New Music Friday: Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus with a late bid for one of the songs of the year

So the prophecy comes to pass and a second Cyrus deploys “break” and “heart” in order to hit the pop jackpot. “We weren’t trying to make a Western song,” Mark Ronson told the BBC this week, “[but] I think with Miley, just the way she wrote the verses and the way the melody came out, came naturally.”

There’s magic in this song and the video brings it out in rather spectacular fashion; entertainment writers around the world should currently be reworking their Songs Of The Year lists to accommodate this.

Notes on this week’s new releases:

• Gabrielle Aplin‘s My Mistake, while not a Christmas song, sounds like Christmas.
• Confidence Man‘s Santa’s Comin’ Down The Chimney, a Christmas song, sounds nothing like Christmas.
• Obviously Rina Sawayama‘s star continues to rise but Flicker feels like a step back after the two steps forward of Cherry. The upcoming BloodPop® collaboration should get things back on track.
• There’s an Initial Talk remix of the Cheryl song knocking around too. That’s probably quite enough Initial Talk for 2018 thanks very much.
• The 1975 have already released all their album’s big pop moments, which is fair enough considering the album campaign seems to have literally been going on since 1975. Most of what remains is in Takes A Few Listens territory but that’s no bad thing.

Subscribe to the playlist on Spotify