New Music: Sigrid - Don't Feel Like Crying

Today Sigrid has released her latest tune Don’t Feel Like Crying, a song which will be featuring on her forthcoming album Sucker Punch, due in March.

There’s a school of thought around some Sigrid fans / music boffins that since the initial power punch of Don’t Kill My Vibe, the BBC Sound of poll 1st place and the UK chart success of Strangers that everything since just hasn’t quite matched up commercially to those early career highs. Of course, much of this thought is based around the fact that these days we can all see the statistics for artists on Spotify, You Tube etc to get an idea of how ‘successful’ they are being. 

And of course artists themselves can also see these statistics, which sometimes must be quite soul destroying. In pre-streaming days an artist could sell several thousand records and happily blindly assume that the people who had bought them were playing them lots and enjoying them – these days the statistics might tell you a very different story about how many times fans are actually listening to the music you’ve spent hours creating, and it may not be very comforting. Alternatively it might just be telling you a story about how many big playlists the song made it to. Not that Sigrid is likely to be feeling uncomfortable about any of this - let's keep this in perspective - a lot of people are still streaming her music.

This article on Popjustice (here) talks about the statistics for Sigrid’s songs and makes the (important) point that such figures don’t tell the whole tale: “Sigrid has pretty much the same number of monthly listeners as Robyn, for instance, and Honey's streaming numbers are, to put it politely, underwhelming, but Robyn can still sell concert tickets.”

But what Popjustice doesn’t say is that Robyn is a long-established artist, who in the UK had a small flourish of hits in 1995-97 (Show Me Love being the biggest at number 8 in 1997) before releasing a string of songs that didn’t chart at all until Be Mine, Who’s That Girl and With Every Heartbeat (her number 1) propelled her back to new giddy heights 10 years later. Sometimes in judging pop  commercial success we focus too much on the here and now and not enough on the long term. Maybe Sigrid isn’t delivering massive pop hits right now, but she’s clearly super talented and perhaps just needs to keep plugging away. Besides she’s already played Brixton Academy – a near 5,000 capacity venue. Not bad for someone yet to release an album. As I said, let's keep this in perspective.

Onto her latest then, in which Sigrid grabs the strings from Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, slows them down a bit, has a go at some speaking rather than singing and generally sounds a little less ‘Sigrid-like’ than we’ve come to expect. It’s a good pop song, and as is probably going to sound very catchy on the radio. As we gear up for the album, my guess is that Sigrid’s label is trying to show some different flavours of what she can do and perhaps appeal to some more mainstream fans. I could imagine this being played on Radio 2 and Radio 1 in the UK.

However, my favourite Sigrid song (this one - click here) still has yet to see the light of day. Let’s hope it finds a place somewhere and hasn’t been tragically consigned to the rubbish bin. For that would be a true crime against pop.

Sigrid - Don't Feel Like Crying

New Music: Sigrid - Sucker Punch (Video)

Do I need to say anything more about Sigrid? After all, if you’re not convinced that she is anything more than a pop artist par excellence by now, you’re probably not going to change your mind.

But even if you’ve not signed up to the Sigrid Appreciation Society (I’m membership number 45,678) I hope you will agree that if you or I walked and danced down the street like she does in this brand new video we’d get some very strange looks. Yet when Sigrid does the same it seems not just normal, but dazzlingly cool. But this is what good popstars do. It’s their job to make the absurd seem brilliant. It’s one of the key factors that divides great pop from poor pop. Absurdity into brilliance is why artists are able to sit in the bath and have their photo taken for promotional purposes and to most eyes it seems perfectly natural. And although Sigrid hasn''t done the bath pic yet (it will surely come) she is very much making great pop. Sucker Punch with it’s rubbery synth verses and big belting chorus is (of course) another example of this.

