CORRECTION: Mike Posner himself announced New Single is due out in June 2013!
“Cooler” Than Before: Mike Posner Looks To Pop Once More
POP! Goes The Charts: 25-year-old Mike Posner has been through a lot at his young age, from putting out mixtapes to getting signed just before his senior year at Duke University, but it all paid off when he struck big with the 2010 single “Cooler Than Me”, which became one of the hottest songs of that summer. It went to #6 on the Hot 100, and was certified 2x Platinum. An album, 31 Minutes To Takeoff, also debuted in the top ten. Yet, after the hype cooled off and several other mid-charting singles like “Please Don’t Go” later, Posner was nowhere to be seen on the American charts. He dropped off the national scene just like that. Although it seems like he’s been quiet lately, he’s actually been preparing a lot of material behind the scenes, and much of that hard work will be released soon as Posner looks to reclaim that success that he once was able to attain.
Things began to crumble in the fall of 2011. In Europe, he was featured on the Cher Lloyd single “With Ur Love”, which went top 5 in the United Kingdom. However, this version never made it to the U.S. shores at that time, and when it did earlier this year, Posner was replaced by Juicy J on a new version. You may also remember that late in 2011, RCA Records released the first single off what should have been Posner’s “new” Sky High album, entitled “Looks Like Sex”. This came several months after the shutdown of his original label, J, and as a result, the release got lost in the shuffle. Plus, saying that someone looks like sex is a little out there for some audiences. The song bubbled under the Hot 100 and missed the top 40 on CHR radio in early 2012. No followup singles were released and there was no sign of an album release date, but Posner remained active in the studio. This resulted in several big singles for other artists, including the U.K. #1 “Beneath Your Beautiful” by Labrinth and Emeli Sandé (co-writer) and the international smash “Boyfriend” by Justin Bieber (co-writer and co-producer).
So, fast forward to a month ago when it’s revealed that we’ll be hearing a second single from Sky High nearly a year and a half later. You should expect that there’s been some label drama, some cut tracks, sound changes, etc. It may be that his long-awaited single “The Way It Used To Be”, also came out of these sessions that I mentioned above, although it’s unclear because a tracklisting for the effort has never been released. The song is due in about three weeks June, and writer Mike Stern at Billboard says that it’s “a great summer record with an amazing melody and lyric that will definitely appeal to women.” So, I guess that you should expect that it will lyrically be about recalling past memories of a relationship. Maybe it’ll be like “Summer Nights” from Grease. Tell me more, tell me more… well, I can’t. I haven’t heard the song, but, we’ll all hear it together by the end of the month. You would think that with a summer-sounding single that RCA could have issued it earlier; I mean, the guy’s not really been around recently, pad that release with some extra time. Oh well.
At the same time, RCA is working a new Sammy Adams song that features Posner entitled “L.A. Story”, with Ryan Tedder credited as a writer and likely had some involvement from Posner as well. As you can see from this video filmed a few weeks back in concert, Posner sings the pre-chorus, hook, and raps a bit of the second verse. Pretty good and catchy chorus, at least from what I can hear in the lyrics: “I’m waking up on Sunset Boulevard/Maxing out all my credit cards/Living my own L.A. story/Living it up ’til the morning/I know you’re passing all those movie stars/Living off the hotel mini-bar/Living my own L.A. story/Living it up ’til the morning.” Adams’s team tried to push his single “Only One” to mainstream radio last year, which ultimately ended with a peak in the 30′s. He then appeared as a featured rapper on the Enrique Iglesias song, “Finally Found You”, which just missed the top ten on the format. Stern writes once again, “This will be the song that punches Adams through in a big way at pop and rhythmic radio.” He’s originally from Cambridge, MA, so I’m rooting for him as the local boy. As to not interfere with Posner’s solo single, this will probably be issued midway through the summer, and once that’s hot, this can easily attract from stations.
Posner still has a pretty decent-sized social following, with over 2 million fans on Facebook and another 640,000 on Twitter. He can definitely build that up and get rank highly on the charts again. His comeback is mainly a question of whether his label can support his needs after such a long time away from the spotlight here. We’ll find out the answer in the next few months.
Ready for new material from Mike Posner?
Mike Posner performing NEW SINGLE “The Way It Used To Be” at 92.3 NOW ‘One Night Stand’ May 1!
