Dreamy peaks

As you may have noticed from the slightly manic tone of that last post, I need a holiday. So I'm taking off to the Lake District for two weeks of leisurely walks and listening to Girls Aloud b-sides.

Normal business will be resumed on or around Friday, 13th February (oooooh, spooky!).

Byee,
mrdiscopop

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New music: Noisettes

Don't be frightened, readers! The cast of Play Away haven't been bitten by zombies - this is a band called the Noisettes. And, yes, you're right, that is what they used to call the hazelnut chocolate in a box of Quality Street.

Described on the Wikipedia as an "indie rock trio", they've been failing to reach the top 40 since 2006. Which, I admit, is very indie of them. However, their new single sounds a bit like Brand New Heavies (in the good way). It's called Don't Upset The Rhythm, and it goes a little something like this.



There is a video for this song, which is set in a Lost In Space-style cardboard cutout space scene. It has a segment where lead singer Shingai Shoniwa is hit by lightning (and survives!) and another bit where she stands on the spot as dancers gyrate next to her, thus giving the impression that she, too, is dancing. In the industry, this is known as "doing a Leona".

Sadly, Mercury Records have stipulated that 'embedding is disabled by request' - the absolute worst marketing decision since they took the artificial colours out of Smarties.

Luckily, Mazda are using the song in to sell their new car, and they have no qualms about letting people see that advert anywhere on the internet... Even if we juxtapose it with a picture of Hitler.

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"Important" U2 news

You may not be aware of this, but U2 have a new album coming out next week. You think they'd do some promotion, or a discreet interview on the BBC. Strange to have omitted such a crucial plank of their marketing, er... gangplank.

Anyway, I have spent the morning listening to No Line On The Horizon it on Spotify (it's legal, don't worry) and, terrifyingly, it's not completely awful.

Get On Your Kinky Boots, probably the worst song of 2009, is probably the worst song on it. One or two of the tracks, Stand Up Comedy and I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, veer dangerously close to being catchy pop tunes.

Unbelievable news, readers. Simply unbelievable.

Anyway, it turns out that the band have been playing a low-key set for a tiny provincial radio station this morning. If you want to hear them do a new song (Breathe - a bit like Simple Minds covering Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changing) and their last proper classic, Beautiful Day, I would click on this link. Or try this one for an MP3.



PS: If you don't know what Spotify is, I insist that you check it out. Here's a quick guide which I've adapted / plagiarised from Popjustice.

1) Spotify is a programme you install on your PC or Mac, which looks and feels a bit like iTunes.

2) It has songs from all the major labels and quite a few of the indies available for instant, high-quality streaming. Pre-release stuff, remixes, the entire Girls Aloud catalogue. It's amazing.

3) You can listen to full albums, or bounce around picking tracks at random.

4) It's completely s legal... but ad-supported.

5) You only have to listen to one advert every half-an-hour or so, so it's not too intrusive.

6) You can make playlists, like in iTunes, and share them with friends.

7) Even better, you can make "collaborative playlists" that people can add tracks to. The new additions appear instantly - so everyone gets to hear (or skip) your amazing choices

8) You can sign up and download it here. The ability to create an account seems to have a daily limit on it, but I've got a few invites to share if anyone wants one.

If you manage to download it and get it working, I've started a Discopop Directory playlist here (The link launches Spotify and takes you straight to the playlist). Add some tracks, and we'll all have a Friday night disco. No UB40, plsthxbye.

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Cheryl Cole inspires novelty song pt329

Many, many people (two in all) have recommended the following video to me today. It's a rapalicious ode to Cheryl Cole in a "comedy" northern accent.

Frankly, it's all a bit Takeover TV (crap Channel 4 home video series from the days before Youtube (youtube)) and it is certainly not a patch on Lily Allen's Cheryl Tweedy.

But I promised I'd post something about Girls Aloud today and this is better than rabbiting on about the frankly ludicrous decision to release Untouchable as their next single.