Sigrid - Sucker Punch

New Music: Sigrid - Schedules

It’s been an odd week or so at Breaking More Waves, simply for the fact that pretty much everything new I’ve pressed play on has been at best average and more often than not way below that. So, glory be to Sigrid for coming along again and saving pop music (or at least stopping this blog from becoming a graveyard of nothingness). Schedules, a live favourite, is the final song from her Raw EP that she’s been slowly revealing over the last few months. And I adore it.

There’s so many things to love about this song. There’s a oh-oh hook. I’m a big fan of the oh-oh or the woah-woah-woah in a pop song. Sometimes you need throwaway lyrics as much as you need deeply personal, poetic and well thought out ones. Then there’s the cleverer lines: “I think we’re a hit,” she sings. As a relationship? Or as a pop song? Both I'd say. Then, and this is probably my favourite thing about Sigrid, her vocal always has that slight raspiness to it – just jagged enough to give it that extra level of raw emotion. In an age when it seems that there are buckets of autotune just waiting to be splashed over every pop singers vocal, it’s great to hear something undiluted. The fact that this song is also quite sweary adds to that even further.

Sigrid wins at pop again.

(Note: Breaking More Waves will be quiet for a few days now whilst I head off to Latitude Festival. See you next week).

Sigrid - Schedules

New Music: Sigrid - Raw

There’s a school of thought that suggests that pop music somehow has less depth than other forms of music like rock, jazz, or soul.

That school of thought is absolute bollocks.

Here’s an example to prove my case. Her name is Sigrid. She’s from Norway. She does pop music. You of course have already heard of her, or you’ve been living under a rock.

Sigrid is brilliant. She can do all the things that are required of brilliant pop music. She has great tunes. She can sing. Boy oh boy can she sing. She has the moves. She has a great band around her.

But there’s more than that. Because any great art has to have more than the sum of its parts to really resonate. Songs are great to connect with, but it’s all the other stuff that surrounds popular culture that’s just as important. Of course, it’s a dangerous thing to do – putting artists on pedestals can lead to them falling off – but if we didn’t, how would we ever show off their greatness to others?

And Sigrid is great. Not just because of the music, but because of the way she is. There’s no artifice or act. People who argue that authenticity in music is important (often fans of men with guitars) will even find it difficult to argue that Sigrid doesn’t have that authenticity in huge bucket loads. Of course, they’ll argue that it’s ‘just pop’, but when you’ve been to a show like the one I saw Sigrid perform last night, it’s possible to see that sometimes pop isn’t ‘just pop’. 

From her simple stage attire (jeans, plain t-shirt and tied back hair) to her self-aware and unassuming nature  (before thanking the audience for coming to the show last night she asked “Can I be a bit cheesy now, is that OK?”) to her inability to surpress her emotion (last night at the start of Don’t Kill My Vibe Sigrid became so overwhelmed with the reaction she couldn’t sing, so she just held the microphone out to the audience who sang the words back whilst she stood and cried – it was a beautiful moment that made even the hardest of us well up a little). These are the things that, combined with the music, make Sigrid special. There is something about her pure and raw.

Which is 398 words just to shoehorn the word Raw into the conversation, which just happens to be the title of the new song from Sigrid. 

It’s the first in a collection of brand new material, set to drop every week. It’s not a banger. Don’t worry banger fans. If you wanted another Don’t Kill My Vibe / Plot Twist / Strangers she has more of those to come. But having watched Sigrid’s set grow over the six times I’ve seen her one thing that is becoming apparent is that she’s a much more versatile pop artist than one that just does in your face jams. This one is stripped back to the very core.

“No apologies for being me,” sings Sigrid on Raw. I think this much about her we all know.

Sigrid - Raw

New Music: Sigrid - Strangers (Video)

One of the great things about pop music is how it can make you feel. That infectious dopamine rush. That high, That ecstasy. That euphoric tingle that takes you to the dance floor and makes you pull shapes like never before. It can make you feel alive. It can even make you believe, for three or four minutes, that you are a pop star yourself.

