Hello

Song: Hello
Artist: Martin Solveig
Album: Smash






Well here is my new, out-of-nowhere, go-to party starter!  A song I discovered just last weekend using the, at least up to this point, pretty useless Shazam.  Are you familiar with Shazam?  Shazam is a phone application that will "listen" to any song that is playing using your phone's microphone, makes an "acoustic fingerprint," and then matches it within a database.  So basically if you are somewhere and hear a song that you want to know what it is... you use Shazam and if it matches up, it tells you the song, shows you the album cover, gives you links to either buy the track or watch it on YouTube... pretty cool.  But I've had the app for probably over two years, and would say it has about a 10% success rate.  So I rarely use it, and hadn't in ages... but last week was at a bar, heard this song, and HAD to know what it is.  What did we do without technology?

Martin Solveig is a Paris-based French DJ and Producer.  Born Martin Picandet, he chose the stage name Solveig as a homage to French actress Solveig Donmartin... who happens to star in one of my favorite movies, German filmmaker Wim Wenders' globe trotting road movie-meets apocalyptic science fiction epic "Until the End of the World."  (Which happens to have an incredible soundtrack.)

But I digress...

Solveig has been releasing albums since 2002 with "Smash," his fifth and most recent, which just came out earlier this month.  "Hello" is the first single, was released in September of last year (where have I been?) and contains vocals by Dragonette.  "Hello" is a song that grabs you immediately, is very cute and fun, and has a rather funny video starring a self-deprecating Solveig and fellow superstar French DJ Bob Sinclar.  It's cute.  But this song is dance-around-in-your-house-by-yourself material, completely infectious.

The rest of "Smash" is actually pretty good to.  Nothing that blew me away per-say, just a good collection of catchy Euro-disco tracks with vocals by Kele, Sunday Girl, Dev, and the aforementioned Dragonette, with another Solveig collab single, "Boys & Girls" is also included.  I really like the Kele-assisted "Ready 2 Go," and the dumb-fun upbeat silliness of "We Like to Smash" and "Big in Japan."  Fun record.

But if you haven't yet heard the elation and joy that is the four minutes and forty-two seconds of "Hello," well you are in for a treat on this Monday morning.

Let's kill it this week.

Enjoy.

Hello

Ready 2 Go

Boys and Girls