Aiden Grimshaw - Is This Love

Right from the outset, Aiden Grimshaw established himself as one of the most interesting contestants ever to grace the X Factor. With his moody, sometimes overbearingly theatrical demeanour and performances, it always felt like he was underserved a little by what the X Factor could offer him. He was certainly never going to win, no, he was too much of an acquired taste for that. He was too much an undefined quantity - you just know that if he had gone on to win he'd have been morphed into a formless Joe McElderry clone and have descended into z-list-dom less than a year later.

But life post-X Factor throws up some fascinating surprises, and one of them is Aiden's actual debut single; a synth-tastic journey into dream-kissed airy pop heaven. It's like Frankmusik rebooted for 2012 pop market, laced with dub-step beats, 80s gloss and vocals that really capture a sense of who Aiden is as both person and potential star. It's a clever move too, with all the shiny pop appeal to grab hearts and minds of a horde of teen girls, but the trendy dance credibility to make its own way into clubland domination.

So, with fingers in both domains, Aiden has recast himself as quite the aspiring dance-pop prince, and it's a look that suits. Is This Love is a terrific debut, and if the rest of his album is as good as this, it could land itself up there with Rebecca Ferguson's Heaven as one of the best LP's ever produced from the ITV ratings giant.

Listen to Is This Love HERE.

Alexandra Burke - Let It Go

I think it's fair to say that Alexandra Burke has decided she's usually at her best when banging out immense dance anthems, so, having promptly delivered Elephant into the hands of a nation of eager pop lovers, she's gone and done it again with new single Let It Go. But whereas Elephant fired away like a high-powered nuclear reactor of futuristic electro energy, Let It Go dips into the past - specifically, the 90s, and rides away on a bubbly Show Me Love-esque riff and shades of 2 Unlimited.

The good thing is, Let It Go is rather decent, if a little by-the-numbers - and that trancey chorus bit is DanceAlex in full-tilt. But the trouble is, will this be the track to finally warm the public to Alexandra again in the way Elephant only really half managed? I'm not so sure. There's only so long an artist can coast along in the Top 10 for without the backing and full support of the public and radio, and right now for Alex, this is looking particularly intermittent. We shall see...

Let It Go is released on the 28th 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.

[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!)

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...

Lawson - When She Was Mine

A lot has been made of how Lawson are the next 'Busted or McFly', but to be honest, one listen of new single When She Was Mine highlights how, at heart, they represent something far more. While the vocals and well-rounded pop hooks might be standard boy-band far, the music itself shows a group of properly accomplished musicians pushing to bring real substance to their sound. Whether it's the Cure-esque guitar, or the dreamy middle-eight, When She Was Mine isn't just great pop, it's mature pop too. There's a depth and weight to the production that really emphasises the 'band' feel of the track, a collective of talent that when combined brings forth prodigious results that feel allied to a wiser, smarter aesthetic than many of their contemporaries. It bodes well for the guys' debut album, that's for sure.

When She Was Mine is released on the 27th May.

Tulisa - Young

I'd always wanted Tulisa to get her solo career off to a bang with a big dancey single - but I wasn't expecting something quite so dipped in the aesthetics of clubland as this. Young blasts out like a little piece of Ibiza transposed onto the airwaves and while on first impressions it seems an odd - strangely icy - choice for a lead single, it's certainly not without its merits.

Chief among these is the sheer scale of the thing. It feels properly epic, and those trancey synth riffs at their best are divine. Proper turn of the Millenium pilled-up bliss. But as for Tulisa herself, Young feels less effective - she roughens up her voice from the smooth gloss of her N-Dubz days and goes in for a ad-lib heavy Jessie J style effort, with mixed results. I'm not quite sure if all the hooks are quite in place, and it certainly doesn't seem to have the uber-magnetic pull a lead single should.

