Blog: Poster Girl

Some pop songs are just transcendent. (Video/song match is not ideal, to say the least.) It's probably an overused word, to be fair, and in and of itself it probably shouldn't be taken to mean anything other than a way [...]

I stop following Croatian singer Franka Batelić for a few months, and what does she go and do? Only continue proving herself to be one of the best popstar projects going. Her team is doing a fantastic job of matching her up with the right music, provided here by the same people as those behind "Ruža u kamenu" (as well as her entry this year in Croatia's national finals for Eurovision, "Pjesma za kraj"). That poppy electro-disco beat, that chorus melody--I would have been sold even without the "ooo bop bop bop" [...]

It's been a very good few days for leaked songs. Generating some of the most column inches have been Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" and "Alejandro." The former is the final version of her new single, following up on the leak of the demo a few weeks ago. I might just be suffering from "preferring what I'm used to" syndrome, but I prefer the sound of the demo at this point; the final version has elements that occasionally come across as harsh and unmelodic--synths that are distractingly abrasive, random shouting, changes to the way her voice is [...]

A few notes on artist and songwriter-related subjects: Martin Stenmarck 's upcoming album, I Septemberland , features five songs from the team at Swedish music publishing and production company TEN (A*Teens, Amy Diamond, Erik Hassle). In this case, though, the songs don't seem to be by the Tysper/Grizzly/Mack team (who in addition to the aforementioned successes have also been the creators of Industry's "My Baby's Waiting" and VV Brown's "Shark In The Water") but rather by Elof Loelv and Kim Wennerström , who also worked with Erik Hassle and produced Malena [...]

With a hat tip to Schlagerprofilerna , one of the twenty-seven Melodifestival entries revealed yesterday has been disqualified. Sadly, it's not that much of a surprise: "Never Heard Of Him" had been available on songwriter Figge Boström's MySpace. This marks at least the second time Figge has had some disqualification trouble: he wrote the original Hungarian entry for this year's Eurovision, which was eventually revealed to have been released years earlier in Sweden by Operation Robinson contestants. A replacement has not yet been announced, but remember: a song not making the [...]

To semi-counteract the abundance of words in my Melodifestival post below, here are a few quick notes on some songs I'm loving at the moment. There are bunches more, but I better break them up into a few posts. As Chart Rigger has already covered, the new Leighton Meester single, "Somebody To Love," is really pretty good. It's electro-pop, but of a more restrained, loungey sort (which isn't actually lounge courtesy of its beat). Leighton's voice is kind of emotionless, but it's perfect for the song. Speaking of voices, this is the first time [...]

The song titles and composers for the non-wildcard entries for this year's Melodifestival were released today. As you can imagine, I'm beyond excited. As I did last year, I have to throw in my two cents on the various entries. In general, there's an almost shocking lack or reduced number of the old staples, the songwriters who have dominated the entries for years. For example, Henrik Wikström and lyrics writer Ingela "Pling" Försman don't have any songs this year, while Anders Hansson and Fredrik Kempe, composers of many of my favorite entries of recent years, [...]

Apparently recovered, Brian Littrell joined the other three Backstreet Boys for a performance of their new single, the Max Martin-penned "Bigger," on Jimmy Kimmel. As I've hinted at before , I love the song. That doesn't mean I don't have reservations about it as a single, though--much as it would make me happy to hear it on the radio, I'm not sure if there are enough nostalgics around and that its sound will appeal to today's radio programmers for it to make it into the upper half of the top 40. [...]

Darin's cover of "Viva La Vida" is in all likelihood only going to appeal to a limited demographic, but for those of us who love his voice--on my part, I'd say it's my favorite male voice going in pop--it's a special treat. It never fully soars, never fully explodes, never gives us that moment of totally swooning, but that was my main problem with Coldplay's original version (the "ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh"s of the middle 8 come close, but, particularly on the original, never quite got there for me). Strangely, much as the the main vibe of this song is [...]

Every now and then, a hit song comes along that you hate. Not the sort of song that you'll almost absentmindedly flip away from on a radio station in hopes of finding something better, or even the sort of song you complain about--I'm talking about those songs that make you angry in a violent visceral way, the ones you'll do anything you can avoid in any facet of life and that everyone around you either avoids when you're nearby or plays just to torture you. ...and every now and then, the artist who created that song you [...]

