WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS (RING A DING DONG)

Crazy Frog

I wanted to ignore this and just hope it went away, but once I heard it I realised I had to warn you. For one thing, it’s under three minutes – that means it qualifies for entry in the Eurovision Song Contest and by God it sounds like it too. Let’s face it, if the Lithuanians can paste the French just by chanting “We are the winners of Eurovision”, then this must be able to get a look in. So, how bad can this possibly be? I mean, it must be at least slightly enjoyable, surely? Yes… yes… I can see how you might think that. But if you do, you’re wrong. Let’s start with the song. We Are The Champions, the old Queen standard, currently beloved of Accrington Stanley and Southend United supporters amongst others. It’s a bit slow, isn’t it? Anthemic, you might say. And it is here too, very slow, all cigarette-lighters-aloft and wailing guitars that sound like they were playing in an abandoned warehouse in Chiswick (a bit quiet mind, as if the recording equipment was actually in Flitwick at the time, probably down to a typing error, that one). Makes you proud to be British, or at the very least it makes you proud not to be amphibian. There is one slight drawback, however. The song’s barely forty seconds in and already that’s a wrap for the Queen tribute band, but although they’ll get a couple of brief reprises later on, in come the Crazy Frog’s proper band (ie. an Amiga 1200 chucking out all sorts of pre-processed beats and riffs) and the tune as we know it is murdered, buried and had a multi-storey car park built on top of it. Now, strangely enough, from here it actually gets worse. The guest rapper (somebody else who wants the Crazy Frog on his CV? Where do they find these people?) sounds EXACTLY like both MC Miker G and Deejay Sven simultaneously. Incredible! Right down to his first line – “Ding-a-dang-dong, let’s rock that sound”. Yes, let’s. Hell’s bells, it’s like Holiday Rap resurrected twenty years later. Now, finally, after all that there is a positive side to all this. The song may well be utterly dire, but I tell you what, the CD doesn’t half make a lovely dripmat. So there you have it, officially my World Cup benchmark single. Every other football song I hear must be better than this, or we may as well go home now.

HEAL THE WORLD

Michael Jackson

No. No, no, no, don’t you start and all. I’ve already had that damn frog and now this? Time for me to bring out the old Happy Eater analogy, I think. Years ago, there was a chain of roadside restaurants called Happy Eater. Good food and an even better logo, namely a bloke cheerfully shoving his finger down his throat. This song makes me want to emulate that chap, therefore it’s a Happy Eater song - it’s lovey-dovey, it wants to make the world a better place, it rubber-stamps its earnestness by bringing in a gospel choir and children and it Goes. On. Forever. I’ve always thought of this as a fairly bland slowie made out to be far more important than it actually is. Sometimes I’m actually glad our singles chart moves so quickly.

HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH

Lordi

Thank heavens for Lordi. If they hadn’t won Eurovision it would’ve been a travesty. I never thought I’d see the day when a fully decked-out heavy metal act would go up against the cream of Europe and Daz Sampson and not only win, but wipe the floor with the lot of them. Just to prove how rock and roll they are, apparently this is coming out on 06.06.06. Oooo, spooky. If you can imagine when the Darkness were still seen as “having a laugh” instead of just having a laugh, that’s this one summed up neatly. It’s ridiculous, but you don’t win Eurovision by writing Imagine, do you? Well, I suppose you could, but I want this to be huge, although at the same time I do wonder how they’ll follow it up.