BBC’s ‘Sound of 2010′

As if wading through endless identikit Best of 2009 charts in December weren’t enough. As if stumbling fat, addled and miserable into another year on this cursed planet weren’t enough. Now it’s this. Month upon month of breathless Tips for 2010. You’ve just got shot of one lot of bloated, idiotic pop stars and now here comes another batch; each one positively screaming: GET USED TO US RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WE’RE NOT GOING FUCKING ANYWHERE. Of all of these tiresome tip sheets, there can’t be a more hyped, more inescapable (inescapable in that if you so much as look at an FM radio you’re gonna get some vacuous jock blithering on about Florence and the Machine in 2009) than the BBC’s Sound of 2010. Having polled 165, no less, ‘industry insiders’ the BBC then draws up a list of five with the biggest marketing budgets, sorry – the most votes, and floods its playlists with them purely so it can crow about how it broke them this time next year. The Ransom Note is having none of it. Learn to dislike the final five now.

• BBC Sound of 2010

Jim Brackpool