Us here ‘Spray writers have written a lot of words over the years and it is with tired hearts and mangled hands that we begrudgingly bring this to you now.  Scroobius Pip is currently informing us that journalism is redundant through our pathetic laptop speakers, America is still unwittingly executing people, and R.E.M have just split up; don’t worry we’re not making THAT joke, but it all makes you remember how terribly rubbish the world is.

To bring this point home we considered bringing you new music videos from the likes of Mastadon and Trash Talk in which you could see a really dirty man, some breasts glow, and some skateboarders injure themselves while annoying everyone in California; and you’d only get a little bit of motion sickness.

Yes, there is a massive ‘but’ here… although, we thought that might not go down to well with all you lovely Cosmo readers.  Instead we’re celebrating the fact that you can watch hours of idiocy on ITV 2 tonight and tomorrow while Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell incessantly flirt and pass aggressive notes under the table about whose teeth are whiter.

So in our American X Factor Video Special you’re going to have to watch videos of past American Idol contestants because we just realised that this is a brand spanking new television drama just waiting to redeem our souls.

Americas sweetheart and answer to Will Young shook talentless middle America to it’s very core when she won the first season of American Idol at the tender, chubby age of 20, but that was nothing compared to her emotionally wrought (let’s face it) video for ‘Because Of You’.

It may not have been her first single and it may have come years into her probably floundering career, but 2005 was never the same after little Kelly Clarkson had her hair done and showed off her acting chops.  As the runner up in 2003’s World Idol we can safely rest in the knowledge that there is only one human on the planet who is better than her. Fact. So while all tonight’s hicks are crying about failing the 3rd grade spelling bee on the word ‘grape’ that one day they might be belting out covers of Sheryl Crowe songs that bring all that resentment to the surface.  This ladies and gents is where it all started. Nobody even knows who you are Kurt Nilsen!

Season 2 gave us the comedy fat-guy with a heart of gold and inner turmoil.  Ruben Studdard, kangol hat finely atop his head, is that man. He wears big floating shirts and gets praise from people like Luther Vandross, when they aren’t looking he records songs like this.

Somebody called Fantasia won season 3, unlike Olly Murs they didn’t even get a presenting job.

Carrie Underwood though, we all know who she is right?  Course we do, she sings those songs, sort of like Taylor Swift right?  That could be Sheryl Crowe though, so don’t hold us to that, she’s from Oklahoma because nobody that isn’t from the Mid-West has ever won an American talent competition before.  Carrie who beat our favourite long-haired chap who plays guitar and has an alliterative name, Bo Bice, has wowed audiences with such hits as…please hold while we go to Wikipedia…’Inside your Heaven’ and ‘Jesus, Take The Wheel’.  In the video for the Grammy award winning ‘Before He Cheats’ you can see a feisty looking leather clad Carrie walk the streets with a baseball bat smashing the car of the cheater in questions, she also references Shania Twain which is fine by us.  Carrie looks a bit like Barbie, but not as human.  She has wind machines on her hair, and throws car keys in alcoholic beverages, she’s a bit full of herself this one.  The sheer power of her voice though does cause the windows of nearby buildings to explode, so that’s something.

Country music continued to prevail for another year and after that Jordin ‘my parents can’t spell’ Sparks won the competition somehow, but since her it’s just been average looking men with guitars strutting like male peacocks.

They could form a more tired, less self-deprecating, attempting to be well dressed, version of Snow Patrol.

As you only just remembered, or heard for the first time some of these names then you will have probably come to understand  your feelings and how you don’t care about the quality of video for whatever the next hit single may be.  The artists too have realised this and thus compile a series of images involving leaning towards the camera with a microphone stand, walking, and hitting a high note while in a moment of emotional intensity.  Let’s hope American X Factor can bring us a star who knows these industry secrets, a star that is homely in that Mid-Western way, a star who can sing like all of these people put together; let’s hope American X Factor can bring us Kelly Clarkson.  Alternatively we’ll settle for a family oriented hooker who snorts cheap drugs at the weekend.

Enjoy your time watching ITV 2 and if you have time between Iceland adverts, coping with the pain of the realisation that Randy Jackson isn’t here, and all the inane flirting then vote for us in those blog awards that we’re up for… please?

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You probably know Carrie Underwood as the American Idol singer who wins all those country music awards.

Well guess what? She’s won some country music awards. We know – we’re just as flabbergasted as you. At last night’s CMT Music Awards, Carrie Underwood walked away with Video Of The Year and Performance Of The Year, beating off the likes of Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Blind Willy Pistolwhip, Boozy Joe And The Domestic Violence Charges and Toothless Jick McGoonahey’s Spittoon Banjo Allstars.

But still, congratulations to Carrie Underwood! May your persistent award victories continue to mask your total lack of personality!

