So, you’re in the club, chatting up a girl you’ve met. Next thing she’s wearing your bloody Rolex. Happens me all the time, folks, so I’m glad Wiley wrote a song about it.
Seriously though, tracks like this are taking over the charts, and with good reason. There’s been an explosion of UK urban talent recently. Not that guys like Wiley haven’t always been around - it’s just that they’re crossing over into the mainstream in their droves. It’s practically an invasion.
We haven’t seen her since All Saints disappeared from the scene in 2006, but Shaznay Lewis is back with a banging* new collaboration with Wideboys.
Daddy-O isn’t just catchy. It’s one of those songs that gets lodged in your subconscious and won’t come out. In fact, Daddy-O proves Lewis should ditch the dead weight in the Appletons and the other sexy All Saint, and go it alone.
Anyone else finding it hard to get excited about music at the moment? For every decent track out there, there’s a moment of utter dirge. For every American Boy, there’s a Heartbeat.
One song I’m loving at the moment is Daddy-O by Wideboys and Shaznay Lewis. It’s a frantic dance track with Shaznay at her most annoyingly catchy - she really was the best thing in All Saints.
As for this week’s chart, it’s a hit and miss affair, so let’s get it started:
Praise be to Ronson! It wasn’t hard to spot the influence of Mark Ronson in Adele’s latest single, was it?
There’s all of Adele’s atmospheric moodiness in this track, but this time it’s married to an ambitious quasi-military snare drum, soaring strings and punctuated by clean sharp guitar lines.
The arrangement brings out the best in Adele’s voice as well. She’s on top form here, letting us see the full power of her voice.
You can’t keep Kanye out of the charts these days, can you? His latest, Flashing Lights, isn’t getting quite as much attention as his collaboration with Estelle, but it’s doing pretty well all the same.
Flashing Lights tackles the thorny issue of how famous folks manage to have affairs while they’re in the limelight. Basically, they can’t. And those flashing lights belong to the paparazzi that follow Kanye and his peers around everywhere.
This new phase of Natasha Bedingfield’s career is an interesting one. Seemingly she’s out to make it in the US of A in a big, big way.
Critics have picked up on this, and I’ve read more than a few comments that suggest Love Like This is targetted to hit a large market very quickly and make as much impact as possible. The inclusion of one-hit wonderboy Sean Kingston is a strange one. Yes, he’s had one massive single, but is he really a big name draw to partner with from a publicity standpoint? And does he really add anything to the song? (hint: the correct answer is no)
…and Estelle has the #1 position locked down for the third week in a row! American Boy is a pretty deserving Number 1 anyway, especially when you consider that only other worthwhile single - Chris Brown’s With You - seems to be sliding down the chart at the moment.
Guess what? Our favourite 90’s boyband (excluding Take That) are back!
New Kids On The Block appeared on the Today show in America …well today, and revealed their plans for their new reunion album.
We reported back in January that NKOTB were planning to reform, but Danny Woods spoke out and refuted that rumour. We’d be calling them liars right about now, except that Donnie explains in the video that they were hoping to keep things under wraps until the new album was ready, but that the earlier leak forced them to come out and admit the reunion was on.
Whew. Strangest pop-related thing that happened me this week was Denial by the Sugababes came on the radio and I liked it before I realised what I was listening to. Guess that blows smoke all over my review!
Not a bad top ten this week. Most of the songs are actually listenable, even the Madonna/Justin Timberlake collaboration. Having said that, when two major stars release a single backed by Timbaland, surely the end result should be 10x more stunning than this?