Justin Bieber
As Long As You Love Me (Island)
The choreographed sexualisation of a former Disney star is an annual event as celebrated in my house as T4 On The Beach or the Countdown final. We marvelled as Miley Cyrus dutty wined on TMZ, applauded as Lindsay Lohan splayed her Aunt Bessie to the paparazzi. Yet never have we seen such a well-handled transition as Bieber's. Apart from this tune reaching Timberlake levels of sex-pop perfection, the video sees Justin trying to steal his negligee-wearing girlfriend from her deadbeat father in a high-speed chase that ends in a brawl to the death.
Simple Plan ft Sean Paul
Summer Paradise (Atlantic)
Who is benefiting from this collaboration? Simple Plan, a band who are to Sum 41 what Shandy Bass is to MD 20/20, were not suffering from a lack of hackneyed patois in their FM pop. Sean Paul can't have decided that what he'd been missing were the mildew moanings of a Canadian punk-pop band. Is anyone even in charge of music any more, or is everything decided by a 14-year-old boy shouting whatever comes into his brain?
The Script ft will.i.am
Hall Of Fame (Phonogenic)
Sore losers about not being asked to record an official Olympics single, the two least sexually appealing judges from The Voice have gone ahead and done one any way. Amazingly, this isn't at all LOCOG-sanctioned, despite including the lyrics "you can run the mile", "do it for your country" and "you can get the gold". Nice try boys, but Elbow had this thing locked up while you were still spinning round on chairs.
Devlin ft Ed Sheeran
Watchtower (Island)
Everyone has a friend like Ed Sheeran. One who spends all his time watching Family Guy and listening to Damien Rice, but will still show up to the pub in a Hendrix T-shirt banging on about how grime never went mainstream because the music industry is racist. Through some gross accident of success, Sheeran is allowed to play out these fantasies on the major-label dollar. The result, an All Along The Watchtower-sampling Devlin track, is grime as reimagined by Richard Curtis: less Ill Manors, more churlish cul-de-sac
Hadouken!
Bad Signal (Ministry Of Sound)
In recent pop times, the grand scale of shittiness has expanded beyond our wildest dreams. Back in the day, "shit" meant Lee from Steps rapping, or the existence of Jet. But with advances in technology, a whole new world of shit has been explosively blown open. Take Hadouken!. In 2007, shit for them meant electro songs which mocked people wearing skinny jeans (satire!). But in 2012, they've released a brostep cover of the Supremes' You Keep Me Hanging On with a rap about annoying Facebook notifications (satire!!!) whapped across protein-shake womps. Truly groundbreaking.
