Xposition - April, 2017

Attention!!!

The 2017 Radio Disney Music Awards 2017 was held in March where Fifth Harmony and Kelsea Ballerini were the big winners. Song of the Year however went to Shawn Mendes’ Treat You Better while Britney Spears was honored with the first Icon Award for her contribution to music. Some of the best performances of the night included Hailee Steinfeld’s medley of Most Girls and Starving, Train’s Play That Song, Julia Michaels’ Issues and of course the Spears’ tribute where a medley of Oops!... I Did It Again, Circus, …Baby One More Time and Till The World Ends were sung by Kelsea Ballerini, Sofia Carson, Hailee Steinfeld and Jamie Lynn Spears. The other significant winners of the night were:

·         Best Female Artist: Ariana Grande

·         Best Male Artist: Niall Horan

·         Best Group: Fifth Harmony

·         Best Band: DNCE

·         Breakout Artist of the Year: Alessia Cara

·         Best New Artist: Grace VanderWaal

·         Best Collaboration: Machine Gun Kelly & Camila Cabello – Bad things

·         Fiercest Fans: Harmonizers

·         Country Favorite Artist: Kelsea Ballerini

·         Country Favorite Song: Kelsea Ballerini – Peter Pan

Next up we have the 2017 Billboard Latin Music Awards where Nicky Jam made a massive comeback winning 6 awards where his song Hasta El Amanecer won the Hot Latin Song of the Year as well as Digital, Streaming and Latin Rhythm Song of the year. Artist of the Year was won by Late Juan Gabriel who also won the Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year – Male, Latin Pop Albums Artist of the Year – Solo and his album Los Duo 2 won Top Latin and Latin Pop Album of the Year. Enrique Iglesias took away 4 awards including Latin Pop Songs Artist of the Year – Solo and Latin Pop Song of the Year for his collaboration with Wisin on Duele El Corazon. Other winners of the night include:

·         Artist of the Year: New – CNCO

·         Tour of the Year: Marc Anthony

·         Social Artist of the Year: Jennifer Lopez

·         Hot Latin Song Artist of the Year: Female – Shakira

·         Hot Latin Songs Label of the Year: Sony Music Latin

2017 Academy of Country Music Awards was also held in April where Jason Aldean was awarded Entertainer of the Year. Meanwhile, ACM Song of the Year went to Thomas Rhett’s Die A Happy Man and Album of the Year was awarded to Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of these Wings. The other winners of the night were:

·         Male Vocalist of the Year: Thomas Rhett

·         Female Vocalist of the Year: Miranda Lambert

·         Vocal Group of the Year: Little Big Town

·         Songwriter of the Year: Lori McKenna

·         Single Record of the Year: Florida Georgia Line – H.O.L.Y

·         Video of the Year: Artists of Then, Now & Forever – Forever country

The world’s apparent greatest songwriter, Ed Sheeran has privately settled a case against him which was lodged last year. In 2016, Sheeran was sued by songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard, writers of Matt Cardle's 2011 single Amazing, for USD 20 million for copyright infringement. US judge James Selna confirmed Ed’s case had been dismissed last month after the Suffolk born star reached an agreement with the writers, with no admission of guilt. Details of the settlement have not been made public. Following this saga, his titanic global hit Shape of You also came under fire as critiques alleged plagiarism from TLC’s legendary 90’s smash hit No Scrubs. Since then Sheeran has added both Kandi Burruss and Tameka Cottle who penned the R&B track as co-writers alongside the song's producer Kevin Briggs.

Glastonbury Festival 2017 has announced its full line-up where along with its headlining acts – Ed Sheeran, Foo Fighters and Radiohead, a number of other high profile artists such as Lorde, Shaggy, Katy Perry, Clean Bandit, Birdy and Stormzy are to perform. Glastonbury will take place at Worthy Farm, Somerset from June 23-25.

Good news for N-Dubz fans as the Hip-Hop trio have indicated that they will reunite in the near future. Fazer confirmed that the group was anyway only on a hiatus and that he along with Dappy and Tulisa will return to the studio to produce new music. When that will exactly be God only knows.

Moving onto chart news, in the US Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You remained unmoved at the top during the entire month accumulating 12 non-consecutive weeks at No.1. Meanwhile, Drake’s Passionfruit, Kendrick Lamar’s Humble and Harry Style’s debut single Sign of the Times all debuted in the top 10. Future’s Mask Off and Sam Hunt’s Body Like a Back Road also entered the top 10.  

