Chart Chasers #16

Hello and welcome to another edition of Chart Chasers. This week there are EIGHT new tracks in the chart for me to listen subject myself to.

First up today is Skrillex. I have heard a few of Skrillex’s tracks before and my ears have never really recovered. He works in the genre of “dubstep”, a term which means ‘only pretending to be music, a genre which entrails making a lot of horrible noise”. Here is Bangarang.

Well that was pretty much what I expected. As dubstep goes this wasn’t too bad. It had something of a tune at least. I still don’t like it very and feel something unspeakable has happened to my ears. 2/5.

Next is Ben Howard with a track called Only Love. I don’t know what this will be like but it sounds nice.

Well yes, that was nice. It was the thought of song of which TV talent show judges would call an easy choice and say the contestant wasn’t really going for it.A typical quite attractive male singer with an acoustic guitar-type song. 3/5.

Next we have the unlikely combo that is Coldplay and Rihanna with Princess of China. This is one of those tracks that I own but haven’t really listened to. Now I shall.

Hmm, it’s pretty much just a Coldplay song with a female voice in it. I quite like it but it just isn’t quite up there with the awesomeness of some of the other tracks on the album. 4/5.

Our third track comes courtesy of Skepta. He’s a DJ bloke isn’t he? Maybe. I don’t really know. The song at least appears that it will have a good message as it’s titled Make Peace Not War.

Unexpected appearance from radio/TV presenter Matt Edmondson there. That was unexpectedly rather brilliant. Skepta is actually a rapper bloke and it was a good choice of music to rap over and worked brillinatly. It’s not very often I like the work of a rapper but in this case I do. 4/5.

Professor Green is back. I still don’t think he actually is a professor. What university does he lecture at? This tracks is called Remedy. Hey, I thought he said he was a Professor not a Doctor.

Well that was one of those songs where the chorus was vaguely OK and the rest wasn’t very exciting. Apart from where BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnball randomly turned up. Some bizarre guest appearances today! Nothing special but enjoyable enough. 3/5.

You might need to press “read more” for the next few songs!

YES! Next up are The Scissor Sisters with a fantastic track called Only the Horses. I love it!

It’s a funky pop song. To me this is at least as good as everything else the Scissor Sisters have created, if not better. Quite what horses have to do with anything I do not know. Try as I might I just can’t work out what on Earth the lyrics are going on about. Still, great song. 5/5.

A newbie brings us our next song. It’s some called D’Banj, who is a big fan of Charles Dickens. Apparently his whole album is named after the works of the great author. This one is called Oliver Twist. (OK, I made up the bit about the album. Unless it does happen to be true which would be weird).

OK so it’s not really anything to do with Dickens. This track reminds me of Pitbull, which is not a good thing. D’Banj has sort of put some reggae into commerical R ‘n’ b. I don’t know why he thought that was a good idea. It wasn’t. 2/5.

Finally, it’s the return of The Saturdays. This lot are a proper girl band who make proper pop songs. I am a little concerned about why this one is called 30 Days though. Perhaps it’s an educational song explaining about how many days are in a month. Or maybe it’s about the menstrual cycle…

Fun fact: One of The Saturdays was here in Winchester at one point last year having lunch with her footballer boyrfriend in a pub. I don’t know which one. This track is a little disappointing for The Sats as they tend to put out stuff that is a bit more catchy than that. It’s a decent enough pop song but isn’t hugely enjoyable. 3/5.