Foolish resolutions: a month in.

So on the 14th of January, I went to see Gruff Rhys in concert with co-Beard Eamonn, and had a great time. I decided then that the time had come for some ridiculous resolutions:

• To watch a film (in the cinema) every week: not at all difficult, in theory. I doubt I've watched 52 films in any given year, but there are definitely that many watchable ones out there, including season/rep in the IFI.
• To go to a gig every week: probably quite doable, though the danger of repeated exposure to Jape certainly looms. Brian helpfully pointed out that Lazybird on Sundays could be used to top up if necessary.
• To read a book every week: not a hope in hell. Trish barely managed 50 last year, and she's Booky McBook.

And tonight was a second Gruff Rhys gig, Friday will be four weeks since the start, so let's see the scores on the doors.

FILM

• I went to see Team America: World Police and laughed my arse off more or less throughout. It does help if you understand that repetition is the thing that makes funny jokes funnier, and that Trey Parker and Matt Stone's political agenda is limited to "let's make some people laugh".
• Er...
• That's it.

A complete disaster, this. On reflection the problem may be that cinema is caught between two stools: With a gig, you either go to the right time and place, or you don't. And with a book, you can keep at it until it's done. Films, though, are on at specific times, but too many times to be able to say that other people who like the same stuff will probably have been planning to go see the same instance. Also, they're always on tomorrow as well.

GIGS

• Gruff Rhys, The Sugar Club, 14th January. A great, warm, intimate gig, with a lot of low-key faffing about and gentle humour as Gruff presents the guts of his all-new all-Welsh solo album. My favourite bit is him bursting into whistling during one of the songs, then looking up and explaining "these are trumpets". I left before the encore for what turned out to be no good reason (I didn't want to miss the last bus back to Navan, but ended up with plenty of time to spare before that dubious prize)
• United Bible Studies, Voodoo Lounge, 30th(?). A gig I was alerted to by Mark, as he was on his way down there. My money was taken from me be a smiling man who looked slightly familiar, and then I was re-introduced to Mark's friend Paul, who joined the smiling man and some others in the free-shronk freak-out that is the United Bible Studies. They were fine if you liked that sort of thing, and I didn't really mind my six quid, though I did get the fuck out before the main act, who I've already forgotten, having finished fucking up the tuning on his guitar, starting tuning his feedback.
• Cake, Vicar Street, 28th. Free in thanks to Simon, and really strange as regards the actual merits of the light hipsterish slightly country rock-pop and the reaction they were getting. It became a little clearer when they complained that they'd never played here before, so some of those people had presumably been waiting eight years to sing along to Going The Distance, and their cover of I Will Survive, and that's about it for the hits (no Italian Leather Sofa!). The general vibe of "we're rocking now!" contrasted with the actual Rock Quotient to make a very strange gig, but not an unenjoyable one (did I mention the free?)
• Gruff Rhys, Whelans, 9th February. Got tickets on the merits of the first one, and to be honest I'd been expecting a let down after the nice atmosphere of the Sugar Club. I was happy to see new arrangements (including some great stuff with a looped mike), though the Dublin Clap did start to make itself felt at the end. Like the first gig, I couldn't really tell for much of it whether it actually sounded like the Super Furry Animals, or whether it just sounded like them because Gruff was singing. Also the memories of the two songs off Welsh-language SFA album Myng have fled entirely from my head, as indeed with the two other SFA songs. I suspect that if it's not on Guerilla or Radiator, that's it gone. The support was by Jape, who one of my co-giggers had never seen before, and she was wondering whether his position in the scene was the reason why people were putting up with him. I suspect that it's jsut that Whelan's Don't Boo.

Much better, for no good reason. And there's a gig by Continuity Estel on Saturday, and there's Doves gig coming up that I would be at, except that I'm not going to pay €33 to go see them. Fuck you, MCD! Also on the event horizon are possibly another Ballroom of Romance, and Helter Shelter, now that indie has improved drastically.

