We told you about British electro-pop songstress Lolene a while ago, along with a pretty strange teaser clip of her new album 'Electrick Hotel.' Now she's ready to unleash her very first official video, for lead single 'Rich (Fake It Til You Make It)', and it is very good.
It's essentially a trip down to the local grocery gone either VERY BAD or VERY GOOD depending on whether you are a good, God-fearing Christian or not. Lolene starts out working the cash counter, and ends up filling her cart with all sorts of expensive goodies and then swimming through a glass of champagne without drowning or succumbing to alcohol poisoning somehow.
In short, it is VERY GOOD.
The album is out in August, but the single is out now.
Ah, Marina, how we heart thee. Quirky pop, hummable melodies, and increasingly odd/brilliant videos make us smile, and she has them in spades. The latest from the 'one to watch' is 'Oh No', and sees Miss And The Diamonds taking on pop art and a number of primary colors. Also the song is VERY GOOD. It's that kind of track that probably will alienate the casual radio listener while endearing itself to anyone willing to give its oddness a chance. 'Oh No' deserves that chance too, as it's one of the most refreshing tracks to come out in quite a while.
Kylie paid a visit to the Wossy himself, Jonathan Ross last night, and was even kind enough to sing her new track 'All The Lovers,' which by some fluke of scheduling is out Monday physically. It's almost as if they planned things that way, isn't it...
Miss Minogue talks tour, "bang on trend" dancers, and her clubbing habit, all the while reminding us why she's the biggest class act in the business.
ScopiSat fave Menya is about to embark on a big tour, and thus will likely not be recording much for the next couple months. To tide us over, though, they've been kind enough to do this RATHER NICE cover of The Supremes' 'Can't Hurry Love.' As with many of their songs, Menya have done a video to accompany it. We think you'll like it, mostly because it has MENYA in it and AN ACTUAL HIPPO.
Maroon 5 burst on to the scene a few years ago, did a duet with Rihanna, and have quietly become sort of a mainstay of the music world. It's a good thing, too, as it's allowed them to stick around long enough to give us 'Misery,' which is more than a bit similar to their smash 'This Love' but more pop-py and perhaps even better. It comes from their new album, called 'Hands All Over,' which Rolling Stone describes as their "brightest record yet." Translated, that means us pop fans are going to LOVE THE SH*T OUT OF IT.
The track just debuted, so there's no official video yet, but luckily some guys have put a very good one together using nothing but a video camera, some douchy "eccentric guy at the party who has a fro to get laid" consignment shop clothes and - we're guessing - frequent use of the word "bro."
'Hands All Over' is out September 21 and is likely to be VERY GOOD
I think you'll all join us in a collective "WTF" about the new The Situation "single" called, imaginatively, 'The Situation.' It features Fatman Scoop, who the world was clearly clamoring to hear more from, and some fist-pumping, eyebrow-threading, muscle-juicing beats that wouldn't sound particularly out of place in a Miami nightclub in 2002.
Sure it's terrible, but come on, we still TOTALLY WOULD.
We actually looked for a release date for this gem but apparently no one actually cares.
Oh, Christina. How it has all gone so very, very wrong. First the lead track 'Not Myself Tonight' sputtered just about everywhere it was released - it only made it to #23 on Billboard's Hot 100, and even in the UK the track struggled to a disappointing #12 - and now any hopes of the campaign being saved by the album release have been dashed, diced, and spat upon by a troupe of Lady Gaga drag queens with murder on their minds.
Yes, we've seen some rather lackluster album debuts recently, but 'Bionic''s 111,838 even throws under Mariah's disastrous 'Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel' which debuted with 180,000 in the U.S. In a sad coincidence, both records bowed at number 3 on the Billboard Top 200. 'Bionic' fared a little better - chart wise at least - in the UK, where it scraped to the number 1 position. It certainly did better than 'Memoirs,' which tanked outside the top 20, but Christina's accomplishment is somewhat tarnished by the fact that it had no competition and sold only 23,000 copies. In a country that still buys records by the bucketload, that's pretty dismal. Like, 'MacGruber' dismal. (EDIT - it only gets worse, as this week the album plunged from 1 to 29. Yes. 29.)
So today, as you are celebrating your fathers, take a break from all that masculine energy to spare a thought for Miss Aguilera, who is probably crying into her macrobiotic what germ as we speak.
Chalk this up to a terrible choice of first single (didn't we learn anything from Kylie's '2 Hearts'/'X'??) and Christina's refusal to give the public what they want. Her fan base has matured, and as much as she wishes she was still 'Dirrty,' we have plenty of electro-skanks already. What we don't have plenty of are seriously talented vocalists who can literally rule a tune like 'You Lost Me.' Let's hope her label chucks it out as the next single and turns this ship around.
