Would you like to have your breath taken away?

Last night, the re-invented Brit Awards were held for the first time at the O2, a venue with a capacity somewhere in the region of twenty three thousand people. The video above depicts a piano player accompanying a voice with the sheer magnetism, power and magic to send each of those twenty three thousand hearts soaring through the air before being brought swiftly back down to the ground with a crushing crunch.

Opinion on Adele amongst the writers of Shiny & New seems to be divided. While 21 hasn't quite impacted one writer, this here author holds it as his favourite album to be released so far in 2011. Admittedly, that isn't the greatest honour one could bestow considering it is only mid-February, but we're struggling to imagine something which can blow us away any further. Her skills as a lyricist are unparalleled within artists of a similar age, while her voice is something which cannot be described faithfully within the confines of a blog post. Magnificent is one word we will try to use. We could never have dreamed that under any imaginable circumstance we would quote the monstrous buffoon that is James Corden, but annoyingly we would struggle to improve on his introduction to "Somebody Like You".

There's nothing quite like the feeling when you're listening to a song written by someone you don't know, who you've never met, who somehow manages to describe exactly how you felt at a particular moment in your life. This artist is able to do that time after time, and it's for that reason that she is currently number one in seventeen countries.

Adele is very much a commercial success. She perhaps sums up more than anyone else currently the concept of mums picking up the latest album on their weekly shop at Sainsbury's, something we have mocked with vigour in the past and will probably continue to do so. However, again more than anyone else she serves as an example of why popularity does not always mean low-brow, or indeed, shite. She oozes beauty and class (well, her singing voice does - we won't discuss her speaking voice), while effortlessly capturing the imaginations and hearts of her audience with laughable ease.

The effect that the above video had on this writer seems to derive in part from the awe and grandeur one can sometimes only receive from enormous crowds of people. The aforementioned twenty three thousand-strong audience sits for three minutes in a daze, absolutely lost in a swirl of magic. A rare sight to behold, and a magical moment even more rarely seen at the Brit Awards.

A tale of two post-Winehouse soul singers...

In 2008, in the wake of Amy Winehouse's phenomenal worldwide success, record labels were understandably clamouring for female blue-eyed soul acts to rake in the millions, which is where Adele and Duffy got lucky. They were both launched to similarly frenetic acclaim, both public and critical and by 2009 had even managed to break America (the two of them). Since then, the entire pop landscape has changed: post/neo/quasi/whatever soul is no longer fashionable (in fact it's hideously untrendy) and you're now a nobody if you're not employing flamboyant dress/expensive concept videos/techno rave synths in euphoric choruses.

Both Adele and Duffy have been forced into slightly different niches and whilst the latter Welsh Dusty Springfield impersonator has dumped her original creative team and recorded an album of (purportedly almost) disco pop!!! - and as a result flopped harder than a beached whale on the beaches of Wales - Adele has shifted slightly further left of centre, where we always hoped and knew she would go.

Her new single and video (and hopefully album) are stunning and odd and inventive. "Rolling in the Deep" is hurtling up the American iTunes chart as we speak, so apparently it paid off.

Something we're excited for.

We know this news leaked a few days ago, but since we're having such a fabulous week off in sunny Lewisham we're only just getting round to it. Basically, there's this singer-songwriter from this-here London who had this album out in 2008 and hasn't really done much since. More importantly, the album was vair vair successful, which means she's done another one! Adele, we mean. We'll call her Adele from now on.

We 'discovered' Adele back in the tail-end of 2006 when we used to spend our spare time trawling MySpace Music profiles (those were the days!) for 'up and coming' artistes to get all foamy in the mouth at. There was a beaut of a song called "Hometown Glory", which despite being basically A Beginner's Guide to Songwriting Clichés, had a chillingly beautiful melody. There was also "Crazy For You" (around this time we had also fell head-over-heels for Mademoiselle Ciccone, and we were a little disappointed to find this wasn't a cover of The Other Most Amazing Song Called "Crazy For You" (Madonna's version)) - omg we just had to do a double close bracket *interjection overload boom boom sizzle sizzle fizz* WE THINK WE ARE DRUNK. No, this must be completely down to excitement for Adele's next album. Where were we? Ah yes, we also won a competition mid-2007, back when Adele was very "hush hush", to see her at a venue in London named The Hospital. It was for record label execs to get all excited at and was very very glamoir. This writer's mother accompanied moi, and we trained it down from the Grim Midlands, and we went for hot chocolate and chocolate cake at this fabulous pattiserie near Harrods where we felt really spesh and nearly had to have a lie down due to massive sugar rush on account of chocolate liquid and cake consumption and FUCK - this is not one of our better articles.

