elcome to a new weekly series: The UK Singles Jukebox: Radio Gaga. The format is simple: we take a smattering of current pop singles, get our reviewers thoughts on them and tally up the average of their scores. Without further ado, the first edition…



The Streets
Fit But You Know it
(WEA)
[5]

Simon Hampson: I don't think this is quite as good as most people are making out. I can see what Mike Skinner means when he says that 'it gets boring pretty quickly'. But it's a fun track all the same, and the way that Mike says "chipsss and drinksss" is already legendary. The B-side to this single is excellent, however: Tinchy Stryder (from Ruff Sqwad) and Kano (Nasty Crew) are awesome. The way that Stryder has of saying 'regular' is a wicked vocal trademark. Hopefully it'll bring these MCs, and the grime scene as a whole, a bit more attention and respect.
[8]

Edward Oculicz: By turns annoying, catchy and cringe-inducing with some of its rhymes, this track has both made me bounce around AND annoy boring fun-haters who will bemoan until the end of time that this song made #4 and being a dead set commercial hit, having beaten the peak of the unbelievably overrated "Has It Come To This?", thus also pissing off people who were "into them before you were".
[9]

Peter Parrish: Oh great, a charva band. Townie music; about townies, for townies. Scallies, pikeys and Muppets unite—your time is now! I can’t wait to hear this song echoing around every single supermarket car park in the land. Mmm...So much fun. Add five points to the score if you own a Burberry cap. Add a couple more if this is all an ironic joke which I’ve totally missed the point of.
[3]

Scott Mckeating: One word…Jaunty; a bouncy guitar loop replacing the backroom garage sounds of Official Pirate Material. I really enjoy Skinner’s boozed up day to day stilted soliloquies for the first couple of listens, but beyond that it gets a bit wearing. The lyrics are there just to tell the story from A to C via comedy moment B, and you don’t normally get to go any deeper with The Streets.
[5]

Dom Passantino: The usual tuneless, arrhythmic, tedious crap put out by the worst music act… ever? Yeah, he’s worse than Catatonia, I’m calling it. Can someone please defend this track to me without sounding like a press release? “B-b-b-b-but he’s the voice of this generation!” No, he’s not the voice of this generation. The voice of this generation is Bam Margera, and he’s shite as well.
[1]



Natasha Bedingfield
Single
(Arista)
[3]

Simon Hampson: The whole Bedingfield thing is a mystery. Daniel is an ugly fat man whose tunes are just Westlife bollocks for the self-conscious Toni + Guy set. And yet he's signed to a major, and being pushed really heavily. How? He doesn't even have looks to compensate for his pitiful lack of talent. And now his sister is also signed to a major and realises this piece of shite which no sane person is ever going to listen to again in a month's time. How have they got so far on so little? They must know some pretty dark secrets about people in pretty high places. The Bedingfield mafia must be taken out!
[1]

Edward Oculicz: I really can't stand Daniel's sister's voice. I played this blind for MY sister and she swore it must be Pink's sister, and that's not really very good. Backing tracks that sound as if they were influenced by flatulence are not a good point, and if you're going to go all female empowerment, at least sound as if you mean it, rather than sound so damn defensive and morose. If she wouldn't trade places right now with stars in the ascendance, why doesn't she sound happy about herself?
[5]

Peter Parrish: Daniel’s on the phone, he says your website is overly fancy and extremely unfriendly to dialup users. Has anyone seen these two in the same room together? Perhaps this is all an impressive marketing ploy? Brother Bedingfield’s falsetto was always suspiciously impressive. I think I’ll pitch Brother Bedingfield to Disney; a heart-warming tale in which Daniel Bedingfield joins a sect of monks, only to be pursued by his devil-worshipping sister. Not that I’m saying his sister necessarily attends the altar of our dark master, you understand. Just that I didn’t especially enjoy her song.
[4]

Scott Mckeating: Nice fat clunky beat and nice sentiment, but her vocals are too thick and marmitey for it to be really enjoyable. Edit off her vocals and stick on someone with a decent set of pipes.
[4]

Dom Passantino: Standard “independent woman and proud” track, not as good as “Independent Women (Part 1)”, mainly because it has no silly rap at the start of it. Can we just talk about her brother instead? He writes all his songs in the nude, and his acoustic version of “Gotta Get Through This” is surprisingly great, kind of like “More Than Words” if “More Than Words” was any good.
[3]



Keane
Everybody’s Changing
(Island)
[3]

Simon Hampson: Keane just make me despair. Listening to this is no way to spend your youth. A few years back teenagers were taking drugs and listening to hard house, and had that wonderful precious thing of parents telling them that it 'isn't even music'. Now they listen to this. Very nice, very polite and all, but there's more constructive things to do with your adolescence. And he does that horrible breathy thing with his voice, inhaling really loudly when he's singing. It makes him sound like he's about to die. This, come to think of it, may be a point in favour of the record.
[3]

Peter Parrish: Cheer up, you’re not that bland. Oh wait, yes you are. Bad luck.
[2]

Edward Oculicz: Jesus, but they're dull aren't they? Not altogether unpleasant, but I swear they're even duller properly recorded than they were on their demos. Which were also very boring. I honestly can't remember anything about this song. Nor the other songs off the album I've heard. There's piano. There's singing. In five months time, it will be revealed that Fran Healy and Chris Martin are funneling their album cast-offs through Keane using mind control.
[4]

Scott Mckeating: I find it really hard to get excited about young guitar talent these days (I have no problem at all with something that’s incredibly derivative as long as it has a decent tune) and for Keane to be sitting in the charts means there are obviously a large section of the messy haired indie youth with a predilection to taking lengthy naps. I get more of a rise from a cup of decaf than I do from Keane.
[3]