For the record, the correct order of attractiveness for Girls Aloud is as follows:


1) Nadine


2) Kimberley


3) Cheryl


4) Sarah


5) Nicola

And that is the last word on that, okay?

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New old Beatles bootleg!!

I am, as you may have gathered, a massive music geek. A nerd, a trainspotter, an anorak, a noddie, a saddo. When I get to interview pop stars, I usually waste half my allotted time talking about arcane synthesizers and the "craft" of songwiritng (nb: pop stars hate this, unless they're Natasha Bedingfield).

You know those classic albums documentaries where bearded producers sit behind a mixing desk fading guitar lines in and out, while explaining how Mick Fleetwood snorted an entire suitcases of cocaine off the back of a Rickenbacker? Best television ever.

So, it hardly comes as a surprise to find that I pored obsessively over those Beatles Anthology CDs a deacde ago, in thrall to John Lennon's early, casette tape demos of Strawberry Fields, and smiling in sympathy at George Harrison's ropey first attempt to play the sitar.

So, the discovery earlier this week of an unreleased, 11-minute outtake from the band's White Album sessions made my ears prick up like a pixie. It's an alternative take of Revolution 1 (the slow, bluesy version of the Revolution single) which segues into some of the Karl Stockhausen-inspired sound collage experiments of Revolution 9.

Unlike the album version, however, this isn't a cacophonous mess.

Some fans reckon it's a fake, but others point out that it matches almost perfectly a description of the song in Mark Lewisohn's exhaustive document of the Beatles in the recording studio, Recording Sessions (although I prefer Ian MacDonald's masterful Revolution In the Head).

Anyway, enough of me. You'll want to hear the bootleg. It was on Youtube (youtube) until EMI posted a "cease and desist" notice, essentially confirming that its real. But you can listen to all 11 glorious minutes on music blog The Talent Show.

I'll post something about Girls Aloud later.

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It's a slightly late Royksopp video

We mentioned Royksopp's squiggly new single, Happy Up Here over a month ago, and it was up for sale on iTunes at the start of February.

Now, safe in the knowledge that it's a bona fide Top 75 flop, they've put out a video. No wonder the record industry is in crisis, etc, etc.



Space invaders!!!

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Kelly Clarkson sings about sucking

Aside from the terriffic title, I don't care much for Kelly Clarkson's new single, My Life Would Suck Without You. But I'm clearly in the minority, as the mid-week charts suggest she's getting her first UK number one on Sunday...

Anyway, La Clarkson was in Radio 1's Live Lounge on Tuesday, showing off her amazing set of pipes. And she did some singing, too (har-de-har). It turns out that, performed acoustically, her song is exactly 8.4 times better.

It's up in video on the Radio One website, along with the obligatory cover (heresy alert: she did one of her own songs). But if you're too lazy to click the link, there's an mp3 of the track coming up.


Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You (live lounge)

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Gig Review: Fleet Foxes, Roundhouse

Seattle five-piece Fleet Foxes shuffle onto the stage, barely acknowledging the audience, and spend a couple of minutes tuning up their instruments and nodding to each other. Given their slightly shambolic appearance and excess facial hair on show, you'd have thought they were roadies if the lights hadn't dimmed.

And then... and then...

They step forward to the microphones and, out of nowhere, the most beautiful four-piece harmony rings out. The thrumming crowd is instantly hushed - and remains so for the next 75 minutes.

Listening to the Fleet Foxes is like being sucked into a time vaccuum. Those intricate vocal arrangements and earnest musicianship wouldn't sound out of place at Woodstock - particularly in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's career-defining set.

The band, too, seem untouched by the modern world. Their lyrics are firmly rooted in nature and the passing of the seasons - all cold winds, snow-capped mountains, rolling streams and hymns to the green shoots of spring.

It's interesting to see how a crowd more used to rock music deals with the luscious beauty of these songs. A reverential, uncoordinated sway seems to the order of the day - except for one gentleman in the front row, who bizarrely elects to headbang throughout the set.