Addendum to the Swedish music update: Magnus Carlsson news. The Christmas album the former Alcazar and Barbados singer is releasing has turned out to be a repackaging of his two previous Christmas albums to tie in with his Christmas tour, but he promises it will have new bonus material. That includes a new single, "Änglarnas tid," which will have five songs on it. He's finished most of the work on Pop Galaxy , his upcoming pop album. He says he's got a new single coming out in a few months which is '80s-styled; [...]

Swedish music update: Jessica mentioned Darin doing a cover of Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a few days ago and linked to a trailer for Idols which featured it (you may have to wait for an ad to play first). In typical Darin style, it sounds great; I imagine I'll like it more than the original. In all likelihood it was produced by Johan "Kermit" Bobäck. Apparently said cover, which puts an electronic beat beneath the song, will be released on Friday and is a new single. [...]

Prepare the stones: I think I really like the new Justin Bieber single. Justin Bieber's "One Less Lonely Girl" is the new "With You," with cheesier lyrics (no, I mean it-- really cheesy). Keeping in mind that I could even tolerate the lyrics to Jesse McCartney's "Beautiful Soul" for the sake of the great pop song that contained them, you'd think my reaction to that fact would be based on 1.) what I thought about "With You" and 2.) how well I cope with pre-pubescent male voices. I thought [...]

I've already written about a few of these songs on Twitter , but I still feel a need to cover them in a (slightly) more expansive way. This is the first of such songs. Sixteen-year-old eventual fourth place finisher Allison Iraheta was one of my three favorite contestants on the past season of American Idol, so I was thrilled when she received a major label deal. If we needed further evidence of the fact that her label was willing to invest some money in her, her debut single, "Friday I'll Be [...]

This is more of a Twitter-riffic post than something with enough substance to merit space on the blog, but Ben Adams, following up his crazy/brilliant video about a1's dance routines, has posted a video of a1 working on new songs that includes clips of some of the songs. They're working with David Eriksen, a Norwegian songwriter who I tend to associate with a kind of pure pop sound (several of the songs on the Saturdays' last album were by him, including "Lies" and "Set Me Off"), on that first song, which sounds more uptempo electronic than I [...]

I've said before how much I love Norwegian Idol winner Aleksander With's winner's single "A Little Too Perfect," a perfect upbeat pop song which still holds the title of my favorite winner's single (probably mainly because it deviates so much from the usual template). Much as I understand his desire to pursue more melancholy music after that, I've never been able to click with any of it as much as I wanted to based on that first single. It's taken a few months, but "What's The Story," the lead single from his second [...]

I've given in and joined the Twitter crowd . Even if you don't have your own Twitter account (if you do, I'd love if you'd follow me), popping by to check out my account every once in a while will keep you up-to-date with new songs I'm listening to but either haven't got around to writing about yet or bits of news that feel too short for the blog. Lately I've been mentioning the second single from Najoua Belyzel's new album, the Mylene Farmer-dedicated "M (Hey Hey Hey)"... Veuillez installer Flash Player pour [...]

One of my songs of the moment comes from Trixie . British singer DollFace was a member of never-got-off-the-ground girl group Silhouettes, whose retro pop song "Surrender" Popjustice wrote about. Demo "Ms. Jamaica" has a very different sound than "Surrender," but I like it even more. Apparently co-written by Jasmine Baird, it's modern electronic pop with production elements that Trixie rightly compares to RedOne, though it's more a useful reference point for writers than real copying on the part of its creators. There's something special about how its synths slice and dice--gently--and about the attitude [...]

Question: What the heck is "I'll Never Love Again" doing on the tracklist for Taio Cruz's second album? Granted, I've spent a year complaining that that track from his first album was never a single and it's one of the songs that played a big role in getting me to buy that album, but (unless it's a different song with the same title), I do NOT want people getting inspired by all this "Radar" ridiculousness. For heaven's sake, it was the FIRST TRACK on Departure [...]

Norwegian singer Samsaya's new single, "ADHD (Love Me Not)," the third in advance of her album, has what you could either call a commonplace or derivative sound, depending on how generous you're feeling, but after several days of listening to it, I'm still just as hooked as ever, which makes me think it might have more lasting value than some of the random one-country pop singles that crop up . If nothing else, that opening "love me, love, love, love, love me" hook is instantly catchy, but I'm increasingly convinced there's something of value to the entire song, not [...]