Her new EP Once Upon Another Time, comes out on May 22, and I am really excited to hear it – Little Voice and Kaleidoscope Heart are two of my favourite albums, and ones I can listen to repeatedly. It’s fair to say Sara Bareilles is one of the most underrated artists out there: her vocals and songwriting abilities are second to none.

Lie To Me is quite different to what we’ve heard from Bareilles before – though the lyrics are of a similar feel to Come Back Soon from Little Voice.

I think this track would slot effortlessly into something like The Hunger Games soundtrack… have a  listen to Come Away To The Water by Maroon 5 feat Rozzie Crane from the soundtrack and I think you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, I am absolutely loving this song, and here it is for you to enjoy.

The above lyrics come from Minaj’s latest offering Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, an album which has gathered many a negative review. Do the above lyrics seem like something you can relate to? Do I really want to dance like popping corn? Would that not be a bit erratic? Have I missed out on a new dance craze?

Pop music has always had it’s bizarre lyrics. But when you are out on a dance floor, are you really noticing the lyrics? The slick production is what is winning you over, which is probably why most pop artists are collaborating with the likes of David Guetta who can produce the beats that make people get up and dance.

>I personally love a good, danceable song. I’m not a music snob; if you can dance to it and you enjoy dancing to it then I don’t see a problem. As the wise Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters once said “If you like a f***ing K$sha song, listen to f***ing K$sha.” In fact it’s the danceable songs like K$sha that are the saviours when you are in a packed nightclub, with it’s sticky floors and drunk people and loud music… dancing about to a pop/dance song helps you forget you are in a sober persons idea of hell.

However, production can always be overlooked – people are always going to pick up on terrible lyrics. In fact, NME have an entire gallery online dedicated to rubbish song lyrics (though it must be noted that NME aren’t exactly fans of pop music) More often than not the internet has something to say about lyrics. There is a meme dedicated to “Lyrics back then” and “Lyrics now”, that usually bash modern mainstream pop artists for their song writing skills. However Queen, the internet’s go to “look at how good music USED to be” band, had some bizarre lyrics at times: “You say ‘black’ I say ‘white’. You say ‘bark’ I say ‘bite’. You say ‘shark’ I say ‘hey man ‘Jaws’ was never my scene!’” It’s not so much that music has got worse (there has always been ‘bad’ music) it’s just that the mainstream pop songs nowadays focus on the production and the sound rather than the lyrics. If you want meaningful lyrics you can find it easily.

Not all pop music is bad nowadays, it’s that pop music now is generally just a way for an artist to get a couple of big hits in order to sell an album. And to get hits you need a catchy tune. But lyrics still mean a lot to people.

One of the reasons some of the reviews of Nicki Minaj’s latest album were so scathing was that the first few tracks were “hard, confrontational rap songs”, what Minaj is known for, whereas the the rest of the album was made up of bland generic songs that any Top 40 artist could have sung and were dismissed by “>Slant magazine as being “a ghastly and desperate bid for a hit single”. The other tracks weren’t Minaj. They were the hit makers that sung about hooptie hooptie hoops and the like.

However mainstream albums don’t need to be nonsensical hit makers. Adele’s 21, a honest and fragile story of a broken heart, sold millions of copies and became 2011′s biggest hit. In fact, there were studies a plenty into what made 21 so successful. Neurologists looked into specific notes used and how they draw emotional responses from people and lots of other scientific research went into Adele’s music. Twenty years ago, the British psychologist John Sloboda conducted an experiment and found that songs that triggered a strong reaction from people (usually crying) contained notes called an “appoggiatura.”Someone Like You by Adele contains various notes similar to appoggiaturas. But honestly, isn’t it just that everyone can relate to what she is singing about? That’s what Dan Wilson, who co-wrote Someone Like You said in a recent interview: “A good song allows us, the listeners, to walk through the songwriter or composer’s thoughts and emotions as they wrote the song,”.

