EOIN BUTLER's guide to singles, downloads and free audiostreams
George Michael
December Song
Island ***
Twenty-five years ago, George Michael would almost certainly have scored a yuletide No 1 singler with Last Christmas, but was thwarted by Bob Geldof and Band Aid. The ex-Wham frontman re-entered the fray last year. However, with the questionable judgment that has marred so many of his recent career moves, he neglected to release his 2008 Christmas effort until December 25th. Michael is having another crack this year, but he’s up against stiff competition from . . .
The Pet Shop Boys
It doesn't often snow at Christmas
Parlophone
**
The Pet Shop Boys, whose version of Always On My Mind cruelly kept Fairytale of New York off the top Christmas spot in 1987. Neil Tennant displays a more common touch here. But couplets like “Christmas is not all it’s cracked up to be/ Families fighting around a plastic tree” only serve to underline that he is, alas, no Noddy Holder.
Lady Gaga
Bad Romance
Interscope
***
The race for the Christmas No 1, incidentally, is one of the few contexts in which the epithet “no Noddy Holder” isn’t necessarily a damning indictment. Similarly, the all-singing, all-gyrating pop sensation that is Lady Gaga is also “no Noddy Holder”, but in a much better way.
Jamie Foxx
J
**
Oscar-winning movie star Jamie Foxx returns with a single so lewd it makes Lady Gaga’s worst appear mild by comparison. “I’ll take a picture of [a part of his anatomy],” he promises at one point. “And send it as a gif.” Not written with the season of goodwill specifically in mind, we can assume.
Though the video features yachts and limousines, Flashback is unmistakably an ode to the less glamorous phenomenon of alcohol and/or narcotic-induced memory loss. But that title has a double meaning. Because, in common with every other track the singer-producer has released to date, Flashback is almost indistinguishable from the one that preceded it.
Clever that.
