We can only hope that this will turn out to be a premium rate phoneline cock-up

Scooch? Scooch? Good lord - given a field of second raters, as a nation we ask "do you have a budget option we could see?"

When Terry Wogan tries to suggest we're languishing at the bottom of the Eurovision board because of some sort of Baltic-Nordic block voting, remember: we sent Scooch in.

Pulling back the chain

The Scotsman meets up with Jim Reid to find out the motivation for the Mary Chain reunion. Could it be money?

"Obviously, or I'd be lying to you - and I hate when other people do that. I'm not rich. I'm not lighting cigars with £50 notes. I've got a family, and it's a consideration. I'm not saying I'm doing it for the money but I'd be a fool if I said it didn't matter."

Still, it must be nice to have all that falling-out and bad blood firmly in the past. It is in the past, isn't it, Jim?

"It's never going to be perfect. Me and William will always yell at each other. We always have, we always will. I don't really know how it's gonna go, nobody does. But we have to do this to find out whether it's going to work or not. I really am nervous. We haven't played music together for about ten years, so it's going to be... interesting."

At the word "interesting", a dozen venue managers run fingers around the inside of their collars and double-check their insurance policies.

Of note to shoegazers, reformed and otherwise, is the detail that drummer for the tour will be Loz Colbert, formerly of Ride (that's Bobby Gillespie stood down, then - clearly the brothers Reid decided they wanted more than one drum being tapped throughout the show) and Phil King out of Lush will be doing the bass.

The stage's gain is all our loss

Oh, that's all we bloody need - Will Young has decided to concentrate on his music career after... well, let's just say that the acting didn't work out, shall we?

Joss Stone hit by Dallas' arsey growl

After the seven-page Joss Stone thanks comes a full-force Joss Stone attack. Dallas Austin popped up on YouTube detailing how great it is to work with her:

"It's not my problem that she was fucking Novel and then she fucking Saadiq. You go in the studio and girls like Joss are just trying to get as much attention as they can from producers. The girls in studios and producers are known to have relationships. Beau rang me every five minutes saying she was the most wonderful girl in the world, I said, 'Don't fall for that shit'."

The video seems to have vanished, apparently after Joss Stone's camp asked for it to go. They're afraid this sort of thing might make Joss look even lamer than she'd already managed to make herself seem. The Mirror have rustled up an "insider" to push the the point:

A musicbiz insider said: "This is the last thing Joss needs. There are concerns that the people she's hanging around with might be leading her astray.

"But to hear such a well-respected producer slagging her off in such a public manner will devastate her. She will be humiliated by her private life being exposed in such a tawdry way."

Dallas, you'll note, isn't thanked on the current iteration of the Joss Stone thank you page.

Mel C: It's not just me

Mel C has snorted at Simon Fuller's attempts to re-corral the Spice Girls by pretending it's just a Sporty short of a full reunion. She suggests its only Fuller who is bothered:

"There is no reunion. I'm painted as the villain who doesn't want us to reunite. But I'm not the only one," Melanie told Weekend magazine. "We have all been much criticised so why face it all again? Life has moved on for all of us and we are looking to the future."

When she says "on", of course, she's not necessarily suggesting forward in all cases.

Red Hot top band ever?

If asked to name the most popular band in Britain, you might take a while before suggesting the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But, apparently, it's them, Snow Patrol, and then the Beatles.

This is down to something called Popscores. The Sun explains:

A POP league table rating Britain’s attitude to acts is becoming an influential tool in the music biz.

The Popscores system checks the popularity and familiarity of artists with 5,500 people every month.

Top record labels, broadcasters and advertisers are now using the service — created by Entertainment Media Research — to help reach their target audiences.

Oh, good - a service which detects what's already popular and then allows the labels and music channels to ladle up more of the same. That's what we need right now.

What the Sun doesn't tell you is that Popscores is a self-selected panel; it's not clear that it bothers to weight the results to reflect the UK population or not. Net, blogs and rock & roll has looked a little more closely at the scheme:

Unlike Last.fm, MyStrands or Flickr, PopScores aren't compiled by digital tracking but by the old-school method of surveying a sample of 4,500 people, aged between 13 and 59, and presumably balanced in terms of UK region, ethnicity, income and so on. There are three key measures at present:

* song recognition;
* artist's name awareness (have you heard of Gnarls Barkley? then they have name awareness for you);
* informed awareness (did you know Gnarls Barkley was a US duo, rather than a bloke from Chipping Norton or a band from the Adelaide? then we're talking informed awareness).
* And I read somewhere, but can't find it now, that a fourth measure — intent to buy — will be added shortly.

