Episode 713: Pop Dissection

Parents wanted to buy mooncakes from Fairmont Singapore for my paternal grandmother, so I persuaded them to have dinner at Brotzeit in Raffles City. I think the pork knuckles at the VivoCity outlet are better though. The meat was tenderer there! Had a listen to The Saturdays' new mini-album, Headlines!, on the way home from my grandmother's, and it's pretty disappointing as far as pop goes. Lead single 'Missing You' was a strange choice, although the second single, 'Higher', is only marginally better. The problem with The Saturdays is that they don't seem to be able to manufacture the kind of pop anthems that they had on their debut album, Chasing Lights. (That title track, by the way, should totally have been released as a single.) They came close on several occasions with the stuff on Wordshaker, all of which reappear in Headlines! except for my personal favourite, 'Open Up', but it all feels very perfunctory, like it's halfheartedly ticking the boxes. This is definitely one group that hasn't progressed since their debut, which is kind of sad, since the girls actually manage to sound decent even when they do acoustic sets, stripped of the bells and whistles of studio production. It's disappointing, to say the least. In other news, The Cadaverine is looking for book reviewers and I'm thinking of applying. I mean, the worst that could happen is that my application gets rejected, so why not?