Hearty congratulations to Taylor Swift! Not because she won four trophies at last night’s CMAs, though.

Or because she’s the youngest-ever CMA Entertainer Of The Year. No, congratulations should go to Taylor Swift because she managed to get through all of her acceptance speeches without being interrupted by a hieroglyphic-haired berk with a weird compulsion to unfavourably compare her to Beyonce – the first time this has ever happened.

But then how could Kanye West possibly unfavourably compare anyone at a country music awards show? “Imma let you finish, but Darius Rucker is one of the most derivative, tedious and inbred-looking singers of all time. OF ALL TIME!”? Hardly.

Right now Taylor Swift has got everything she ever wanted. The Kanye West thing made her a household name. She’s hosted Saturday Night Live. She’s got a boyfriend who doesn’t understand how clothes work.

And, most importantly, she deals with a genre of music that’s so uniformly generic and terrible that she comes across as a bravely innovative pioneer just because she isn’t a toothless 90-year-old man who plays the banjo, whistles when he tries to pronounce any word with the letter S in it and routinely gets cautioned by police for firing shotguns at children who stray too close to his porch.

And that’s why Taylor Swift cleaned up at last night’s Country Music Awards. We’ll get straight to the details, courtesy of Reuters:

Taylor Swift claimed a piece of music history on Wednesday when she became the youngest artist ever to win the coveted title of Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Awards. Swift, 19, also claimed awards for Female Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year and Album of the Year. “I’ll never forget this moment because at this moment everything that I ever wanted has just happened to me,” a tearful Swift said.

More than that, though, Taylor Swift must be relieved that nobody staged a Kanye-style speech interruption during any of her wins. Because this is country music we’re dealing with – if people don’t like you, they won’t simply imply that another singer deserved to win ahead of you, they’ll either strangle you or marry you and then molest some children or, if the interrupter is Billy Joe Shaver, simply shoot you in the face because you looked at him funny.

Still, you know who we feel sorry for here? Kenny Chesney. Up until now he’d won the CMA Entertainer Of The Year award four times in five years – possibly only because he likes to wear unusually large hats sometimes – and so he must have thought that he’d be a shoo-in for this year’s title, too. But, no, Taylor Swift has gone and spoilt all of that, the cow.

However, Kenny Chesney didn’t get where he is by not moving with the times, and that’s why next year we’re sure we’ll be seeing him copy some of Taylor Swift’s tricks. He’ll ask to present Saturday Night Live, for starters, and if we don’t see him out and about on the arm of a topless 17-year-old boy by Christmas we’ll be stunned. Because, you know, we heard those rumours too.

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This Aerosmith split is ugly, and not just because everyone involved in it looks like a voodoo doll made from medical waste.

No, it’s the bitterness that’s ugly. Steven Tyler has only been out of Aerosmith for a few days, and the rest of the band are already lining up to badmouth him as much as possible. Just yesterday Joe Perry complained to a radio station that Steven Tyler had recently hung up on him midway through a phonecall.

And that’s just the start. We also heard that Steven Tyler always steals the Coco Pops whenever the band buys a Kellogg’s Variety Pack, thinks that Joe Perry’s mum is a slag and once drew a cock and balls on the back of Brad Whitford’s bomber jacket in Tipp-Ex. The man is evil.

What we appear to have here is something we like to call un problème Gosselin. You see, as we reported yesterday, Aerosmith have split up. And, just like when Jon and Kate Gosselin split up, we’re expected to pick sides – are we Team Tyler or Team Aerosmith?

However, just like the Gosselin situation, we’re having trouble picking a side, because neither option is particularly appealing. Side with Aerosmith and you’re essentially voting to see the remnants of Aerosmith shamelessly trundle around the world ripping off fans with a show starring a two-bit replacement singer.

Side with Steven Tyler, though, and you’re basically endorsing the egocentric whims of knackered old sexagenarian who looks like a bad painting of a transvestite with gills and is interested in something called ‘Brand Tyler’, even though that sounds genuinely nightmarish.

See? It’s a lose-lose.

But to help our decision along, Joe Perry is doing his best to convince us all that Steven Tyler is a right old git. Yesterday he gave an interview to a Boston radio station where, among other things, he claimed that Tyler’s telephone etiquette is nothing short of abominable:

“I did call him when we were in Hawaii, because we had some gigs that were offered to us to do in South America — like, three gigs that we were gonna do in December. And I called him up and asked him if he would consider doing them, and he hung up on me about halfway through the conversation, so I kind of got the hint that he pretty much wants to be alone and wants to do his own thing.”

