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The week's best new releases: Adam Lambert, Brendan Maclean, Shura, Pet Shop Boys and more

new-music-friday-march-18

In this week's new releases, or at least the ones that have popped up on Spotify (ie this doesn't include Ariana's 'Be Alright' which is floating around but not available to stream):

  • Adam Lambert's new single has been knocking around for a couple of days and is really good; it's a Max Martin job that also features supremely amazing Laleh on vocals. (If you haven't heard Laleh's brilliant 'Boom' EP from a couple of years ago give it a spin now — she's probably going to do a Tove Lo this year.)
  • Emil Berg's got a song called 'Britney'. It's not very good but we've included it so that we can mention Britney's name when we promote this post on social media, which hopefully means people will click on the link thinking they'll hear a song by Britney Spears. If you are one of those people, we're sorry but not very.
  • Iggy Azalea's new single is, well, do you know what, it's actually a good single.
  • There's a Four Tet mix of Shura's 'Touch'. It 'works a treat'.
  • Promising purveyor of desolate pop Betsy has an EP out today. 'Time' is co-written and produced by Fred Ball (who worked on 'Love On The Brain' off Rihanna's Anti and has also worked with Little Mix, Nicola Roberts and so on). (Why are we explain­ing who Fred Ball is? You know who Fred Ball is.)
  • Blonde and Craig David have the week's best artwork.

blondecraig

  • Brendan Maclean's new song features the chorus lyric "we want hugs not drugs, or both if it's available", which is a pretty good lyric.
  • All Saints' 'One Woman Man' is far better than a 2016 All Saints release has any right to be.
  • WSTRN's follow-up to 'In2' is a strange one — 'In2' seemed to establish WSTRN as a really fresh kind of act but 'Come Down', a semi-cover of an Evelyn 'Champagne' King song from the 80s, feels like an A&R idea straight out of 2002. A bit of a cop out really. Very odd.
  • The new Pet Shop Boys single is properly available too and with it an extended version that updates the story on the song's two main char­ac­ters. The single version explains how they moved to London to go to uni and bonded over nights out in pop clubs; the new verse rhymes "global situation" with "pop education". You can't say fairer than that, really.

We didn't include 'Frightened Rabbit', apols.

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