Katy B - On A Mission (4 April 2011) - hype, anticipation &c

wasn't gonna post my alternate track listing til the thing was actually out but here we go

next thing
everything
i like you
blue eyes
sapphire blue
stay down
emotions
aaliyah
hot like fire
all my lovin'
wicked love
crying for no reason
5 am
sky's the limit

tumbling down/play/still can be bonus tracks if they want

oh i talked to her today and at least have an answer as to why "hot like fire" is just a bonus track

she had no excuse for "blue eyes"

please say she made "hot like fire" a bonus track so she can "super bass" it

i'm imagining she's just sent it to t-swift right now while she's in the uk so she can impromptu sing it on the radio

Don't have the bonus tracks, dig the album. Really like 'Play' and 'Tumbling Down' - 'Still' can get the boot though.

i sorta feel like she came for adele's neck with this album and i'm not even mad at her

i don't get that impression at ALL unless anyone focusing on slow songs is automatically pitching themselves against adele? everything about them is wildly different.

the production on this album is still pretty heavily rooted in uk dance, it's still unmistakeably the katy & gee show

i have a suspicion that you wouldn't like "hot like fire" so much if it wasn't named after an aaliyah song, i think that's one of the worst songs

tim jonze a bit harsh today i thought

it has nothing to do with the aaliyah song? i can assure you that aaliyah worship is not exactly a means to win me over. it's one of the most immediate, anyway

i think this is totally a transition album, i also think it's kinda great

"still" was co written by an adele collaborator and though "emotions" is a total rudimental track i do feel like adele could've come back "crying for no reason" and people would've flipped

Yeah, after some of the pre-release talk I was surprised listening to it how much this was 'like the first' in its uk dance roots and general low-key beauty. Except for Still I guess.

is there a reason why the continuous mix has a completely different ordering to the standard tracklist? it works so much better.

What's the continuous mix tracklisting?

crying for no reason
sapphire blue
i like you
everything
tumbling down
play
aaliyah
next thing
blue eyes
5 am
sky's the limit
wicked love
stay down
all my lovin'
emotions
hot like fire
still

"Next Thing" is way more uk funky than I expect of her (or anyone, really) at this point

wow i'm about the sequencing of the continuous mix

I'm glad I ordered the deluxe version, that continuous mix looks fantastic.

continuous mix makes me actually like "tumbling down" and "play"

"blue eyes" is seriously blowing my mind right now.

and "stay down" is just the most gorgeous heartbreaking thing ever. whoever decided upon what should be on the standard version needs a long hard look at themselves.

Blue Eyes was maybe the standout for me first go around, yeah.

so yeah this blue eyes song kind of reminds me in parts of sweet female attitude's "flowers" which is about the highest compliment i can pay anything

yes! my initial thought when listening to it was of the artful dodger mix of valerie m's "tingles 2000" but that makes much more sense.

just going in on the continuous mix and feeling v vindicated. why the hell wasn't this the actual track listing?

i changed the actual tracklisting to reflect it. "hot like fire" as a penultimate track is weird but otherwise it works perfectly

whats the line ware sings starting with "i don't believe...", been trying to work it out

― r|t|c, Friday, December 7, 2012 7:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also this is v belated but i heard this last week and couldn't believe it ever stumped me. "i don't believe i can defend him", right?

ya i'd always assumed it was that but the line still sounds fudged somewhat

vox aside the lp version is reproduced a tad clearer i think

going to give this lp the grace of another chance sometime but i must admit the first blush leant towards insipid

yes! my initial thought when listening to it was of the artful dodger mix of valerie m's "tingles 2000" but that makes much more sense.

― prolego, Sunday, February 9, 2014 7:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 you for even thinking of this tune as a reference point for anything.

holy shit this is a grower

man, the continuous mix really is far superior. jeez.

the bridge of "all my lovin" seriously reminds me of that rihanna song that interpolates "pony"

So you guys reckon the "continuous mix" is worth the £2 for the upgrade?

Hmmm, going in now.

the continuous mix does make it more amazing, but re-ordering the individual tracks would probably work too. but the bonus tracks are definitely worth the extra £

Yeah, I've splashed out for it, downloading now. Await giddy glee in about 20 minutes...

My hard drive is now so full I have to operate on a one in/one out policy to add more albums on iTunes. Scrapped the turgid Atoms for Peace album for this, which feels kinda symbolic. :-/

Why are pop albums so L O O O O N N N N G G G G these days?

