No Rock And Roll Fun

OPPORTUNITIES THAT ARE OPEN TO ALL AREN'T THE GOLDEN ONES: It's interesting that Victoria Beckham has felt like she has to defend her sudden interest in hip-hop. It might be cynical for us to point out that at a previous slump in her career led to Victoria to suddenly announce a hitherto unremarked obsession with UK Garage; or that her career has now sunk to a point where you can amaze kids in Beckham-branded sportswear by saying "Did you know his wife used to be a pop star?" and the phrase "I badly need a Mariah Carey style makeover - although not to the going mad and destroying the crockery point, of course..." must have been snarled more than once.

Victoria - you'll remember her from those crisp adverts a while back - has this to say about her marriage of convenience with Damon Dash ("collaboration with a bloke who must have figured the cheese factor will be outweighed by the extra publicity"):

"I think there's been a lot of anticipation for this record, a lot of people wondering what it's gonna be like, when it's gonna come out, because it's good music and I like it."

I used to spend a lot of time wondering what a small nuclear explosion over the Chatham Dockyard would be like. This didn't mean that I was exactly 'anticpating' the event, mind. And how can people know its good music and yet also be "wondering what it's gonna be like"? And who'll be wondering very much - some standard hiphop with Victoria Beckham's electonically aided voice around the top, but not too near the top, of the mix...

"At the end of the day I've been told I should do it this way, I should do it that way, but I'm doing it my way and I'm doing what I like. So I'm not surprised people are being positive about it because it's a good record at the end of the day."

You'd never tell she was the wife of a footballer, would you? "It's a good record at the end of the day, Brian." But who could possibly have forseen that Victoria's choices would involve her being dumped by her label last year and not making any records for anyone for the longest time, eh?

"It shouldn't all be about your celebrity status and whether that opens or closes doors for you - it shouldn't make a difference."

This is almost so self-delusional that we suspect she might actually be sincere in her little Gucci-wrapped heart when she says it. Maybe she really does think that Mr. Dash was keen to work with her because of what she can do in front of a microphone rather than what she does on the front of newspapers. Maybe she believes that if she'd spent the 1990s working on the Pick'n'Mix counter at Bridlington Woolworths rather than being in the biggest pop band of the time, she'd still be on the cover of the Daily Star and getting to make hip hop records left, right and centre.