BOOKS

• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, both by John LeCarre, both from Santa Ian. Two absolute classic spy novels, it's easy to see how the first one made his name, and the second underlined it. What struck me most was how completely different they were. ..In From the Cold is brutal and nasty, starting from a border-crossing death, and working it's way down into the mind of our hero, the deciever and decieved, where death is always close at hand, and through to one of the all-time great sickening lurches. Tinker Tailor, on the other hand, is a mostly genteel book, all drawing-rooms and clubs and a lot more tradecraft, more tricks of the trade and rules of conduct. The benefit to this is that the central character is fantastically well-drawn. The book is more of a mystery novel than ..In From the Cold, as the camera shift from first to third person never really happens: George Smiley has no-one to dissemble to, so we never see how his actions look to others.
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. I'm only in the middle of this now, so I'll not say much. Except that one of the things I didn't know about it until I started, and one of the reasons I'm enjoying it more than I expected, was the biographical allusions linking Sammy Clay and Josef Kavalier to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Going more or less as planned. I'll be doing well if I only read books as short as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

3 hours of MTV XXXVI

This was te week that MTV decided to launch Spanking New Music, which is a ploy to actually play songs you haven't heard before, and in bulk. The method they do this is mental:

• Monday: two hours of the usual rubbish + two hours of 50% entirely new stuff.
• Tuesday: same old shite
• Wednesday: Sixteen new tracks in the first hour! Then the same hour repeated three times!
• Thursday: Some new tracks, plus a handful of the ones from Monday & Wednesday for two hours - then the two hours back again!
• Friday: the same tracks as Thursday, except they've started the two hour block at 1:00 into the loop, if you get me.

Anyway, more new = good, by whatever means.

Oh alright, Maroon 5 aren't Terence Trent D'Arby after all, they're Jamiroquai. The video far Sunday Morning seeks to position them as the favourite of karaoke singers. Just like, er, Jamiroquai.

A bit of mild skatting and some spanish guitar - it could be a sugababes single. And then No More's d'n'b snares hit the ground running, and Beverley Knight starts singing. The video is urban, IE concrete and fluorescent lights, preferably in a parking garage. It probably says something about how cliched the setting is, and how much Beverley's voice rolls over me, that it's only when the dates of deaths appear superimposed on shop fronts and back alleys that I realise this Roni Size-fueled track is about the tragedy of yoof. Note to myself: Miss Dynamite who sings with Beverley on the Band Aid record is not the same as Dynamite MC on this one.

Thirteen Senses seem to be aiming at the market segment who are looking for Travis, only a bit more plodding, if you would. The video for Thru The Glass (sic) combines the crawling out of a car crash sensibility of Coldplay/Stereophonics/Feeder and the blighted scottish landscape of Travis, to no goddamn effect at all.

The Zutons stand on a stage and play Confusion, their slow sad song about love that was never to be, and the rest of the chaitr, bottles, etc in the room dance. Not like Beauty and the Beast, just slow sad waltzes. Drinking music.

There's a pretty clever idea in the video for Always - split screen in three, keep switching which of the members of Blink-182 is in the top middle or bottom shot, but it's wasted on "quick! under thebed!" farce. The song's not terrible, but never quite hits the sweet spot like All THe Small Things, and wears out its welcome trying.

Okay, were Feeder ever nu-metal or was I just mad? Probably the latter. Tumble and Fall is a pleasant enough slow indie tune, like I Am Kloot or Mull Historical Society without the accents or vim. The video involves the lead singer tumbling/falling. It isn't really very good.

This is a bit more like it, though possibly only a bit. Renegade Calvacade is towards the minimal end of Ash's scale (uh-oh), with some dodgy verses over leaden chords, followed by an enourmous chorus. They appear to be nicking back the vibe that U2 stole for their last single. It would have to be said that I am not feeling their new power chord love. The video is just them playing, they all seem as we left them EXCEPT! the babyfaced drummer has finally embraced his baldness, and grown a goatee. The overall effect is a little disturbing, like Toby from The West Wing suddenly turning up on the skins.