So we’ve heard from Aerosmith. What about Steven Tyler? Well, so far he’s keeping a dignified silence about the split – so silent, in fact, that not even Joe Perry seems to know why he left so suddenly. Actually, maybe this is what Brand Tyler involves – Steven Tyler disappearing from view and keeping his gigantic mouth shut for the rest of his life.

If that’s the case, we’ve made our choice. Go Brand Tyler. We’re Brand Tyler all the way.

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It’s weird when old people get divorced, isn’t it? You’re both going to be dead soon, so what’s the point?

Which brings us to Aerosmith. Despite having a combined age of the highest number you can possibly think of, Aerosmith have just decided to split up. Actually, no, that isn’t strictly true – Steven Tyler has decided to leave Aerosmith to concentrate on something called ‘Brand Tyler’, something that – if Steven Tyler’s appearance in the movie Be Cool is anything to go by – will be the very worst thing ever created by a human being in all of history.

As for Aerosmith? They might carry on without him. Idiots.

This isn’t an admission we’re particularly proud of, but we own Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. We know, OK? We know. We just quite like Guitar Hero and it’s got Complete Control by The Clash on it and it’s fun to play Livin’ On The Edge because it’s the stupidest song ever written. Please accept our apologies. But here’s the thing – we bought Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and then Aerosmith split up. On that basis, maybe we should invest in Guitar Hero: Metallica too. You never know.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – Aerosmith is no more. Or at least Aerosmith in its current incarnation is no more. We’ll let Digital Spy do the explaining:

[Joe] Perry said: “Steven quit as far as I can tell. I don’t know any more than you do about it. I got off the plane two nights ago. I saw online that Steven said that he was going to leave the band. I don’t know for how long, indefinitely or whatever. Other than that, I don’t know.” Tyler, 61, said that he was going to move ahead with a solo career, concentrating on ‘Brand Tyler’.

This is bound to be a shock for both Aerosmith and the eight remaining Aerosmith fans who haven’t lost all of their cognitive function to the ravages of old age yet. But, that said, we can see why Steven Tyler has decided to leave Aerosmith. As far as we’re concerned, there are two clear reasons:

1 - Aerosmith has been cruel to Steven Tyler in recent years. Thanks to Aerosmith, Tyler has caught hepatitis, been to rehab, knackered his throat and fallen off a stage like some sort of ridiculous pensionable transvestite with woefully unsatisfactory motor skills. The man clearly needs a rest.

2 - Aerosmith are crap.

Now we’ll just have to see what happens next. There are already rumours that Aerosmith will simply replace Steven Tyler and move on without him. But that won’t really be Aerosmith, will it? Sure, it might sound like Sweet Emotion when the new line-up plays it, but if it’s not being wailed out by an old man who looks like a Janice Dickinson mannequin that’s been stitched together out of animal scrotums and dances like a monkey being anally molested with a pine cone, then it’s not going to fool anyone.

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The artwork for Adam Lambert’s new album For Your Entertainment has already kicked up one hell of a fuss.

Why? It’s simple. It looks like one of those awful transfer-print T-shirts that people who like wolves buy from tatty market stalls. It looks like something that the redneck wife of a professional wrestling fan would airbrush onto the back of her leather jacket. It looks like a poster that someone you hate would buy. It’s bizarre.

But it’s OK, because Adam Lambert says it’s all deliberate. Unfortunately it means that Kris Allen’s new album artwork will now probably show him covered in glitter and bumming a unicorn, but we’ll deal with that when we have to.

Adam Lambert clearly hasn’t read the rulebook. You know, the rulebook which says that the debut album from all American Idol graduates should come with artwork where the performer looks approachable and friendly. The rulebook which very specifically says that the debut album from all American Idol graduates should most definitely not come with artwork that makes them look like a naked genderless sex alien who suffers from debilitating migraines.

And yet that’s what the artwork to Adam Lambert’s forthcoming album For Your Entertainment is. Look, here it is all close-up…

Admit it, when you first saw the artwork you thought it was a hoax. You thought it was a hoax knocked up by a 12-year-old girl with a second-hand VHS copy of the 1986 Grace Jones movie Vamp and a Blingee account, didn’t you? You thought that not even Adam Lambert – the man who used American Idol to sing Ring Of Fire in the style of a creepy Middle-Eastern snake charmer and part-time date-rapist – would think of becoming a topless, blue-haired version of the Sarah Jessica Parker character from Flight Of The Navigator on the sleeve of his first album.

But he has. And he’s done it on purpose, as he told his followers on Twitter yesterday:

“Thank you to those who appreciate and understand that the album cover is deliberately campy. It’s an omage to the past. It IS ridiculous… For those that don’t get it: oh well… Glad to have gotten your attention. androgyny. Rock n Roll… *homage. When’s Twitter adding spell check?”

