Showing posts with label Eden xo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eden xo. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Eden xo - Dirty Blonde (2016)

Following her stint in Shut Up Stella in 2007, and an attempt at a solo career in 2008, Jessica Eden Malakouti formed Jessie And The Toy Boys in 2011, which was actually more of a solo project, with the Toy Boys being mannequins. She said in a 2011 interview that she wanted plastic bandmates that could not get in the way of her creative vision, and under that name she independently released the 'Show Me Your Tan Lines' five-song EP. 'Push It (feat. Yelawolf)' hit the Top 10 on the Billboard dance charts, and during the summer of 2011 she opened for Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj on the North American leg of the Femme Fatale tour. The band's debut album, 'This Is How Rumours Start', should have followed, but it was pushed back to summer 2012, and despite some of the songs appearing as videos on Youtube, the album itself has failed to materialise. In May 2013 she released 'White Girl Wasted' under her own name, and this sparked rumours that she would no longer be releasing music under the name Jessie And The Toy Boys. This was confirmed when she announced that she'd signed to Virgin, changed her name to her middle name of Eden, followed by xo, and released her first single under this name with 'Too Cool To Dance'. It hit the Top 40 on the Billboard chart and the Top 20 on the club charts, and in 2014 it was featured on 'So You Think You Can Dance' to mark National Dance Day. 'The Weekend' was another hit single, as was a remix of the track that featured Lil Jon, and she also recorded a version of the Thompson Twins song 'Hold Me Now' in 2015. Her next release was intended to be an EP titled 'Dirty Blonde', but due to label problems she ended up being dropped by Virgin and the project was shelved. During her time at Virgin Records she had sessions with Ron Fair, Toby Gad, Fred Falke, Sean Paul, and Jesse Shatkin, and had enough songs for an album at the time that the EP was cancelled, and so if she hadn't left the label in 2017 then she could have expanded the EP into her debut album. As she didn't do that then I have, and so here is Eden xo's first and only album, which should have come out around 2016.


 
Track listing

01 Dirty Blonde  
02 Too Cool To Dance  
03 Drips Gold (feat. Raja Kumari) 
04 Finger
05 All Day Every Day 
06 Sideline (feat. Swick)
07 Torn (Don't Stop Believing) 
08 Cinematic Goodbye
09 Say That Again (feat. Travis Mills)  
10 El Barrio 
11 Hold Me Now  
12 Color Me In (feat. The Hot Damns) 
13 The Weekend 

Friday, April 5, 2024

Jessie Malakouti - Pretty & Gritty (2008)

While she was still a member of Shut Up Stella between 2007 and 2008, Jessie Malakouti was thinking ahead to a solo career, if and when the band broke up, and she was writing and recording her own songs. After Shut Up Stella was dropped from Epic Records, she flew to Sweden to work with production team Money&Stuff and other producers such as Arnthor Birgisson, Justin Trugman, Lester Mendez, Matt Rowe and Wayne Rodrigues, with the intention of producing her debut solo album, which was to be titled 'Pretty & Gritty'. The record was due to be released in 2008, but it was never completed, and so she uploaded some songs to her MySpace page, while others were consigned to the vaults, although two of her songs, 'Trash Me' and 'Outsider', appeared in episodes of MTV's 'The Hills', as well as being independently self-released as music videos and digital downloads. In December 2008 she signed a publishing deal with EMI, and the next two years were spent in London working on dance music with Fred Falke, as well as writing for UK production house Xenomania. In 2010 she formed Jessie And The Toy Boys, launching them with the  single 'Push It' in February 2011, and so all thoughts of a solo career had by then faded away. To fill in the gap between the cancelled 'Shut Up Stella' album and the cancelled' 'This Is How Rumors Start' by Jessie And The Toy Boys (can you see a pattern emerging here?), we have the cancelled 'Pretty & Gritty' by a solo Jessie Malakouti.  



Track listing

01 Trash Me 
02 Eyes Closed 
03 Bad Guy 
04 Check 'n Out 
05 I Need Love
06 Big Booty 
07 Commitment Issues
08 PS 
09 Upside Down 304
10 Lately 
11 Outsider 
12 Crash Bang Baby
13 You're My Viagra 
14 Things