It's no secret we love 'Party In The USA' because it is amazing. We also love 'See You Again' because it is a brilliant pop song. As for Miley herself, however, we've always had sort of mixed feelings. Could 'Can't Be Tamed' be a turning point in our feelings about the teen sensation?
With the recent up-skirt picture controversy (thanks, Perez Hilton - always a class act) there has been much discourse about whether Miss Cyrus is growing up too fast and ruining our youth. The answer to both is probably a RESOUNDING YES, but when corruption looks and sounds this good, who cares?
Somehow when we least expected it, Miley turned into a VERY GOOD little pop star. The album 'Can't Be Tamed' is out June 21, and the single is out now.
A new Kylie 'Aphrodite' sampler has emerged, and this time we are treated to 30 second clips of EVERY TRACK on the album. Surprisingly, there are actually a few more downtempo numbers, not just the high energy club bangers we were led to expect. And unlike 'X', it sounds like one cohesive project that has a great chance to go down as a defining pop album.
The album pre-order has been knocking around the top 70 of iTunes' U.S. chart all week, and in the U.K. the single is at number 3, weeks before its release.
N.E.R.D. have been off the scene for a while, so ScopiSat did some nosing around (read: wikipedia-ing) to see what they had been up to. The answer is "nothing particularly interesting" but we did find out that as a band, N.E.R.D. have not been nearly as successful as we assumed. The group has never (!!) had a top 100 Billboard single (excluding dance charts) and while their first two albums went Gold, their last has only sold about 250,000 in the U.S. Then we remembered that N.E.R.D. is actually just a side project and two of the three members are actually THE NEPTUNES who produced EVERY NUMBER ONE HIT in America between 2001 and 2006. So they're doing fine.
Anyway, N.E.R.D. has a new song out with Nelly Furtado and they made a video for it. Here's a preview.
Ah, always classy, this one... True to form, Katy's got all sorts of debauchery and nonsense up in her new video. There are COLORS and BOOBS and COLORFUL BOOBS and Jell-o for some reason.
It's actually quite fun, and matches the unapologetically pop sound of the track perfectly. It's also one of the few songs we don't mind having a completely pointless rap on. Somehow the whole thing just....works.
So 'All The Lovers' has finally rolled as a single-track digital download out in almost every territory, and the results are looking pretty solid. It currently sits at #3 on UK iTunes, behind only the World Cup themes (notorious for selling bucketloads and then diving off the charts altogether) and #141 on US iTunes. That last number might sound a little disappointing, but the track was only released a few hours ago, and considering that #140-1 are all Glee it's probably not a terrible result. Most of the interest in the U.S. will likely come when the remixes are released in a couple weeks, and might be boosted by the upcoming North American album promotion she has hinted at.
Just in case you've forgotten, here's the video ONE MORE TIME:
In other news, Kylie recently revealed that she is not only considering returning to the big screen, but is actively deciding between roles that have been offered. Let's just hope she's not considering 'Bio-Dome 2'. Read all about it here.
Despite any initial doubts about Adam Lambert's career trajectory after debut single 'For Your Entertainment' failed to crack the top 40 in the US and scraped a rather non-canon 37 in the UK, he managed to turn things around with the US top 10 hit 'Whatya Want From Me.' Hoping to continue that success, Glambert has just released the video for 'If I Had You,' and we're actually quite digging it. It's sort of 'Mad Hatter meets Mad Max.' There is so much 'Mad'-ness, in fact, that we even toyed around with a new nickname for Lambert...something like Madbert or Madam Lambert, but we decided against it at the last minute.
Anyhoodle, here's the clip. It's pretty ok don't you think? The song isn't half bad either.
Kanye's been flying a bit low lately, after something apparently happened at some awards show. Not one to rest on his laurels, however, he used that 'time off' to record some music, and to all you 'hAtErZz' out there (ScopiSat included) we are sorry to say it's actually quite good. It's very 'Jesus Walks,' and serves as a nice reminder that behind the ridiculous ego there lies some very real talent.
The album 'Good Ass Job' is out in September and boasts some of the finest talent in music today.
Kelly's big summer tune 'Commander' is already out worldwide, but the US - with all our special music needs - is getting a double A-side of two brand new tracks. One of them, 'Grown-Ass Woman' is pretty alright, but the real corker is 'Rose Colored Glasses.' It manages to stay consistent with Kelly's emergence as a big dance diva, but slow things down and stay true to her roots at the same time. ScopiSat is loving this jam, but what do you think?
