Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe. All my Songs of the Week are featured on my Top of the Poptastic playlist, along with the rest of my faves from the year so far.
Pop fans might overlook Tie Me Down as it’s attributed to the producer rather than the artist, but actually it would be a great single for a young female pop star. Despite the EDM touches, it’s really just pure pop – the kind of thing a teenage Disney actress would record for their first album with Hollywood Records, before they try to reposition themselves as a mature artist (at the grand old age of 17). Elley Duhé can also be heard on the current hit Happy Now by Zedd, while Gryffin is best known for his remixes of acts such as Tove Lo and Years & Years. Gryffin said in an interview that he tried over 10 different vocalists before choosing Elley to record this song, a similar story to the recording of The Middle by Zedd. And there’s another thing they have in common: they were both co-written, and I assume demoed, by one of the best songwriters of the moment, Sarah Aarons. This is just making me even more intrigued to hear what Sarah’s own music would be like if she “did a Julia Michaels.” Hmm…