Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory

"Everything you say to me takes me one step closer to the edge and I'm about to break" say Linkin Park on 'One Step Closer'.

What you gonna do? Go on. What you gonna do?

Are you going to break your six month old tennis racket and make mummy buy you a brand new one?

When mummy brings you steak chips and peas are you going to leave the peas, saying you don't like them, even though they're your favourite vegetable?

Are you going to cry and cry and scream and scream until mummy buys you an Xbox 360?

I tell you what, you don't want to be nearby when Linkin Park 'break'.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus

This album is fantastic. I lent it to mum and mum hated it - what more do you need to know?

It's better than wanting a pizza and finding one in the freezer. It's better than asking for one kind of beer on someone else's round, their getting it wrong and bringing you a better one that you've never had before. It's better than comfy shoes.

It's better than that time that girl looked at you and thought about speaking to you before thinking better of it (so close). It's better than that day at school when no-one spat on you.

It's better than finding a quid.

Akon - Trouble

Akon's not got a vest on.

This is clearly a variant on the old 'feeling the benefit' of only using your coat when necessary.

Akon has clearly become a bit cold. In order to combat this, he has stripped off his clothing and removed himself to an even colder place for a short period.

When he returns to the warmer environment, he will redress and consequently 'feel the benefit'.

Cooper Temple Clause - See This Through And Leave

The Cooper Temple Clause, like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, appear to have a band name consisting of randomly selected nouns.

I love names like that. Redcar in the North-East is a great spot for names consisting of random nouns, so long as you read it as 'Red Car'. So you get 'Red Car Baths' and 'Red Car Library'. Brilliant.

However, we have seen the king of random noun names. It's on a sign in York and it will never be bettered.

It's on a road called Monk Bar and it's a garage selling spare parts for a car called the MG Midget.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Monk Bar Garage York Midget Spares

Out-noun that bad boy.

Keane - Hopes and Fears

What do you think Keane's hopes and fears might be?

Hope: The Earl of Rochester will take the hand of sister Phillipa, thus increasing the Keane family's land.

Fear: The Earl of Rochester will continue visiting Tom in the night, drunk on port.

Hope: The new gamekeeper will be able to protect the land from the poor.

Fear: The poor will rise as one, claim the Keane family's land and divide it amongst themselves.

Hope: A Keane will one day rise to the throne to rule over the poor AND the rich.

Fear: The genetic weaknesses that have arisen through excessive interbreeding will one day conquer the Keanes, meaning no-one will be able to protect the land from the poor.

Aerosmith - Honkin' On Bobo

This falls into the category of things that I don't want explained. Honkin' On Bobo. Clarity would diminish it.

I saw Aerosmith's singer, Steven Tyler, on Wayne's World 2 the other day. He's unbelievably cadaverous. More so than I remember. If you've got a spare oversized mouth lying around, you could probably build a fairly credible Steven Tyler by joining some chicken wing bones together with string and glueing the mouth near the top.

He's like a puppet, most of which has biodegraded. He even moves like he's on strings. And he's got a comedy fake voice, which is clearly a very bad example of ventriloquism.

Curtis Stigers - I Think It's Going To Rain Today

As an Englishman and therefore being obsessed with weather, I'm not satisfied with Curtis Stigers' assertion that he thinks it's going to rain today. Is it or isn't it?

Not only that, I want justification. Once he's certain that it's going to rain (or not), then I want to know why he thinks that. Is it because the weather's predominantly coming from the west? Is it because of the morning humidity?

If it's just a feeling, that won't do. I want Curtis Stigers to quote atmospheric pressure, relative humidity and seasonal precedents. I want him at the very least to say that he felt a couple of droplets.

You can't just go round making rash pronouncements, you know, Curtis.

Amerie - Touch

It's Amerie. I didn't spot that last time I did an Amerie album, because in my head, I was hearing her name wrong. I know her as 'Eh, Marie?'

I should have seen my error though, because the main thing I remember about Amerie is that she sings while wearing lots of top clothing and a pair of hotpants. On the cover of Because I Love It, there are three or four Ameries, each wearing virtually nothing on their legs.