Welcome to the very first ScopiSat VideOff, where two videos face off in an EPIC BATTLE TO THE DEATH. Each video will be rated according to a number of largely meaningless factors which are then assigned arbitrary point values.
The ALL NEW ScopiSat VideOff (c) is being trotted out now because, well, we feel like it, and also because Gaga and Kylie have given us two superstar videos that couldn't be more different, each competing for the same audience.
First, here's Kylie:
And the Gaga:
Now, in response to HUGE DEMAND (read: no demand whatsoever), here is a dodgy MS Word cut and paste comparison chart.
Let's see how they stack up, shall we:
There. That's decided.
Though the chart is certainly exhaustive, we feel that there is somehow more to be discussed here. "An opinionated editorial on the state of pop music and the deeper meaning of the differing ways artists choose to express themselves?" you ask?
Yes. Yes exactly.
Much of pop discourse has been about Kylie/Madonna and Gaga/Madonna. But most of what has been said can be applied to an EPIC KYLIE/GAGA SHOWDOWN as well. For instance, a lady from The Telegraph once said "Simply, Madonna is the dark force; Kylie is the light force." Similarly, Rufus Wainwright famously told The Observer that "[Madonna] subverts everything for her own gain. I went to see her London show and it was all so dour and humourless... I love Kylie, she's the anti-Madonna. Self-knowledge is a truly beautiful thing and Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy."
It's becoming apparent that each quote could be just as easily be applied here, by simply replacing "Madonna" with "Gaga." Perhaps the biggest thing that watching the videos side by side exposes is just how concerned Lady Gaga is with making her image and statement in a very self-conscious fashion, while Kylie has emerged as an artist completely confident in her talents and strengths, but more importantly herself and who she is. To break it down, Gaga seems like the high school girl trying desperately to be shocking in a bid to be noticed and somehow find herself, while Kylie is the confident, self assured college woman who couldn't give two shits what anyone else thinks - she just wants to have fun.
Pop is about both things equally - it is a vehicle through which many find themselves and glean inspiration for where they'd like to go, but pop is also about expressing exactly who we are right at this moment, and celebrating everything that we are and that exists as it is.
Gaga, a still-emerging artist with visions of a future where the "freaks" turn the tables on the rest of the world, speaks to the youth of today who all feel a bit like "little monsters" in their schools and social cliques. She necessarily condemns one view while espousing her own, in a constant effort to shape the future.
Kylie, on the other hand, a seasoned pop star who has seen artists come and go, seems to recognize that this struggle of subculture versus culture will always be going on - that the subculture will one day become the culture and a new subculture will wage war against it. Instead of diving into that ultimately futile war, Kylie takes the focus off of us and instead celebrates the genuine contentedness she feels in her life right at this very moment.
All this seems to be a bit overdramatic, admittedly. It's "just pop music" after all. But these two videos represent two equally dynamic world views. One is always clawing toward a future that may never come, while the other celebrates each moment as it happens.
So which one are you, pop fans? Are you a Gaga or a Kylie?
EDIT: One reader noted that we are all probably a little of both Kylie and Gaga (and indeed some of us may be neither, though we'd never want to meet those people...what a sad life they must live), and still more have noted since this was originally posted that it comes off a bit harsh toward Gaga. We have nothing against the woman - any casual perusal of this blog will reveal a high degree of respect for the Lady. She's a newer artist, and one that comes at pop and life with a very different - and very successful - approach. Her music is brilliant, her videos are incredible, and her persona is delightfully outlandish.
Here is the Lady Gaga video (amazing). It is 9 minutes long (ridiculous). It is black and white sort of but at the same time not (amazing).
ScopiSat has made it no secret this is our favorite track from 'Fame Monster,' with its Ace of Base beat and overdramatic flair. The video, then, had a lot to live up to. Never one to disappoint, the Lady has offered up a taut, other-worldly adventure where women lord over buff male models with their eyepieces and have guns strapped to their boobies. All in all it's very 'Gaga' which is great, but in danger of getting a little old. Chalk this one up as a big win for pop but with the caveat that it's certainly not going to win Miss Germanotta any new fans. To be fair, though, is there really anyone left that hasn't made up their mind about the star yet?
In the interest of full disclosure we should tell you that we weren't really feeling the clip, until exactly 5:37 when something INCREDIBLE happens and the remainder becomes something of a masterpiece. Just when we think the whole 'Gaga world domination' thing has turned a corner she pulls it back from the brink and wins our sad, doubting asses over.
