Don't wanna kiss, don't wanna touch, just want one cigarette and run

It's been a very good few days for leaked songs.

Generating some of the most column inches have been Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" and "Alejandro." The former is the final version of her new single, following up on the leak of the demo a few weeks ago. I might just be suffering from "preferring what I'm used to" syndrome, but I prefer the sound of the demo at this point; the final version has elements that occasionally come across as harsh and unmelodic--synths that are distractingly abrasive, random shouting, changes to the way her voice is handled--and cuts ones that enhanced the opposite perception.



Luckily, we've still got the synths-meet-ABBA/Ace of Base-ish "Alejandro," a clip of which leaked as "Don't Call My Name" a while ago, to make up for that loss.

I mentioned on Twitter that I was looking forward to Timbaland's new album far more than I would have expected given the lack of any high quality material out there (some of the low quality recordings are tantalizing, though, including what we've heard of the Miley Cyrus song), but we've now actually got something to listen to: "Morning After Dark," featuring French artist SoShy. Timbaland's voice sounds strangely high-pitched on the chorus, but if you can get over that fact, "Morning After Dark" proves that the producer, much maligned by many for repetition after his revival in 2006, still has something to offer pop fans.



Contrary to what one of my recent posts may make you think, I don't often take to really hating songs. That's at the point I'm at with Leona Lewis's "Happy" at the moment, though. Knowing she had songs like "Strangers" and "Perfect Stranger" for her upcoming second album helped me accept that disappointment, but as it turns out, neither of those tracks made the tracklisting in the end. Luckily, "I Got U" did.



Penned by Max Martin, "I Got U" is the closest Leona has come to recapturing the magic of "Bleeding Love" in my eyes. It bears more similarity to Leona's debut single than it does most of Max's recent work, though you could make a case for Backstreet's "Bigger," I guess. It's the best of Max's late '90s/early '00s sound combined with "Bleeding Love"s drums. "I Got U" is gorgeous, a ballad but with a quicker than a ballad feel, with a pulse, and with a smart repeated "hit it strong-back off" two-syllable pattern to emphasis its chorus. Leona's "I Got U" may not be a cover of the also Max-written Nick Carter song "I Got U," but it's just as special a ballad.

Your love is like a weapon

I'm not sure whether Lady GaGa's decision to write a song for Michael Bolton was from her wear-a-suit-of-Kermits, do-anything-to-get-people-talking-about-how-crazy-I-am side or born out of a genuine interest in making a great song that she thought would work really well with his voice and a willingness to ignore usual rules of cool for the sake of achieving something good, but whatever her reasoning, "Murder My Heart," the result, means that whether or not she intended the latter, she's done it.

The melody--which would have been perfect for an '80s film--and piano-meets-synth backing are strong enough that I would most likely have enjoyed the song regardless of who was singing it, but there's a roughness in Michael's voice--not wholely unexpected given that he was never the smoothest of the power ballad crooners, but that earlier trait has been mangified; Michael Bolton meets...age--that makes it stick in your mind just that bit more.

GaGa on backing vocals, as on Britney Spears's "Quicksand," makes me appreciate her voice in these small, pathos-inducing cameos just as she did on that earlier Britney song. I've never been fully sold on any ballad (or half-ballad, as "Murder My Heart" is) she's sung by herself, but boy, can she take one to the next level when used in that capacity.

Got me like nobody

I don't usually spend much time on mash-ups--rarely for me do they exceed the pleasure of listening to the original songs. Sometimes, though, even if they can't do that, they succeed in reawakening your love for the originals and cluing you in to aspects you never fully paid attention to before.



(Thanks to Alex for the tip!)

Just when I thought I was losing interest in "Poker Face," here comes DJ King Rollo with a mash-up of Charlotte Perrelli's "Hero" and Lady GaGa's "Poker Face," re-entitled "Hero Face." Taking the instrumental from "Hero" and the vocals from "Poker Face," the end result is a-mah-mah-mazing. It's really well done and, if nothing else, should increase your appreciation for just how killer (and beautiful) Fredrik Kempe and Bobby Ljunggren's writing and Bassflow's production are, as well as maybe get you thinking that the toplines Lady GaGa co-writes could work outside the RedOne context. Though I'm sure she'll never go in this direction, "Hero"'s combination of this style of electronic beats, longing strings, and piano all creating a poppy song is something that has a substance to it that I don't think even I--who loves "Hero"--fully appreciated until hearing this mash-up. As much as "Hero" got written off as a cheap Europop rip-off of "Cara Mia" in some quarters (not here!), if anything, this mash-up proves to me just how international in quality the work that went into it is.

In short: probably the best song I've heard this week (edit: though the chorus of Girls Aloud's "It's Your Dynamite" is really good).