As Fatboy Slim singles go, Wonderful Night is a bit Weapon of Choice, and the dancingness in the video doesn't exactly put that comparison to rest. Closer examination suggests that the main guy in the video, though flanked by two excellent dancers in spats and tails, doesn't actually do much more than shuffle a bit himself, though this is brilliantly disguised. So presumaly he's the Lateef that does such an uninspiring job on the track. THe video's fun - first time.

Galvanise doesn't really move the Chemical Brothers sound on much from Come With Us (its better cousin). The video is a nifty little short film featuring kids in clown gang colours and a half-fighting half-dancing that I used to think I knew the name for, but I thought the name was crunk dancing.

a) Lethal Bizzee is the best name ever. b) He only actually appears for the chorus of grimefest Pow (Forward), so it's chorus, verserverseverse chourus verseverseverse chorus verseverseverse chorus, for a total of 10 actis in a 3.00 song. c) Comparison with 21 seconds are inevitable, and to be honest do the track no real favours. D double E and Napper seem to be someone to look out for, mind you d) There's not much Lethal Bizzee for all that. e) Between the rewinding self-censorship and the MTV blanking, some of the artists get very little indeed

Na Na Na Na sounds like a Nelly party tune, but not as much as it sounds (with the slightly sickened strings) like the J-Tipsy. Which isn't really all that surprising, geographical factors considered. The video looks a bit familiar as well, Nelly dancing in front of a line of cars forever.

So, Babyshambles then: being the new band by Pete Doherty from the Libertines. (or psssibly the other one, Carl Sagan). Killamangiro is a strange mix of the "chorus" from a libertines song, with the monotonic drumming, and a really wandering delivery, like if David Gedge was still around (yes, I know). The video is in hideous black and red, and intersperses the usual band playing shots, with random clips of Carl (or possibly pete) wandering around doing... stuff. Halfway between fan service and a postcard to his mum.

TARROKH BULSARA RIP. And so ends Electric Six's Radio Ga Ga, the greatest video of the 21st century, one that mercilessly takes the piss out of Freddy Mecury, while reminding us that the world will always need the spark of him that lives inside us all. Also, poodles.

Jamie Scott: for people who think Jamie Cullum is a bit too.. freakay. The patented Cullum hand slap on the piano can put some people off, so here's a man and a guitar. He plays a six string for a living, you know, and he's not about to give in, because he's constantly searching for that viiiiiibe. Anyone who can and will stretch vibe to that many sylables need shooting.

There is simply no way to review Ja Rule's New York, due to the fact that over half of every line is blanked. wtf?

THe best part about filming a video for a Joss Stone song which is about having the Right to be Wrong, and how her mistakes will make her strong, is that you can just film her fucking up as well, it's all good material. The worst part is left to yur imaginatiopn (it does have to be said that she has a great voice, but only disaster can follow as long as she writes her own material. Let other people's mistakes make you strong)

There are three main parts to the video for dodgy eurotrance outfit Narcotic Thrust's single When The Dawn Breaks: girls in bikinis dancing in flame, girl in racing leathers driving cars very fast in a race, and girls rubbing car grease all over their tanned body. Bonus if you get to the end: bikinis and champagne!

Rapping isn't just talking over a track, you know. Unless you're Petey Pablo! Goodies is pretty lousy stuff, Ciara (rhymes with tiara) isn't much better, drastically underselling/sexing every line of her chorus and the only good thing about it is the second appearance this week of Jazze Pha.

Lil' Jon's commitment to innovation continues. Where you or I would sample an existing rock band, he's made one up and put them into the video as well! All for a particular noise on the guitar, that, perfected and cleaned-up, is better known as the lightning bolt from Transvision Vamp. I sometimes wonder if Lil' Jon is sort of like the mob in Goodfellas, You come to them when your track needs a bit of oomph (you in this case is Trick Daddy, and your track is Let's Go) then they move into your basement, drink all your booze, chuck a lot of great stuff into the track, including a blistering if indefensible guest spot from Twista, and they shout all over the track, and you just get to look a little mean in the video when everyone's staring at the girls instead.

