Wonky Pop - Quirky, Catchy and Credible Pop Music

Michael Holbrook Penniman (born 18 August 1983), known as Mika is a London-based, Grammy-nominated and BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter.
Mika was trained by Alla Ardakov (Ablaberdyeva), a Russian opera professional. He is rumoured to have a vocal range of five octaves, he claims that it is actually closer to three and a half octaves.

In 2007, Mika won three awards, the most of any artist, at the World Music Awards, the annual ceremony, held since 1989, at which awards are given for the highest selling recording artists internationally. He is the first artist to have won three World Music Awards in just one year.

Sounds like: An upbeat Freddie Mercury

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The 20-year-old Florence Welch, like her peers Liz Green and the highly touted Adele, has her roots in the rough and ragged sound of American pre-war folk and blues. Accompanied by a different - disposable? - male guitarist at most gigs the skinny, freckle-faced redhead in the floral shirt tied to the waist is the centre of attention as she pounds the floor with her foot and fills the room with her songs about gouging out enemy female eyes and burying boyfriends, her cautionary tales and exorcisms of Catholic guilt. On her MySpace she describes her music playfully as grindcore but also as Melodramatic Popular Song. Really, it's the most powerfully simple, stripped-back, rocked-up folk'n'blues, with a scintilla of guitar and smidgeon of drums. She is the light-skinned "enchanted skeleton" with the dark subject matter, kooky stagecraft of Kate Bush, feisty growl of Janis Joplin and pastoral menace of Sandy Denny.

The buzz: "A voice so hauntingly captivating you can feel it in your stomach."

The truth: It's early days yet, but Florence will haunt and captivate, although not necessarily simultaneously.

Most likely to: Astonish with her raw emotion.

Least likely to: Make you long for That Petrol Emotion.

File next to: Adele, Liz Green, Kristin Hersh, Amy Winehouse.

-Paul Lester

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Alphabeat is a Danish pop band from Silkeborg made up of six members, Anders SG, Stine Bramsen, Anders B, Rasmus Nagel, Anders Reinholdt and Troels Hansen. They are not a manufactured pop act, but a group that works hard and has years of experience. All the hard work is beginning to pay off for the band as their catchy pop has struck a chord with British audiences.

Their debut single "Fascination" was a major hit in Denmark during the summer of 2007 and a significant hit in the UK in 2008. A second single, "10.000 Nights of Thunder" (or just "10,000 Nights" in the UK) saw equal success, and their eponymous debut album went platinum in Denmark, and in the UK, the album has gone gold.

Several popular British publications have praised Alphabeat including NME, The Observer Music Monthly, Digital Spy, and Popjustice. In fact, Alex Hoban from NME has suggested that they are the best Scandinavian band since ABBA!

Sounds like: a combination of the pure pop of ABBA, the sassy sounds of the B-52's (without the kitsch), and the disco stomp of Scissor Sisters (without the camp)

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Leon Jean-Marie is a hotly-tipped musician from East London.
His first release is two slabs of urgent future-funk, motoring beats, twanging riffs and vocals that Prince would swap his high heels for. We're gonna party like it's 2099. Hear Leon's 'Scratch'/'Make It Right' and you'll hear a 24-year-old who mixes up Beck, Bill Withers, Nirvana, the aforesaid Prince and many more besides. A vocalist and electronic maestro who, having dreamt up his tunes in his home studio, is now working with some of the smartest producer-collaborators in the world.

Jean-Marie has worked with Mark Ronson and supported Mika, Amy Winehouse and Estelle on tour. He released his debut album, Bent Out of Shape, in June 2008.

Sounds like: Prince meets Beck

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Phillipa "Pip" Brown, better known by her stage name Ladyhawke, is originally from New Zealand but now an inhabitant of the UK. The story of Pip Brown and the birth of Ladyhawke veers off on numerous tangents but her passion for music and her dogged pursuit of this are apparent throughout. A solo singer-songwriter, Ladyhawke plays all the instruments in studio and tours with a band.

She is quoted as saying, "I wanted to make music that could put a smile on peoples faces and give them a feeling of nostalgia even though they may be hearing my songs for the first time." Given the amount of musical comparisons to prominent musicians of the 80s, it seems she has met her goal.

Sounds like: Blondie meets the Pretenders

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Lady GaGa is the girl who at age 4 learned piano by ear. By age 13, she had written her first piano ballad. At 14, she played open mike nights at clubs such as New York's the Bitter End by night and was teased for her quirky, eccentric style by her Convent of the Sacred Heart School (the Manhattan private school Nicky and Paris Hilton attended) classmates by day. At age 17, she became was one of 20 kids in the world to get early admission to Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. Signed by her 20th birthday and writing songs for other artists (such as the Pussycat Dolls, and has been asked to write for a series of Interscope artists) before her debut album was even released, Lady GaGa has earned the right to reach for the sky.

It's been a while since a new pop artist has made her way in the music industry the old-fashioned/grass roots way by paying her dues with seedy club gigs and self-promotion. This is one rising pop star who hasn't been plucked from a model casting call, born into a famous family, won a reality TV singing contest, or emerged from a teen cable TV sitcom. "I did this the way you are supposed to. I played every club in New York City and I bombed in every club and then killed it in every club and I found myself as an artist. I learned how to survive as an artist, get real, and how to fail and then figure out who I was as singer and performer. And, I worked hard."

File next to: Christina Aguilera

Being hailed as: the next Madonna

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