#8 Lady GaGa, "Poker Face"

Russian roulette is not the same without a gun
And baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun

"Poker Face" has many things in it that could make my attitude toward elements of Lady GaGa songs seem inconsistent. How can I criticize the middle 8 of "Just Dance" for losing all sense of melody and then rank higher a song with verses like this? How can I hate the way "let's have some fun, this beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" of "Lovegame" comes across and then love the lines quoted above and a song that is, as a whole, completely full of innuendo, some clever and some not? It makes sense in my head, but I don't know that I can convincingly sell you all on what the differences are (for the record but briefly, on the first subject "Poker Face"'s verses aren't just whirring sounds and on the second subject the sound of the words is completely different and that line ends up coming across less childish than those opening lines of "Lovegame"). Maybe it helps that the backing track is just better, and everything around it benefits from that.

To engage in a not purposefully but nevertheless probably too obscure analogy, "Poker Face" is the "Brother Oh Brother" to "Just Dance"'s "Cara Mia": bearing a lot of resemblances to its more party-friendly older brother, enough to garner accusations of basically being the same song, but with a few key musical alterations that give the song an emotionally crushing edge. While "Brother Oh Brother" takes the point of view of an injured man warning another of the dangers of getting involved with a heartbreaking girl who'll take advantage of him, "Poker Face" is sung from the perspective of a woman who could quite easily be the one in "Brother Oh Brother." Still, even as Lady GaGa talks of her ability to hide what she's really thinking and feeling from some man to get at his money, even as she vamps her way through a braggadocio-filled middle 8, I can't help feeling like there's something in her tone in the chorus and in the song's slightly darker-than-usual synth backing that gives the song that extra layer, giving a sad edge to all Lady GaGa's boasts of her maneating prowess...an American and man-focused equivalent to the "And if I stop, I'm sickened, it really gets me down/So I step back into the city lights, the queen of London Town" sentiment of "Swinging London Town." As much as she has so much success in manipulating men with flirtation, sex, and fake love, the narrator's not really as in control and invulnerable as she presents herself in the song, and she knows it. After all, even in Russian roulette, there's an equal chance of either participant getting hurt. In amongst all the sleaze, hedonism, and dance-pop catchiness that is Lady GaGa, there's still time for complexity and emotion--and, contrary to what I bet the lady herself thinks, it's best done not on the piano-led ballads of The Fame but on songs like "Poker Face."

Find it on: The Fame

#31 Lady GaGa feat. Colby O'Donis & Akon, "Just Dance"

Where are my keys
I lost my phone

My position on Lady GaGa stands at what it was this summer--underwhelming album (compared to what I expect from a popular international artist) and still not totally sold on her as a popstar--but "Just Dance" remains just as great as it was the first time it debuted on the world out of nowhere. I don't believe "Just Dance" was nearly as guaranteed a U.S. hit as its success around the globe might imply--without the massive backing from her label, it could have sunk as easily as many a great quirky pop track did here when labels weren't willing to provide similar support levels--but I'd be crazy if I thought this was anything other than a fantastic exciting song, one that is more than welcome on my American radio any day and as much as DJs want to play it. The introduction and incarnation of Swedish producer RedOne's latest sound (though certainly not his first great song), "Just Dance" suffers just a bit for me because I've never been a fan of the Lady GaGa performed middle 8--I can see its use as a moment for spazzy dancing, but the melody gets so lost there that it always takes me out of the song. Still, save for that one section, it's nonstop fun, the sort of song perfect for the very actions its lyrics describe.

Find it on: Lady GaGa

Jag är tillbaks?

With credit to PubliSpain, Naked, the debut album of Dutch singer Nikki, whose Kelly Clarkson-ish song "Bring Me Down" is really shaping up to be one of my favorite singles of the year, can be listened to in its entirety here. Good news: another version of "Brief & Beautiful" (though it plays as track 8, not track 9 as labeled)! Just what the world needed.

Surely Markoolio can't be imitating Lady GaGa's "Poker Face" in his new song ("The Markoolio Anthem")? I mean, the turnaround time given when "Poker Face" started taking off in Sweden...they just couldn't have done it quickly enough...could they? But what other (modern, unless we think he's going Boney M.) reason would there be for that very distinctive "ma ma ma ma" after the chorus (not the one near the chorus's beginning)? It's a heck of a coincidence otherwise.

I am beyond thrilled that finally, finally I was able to buy John Barrowman's "What About Us." My love of that song (an ultimate sing-along-in-your-car, clenched-fists sort of melodic power ballad) still remains at unhealthy levels--I'm blaming you, Gary Barlow.

Speaking of Popjustice-featured songs, I also love Britain's Got Talent winner George Sampson's debut single, "Get Up On The Dance Floor." Yes, he won for being a dancer, not any sort of musician, but that hasn't stopped me from playing this song (via its video), basically a mash-up of a bunch of famous dance tracks, multiple times. I will absolutely not back down on my love of this.



Also on the front of tracks that will probably be marketed towards British kids but that I adore, we've also got Same Difference's "We R One." Paul already analyzed the video, so instead I'll just leave it at this: fantastic song and fantastic dance routine for the chorus, especially during the whole "together, together, we're coming undone" second half of the chorus. Just as he did when writing for Marie Serneholt's solo album, Jörgen Elofsson's done a great job of making a song that harks back to '90's pure pop but that's still enjoyable for today. I wish he'd make songs like this--as opposed to the ballads he seems to mainly produce now--more often.