Monday, November 28, 2005
As predicted, the Lilyjets song has grown on me loads since I posted it, and here's another teenage girl pop-rock song that I've been enjoying recently. As far as I know, Max Martin had nothing to do with it, but the style fits in well with that of the new wave of pop-rockers he has been working with. Sara is an actress who has starred in films such as 2004's
Sleepover, and now she's turning to music with this as her debut single. She has also duetted with J-Mac aka Jesse McCartney, ex-member of the worst boyband of all time, Dream Street, who is now a fairly popular singer in America in his own right. On Sara's website you can listen to a few more songs from her forthcoming album, The Ups And Downs, and they sound quite promising although pretty similar to Here We Go Again. This is no bad thing, though, cos the songs are all catchy and ace. Since she's only 17 (a few months younger than me!), she may well be giving Hilary and Lindsay a run for their money in 2006!
# posted by Jessica : 5:36 PM
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Saturday, November 26, 2005
I haven't even got the Infernal album yet and they're releasing a new song that's not on it. It will, however, be on the international version of the CD, released to capitalise on their success in such countries as Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland, Norway and even Australia. It's an extremely catchy dance-pop song, similar in sound to From Paris To Berlin and Cheap Trick Kinda Girl, but with extra aceness from the talky bits and It's Your Duty-esque whip sounds! Infernal, aka the fabulously-named Lina and Paw, have to be one of the best pop discoveries of 2005 and if they carry on making music like this they could be up there with the Alcazars and A*Teens of the boy/girl Europop groups in no time.
# posted by Jessica : 2:49 PM
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Friday, November 25, 2005
This is a duet between one of the biggest pop stars in Norway, Espen Lind, and a popular female classical singer (best known for singing on the Titanic soundtrack), Sissel Kyrkjebø. The photo on the left is of the two of them performing this song at the Norwegian Spellman music awards in 2001. He is Robbie Williams' much calmer Norwegian cousin, while she just looks like that woman out of Love Soup. However, she is an excellent singer and this is an amazing song. I first heard it a week or so ago and I have been playing it non-stop ever since. It's so dramatic and the chorus is fantastic.
# posted by Jessica : 5:44 PM
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Saturday, November 19, 2005
I posted the first single by Lilyjets (the incredibly ace Going Blind) earlier this year, and at last the Norwegian rock/pop girl-group are back with a new single, and again it's very good. I'm not sure if it quite scales the heights of Going Blind, but that did take a few listens for me to realise the extent of it's fabulousness, so I expect this'll be a grower too. I'm not sure if it was written by Max Martin & Rami, as Going Blind was, but I imagine it would be and it certainly sounds like it. If you like the Kelly Clarkson, Veronicas or BSBs stuff made with the same people, you should definitley give this a try and look out for the album which should be out in early 2006. The girls are obviously very sassy and are quite powerful singers - despite looking very sweet and lovely, their songs are really quite angsty!
# posted by Jessica : 5:19 PM
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Her Eurovision-winning Number 1 was a total classic and the disco-tastic follow-up, Light In Our Soul, was just as ace, but I think this, her 3rd solo single in English (she released one prior to Eurovision in Greek), has to be her best yet. It sounds like a combination of Number 1 and the best Antique (her old group) songs, and it's so wildly happy and summery that you could almost forget that it's absolutely freezing outside. Maybe a summer release would be more suited, but at this time of year we need this stuff much more. It's fantastic!
# posted by Jessica : 4:54 PM
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A title that makes "Crazy Chick" sound sophisticated, but the song is actually very good. The style is r'n'b pop, somewhere between Jamelia and Lene Nystrom. Birgit is a new Dutch pop girl, with the acest
web site I've seen in ages. The site even plays a version of the single with Japanese language verses! Birgit has been releasing singles since 1999 and released her first album, Few Like Me in 2001, when she moved from Mercury Records to Virgin. Hardrocking Diva is from her second album, Sticky Tales (released last month), and you can see the video (a mixture of 60s and Japanese style, and extremely cool) on her web site. You should also look through the photo section because this girl has got amazing style and takes great photos. I can't believe I haven't heard of Birgit before - she is quite a find, to say the least! The only rubbish thing is, I can't find anywhere at all to buy her CDs - how does she expect to sell any?
