Kylie Minogue – Every Day’s Like Christmas (Stock Aitken Waterman Remix)
Kylie Minogue’s new Christmas album, the inventively titled Kylie Christmas, is what you could politely call a bit of a mixed bag. Not only does it feature duets with Iggy Pop, her sister Dannii and a posthumous Frank Sinatra, it also includes an earnest version of Yazoo’s Only You with the perpetually jovial James Corden. Nestled in among the familiar cover versions – Winter Wonderland, Christmas Wrapping, Santa Baby – is a new song, Every Day’s Like Christmas, written by Chris Martin and produced by Norwegian pop behemoths Stargate. The original is everything a Christmas song shouldn’t really be, ie politely understated. Thankfully, someone somewhere realised it would be a shame to waste a good song, so after 25 years away from the production desk, in came Kylie’s original hit-makers, Stock, Aitken and Waterman, to give it a nostalgic, sleigh bell-filled, cheeky-snog-at-the-80s-Christmas-disco feel. Much better.
Miike Snow – Genghis Khan
It’s surprising that the three members of Miike Snow have managed to find the time to make a new album together. Since 2012’s second album, Happy to You, the group’s singer-songwriter Andrew Wyatt has squeezed in a solo album and collaborations with the likes of Flume, Charli XCX and Mark Ronson, while producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg have both established new bands – Karlsson with dance duo Galantis and Winnberg with Amason. But at some point they managed to get together long enough to record iii, the first single from which, the retro soul-tinged Heart Is Full, premiered last month. Second single Genghis Khan looks even further back, taking one of pop’s most strangely underused lyrical tropes– comparing yourself to a 13th-century conqueror – and running with it for four minutes. Over bouncing piano riffs and delicate synth stabs, Wyatt gleefully croons: “I get a little bit Genghis Khan, don’t want you to get it on with nobody else but me.” That’s certainly an interesting way of assuring fidelity.
Lola Coca – Bad Girlfriend
London newcomer Lola Coca – possibly not her real name – decided she wanted to pursue music at the tender age of six after seeing a life-changing gig. “I went to watch the Smurfs live,” she told Galore magazine of her epiphany. “I remember them playing a cover of Oops Up Side Your Head and just feeeeeeling [sic] that groove.” In fact, groove, Smurfs-inspired or not, permeates the two songs she’s put online so far. The low slung, crackled-vinyl vintage soul of Love Songs recalls Alright, Still-era Lily Allen, complete with some very British loveliness and bolshiness. (The chorus of “love songs are for losers baby and I have already lost” is very sweet.) For her equally vibrant and intriguingly off-kilter second offering, Bad Girlfriend, about rejecting the obligation to give your boyfriend birthday sex, she does away with the niceties, focusing more on spoken-word put downs and sweetening only slightly for the carnivalesque swirl of the chorus.
Foxes – If You Leave Me Now
If you’re planning on breaking up with your loved one this Christmas, Foxes may well have created the perfect soundtrack. If You Leave Me Now, taken from her delayed second album, All I Need, is perfect for a self-conscious moment standing gazing out through a frosted window pane as a perfect silhouette trudges forlornly through the snow. If listened to at the right time, the sumptuous strings and lovely, lilting melody could even make a breakup text featuring an emoji of someone dropping rubbish in the bin seem poetic. It’s a bit of a shame that the video is made of cobbled together live performances and footage of her walking around backstage near some security guards in luminous tabards: if ever a song was crying out for a windswept hillside walk and a chunky winter coat, it’s Hello by Adele. And this one by Foxes.
Elliphant – North Star (Bloody Christmas)
Swedish pop rebel Elliphant is more used to rapping about being like a finger up someone’s arse or chatting away about how she likes to wee in the street than waxing lyrical about the festive season. So it’s surprising to find her not only tackling an original Christmas song but one as plaintive and downcast as North Star (Bloody Christmas). For Elliphant, Christmas isn’t the time for joy and happiness but for drinking (“Take a shot in the dark for me,” she demands at one point), stealing kisses with a mistress around the tree (“No, it could never last”) and despondency: “And we dance around a tree, unwrap our souls and see, that we are the north stars and we are frozen apart so let the night in your heart.” The good thing about North Star (Bloody Christmas) is that it’s just Elliphant and a piano, so it could in theory be recreated at the Queen Vic during one of the emotionally overwrought EastEnders montages. Altogether now: “Bloody Christmas, fucking Christmas ...”