That’s awfully nice of Adam Lambert, but we’re not really sure it counts as androgynous. Not unless the definition of androgyny has expanded to include men who look as if they’ve woken up in a ditch on the day of their wedding and realised that their stag night prank involved being stripped, dyed and eyebrow-waxed, while simultaneously having their hand glued to their own face.

But nice try anyway. And if the album cover has walked the line between amazing and terrible so easily, then God knows what Adam Lambert’s album itself will be like, right Adam?

“[There's] a tune called “Music Again” written by Justin Hawkins of the Darkness!”

OK, we take that back, sorry. It’ll be terrible. As you were.

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Sorry Rihanna. You may have wrapped yourself in barbed wire and sung about killing yourself, but you’ve been out-depressed.

You see, Chris Brown also has a new single out. And even though your song, Rihanna, was about blowing a gigantic hole in your own chest with a pistol, Chris Brown’s new single is immeasurably more depressing simply because it exists. It’s called Crawl, and it’s a kind of sadsack ‘I know I tried to choke you unconscious and bite one of your ears off, but I still love you baby’ plea for forgiveness.

And it’s worked. Oh Chris Brown, we could never stay mad at you, you stupid-toothed, bowtie-wearing, violent, woman-hating twat.

Well what are the chances of this? Just yesterday we were telling you about Rihanna’s morbid new single, and now Chris Brown has decided to unveil his new single too. Honestly, you wait eight months for one song to ghoulishly reflect on a harrowing assault that everyone would quite like to forget about, and then two come along at once. It’s like buses, isn’t it? Admittedly buses where the driver will repeatedly punch you in the head while threatening to kill you if you haven’t got the correct change, but buses nonetheless.

The good news is that Chris Brown hasn’t decided to wrap himself up in barbed wire and pull a sad face on the cover of his new single Crawl, but the bad news is that the song sees him cast himself as an unlucky loser in love, just because he got a teensy bit angry about a text message once and wound up choking his girlfriend and smacking her skull against a window because he couldn’t push her out of a moving car. But, hey, who hasn’t been there, right guys? Guys? Hello? Guys? No?

Anyway, here’s Crawl by Chris Brown for your timely assessment…

Horrific, isn’t it? Not so much because it seems to be yet another reminder that Chris Brown isn’t completely aware of what a monster he is – see also the time when he said he wasn’t a monster – but because it betrays a basic lack of knowledge when it comes to developmental mobility.

Yes, Chris Brown might be right in thinking that humans must learn to crawl before they can walk, and that they walk before they can run, and that they run before they can jump – but jumping clearly doesn’t lead to flying. That’s a fundamental mistake he’s made right there, and it leads us to question his credibility as an artist. What’s more, even if humans could fly, they most certainly wouldn’t fly until there was no end. They’d probably just fly to the shops or something. Chris Brown is an idiot. We hate him.

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Why, just the other day we were wondering why there aren’t any more songs about Rihanna shooting herself in the chest.

And here’s Russian Roulette. It’s serendipity, that’s what it is. Russian Roulette is the first single to be released from Rihanna’s new album Rated R – the R, if you’re wondering, stands for Really Bloody Depressing.

Will Rihanna’s Russian Roulette take off? We hope not. The last thing we need is a bunch of copy-cat suicide songs from lesser singers – although insiders have informed us that Ciara’s forthcoming Do The Toasterbath and Amerie’s Let’s Push Scorpions Up Our Bumholes are actually pretty catchy.

We blame Chris Brown. Of course we do. If it wasn’t for Chris Brown’s horrific attack on her face earlier this year, then would Rihanna be releasing a song about suicide? No way – we heard that her original choice for a comeback single was a song called I’m Just A Giddy Gumdrop Girl (My Heart Goes Boing Boing Boing). But we can’t change the past – Chris Brown did attack Rihanna, and therefore her comeback single is Russian Roulette. EW has more on the song:

The midtempo tune opens with a screaming processed-guitar solo that segues into an eerie-sexy bass rumble… Soon thereafter comes the big pull-out-the-stops hook: “And you can see my heart beating/You can see it through my chest/I’m terrified but I’m not leaving.” The music ends dramatically with a single gunshot.

And, just to push the message home, the artwork for Russian Roulette shows Rihanna wrapped in barbed wire. This either suggests that Rihanna is in a truly dark and edgy place at the moment, or that she’s depressed because she ended up getting accidentally tangled up in a fence during an abortive apple scrumping mission and now she’s worried about tetanus. We just don’t know.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by Russian Roulette. After all, Rihanna has never shied away from flirting with dark imagery in the past. Remember Unfaithful, where Rihanna compared the act of infidelity to murder? Or Shut Up And Drive, where Rihanna harrowingly relived the nightmare of being trapped in a taxi with a needlessly chatty driver? Or Umbrella, where Rihanna sang about, um, some umbrellas? The woman is essentially Marilyn Manson.

