mixtape maestro (2.0)

In which Lady Gaga reminds us of the old days when a “World Premiere Music Video Short Film Event” (as well as corded land-lines) really meant something.

We can’t help but think (or hope) that somewhere Missy Elliott has just finished watching this awesomely WTF!!-to-the-infinite-power  (and obviously Quentin Tarantino-influenced) smorgasbord of mass murder, girl-on-girl kissing (and prison fights!!!), bizarro fashion sense (where does one buy still-lit, half-smoked cigarette butt shades?), early Madonna eyebrows, purposefully flat acting, shared Honey Bun snacking, vogueing boy dancer chefs, future Twitter-hyped one-liners (“Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger“) and…erm, Tyrese, and has immediately got her record label on the phone, demanding that they get her a music video budget big enough to include James Cameron as director and the actual Moon as a set location, just so she can end up besting GaGa’s “Telephone” as the owner of 2010’s best clip.

BONUS DL: As An Aquarius (Myspace) featuring Bryan Zimmerman “Telephone (Lady Gaga/ Beyonce Cover)” (alt)

Uncategorized as an aquarius, beyonce, bryan zimmerman, cover song, dance pop, diva pop, lady gaga

Australian chanteuse Sia has attached herself to so many different musical styles over the years (whether it’s the jazzy diva stylings of 2002’s quirky Healing Is Difficult or her many Zero 7 collaborations; the seducing, adult-pop melodrama of her Six Feet Under-featured breakout “Breathe Me”; or the more straight-forward, blue-eyed soul tinges found on her solid 2008 triumph Some People Have Real Problems) that if one was to try to absorb her entire back catalogue all at once, they might find it impossible to grasp that it all emerged from one artist.

New single “You’ve Changed” once again finds the singer shattering expectations and taking on an entirely different sonic realm: this time, mainstream-glossed disco-pop. And while it’s definitely an initially jarring new route for Sia to conquer (and will likely garner it’s share of “sell-out” balks), it’s also one she aces spectacularly, her pipes gelling perfectly with the track’s funky Studio 54 jubilance, while commanding your attention from gleeful note one as she soulfully celebrates the way her love has transformed a man who was, up-to-this point, widely known for his heartbreaking ways.

You’ve changed Sia, and moreso than your previous about-face reincarnations, this Robin S./ CeCe Peniston-reminiscent makeover absolutely feels for the better.

Sia’s fourth album, We Are Born, is scheduled for an April 2010 drop.

DL: “You’ve Changed” (alt)

Uncategorized australia, blue-eyed soul, disco, diva pop, sia, singer-songwriter

Despite arguably being Janet Jackson’s most immediately enjoyable single in years, her new greatest hits padder “Make Me”, a breezy dance concoction with nods to classic ’70’s-era MJ and her own early career heyday, has inexplicably failed to generate much of a chart presence so far (no love on the Billboard Hot 100 nor R&B/ Hip Hop singles listings). Sigh.

All is not lost though, as the single has at least gained some ground amongst the club-going sect, recently inching it’s way all the way to #3 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart.

Below, snatch up one of the new remixes helping lengthen this song’s life as a late-night floor-filler, a teasingly chopped “Edit” from the Ghosts of Venice crew, then re-acquaint yourself with one of JJ’s first chart hits with a “bonus” offering of her equally disco-tastic, pre-Control gem “Young Love”.

“Make Me”:

DL: “Make Me (Ghosts of Venice Edit)” (alt)

“Young Love”:

BONUS DL: “Young Love” (alt)

Uncategorized 70's, 80's, dance remix, disco, diva pop, ghosts of venice, janet jackson

After spending a large part of 2009 having to deal with the embarrassment of having everyone know (and freely share their opinions and concerns) about a certain Grammy night ordeal, you would think that Rihanna, one of the decade’s top singles artist, would deliver an upbeat fourth album lead-off single that was all shades of game-changing kick-ass to succinctly remind the masses of how she really became a household name in the first place.

Instead, as the first taste of the November-set Rated R, Ri-Ri has oddly chosen to give us a Ne-Yo co-penned ballad that utilizes the title “Russian Roulette” as a metaphor for taking a chance on love over a backing track that’s all intense and menacing, with rolled dice (or is that the crackle of a barrel turning?) and gun shot sound effects thrown in to add more oomph to it’s darkened moodiness.

We’ll give “Roulette” a few points for effectively illustrating the tense stand-off between the song’s two lovers, with a relentless heartbeat-like drum stomp and the occasionally haunting lyric (“…And then I get a scary thought/ That he’s here means he’s never lost”) doing enough to bring about a couple of arm goosebumps. But following the first few curious listens, it’s spooky intrigue fades, exposing it for the largely lackluster “comeback” it is.

