Its Friday so its time for five brand new tracks to get their first spin on the hour every hour from 9am. We’ll keep playing these tracks on New Zealand Net Radio, home of streaming radio ad free 24/7 throughout New Zealand.
GRAACE – SOS
A great track off her recent EP Self-Sabotage
Anne-Marie – Perfect to Me
An uplifting track from the British pop phenomenon.
Billie Eilish – come out and play
Part of Apple’s ‘holiday’ (i.e. Christmas) campaign another nice track following on from “when the party’s over” a few weeks ago.
Norah Jones – Wintertime
Avalanche City – Prayed For Love
And we saved the best for last (in our humble opinion!). We haven’t heard any music from this amazing Kiwi artist since 2015. This fantastic track presages his new album My Babylon early next year – can’t wait!
With a name that must frustrate spell-checkers everywhere, Lynyrd Skynyrd have achieved recognition for bringing “Southern Rock” to the forefront in the early 1970s. Their hard rocking image was backed by the songwriting talents of leader Ronnie Van Zant. They formed in high school, their name being a mockery of teacher Leonard Skinner (who didn’t like long hair). They played live for a few years without much success before they were spotted by producer Al Kooper who produced their first album Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd. “Free Bird” off that album was a big success. Dedicated to Duane Allman of The Allman Brothers (who had died in a motorbike crash in 1971) the song became legendary through radio airplay. Their second album (Second Helping, 1974) went multi-platinum and featured the 70s standard “Sweet Home Alabama”.
Rita Ora’s new album has been greeted with universal acclaim. Six years in the making (due to legal disputes with her label) a lot of the album feels familiar. This is a function of the streaming age, with singles being dropped over time. We’ve been listening to the late Avicii with Rita on “Lonely Together” and “For You” from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack for a fair while now but there are plenty of new treats here. NME described it accurately as “a confident pop gem that stands tall on its own”. We look forward to it this week.
Hozier – Movement
Mumford & Sons – Beloved
Lennon Stella – Fortress
Rita Ora – Velvet Rope
Lastlings – Deja Vu
The Fleet Foxes are an ‘indie folk’ band from Seattle, USA. Their first big impression was with their 2008 EP Sun Giant. Since then they’ve gained a great reputation building a body of beautiful melodic folk. To celebrate the recent release of their box set First Collection 2006-2009 we’ll be enjoying great music from across their musical career.
NOURI – Where Do We Go From Here
Jonas Blue, Jessie Reyez, Juan Magan – Wherever You Go
dodie – If I’m Being Honest
Leisure – Feeling Free
Tom Odell – If You Wanna Love Somebody
The Eagles have certainly had their share of compilations over the year. Recently they released a big box set of all their studio albums, three live disks and a collection of single cuts and b-sides. It seems a good excuse to enjoy revisiting the band from Los Angeles. Formed in 1971 the band went on to release six albums in the 1970s, spawning five number one singles, six Grammy’s and five number one albums. After breakup in 1979 (saying they would only perform together again if “hell froze over”) they got back together for 1994’s ‘Hell Freeze’s Over’ tour, which yielded a number one live album and video.
Only a couple of years after the smash hit album Evolve comes Imagine Dragons’ fourth album, 12 tracks of solid pop rock, written to conquer the charts. Although the singles don’t seem quite as strong as the last album this is still a great listening experience, if you enjoy melodic thumping rock.