A lot has happened in music lately

As you might or might have not noticed, I've been absent from the blogosphere for a week or so and phew, there's been all sorts of things going on! Here are some of my picks:

Arguably the biggest scoop is Nirvana's unexpected (or expected, depending on how you see it) onstage comeback. The iconic grunge group was inducted to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility (there has to be at least 25 years from the inductee's debut single; Nirvana's "Love Buzz" came out in 1988). The remaining members of the band then performed a handful of their songs with female singers, with Joan Jett, Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth), St. Vincent and Lorde singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Aneurysm", "Lithium" and "All Apologies", respectively. The group also asked PJ Harvey to join them to sing "Milk It" but unfortunately, she couldn't make it. Check out the performances below:

















Hopefully the performances were also recorded officially so that we wouldn't have to rely on clips recorded with mobile phones.


So that's there. Then to other news:

2014 BRIT Awards: A brief recap

As you might now, the 2014 BRIT Awards were held last night, with some of the biggest names of the British (and global) music scene getting together and celebrating each other's work. The attendees and the viewers were treated with several live performances among which there was an interesting collaboration between Disclosure and Kiwi indie sensation Lorde. Now, let's be honest - we've heard the lead single of her pretty good Pure Heroine album far too many times already (catchy as it is) but here the song's remixed into a refreshingly new version. However, by the time the song speeds up and segues into "White Noise" with Aluna of AlunaGeorge coming to claim the stage, there's no question of which alt-popper's performance dominates in this mashup. Nice jobs from the both of them, anyway!

We also heard an Egyptian-themed live rendition of Katy Perry's latest single "Dark Horse", complete with her channelling a neon-clad Cleopatra. She does deliver a solid performance, even though I still can't get over the fact that Prism would've had basically ten better candidates for the next single (which is nearly every other song on the album barring "Roar" and "Unconditionally" which have already been released as singles, in case you missed it). I would very much prefer it without its silly trap elements. What is it with me and my disappointment in single choices these days...?






I'll leave the outfit commentary for fashion blogs, so let's move on to the awards. Deservingly, music icon David Bowie was awarded as the best British solo male, becoming the oldest recipient of a Brit Award at the age of 67. He wasn't present himself so his award was collected by Kate Moss. Fun fact: he's been nominated in the same category for four times before, the first of which resulted in a win in 1984, 30 years ago.

Elsewhere, Daft Punk and Arctic Monkeys were expectedly crowned as the best international and British groups, respectively, while the latter's latest record AM was chosen as the album of the year, beating Bowie's The Next Day among others. In addition to Arctic Monkeys, many BRIT Awards performers such as Ellie Goulding, Bruno Mars and Lorde received awards, while the latter's temporary partners in crime Disclosure were nominated in four categories but eventually lost them all, two of them to Arctic Monkeys. Such injustice - "White Noise" should've been the single of the year. And then there's One Direction who, like Arctic Monkeys, scooped two awards as well. *sigh*


Here's the complete list of winners:


British Male Solo Artist - David Bowie

British Female Solo Artist - Ellie Goulding

British Group - Arctic Monkeys

International Group - Daft Punk

British Breakthrough Act - Bastille

Critics' Choice - Sam Smith

MasterCard British Album of the Year - Arctic Monkeys - AM

British Single of the Year - Rudimental featuring Ella Eyre - "Waiting All Night"

International Male Solo Artist - Bruno Mars

International Female Solo Artist - Lorde

British Producer of the Year - Flood and Alan Moulder

British Video - One Direction - "Best Song Ever"

BRITs Global Success - One Direction

Popheaval's Best of 2013: #20-11.

The end of the year is drawing near and you know what that means - best of lists! Yay, amirite? (Also, this is my 100th blog post! This calls for celebration.) And no music blogger would be credible without one of their own so... here's mine. It certainly wasn't an easy task to try and narrow down the best songs of a whole year into a set amount, let alone rank them. I was considering all these different kinds of brackets to do the job for me but ultimately ended up with an unbribable scoreboard (THAT TOOK AGES TO FILL). And of course I forgot to save it and then accidentally deleted the whole thing, having to do it all over again...

Phew, it sure took some time. And innumerable replays of songs. The face-offs were tough, but here's the final results. Lists like this are obviously highly subjective since they are merely a matter of personal taste (I didn't give two fucks about chart positions or commercial success). I have also probably missed a myriad of excellent songs - I've spent the whole past year discovering amazing songs from 2012 that I had totally overlooked in my last year's list. Furthermore, in order to prevent the list from becoming too monotonous and consisting of multiple songs from same artists/albums, I chose to use only one song/main artist.

There will also be another post on special mentions, but here's the first part of my final list with the final order - are you ready?

Here we go!

Review: 'Pure Heroine' by Lorde

Now, if you've been following any music media lately you're already probably familiar with Lorde, the 16-year-old pop sensation from New Zealand and especially her critically acclaimed debut song "Royals" that has topped charts everywhere from UK and Canada to New Zealand and Ireland not to mention various Billboard charts in the US (5, to be precise). Quite an achievement from someone that young - I mean, what were you doing at the age of 16?

We could indeed be witnessing a meteoric rise to fame here: she's already become a bit of an internet phenomenon. However, the pattern isn't exactly unheard of: a promising, somewhat different singer-songwriter who's launched into global spotlight by a catchy, distinctive breakthrough single, then releases a solid album and enjoys the fruits of his or her labour for a while. But after the momentum is over, the descent to oblivion tends to be just as rapid as the rise to fame was. But does Lorde have what it takes to stand out and forge a career out of it?