New Music: Robinson - Don't Trust Myself

It’s been a pretty quiet month on Breaking More Waves and next month will be even quieter as I take the majority of August off to have my first two-week holiday in over a year and also hit a couple of music festivals; Bestival – where I’ll be DJing as well as enjoying all the fun as a punter and Victorious Festival in my home city of Portsmouth. It will be the longest break I’ve ever had from the blog, but right now a recharge of the batteries is necessary. There will be a handful of posts, but that’s all. Normal service will resume in September.

However, before the big slow down here’s a final post for July. 

New Zealand's Robinson first appeared on Breaking More Waves back in May 2017 to very little fanfare (a quick check on Hype Machine shows that of the blogs listed there just Breaking More Waves and Going Solo posted her song Don't You Forget About Me via Soundcloud upon release) with me mainly making jokes about how Robinson was only using her surname and how most big popstars used their first name (Adele, Beyonce, Kylie, Rihanna etc). However, since that time something pretty incredible has happened because one of Robinson’s subsequent releases Nothing To Regret went supernova and has now clocked up a huge 41 million streams on Spotify. That’s pretty huge numbers for a relatively new artist. Maybe she'll have to start using her first name after all?

Yet streaming statistics in pop music doesn’t always mean huge stardom or a long-term career. In fact Robinson’s latest release, the track I’m posting here, Don’t Trust Myself has just over 1,000 views on You Tube so far (it’s streaming statistics are better with about 200,000 so far on Spotify). 

And whilst our love of music isn’t about statistics I wonder how many so-called hardcore music fans have even heard about Robinson? Today I did a quick straw poll survey of some of my ‘music friends’ and only 1 out of 7 people knew her name. This shows that my music friends aren’t all reading my blog (boo they let me down) but more importantly demonstrates some evidence that a single ‘hit’ on Spotify doesn’t make you a star. If Robinson played some shows in the UK she probably wouldn’t be rocking out Brixton Academy or even Shepherd’s Bush Empire just yet. Despite those big numbers. Hopefully she's be doing somewhere bigger than The Old Blue Last though - although if it's big enough for Kylie (see here) maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea?

So, there’s still work to be done. Streaming below is Don’t Trust Myself with one of those lyric videos which even features the ‘Oooh Oooh’ parts of the song. It’s a slow burning emotional electronic pop tune that deals with the complexity of relationships, the heart ruling the head and feelings of emptiness: “How am I lonely, with so many other people round me.” It’s also a fine, albeit subtle, follow up to Nothing To Regret.

You can also find Don’t Trust Myself on the latest instalment of the Breaking More Waves Spotify monthly playlist, which has just gone live, and features all the songs I’ve featured this July. As it was a relatively quiet month the playlist is only 12 songs and forty minutes long, so you can perhaps take a listen on your morning commute? Don’t forget to follow it if you don’t already do so. I update it at the end of every month (You can find it by clicking here).

Robinson - Don't Trust Myself

New Music: Introducing - Robinson

I always think it’s a little odd when a musician just uses their surname as their pop star name. Can you imagine Adele if she was just known as Adkins? Or Rihanna if she’d been called Fenty? And Knowles-Carter would be a bit of a mouthful when you can just have Beyoncé wouldn’t it? But new singer on the block Robinson has decided to go down the surname route, aligning herself with a UK brand of fruit cordial that has real fruit in every drop. As far as I can tell from a quick Google search her first name is Anna, which is a nice name, but maybe not very pop star like. But then you could say the same about Adele.

Robinson is from New Zealand, a country that has been banging out all sorts of quality pop over the last few years, most notably Lorde, but also Broods and there’s a hint of both of those artists in Robinson’s debut song Don’t You Forget About Me, which you’ll be pleased / disappointed to hear (depending on your perspective) isn’t a cover of the Simple Minds song. Instead it’s a relatively subdued piece of pop that gets better with every listen. Along its way Don’t You Forget About Me throws in a couple of f-words, some yeah yeah yeah chants and a black and white video which was either filmed in the rain or a car wash. 

Don’t forget her name, particularly her last one – this is Robinson.

Robinson - Don't You Forget About Me (Video)