BBC Sound of 2009: The Results

[ManicKangaroo]

BBC SOUND OF 2009 TOP 10

1. Little Boots
2. White Lies
3. Florence and the Machine
4. Empire of the Sun
5. La Roux
6. Lady GaGa
7. VV Brown
8. Kid Cudi
9. Passion Pit
10. Dan Black

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Fifteen of the best rising music stars have been announced as the longlist for the BBC's Sound of 2009.

The list is designed to find the best up-and-coming acts for the coming year, with the winner to be named in January.

More than 130 of the UK's leading music critics and broadcasters named their favourite new acts, and the 15 with the most votes have made the longlist.

Adele triumphed at number one in Sound of 2008, followed by Duffy, The Ting Tings and Glasvegas.

Here is the longlist, in alphabetical order:

THE BIG PINK

This London duo use gritty beats, droning guitars, abstract effects and dreamy vocals to create a soundscape that is arty yet tuneful. They are currently supporting experimental rock heroes TV On the Radio.

Milo Cordell is son of 1960s pop producer Denny and runs the Merok label, which has released cutting-edge dance acts Klaxons and Crystal Castles. Robbie Furze is a former guitarist with electro-punk singer Alec Empire.

DAN BLACK

Dan Black, former frontman with indie also-rans The Servant, is attracting attention as a leftfield singer-songwriter who uses samples and beats as his backdrop instead of guitars.

The London-born, Paris-based singer caused a buzz with his radical reworking of US rapper Notorious BIG's song Hypnotize, featuring snippets of Rihanna's Umbrella.

VV BROWN

VV Brown is a 24-year-old modern-day doyen of doo-wop, giving the sound of vintage girl groups a 21st Century twist with a quirky, savvy, squeaky sheen.

As Vanessa, she had a previous shot at fame three years ago as a straight-up soul singer. She sang backing vocals for Madonna, Westlife and the Pussycat Dolls, and signed a major record deal - but that fell through.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

Looking like extras from a psychedelic Star Wars, Australian duo Empire of the Sun mould 1980s-influenced soft pop synthesisers with blissed-out space beats.

It is the work of Luke Steele, frontman of indie band The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore of electronic outfit Pnau and their one-off album has made it into the Australian top 10.

FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE

A quirky singer-songwriter in the grand tradition of Kate Bush, Bjork or PJ Harvey, Florence Welch makes music that is familiar, joyful and accessible while still uncompromising, fresh and eccentric.

Accompanied by a harp and scary clowns on stage, her live shows have earned her a sizeable following over the past 12 months and her debut album has been produced by Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford, who helped shape the Klaxons' sound.

FRANKMUSIK

Dance singer, remixer and all-round whizz-kid Vincent Frank creates high-energy robopop in which fast neon beats jump out of '80s-tinged tunes.

Frank has remixed tracks for the likes of Mika, Radiohead and CSS. His debut album, Complete Me, has been co-produced by Stuart Price, who has worked with The Killers, Madonna and Keane.

KID CUDI

Currently the hottest new hip-hop artist in the US, Kid Cudi has signed to Kanye West's label, features on the star's new album and has been supporting him on tour.

Like his mentor, the 23-year-old, from Cleveland, Ohio - known as Scott Mescudi to his mum - is at the adventurous end of rap and his single Day 'N' Nite bridges the gap between dance and urban.

LA ROUX

Another hot new name on the electro-pop block, singer Elly Jackson and synth player Ben Langmaid are La Roux, creating playful, modern tunes informed by the likes of Prince and David Bowie.

Langmaid is a veteran of the dance scene, having worked with Faithless mastermind Rollo Armstrong, and La Roux are supporting Lily Allen on her UK tour next year.

LADY GAGA

Hip New York party princess Lady GaGa is making waves in the US, where her infectious top 10 single Just Dance has just been nominated for a Grammy for best dance recording.

Real name Joanne Stefani Germanotta, she went to the same school as Paris Hilton and named herself after the Queen hit Radio Gaga. She has also written songs for Britney Spears, Pussycat Dolls and New Kids on the Block.

