The Winterval Personnel

There used to be a time when the bit between Christmas and New Year would be a sneak preview of those radio disc-spinners who were about to graduate through to the big time and it wasn't that long ago. Sadly this year has just been a bit of a disappointment. I'll put it down to Christmas Day being on a Sunday which has left us with a distinct week between Christmas and New Years.

Dev has taken over the Radio 1 breakfast show for this week and i think its finally clicked what i find disingenuous about him. For the most part, he pretends to be a bit of a geek and avoids most of the too-cool-for-school cliches that afflict some of the Radio 1 roster, but then we'll get to a feature like the resident DJ where a listener will come on an pick singles from a specific pigeonhole. Today is One Hit Wonder Wednesday. The listener chose "Turtle Power" by Partners in Kryme, which i've got to admit i haven't heard for well over a decade and in all truth it doesn't stand up badly. Meanwhile Dev is busy ripping in to the caller, the song and saying how he thinks it'll bomb, then interrupts it half way through to say he's going to finish playing it because it has received such a good reaction on the texts. So the geek without preconceptions suddenly becomes ubercool when music is involved, and its not the first time. If you're going to play a character on the air, then you've got to follow through and not have breaks in the armour otherwise the whole thing sounds like a bad ILR.

Edith Bowman is covering for Fearne Cotton. Sorry, that should read "Edith Bowman's Show About Films". For the 90% of us who aren't obsessed with being at the cinema 24/7, nor fawning over Hollywood's most overpaid (and often undertalented), Bowman's show is interminable. And i genuinely like Edith as a presenter, its just the whole format of the Films show is painfully restrictive.

Huw Stephens is about the only future star i can see from the daytime line up. His weekend afternoon show is excellent and his enthusiasm for music always comes across as sincere. He'd make far more sense presenting the weekday morning show than Fearne Cotton does.

I've also heard some of Ryan Tubridy in for Ken Bruce on Radio 2. It doesn't really move me either way, which is probably exactly when Radio 2 is looking for - new voices to the station either have to be somebody interminably bland or somebody off the telly.

No More Christmas Singles

As Spitting Image once sang "No more christmas singles/ They're worse than any war/ If we hear Aled Jones again/ We'll throw up on the floor". Well it looks like they've got their wish. The good old age of the novelty christmas single is dead, as are novelty singles in their entirety if the charts of the past two years are anything to go by. What we have now is a watered down collection of stupid earworm noises looped to infinity by producers who are laughing at anyone dumb enough to buy them. Oh yes, and Rihanna singing about sex.

Anyway, some song reviews?

Katy Perry - The One That Got Away
I'll be honest. I wasn't that averse to some of the songs from Perry's first album, but this fifth single off the awful Teenage Dream album is painful. To my mind, there is something unsettling with how her songs are full of thin innuendo and fake memories of oh-so-perfect teenage years that never really happened for anyone except Danny Baker. Her videos are even worse, an open begging letter for censorship if ever there was one. And this song... Pffft. Just another collection of fake late-teenage memories from some syruppy movie.

The Only Way Is Essex - Last Christmas
Is that autotune i hear? Oh, it is. It is a pointless, cash in cover version? Affirmative. Is there any reason why anyone not requiring sectioning under the mental health act would want to listen to it? Not unless they were reviewing it.

Arianna Morgan - Songbird
Its a ten year old covering a Fleetwood Mac song. Just imagine how painful that would be unless you're a 58 year old reader of the Daily Mail.

T-Pain & Lily Allen - Five o'Clock
I should really have started this post off with something more positive, shouldn't i? I mean, i'm just sounding like a miserable, jaded old git with nothing better to do that post hatred about modern music. I blame Nero. ANYWAY. Down to business. Take around eight lines from a Lily Allen song, loop until more stale than a ten week old Kwik Save loaf, add some fucking abysmal autotune rap from Mr Pain (never has a name been more appropriate - i think his first name might be Tristram) and stretch the whole sorry shithouse out to about an hour. Or maybe it just feels like that. One of the worst records ever.

The Collective - Teardrop
We're supposed to be upbeat and positive about charity singles, no matter how awful, aren't we? The Collective are various young and happening urban types from south London (and Ms Dynamite off of the 90s) rapping about how we "shud be finkin'" about what we do and being mindful of others. I've never heard human emotion being described in such stunted terms. If this is the best you lot could do, then just don't bother next year. It ruins a perfectly good original song with lots of posturing and fake bravado.

The Wombles - Wombling Merry Christmas
Jesus. Has Mike Batt run out of pension or something?

Caution: Next one a bit political.

Military Wives Choir - You know what? I really don't care what its called.
Your husband / boyfriend / FWB joined the army. They should have known at some point there was a fairly good chance they were going to get shot at someday. They could have just taken a job in a bakery. Every corner i turn at the moment there seems to be some Help for Heroes tat or collection of drunks toasting R BWAVE BOYZ and not yet has anyone demonstrated or explained to me why they deserve my sympathy. Yet another charity record is unlikely to do so.

Dirty Mavis - Stop the HS2
Its a record campaiging against building a railway line. I wonder if they're on Ford Records, Vauxhall Records, Toyota Records....?