[Cover Art & Tracklisting] Cheryl Cole - A Million Lights

Can we just stop for a moment and appreciate how bloody good the artwork for Cheryl’s new album is? (And yes, that is ‘Cheryl’ – singular – that whole ‘Cole’ business seems to have been dropped, at least as far as her musical output goes anyway.

That font – all futuristic and amazing, like something you’d see in Star Wars or something, all painted up in Neon and phosphorus. And then *the* hair, which pretty much dominates the cover – but I mean, when you’ve got an asset as lovely as Cheryl’s ‘You’re Worth It!’ locks, you’re going to flaunt it, aren’t you? And flaunt it she does. She’s making good use of her tattoo too – clearly not wanting to be trumped by ‘The Female Boss’ Tulisa, it’s fair to say Chezza’s getting her money’s worth out of her tattoo, giving it pride of place on the cover of her third album. And this whole hand business too – it’s like a special hand signal conjured up by a secret society. There’s been rumblings on Twitter recently that Cheryl has been dabbling with the Illuminati. It all sounds pretty fantastical to us, but I suppose it all adds to the Cheryl ‘mystique’.

The tracklisting of A Million Lights is as follows:

1.  Under The Sun

2.  Call My Name

3.  Craziest Things

4.  Girl In The Mirror

5.  A Million Lights

6.  Screw You

7.  Love Killer

8.  Ghetto Baby

9.  Sexy Den A Mutha

10. Mechanics of the Heart

11. All Is Fair

Scissor Sisters - Only The Horses

The flagging fortunes of Scissor Sisters' last album Night Work was a real lament of changing times and tastes in music - of one of the former stalwarts of radio airplay and sales figures being hung out to dry. It was a shame, because Fire With Fire is a masterpiece of songwriting while Invisible Light was a delightful piece of synth magic. But for all that it might have been a great album, it just didn't seem to connect with the public in the way the band once did. And much the same could be said for Azealia Banks collab Shady Love earlier this year. Again, a great track, but after all the initial hype, it seemed to fizzle away into nothingness come its actual release.

We have to hope Only The Horses will reverse affairs then, and on first impression, it does indeed sound like the kind of track with the potential to do so. With Calvin Harris on board for production duties, where the song excels is pushing the band simultaneously in a new, cooler direction, while canvassing all the glam-disco vibes that made their 2004 debut LP such a joy. With a Radio 1 premiere and the Calvin touch, there's the sense that Only The Horses is the distinct mainstream push the band really need to get them properly back on the public's radar, and it goes without saying that Only The Horses is quite the pop delicacy in itself - all icy and glacial, and as the Scissor Sisters always are, wonderfully flamboyant.

Only The Horses is released on the 14th May.

Kasabian - Man of Simple Pleasures

How do we approach Kasabian's latest single Man of Simple Pleasures? Released at what must surely be the tail end of their album campaign, even from the very sound of the thing, there's a sense that this is a closing of a chapter, a quick swill of the remnants in the album's barrel to shake out those last few album sales and brush up a bit of familiarity for the song before the festival season kicks in.

Man of Simple Pleasures sees the band pursing those same Morricone Western refrains they seem so obsessed with at the moment, but beyond this, the track feels utterly flat, depleted of all the swagger and bravado we usually expect as given from Kasabian.

With disappointing chart placings for every single from the album, and this more restrained side of the band on show here and with previous single Goodbye Kiss, there's the very easy temptation to say Kasabian are teetering down the verge to becoming a Radio 2 act. One can only hope that come the next album, they'll storm back with an absolute monster of a track (basically, another Fire).

Man of Simple Pleasures is released on the 7th May.

Linkin Park - Burn It Down

Well, this is quite something. With the initial hype about the new Linkin Park single and quotes from the band themselves, we had ourselves set up for their new single to make a dramatic return to the classic Nu-Metal sound evidenced on their first two albums - a sort of triumphant return to form that'd sweep them right back into the massed general public's hearts again (not that, in our opinion, they ever lost their 'form'.)

But Burn It Down is something else entirely. A synth-laced behemoth that propels itself on a fiery concoction of mechanistic beats and another classic Chester Bennington vocal. You could even, at a push, call it Linkin Park's most 'pop' single to date. With the guitars largely switched out, Burn It Down certainly doesn't sound like a return to the band's early work, but in its supercharged kinetic energy, it feels like the group's most on-point work since What I've Done. It's the kind of track that wears its goals on its sleeve, a big anthem of a number that says 'We're back, and this time we're aiming high'.

