Diana Vickers celebrated debuting at number one on the UK album charts with a cake. (Twitter Link)

Avril Lavigne finally got herself a Twitter account, even if it is hard to believe that it’s really her or that she’s 25 years old from her Tweets. (Twitter Link)

Jade Ewen thought she was driving on a motorway today but it was in fact a dual-carriageway. (Twitter Link)

Alexandra Burke’s third single from her debut album has reached number one on the Irish iTunes. (Twitter Link)

The Only Exception is an acoustic ballad and the stand out track from Brand New Eyes. It’s about time that one of Paramore’s best songs is getting a single release. The vocal from lead singer Hayley Williams is delivered really well as always but also shows hints of Avril Lavigne at times. While the chorus is quite repetitive, the vocal makes it interesting. The way Hayley sings the words “you” and “are” right after each other, but in different octaves, sounds a bit shocking on first listen but soon becomes one of the best things about the song.

The best part of the song is the middle 8 and the added lyric in the final chorus.

I’ve got a tight grip on reality but I can’t
Let go of what’s in front of me here
I know you’re leaving in the morning when you wake up
Leave me with some kind of proof it’s not a dream
…
You are the only exception
And I’m on my way to believing

The middle 8 is the most “Avril” sounding moment of the song and sounds similar to the middle 8′s in both How Does It Feel and Fall To Pieces. The Only Exception wouldn’t sound out of place on Avril’s Under My Skin but it does sound out of place on Paramore’s Brand New Eyes in between much heavier tracks.

The video premiered on February 14th and fits the song perfectly by acting out the lyrics which gives the video a good storyline instead of just a performance of the song. You can check it out below:

The Only Exception is set for release on April 19th through Fueled by Ramen.

Alice starts off sounding heavy and quite dark with just a piano and drums. It’s a little surprising when Avril starts singing as her voice is almost unexpected after such a dark introduction. Sonically, it doesn’t sound too distant from her sound on Under My Skin.

Penned solely by Avril herself, lyrically it’s much more mature than most of The Best Damn Thing. However, vocally Avril hasn’t managed to shake off the “shouty” voice which she took on full time during The Best Damn Thing.

The best thirty seconds of the song are when Avril sings:

I found myself in Wonderland
Get back on my feet again
Is this real, is this pretend?
I’ll take a stand until the end

Alice is a clear progression from Under My Skin and a huge progression from the step backwards she took with The Best Damn Thing. Had The Best Damn Thing never happened, Alice is exactly the sound Avril should have returned with after Under My Skin.

You can take a listen to Alice below:

[See post to listen to audio]

The album opens with the infectious Your Love Is My Drug which on first listen makes you think you’ve heard the song a thousand times before but somehow it still sounds fresh. While not being incredibly innovative, the chorus will get stuck in your head for hours after listening to it. As far as singles go, it’s definitely a contender but should be a later single in the campaign as it has the same sound as TiK ToK.

If you’ve been to clubs any time in the past few months, then you can’t have missed out on hearing TiK ToK which gets a spin a few times per night. TiK ToK was the perfect debut single for Ke$ha as it established exactly who she is as an artist. Like most of the songs on Animal, TiK ToK is about being drunk at a party.

Throughout the album, it’s hard not to hear similarities to Avril Lavigne’s 2007 effort The Best Damn Thing. Although it’s not surprising since Ke$ha wrote some tracks with Avril which didn’t make the final cut of the album. The sound of The Best Damn Thing isn’t only on the tracks by Dr. Luke, who worked on most of The Best Damn Thing, but also on tracks like D.I.N.O.S.A.U.R. which doesn’t sound too distant from the “rapping” and beat of Avril’s I Don’t Have To Try.

Kiss ‘n’ Tell is a strong contender for the second single. You can instantly tell it’s a Max Martin and Dr. Luke track which echos Katy Perry’s Hot ‘n’ Cold in the chorus sonically and in structure.

The slower songs on the album are quite good and while they show Ke$ha’s diversity between up-tempo and mid-tempo songs, some of them are too similar to each other. In particular, Blind and Dancing With Tears In My Eyes could interchange their choruses and the only thing that would make you realise they weren’t the real chorus of the respective song is the lyrical content. Having said that Blind is the stronger of the two and a contender for the best song on the album.

Other highlights on the album include the title track, album closer Animal and Hungover, both mid-tempo but quite different to the aforementioned with Hungover using the metaphor of a hangover to describe being broken-hearted and Animal which is the perfect way to end the album. The mid-tempo tracks really show an honest side to Ke$ha while still maintaining her party girl image in both Hungover and Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.

Overall Animal is a very nice debut and looks set to be a very successful album campaign.

Variety.com mentions:

Much like penning the opening song for a James Bond film, top-shelf performers savor the opportunity to write a Disney tune. In March, the studio will throw its weight behind Avril Lavigne’s Alice (Underground) from Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland.

In a recent interview Avril described her upcoming record:

I started this record off really slow, just writing songs at home on my piano. I didn’t work with a ton of people this time. This record, I just really, really wanted to sing. We started recording each song, some of them, just with acoustic guitar and the vocal and building it from there. It’s stripped down. I love performing that way, so I really felt like it was time to make a record like that. To just make it all about the vocal and the performance, and the vibe, and the emotion.

Alice (Underground) is set for release on March 5th through RCA Records.