Name awareness figures for an artist are always higher than informed awareness, but it's suggested (according to Music Week) that the narrower the gap between the two, the greater the sales potential. I don't know the basis of that suggestion, but if it's true then presumably the chart above would encourage the industry to seek to improve James Morrison's 'informed awareness' rating to exploit untapped potential. (I've heard of him, and what I've heard, including Pete Paphides memorable description of him in The Times article as "Chris Martin in a James Blunt wig", suggests that getting better informed isn't going to persuade me to part with cash — but I'm not as representative as 4,500 people.)

Which says it all, really - this is just a focus group using the internet to make it seem a bit more relevant than it actually is. If the music industry really wants to know what sells, it already has a copper-bottomed research method, called the Top 40, which provides a nation-sized sample. If they want to predict what will sell, a survey which claims the Peppers, Patrol and Beatles are the three key sounds isn't going to help.

Kylie Brown? It does have a ring to it

We're sure the leaking yesterday of details of Gordon Brown's 'secret' supper with Kylie Minogue was just a strange coincidence and not, in any way, intended to try and take the shine of Tony Blair's embracing of his light entertainment destiny by appearing in a Catherine Tate sketch for Comic Relief. (Tony, we discovered, is "not bovvered", which would at least explain the pisspoor performance of his government since the last election.)

The Sun tries to imagine just what Gordon and Kylie might have had to say to each other:

KYLIE: We’ve hardly spoken all evening.

GORD: (Spinning around) I know the face. I just can’t get the name out of my head.

KYLIE: Kylie. We have lots in common.

GORD: Yes, er... the gold hot pants.

KYLIE: No, we’re both well shot of Neighbours. Anyway, I’ve paid, so must be off.

GORD: Indeed. Waiter, where’s that VAT?

We apologise for the damage reproducing that might have done to your poor, straining sides. We're still puzzling over the punchline - we're guessing that they forgot the word "receipt", implying that Gordon will be claiming VAT back on an expense he didn't occur; but maybe the joke was meant to be that he was going to wallow in a giant vat of butter. Actually, none of it makes sense. Even down to why any editor would have run this instead of, say, a larger picture of Kylie.

Who isn't wondering what the next Metallica album will sound like?

Of course you are. And here's Kirk Hammett to explain to us:

"There is a really unusual theme that's working its way into the music," he replied. "I'm not really sure how to react to it. Maybe it's someone else trying to tell us that we should react to it, but a lot of the music has an eastern harmonic flair to it, a harmonic minor flair to it, and when I say harmonic minor, that could be construed as like eastern sounding or Middle Eastern sounding or maybe Arabic? I don't know if it's just the zeitgeist, a sign of the times, or maybe because like, you know, Middle Eastern culture is so prevalent, or maybe the negative things about Middle Eastern culture. Maybe artists are conscious, just want to shine light on the positive aspects of Middle Eastern culture, i.e. the music. But there's passages that sound, that use harmonic minor and dominant, and those sounds are distinctly Arabic sounding or Middle Eastern sounding, and you hear them in all the songs.

We can imagine a Metallica album making people think of the Middle East - a long, miserable, drawn-out series of unspeakable horrors that leaves everybody praying for a little bit of peace.

Thank God (and everyone else in between)

Joss Stone's bid to turn herself into an American soul diva continues apace. Having noticed that their albums generally contain long, rambling thank you lists - always namechecking god - Joss has turned in a thanks list so long, rambling and embarrassing she couldn't fit it on the album liner and has had to post it online instead:

making this album has been a true growing experience for me in so many ways. in the last 4, almost 5 years, i had no choice but to grow maybe 20 years in that time. so it’s been hard work, tiring and emotionally....interesting. for some reason, i've always known that everything’s gonna be ok, no matter what happens i'm always gonna be...ok. that's my faith that keeps me there, so i do with all my heart and love, my whole everything, i thank god, whether it be a he or she i won't know til i get there but whatever it is, no matter what, i thank god so much for putting me through everything i have had to endure. i also thank him for giving me the common sense to listen and learn.

it’s been a pretty intensive course but i know all that is only is because it was meant. also i thank him for keeping me company and hearing me when i speak. what will be will be. many people are uncomfortable with this sentence. some don't like to think they’re not in control of their own fate. i believe in karma. everything comes back around, but it isn't up to any of us to decide when or what shall happen. that’s just fate. we can only be positive and know that there's always a smile lurking. u just have to catch it. Mostly, i thank him / her for giving us all the gift of being able to hear and see art. it's a beautiful thing. so thank u love!

Did she just call God "love"?

But she's just getting going... she then rolls onto thank everyone she's ever met. (Everyone else, as she doe