TRACK OF THE WEEK
Mabel
Thinking Of You
Pure 90s nostalgic R&B, Thinking Of You captures that really specific emotion of being head-over-heels in love as a teenager, where you genuinely think you’ll die if you don’t see the person you fancy over the school summer holidays. You know, that all-encompassing passion that happens before you’re grown up and it’s complicated and mainly involves texting the words “buy loo roll” to your other half. Look, we know that sometimes it can be a bit like “The Guide That Cried Song Of The Summer” but honestly: this is the song of the summer.
Olly Murs
You Don’t Know Love
Sit down, take a deep breath, bite down on something hard and try to stay relaxed. We’ve got news. It looks like… well… Olly Murs might have made an amazing song. A grown-up one. You Don’t Know Love is, as Olly himself would say, “proper good”: it starts off sounding like it’s going to be another EDM-lite knock off – okay, fine, it’s very Disclosure – before really taking off with a shimmering, fist-in-the-air synthpop chorus. Clearly, Olly’s been listening to Carly Rae Jepsen’s E. MO. TION. album in his time off. And, if you pretend it’s not an Olly Murs song, it’s even better. Maybe just change the artist’s name in your iTunes library.
Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa & Imagine Dragons With Logic And Ty Dolla $ign ft X Ambassadors
Sucker For Pain
A real “kitchen sink” approach to music here, with 12 humans getting involved in the performance element alone. Did X Ambassadors turn up late and that’s how they ended up as the “ft” artist and not one of the main ones? Did they overbook in case artists didn’t turn up? Anyway, Sucker For Pain plods along in such a laidback manner it’s like everyone was stoned on the day (highly probable), only to be rescued by Lil Wayne’s intense verse, a musing on his recent health scares and the proximity of death.
Fergie
Milf $
Update your outdated offensive 90s slang, because, as in Fergie’s video, MILF now stands for Moms I’d Like To Follow. Not in a stalking way, but on Instagram. Technically, that’s MILFOI, Fergie, but let’s not be picky. Clearly, this was a last-minute decision because nowhere in the song is social media referenced. Instead it’s all rapping like Nicki Minaj about being a financially independent mother, with a video in which various celeb mums, including Kim Kardashian, pour dairy products over themselves. Objectification or aggressive milk advert? You decide!
Dizzee Rascal And Calvin Harris
Hype
Music’s all about context, isn’t it? Dizzee and Calvin’s second collaboration – the first being Dance Wiv Me, back in 2008, before Calvin discovered the gym, the dentist or a decent hairdresser, and before Dizzee did that weird track with Robbie Williams – would sound incredibly exciting and well, hype, at a sun-drenched party in a beach bar. But put it on the work stereo and the screamy record scratch effect Calvin’s dumped on there are going to induce some kind of office-wide panic attack. Risky.
