Brand New Franz!

Franz Ferdiand's new single 'Ulysses' is doing the rounds on YouTube, and whilst the first verse or so sounds like a reject Mika single, the song quickly finds its feet and returns the band to their catchy roots. They've got a few more synths in tow this time, but essentially that ridiculously funky sound that made their early singles so good is still very much in tact.

Listen, if you will:



'Ulysses' is out on January 19th.

Musical Highlights of '08

Wasn't 2008 quite a nifty year musically? Let's take a quick moment to honour the most memorable bits, shall we...

Best Creation of New Sub-Genre
Whoever came up with the genius idea of mixing r'n'b with power ballads needs a serious raise. 'No Air' by JORDIN SPARKS and CHRIS BROWN was nothing short of epic. Just epic. No other word. Epppppic.

Best Lyric In The History of Ever
"My best friend Lesley said, 'oh she's just being Miley'." You are hereby challenged to find any lyric in the history of popular song that can top that. Note: You will fail. Kudos to the songwriters behind that MILEY CYRUS epic 'See You Again'.

Best Song About Housework
"Does he wash up?! He never washes up!" cries ALESHA DIXON. It's not just kitchen-themed ranting that makes 'The Boy Does Nothing' such a tune, oh no. Mambo intro? Check. Nifty use of the word "HEY!" about half-way through? Check. Excuse to dance like a beast in the music video? Check. Top marks to Alesha for making the male population re-think their attitudes around the house.

Best Demonstration of the Ability to Count
They don't write much of their own material but whoever says GIRLS ALOUD are thick needs to check out the intro to 'The Promise' in which cries of "1! 2! 3! 4!" signal in the best pop record of the year. FACT.

Best Epic Ballad Based Around A Hypothetical Train of Thought
Most of us keep our musings about being the opposite gender for the day to ourselves, but not BEYONCE. She's got her plan for if she were a boy absoloutley sussed.

Most Ridiculously Overkilled Song
'Rockstar' by NICKELBACK is NOT that good. It's really not.

The 'Wish I Thought Of That' Award
This one's a tie. Firstly to ITV for wishing they'd tapped into the school-based musical genre before those pesky Disney fatcats did. Shame that BRITANNIA HIGH turned out to be a bit of a turd. Other winners in this category are BOYZONE, desperatley trying to emulate the TAKE THAT reunion but obviously falling flat on their faces. Shaaaaame.

Worst Use of Grammar
"Are we human or are we dancer?" questions Brandon Flowers in 'Human' by THE KILLERS, before moaning that listeners keep mishearing the lyrics. They probably just assumed that his use of the English language would be a bit better. Still a great tune though.

Best Road Metaphor
"This is the crossing at the main intersection". Simple but effective. THE SATURDAYS aren't quite up there with the greats but if they keep on producing tunes like 'Up' then it won't take long.

Attack On A Simpson Sister of the Year
PINK's 'So What' for "Somebody just took my table and gave it to Jessica Simps. Shit." Runner-up is JESSICA herself for trying to launch a country music career. Eeek.

Artist Most Likely To Kill You If You Don't Remember Her Name
Let's not get on the wrong side of KATIE of TING TINGS fame, shall we?

Ah, it's been a good year hasn't it?

All-new 'Brothers and Sisters' next week!!!

The third season of 'Brothers and Sisters' begins here in the UK on 8th January. Yep, that's next week!! The series hasn't really been a huge hit on these shores but it does the business in the States, with around 10-12 million viewers per episode. Its first season played out on Channel 4 to pretty dire ratings, then E4 screened the second season at 11pm on Sundays (and then wondered why nobody watched).

The third season commences next Thursday at 10pm on the much more fitting channel of More4, right after new episodes of 'ER', which is about to begin its final season. 'Brothers and Sisters' marries a spectacular cast with a heart-warming sense of family that is severely lacking in many other US dramas, and has earned Sally Field an Emmy Award as well as a heap of nominations for Rachel Griffiths.

Here's a Season 3 promo to whet your appetite. QUALITY DRAMA!!

Katy Perry gets emotional

In a total shift from 'I Kissed A Girl' and 'Hot'n'Cold' the third UK single to be lifted from Katy Perry's 'One Of The Boys' album is 'Thinking of You', an emotional ballad with a video about Katy trying to move on after the love of her life goes to war. Warning: it's really sad at the end!

Dannii Minogue time-warp pencilled in for '09

Rumours are doing the rounds that DANNII MINOGUE is bringing out a new studio album next year. No, really, not kidding.

