GivePopAChance's Summer Playlist 2014!

GivePopAChance is going on a hiatus, but before we go, we'll leave you with our Summer 2014 playlist, featuring our favourite pop and dance tracks of the year so far. 

From balearic nu disco to edgy trap-flecked R&B, glorious summery dancepop to simmering electropop, the playlist showcases what we consider to be the very best summer anthems you'll hear all year, from sunrise to sunset to twilight.

Have a great summer!

- Joe, 17.05.14

NEW MUSIC: Frankmusik - By Nicole (Highlights)

Frankmusik is some kind of modern pop hero, and quite possibly the UK's guiding light for truly independent music. After a year of using social media to share his every move, emotion and frustration during the process of making this album, it would be a bummer if "By Nicole" was anything less than exceptional. Luckily it's more than exceptional.

I'm not here to review the album in detail, but I will tell you it's his most colourful, organic and human sounding effort yet. Whilst still being essentially electropop, live instruments pop up everywhere, weaving a delicate 3-dimensional tapestry that the "Do It In The A.M." Frank would never have considered. Take the lilting guitars on the verses of "Misdemeanor" and "These Streets" - gorgeous. And the double bass/marimba texture on the verses "Go"? Subtle but somehow breathtaking.

"Misdemeanor", "Go" and first single "These Streets" are my album highlights because they are the sound of an artist simultaneously at his artistic and commercial peak. Their big pop choruses could easily stand out on his exceptional debut Complete Me, with a warmth and maturity that Vince wasn't in touch with back when he recorded it. On "Misdemeanor", Frank talks of conquering his fear of getting older at one point, admitting "the future's a place I feel I don't belong", whilst "Go" could well be about the same girl from "Confusion Girl", but this time Vince is wiser, wryly encouraging Ms Confusion to "go and do what your friends say, they didn't like me anyway."

But best of all is "These Streets". It might not seem like an obvious first single, with its subtle, subdued "Black and Gold"-esque pulse, but placed at the very end of a focused, reflective and forward thinking album, it comes across as the perfect curtain call, or perhaps the perfect 'to be continued'. It's a break-up song, like so many of Vince's are, but when he says "strangers pass by where you were once there by my side", he shrugs it off with a sweet "I've got these streets". 

After 7 years of Vince singing mournful tales of 'what if?', and even one unconvincing (yet beautiful) track named "Final Song (To You)", this finally feels like the end of this chapter and the beginning of a new one for Vince, musically and lyrically. And judging by the raw, idea-crammed By Nicole, there is so much more new inspiration in him, growing by the second and bursting to be expressed.

Below is the one take video of "These Streets". It features nothing more than Vince standing under a bridge somewhere in London (on the route of the 152, if you pay attention), but I dare you not to fall slightly in love with this man whilst watching it.

FOR FANS OF: Sam Sparro, Bastille, The 1975

- Joe Copplestone, 28.04.14

NEW MUSIC: Betty Who - Slow Dancing EP

No sophomore slump here. Betty Who, the 21 year old Aussie synthpop sensation who's currently winning the hearts of all kinds of music fan worldwide, delivers the perfect kind of second EP - everything we loved about the first EP whilst showcasing more sides of Betty herself as well as countless pleasant surprises.

Slow Dancing, if this is at all possible, is more gleefully 80s than The Movement, stepping confidently out of the sharp Robyn mould, and injecting more life and even sex into proceedings. Check out the absurb but brilliant guitar solo in the funky Paula Abdul-meets-Katy-Perry/Soon-to-be-fan-favourite "Alone Again" and the sweet, burbling 80s Soul/R&B of irresistibly beautiful "Lovin' Start", surely perfect for the last dance at every 1980s prom ever.

Despite the slow-mo groove of "Lovin' Start", the EP's Slow Dancing title doesn't quite deliver what it suggests musically (thank god). However, lyrically and emotionally we hear Betty in a more confessional mood. Whilst previous songs like "High Society" and "Somebody Loves You" celebrated life and love, "Heartbreak Dream" laments a broken relationship, despite it's explosive pop exterior, and closer "Silas" is breathtaking and hypnotic; it's muffled guitar arpeggios and fragile, almost choral vocal could almost be mistaken for Daughter.

Yet to produce even one song that is anything less than show stopping, and now nine songs down the road, Betty Who could be well on her way to change the pop music world with one fell, debut album shaped, swoop. If she hasn't already.

FOR FANS OF: Robyn, Katy Perry, CHVRCHES

- Joe Copplestone, 16.04.14