Robyn
Honey
“Come get your honey,” winks pop’s centrifugal force Robyn on a song she teased in March 2017, and has made everyone wait patiently for ever since. Well, it’s here now, so please be upstanding, and place your hand over your soon-to-be-healed heart, for 2018’s best song. Obviously, it’s brilliant in myriad ways – that deconstructed house beat! Those crystalline vocals! The woozy sensuality! – but the main takeaway is that it feels like slowly diving into gloopy molasses while being gently tickled.
Four of Diamonds ft Saweetie
Stupid Things
X Factor series 13 fans rejoice because girlband Four of Diamonds are back, only now they’re no longer hampered by Louis Walsh’s “unique” mentoring (ie doing sod all near someone from Westlife). Instead, they’ve curated this personality-packed, last dregs of summer semi-banger outlining the negatives of following three gin and tonics with a bucket of wine. “I mix up my drinks / I do stupid things,” they warn, gulping down a burp and their feelings.
Sigrid
Sucker Punch
After a few too many wafty slow-burners that edged too close to beige, Sigrid and her range of multi-coloured hoodies are back in proper banger mode. In fact, Sucker Punch, all pinballing beat globules, sky-rocketing melodies and – warn Radio 2! – light swearing, would have been this week’s Best Track were it not for the box-ticking, Coldplay-circa-album-two guitar solo that sullies the second half.
Jessie Ware
Overtime
It’s not ideal when, as a singer-songwriter, your singing and songwriting is overshadowed by your sideline. As with Lily Allen and her book, which seemed to excite people more than her album, Jessie Ware’s last opus, 2017’s Glasshouse, became secondary to her hit podcast, Table Manners. Co-produced by dance boffins Bicep, this muscular (do you see?) new single feels like a concerted effort to redress that balance, with Ware flexing (!) her elegant nonchalance over pumping (too much??) beats.
Olly Murs ft Snoop Dogg
Moves
If Calvin Harris’s Feels was a little too outre for you, then fear not because it’s basically been remade as Moves. Ostensibly headlined by human Lad Bible Olly Murs, it’s dominated by two things: Ed Sheeran, who co-wrote it, likely demoed it and then emailed it over as willthisdo.mp3; and Snoop Dogg, who was no one’s first choice and has literally no idea what’s going on.
