Music blog
Monday, 3 September 2012
Muse
Download Everyone seems to be calling Madness a new direction for Muse, but if you look in the Muse back catalogue you’ll find many signs of songs like this coming, and even songs with a similar vibe, and those fearing a lack of guitar stomping anthems have no fear if Survival is anything to go by! Other influences have said to be from Queen’s “I Want to Break Free” and David Bowies “Scary Monster and Super Creeps” album, not to mention Muse’ very own “Undisclosed Desires”, with influences like that, how can you not have a great song on your hands”.
Jack White
Download 'Freedom At 21' is the third single from White's debut solo album 'Blunderbuss', which was released in April. The B-sides to the album's three singles, including White's cover of U2's 'Love Is Blindness', were made available digitally for the first time on Tuesday (July 10).
Last month (June 26), White performed songs from 'Blunderbuss' during a show at London's Brixton Academy. He will continue his 'Blunderbuss' tour in the US later this month, before returning to the UK for a one-off gig at Camden's Roundhouse as part of London's iTunes Festival on September 8.
Everything Everything
Download I concur heartily with Huw’s statement; for anyone who is a fan of the band, whether you think ‘Man Alive’ is gospel, or simply that ‘My Kz Ur Bf’ is A Top Tune Indeed, you hear ‘Cough Cough’, and there is no mistaking it for any other band. The hip hop beats and lyrics delivered by staccato by Jonathan Higgs, followed up by his bandmates’ harmonious backing, is classic EE. As the song oozes into the chorus, it turns – briefly – into a slow jam, smoothly, not unlike the way your brain wraps around the actual lyrics of “that a eureka moment like being hit like a cop car”.
The lyric “We’re coming alive”? It’s meant to be a confrontational song, judging from the video. Water torture, gas masks, hooligans trying to break the glass of car windows and police in riot gear aren’t things you’re supposed to see in pop music videos. I’m guessing from the fires and liquids in piping is referring to the reliance on foreign oil, with the water/oil torture indicating how we’re being involuntarily being force-fed bad things like propaganda. Higgs describes the song like this:
‘Cough Cough’ is about the power of money and the desire to get away from it. It’s also about waking up and seeing the world as an unfair place and then slipping back under the spell of greed. It’s about having no money, and wanting more money, and wanting nothing to do with money at all.”READAlso, besides drummer Michael Spearman who’s supposed to be banging on the drums, all four of them are beating on huge skins, conjuring up my memories of the last day of Roskilde 2010 and Korean rhythmic group Dulsori‘s performance, minus the colourful costumes. In any event, it’s a welcome sight, rather than four blokes on a stage in their normal performance guise. I suspect they’ll also gain some more female fans too; who doesn’t love a sweaty musician on stage? It should probably be noted too that the heaviness of the drums, which draw you in and make you want to dance, could be equated to Friendly Fires‘ ‘Kiss of Life’.
Jonathan Higgs has this memorable, self-satisfied smile in the video, and self satisfied he should be. No doubt about it, ‘Cough Cough’ is a cool-sounding song by anyone’s measurement and should do great on Radio1′s kind of audience: it’s urban enough while maintaining originality and freshness. While it’s got the kind of exciting sound we should expect from Everything Everything, this new material was made not by reinventing the wheel but doing what they do best…and taking it up some very important notches. We’ll be watching when the new album drops in mid-January.
Taylor Swift
Download has just written the girl power, breakup anthem for millennials with her brand new single, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’
It’s the first taste of her new album, ‘Red,’ which she revealed will drop on Oct. 22, almost two years to the day after ‘Speak Now.’ Besides being a massive, singalong song, it’s also one of the catchiest tunes she’s ever penned. Or in this case, co-penned, since she enlisted Max Martin and Johan Shellback to co-write the song with her, something she did not do with the predecessor of ‘Red.’
The song is the ultimate kiss off to the boyfriend that you don’t see anymore because he said he needed space, but then he comes sniffing back around again when he wants something, promising to change. Who hasn’t been there, ladies? Even our gal T. Swift has experienced that emotion and she encapsulated that universal feeling in an upbeat, empowering song.
The hook, when she declares, “We are never, ever, ever getting back together,” is a handicapping, foot-stopping, fist-in-the-air singalong bolstered by the acoustic riff. Who knew that breaking up could feel so good? At most, it’s a sonic celebration of strength.
Swift uses the word “like” dozens of times, and has a monologue with herself and then a dialogue with her loser ex-boyfriend in the space of the song. She even includes a couple of conversational bits; it sounds like an authentic recorded chat between her and a friend was used, too.
Jack Beats
Jack Beats
Download “Careless” (feat. Takura) – This is the perfect title track for their mini album. Clearly these guys have nothing to prove. The trippy synth and strategically placed drum instrumentals couple perfectly with Takura’s sexy vocals. “I don’t care what you say / I don’t care what you do / You mean nothing to me / I got nothing to prove.” This break up anthem has me wondering a few things… Are you still on the market? Is Takura Akon’s lost voice?Cher Lloyd
Download During an interview with Sugarscape, the Swagger Jagger star insisted that 1D will have a long and successful career, stating: "I haven't seen them in a long time but when I go out there all my fans are always raving about them, it's great.
She continued: "There's been a few incidents where sometimes you don't feel as if you've got a connection with a certain someone and then they go to America and they say something nasty about you.
"We're on the same label in the UK and I think the UK artists should stick together."
"You think, 'You're from the UK, why have you done that?' The one thing I can say about One Direction is I feel like they're going to have a very long and successful career."MTV
The 18-year old, who launched her new perfume Pink Diamond earlier today (3rd September), also spoke about being bottled at V Festival last month - stating she hasn't taken the incident personally.
When asked how she managed to get over having a bottle of urine thrown at her during her Chelmsford set, Lloyd claimed: "Just to step back for a minute and realise that there's so many good things going on in my career at the moment.
"We've got everything in the US, we've got this fragrance in the UK. I mean, there shouldn't be anything that's going to get me down.
"At the time I was upset about it, but the amount of support that artists have shown me and it's made me realise that it wasn't personal, it was actually something that happens to all the artists."
She added: "I heard it happened to Beyoncé. Now if that can happen to Beyoncé, I don't know why it was a big deal about me."
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