Kristian Leontiou – Story Of My Life
I knew nothing about Kristian before I saw his video or heard the song, except that he is Canadian and dresses in a ‘skate punk’ style. Sounds brilliant…not! Have you ever come across a likeable Canadian skate punk singer? Or in fact any likeable Canadian singers at all. Eek! I just remembered Ryan thingy, Canadian Idol (aka Jamie Theakston) who is not someone I like to be reminded of. Anyway, I was pleased to find that this song is a pop ballad with a slight rock edge and Kristian has an OK voice. I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy this because it is frankly, very Canadian (ie. easy to sleep through), but at least it isn’t Avril Lavigne or Ryan Thingy.
Kurt Nilsen – She’s So High
I’ve known this song for about a year but it finally gets it’s UK release this summer. Kurt doesn’t actually look too awful in the video. If you ignore the teeth, he’s fairly normal looking. The song is quite similar to his World Idol winning song, Beautiful Day by U2, except better because that song is rather overrated in my opinion. This is in fact a cover of Tal Bachman’s no.30 hit of a few years ago. It’s done pretty well in Europe, but I doubt Norwegian dentists are very pleased – they are going to get a very bad reputation!
Sarah Connor – Bounce
I first saw this video last August in Germany (her home country) and I was pleased to see it’s finally being released in the UK. It’s also out and doing fairly well in America. If you can’t remember Sarah, she’s best known here for her song Let’s Get Back To Bed Boy featuring TQ. She did release the moderately ace, No Diggity sampling He’s Unbelievable onto the Box in 2002, but it either didn’t chart or wasn’t released in the end. This song has been accused as being a copy of Mary J Blige’s Family Affair and it does sound similar but it’s more of a pop song. I’d like this to do well and it sounded fab on TV compared to the boring British excuse for pop these days, so hopefully it will.