Oh, we’ve teased you for long enough. Here’s Russian Roulette by Rihanna. If you find yourself affected by any of the issues raised in the song, then help can be found here. Oh, and also you’re an idiot…

What did you make of that, then? Personally, we hope that the song disappears without trace. Not necessarily because the subject matter is too dark for its intended audience, but because we’re worried that Chris Brown will try something similar in an attempt to get back into everyone’s good books again. And, really, we don’t want to see any photos of him with barbed wire wrapped around his nipples. We’re depressed enough as it is, thanks.

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A warning: if you don’t like fat teenage girls with silly emo haircuts and black nail polish, stay inside during November.

They’ll be out in force. Not only is New Moon coming out – which, let’s face it, would be bad enough by itself – but it’s also when For Your Entertainment, the first album from stupid-haired screeching emo vampire  American Idol loser Adam Lambert, is being released.

And Adam Lambert’s first single has just been leaked onto the internet. It’s called Time For Miracles. So long as that miracle involves the entire internet being deleted just to stop us from hearing it, we couldn’t agree more.

You remember Adam Lambert, don’t you? Of course you do – he was the break-out star of the last American Idol. And by ‘break-out star’ we mean that he was the contestant who looked most like Evil Spider-Man, had a singing voice that sounded most like an obese old lady being molested by a ghost and wouldn’t let on about his sexuality even though he literally couldn’t have been any gayer if he wore a T-Shirt with ‘I AM QUITE GAY’ written on it in sequins. You remember Adam Lambert. He was rubbish.

And, more importantly, he’s back. On November 23 Adam Lambert releases his new album For Your Entertainment – a slight misnomer because, if other American Idol albums are anything to go by it should be called For You To Buy, Play Once, Forget About And Then Hide Whenever Your Friends Come To Visit. But that’s beside the point, because the first single from Adam Lambert’s album has been leaked onto the internet.

The song’s entitled Time For Miracles, and it shows an impressive level of intelligence from Adam Lambert. You see, the song is from the forthcoming end-of-the-world disaster movie 2012, so its nearest reference point is Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing from Armageddon. And it has to be better than that, right? Listening to a cat vomit into a metal bucket is better than that. So, MTV, what does Time For Miracles by Adam Lambert actually sound like?

The Brian May-approved power ballad was composed by…

OK, sorry MTV, we’re just going to stop you there. Brian May-approved? Brian May-approved? That’s not exactly a mark of quality, is it? In fact, it’s pretty much exactly the opposite. Let’s just take a quick look at some of the things that Brian May has approved in his time: 1) the Queen album Hot Space, 2) haircuts that looks exactly like explosive candyfloss diarrhoea, 3) standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace playing the guitar like some sort of awful hairy wazzock, 4) getting his wife to sing songs based on the EastEnders theme-tune, 5) Adam Lambert’s new single.

So, yeah, we’re not exactly jumping up and down about it.

But, hey, if you still want to hear the leaked version of Time For Miracles by Adam Lambert, you’re going to have to track it down for yourself. Alternatively you can listen to a sneak preview on this 2012 video. Be warned, though – it sounds a bit like a miniature witch having a violent tantrum over a lesser Bond theme. But maybe that’s your thing.

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Yo women, we’re real happy for you, we’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has some of the most immoral breasts of all time!

OF ALL TIME! How immoral are Beyonce’s breasts? Beyonce’s breasts are so immoral that they’ve just made her postpone a concert in Malaysia. Apparently the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party is so outraged at the prospect of watching a pretty young woman wiggle her scantily-clad body about that she’s decided to pull out.

Of course, Beyonce could have just worn a few more clothes, but then people would have had to concentrate on her songs. Talk about a disaster.

When, many years ago, Beyonce said “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly” you may have thought that either a) she was informing you that she’s clearly out of your league and that you should probably stick with your fat girlfriend, or b) she was taunting you with a delicious trifle. But now it turns out that the real answer was c) Beyonce was actually testing the sociocultural acceptance of her unbridled femininity in the face of the world’s major religions.

And the results of that test are finally in – Islamic Malaysians are most certainly not ready for Beyonce’s jelly. Or her turkey drumsticks, for that matter. Or her wobbly blancmanges. Or her hairy kebab. Because – for the second time in three years – pressure from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party has caused Beyonce to postpone a concert in Kuala Lumpur. E! Online reports:

According to a statement released by Malaysia-based promoter Marctensia, the performance “has been postponed”… While Marctensia denied the delay is a response to the uproar sparked by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, which has labeled Beyoncé’s bootylicious stage show a Western attack upon the country’s traditional values, it’s likely the move will succeed in dampening the threat of protests.