Funnily enough, that dichotomy is reflected on stage, too. While frontman Robin Peckold stands rooted to the stage for most of the set, guitarist Skyler Skjelset requires an almost athletic ability to reproduce his intricate guitar lines.

Stand-out moments included current single Mykonos and a driving run-through of Blue Ridge Mountains. And when Pecknold abandoned all amplification to stand at the front of the stage, guitar hitched up to chest height, and cover traditional song Katie Cruel, you could have heard a pin drop.

Undoubtedly, the Roundhouse is the perfect venue for this sort of intimate, acoustic folk-pop. But if Fleet Foxes are playing any sun-drenched midday sets at this summer's festivals, you would be mad to miss them.

Update: Fleet Foxes have just performed Mykonos on Radio 1's Live Lounge. And it sounded a little bit like this:



[Pictures courtesy of Mr Ush on Flickr]

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New Pet Shop Boys video

I suppose this is art?

Pet Shop Boys - Love, Etc


Worst. Super. Mario. Bros. Rip-off. EVER.

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Television highlight of the decade

No, it wasn't the Oscars (what was all that about?) but comedian Robert Webb recreating the choreography from Flashdance on the otherwise abysmal Let's Dance For Comic Relief on Saturday night.

I cried actual tears.



Note to Youtube pirates: The intro video, in which Webb detailed his lifelong ambition to become a welder, was almost as hilarious as the actual routine. Could you possibly clip that up for us? Cheers.

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Culture wars, pt 45,334

Here are two versions of Kid Cudi's Day And Night video, one for the US market (tripped out animation, ominous undertones) and one for the UK (girls, binikis, a 'donk'). Which do you prefer?

Kid Cudi - Day and Night (US)


Kid Cudi - Day and Night (UK)

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Video: Kanye West - Welcome To Heartbreak

The other day, some nerd was showing me this "like, totally awesome" video, which was basically a corrupted computer file of a thrid-rate indie pop song. It was a bit like watching Freeview on a 60" plasma, lots of pixels and interference, but the overall effect was hypnotically beautiful.



According to Youtube, that video was uploaded on 8th February and, faster than you can say "I bet someone uses this on a real video", someone has used it in a real video.

Appropriately enough, that someone is notorious internet magpie Kanye West, who's gone all blocky in the clip for Welcome To Heartbreak.

Kanye West - Welcome To Heartbreak


You have to give Kanye credit here. Despite his uncontrollable God complex, he does take a lot of care over the visual aspect of his work - and he's constantly on the look-out for new talent. Much like a hip-hop Bjork.

If you want to know more about this technique, which has been christened Datamoshing, this page contains an unusually erudite internet discussion about it.

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Tiga ft Madonna - Shoes

Qualitative research proves that this is the best thing Madonna has done since she first picked up a bottle of peroxide and though: "I wonder what I'd look like blonde?".

Okay, it's not that good - but it's a million miles better than the turgid mud-pit that was her last album. The song is called Shoes and it's a classicaly arch bit of synth piffle which would - let's be realistic, viewers - go completely unnoticed if it didn't have the planet's most famous gusset thrusting pop star talking all over the top of it.

The first name on the credits is Tiga, a Canadian-born, privately educated, disco tart of some repute - having done records with Sir Richard of X, Scissor Sisters and Felix Da Housecat.

But you're not really interested in him, are you?

So, with no more ado, for ado is not what we do, here is the song in all it's deadpan glory. It was on Pete "Pete Tong" Tong's show last week, so it has stupid shouty bits all over the top, but you'll get the general idea.

[MP3 removed by request]

NB: Some fans reckon the lady vocal isn't by Madonna, but they're generally of the "Why would Madonna record with someone I've never heard of" variety. Because Madonna always checks her fans' record collections before deciding who to collaborate with.

...Although, that's not such a bad idea, is it? If she comes round to Discopop Towers, I'll lend her the Dragonette and Ladyhawke albums and see what happens. I might hide the promo copy of Morrissey's new album, mind.

