Happy New Year! So here we are in 2007, and what better way to celebrate the new year than to use up the entire first week's column going over what made 2006, undeniably, the sixth year of the century. Off we go then…

THINGS I LIKED

Whoever decided to mix Blondie with the Doors is a genius – Rapture Riders was magnificent, the Arctic Monkeys doing their own thing and to hell with the rest of the record industry, Leo Sayer hitting Number One, Sparks making a brief return, You Got The Love getting dredged up again – one day somebody's finally going to do a rubbish mix of that song, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, New Order finally re-issuing some of their Factory-era tracks (come on London Records, surely it's safe to do a proper box set now), the Modern, Franz Ferdinand, U2's new policy on duets (first they do an amazing version of One with Mary J. Blige, then follow it up by roping in Green Day for the actually quite stunning The Saints Are Coming), Will Young's Blue Peter video, the Pet Shop Boys' I'm With Stupid, Nine Inch Nails, Fall Out Boy, Muse's Supermassive Black Hole, Lordi winning Eurovision, singles going up the charts again (God only knows what'll happen next year when the chart becomes a free-for-all), Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, Lily Allen, Rogue Traders' Voodoo Child, Justin Timberlake's SexyBack for being so bad it goes all the way around the dial and actually becomes good, Vitalic, Kasabian, Thom Yorke, X-Press 2's Kill 100 – should've gone Top 10 at the very least, Nelly Furtado actually becoming good, Siobhan Donaghy's Ghosts, Evanescence actually releasing a decent single, Madonna releasing a decent single (Jump) albeit far too late, the Gossip, Jamelia's Beware Of The Dog, Take That and All Saints coming back properly by bringing out brand new material and Chris Cornell giving the world its first decent Bond theme since The Living Daylights. So, the best song of the year then – the Automatic's Monster, hands down, but an honourable mention must go to UNKLE's remix of Depeche Mode's John The Revelator - if that had been the single version it would've gone Top Five easy.

THINGS I DIDN'T

Shayne Ward, Liz McLarnon's dire rendition of Woman In Love – no wonder Atomic Kitten are reforming if they can't do the business separately, Kubb, the utterly desperate move of re-issuing twenty Michael Jackson singles (but on a personal note, it was great to see the very worst song of the whole lot limp to No.34, well done Earth Song), the stream of Depeche Mode releases and re-releases that EMI and Mute crammed into 2006 (7 albums, 3 singles and 2 DVDs, not to mention the iTunes 644 track set) that culminated in an utterly needless Best Of, the Pussycat Dolls, Chico, Journey South, Orson, the Feeling, Daz Sampson's Teenage Life (utterly horrible, but that's par for the course for Eurovision), Robbie Williams – Rudebox still makes me think "Why?", Keane, some of the very worst World Cup songs I've ever heard in my entire life (Tonedef Allstars and Crazy Frog were bad enough, but Stan Boardman's effort really was the icing on a cake made of sewage), McFly giving up the whole "grown-up pop band" thing as a bad job and regressing back to their early pre-school party music, Paris Hilton – who on Earth thought THAT would be a good idea?, Supermode (for hijacking Smalltown Boy, moving it about a bit and changing the name), Ronan Keating, Scissor Sisters, Fergie, the triumphant returns of Blazin' Squad and Gina G, Girls Aloud spoiling Something Kinda Ooooh by singing on it, that band who released an album of covers and inexplicably still remain successful, Gwen Stefani's Wind It Up – it wound me up and no mistake, Chacarron – no explanation necessary and finally, the total and utter devaluement of the Christmas Number One thanks to The X-Factor. Right then, worst song of the year… it's got to be Fergie, really, hasn't it? Both her singles were equally dismal, so she wins it for sheer consistency.


And that's the end of 2006. Next week, I'll start on 2007… a week after everyone else, admittedly, but I'll soon catch up.