Now, it’s important that we shouldn’t single out the entire Islamic faith as the bad guy here. All religions have a tendency to get a little nervy when it comes to live pop performances. For instance, while Malaysian Islamics might find fault with Beyonce’s skimpy stagewear, Catholics will be up in arms whenever a singer, say, dons an age-inappropriate leotard and crucifies herself on a giant cross made out of mirrorballs. And Confucianists don’t like it when you sing a song about a happy goose in a hat shop. They’re just the rules.

But if anyone can change these outmoded and foolish religious viewpoints, it’s Beyonce. Beyonce knows that, with some sustained pressure and a few pure words spoken directly from her heart, she can help Malaysia break free from the constricting shackles of its conservative patriarchal society and provide the young people with the very thing that they’ve been so desperately craving – two hours of a woman dressed like a massive-arsed prostitute shouting generic pop songs and occasionally falling down the stairs.

You can do it Beyonce! We believe in you!

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For too long, country music has just been about fat old men in big hats playing up to an outdated stereotype.

But no more. Because Garth Brooks is back. And, as everybody knows, he’s… oh. He’s a fat old man in a big hat playing up to an outdated stereotype, isn’t he? Bugger. OK, anyway, Garth Brooks has decided to come out of retirement eight long years after everybody forgot that he was ever around in the first place.

Oh, we’re just kidding. Everybody knows that Garth Brooks is the top-selling solo artist in American history. What? You didn’t know that? Depressing, isn’t it?

Musicians are a funny bunch – it’s just about the only profession where retirement doesn’t seem to mean retirement. You don’t tend to see too many lollipop ladies holding press conferences to announce that, due to popular demand, they’re coming out of retirement to do a 32-week residency at the junction between Wellington Drive and Juniper Avenue, do you? 85-year-old former passenger aircraft pilots don’t spontaneously decide that, despite their failing eyesight and short-term memory problems, they’ve still got so much to give to the industry.

But with musicians it’s fine. First there was Jay-Z, who once retired for about 15 seconds in between albums, and now there’s Garth Brooks. You may remember Garth Brooks retiring back in 2001, either because he valued his family over his music or because he went a bit mental, grew a teenager’s haircut and a funny beard, decided to call himself Chris Gaines and released an album that everybody ignored.

Well forget all that, because Garth Brooks is done with retirement. As People reports, Brooks used his comeback press conference yesterday to announce a brand new Las Vegas residency:

“We’re going to take the retirement roof off over our head, and I already feel taller,” Brooks said in a press conference at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry... “As for touring, if I can’t eat it, sleep it, breathe it, then it ain’t me.” said Brooks.

We have to admit that Garth Brooks has got a point. We also often base our opinion on what stuff is us on a criteria that includes eating it, sleeping it and breathing it. However, until the day that mattresses start being made from a variety of delicious gases, we’ll never find anything that we can simultaneously eat and sleep and breathe. What Garth Brooks needs to do is lower his expectations.

Anyway, we couldn’t be happier that Garth Brooks is coming out of retirement. After all, he’s only 47 and missing the greatest years of his life. Remember that country music is one of the rare performing arts where credibility is doled out based on how old and wizened and toothless and crotchety and bald you are.

Just look at Dolly Parton. She’s a megastar.

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Honestly, Michael Jackson should have popped his clogs a few years ago – it’s done wonders for his career.

Take The AMAs. The 2009 American Music Award nominations have just been announced and Michael Jackson is up for five awards, including Best Artist (even though he’s dead and hasn’t released any new albums for eight years) and Best Album (for a Greatest Hits collection that came out six full years ago).

Why has Michael Jackson been nominated so many times? Simple – it’s because he’s dead and dead people can’t make acceptance speeches. Basically it’s all a big ploy to ruin Kanye West’s fun.

This is just a hunch, but we’re expecting the big winner at the 2010 Brit Awards to be Stephen Gately’s nine-year-old cover version of Bright Eyes from Watership Down. Because if the just-announced American Music Award nominations are anything to go by, handing out awards to dead singers regardless of when they last actually recorded anything seems to be the hot new thing.

Michael Jackson, the dead popstar whose last underwhelming album was released in 2001, has been nominated for five awards – Best Artist, Best Male Artist, Best Album, Best R&B Male Artist and Best R&B Album. The album in question, by the way, is Number Ones. From 2003. Even when you factor grief into the decision to nominate him so many times, it still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.

