After some tweets on this yesterday Una Mullally asked me to do a guest post for her Irish Times blog Pop Life on the new Eminem tune Rap God and his use of homophobic language. It surprised me how few people were talking about it and realised that it's part of a wider acceptance of what made him so shocking in the first place.
I'm about to prep tomorrow's Friday Four post for GCN.ie but if you missed last week music from Lady Gaga, TLC, Bastille and Jessie Ware and Julio Bashmore are still worth a look.
Pop music geeks have been in a tizzy over the reunited Mutya Keisha Siobhan (aka the original Sugababes line-up aka the Origibabes aka the Pop Reunion Nobody Expected) and in a way it's hard not to blame them. The Sugababes may now be tarnished by line-up changes and an ever changing sound but the bones of what their voices did together on those early songs still sound fresh and interesting. The group's first release proper as MKS was rather brilliant Flatline which sadly didn't set the charts on fire. Given how the girls have said they reformed for themselves it's easy to see why they might want to be something of a cult proposition but in a climate when Pop Acts That Are Pop Acts But Everyone Pretends Aren't like HAIM and Chvrches are flourishing it doesn't seem odd to think MKS could have a broader appeal. The album is due early next year (This Billboard article has some interesting detail on tracks on it including a track from Sia) and while the band performed some new stuff at a gig in August, this acoustic session that's just appeared online is a reminder of just how promising this whole affair could be, offering up a forgotten Sugababes gem, a promising new song and a cover that offers up something fresh.
Cher's new album is arriving in Ireland on Friday and in the UK Monday following her appearance on The X-Factor this weekend. It's easy to dismiss her but the new album is half pop-dance gems and half well realised ballads. If you're in Ireland you stream it in full at GCN now and wherever you are you can read my track by track thoughts on the album there too.
"I'm a female rebel, can't you tell?" Miley Cyrus deadpans early into new album Bangerz. And given the year she's had (and we've had with her) it's hard to disagree with that kind of sentiment. Bangerz comes just as MTV debuts a documentary where she talks "talking over the whole world" with "more than just a record" and a year that's had her "shock the world" via the MTV VMAs and respond rather rudely to Sinead O'Connor's open-letter hand wringing over her new found love of using her body to mark out her adulthood. The teen star grows up by getting sexy thing is a mold that certainly fits where Cyrus has landed but there's more to it than just "I'm grown now so there goes my clothes". Cyrus has always been something of a gawky presence even at the peak of her Hannah Montana fame, her stage presence having a kind of off beat energy that suggested that her drawly, country-tinged voice and her knack for fanning controversy would see her past her TV days. So in an odd way, for her to swing her sound into a country-pop-R'n'B hybrid seems like the awkward and all over the place a move as you'd expect from a 20-year old multi millionaire who has spent a chunk of their almost-adult life in public.
You desperately want Bangerz to be a killer pop album. Especially as the Sinead O'Connor back and forth exposes Cyrus in lacking a degree of tact and yet another over the top collab with Terry Richardson emerges showing even more of the starlet. But can it ever really live up to such controversy-baiting hype?
If you've not been over to GCN today then there's a playlist of hidden gems of a one Miss Britney Spears that is worth a look and also this week's Friday Four which is loaded with incredible songs from Sia, Sky Ferreira, Charli XCX and Katy B. Consider it a nice little kickstart to the weekend on me.
The new Britney video is here! And in less than 24 hours it's clocked up plenty of chatter and had us wondering if sharks, large cars and questionable S&M imagery will feature in Miss Spears' much hyped Vegas residency.
There is lots to love about Work Bitch. Britney looks present and into it in a way she hasn't been in years. She's doing dancing that's actually faintly intricate and impressive, even if there's plenty of fast cuts away so we never see her do too much back to back. It's kind of like one of those really stupid Michael Bay directed ads for Victoria Secret given a Britney makeover.