LITTLE BOOTS

Little Boots is the stage name of Victoria Hesketh, who left synth-rock girl group Dead Disco to pursue a solo pop path and has been guided by Hot Chip's Joe Goddard.

Like a British Kylie or a harder, shinier St Etienne, she plays catchy, credible futuristic pop. She was raised as an accomplished pianist but now prefers to play the tenorion, a flashing Japanese gadget, which has become her trademark instrument.

MASTER SHORTIE

Tipped as the next star of British hip-hop, the fluorescent Master Shortie spans the roles of grime MC, cool club kid and teen-friendly pop singer, with a dash of indie influence thrown in.

London-raised Theo Kerlin, aged 19, had a spell at the Brit School and signed a major record deal before taking the DIY route and setting up his own label, Odd One Out.

MUMFORD & SONS

Mumford & Sons have emerged from the London folk scene that produced Laura Marling and Noah and the Whale.

They play hearty country-tinged acoustic anthems featuring banjo, double bass and four-part harmonies.

Frontman Marcus Mumford is Marling's drummer and the quartet have supported the Mercury nominee widely on tour, winning wide praise for their live shows.

PASSION PIT

Passion Pit make colourful and cerebral electronica, combining layers of sunny vocals, warped samples, glitchy beats and euphoric effects with a sturdy rhythmic backbone.

It is the work of Michael Angelakos, who borrowed MGMT's cosmic kaleidoscope and Hot Chip's geeky gizmos while writing and recording all the music himself, enlisting four more musicians for his live band.

THE TEMPER TRAP

Two years after they released their initial EP in their native Australia, this quartet have recorded their first album with producer Jim Abbiss, who was at the controls for the debut albums by The Arctic Monkeys and Adele.

The Melbourne band aim for an atmospheric, captivating sound, created using grand guitars, pulsating rhythms and yearning vocals.

WHITE LIES

These moody London rockers can expect to be compared to the likes of The Killers and Editors, with epic vocals and dark, swirling guitars, plus a synthesiser giving them a pop sheen.

That, along with the poetic quality of their lyrics - mostly about death and doomed romance - is likely to win them a devoted following after they were the subjects of intense record label interest.

[vastar iner]

Saw VV Brown last month. She's got it all.

[o]

Lady Gaga to win it, with VV Brown and White Lies 2nd and 3rd.

[S1m]

These sound like parodies of band names. Like something Alan Partridge might dream up!

[Smurfie]

VV Brown to win for me, but I should imagine it will be Lady Gaga.

Quite a few on the list I haven't heard anything by yet - but I heard a couple of Dan Black's tracks in the last week, and thought they were rather good.

[Razzle Dazzle]

not a very strong list this year

[Serge Freeman]

I think the list is VERY STRONG this year. I absolutely loved ALL 15 future singles from these artists. 2009 would be cool!

[o]

It will be even cooler when artists arrive out of nowhere like they do as well.

[ManicKangaroo]

Florence & The Machine are looking like hot favourites now

Florence And The Machine have been announced as the Critics' Choice Award for the BRIT Awards 2009.

Florence Welch and co, who play the Shockwaves NME Awards Tour next January along with Glasvegas, Friendly Fires and White Lies, beat off competition from Little Boots and White Lies, who were second and third, respectively.

Florence And The Machine are now set to perform at the BRIT Nominations Launch at Camden's Roundhouse on January 20, before collecting their award at the ceremony on February 18.

Speaking about the award in a statement, Welch said: "Blimey, a BRIT Award. Thank you so much to the critics.

"I'm making my album at the moment, it's sort of sounding like a choir, a harp, some metal chains and a piano all put through a car crusher, then hit with wooden planks really hard. I will see you at the awards. I'll be the one trying to get off with Katy Perry and passed out next to Leona Lewis."

The winner of last year's BRIT Awards Critics' Choice Award was Adele.

[ManicKangaroo]

The first act from the BBC's Sound of 2009 list has been revealed, with electro-pop duo La Roux at number five.

[o]

I had a listen to some of these yesterday and they all sound very 80s synth electro pop, shame they couldn't vary the styles of the entries even more.
Did I see Empire of the sun at #4 today?

