Strangely, we have twice posted Wham! on here, but never George Michael solo work.
And yes, when I posted this last year, I very clearly called it more of a George Michael solo song, but it wasn't in name. THIS was.
This was Michael's second solo single, but also, probably his most iconic single. It held the top of the Billboard charts for four weeks in 1988, becoming the biggest single of the year by ANY artist. The song was never intended to be a single - until it was and THAT is when the songwriter - not coincidentally, George Michael - added the famous guitar solo.
The pipe organ at the beginning is actually a nod to a Wham! song, "Freedom".
And c'mon, the song is just fun.
25 years later, he performed the song live and it still sounded great.
I'm guessing a lot of you who are indie pop fans are saying "well, it's about time he got here."
I got here. This draft has been kicking around for months.
And really, Beatrice Laus is one of the greatest and most accomplished singer/songwriters of her generation, so it's surprising she's not a household name already. But it's starting to happen - this was a top 40 Rock chart song in the United States and was also a hit in New Zealand. From her fantastic album This Is How Tomorrow Moves, this song was released as a single in late 2024 and is an absolute gem.
I was originally going to post this last week.
I'm glad I waited, because she performed this song THIS WEEKEND at Coachella, and that was a delightful performance that I now get to share with you.
I've been really bad at updating this blog because I have been consumed with work and, really, the Canadian election that's coming in a couple of week. So, I figured I'd borrow I post I already had written for March 2025 and post it today.
And I chose a hell of a Canadian to post about today - Lowell.
Did you know that Lowell was nominated for a Juno in a non-performer category in 2025? And WON?!
Yep. She's a songwriter. And a Canadian one at that.
She was also nominated for a Grammy, by the way. Song of the Year. For "Texas Hold-Em", which she co-wrote.
Although it's been a few years, she is a musician in her own right as well, despite her non-performer nomination. Born Elizabeth Lowell Boland and Toronto-based, she was born in Calgary in 1991 and has collaborated with a lot of pop and rock artists we've featured on this blog. She's also produced - she co-produced the 2023 breakthrough album by The Beaches, Blame My Ex.
This song, from 2014, from her album We Loved Her Dearly, is dreamy noise experimentation, at once interesting and different. Lyrically, she's been called "the next Kanye West." I get it. Anyway, I encourage your timely listen.
The song also sounds great stripped down to piano, like in this 2015 performance.
Why does every Canadian artist I listen to release new music in EARLY APRIL right after I dedicate a month to them?
And yet, here we are. Our favorite record mogul (owner of Bravo Musique) with "œ" in her name has a new single out today. And, frankly, it's a bright and fun banger.
This MAY be the first time we've ever had a song with Bing Crosby credited as a songwriter, but he is. You see, he wrote the lyrics for a song called "My Woman". And, Dua Lipa and her songwriting team were writing this song with a disco feel..... and one night, one of her songwriters started singing the song "Your Woman" by White Town over top of the pieces of "Love Again" they had already laid down.
Dua thought it was from Star Wars.
Anyway, they laid pieces of Bing's recording over top of what they had already - with some significant pitch correction. So, Bing, and not Jyoti Mishra, got a songwriting credit, because, despite what you've heard on social media, Dua didn't sample "Your Woman". Both "Your Woman" and "Love Again" sampled the same parts of "My Woman".
The more you know.
Anyway, it's a cool, disco-y song and adding the sample makes it better.
This was a pretty big hit song for Dua Lipa, especially in Europe, so she performs it live a lot. However, I love this version she did with Elton John and a bunch of strings live-performing the "My Woman" sample. It takes on a less disco and more torchsong feeling, but it still works, really well.
It's rare that I have a theme for a week and blow it before the first post.
My theme was - Artists that I've Never Posted Before.
And, while it's true that I have personally not written a Kate Nash post, Scott did.
So, screw that theme for the week.
This song was a single from her fourth album, 2018's Yesterday Was Forever, a Kickstarter-funded project that combines her riot grrl tendencies with some indie folk-rock sounds. The album's themes revolve around her mental health, which she clearly addresses in this song AND the video.
And yes, this was released during her time on GLOW.