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ABOUT BLOODY TIME

Girls Aloud won a Brit -- and Coldplay got none. Divine justice.

Girls Aloud - The Promise (live at the Brits)

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Sing it like you mean it

According to the Brits website, "U2 will be performing their brand new single Get On Your Boots for the very first time" at tonight's ceremony. Clearly, they missed the Grammys last week... or maybe they're hoping that, this time, the performance won't be such a s crushingly bad, dad-at-the-disco fiasco.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Get On Your Boots is a fascinating song. Bits of it - particularly the supple harmonies in the chorus - are sublime. But all the great writing never combines into a coherent, uplifting pop song. I think the main reason is this: Bono sounds insincere.

I know lots of people will be saying "Mark, what did you expect? That massive Irish gasbag is genetically incapable of sincerity". But they are wrong. Bono can sell a song like One with the raw, emotional conviction of a gospel singer. Which is pretty awesome if you consider that Mary J Blige - a real gospel singer - completely trashed it.

No, the reason Get On Your Boots doesn't work is because Bono wants to be something he's not - cool. It's a craving that's derailed the U2 train in the past (cf Discotheque) and it's happening again - Get On Your Boots is only at number 10 in the midweek charts.

Of course, some artists make a career out of play-acting in song. David Bowie is the obvious example, but you could also mention Anthony Hegarty or David Byrne.

Funnily enough, I have real trouble engaging with their music, too.

When Bowie puts on that silly nasal voice in Space Oddity, or sings "Sound and Vision" like he's Goofy, it completely spoils the atmosphere. You know when you ask, "Is it Wednesday today?" and some guy in the office replies: "Yes it is - all day!"? That guy is David Bowie.

As someone once said: "Music is what feelings sound like". You can't fake a feeling. People around you know when you're forcing a smile, paying a false compliment or acting confident.

So why does Bono think he can get away with it in music? I suspect he genuinely believes he can be cool at the age of 49. To me, that's a worse crime than all the other nonsense that's levelled at him. He can squirrel away his money into a offshore tax havens, gladhand war criminals and wear those stupid fucking fly shades until he goes blind. But, please, please don't put your midlife crisis on record.

U2 - Get On Your Boots

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Video: Lady GaGa - Love Game

I'm too wasted on Campari to say anything intelligent about this video. I don't even like Campari. So why have I drunk three bottles of it in the last ten minutes? I'm confused.

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STOP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING AND WATCH THIS MUSIC VIDEO!!!!

Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum


A-MAZ-ING

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Ludacris - he's definitely not gay, alright?

Two years ago, a highly dubious "hollywood blogger" claimed to have outed several of hip-hop's biggest stars. Jonathan Jaxson, whose blog has since been deleted, was so scurrilous that even Perez Hilton sued him for libel, slander, invasion of privacy, harassment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Nonetheless, hip-hop is not the most enlightened of communities when it comes to gay rights, so several artists have found their names sullied by the (never-proven) gossip.

Step forward Ludacris, who has taken extreme measures to ensure we aware of his love for the female of the species. Especially all the hot ones, okay?

Ludacris - Nasty Girl


Okay, it's a complete car crash of a song, but I think we're left in no doubt: Girls and fucking - Ludacris is a fan of them both.

He's also a fan of Jay-Z's Girls, Girls, Girls, which he's completely ripped off.

But the real reason I posted this travesty is for the comments on its Youtube (youtube) page. They are, to say the least, perfect examples of their genre:

I want to see one of these rappers just pull their penis out...Im being honest, I dont want to see girls all the damn time!!!

As if guys that look like that could get chicks that hot anywhere except outside a music video, get the fuck outta here...

If they keep putting hoochies in here, and we go against it; then they would stop. It's the sick minded people that encourage this that makes it sell. If people would just grow up and stop being perverted, then maybe we wouldn't see half naked hoochies every time we turned on the TV.