Long-View, like Kane a few months ago, have in their first video (that I've seen) presented the band as a fait accompli, playing an gig to an enormous crowd. The song in question, When You Sleep is big and useless, like Bush if they had grown up on a diet of Snow Patrol

The video for The Blowers Daughter is smart enough to realise that its biggest selling point is that it's off the soundtrack to Closer, so it doesn't do naff all else except film Damien Rice playing mother may I with a refugee from the 1930s Ireland, all flowing hair and shawls knitted from wheat. The song is the sort of thing that's done much better by David Grey. It picks up for a second before you realise that he's not the first person to wrote about obsession to use the line "can't take my eyes off of you"

It is, I suppose, not much of a surprise that Xzibit's first video since Pimp My Ride hit the screens is related to cars, and tricked out cars at that. The track itself, by name Hey Now (Mean Muggin) is nothing special, due to him rather than Timberland's backing. He's just too genial to be dangerous.

This, annoyingly, is more like it. The video for The Music's Breakin' has one smart idea: the lead singer walks through a world which is in reverse video. Now obviously, this would usually look like shit, but this has been combined with an auxiliary smart idea: film it in black & White (or white & black), and the result looks really nice. The song is also a giant step ahead of their last single, nice drumming, good use of quiet and loud bits, and a stunna of a vocal peformance. If only they could convine Mr The Music to stop dancing. Anyway, this is very good, though I'm sure they'll let me down properly next time.

It's the bastard children of Joe Strummer! Or The Bravery, as the are also known. In fairness, the clash never sounded thisd speed-driven, and the keyborad line that drives Unconditional is very driven. They are of the people, though.

It seems possible to reconstruct the thought processes that went into the video for Live Twice: Darius bears a vague resemblance to Clive Owen, so let's stick him in a tuxedo. Er, but it's only a vague resemblance, but this plan can be extended by switching to black & white. Still needs a bit of heft, so why not stick in a white horse, and if possible a dove? You never know, John Woo might be watching MTv late at night. Though John Woo must have heard better slow crooners than this one.

3 hours of MTV XXXI-XXXV

No real changes over this five weeks, we continued to be ruled over by Steriogram, Gwen Stefani and the Scissor Sisters' Mary. Dark days, dark days. I've officially given up on the red text now: if it's modern, I heard it here first.

I remember positive feelings about the Chris Cunningham-directed video for Windowlicker, and most of them remain. The fantastic dance-choreography, the simple derangment of seeing bikini-clad girls with Richard D James' face are still there. The extended version howerer starts out with a constant stread of niggas, motherfuckerzs and bitches, like what your mum thinks hip-hop videos sound like. And there does come a point in the main video where you have to ask yourself "is spraying nubile ladies with champagne and observing the results really any better if they all have the face of Aphex Twin"?

The director of the video for the new Roger Sanchez is a Master! of visual! metaphor! There's a prettyish girl with an enormous plastic heart, looking for love on the streets of New York. So over the course of an evening, her heart shrinks, then she meets a nice man, and they hand around until the evening. The next morning, her heart is monstro-sized, and he spots it and runs away. This is War & Peace by the standards of bobbins trance tracks, which is what Another Chance definitely is. They even drop the track to barely-audible for the meet-up, just to show who's boss.

Is it just me, or is the vast amouts of female flesh in the video for Lapdance not that sexy? I don't mean in a "ugh, strippers" way, just that the presentation all seems ultra seedy. It's possible that the mustached Pharrell might have helped there. The song itself seems really strange in light of N.E.R.D.'s new ELO status these days. It's really lyrically tough and it's hard to see if they really has a vision of themselves becoming this band on a permanent basis (and whether this plan included their friend Harvery the Duff Rapper).

