No Rock And Roll Fun

MAKE MINE A DOUBLE: MTV Hits, the lumbering music telly giant's bid to steal back Smash Hits & The Box's audience, has been doing one of its occasional weekends Doubles events, where they play - as the name would imply - one track from an artist, followed by, yes, another a track from the same artist. The genius move that MTV Hits makes, though, is to play the current track first, followed by one from ages ago, thereby generating an instant compare and contrast environment that works so much better than doing it the other way round. So, it's possible to listen to the Appleton debut and think "This isn't half as bad as people imply", only - as soon as it ends - for All Saints to come on doing Pure Shores, and it becomes clear exactly what's missing. (Clue: Shaznay turns out to have been the talented one who lifted the project from being pleasantly sung pleasant enough tunes into Great Pop.) In the opposite direction, Beyonce's solo Work It Out passes over for Say My Name, and shows up what seemed at the time to have been a whole carnival to have consisted of little more than a whelk store and a roundabout in comparison. For some reason, the new-followed-by-old line-up gives a far clearer paralax view. We hope MTV2 will adopt the idea and let us see, say Envy followed by Kung-Fu or early Marilyn Manson after his pisspoor new efforts.