The ones that got away

Like last year I've contributed lists of my favorite albums and songs of 2007 to the polls run by Idolator and The Village Voice. I'm not entirely sure when they're going to come out, but in the meantime here are some songs from 2007 that I discovered after the deadline. I'm pretty sure Emmon's The Art and the Evil would have made the album list had I heard it on time.

Emmon "High Horses" and "Friends" (from The Art and the Evil)
Can't you picture Swedish popstress Emmon, aka Emma Nylén, listening to early Depeche Mode? She's around 13, holed up in her room while it's snowing outside, and suddenly it hits her: Speak & Spell is genius!!!

Nylén (pictured) had a busy year: She's also is in the band Paris, whose own ’07 release ain't too shabby either.
Paris "Mountains" (from The Landlord Is Kind Enough to Let Us Have Our Little Sessions)

Staying in northern Europe, Denmark gave us Private, the new project from former Superheroes mainman Thomas Troelsen. "My Secret Lover," the album's title track, betrays a fixation with early Michael Jackson and Prince. The lyrics are worthy of Miranda Cooper ("I met you at the club, no further comment/I said, Baby, let's go back to your apartment") and the song features two of my favorite pop ingredients: a phone call and meta lines ("Man, I'm a man machine/Check out my style cause I'm going real wild/I'm plugging in keyboards one at the time/And then I gotta song, gotta a song in no time") uttered in cartoonish voices. Added bonus: out of the blue someone threateningly bleats "I'm coming after you" in a chipmunk squeak. I almost never say this about a song, but "My Secret Lover" ends too quickly.
Private "My Secret Lover" (from My Secret Lover)

Crossing the Atlantic we end up in Argentina, where the techno-poppy Miranda! delivered its excellent fourth album, El Disco de tu Corazón. I picked a track featuring a guest, the Spanish band Fangoria, whose leads used to be in Alaska y su Dinarama, one of the prime groups of Madrid's early-’80s movida.
Miranda! "Vete De Aquí" (from El Disco de tu Corazón)