Anyway - we got a call while we were sashaying around Knightsbridge mere hours before we were due to see a Currently Unknown But Soon to Be Very Popular Talent to say "Adele won't be performing tonight, she's got tonsillitis, soz!" Bitch. We did a bit of retail 'therapy' (love it when people say that) and went home. Her album came out a few months later, it was massively successful, and to use one of the most irritating Internet-birthed acronyms we have come across in recent weeks, TBQPH (to be quite perfectly honest - we know, fucking annoying right?) it deserved it. Her voice is astounding, like, actually astounding. She can write her own fucking songs - she did write "Hometown Glory" at 16 after all, it deserves a bit of cringe - and she can play guitar/piano/voice box. So Adele is an actual proper musician. Another thing we like - her first album was called 19 because she was 19 when she released it... her new album is named 21 because she's now 21! Well good. We hope she continues this themeing. Also, both album covers are very similar. Smoky lighting, closed, deep-in-thought musing eyes, no photography below the neck because she's a bit of a chub and that puts mums in Tesco off. We love music-related graphic design continuity like this. Keep it up.

The song is out soon so we'll probably discuss it then. If it's shit, forget you ever read this.

THIS GIRL IS MARVELLOUS

Several weeks, but finally we bring you

We know, we know. It was meant to come all the way back in early December, but due to us having far too much fun or better things to do, like working on getting rid of all those pesky hangnails, it's being delivered just under a month late. Doesn't make it any less amazing. You may have gathered Shiny & New is predominately authored by two main (and mayjah) hemes (homos in Polynesian), with one massive lesbian occasionally flitting in to inflict scorn on everything anti-kd lang and various other sluts and wannabees writing now and then. The two mayjah hemes took it upon themselves to compile this list, in their opinion, the ten best* albums released between January 1st and December 31st of 2008. You will find the favourite album of each writer and their explanation, along with the eight runner ups, SCROLL DOWN NOWWW.
*Best, in this sense of the word, being defined as anything sufficiently amazing, fierce, fabulous, 'on it', hilarious, spine-chilling, etc.

Adele – 19
Layers upon layers of lush strings, enchanting xylophones and shiver-inducing bass fail to mask the magnificent sound bursting from this born-and-bred-and-yes-genuinely-common-as-muck Londoner’s lungs. Her debut features heart-breaking paeans to lost love alongside breath-taking soul orchestrations, showing a wide range of musical capabilities concealed by a mistakenly brought about “new Amy Winehouse” facade.

Camille – Music Hole
The French Bjork done good with a thigh-slapping, knees-up, non-stop whirldwind tour through her sprawling imagination. Perfectly formed little acappella vignettes depicting everything from wild ducks, to tea parties, to vocal Divas, monks and waves this was a unique album of assured genius.
Girls Aloud – Out of Control
Continuing their practise of improving their craft with each new album, the Girls returned with perhaps their most consistently brilliant album yet, exhibiting epics crawling with early 80s disco synths, Motown-referencing calls to the dancefloor and a surprising jig featuring an ex-member of the Smiths on mouthorgan defying the listener to stay still.

Joan As Police Woman – To Survive
Similar to Feist in her skill of making ordinary musical instruments and hushed vocals sound extraordinary, Joan Wasser crafted an album of astounding beauty and mastery. Blending unconventional structures with almost classical sounding musical turns, this was a triumph.

Lady GaGa – The Fame
This was the sound of a thousand synthesizers exploding musical cum all over the world. Many hailed a successor to Madonna’s throne. We think they might finally be right. A club brat from New York turned disco dance diva, this was an album packed full of spooky, otherworldy super smash megahits. All attempts to keep from dancing to this ended in failure.

Ladyhawke – Ladyhawke
Lauded as “Cyndi Lauper for the American Apparel age”, Ladyhawke continues the trend of referencing (and down-right stealing) 80s alternative pop motifs and splatters them all over her menacing, neurotic lyrics. We particularly love the merciless destruction she plans to unleash upon the next male she happens to be scorned by.

Lykke Li – Youth Novels
Not the new Robyn, but the antithesis to her. Shy, awkward and self-conscious, this was more than just a polite alt-pop opus. It was the sound of Nordic pop colliding with trumpets, handclaps, piano, saxophones and a heap of musical promise.

Santigold – Santogold
Insultingly so, Santigold’s reputation has yet to stretch further then “the new M.I.A.”. Her musical boundaries happen to stretch much further than our favourite Bangladeshi child-bearing self-publicist, with no less than eight stark genres woven together in amongst the masterpieces that lay in wait on her eponymous debut. This girl knows her shit – and don’t you dare tell her she’s an R’n’B artist on the basis of her skin colour.

