Starley is an artist who’s come to prominence only very recently, and the song she’s known for is a remix, so we haven’t got much to judge her on as yet. However, I decided to include her here simply because I believe Call On Me will be one of the first big hits of 2017.
Call On Me was originally released as a mid-tempo soul-pop tune back in July, on Australian independent label Central Station Records. It was picked up and re-released in October by Epic, and she hired a UK/US-based management team, Insanity Artists. However, the original version was quickly outpaced on Spotify by the remix by Ryan Riback, who had turned it into a Sigala-esque happy banger. She’s the 39th most popular artist on Spotify today, with 90 million plays on the Riback remix alone, and the streaming numbers have already translated into chart success across the world. So far she’s made the official charts in 19 countries, including no.1 in Sweden, top 10 in Norway and Belgium, and she’s on the verge of breaking into the UK top 40 with a peak of no.45 last week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rosnkgE7R4w
As with Raye, who I featured yesterday, Starley now has the challenge of creating music that appeals to fans of her breakthrough hit, which is very different to her usual sound. However, Starley has a few things on her side. Live videos show she’s a lively performer, dancing around on stage, and Insanity is best known for their work with dance artists, such as DJ Fresh and Matrix & Futurebound. This all suggests she’ll be open to the re-positioning, and prepared to capitalise on her hit with tracks that her new fans will love. She might just become the artist that Imani Williams, who suffered one of the most disappointing launches of 2016, was meant to be.
Click here to find out more about This Must Be Pop’s Stars of 2017 and come back on 19th Dec to vote for the artists you think, and hope, will be the biggest pop breakthrough of 2017. The results will be announced in the Future Pop mailer on 2nd Jan.