And I like that La Roux track - Quicksand, but it is very Prince - When doves cry!

[ManicKangaroo]

Australian fantasy pop duo Empire of the Sun have come fourth on the BBC's Sound of 2009 list, which features the best bands and singers to watch in the next 12 months.

Empire of the Sun are on a spiritual mission.

Dressed as extras from a psychedelic Star Wars, the duo are on an epic journey to seek out ancient cultures across the globe, searching for inner enlightenment while creating a musical dynasty that will last for ever.

It seems like a tall order. But the ambitious, enigmatic and utterly egotastic Empire of the Sun are dead set on their task.

So their debut album, the story it tells and the places it takes them is "a walk to finding the inner being", singer Luke Steele says. "It's kind of like a spiritual road movie.

"We went to Shanghai and met the emperors, and we went to Mexico and met the Aztecs, and now we're going to Iceland.

"It's now or never and we have to push the limit. There's no holding back and there's nothing to lose. We really want to make something otherworldly and special."

Steele, who also fronts indie group The Sleepy Jackson, has teamed up with Nick Littlemore of electronic outfit Pnau, who is friends with Sir Elton John, has worked with The Killers and been in a band with Ladyhawke.

Together, the pair's 1980s-influenced soft pop synthesisers and blissed-out space beats have already taken them into the Australian top 10.

The music is coupled with a striking image of two colourful, cosmic crusaders that has been inspired by movie characters and rosily-remembered childhood idols.

"We are superheroes. We are Emperor Steele and Lord Littlemore," proclaims the singer.

In the video for their first single, Walking on a Dream, the pair are seen in front of the Shanghai skyline striking overblown, dramatic poses.

Steele grandly waves huge feathers and a big red stick while wearing white face paint, a bright blue oriental frock coat, gold ceremonial neckwear and a tall ornamental crown that looks like it might have been a rather nice lampshade in a former life.

"We've done the band thing, which is great, but we wanted it to be a lot more epic and theatrical," he declares.

"We want to start something a bit bigger than what bands have been for the past 20 years. We want to bring entertainment and colour and positivity and melody back into it."

The album, also called Walking on a Dream, was made over two years between other projects. "I was only ever in town for a night in Sydney, where the studio was, so it was all quite spontaneous," Steele says.

"I'm really good at writing top lines and coming up with chord progressions and production." Littlemore is all of the above plus is "amazing in terms of writing words", the singer says. "He's quite romantic with his words. He's like a beat poet."

The group borrowed their name from a 1984 JG Ballard novel, which was adapted for the screen by Steven Spielberg in 1987.

"We wanted something quite epic," Steele says, citing the history of Chinese emperors and the importance of the sun to the Aztecs.

"And obviously Jesus Christ is the son of God and everything," he adds, slightly inexplicably.

"We were looking for a name and we saw that and it just seemed so fitting."

Steele has become so immersed in the band's mythology that he has even named his daughter, born in October, Sunny Tiger. (The band also have a song called Tiger By Your Side and tigers feature in their graphics.)

The singer now wants to blow the minds of young fans in the same way that pop stars did when he was growing up in the 1980s.

"We're so visual," he says. "We want to make something that as a child you see and you just love because it's so colourful and it's got imagination.

"Music is magic, and with imagination combined it can be completely epic. We've been both on the road doing shows for the last 10 years and we wanted something that's higher - visually, mentally, physically, a bigger level, a bigger vision that can last for ever."

[ManicKangaroo]

Spirited singer-songwriter Florence and the Machine has come third on the BBC's Sound of 2009 new music list.

Through the window of a small recording studio in west London, Florence Welch can be seen jumping around like she's on fire, her auburn hair thrashing as she bounces to a raucous drum beat.

There is no-one watching, but Florence is in a world of her own.

In the studio, on stage and on record, Florence is unbridled, expressive and wonderfully weird. Her music is fresh, arresting and accessible - and the combination makes her one of pop's most compelling new voices.

Slightly bonkers singer-songwriters like Kate Bush, Bjork and PJ Harvey are not far-fetched comparisons.

