We've been keeping an eye and an ear on Skylar Grey since her collabs with Diddy and Dr. Dre early last year - as far as featured artists go, there's something about Skylar's haunting, gothic-tinged vocals that properly sweeps you up in when so many other guest parts leave you disaffected. Both memorable and delicately haunting in all the right ways, new team-up with dance producers Kaskade offers an impressive new direction for Skylar - Room For Happiness casts her as a goddess-like Eurodance diva. The track throbs with the dim glow of neon caught amidst the shadowy folds of night, the draw of some distant club beat echoing out to the early hours... and we want to be there.
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.
Sure, it might be the sugariest, poppiest, almost overly sweet thing you'll have heard all year, but there's something so unashamedly carefree about Call Me Maybe that you just want to dive into its world and never leave. Because in Carly Rae Jepsen's world, POP is the order of the day and Call Me Maybe - a kind of Diana Vickers meets Disney princess gem of a song - is frankly awesome.
It's kooky to just the right degree, and touts a hook of such coquetish flirtiness, tripping off those little synth-string stabs, that we want to down a gallon of fizzy drink and go out dancing. In a way, Call Me Maybe's chief joy is it just exists in its own little world, able to charm its way onto the Radio 1 playlist where anything else this pop would never get a look in. What with Canadian Idol shooting Jepsen to fame, it just leaves you asking, when is X Factor going to produce someone like this?
After all, I just met you, and this is crazy, but we think we're in love already. Carly Rae Jepsen, will you call us... maybe?
Every year, there’s always a smattering of tracks that seem to utterly take over the radio – both through virtue of being played a hell of a lot, and simply sounding like a ‘radio’ track; something which merges into the consciousness of the surroundings. This year, Gotye’s 8x platinum (in Australia) Somebody That I Used To Know is one of those tracks.
Now firmly nestled in the public mind, Gotye turns to the track that warmed native audiences to him as his follow-up over here. Eyes Wide Open largely marks a big departure from his mega-hit; for starters, it’s placed far more firmly within the up-beat ouvre of standard indie-pop tropes. Like a shimmery middle-ground between Snow Patrol at their more pensive and Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition, it once again nails that hazy radio-track substance, drawing it in, gorging itself on its essence. The result? A track that, while lacking the neat prettiness of Somebody That I Used To Know, shows that Gotye is more than just a one hit wonder.
It might come as a surprise to hear that one of the most touted up and comers this year has actually already released three years. Singer songwriter Gotye is something of a big deal in his native Australia - releasing his first album Boardface all the way back in 2003, his sophomore effort hit the Top 20 and went platinum.
His most recent LP - Making Mirrors - from which UK 'breaker' single Somebody That I Used To Know is released, saw him reaching his zenith, hitting No. 1 in the Aussie charts. What's even more impressive though is the fact the single has gone seven times platinum over there. Yes, that's right, seven times.
And for all the track's subtle, understated qualities, it's not hard to see why. It's got all the hallmarks of a dark-horse hit, from the quaint xylophone hits to the slowly revolving acoustic strumming. It's the kind of record that crosses all borders of genre, taste and boundary - its appeal? Universal. By the time guest vocalist Kimbra lends her delicate tones to the mix and the folksy flute melodies blur across the track, you're already under its spell.
Its charm is that it feels completely without ego, without bravado - in an era where most records pound at your senses in an effort to be heard - to be acknowledged - Somebody That I Used To Know merely presents itself, and leaves the decisions up to you. Its self-evident quality does the rest.
As a bright New Year dawns on the the 1st of January, we imagine there'll be a fair few sore heads out there this morning. And while most people would probably want to forget those shaky memories of berocca and being too sick to clamber from bed, Taio Cruz has gone and done a song about hangover. Brilliant.
The thing about Taio is that for all his seeming commercial artist simplicity, recently, as he's dabbled in the American market, things have all gone a bit weird. Previous album Rokstarr ended up splitting off into semi-greatest hits compilation The Rokstarr Collection - while super-smashes Break Your Heart and Dynamite did exceedingly well everywhere, other singles like No Other One flopped without trace.
And the piecemeal approach to round the world success seems to continue with third album TY.O, already released in Germany on the 2nd December, but not out here until the 26th March. Go Figure. New single Hangover has all the makings of another mega-hit though, with 19 Million views on YouTube already and a de-rigeur guest rap from Flo Rida.
It's a suitably standard club-based affair, the synths going for a harder edge than Taio's previous singles and with a bit of guitar thrown in for good measure. Beneath any surface embellishments though, Hangover is a thoroughly to-formula track, working to a tightly planned schematic of contemporary urban-pop tropes. It's tediously predictable, a mish-mash of sounds we've already heard a thousand times on assorted tracks across the past year.
It's a disappointing turn for the artist many of us still remember as capable of producing beautiful, reflective R&B like I Can Be and Moving On. But whatever format they take, Taio's hit-making talents can't be faulted, and if the track's 'I got a hangover, whoooahhhh!' isn't one of the most indelible pop hooks we've heard recently, we don't know what is.
Sometimes, you just want something incredible to dance to. Crazy In My Heart - the debut UK single for Russian superstar Kamaliya - takes the trend for immense Euro-dance smashes to the most epic of levels, propelled on an apocalyptic mix of thumping beats and fist-punching synth bursts.
On one level, it's Eurovision to the power of a million, but at heart, where it matters, it's a full throttle club anthem with a deliciously throbbing bassline.
With some cool kaleidoscope inspired dance routines in the video, the track is as visually arresting as it is sonically - those that loved what The Saturdays did in their All Fired Up video will be pleased to hear the video for Crazy In My Heart features an assortment of water-slashing moves too. It's clearly all the rage at the moment.
