HEART OF GLASS

Blondie vs Edison

Well, would you look at that. I started 2006 with Blondie vs the Doors and here I am ending it with Blondie vs Edison. Who'd have thought it possible, eh? If we're going to be comparing the two, then Heart Of Glass has a lot to live up to, as Rapture Riders is still one of the best singles I've heard all year. Unfortunately, the new 56-registration model of Heart Of Glass isn't as good as the original T-reg version – it comes close, but when you get down to brass tacks, there's some unnecessary jiggery-pokery being used and it breaks the song up. Rapture Riders worked because it sounded as though it could conceiveably have been a proper song in its own right rather than being seen as "just another mash-up", but Heart Of Glass doesn't quite work because as soon as the vocals kick in, the song screams "another ancient song remixed and remodelled". To be honest, that's a shame, the original is a great song and it deserves slightly better than it's got here – and the thing is, it really wouldn't take much to improve this song by leaps and bounds. The tune has a nasty habit of stalling and restarting only to conk out again a few seconds later and then get going again – to be honest, if you're the proud owner of a car that's got more chance of transforming into Optimus Prime than it has passing its next MOT, this song would make ideal music to compliment your vehicle. There's no real flow to the track, and on top of that there's also some sound effects added in that made me wonder who on Earth thought they would add anything of value to the song. If those minor details were sorted out, I'd be giving this a glowing review, because everything else is absolutely spot on and it's an otherwise extremely faithful update. The devil's always in the details though, and that's where things fall down a bit here.

I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW

Girls Aloud

Oh good, another old song. That's unusual for Girls Aloud to do a cover. I remember the original, it got to No.1 way back in the mists of time (January 1988), but what I recall most about this song is seeing Tiffany dancing on Top Of The Pops wearing a giant jumper that was bigger than her. Classic television, I assure you. Mind you, it does look as though they've taken note of the success of their last single, stupid title and all, because they've already overhauled this song for single release. They don't waste any time, the album only came out a couple of weeks ago, but then when you hear the original it does sort of make sense. Their original sticks very close to Tiffany's original, right down to the instrumental break, and to be honest it sounds a little tame. In comparison, the new mix takes a steamer and scraper to the tune and strips it away, and then repaints a new tune over the top… and this is where things go awry. The new tune sounds a little similar to their last single, to the extent that the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" entered my head. It does sound an awful lot like somebody decided that the best way to make their new single a success would be to make it sound as close as possible to the last one, and it does sound very rushed through, I mean, look, you've got the tune for the verses and the choruses, but that's it. There's no instrumental break as such, the tune just carries on same as before, just without any singing, there's nothing special going on to keep you interested. It's a bit pants really. On the bright side though, Girls Aloud have done much better songs than this. Tiffany hasn't, but it could've been worse. If her best known song was Santa Claus Is On The Dole, then she'd have problems.