The single is dead? Ten pop singles of 2008.

I mentioned this here recently and, since Friday afternoon is often a good time to do such frivolous things and the opportunity presented itself, I mentioned it - albeit in slightly different terms - to my colleagues at work.

"What? pop... singles... in 2008?"
"Yes, that's right."

They were probably protesting their innocence but I added "if that's too much choice then that's fine, let's only consider ones by female artists or all-female bands!"

Pop, in all its disguises, has returned in 2008 and here - according to the above criteria - are ten singles (in alphabetical order) that I think matter in this respect.

• Disturbia - Rihanna
• I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry
• Issues - The Saturdays
• It Was You - Sharleen Spiteri
• Keeps Gettin' Better - Christina Aguilera
• Nothing Sweet About Me - Gabriella Cilmi
• Piece Of Me - Britney Spears
• Rain On Your Parade - Duffy
• So What - P!nk
• The Boy Does Nothing - Alesha Dixon
  

Pop is back for sure and, although it takes a lot from the past, it also offers something new. That is why, after over half a century, pop still matters.

Remixes, covers and coincidences...

The last year or two have thrown up a selection of cover versions and remixes, and some of them have been as successful as they seemed unlikely. The cover of The Zutons' 'Valerie', produced by Mark Ronson with Amy Winehouse on vocals, is probably the best known in the UK. Others turn up in less obvious places, b-sides and also in live sets. You can find such things such as The Manic Street Preachers covering Rihanna's 'Umbrella' (live) and also Lily Allen singing Keane's 'Everything's Changing' - it is the b-side to the 7" of 'Littlest Things'. The CD single had a new song 'U Killed It' as the (so called) flip-side!
'Littlest Things' fits well here too - it was largely written by Santi White, who has worked in major-label A&R, as a producer and also as a freelance songwriter. Now better known as Santogold she sings her new, often rather challenging, songs herself...

Santogold - Santogold (Warners, 2008)

The TV contest coincidence is this:
Earlier this year Duffy hit the big time in the UK with her début album Rockferry. She had however made a couple of fleeting appearances before. The first was as the runner up in Waw Ffactor 2003, the Welsh language version of Pop Idol. The next was a CD single, Aimée Duffy in 2004, which you can still buy new.

In 2005 she sung vocals on two tracks on the album See You In The Morning, the third album from Manchester based dance-pop act Mint Royale and this is where the coincidence factor plays. Another track from this album looks odds-on to be the UK #1 single this week. It is a cover/remix of 'Singing In The Rain' that was originally used in a VW Golf advert in 2005! That it has suddenly shot to prominence some three years later is due the fact that the winner of Britain's Got Talent, break-dancer George Sampson, used it as the backing for his final performance!
This will be a very good example of just how the weekly singles charts in even the countries of Western Europe can be incredibly different, which is not even a remotely unusual event.

Split indecision - Love To Hate or Hate To Love?

It always comes to the fore when someone well known for music, such as Madonna, attempts a transition to film or indeed vice versa, although Ne-Yo is currently saying how good Lindsay Lohan was in handling the track 'Bossy' that he has recently written and produced for her!
He is not one to court disaster. He has written two global chart hits for Rihanna (including the current UK #1), plus a few more for himself and others, so that is hardly an assertion open to much doubt. Then again he professes a wish to work with Amy Winehouse, so trouble makers and jail-birds are clearly not an issue as such, and also Duffy who like Rihanna is generally held to be squeaky clean. So are Alicia Keys and Jordin Sparks, with whom he is currently touring America. He can certainly spot talented artists when he hears them but that is merely a digression.

There is one album, in the genre actress-turned-singer, that is currently testing all sorts of preconceptions at least here in the UK. The lines along which opinions are drawn are the predictable ones but the sides taken by various parties are however not and it seems able to divide even apparently kindred reviewers, resulting in something approaching civil war.
This is all the more surprising for the fact that it has been precipitated by a seemingly rather harmless project that might very easily have been largely ignored on this side of the Atlantic.

Scarlett Johansson is the unlikely revolutionary. This has, on the face of it, everything that says £2.99 in the bargain bin in Woolworths come August. That could still be true but the thing is that this is an album that incites writers in the music press to go to battle in a manner that few albums do.
The album Anywhere I Lay My Head consists of ten cover versions of songs by Tom Waits and also a new one too. On two tracks she shares vocal duties with David Bowie and the album was produced by David Sitek (Yeah, Yeah Yeahs, etc.) and none of them are known either for their unwillingness to push boundaries or an inclination to back a losing horse.
This is certainly something unusual and, if you feel the way that I do, it makes me want to listen to it too. I will have to buy it and, if enough people feel the same, the bargain bin scenario recedes.