Singles of the Year '10!

It took a year off last year, but here returneth our Very Fave Singles of the Past 12 Months. This was also a zine-only exclusive, but seeing as we don't anticipate printing any more off any time soon, you zine-slackers can get it right here!
"Better Than Love" - Hurts
The first song we heard in 2010 to a) give us full-on shivers and b) reassure our worries and tell us this year was going to be a good one for pop. Hurts are the injection of Pet Shop Boys-at-a-funeral that we all need, and this song more than anything else on the album gives the listener that rush of excitement and sheer joy that we so crave. The middle eight towards the end should be the standard to write all future middle eights by.

"Momma's Place" - Róisín Murphy
A strong contender for the funniest and fiercest songwriting of 2010, “Momma's Place” was Róisín's only foray into music this year but is a fine example of quality over quantity. A powerful bass-heavy opening leads into a “Mark my words, you'll see”-style ode to her child, providing an interesting alternative to the unconditional love of Kelis‟ “Acapella”.

"XXXO" - M.I.A.
Not the follow-up hit to “Paper Planes” that might have pleased her record label, but never mind. “XXXO” is a dark disco-ish R&B number, that, well… sort of defies description. Hooky, fun, and quotable as hell it'll go down in history as an underrated gem. Try not to fall for the lines “you're tweeting me like tweety bird on your iPhone” or “I can be the actress, you be Tarantino”.

"Your Love" - Nicki Minaj
We're ginormous fans of Annie Lennox, which is a factor we can only presume helped considerably when we first heard this track. We love “Your Love”, and if you've been with us for the entirety of the zine, you'll know we love the Minaj too. With lyrical themes revolving around samurai and geisha, we were more than happy to keep this beautiful mid-tempo ditty on loop for the majority of the past twelve months. If you don‟t like Minaj after hearing this song, you probably never will.

"Happiness" - Alexis Jordan
What happens when you put a quasi-Whitney-Leona-style ballad on top of a Deadmau5 sample? A fabulous wave-your-hands-in-the-air-and-feel-the-love anthem quite simply. We haven't even discussed this summer soundtrack on the blog, which is rather baffling, but if record labels continue to insist on using pre-pubescent popstars, we'll put up with it if we keep getting productions like this.

"Shampain" - Marina and the Diamonds
Marina hasn't had quite the stellar year she, or her team, probably had hoped for. She still hasn't broken into foreign territories and none of her singles went top 10. Never matter, though. On “Shampain”, she used the topic of drunkedness to sing about celestial angels, over a beat that practically glitters. Scathing sarcasm has never sounded so joyous.

"Dancing On My Own" - Robyn
Best song of the year, no further discussion needed. Tear-inducing, stomach-punching, throat
-grabbing; a Robyn-flavoured brand of desperately sad euphoria. Has been known to actually make people burst out crying in nightclubs. Which we believe, was the original aim. That synthesised pounding heart-beat will stick with us for years to come.

"Teenage Dream" - Katy Perry
Either Katy Perry is a brilliant, brilliant songwriter capable of moments of pure pop genius, or the team behind her is. Either way, “Teenage Dream” took us all back to the most romantic moments of or adolescence, whether they happened or not. Giddy, wide-eyed, euphoric, almost flawless. If Ms. Russell Brand ever releases another song as good as this it’ll be a full-blown miracle.

"Tightrope" - Janelle Monáe (feat. Big Boi)
We defy you not to dance to this. If you can get from start to finish without even tapping or shuffling your foot about, then you’re clinically dead, or something. And that horn section! Exhilarating. Monáe released one of the most bemusing and epic albums of the year, but as this song proved, she could shine in short form too.

"Acapella" - Kelis
Never one to do what’s expected of her, Kelis worked with some of the world’s most ubiquitous dance producers (David Guetta etc.) and then came out with… this! No one else could or would release it: a pulse-quickening house anthem about the wonder of life as seen through new motherhood. At first we weren’t sure if the minimal production worked, but we soon realised it was perfect.

A very nice Christmas song from Hurts

This has been available for a good few days but we've been so behind (writing our very very exciting zine... see below) that we're only just getting round to writing about it. It's basically what you'd expect if Hurts put out a Christmas song; a little bit gloomy but with a definite light at the end of the tunnel, classic Christmas motifs (we love bells, soz) and an 'alternate' message. The one in "All I Want for Christmas is New Year's Day" is Hurts preferring New Year's Day to erm, Christmas. It is a bit tragic in the way that they're singing about what an awful year they've had and how they can't wait for a fresh start, despite them actually having the best year of their lives, professionally anyway.

More importantly, it's the best original Christmas song we've heard in a long while. Fuck off Mariah stans. PS, the actual video is here, but you can't embed it so you'll just have to put up with a shit version in this post. Merry Christmas!