This album, Touch, features '1 Thing' which is that really insistent song where the chorus seems to alternate between two different octaves. Makes her sound a bit like a dog. In a good way.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

I wish I had a silent alarm.

The house alarm's got a faulty battery. It overcharges or something. If the power goes off, the alarm goes off.

Disconnect the battery, you say? I did. The alarm still went off. Turns out there's a second battery that's in the box on the outside of the house.

So disconnect that one as well, numpty, you say? Well, unfortunately, if this battery is disconnected, the alarm thinks it's being disarmed by a burglar, so when the mains is on, it sounds.

So until the replacement battery is fitted, I have to lie gazing at the ceiling at nights, occasionally twitching at the thought of the impending power cut that I'm helpless to prevent.

Oh for a silent alarm.

Pink - M!ssundaztood

I've previously gone on record as saying that Pink is a stupid name. For some reason I didn't notice that it was, in fact, 'P!nk' - which is just as well. Let's gloss over that.

I can't gloss over 'M!ssundaztood' though. It's too wilfully quirky to pass without comment. We all know what it's supposed to say and we all blindly accept that sometimes in pop music, you use the wrong letters - because that's the way things are done in pop.

But look at it. Read it. Just try and read what's ACTUALLY there. 'M!ssundaztood'.

For one thing, you can't pronounce an exclamation mark. It's not an audible sound. It just gives instruction as to how the preceding word or words should be produced - as an exclamation.

Secondly, that Z. 'Misunderstood' doesn't have a Z sound. The letter Z tends to indicated a voiced sound; the letter S an unvoiced one. 'Misunderstood' has a voiceless S sound.

Finally, the A that replaces 'er'. The fact that this has been deliberately included at the expense of 'er' means there's a change in sound there. If you say the word, you have to really concentrate to get that bit right, because that neutral 'er' sound's so natural. You'll tend to emphasise it weirdly: 'MisundAstood'.

Put it all together and it's a bloody nightmare. If you ignore the exclamation mark and succeed in making the A sound, you'll probably still do an S instead of a Z because all your focus was on the A sound.

No wonder it's M!ssundaztood.

The Game - The Documentary

Unexpectedly, this Game album is a concept piece inspired by Nick Broomfield's documentary about South African white supremacist, Eugene Terreblanche - hence the title 'The Documentary'.

The Game commented: "People may have expected me to record another album about the hood full of name-dropping of other west coast rap stars, but that's just not me.

"I was profoundly affected by Broomfield's portrait of Eugene Terreblanche. It was astonishing to realise that such a man could wield power in this day and age, but more than that, the film was an intriguing insight into a certain part of South African society.

"It was strange to see the human side of such outwardly hateful people, while at the same time, it was astounding to see the delusion behind their unsavoury beliefs.

"Hopefully this record will reflect that. I don't even say 'ho' on it or anything."

Madonna - Confessions On A Dance Floor

Confessions to make on a dancefloor:

I know I said I couldn't dance, but actually I spent three years at disco school.

I have to confess: I wrote this song.

Confessions not to make on a dance floor:

Any kind of rhythmic movement makes me engorged down below.

It's my fault you're dancing weirdly. I spiked your drink with barbiturates.

Britney Spears - Britney

Why has Britney Spears seemingly got a purple lightning bolt passing through her pallid carcass on the cover of this album?

Perhaps it's the superstar equivalent of a kick up the arse, encouraging her to name her albums more imaginatively or ordering her to once again make the effort of having her heart beat, thus ensuring adequate blood supply to her extremities.

Look at her. She's corpselike. And you think she's rubbish when she moves around and sings. Imagine how poor she must be with rigor mortis setting in.

Very poor. Very poor indeed. Perhaps even worse than Toploader.

From First To Last - My Teenage Angst Has A Bodycount

As a card-carrying ugly person, I'm delighted to see that my people, in the form of 'bagheads' are finally being represented on album covers. Not before time.

Some tracks on this album aren't very nice. Tracks like, 'Kiss Me, I'm Contagious' and 'Ride The Wings Of Pestilence'. However, there are some wise words as well.

