TAKE ME OUT

Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand are one of those bands that seem to be one of the “Bands To Make It Big In 2004”, which is nice for them if they make it, but a tad annoying if they blow it. After all, who remembers Terris? They were supposed to make it big either three or four years ago and it all went a tad wrong, ie. they didn’t. This lot, however, stand a chance. Take this song for instance. It starts off like a train, motoring along for the first minute or so before deciding to slow down just a bit and then – and this is the clever part – it also turns into a completely different song, which then continues until the end. This ends up sounding a litle like early-eighties new wave type music, you know the sort, a proper band with drums and guitars and everything attempting to do a disco record with the tools they’ve been given. Although, given the band’s name, the lines “I’m just a crosshair, I’m just a shot away from you” made me smile – maybe those history lessons at school weren’t totally wasted. To be honest, this is great and the two-songs-in-one idea works really well. It deserves to be huge and it’ll probably have to settle for seven days in the Top 40, but what the hell, it’s a start.

I PROMISE

Stacie Orrico

Ah, what a sweet little song this is. Fair warms yer heart it does. If it was a person it’d follow you around, plumping up the cushions on the sofa before you sat down, making you tea and serving up an endless supply of ginger nuts on demand, turning the volume up and down on your stereo for you just so you could sit and relax for a bit, serving you a nice boiled egg with toast all cut up into soldiers of varying ranks, cleaning the oven in the kitchen and chucking Domestos down the toilet whilst humming Whistle While You Work, before finally going out and doing all your shopping for you. How cute. Songs like this make me want to do what the bloke in the Happy Eater logo used to do, namely to shove my finger down my throat. This song’s so sickly it’s unbelievable, even down to the twangy sounds during the chorus that seem to have escaped from an eighties Paul Young record. A more formulaic “You can rely on me matey” song you couldn’t hope to imagine, and believe me, I really don’t hope to imagine one. Oh yes, did I mention there was a key-change towards the end? I didn’t? There is and it can be spotted a mile away. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too harsh on Stacie Orrico, she is a relative newcomer after all and she does her job efficiently enough but a bad song is a bad song no matter who sings it. This is a really, really, really bad song.

FELL IN LOVE WITH A BOY

Joss Stone

Think about it. You’re a soul singer whose songs are so funky they could be in Huggy Bear’s personal record collection (not to mention infinitely better than anything The Brand New Heavies ever did) and you want to cover a song. So what do you choose? Obviously, something by the White Stripes, that’s what. Now, me and funky soul songs are totally incompatible, but if a song is done well I’ll say so. This one is done very well, even though there’s no way on earth that I would buy it because it doesn’t do anything for me. Mind you, on the bright side Joss Stone can’t half sing, which at least proves that not everyone is taking the Pop Idol route of cramming in loads of unnecessary notes into singing one word just because it’ll get them votes.

EVERYBODY CRIES

Liberty X

As slow pop songs that come From The Heart TM go, this isn’t bad. It’s still a bit dull, though and the only reason I can think of for the string section to kick in halfway through is to make sure the listeners stay awake to the end. No matter how dull this is though, it’s an absolute classic next to the horror that is Mandy.