MY PREROGATIVE

Britney Spears

Now, you're not going to believe this, but this really isn't as bad as you think it's going to be. I'll bet that's not how you thought I was going to start this review. It's still not great, but this does at least have its own identity, albeit that of a song that has no idea of how it wants to end up sounding. The weakest link here is the singer, which when you come down to it is a pretty major place to go wrong. The problem with La Spears is that she's still doing her vocal theatrics and trying to insert a bit too much attitude into her singing - trouble is it sounds a tad over the top, especially when you've got a tune that's a little bit all over the place to begin with. When Bobby Brown originally did it, the song moved along nice and smooth as it was designed to do, but this new version sounds like the people in charge gave the backing band any old instrument that came to hand and said "Here you go chaps, see what you can do with that" and the end result sounds a bit like what would happen if you allowed a school band to run riot in Chappells and get the most expensive equipment they could carry back to the classroom. The really daft thing is, after all that this is one of her better singles - mind you, that shows how high the bar had been set by her previous output.

NOTHING HURTS LIKE LOVE

Daniel Bedingfield

Listening to this comes mighty close, though. First, the plus points. I'm not really a fan of slow songs, it has to be said, but there are much worse ballads around than this (see Against All Odds for details on how bad things can get). Also, this song is a definite progression from his first album, this slowie isn't quite as formulaic as the ones he's put out before. However, every silver lining has a cloud and this song has been given almost the full works. Acoustic guitars, half an orchestra, everything bar a wailing guitar solo and a key change is here. It's all too much for me, I'm off to listen to something else.

YOU STOOD UP

V

One day, in about half a billion years, the golden glowing Sun that has helped to give life to this planet of ours will eventually run out of fuel. It's going to change colour, going from yellow to red and as it slowly cools down it's going to expand, which is something of a downer if you happen to be on one of the planets invading its personal space. First of all, it's going to take out Mercury, closely followed by Venus (so don't go on holiday there) and then there's Earth. Our planet's either going to be vapourised by the expanding Sun or it's going to be the victim of the ultimate scorched Earth policy and burned to the point where nothing can or will survive. Our atmosphere will be burned away and the oceans will boil off, but worse still, the Football League fixture lists will be in total disarray thanks to the appalling weather. In other words, this planet's going to be knackered when it's all over. After that, the Sun will settle down again for a while (although occasionally blasting bits of itself out into space could be interpreted otherwise), turn white and gradually cool down even more, darken and die and that is how the world is due to end along with most of the solar system. Now, you may think that has absolutely nothing to do with listening to this single and you'd be mainly right, but the reason I've told you all this is to prove categorically beyond a shadow of a doubt that they really cannot make syrupy factory-processed downtempo slabs of goo like this forever. See, it's not all bad news.