Would this very emailed-around and YouTubed-about and retweeted clip become a hit?
Would Chris Moyles start hammering the track every morning on Radio One, or would it fall to Scott Mills to hammer it every afternoon?
Would it save the whales?
Would Lady Gaga acknowledge the song or refuse to dignify its existence at all?
If Gaga did acknowledge the song would she permit the lyric changes and, if she did, would "I don't give a crap about whales so go and hug a tree (I love it)" become a late entry for Popular Offensive Playground Diss of 2009?
Pet Shop Boys have just confirmed that there will be a five-track Christmas EP this year - it's called 'Christmas', title fans, and it's released on December 14.
Here's the tracklisting, and can we draw your attention to Track 4 in particular.
1. 'It Doesn't Often Snow At Christmas' - new version produced by Marius de Vries and Pet Shop Boys.
2. 'My Girl' - Madness cover, produced by Pet Shop Boys.
3. 'All Over The World' - new version, produced by Marius de Vries.
4. 'Viva La Vida' (AMAZING) / 'Domino Dancing' (AMAZING) medley (AMAZING) - studio production (AMAZING) by Stuart Price (AMAZING).
5. 'My Girl' (Our House mix) - produced by PSB.
This is the sleeve for the X Factor Finallists version of Michael Jackson's 'You Are Not Alone'. It's been done with computers, they're not all suspended on wires.
The good thing about this is that it's arranged so that each X Factor finalist is like the number on a clock.
"9pm? Time for me to do a stupid manipulative seriousface."
"It's half past Rachel, time for me to pretend it's 8 o'clock in a crass and ultimately humiliating attempt to win votes."
"2 o'clock! Time for Jamie to get a job!"
"You said you'd be home at Murs o'clock - it's a quarter past McElderry and you're pissed." "I'm sorry dear, I've been drinking since Miss Frank and I quite lost track of time."
This is quite big news if you're a fan of Rihanna and/or mobile handset manufacturers: the popular warbler will be coming to LONDON to perform a SPECIAL QUITE SMALL GIG on NOVEMBER 16 and it's SOMETHING TO DO WITH NOKIA.
The show is officially to launch her new album but let's face it it's also to flog mobile phones . It'll be beamed live across the internet and it will all be very exciting, a bit like when Madonna did that Brixton Academy show ages ago and everyone went "OMG OMG OMG OMG", except that was in the days before 'OMG' really existed. But it will be a bit like that.
WE'VE GOT SOME TICKETS TO GIVE AWAY
Nokia are giving us 20 tickets to distribute as we see fit. Please be aware that we might give some of these to friends because frankly you would wouldn't you but we'll definitely be giving away SEVEN PAIRS OF TICKETS to Popjustice readers.
To win: write a poem about Rihanna. We'd actually like to see some good poems here so we'll give you until Monday morning 9am UK to get your entries in. We might see if we can find a proper poet to pick the winners. If not we'll just pick the best ones ourselves or something. Send your entries to
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- make them poignant or funny or creative or whatever.
Incidentally, if you've ever wanted to hear Rihanna say "I'm Rihanna and this is my widget", you're in luck.
Is this new album the most widgetised pop release of 2009? We don't know.
Sorry about this readers but GOOD GOD have you seen this utter piece of rubbish? It is an officially sanctioned Beatles USB stick, announced yesterday. It's got Beatles songs on it and some other bits.
It costs about £200 and is limited to 30,000 units.
200!
30,000!!
This reminds us of the time we attempted to popularise the idea of muffin USB stick formats as a new way to sell music.
Except at least you could eat the muffin. And a muffin single would cost £2.29. This Beatles thing costs about two hundred pounds! Yes, we know they could put the Beatles back catalogue inside a baked potato then shove it up a cow's arse and you'd still shift 8,000 units but Christ alive, what are you supposed to do with a small plastic apple? Put it on your shelf? Oh yes that would be a good idea because it's not as if every single person who came round your house wouldn't see it and immediately recognise it for what it is: a miniature beacon of your massive stupidity. Yes put it on your shelf. It definitely won't be the first thing to be picked up and chucked out of the window by your wife when she's screaming at you about a divorce. Brilliant.
1. Lady Gaga
Who'd have thought the greatest popstar of the noughties would appear in the decade's final 18 months?
2. Donkeyboy
We wrote about Donkeyboy in July but their album came out (in Norway) a couple of weeks ago and is just brilliant. You can listen to clips on iTunes Norway ('Sometimes' is currently Number One and is tomorrow's Popjustice Song Of The Day), and 'Ambitions' is for sale on iTunes UK.
