Girls debut single Girls Will Be Girls is out to download on iTunes now.

Bikini Test Failure - Fleecing The Easily Pleased

Some days I wish I could go back to the 90s. There was just a real special-something about the decade; maybe a little rough around the edges at times, but always enfused with that sheer joy of life. And Bikini Test Failure’s album Fleecing The Easily Pleased is full to the brim of that feeling, so much so that the first track is rather cheerily titled Yes, We Are Having A Good Time Now. The songs here are pure Blur and Lightning Seeds; packed with that anthemic sense of energy, pride and happiness. Jangly guitars and elegant touches of synths polish the sound off, front-man James’s vocals coming across like a modern-day Damon Albarn.

Tracks like Missing A Gene come across more like Oasis in one of their more gentle moments, full of that Brit-pop swagger. Bikini Test Failure’s real strength is recapturing that lost sound, revitalising it and unleashing it in a whole new era. It’s old sounds, but with new innovation – the album being remarkably consistent, keeping a flowing sense of continuity from end to start with nothing that ever really jars the listener. There’s a cutesy, quaint British-ness to all the tracks; a pretty home-made quality to tracks like Falling Apart that stands as a perfect counterpoint to the grander moments elsewhere on the album.

There’s even touches of Doves to their sound too, and hailing from Manchester too, there’s a real sense of the musical legacy of that great Northern city here. With soaring, radio-friendly choruses and a real sense of musicianship to the songs here, Fleecing The Easily Pleased, is an album that impresses from first listen and is sure to delight fans of the best in British alternative guitar music everywhere.

Introducing... The Ultra Girls

Supporting Kylie Minogue is a pretty big gig. Her previous KylieX2008 tour didn’t even have a support act. So The Ultra Girls must be feeling amazing right now as they have the exclusive honour of going on tour with Kylie for her Aphrodite Les Folies arena dates.

So who exactly are The Ultra Girls? Well, they’re a trendy looking new four-piece girl group consisting of Lucy, Lauren, Amy and Laura. “We’re young and fun. We want you to dance with us, wear your trackies with us and go crazy,” they say. “It’s not ‘look how sexy we are’ its girls singing about girls lives, not taking it too seriously or being too polished.” Attitude is a key ingredient for girl groups and these girls seem to have it in bucketloads.

One of our favourite things about them is that Lauren used to be in a tribute band with Tom from The Wanted. He’d sing Take That covers and she’d do Girls Aloud tracks. A good taste in great pop songs always wins us over so we’re liking this little factoid a lot. The team surrounding them is amazing too, including music-mastermind Steve Anderson (the man responsible for producing Kylie’s mind-blowingly good Impossible Princess album, which most hardcore Kylie fans agree is her best). There’s also stylist Kenny Ho on hand, who’s an experienced hand when it comes to girl groups, having worked in the past with the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud.

The band have got a couple of free downloads available on their website/Facebook page at the moment, including a genius mash-up of P!nk’s Get The Party Started and Blur’s Brit-pop anthem Song 2. It’s fresh, feisty and full of attitude. Even better is their gorgeous chilled acoustic version of The Wanted’s Lose My Mind; this one lets the girls really show off their vocals and fans of stuff like Pixie Lott’s cover of Use Somebody will love this. The harmonies in the chorus are spot on and remind us of The Saturdays when they were just starting out in 2008. The Sats started out supporting a much-loved pop act too, and now represent one of the biggest and best British acts around, so the future looks very bright for The Ultra Girls. We can’t wait to hear more from them!