While in the grand scheme of things, the epic grandeur of The Catalyst might stand - musically speaking - as the better record, Burn It Down acts as a marked progression on from the A Thousand Suns sound, losing the more outre elements for a cleaned-up, agile single that stands up there with some of the band's best choruses. And Mike Shinoda's raps - well, they're properly, properly back; again, with an energy the band haven't displayed to this degree for years. And all this bodes extremely well for new album, Living Things, released on the 25th June.

Linkin Park unveil Burn It Down cover art!

It's the first single from the new Linkin Park album. It's called Burn It Down. The cover art features a burning man. All we know right now is that we can't wait to hear the song. Bring. It. On.

Rebecca Ferguson - Glitter & Gold (Fever Pitch Mix)

Last week we posted the Cahill mix of Rebecca Ferguson's excellent new single Glitter & Gold, but the Fever Pitch mix - which we've just had the joy of hearing - is even better. Taking Rebecca's luxuriantly soulful vocal and wrapping it around a poppers'o'clock exuberant burst of magnificent that synthpop maestro's Erasure would be proud of. It's the kind of thing we would be over the moon about if we heard it as we walked into a club on Friday night. We love it, that's for sure.

Glitter & Gold is released on the 30th April.

[Official Video] Jessie J - Laserlight feat. David Guetta

Laserlight sort of makes more sense with it's video. Sort of... You see, as much as you might want to, you just can't shake that feeling that Laserlight is a poor man's version of that Guetta masterwork Titanium. While Jessie's previous single - Domino - might have been an unashamed aping of Katy Perry tropes, it at least fit her voice and energy well, whereas Titanium reduces Jessie to filling a generic club-diva placeholder role. Anyone could be singing, and the tracks morphs away into a formless entity that could just as easily be on the new Nicki Minaj album. Even with all of Jessie's visual prowess in the video and the flash of neon writ large on the big screen, Laserlight is only ever the song that goes half-way, leaving you teetering on the edge of the commercial club banger production line, with this as the hastily packaged together left-overs. As a recipe for chart success, Laserlight pushes all the right buttons, but as any significant artistic statement, it feels distinctly ill at ease.

Laserlight is released on the 14th May.

The Wanted - Chasing The Sun

They've done it again. The Wanted have come up trumps once more, delivering another lad-anthem dance stomper every bit as excellent as Glad You Came - fitting then that new single Chasing The Sun is set to become its follow-up over in the States. We could go into an essay-length discussion of how brilliant it is that the group are doing well in the US, but suffice to say, Chasing The Sun feels like the sound of a band on top of the world - riding high on another classic chanty Wanted riff and a pumping club bassline. There's a sort of smooth, sultry glide to Chasing The Sun that shoots it into new levels of the whole futuro-synth work-out vibe the band really cornered with their second album and frankly we just love the song. It's also, we hear, the song that Example originally wrote for Kylie - and it sounds like it - which makes it all the more amazing. It's essentially, crucially instant in a way The Wanted have always done with such ease, and if we're this excited about it, we're just trying to get our heads around how excited all those American girls must be. Quite a lot, we imagine.

Cut Your Hair - Utah In Pictures

It's been a long time since I heard a debut single by an up and coming guitar band with as much freshly-formed energy as Cut Your Hair's track Utah In Pictures. Wrapped around a clinically imbued central hook and breathy, almost disembodied vocals that recall recent material by the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club, the song frolics with a sort of faerie-like playfulness. It's a song born of looking to new horizons, or as the Catalan group's Sergio puts it: 'planning what would be in the future for me'. And with a debut as good as Utah In Pictures is, that's looking like a pretty bright future right now.

Utah In Pictures is released on the 30th April.

Nina Nesbitt - The Apple Tree

Nina Nesbitt is only seventeen, but going by how insanely talented she clearly is, you wouldn't think it. Delightful new single The Apple Tree - the title track from her forthcoming EP - is the kind of perfectly proportioned pop melody some artists go their whole careers without nailing, yet Nesbitt makes it sound second nature. There's the sense, amidst the breeze and youthful flair of the track, that for Nesbitt, songwriting is akin to breathing - so natural and organic a process she could do it in her sleep.

There's a sort of pretty, whimsical airiness to Nesbitt's music that recalls Ellie Goulding or a younger KT Tunstall. It's classic home-spun singer-songwriter fare, but with a delicate touch of campfire folksiness to it, and must crucially, real pop sensibility at the heart of it. No wonder then that she caught the attention of Example and Ed Sheeran, both of whom she's supported live. The cute DIY feel of The Apple Tree video really fits the track too, and even features a little guest appearance from Ed - he's oviously keen, and so are we!