But fair play to Tulisa - especially in the wake of this week's frenzy of events - for delivering something uncompromising and true to herself. Because the idea of the X Factor judge as an empowered club diva is quite an attractive one. Let's just hope there's some better choruses on the album.

Garbage - Blood For Poppies

With Garbage, you can always count on two things - Shirley Manson doing her amped-up power-woman thing, and tracks that even when not the most consistent in quality, assured of a sort of intelligent vitality. And new single Blood For Poppies is in many ways the very definition of all that - a punky, agile number that for all the world ends up sounding like Hard-Fi.

Blood For Poppies chief merits are that it's far more (appropriately) poppy and more clinical than most of Bleed Like Me was. While Manson's vocals might be invested with a cool new brattiness and the production has been given a smart lick of paint and gloss, the song is firmly rooted in the Garbage we all fell in love with back in the 90s.

Sure, it's no Stupid Girl, but then the band's return - after more than half a decade - was never going to be like that. Like every band of their generation, there's the need and capacity to adapt, to bring in new influences and new sounds. And in Blood For Poppies, Garbage bring in a smattering of both worlds; the old and the new melded together with the union they were always so skilled at crafting. As far as 'comeback' singles go, Blood For Poppies might be more perky surprise than it is essential, but it sure feels good to listen to. And it's that ideal of auditory enjoyment which has always lain at the heart of the Garbage aesthetic.

Madonna - Love Spent

Yesterday we went and listened to the new Madonna album, MDNA, at a special playback session. It was all very fancy and we got given lots of free booze, cheese-sticks and posh salad - oh, and amazing MDNA notebooks to write our musical musings down in.

Love Spent is one of the William Orbit produced tracks off the album, and as this one minute teaser clip shows, it's a bit of alright! Boasting a classic Madonna chorus and some trippy interwoven acoustic guitar/synth bits, it's exactly the kind of thing we wanted when we first heard Orbit and Madge were getting together to cook up some tunes again.

Madonna - Girl Gone Wild [Listen]

It's been a long time since we felt a Madonna track sounded like 'classic' Madonna. Hard Candy was a tired chasing of popular R&B tropes while Celebration felt too rushed. But in Girl Gone Wild, we finally have a move back towards Madonna's dancefloor roots via a calculated new dabbling in the dark, synth magic that made Confessions on a Dancefloor such a joy.

Girl Gone Wild's chief merits lie in its simplicity - a great hook and a classic Madonna club groove that also mirrors some of the best moments of her Music album. It's a self-conscience looking back, and while it might lack some of the emotional maturity and depth that characterised Confessions, it's a definitive move in the right direction.

From what we've heard, Girl Gone Wild is far more respective of the MDNA album than Give Me All Your Luvin is - probably a good sign given said 'taster' single failed badly to set the charts alight in any shape or form. While us pop aficionados might have loved it, the public didn't seem to be swayed by Madge's MIA and Nicki team-up.

The best way to see Girl Gone Wild is as a prototype - yes, it's by no means perfect, and it's a long way off the absolute Madonna can produce when she puts her mind to it - but as a base template to expand from, it holds a whole load more promise than most of what she's done for the past few years.

Parade debut new track 'Throw It Up In The Air'

Those Parade girls certainly don't hang about - it's only been three months since the release of their debut album and already they're pumping out new material, and going by the sound of ace new song Throw It Up In The Air, there's a lot to get excited about!

Building on the street-smart PopR&B combo of their album, Throw It Up In The Air steps the Parade sound up to a bigger, more anthemic level via airy, glacial synths and an absolute killer of a chorus (seriously, how good are those 'oooooohhh' bits?!)

It's safe to say we're hooked, and we reckon the song will be netting them a whole new raft of fans as they perform it alongside old favourites like Louder and Perfume as they support The Wanted on their current arena tour.