Right now, Sigrid from Alesund, Norway is doing a very good job at being a pop star, her music is doing a very good job at getting people to move their butts and she’s also pulling some very good shapes herself. In fact, I’d like to dance like Sigrid does in this new video for her song Strangers. The trouble is when I’ve tried (and trust me I have tried) I don’t look anything like a pop star. I look like a sad-dad dancing. There are reasons for this. The main one being that Sigrid is a pop star (or at least a rising pop star). And I am a dad.

But, here’s what I’d like to believe. I’d like to think that all over this country dads weren’t listening to Pink Floyd / U2 / Oasis / The Foo Fighters (a massive generalisation that that’s what dads listen to I know, but perhaps to a certain extent true) and were actually putting on a colourful pair of trousers, a neat little t-shirt and dancing like Sigrid to her new single Strangers. Somehow, I feel if we all did this together the world would be a much happier place.

Don’t kill my vibe readers, more dads need to dance like Sigrid. Let’s go to work and do this. Fill your lives with joy.

Sigrid - Strangers (Video)

Ones To Watch 2018 - Summary and Playlist

With the 2018 Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch posts now complete, I’m wrapping things up with the full list of 10 artists selected and an accompanying spotify playlist which you can find by clicking here or stream below. It has one song from each of the acts selected.

Whilst posting about these artists I’ve had a couple of comments made from readers about balance and how the selections were all mainly female and I’d just like to address this. First, so what? It’s the music that I'm concerned about not the artists sex. Secondly that statement is actually incorrect. Yes, 9 of the 10 artists I have selected have a female vocalist (when I introduced the posts here I noted that because of my tastes, the list wouldn’t be balanced in that way) but there were 31 musicians of which 16 were male and 15 were female. So in terms of that demographic the list was pretty much balanced - although this was more from luck than any judgement.

Thank you to everyone who engaged with these posts this year. Whilst Breaking More Waves is written mainly for my own entertainment, the Ones to Watch posts are very much for others. Amongst my (real life) friend group some of my friends, who know I'm obsessed with music will often ask me ‘what are the latest new acts we should be listening out for then?’ My Ones to Watch list is essentially my online response to that real-life question. 

Here’s a summary of the 10 artists chosen and a playlist featuring 1 song by each act.

1. Sigrid
2. Jade Bird
3. Superorganism
4. The Blinders
5. Pale Waves
6. Grace Carter
7. Off Bloom
8. Confidence Man
9. Pink Kink
10. Maisie Peters

I'll be updating the Breaking More Waves monthly playlist at the end of this month as per usual, but it won't include the Ones to Watch posts only the other new music that I have uploaded in November. If you want to follow the monthly Breaking More Waves playlist you can find that by clicking on this link.

Ones To Watch 2018 - #1 Sigrid

To any new music fan the selection of Norwegian pop singer Sigrid Solbakk Raabe (who just goes by the name of Sigrid) as the first of Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch for 2018 probably feels a little bit old hat. After all her songs Don’t Kill My Vibe and Plot Twist have achieved seemingly international recognition in 2017 and she’s already been pulling large enthusiastic crowds for both headline shows and festivals.

Yet it’s probably worth remembering that despite her success so far Sigrid only signed to Virgin records in 2016, has released just 1 EP plus another original song Strangers and that Don’t Kill My Vibe achieved a highest chart position in the UK of 62 in 2017. She’s still a long way from being a huge international popstar. 

With a voice that manages to display elements of tenderness and delicate emotion alongside a slightly throaty raspy fullness Sigrid has the versatility. She can do big belter pop songs or fragile ballads of intimacy. There's a hint of another Scandinavian pop singer - Robyn - in what Sigrid does. Combine that with an enthusiastic and endearing stage presence something akin to a punchy gazelle and a bunch of strong still to be released tunes and it’s clear that of this year’s Ones to Watch she’s possibly the one with the most commercial potential.

Just in case you've been living under a rock, you can see the video for Plot Twist plus a rather lush remix of Don't Kill My Vibe by Gryffin below.

