This time the Mickie Most-omatic (phasers set to Winehouse) has dredged up someone so inauthentic she makes Duffy look like Johnny Cash.

'Lions' is widdle-smothered great-grandadrock shite that Hendrix could whack off in ten minutes today, despite being dead. Pumped full of funk-rawk formaldehyde to stop the choruses dropping off, it boasts all the originality of a cloned baked bean and about as many tunes as a tractor makes trying to get out of a ditch.

For now, though, she's no better than one of Cowell's ventriloquist dummies.

Cardiology is monstrously offensive – the latest shit-streak by music's laziest sons.

Anodyne dance music for people who don't go to clubs, comedown music for people who don't do drugs.

Soppy nostalgia that bares little else.

‘Take A Look In The Mirror’ doesn’t just sound like a bad album, it sounds like a broken record.

Yeah, it’s his shtick, and you could laugh with him if the music was in any way exciting. Unfortunately, however, Dark Touches filth-funk fury is made impotent by sheer lack of hooks.

3OH!3 are electro-hip-pop white bread American scum.

Thieves Like Us look and sound like three yuppies trying out the music lark after being laid off by an investment banking firm.

What Paul Weller uniquely manages to do to the 12 songs... is to make every one sound exactly like a Paul Weller song. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

A lacklustre collection of what sounds like pallid versions of previous hits.

More over-produced introspection. [6 Aug 2005, p.56]

You can’t help but feel that Gary Go’s biggest ambition is to be on the soundtrack for "The Hills."

They peddle clichés about ugly ducklings and shagging that are so offensive they make a donkey braying into a bin sound like the ripe observations of a Charlie Brooker column.

Madonna and Perez Hilton may be fans, then, but if you’ve got even a passing interest in actually enjoying a record, don’t buy this one.

Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.

At best, his words are boring, silly or totally forgettable.

It’s not an issue that this is a pop album. The issue is that it’s weak and is a contrived commercial move.

The music is as grotesquely over-produced as its lyrics are undercooked, with glossy drum rolls and naff scratching segments fighting for attention on the gruesome battlefield.

And what illuminating revelation do we learn from the half conceived, cottonmouthed rubbish that constitutes ‘Democrazy’? In full: ‘thank Christ Blur usually finish writing their songs before they sell them, otherwise they’d be shit’.

Vile, goth-jock pop with all the wit and nuance of a urine-soaked sock.

For a genre that once sounded astonishingly futuristic, it is quite remarkable how tired and old house sounds now.

Who needs anti-depressants when you have Jesus and schmaltz?

Just when you think they’ve already smithereened the silly barrier, what the world needs most swiftly turns up: Hadouken! go Auto-Tune.

The message is simple: the joke isn’t funny any more, last orders rang long ago and the game is well and truly up.

And Then Boom is the moment the ironic ’80s electro revival finally manages to jump the shark.

In the end, this can't even make you feel angry; just desperately sad. [16 Jul 2005, p.50]