Alexandra Burke - Elephant

It's been one of the most anticipated pop singles in recent months, and with a number of shifted release dates, the first single from Alexandra Burke's second album was starting to look like it might falter before it even got started. But hearing the full radio version of the single blows all doubts away in an instant: it's a full-throttle adrenaline rush of a song that hurtles from hard electro filth to nuclear reactor synth blasts.

For me, Elephant is the ultimate in dance-pop allure - a dark, sensual ride of apocalyptic rhythms and teetering bass - it remains definitively commercial whilst re-positioning Alexandra as an uncompromising disco diva. When she goes in, she goes in to win.

And of course, Elephant wouldn't be an Alexandra Burke without a sky-piercing high note in the middle-eight where she gets to show off the true extent of vocal acrobatics she can accomplish. In short, it owns - Ok.Com?

Sure, it might lack the uber-refined nature of her classic singles, it more than makes up for it with its dirty electronic rawness. This is Alexandra at her most dancey to date, a Euro-smash monster to slay dancefloors across the country and beyond. It's the sound of an artist that has left the X Factor for dust behind her, moving ever onwards and upwards to better things - the sound of a proper popstar.

Elephant is released on the 12th March.

Elephant by CaptainGravity

Lana Del Rey - Yayo

It's the classic Lana Del Rey method - put a song out with pretty much zero fanfare from herself, but within hours, you could bet your birthday money that the track will have been analysed and dissected and held up as the second coming. It's just the way of the world. And like Lana's previous tracks, new teaser Yayo starts tortuously slowly, only really getting going two minutes or so in.

But whereas Born To Die actually has a good pop melody buried under that chocolaty sea of vocals, Yayo is just the wrong side of sensual artistic spillage. It's like the leftover wash of semi-nothingness that remained after everything else was said and done. As always, there's a real beauty of a song there at the end of the day, but it takes a disproportionate amount of time to dig out, constantly underscored by the vague unsettling-ness of the song's refrain: 'Let me put on a show for you daddy...'

Yayo is Lana's most chilled, ambient track to date - a kind of movie soundtrack-esque track that seems to exist in the spaces between her previous singles. The production, as always, is truly lovely, and in the track's closing outro, it reaches a perfect balance of luxe ecstasy that only Lana seems capable of doing these days.

But as ever, Lana's subtlety is her undoing - in the context of the whole album, a track like Yayo would make absolute sense - but here, after the sexual boldness of Born To Die, it feels like a slow-runner, a third wheel to the all conquering Del Rey juggernaut; albeit, a very pleasant sounding one.

Leona Lewis covers Nine Inch Nails' 'Hurt'

In the history of unlikely cover versions, Leona Lewis taking on Nine Inch Nails ranks as potentially one of the most unexpected combinations... but then again, considering she's already tackled Snow Patrol and Oasis, it's fair to say she has at least some experience in the 'rock' sphere.

Of course, much of the popularity of Hurt has to be attributed to the Johnny Cash version, but remarkably, amazingly, Leona's version of Hurt actually begins sounding far more like the NIN original. The central discordant piano hook is there, as is the haunting whistle of blowing wind. Leona's vocals suit the dark sensuality of the track perfectly.

As the track builds and builds, it morphs more into generic Leona EpicBallad territory - but with its soaring string sections and flanged guitar riffs, it stands a rousing take on the original that manages to carve out its own merits.

(Part of me hoped she'd sing the infamous 'crown of shit' line... but of course, she doesn't. This is strictly PG rated. But still, rather amazing.)

Leona's cover of Hurt features on the forthcoming EP of the same name alongside other cover version, including the Goo Goo Dolls' Iris.

The Saturdays reveal My Heart Takes Over single cover!

Exciting pop news alert! The title of the new The Saturdays single has been confirmed as My Heart Takes Over - just look at the gorgeous cover art above! The girls are all in white striking identical poses - a striking image for what we are sure is another bit of pop brilliance from the girls.

The song gets its first play on Radio 1 at 8.15 tomorrow morning, no excuses for not listening! - the CD release of the track comes accompanied by new b-side So Sorry!

