The Delays – Lost In A Melody
How did I not know that this band are amazing?! This sexy electro-rock storm is one of my favourite songs around at the moment. The music, the lyrics, the high bits and the glorious video are exactly what credible grown-up music should be in 2004. And hopefully this is how it will sound in 2005 too! I’m also proud to say I can now tell the difference between them and the Stills – quite a feat for an innocent pop girl like me.
97% Poptastic!
Ronan Keating feat. Yusef Islam – Father And Son
Thanks to my Mum, who adores him, and partly to his few worthwhile moments in Boyzone (Namely All That I Need & Key To My Life) I have managed to go through life without hating Ronan Keating too much. But Father And Son was always one of my least favourite Boyzone songs and bringing in the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens for a Christmas re-release is a bit of a cheap trick. Still, Yusef doesn’t seem to be doing much these days other than being accused of terrorism, so I expect he’ll be pleased for the sales boost. This could be Band Aid’s biggest challenge for Christmas no.1.
34% Poptastic!
Band Aid 20 – Do They Know It’s Christmas
This video would be much improved if it actually showed the 2nd most important person present aka Mr Gary Lightbody, where art thou? There’s not even a glimse of him here and he doesn’t have a bit to sing, so there will be no record of his presence. He wrote a song for Freeform Five, several for the movie Camp and the whole Final Straw album – how can he not be included here?! Anyway, there is plenty of the actual most important person involved (I’ll just let you guess who that might be), including a very lovely bit where he is having a giggle. And he’s wearing Adrian’s jacket, so a good fashion day too! As for the song itself, it does just seem like a bad cover version of the original, which is I guess what it is, but it deserves to be better than that considering all the talented people involved (although Justin Hawkins’ presence throughout practically the whole entire song does balance that out). The singers they’ve chosen to sing lines are all good enough but few of them have very strong voices, for example Dido, the Sugababes and Chris Martin are very understated compared to the original singers of their lines and that just makes the song sound comparitively very bland. It also seems a bit random who they have chosen for those bits, for example Beverley Knight, Dizzee Rascal and Ms Dynamite over the Bedingfields, who could have done their first bit of duetting on a single, and Busted who are easily the biggest pop act of the last 2 years and will sell millions of anything they put their name to, only get one word each!
88% Poptastic!