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sexual perversion

i am a christian and i do have jesus as my personal savior... but this song is still cool:)

haha... "bread" and "bed" rhyme!

This is probably the most intelligent discussion I have ever read on the internet.

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Kittens... Inspired by Kittens!!

Twitter makes my head go weird. What kind of world is it where Holly Willoughby sends Fearne Cotton a video of kittens on Youtube and it ends up in my inbox?

A spectacularly awesome world, of course.



For more of this fascinating content, try shoving my twitter page up your wazoo.

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Video: Ingrid Michaelson - Girls & Boys

Ingrid Michaelson's album was one of my favourite finds of 2008. Self-recorded, self-produced and self-released, it never managed to work its way into shops in the UK (although I think plans are afoot) but if you were disappointed by Sara Bareilles and Gabriella Cilmi's debuts, this is the record you were looking for all along.

If you're allergic to the sort of music they play at the end of Gray's Anatomy, however, this won't be your cup of tea. In fact, it'll be more like drinking razor blades through a bendy straw: Hard work and ultimately painful.

Michaelson's latest single is called Breakable, and the video serves the dual purpose of promoting the song and warning you against giving your still-beating heart to a street busker. Whether you like the song or not, I think we can all take something away from that.

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New Ting Tings video: We Walk

Katy and the odd bloke in the sunglasses are going back to their roots and putting out a limited-edition, vinyl-only version of We Walk as the next (last?) single from We Started Nothing. Logically, A new Ting Tings single means a new video. And here it is.



Okay, not really. This is the actual video.



I prefer the first one, though. (And if anyone can do a mash-up of We Walk and The Bill theme tune, I'll send them a free copy of The Ting Tings album.)

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Girls Aloud know what time it is - update!

Today it's the turn of Kimberley Jane Walsh to add a be the voice of the speaking clock for Comic Relief (dial 123 from your landline, fact fans).




Kimberley sounds relaxed and authoritative compared to Cheryl "way aye man" Cole, who may well have been forced to tell the time at gunpoint. I particularly like the sultry way she says "ten seconds" - although it's ruined somewhat when she decides to make the 'ting' noise by herself.

Dear God, I'm reviewing the speaking clock. What has my life come to?

EDIT: Someone has, quite rightly, pointed out to me that anyone who phoned the speaking clock in order to hear Kimberley or Cheryl and their mad timekeeping skillz was simultaneously making a donation to Comic Relief. Therefore, by posting the audio up here I was quite literally taking candy from a baby. To rectify this, there's a big old cheque on its way to the Red Nose people with tenpence for everyone who visited the site in the past seven days.

Mrdiscopop

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Is the pop revival going to happen?

If we're to believe the pundits, electro-pop is going to be the big thing in 2009. Roisin Murphy must be hopping mad. Goldfrapp have thrown away their lutes. Kylie is thinking "maybe someone will buy my records again".

Personally, I remain to be convinced. A lot of the hotly-tipped artists are making anaemic, tinny synth pop with incredibly slight melodies. Imagine a weedier version of Hot Chip, and you're in the right ballpark (nb: these artists would not be seen in a ballpark as it would "play havoc with their allergies").

Here are three of the aforementioned hot tips. They're definitely cool, I'll almost certainly load them onto my iPod, but I just can't see them in the top 10. What do you reckon?


La Roux - In For The Kill

La Roux is Elly Jackson and co-writer and co-producer Ben Langmaid

Elly has a trendy haircut

On second thoughts, it's a terrible haircut

We're not in France, you know.
Official website

Cocknbull Kid - I'm Not Sorry

Cocknbull Kid is 22-year-old Anita Blay

She's "the lovechild of Morissey and Neneh Cherry" (Nenissey??)

She DJ'd at the Sugababes album launch, which was terrible
Official website

Ladytron - Tomorrow

This lot have been around for a decade

If they can't have a hit, why should any of these other bands?

But we still like Little Boots
Official website

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Oi! Cheryl Cole! Do you have the time, love?

