TRACK OF THE WEEK

Laura Mvula
Ready Or Not

Laura Mvula here, proving the old adage “if you just put Laura Mvula’s voice on something, it sounds more-or-less good”. She’s taken a run at the Fugees’ Ready Or Not, which is brave considering it’s easily one of the top 100 songs ever recorded. But the result is good, falling somewhere between a really squidgy remix and a curiously jingly festive upbeat number. And, no, I can’t explain how; it just works.

Alicia Keys ft A$AP Rocky
Blended Family (What You Do For Love)

What Alicia Keys has done here is turn a tricky conversation with her stepson about how she isn’t his real mum but loves him anyway into a song about love, which is fine, but really makes you wonder: what other difficult motherly chats is she turning into album filler? Expect That Thing You Saw Us Doing In Our Bedroom Was Actually Very Beautiful and Your Pocket Money Is Rescinded For The Foreseeable to drop soon.

Afrojack ft Ty Dolla $ign
Gone

It is my sad duty to report that Ty Dolla $ign is horny again, and this time he’s recruited Afrojack to help him. “You know this suite is Presidential,” Ty hiccups, walking round the most 14-year-old boy fantasy music video of all time (20 Instagram models and a black Bugatti in a villa in bright daylight), “you about to get elected.” The song itself – that half-arsed Euro dance Afrojack specialises in – seems a mis-step for Ty, whose star has risen this past couple of years. The things a man will settle for when he is horned up.

Kings Of Leon
Find Me

We are seven albums in to the reign of Kings Of Leon, and to be fair there isn’t too far to go once you get stadium big beyond making Sex On Fire rip-offs with ever dwindling returns. But Find Me isn’t like that: it’s a slightly harder edged Boys Of Summer rip-off instead. Shimmering guitars, real engine of a bassline, and some curiously weak vocals. Not a classic.

Jamie T
Tescoland

Whatever your opinion on Jamie T – that he fills the same indie machismo void left by Oasis by repeating their trick of making the same song again and again for pilled-up lads to rip their tops off to and do a sort of half-fight, half-dance at each other, for example – you’ve got to admit he’s really done what he normally does here. Which consists of playing guitar so frantically it’s as if he’s running down some stairs and talking-not-singing about Tesco.