Rochelle had this to say of the track:

"Shooting our new video this week...:) #ontothenextone haha...SO EXCITED for you guys to see/hear its a power ballad yayyyyyyyyyyy...."

Kasabian - Days Are Forgotten

Kasabian are never ones to let the public down. And after all, where would they be without those seething crowds to sing back every word of the likes of Club Foot to them?

No, Kasabian are one of those precious few bands who seem to live an almost symbiotic existence with their fans - feeding off their very energy and channelling it back into their latest musical creations.

Maybe this, then, is the secret of their success. The reason why they remain at the top of their game when so many others have faltered. When we covered their new teaser single Switchblade Smiles back in June we loved how it felt like a return to the darker, more brutal sounds of their first album - Days Are Forgotten feels much the same.

With its classic, jabbing, bassy guitar hook, like its predecessor, it already seems destined for the soundtracks of Top Gear episodes and sports montages.

Indeed, this is Kasabian at their most epic; a Good, The Bad, and The Ugly meets James Bond composition of anthemic proportions.

Days Are Forgotten wears those filmic influences bared on its sleeve and boy does it merit from them - the chorus is one of the band's most slick to date, a monster of a thing that screams 'hit'. Add in those eerie vocal wails and you have something completely and utterly thrilling.

Four albums in, and Kasabian still at the top of their game, you wonder how many bands would kill to get their hands on that magic formula.

The band's new album Velociraptor! is released on the 19th September.

The Saturdays - All Fired Up

When I first heard Girls Aloud's masterpiece Sexy! No, No, No... I loved it right away. That feeling of eagerly listening in to a radio show, tuning in especially just to hear the new single from one of your favourite bands... there's nothing like it.

And so Sexy! No, No, No... became one of those rare songs that I absolutely loved from the out. No need for it to grow on me, the infatuation was there from the start - and the song remains to this date my favourite Girls Aloud single.

It brings me great pleasure then to be able to say that I'm experiencing all the same emotions with The Saturdays' spell-binding new single All Fired Up.

Initial reports and 30 second preview clips made it clear the track was a hyper-upbeat floorfiller, but hearing the full thing played on Radio 1 today, calling it merely a 'floorfiller' would be an understatement.

All Fired Up is positively alive, blasting away anything in its path with atomic levels of power and punch. Launching straight into the chorus straight from an ambient, moody intro, the Xenomania influence is clear.

For years the thoughts of The Sats working with Xenomania existed as a kind of Holy Grail of pop, a collaboration that seemed logical seeing as the band launched off the back of touring with Girls Aloud.

But of course, Xenomania in 2011 is in many ways a rather different creature to when dear Girls Aloud were putting out Tangled Up and Out Of Control, and it shows in All Fired Up. The DNA of tracks like Sexy! No, No, No... are there in the song; whether it be the structure, vocodered vocals or hectic pace. But it's an evolution of that sound - a FutureXenomania; a sleek space-rocket of pop amazingness that blasts away to stratospheric heights.

All Fired Up is the pop dance anthem to end all pop dance anthems - If there was a time when The Sats might finally claim that No. 1 single which is so overdue for them, then it is now.

With flirty, playful lyrics like 'we make the party super-naughty', All Fired Up is just as irresistible  - if not more so - as its forerunner Notorious was. And then there's Mollie's uber-cute 'We're all animal!' chant, oh, and Una's inspired 'Keep me on your radar...' outro, quite possibly my favourite bit from the song.

All Fired Up's real charm is that it channels repitition in a way that is impossibly exciting - by the time the song's finished you feel like you've already heard it ten times - and that's a good thing as it's So Damn Great!

This represents a big step for The Saturdays - in its entirety it sounds like nothing they've done before, yet zooming in, it stands as a very natural progression from what they began in Missing You and Notorious - now brought to full fruition.