Innit weird? The X FACTOR judge is apparently returning to the "pop and dance" sound that gave her the biggest hits of her career a few years back. It seems difficult to actually envisage Dannii writhing around in a music video but before we disregard it completely, lest we forget that she actually did give us a small handful of quite good songs in the not-too-distant past. Remember 'Who Do You Love Now'? Or 'I Begin To Wander'? In fact she's actually had twelve consecutive number one hits on the UK Upfront Club Charts.

Didn't she look like someone else entirely though?!



She just seems too mature now to go back to that. But still, we could be wrong - lord knows KYLIE's last album didn't do the business in terms of sales and critical acclaim, so maybe it's Dannii's turn to be the all-conquering Minogue sister?

... nah, probs not.

Zavvi follows Woolies down the pan

So Zavvi is the latest high street music retailer to plummet into administration. It joins Tower, Our Price and Woolworths to the music shop graveyard, threatening more than 3000 jobs in the process. Woolworths and Zavvi (formerly Virgin Megastore) both use the same supplier - EUK - and now that EUK is in administration both stores have struggled to support themselves.

Not only is this a Christmas blow for the 3000+ employees but also for the flippin' music industry. HMV is more-or-less all that's left, and if they go bust then the number one resource for a CD album is going to be the supermarkets; and with those only selling the most mainstream of the mainstream albums coupled with randomly produced compilation sets then this is very bad news for up-and-coming artists able to put their music out there in an actual huge music store. As for the CD single, this surely must be among the final nails in the coffin.

Zavvi is (or rather was) the largest entertainment retailer in the UK with 136 stores in the UK and Ireland and was formed just last year as a buy-out for Virgin Megastores.

So long, Zavvi. We'll miss you :'(

Another crap Big Brother ad

BIG BROTHER promos tend to love giving the theme tune a bit of a mysterious remix, and the new promo for the sixth celebrity edition, which starts on January 2nd (next Friday, fact fans), takes it a biiiiit far and actually just spits out fragments of track every few seconds, coupled of course with little pieces of eye. Oscar-worthy film-making indeed. But nevertheless it's (just about) enough to stir up a bit of excitement for the show, and, would you believe it, the very same advert appears below. Right there, look:



Incidentally rumoured contestants include former Sugababe MUTYA BUENA, who strangely enough is now without a record deal, WHITNEY HOUSTON (hmm...), COOLIO, ex-Liberty X star MICHELLE HEATON, glamour model LUCY PINDER, footballer-turned-presenter IAN WRIGHT and the former Mr Cheeky Girl, MP LEMBIT OPIK. We shall see. DAVINA is back on hosting duties, duhhhh, and GEORGE LAMB is back on BBLB, but this time without the absoloutley dire ZIZI WHATSHERFACE... instead it's MICHAEL BARRYMORE who'll be doing the "roving reporting".

I'm gonna make a prediction right here that ratings will be shit, but we'll see if the show itself is any good when it starts at the arse end of next week.

More Housewives NOW please

Channel 4 have once again halted DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES mid-season, but this time they kinda didn't have a choice, seeing as the series is on its festive break in the States. But across the pond the lucky Americans are one episode ahead of us - you can't really tell it's a classic by this slightly underwhelming promo, but all the same, apparently 'A Vision's Just A Vision' looks set to be a pretty eventful episode. Observe:

BREAKING NEWS: Diana wants a dog :-o

Until she gets an album out and tells EOGHAN to fuck off, we don't really give a shit. Out of the tabloids and into the studio please, DIANA.

Girls Aloud do it again...

They did well on their TV special, but GIRLS ALOUD are lucky that they're so indestructibly popular at the moment, because such a growing track record of out-of-tune TV performances would surely have killed off any other group by now. Admittedly their performance of 'The Loving Kind' on GMTV last week was a million miles better than that X Factor performance, but SARAH's ridiculously painful ad-lib at the end must, MUST, have earned her a slap on the wrist and/or face from her otherwise pleasingly tuneful band-mates.



P.S. How come neither of KIMBERLEY's two lines (two!!) were accompanied by a close-up?! She's the best one!!

No, Hilary. Just no.

Who fancies a quick LOL at the expense of HILARY DUFF? The undeniably hard-working predecessor to MILEY CYRUS has been desperately trying to re-invent herself as a proper grown-up for quite some time now, but you can't help but have a quick giggle at her new video. The song's called 'Reach Out' and samples Depeche Mode's 'Personal Jesus'. Now I have to admit I am a bit of a Hilary fan, but this mildly pornographic video is pure jokes. She's even bought in a rapper. A RAPPER. Bless her heart. If you're wandering when it's going to sink without a trace like her UK singles tend to do, it comes out January 19th, and is to be followed a week later by... wait for it... 'The Best of Hilary Duff'. No, really. Bad times, Hilz. Bad times.