In the UK, Sheeran’s reign with Shape of You was only interrupted when Harry Styles debuted atop the charts with his Sign of the Times.  During the month Julia Michaels’ Issues, Zedd & Alessia Cara’s Stay and Kendrick Lamar’s Humble all entered the top 10.  

Other songs which became popular during the month were: 

1.       Drake ft. Travis Scott & Quavo – Portland

2.       Future ft. Rihanna – Selfish

3.       Kyle ft. Lil Yachty – iSpy

4.       Zayn ft. PARTYNEXTDOOR – Still got time

5.       Stargate ft. Pink & Sia – Waterfall

6.       Lana Del Rey ft. The Weeknd – Lust for life 

Till the next beat...

At Ease!!!

MICHAEL LEARNS TO ROCK ~ Every Romantic's Guilty Pleasure ~

Attention!!!

All Asians born from the late 1970s to the early 1990s know almost all of their hit songs. While Sri Lanka as an insignificant isle in terms of the mainstream music industry does not witness concerts of many top notch musicians, we are indeed privileged to have these Danish guys rocking Colombo for the second time.

Michael Learns to Rock, was formed as a foursome in 1988 composed of Jascha Richter, Mikkel Lentz, Kåre Wanscher and Søren Madsen. They have now sold over 11 million records worldwide for a career spanning for almost thirty years. They are extremely famous in Asia, mostly due to their subdued clean image and also because their love songs are very pure with little or no hint of sexual innuendo.

Although the quality of their songs was on a level of those boy bands of the nineties, they never made ground in the two big music markets – US and UK. However, their popularity in Asia and Scandinavia is undeniable as they are overplayed on radio stations, television music shows and in any sort of lounge atmosphere. Theirs is a very pop/soft rock sound with any hardly fast paced beats or rhythms.

Their eponymous debut album was released in 1991 and peaked at No.1 in the home country. This album contained their signature hit The Actor which peaked at number one in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.

Their second album Colours released in 1993 contained another two hits – Sleeping Child and 25 Minutes. Their third album Played on Pepper was released in 1995 which contained their second No.1 hit, That’s Why (You Go Away) and a somewhat fast paced pop rock single Someday.

                                                                          

In 1996 the band released their first edition of their greatest hits titled Paint My Love – Greatest Hits wherein the title song Paint My Love, became their greatest love song. The song composed by lead singer Jascha Richter was initially written in Danish – Kun med dig – as the Danish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest of 1996 sung by Dorthe Andersen and Martin Loft. However, it was one of seven entries voted off in a pre-contest semifinal. This led the band to release the English version in their album.

The band took to the studio again and released their fourth album Nothing To Lose in 1997 which contained the hits Breaking My Heart, I’m Gonna Be Around and Something You Should Know.

In 1999, the band rebranded themselves with the simple acronym MLTR and released another compilation album under the same name. This album contained their hit Strange Foreign Beauty.  In a process undertaken by MLTR for the first time, the song was made by compiling the best details from recordings of ideas made individually by the four members. This album included their previous hits, either remixed or refined in some way by notable international producers. This greatest hits album went to the top of the Danish sales charts (the second MLTR album after their first album to do so), as well in Sweden and Portugal, and logged sales of nearly a million copies.

In 2000, Søren Madsen left the band and the remaining members decided to continue as a trio and released Blue Night which was also moderately successful and produced hits such as You Took My Heart Away, Angel Eyes and the title track. In 2001, they released another compilation album titled 19 Love Ballads with all their best singles and an original single titled The Ghost of You. 

In 2004, the band released their sixth studio album which was another eponymous album. This album produced hits such as Frostbite and Take Me To Your Heart. Take Me To Your Heart was one of the most downloaded songs in Asia that year exceeding 6 million downloads alone and this memorable ballad proved to be their last hit single worldwide.

After 2004, the band went on to release two more studio albums Eternity in 2008 and Scandinavia in 2012. Thereafter, the band celebrated their 25^th anniversary in 2014 with the release of a compilation album 25: The Complete Singles wherein two original singles Silent Times and Call on Love were released. In 2016, they released an Extended Play titled With Love which produced the singles We Shared The Night and Dream Girl.

Although I have covered in this review almost all the songs that were hits for the band, here are some of the other songs which are worth listening to:

·         How many hours

·         Anyway you want it

·         We shared the night

·         More than a friend

·         Nothing to lose

·         Sweetest surprise 

Till the next review...

At Ease!!!