Plagiarists are the new Gods

Review time? I should think so...

Pitbull ft Nicole Scherzinger - Hotel Room Service (Positiva)
Once upon a time, Positiva used to be a half decent dance label. Now they're releasing utter garbage like this which shits all over any respect that commercial electronic music was just about hanging on to. The riff is taken hook, line and sinker from The Nightcrawlers' Push the Feeling On, the main hook chant is taken likewise from The Sugarhill Gang's Rappers Delight and the rest of the lyrical content has all the value of a penny stuck in a dog turd. Nicole Scherzinger should be embarassed of being involved with this dreck.

The Veronicas - 4Ever (Warner)
The Veronicas' breakthrough single in the UK, Untouched was quite a fresh sounding bit of pacey, power pop. Sadly the follow-up is a straight rip of Pink's U and Ur Hand, trying so painfully hard to be cool. I tend to switch off when i hear lines like "Do i gotta spell it out for you?". Artistic licence is one thing, talking like you're a village idiot is just dumb. Overall, its quite a shame because their Radio 1 Live Lounge cover of Muse was quite promising. Speaking of which...

Muse - Uprising (Warner)
I'm sure Muse have already done this record at least fourteen times before. I'm sure the lyrical content of "They cannot force us / We will be victorious" is about as original as a track by Pitbull. I've heard people comparing Muse to Queen for their pomposity, but the key difference is that Queen managed to write some good songs on their later albums.

Cobra Starship - Good Girls Go Bad (Fueled By Ramen)
Pointless. Utterly pointless. I've heard this at least a dozen times and i still can't remember anything about it. Its like the equivalent of musical beige paint and much less entertaining. These tossers have apparently released three albums. God only knows what they use as filler if this is lead material.

Robbie Williams - Bodies (EMI)
Robbie Williams is desperately unfashionable at the moment, yet judging by this he is recording some of the most inventive pop music around. If you ignore the right wing Christian baiting lytics about Jesus, the choppy and unusual structure of the song is the perfect remedy to the passionless gubbins currently all over British mainstream radio. The problem is that because it is Robbie Williams, commercial playlisters will be falling over themselves to find an excuse not to play it, possibly in the vain hope that Williams will rejoin Take That and Heart will have a whole new album of playlist material, none of which would be fit to be a b-side of this.

Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love (Polydor)
I didn't know Girls Aloud had split up. That press conference must have passed me by. Nevertheless, Cheryl Tweedy... sorry, Cole is pressing ahead with a thoroughly awful piece of R&B boredom. She sounds bored. Her backing singers sound bored. The producers must have been on intravenous drips of Red Bull to get through re-tuning her vocals so that it didn't sound like a tone deaf gibbon murmuring its way through three minutes of this insipid rubbish. Doing my best Derren Brown impression, I confidently predict millions will watch Cole miming badly to this on a forthcoming edition of X-Factor. What a coincidence that Cole's new album and X-Factor are happening at the same time.

Deadmau5 - Ghosts 'n' Stuff (EMI)
Just when you thought dance music was in a very ill state, Deadmau5 partially makes up for his stupid name by teaming up with Pendulum's vocalist Rob Swire for this storming tune which sounds rather epic in its construction, quite unlike the current minimalist, lo-fi trends. I'm still not convinced about Deadmau5 as an act, but this track is better than most around at the moment.

Jay Z ft Rhianna & Kanye West - Run This Town (Atlantic)
Jay Z ft Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind (Atlantic)
When promotion first started for Jay-Z's Blueprint III album, Zane Lowe played the excellent Death of AutoTune, seemingly a rant against overproduced, cliche ridden rap and R&B music. Its such a shame that the first two singles to gain airplay from the album were both overproduced, cliche ridden rap driven R&B music.
Run This Town is just ghastly. Rhianna's horrible nasal moaning sounds like she's barely concious and trying to alert somebody to the fact that she's lost a limb. Jay-Z barely opens his mouth, whilst Kanye West does his best to glorify the "running" of "towns", a non-veiled reference to glorifying gang culture and the vile activities that come along with it.
Then we have the dreary Empire State of Mind which plods along, being anthemic and inspirational for several minutes, providing you have an IQ below six. Any producer could have recorded this with a remit of "do something a bit epic and overblown".
Overall, both of these songs are pretending to be better than they actually are, mainly because of Jay-Z's name being on the cover. Nobody claimed that tracks like Show Me What You Got were classics, but the effortless fun of a track like that makes it a classic far more than either of these two.

La Roux - I'm Not Your Toy (Polydor)
Looks like the bubble has burst then. Having exhausted her supply of two vaguely catchy tunes, La Roux churns out this dross about not being my toy in lyrical sentiment which was last cutting edge in 1962. Her voice sounds strained and worse than normal throughout as well, grating even more than normal against the sub-Stylophone backing track.

Pixie Lott - Boys and Girls (Mercury)
Another case of plagiarism as Ms Lott does a weak, if inoffensive reworking of Rhianna's Shut Up and Drive. On the plus side - no Rhianna voice! Result!

All Time Low - Weightless (Hopeless)
Another bad emo band roll up with more plagiarism. This time, sing along the words of BoysLikeGirls' track The Great Escape and they'll fit right in.

Editors - Papillon (Columbia)
Editors are something of a marmite band. Personally, i can't see anything wrong with their update on the Joy Division sound. The modern-but-retro synth sound that so many bands attempt to produce is in abundance here, married up with a rich bassline. Lead vocalist Tom Smith's vocals are stern and unique amongst current bands, if possibly edging towards the overblown at times, but if Muse can get away with pomposity, surely other bands should be allowed to?

Jay Sean ft Lil Wayne - Down (Universal)
Jay Sean is apparently huge in America at the moment, and bearing in mind the fact that this is the country that went bonkers over R&B super-non-entities like Ashanti, it doesn't surprise me that his latest material is completely devoid of any interesting components. Gaining an American influence has robbed him of the small creativity his music has shown in the past. Guest artiste is Lil Wayne, the thinking man's barely coherent, sex obsessed pottymouth, whose appeal is a mystery to me. Unsurprisingly, he adds nothing to proceedings.

Dizzee Rascal - Dirtee Cash (Dirtee Stank)
Dizzee is another artist who has been spreading himself increasingly thin recently. If the warning wasn't loud enough with Holiday, then this is a clear warning his creativity is being wasted in favour of brash and clumsy commercial pop. The riff is unsurprisingly taken from The Adventures of Stevie V's 90s hit Dirty Cash but the raps are lazy and uninspired compared to what we've come to expect from Dizzee.

Young Soul Rebels - I Got Soul (Warchild)
Dozens of British urban artists have got together to record this rather odd and desperate sounding cover of The Killers' All These Things That I've Done. It is bound to make a lot of people very angry, milking the "I got soul but i'm not a soldier" refrain until it bleeds and i'm struggling to find anything it really adds to the original, but the enthusiasm of featured acts like N-Dubz and Chipmunk is quite infectious. It isn't a record i'd choose to listen to, but as it is being done for charity and will make a lot of people who take bands like the Killers far too seriously. At least a lot of these British artists actually have a personality, whereas Brandon Flowers doesn't.