Especially because Michael Jackson has released new music this year, which would have been legitimately eligible for nomination. It’s just a shame that the American Music Awards organisers failed to initiate new categories entitled Best Halfhearted And Truncated Rip-Off Of A Song From Grand Theft Auto and Best Cover Version Of An 18-Year-Old Puerto Rican Song That Nobody Had Ever Heard Of Until Yesterday, because Michael Jackson would have bloody well walked those.

Somewhat inevitably, news of all these Michael Jackson nominations have been met with bemusement from all corners, not least the LA Times:

Regardless of retail impact, a 2009 award show should be restricted to albums actually recorded within its recent history. At last check, Jackson has already won plenty of American Music Award trophies for the songs on “Number Ones,” including an artist of the century accolade in 2002. A segment or two honoring Jackson would have been a better way to recognise the King of Pop’s contributions to music.

Actually, you know what? Screw it. Based on unit sales and radio play, Michael Jackson probably does deserve all of these nominations. And let’s not forget the most important thing here – if Michael Jackson doesn’t get nominated then he can’t win, and if he doesn’t win then Jermaine Jackson can’t make an acceptance speech by proxy where he insinuates that he had a greater hand in the making of his brother’s hit records than he actually did. Won’t anyone think of Jermaine here? Jesus.

And anyway, surely the American Music Award voters are smart enough to realise that the basis for Michael Jackson’s nominations are flawed, and that maybe acts who have made legitimately eligible albums of new material would be more deserving of the awards. What’s that? The American Music Awards are voted for by the public?

Oh bugger.

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When you heard Michael Jackson’s new single This Is It yesterday, you probably thought “Wow, Michael’s still got it.”

And you’re right. Michael Jackson has still got it. It’s just that ‘it’ in this case refers to an 18-year-old collection of obscure Puerto Rican pop songs. Because This Is It was first released in 1991 by an artist called Sa-Fire, who we haven’t heard of either.

What’s more, it’s been announced that Paul Anka will get half of the royalties from This Is It, ensuring him a massive payday. So just imagine how much bigger the payday would have been if the song was actually any good.

We don’t know about you, but yesterday we were actually pretty scared. It saw the first play of Michael Jackson’s first posthumous single This Is It and, terrifyingly, things went off without a hitch. That’s not the Michael Jackson way at all. There were no scandals, no spurious postponements, no giraffes sploshing around in pools of their own blood. It was all coordinated with a level of professionalism that would have made Michael Jackson blanch, if it was possible for his skin to get any lighter than it already was. Obviously.

Announcing a new single and then releasing it on time without any controversy isn’t the way to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life. Organising a tribute concert in Vienna and then cancelling it because nobody wanted to play there – now that’s the way to celebrate Michael Jackson’s life. This Is It had no problems, no snarl-ups, no snafus – which is why we were scared.

In retrospect, though, we shouldn’t have bothered. This Is It had plenty of problems, snarl-ups and snafus. We just had to wait for them to emerge. Problem number one was that This Is It was co-written with My Way writer Paul Anka – and originally titled I Never Knew – for a 1983 album that never came to fruition because of an argument between Jackson and Anka. This meant that Paul Anka would have to receive half of the royalties for the song’s re-release which, as he told TMZ, he was more than happy to accept:

“They realize it’s a mistake, they realize it’s my song, they realize it’s my production of his vocal in my studio and I am getting 50 percent of the whole project, actually, which is fair.”

And problem number two is that This Is It has already been released once, by a Puerto Rican singer called Sa-Fire 18 years ago. Here it is…

We’re over the moon that This Is It has turned out to be such a monumental balls-up. It’s how Michael Jackson would have wanted to be remembered. Obviously the Michael Jackson movie This Is It still poses a problem, but we’re sure that the producers still have time to bungle it in a respectfully Jackson-esque way before its release. Maybe they can prime the reels to catch fire 15 minutes in, or just recut the whole thing until it consists of nothing but home-recorded footage of a toddler carelessly hitting a yogurt pot with the back of a spoon for 45 seconds or something.

We know you can do it, This Is It producers. We believe in you!

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Michael Jackson’s aborted comeback shows were dubbed This Is It. And his new movie is called This Is It.

Now Michael Jackson has a new song. Guess what it’s called. That’s right – it’s called Mr Dingleberry’s Enchanted Bloodhound. No, no it’s not. It’s also called This Is It. And the good news is that, provided that Free As A Bird is your favourite Beatles song and you feel that Tupac Shakur never really came into his own until several years after he died, it isn’t completely awful.

You want to listen to Michael Jackson’s This Is It, don’t you? Oh, go on then.

Michael Jackson’s death has taught us all two exceptionally valuable lessons. Lesson number one is that you probably shouldn’t take medical-grade anaesthetic on a recreational basis, and lesson number two is that death can actually increase your productivity by up to 75%.