Words don't come much wiser than 'I Liked You Better Before You Were Naked On The Internet'. This applies to everyone you know. It even applies to people you think you'd like to see naked, (obviously on the internet, because you, like me, are a complete baghead and will never - NEVER - see another person naked).

There's also a song called 'Featuring Some Of Your Favourite Words'. Actually, it's 'Favorite' words, but I've corrected them. 500 million people spell it 'favorite' and remarkably they're all wrong.

Anyway, it's good to see that some of my favourite words are appearing in song. Not since Noel Coward have words such as 'splendid', 'marvellous' and 'spiffing' been represented in popular music. Hats off.

Joss Stone - Mind Body and Soul

Funny thing about soul music: If it's any good, the creator never, ever applies the label 'soul' to it.

So: Mind, Body and Soul then.

It contains some woeful thinking. One song is called 'Right To Be Wrong'. Erroneous. It's wrong to be wrong. You can tell by the use of the word 'wrong'. Big give away.

Another track's called 'Less Is More'. Again, no. More is more. Less is less. You can't just disregard the meanings of words otherwise there's going to be anarchy.

On the other hand, I can call Joss Stone 'a moronic bitch who looks like a turd in a hat' and she'll probably take it as a compliment, if that's the way she thinks.

Gwen Stefani - Love Angel Music Baby

I'm going to have to repeat myself a bit here. I was once moved to write something about the song 'Rich Girl' which appears on this album. It's worth repeating.

One line runs: ‘If I was a rich girl, then I’d have all the money in the world’. Richness is all relative. Compared to the average third-world resident, I'm rich. Compared to the majority of the first-world, Gwen Stefani is rich.

You don't need to have all of the money in the world to be classed as rich. By the same token, if you are rich, you have a relatively large amount of money. You do not, under any circumstances, have all of it.

If you did have all of the money in the world, Gwen, you would be paradoxically poor as without hard currency, people would have to revert to a primitive barter system and your wealth would be meaningless.

More to the point, it's very unlikely that anyone would wish to trade food with you in exchange for your lamentable services as a 40-year-old woman dressing as a cheerleader.

Beyoncé - Dangerously In Love

Dangerously in love? Just how dangerously in love are you Beyoncé?

Are you so dangerously in love that if you saw your lover on the opposite side of the A556, you'd try and dash across at rush hour?

Are you so dangerously in love that if offered a telephone that you knew was electrified, you'd still try and call your bloke, even though there would be 240 volts of consequences?

Beyoncé. Are you so dangerously in love that you'd still try and see your other half, even if his father was Skeletor and Skeletor had expressly forbidden you from seeing each other?

Emma Bunton - Free Me

I'm always astounded at how vaguely memorable pop songs can often be found on albums featuring nothing else of note.

You tend to think that some artists release singles and only singles before compiling them all for a 'best of'. Take Free Me by Emma Bunton, for example. I just about remember the title song, but I can't honestly say that I recognise any other song title.

Maybe that's because they've all got titles that are about as arresting as the air behind your left knee: 'Maybe', 'I'll Be There', 'Tomorrow', 'Amazing', 'You Are' and 'Something So Beautiful'.

What's also striking is that Emma Bunton felt she could pass as just 'Emma' when this came out. Bit ambitious.

Black Eyed Peas - Elephunk

Later in their career, the Black Eyed Peas went on to release a song entitled 'Don't Phunk With My Heart'. 'Phunk' in that instance, clearly meant 'fuck'. That would mean that this album is rather intriguingly called 'Elefuck'.

Don't know what that means. Don't want to encounter it in my everyday life either - whatever it is.

If you're in the UK, you get a bonus track on Elephunk. It's called 'Rock My Shit'.

Rock it! Rock that shit! Scoop up the Black Eyed Peas excrement, cradle it in your arms and slowly try and help it to sleep with gentle movement. Rock the Black Eyed Peas' shit!

2Pac - 2Pacalypse Now

Not QUITE got the hang of this 'play on words' thing, have you Tupac?

He'd have been better off with '2Packets of crisps, please' or '2Pac or not 2Pac, that is the question (with my holiday in Portugal fast approaching)'.

But really he could have gone for a better name in the first place:

The Packinator 9000
The Twoinator 9000
The Shakinator 9000

The list's virtually endless.