Russian Roulette Is Not The Same Without A Gun

Rihanna can do so much with what is quite a technically limited voice - the fact that she grapples with it instead of fulfilling the criterea of singing a Celine ballad really shows up the so-called talent contests on TV as their formats completely miss out on the capabilities of singers like Rihanna. This is a good appetizer, as why blow your load with the Disturbia-esque songs we are all expecting first? It is not amazing, but the silent warfare of her earie verses convey much more than contemporaries such as Britney seem brave enough to challenge themselves to achieve these days. On the other hand, it's a ballad dressed up in makeshift goth stylings - but one thing is certain, Rihanna won't disappoint us with the video.

I'm In Love...

I haven't bothered with Peaches, regretfully, since the Fatherfucker album, but new single I Feel Cream totally blew me away a matter of seconds ago. A contender for Diva Incarnate single of the year - it seriously puts Goldfrapp to shame (a lazy diss, but totally worth it).

Groove Armada featuring SaintSaviour

I am getting super shit with my descriptions of artists in terms of their comparisons to other acts, but by gosh the amazing new song I Won't Kneel (as if) by Groove Armada features vocalist SaintSaviour who looks like - here it comes - a cross (dresser) between Madonna's bubble-butt cougar Celebration outing and Norwegian goddess Bertine Zetlist. This is high praise as far as I am concerned, especially since the video fizzes together with the track perectly, which is out 16 November in the UK. Furnace-blasting electronic pathos doesn't come as crystalised as this often - I honestly thought it had to be some sort of Stevie Nicks cover, and those rusty guitars could massage melancholy out of a stone. In the video, SaintSaviour reaches up to the ceiling as an axis of euporia and it's more than a promising preview for the forthcoming 2010 release Black Light from which it is lifted.

Bleeding Hell, Alex, Get Your Own Tunes!

Above: On an album that never quite shoots its load, X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke's air-tight songs are sturdy carbon-copied disposable cutlery of other people's tracks.

With all the bad ass attitude of Olivia Newton-John stepping onto the field in her leathers, Bad Boys is a cheery update of Gloria Estefan's similarly titled Bad Boy. Obviously Alex wants a whole football team and one BBD just ain't enough, with Flo Rida dipping it in 3/4s of the way through for an unforgettable routine rap. If Rachel Stevens' electro-dump I Said Never Again was as good as Britney's electro-sizzler Womanizer it would have sounded like this.

Good Night Good Morning stems from the same melody-stalk as J-Lo's skimming We're Walking On Sunshine, with sinking in vocals pronouncing. every. word. like. this.

The Silence slices her thick-crust vocal-thrust into Jocelyn Brown mode. A strange mixture of Dina Carrol, The Beloved and E'Voke. The verses are tinged with the melody for those of I Believe I Can Fly.

The appealing All Night's squirming bassline props up a Michelle We Break The Dawn style rainbow-sprouting chorus.

Bury Me is the cover-all-bases Winehouse/Duffy/Mutya/Adele/Solange track and despite the cynisicm is one of the better examples of such divas deliberately choosing their market. In a heap of piled-on pile-bursting club bangers, the tip-toeing 60s piano trail is a refreshing deviation.

The album's strident peak is expectedly fired from the starting blocks of choosey knob-twidlers RedOne, with tumbling percusion and Alex's husky tones are far more agile than the ubiquitous Lady Gaga, but the track does not have its own spine to warrant full-on fawning. Oh, and it's called Broken Heels.

Below: could she have anymore bronzer on those bangers?

The IQ-blaster Dumb is a steam-blowing banger with signposted Rihanna ambitions more obvious than Cheryl in a restroom wearing boxing gloves shouting 'bring that black bitch over now!' like it were 2002-2009 again.

Below: fierce Alex pokes fun at Cheryl's 'KKK Prom 1999' dress.

The title track Overcome is evidence that formulaic club stompers are actually her niche: on cue, pre-programmed 'emotive' arrangements that could be any song by anyone else, moaning 'nothing's gonna stop me now / I've been hurt so many times before' at least proves amongst the rubble, here is originality. One would have to be really brainwashed by her F-I-E-R-C-E level of fierceness to actually put this on and pretend you are feeling anything other than faux-humble narcisism double penetrated by ripped-off peices of polystyrene.

Trembling synths sift strings and Bleeding Love style earthquaking drums on Gotta Go (and steal a melody). You can giftwrap presents as lavishly as you like, but if you have got a crap melody then it starts to feel more like a sales pitch.