Because what did Michael Jackson do in his last few years? Not a lot – there were all the lawsuits, obviously, and the occasional bout of transvestitism to keep him occupied, but that was about it. Even his comeback shows didn’t sound particularly heartening, what with the postponements and the rumours of ill health and the contractual obligations to only appear onstage for 13 minutes per concert. But now he’s dead? There’s no stopping Michael Jackson.

Seriously. Not only has Michael Jackson made a movie from beyond the grave, but he’s also recorded a new song to accompany it. Well, we say ‘new song’, but he actually recorded it in 1991. And then decided that it wasn’t very good. Not even good enough to be a b-side. Not even better than Earth Song. And so he locked it away so that it could never be heard. And now, probably on the basis that the first line of the song also happens to be the title of his new movie, it’s being released as a transparently opportunistic single.

But, on the plus side, at least This Is It is better than the last posthumous music we heard from him, on the basis that it’s an entire song and it hasn’t been ripped off from an underwhelming song on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack. And it’s all over the internet, too. Here, have a listen…

If you listen closely enough to This Is It, you’ll hear Michael Jackson’s brothers harmonising on backing vocals. This is down to the verbal arrangement that Michael Jackson had with his brother Jermaine on his deathbed whereby Jermaine agreed to appear on every single last piece of posthumous Michael Jackson merchandise, even if he logically doesn’t even have anything to do with it and the merchandise ends up appearing inferior in comparison. It would have been a written arrangement, but Michael was too ill to sign the contract and then the contract burst into flames and blew away in the wind. Jermaine isn’t making it up, you know.

Anyway, if you’re a fan of This Is It, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s just one of 200 unreleased Michael Jackson songs that will be released over the course of the next few years. So just 198 stories identical to this and we can all go home.

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We hate things that mislead or confuse us. Just the other week we decided to dine out at an all you can eat restaurant.

Pay your money and grab a plate, that’s the basic premise. Simple or what? Apparently not in our case. Many hours later, the management asked us to leave as we’d supposedly had too much and were ruining everything for everyone else. We beg to differ.

As far as we can remember, The Jackson 5 was made up of Marlon, Jackie, Tito, Michael and Jermaine. Quite recently, one of the members passed away, thus destroying anything that can kind of be marketed as The Jackson 5. But ballsacks to everyone, because the remaining brothers have decided to knock out a brand new compilation album featuring remixes and unreleased tracks. Holy hell, we hope Joe Jackson isn’t trying to impersonate Michael.

Out of all the Jacksons, everyone knows that Michael was the most loved out of the general public. Did you ever see Janet Jackson with a hilarious pet lion that got her into all sorts of jams? What about Tito Jackson, he’s never had any brushes with the law. You’d have thought that after all the attention Michael got during his various court cases, he’d follow suit and do something illegal to boost his popularity.

While many people are still in shock over the death of wonky-nosed Michael Jackson, this hasn’t stopped bucketloads of people cashing in on him. Various writers have unauthorised biographies in the pipeline, badly-printed merchandise is flying off the shelf and that annoying Welsh kid who sung at his memorial has seen an increase of work.

Of course, you’re always more popular when you die. In the case of Michael, he quite literally had the charts all to himself as millions of people repurchased CDs they already had. In the distance you’d just be able to hear the laughter of record company executives and the heavy wheezing of Joe Jackson. And now another release featuring Michael’s work in The Jackson 5 is coming out. Just in time for you to buy it as a disappointing Christmas gift.

To drum up excitement, an unreleased track That’s How Love Is will be released as a single. NME.com reports:

“The 12-track album, called ‘I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters’, is released on November 12. A single from the album, the previously unreleased track ‘That’s How Love Is’, has been released as a single on iTunes. You can listen to the track being streamed online at Ilovethatsong.com/jackson5. An alternate version of ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ also features on the album.”

Crikey! We can’t wait. What’s next in the Michael Jackson money-making music line? Unreleased tapes of himself and Janet trying to teach Bubbles to sing along to Scream and Earth Song? Or samples of a compilation of adverts he promoted in audio form?

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If you enjoy paying to see odd men repeatedly bellow about how brilliant they are for two full hours, we have bad news.

Kanye West has cancelled his tour. Kanye West and Lady Gaga were due to perform a tour across America this winter. But now, just a few weeks after he broke little Taylor Swift’s heart into pieces at the MTV VMAs, Kanye has decided to scrap the whole thing.

Yo Kanye, we’re really happy for you, we’re gonna let you finish but Michael Jackson had one of the best tour cancellations of all time. One of the BEST OF ALL TIME!