Dom Passantino: I’m not “keen”, if you will. Ho ho ho.
[2]



Christina Milian
Dip it Low
(Def Jam)
[3]

Simon Hampson: What to say? It’s OK, but it's also desperately unexciting. Didn't she used to present MTV or something? She was good at that.
[2]

Scott Mckeating: Caveat Emptor: The axiom or principle that the buyer alone is responsible for assessing the quality of a purchase before buying. Only you can decide whether you find this spiriting and enlightening or just straight up shit.
[1]

Edward Oculicz: She wrote a song for Jennifer Lopez, therefore she is a menace to society. Even back when this was circulating on MP3 some months ago this sounded like someone grasping for dear life onto the last batch of “I'm A Girl and I'm Going to Rock You Good” songs that were popular. Now, separated from its bandwagon-chasing context, it just sounds plain crap. Could we please, I don't know, Christina, PROJECT A LITTLE? Quiet does not equal sexy, please make a note of it.
[3]

Peter Parrish: It’s a song about shagging. Hear it soon, from a car driving past you! Err…that’s it.
[5]

Dom Passantino: Didn’t she have that video that was kind of like Fun House, with all the people in carts travelling around this weird club/fairground hybrid? Or was that Samantha Mumba? Anyway, “AM to PM” was quite good, the stuff she wrote for Jennifer Lopez was quite bad, this is quite average and is going to be in the top ten for fifteen decades. Well done.
[3]



The Corrs
Summer Sunshine
(Atlantic)
[4]

Simon Hampson: I like The Corrs because they don't even try to be 'cool'. They know that they're just music for furniture shops and sales reps, and they just stick to doing what they do. As long as they keep to their patch and don't try to muscle in on the impressionable minds of the nation's youth, they're fine by me.
[3]

Edward Oculicz: One thing The Corrs have always been good at is the transition between verse and chorus, and this single is no exception—a guitar coming in at the exact time it's needed to make the chorus's arrival a mammoth moment. Unfortunately, that's about all that's good about this single; as it lacks the all-conquering 70s blast of a "Breathless" or the brooding drama of an "Only When I Sleep". Did they lose Mutt Lange's phone number?
[5]

Peter Parrish: Like Keane, the Corrs want to tell us that everyone is changing (but they stay the same). This is a slightly spooky coincidence. It wanders along for a bit until... HELLO, I’LL BE YOUR CHORUS FOR TODAY! Devious ear-worm techniques are evidently in use. All is forgiven when the track triggers memories of some excellent Corrs-related sketches by Lee and Herring (“The Mancorr Stu, call him by his name!”). Dear BBC 2, where are my Fist of Fun repeats?
[5]

Scott Mckeating: As they became more popular The Corr’s became slimmer; Mandy, Shandy and Brandy now look like a hideous government experiment to gene splice Pandas, weasels and Phantom Menace droids. Its pretty much standard urbane Corrs fare, [SARCASM]although I think I could’ve handled more traditional instrumentation to ram home the fact that they are Irish [/SARCASM]. The drummer (Shandy, I think, the one that wears the kinky leather gloves) will be taking a little break soon to have a little Corr baby. The Corrs: The Next Generation.
[4]

Dom Passantino: I’ve never listened to my copy of Rumours all the way through. The Corrs have.
[3]



Joss Stone
Super Duper Love
(Relentless)
[3]

Simon Hampson: Good Christ. I HATE this kind of music; this fucking horrible 60's 'r n b' guitar rock, it's so stodgy and graceless. There have been two major attempts to rid the world of this plague; punk and rave both, it seems, have been unsuccessful. It's the result of kids raiding their parent’s dire record collections and misguidedly thinking that they've uncovered 'real' music. The folly of youth. This is a fake and contrived take on a genre that was already rotten to its core to begin with. Disgraceful.
[1]

Edward Oculicz: There's something not quite right about The Kids making pop records for The Old People. It's supposed to be the other way round, isn't it? I don't care if she has soul, a great voice or anything; her producers must think that in order to prove those two things, you DON'T actually need a catchy melody, a hook or something that actually proves entertaining. As a throwback to another era this is mediocre, because I tell you nobody in 30 years time is going to listen to Joss Stone and try to emulate her. She exists only as a rough facsimile of the soulful music she attempts to invoke, and she thinks she's got all the elements that made that music great, but she reveres the sound and ignores the song. May she fail spectacularly once the novelty wears off.
[1]

Scott Mckeating: The main aim of the marketing of Joss Stone was to create an air of verisimilitude; her White Stripes cover was released so we would know she was an artiste, a reinventer of a modern classic from another genre. The radio still loves “I Fell in Love with a Girl”, though I’m pretty confident that her nascent career will begin and end with that song and this pop idyll will sink into the depths of pop obscurity. And who the hell says “Super Duper” anymore?
[3]

Peter Parrish: Automatic bonus points for using the term “super duper”. It has one of those cheesy seaside organists wibbling away in the background too, which is always appreciated. The guitarist merrily noodles around while Ms. Stone goes “Yeah!”, “Ooo!” and “Are you diggin’ on me?” Our heroes are in love, the film is slowly panning upwards to a gentle fade out and we can all go home happy. Hurrah!
[7]

Dom Passantino: Jailbait nu-soul Muppet releases second single. I ain’t going for it. I’ve not listened to the album since I got it, mainly because… ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? I’m just not buying it. At all. It’s like Parkinson created a monster that he can’t contain, and it’s just going around doing middling cover versions of tracks everyone’s forgotten. Like a cocktail lounge singer gone wrong. Ah well.
[2]