Popsessed!

We hardly ever reblog stuff or post GIFs but we have to make an...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:28:31 +0100

We hardly ever reblog stuff or post GIFs but we have to make an exception for the great work of ihave4catz. Amazing stuff, we can’t wait to see who or what’s next!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #15-11 About time to write a...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 23:22:26 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #15-11

About time to write a little about the last 5 great 2011 singles that álmost made our top 10..

	15. Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me Although Miss Spears is hardly known for being the most revolutionary or original artist, when it comes to her album’s first singles she almost always brings something completely fresh and unexpected. She did it with Baby…, Slave, Gimme More, and Hold It Against Me once again delivers. Just like these singles turn, what could have been just a pleasant discography, into an amazing one, it’s also songs like Hold It that turned the already good Femme Fatale into an amazing album, and our mostplayed one of 2011. We’re not sure if it’s the stompin’ chorus, the brilliant breakdown, or the great melody (a friend of mine who doesn’t speak English actually commented on what a pretty and emotional song it was, before asking me what it was about..) but it’s definitely her finest moment since Piece Of Me.
	14. Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull - On The Floor Being one of the first major hits I can remember hearing and dancing and singing (in some made up language) along to, the Lambada always has had a special place in my heart. You may think with nostalgia like that they could have just shouted ‘GET ON THE FLOOR!!!’ over the song for 3 minutes straight and we would have loved it, but not too long ago the Black Eyed Peas did prove us that sampling a song we love can just as well end up going horribly wrong. So yeah, we were quite pleasantly surprised by how much we loved this song, and how it both worked great as a new song as well as keeping the magic of the original. One of the greatest summer songs we know, despite being released in february.
	13. Tove Styrke - Call My Name Tove might have only come third on Swedish Idol, but she’s still one of the two finest acts to come from that show for us (we’ll get to the other one soon!). Her selftitled debut album is everything a great pop album should be. Diverse, adventurous yet accessible, still growing on you after tons of plays, and pretty much the best Xenomania produced album that isn’t produced by Xenomania we’ve ever heard. If we’d have to pick one thing it’s lacking it would be a properly big in your face ‘tune’. That is, until Call My Name got released, which is exactly that. Every part is interesting as her previous material, but this time with a ridiculously catchy chorus. We dare anyone to give this 2 plays without getting hooked!
	12. Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum L! O! V! E! Since it’s a bit late for us to still do a 2011 album list, I suppose this is where we get to praise Cinderella’s Eyes. Well, sales aside, everything about that album’s era was flawless: we got great b-sides, unplugged versions, remixes, mash-ups, demo versions, stunning coverart, and (not unimportant either) a very very solid album. Although we definitely would have welcomed more songs as fun, feisty and uplifting as Beat Of My Drum. The video with it’s bum dance, hair whips and cheerleaders is still very entertaining as well. When it comes to songs to gleefully shout along to L! U! V! Madonna has got nothing on this.
	11. Agnes - Don’t Go Breaking My Heart We almóst called Tove the greatest Swedish Idol act, when we realized Agnes actually won the show in 2005. However, it wasn’t until her, fittingly titled, third album Dance Love Pop and it’s great single Release Me, that we really started paying attention to her. Although we’re still undecided whether her new single is or isn’t as great as her biggest hit, we are glad she sticked to the same sound, with another ‘heartache on the dancefloor’ anthem with huge vocals. What we would have done for this to have been Steps’ comeback single!

We have nothing against Demi Lovato, but this performance is...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:29:12 +0100

We have nothing against Demi Lovato, but this performance is making us wish Skyscraper had in fact been a Kelly Clarkson single, becoming the Because Of You or Sober of this era. Oh well, what can you do? (maybe pray for a Live Lounge recording of it?)

When we read there was some new dance song featuring Paris...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:59:12 +0100

When we read there was some new dance song featuring Paris Hilton talking about drunk texting, we assumed someone just put a funny soundbite of her over a beat.
But no, this is a real thing. And it’s exactly as silly as it sounds. If only there’d be a proper big chorus in there somewhere. As it is, it’s not even half as fun as she used to be.

Photo

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:07:02 +0100

Vanbot’s new single isn’t a big departure from the...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:45:20 +0100

Vanbot’s new single isn’t a big departure from the sound of her debut album, but it’s still a quite nice slice of electropop. Also, you can download it for free right here!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #15-11 While compiling our 2011...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:06:00 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #15-11

While compiling our 2011 Top 100 we already played all the songs so often that after 2 months of counting down we’re almost getting 2011 tired. But that surely doesn’t apply to the final 15, which are all songs that, up to a year later, still scream ‘AMAZING!!’ every single time we hear them, reminding us 2011 really was quite a good year for pop.

