Back for another week! This week, lots of well known names in the “Single Play” line up. Let’s get started, shall we?
New Order, “Stray Dog”
New Order’s “Music Complete” is one of my favorite records of 2015. Of course, being a New Order fan is part of the reason it’s been getting so much time in my music player for months. And while the album is solid from start to finish, and there are many stand out tracks, “Stray Dog” featuring Iggy Pop is dark, growly, and superbly executed.
Iggy Pop, “Gardenia”
And speaking of Iggy! Well, the guy may be 68, but that’s not stopping him from making new music. Who does he call as a musical partner? Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. The two of them holed up together to create some songs in total hush-hush. The result is a new record (Post Pop Depression) that comes out in March. But the first single (“Gardenia”) is getting a lot of traction due, in part, to the “Colbert Bump” that happened on Thursday night. Both Pop and Homme performed the song on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with a full band — and the result was far and away better than the studio version.
Norma Jean Martine, “Animals”
Norma Jean Martine has been extremely lucky in her music career. After moving to London to attend college, she took a year off to see if she could get her music career going. And guess what? She got a publishing deal after a year and started writing songs — and some were hits. Flash-forward five years later, and the 25-year-old sounds rather seasoned on her single “Animals” — probably because she is. “Animals” has a strong hook, but mostly it’s Martine’s smokey voice that makes the song stand out.
Sia, “Unstoppable”
There’s no doubting that Sia has been on a roll for…well, a mighty long time. While “Unstoppable” doesn’t break much new ground musically from her last collection of songs, it does demonstrate that she’s still able to write solid “from the heart” pop hits with disturbing undercurrents.
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