DOWNLOADS AND UPLOADS, OH MY

Gnarls Barkley's self-deletion of Crazy has - thanks a lot, guys - left the way clear for pretend overnight sensation Sandi Thom to take the number one spot. Which, of course, would be a a great tribute to the power of PR. Except, of course, she isn't a PR company creation, in no way. Oh no. Not at all.

Now that it's become a number one single, though, we do have to ask: where the bloody hell did Thom study history?

Leaving aside her irritating attempt to confuse (or worse, genuine confusion between) punks and hippies, what actually is she talking about?

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late to a world that doesn’t care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

Why are you unable to be punk in 2006? Buy yourself a copy of Maximum Rock & Roll, and read it, if you really want to be a punk that badly. If you feel the revolutionary urge, go out and be revolutionary? Do you think the King of France sent himself to the guillotine? Where do you think we'd be if the Chartists had sat on their arses writing poems "ooh, if only we'd been born forty years or so before..."

When the head of state didn’t play guitar,
Not everybody drove a car,
When music really mattered and radio was king,
When accountants didn’t have control
And the media couldn’t buy your soul
And computers were still scary and we didn’t know everything

This could almost be funny if you didn't think she meant every word. Computers? Scary? To someone who is supposed to have set up her own basement multi-media streaming party tour? The media and accountants are figures of terror, to someone with such a great PR company pulling for her? All of this, from a person who webcast their signing to Sony?

Okay, Gnarls, we were wrong. Undelete yourself, and save us.

music sandi thom gnarls barkley