(via Shutterstock)
Pop which gives your ears a happy burst of musical escapism are always welcome.
Even better though is when those slice of transportive musical delight come with lyrics which say something profound and which mean something real and relatable; marrying the two isn’t for everyone but for the five artists in this post, the mix of clever music and thoughtful words absolutely works.
It works to the extent that you will find yourself listening again and again to these pop songs of substance, dancing a little, or likely a lot and singing to words which mean the world and which add some much richness to the melodies they accompany …
“Come” (extended version) by Jain
(courtesy official Jain Facebook page)
Born Jeanne Louise Galice but latterly know, professionally at least as Jain”, the French singer-songwriter and talented musician first rose to notice in 2015 with the release of her debut album Zanaka, which followed a career-beginning meeting with record producer and DJ Mr. Flash some two years earlier.
While her song “Come’, presented her in extended form, is a decade-old, the opening track of Zanaka, it only surfaced on an algorithmic binge this year, one of those happy spins of the software dice that lead to the endless playing of a song with some serious cool pop leanings.
Apparently performed on the season final of talent show The Voice of Italy in 2016, “Come” is a jaunty journey which captures attention immediately with Atwood Magazine reviewing the track.
There’s a lot to love about this French singer/songwriter, and it starts with “Come.” Layers of dark emotions are buried under this song’s happy bounce, which fills the air with life and dance. “Black burn, I feel so alone without you boy,” sings Jain in the opening verse. She sounds more alive than ever, vibrant and inviting. Her voice flows over poetically somber lyrics with an easy lilt, buoyed onward by a constantly chugging guitar accompaniment.
Double-tracked vocals add extra firepower to an already powerful moment as Jain professes her undying love for the one who got away. She adds little flurries of notes – ch-ch-ch-chay – in a percussive manner that mirrors jazz improvisation: Not many singers have the guts, much less the talent to be able to pull off such expansive vocal work on record. Well beyond her years, Jain brings in different influences – from French techno and dance to African rhythms – to create a complex musical voice that is unique and unequivocally her own.
“Love Love (Love Love) by daine
(courtesy official daine Instagram)
A sunderingly weighty slice of richly catchy dance pop which sounds upbeat as hell, and which is, “Love Love (Love Love)” by Melbourne/Naarm-based singer daine embraces some dark lyrics about the end of a close and special friendship.
It does fairly cool things with its beautifully harnessed electro pop influences with Melodic Mag have g this to say about this hugely listenable track which all but demands endless hits of the “play” button.
‘Love Love (Love Love)’, just like [earlier track] ‘PQC’, sees daine mastering the art of the electro-pop chorus. She neatly packs the complex, bittersweet feelings of resentment and uncompromising adoration for someone into sticky, deceptively simple pop rhythms: ‘You lay low / Then wonder where’d your friends go again / Maybe you could stay close / And give yourself another whirl / My love, love, love, love / Your heart is second to none / My love, love, love, love / I’m living in the echo of us.’
The lyrics are bright but painfully intense, the perfect delivery of a song which has as its musical DNA the Scandinavian light and dark approach to songs which absolutely works.
“24 Février” by ANAÏS MVA
(courtesy official ANAÏS MVA Instagram)
Thanks to my high school French teacher, Ms. Fields, I have long had a fervent appreciation and love for French pop.
One of my recent discoveries, courtesy of a deep down into the musical possibilities of YouTube, is ANAÏS MVA, a French singer currently resident somewhat north of her home country in Belgium, who made waves in something called The Song 13, a Eurovision-like singing contest held in 2024 in which the artist placed quite well.
Two years on from the pan-European moment, I stumbled on another track from that year, “24 février”, a super catchy of French pop, that carries itself irresistibly along on a wave of bouncy pop bliss and which was used, if memory serves, as the theme song for a recent French Film Festival in Australia.
Running to an admirably brief and appealingly taunt two minutes and eighteen seconds, the song is a brightly, lightly danceable delight which comes with some sagely reflective lyrics about breakups and heartache and how you move on from them, recognising that while the pain comes from outside yourself, you control how you handle it thereafter.
As anthems dealing with romantic loss, it’s an absolute banger that gives suitably pop-saturated middle finger to love’s less than stellar moments.