Put simply, if we wanted noir-ish ambiance from Rihanna right now, we’d revisit her and Ne-Yo’s previous single collaboration “Unfaithful”; for goth-toned pop, we’d rather give “Disturbia” a re-spin (and if we wanted gun shot-accented R&B, Lloyd’s “Pusha” would be the ticket).

“Russian Roulette” is okay (in a third or fourth single kind of way), but as the first solo thing to emerge from the singer following all that Chris Brown drama, releasing an eardrum-rupturing club-pop confection (possibly about how much angry lil’ ex-boyfriends suck) would have been far more appreciated.

Rated R arrives November 23rd.

“Russian Roulette”:

Uncategorized diva pop, ne-yo, R&B, rated r, rihanna

Say what you want about it’s awkward rush to that big, key-escalating finale or, hell, the necessity of it in the first place, but be honest: Mariah Carey’s cheese-tastic cover of Foreigner’s ’80’s radio/ karaoke staple “I Want To Know What Love Is” gets the job done; if nothing else, proving that hearing a gospel choir emote the chorus couplet hasn’t at all lost it’s eye-misting effect after all these years.

Hotter-than-hot remixer Chew Fu migrates her version to the club realm in his latest “re-fix”, garnishing it with all the usual dizzying dancefloor bells and whistles (while giving the backing choir support some extra love) with solid results.

Check out it his “Extended Club Fix” below:

DL: “I Want To Know What Love Is (Chew Fu Extended Club Fix)” (alt)

Uncategorized 80's, chew fu, cover song, dance remix, diva pop, foreigner, mariah carey, memoirs of an imperfect angel

Fresh from penning Whitney Houston’s surprisingly irresistable “don’t call it a comeback” entry “Million Dollar Bill” and co-celebrating the Big Apple on Jay-Z’s anthemic Blueprint 3 highlight “Empire State of Mind”, Alicia Keys steers the focus back to her own solo career with the newly leaked ballad “Doesn’t Mean Anything”, the first taste of her as-yet-untitled upcoming fourth album and one that’ll surely garner her some more award gold come 2011 Grammy night.

Built on a steady drum/ piano pounce that initially hints of a “No One” re-do before evoking more of a Fray/ OneRepublic adult-pop feel, “Doesn’t Mean Anything” presents Keys growing even more comfortable in her position as one of today’s most reliable timeless pop creators, delivering a moving “true love > material things” lyric that pierces the soul in all the right ways and an utterly gorgeous musical arrangement and poised diva vocal performance that both slowly swell upward until they seem to break through the clouds above.

Some may balk at the track’s decidedly non-urban stamp (and to be honest, we might not be fully on-board with this project, if we start to get the gist that the rest of the album will follow this somewhat VH1-ish formula), but it’s hard to easily deny the level of class and universally-appealing popcraft on display here.

Consider her “can’t do any wrong” streak extended for at least another year with this one.

Uncategorized alicia keys, diva pop, piano-pop, singer-songwriter

While the ‘09 VMA’s will likely be most remembered for being the show where Kanye totally did poor, sweet Taylor Swift wrong (two wagging fingers of shame directed at you, Mr. West; standing ovation and rapturous applause to you Beyonce for being a Grade-A class act!), let us not forget the other interesting-to-great moments produced by this year’s “M”TV Awards: Lady Gaga’s “death” (and her continuing climb up Mt. “WTF”); Pink managing to make a dull song like “Sober” so much more interesting thanks to a really cool (and quite uncomfortable-to-watch) high-wire act; a teary-eyed Eminem and tone-deaf Tracy Morgan reminding us once again that Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” is one of the best pop songs ever; Madonna’s surprise appearance and her touching, though somewhat awkardly Madonna-centric, tribute to the King of Pop; Asher Roth NOT winning the Best Hip Hop Video Moonman (we can’t stress how important that is)…and of course, Janet Jackson’s opening live performance of her and her bro’s “Scream”.

Perhaps like most of you, while watching JJ strut her (once again slimmed down) stuff to the aggressive dance-pop of that 1995 semi-hit, we were reminded of how much we really longed for Janet to give us something new and exciting…something that hearkened back to her reigning Control-thru-“All For You” heyday…something unlike the passable, but oh-so-far from “WOW!!!”, stuff heard on her most recent albums.

Imagine our excitement to receive something close to that…erm, “something” in “Make Me”, a “gift” she very recently posted on her website. And oh what a great present it is!!

A disco-licious R&B workout in which she coerces some guy to get up off the wall and help “save the party” by lighting up the dancefloor (and her nether-regions) with his electric moves, “Make Me” gives us everything we could possibly want from a Janet record in 2009: It’s sexy, but not pathetic-sexy (as she’s been prone to deliver for quite some time now); features her disregarding that annoying, edge-of-orgasm talk-rap thing she likes to do for some actual singing; and, most importantly, bears this buoyant, roller skate jam of a groove we can’t get enough of.

