Flashback Friday: Mark Spiro - She Doesn't Mean A Thing To Me

"Baby save the third degree"

Those who follow this blog closely will realize exactly why I picked this song to highlight based on just the few seconds alone. It's got those cheesy, chugging synths! They may be what some people hate about 80's music, but I am in love with this sound. Mark Spiro's song may not be one that a lot of people remember from the decade, but it's a solid piece of very 80's radio rock. It was featured briefly in cheesy cult movie Voyage of the Rock Aliens (which I wrote about earlier this year), but beyond that Mark Spiro did some songwriting for others in the 80's and released a string of albums starting in 1986 and continuing on to the present. I can't say any of his other stuff's interested me all that much, but there's something about this song that catches my attention.



(Music posted for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear, support the artists. Buy his albums here. Follow me on twitter and facebook.

Ola - I'm In Love

"I'm a sucker when she pulls her game"

Ola Svensson never lets down pop fans. I could say that about many of Sweden's pop music exports, but I'm always paying extra attention to Ola. It used to be the fact that he was known to collaborate with the songwriting/production duo extraordinaire Tony Nilsson and Bassflow, but even now that he's moved on to new sounds, I still find myself waiting impatiently for new material from him. He's got such a cool, laid back persona and (in my opinion at least) the perfect male pop voice. It's instantly recognizable. I'm In Love is his new single and, even though it sounds a lot like his last album (which saw him moving toward a trendier, less interesting direction), it's still got the kind of incredible hook that marks his best work. The chorus is so stupidly simple, yet buoyant and much more fun than it seems on first listen. It's another great single in a discography full of them.



(Music posted for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear, support the artists. Buy the single here. Follow me on twitter and facebook.

Surferosa - Birthday Party

"It's your birthday, we're gonna celebrate you"

It's my birthday today! I'm not sure if I've ever done a "birthday post" before, but this one's gonna be short and sweet. Let me start by saying that I hate the traditional, American "Happy Birthday to you" song. Seriously, why celebrate with such a maudlin, depressing sounding melody? Nobody ever wants to sing it. I propose something new, something more like Surferosa's Birthday Party. True, the fact that they're an awesome Scandinavian band helps, but still...



(Music posted for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear, support the artists. Buy Surferosa music here. Follow me on twitter and facebook.

Icona Pop - I Love It

"I crashed my car into the bridge"

Some songs just blow in like a hurricane, stealing attention away from everything else on the radio. Icona Pop's new single, I Love It, has widely (and preemptively) been looked at as the best song of 2012. And really, when December rolls around, I wouldn't be surprised to see it towards the top of my own list. It's that good. Icona Pop are a Swedish duo making quirky, slightly aggressive pop music. They released an EP last year that was pretty good, but nothing could have compared me for this track. Being a creative person myself, I'd imagine it was one of those kinds of songs that just came from the ether... "inspiration," if you will. Of course, I know nothing about the songwriting process involved, but it just has such an urgent--yet ridiculously simple--structure and vibe about it. Hear it once... hell, hear half of it once... and you'll be singing it back. It's like Robyn's Dancing On My Own if that track was really, really pissed off. This makes sense, since the two share a songwriter in Patrik Berger. If that's not enough to get you listening, I don't know what is. (This embedded version has a few seconds of talking at the beginning. Ignore it. It's not on the single version)



(Music posted for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear, support the artists. Download the EP here. Follow me on twitter and facebook.