Want to hear the sound of the summer? Then watch the video sampler below. It seems to be the same megamix she performed at NYC's Splash bar this weekend. Kylie's 'Aphrodite' seems to be exactly what everyone has been saying all along - a brilliant dance record with a cohesive and slick sound that 'X' didn't have. The project sounds musically a bit like her 'Fever' heyday and it surprisingly - and refreshingly - sidesteps the retro 80's vibe that is being summarily run into the ground by nearly every pop starlet out there at the moment, in favor of a completely modern and forward sound.
What do you readers think? Actually, never mind what you think. It's brilliant and we won't stand for any opinions to the contrary.
So ScopiSat wrote a whole treatise on the Vengaboys comeback a while ago (we'd link to it but we're late for a thing already) but it was all done with the express assumption that it wouldn't ACTUALLY HAPPEN. But now there can be no denying it. They are actually, truly back.
In the 'buzz' leading up to the release there was much ado (read: an article on the Vengaboys' official site) about a "celebrity" making an appearance in the video. We are totally on board with crossover projects like this, but - as we said then - only when it is not Perez Hilton. :(
Regardless of the Perez thing, it's nice to have the 'boys back on the scene, even if it is with a kind of crap song and ....*shudder*... Perez.
Zarif is one of ScopiSat's "ones to watch" this year, as the Brit singer/songwriter is gearing up to be quite big (and by "quite big" we mean "will scrape a top 75 hit out and impress all the critics without ever actually selling any records"). Zarif is from Harrow, London, which, incidentally is where ScopiSat lived and went to university. Oddly, Harrow is becoming a little hotbed of music activity - Jay Sean, Scouting For Girls, Kate Nash, and Lady Sovereign all hail from the suburb.
With her new single, Zarif takes the retro 80's movement and winds it back about 40 years to give us a swinging big band pop tune... With rap... while for the video, she has chosen to film inside a MAGIC PHOTO BOOTH where "things" happen and pictures are taken of those "things."
Here are those things:
Bonus points for using "that swing song everyone knows but no one can name" in the middle 8.
Much blog ink has been spilled over up and comer Sky Ferreira (pictured here having a wee in a supermarket) and her rosy future prospects. The L.A. based singer/songwriter is only 17, but since signing with EMI Records last year she has been riding a promo train that many established stars would kill for. Her buzz track '17' didn't make a ton of impact, but that's probably because it sounded like a bargain-basement Ke$ha b-side.
But fear not, pop minions! Ferreira's proper debut single 'One' dropped the other day and we're delighted to say it is much, much better. It's not just good, either. It's 'this song gets us excited about popular music' good. It's 'makes us forget that Nickelback squeezed eight (EIGHT!!!) singles out of their last album' good. It's....well, we don't want to over sell it, so just have a listen for yourself:
It's always nice when 'the blogs' get it right, eh?
Lady Gaga went on (of all places) Larry King Live last night to talk about her health, Michael Jackson, and her new video 'Alejandro.' Contrary to reports prior to the show, she did not premiere the whole clip, but instead offered an odd sort of teaser. It's short (as teasers are, we suppose) and gives some idea what exactly might be in store. It's a whole black and white stylish affair that brings to mind Madonna's 'Vogue' and 'Justify My Love' clips. Funnily enough, Gaga's current incarnation seems to be a pretty by the book restyling of Madge's early 90's 'Erotica' phase. Severe makeup, art deco influences (round glasses much?) and a dash of the 1930's. The video is, thankfully, stripped down a bit from her usual wackiness, but as we pointed out when the 'Telephone' video premiered, she seems to just be progressing chronologically through Madonna's various career incarnations. Let's take a look, shall we?
Could a short pixie cut be next? Judging by her 'performance' in 'Telephone,' lets just hope she doesn't get the acting bug... 'Body of Evidence,' anyone?
Still, we're pretty darn excited, as despite any feeling as to Gaga's current career choices the video itself looks pretty great. What do you readers think?
Kelly Rowland (pictured above pretending she is Toni Braxton for some reason) is back with a brand new video for 'Commander,' and it is big, bold, cheesy, cheap and a little bit amazing but in an oddly crap way. It starts with a sort of 80's kitschy-ness, but at the same time has the sugary gloss of a budget Euro-dance clip - you know, the ones that cast lingerie models as 'dancers' and are by bands named things like 'Groove All Star Rave Junkies'. Then in the middle it goes a bit 'Destiny's Child except with only Kelly' split screen-y and then she jumps through some safety glass and it ends.
Regardless of the video's relative shortcomings, it certainly ticks all the boxes for what it was meant to do. For once Kelly looks self-assured and comes off as an actual grown woman in charge of herself and her career. Just the other day we were at a dinner party and agreed with our friend who said Miss Rowland would never really make it as a club act. But suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, it seems as if this whole 'dance diva makeover' might work after all.
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