Taio Cruz Promises More 'Dynamite' on New Album

Taio Cruz performs at Sainsbury's Super Saturday at Clapham Common n London.

Nick Pickles/WireImage

Don’t expect Taio Cruz to switch up his sound anytime soon. The U.K. pop singer and songwriter plans to stick with massive four-on-the-floor beats on TY.O, his third album due out December 6th, and the first since he conquered dancefloors with the giddy, inescapable anthem "Dynamite," from last year’s Rokstarr LP.

"I feel like it’s too early to mess with the branding," Cruz tells Rolling Stone. "I could have happily done an entirely Motown-inspired record, but I just think it would confuse people."

Instead, Cruz re-teamed with "Dynamite" producer Dr. Luke for "Hangover," the album’s first single featuring party rapper Flo Rida, and a song about being sloppy drunk and loving it. Cruz wrote the tune after a few nights of partying with friends in Ibiza. "I don't really drink alcohol myself, but the scenery going on around me definitely inspired the music," he explains. "The lyrics are a bit risque, but they're a mirror to most people's weekly, if not nightly, antics, and I wanted to make a song that was a true representation of all the partygoers out there. People party, they drink, and they have hangovers – I'm not making this up!"

Cruz also tapped A-list producers RedOne, Swedish House Mafia and David Guetta for TY.O.  "I can tell you that there’s definitely a couple of ‘Dynamites’ on there," he teases. "I’m definitely not bored of the up-tempo dance electro sound. I’m not going to change it until I feel like I want to do something else."

All that said, Cruz does admit to feeling some pressure this time around. "It’s a much bigger deal now, being released in so many different countries and having so many different record label heads call me and my manager up," he says. "But I’m really happy with the songs that I’ve done, and I try to keep it that simple. If they make me smile when I listen to them, that’s enough."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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