When Florence sings, this innocent 22-year-old is possessed by rock's most restless demons, and channels them though her enigmatic fables about sex, violence, revenge and donkeys.

But the ideas in her fervent imagination can get lost in translation when she talks.

Asked to describe her songs, she decides they sound like the joy of someone being overcome by music after discovering how to play. "Like something being taken over and escaping," she says.

"Taken over and escaping? That doesn't make sense. It sound like an escape I think. Or the end of something. Or things falling over. Falling down."

She continues mulling whether her music is more like "a collapse and then explosion" or "a demolition" or "one of those demolitions where they do it from the inside so it all goes boom" or "a reverse demolition".

Erm, an implosion?

"An implosion!" she explains. "But no. Because it's all external so it would be like an externalised implosion. But that doesn't make sense. I'm just saying random words. I don't know."

Florence inhabits a slightly alternative reality to the rest of us. But it seems like quite a nice if slightly strange place to be.

She remembers growing up with "musical Tourette's", where she was unable to stop singing.

"My whole primary school life was just a chorus of 'Shut up! She's singing again!' Teachers telling me off," she says.

At home, her family had a giant wooden chest that held their vinyl. "I can remember opening it up and the smell of all the old records," she says.

The young Florence would dance on top of it with her father to Love, The Incredible String Band, The Smiths and The Velvet Underground.

"But my mum only listened to Tom Jones and The Monkees," she says. "And collectively that's what I sound like - Tom Jones, The Monkees, The Velvet Underground and The Incredible String Band."

Asked to name her musical heroes, there is a long pause before she picks Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane because she named her daughter god as a joke.

Florence herself was spotted singing in the toilets at a party by Mairead Nash, one half of DJ duo the Queens of Noize, who is now her manager.

An early taste of her unpredictable talent came at a gig at the South By Southwest Festival in Texas in March, when she jumped into a pool and then crawled under the stage during her final song.

But the performance impressed US space-rockers MGMT enough for them to ask her to support them on tour.

And her first single Kiss With A Fist may be familiar as the music from a Channel 4 TV trailer.

Many of Florence's songs conjure up warped fantasy, unlike the down-to-earth storytelling of the likes of Lily Allen and Kate Nash.

"They're stories with consequences and weird morality issues," she says.

"I write about love and I write stories and I write about things I've seen or walls or picked up on pieces of paper.

"I write about things people have said to me, I write about things I've done. And then it all gets stuck together and it sometimes becomes a story with characters, like a bird or a donkey."

In her live shows, she lets the rest of us into a small nook of her fantasy world, bringing on scary clowns, spelling out her name in flowers above the stage and selling bunting and customised school exercise books at the merchandise stand.

After making waves for the last 12 months, many of Britain's scene-watchers are now willing Florence to fulfil her potential, and she has just won the Brit Awards' Critics' Choice prize for best rising star.

She has recently been putting the finishing touches to her debut album, which will be released by Island Records, home of Amy Winehouse, Mika and U2.

Now, she is ready to bring more of us into her world. So would she like to be a pop star?

"Um… yeah, why not?" she replies with a giggle. "Might as well."

[o]

You do wish some of them would just say, "I like playing music, I like writing music, end of!" Not all this kookiness and slagging off other genres.

[Mart!n]

Great for Empire Of The Sun coming 4th, I'm hoping for great things for them.

My tip for the top will have to be White Lies

[Al]

I'm sure the Brit award will make up for not winning BBC Sound of 2009.

[Circle the Earth]

Good list of artists. Lady Gaga really stands out because she already broke through in a major way. Great seeing Empire of the Sun and Kid Cudi up there. I've gotten really into both of them lately.

[yeahyeahtron]

Florence & The Machine... She's the best of them all... Lady Gaga might come first but everyone knows who is the most talented of the bunch... I've seen Lady Gaga live last summer but I was totally unimpressed!

[yeahyeahtron]

Hopefully Little Boots fills either of the next slots preferably #1 of course

[RyanS]

Lady GaGa had better not be in the top 2. Whilst she will be (already is) big - it's a different type of thing really. It's like - you wouldn't put Alexandra Burke on the list, and you know she's going to be big.