The Apple Tree is released on the 7th May.

Far East Movement feat. Justin Bieber - Live My Life

I never thought I'd be about to express this much love over a product stemming from either Justin Bieber or the Far East Movement, but the truth is, their euro-dance rave-up Live My Life is bloody incredible. As an all out pop smash, it touts a chorus that not only actually makes Bieber's vocals vaguely bearable to listen to, but wraps them around an uplifting club melody of chart shattering proportions. And even the rent-a-rapper feel of the FEM verses are helped by a generous dose of groove-inducing mechanistic bass-licks. As an entity, Live Me Life is sort of like J Lo's On The Floor re-incarnated into the body of a teenage lad, a unadulterated, shot-fuelled locomotive of a thing, powering on through the club door with one mission in sight; to have an insanely enjoyable night out on the tiles. And Live My Life is all that, and more.

Live My Life is released on the 30th April.

The Temper Trap - Need Your Love

Those that thought The Temper Trap were just the softly delicate pensive guys that crafted Sweet Disposition would be inclined to think again after hearing synth-tastic new single Need Your Love. In the UK at least, with the band very much in danger of becoming remembered as a one hit wonder (though partly the fault of Radio 1, who singlehandedly hammered Sweet Disposition to excess, but didn't follow through with the band's other singles to any similar extent), Need Your Love is exactly the kind of song they needed to release.

Serving as a pumped-up reboot for the band, it casts them in the vein of weighty 80s stadium rockers, with touches of Simple Minds and even a-Ha. It's a triumph in New Wave revivalism, and throbs with a sort of living energy that flips from the gloriously low-fi synth elements to the booming, atmospheric percussion. If the band's new self-titled LP (always a sure sign of an acknowledged and conscious reboot) offers more like this, it could very well end up being one of the surprise hits of the summer.

Need Your Love is released on the 7th May.

Paloma Faith - Picking Up The Pieces

I have to admit, I never bought in to Paloma Faith the first time around. Sure, the lovely string-soaked refrains of New York were nice enough, but I never felt compelled to go out and buy her album. And new single Picking Up The Pieces - the first from her second album - still leaves me unconvinced too. She's still going that heady retro-soul thing, all theatrical vocals and liberal dollops of star-dust thrown in for good measure. But in a post-Someone Like You world, there's the sense that torchbearing female singers like Paloma have to up the ante a bit. And Someone Like You isn't that - moreover just a sort of reasonably pleasant coasting along. As a pretty thing, Picking Up The Pieces is undoubtedly a curio worth more than a cursory bit of interest, but even the gospel choir that surges up on its final choruses can't seem to elevate it to something more profound than that.

Picking Up The Pieces is released on the 21st May.

Rebecca Ferguson - Glitter & Gold (Cahill Club Edit)

Continuing the amazing disco diva makeover that Seamus Haji worked on sensational soul starlet Rebecca Ferguson on her previous single Too Good To Lose, Cahill takes up the baton on this ace re-work of new track Glitter & Gold. It's a swishing, sashaying take on the track, gorgeous string sections and blippy rave-tastic synths backing up *that* voice. Every time we hear Rebecca sing, we fall in love, all over again. We've long said how we always imagined her as an empowered club diva, and this version of Glitter & Gold is all that, personified.

Dragonette - Let It Go

Since Dragonette featured on Martin Solveig smash Hello, there's been the overarching sense that now, on their upcoming third album, they'll finally be able to achieve the proper mainstream success they've so blatantly been deserving of since they kicked things off with 2007's Galore.

We pop fans have known about them for ages, but as far as 'Hi, we're Dragonette!' introductory type tracks go, new single Let It Go is spot on. It leaps from fuzzy synth lines to whipcrack beats with all the enthusiasm and carefree exuberance that powered the Solveig collab and is peppered with just the right amount of quirkiness to keep the casual listener fascinated. It's that radio record that screams with the potential to skyrocket the group into previously uncharted levels of adoration - a gateway into a new summer of love where Let It Go blares from every speaker and car stereo.

In a post-Cinderella's Eyes world, Let It Go is a frothy, perked-up gem to compliment the carefully collated iPod playlist of any true pop aficionado.

Let It Go is released on the 2nd April.

[Official Lyric Video] The Saturdays - 30 Days

All that anticipation, all that waiting with baited breath for the new Saturdays single since the largely unspecified 'end' to the On Your Radar album campaign. And it lived up to our every expectation, exceeded them even!

