NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC! 57

Various Artists (album)

This album is more a case of who's not on it rather than who is. There's a lot of Pop Idol-style tat (Michelle, Alex Parks, Will Young) to be found here along with one or two gems, but The Darkness, Anastacia, Outkast, Gary Jules, Lostprophets, even McFly could present strong cases for inclusion and they'd certainly help Now 57 act as a more accurate snapshot of what we're listening to right now. Until now, I thought the series was going downhill, but that was down to the music of the day. This is the first time I've thought more about what's not included than what is. What's really worrying is that the Now series still beats seven bells out of the Hits series, so things could be worse. Unfortunately, they seem to be getting there.

IN THE SHADOWS

The Rasmus

I really needed something good to listen to after that and frankly, I wasn't expecting too much from this. Perhaps over-exposure to kiddiepop does that to me, but I put it on and straight away, the song got my attention. No quiet build-up here, no siree, In The Shadows starts off with a guitar imitating a reversing vehicle (the sort that goes beep-beep-beep, not the sort that goes "This vehicle is reversing") and then we're treated to four minutes of the sort of rock music that they really don't make enough of these days. It's not too manic, there's no screaming, but it's still fast enough to make the radio stations toss a coin between playing this and Atomic Kitten. The best thing about it is it sounds like little else around right now, but that's probably because the band are from Finland. I know what you're thinking, Finnish rock, what the hell's that ever done for us? Well, when you consider that American rock has given a bemused world bands like Nickelback and English rock has offered up stuff like Magnum, perhaps there's something to said about Finnish rock after all. There's no other way to say it, this is great.

HOLD ON TO OUR LOVE

James Fox

This song can be summed up neatly in one word. Revenge. Unfortunately, that's not quite enough for the nice people at the printers, they don't like sending out pages filled with big empty gaps because muggins here has done one word reviews, so here's a little bit more detail. We finished last in the Eurodisney Song Contest last year, did we not? Let's face it, we were so far behind we were lapped. Still, while that may mean relegation to the qualifiers for all the smaller countries, because the UK actually helps to pay for this stuff to take place, back we come for more punishment. Hooray for us (or something). Sadly, this song is dreadful. It's even sub-Eurovision-dreadful, that's how bad it is. It's a bog-standard guitar-led slowie that has all the emotion and feeling of a blocked toilet. The singer sounds like he's heard far too many Westlife singles and thinks that's the only way to sing a song, it works for Westlife because they can do this sort of stuff in their sleep (who knows, they possibly might) after years of practice. It doesn't really work here though, his style of singing sounds a bit forced and artificial. OK, I hold my hands up and admit I can't sing so perhaps the next sentence I write should include the words "glasshouses" and "stones", but I'm not the one releasing a single here. Thank Heavens, I wouldn't want to inflict something as hideous as that on the world, besides, how could I review it? Anyway, back to this song - the chorus. Wow. Breathtaking. Formulaic. Shades of Queen Of My Heart here, you can imagine the British contingent waving their arms whilst holding cigarette lighters during this bit. One saving grace for the song is that it's just under three minutes, but Eurovision rules prohibit it from being longer. I don't think I can quite convey how bad this song is, so I'll leave you with this thought. I summed it up in one word - revenge. This is why. We finished rock bottom last year and apparently our way of hitting back is to make the other twenty-three countries sit through this song too.