Sigrid - Plot Twist

Sigrid - Don't Kill My Vibe (Gryffin Remix)

New Music: Sigrid - Strangers

After managing to work the Don’t Kill My Vibe EP for virtually the whole year, finally there’s some new music from Sigrid. Hurrah!

Strangers isn’t the best song in her bag (anyone that has seen her live will know that she still has some even bigger bangers to come) yet it’s better than probably 95% of other pop music released this week. Why? Because: 1) It does what all good pop songs should do and gets straight in your head. 2) You can dance to it with your hands in the air. OK, maybe not the mellow beginning, but once it fires itself up and starts pumping big electronic pulses out, you’ll be raving. 3) The mellow beginning is lovely: “Just like in the movies, it starts to rain and we’re the broken beauties.” Perfect.

She’s mainstream pop music's brightest hope for 2018 for sure.

Sigrid - Strangers

Review: 5 Acts At Great Escape 2017 That Had The Wow Factor

Brighton’s Great Escape, Europe’s largest new music festival, is like a live version of a new music blog, with over four hundred artists vying for your attention playing shows in clubs, pubs, churches, hotels and other locations of the south coast town. The key word with the Great Escape (much like this year’s event’s weather which went from heavy rain to sun) is variety. In just over 72 hours of being in Brighton I saw indie, country, folk, jazz, pop, soul, funk, disco, rap and many other genres, witnessing 37 full sets.

Of those 37 performances, the quality level was very high and so it’s impossible to say which gigs were the best. However, there’s something very exciting about seeing an artist for the first time and their performance leaving you breathless and giddy. So, whilst I went to shows by acts that I’ve witnessed already such as Alice Jemima, Skott, Casi, Pumarosa, Liv Dawson and Jerry Williams and they were all hugely enjoyable, these five gigs by musicians that I'd not seen before had that ‘wow’ factor that you can only get the first time you see a band or solo performer. They came from all sorts of genres and, reflecting the Great Escape’s truly international curation, from all over the world.

Sigrid (Coalition) Norway

It might have been raining outside, the venue ceiling was dripping inside with leaks but Sigrid just can’t stop winning and spreading sunshine. A superb Later with Jools debut, an outstanding debut EP and positive reviews from critics and fans alike, the new pop lady on the block had a lot to live up to and she delivered. Sigrid was as charismatic and praiseworthy as I’d imagined. Yes, of course Don’t Kill My Vibe gained the biggest cheers but the rest of her set was coated with enough quality to suggest that alongside other new potential pop stars such as Maggie Rogers and Skott, that it’s possibly time for Perry, Gaga and Spears to move to one side. 

Sultan of the Disco (Latest Music Bar) Korea

On entering the Latest Music Bar for a K-Pop Night Out (which actually took place in the afternoon) guests were greeted by friendly Korean hosts and handed glow sticks, cute animal temporary tattoos and leaflets about the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. It clearly wasn’t going to be an ordinary gig by UK standards. And it wasn’t. 

In a sweaty basement bar Sultan of the Disco delighted with non-stop dance routines, classic disco grooves and funk not dissimilar to Chic, The Jackson 5 and Bruno Mars together with a joyful cover version of Ghostbusters; which you can see a clip of by clicking here from my Twitter feed. Dressed in kimono style dressing gowns, shades and headbands the band threw to the audience cuddly toy versions of Soohorang and Bandabi the Winter Olympics 2018 mascots and at one stage lead singer Nahzam Sue played keyboard by being held mid-air by other band mates. Band’s don’t normally do encores at Great Escape, but there was no way the audience was going to let Sultan of the Disco get away without playing one. 100% fun.