Because what 30 Days represents is a new scale for The Saturdays, a fully epic club banger that builds on the All Fired Up formula and bolts on all the heartaching emotion of My Heart Takes Over for good measure. It put it in a wider scheme of things, it really is - as so many have long wanted from The Sats - their Call The Shots, their Untouchable.

As with all the best Saturdays songs, there's a top-notch middle-eight bit from Una and an incredible drum fill at 2.25 that sounds like a jet-fighter fly-by. The lyric video, in my eyes, totally fits the feel of the song - that sort of neon-drenched, fizzing realm of pure electricity - barely on the cusp of being constrained. 30 Days is that impossible, teetering moment on the edge of letting loose, of collasping into constituent atoms of pure energy. And boy does it sound good.

30 Days is released on the 13th May and a five-track iTunes EP is available to pre-order now including a karaoke version and the Ruff Loaderz Radio Mix of the track. More important though, is the studio version of fan-favourite Turn Myself In and a 'Saturdays Only' version of The Way You Watch Me (with no Travie McCoy guest raps!)

[Single Cover] The Saturdays - 30 Days

We haven't even heard the song yet, but some quick snooping on The Saturdays Facebook page has revealed this cover artwork for new single 30 Days!

What do we reckon? Speaking style-wise, it's very much in keeping with the On Your Radar look, so could this mean the single is fronting up a re-release of the album? One thing we know for sure, Una flipping her hair sure gets us overwhelmed. We like Vanessa's finger-gesture too, very Saturday(s) Night Fever.

Anyways, the song is getting its premiere on Radio 1 at 7.55am tomorrow morning - so make sure you listen in then.

30 Days is set for a 13th May release date.

J-Lo feat. Pitbull - Dance Again

She's done it. She's actually done it. Following up the incredible On The Floor would be a pretty nerve-wracking job for any artist, but J-Lo - with Dance Again - has actually managed to pull of a track that matches its predecessor in terms of distilled eurodance awesomeness. Already, it sounds like the makings of a proper summer anthem, the kind of thing you can't move for hearing - and if that's how it goes, we won't be complaining, because we love it. You can picture it already, cars jammed up in petrol station forecourts, everyone getting hot and flustered, and then suddenly, Dance Again comes on, and everything is suddenly right with the world.

Of course, J-Lo has far more important stuff on the mind in the song, chiefly, love: 'If this was a perfect world, we'd be together now'. We don't live in a perfect world, but Dance Again makes us feel like we do. It's got that sort of strutting confidence to it, and an ace soaring chanty bit - basically all the ingredients you want from both a J-Lo single and a full-on summer smash. A fire's lighting us up, and we just want to dance again, or more specifically, play this again, and again, and again...

Flux Pavilion feat. Example - Daydreamer

Of all the bass-toting dance acts awash in the charts at the moment, Flux Pavilion win points from the off for the sheer bonkers-ness of their name. It's got that sense of the grandstand ego, prepped and ready to obliterate dancefloors across the nation. In that sense then, Example makes for the perfect fit for new single Daydreamer and its accompanying slipstream of hi-energy laser synths. The track literally ripples like a livewire current of electricity, and while it's far from being Example's greatest moment (it doesn't hold a patch on Stay Awake), he certainly adds a certain bravado-laden swagger to the track. When the beat drops post-middle-eight, Daydreamer ends up sounding like Super Mario on crack, blippiness exploding outwards in an infusion of 8-bit madness. It's not clean, and it's not clever, but Daydreamer's sheer scale can't be faulted.

Daydreamer is released on the 30th April.

Maximo Park - The National Health

Of all the bands that have 'been away for a while', Maximo Park were always one of the ones we were holding the most hopes for. Back when we were angsty teenagers polishing off our GCSEs, we were obsessed with them - tracks like Our Velocity became those magical 'soundtrack to your life' moments that get indelibly ingrained alongside all your formative memories. And now they've returned, at long last, with new album The National Health, and the title track is a bit of a treat - a real storming reaffirmation of the band's core values

2009's Quicken The Heart, while still a perfectly good album, felt nowhere near as vital or 'alive' as the band's first two platinum-selling efforts. Praise must be afforded to The National Health then, for catapulting the band firmly back into everything that made us fall in love with them in the first place - it's snappy, it's energised, and most importantly, it's bloody good.

Maximo Park are back, and we're loving it.

The National Health is released on the 11th June.