Wilson continued: “With Adele, we wrote this song that was about a desperately heartbreaking end of a relationship, and she was really, really feeling it at the time, and we were imaginatively creating,”

“That walked her back through that experience. And when you and l listen to that song, we walk through her shoes through that heartbreaking experience — but it’s in our imagination. And so instead of being devastating, we’re like children play-acting. We get to have an imaginative experience.”

We’ve all been a bit crushed by a failed romantic endeavour, and sometimes we need a good album to listen to whilst we down a bottle of wine and eat a tub of Ben & Jerry’s – Adele’s 21 provided that soundtrack.

Connecting personally to music is something everyone can share. Especially during those influential teenage years. You need something to connect with your teenage angst (if not music then perhaps some Catcher In The Rye). The music you listen to as a teenager is the music you look back on and remember what it was like to be young, and more often than not your favourite albums as a teen remain your favourite albums when you are older.

I first listened to Songs About Jane by Maroon 5 in 2004 and it instantly became my favourite album. It’s an album that I can listen to now and I still find myself, track by track, falling in love with it all over again, as if it were the first time I was listening to it. It reminds me of walking home from school, with my blue ipod mini (when it came with the cool white belt attachment!), blasting the album at full volume. Songs About Jane was the pop and r n’ b infused heartbreak anthem of my generation. Everyone I knew at the time had it on their iPod. And for a long time it felt like we were lacking another album like it in the pop world.

But perhaps we have a pop saviour on the horizon? Marina and the Diamonds achieved relative success with her first album The Family Jewels, which was a very personal look at Marina Diamandis’ life leading up to being signed by her record label. It talked about being nervous about achieving fame, asking if she had to change herself as well as about not fitting in and not belonging.

Her latest offering, Electra Heart, is a fascinating look at how people change themselves and adopt persona’s whilst in relationships, all wrapped up in a big glittery pop bow. With the help of Dr Luke (who has produced no 1 songs such as Tik Tok, My Life Would Suck Without You and I Kissed A Girl) the album has a very slick production, but is teamed with lyrics that can mean a lot to a wide variety of people.

Diamandis has said that if other artists wrote the songs she did, .”If I didn’t have the chance to write lyrics I wouldn’t bother being a singer. That was the only thing that really attracted me to music. It wasn’t that I thought I was particularly musical, that I had a good voice, it was just words”

To artists such as Marina and the Diamonds is it primarily about the lyrics. And with Electra Heart that idea has proved successful – the lead single Primadonna reached No 11 in the UK, and Electra Heart debuted at No 1 in the album charts. So maybe the time has come where we want our big pop songs to have some sort of meaning to them. And that is perfectly okay by me.

Electra Heart is the latest offering from Miss Diamandis, a concept album that explores the identities (or “archetypes”) that people assume whilst in relationships. It’s a fascinating look at love and relationships all wrapped up in a big glittery pop music bow.

It all kicks off with the powerful and riotous, “I’ll break your heart with all my charm” anthem Bubblegum Bitch, where Marina gloats about her “sugar pink, liquor liquor lips” and all in all it’s a fun, tongue in cheek song.  Homewrecker sets a similar tone of doing whatever the hell you want and having control over others – “I break a million hearts just for fun“

Teen Idle and Living Dead are upbeat songs with wistful lyrics – reminiscing about lives not lived “I wish I’d been a Prom Queen, fighting for the title” missed opportunities “I haven’t lived life, I haven’t lived love” and a change in identity.

Fear and Loathing draws Electra Heart to a close, and pauses to look back on the journey (funnily enough, Fear and Loathing was the first track Marina revealed online back in August) – from the transformation that she has undergone for love “I’ve lived a lot of different lives, been different people many times” to finally seeing that she can trust people “Not everyone is out to screw you over/Maybe, yeah just maybe, they just wanna get to know you”.

Marina hits the perfect mark between wanting to seem powerful and not needing anbody, and the heartbroken girl. Starring Role and Lies are two beautifully vulnerable and honest songs that set the balance between the two perfectly.

