Lopez Blogs

8 ~ The next great boyband album: Besides the stalwarts like Westlife and Take That still churning out some quality if matured boypop, there isn’t much around in the shape of decent boybands with some sterling dance routines. And there are some great pretenders waiting in the wings but haven’t quite happened just yet. Avenue (above, doing Take That’s Shine) spruced up their post X Factor expulsion image, knocked out the rather good pop song Set Your Body Free and then just sat on their asses. Ditto other potentially quite good boybands, Eton Road, Pacific Avenue and Vigo. Stop promising to be the next big thing already and do it!

7 ~ The next great Boyz aloud album: Yes. The rumours are true. Scottish indie-pop band Franz Ferdinand are releasing a pop album. Sort of. Ever since their orgy of sound with Girls Aloud on a cover of Bowie’s Sound and Vision, the Franz have threatened to buff uo their sound by working with Xenomania genius Brian Higgins. It’s out sometime this summer and after loving their first album and eventually appreciating their second, i can’t wait to see how this turns out…

6 ~ The next classic Whitney Houston album: From 1984 to about 1994 Whitney was one of my favourite singers. She wasn’t particularly hip or cool, but i really liked her voice and music. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her after this time, but she wasn’t quite as high on my list of faves. Still, I would love to see a decent return album from her this year with a killer dance track lead off single in the vein of I’m Your Baby Tonight or Whachulookinatme or whatever it was called. Come on Whitney, blow aside the booger sugar, I know you got it in ya…

5 ~ The next great movie to musical album: It’s always a bit dodgy. For every successful transfer like Hairspray, Legally Blonde and High Fidelity there is an appalling failure like Desperately Seeking Susan or Young Frankenstein. So I’d like to see something either terrifically emotive (Love Actually The Musical may be too complex) or incredibly witty (I have the whole Mean Girls the Musical soundtrack already written in my head!) come to the stage. Oh and of course some original broadway stuff too…

4 ~ A sophomore album that actually gets promoted correctly: While I liked all the sophomore albums from my beloved acts like Scissor Sisters, Killers and Maroon 5, apart from touring (which attracts people likely to buy their music anyway) and almost obligatory videos, they didn’t seem to be too bothered about promoting their tunes. Which of course led to the law of diminishing chart returns. So fingers crossed when the feeling (already out and about touting their excellent lead off single) return in February with the very excellent Join With Us that will hopefully be laden with chart bound tunes and of course the studio version of the popular live title track (above)…

3 ~ A poptastic 13 in 08 act album: Some of them already have albums out or at least scheduled to be released (Oh Laura, Matt White, Christian Ingebrigtsen, Blake Lewis, Sergey Lazarev, Jonah, Isabel Guzman) but I am very eager to hear a power pop/dance album from Candy Coated Chaos or some super pop goodness from the boys in Switch 22. It’s gotta happen for one of the guys soon!

2 ~ A dream realised album: Ok. This could easily be as much about Same Difference as it is going to be about Simon Curtis. But i wrote about my fave bro-sis duo yesterday so Simon gets the honours. I heard potential tracks for Alter Boy way back in Aug 06 and many have been added since then. 2008 is the year it needs to be released. And to do that, Simon needs to come to England. He can stay rent free in our palatial second bedroom. He can sign to Nightingale records and perform at the club regularly and break the music scene here, before conquering Europe and America. It’s gotta and gonna happen. You heard it hear first. Just 18 months ago…

1 ~ A new album from my icon: 7 years. 7 bloody years and I have an itch that needs to be scratched. Deborah Gibson released MYOB in March 2001. And it was a woefully overlooked album. Full of pop-dance epics and some sweeping understated ballads it should have been her Light Years, but tragically wasn’t. Since then, it’s not like she’s been lazy. There’s been numerous stage performances, club tours, a broadway album, 2 albums of unreleased demos and various one off tracks and collaborations. Still it’s time to get back to what she does best and rock my world with a new studio album of original compositions. And rumour has it, despite the 3 week vegas gig in May and Camp Electric Youth in the summer, it’s not actually that far off. Woo hoo!