Singles of the Week: 18th July 2011

Nicola Roberts
Beat Of My Drum

Nicola Roberts may not be an ex-X Factor judge, drunk, Irish or, er, Kimberly, but, with ‘Beat Of My Drum’, she’s easily made The Best Song By A Member Of Girls Aloud Outside Of Girls Aloud. This Diplo-produced earworm originally emerged digitally a few weeks ago but, for some reason, it’s only getting a physical release now. So while that’s unlikely to send the song back up the charts where it belongs, it’s still the best thing released this week. Her album, Cinderella’s Eyes, is coming at the end of September but, for now, just enjoy the sight of Nicola dancing on top of a stack of speakers in a furry jumper dress.
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Singles of the Week: 20th June 2011

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to take a look at the most interesting singles of the week ahead. It also means that we, at Muso’s Guide, have a chance to champion a few outstanding indie bands for you lovely people to go and get behind.

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Singles of the Week: 13th June 2011

This week’s singles column is very alternative and indie heavy. It’s time to show some love to those that don’t have huge record companies backing them up and it just so happens we have a nice half dozen of those right here. So settle down and we’ll begin.

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Singles of the Week: 6th June 2011

It’s my birthday on Saturday. Now, I’m not usually one to make a big deal out of growing one year older, especially now the milestone years of 1, 10, 13, 16, 18, and 21 are out of the way. I usually like to spend my birthday sleeping, mulling or pottering around as usual. However, this year, I have been encouraged by various individuals to make more of an occasion out of the day. Taking this on board, I have decided to hijack this column in order to stroke my own ego, by regarding each single released on Monday the 6th of June as a personal present to me, for my birthday. SO THERE. They’d better be good guys. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.

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Singles of the Week: 30th May 2011

Finding out what potential horrors are being unleashed this Bank Holiday has been about as easy as DIY dentistry but, in the time it takes to cook a quiche, half a dozen have been tracked down and appraised below:

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Singles of the Week: 23rd May 2011

Judging by this weeks release schedule, most bands are biding their time for festival season to get into full swing before releasing their summer singles. As such, there’s not a whole lot of action coming our way this week but there are a few gems in the singles that are seeing the light of day.

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Singles of the Week: 16th May 2011

In a Eurovision weekend that has seen plucky little Azerbaijan sweep aside those terrible bastards Jedward as well as Blue’s sterling efforts to manufacture the most pointless pop reunion since four fifths of 5ive got back together, I’ve toyed with trying to weave some kind of tenuous European theme through this week’s singles. However, I’m far too hungover for that, so I’m afraid you’ll have to use you your imagination. We do have cracking releases from a couple of Swedes though, and only one real ‘nil points’ horror.

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Singles of the Week: 2nd May 2011

Looking over the release schedule for this week reminded me very much of Jo Moore & her “good day for bad news” faux pas of a number of years ago – with attention diverted by the improving weather and the wedding it looks like the hope is that people will be overwhelmed with good feeling and buy any old rubbish that’s put on the shelves today. Then again it’s also probably about now that the battle begins to get the summery tunes out there so the quality’s bound to drop. Is what’s on offer actually that bad once you’ve given it a listen?

In a word – yes.

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Singles of the Week: 25th April 2011

So, its Bank Holiday Monday and the last thing on many people’s minds will be the new releases coming this week. We seem to be having a glut of holiday days right now thanks to one thing or another, and the feeling I get is that we’ve almost jumped forward in time to the summer in our minds, helped along by the weather being unusually scorching for April. It would be a shame to completely overlook some of these records though as there are some real gems both from our home grown talent and from across the Atlantic. Also there’s one single that I feel I had to review to give some context to the other UK releases, more on that after we look at the American imports.

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Singles of the Week: 18th April 2011

Back in the mists of time,  I used to get my pocket money and head off down to Goldrush Records to spend it on Kinks, Small Faces and The Jam singles. It was heaven. During the era of The Jam you need to sell upwards of 100,000 copies of your single to stand a chance of a Number 1. Times have certainly changed. Downloads have revolutionised the UK Chart and sales of singles rarely reach 100,000. Now, which of the following singles will tickle your fancy, whether or be vinyl, CD or digital download.

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