Kelsea Ballerini - Homecoming Queen (Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park 2019)

I haven't been able to find a full live set by Kelsea on YouTube, so here she is performing 'Miss Me More' with Halsey at CMT Crossroads earlier this year. It is well worth watching.

Halsey - Graveyard (Live From The AMAs / 2019)

This is Halsey performing at the American Music Awards in 2019. You can watch her full Pandora Live set, also from 2019, here.

Fantasy Festival number 8: The lineup

Georgie: Mansfield singer/songwriter Georgie has toured with Jake Bugg and her live album Georgie: Live! was recorded at Nottingham Trinity Church and released last year. You can find out more about Georgie here. 

Geowulf: Australian dream pop duo Geowulf are onto their second album, from which the recent single 'He's 31' was taken. You can find out about them here. 

SOAK: Northern Irish Bridie Monds-Watson, aka SOAK, released her second album, Grim Town, in 2019. It included the highly acclaimed single 'Everybody Loves You'. You can find out more here. 

The Regrettes: The LA punk bands second album How do you love? was released in 2019, and was an express ride through a landscape of hyperactive punk pop anthems. You can find out more here.

Nasty Cherry: Nasty Cherry are a manufactured pop act with a difference: Their svengali is Charli XCX. Also, in a nod towards the Monkees, they had their own TV show before they played their first gig. Also like the Monkees, they write surprisingly good songs and put on a good live show. You can find out more here. 

MØ: Danish singer, songwriter and producer Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen has been making innovative electro flavoured music since 2012, and has released two albums. Perhaps best known for her collaborations with Iggy Azaelia ('Beg for it') and Major Lazor and DJ Snake ('Lean On'), she has been compared to Grimes (musically) and Lana Del Rey (vocally). You can find out more here. 

Halsey: "Anti-Popstar" Halsey seemed like a logical choice as a headliner. She makes pop music, and operates in the pop world, but she also plays it awkward often enough for it to be hard to box her up and easily market her. Her music can be high gloss, big, emotional and slick, but it can also be glitchy and messy, as her three albums have shown, and she's not afraid to mix politics with pop. You can find out more here. 

Halsey & Kelsea Ballerini Perform 'Miss Me More' | CMT Crossroads

There's a couple of funny stories and coincidences that led me to choosing this video for you today.

To begin with, this is a song we used to have a whole routine worked out to at my weekly adult jazz dance class. I have continued my dance classes over Zoom during lockdown but the adult jazz class is on hold at the moment, and I miss it.

Secondly, I was going to use the video to 'Miss me more' only I realised as I was about to that, as with Halsey and Lauren Jauregui's 'Strangers', it's a video revolving around the actions of two women in a boxing ring. And that can get a bit samey after a bit.

Kelsey Ballerina is on record as being very influenced by Shania Twain, and you can really hear that in this song, and see it in the campness of the performance. The audience reaction to it is reminiscent of a million hen parties going ballistic to 'Man, I Feel Like A Woman', and it's exhilarating to watch, but there's a serious note to the song that goes beyond the two fingered salute and gleeful liberation: There's hints that our heroine was leaving a very toxic relationship in which her partner systematically remodelled her personality and, as such, there is a darkness at the heart of the catchy riffs and full on glee: She got out. Not everyone does.

Halsey - Strangers ft. Lauren Jauregui

There's a great chapter on Halsey in Hannah Ewens excellent book, Fangirls, which includes a lengthy discussion of 'Strangers' and it's importance to the Halsey fanbase. Everything about this song, and it's accompanying high gloss video, is full on turbo charged melodrama and yet there's an emotional honesty to it somehow that feels real. A perfectly crafted high octane, high emotion pop song.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue #6

Christmas star decoration

Boxing Day always seems to require something vaguely poignant and slightly overblown. Because even if you don't have a hangover on Boxing Day, there's always a vague sense of disappointment and ennui somehow.

Let the majestic Dinah Washington lift your mood this morning...

I heard the record shop at the Piccadilly Approach end of Newton Street blaring Dinah out over their external speakers one evening on my way to the bus stop, and while raising a smile, it also made me feel like I was in the supermarket scene in Morvern Callar, or else the Bonnie and Clyde homage scene in Run Lola Run.

What follows is a sudden jolt into nihilism and dystopeia courtesy of Halsey's 'New Americana', which is best described as post Lana Del Rey and post Hunger Games... 

By contrast, Dusty Springfield's impeccable (of course!) take on the Lesley Gore classic 'You Don't Own Me' is a different kind of restlessness.

From one outstanding singer to an outstanding, and much under appreciated singer songwriter, namely Laura Nyro. 'You don't love me when I cry' is the opening track from the classic New York Tendaberry album from 1969, and is a defining example of edge of the seat gripping, while also being very sad and beautiful.

Image of Christmas star decoration by Cazz Blase, copyright Cazz Blase, all rights reserved.