Madonna – Hard Candy
Madonna’s most recent incarnation sees her as the confectionary-toting dominatrix of 2008, a nod to her Miss Dita persona of the early 90s Erotica era, but with lollipops ñ made from sugar. Reviewers, fans, record executives alike ñ even Madonna herself ñ were quite aware 2005’s Confessions on a Dancefloor would be a tough act to follow, and while I don’t think anyone would say Hard Candy topped Confessions, I’m sure I’d have some support in stating it gave it a good shot. Attitude’s brief review stated it in a satisfyingly succinct manner; ‘A brilliant pop album, but Madonna can do better.’

Opener ‘Candy Shop’ attempts to set the tone for the rest of the album, however the thinly-veiled call to eat Madonna’s vagina is quite separate from the lush synths and layers of the electro-guitar lament ‘Miles Away’, the Nile Rodgers nod from the menacing ‘She’s Not Me’ and the irresistible ‘Beat Goes On’, complete with token rap from well known African American rap artist.

It may encroach on flawlessness, but debut single ‘4 Minutes’ is really the only track which puts Timbaland’s tricks of the trade to noticeable use, while the follow-up ‘Give It 2 Me’ stands with La Stefani’s second album in the Hall of Pharrell’s Not So Amazing Work. However, Hard Candy definitely does show promise. While an anomaly in Madonna’s track run of working with 'unknown’ producers, her personal stamp on the album is clearly recognisable amidst the fog of Justin Timberlake’s irritating backing vocals and Danja’s repetitive synths.

The glorious ‘Devil Wouldn’t Recognise You’ demonstrates the entrancing song-writing talents of Madonna’s folk singer brother-in-law Joe Henry (see ‘Don’t Tell Me’ and ‘Push’), while album closer ‘Voices’ provides the listener with a spine-tingling climax to a mixed bag of tricks. For every dull ‘Spanish Lesson’ there is a captivating ‘Heartbeat’. The listener cannot help but wonder whether it would have been in the better interests of the album’s quality if Madonna was not so blatently intent on making a mark on the American charts; either way, it cannot be denied that Hard Candy is a pleasurable dessert to end the Queen of Pop’s reign at Warner Bros.

Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
Erykah Badu has been enchanting listeners as the ‘First Lady of Neo Soul’ since her first album, Baduizm, was released in 1997 but until this, her fourth studio album, she hadn’t taken such a risk, artistically. Her first three albums, whilst solid and beautifully crafted works, serve more as patchworks of interweaving thoughts, drifting amongst slowly shifting grooves, beats and Erykah’s distinctive voice, as opposed to being fully formed and cohesive collections of songs, like New Amerykah Part One.

Quite what prompted her to make such a change in direction, from being content to essentially go with the flow musically, to make an album like this, of such stark, unusual and controversial beauty, one can only imagine, but whatever it was, it can only be good.

Opening with Amerykahn Promise on which Erykah appears to be welcoming immigrants to the US of A and explaining the skewed principles of the ‘promised’ land upon which they have arrived with biting irony, she makes her mission clear. This is not just an album of existentialist breakup songs, or hazy grass-fuelled musings on life. This time, it’s political. And despite the potentially disastrous results of that, it turns out fantastically well.

This year Solange Knowles declared that she’d like to be “the black Björk”. Unfortunately for her, though, Erykah Badu comes much, much closer. Working with a kind of feverish musical genius and finding that magical balance between being a true sonic innovator and making gorgeous and life-affirming music, Erykah turns out the most artistically adept album of the year.
Whether it’s on The Healer on which she declares, over spooky and achingly slow swells of darkly rhythmic chimes and bells that hip hop is “bigger than the government”, or on Me in which she sing-songs a potted version of her childhood accompanied by a slow, rubato trumpet, there is plenty to savour here.

And Erykah makes her strange political reflections manifest without beating you round the head with them. On Twinkle, the track breaks down half way through giving way to genuinely eerie African chanting and a sample of Peter Toole’s infamous society-bashing monologue from Oscar-winning movie Network (also used to frightening effect in cult internet conspiracy-theory movie Zeitgeist). From images of drug dependency to addressing Hurrican Katrina or black-on-black crime, Erykah expertly melds musical innovation with lyrics of substance and importance – a rare and wonderful skill.

The album closes with Telephone, a seven minutes tribute to J Dilla, a neo soul music producer and close friend of Badu’s, and provides the listener with material much closer to her previous work: personal, ambling, gorgeous in its relative simplicity. One hopes that soon she feels comfortable enough to return to that ground. But in the mean time, her scathing yet subtly and brutally beautiful attack on the so-called “American Dream” is so captivating and inventive, we can only hope the second installment lives up to the first one’s artistic merits