Hello! It is, once again, Monday and I am, once again, coming at you with a roundup of the best of the best of the new songs released last week.
Notable omissions from this blast are anything from Kanye's new record Donda, which felt like too much of a time commitment with its 27-song 1hr 48min play time, and Drake's new album, because life is too short to try to listen to someone I can't bring myself to like.
Oh, also, for anyone who missed it, check out my post on the Top 20 songs that came out in August.
Alright, here we go - the 16 best songs from last week | SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Don’t Shut Me Down by ABBA - ABBA's first new songs in four decades in and of themselves demand that you listen to them, even if they're not much to write home about (and this was the better one). Unsurprisingly, sounds a lot like an ABBA song
Fake Believe/I'm A Mess by Baby Queen - Queen of the babies and lyricist extraordinaire, Bella Latham, rounded up a bunch of her best songs and some new ones for a 10-track album. Whole thing is worth a listen, but these two stand out: Fake Believe because “I'm a saint because I pray/Jesus died for me to say/"You're not human, you're gay” and I’m A Mess because: “Somebody please stop the world, I think I would like to alight/It's not for me, I can't believe I've paid two decades for this ride”
Million To One by Camila Cabello - the new Cinderella film was … certainly something. Felt a bit like a pantomime with too much budget, and this original song for it is a bit much, but hits the inspiring-Disney-princess-ballad mark
Record Player (with AJR) by Daisy the Great - unsurprising that internerds AJR have been enlisted on the remix of this TikTok hit, a nice elevation of a relentlessly catchy hook
The 90s by FINNEAS - not entirely sure what it means, but “Lay your guard down in your garden” is quite the lyric
Lonely by Imagine Dragons - Dan Reynolds and co have released their fifth studio album, bit of a mixed bag but this is the best of the bunch
Eternal Love by JLS - very sensible of JLS to enlist Ed Sheeran to co-write their comeback single - the right balance of pop relevance and the definitive JLS signature sound. Time to get my JLS hoodie out
Only Us by Kaitlyn Denver + Ben Platt - if you are anything like me, you were already very excited to see the film adaption of Dear Evan Hansen, and you will be even more so now that you've heard this gorgeous duet
Different Bridges, Same River by Kris Allen - this one has too much metaphor to get my head around, but Kris sounds great and the lyric 'Why are we building different bridges to cross the same river’ sounds quite good doesn't it?
ex i never had by LANY - albums galore this week, including sadpop aficionados LANY's 4th record gg bb xx featuring this very good sadpop song
Love (Sweet Love) by Little Mix - its a banging new Little Mix song, what else do you need to know?
More by Sam Ryder - i always have more room for vocally-talented men singing loud, soaring pop songs with vague imagery - this one is particularly buoyant
Nights Like This by St. Lundi - a big, senseless pop-rock tune, very Onerepublic-esque, a lot of piano bashing, highly enjoyable
Don’t Break The Heart by Tom Grennan - Tom Grennan has decided that it ain't broke and has given us five more songs on a repackage of his recent album that sound a lot like all the other songs on said recent album. Would be lying to myself if I didn't admit I am loving this shiny new full-throttle angst-ballad
Oh shit… are we in love? by Valley - a nice one to finish off this week, a lovely little indie-pop song - very Lauv/Troye Sivan