I love how, at the beginning of each time check, Cheryl sounds petrified, before slowly calming down when she gets to the seconds. Bless her cotton socks.

*Yes, I am quite aware that Cheryl is not wearing a watch in the picture

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Pet Shop Boys - Love, Etc

Ooomph! Neil Tenant and Chris Lowe have just thrown their new single right into our solar plexus. It's called Love, Etc and it's a bit more rowdy than you'd expect of a Pet Shop Boys single, with a Go West-style male voice choir shouting all over the top of it.

The lyrics are an acidic inversion of The Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love, with Mr Tennant explaining that money, fame and beauty don't guarantee you a life partner, but it helps. He must have missed all those stories about Madonna divorcing Shane Ritchie [please check these names - factual accuracy ed]

The full track isn't ready for your discerning ears just yet, but here's a taster:
Pet Shop Boys - Love, Etc

Hmmm... Do you think i could have been "inspired" by this classic TV theme???
Joe Fagin - That's Livin' Alright

Answers on a banana.

PS: There's a longer clip on the official PSB website

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Grammys = crushingly boring

If there's one thing the Grammys does well, it's making rock and roll seem like the planet's most pointless and boring pursuit.

The 2009 ceremony opened in Los Angeles last night with U2 - who played a terribly important rendition of their terribly important new single Get On Your Boots. They projected the lyrics onto a big screen, even though the lyrics are a load of turgid old bollocks. "The future needs a big kiss"?? Whatever you say, Bono.

Things barely improved when Justin Timberlake joined Al Green for a lacklustre Vegas lounge version of Let's Stay Together. We were also teased with twenty seconds of MIA's excellent Paper Planes before TI, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne came out and shouted a load of nonsense all over the top of it. MUSIC FAIL!

Estelle's run-through of American Boy, meanwhile, was notable only for Kanye West's haircut tribute to Bobby Brown.



There was some light in the dark, though. Coldplay got Jay-Z on stage for an awkward/brilliant rendition of Lost+, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke started Vogueing (?!) during a marching band-assisted version of 15 Step.

The best performance of the night was probably the Motown medley, featuring Jamie Foxx, Ne-Yo and Smokey Robinson. You can't really go wrong with a bit of Motown, of course, but as Stereogum noted in it's liveblog, you couldn't see the tracks of Smokey Robinson's tears "because the plastic on his face is water-repellent".

Katy Perry also turned up to do her thing - her thing being the ability to wear amazing costumes (with actual watermelon breasts) while not singing very well. She had at least spent some money on the set, which is why I'm posting her video and none of the others. So there.



All the news outlets are going on about how Robert Plant was the big winner but, for me, the most interesting winner of the night was Jimmy Sturr & His Orchestra. The gourp picked up the best polka award for the 18th time -- meaning he's won it two out of every three years since the Grammy committee invented the prize.

Keen to find out more, I went to Wikipedia, which helpfully notes that Jimmy is the "Irish son of a local bank president" and "the band has also played at many famous casinos".

Here's what you're missing:

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Animated Foxes

This paper cut out, stop-motion animation for the Fleet Foxes' new single, Mykonos, is more serene and meditative than Buddha on tranquilizers.



A time-lapse "making of" video is also available here.

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One for all the fly mothers

Break out your Adidas, here is the best compilation of the year!



Fly Girls (B-Boys Beware: Revenge Of The Female Rappers) landed on the doormat at Discopop Towers on Tuesday, since when we have all adopted hi-top haircuts and fought in a series of hotly-contested dance offs.

The record collects together the best moments of the 1980s block party rap scene, lady style. Due to hip-hop's innate misogyny, most of the acts remain fairly obscure, but the compilers have unearthed 20 absolute gems from the archives.

Highlights include the Dr Dre produced JJ Fad (Just Jammin' Fresh and Def), whose You're Going Down is a hilarous diss of Roxanne Shanté: "We knew you were wack from the start / Did a hundred twleve inches and never hit the pop charts". Also included is the original Marley Marl version of Dimples D's Sucker DJ - which hit the UK charts in 1990 courtesy of a gimmicky I Dream Of Jeannie remix.

