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...

will.i.am - T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)

You have to wonder if back in the 60s, Mick Jagger ever had an inkling that he'd someday end up on an uber-commercialised electro-rap toss-up. Of course he didn't. But you sort of have to marvel at his leery, gurning lines that burst out over the outro of will.i.am's The Hardest Ever. If anything, for all their cringe-inducing banality, they add a bit of chutz-pah to a largely predictable track.

You see, The Hardest Ever is every contemporary dance-hip-hop blend track you've heard over the past year or so, all pile-driven into one espresso shot of buzz-saw synths and lyric spitting. Oh, and there's a bit of J Lo 'doing her thing' in there too, just for added titillation, you know...

'In the club', The Hardest Ever is the kind of track that gets the job done - but removed from any kind of alcohol-imbibing setting, it's crude chants of 'you can go hard or you can go home' just sound like a massively conflated sexual metaphor.

When will.i.am is properly on form (3 Words, OMG, I Gotta Feeling), he's brilliant - and as a popstar in general, he's profusely cool. But The Hardest Ever is none of that.

(Video) The Wanted - Glad You Came

What better way to show you're a cool, trendy boyband than a video for a new single where said band goes and lives it up in the clubbing capital of the world?

Yes, that's right - for The Wanted's new track Glad You Came (resists innuendo laden joke), they're going to Ibiza! (resists singing the Vengaboys song).

There's a real LADS on a night out feel here, with lots of hot girls dancing around the boys (we imagine all The Wanted fans will be massively jealous of these girls right now) and there's even lasers! Actual lasers!

In many ways, Glad You Came is a kind of male version of J Lo's On The Floor, channelling that same glorious strain of EuroDance. It's also a very natural evolution from Gold Forever and you can easily imagine the two tracks sitting side by side on the band's forthcoming second album. That said, I don't think it's quite up there with Gold Forever (still my favourite The Wanted track), but a good record nonetheless.

Glad You Came is released on the 10th July.

(Video) The Saturdays - Notorious

Before you ask... No, The Saturdays new single is not a cover of Duran Duran’s 80s classic Notorious. What it is though is one hell of a classy piece of dance-pop. With auto-tuned vocal samples and glitchy synths, it's bigger, bolder, braver than anything on their first three albums. This is the girls full on and in your face, upping their game and wearing the look with effortless chic.

Half the infectious beats of Far East Movement’s Like A G6, half epic-euro dance anthem in the vein of J Lo’s On The Floor, Notorious is a club banger through and through. With a resounding chorus of ‘I’m an outlaw, I’m the big boss, I’m a ganster on the dancefloor’, the track is bursting with confidence and swagger. There’s no room for second best here, only the refined super-glamour and highest grade of pop music that The Saturdays have made their own.

In the track’s video we see the foxy five-some taking a high speed elevator down from a futuristic office block straight to a club. This track is all about breaking free from the humdrum of working life and letting loose, unleashing that ‘outlaw’ in all of us.

Armed with towering stilettos, lip gloss and some suitably hot outfits, The Saturdays are the girls who can accomplish anything. December sees them stepping up to the big time, heading out on an arena tour across the UK. And from there, with tracks as good as Notorious, anything is possible really...

‘Closer, baby look in my eyes, do you recognise me?’ they sing, all sultryness and untamed passion. For The Saturdays, the whole world is their dancefloor, and they are there at the very heart of it – as for the rest of us; well, we’re hooked.

Notorious is released on the 22^nd May.

Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor (feat. Pitbull)

I've lost count of the number of artists who've gone for a hip new dance 'angle' with their new single and thrown in a guest rapper for good measure too. It's easy to be cynical, but you know what, they do it because it works. And J Lo's new single On The Floor is the prime example.

With its staccato beats and rhythmic euro-trance synths, On The Floor is an anthem to the coming summer - the sound of a thousand dancefloors the world over beating as one. And that's the joy of tracks like these, they're just big dollops of ready-for-the-club anthem, precision tweaked to hit all the right buttons. So when you hear Pitbull's guest slot and think 'Isn't this a bit like what he did with Enrique, Alexandra Burke and Nicole Scherzinger', it's because it is like that.

This is the natural successor to all those songs; building on them, growing, snowballing... keeping the endless dance rolling on for another year. J Lo's last album Brave only managed to reach No. 24 in the UK charts, but propelled by On The Floor, her new LP Love? could very easily see itself shooting into the upper echelons of top 10.

I'm properly loving the whole Love? thing too, as if the album is questioning its own existence. It needn't though, as On The Floor is exactly the kind of life-affirming tune we want to hear from J Lo. It's hot, dance-able and without a doubt the future-soundtrack to many a night of shots at the bar. Bring it on.

On The Floor is released 27th March.