*insert name of obscure cheese here*

The new Hurts song is... well the video is... we could throw some words around. Epic, is one. Beautiful is another. Evocative etc. Repetitive is just one more. But that's just the video. The song?! Well. A hefty chunk of whirling, swirling, euphoric fromage.

Stuck In Our Head: "Devotion" - Hurts (feat. Kylie Minogue)

Dramatic.

An essay on how wonderful the Freemasons are, and why.

The Freemasons are absolutely brilliant. That is going to be the spin of this here piece of writing, so if you disagree, GO AWAY. But at least click on one of the ads at the side, Google needs to pay us more money.

The Freemasons are two men who live in Brighton and make amazing remixes of amazing songs. There are many remixers out there who have fashioned incredible new versions of classic songs, and there are many remixers who perhaps do something even more admirable – they make incredible versions of pretty shite songs. However, it is the norm of these people/outfits to not really count consistency as one of their greatest assets. We won’t name names, but Bimbo Jones for example has made some brill stuff and some bad stuff. The Freemasons? They. Can. Do. No. Wrong. And it’s not like we don’t have the evidence to back us up – no, no sirree, we’ve compiled a full portfolio of evidence, your honour, that the Freemasons are in fact the best thing in the world. Well, after Diet Coke, Madonna and peanut M&Ms. In March, around the time Sophie Ellis-Will-Never-Make-It-Big-Shame-But-Weird-Looking-So-Whatever-Bextor featured on the terrific “Heartbreak (Make Me Dancer)” we pondered why hadn’t we written about our appreciation for these princes of the pop pantheon before?

Point one: Green Light EP - Beyoncé
It could be argued that Beyoncé is the star who made the Freemasons stars. They had had sporadic success before hooking up with Mathew Knowles’ number one friend on MySpace, but creating the seminal Green Light EP of remixes of amazing tunes from B’s sophomore B’ Day was their first moment of genius. The first time we heard “Deja Vu” as swizzled up by the Brighton boys we got very excited and realised that God awful (see above when we called all songs remixed for the Green Light EP amazing, “Deja Vu most certainly isn’t) campaign lead singles can be turned into highly thrilling ditties. “Beautiful Liar” featuring the glittering Shakira (we’ll see more of her later) is severely heightened in the glamour stakes with a funny old bhangra man in the background, the eponymous “Green Light” was officially the best possible choice for a polyphonic ring tone in 2006 and “Ring the Alarm” – well, where do we start? “Ring the Alarm” is one of the Freemasons’ finest achievements, making “He’s so arrogant and bold” sound quite successfully like “He’s so African and bo”. We know it makes no sense but it sounds good. Those climatic strings – argh. Epic.

We still think to this day that if Beyoncé and the Freemasons had teamed up for a one-off show at G-A-Y or something and just performed the entire EP it would have been the greatest thing since... whatever. You know how good it would have been. Beyoncé knows it too. That’s why she wanted to make an entire album – what became I Am... Sasha Fierce – with them. But Mathew Knowles thought it would be too gay.

Point two: “Million Dollar Bill” – Whitney Houston
Let’s be honest, Ms. Houston is what you would call a bit of a flash in the pan. It just hasn’t worked out for her, has it? She went away for a few years, and to be fair she probably gave her ‘comeback’ the best shot she could muster – she did the promo, she did a relatively good album, she even did the world tour, despite her voice being beyond a shadow of its former self. Despite all of this, it just didn’t work. She won’t ever reach the dizzying heights she once met with ease. Sad face. What ever could turn our frown upside down? That’s it, a Freemasons remix of the Alicia Keys-penned lead single!

There aren’t many songs which can achieve the reaction “Million Dollar Bill” gets in a gay club when the DJ plays it. The entire place just erupts, and whether you are a Whitney fan or not, it is the most perfect little slice of brilliance you drop everything for the dance floor. Songwriters taking classes in Pop Music Euphoria 101 should listen to “Million Dollar Bill (Freemasons Mix” on day one of school.

Point three: “I Decided, Pt. 2” – Solange
We have a very special place in our hearts for dear Solange. She was one of the very first people we championed on Shiny & New, and her yellow lipstick had taken us all in when we first heard the most fantastic nod to Motown, “I Decided, Pt. 1” and the ecstatic “Sandcastle Disco”. In a theme began with her sister’s Green Light and continued with ‘family friend’ Kelly Rowland’s “Work” – more on her later – clearly some very clever record execs decided the original version was too ‘urban’ for Europe and needed gaying up. Much of the Freemasons’ income relies on these decisions.