Getting to the point where 11, 12 songs in a row is the upper limit of my attention span.

I would eyeroll at this album if the whole thing weren't so sad.

Like, the continuous mix is okay but all it does is frontload all the insipid shit and really who wants that? The first half of this album is mostly good, the second half of the album proper is, by and large, flimsy and weak. And they certainly shouldn't have been roping in fucking hack Robbie Williams songwriting guns for hire (Crying For No Reason is still dreadful).

The bonus tracks are fantastic, yes, but (pardon my rockism here) they're bonus tracks, people will buy versions of this album without them. It's like whoever was responsible didn't feel they were good enough or something?

A Deluxe Edition where the bonus tracks are, by and large, the best bits, is a surefire sign of a project that's been unnecessarily pissed about with and triangulated to death. The fact that you're all working out alternative tracklistings shows that this album kinda already lost, like it should be a fucking TRIUMPH. It should be Katy and Geeneus doing victory laps around the pop landscape they helped usher in, and beating everyone else at their own gamne, not "hey you can make a decent album out of it if you shunt some tracks round and squint a bit".

This wouldn't matter so much if On A Mission hadn't been BOTH a peerless collection of bangers AND an album-qua-album that worked really well as a complete listen. I'm being harsh here, but really this album was only ever going to be a triumph or a failure for me, minimal middle-ground, raise your standards people.

Sorry you lost me calling CFNR dreadful.

I need to go back and look where the "official album" begins and ends to make up my mind on how I feel about it being too long/the bonus tracks being so much obviously better.

But I am now going to listen to the continuous mix.

On first listen, I think DC is a curmudgeon (as usual) because it's certainly not shit. I do completely hear the "badly sequenced" complaints, because yeah, it's not as "albumy" as the first one, but I am still bouncing up and down on the bed and annoying my neighbours with immediate excitement for some tracks but kinda "meh" on others.

It's not shit at all, it's pretty good, it's just not the album it should (and quite easily could) have been.

sort of feel like someone needed to go in on this album like mdc did b/c while its nowhere near that bad it's so weighed down by so many stupid decisions. though at the same time i reject the idea of holding albums to mythical standards, you sort of deal with them as they are, and i'd rather have an album i have to rearrange to make good than one that isn't salvageable. cf nicki minaj? ultimately roman reloaded was a fantastic album and it doesn't matter about the negatives.

I'm holding it to REAL standards - ie the first album.

The worst track here by miles is the one with Sampha (people in the music industry REALLY need to stop trying to make Sampha happen), but 'Still' reminds me a lot of 'Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?' by Moby. Neither are a good look for Katy. 'Crying For A Reason' is great in theory but slushy in practice. 'All Loving' is a good Katy ballad though, although that's basically 'Go Away' pt 2.

Just one track with the unbridled joy of 'Got Paid' or the mischievous spark of 'Easy Please Me' would leaven this a lot.

It's a bit like she's a rapper and 'On A Mission' was the mixtape and this is the major label debut.

no i mean the "bonus tracks don't count" line. obviously it bespeaks the pissing around and triangulation you mentioned but they're still amazing songs! "super bass" was a bonus track, lest we forget. i guess the point i'm trying to make is that there are lots of amazing songs and their quality manages to override everyone's best efforts to make this an actual botch job

I like this album the closer it stays to the personality of Katy B that's been established, and less the further it moves from that to that of a Major Pop Star. I've never thought her strength was in powerful vocals but in the way her songwriting and nuance for performance really sold the songs and the idea of Katy B as a girl-next-door, fun but headstrong character - but there are parts of this album where it feels like it could be anyone rolling along Rudimental's factory line of guest vocalists. I'm not sure I believe that she can't be a massive star while keeping the essence of what makes her sparkle but this album isn't the way it could have been done.

and no, it's nowhere near as good as on a mission and even allowing for some of these songs to grow on me i doubt it'll by an EOY favourite but also it's february and there aren't really any better 2014 albums around yet (apart from toni braxton & babyface but that's hardly a big pop release or anything surprising)

You can buy copies of the album without Hot Like Fire etc = they don't really count. Obviously they will in the future when the Deluxe issue is the only one but for now it really does feel like they've been tacked on the end as an afterthought. Why is it not just a 15-track album? Really they should have been the first things on the tracklisting, not sitting on the subs bench.

I mean this is very much the way of post-death of the music industry pop music but Superbass was also very nearly a victim of a cloddish record company who didn't know what they had. Either that or they knew full well and just wanted to sell more copies at a later date.