New Pop on the Block

Selena Gomez & The Scene – Love You Like A Love Song (Listen)
In my last New Pop On The Block post I complained about a Disney act, Joe Jonas, being a useless American attempt at a popstar, but Selena Gomez is turning out to be quite the opposite. Although her previous singles have just been quite good, she finally has begun to release music of the standard that should be expected from a globally famous pop singer. I was lucky enough to get a preview of her new album, and it’s one of the best Disney pop albums I’ve ever heard – only second to Ashley Tisdale’s second album. Sadly we all know how well that one did, but Selena seems to be more liked generally than Ashley so I’d like to think she has a better (although still not huge) chance of success. The fact that she has dared to date Justin Bieber even at the risk of death by Belieber makes her pretty cool, after all. Love You Like A Love Song is a definite highlight of the new album, it’s high quality proper pop and I reckon there’s going to be a lot of love for it in the pop fan community.
84% Poptastic!

Talay Riley – Make You Mine (acoustic version)
When I first visited Talay’s website I was excited about his potential simply cos of a clip of this song which was in one of the videos on the site. Sadly none of the singles he released since then had the same appeal. However, he is at last releasing Make You Mine and we will soon get to hear the full studio version. Rather than the tough, unfriendly urban music Talay’s released so far, this is a sweet love song, similar in sound and lyrical content to With You by Chris Brown. I think the studio version will be much better than this acoustic performance (you can hear some of it in this video) but this is enough of a taster to show its potential. As his music hasn’t connected with the British public so far, this is sure to be Talay’s last chance, and if it works the label will say it was supposed to be ‘the big single’ all along. If not he’s probably not going to be getting any more singles! He has however been working with JLS, so fingers crossed there’s a track like this on their next album.
70% Poptastic!