It must be breasts night at the OK Corral, because here comes The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up. Whatever you might think about the song (probably the last great single they'll ever release, for my money), the video is striking, first for it's shock ending, then for they way that repeated viewings bring out it's devotion to its ethics. It is in its own way very pure.

In a reversal of the usual D12/Missy Elliott fashion, My Boo has a completely superfluous song stick on the start instead. The main attraction is a pretty lightweight affir, with the videos showng the Usher & Alicia Keys as from the same side of the tracks. Will the world never be fair for two rich people in love? Alicia seems to be hoding him close in the later scenes partly to suppress his dancing.

Apart from the body-horror of Chris Cunningham's Aphex Twin videos, there's another side, fascinated by techology and humans and various borders between, and it's the one shown on Bjork's All Is Full Of Love. A simple, spare song, just her voice, a drumbeat like a limpng heart and some synths, and a video tha't simultaneously beautiful and reallly disturbing. The shot of two apple-like robots kissing while various mechanincal appendages are plugged into their backs liek enormous parasites is the shot that convinced me that he could well be the man to make Neuromancer (Though that appears to have gone the way of the arse).

Another "I can't believe that I haven't reviewed it before" video, courtesy of The Darkness. I've said somewhere else that the video for Don't Let The Bells End harks back to the time when bands would pretend that they spent Christmas together, and I Believe In a Thing Called Love takes us back to the non-existent tradition of pretending that the band roams the galaxy in a spaceship together. Oh all right, non-existent apart from N.E.R.D.'s She Wants to Move. A fantatically silly video for a fantastically silly song. Note: the gratuitous knockwurst that Justin uses for a microphone for the line "Guitar!" and the brief inexplicable she-devil.

So now that U2 have, in their own words, reclaimed the title of best rock and roll band in the world, what will they do with it? The answer is implausibly "Release a track that sounds like the Ash single before last". The video for Vertigo is almost certainly the product of a conversation that included the line "we would everyone watching to be perfectly clear that this cost an appalling amount of money"

It's not unexpected for an Eminem video to court controversy, but when Mosh starts with an overhead plane crashing into something, then to cartoon Marshall Mathers as the president in a classrom full of kids, you have to wonder what this is. This in fact is an all-out assault on George W. Bush, relased the week before the election. Eminem being Eminem, it takes a verse for it to get off the subject of himself, but after that it's vitriol pure. The video looks flash animated, but where that usually means ridiculous simplicity, here it's just simple - a story of unidentified everypeople who've reached snapping point. The backing track is pretty martial - foot stomping, humming, gothy piano chords, not a million million miles from Jesus Walks. It probably wouldn't stick in my head bveyond the first few listens and a few nice lines, but the video is absolutely incredible. Shown on MTV it's slightly cut: a raised middle finger is blurred, but the silencing of the first word in "fuck Bush" makes it sound 10 times louder. In years to come I'll probably look back on this and sneer. I'll be wrong.

Wait, why is Robbie Williams answering questions in a Hong Kong customs office? Oh right, because this dreadful rubbish, by name Misundertood, is off the soundtrack to Bridget Jones 2.

On the night of the election, along with an actual current song from Eminem (see above) we get Shoot The Dog from George Michael, from a few years ago: not that this kind of political commentary ever really ages: it was rotten to statrt with. The video is that rubbish animated one starring George as everyone except Tony and the other George, and the song is GM as your embarrassing uncle, who only stops ripping off Pop Music long enough to steal a lengthy chunk from Love Action.

Time Is Running Out is the other "topical" track tonight, it's Muse at their worst and most grandstanding, while standing on the table in The War Room, while the generals march around the table, and some of the sexier ones dance a bit. Matt Bellamy looks 20% more like Tom Cruise than usual in the video, and sounds 100% more like Thom Yorke (from an impressive start)

Toxic strings and marching band drums. Synthstring stabs and one of most insistent vocal performances from Destiny's Child since Jumpin' Jumpin', that's what Lose My Breath is all about. The video is a dance off between them in yellow, and them in red, Truly, everyone wins.