Could It Be Magic style piano keys stutter on the intro to You Broke My Heart, another arm-swinging Mercy style sass that shall soundtrack bored till assistants all over the UK.

Below: with just one BBD finished, poor Alex asks what she's let herself in for.

The elevatoring electronic stimulation of Nothing But The Girl has a decent enough swagger, provoking more 'mmmm, girl' fingerwaving filler, but Alexandra is really pulling this one trick off despite the repetition discounting from the chance of listening to this album in one sitting.

Her second fingering at a ballad is even worse, we all know the difficulties she has had with her jealous has-been mother, but the narrative is crass and far too autobiographical - if you're going to tell magazines about your problems, explicitly referencing these people in songs becomes a tad obnoxious.

Below: as her album attests, ubder-fierce Alex is not one to repeat herself over and over and over again.

It's Over is a stir-fried electro Bleeding Love - Alex's tampon vocals absorb all the melody from Leona but dries it up into a club jam more spreadable than Dannii in a sling at the X-Factor wrap party. As an 8 stone black woman she sounds like a 16 stone black woman - feirce, bitches, she's fierce! Do you understand Alexandra is fierce? It's not like she has went out of her way to make this point clear - spontaneous this is not, but deliver a functioning set of club slices she does well enough to convince. An adequate debut has been served even if we are being force-fed second-helpings.

Above: the singer tried to pick up yet more left overs before ex-mentor Cheryl.

Whitney Strips For Morons

Whitney's extravagantly anticipated live UK TV comeback had spectators grovelling for her sillouette to emerge back into the spotlight: recieving their OMG ITZ WHITNEYEUSTON!!! applause like the oxygen she was missing during Million Dollar Bill's honey-dribling rapid verses, Whitney worked the crowd; hoisting her gown up to make her way back and forth, and round and round, the stage, microphone-gesturing just about anybody to save her from singing - I am sure she stuck it in Dannii's face backstage as well. Her helpless tarzan soars were kept to a minimum but were devoured by the whooping oinkers in the audience with the appropriate restrain one has came to expect from this show.

However, the main show was her 3-way chat with 'random' Dermot and a fawning Simon Cowell. If anyone can say WTF with half downturned eyes alone, it's Whitters, and her deliberately evasive feedback on the contestants performances was a stunning victory for reality over reality telivision.

Above: with no one to punch, the real wardrope malfunction was Cheryl's disasterous attempt to make herself sexy by covering her face and dressing up as a man in order to get a response from Ashley who was busy with his Nokia 330 throughout her performance to notice his wife getting it out the way without too much faults - it's not as if Fight For This Sham of A Career is a challenging song, even if you sing like a chav getting gang raped at the bus stop before her shift at Lidl.

Most jawdropping of all was the American singer's bemusement when her dress-straps came off - at least no crack came falling out. Her impromtu striptease no doubt wasn't even noticed by the morons clapping for high notes and other qualifications they might want to consider when voting such as talent and stage charisma. Seriously, she could only have topped it had she fell over or snorted cocaine of Dannii's note-perfect baps.

Shakira's Vaginal Herpetunes

She of the lion king hair returns with She Wolf, a sturdy set with 2 or 3 leaders of the pack.

The taut electro disco of title track She Wolf is the album's beguiling peak, inititally seemingly by a mile but Shakira manages to pull it back like excess foreskin and engineers quite a decent album 3 years after her last one which was shit. No doubt helped by producers John Hill and The Bravery lead singer Sam Enditcott, its intoxicating, skin-shedding textures and career-best video have made this an instant classic despite not quite cracking the American top 10. Whereas Beyonce simply dances to warm herself up to accomodate Jay Z's telephone-box 'ego', Shaki climbs, hangs and dances inside an even bigger vagina. Entangled in such retro rapture, it's impossible to free oneself from the sticky web-like instrumentation of which is her all her own navigation: a ploughing corkscrew bassline, agile guitar riff and flowing hurried strings you could comb your fingers through.

Her toilet-flushing vocals sound alarmingly like a baby seal with a sore throat on the reclining modal operatiuon Did It Again. With hovering synths, in comparison with some of her other choices, it's a tame choice of single number 2 and almost certain to flop despite being 'not that bad' once this shock has settled in slower than giving Jay-Z free entry whilst sober - a bit of spit (and polish) and this could work. It's open-ended capacity is something to go back to. The windy strings hint to passing love, and 'did it again, but it felt so right' is the lyric, making it a wonder she didn't just call the song D'oh! instead. Lyrically, the groaning come-on Long Time's body-modesty is the styfled yawn of singing Whenever, Wherever for the 1000th time.