And so, “I Decided, Pt. 2” was born – unusually named as the second part to the original, instead of being given the (Freemasons Mix) tag. Again, rather unusually for the ‘Mases, they seem to simply give the rather bare and basic (nuttin’ wrong with that, mind) “Pt. 1” a fully fleshed out incarnation rather than taking a complete pop song and turning it into a dance spectacular. It marks them out as above and beyond a standard remixing outfit; they only serve to plus the song. Solange and the song both deserve far more UK success than they received.

Point four: “The One” – Kylie Minogue
We’re sure regular readers of S&N know full well our feelings toward the lesser of the Minogue sisters (we don’t really have an opinion on that, we just like to rile stans up) – we simply love to hate the woman. She makes excellent, brilliant pop, so as much as she personally irritates the fuck out of us we try our hardest to detach the person from the music due to it being impossible to ignore how amazing it is. “The One” is one of our personal favourite Minogue songs ever, and is by far the finest track to be lifted from the gay-dividing X.

A pulsating love song backed by overwhelming synths, it stands as one of her finest dance-pop productions of recent years and we have the Freemasons and the Freemasons only to thank for this. They didn’t just remix the track (although they did provide a blissfully long 9-minute edit for clubs), they produced it in the first place. Maybe the reason why it stands out as an unmistakeable highlight on an album of hits and misses is the ridiculously high level of quality in production. It’s just a pleasure to listen to.


Point five: “Work” – Kelly Rowland
We don’t really know where to begin with this. What the Freemasons did to “Work”, a pretty standard – yet surprisingly filthy – RnB/dance track Kelly put out in a rather desperate attempt to claw back some of the former glory only Destiny’s Child could give her, is probably their finest effort. As we mentioned earlier, some record label executives have seen fit, particularly with alumni and friends of previously mentioned amazing girl band DC, to release a song in the United States and provide a remix, nearly always dance-orientated to European markets. How well this works is debatable, but we thank our lucky stars every time we hear this particular remix our home country is part of Europe.

Kelly opens both tracks with “This ain’t gon’ be easy” oozing with sex and syrup (isn’t that a Christina Aguilera track?) but in the remix it just sounds so much hotter. It’s an absolute mess of bhangra beats, horns, strings, synths, house piano and it works like alchemy. Its absolutely epic, a track of mammoth, supreme proportions and something Kelly should be – and from the sound of her latest release “Commander”, is – very proud of.

Point six: “Wonderful Life” – Hurts
You should already be aware of how exceptional Hurts are, and if you don’t, leave this blog immediately. “Wonderful Life” isn’t our personal favourite of theirs, but “Better Than Love” is a hard track to top. However, it seems to lend itself very well to remixes, and the Freemasons Edit is no different. After 1,300 words on how brilliant these two men are, we completely understand if you’re knackered and bored. So are we. But they deserve this applause, and “Wonderful Life” being their most recent mix and one of their very best, deserves a little spotlight. It seems they brainstormed around a central theme of ‘Pet Shop boys in Berlin after a long weekend in Tiesto’s Dutch love nest’ and somehow it popped out as a fully formed pop classic. Highlighting the highs, brushing over the lows – what they do best.

We’re exhausted. Email us your postal address and we’ll send you a chocolate medal if you made it this far. Well done.

Wonderful Hurts.

Quite good.

And it feels better than...

Tonight we saw Hurts at the Manchester Academy 3. They were very, very good. We had a chance to talk to the band outside before the gig. They were very, very normal. They liked the t-shirt this author wore - it was in the fact the same t-shirt this author had worn to the gym earlier and not bothered to change. Noice. On stage, the melodramatic facial contortions and the ethereal gesticulating all came out in force. That's what popstars do!

They played a good ten-song setlist, not bad for a band who have succeeded in leaking very few songs. The music was colourful, consuming and extremely enjoyable - we look forward to hearing many of the played tracks in their studio versions soon. The band was comprised of an organ, a synthesiser, your standard drums and an impeccably dressed single male back up singer, who looked in the region of around his early 50s. Unusual. It worked.

Of course "Better Than Love" was the highlight. It was a pleasure to see the following the band had gained in such a small space of time. The aesthetics were wonderful, we've mentioned how fabulous the music was; could this be the first all-male band we really go for? There were many older attendants in the audience. They may be co-workers dragged along by mothers of band members - they are a Manchester band - or they might just be old people who visit Pop Justice. We can't really remember the full setlist, they played many a song we hadn't heard before, but it was good. Trust.

File under: stately, stunning, sapphic.

Wonderful Hurts...

That stunning single by Hurts (is it HURTS? We can't be bothered to go around changing it) is out soon and here is a teaser trailer and some single coverart to whet your appetite/whip you into a frenzy/get you excited. This is all very dutch sea wall. Effervescent.