Interesting night at the CMT Music Awards yesterday. Did you know they only hand out nine awards? It used to be more, but organisers recently decided to do away with the Best Video About A Man In A Stupid Hat Singing An Awful Twingy Twangy Country Song From The Back Of A Pick-Up Truck category, because they realised that all country music videos are technically about that.

But apart from that, the main story of the night was that Carrie Underwood won two CMT Music Awards, for the categories we only just told you about. Jesus, don’t you people listen? BBC News reports:

Former American Idol star Carrie Underwood scooped two trophies at this year’s Country Music Television Awards. The singer won video of the year and also performance of the year. Collecting one of her awards, Underwood addressed her “awesome fans”. She said: “They were there before I had anything, an album, a record deal, a tour or anything like that. They built me from the ground up.”

Carrie Underwood can now add these two awards to all the other awards she’s won, like the ACM award and the AMA awards and the People’s Choice award and World’s Sexiest Vegetarian award. What’s the secret to her success? Could it be that she’s the only female country singer on Earth not to be an alcoholic of a victim of domestic violence or a closet lesbian or the wife of a child molester? So, girls, remember – don’t marry child molesters. That’s possibly our point.

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Oh well done Mike Fisher. No, really, on behalf of all men, thanks. You’ve just ruined Christmas for us all.

You’ve got engaged to Carrie Underwood. Right before Christmas. You know what that means? It doesn’t matter what gifts we buy our girlfriends this year – oven cleaner, hoovers, ironing boards – it’s not going to go down as well as a marriage proposal. Sure, you might have made Carrie Underwood very happy, Mike Fisher – but by highlighting our lacklustre gift-giving skills, you’ve buggered Christmas up for all men.

Wore still, we don’t even really know who you or Carrie Underwood are. You’re mean, Mike Fisher, you arsehole.

Compared to the rest of her American Idol alumni, it’s hard to know where to place Carrie Underwood. She’s won less Oscars than Jennifer Hudson, she’s less hefty than Ruben Studdard, she’s not as famous as Kelly Clarkson, she hasn’t done her best to asphyxiate a member of the same sex with her tongue during a live music awards show like Adam Lambert - so what’s her angle?

Well, she’s country for starters, which means that she gets to essentially release the same song over and over again in the knowledge that all kinds of banjo-faced truckers will lap it up. And she’s sexy for a vegetarian, which isn’t saying much given that she’s the only vegetarian on the planet who doesn’t have bad dreadlocks and body odour that smells like turnips. And she’s just got engaged to a hockey player called Mike Fisher, which we suppose is something too. MTV reports:

We can confirm that the duo are now engaged! “I’m happy to confirm that Carrie Underwood is engaged to Mike Fisher, and the couple couldn’t be happier,” said a statement from Carrie’s rep. “No wedding date has been set at this time.”

But of course Carrie Underwood is engaged to a man who plays ice hockey for a living. All girls like ice hockey players. Elisha Cuthbert loves hockey players, Sarah Palin’s daughter really loves hockey players and now Carrie Underwood does too. There’s just something about their rugged machismo, cack-awful mullets, alarming lack of teeth and eyes that don’t quite point in the same direction at the same time that drives girls wild.

So let that be a lesson to all you boys reading this. If you ever want to marry an American Idol contestant like Carrie Underwood, all you need to do is repeatedly smash yourself about the face with a stick or another man’s fist and grow a haircut that even a professional wrestler from the 1980s would think twice about. That probably goes the same for Adam Lambert.

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Every year the ACM awards – like the Grammys but more buck-toothed and NASCAR-fixated – end up the same way.

Kenny Chesney wins. Every year – no matter how obviously unentertaining he’s been – Kenny Chesney wins the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award, even though he basically has a hat instead of an actual personality.

But this year the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award went to Carrie Underwood, who is female. Carrie Underwood’s win shocked the country music community, with some members worried that if women can win gender-unspecific ACM awards then next they’ll be allowed to vote or drive or something.

The ACM Entertainer Of The Year award has always been Kenny Chesney’s to lose. For some reason – we’re guessing that it’s because the majority of country singers routinely confuse ‘charisma’ for ‘uncomfortable xenophobia’ or ‘assaulting women in the face‘ – Kenny Chesney managed to walk away with the award for four years on the trot.

And, truth be told, Kenny Chesney would have probably won it this year too, if only he hadn’t been such a monumental turd about it last time around. And even though throwing a tantrum because an award was voted for by fans instead of an anonymous panel of industry insiders was by default the most entertaining thing he’d ever done, it pretty much destroyed any hope of him winning it again this year.