A write-up on these 5 songs, ánd the reveal of our 2011 Top 10 should be up soon! Any guesses to what will be in there?

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26 About time to explain...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:23:12 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26

About time to explain our next five 2011 Top 100 choices..

	20. Glee Cast - Loser Like Me There’s an odd pattern here with the last 3 videos all starting with a Max Martin song. And although we’d love to pretend we have something new to say for this one, we really don’t. Just like What The Hell and Light Up The World, Loser Like Me is just a fun, catchy, uplifting piece of pop, that screams ‘underdogs, yay!’. Nothing new, but perfectly entertaining at the same time.
	19. Britney Spears - I Wanna Go Let’s start by saying the video for this was a hot mess. We’re not sure what it was going for, but it made us like the song less, which isn’t really what music videos are supposed to do, is it? But that aside, and ignoring this and the fact that the whistling still reminds us of Bob Sinclar anno 2006, this song really is good fun. Our instant favourite for 3rd single from Femme Fatale, which was our mostplayed album of 2011. The song does a great job of capturing what we liked about early days pure pop Britney.
	18. Booty Luv - This Night When the Saturdays came up with Notorious we found it quite refreshing to see a girl group go dance. A few months later, Booty Luv returned on the scene to remind us they did it first. They did it several times in 2007, one time in 2009, and in 2011 they once again came up with a dance smash that sounded perfectly current, yet 100% Booty Luv. We have no idea what happened since. Why they were suddenly called ‘Cherise & Nadia’. If this even ended up being released. Last thing we read they were shooting a new video in late 2011 though, so we hope they’ll do it all again this year!
	17. CocknBullKid - Asthma Attack We’re not sure what we were expecting when we first saw CocknBullKid’s name, but it wasn’t until months after that we decided to check her out. About 10 minutes later we had her album preordered. Asthma Attack sounded fresh, catchy, fun, and unlike anything we’d heard before. And it had strings. We LOVE strings in pop. But the whole production’s lush actually. Such a great feelgood song. The whole album’s very much worth checking out, don’t let the name put you off!
	16. One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful We’re really not that big on boy bands. Some of them (‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys, Westlife) eventually won us over with some good (mostly uptempo) singles, but a new boy band is never something that makes us sit up and pay attention. And with us not even having watched season 7 of X Factor UK, to be honest the only reason we listened to this song in the first place was because we just relaunched our blog and we felt we had to keep up with all new pop releases out there. (Actually, as long as we have the time for it, we still feel that way.) We weren’t expecting much, leave alone for this to end up being ‘end of the year list material’. But they proved us wrong. Despite not being a Max Martin song, this is the first boyband single to come close to the Backstreet Boys’ great Max Martin powerpop since their own heyday in the early ’00s, and probably the strongest boyband debut single we’ve heard. The album was an equally nice surprise. Stay tuned for the last 15 songs to be revealed soon!

Popsessed Song Chart 12-02-2012 Poor poor Katy. While she was...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:28:00 +0100

Popsessed Song Chart 12-02-2012

Poor poor Katy. While she was patiently waiting for Madonna to step aside so her The One That Got Away 2.0 could climb to number one, XELLE stormed in at the last minute and took the top spot instead, with a song that, to make matters even worse, sounds like it was a little bit inspired by her very own Firework.

New entries:
1. XELLE - Invincible
3. Madonna - Like A Prayer (live at the Superbowl)
5. XELLE - Hologram
19. Rihanna - Red Lipstick
37. Lady Gaga - So Happy I Could Marry The Night

In other news: Invincible got us back into XELLE’s previous single Hologram as well, Like A Prayer is a better song than Give Me All Your Luvin’ (‘you read it here first!’), one of our initially least favourite Talk Talk Talk songs finally clicked, and if you throw two Gaga songs together you essentially get.. a Gaga song. Which is still quite good.

Once again some really enjoyable songs leave, which of course doesn’t mean we don’t love them, or hey wouldn’t have been here in the first place!

A new Song Chart will be up next week, meanwhile you also can keep up with (the biggest part of) our chart on Spotify!

