Produced in a home built studio in the basement of a family home in Streatham in South London, the self titled debut album from the London band Mirrorkicks is released on April 19th.
The band are whipping up a storm with their live performances, Mirrorkicks have already built up an impressive fan base, including XFM’s John Kennedy who invited them to play at one of his live club nights in February as well as support from Razorlight, who hosted a DJ night following the bands headline performance at The Water Rats venue, also during February.
Over the past few months Mirrorkicks have raised some impressed eye-brows with their unique online version of Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love; and their debut single, Turning Up, has generated interest on the other side of the pond, with talks of collaborations and touring on the West coast later this year.
Their latest single Anything has been playlisted on XFM amongst others and the band have also been mentioned recently on Radio 2.
The next single from the album is easily my favourite track from the new album, Podium will be released a week before the album on April 12th. Well worth a listen, check out Podium by Mirrorkicks below:
Jay Z will release the latest single to be taken from the Platinum certified album The Blueprint 3, the track On To The Next One, is released through Atlantic Records on April 12th.
Hip Hop star Jay Z performed the track on his recent appearance on the BBC’s Jonathan Ross Show, in case you may not have seen it here is the video ;
Jay Z – On To The Next One
If you missed Jay Z chatting with Ross, the interview itself was quite amusing, here it is in two parts;
Rihanna’s latest hit single Rude Boy leaves little to the imagination, and its accompanying promo video left even less to its apparent fabric budget.
Less is more as they say, but in this case, the phrase can only be applied to the amount of clothing worn in the clip – everything else is excessive bordering on obscene.
The super-stylized, Warhol-esque video begins with a scantly-clad Rihanna playing air-drums on a less than responsive kit, while the background drum machine lets a dance-hall beat rip and shake. One of the next shots comprises multipe Rihannas, shaking in a bright kaleidoscope of African colors, stylized with comic book style Pop Art layering and animated lions, before moving onto the super-ripped object of her desire, whose pants she soon pulls back to check for sufficiency.
The style is impressive, and the overt sexuality of Rihanna herlyricsand video itselfhaveensured the song’smega-hit status. Speaking of which, the video has received over 8.4 million hits on Youtube as of March 4th.
In a kind of backwards victory for women’sequality, the lyrics of the song, both, advocate male teasing and mockery, and a love of rough sex – a wise and winning combination in anyone’sbooks, and a surefire way to win over millions of young, sexually-frustrated fans. Lyrics include:
“Come here rude boy, boy
Can you get it up
Come here rude boy, boy
Is your big enough
Take it, take it Baby, baby
Take it, take it Love me, love me.”
and:
“I like the way you touch me there
I like the way you pull my hair
Babe, if I don’t feel it, I ain’t faking
No, no.”
Whatever you think about the lyrics, or the apparent direction of today’s youth, the sound, technique and style are undeniable. Both, Rihanna and the object of her desire, are super-fit, clad in designer clothes, and edited at a super-stylized and perhaps seizure-inducing pace.
It seems that Rihanna’s superstardom will continue its upward trajectory at a seemingly unlimited velocity, or at least, as far as censorship is willing to allow
One of the biggest names from the nineties onslaught of R&B music, R Kelly has continued to make music and is still mixing it with the current top names in the genre, writing, performing and producing the music that he loves and again topping the R&B charts last year with his album Untitled, which is generally being hailed as a classic.
Now among the host of R&B/Urban/Soulstars from those early days who are back out on the road, R Kelly is heading into Europe for a series of shows that will see him performing his own sultry style of music in Germany, Netherlands France and Brussels, before hitting the UK for four shows in April.
Twenty years on and R Kelly has sold a staggering 50 million albums around the world and in the UK he has chalked up an unbelievable 30 hit singles throughout his career. At the same time he has managed to write and produce for some of the most legendary names in the business, working with stars like Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Ciara and The Isley Brothers. He also wrote the international comeback song I Look To You, for Whitney Houston.
But it his fantastic personal back catalogue that fans will be eager to hear him perform at his 2010 concerts, songs like Bump & Grind, Shes Got That Vibe, I Believe I Can Fly and If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time, will have the fans moving in the aisles.
Scouting for Girls’ new single This Ain’t A Love Song is out on 29th March.
Scouting For Girls release new single This Ain’t A Love Song on 29 March. It precedes the release of sophomore album Everybody Wants To Be On TV on 12 April.
In 2008 Scouting For Girls became the biggest selling new British band of the year. Having toiled for ten years unsigned, the boys sold over 900,000 records of their eponymous number 1 debut album, and were nominated for three Brit Awards (British Breakthrough Act, British Single and British Live Act) to become the UK’s most successful new pop band.
Fronted by exuberant showman Roy Stride, Scouting For Girls quickly became renowned for their contagious piano-led pop songs (She’s So Lovely, Heartbeat, It’s Not About You), that connected with a huge audience and reaped multiple sell-out tours.
Those live shows grew as Scouting For Girls mania gripped, buoyed on by huge radio support, and venues were upsized across the country and sold out just as quickly. By the end of 2008, they had performed to hundreds of thousands of fans, and outsold bands twice their size in the live arena.
The initial recordings of their forthcoming second album Everybody Wants To Be On TV were ruthlessly scrapped after the Brit Awards in 2008, when the band decided it needed re-writing and re-shaping.
Whole tracks were dropped in Roy Stride’s mission for a collection of perfect pop songs. The resulting album, produced by Andy Green at Helioscentric Studios in East Sussex, is unshakeably bold and confident, a genuine step up in sound that loses none of the band’s early charm but builds and expands upon it as infectiously as only they know how to be.
This Ain’t A Love Song is a telling introduction to the new record. It is a hugely powerful, soaring song and a strong example of Scouting For Girls’ ambitious new sound, sculpted by Roy’s unflagging confidence and songwriting prowess.
It is a welcome return by this everyday trio, writing a bright new chapter of British pop for 2010.
