CENTREFOLD

Adam Austin

This week’s winner of the Unnecessary Cover Version award goes to Adam Austin, who was always on to a loser here, as nothing will ever top the madder-than-a-love-starved-bunny original. Full marks for effort though.

DREAMING

M People

Go away and don’t come back until you’ve written something that sounds different to everything else you’ve ever done.

FLY AWAY

Lenny Kravitz

Oh Lenny, how desperately you need a hit. Your last few singles have been even less successful than a stone-cladding salesman at work on a campsite, the album has nosedived faster than a lead balloon and it’s all looking grim. Lucky for you Peugeot got hold of the best song on the album then, isn’t it? TV exposure, you can’t beat it.

MARIA

Blondie

15-odd years later and they all look the same as they did in the seventies (except Debbie Harry who’s starting to resemble a Teletubbie) and they sound it too. The music’s rocky and drifts along merrily, but like Wimbledon v Spurs, we’ve been here too many times before…

NB. At the time of writing this review Wimbledon and Tottenham Hotspur had played each other something like four or five times in the space of a month. Obviously, the comparison suffers somewhat a few years later (especially as Wimbledon were relegated to Division One in 2000 and haven't played Spurs since...)

STRIPPED

Rammstein

It doesn’t matter one bit whether you remember the Depeche Mode original or not as this is unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Think of a dirty old man with a voice more gravelly than Milton Keynes itself and a thick German accent saying "Come with me into the trees" and "Let me see you stripped down to the bone" (and there goes that invite to Live And Kicking) over a heavy metal soundtrack and you’re a long way towards what this song aims for. It’s going to freak a hell of a lot of people out when it’s released later this month, personally I thought the whole thing was hysterically funny. It’s one of those rare songs that you’ll want to hear all the way through, something to be treasured.