Popsessed Album Chart: 19-02-2012 Congratulation Saturdays,...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:17:57 +0100

Popsessed Album Chart: 19-02-2012

Congratulation Saturdays, it’s been very close for weeks, but after 6 weeks at number 2 you finally got that number 1 position! (Although if we’d been running these charts last year they’d probably been there before)

Rihanna’s Talk Talk Talk hasn’t stopped working it’s way up our charts either, after we decided this week that we have officially ended up preferring it to her previous album. And then there’s the new entries, that aren’t very new at all. In fact they’re both over 3 years old, but being reminded of them again they were both on very heavy rotation over the past few days. Most likely they’ll leave the chart just as quickly next week!

Well, and there goes another three fabulous albums, that are actually all still on our iPods but there’s only this much room in a top 15..

Our weekly Song Chart should be up later tonight!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #20-16 Well well, top 20....

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:28:34 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #20-16

Well well, top 20. Considering we even loved the number 100 on this list there’s some pretty great songs ahead now. Or at least ones that we loved to bits in 2011. So on we go, enjoy!

A write-up on the #20-16 will be up soon!

Now thát’s how you do a tribute act!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:07:33 +0100

Now thát’s how you do a tribute act!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26 About time to explain...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:28:23 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26

About time to explain our next five 2011 Top 100 choices..

	25. Avril Lavigne - What The Hell Yes, this is a 26 year old acting like she hasn’t aged one bit since she released her first single 9 years earlier. Not the greatest image when you think about it, but it takes a lot more to keep us from loving a good Max Martin chorus. Plus it’s perfect for our own occasional ‘what the hell’ moments, even though we’re not exactly 17 year old sk8er girls ourselves.
	24. Florrie - Experimenting With Rugs While everyone else was going crazy about I Took A Little Something we instantly had another favourite on Florrie’s Experiments EP. This is emotional Xenomania material at it’s best. No quirky sonsensical lyrics here, like they often come up with, but just a pretty poignant breakup song. Not what they’re most known for, but they’ve showed before that they can do some quite good love songs, and this one’s definitely up there with their greatest. Now can someone explain the title to us?
	23. Wynter Gordon - Buy My Love What at first seemed like a gold diggers anthem to us, actually turned out to be quite a cute song about how ‘you can’t buy her love, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you to try it anyway’. Still, in the wrong hands this could have easily come off a little bit unlikeable. Good thing it ended up with Wynter, who made the song every bit as cheeky, flirty and fun as it should be, with the video being the icing on the cake.
	22. The Saturdays - Notorious It’s not an easy task to follow up on a single as amazing as Higher, but Notorious didn’t disappoint. We’ve heard many people complain that ‘it has no chorus’, and although we’d have trouble to define where that bit starts or ends, who cares when the entire song is filled with hooks? Add to that their most fun video since Just Can’t Get Enough and it pretty much offers everything we want from our favourite girl groups. We may have been obsessed with All Fired Up as well, but Notorious really was one of the Saturdays’ finest moments.
	21. Young London - Let Me Go Nothing to saaaaaaaaaave me now… God, we love this song. When we first heard of Young London we described them as ‘Cobra Starship meets Alphabeat’ and we still hear that. We love upbeat songs with a good powerful emotional chorus and Sarah absolutely rocks this one. Thát chorus is still every bit as strong as the first time we heard it, and makes this song one of the most promising debut singles we’ve ever heard. Stay tuned for our final 20 soon!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #25-21 We’re getting to...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:02:00 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #25-21

We’re getting to the genuinely great (or at the very least ridiculously catchy) songs now. Some of them really are top 10 worthy, but then.. so were 20 other songs..

A write-up on #25-21 will be up tomorrow.

We’ve kinda had our share of ‘love yourself’...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:08:00 +0100

We’ve kinda had our share of ‘love yourself’ anthems (one more and we’ll build ourselves a shrine), but we can’t ignore the one the ladies from XELLE came up with as their third single. There’s uplifting lyrics, there’s a Fireworks style strings bit, there’s a nice spoken bit, there’s hints of ABBA, Lady Gaga has a ‘cameo’, basically it’s the greatest Eurovision song ever coming from a US pop act. We’d only wish the beat would have been a bit fuller, but who knows, remixes might be on their way?

Popsessed Song Chart 12-02-2012 It’s about time for some...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:03:39 +0100

Popsessed Song Chart 12-02-2012

It’s about time for some new material to be released because a lot of the songs in our song chart right now mainly thank their positions to a lack of fresh competition. Which is not to say these aren’t 40 songs we love, but just a little more action wouldn’t hurt!