Dimples D - Sucker DJ


The best track is probably MC Lyte's upfront and funky Cha Cha Cha, which features the genius rhyme: "Better than before, as if that was possible / My competition? You'll find them in the hospital".

But the record goes further than recreating the ghettoblaster-fabulous early 80s rap attack, with a few cuts from the Afro-jazz poetry scene of the 70s that fed directly into hip-hop. And, because it was put together by London's Soul Jazz records, The Cookie Crew and Monie Love are present to represent the UK. There's even a track from Betty Boo's former band, She Rockers - although, sadly, The Wee Pappa Girl Rappers have been overlooked.

There's the odd anomaly - Camille Yarbrough's soul classic Take Yo' Praise has no business here, and Lady B's badly recorded To The Beat Y'All is a poor rip-off of Rapper's Delight - but throw this record on the turntables at your next house party, and you're guaranteed three hours of quality body popping.

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Left Eye reprise

Former TLC star Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes is getting a Tupac-style posthumous tribute album, full of studio off-cuts worked into proper songs by the likes of Missy Elliot and Chamillionaire.

Eye Legacy (terrible name) is something of an oddity, considering that when she was alive, producers took every effort to erase Left Eye's contributions to TLC's records (her rap was excised from all but the video version of No Scrubs, for example).

Odder still, though, is the project's first single, Let's Just Do It. A so-so electronic rap workout, it is credited to "Lisa Lopes featuring Missy Elliot and TLC". Considering that Left Eye is the "L" in TLC, this must mark the first time an artist has made a record by themselves, featuring themselves. Amazing.

Lisa Left Eye Lopes ft Missy Elliot and TLC - Let's Do It

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Goodies from the internet cookie jar

Today, we bring you links to external websites to create the impression we're working when, in fact, we're reading external websites. Duplication is keeping this blog alive, folks...

:: Katy Perry is all tucked up in a cosy duvet.

:: Following the much-emailed literal interpretation of A-ha's Take On Me video, and the not-nearly-as-funny version of Tears For Fears' Head Over Heels, comedy gold is mined once again in the series' third instalment.



:: Credit card warning. Don't do what this guy did.

:: Isla Fisher looks truly scrumptious in this photoshoot for Allure magazine.

:: Lily Allen is streaming her new album on MySpace. I can't be bothered to listen to it - can someone else pass it through their auditory system and let me know if it's worth buying? Thanks.

:: We all suspected Christian Bale had a bit of a temper, but here's confirmation - an extraordinary two minute, expletive-filled rant on the set of Terminator: Salvation. Disgraceful. Update: Here's the inevitable dance remix.

:: Following SingStar Abba's success, we're promised Singstar Queen later this year. I don't care what Sony says, however, I'm not buying a PS3 until we get Singstar Girls Aloud. And the price drops by £100. And pigs fly.

:: President Obama reads Bush's handover letter live from the Oval Office



:: A trainspotter-esque, but nonetheless fascinating, Wikipedia page on unusual types of gramophone records.

:: Whatever happened to TV's Blossom? "I was too 'ethnic' or 'quirky'," she tells The Onion.

:: Here's what Guitar Hero would have looked like in 1982 [via b3ta]

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Lady GaGa's new video is a load of balls

Meatballs, that is! Ah-hahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!



The Italian-themed video is for her third single, Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), the closest thing GaGa has to a ballad. It's out imminently in Australia, and later this year in the UK.

Lady GaGa - Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)

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Get up outta your rocking chair grandma!

Or rather, would you care to dance grandmother?

Annie Lennox - Shining Light


Okay, Annie Lennox isn't that old - but that song is truly, embarrassingly, terrible, isn't it? Like watching your mum dancing to the Birdie Song at a wedding. Or when ITV tries to make a quality drama. Or being smashed repeatedly in the face with a pitchfork.

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