Friday 4 December 2009

V.O.R.L.D is full of M.A.G.I.C.

75. The Sound of Arrows - M.A.G.I.C. - 2009

Right back to the start of the year and one of my favourites of 2009, Swedish electro pop duo The Sound of Arrows are yet to breakthrough properly despite producing the glorious pop songs M.A.G.I.C. and Into The Clouds, not to mention the truly stunning videos for both songs. M.A.G.I.C. owes a lot to the music of Justice, particulalrly D.A.N.C.E, but ends up sounding a lot more fun, childish and charming in comparison to the often harsh and dark tones produced by Justice. A brilliant song, showcasing the vocals of the lead singer on the verses, who sounds somehow like a Scandinavian Neil Tennant, and a sampled choir sound on the chorus. It truly is magic!



74. Mason vs. Princess Superstar - Perfect (Exceeder) - 2007

All good things happen in threes, so when Fedde LeGrand's Put Your Hands Up For Detroit and Bodyrox's Yeah Yeah both became huge UK electro hits, completely revitalising the dance music scene in the process, it was only natural for a third huge hit from the genre to come along. Surfacing in 2006 originally as a rather excellent instrumental called Exceeder, by German producer Mason, US rapper Princess Superstar, who had been a one hit wonder here with 2002's Bad Babysitter, added vocals from her song Perfect in a Toca's Miracle style mashup, and voila, one of the defining electro dance songs of the last few years and a huge UK top 3 hit!!!



73. Love Inc - You're A Superstar - 2002

Not technically a noughties song, Canadian dance duo Love Inc's sound was compared to Sash!, and it was hardly surprising seeing as the song first came out in 1998 in Canada. A gloriously uplifiting piece 90's dance with excellent vocals from singer Simone Denny and inspirational positive lyrics, the follow up single Broken Bones, was very nearly as good. This song helped me through many a Music GCSE listen, as I put the video on whatever was the predecessor to youtube as I was supposed to be writing an 'original composition'!!! It's a shame it didn't go any higher than #7 in the UK, but it did spend about 28 weeks stuck at #7 so it probably sold as well as a lot of #1 singles did, paritcularly seeing as it came out in the busy xmas market which saw Girls Aloud and One True Voice's infamous battle for #1!!!



72. Cascada - Evacuate The Dancefloor - 2009

Another song from the fantastic year for music that has been 2009, German trio Cascada returned in the summer with the first single from the album of the same name, Evacuate The Dancefloor. Moving on from their usual Eurodance sound, this song owed more to Lady GaGa's Just Dance than their previous hits. It was panned by many who said that Cascada were just jumping on the latest bandwagon, with even a rent-a-rapper providing a Colby O'Donis style unnecessary but enjoyable rap two thirds of the way through. It worked though, it provided Cascada with their first UK #1 single, an almost unheard of feat for a Eurodance act that have already had a few top ten hits to achieve and the song was a hit worldwide to, including in the US!!! Easily my favourite single of theirs to date.



71. Jade Ewen - It's My Time - 2009

So, after a string of absolutely disasterous results for the UK at Eurovision, seeing us languishing in the bottom five nearly every year, much loved songwriter Andrew Lloyd Webber was drafted in to write the UK entry with US writer Diane Warren (behind How Do I Live and I Don't Want To Miss A Thing amongst others) and the result was It's My Time, an extremely grand sounding ballad more suited to the Eurovision 40 or 50 years ago!!! The winner of the 'Your Country Needs You' competition to sing the song was Londoner Jade Ewen who delivered a stunning vocal performance every time she performed it. Andrew sat at the piano whilst Jade sung it to hundreds of millions of people across the world, and the result was 5th place, the best result for the UK since 2002 when Jessica Garlick came 3rd!!! As for Jade? She joined the ever revolving door of Sugababes and is currently the sixth member of the three piece band!!! Let's hope that the UK can go even better next year and win because after years of it being assumed that we never do well because nobody likes us, the BBC have finally realised that if we send in decent songs, we can actually do well, hence are taking it all a lot more seriously now!!!



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