It's The Saturdays go trance - and quite simply it sounds as brilliant in reality as it does on paper.
All Fired Up is released on the 2nd September and can be pre-ordered here.

Listen to The Saturdays All Fired Up & Ladykiller previews

Don't you just love it when Amazon/iTunes post those 30 seconds of preview of new songs ages before they're released? What this means is that we get to hear The Saturdays' frankly amazing new single All Fired Up, which gives its name to their upcoming winter tour.

Following in the more dancey tradition of Notorious, but stepping the drama and pace up another few notches, All Fired Up is a relentless onslaught of trance madness and My God does it sound good.

The lightning-quick repition of the chorus 'All Fired Up! I feel alive!' is hyper-catchy, channelling the song's energy and power on a non-stop track straight to your heart, delivering with it a massive shot of adrenaline. It's like the first time you ever drink Red Bull - but a hundred times better than that.

If this doesn't get you up on your feet dancing like it's your last night on Earth then I don't know what will. What's more, the track was written by Space Cowboy (he's done stuff for Lady Gaga!), Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper (Xenomania - need no introduction!) and MNEK.

Meanwhile, Ladykiller looks set to continue the tradition of absolutely brilliant Sats b-sides. Their last effort Not That Kinda Girl stands as one of their best to date, so I have high hopes for the full length version of Ladykiller when it comes out.

Indeed, by this point in the Saturdays career you could quite easily put together a compilation of all their b-sides and it'd still be better than a good deal of other pop albums out there.

All Fired Up is released on the 2nd September.

Parade - New album megamix featuring Stars!

OK, time to get really excited. I've been following hot new girl band Parade for a while now, and was overjoyed to hear them get their second Top 40 with Perfume a couple of weeks back.

Earlier in the day I caught up with the girls after an exciting exclusive performance at a flash bar under Chelsea's Stamford Bridge and they were all really thrilled with how well everything is going so far for them.

And now, with the release of their debut album on the horizon, they've released a new mega-mix of tracks from the album which you can download from their website now! How nice is that!

The mix features 'Perfume', 'Stars', 'Knock On My Door', 'Yes You Are', 'Just A Girl' and 'Like You' - All are brilliant, exactly the kind of fresh, modern pop I love and the band carries it really well. Seeing them increasingly frequently in the women's mags, they look stylish, trendy and every inch proper popstars.

Out of this crop though, I have to gush about Stars though because it's absolutely amazing - easily one of my favourite tracks the Parade girls have put out so far. It's something a little different for them, taking on a far more dancey angle, rocketing at you on a wave of trancey synths and feisty raps. Oh, and what's quite possibly my favourite lyric of the month: 'I've even got my own theme song!'

SO good.

WOW! It's a new Cher Lloyd photoshoot

Now this is more like it! I'm still feel the effects of dissapointment experienced on first hearing Cher Lloyd's debut single Swagger Jagger, and having listened to it further since then, it hasn't done much to grow on me either.

This dazzling new photoshoot is something to get excited about though. Cher looks hot, she looks trendy, and most importantly, she looks cool.

This is the kind of thing I envisioned when Cher won the X Factor, and if she'd come out with a thoroughly amazing song in conjunction with this photoshoot she'd be my new favourite popstar, without a doubt. But there lies the problem, the complete mismatch in her image and her music.

It's a shame almost, because he image is bang on. That's why we fell in love with her on X Factor after all. But any 'cool' she managed to acrue on the show or through brilliant photoshoots like this is instantly eliminated by the annoyingness of Swagger Jagger - as much as I wish I could love the track, I just can't.

I'm willing to hold out on the jury when it comes to Cher though - I have hope in her. You see, when someone like her has potential, it doesn't really go away, it's just sometimes masked behind a whole heap of other stuff.

So, for the time being, I'm hoping Swagger Jagger is just a momentary blip, and that in time Cher will grow into the full package we all imagined she'd be when we first saw her on our tellies.