New Music Friday Review; Liam Payne and J Balvin try to create the 2018 "Despacito" and new Ariana Grande

Song: Familiar
Artists: Liam Payne, J Balvin


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I truly believe that "Despacito" has begun a serious trend of English/American artists teaming up with Latin music stars to attempt to find a hit given Liam's last single with Zedd "Bedroom Floor" really did tank hard and well, I am not sure that "Familiar" is the hit that Liam wants or needs, oh sure its catchy and the lyrics aren't THAT bad, they are all about getting to 'know' that hot girl's body with the typical latin pop instrumentation and production, I can't say I am overtly crazy about the song though.

However this trend of people trying to create the 2018 "Despacito" needs to stop and soon.

Rating: 6/10


Song: Babe
Artists: Sugarland, Taylor Swift





American country act Sugarland are back and this time they have released a song that was an off cut from Taylor Swift's album "Red" and yeah you can kind of tell the song is an off cut for Taylor Swift with the lyrics (kind of a step back from '1989' given that she was young at the time) but given Jennifer Nettles really is an impressive vocallist, this song does sound better than it had any right to be especially with Taylor only singing backing vocals. Not expecting this to be a hit but would welcome it if it does happen. Decent song.

Rating: 7/10




Song: 2002
Artist: Anne-Marie



Just me or is Anne-Marie becoming one of those frustrating artists who you know is capable of better than what she releases and her new single '2002' is a case in point an instantly dated song making references to songs that don't come from the year 2002 eg: Britney Spears 1999 hit "Baby, One More Time" and its all set to the same guitar riff that doesn't change or do anything different, it's all very clunky so I'll pass on this and hope it doesn't become a hit.


Rating 4/10


Song: No Tears Left to Cry
Artist: Ariana Grande



I am not going to go into the whole thing to do with the awful events in Manchester and how this song deals with it and the whole debate over whether or not it should have been a ballad because I'd rather talk about how much fun this song is and it's about freaking time we got a song that was pure fun on the charts, heck, "No Tears Left to Cry" is a jam in many ways that is reminiscent of late 80s early 90s Janet Jackson (Look up "Runaway" and you'll get what I am talking about). I really enjoyed this and hope it's a mega hit for her.


Rating: 9/10


Best of the Week: "No Tears Left to Cry" by Ariana Grande

Worst: "2002" by Anne-Marie


No New Music Friday review for releases on Friday 25th April, not all that interesting a week. Check out "Time" by Gretta Ray amd "Brooklyn in Summer" by Aloe Blacc.

Next week:
"The Way I Am" by Charlie Puth (he has released pretty much half of his album "VoiceNotes" now)
"Bloom" by Troye Sivan (Out May 3)
"Hunger" by Florence and The Machine (Out May 3)
"You Can Cry" by Marshmello, Juicy J feat. James Arthur
"Jump" by Julia Michaels
"Accelerate" by Christina Aguilera

Beyond that who knows!