While the X Factor contestants are busy covering Motown hits this Saturday, we thought we'd track down a nice, soulful cover of our own - Sleek, slinky vocals and an equally smooth backing of funky bass and sax solos are the order of the day with Traedonya's cover of Sly and the Family Stone classic Family Affair, which you can take a listen to here.
The singer is picking up radio support rapidly across America and Europe for her single Another Lie - like the cover version, it's a cool as can be slice of classy funk vibes. Like En Vogue's chic vibes mixed with the raw soulful power of Beverley Knight, Traedonya is a definite talent to keep an ear out for.
It makes for a marked difference from previous material - 2009 single I'll Give It To You is a mechanistic, synth-heavy affair full of man-eating spunk and spat-out attitude.
The concept of a winter-world is an oldie in sci-fi terms, but it’s a goodie. And it’s to this setting we turn for Dan Abnett’s new Doctor Who romp – featuring old adversaries the Ice Warriors!
When it comes to action, there’s no better writer than Dan Abnett and paired with the inimitable delivery of Michael Maloney, The Silent Stars Go By does well to conjure up the scenes of a treacherously cold lost world that has forgotten its original heritage.
This might be officially touted as an 11th Doctor adventure, but Maloney clearly had Tom Baker in mind when narrating the Doctor’s lines, and it actually works a treat – the likeness is spot on, plays in some wonderfully humorous lines and is at its best in the brilliant confrontation with the Ice Lord in Part 5. Full of menace and rich in the history of the show – it’s a classic Doctor/baddie confrontation and written with perfect suspense.
That said, for all that this adventure has its high octane moments, it’s not without its lulls too. At six hours long, parts of the tale can feel rather wordy and there’s a lot of exploratory stuff mid-way; part three in particular feels rather padded out. Equally though, the extended running time gives the story room to build a proper sense of setting, giving it a richness of texture you rarely get in the TV episodes.
Amy and Rory feel rather periphery to the action, but this is all the more to allow the Doctor more time to be brilliant himself – the effect is of giving The Silent Stars Go By the flavour of a classic series adventure, or indeed classic sci-fi; those golden greats of the 60s pulp fiction era.
The descriptions of the ice warriors themselves are brilliant – they’re given genuine menace and gravity; their monstrous, hulking size really coming across. Likewise, the other enemies of the piece – the trans-humans – are fantastically realised; horrible Necron-esque creations of fused flesh and metal. On the other end of the scale, there’sthe large supporting cast of west-country-accented natives who serve a rather good job of filling in the mystique of the post-Earth world.
If there's one act in this year's X Factor that seems to have bucked all the usual trends, it's Little Mix. Normally, girlbands are the first to be booted out of the show as lacklustre support from the public sees them dropping like flies compared to the big personalities and individualism of the solo contestants.
Why have Little Mix managed to do so well in the live shows where so many of their predecessors have faltered? You could argue its down to styling, good song choices, a lack of strong competitors, but both the girls themselves and their mentor Tulisa have raised another interesting factor that bears considering.
Speaking to The Sun about Little Mix, Tulisa explains: 'They are endearing. They don’t seem like the kind of girls who are going to nick your boyfriend. They’re the kind of girls whose shoulder you want to cry on.'
On the level, the idea that a member of a girlfriend might actually steal a potential female fan's boyfriend is pretty far-fetched. What Tulisa is referring to is a far more sub-conscious level of the psyche. When we decide if we like a band or not a whole load of algorithms go through our head at lightning speed, many of them based on simple questions like do we actually like their music or not - but equally, many tap into deep-rooted fears and desires. One of these is - in the case of girls - is the boyfriend-stealer principle.
Here, the girlband prompts the paranoia part of our brain, stirring suspicions: 'These girls are really hot. I see them as competition. If my boyfriend sees them, he's going to fancy them. He's going to fancy me less compared to them'. Irrational fears, yes, but sub-conscious, automatic reactions - and all this plays into that on/off decision of whether the girl picks up the phone and votes for the girls or goes out and buys their single in the shop.
