BETH DITTO
Oo La La ★★★★
Virgin
In 2006, I interviewed The Gossip backstage in the Temple Bar Music Centre just after they'd released what would become their breakthrough album Standing In The Way of Control. The photographer accompanying me brought along trashy celebrity magazines to use as props for the photoshoot. (Gossip…get it?) But frontwoman Beth Ditto refused to pose reading that week's copy of Heat magazine, since Kate Moss appeared on its cover and she believed the supermodel perpetuated an unrealistic body image that was damaging to young women's self-esteem.
I was impressed by her articulacy and persuaded by the strength of her conviction. A few weeks later, the album was a chart hit and Ditto was photographed leaving a nightclub arm in arm with her new best friend Kate Moss. This taught me an important lesson: musicians are full of shit. Beth Ditto's excellent solo debut Fake Sugar is out now.
LILLIE MAE
Over The Hill and Through The Woods ★★★★
Third Man Records
I've come a little late to this. Lillie Mae Rische is the fiddle player in Jack White's touring band. (She sang Temporary Ground on his Lazaretto album.) A professional musician since childhood, Forever and Then Some is her Dolly Parton-esque debut album.
5 AFTER MIDNIGHT
Up In Here ★★
Syco
Filmed on the streets of sunny Shoreditch, Up In Here is the debut video from former X Factor finalists 5 After Midnight. It contains so many blatant nods to Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk that I genuinely can't tell if it's a homage or a piss-take.
LIAM PAYNE ft. QUAVO
Strip That Down★★
Capitol The Howard Donald of One Direction, Liam Payne, has struck out with very much the Howard Donald of solo singles. It's passable, it's workmanlike, it ended about 10 seconds ago and I couldn't pick it out of a police line-up if my life depended on it.
