READY FOR THE FLOOR

Hot Chip

The history of popular music is littered with songs that would've been a damn sight better if only somebody had plucked up the courage to say "Tell you what, let's not bother adding vocals to this one, it's fine as it is". Eiffel 65's Blue is a fine example of this – take away the stupid yappy bloke and you've actually got a reasonable tune – and anything the Cheeky Girls recorded would surely sound inifinitely better in instrumental form. Here's another candidate to add to the list. It's nice and poppy and has a pretty good tune and for some reason I'm starting to sound like my parents there. That's an unacceptable situation. Anyway, the problem with this song is that the vocals get right in the way of the song, which is odd really when you think about it. The lyrics are a bit daft, for one thing, and they're also a tad repetitive to boot. Personally, I reckon they'd have been much better off putting this out as an instrumental. Right, next!

THE GIRL IS MINE 2008

Michael Jackson and will.i.am

Where to start… OK, first off, any song that has the year of its release stapled onto the end of its name is almost guaranteed to be a pale imitation of the original, which is a nice way of saying comprehensively dire. Secondly, I wonder why he didn't team up with Paul McCartney as he did for the original? Anyone would think they'd fallen out or something. Thirdly, this song's ancient – I work with people who are younger than this song – which makes me wonder whether Michael Jackson or his record label are simply content to live off past glories. To be fair to him though, in the ranks of the greatest pop vocalists of all time, he's certainly one of the best dancers. Fourthly, this is being brought out to promote the 25th Anniversary Edition of Thriller, which is one of the most famous pop albums ever made blah blah blah. You may be suspecting that I never really understood the appeal of Mr Jackson, and you'd be right. In my opinion, the last truly great song he did was Smooth Criminal, and that was 20 years ago. The Girl Is Mine was certainly not one of his better efforts, it was all a bit twee and the "chumminess" between Macca and Jacko… urgh, let's really not go there. However, a lot of what I've just said leading up to this point has tipped on its side by the new version. I've always said that if you're going to revisit an old song, you've got to stamp your own mark on it otherwise there's no point and bless him, will.i.am has done just that. The title's the same, Michael Jackson is still singing, but that's it. Pretty much everything else has been ripped out, chucked into a skip and replaced with something far more up to date. "Twee" is not the order of the day, instead the motto is "in your face". It all sounds much harder, Jackson's capital-letter-phobic friend raps virtually all the way through, only pausing for breath while the star of the show does his bit and surprisingly, it's a massive improvement on the original. What does disappoint me is that the two sets of vocals were recorded 25 years apart – if Mike had re-recorded his part then it'd be a proper duet, but as it is really this has to be classed as a remix. Even so, this isn't the lazy cash-in I half-expected it to be – remember the twenty singles that Sony re-issued a couple of years back? – but all the same, it'd be nice if he actually recorded something new for a change. In the meantime, this'll do.