The Arabic-drenched Why Wait sees The Neptunes lagging behind Shakira, providing no more and no less than expected (or paid for) - the sort of sprightly production slightly rekindles the Kelis flame of her Kaleidoscope album, but the Columbia export deserves something a bit stronger than a stale signiture sound that has not evolved for 10 years (music is like Cher - it needs a new facelift every decade to stay interesting and shocking). To varying degrees, these Neptunes tracks are moist and misty dance tracks, but the turgic lack of imagination from this team has a lot to answer for when Shakira gargles decent howling choruses out of them, showing that things could have ignited beyond such glimmers of soul-rinsing melodies that merely arrive at intervals here.

The dry and brittle Good Stuff is yet more surface fluff, but shows invention with a delightful nod to The Cure's Close To Me. The familiar stacato beats peck away like one of Eve's 'bangers' with all the charm of Guy Ritchie penning a love letter to Sean Penn. Her door-creaking vocal once again bristles and saves the day, but sparse elastic dance segments don't have much impact if the most interesting feature to these parts are the singer going 'ugh!', which is my own reaction also. Song peak: the waltzing chorus sprinkled with The Cure.

Above: A-wooo is only ever appropriate if dancing inside a really big vagina (Michelle McManus has finally got herself a proper job hosting parties all over the Scottish central belt).

Paula 'where have all the cowboys gone?' Cole just got herself a new drinking buddy on Men In This Town where Shakira asks 'where are all the men in this town?' Haven't these broads heard of G-A-Y? A sure-fire hit complete with a gobby Luciana-esque rap, it's lubricated with a modern electronic sheen serving to add yet more fizzing gloss to her eccentric glamour. However, I object to its lyric hinging itself on the idea of 'real men' not using cosmetics, and yet her dreamy middle-8 seems to identify with extreme male vanity more sympathetically. This is easily in her top 10 English language tracks. Starting with melancholic guitar strums, a zipping bassline enters the fast lane and a note-bending vocal leads one stray into its gloriously incoherent and jaded frustration. Her banshee-purge 'so fresh and so clean' is the album's second illuminating catchphrase after 'a-whoo!'.

Above: Shakira fell asleep during her Neptunes tracks as well!

The love-wrapped Gypsy is a sunny, antiquated pagan ballad that sounds like a happy ending to Xena: Warrior Princess. The love-wounded repairing sentiments and her soaring self-assurance intersperse the album with a much-needed ballad that doesn't go over the top announcing itself as such, blending Cher, Cyndi, Stevie and even Annie Lennox (2:35!), but the aroma all belongs to she, with field-skipping rhythms errupting into full-on clapping.

Almost certain to be plucked as a single, her almost obligatory collaboration with Wycleff, Spy, is no surprise with phoned-in interracial interraction doing what it says on the royalty cheque. Her vocal-trumpet sound is interesting, her unapolegetic drone and the instrumentation is slightly jazzy - it's an easier melody to get hold of than her Neptunes results, but it would be worth releasing 3 singles before resorting to 'look it's the Hips Don't Lie singer, she's back with the same guy who used to be vaguley credible!' tactics which have already creeped through on her UK ad campaign for this very album, which is a little naughty given Hips Don't Lie is not actually on the thing.

Above: Shakira goes toe-to-camel-toe with Mariah with her new b/w bathing costume snaps.

Mon Amour is the final new song of the album and is a vibrant release of the vintage Shakira sound - Shakira was Alanis before Alanis, but it is very Alanis (as in old Shakira who had this sound before Alanis had it too). The melody has more impact than being slapped in the face with a large trout and the lyrics are the best of the album - basically Shakira has taken a dump in her ex's toilet and hopes it leaves a big stink or something.

Shakira's never-ending brewing lust brings many songs to the boil, but is left doing the heavy lifting on her ill-focused Neptunes tracks - the shapeshifting title track is unassuming and one of the most captivating pop tracks of the century thus far, others such as Men and Mon are likewise full-speed regular routes for the star, but a few too many fail to raise the bar. Yes, my aliteration is contrived and so are the Herpestunes, but when her soaring self-assurance interrupts the club tales it starts a fire not easily extinguished.