New entries:
2. Katy Perry - Part Of Me
7. R.I.O. - Like I Love You
19. Taio Cruz - There She Goes

The power of Madonna is keeping Katy from shooting right to the top of the list, but number 2 isn’t exactly bad for a single we didn’t even know was being released a week ago.
The R.I.O. song entering at number 7 is quite a random one, cause it’s well over a year old. But it’s our list, we just discovered it, and we love it (generic dance tune ahoy!), so it’s earned it’s spot. As for Taio, he thanks his spot to our iTunes randomly playing him a lot this week, although the song is catchy enough. It’s no Dynamite though.

3 great songs, but they’re a bit past their prime for us. We’re as shocked as anyone how quickly Elephant’s leaving the room already, but, unlike any other Alexandra song, we just have no desire to go back to it at the moment.

A new Song Chart will be up next week, meanwhile you also can keep up with (the biggest part of) our chart on Spotify!

New Dragonette sample! It’s a bit bonkers, in the best...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:50:35 +0100

New Dragonette sample! It’s a bit bonkers, in the best possible way. Like Basement Jaxx on a really, really good day.

We’re very happy to see Kosheen return to a more dancey...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:13:29 +0100

We’re very happy to see Kosheen return to a more dancey sound, although new single Get A New One is a bit more generic than classics like Catch and Hide U, and doesn’t feel like a complete return to form. As for the video… well, let’s hope there’s some good songs on the new album.

Popsessed Album Chart: 12-02-2012 These albums charts are...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:06:23 +0100

Popsessed Album Chart: 12-02-2012

These albums charts are making it rather clear that this time of year really isn’t the most exciting time for new releases. Nevertheless this week’s, otherwise quite samey, chart, sees one new entry in Norwegian singer Lise Karlsnes, who’s album full of Robyn lite electropop won us over as soon as we gave it a listen, so we suggest you do the same!

Our weekly Song Chart will be up soon!

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26 About time to defend our...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:39:00 +0100

Popsessed’s 2011 Top 100: #30-26

About time to defend our next five 2011 Top 100 choices..

	30. Glee Cast - Light Up The World We gave up on watching Glee about halfway through season 2, but we faithfully kept checking out their songs, and actually got obsessed with quite a few of them. They even ended up being our second most played artist of 2011, although that isn’t that hard when you release pretty much a new EP every week. Although technically every Glee song is a ‘single’ we’ve limited ourselves to their original songs for this list, because letting them take over half of the list with other people’s songs didn’t feel quite right. We might be pushing it when we say ‘original songs’, because Light Up The World doesn’t sound unlike a ton of songs we’ve heard Ke$ha, Pink or Katy Perry sing before. But, formulaic as it may be, we’re big suckers for Max Martin productions, and this one captures everything we like about them. Naya’s opening is what really makes the song though.
	31. Cobra Starship ft. Sabi - You Make Me Feel When we first heard this, we stated disappointed that it was no Good Girl Go Bad. 7 months later we must say it might be even better than that. The accompanying album was a big letdown, but You Make Me Feel (and especially Sabi’s part) remains insanely catchy. It’s like an improved (but still suspiciously similar) version of JLS’ She Makes Me Wanna.
	28. The Wanted - Glad You Came The far from clever innuendo here doesn’t do the song any favours, but when we put that aside, we’re left with a pretty great song. There’s something Xenomania-like in Glad You Came, with it not just being some average verses and a catchy chorus, but tons of catchy hooks and bits thrown together. Our favourite of them definitely being the ‘let me take you by the hand..’ part where every line nicely starts with the last word from the last line. Nicely done.
	27. Little Mix - Cannonball Unless you’re seriously messing up afterwards, the winner’s single is hardly ever a carreer high for an X Factor act. We sure don’t hope this is Little Mix’s. In hindsight Cannonball, which clearly wasn’t selected with these girls in mind, probably isn’t really final 30 material. But we were on a Little Mix high around the time of us compiling this list, and we had to represent the girls in here somewhere. That said, not being familiar with the original, we still enjoyed this song like it was new one, and it’s not a bad song or version at all. Plus it gave us Perrie’s cute ‘what’s going on?’ moment.
	26. The Saturdays - All Fired Up All Fired Up originally let us down. After the similarly themed Notorious we were hoping for a song with a little more heart, and when it turned out to be yet another ‘fun’ song we would have preferred for the video to actually reflect that fun, instead of being the dark, sexy, slick, pretty but generic thing we got. Plus with it being a Xenomania production we were expecting something mindblowing, and on our first few plays it really wasn’t. But this fire turned out to be a slow burner, eventually clicking, (according to Last.fm) becoming our most played song of 2011, and still being on heavy rotation 6 months later. It still isn’t our favourite Saturdays single, but in hindsight it is definitely a great song and single choice. Stay tuned for our #25-20 montage soon!