This isn’t a heartbreak anthem album like Adele’s 21. This is a thoroughly modern look at how people change and alter both themselves and others in relationships.From trying to look like you don’t give a damn after a split and assuming the role of heartbreaker, to reflecting on your life and taking and honest look at the sorrow someone caused you – it’s a rollercoaster ride through it all. The slick production helps you guide you between the good and the bad times.  At the end of it all you feel like you’ve actually been in a relationship with the collective number of identities that is Electra Heart.

Electra Heart is wonderful piece of smart, clever and interesting pop – this album is exactly what the pop world needs right now.

Acoustic versions of certain tracks (I particularly recommend Lies) are available here.

Today’s Sunday chillout track has come about due to a nostalgia filled weekend. This all kicked off on Friday night when I was at my friends 20th birthday party, and as well as teasing her for being “old”, there was a lot of chat about how long we have all known each other. And then HelloGoodbye – Here In Your Arms started playing, which lead to an outcry of “Oh my god this song just reminds me of Cathouse unders!” and “When was the hell was this song out?” – a quick google search found it was 2007. And then we all felt old.

That song lead to searching YouTube for all the songs and artists I haven’t heard in so long: Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco (back when they had the exclamation mark), The Gossip, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, and eventually to my chillout track artist.

Which leads me to this week’s Sunday Chillout Track: Here We Are  by Bloc Party (which, in case you were wondering, was out in 2005)

Enjoy!

So, I present to you a little playlist of just some of the songs I’ve been listening to tonight. Unfortunately no cat videos are included.
http://8tracks.com/mixes/606877/player_v3

Electric Thursday from burnthesephotographs on 8tracks.

The issue of Valentine’s Day divides quite a few people – some loathe it, others love it. Usually this divide is split by your relationship status, however, as Occupy V-Day has shown, some couples hate Valentine’s Day, and some singletons like celebrating their love with someone they aren’t in a relationship with. So, in brief, screw you stereotypes!

Anyway, this is a music based blog, so I thought I’d recommend a fun track to listen to today. It’s Crash The Party by OK Go, and contains some brilliant lyrics including “While the rest of the girls are drowning in roses and songs he composes/And while the rest of the guys are trying, trying so hard”.

And yes, as you might be able to tell from this song selection, I am single. But y’know what? This doesn’t mean I’ll be downing a bottle of rose and listening to Adele songs whilst weeping tonight. I’ve spent a wonderful day with lots of people I love: my friends, my family and myself! Celebrate love, it’s a wonderful thing! I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day, regardless of your relationship status. Enjoy

Happy Sunday everyone!

Happy Sunday everyone!

Music helps a long way in creating that chilled out, Sunday atmosphere. So here is my second choice for the Sunday chillout track – Clocks by Coldplay and Chicago by Sufjan Stevens being played over each other.

I know that two songs being played over each other may sound like a bad idea initially, but with these two tracks it works beautifully. What more could you ask of a chillout track?

Happy Sunday everyone!

Anyway, the first big festival announcement this year was the Coachella line up, which never fails to disappoint, and boy this year is no exception…

Tickets for last year sold out for the 3 day festival a mere week after the artists were revealed. However this year the organisers are experimenting by having the exact same line up two weeks in a row. That’s right, the same festival twice. That’s how popular this thing is.

Artists announced for the Friday include The Black Keys, Swedish House Mafia, Atari Teenage Riot, Yuck, Afrojack and Arctic Monkeys.

Saturday sees Radiohead, Bon Iver, The Shins, David Guetta, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Dragonette, We Were Promised Jetpacks, The Vaccines and Feist perform.

And as for Sunday… oh my good god get your dancing shoes on Los Angeles, because Sunday looks spectacular. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, At The Drive-In, Justice, Florence and the Machine, AVICII, La Roux, Beirut, The Weeknd, Girl Talk, The Hives, Calvin Harris, Nero and Metromony are just some of the acts playing on the Sunday.

It is now I would like to announce the beginning of a very worthwhile charity campaign. It’s called the “Shelley needs to attend Coachella 2012″ appeal. Please donate what you can.