A God-awful Small Affair

Before I bestow any praise let me get my bad blood out of my system, so I can enter the festive period drained. The following may not be the worst of ALL released this year, but just of what I had the misfortune of hearing. Apologies in advance. #10 - "Union J" - Union J My last review will prove that I don't have a total intolerance of UK boybands, but one of the most cringeworthy music moments of the year was sitting down to watch Kick-Ass 2 and seeing their music video not-so-subtly shoved in by promo-folk. Let's hope this is the last we'll hear of them. #9 - "James Arthur" - James Arthur Not a good year for self-titled X Factor releases, is it? Idiotic motormouth with no ability to rein it in on his vocals. Agonising listening. #8 - "Magna Carta Holy Grail" - Jay Z He fell off a long time ago but I never suspected he'd ever produce something so dull and so lacking in life as this. #7 - "The 1975" -...

It would appear we've created another monster. There's something about the process of becoming an X Factor winner that turns British males from humble, heavily controlled and safe folks into quite unlikeable people. Anyone who's followed Arthur on Twitter for the year following his restricted tenure on the show (where you're groomed and preened into being as inoffensive as possible) will have found a series of not-very-thinly-veiled jabs at a whole host of people, ranging from his own peers (2010's winner Matt Cardle, who, to be fair, is a bigger prick), the current generation (this year's act Kingsland Road) and just about everyone in response to his proper debut single failing to reach #1. Of course it's understandable that some will grow to resent a show where you're supposed to pretend to relate to Nicole Scherzinger and then find yourself on the scrapheap within 5 years - but with Arthur that hasn't happened yet, and the sense of entitlemen...