Bah. Stop being boring, Green Day! Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a sub-Bush plodder, with a video that looks like 12 graduates of the Avril Lavigne film school fighting it out.

I'm not entirely clear that the world needs two bands that take their cues from Television, but Mando Diao seems to be the yin to Razorlight's yang, or whatever. Paralyzed sounds like prepunk + horns and a bit of Hammond and I should probably like them on that basis, but I don't. The video is just them looking thin.

I'd never really though of Jay-Z as a nu-metaller, though they share certain traits - the love of turntables, the pomposity, so the news of a new cd of collaborations by Jay-Z and Linkin Park is sort of interesting. There's reason to think it could be rewarding, but there's no reason to believe that it could be as great as the first single Numb/Encore is. Part of the trick is that the track for the video isn't the studio collabroation, it's the live gig in the Roxy from July, and the energy level is quite noticable. The rest of the video is just footage from the bands in the studio. It would have to be said that Linkin Park look more geeked by being in the same studio as Jay-Z than vice-versa.

The very last thing I expected to see now is a brand new Michael Jackson single, and I suspect that Cheater isn't it. It sounds more like a B-side from Off The Wall or such like, the sort of thing that might be thrown onto a greatest hits or something. If this is off the new album now that might be interesting (except if this is the first single off the new album, er maybe not). The video is a compilation of concert footage, and is a deliberate reminder of the things Michael does when he's not (allegedly) molesting children: he dances. And Jesus, does he dance. His choreography and control is fantastic - there's a moonwalk halfway through that looks like a special effect. If this is (please please) the last single, it's only fair that it leaves with the enduring image of Michael and his greatest love/worst enemy, the public, taken back when things were just fine between them.

The video for Ghetto Musick is a bunch of skits around the central premise of a courier company called Fed Up, like something that the GTA people would write. This is a pretty good match for the actual track, which sounds like someone made a (foolish, foolish) bet with Outkast that they couldn't put blurty-bass rave, a slow bump'n'grind number and an organ break in the same song.

I thought this was supposed to be the Beastie Boys old school album? The beats on Open Letter to NYC are spectral, like rolling dried peas around in a pan. The wee bass runs are pretty cool. The Ode To New York is great by being shameless, and because at the end of the day, it is New York. Love shines through on this one.

In fairness, they're not actually showing the video for We Will Rock You, they's showing Queen's performance from Live Aid, as a way of promoing the fact that you can soon buy it in the shops. And thery're not even doing that, they're interspersing it with a lot of footage of The Who, Sade and ships being launched etc. It still doesn't explain why they apppear to have reedited the song to insert a guitar solo right after the first chorus. No-one escapes the gaze of the ages, except understandably David Bowie. and Freddie Mercury, too. Something that the reediting shows is a minor matter of against-the-clock professionalism: during the final guitar solo Freddy actualy wanders off to the left, and ends the song sitting at the piano for the next track.

Could Well Be In the the first track on A Grand Don't Come For Free that really exhibits the precision evocation that's in the rest of The Streets's album. The line about talking for as long as that again is so simple and carries such a punch, that the rush of pleasure you (I) get from hearing it seems easy. The video is one nice idea + Mike Skinner: there should be more visions of people haunted in good way by happy memories. It mirrors the Dry Your Eyes video in its canny manipulation of the distance that you have to put into the video of a narrative song.

"Yes lads, this is Keane's management, We saw the video for This Is The Last Time. Do you not think it was a bit... good? Here's 50 quid to go out and make one that would remind people of A Hard Day's Night if they had never seen it"

Ashes, in which Embrace make a better stab than usual of defending their existence in a world which already contains Doves. The same pounding back line, but Mr Embrace's actual singing prowess give it some soar and speed in the choruses. The video is special effects trick #4 - things fall together.