I mentioned that the album was Kickstarter-funded. It took her five years to record and release the album, and the songs didn't magically materialize in 2018. No, in fact, this is a live performance from 2016, one of her first of this song. It's a little different, but not dramatically.
But, like the song didn't materialize in 2018, it also didn't disappear, and she still performs it live - and it is a crowd favorite.
I am quite certain there was probably no doubt we were getting here.
But let's start with the obvious: this song makes heavy use of a sample from a classic song by Goyte and Kimbra (itself making heavy use of a sample) and I don't want people to forget the Kimbra part of this.
But this song is all Doechii, the 2025 Grammy Award winner for best rap album....and the song's social media following parlayed itself into her first Top 10 hit and the first huge hit of 2025. The song is happy and lighthearted and both anxious and energetic. Anxious energy - THAT'S what I was looking for.
However, a lot of you don't know that this isn't where the story started. It started with a young woman who left her job to focus on music and recorded a song in her bedroom in 2019.
Seriously. SHE RECORDED THIS IN HER BEDROOM SIX YEARS AGO.
Fast forward to 2023. Sleepy Hallow caught her song, and sampled it.
THAT got some attention, including the attention of social media.
So Doechii rerecorded her vocals and rereleased the song, and it blew up.
The hardest part of Maple Leaf March is the great music being made in the other 190-odd nations in the world.
And usually, if you look at my Spotify stats for March, my most listened to artist is almost always going to be Canadian.
Not this year.
2-10, absolutely Canadian.
#1 was an AMERICAN artist and I'm frankly a little surprised, but not a lot. My family would not be surprised, I would assume.
3 of my top 4 listened to songs in the last month are by one artist - Soccer Mommy.
And two of them are "Driver". Yeah, one of them is the stripped version from Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The third is this song, the opening track and 4th single from her experimental and groundbreaking 2020 album color theory, where she incorporated a bunch of chunky downstroked chords with a number of weird samples and unusual synth choices. They all work, by the way - the entire album is incredible, end-to-end, with this being my favorite of a great collection.
Hey, if you end up loving this song as much as I do, you can sing along with the official karaoke.
Anyway, you know we're coming at you with a couple of live versions, and this first one is something of a historic doozy. color theory was released at the end of February 2020. As part of the promotional tour, Soccer Mommy was supposed to do an NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
Then a pandemic happened. And, well, NPR stopped hosting these. However, they had the idea to have artists do these concerts from their own homes..... and THIS was the FIRST one, in March 2020.
"bloodstream" was the first song she played and it's beautiful in its acoustic format..
Live music did return, and this performance from 2021 of the song - with Sophie in a cape! - is one of my favorites, truly illustrating the chunky guitar rifts.
Well, #MapleLeafMarch is over for another year. Guess it's time to get back to the American artists we all love.
Never mind that I'm writing this in January the same day I wrote this post. I should really be working on a Monday post. Oh well.
The reason I wanted to put this today is that my birthday is in March. And, because of what I do in March, I posted this song on my birthday. This year, as I was researching the other post, I realized that I was the same age as Laura Branigan was when she passed away in 2004. Which means I'm older than she was now.
This cover - of an Italian song - was her biggest hit by far, and at the time of its release, it spent 36 weeks on the Billboard chart, which, at the time, was longer than any song by a female artist had ever been there. It peaked at #2 in 1982, kept from the top spot by the juggernaut that was [checks notes] Toni Basil.
I mention it was an Italian cover. The original was performed by Umberto Tozzi, who also was co-writer on the song.
It should sound really familiar, but lyrically, it's very different. This is a love song. Branigan's version was about a woman out of control.
Tozzi DID record an English version of his song, with lyrics translated by Jonathan King. THIS retained the love song aspect of the lyrics.
It's not the same song exactly as the Italian version, either - it's very much an imaginary woman here.
By the way, Jonathan King recorded his version as well, and it was a minor UK hit. It's barely worth mentioning. His songwriting was good, though.
But back to Laura Branigan.
In January 2019, the St. Louis Blues were in last place in the NHL Western Conference, so they.... adopted a theme song and went on a 19-game winning streak. They ended up making the playoffs, and won the Stanley Cup in seven games that year.
So, yeah, "Play Gloria!" is a thing in St. Louis now.
