No opening paragraph today, just going to get right to the good stuff.
Stine Bramsen – Prototypical
If you don’t recognise this lady, or her voice, then you need to go and have an Alphabeat session right now. Both their first two albums were 50% rubbish and 50% beyond incredible. They had a great run of singles too – ‘Fascination’, ‘10,000 Nights (of Thunder)’, ‘Boyfriend’, ‘Hole in my Heart’ and ‘DJ’ (well, this remix anyway) being my favourites. They had a third album too but I really didn’t pay attention to that, it’s not anything special apparently.
Now Stine is going solo whilst the band is taking a break and after featuring on the incredible ‘I Want You’ in 2011, Bramsen is back with the ‘Prototypical’. I’ve embedded the live session version above and it’s my favourite, but the actual version is worth listening to as well.
Lily Allen – Air Balloon
After making her return late last year with The Annual John Lewis Christmas Song and the fantastically sharp-tongued ‘Hard Out Here’ Lily Allen is releasing her second single from her long-awaited, still untitled third album. It’s catchy, combining modern beats with playground melodies and cute lyrics about Elvis getting to first base before Kurt Cobain. It’s good, but in a B-Side-That’s-Not-As-Good-As-Any-Of-Her-2nd-Album*-Era-B-Sides way. Let’s just hope the video takes the day-dreamy feel of the song and elevates it (pun intended) to something worthy of a single from my 2nd favourite popstar ever.
*That 2nd Album is called It’s Not Me, It’s You and its my favourite album of all time. Every song is perfect. Buy it. Now.
Kylie Minogue – Into The Blue
http://a.tumblr.com/tumblr_mznojei9I31qjdybto1.mp3#_=_
(In lieu of any sort of video, here is the single cover and a link.)
Thanks to some naughty internet people leaking things they shouldn’t, we get new songs from 2nd and 1st favourite Popstars in one week. January blues? Not this year!
I only heard this for the first time last night and didn’t really like it, but at that point I had been awake for 20 hours and you could’ve given me a million pounds and I would’ve grumbled it wasn’t 2 million. Now I’ve had some sleep and given this tune a proper whirl I’m ready to give my (still mixed) opinion. It’s not as an Americanised as I’d feared from Kylie‘s deal with Roc Nation (Jay-Z‘s label) but the ‘E-yo-oh-oh-oh’ hook is the basic sounding thing you’d find on a Flo-Rida song and why sing ‘Don’t need no miracle’ rather than ‘Don’t need a miracle’? Just generally unnecessary.
Also, the production on the chorus is a bit too ‘hard’ and contrasts with the feeling but the verses sound divine as expected from the Goddess of Pop herself. To be honest, it’s Kylie and it’s hard to dislike because she delivers warmth and happy fuzzy feelings in spades. I can’t wait for her debut performance on The Voice (where she is instantly the best judge, obviously) and studio album number 12.
That’s it from me today, peace out!
joeanderton 
