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It is exactly the same blog, just a different name and a different colour.

See you there!

Remember the band Tough Love I was recommending about a week ago? Well, it turns out that they're not entirely new to the music business. One of them is Toby Slater, lead singer of 90s indie boyband Catch! He was also one of the stars of the much-mocked (but actually quite ace) Romo movement. Hopefully Tough Love will do better than his fellow Catch member Wayne Murray's utterly brilliant, yet barely remembered, band The Honeymoon.

We've had T.I. sampling O-Zone, Akon covering The Underdog Project, and everyone borrowing Darin and K-otic's songwriters (Red One and Toby Gad). If a year ago someone had told me this was going to happen, I would have joked, "oh yeah, and maybe Flo Rida will do a version of Blue by Eiffel 65!" Well... he actually has! The song is called Sugar and you can listen to it here. It even features Wynter Gordon, who released the brilliant Surveillance last year. Right Round is set to be no.1 in the UK this week, and Blue (Da Ba Dee) was no.1 back in 1999, so I think we can safely predict that Sugar will be a huge hit this summer. The Europop sound is perfect for summer, after all.

If there is anything I will remember 2009 for, it will be that it was very strange. You just don't know what will happen next! So far, as well as the above, we've had acts (like Erik Hassle and Adiam Dymott) coming from nowhere with the best new music I've heard in years, and even the 99% terrible UK rap/r&b scene has produced some brilliant songs. I really can't wait to see what happens next. Pop music has become exciting again, and I'm incredibly pleased!

When I chose the name of this blog, I didn't think much about it. I was always starting new online projects at that time in my life, and didn't expect to still be writing this blog 6 years later. Writing Dirrrty Pop has never stopped being enjoyable for me. If it ever does, then I'll give up, but unless I change considerably as a person, I can't see that happening. Therefore, I think it is important for the blog to have a name which I am proud of, and that I feel represents its content. There's nothing dirrrty about me or this blog - I love Same Difference, after all, and hate the Pussycat Dolls.

I thought for a long time about what to rename my blog. I consulted some friends and regular readers, and in the end decided the best name would be another one taken from the fantastic song, Pop by *N Sync, which inspired the title Dirrrty Pop. See it like S Club 7 renaming themselves S Club when the 7 in their name became inappropriate, but in this case, nothing is going to change except for the name. And that new name is going to be...

This Must Be... POP!

and the new blog address is going to be http://tmbpop.blogspot.com

I will make the move in a few days, when this message should have got to most of my readers, and I hope to be able to keep this blog address as well, so I can leave a note on it to redirect people. But just in case, if you have friends who you know read this blog, please let them know about the change of name and address. Also, please change any links you might have to this blog on your own website. I really appreciate everybody who visits the site, and who links to me. It's great to be part of the pop blogging community, and I definitely want that to continue.

Tonight is the night when those who didn't quite make it through to the final of Melodifestivalen get another chance to do so. I can't remember anyone ever winning after having been on Andra Chansen (which literally means 'the second chance'), but of course it is important that the places go to deserving people i.e. BWO and Amy. Unfortunately I'm not too confident for BWO, but I think Amy has a good chance. She's also one of 4 acts who didn't go straight to Globen (where the final's held) but have been shortlisted by an international jury, and 1 of them will get a place in the final.

As seems to be the pattern with Melodifestivalen, the winners of Andra Chansen are picked in a pointlessly complex way, but I suppose it does add to the drama a bit. Basically, the 8 acts who are competing are separated into pairs, and the winner of each pair will then go on to compete with the winner of another pair, and the winners of that will go to Globen. I will make a prediction of what will happen, but it's quite difficult to get it right with so many choices to make:

Scotts vs. Sarah Dawn Finer -> Sarah
Lili & Susie vs. BWO -> Lili & Susie
Amy Diamond vs. Star Pilots -> Amy
Rigo vs. Caroline -> Neither, they're both rubbish (but probably Caroline)

Sarah vs. Lili & Susie -> Sarah
Amy vs. Caroline -> Amy (I really hope!)

Then there will be the International Jury, but they have made such random choices, I couldn't say who they'd go for. However, if Amy and Sarah do go through, that will only leave Caroline and Sofia to choose from, so I think it is probably quite inevitable that we will see Caroline in the final, unfortunately. Of course, it could easily go very differently, and it will be fun to see how well I have predicted, as I have in all the past rounds got it almost but not quite exactly right.

I was so pleased to see Popjustice mentioning the super-ace Yeah Yous today, and even happier to see that they've finally got more than one song on their MySpace. I posted If I Could a while ago on Into The Groove when I first heard it and found it stuck in my head for the next week. They're extremely radio-friendly, basically doing what The Feeling set out to do, before they forgot and went boring. They're also a bit like Take That on their Mark Owen singles. There's not one thing original about The Yeah Yous, but they have a great, jolly vibe and I can't see why local radio, Radio 2, and maybe even Radio 1, wouldn't put the new single 15 Minutes on their A-list. All my friends who know nothing about music will love them, and hopefully they'll forget all about Scouting For Girls in the process. Hooray!

He also hasn't aged a bit. Well, according to this ace film anyway:



You can watch all 110 minutes of extreme AWWW-ness on YouTube.

The best singles of February. A rather long list = a rather good month!

1. Taylor Swift - Love Story (Digital Dog Radio Edit)
2. Erik Hassle - Hurtful
3. Pet Shop Boys - Love Etc.
4. Will Young – Let It Go
5. September – Can’t Get Over (UK release)
6. Tinchy Stryder ft. N-Dubz - Number One
7. Annie Lennox – Shining Light
8. Noisettes - Don't Upset The Rhythm
9. Velvet - Chemistry (UK release)
10. Swingfly - Singing That Melody (UK release)
11. The Saturdays - Just Can't Get Enough
12. Lady GaGa - Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)
13. Swingfly - Touch and Go
14. Velvet Inc. - Tricky
15. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
16. Miss Li - I Heard of a Girl
17. Enrique Iglesias ft. Ciara - Taking Back My Love
18. Basic Element - Touch You Right Now
19. Melody Club - Girls Don't Always Wanna Have Fun
20. VV Brown - Leave!
21. Velvet - The Queen
22. Defend Moscow - Manifesto
23. Liam and Me - Say It Out Loud
24. Lasse Lindh & Bandet - Jag Ska Slåss I Dina Kvarter!
25. West End Girls - Little Black Dress
26. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero
27. Marina & the Diamonds - Obsession
28. Lisa Lavie - Angel
29. Darin - See U At The Club
30. Marie Serneholt - Disconnect Me
31. Jonathan Fagerlund - Welcome To My Life
32. Nick Lachey - Patience
33. Nina Söderquist - Tick Tock
34. Cocknbullkid – I’m Not Sorry
35. Markoolio - Kärlekssång från mig
36. Jenny Wilson - The Wooden Chair
37. Platnum - Trippin'
38. Empire of the Sun - We are the People
39. Al, Marc & Sandy - Mike
40. Sweet Rush - Hot Sauce

In case you're new to this blog, I will inform you: Kevin Borg won Idol 2008 in Sweden, and he is utterly adorable (like a Maltese David Archuleta) and highly poptastic. He's got a new single out, Street Lights, and the album, The Beginning, is out on Wednesday! Street Lights isn't very original, but he does a good job with it, and hopefully the album will be of at least this standard throughout. I am a little worried that it has been rushed out without a thought for staying true to Kevin's extreme poptasticness, but he can always make a better 2nd album (like Ola), and we have Alice's album to wait for as well, which is sure to be brilliant. You can listen to Street Lights here, and pre-order your copy of The Beginning here.