Being an American fan of British pop music is like fighting a constant battle. Your favorite artist releases a new video. You get really excited. BUT NOPE. Can't play it in your country. But one without the region blocking usually shows up eventually and here's one for Cheryl Cole's new video for "Under the Sun". It's basically Cheryl walking around town looking amazing and not giving a fuck about anything. Which is what most pop videos should be. There is one weird bit where it gets scary for a couple of seconds. But then she just goes back to dancing with a bunch of dudes.
I finally found an upload of the Little Mix video that actually plays in the US. So, here it is! It's pretty good. It's pretty much exactly what you want a girlband video to be. You can read what I had to say about the song here.
Not content to have just one great song, Cinnamon Girl smartly decided she would be amazing a second time around. This time the song is "Devil in Me" and it is fantastic.
And even though I'm not one to slag on artists for not writing or producing their own material, it does actually make it quite impressive when just one person is responsible for all of the joy-inducing sounds on a track like this. The song is obviously very influenced by 80s new wave, but not so much that it sounds like she's just aping a style. It sounds like it should exist in 2012 and it's a sound that very much belongs to Cinnamon Girl.
If the rest of her followup songs are as good as this and her earlier single, "Friends", then we are going to have one serious corker of a pop album on our hands.
When I first listened to this song earlier today, I immediately liked it, but I didn't expect to be coming back to the song/video so many times throughout the day. But that is exactly what I did. Because it is amazing. It basically sounds exactly like what you want a No Doubt single to sound like in 2012 unless you are crazy. It probably won't gain them that many new fans except for maybe some of the ones that are too young to really remember No Doubt in their heyday. It feels weird that there are 16-year-olds out there who weren't even alive when Tragic Kingdom came out.
Anyway, No Doubt is still brilliant and this was produced by Spike Stent who has worked with about a billion other mega famous popstars. I actually like that it's not a big in-your-face comeback single. It's just a great song. It's not desperate at all and actually makes you feel more like No Doubt never really went away. It is basically a warm hug from an old friend. Also, I quite like the video, too. It features the members of the band driving some huge disco trucks until they arrive at an amazing party. And Gwen Stefani is still one of the most attractive humans on the planet. So, that's nice as well.
Oh, and I also actually like how ugly the single's artwork is.
As much as I liked "Wings" by Little Mix and "Home Run" by Misha B, Amelia Lily's "You Bring Me Joy" is definitely my favorite debut single from the 2011 class of X Factor. It's incredibly satisfying to hear a brilliant Xenomania-produced single in 2012. Not that it hasn't always been, but now that Girls Aloud isn't around, (and no one's sure how long they'll stick around after their comeback this year) you just savor each morsel we're given that much more. Brian Higgins is a master of crafting slightly melancholic dance pop songs. Songs that other people might have said, "You know what? Let's make a ballad with this one." But no! Brian Higgins knows there is nothing better than sad dancing.
This song has so much class and confidence. It's not shouting about how brilliant it is. It's just simply going about it's business being brilliant. I don't know much about Amelia Lily yet, but I do know that if the rest of her album is this gobsmackingly amazing, then it will be one of the best things to happen to this year.
And there is reportedly a full minute of this song I haven't even heard yet. (!!!)
UPDATE: I've added the even more brilliant full version below the radio rip.
UPDATE 2: The other videos got deleted. Here's the real one.
I've been watching old episodes of X Factor lately (started with series 5 because I love Diana Vickers), but I haven't gotten to the one with Little Mix yet so I didn't really know whether or not to be excited about them. All I had heard was their cover of "Cannonball" and I thought it was nice enough, but I wasn't wowed, or anything. But that's probably mostly down to me not being a Damien Rice fan.
But it turns out I definitely should have been excited because "Wings" is crazy good. It's such an amazing debut single. It's one of those songs where literally every single ingredient exists in order to get you out of your chair and dancing and air punching and singing along. I didn't actually do any of those things when I first heard it, but that's only because it's 4 in the morning while I'm writing this. All debut singles by girlbands should be this much fun. Speaking of fun, I hope there's no more than two full-on ballads on their debut album.
2012 seems like it might be the year of the girlband. Girls Aloud and the original Sugababes are both working on new music, The Saturdays had a good single and a good b-side, and Parade have been making some supposedly amazing music.
I wish every year was the year of the girlband. :(
