I KISSED A GIRL

Katy Perry

Big deal, so have I, but you don't see me writing songs about it do you? Now then, if you cast your mind back a mere four years there were a couple of one-hit wonders having themselves a very public slanging match, namely Eamon and Frankee. Eamon had his say first, giving his "ex-girlfriend" a proper verbal mauling, and was then knocked off the top of the charts (some would would say rather conveniently, I couldn't possibly comment) by Frankee, who used a remarkably similar tune to vent her anger. So anyway, the reason I bring these two up is that their songs screamed "blatant marketing ploy" which used the age-old formula of Controversial Subject Matter = Surefire Number One. It worked for Je T'Aime, it sure as Hell worked for Relax (take a bow, Mike Read) and it worked a treat for Eamon and Frankee. It's also going to work for Katy Perry too. I don't know her well enough to be able to judge whether she actually believes what she's singing or whether it's all been done solely to make her famous, but the cynical part of my brain (which as you know I normally keep well hidden) is telling me that things don't quite add up. As for the tune, well, that's alright actually. Electropop seems to be the in thing with female singers these days, what with Sophie Ellis Bextor, Ashlee Simpson and somebody else, and this is more of the same. Perfectly serviceable stuff, but as to whether this is a proper song or just a marketing gimmick, time will tell. Just wondering though, if an unknown male singer brought out a song called I Kissed A Boy, would that be as big a hit single?

O.M.G.

City Girls

This is a song about deleting Internet stalkers from your MySpace profile. How utterly ridiculous. I mean, seriously, MySpace? Everyone knows that all the cool kids are on Facebook and Bebo these days. Thing is, if you want to communicate with the kids of today, you can't go around using complete words because their brains can't handle that much information - at least, that's the impression I'm getting from the lyrics to this song. You can't say "Oh my God" anymore, it's OMG. There are other abbreviations hidden in the chorus, like LOL, FAO and IMO, and as if that's not enough to speed up the delivery of the lyrics, they even omit the letter 's' from "do the maths." That's streamlining for you. And, of course, because children apparently don't go outside and play anymore there are plenty of computer-related analogies to be found too. Fantastic – at least, that was probably the intention. In actual fact, what we've got here sounds suspiciously like "Tonight Matthew, we're going to be Girls Aloud." I said the same thing about the Saturdays a fortnight ago, I seem to recall... makes you wonder if these bands know something we don't. If Fall Out Boy's next single sounds like Girls Aloud, then there's DEFINITELY something fishy going on. As for this one, it's OK, but that's all it is.

LAZY

X-Press 2 featuring David Byrne

Sometimes, old songs get remixed or updated and a lot of the time I wonder why on Earth they bothered. On the face of it, you'd think Lazy would be one of those songs that X-Press 2 would want to leave well alone. After all, it was their biggest hit by a country mile... and because it is the song that most people remember them for, Lazy is a song that wasn't broken, so somebody fixed it anyway and the end result is... different. Almost completely different, actually. The vocals are the same, but the original tune's been put into receivership, liquidated and a brand new tune has started trading in its place. And do you know something, Lazy Mark II isn't bad at all. It's got a bit more get up and go about it, but because it's a completely new tune it doesn't have to worry about sounding like a turbo-charged retread of the original. This is one of the few remixes that can actually stand side by side with its predecessor and not look remotely embarrassed.