Could we FINALLY be getting the real Janet “comeback” album we’ve anticipated for what seems like forever now? From the sounds of this, maybe so…

Uncategorized '09 vma's, disco, diva pop, janet jackson, R&B

For close to two decades (!!) we’ve relied on Mary J Blige’s raw, grainy (and, at times, off-key) whoops to help keep some semblance of true, from-the-soul authenticity alive in the contemporary R&B realm, and even though those fiery chops have gotten smoothed over in recent years, we never once thought that she would ever think of joining the “singing android” parade. Yet, there she was on the summer-leaked (and Drake-featured) “The One”, crushing plenty of hearts across the globe in her unnecessary decision to undergo the Auto-Tuned treatment.

Why MJ why, we sighed and whimpered, hoping that the track would either end up in the recycling bin, get passed onto some lesser naturally-gifted singer, or at least be given a post-”D.O.A”, vocal effect-stripped make-over before it’s official release. Unfortunately, our wishes were ignored: “The One”, minus any revisions, would ultitimately be branded as the jump-off single for Mary’s 9th studio effort, Stronger.

In a case of the video sort of making a song better though, thanks to “One”’s heavily stylized accompanying clip, featuring Blige cutting up a rug while getting her sexy swag on under a neon-lit glow, our initial hesitations towards the record have alleviated some.

It’s plinky-plonk futuro beat may fall a tad on the generic side but it does bump (a fun vibe we actually requested from her a couple months back), the boasting lyrics are cool (“Let me break it down if you don’t get it/ Quality, I’m custom-fitted/…Boy don’t you know I’m the one”"), and the Auto-Tune is really only heard on a couple lines. Still, let it be known that we would fully appreciate it if Blige left the roboticized gimmicks to the chicks that really need it from here on out.

Stronger drops this November.

Uncategorized auto-tune, diva pop, drake, electro-R&B, mary j blige

Shakira’s inner “She-Wolf” gets it’s chop-licking boogie on further via these two recently unleashed club mixes:

The first, helmed by none other than Mr. Calvin Harris, shrouds the singer in back-and-forth dashing synths and spacey sound effects while re-reminding us that you can never go wrong with a lil’ cowbell additive; the other, known as the ‘Deeplick Edit’, bears a catchy, syncopated guitar shuffle and a nice Zapp & Roger-esque vocoder slant to the “S.O.S.” line.

Too bad these things don’t come with videos, cause we’d love to see how Shakira would freakishly contort her groove thang to their beats.

DL: “She-Wolf (Calvin Harris Remix)” (alt)

DL: “She-Wolf (Deeplick Edit)” (alt)

Uncategorized calvin harris, dance remix, deeplick, diva pop, shakira

Just when you think pop music has exhausted all of it’s best tricks, that all we’ll have left is a billion regurgitations of “Boom Boom Pow” or some other ridiculous catchphrase, something comes along that smacks you across the foreheard so damn right, you once again begin to hold out hope for what the genre has to offer around the corner.

“New York”, from East London-born singer/ actress Paloma Faith, is one of those “somethings”.

Opening as a stately pop ballad slightly modernized by a subtle hip hop percussive swing, “New York” won’t instantly grab you as anything all that extraordinary. Yeah, Faith’s crisp, soul-tinged voice is nice, and the lyrics’ “cheated-on” sorrow theme bears an appreciable grown-up singer/ songwriter text (“The days were long and the night so cold/ The pages turn and the tale unfolds/ He left me for another lady”), but for nearly a minute you’re left with the ho-hum idea that Paloma is just another in a long line of less-frazzled Winehouse soundalikes (or the “new Lisa Stansfield”).

Then, assisted by a theatrical instrumental soar through the skies, that breath-halting chorus arrives: “Her name was New York, New York/ And she took his heart away from mine”, a clever switcheroo reveal (Whoa! She’s talking about a city!!) that instantly re-positions one’s perspective on everything that came before that moment (“She stood so tall and she never slept/ There was not one moment he could regret…”) and what will arrive afterward (“The newfound friends she introduced you to/ I don’t want to know them/ I just want to be with you”).

Great lyrics. Commanding vocal performance. A rousing, knot-in-throat climax aided by a gospel choir and ascending strings. Yeah, we smell a future standard with this one.

The single officially arrives September 13th; Pre-order Paloma’s debut, Do You Want The Truth or Something Beautiful, dropping Sept. 29th, here.

Uncategorized blue-eyed soul, diva pop, london, paloma faith, singer-songwriter, UK