Cher Lloyd - Swagger Jagger

Whether you blame it on hype or raw talent, the nation awoke this morning to its first week of having Cher Lloyd's Swagger Jagger at number one in the official singles chart. It's a curious event, as she never seemed to get to the top spot on iTunes over the course of last week, suggesting physical CD sales might yet play a part in deciding how the finished chart evolves.

Either way, it's a result that's likely to fuel the fire in fans' hearts, while annoying Cher's haters to fever pitch. I was (and still am) a Katie Waissel fan, rather than a 'brat', but many of the Warriors on Twitter seem to support both - and there's nothing really wrong with that, is there?

It would be fairly pointless to review a song that's been everywhere for the past few weeks in the usual way, so the below takes a bit of a departure from our normal format.

Singles Round Up: Tinie Tempah ft. Ellie Goulding - Wonderman

It's a bumper week for big-name pop singles this week, with Britney, Black Eyed Peas, McFly, Olly Murs and Tinie Tempah all putting forward releases for your consideration. We've picked through that lot, and a few of the smaller name releases to bring you some of the best, and inevitably, some of the worst new singles.

Tinie Tempah ft. Ellie Goulding - Wonderman
Bobble: This song does to Ellie Goulding what Madonna did to Bond themes - she's post-processed to the hilt and mashed up like Monday morning's bubble and squeak, but it works well. Tinie takes the lead with strong vocals but it's a well-balanced partnership and a catchy track. Good effort from both.
» Tinie Tempah ft. Ellie Goulding - Wonderman on iTunes

80s Movies: Dirty Dancing (1987)

For a movie built so strongly around the concept of "the time of your life", Dirty Dancing doesn't really make so much of either its holiday park setting, or any particularly enjoyable experiences for the cast. Jennifer Grey as Frances 'Baby' Houseman goes through the kind of adolescent traumas you might expect wherever you were - and at 17, there's a bit of a question mark hanging over the whole friendship with Patrick Swayze's character, dance teacher Johnny Castle.

That aside though, I think any of us could empathise with at least part of the movie - whether you're a girl (or boy) wishing for that swept-off-your-feet first romance, a concerned parent who actually sympathises with the adults in the film, or someone who can relate to the bit-parts and the seemingly futile nature of their existence, going through the motions of this holiday park hell.

Black Eyed Peas - The Beginning (Deluxe Edition)

It's not often these days that a new album gets past my cold hard exterior of cynicism and weary indifference to actually make me feel something. The Beginning, the latest from Black Eyed Peas manages it though for all the wrong reasons. It's not that I've ever been a fan of theirs, but at least in the past you could count on Will.I.Am and his other preposterously named cohorts to come up with the odd good hit; Shut Up is a decent song, My Humps was ridiculous but undeniably catchy, and it all seemed to come together on I Gotta Feelin. But The Beginning falls so far short of even my modest expectations that I found myself getting really wound up just listening to it.

It's not just the sense of talent being wasted, but the obvious lack of finesse or any sort of care gone in to the process of making this album. This hasn't been crafted, just thrown together and packaged up, shamefully, into standard, Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions, all conveniently available in time for the lucrative Christmas market. Black Eyed Peas see themselves as some sort of 'future hip-hop' group, which apparently means an abundance of over-compressed sounding electro/dance beats, robotic one-paced rapping, and practically every line spoken or sung either cut to pieces, or autotuned beyond recognition. Kanye has a hell of a lot to answer for if this is the future of hip-hop.