Trawling the archives of the UK pop charts for tenuous links, patterns and globally important trends. We're gonna get ourselves connected, as they say. (NB: they don't)
Over the past few weeks here at The Pop Web we've become absolutely obsessed with emerging young artist Robin Sparkles. After having carved out a cult following in her native Canada, Sparkles is attempting to crack the lucrative US market with her unique brand of retro-pop.
Front and centre in the Sparkles back catalogue is the infectious Let's Go To The Mall. Look past the somewhat trite, bubblegum lyrics ("Everybody come and play/ Throw every last care away") and the nationalistic jingoism and Sparkles has actually managed to effortlessly recapture the spirit and energy which pervaded (for example) Madonna's eponymous debut album.
Madge's influences on this track are, to the trained ear, self-evident. The chorus in particular calls to mind Holiday whilst the track as a whole would sit quite comfortably alongside tracks like Borderline or Lucky Star. So far so good, but you may well be wondering why we'd need someone like Sparkles dredging up memories of the Queen of Pop, when her back catalogue more than speaks for itself.
Enter Sparkles' follow-up effort, Sandcastles In The Sand, quickly helps dispel any doubts about Sparkle's versatility and also testifies to her burgeoning popularity across the pond. Recruiting Dawson's Creek star James Van der Beek and veteran Canadian actor Alan Thicke for the video, Sparkles' sophomore effort brings to mind the seminal Circle In The Sand video by Pop Web favourite Belinda Carlisle.
Vocally, Sparkles is on top form, particularly in the middle eight when she mournfully laments "Life is crazy/nobody gets me/castles wash away". Clearly underpinning the veneer of 80s nostalgia, Sparkles possesses an admirable ability to connect with the song's emotion with her vocal delivery. "Sandcastles" acts as a refreshing complement to Let's Go To The Mall, by showing off her impressive vocal range, whilst also refusing to shy away from the retro styling which has so effectively captivated the music-buying public in Canada.
To be sure, there is a lot to work on here. We'd very much like Sparkles move out of her comfort zone and see her take on songs which have a little more emotional maturity to them rather than pandering to trite teenage clichés. But what these initial tracks show us is that Sparkles is loaded with potential, and if her recent relocation to New York City is handled correctly, Dominant Records could well be responsible for launching pop's next great superstar. And that's not something we say lightly.
Regular readers of The Pop Web will know that we declared that Kickstarts by Example was the 4th best song of last year. What made that track so amenable to our tastes was the combination of the amazing production, the utterly addictive backing track and the sensitive and perfectly-observed cyclicality of a relationship going stale.
We are thrilled to report that Example's latest offering pretty much captures that winning formula, bottles it, and then uses it as a marinade for the first single for upcoming album Playing In The Shadows. It's called Changed The Way You Kiss Me and sounds a little bit like this
Structurally, the track owes much to Kickstarts. But as you can hear, the dark, synthesised backing track creates a much moodier atmosphere than on its spiritual predecessor. In many ways, we'd quite like to see "Changed" as the "anti-Kickstarts" (i.e. where everything turned out to be alright again in Kickstarts, everything goes to shit in "Changed" - in a narrative rather than a musical sense, obviously). That feeling is compounded by the foreboding lyrics "But now I want off this ride/ Cos you're scaring me/ And I don't like where we're going". Playing expertly with the instrumentation to build the tension in the track, Changed The Way You Kiss Me encapsulates beautifully that sense of dread creeping up on you when a relationship slowly morphs from something into amazing into something a little bit awful.
What really works in this track, though, is when Example allows the strength of his vocal shine through. Does he have a technically perfect voice? No. But that really isn't the point. The final chorus where he decries "Our love feels wrong, please wind it back/ Our love feels wrong, can't hide the cracks." has a genuine sense of despair behind it and gives the song a real authenticity and a menace. As the amazing blog Electroqueer points out this track is both "real and relevant". It also reinforces our conviction that lyrically, Example's music has an extremely acute observational quality which makes it so relatable and enjoyable. We can't wait to see what else Playing In The Shadowsmay have in store.