The Rhythm Method (Brighthelm) UK

The Rhythm Method (pictured below) are the sort of band that could only come from the UK. Or rather England. More specifically London. They channel The Streets, Madness, Squeeze, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, and The Pet Shop Boys. Lead vocalist Joey told the late night drunken crowd “You don’t want to be here, we don’t want to be here,” whilst looking thoroughly pissed off and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being serious. They had catchy hooks, bored sounding half spoken-word lyrics that referenced politics, pubs and sex and opened with a song that, if I’m not mistaken, mentioned salad cream. "Play Home Sweet Home," shouted someone in the audience referring to the duo's most well known track. "No," replied Joey. And they didn't. And it didn't matter. You’re either going to love them or hate them and if they get around to releasing an album I suspect there’s the potential for it to be an instant cult classic.

Confidence Man (Komedia) Australia

Confidence Man are a group that make every regular indie rock band, every bland music by formula pop band and every Drake wannabe seem as boring and pointless as ironing socks. Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie came dressed in a baby doll dress, way too-short shorts and two gothic beekeepers hats respectively and for 20 frenetic minutes bombarded the audience with comic strip sassiness, high energy dance routines, (click here for what they were doing) and Lucozade fuelled skilfully crafted electro bubble-gum tunes. That’s all the time it took for Confidence Man to quickly become one of the most talked about bands of the day. I can’t wait to hear and see more.

Tom Adams (Unitarian Church) UK / Germany

Sat at a piano in the corner of the church Tom Adams (pictured below) created the closest thing possible to heaven. Placed somewhere between Phillip Glass and Sigur Ros, Adams’ contemplative modern classical pop with choir boy falsetto voice and soft ambient electronic backing was a beautiful still moment amongst the craziness, the crowds and the energy of much of Great Escape. It was a perfect way to end the Friday evening. He’s already created one of my favourite records of 2017 (Silence), and the live incarnation was just as good.

The 37 artists I saw at Great Escape and Alt-Escape 2017 were: 

Benny & The Hair Nets, Fable, Porshyne, Confidence Man, Jade Bird, The Van T's, Be Charlotte, Liv Dawson, Songe, Swimming Tapes, Sigrid, Shitkid, Nilufer Yanya, Tom Grennan, Cosima, Salen, The Rhythm Method, Flamingods, Slotface, Rosie Carney, Hazel English, Childhood, Matt Woods, Wrabel, Sarathy Korwar, Julie Byrne, Tom Adams, Alice Jemima, Bokito, MC Sniper, Sultan of the Disco, Jerry Williams, Matt Maeson, Off Bloom, Casi, Skott, Pumarosa

Preview: The Great Escape 2017 (Part 2.1 - Music Tips)

With less than a couple of weeks until 450 bands and solo performers and 1000s of punters descend to the seaside in Brighton for the annual orgy of new music that is The Great Escape, most music geeks will already have worked out their must sees, possible sees and might sees, with spreadsheets, apps and good old fashioned bits of paper being utilised to work out their timetables.

If you’re one of those people then this post isn’t for you. However, if you are organised but haven’t been to Great Escape before you might want to check out Breaking More Waves practical tips guide for making the festival work for you by clicking this link here.

If you’ve been less industrious in your timetabling or are looking at the full list of artists and are thinking ‘I only know about 4 of these’ then this post is for you. Put your trust in Breaking More Waves and allow this blog to act as your filter. With no messing, I’m recommending 10 acts playing Great Escape 2017 that come with the Breaking More Waves seal of approval – 5 are featured in this post and 5 in a further post published tomorrow. There should be no surprises that they’ve all featured in some form on the site before.

1. Confidence Man (Australia)

The fact that the two front persons in Australia’s Confidence Man are called Janet Planet and Sugar Bones should be enough to recommend them to you without any further information, but if I add in on point dance routines, pop songs that buzz so hard with energy that they might explode into confetti showers at any point and more fun than you thought humanly possible, then you’ll understand why Confidence Man are one of the must sees of Great Escape. Take a look at the live video below and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Novelty pop maybe, but life (and therefore music) doesn't always have to be serious.