Previous references to Natasha Bedingfield sounding like Nelly Furtado are completely surpassed by the similiarity on her new single Unwritten. The video looks like Coffee & TV for the bilbiophile set.

Rip It Up: Whoo, fun with Razorlight, whoo. Even Television are probably more fun to party with.

Blimery, what can you say about Band Aid 20?. For starters, Bono completely throttles the life out of That Line, even reverb can't help him. Justin Hawksmoor or whatever his name is does well wherever he pops up, rumour has it that he originally sang That Line, but turned out to be too good for Bono's taste. And isn't it strange that Bono seems to have taken possession of the whole deal? I have to suspect that there's a scene on the cutting room floor where the participants line up to kiss his ring. Anyway, now I know what Tory Busted look like for, how you say, future reference. Do They Know It's Christmas itself manages having a couple of bars stuck into it (so that Dizzee can rap a bit) rather well, possibly because it was never exactly a taut panther of a track. Similarly, it survives a bit in the middle where the singing stops so that the artists can sit around and watch old footage of Ethiopa (apprantly the message is we won, stop sending stuff?) but the song abides, and serves out its natural life. Unfortnately, the presence of Sir Paul Mcartney seems to have confused many present (we're looking at you, Fran Healy and Joss Stone), into thinking that this is in fact Love Is All Around, and things continue for a good minute after the natural end.

I wish I could remember what exactly it is that Goldie Lookin' Chain nicked the beat to You Knows I Love You off - I think it's I Need Love, which is a perfect match for this west-and-north-quite-a-bit 17. Some of the verses are pretty inventive, but again it's one joke (crap welsh verion of [X]) divided by four MCs = no fun.

A motorised, almosy Yello, bassline, glassy synths and rock steady drum machine, and the final layers is sweeping legion of Kylie, who makes the other elements sound like The Fatback Band in their warmth and humanism. The video for I Believe In You is classic disco, her in a well-lit halo of hair, inside spheres of neon lights, and tronned-up co-dancers. The song without vocal might well cross the line from disco to techno in a few places, not even it's closest neighbour, Eurythmics, seemed so lifeless. But then Kylie, like Annie Lennox, is no Annie Lennox these days.

Sick and Tired, by Anastacia, has a really strange and compelling twist in the video. They're casting for a kitchen sink play about the growth and death of a relationship - you know, the sort of thing that's in a lot of music videos. Two guys and two girls are auditioning for the two roles, and one of the girls is Anastacia. So we get a lot of mix-and-match scenes from the casting (in arty black and white), with direct and indirect emotional connection to Anastacia. Also we get the video for the song, with herself and an artfully arranged series of musicians, including an african chap with a flat cap who sings during the many bridges/choruses. The song itself is top.

The Hardest Button To Button is, it would have to be said, one of the few tracks that actually caught my attention on Elephant, The White Stripes' last album. One of the reasons for this is that it has a bassline, quite a departure from the usual one guitar, one drumset lineup. I'm not saying it's an actual bass, it could be one of the two instruments with some processing or something, but it's a definite bassline. The Video is Michel Gondry, still probably best known (in the music video world) for his painstaking Fell In Love With a Girl video. He doubles and redoubles his efforts here, and it's both fantastically beautiful and slightly empty stop motion. Thogh it certainly isn't helped by Jack White's dodgy mustache and general Michael Jackson impersonation.

Bah to videos with reading in them. Anyway, Soulwax's new single, E-Talking is back to energetic pop, which appears to be carved out of the Peter Gunne start of their Radio Soulwax mix. The video is a riot, though. And a handy A-Z of drugs!

A delicate spoken word into Only U, then - it's Prince, no wait it's not, it's just someone that Prince should be suing for theft of appearance appearance, but he brings a monstrous, building destroying backend. Ashanti brings the usual front end stuff, the video has her larger than god and seductive/chilly/destructive like, oh dear, Aaliyah.