Beyonce – Why Don’t You Love Me
This bonus track from the booty-shaker’s I Am… Sasha Fierce album is yet another radio-friendly hit chock full of her own distinct brand of sassiness. Where ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’ differs from most of her out-put, though, is that it sees Beyonce on the defensive – grasping for reasons why anyone would be stupid enough not to love her: “Why don’t you love me? / Tell me baby, why don’t you love me? / When I make me so damn easy to love!”
Being Beyonce, this vulnerability eventually morphs into bolshy and unapologetic feminism: “… there’s nothing not to need about me / Maybe you’re just not the one / Or maybe you’re just plain dumb”.
This is played out over a musical back-drop that starts off like a homage to Motown before incorporating funk guitars and a bass line designed to keep the dance-floors interested.
The pop world is a lot different to when Beyonce first burst onto the scene, with the likes of Rihanna and Lady Gaga challenging for the Queen of Pop crown, but it’s inventive and brave songs like this that will keep her at the top of the pile for some time yet.
The Cribs – Housewife
When Wakefield’s finest enlisted the help of mercurial Mancunian axe-man Johnny Marr, the collective eyes of die-hard Cribbers must have rolled – the rest of us, however, were intrigued as to what the legendary Smiths guitarist would bring to the Cribs table.
Their first album with Marr, Ignore The Ignorant, proved to be their most successful yet, with his trademark guitar hooks adding colour and vitality to their sound.
New single ‘Housewife’ is not as immediately accessible, but it’s atmospheric guitars and tribal drums soon grow on you and before you know it, Ryan’s haunting vocals are making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Buy Housewife
Groove Armada ft. Will Young – History
Every time eclectic dance duo Groove Armada release an album they remind everyone that they are one of the UK’s best producers of chart bothering dance-floor classics. Unfortunately they tend to disappear from the fickle mainstream almost as quickly as they entered it.
Hopefully ‘History’, taken from their superb album Black Light, will help to buck this trend and keep the London duo in the limelight. With Bronski-esque Beats and Will Young producing his best vocals since… erm, forever, ‘History’ has every chance.
Buy History
Cherry Ghost – Black Fang
After signing to Doves’ Heavenly Records label, Bolton’s Cherry Ghost released debut album Thirst For Romance in 2007 – with stand-out track ‘People Help The People’ winning an Ivor Novello award. Despite this pedigree, Simon Aldred and co. still have a fairly low profile and their second album Beneath The Burning Shoreline came and went without much fanfare. Although they have cultivated a small but loyal cult following, their song-writing talent and stripped back style deserves a larger audience.
New single ‘Black Fang’ showcases everything that is good about Cherry Ghost. The soothing melody, bare bones production and Simon’s vulnerable yet powerful vocals combine to create a song much greater than the sum of its parts.
Whether it’s enough to get them the attention they deserve is unlikely – unless it comes with a banging dub-step B-side, of course.
Buy Black Fang
Watch a typically modest live performance here
Olly Murs- Please Don’t Let Me Go
The timing of this release is wrong on at least two levels. First of all, there’s already a Will Young song being released this week – two is taking liberties. Secondly, with summer well and truly gone, a reggae-tinged bbq background song feels more like a slap in the face than the sunshine and smiles care-free attitude it attempts to induce.
Although Olly is undoubtedly a good singer and a natural in the cheeky chappy Robbie Williams mould, Simon Cowell’s hit factory will need to do better than this if he is going to avoid joining Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson, Michelle McManus etc… in the reality pop star graveyard.
Watch the video
