Cooler than the Red Dress

Matt is right, sometimes entries do write themselves. Matt favours the "make enormous numbers of in-jokes and be amusingly gay", a fine strategy even when he doesn't call in the big guns like Danny, who is the most amusingly gay man alive. However, an even easier way of getting entries to write themselves is by responding to somebody else's entry. As follows.

Red Dress certainly is a good song from the Sugababes' excellent new album, Taller in more ways. My current list of "likely singles" off this album, in order of likelihood:

  1. Push the button (already a single, but I'd like to emphasize that I thought so even before it was released, because I'm snooty)
  2. Red Dress. They'd be foolish not to; it's intensely danceable, and of how many songs involving a tuba can that be said?
  3. It Ain't Easy. From the very first opening guitar twang to the juicy, juicy bass, this song demands dirty dancing. It might even beat Red Dress out of the gate.
  4. Obsession. Following the long-standing Sugababes tradition of doing distracted-sounding, but very good, 80s covers. I recognized the sample but frankly didn't even realize it was a cover until somebody pointed it out.
  5. Gotta be You. A solid piece of R'n'B with another chunky bass line. It might be tricky to release this with It Ain't Easy and Obsession already out though.
  6. Ace Reject. Not an obvious single, but the hook is quite catchy -- a good radio edit, and it's away. It would also be a good ballad to release as a spacer between Gotta Be You and whatever the previous single was.

Yes, six singles. Like I said, it's a really good album! The Sugababes have a fine line in pop, and manage to maintain credibility while doing it thanks to the slight but definite impression they get that they can only barely be arsed to do it. Like, it was watching Big Brother or writing a barnstormer of a pop album, and they only did the album because they wanted to get out of the house before lunch. Compared to the desperate attention-seeking of other pop acts (Kylie, Rachel and latterly Madonna, I'm looking at you) it's refreshing.

Wait a minute...

But what actually got me started writing this entry was the star-rating system. Do you rate stuff in iTunes? What's your system for doing so? Here's mine:

Rating Definition
Crap. Tunes rated 1 star mean I hate it so much I've made a positive decision to get rid of it -- 1-star songs are automatically removed from my iPod.
Album track. This song is okay, and sounds good as part of an album of other songs by the artist, but isn't strong enough to stand on its own.
Positively like. Sounds good even when randomly selected from the library. Of course, it can still be any type: a ballad, a dance track, an angry song. So I don't necessarily want to listen to all three-stars all the time. Because I don't usually download a song I don't like, the vast majority of songs in my library are 3 stars, although only about 1000 of them have actually been rated as such.
Exciting! This is a very good song; it makes me bounce around with excitement when I hear it, and usually (but not always) run to a dance floor as well. These songs, if not singles already, would usually make good singles. Examples include "The last song" by All-American Rejects, "Round and round" by the Body Rockers, and "Happy" by Fischerspooner.
Absolute favourite. Of 12,000 tracks in my library, only 22 have this rating so far (of course, I've only bothered to rate 1200 of the tracks so far). These are songs that have remained 4-star for a long time, and I consider them classics -- although some fairly recent tracks have made the leap pretty quickly. Examples include "At My Most Beautiful" by REM, "Sexy Boy" by Air, and "You drive me Crazy" by Britney Spears (you want to make something of it, pal?)