(via Shutterstock)
Welcome to the first music post of the year which is all about finding music and being changed by it.
All five of these immensely talented artists or groups of artists have shown they are worth being found, marrying up lyrics that really hit home with music that soars to the heavens, gets your feet moving and making your heart feel like it’s in the business of feeling good all over again.
Listening to these tracks is a lift for the soul, and while the lyrics deliver a massive sucker punch to their intended targets, they have you dancing as they do, embodying life itself which is never all dark or all light but often a mix of the two.
Why not reflect that in music? So, happily for us, they have …
“Carsick” by K.Flay
(courtesy official K.Flay Facebook page)
One of the things that is so intoxicating about really great pop music is the way it can tap into a host of emotions you’re feeling and give you a name for it.
Or even if you don’t need to name it, an evocatively emotional song can reach deep inside and allow you to feel solidly and with definition, emotions roiling around in an ill-defined chaotic burble.
One artist who knows emotions and pours them into her music with liberal abandon is K.Flay aka Kristine Meredith Flaherty, an American singer/songwriter/rapper whose latest song “Carsick”, which premiered on Triple J radio in Australia, exemplifies her ability to put form and feeling to emotion and to bring it alive in powerful and transformative ways.
In this brilliantly clever song which “[captures] both the dizzying feeling of being in a toxic relationship and the freedom that comes with leaving it”, K.Flay fills every note and lyric with feelings so intense and real it’s near impossible not to live this song to the nth degree.
No, just listening here; you are the song and it is you and it’s a fantastically alive and freeing thing.
“Mirrors” by Caravan Palace
(courtesy SoundCloud)
Discovering a new band is always a rare and delicious pleasure.
Coming across Parisian French electro-swing band Caravan Palace via new single, “Mirrors” came courtesy of YouTube and it’s gloriously fun rabbit holes of endlessly algorithmically linked video rabbit holes.
The song is a bright, light and spirit-raisingly bouncy slice of joyous pop with disco stylings but as Broadway World observantly picks out, there’s more going than just a welcome dance jaunt.
On the surface, it is a sample-centric, frisky disco tune about the joys of dancing, but dig deeper into its hypnotic mix of soul, swing, freaky funk, & French Touch, and you’ll find a complex, yet inspiring, narrative about jealousy, self-acceptance and confidence.
It embodies that refreshingly European, particularly Scandinavian, penchant for mixing light and dark in their songs and it’s slice of real fun pop that underscores how inventively off-the-mainstream this group who are happy to simply live the music and leave all the fame and noise to itself.
Social media’s exploding obsession with Caravan Palace is down to the fans, rather than the band, who shrug their stats, preferring to party onstage with brass and strings. From Facebook to YouTube to the billions of clips on TikTok set to songs from their first four albums, technology has embraced their genre-mashing music without any intervention. (Broadway World)
“Mi Corazón” (feat. Camilo) by Jacob Collier
(courtesy official Jacob Collier Facebook page)
Speaking of wondrously good musical discoveries, finding out some years back that English singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer/educator Jacob Collier not only existed but was producing fantastically listenable music that refused to abide by musical norms was one of those moments that I’ve never forgotten.
The song that pulled back the no-idea-Jacob-Collier-existed curtain was 2020’s imaginatively dancey, oddball slice of pop perfection, “Sleeping on My Dreams” and once I stopped dancing with a silly grin of escapist happiness on my face – again here’s a bright upbeat song with some decidedly thoughtful and emotionally intense lyrics – I realised that here was an artist with lyrics and music that go together perfectly and say and feel all the things.
New single, “Mi Corazón”, which features on upcoming album Djesse Vol. 4, is a collaboration, a standard thing for Collier who delights in sharing musical creativity with others, with “award-winning Colombian music star Camilo” and came from one of those impromptu creative moments beloved of anyone who’s in the making-up-stuff business.
With a filthy head-bop chorus that packs a serious punch, and tender, eloquent multi-lingual verses to boot, “Mi Corazón” was born out of an in-person jam session and an authentic budding friendship between two warm-hearted musical titans. (Shorefire)
It’s bound to not be the first time these now firm friends work together if this statement from Collier is any indication.