That meant the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award was wide open this year – it could have been won by the recovering alcoholic or the annoying virgin or that fat woman – but in the end it was won by none other than Carrie Underwood. Given that we couldn’t hum a single Carrie Underwood song to you even if you put a gun to our heads, we’re guessing that Carrie Underwood won for the entertaining way that she a) never takes her clothes off, b) never eats delicious meat and c) never reveals any personal secrets about herself whatsoever.

Because, you know, all of these are the epitome of entertainment, right? Right? Hello? Anyway, People reports:

Carrie Underwood became the first woman since 2001 to be named ACM entertainer of the year – and only the seventh female to win the Academy of Country Music’s top honor since it was first handed out in 1970. “I’ve had a lot of good moments in the last four years. This one takes the cake!” said a teary-eyed Underwood. “I don’t know what to say! I got nothing.”

While it’s good to see Carrie Underwood win the ACM Entertainer Of The Year Award – especially since it means that the country music community no longer sees women exclusively as objects to compose identikit trucker ballads with tortuous punny titles about – we are a little worried about the precedent that it sets.

After all, Carrie Underwood is from American Idol. And now that reality TV stars are being allowed to infiltrate the ACM awards, it’s highly probable that Adam Lambert will win the award next year. And then, the year after that, the woman with the funny mouth who got kicked off The Apprentice a couple of weeks ago. And then the next thing you know, someone’s remade The Wild Bunch with Clay Aiken, Renaldo Lapuz, Maureen off Driving School and Piers Morgan. Look us in the eye and tell us that’s something you actually want. Piers Morgan, for crying out loud.

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A momentous, world-shaping thing happened last night – we learnt that you can put a shark into a trance by holding it upside down.

Oh, and also there was something about an election. Or something. Apparently Barack Obama gets to be president of America now, and that’s something we’re putting down to the huge array of celebrities who endorsed him. True, Obama’s lack of top-level experience may be a concern, but Barbara Streisand says he’s OK, and she sang You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. Ergo he’s the best man for the job.

Just don’t tell that to Carrie Underwood. Carrie Underwood has got so sick of hearing celebrity political endorsements that she’s ranted about it to TV Guide. And rightly so – it’s wrong that celebrities get to abuse their position by publicly broadcasting their badly thought-out opinions in the mistaken belief that they’re more important than everyone else. So thank you Carrie Underwood for doing, um, that exact thing.

Well done, celebrities. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Barack Obama is going to be the next president of America, and he wouldn’t have got there without you.

Sure his inherent decency, cool-headed crisis management and clear ideological differences from the current president might have helped him a bit but, really, would Barack Obama have won the election if Diddy didn’t spin around in his garden babbling about crackheads? Of course he wouldn’t. And Pamela Anderson, for bravely screeching about Sarah Palin like an injured witch at some godawful awards show, you deserve a bloody medal or something.

It’s just a shame that Carrie Underwood doesn’t feel the same. Oh come on, you know – Carrie Underwood. She’s that vaguely redneck woman from American Idol who doesn’t eat meat. Not really a big fan of taking her clothes off. Never really done or said anything particularly interesting or worthwhile in her entire life. You know her. Or, more realistically, you don’t.

Either way, boy oh boy, is Carrie Underwood ever mad about all these celebrities banging on about their political beliefs all the time. Underwood told TV Guide:

“There is someone I do support, but I don’t support publicly. I lose all respect for celebrities when they back a candidate… It’s saying that the American public isn’t smart enough to make their own decisions. I would never want anybody to vote for anything or anybody just because I told them to.”

Carrie Underwood makes a very good point here – that you should never, ever do anything that Carrie Underwood tells you to. In fact, just to be safe, we should all probably start actively doing the precise opposite of whatever Carrie Underwood says, even if it means returning to a lit firework when she tells you not to.

That means that, when Carrie Underwood said we shouldn’t listen to celebrities who preach their worthless opinions to the public under the borderline offensive assumption that anyone cares, what she actually meant was that we should listen to them.

Phew, thank heavens for that. Because, honestly, we don’t know about you, but we wouldn’t be able to even wipe our own arse unless we heard what Matt Damon thinks about the political ramifications of various arse-wiping techniques first.

All ready to wrap up our four-day-long look at the nominees for the next month’s Best Song Grammy?

What do you mean you hadn’t even noticed we were doing Grammys betting odds? You people make us sick. Anyway, before we start the real fun next week – so long as you can define Dancing On Ice as fun, which you really can’t – let’s wind things up with a look at the favourite to win the Grammy.

So here are the Best Song Grammys betting odds for Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood, with help from Paddy Power…

Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood: Now, as non-Americans we haven’t got the foggiest clue what Before He Cheats actually sounds like, and we wouldn’t recognise Carrie Underwood if she rode a pony up our bottoms. However, thanks to an American Idol audition performance we saw at the weekend, Before He Cheats seems to be a glaringly-off-kilter heavy metal song about a woman screaming “I’ll destroy your car! I’ll burn down your house!” while stomping about looking murderous. However, we do know that Before He Cheats has won all kids of other awards, so there’s really no reason why it shouldn’t win the Grammy. Unless it’s crap. It might be – we’ve never even heard it. Current Grammys betting odds – 7/4

Next week – Dancing On Ice betting odds. May God have mercy on our souls. But if that’s too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power Grammys betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds.

