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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: new single

  • New Single! Katy Perry “Part of Me”

    New Single! Katy Perry “Part of Me”

    The Forthcoming Tricked Out Reissue of Teenage Dream
    Katy, interrupted: midway through a performance of her single “E.T.”, just minutes after head Foo Fighter Dave Grohl speechified about celebrating the human element in music-making (specifically learning how to sing and play instruments); in the same Grammy Award broadcast that at once celebrated the power of one particular voice (the late Whitney Houston) while also inexplicably celebrating the spectacle of loathe-able mediocrity that is Chris Brown; in the middle of a performance that itself seemed, or might have seemed, aided by backing tapes, those presumable backing tapes started to skip. Or something. Something was wrong. Katy struggled – or seemed to – for a second. Live television! Recorded backing malfunction! What to do? Cross your fingers and hope the sound guys can find a quick fix? Pull an Ashlee Simpson and pretend it’s all the band’s fault? Slink off stage and announce to the nearest Entertainment Tonight correspondent that you’re entering rehab?

    The lights went out. And Katy started to…

    …sing her new single. O. M. G., Grammy audience! We’ve been punk’d! By Katy Perry!

    Unfortunately, the song itself couldn’t live up to the cleverness of its introduction to the world. It’s called “Part of Me”, and is easily spotted as a kiss-off to her freshly exed husband Russell Brand (just as “E.T.”, the song aborted mid-performance to make way for the new single, might be easily spotted as a loopy tribute to Brand, dating back to the couple’s courtship). But the break-up aspect of the song is really the only thing newsy about it. The song doesn’t signal a new album – it’s merely being tacked on to a deluxe edition reissue of Perry’s sophomore album Teenage Dream (which has already sent a record setting six songs to the top of Billboard’s Pop Songs Chart) called The Full Confection, set for release March 27.

    I was a fan of Katy’s first album One of the Boys, but I’ve found most of Teenage Dream to be, at best, generically likeable. This song is both less and more of the same. On one hand, where Teenage Dream was generally a cotton candy album (the LP edition even came out on cotton candy-scented, pink-flecked white vinyl!), this song wants to be a jawbreaker. On the other hand, as jawbreakers go, this one’s just not that tough. Think Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” in reverse. Max Martin and Dr. Luke can toss off hitbound pop singles like this in their sleep, and it appears that’s what they’ve done here. “Part of Me” might just as well have been called “Katy Perry Radio Single #11” and come with black stripe, white block letter thumbnail artwork. But you needn’t take my word for it – hear it here:

  • The Wanted Came Adorable on Chelsea Lately

    The Wanted Came Adorable on Chelsea Lately

    The Wanted's Surprise U.S. Hit
    It’s been a full decade since the end of the last great wave of boy bands, and even then, the most successful of the bunch were of the American variety. So the sudden cross-Atlantic success of British quintet The Wanted with their song “Glad You Came” (which surged into Billboard’s Top 40 Pop Chart a couple weeks ago) feels unlikely and deliciously random. Why, then, a guy might fairly ask, haven’t superior recent singles by JLS or One Direction similarly stormed our airwaves?

    Maybe The Wanted are just really cute, sweet guys – even by boy band standards?

    Last night, fresh from a tour date in Las Vegas and en route to more dates in Canada and then back to the U.K., the group made their American “late night debut” on Chelsea Lately, all five of them piled up onto Chelsea Handler’s guest couch fielding questions about, y’know, their British accents and whether they are “of age”. The group came across wide-eyed and friggin’ adorable – in stark contrast to the residual tackiness of Chelsea’s show (I’m kind of a fan). When Chelsea told 18-year-old Nathan he looked a little like Justin Bieber, he blushingly replied “if someone did something horrible to his face, possibly.” O. M. G. So damn cute.

    “Glad You Came”, which debuted at the top of the UK singles chart last summer, is the lead single from the band’s sophomore album Battleground. The single’s available for download here, but neither Battleground, nor the group’s 2010 self-titled debut have gotten a U.S. release yet. Sadface. Get happy! Watch the video:

  • First Listen: a-ha’s “Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)”

    It’s 25 years ago next month that a certain Norwegian synth-pop trio first entered the Billboard Hot 100 with a song that would become one of the most beloved of its era, and a video that still looks as ground-breaking and exciting as it was in 1985: “Take On Me”. Though a-ha never managed another U.S. hit of that magnitude (or even close), they never really went away. Well, except for that time when they went on hiatus for most of the 90s. But with last summer’s lovely album Foot of the Mountain, and their current “Ending on a High Note” world tour, lead singer Morten Harket, keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, and guitarist-songwriter Pal Waaktaar-Savoy are, in fact, calling it a career. But not without a small postscript. The band will release what will presumably be their last single, called “Butterfly, Butterfly (The Last Hurrah)”, for digital download in July. After news of the new single was leaked by a mixing engineer, the song made its official world premiere on the internet via Warner Music Norway last week. For a good-bye song, “Butterfly, Butterfly” is remarkably unspectacular – just a typically sweet, three-minute, mid-tempo, synth-pop song, with a matter-of-fact vocal performance by Harket well in keeping with Waaktaar’s ambivalent farewell of a lyric: Tomorrow, you don’t have to mean what you say/left without a reason to stay/comes the last hurrah. The single is being released in conjunction with a forthcoming 2-disc retrospective set, and coincides with Rhino Records’ recent deluxe edition reissues of the band’s first two albums Hunting High and Low and Scoundrel Days.