TRACK OF THE WEEK
Stormzy
Big For Your Boots
Stormzy is back, rapping in a chicken shop about how you’re too old for Twitter now. Highlights include, but are not limited to: the way Stormzy says the word “boots”; the fact that it’s essentially four minutes of Stormzy threatening to beat you up, or Chat Shit, Get Banged: The Song; the video, which is just 1,000 beautiful women looking really, really mad and then Stormzy – wearing ever more immaculate and complex sportswear – being about to kick the head in of that bloke from the Rag’n’Bone Man video. Flawless.
Katy Perry
Chained To The Rhythm
Hello, Katy Perry is woke now, which means that every one of her songs will now come with a Da Vinci Code–like supra-level of enigmatic lyrics to go along with it. Chained To The Rhythm asks: hey, are you comfortable in your bubble? No, thought not. Really making us think here, Katy. Sound-wise it’s a bop, though, which is the main thing.
MIA
POWA
Dunno if you noticed at any point over the past nine years, but the name “Obama” (goodie) sounds a bit like “Osama” (baddie). MIA just realised, and now we have a song about names that sort-of sound the same. It, like every MIA song, sounds like coming up in an unfamiliar country as somewhere between three and seven violent protest groups skirmish around you.
Sia
Move Your Body
This really, truly, is about nothing; sample lyrics include: “Oh oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh” and “I wanna be your muse, use my music”. Proper “Sia, we’re recording in five minutes, you did remember to write the lyrics, yeah?” stuff. This one was originally meant for Shakira and it sort of shows; still, the lyric video has a dancing child in a two-tone wig, so whether you like it or not, this is a Sia song now.
Hercules & Love Affair ft Faris Badwan
Controller
For a long time I thought Faris Badwan didn’t exist, but instead was a myth made up by parents to scare their kids away from art school. Yet, he’s real, and here he is, moving away from familiar Horrors/Cat’s Eyes territory to help Hercules & Love Affair make their first noises since 2014. Does the sideways move from goth-punk and alt-pop into sort-of-house work? Oh, massively. I want to go and live at whatever all-night 80s cafe this sounds as if it always used to play in.
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