We love American Idol.  

We love it as much as we love watching The Notebook. In a sauna. Wearing a parka. And burlap underwear.  

And if there’s anything we love more than American Idol, it's following past American Idol contestants on their road to guaranteed fame and fortune.Take Carrie Underwood for example. She’s twanged her melodies all the way to the top of the country music world, and it isn’t because she’s worked that midriff or had unclassy cleavage, either, because girlfriend says she isn’t into showing a lot of skin.  

You see, kids? You don’t need to know that Europe is a continent, not a country to be successful. Just have classy cleavage and you’re golden. 

In the January issue of Glamour magazine, former American Idol finalist Carrie Underwood shares her views on the hot button topic of body image. Like many celebrities these days, Carrie Underwood’s weight has been followed closely by the press. It’s such a fascinating topic, really. The sooner we can convince young starlets to become human Shrinky Dinks, the sooner we can start railing on them for being deathly skinny and shake our heads in disgust at what terrible role models they are for young girls. 

Carrie Underwood really gets to the heart of the matter as the following quote from the Glamour article illustrates: 

“I definitely don’t do stomach, because nobody wants to see that… And cleavage can be done in a tasteful manner — you can be intelligent, sexy and not have boobs everywhere.” 

The statement “not having boobs everywhere” is intelligent and sexy enough all on its own if you ask us. Intelligent, sexy ladies throughout the years have often commented on not having their boobs everywhere. Seriously, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly were all about not having their boobs go everywhere.   

Really, though, it’s a breath of fresh air to see an attractive young lady not feel like she has to flash the whole world to be successful and respected. Well done, Carrie Underwood. Well done. Now get back to making that good old fashioned country music even though we’d rather listen to an album of cats being strangled.  

Hey, Christina Aguilera, we hope you took Carrie Underwood’s message to heart before you spray yourself orange and made us all look at your big naked foetus-filled stomach all the time. Oh, wait…too late. Far, far too late.

Read more: 

Underwood Won't Show Off Her Belly – Access Hollywood

Since the Black Eyed Peas haven't released any albums this year, we can't have been alone in thinking that it'd cause the American Music Awards to burst into flames and disappear into a vortex.

After all, we thought the Black Eyed Peas were contractually obliged to always win all of the American Music Awards, lest America wants to feel their wrath. But clearly that isn't the case – the 2007 American Music Awards took place yesterday with American Idol contestants Chris Daughtry and Carrie Underwood dominating the prizes. Why? Because it was the first time that the American public had been allowed to choose the winners, that's why – so we suppose we should just count our blessings that the Chocolate Rain bloke and the sodding Hamburglar didn't win everything instead.

In Britain we have The Brits – a chance to celebrate the best in British music while laughing at how funny Joss Stone's voice sounds these days – but in America they have the Grammys. And the People's Choice Awards. And the American Music Awards. And the MTV VMAs. And the Billboard Music Awards. And the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. But for the purposes of the next couple of minutes, let's all pretend really hard that the American Music Awards are the important ones.

That's because – barring the award ceremony we just had in our head just now where we were the only nominees and we still didn't manage to win anything – the American Music Awards took place most recently. And this wasn't any old American Music Awards show, because this year marked the very first time that the American public got to pick the winners. And, on the basis that the public are generally stupid and wrong about everything, that meant that this year's American Music Awards would be the stupidest and wrongest ever – an idea reinforced by having Jimmy Kimmel as the host.

And the result of this changing in voting procedure meant that the American Music Awards winners this year couldn't have been further removed from the winners of last year. At the 2006 American Music Awards, for example, the big winners were the Black Eyed Peas and Kelly Clarkson from American Idol. This year, however, the bulk of the American Music Awards went to Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas and Carrie Underwood and Chris Daughtry from American Idol. Completely different.

Carrie Underwood, the woman who – let's not forget – is primarily famous for being a sexy vegetarian, walked off with the Best Country Female Artist, Best Country Album and T-Mobile Text-In Awards, while Chris Daughtry's band Daughtry won Best Rock Album, Best Breakthrough Artist and Best Adult Contemporary, even though by and large they sound useless.

Other winners at last night's American Music Awards went to Justin Timberlake, Akon, Rihannah, Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez and, if you ever needed proof of the American Music Awards' complete lack of credibility, Nickelback. And if any of this news has affected your day in the slightest, you probably only have yourself to blame.