PLEASE, PLEASE

McFly

And in the blink of an eye, it was as if the second album never happened. Where the first album introduced McFly as a pop band with an uncanny knack of hoovering up kids’ pocket money without actually releasing anything remotely memorable, the second album was a brave step. To put it bluntly, they grew up. The lyrics were more mature and the music was, for a guitar pop band, far better than I thought they’d be capable of. There was just one tiny drawback – the kids weren’t going for it and the singles weren’t hanging around in the charts, but then that’s what usually happens to the better quality singles (and the Michael Jackson re-issues, but let’s ignore those for now, everybody else has). So what’s a band to do? Stick to your guns and carry on experimenting or do you go back to what works? I’ll give you one guess as to what McFly have done and it’s not a pretty sight. If you can imagine McFly rooting round Son Of Dork’s bins and finding this song, you’ll have a really good idea of the sound. American-influenced pop-rock with very little personality of its own to speak of, in other words. For a while, I actually thought McFly were capable of making the crossover from a boyband loved by kids to a proper band respected by kids and adults, but just when it looked like they were going to make the leap, they’ve taken a huge step back. God alone knows what Lindsay Lohan makes of all this, apparently she’s the subject of the lyrics.

SMILEY FACES

Gnarls Barkley

I remember when Wet Wet Wet deleted Love Is Around because they were sick of it. Mind you, the charts were a much crueller place back then. When Gnarls Barkley killed Crazy it was kicked out of the chart when it was still at number five, nobody kicked out Wet Wet Wet and it hung around for some time longer. Not fair really. What I can’t work out is why Crazy was shoved aside in favour of this. The title’s good and it does a pretty good job of sounding like a cross between something off the Motown label and Hall and Oates’ Maneater, but it’s just nowhere near the quality of its predecessor. That’s not because the novelty’s worn off, far from it, it’s purely down to the song. I think the nicest way to say it is that I don’t think there’s any danger of this getting booted out of the chart when it’s still in the top five.

SMILE

Lily Allen

Sometimes, the best songs come out of nowhere. For example… I was listening to this and thinking to myself (because I can do both at the same time), “This is a nice jolly tune, a bit summery, but fairly inconsequential”. See, I can do big words too. But that’s the tune for you, all of the above with a bit of easy-going thrown in as a side-order. However, things take a distinct turn for the better once La Allen starts singing. For one thing, she’s singing it with her own accent, not some put-on Transatlantic drone – this sort of thing gets my approval straight away, but then she uses a naughty word in the very first verse. I admit, it’s an attention getter, so now I’m listening to the words to see if she’s putting the words in just for the “Aren’t I outrageous?” angle or whether the lyrics are actually any good in their own right. Good news then folks, they’re good. It’s the age-old story, boy loses girl, girl gets over it, boy doesn’t, the end, but it’s all done in such a polished manner it’s like Lily Allen’s been around for years singing this sort of thing. And as for the video, well, let me put it this way, you’ll have to go some to have a worse day than the bloke in the video.