PICK OF THE WEEK
ANOHNI
4 Degrees (Rough Trade)
“Alternative xmas” music normally means twee indie covers of dated 80s schmaltz, but now ANOHNI, the artist formerly known as Antony Hegarty, has given us a track we can blast at full volume when we’re sick of the in-laws and just NEED TO GO FOR A WALK. This is a big-coat track, written about life just above freezing and how it can make you want to go full arsonist on the animal kingdom. “Those rhinos and all those big mammals, I wanna see them lying, crying in the fields, I want to see them burn,” she weeps. Who hasn’t felt like that after being told off for leaving your brussels sprouts?
Psy
Daddy (YG Entertainment)
Do you think there’s an annual meeting where Justin Hawkins, Psy and the guys who tried to relaunch MySpace all sit around trying to work out why they can’t find their way back into the nation’s affections? “I had the most-watched YouTube video of all time,” you can imagine Psy complaining, winding his arm in a mime lasso because Post-Fame Disorder means he can’t stop himself. “Now I’m reduced to this, a song even Jedward would think is beneath them.” Daddy is a cheap knock-off of another failed viral hit, Will.i.am’s I Got It From My Mama, only in this version the gender pronouns have been changed and you can hear the silent sobs of a man who can’t even get booked on Loose Women any more.
Travis
Everything At Once (Red Telephone Box)
Fran “Coldplay stole our fanbase” Healy and the Blue Harbour four are back. This song lives up to its name: the verses are like a PC Music attempt at Radiohead, the choruses recall a cheesy Christmas song, the whole thing sounds like Travis need to go that meeting with Psy and Justin Hawkins and work out if collaboration could be the answer.
Wretch 32 Ft Anne-Marie & PRGRSHN
Alright With Me (Ministry Of Sound)
It’s been a great year for UK urban music, with uncompromising grime, smart house and party Afrobeats all finding a home in the charts. Clearly no one told Wretch and Anne-Marie, who are still working off the 2011 playbook where you have to rap slowly with a Year 4 vocabulary and then have a pretty girl singing some platitudes to have a hit.
Kygo Ft Maty Noyes
Stay (Ultra)
There was a telling moment in this year’s X Factor, where the public voted for the songs to sing that week. For Lauren Murray, they picked Kygo’s Firestone, to which she barked: “I’ve never bloody heard of it.” Kygo is one of the year’s biggest artists, a Norwegian DJ perhaps best known for remixing Sexual Healing to make sure it was neither sexual nor healing. Stay sounds like that, too: all smooth edges and vocals run through a hundred Instagram filters. I wish I could share in Lauren Murray’s ignorance, but Kygo is a sad spectre over pop who isn’t going away any time soon.