Poor old Kanye West. Nothing’s going right for him at the moment. When he wanted to express his opinion that Beyonce made a better music video than Taylor Swift, he ended up becoming a global hate figure. When he tried to apologise to Taylor Swift on his blog, he ended up just howling “BOOOYAAAAWWW!!!!” for no discernible reason. And then when he tried to apologise again on TV, he ended up getting his leg molested by a man with an obscene chin. Honestly, Kanye West can’t even get a haircut without some idiot carving berserk hieroglyphics into his scalp. No wonder he’s a mess.

During his molesto-leg appearance on TV, Kanye West revealed that he wanted to take some time off work and properly grieve for his mother, who died in 2007. And now it looks like he’s done exactly that. The big three-month Fame Kills tour of Canada and the US that Kanye West had been planning to start in November with Lady Gaga is now off for good. The New York Daily News reports:

Kanye West’s much-hyped “Fame Kills” tour with Lady Gaga has been canceled — with no reason as yet given. Despite the fact that a rep from Live Nation said Wednesday that the concerts were still a go … Nation announced Thursday they were pulling the plug on the tour. No explanation has been put forward — but the VMA backlash and Kanye’s upcoming criminal court date could have been factors.

We don’t know about you, but personally we think this is a real shame. Everyone had so much to gain from this tour – Kanye West could have proved to everyone that he wasn’t the monster the press is making him out to be, while Lady Gaga could have stood next to Kanye West and shown the world that she isn’t pop’s most insufferable moron after all.

And what about us? We were really looking forward to the tour, if only because it would have been funny when Kanye West inevitably shambled onstage eight hours late again and then wrote another deranged, genuinely terrifying blog post about it afterwards.

But still, let’s draw some positives from this. Hopefully Kanye West will be able to use his time off positively so that he can come back stronger than ever. By which we mean we hope he can figure out a way to interrupt the Queen of England during a speech while punching an endangered animal square in the face and roaring “BOOOYAAAAWWW!!!!” into the sky until he coughs up blood. Because, honestly, the day that Kanye West learns self-awareness is the day we’re out of a job.

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Britney Spears has a new single out. It’s called 3, so presumably it’s about the highest number she can count to.

Just kidding. It’s about the amount of braincells Britney Spears has left. Just kidding. It’s about the number of industrial-sized bottles of toilet cleaner that Britney Spears had to drink before allowing Kevin Federline to marry her. Just kidding. It’s about the number of people who have an unblocked view of Britney Spears’ vagina at any given time. Just kidding.

It’s actually about Britney Spears having sex with two people at once. We think we preferred the toilet cleaner one.

Back in 2004, did you buy the Britney Spears greatest hits collection My Prerogative? You did? Well throw it away. Throw it away THIS INSTANT. It’s no longer the definitive Britney Spears greatest hits collection.

Sure, it might have all the songs you’d ever really need from a Britney Spears greatest hits collection, but ask yourself this – does it have the song that Britney shambled around silently to in a weird bikini at the MTV VMAs that time? Or the song that sort of spells out a swearword if you say it quickly enough in a funny accent? Or the one that sounds like Professor Steven Hawking’s voice machine succumbing to a malicious virus that can only make him repeat the word ‘womanizer’? You know, the songs that you’re likely to listen to once and then forget about forever?

The answer is no. And that’s why you need the new Britney Spears greatest hits collection that’s coming out in November. That and because there’s a brand new golden-era Britney song on it, entitled 3. Well, OK, maybe not golden-era. Or bronze-era. What’s the era called when you’ve had a series of psychiatric meltdowns and have to have your entire life controlled by your father and a team of faceless officials who are are financially invested in your success? Well, that era, anyway.

But 3 has been written and produced by Max Martin, who did …Baby One More Time and Oops!… I Did It Again, so it’s sort of golden-era Britney, even if it sounds like it’s been performed by an unnecessarily strict robot and is all about how much Britney Spears likes being spitroasted by a couple of burly strangers. Look…

What do you think? Personally we’re hoping that 3 is a success for Britney Spears, because then she can follow it up with a song called 4, about having it off with two blokes and a woman. And then 5. And then 6. And then a song called Actually It’s Getting A Bit Sore Down There Now (What Is This Anyway, Bloody Caligula?).

Anyway, if you like 3 then you’ll need to buy the new Britney Spears: The Singles Collection album when it’s released in November. That’s a disappointing title, isn’t it? After all, My Prerogative was a nice bellwether for all the years of madness that would ensue when Britney Spears was allowed a prerogative. We were kind of hoping that her new album would predict the years to come in a similar fashion, too. Is it too late to retitle it For God’s Sake Don’t Let Her Near The Scissors Again?

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