Lopez Blogs

Before I get all pop perfect on your (quite cute and well formed) asses, aidez-moi with a little light listening (oh I am all about the alliteration today!) My 11 hour flight to Vegas kicks off on Saturday and I was hoping you could all recommend something new (or new to me) to listen to on the way there. Send me your poor, your huddled masses, etc. Oooo it's like being an A&R executive isn't it? Sidebar your honour: The earth moved in England the other night - earthquake, or hell freezing over and the four horsemen of the apocalypse rising because of this??

Jonathan Fagerlund ~ Playing Me: This may be the best boyband single by a solo artist in a very long time. The remaining Backstreet Boys should sit up, listen and take notes. You know when you've had a really long crappy day and you get home and slip into a bubble bath, or wrap yourself in your favourite old duvet? That's what listening to this golden gem of pop music is like - Jonathan's voice is delightfully warm and smooth, the pulsing instrumentation strums along into the "screw you" message of the chorus, and the whole thing is pretty bloody aces. And it's doing well in Sweden. First Angeline and now this? Jonathan's batting two for two and I cannot wait to hear a full album of this classic pop material. PS - check out PPG for a much better write up than this!

Simon Curtis ~ Another Heartache: My memory isn't what it used to be, so forgive me if I've written about Simon before :P Actually i'm about to reboot on the Alter Boy project (that's a good thing) so expect a lot more in the future. I've been playing this song for a few months now and i'm still not tired of it. And writing about Jonathan reminded me what a great classic pop tune this is - part Savage Garden, part Backstreet Boys, part A*Teens and all Simon. I've written about the musical amazingness of it before so for now i'll focus on the lyrics and vocal. Ironically, the song itself causes another heartache - while explaining to a lover that it's better they break, Simon conveys the sheer agony of splitting up with such raw emotion (particularly on the gorgeous piano driven acoustic version) that it's difficult not to be sucked into the song. As a vocalist Simon is equally comfortable at the top and bottom of his vocal range and uses his voice and inflections to complement the message of the song. Great production values too. You can listen to it on his myspace page...

Matt Pakora ~ Dangerous: Now i'm not sure that this comes under the perfect pop description, but I do like the song and it raises some interesting (to me anyway) points. I pretty much thought i was done with the Timbaland sound, and while this track doesn't really provide anything fresh to those production values, French artiste Matt makes the song fun enough and fairly catchy. The real puzzler here is no doubt a lot of money was poured into this track, yet to me it's substandard to say, a Simon track like Pop Messiah or Broken who didn't have the budget this song has. I'm not criticising the song, i like it i do - but let's be frank. Who do you have to sleep with to get a record deal these days? (for Simon's sake hopefully not Perez!! EW)

Still loving: Jesse McCartney's Leaving; Chris Richardson (shameless Justin T cribbing) All Alone; The Feeling's Join With Us
Newly Loving: BWO - Lay Your Love On Me and little David Archeluta (Imagine on American Idol was just - wow!)