We’ve hit February! I’m sure January was longer than the entire of 2018? I had a lovely Saturday having brunch at Bao and Bing. It was so cool! It’s this cute little Thai cuisine restaurant just off Baker Street. You pick two buns and then your pieces inside the buns…Bao is like this fluffy, steamed bun and it’s absolutely scrumptious. I had salmon, avocado and vine tomatoes with me and a glass of prosecco or two. They also do this really fun thing where you can pick a number between 1-150 and if your number is called from this bingo box, your meal is free.
I adulated pretty hard on Saturday night and spent my evening drinking red wine and watching Mariah Carey videos on YouTube with a friend; we cackled, we drank and impersonated Mariah’s dancing from the ‘Auld Lang Syne’ music video. It was a wonderful evening; but the red wine mixed with the prosecco certainly was felt on Sunday morning.
I’ve been really ill this last week, so these tracks have been keeping me company:
LSD (Labrinth, Sia & Diplo) – ‘Genius’ (feat. Lil’ Wayne)
‘Genius’ was the first release from the forthcoming LSD record and was dropped last year, however, the guys have teamed up with Lil’ Wayne and freshened the track up. Sia cooes on the track “you’ll be my Einstein, my Newton, my Galileo, and my Hawking” over the hypnotic beat and the addition of Wayne on the wacky track only compliments it with his “a b c d r u g h I j k l s d” which is quite a fun play on the whole drug referenced name lsd… Not going to lie, I have been quite disappointed by the music the guys have done thus far and this is certainly the stand out track, but I am a sucker for a Lil’ Wayne feature.
DJ Snake – ‘Taki Taki’ (feat. Selena Gomez, Ozuna and Cardi B)
‘Taki Taki’ came out last year and I had it spinning for a while but didn’t really give it the love it deserved until very late last year when I was out with a friend at a nightclub and it came on and I was hooked… since then, I’ve been hooked. My play counts for the track have doubled this year alone… I just find the song hypnotic and even though 50% of the song is Spanish and I don’t speak the language or understand it, it’s still gets you reeled in. Anything Cardi puts her name on is gold dust to me and the way Selena slurs “DJ Snake” before her verse is possibly one of the best things Selena Gomez has ever done, besides ‘Naturally’.
Little Mix – ‘Think About Us’ (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)
LM5 seems to be getting off to an incredibly rocky beginning… with the lead single being a complete fiasco, with the girls’ messy transition from Syco to RCA and then they drop yet another rent-a-rapper release, even though during their promo run for the album, they highlighted they were only working with female collaborators this time around… but it’s unfair to take it out on ‘Think About Us’ – the song is undeniably catchy and would have served as a great lead single and the particular lyric “me and my baby / we up in the club” gets stuck in my head for hours on end. Sure, the songs a little bit shouty and I wish for them to go down the Xenomania / Dream Pop route (as the best moment on LM5 is the vocodered outro on ‘Monster In Me’), it’s still a catchy enough track and one we can look forward to them performing live.
Claire Richards – ‘Don’t Leave Me In This Love Alone’
I was blessed to attend the Claire Richards’ album launch last November with the Essentially Pop head honcho and we literally baked a cake with the album blasting in full for about 3 hours (we should have won! Ed.), and now, 3 months later, we have the record and the undeniable stand out for me has to be the Diane Warren track ‘Don’t Leave Me In This Love Alone’.
The track is cinematic, theatrical and Claire’s vocals soar all up and down the scales proving that she is some British Celine Dion; as the crescendo hits in later in the song, Claire roars “I’m floating out in Space without you” as she realises to herself that she is in a one-sided relationship. We can relate Claire.
Julia Michaels – ‘What A Time’ (feat. Niall Horan)
Julia Michaels is such an undeniable talent. As a songwriter she has contributed to so many wonderful tracks from Britney to Justin Bieber to Selena Gomez, her debut EP ‘Nervous System’ featured the wonderful ‘Issues’ among some other incredible numbers and now, she’s dropped her latest EP ‘Inner Monologue Part 1’ and the stand-out track ‘What A Time’ features former 1D star Niall Horan. The track is a light-hearted, almost-verging-on-folk number as the two stars coo over a wonderful romance “you were clinging to my body like you wanted it forever”. It’s possibly the most positive track on the record, in the sense of not having Julia have self-doubt about the motives behind her actions or her lover’s motives. She just seems to be celebratory and happy in the moment in this track.
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Julia a few years ago and she and her management were delighted because she was on a promo run for ‘I Miss You’ with Clean Bandit, but I wanted to discuss ‘Nervous System’ and I don’t think many UK press were bothered. I must have spoken on for hours about how ‘Don’t Wanna Think’ is a soundtrack to life. Sometimes you just have to own your fangirling ways don’t you?
It’s been a wonderful week and I have some really exciting plans happening this month that I cannot wait to share with you… Until then, over and out xoxoxo
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