What’s this? Why it’s the debut album from Swedish pop collective NEIKED. This is ‘Best Of Hard Drive’.
What’s on it? It’s a collection of hit singles, songs they’ve already put out, brand-new tunes, and unreleased stuff from the hard drive.
That’s a very honest approach to an album. It is, isn’t it? Care to let them explain? Well here we go: “Funny this whole thing started out with a hard drive. A hard drive filled with songs that we’d been pitching to other artists and acts with no success. Not because it was bad but because it was too different and “strange” sounding. So we decided to start our own label and pick our favorite material from the drive and have it be the first phase. The first album. The beginning. “Best of hard drive” is out now.”
Highlights? Well, look, obviously ‘Sexual’ still slaps harder than a ten inch *redacted*, and last year’s ‘Old School Love’ should have been just as huge. But of the ‘new’ songs, we love ‘Friend’ the most. Bizarrely, it’s titled ‘Friend – Demo’, despite the fact it sounds better than most finished and mastered songs out there right now.
And what’s this ‘strange’ stuff they speak of? Any of that any good? ‘Gunilla’ is something that we can’t imagine anyone releasing, really – least of all did we expect to find it on a NEIKED release. Yet here we are, loving the clapped-out, faded-rockstar, bygone-era, misguided-glamour of the whole thing. Definitely worth a listen.
You can find ‘Friend’ on our Best New Pop playlist.
