Cheryl Cole – Hear My Name
Any way you look at it, Cheryl Cole’s last album was a disaster. In fact, it should have been called Hot Messy Little Raindrops.
While debut album 3 Words triumphed with current dance/pop anthems not too far removed from her Girls Aloud origins, Messy Little Raindrops was rushed, awkward and desperate.
For Cheryl’s third album in only as many years, A Million Lights, she’s come full circle and with the help of pop juggernaut Calvin Harris, has produced her catchiest track since Stand Up was never released.
While essentially a remodelling of Harris’ previous global pandemic We Found Love (Tulisa should also be named and shamed for doing the same), Call My Name succeeds in Cheryl finally trying to sound MORE like Girls Aloud, rather than denying her roots. She’s also not trying to be Cheryl And The Machine, this is just unashamed and frivolous pop.
Call My Name isn’t immediate. You don’t realise its pop greatness the first, second, even third listen, but when it does it smashes you. Throw in a scorching hot video clip and you have the poppy club anthem of the British summer. A serious return to form. 3.5 stars.
Dia Frampton – Don’t Kick The Chair (feat. Kid Cudi)
Javier Colon may have had “The Voice” but Dia Frampton’s slightly off-centre, Feist-esque pop feel made the first season of The Voice US incredibly watchable. Renditions of Kanye West’s Heartless and R.E.M’s Losing My Religion showed potential for an artist, not just a performer.
Don’t Kick The Chair is light, breezy and full of chimey goodness – exactly what you’d want in an anti-suicide anthem! It’s also precisely what you’d expect from Frampton, being an easy transgression from the artiste she was on the show to the one she wants to become. Kid Cudi’s presence is as welcome as it is curious, with his genre-crossing talent being the highlight of the song.
While the chorus is catchy, the repetition means the life cycle on an ipod is a few weeks – tops. Nevertheless, it’s a worthy introduction to post-Voice Dia. 3 stars.
Mark Foster, A-Trak and Kimbra – Warrior
Part of Converse’s consistently amazing Three Artists, One Song campaign, Warrior brings together Mark Foster (Foster The People), A-Trak (Duck Sauce) and Kimbra for an 80s synthed ménage-a-trois. Sounding like some sort of sequel to Mark Ronson’s Bang Bang Bang, Warrior might just be the finest addition to the Converse campaign yet.
Between Kimbra’s sensational debut Vows, her scene stealing spot on Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know and her career peak of Miami Horror’s I Look To You, she can barely put a foot wrong. Ditto Mark Foster, for while this pushes the envelope on Foster The People’s sound, still h as his fingerprints all over it.
Belligerently appealing, the track has that kind of indie-electro feel that is heroin to hipsters. 4 stars.