Oh No, Oh No - It's Annie Again

With anti-septic vocals thinner than a coat of paint, charismatic Norwegian starlet, discerning Geri-disser and acclaimed whisper siren Annie returns half a decade after her half decent debut and has not lost an ounce of her baffling hype even if she still sounds like an air vent on her sophomore set Don't Stop.

For the trigger-switching opener at first it's The creatures Standing There meets Destiny's Child Lose My Breath. Hey Annie kickstarts with gear-shifting ribbed percussion, rippling syths, referee-whistling, clockwork sounds and a pulsating bass liquidising into another dimension - the clotting, rubbery bassline is a dream but it's hard as fuck to focus on one thing when so many illuminating features are activated simultaneously. Her tooth-pic vocals are nimble and discreetly perfect, it swims amongst the most orgasmic currents since Madonna's denuding Skin. Identifying a pulse and a beat, Annie is starting from scratch - 'dance with me, just dance with me' she sneers with pen-knife promise. The playground chant of the title lyric swallows you whole with it's menace and sheer volume. Good times.

Yet her worm-eaten vocals could slit wrists nevermind make ears bleed, but with such a stunning ice-breaker, My Love Is Better now sounds so much better in fact. It's basically Long Hot Summer Part 2, and snorts the same lines as pretty much any other Xeonomania cheque-grabbing handout, whilst Annie's stuttering declaration is like listening to a WAG bad mouthing the mother of her husband's kids. Bad times.

The uplifting melancholy of Bad Times utilizes spiralling guitar chords and wistfully tremulous eloquence. If Annie's voice is sharp like sunlight, the crystalised disco-guitars rattle like a chugging exhaust pipe, creating an equally airy bliss when the chorus kicks in. Imagine Jane Wiedlin paying the bills writing ambient shopping mall music. The one-gear voice is no grain here even if they are a respective match for the steam-whistle of a stovetop kettle. The holiday take-off of the title track is another highlight.

After poking fun at innocent bullimia victim Geri, one can't argue Annie has no guts or originality, and so she is at it again on I Don't Like Your Band, but struggles to find a vein for her poison this time. It doesn't really do much besides accommodate various bleep and bloop sounds whilst she whispers her lungs out. Sounding like a remix of Chewing Gum, grinding the same melody but with less flavour second time around despite the noise trying to suggest this is the anthem of the century. It's frankly outshone by the retro-disco of Shakira's Shewolf or the vitriol of Girls Aloud's Hoxton Heroes. Despite the engaging throb of the music, Annie's formulaic intonations are far too twee to prop this disabled carcass into any kind of a sprint.

The stodgy electro number Songs Remind Me of You runs rings around it and is far more incisive with breathless synergy between singer and producer: deliciously sharp pulsating hi-nrg beats thunder relentlessly like clouds having a temper tantrum. Richard X's flashing soundscape is one of his finest and manages to sound like the Freemasons' expansive club remix of Kylie's The One and yet retains a sense of aloofness that could be no one else but face-like-a-stubbed-out-fag Annie. Whether the lyric is a cruel look-at-me taunt or of sympathetic attraction, the track is strangely foreboding as opposed to being carelessly celebratory and for once Annie's vapour-like vocals (not that I want to draw too much attention to them) sound outstandingly toxic as if inhaling deadly chemicals.

The downbeat melancholy Marie Cherie highlights the DJ's inability to convey emotion, but it has an infinitely wondrous quality. The lush storytelling has the serenity to make it as believably cinematic as Saint Etienne ('her skin's like velvet cream ... it was as if she wasn't there'), but her vocal deposits (hard and wet like rabbit droppings) are decidedly smallscreen however epic the ambitions are to be the next Celine.

Below: readers should take this post with a pinch of salt - how else can we achieve Annie's red-eye glamour without pissing off Chris Brown?

The accomodation offer Take You Home is hypnotic, seductively gloomy and calculating. Not since Marianne Faithful's Sex With Strangers has western civilisation been so under threat from a hungry vadge.

The Breakfast Song is a misfire. Her obsession with Geri continues as she purges out whatever bile as at the bottom of that barrel, hollering 'what do you want for breakfast?' at her arch nemesis via voicemal. ASDA and Tesco have ample selection of cereals, varieties of milk, raw meats and there's even Boots around the corner where she could just get a meal deal for £2.99 so I am not falling for it, you got that girl?