“be the girl!” by hemlocke springs
(courtesy Spotify)
Finding British artist hemlocke springs was one of those moments that come courtesy of idle YouTube lunchtime trips down a series of super lucky algorithmic rabbit holes.
A couple of years later that instance of happy discovery that gave me the songs of an artist with real idiosyncratic flair and a gift for songs that inhabit a space which is both deliciously offbeat and merrily mainstream bears still more fruit with the super catchy song “be the girl!” which has the singer’s trademark lushly pop melancholy married with danceably charming music.
It’s an all-encompassing, compellingly emotionally intense song which “function[s] as a breakup song, a loss-of-innocence song, and a liberation simultaneously” (The Singles Jukebox) and which reviewer Claire Davidson described this way:
As an aspirational pop anthem, “Be the Girl!” is remarkably well-structured, opening with a gentle keyboard line that gives way to more colorful synths as the song grows more sure of itself, textures that are just ramshackle enough to add some character while avoiding full-on 8-bit gimmickry. Imagine Carly Rae Jepsen at her commercial peak, add in a Gen-Z appropriate level of tongue-in-cheek, bedroom pop kitsch, and you’d get something akin to what Hemlocke Springs accomplishes here — a parallel that feels particularly in step with the track’s exhortation to embrace vulnerability as a path to real love, a brand of sincerity that’s very much in Jepsen’s lane.
I also love the enthusiastic empathy of Al Varela’s take on this bountifully emotive and highly relatable track which they deliver straight to the artist as if in conversation.
It’s easy to look back at your past self and feel a bit of embarrassment. You thought you knew it all, but you had no idea what was in store for you. Now it feels like that version of you is so far away. You can choose to either leave them behind or envy what they used to have. But Hemlocke Springs knows you can’t just be the girl again. You’ve changed so much. Yet, this song still feels like a celebration of that girl you used to be. The huge build-up of synths and keys, as if the platform beneath Hemlocke Springs is rising towards the sky, feels so grand and incredible. Arpeggios that keep the song moving but keep the focus squarely on Hemlocke Spring’s passionate singing, full of love and joy for that younger version of herself who would eventually figure things out. It’s a triumph that Hemlocke Springs can no longer be the girl she used to know, because it means she’s truly grown and there’s so much ahead of her in the future.
“These Alarms” by Snow Patrol & Kylie Minogue
(courtesy YouTube)
Is this the pairing of Snow Patrol and Kylie Minogue a match made in musical heaven or a WTF head-scratching moment?
The former, of course; the story goes that Gary Lightfoot, one of the three University of Dundee student co-founders in 1994 of a band called Shrug, which became Polarbear and then Snow Patrol, had long had a file in his computer marked “KYLIE” in which an envisaged collaborative song lurked which made eventually made its way onto the band’s latest long-playing release.
“As a huge Kylie fan I originally wrote ‘These Alarms’ with her in mind,” Lightbody said. “I played it to Johnny and Nathan [fellow band members Johnny McDaid and Nathan Connolly] and they loved it and we decided to record it for our (most recent) album The Forest Is The Path. All the way through the recording process the song was simply called ‘KYLIE’.” (EUPHORIA. Zine)
Kylie Minogue, who has had an enviable track record of really creative, attention-grabbing collabs in recent years with the likes of Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo, Orville Peck and The Blessed Madonna, was happy to jump on board this most unexpected of pairings.
‘Hearing there was a demo called Kylie that had been living in the Snow Patrol archives was a complete surprise and, naturally, I was curious to hear it. Gary is such a brilliant songwriter, so to be invited into the band’s world is a total honour.’ (EUPHORIA. Zine)
The result? A hugely listenable, fun and dancey song that EUPHORIA. Zine reviewed thus:
“These Alarms” is a song that speaks to the intimate nature of love and desire. Sometimes what you want from someone is just a simple hug after a bad day. You don’t need the world or any of its grand gestures. A squeeze from someone you love can be enough to recalibrate your mindset. “I don’t want the world from you / I’m just wanting something true / Far from these alarms,” Minogue sings, her vocal work made haunting thanks to the production style. The beat is one that creeps up on you and makes you nod your head and sway your shoulders to the rhythm. It’s not your average club banger, but I’m sure you can get the party going if you speed it up just a little bit.