Ultimate Pop Star Countdown: 25-21

 21. Vitamin C - Sex Has Come Between Us / Last Night

10 years too old.  Poor Colleen, she made the best pop princess album of the naughties, but looked like Britney’s babysitter. The slightly morbid lust of Sex Has Come Between Us is slithery and agile enough to rival Holly Vallance’s State of Mind and B's In The Zone alike, and pre-dating them by nearly two years. The More album is an outstanding pop document. Last Night is of course the well scratched cover of The Strokes breakthrough hit put in the disco spin cycle with Blondie's Heart of Glass instrumental: utterly cheapskate but creates a high price tag for itself.

22. Alanis Morissette - Front Row / Thank U

Like having a million dictionaries thrown at you and being completely transfixed – like being in the chaos of someones dream. Thank U's unforgettable dangling carrots and Glenn Ballard's production that was on the same scale as Massive Attack in moments like both of these songs.  Other album highlights: Baba, Are You Still Mad, Unsent, Joining You, I Was Hoping and The Couch.

23. Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid

Pugnacious robo s&mer Shirley has 'issues'; confrontational and angrily beautiful. Manson’s irrational desire reaches breaking point, the fury of the chorus is channelled into one of their biggest and best choruses (the glam-grunge sneer-fest Only Happy When It Rains probably should have been my choice, but this song is just cooler).  Her heartbreak sounds like an anorexic staring at someone eating pizza: completely miserable and just waiting to pounce.

24. Liz Phair - Polyester Bride

Polishes herself off to play Sheryl Crow at her own game and music wins. “You’re lucky to even know me, you're lucky to be alive.” Whitechocolatespaceegg will also see you around if you’re clever enough to be alive and buy it.  Go on ahead now.

25. Luscious Jackson - Naked Eye

Hypnotically aloof and ice-cold, Jill’s calculating rap decides “wearing nothing is divine”, the sleek vocals compete against murkier sounds, all working together separately but in unison.  The chorus is built from three lanes: the main vocal and two shades of backing vocals that wrap together like ribbons. Quite the package. Like this then try: Under Your Skin, City Song, Lady Fingers and Nervous Breakthrough.

Garbage - Version 2.0

Shirley Manson's sadly exctinct S&M robo-sex vocal, until it returns, was a dry postpunk barbed wire neatly treated to properly techotronic pop overlays via Butch Vig and co, who altogether formed Garbage. I'm talking Garbage Version 2.0 here - a unique phase wherein we get 12 songs all scanned for traces of life but they'll still have sex with it anyway. Shirley's sado/maso phrases didn't have to always be smart as well ('I fall down just to give you a thrill, prop me up with another pill' plays dead on the album's best single I Think I'm Paranoid), but it would work well if they were. There's not much nostalgia either - even the beautiful moments feel like slowmotion pornography, albeit with aliens. With no need to cheer up, Hammering In My Head gives you body burns, Push It anihilates you, anchored by Manson's glum dominatrix hosting duties, your free pass is at your own peril. Synthesizers? Probably - 12 years later I am still identifying new sounds and voltages. You'll have fun with this album - the jangly H-bomb dropper Special tosses a lover off, off a plane that is - 'do you have an opinion' isn't even a threat, there's real venting intention in her voice that suggests her mind's already made up. The full-speed abstraction of Temptation Waits smoothes the edges, the singer having evolved into simulating motions whether they are human or not. Even if her often clumsy lyrics aren't always arresting, the production always turns it into an incident with scathing observations. The dreamlike ballads The Trick Is To Keep Breathing and You Look So Fine, or the lapsing withdrawl 'co-dependent' cold-turkey middle-8 on Medication are incredibly lonely and insatiable, with the odd phoney stuff about 'if we sleep together will you like me better' as if we believe by now that she doesn't know any better herself. Blondie, The Pretenders and Siouxsie & The Banshees are the obvious idols being ripped off, but this music is rendered by such exceedingly skillfull deployment their eurodisco post-punk butcherings are hyperaware and they make it their own design. Shirley craves yet more skin on Sleep Together, which is the most blatant attempt to cultivate the persona and a bit of a placebo if I'm honest. We know she doesn't play the 'stupid girl' but mutates her weaknesses on the play-loud Dumb and Wicked Ways, pumping her bad behaviour in suitably grotesque salivation. Cashing in on self-dramatizing teenagers, When I Grow Up sounds like an actual-hit, cheerfully going on about 'golden showers' as you do.