Thankfully Loco is back on track, and a motorbiking bassline swerves and shows off some badly-needed production agility. Annie's vocal may be one size fits all but it just happens to be tailor made for svelte pop outfits like this.

The aspartame-coated When The Night is almost laughably like a S.O.A.P ballad. Foggy synths are as gentle as snow and the singer's slushy vocals are poignantly limp as ever. Up there with the best non-single pop ballads of the 1999-2000 period.

Below: if she waits any longer she might give birth to a hit single.

The credits-rolling Heaven & Hell is dangerously close to being an outtake from The Singing Kettle, but not even a curmudgeon like myself can deny its ample charm. Her voice melts like butter on a jacket potatoe and Annie's album is the perfect bite-sized snack with no illusions of being anything otherwise, but that is not to say you won't be back more. You will want more.

She might appear to be all talk, be vocally crippled to the point where her voice peels away like a sticker and sounds like Dannii's excess botox hissing out her forehead as Kylie sticks pins into it whilst she sleeps in her sling, but Annie has substantially upped her game second time around - she put Geri Halliwell out of her misery on Me Plus One in 2004, but Annie's best cuts in 2009 are gimmick free and despite the glue-sniffing vocals she can count me in as a kind of fan. I have seen cleaners outside shopping centres smoking on their cigarettes with more emotion though.

Don't Stop is released 19 October 2009.

Stephen Gately 1976-2009

I always had a soft spot for Stephen, but never a hard one strangely. The guy certainly packed a lot in for his short years - at least that's what said he could do on his gaydar profile.

You're On In 5, Lambchop!

Bisexual Skank Trance Volume 2

More likely to have a massive shit than a massive hit (unless her boyfriend gets really mad), Karren Parry's ambitious neice Skyla cranks up the skank higher than her New Look shoplifted mini-skirt, whilst trying to get a free taxi or kebab, for her second solo AATW release Ayo Technology and it is certainly up there with the labels' finest output. Already a Polish number one, she is quick to cover it and to misquote an AATW forum user, it is being bummed harder than Tina Cousins tying her shoe laces.

Liscensed with hard-boiled chav and Blue Wkd spurred 'romance' on the dancefloor, the song is more infectious than bareback sex in Africa, and unlike her GUM clinic visits her double-vadge-enda is perfectly clear as she g-spots some bitch in the club securing payment for her debts with dancefloor handy j's and full-on cunt teasing:

She work it girl she work the pole
She break it down she take it low
She fine as hell she about the dough
She doing her thing out on the floor

With her vocals soggier than her thrown out used tampons, the midget dance diva can't stop noticing 'she want it like a nympho / the info / I show you where to meet her' and soon finds her same-sex soul-mate as they compare abortion loyalty card rewards - Skyla's record contract came free after she got her 5th stamp in one month and only had to give a further 5 DJ's BJs to show them she was the real deal unlike auntie Karen who simply takes it from behind.

The Divine Inspiration-esque collateral damage is gorgeous, but Skyla's glaringly-faux lesbian pursuits are wonderfully desperate and verge on stunning were it not for the small matter of having no class:

When she ready to ride I´m ready to roll
I´ll be in this bitch till the club close
What should I do one thing on all fours
Now that that shit should be against the law

Her insatiable internal accomodation narrows her limits to just about nothing and compromises:

We can switch positions
From the couch to the counters in my kitchen

I am surprised this teenage trollop even bothers to take girls back to her flat, as I'm sure the bouncers at her favourite club have all had a go already and probably have posted it all on youtube anyway.

She wants it
she wants it
I got to give it to her
I got to give it to her

Eurgh, enough already - clearly this clit-crusader has never heard of a) black men, or b) the vegetable section at her local Lidl (it's the same difference depending on the quality of courgettes, just ask Jenny Frost - and why else do you think Tina Cousins is banned from ASDA?).

I never tire of the sheer ridiculousness of pimping this felch-face primadonna out as some kind of stunner - check out the guys clearly plucked from the nearest gym pretending to be into her for anything more than being seen in a music video:

Below: jealous camgirls cast as 'friends' and gym-fit straight boys make this very watchavable - ooh the angst of being a chav with feelings.

Living this dangerously does not come easy, even if she does cum easy if her twitter account is to be believed, and unless she dies of herpes, shame or a home visit from Kelly Llorenna, then I see no reason why there won't be more to come from this astoundingly tasteless trash diva princess.