Komedia 12.10pm May 18th
Sticky Mike's Frog Bar 23.30pm May 18th
Horatio's Bar 13.30pm May 20th




2. Jade Bird (UK)

Jade Bird was the subject of an introducing post on Breaking More Waves in Summer 2016 and still there’s been no official single or EP release. Yet with slots supporting the likes of Rag ‘N’ Bone Man, Tom Odell and Mahalia and a number of festival slots besides Great Escape confirmed (Latitude, Bushstock, Field Day) Jade is clearly working towards that. Catch her mix of acoustic folk, country Americana and pop early.

Patterns (Upstairs) 13:15pm May 18th 
Prince Albert 22.30pm May 20th



3. Sigrid (Norway)

In 2015 one of the main highlights of my Great Escape was Norway’s Aurora whose mesmerising performances were so good I ended up seeing her twice. Norway could win again in 2017 with another single named pop star. Sigrid’s Don’t Kill My Vibe has already been a huge on line hit and Great Escape is her’s for the taking.

Coalition 20.00pm May 18th
Wagner Hall 16.30pm May 19th



4. Rosie Carney (Ireland)

Rosie Carney is another artist that first featured on Breaking More Waves in 2016. Making beautifully poignant songs awash with meaning and melancholy, Rosie will appeal to those who love the music of the likes of Billie Marten, Lucy Rose and Laura Marling.

Jubilee Square - 13.45pm May 19th



5. Tom Adams (Germany)

His debut album Silence was largely recorded in his one bedroom flat in Berlin and is already one of my favourites of the year. It’s a quiet and gentle record formed largely of soft piano, ambient electronics and Tom’s haunting falsetto that transports you to another place. Thankfully his one show at Great Escape is in a church – which seems the perfect location for his music. If you want something far away from the rock ‘n’ roll shenanigans of much of Great Escape, mark down Tom Adams as one to watch.

Unitarian Church 22.30pm May 19th

New Music: Introducing - Sigrid

Now that we’re one third of the way through the year what are your most played songs of 2017 so far? In terms of albums here at Breaking More Waves Towers the five 2017 releases that I’ve listened to most are Stormzy, Laura Marling, Alice Jemima. The Big Moon and Depeche Mode. Something for everyone in those five I think. As far as singles go, the big three are Lorde’s Green Light, Alt-J’s 3WW and Norway’s Sigrid with her online hit Don’t Kill My Vibe.

When Don’t Kill My Vibe first burst out into the public arena by way of a very high placing on Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist back in February there was, in certain quarters, an amount of cynicism that this was a big label throwing dollars at the song to make it a break through hit – after all it was even cropping up on posts by hipster indie blogs who very rarely feature mainstream pop music. This view was compounded because before Don’t Kill My Vibe Sigrid had released a handful of singles in Norway with little fanfare and then all of a sudden, with the help of management company MADE and Island Records, BOOM!

But irrespective of marketing, Don’t Kill My Vibe remains a great pop tune – with thoughtful lyrics, a hooky warlike chorus and dynamic production; Sigrid herself has described her music as ‘aggressive pop’. With such an impressive first worldwide release the potential difficulty for Sigrid would be maintaining the momentum, but two new tracks, Plot Twist (which continues the same fierce electronic style with a human touch) and the piano ballad Dynamite (which shows that Sigrid isn’t just about the bangers – I particularly like that her vocal isn’t 100% smooth and you can hear a slight rasp to it on the song) give reason to at least hope that Sigrid might be around for a while yet.

In the UK Sigrid plays The Deaf Institute in Manchester on May 15th, London’s Hoxton Bar & Kitchen (sold out) on the 17th May and Brighton’s Great Escape Festival on the 18th May. She’s also playing Latitude and Wilderness festivals this summer and has a further show at the Scala in London on 13th September. Sigrid’s debut EP is out this Friday.

Sigrid - Don't Kill My Vibe (Video)

Sigrid - Plot Twist



Sigrid - Dynamite (Acoustic)