THE BOTTLE

Paul Weller

In which Paul Weller gets down and funky. We have a flute, a brass section, a wah-wah thingy and lots of percussions, which is nice. More importantly, what we don't have is the overly heavy sound that made some of his earlier solo songs a bit dirgey (and dare I say it - a bit middle-aged), instead we have a Paul Weller who's dancing in fields on bright summer mornings and singing to the birds just because he thinks they're singing to him personally. Fair warms your heart, it does. This is bright, breezy, cheerful and not created in such a way as to guarantee loads of airplay, it's just a good fun song and it doesn't care if you like it or not. Not only that, but the sudden end to the song works on two levels - firstly, you know the song ends at 3:03 because the cover says so but it's still a surprise when it just stops dead and secondly, when it happened I wanted the song to continue. Now that's the sign of a half-decent song if ever I saw one. I like it, in fact, this is so good I'm going to forgive him for Life At A Top People's Health Farm. There, I can't say fairer than that.

IN IT FOR THE MONEY

Client

Blimey, there's plenty of attitude here. Even the singer sounds pretty hacked off, almost as if she's been dragged out of bed, carted off to a recording studio and told to sing or the wrecking ball outside her house starts doing what it's designed for. If you've heard the first thirty seconds, you've pretty much heard the whole tune, it's so electronic the only way this single's going to end up anywhere near a real musical instrument is if somebody accidentally leaves a copy in Chappell's. It does the job, mind. The lyrics are where it's at, though. It's all about somebody who wants fame purely so they can make lots of cash - you'd never know it from the title. There are some pretty hard-edged lines in there too, in fact one or two of them sound as though the words have been changed slightly so small children can listen to them without having worried parents pulling the plug out of the CD player. All in all, it's not bad. Plus there's the added bonus of Pete Doherty turning up on the B-side (Down To The Underground). Three singles in as many months for Pete now, strange how the words "Wedding" and "Present" spring readily to mind...

REBEL NEVER GETS OLD

David Bowie

For years now, it's been the same old thing. David Bowie releases an album, it's trumpeted as a Huge Return To Form, a few years pass, David Bowie releases a new album, it's also trumpeted as a Huge Return To Form, a few more years pass, David Bowie releases another new album, it too gets the Huge Return To Form treatment, repeat to fade. I haven't heard Reality, but I did hear Heathen and it did naff all for me. That Best Of he released a while back, that was tons better. Mind you, he does still like to try new things (after all, he was one of the first artists (if not the first) to put out an Enhanced CD single, thereby introducing to the world the concept of lots of confused people worldwide wondering why their stereo won't play Track 4). So how about merging two of your own songs together and seeing what happens? Now, I had a go at George Michael's single for doing something similar, but I'm not going to do the same this week because, well, they're both Bowie songs so it's his tune and his words and that's alright. So we have the words from Never Get Old (new song) over the top of Rebel Rebel (your dad'll remember it), but it's been given a twenty-first century style makeover so you can do a little dance to it if you like. The end result is surprisingly good, it has to be said. Just a word of warning though, it's a limited edition 12". There's always a catch, isn't there?