If you're already fairly tuned in to the Internet's various "buzz" channels for new music, you may have heard the name Natalia Kills being bandied about here and there. And with some good reason. Natalia is the product of the amazing Cherrytree Records who are directly responsible for launching the career of a certain Lady Gaga whilst also having on their books artists such as La Roux, Ellie Goulding and Keane. Heavyweight stuff, but what about the content?
Well, funny you should ask, because Natalia is about to hit the promo trail hard ahead of the UK release for her debut single Mirrors, the video for which you can check out below.
The comparisons with Lady Gaga here are fairly self-evident. Setting aside the fact that vocally, we're clearly heading for similar territory as Just Dance,you've got the apparently-obligatory stylized presentation complete with masks, axes and, for extra subtlety, plenty of mirrors. The track itself is respectably catchy, with "And the mirror's going to fall tonight" constituting a fairly meaty hook. The backing track in particular calls to mind what might happen if Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) had an unfortunate accident with Kelly Clarkson's guitarist. Which is to say it's catchy, but let's stop trying to pretend someone wasn't flicking through their old Eurythmics albums and thought "wouldn't it be great if we could slap this on a pop song in 2011?". In any event, Mirrors is a decent enough debut which sets out Natalia's stall nicely, even if it doesn't quite set the old pulse a-racing.
The other tracks made available by the kind people at Cherrytree are delivered in much the same vein. Zombie is a similarly and dark and brooding affair which is fairly unrelenting in its sinister recapitulation of the "my boyfriend's a monster but I'm not exactly turned off by that idea so let's see where it goes" trope. Activate My Heart sees Natalia channel her inner Robyn and basically delivers Fembotin so far as it's playing on the whole "I've turned into a robot as a result of heartbreak" but, typically, in a downbeat fashion. In fact, that pretty much sums up the Natalia Kills experience so far: downbeat. There's very little levity on offer here to try and cheer the listener up a bit. In our experience this can go one of two ways. Either it will really help Natalia carve out a niche as the "dark" Gaga, or it will cause her listening base to become thoroughly depressed and abandon her for something a bit less heavy. It's a fairly risky strategy, and one which esteemed critic Popjustice has already begun to notice some flaws in.
In conclusion, our advice would be as follows. Enjoy Mirrors, it's alright and as debuts go does the job fairly well and definitely borrows from the right bits of pop's murky history. As for the post-Mirrors landscape, in the immortal words of Karen Walker from Will and Grace, we'd advice grabbing a bottle, hunkering down and praying for daylight.
One is a solo artist whose UK chart career now spans almost 11 years, and now has a greatest hits album to celebrate the fact. The other are a band who have sold over 65 million albums worldwide and have their own broadway musical. But aside from a penchant for spiky hair and names destined for novelty versions of the Dulux Colour Chart, what exactly to P!nk and Green Day have in common? Ever the pop sleuths, we set out to find out.
First of all, cast your minds back to June 2001, when P!nk was still largely known as an RnB vocalist on the cusp of metamorphosing into the pop-punk stylings which she would go on to champion for the rest of her career. It was this Summer that, as part of the hype of the Baz Lurhman-directed mega-hit Moulin Rouge!, that P!nk was enlisted to collaborate that would not only bring together some of RnB's hottest vocal talents, but would give her her first UK Number 1 hit single. That single, of course was Lady Marmalade, and as well as constituting an unreconstructed diva-off, it effortlessly and sassily updated the blueprint set down by LaBelle in 1975
In addition to Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim and Missy Elliot (who, if we're all honest, only showed up to collect a few quid to introduce the video and then buggered right off), the track also featured Mya who had been undergoing her own career renaissance in 2001. Whilst also having a huge solo number 3 hit with the frankly-brilliant Case Of The Ex, Mya was also known for providing the vocal flourish behind this collaborative smash in 1998.
