w/e 22nd April  2006

Pop Flix is terribly worried and sweaty this week. You see, as we sit here something very bad is happening. Persons unknown, thousands and thousands of them, are out there buying the Shayne Ward album. They don't know what they're doing. They can see him, sitting at home with his earnest little face fearing a jumbo sized flop, and they want to help. So they rush out and they pay the knockdown price of £8.77p from Tesco. They gaze over his vacant mush on the cover and feel glad they've helped. They go home and, this is where it gets really offensive so please stop reading if you are easily unsettled, they play the new CD while they cook, they have it on loop in the car, they don't - of course - like certain songs or feel moved or changed by the album, that would be silly, but they do think it's "nice" and (be brave) honestly think that "Someone To Love" is "that Shayne Ward song". And Shayne is happy. He's at number one. By the weekend literally a hundred billion people will have purchased his insipid little record (that I've never even heard; that's how confident I am). It's the biggest charity release in history.

And relax. Because there is also good news this week. Michael Jackson is back in the studio! Is it a joke, Daisy K? A belated April Fools gag perhaps? Recording for some Bahrain label, Pop Flix would like to advise caution - for as the old Chinese proverb goes, "When Jackson record, new album not always come". As proof, consider that since his last album, "Invincible" came out after taking fifty years to make, Jackson has made a hobby out of roping his celebrity friends into the studio only to never release the finished results. I'm sure everyone had a ball making "What More Can I Give" and that other one, but tell that to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Pop Flix won't be happy until a new album is actually in the shops, AND he's made a video. One where his face isn't hidden by a low hat and everything.

Pop Flix loves... no, HATES silly polls. You know, the ones where a bloke from Morey quizzes the twenty stupidest members of the public he can find before announcing that U2's "Zooropa" is the most popular album ever made ever. This week, let's have a drum roll for... THE MOST POPULAR MUSIC LYRICS EVER!

Neatly dovetailing with our Shayne Ward chatter earlier, it should be noted that members of the general public don't know about lyrics. They aren't important. And by members of the public we're talking people who buy X-Factor related CD's and Now! compilations, who buy music only when they've seen it advertised in the ad-break halfway through "Coronation Street", and who keep Ronan Keating's Greatest Hits in their car for three years because they simply never got round to taking it out. The box is stuffed in the pocket on the car door with a packet of Wine Gums and some Wet Ones. The Great British Public voted the following the GREATEST LYRIC OF ALL TIME:

"One life, with each other, sisters, brothers".

It blows you away doesn't it? Never mind the fact it could quite easily be said, matter-of-factly, by the man at the post office checking your passport before he renews it. It is, of course, by U2, and may or may not have been selected because its parent song, "One" is currently bouncing jauntily up the choppy waters of the top 10, helmed by Mary "is she young? is she old?" J Blige. No-one knows what the 'J' stands for.

These things are always won by U2, or Radiohead, or Bob Marley. I wonder how many members of the public actually own a Bob Marley album (not his Greatest Hits)? The rest of the Top 10 Best Lyrics Of All Time range from the schoolboy poetry moronic (""I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now, entertain us.") to the meaningless ("Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds, have no fear for atomic energy, 'cause none of them can stop the time.". It's not from a Rachel Stevens song).

Finally, it's another dull Top 10 this week with hardly new entries, Gnarls Berkley at number 1 and people like Fall Out Boy and the Flaming Lips having new entries. God, can it get any worse! Pop is Dead! etc. Pop Flix never thought it'd say this, but bring back that Rachel Stevens. At least you could have a fun game guessing if she'd just miss the Top 10 or not. When Stevens was about to release her last album, the record company put a poll on-line to ask people for their preferences with regard her album artwork and image etc. Pop Flix piped up and told her to be less slutty. Did she listen? We now sagely point to the absence of her album at the "summit" of the charts and laugh heartily at the blind...er... ear she turned when help was offered. Pity the Stevens, as we sometimes say.

Pop Flix will be, like Steve Brookstein's wallet, a lonely nothingness next week as we won't be here. Portugal calls, where pop doth not exist, but look out for us the week after. And if you know where we live, please don't smash our car windows while we're gone. Again.

God bless Proof from D12, and B*Wichya soon!