3. Hurts
You know about them already, we mentioned them in May. In the time since they've signed a big deal with a big label, recording a variety of soon-to-be-popular tunes, had some posh new photos taken etc etc. Expect to see them on a variety of Big For 2010 lists, along with...
4. Ellie Goulding
...who you are all intimately acquainted with thanks to the 'Ms Goulding's Vacuum' feature that has been stuck at the top of this website for somewhere in the region of a million years.
It's about an Estonian singer called Hannah. She seems like a nice enough woman. She's launching in the UK with a single later this month.
It's always interesting when internationally successful artists are launched like this in the UK. You find yourself bombarded claims like "SHE'S THE RUSSIAN MADONNA!" or "IT'S THE BELGIAN KYLIE!" (in this instance Hannah is apparently "EUROPE'S ANSWER TO LADY GAGA"), and you think to yourself "this will be quite good then", and then you listen to the song and it turns out to be alright in a 'pleasant enough when Texas released it' sort of way, and then there some 'Digital Dog' (or whoever) remixes that get played on Gaydar Radio, and then the money runs out and that's the end of that. 'The', as they say, 'end'.
Anyway, there are two problems with this newspaper. Firstly, we received this over a week ago and the second issue has yet to materiaiise, meaning that this is NOT a daily publication at all but instead has a very distinct whiff of something treated as a ONE OFF. Then there is the great bit about Hannah's London.
Here's what she has to say about one particular area of London. "The people and the ambience are so down to earth and real and there's a real sense of style and fun about it." Guess the area. Remember the key points: down to earth, realness, a sense of fun. Go on. Have a guess. That's right, Hannah is talking about SHOREDITCH.
Intermittently reliable gossip website Holy Moly reported yesterday that the Sugababes - and by Sugababes we mean SUGABABES not 'Sugababes'* - are back together and in talks with either Stuart Price or William Orbit.
A reunion would probably be the most awesome pop event of the millennium (unless it was shit), and this doesn't bode well, but in the event of a reunion what would this lovely trio of warbling ladies call itself?
Here are five ideas.
1. One Touch Just as suga and babe were a play on spice and girl, so the new name for the original Sugababes lineup could be a play on the Spice Girls' original name, Touch. 'One Touch' was also the title of the first SUGABABES album so it all fits in, do you see etc etc.
2. Babes Aloud This would be the worst name in the history of bad names, and considering The History Of Bad Names is a 50,000-page leather bound book with 'Orange Orange' in the first chapter, 'Test Icicles' a few pages later and 'Girls Can't Catch' on Page 8765, you can rest assured that Babes Aloud is a pretty bad name. A BAD NAME.
3. The Shergarbabes
This would only work if famous missing racehorse Shergar joined the band which, under the circumstances, is not as unlikely as it might once have seemed. This is all a bit like watching something like Flashforward in which an event which is incredibly unlikely and previously unthinkable has occurred meaning that if impossible things can happen any traditional sense of suspense of narrative pace goes out of the window and the whole thing is useless. That is a bit like a racehorse joining the SUGABABES. It's unlikely, but so is SUGABABES reforming in the first place, so anything could happen.
4. Heidi Amelle & Jade
Considering everyone is going to call Keisha, Mutya and Siobhan the Sugababes (and by Sugababes we mean SUGABABES) regardless of whether Jade, Heidi and Amelle actually have the legal right to the name , it stands to reason that they might just as well call themselves Heidi Amelle & Jade because then you will know that if someone says Sugababes meaning Heidi Amelle and Jade or Heidi Amelle & Jade meaning Keisha Mutya and Siobhan all you have to do is think of the other one and then that's the one they're talking about, unless they are also aware of this rule in which case you have to think of the one they ARE talking about instead of the one they're NOT talking about.
5. Them Apples As in, 'how do you like them apples?', which would basically be a big old 'fuck you' to everybody else. Do you know what, readers, we've totally lost track of whose side we're on in this whole thing. (Answer: Girls Aloud's.) (We're joking of course.) (Or are we?) *Goes for a lie down*
We hope this has been of some use to the band we'll refer to, in the interim, as SUGABABES.
* Heidi, Amelle and Jade should probably just rename themselves 'Sugababes' with full-on inverted commas action, shouldn't they, like with Hear'say but different. Perhaps we will write to the 'Sugababes'' management and suggest it.
Would this very emailed-around and YouTubed-about and retweeted clip become a hit?
Pet Shop Boys have just confirmed that there will be a five-track Christmas EP this year - it's called 'Christmas', title fans, and it's released on December 14. 
Intermittently reliable gossip website Holy Moly 