Pras Michel, also known as probably the sanest person ever to emerge from The Fugees, had his biggest "solo" hit with this genius reworking of the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers classic Islands In The Stream (which, lest we forget, was written by THE BEE GEES!). Far more successful, of course, was his tenure in The Fugees alongside Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. Prior to attempting to become president of Haiti (despite not having actually lived there all that much prior to standing for election) Wyclef had carved out a respectable reputation as a producer and a solo artist clocking up such hits as Perfect Gentleman (about the life and times of a man who meets a stripper who is trying to pay her way through College), Gone Till November and this little gem with Claudette Ortiz of the short-lived City High: Two Wrongs. All this is grist to the mill, however, in light of our ultimate destination. So we want to pinpoint one particular stop on The Pop Web's Wyclef Jean Nostalgia Trip. That stop would be 911, Wyclef's duet with the RnB icon Mary J Blige.
Mary J Blige's own career has seen a bit of a mixed bag in terms of chart viablity and, indeed, quality. Despite undoubted highlights like Family Affair and No More Drama you've got the little-bit-dismal Just Fine. Blige's duet with U2, a cover of the band's seminal classic One we would argue falls somewhere in the middle (even if it is one of The Pop Web's guilty pleasures), even though it probably doesn't cater to hardcore U2 fans' tastes.
U2, conveniently enough, provide the final stepping stone on our way across the babbling fjord that is pop. Back in 2006, the world was collectively recoiling in horror in the wake of the humanitarian disaster that befel New Orleans in the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Katrina. One of the most prevalent opinions that could be made out on the political stage at the time was of the disbelief that then-president George W. Bush wasn't doing nearly enough to help New Orleans' citizens to recover from the disaster. Enter U2, who teamed up with (you've guessed it) Green Day to record The Saints Are Coming, the video for which posed the question: what would have happened if the US Armed Forces had had their attentions redirected from Afghanistan and Iraq towards helping Louisianna recover from the hurricane's effects?
Powerful stuff, but, being the merciless scavengers we are, for our purposes it simply provides one more connection in the incestuous world that is dear old pop.
So there we have it, from P!nk to PunkGreen Day. That wasn't so hard now, was it. And coincidentally, we're now in the mood for a trip to homebase to freshen up these walls a bit. We're thinking Banana Dream should be just the trick...
P!nk - Mya - Pras Michel - Wyclef Jean - Mary J. Blige - U2 - Green Day
So, on Friday night, on The Graham Norton Show, Blue unveiled their stab at this year's Eurovision Song Contest and performed I Can live.
As an immediate reaction, we'd like to point out that Lee's falsetto has absolutely no impact whatsoever when it's literally used from the very first line of the bloody song. Also, whilst we'd love to have full faith in Blue's ability to pull this off live, there's a real possibility of some Jemini-style hilarity on the night.
But let's brush past all of that and try and look at the song on its own merit. Well... it's fair to say that this isn't breaking any new ground. The backing track at the start appears to have been lifted from t.A.t.U's All The Things She Said. The dance routine appears to consist entirely of the band moving only the left side of their bodies, which might not be enough to set the Eurovision stage "on fire". And at no point in the whole thing does Lee feel the need to shut up. That by itself is probably the most irritating part.
And yet... the whole this isn't exactly terrible. Blue aren't exactly reshaping the contours of popular music, admittedly, but if this is the start of a renaissance for the band, then they could do worse than putting something out which is unmistakably a "Blue" song, which this is. Vocally, the whole thing really benefits from Simon's deeper tones to give it a bit of meat - paarticularly in the chorus. And the chorus is, as it goes, fairly catchy.
But anyone expecting this to be the saviour of British Eurovision hopes is probably going to be disappointed. It's pleasant enough, and it's certainly better than some of the monstrosities we've put forward in previous years (c.f. Dubovie, J., That Sounds Good To Me - which we may have deemed an absolute shower of crap once or twice), but there doesn't seem to be an awful lot here which is going to compel viewers across Europe to pick up their phones and vote. Our prediction? It'll do OK, pick up some decent points (we actually think it'll do alright in the notoriously difficult-to-crack Eastern bloc, for instance) and ultimately stagger in respectively mid-table. I'm thinking somewhere around 10th, perhaps, if stars align on the night.
Provided Lee doesn't fuck it all up. Because let's face it, if he does, he's on every bloody line.
