Icona Pop - Girlfriend

The key to Icona Pop's success is their defiant lack of self-awareness. Breakthrough single "I Love It" was a simple electropop onslaught with the same couple of shouty empowerment rants repeated throughout the song - but to any criticism, their fans were given a useful automatic response: "I don't care, I love it!" This carefree, hedonistic and shameless attitude lifts Icona Pop out of the guilty-pleasure bracket and firmly into credibility. 

That's precisely why new single "Girlfriend" also works. Production wise, the track is almost identical to "I Love It", all pulsating electro basslines and commercial dance beats. The track also has the sexually ambiguous undertones of the most obvious kind, and distorted vocals aside, the structure and hooks of a two-a-penny Katy Perry track. But combined with the girls' playfulness and lack of hollywood glamour and ego, the simplicity and commerciality of their music goes from potentially tedious to charming, tongue-in-cheek and 'feel-good' in the most natural sense.

"I Love It" has become a worldwide hit, but Icona Pop clearly don't take fame very seriously at all, and why should they? It's a farce that can turn likeable artists into holier-than-thou popstars, making unconvincing and passionless music - Icona Pop could not be further from this world. What they do take seriously though is having fun, and delivering that sense of fun in the simplest, most accessible way - through Chart Pop.

Icona Pop are totally reinventing the idea of what it takes to have a worldwide hit, and it doesn't involve any image or pretense whatsoever - just catchy songs that remind us not to take ourselves so seriously. And "Girlfriend" is definitely one of those, and with any luck will be as big as "I Love It".

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