AMELIA LILY - YOU BRING ME JOY

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.

LITTLE MIX - WINGS

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.  :(

Anyway, here's this amazing Little Mix song.

LANA DEL REY - NATIONAL ANTHEM (video)

Lana Del Rey is incredible and this video is incredible.  In fact, it's easily my favorite video of the year so far and I can't imagine it not being my favorite at the end of the year.  It's a perfect representation of her aesthetic and the juxtaposition of the early 60s home movies and hip hop video is done with such finesse that you can almost imagine that this is what JFK and Jackie O were actually like.  It takes what could potentially be very hokey and makes it gorgeous.  Honestly, that might be the best way to sum up Lana Del Rey.

FLORRIE - SHOT YOU DOWN (video)

Florrie has released the video for the best song from her latest EP.  It's a quite simple yet effective video where one Florrie with pants plays drums and another Florrie with shorts sings the song and they both look lovely and pull some intense, seriousfaces.

Florrie is currently recording her major label super duper megastar debut album so things are all very exciting around the Florrie camp.

If you missed my review of her EP, you can find it here.  And here's the video.

JESSIE WARE - WILDEST MOMENTS

I haven't featured any Jessie Ware songs on my blog yet and I can't remember if it's because they came out before I started it or if I'm just stupid.  Because she is amazing.  She has had such an incredibly strong run of singles for a debut.  Each one is brilliant and surprising.  I have no doubt in my mind that Devotion will be one of the top five albums of 2012.

Her new single, "Wildest Moments", is gorgeous.  She continues on her path of making incredible pop/soul songs that don't just sound like they are aping the style of every pop/soul song that came out in the 70s.  There's a definite modernness to them without giving you that feeling that it sounds "so 2012".  They are timeless.  And her voice is just... perfect.  Jessie really seems like the type of artist that is going to have a really long, really satisfying career.  I truly believe that people will still be talking about her (positively) 20 years from now.  Unless the world ends this year.

VENDELA - PUNK ROCK SONG

This song by Swedish songstress, Vendela, is relatively ancient by music blog standards (the video appeared online sometime last year), but ever since I randomly stumbled upon it by searching for something else on Popjustice a couple of weeks ago, I've been listening to it so much that I just had to write something about it.  Plus, it's never been an official single so I feel like enough people probably haven't heard it that it warrants mentioning again.

One of my favorite things about "Punk Rock Song" is that it's not a punk song.  It's not even a pop punk song.  It's not just dropping names and putting up a front pretending it's something it's not.  This is a proper pop song through and through, and it knows that.  It's not even really about punk rock.  It's about love like most amazing songs are.  It's about a sweet, gorgeous girl who is feeling something primal for her love interest.  This lucky individual has got her so worked up that she feels her own voice isn't even adequate to express what she is feeling.  She wants to growl, she wants to shout.  But when she sings this song, all that comes out is this brilliant, infectious, bursting-with-joy pop song.  The song's lyrics are ingenious, but that wouldn't mean anything without the exuberant production and Vendela's unique, bubbly voice (You can hear the smile in every word).  She is quite literally incredible.

To sum it all up, this song is absolutely amazing.  I love it so much that I would actually like to sing like Patti Smith for everyone involved in the making of this song (Tony Nilsson and Sharon Vaughn wrote it; not sure who produced it).  I really hope that it is re-released as a proper single at some point this year.  With a new video and some good promotion behind it, it could be huge.  Or at least if this world decides to make any sense at all.  And if the other songs on Vendela's debut album are anywhere near as great as this one, it will be a stone cold pop CLASSIC.

Here is the video of this bonafide pop supernova.

A SNIPPET OF A NEW ANNIE SONG

The trailer for the new short film, The Night Within, directed by Hildegunn Waerness has arrived.  And with it, a bit of a new Annie song called, "The Night Within Us".  There aren't many musicians who can get me excited with a clip of a song, but brilliant song-maker Annie Strand is one of the few.  In fact, for the most part I usually just ignore song/music video teasers, but I've already watched this trailer like five times just to hear the song again and again.

It sounds SO GOOD.  Which was to be expected, of course.  There literally isn't a single Annie song that I don't like.  Can't wait to hear the full track.

Here's the trailer: