Emerging From Hibernation:
After the bleak january popscene here comes a belated valentines to sort things out...

All the hype is paying off for the Adele's, Duffy's and David Jordan's of this world...but none of them could get a hit at any other time of year.
Basshunter gives us 2008's biggest selling song of the year so far... with a measley 200,000 sales.
Nickelback reach a new peak of number 2 with a song that charted first way back in october '07...

...and so while pop seemingly slumbers on here is my rundown of the small stirrings going on that give me hope that pop wil soon bloom again:

10) NZ band Cut Off Your Arms: Oh Girl, stealing the building blocks from with every heartbeat to provide the type of indie boys pop that might make some people think pop is newly credible and others think that indie boys are newly hot or something... anyway there it is for you:

9) Two sweet singles should encourage anyone to find out this album: here is the cover so you know what to look for when u enter a record shop or when u want to paste into itunes to add to your illegally downloaded copy.

8) Black and Gold: Sam Sparro : hotpants : hit single

7) she dont rush the bus: snoop / robyn / sexual eruption

6) im a lyckle bit in love with her: lykke li, little bit

5) Kylie, do it again, cherry bomb, carried away: three new b-sides that add to that whole nintendo/kawaii/mecha/candy thing she almost had goin on with her album. The album is still good but hopefully some of these tracks get merged into the tour setlist to make things a bit more cohesive and thereby resembling artisitc integrity rather than capitalising upon a mix of potential singles.

4) simon curtis remains lodged on my album and hopefully this year you will have heard of him hear him here see him here:

wowowowow

Kylie, X

Set the scene: i've never listened to an entire kylie album before. i have Ultimate Kylie which is basically a singles collection. my favorite tracks are, 'breathe' / 'did it again' from the deconstruction era, and the singles from Body Language (perhaps cos they were written with my heroines Emiliana Torrini and Karen Poole).

The journey: I wasn't really expecting much from X. Judging from afar as a non-fan I feel like deconstruction showed promise, light years went retrograde, and since then shes been clawing slowly back up to credibility. fever gave good singles but most importnantly gave us iconic images courtesy of will baker and Body language tightrope walked image was flawless, singles a little quirky for the mainstream. bring in xenomania and scissor sisters for two new greatest hits releases and who know which direction she would head next.

2 hearts: not knowing what to expect or indeed expecting much to like from kylie's latest, made me feel kinda unecessarily deflated that 2 hearts wasnt more amazing. but what did i want it to be? im not sure? i saw a lazy goldfrappian song replacing elector blips with guitars and it left me and the charts cold.

x: so entering X is unsignposted territory who knew where it would take us... and the verdict is: i really really like it. im stil surprised by that myself.

'i wanted to write a song called cosmic' is almost a microcosm of the entire album. she has taken that step back and evaluated what worked, what didnt, what she is admired for, the electro dance, the quirky pop expermients the heartfelt ballads, so that X seems to echo so much of her past that it feels truly like it wraps up all those strange falsestarts and misdirections of this huge pop career and points full focus on kylie.

'Like a drug' and 'In your arms' (and later 'Im the one') are to my ear, full of that specific fever dance style that Kylie perfected herself, but as potential singles they are kinda light and sub 'i believe in you' tracks that as the kylie show deomstrated would make lovely ballads as well as dance tracks but here seem to be a bit likefever rejects, fan pleasers maybe? (im the one , yes michaelangelo saves it, but i find the chorus to be weak and needy love me love me...)

'Speakerphone' is the bloodshy and avant track which channels so much of Uffies 'pop the glock' that its practically an illegal homage. kylie does it better. its less harsh more listenable and a nice quirky track that my subconcious, apparently, had been hoping for. i love this track anyway.

'Sensistised' is another ace track, chocolateesque its has a nice hook and breathy backing, its sexual kylie.

Checking the album credits its nice to see my quirky miss poole providing some nice co-writes with minogue herself. i feel like karen poole truly gets the dark erotic pop that i think kylie wants to create. i hear karen all over 'chocolate' and 'red blooded woman' and i always imagined she demo'd them for kylie and it was like she held a mirror up to kylie herself, and karen was both left huming in the backing track and aped in the lead vocals. here they give us some sublime tracks. 'heart beat rock' is solid filler, its another Uffie style track; probably written to make speakerphone less of a standout, but also a nice lead into Nu-Di-Ty later) 'Nu-di-ty' is probaly the dividing track i like it but its experimental nature can make it feel a bit too try hard. but i like my kylie avant garde i have now decided. also this dynamic duo provide 'no more rain' kylies new over the rainbow unapologetically hopeful cure-all, a little bit like pink elephants and lemonade... mm?

Most importantly they give us 'WoW' the best song on the album, its just huge. i hear B*witched echos for me early on i so have to find the track it reminds me of to prove it. (i think its rev it up?! or maybe 'never giving up') regardless this should be the big single from this album?

'all i see' and 'stars' are perhaps filler for me, but they are solid tracks and echo so much of kylies past that u suddenly find yourself having spent a pleasent 45minutes in the presence of kylie herself in all her incarnations. i think no matter what type of kylie fan you are there must be so much to love on here that shes really pulled it off. this is a perfect album and for those future generations, to whom kylie will once again mean boomerang and not much else, asking with wondering eyes what kylie was, what did she sound like, and why was she so revered, X will, for me, be the only response.

a good heart these days

Kylie, '2 Hearts' X

I'm not even a Kylie fan really, but i do love 'Body Language' for the Karen Poole written tracks and its nice that even though the whole world and its dog were making tracks for this album that Miss Karen managed to co-write 4 of the tracks on here. Check this out for a nice round-up of all the -many- Kylie leaks over the months...including one or two tipped to make the album.

The future...

I'm being a bit lazy with my blog reently now im back in England, but there is very little to report really so heres what we can expect as we head into the final quater of '07.

September
24th > Sugababes new single 'About You Now; released.
New britney video coming soon...?

October
2nd > Britney's 'Gimme More' is available as legal download.
7th > Sugababes new album Change released.
Kylie and Girls Aloud's new video will be all over youtube.

November
5th > Kylie's new single '2 Hearts' download available.
12th > Girls Aloud's new 2nd single 'Call the Shots' will be released.
Britney's fifth studio album, Pieces of Me is likely to be released.
Kylie's single '2 Hearts' physical release.
19th > Girls Aloud 4th Album released.
21st > Kylies new album released?

In between these dates Britney will leak every track she halfheartedly warbled on until we possibly hear the finished album...Girls Aloud will promote themselves on any tv show available... Sugababes will sit back and watch the sales roll in after getttin their material out so soon... Kylie will reveal a killer video and generate enough buzz to go to number one on downloads alone...and Madonna will quietly postpone her new album untill the new year.

white diamonds

Kish Mauve have a new song coming out in November, you will here it soon enough -in fact you can hear an early version over at XO- but they've roped in some pop star to sing the single release and this might make it more popular.