Sweetheart - The Avenue

Sweetheart seems a rather apt name for this Southampton band; their debut single The Avenue being steeped in a sugary collection of retro pop hooks. Scouting for Girls, The Feeling... Sweetheart slide effortlessly alongside these bands with their cheery Supertramp piano chords and the sense they're singing all this with a cheeky wink and a smile.

There's more of a punch to them than first impressions would seem to dictate though - a sense of staying power rooted right in the heart of the song. The Avenue is in many ways a classic lads anthem in the vein of Madness or The Jam, with a singalong chorus to match. Indeed, like the band's name, the record's title seems quite fitting too - you can imagine this soundtracking Pimms-fuelled summer street parties up and down the country.

Interestingly, the band's keyboard player and singer Harry Burgess says the song centres around 'a flurry of demotivational lyrics' aimed squarely at the products of shows like The X Factor and American Idol. The pop hooks here in The Avenue are apparently highly ironic, a targeted 'over indulgence' to further attack the kind of song spawned from these reality shows.

But of course the real irony is that in the process the band have actually created a highly solid pop track themselves, and there's no shame in that, because that's what the public at large will remember you for in years to come.

The Avenue is released on the 30th May.

Rebecca Black wants us to take her seriously...

"I don't want to be known as the 'Friday' girl," says Rebecca Black in an interview with The AP. I'm afraid it's probably a little late for that, love, but I hear you. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment, and imagine that for the rest of your life you would be known solely for Friday. It's enough to make you nauseous. So as unlikely as it seems, you can kind of emphasise with Rebecca when she says  "I want to be a performing artist - that's what I've always wanted to do."
I'm still not really quite sure how best to approach Friday as a song. I really don't like the whole 'It's so crap it's amazing, ha ha ha, I'm being super-ironic and cool' thing. Distinctly, Not Cool. But you know, the more I listened to the song, the more it started to grow on me. Obviously the lyrics still are, and always will be, absolute drivel. But the melody is actually half-decent, a solid bit of pop. Because the way Friday was created, coming from a factory-like production system, they follow pop formulas - they know the chords that work, the notes that sound great.

You have to remember that despite everything else, Rebecca Black remains an extremely young girl who has been thrust extremely prematurely into the harsh intensity of the media and public spotlight. Some of the abuse she's received has without a doubt gone beyond any kind of rationality. Death threats? That's sick. This poor girl was only trying to follow her passion for music. At that age, who is to deny someone from giving anything a try? It's a testament to the Internet age that a something like Friday can instantly explode into world-wide recognition - with an equally expansive host of 'haters' at the ready to target individuals with a stream of bile and insults.

"I want to see everyone's opinion of my actual voice… I don't care if they love it. I don't care if they hate it. Well, I'd like it if they loved it, but I just want to hear their opinion," continues Rebecca in the interview. She seems very eager to invite criticism in; I'd be far more wary if I was her. As the whole Friday saga has already shown, 'hate' is oh so quick to raise its head.

Of course, we could fast-forward five/ten years and see Rebecca as an aspiring American Idol contestant or something like that. And if she actually puts aside the colossal circus that Friday has become, puts her head down and works hard at what she's clearly passionate about; you never know, she might, just might, be half-decent.

Alexis Jordan - Good Girl

I can't rave enough about this song. Every month there will always be one song that I fall in love with more than any other. And in February, this is most definitely it. Now, I saw Alexis last year at GAY opening for Nadine Coyle and was charmed with her highly endearing pop sweetness as well as the fact Happiness is rather amazing.

And where Happiness began, Good Girl follows - all dance-pop lightness with just that edge of pushing the boundaries. There's a number of reasons why the song works so well. For starters, that funky strutting beat and rubbery bass sound is utterly infectious. You can't not move your feet to it. Remember that Alexis is an American Idol winner, and then listen to the Euro-disco shimmer of her tracks and her awesomeness reaches all new levels.

Then comes the fact this song has fifty-million different choruses. There's that catchy 'I like...' bit, then the tears on the dancefloor moment of 'You might mistake me for a heartbreaker...' and then the chorus-proper as it were of 'Good girl... but I've been bad before...'  - If one of them doesn't hook you, the others will.

Now, most good pop songs would be happy to leave it there. But Good Girl goes further, just listen to those swirling guitars and strings, all swept up into one hypnotic pulse - those chord changes are simply divine. Some songs just have IT... that moment where something just feels so right.

Alexis Jordan. Good girl? She certainly is. And this song is very, very good too.