Speaking to Heat magazine, Little Mix revealed how their fanbase was primarily female:
'We don’t really get very much attention from boys, I think people think we’d get loads of guys asking us out, but we don’t. We get loads of messages from girls, but hardly any from boys.'
As Tulisa mentioned, these fans are seeing the girls more as pals than as potential competition. Why is this? Arguably, it is because Little Mix play to a more plain street-smart vibe than uber-glossy, super-sexy groups like The Saturdays. When The Saturdays are charting at a dangerously low No. 23 in the official album charts, it has to be asked why the connection with a young, female fanbase isn't there to the degree it should be. The boyfriend-stealer principle probably comes into it.
When it comes to purchasing music, the sub-conscious is often a powerful vibe. Continuing with the example of the Saturdays, go to one of their gigs or a club playing one of their singles and you'll undoubtedly see just as many guys as girls enjoying the music. But when it comes to buying the music, parting with their money to become the owner of a 'Saturdays CD' - far less likely. These guys might fancy the hell out of these girls and casually enjoy their music while in the company of friends, but their deep-rooted masculinity cannot extend to allow them to purchase the music.
These principles are only a small part of that innate music-buying, but sometimes, it's that small part that tips the balance, that makes the difference between a yes and a no.
Oh to be a Euro-dance artist. It's this genre, more than any other, where it seems to be deemed acceptable to put out the same song again and again with barely the slightest of tweaks. It worked for Basshunter, and not being one to buck the trend, Alexandra Stan follows the formula down to a T.
For all its cheese and nonsensical sexual posturing, Mr. Saxobeat was a pretty good track - it played to a keen pop sensibility while simultaneously targeting all the party season buttons of your average twenty-something Ibiza clubber. But the trouble with Alexandra Stan's new single Get Back is that is an identikit clone of Mr. Saxobeat - so much so that it not only scuppers its own likability, but also any of merits its predecessor had.
Get Back is the sound of an endless cycle of self-destructive dance-pop, feeding into itself and regurgitating the same three seconds of music again and again. Whatever substance was there initially is long gone, blitzed away into the pop meat grinder; emerging as an utterly faceless entity.
There's a tendency these days for bands to pile so much into a track, to approach it with such intensity and frantic pace that any sense of individuality and power is lost. It's nice to hear then that The Duke Spirit stick to a restrained, almost polite methodology for their new single Don't Wait.
With the press hailing the track's parent album Bruiser as an impressive return to form, Don't Wait plays to well established tropes but does it with such comfortable ease that every meaty guitar hook it knocks out feels like an old friend.
For the majority of the song, the band hold back - content to sit in their introspective collation of rough, earthy sounds - it is only in the passionate last minute that they really let rip, blasting away the barriers of containment, hammering home the emotion burning away at the very heart of their music.
When awesome new pop duo Oh My! meet modern day pop classic Higher, you know you're in for a treat. Here the feisty twosome girls tackle The Saturdays hit single with suitably rave-tastic results - imagine the song propelled through a Super Mario 8-bit sound card and you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect.
With their flirty, uber-trendy pop credentials, Oh My! have already taken the blogosphere by storm, and this cover makes for a fitting celebration of the girls' opening night supporting The Saturdays on tour.
Of the nine artists touted by MTV as the ones to watch in 2012, for me, Clement Marfo & The Frontline are by far one of the most exciting. This exuberant seven piece hip-hop gang from South London blaze onto the scene brimming with swagger and buckets of finger-flipping confidence.
Slipping effortlessly alongside contemporaries like Tinie Tempah and Tinchy Stryder, the group keep pop sensibilities to the fore with an immense chorus of epic proportions in Overtime. Switching up from the full-throttle power of the central refrain to grimy rapped verses, the group are clearly as versatile as they are ambitious.
Having just polished off a tour of the UK, the group are riding high on a wave of support from Radio 1 DJs - Overtime standing as the first chapter in their undoubtable conquering of the airwaves in 2012.
