AN HONEST MISTAKE

The Bravery

The first time I played this I thought for a second I’d cocked up (I could’ve done the obvious title-related pun, but I thought I’d spare you that – kind, aren’t I?) and somehow put an early New Order B-side on instead. As it turned out, I hadn’t, but this song did inspire me to dig out my battered copy of the 1981-1982 E.P. and give that another airing, so you won’t get any complaints from me there. Listening to it again, it’s pretty obvious how I got confused, after all you’ve got the almost danceable drumming, the keyboard riff sounds like it almost made it onto Blue Monday and the guitars sound as though they’ve been borrowed from Mesh – alternatively, if you’re not au fait with New Order songs, think Franz Ferdinand and you’re on the right lines. It’d be really easy for me to take the easy way out here and say something along the lines of “If you liked the Killers and / or Franz Ferdinand, you’ll love this”, but the trouble is that really is the best way to sum this up. It’s not really offering anything new, in fact it almost sounds like it could’ve been released twenty-odd years ago, but I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I actually like this song. I just hope we don’t end up being swamped with hundreds of Killers soundalikes now.

IT'S LIKE THAT

Mariah Carey

It takes effort to make a single as dire as this. To start off, there are about four different musical instruments used (although I am admittedly impressed at how they’ve managed to train an owl to do the harmonies), possibly less if all the percussion stuff was handled by one drum machine, someone’s forgotten to put in enough bass sounds to round out the song and the first voice you hear doesn’t even belong to the featured artist! Nope, it’s Jermaine Dupri telling you how he’d like everybody to get to the dance floor. If that means something else is being played there, I’m on my way. But wait! Depending on whether you see the glass as half-full, half-empty or (as someone genuinely once said to me) 50% efficient, it either gets worse or better. Some of the lyrics had me scratching my head, thinking “What the hell is she on about?” Example – one line sounds for all the world like “Them chickens is ash and I’m lotion”. If they’re not the actual lyrics, I’d love to know what they should be, but if it is then you have to wonder what sort of mushrooms made it into the pizzas ordered by the songwriters. That’s even before we get to the crowning glory of this song. Hold on to your seat, readers (both of you). Fatman Scoop is back. Oh goody gumdrops. The man who shot to Number One purely for shouting over Be Faithful has been brought back from the brink of the dumper to make a couple of loud noises during the chorus and then to bring the song to an end in his own way, ie. by shouting all over the last twenty seconds. Ah, bless him, it’s like he’s never been away. In Ms Carey’s defence, she doesn’t wail too much here and it’s not a slushy ballad. Unfortunately, the evidence presented above proves the prosecution’s case is watertight. However, the single’s not totally without merit. If you cut the CD in half, you can make some rather nifty blinkers for a racehorse.

WAKE ME UP

Girls Aloud

No doubt about it, Girls Aloud’s fast songs are better than the slow ones. For a start, there’s more going on in the background (which is handy, because the lyrics here are not great) and the tune here practically screams “Did you spill my pint?”. The only problem is that the song relies on its one and only riff to see it through the entire three and a half minutes – for a couple of listens it gets away with it, but after that all the tricks are used up and the “I must hear that again” factor drops to zero. Shame really, the attitude’s there, it just needed a couple more ideas thrown in and we could have had a really good pop song here.