What we love most though is the massive moon suspended over everything - like the track, quite literally out of this world.
Crazy In My Heart is released on the 12th December.
Following up their critically acclaimed 2009 debut Ups and Downsizing, US pop-punk rockers the Swellers are hitting the UK this winter to help promote their new album Good For Me.
Lead single The Best I Ever Had is a classic bit of youthful Americana, big meaty guitar hooks colliding with a passionate, rousing chorus. For those that like their rock on the XL size, this'll be right up your street.
The Best I Ever Had is available to download on iTunes now, and the album's UK release follows on the 21st November.
The full list of tour dates is as follows:
Tues 29 Nov Rescue Rooms Nottingham
Wed 30 Nov Cockpit Leeds
Thu 1 Dec King Tuts Glasgow
Fri 2 Dec Academy 2 Newcastle
Sat 3 Dec Corporation Sheffield
Sun 4 Dec Academy 3 Manchester
Mon 5 Dec Academy 3 Birmingham
Tues 6 Dec Clwb Ifor Bach Cardiff
Wed 7 Dec Borderline London
Sat 17 Dec Peel Kingston
Own The Night was released in the US last week to staggering sales figures - 347,000 copies in one week. Wow! When you remember that the group have six Grammy awards under their belt though, the hype and acclaim around them seems completely justified.
We Owned The Night is surprisingly upbeat for such a sombre title - a real jumpy, springy track. It's good to see the band kicking the album off with a proper upbeat number the first of many signs that this is a band unwilling to sit on their laurels.
Even by second track Just A Kiss you can tell Own The Night is an infinitinely more confident, well-rounded affair than Need You Now was. The production is big, glossy - but doesn't ever cheapen their sound. The tracks still feel authentic, genuine. If anything, this new, slicker Lady Antebellum seems in a better position to put out epic ballads like this. The guitar work sounds a lot cleaner, and the strings are applied liberally across the LP.
On the whole, the album feels like its moved the band closer to pop sensibilities and further from their country roots. They've not concreted over the country sound, merely re-rendered it under a pop paint job. It's in achieving the right balance that affirms Own The Night's quality as a consistent body of work.
Every track is suffused by a buoyed up, cinematic portrayal of romance it - of course, if you go to buy a Lady Antebellum CD, chances are that's probably what you want/expect. One thing that does come as a surprise is Friday Night; a sprightly, Bon Jovi-esque bit of 'real rock'.
When You Were Mine is the real highlight of the album and also sees it at its most pop. It's the kind of track UK girl-group Wonderland would have killed for to have on their album (they who covered Need You Now and were set to release it as a single before they were swiftly axed by their label).
The funky groove and rosy, full-bodied choruses of Singing Me Home almost verges into Beautiful South territory while Wanted You More is the album at its most epic and cinematic, but also its most experimental, with lovely little piano flourishes. As the record comes to a close, we see an impression of a band clearly not content to merely wheel out twelve tracks of identical crowd-pleasers, there is a real sense of ambition.
It's time for the UK to wake up to just how good Lady Antebellum are.
Own The Night is released on the 3rd October and can be pre-ordered here.
Who's for a real classy slice of soul funk that sounds like it's been shot straight out of the early 90s? Well that's what you get with Jill Scott's latest single So In Love, the first from her new album The Light of the Sun.
The track is already a big hit in America and it's not hard to see why - Scott's voice is so natural, so beautifully attuned to everything going on around it that you feel yourself slipping into a kind of almost-hypnosis. Anthony Hamilton also features on the track, his own vocals serving as the perfect counter-part to Scott's.
With duets there's always the danger one singer will dominate or show up the other, but the two seem in absolute harmony here - two peas in a pod, so to speak.
With enervating lyrics of 'I feel like a breath of fresh air' riding high high on an irresistibly groovy beat, the record feels so empowered, so on the money in every sense. Some records try to be cool, some try to redefine what cool is, but there are those rare gems that beyond all reason and logic just are the very definition of what 'cool' is.
There's a suitably satisfying crispness to the percussion too, the piano chords floating on the breeze like angel wings; all underscored ever so delicately with dreamy synthetic strings.
Going on holiday somewhere hot this summer? So In Love is what you'll want playing as you lie back on some sun-kissed tropical beach.
As the summer creeps in, you can always count on the dance world to begin hotting up, shuffling their deck of cards and dealing the first hand of records to soundtrack the summer nights. There are changing trends and shifting scenes to bear in mind, but there will always be reliable formulas to stick to when you want a hit record on your hands.
Enter Zoe Badwi. The Australian singer-songwriter started her career in modelling and TV adverts for things like Mars Bars (yum) as well as being part of a girl group. The usual sorts of things you can expect for a trendy popstar.
And so we come to her new single Freefallin', which is already a top 10 hit in her native Australia as well as being certified platinum. Impressive. Anyway, the track is your standard, anthemic, super-uplifting dance-pop fare and sounds a LOT like When Love Takes Over - meaning it sounds very good, if not the most original record on the block. What it does do is showcase Zoe's rather impressive vocals; she can certainly hit all the high notes a track like this demands as well as packing some real power and grit that helps set her up as a proper popstar in her own right rather than just a faceless dance diva.
'It's all good, I'm alright', she sings in the chorus - well, with that platinum accolade under her belt already, things definitely seem to be going more than 'alright' for Zoe at the moment, and if she can translate that success to over here, Freefallin' could very well be the soundtrack to your summer too - the UK single release featuring remixes by MotoBlanco and WAWA.