Camilo is without doubt one of my favorite humans and musical forces on the planet. Despite us only having met three times, we genuinely feel like brothers. When we coincidentally collided forces for the first time in Tokyo last August, we instantly hit it off and became firm friends. A month later, we convened in Los Angeles to throw some musical paint and see where it might lead us. That afternoon’s experiments resulted in “Mi Corazón”, which elated the two of us in equal measure. When we met a couple of months after that to shoot the music video, both of us knew we had a friend for life in the other. I am overjoyed this song is in the world! (Shorefire)
“MIRROR MIRROR” by Ida Just
(courtesy official Ida Just Facebook page)
Hailing from Denmark and how happily resident in London to which she went “to immerse herself in the eclectic music scene of London”, which you may or may not have noticed now has an Australian-born queen, Ida Just is a singer-songwriter whose musical levity belies incisive, emotional pinpoint lyrics that cut right to the heart of the issue.
Which in the case of “Mirror Mirror” is a scathing takedown of someone with whom she was clearly once close who’s been exposed as a “fake friend” who was happy to “Push out me out right in front of the train”.
It’s intense lyrically, and oh, they are the stuff of brillliantly poetic word pictures that land a real emotional punch, but also buoyantly alive, infused with the sense of someone coming alive to the truth and almost dance in the liberating effervescence that brings them.
It’s catchy as hell with lyrics that engage the mind every bit as much as the heart and it marks Ida Just as one of those artists worth seeking out again and again if only to glory in life-smart pop with music to carry the message home with soul-invasive truthfulness.
“Yes, and?” by Ariana Grande
(courtesy official Ariana Grande Facebook page)
Oh what a thrillingly bouncy slice of banal busting pop “yes, and?” is.
Coming courtesy of American pop giant Ariana Grande, the song is a dancefest of exuberant release which finds physical form in a video which sees cynical executive wholly won over and given freedom from their repressive banality by the singer’s buoyant pop.
Zipping straight to the top of the charts, and how could it not, this catchy piece of pop gloriousness is not only a stinging rebuke to those who criticise her every move, but a snappy track that, as NME perfectly observes, “[delivers] a compact and clever clapback with the energy of the nail-painting emoji”.
“yes, and?” may be a stinging lyrical retort but it’s also exuberantly upbeat and fizzily vivacious, a song that know sit will win you over, and that it’s just a matter of time before you succumb to its many seductively danceable charms.
EUROVISION 2024 UPDATE
It’s less than 100 days until the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest and as you might imagine, LOTS is happening! Entrants and songs are being selected from a host of countries, selection contests are happening everywhere and the selection draw for the semi-finals have taken place.
Phew! As we said that’s a lot but it’s a sign that Europe’s musical week of weeks is fast approaching and we’ll be covered in glitter, bathing in the gloriously good camp bonhomie and reaching for those key changes as giant TV screens burst into pixelated splendour!
(via Shutterstock)
WHO’S HEADING TO MALMÖ?
So far, we know that Austria is sending Kaleen, Georgia is sending Nutsa Buzaladze, Luxembourg is sending TALI with “Fighter” and Ireland is sending Bambie Thug with the wonderfully named “Doomsday Blue”. Some great talent and interesting song choices and just a taste test of what’s going to be an avalanche of reveals coming up in the next few weeks and months!
Luxembourg
Ireland
To get the latest on which countries are holding their national finals when and who’s up for consideration, head to Eurovision.tv
SEMI-FINAL DRAWS
This may not seem like such a big deal to the uninitiated but trust us that it’s BIG. Which semi final your country scores can have a direct bearing on how you are in the vote and thus whether you are one of the ten from each semi that makes to the glittering surrounds and big stage pressure and fun of the grand final. If you want an example of the importance of the draw, check out this article from Australia’s Aussievision site which evaluates hurts or enhances how Australia will fare this year.
The draw was held on 30 January in Malmö, at the same time as Liverpool, last year’s host city on behalf of Ukraine handed the Host City insignia pass to this year’s home of Eurovision. For the full story, head to “Semi-Final Draw results”.
(courtesy Eurovision.tv)
(courtesy Eurovision.tv)
The draw also assigned the countries that make up the Big Six – the host country, which is Sweden plus the UK, Spain, Germany, Italy and France – to the semi-finals in which they can vote.
(courtesy Eurovision.tv)