# posted by Jessica : 3:31 PM
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A few months ago I
posted the flop single by Anniq from the early 00s, Skin Deep. It was an exciting surprise when a few weeks ago I saw the new Lacoste advert featuring Natasha Thomas (who has also
appeared on this site before)singing a cover of the same song. It's nice that the song hasn't been wasted, although Natasha has covered the mid-tempo radio version as opposed to the extra-ace dance version Anniq did. It's still a lovely song, though, and is apparently Natasha's next single so hopefully it will at last give someone a hit.
# posted by Jessica : 1:26 PM
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Most of the songs on Andy Bell's recent solo album, Electric Blue, sound like slightly inferior (but still ace) versions of the single, Crazy, which I posted here a few months ago. This one, however, if a very jolly, catchy number which sounds more like something A1 would do on their first album. As everyone knows, A1's first album was their best, so this is a very good thing indeed. Electric Blue is only £6.99 on CD Wow now so it's well worth getting if you like what you've heard of his solo work. And yes, I know that's a very old picture but it's the least scary one I could find.
# posted by Jessica : 11:11 AM
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Despite looking very fat in that photo, Baby will remember my name because I have at last found fame! Well, Into The Groove got a little mention on the BBC website,
here. I'm still undecided whether this beats being in the
Le Monde, but I am pleased to be there with such ace fellow bloggers all the same. (Thanks to
Greg for the tip-off)
# posted by Jessica : 7:33 PM
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Sunday, November 13, 2005
Here is yet another Roxette dance cover, this time of their no.13 hit from 1992, with it's 'imaginative' use of punctuation. This version is true Europhoria (if that's not a genre already it should be) - a very energetic dance background with a young female singer who sounds almost unreasonably cheerful. This one certainly won't be getting anywhere near the US top 10, but it's certainly rivalling Fading Like A Flower for my favourite of these new Roxette covers. Cascada are the same people who did the brilliant single (I Need A) Miracle, although they were then called Cascade. The songs are sung by an English/German girl named Natalie Horler, and she has 2 male dancers named Falk and Essa. The songs are created by DJs Yanou and Manian.
# posted by Jessica : 2:32 PM
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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Jenn is a Filipino American female singer who has released a few small-scale dance tracks, and this, her latest single, which samples the Wings single, Silly Love Songs. You may have heard this on PWL Radio, who often play it. It's a joyful, 90s-style summery dance track, and very catchy. You'll be singing along in no time. It's the kind of song I can imagine being played in a cheesy American teen movie to soundtrack a montage of cheery summertime events - rollerskating in the park, eating ice cream etc. This song just sounds like smiling!
# posted by Jessica : 2:38 PM
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
I don't often post singer-songwriter types in my blog, so when I do you should know they'll be good! I'm actually not sure how good Butch Walker is, as this is the only song I've heard by him, but this song is definitely good. It's about a mixtape he got from a girl, how he loves it just because it's from her - the bad songs aren't so bad, the sad songs aren't so sad etc. In a way, the lyrics are rubbish, but in another way they are totally brilliant. I suppose it depends what you like in a song - if you like funny lyrics which sound like something a real person would say, you'll like this, but if you like your song lyrics a bit more intellectual, you may hate it. And then you'll be missing out.
# posted by Jessica : 2:29 PM
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Monday, November 07, 2005
My discovery of this song involved me seeing an advert for the single release in a Danish teenage girls' magazine when I went there on holiday many years ago. A Google of her name shows that she had other songs but this was the most famous. It got to no.34 in the Swedish charts, and most of the Google results are from Sweden too so I guess she must be Swedish. I have also found that she has released music under another name, probably her real one, Emilia de Poret, as well. I'd love to know, if anyone can shed any light. She has an oddly deep, almost manly voice, but the song is very good in a cheapo Euro-Britney way. I expect that a lot of people with finer taste than me would hate it, but if, like me, you have a high threshold for unoriginal yet ace pop music, you may just love it.
# posted by Jessica : 7:59 PM
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Sunday, November 06, 2005
It was really hard to decide between this, Jump and Sorry as for which track from the new Madonna album to post, but I chose this one. I just hope now that this site doesn't get closed down a la the download section of
Muzicmatters mysteriously did soon after the madge album leaked. There are some advantages of being a small site, not getting shut down for posting new tracks being one of them (hopefully I haven't spoken too soon). So, on to the song. This is one of the most poptastic tracks on the album, it's really catchy with several different ace sections. Unlike most of the songs it doesn't sample anyone else (to my knowledge, at least), although there is one bit which reminds me of Fantasy by Mariah Carey - but don't let that put you off if you dislike that song cos they don't really sound alike anyway.
# posted by Jessica : 1:57 PM
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