Last night, we traipsed down from Oxford to the Roundhouse in Camden to see perennial Pop Web favourite Robyn perform live. Let it be known from the outset that whilst we will certainly try to deliver the jounralistic objectivity loyal readers have come to occasionally see expect from this reputable blog, we were so bloody excited about the whole thing that she could have stepped on stage and read the local Chinese takeaway menu and we'd have loved it. Such excitement, we hope, will also explain the fact that we forgot to bring a camera and thus have no photos of the event which was (in hindsight) a bit of an error.
Let's get the tedious negatives out of the way first. The set was fairly short. The whole concert lasted just less than an hour, and appeared to be suffering from some delays in the earlygoing. The reasons for this became clear when Robyn eventually took to the stage and addressed the crowd. Robyn has been suffering from a throat infection, which in fact has caused her to cancel tonight's gig in Bristol. Given these caveats, what Robyn actually delivered in the hour she was on stage was nothing short of amazing.
From beginning to end there was no wasted motion, and track after track was delivered with staggering energy. There wasn't a single point that we could discern that the crowd's energy level dropped, which is absolutely a testament to Robyn's ability to engage an audience. For someone who is clearly a bit under the weather (to say the least) the Swedish dynamo was constantly leaping around the stage, dancing every bit as frenetically as she does in the video for Dancing On My Own. It was certainly an 'A' for effort from us.
The setlist delivered hit after hit, but nostalgia was noticeably lacking. Starting things off with Time Machine was an inspired choice as it got the by-now restless crowd firmly on side with one of Body Talk's more undersung anthems. Vocally, this was a polished performance (again, amazing given her current bout of illness), but frankly, the singing along of the crowd on Dancing On My Own (be warned, that video contains liberal use of strobe lighting) and Cobrastyle meant that Robyn could have sang every single note off key and it wouldn't have mattered. Dancing On My Own was given a very early airing, which initially had us worried that after her biggest recent hit, the energy levels would drop. Those fears were utterly unfounded, as We Dance To The Beat/Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do built on "Dancing's" momentum and actually made us appreciate two of the more experimental (read, skippable) tracks on Body Talk. We could enthuse at length about the many other phenomenal performances Robyn delivered, including Love Kills, and Stars 4-Ever which were two of the more impressive sleeper hits of the night. Instead, what we'd like to focus on are the three tracks which, to be quite honest, if we died tonight we'd be glad we lived to hear live.
Firstly, Indestructible. (Apologies for the slightly fluctuating sound quality on this video)
Particular highlights here included a man standing behind us bellowing this song with such gusto that it almost made us want to turn around, hug him, and tell him that everything was going to be all right. Also, the mini-breakdown after the "four to the floor" bit where everyone did the right thing and clapped along. Well done Camden.
Of all of the songs in the Robyn corpus, this is the one that can, at any given moment, dissolve us into floods of tears and force us to atonally warble along. Seeing it live magnified that feeling tenfold. Absolutely beautiful performance of a beautiful song.
And finally, With Every Heartbeat. With one performance, Robyn absolutely cemented her reputation as the queen of disco-fuelled heartbreak (yes, that well known monarchy). The noise from the crowd when those first beats kicked in was frankly astonishing, and the feverish refrain of "And. It. Hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat" as the concert drew to a close was (not to be too gushy about this) inspiring. An amazing conclusion to a phenomenal concert which sent the room's two key demographics (i.e. Scandinavians and gays, or, as we loudly termed them on the tube going home, "Scandigayvians"...) hope both happy and heartbroken.
With all that said, there were some unfortunate omissions from the evening. Hang With Me was conspicuous by its absence as was None of Dem similarly, Cobrastyle and With Every Heartbeat Aside, there was no room for going over old glory in this concert. This was all about Body Talk, and as such Be Mine! and Who's That Girl? were somewhat missed, to say nothing of Show Me Love or Keep This Fire Burning. This was not a greatest hits concert, but it was also far from self-indulgent. Robyn had the crowd singing along to every single word, and she showcased Body Talk beautifully, remaining accessible for new fans whilst indulging the rabid fanbase she had attracted to the show.
All it remains is for us to do is to count down the seconds until Robyn is back in the UK, in rude health. Because, frankly, if we can be left this buzzing with excitement 24 hours after a concert in which she wasn't at 100%, we can't wait to see what she'd deliver when she's back on top form.
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