Gordon in the morning: Stone me

Gordon Smart - and, to be fair, The Times both claim that Joss Stone has been asked to record the theme song for Barack Obama's campaign - although, curiously, the story doesn't appear in any American media.

The Times, at least, manages to keep fairly sober in its report, but Gordon gets a bit over-excited:

Democrat candidate Mr Obama approached her personally because he was impressed by her appeal to both black and white voters in America.

Really? He approached her personally, did he?

Joss is a household name in the US, where she spends up to nine months a year.

A household name? Really, Gordon? Do we need to go through the difference between "a household name" and "slightly well known" again?

It might sound ludicrous, but as Gordon points out, Stone has done endorsements before:

Earlier this year Cadbury chose her to front new adverts for Flake chocolate bars.

And what a great job she did with those toe-curling adverts, huh.

What really makes Stone an unlikely choice is the way that Obama gets constantly beaten-up on the un-American/ un-Patriotic excuse. If he orders a salad with French dressing, the right-wing blogs report it as a slight to Lady Liberty. Is he really going to lead out his campaign under a track which draws the "he can't even find an American to sing a song for him" jibes?

Meanwhile, Smart is still trying to construct a Lily Allen - Katy Perry battle from the thinnest of material:

But Lily has now postponed new album Stuck On The Naughty Step until next year in what is shaping up to be the best chart battle straddling the pond for years.

Although if Allen has rescheduled her album release, then it's not much of a battle, is it? I never read Hotspur much when I was a kid, but the few times I did, I remember the story where the German soldiers turned up for the battle six months after the British troops had gone home were always heartwarming from a humanitarian point of view, but somewhat lacking as a battle narrative.

Anyway, today's attempt to try and stoke a fire is the surprise that:

I can tell you Katy’s boyfriend TRAVIS McCOY, from emo band GYM CLASS HEROES, had a thing for Lily before he met the US pop sensation.

Oh yes?

When asked last year if he had any celeb crushes, he confessed: “Lily Allen. I met her before very briefly. She’s cute. Yeah. . . I’d like to see her again.”

The key words here, of course, is "last year" - before he was dating Katy, in other words. Not that stops Gordon extrapolating:

Oh dear.

Oh dear?

That’s the kind of historical comment that is perfect ammunition for a girlfriend.

That rather presupposes that she would be looking for ammunition.

I feel for Travis the next time he doesn’t pick up a wet towel after having a shower.

The old “I bet you wouldn’t do that if you were with Lily” trump card will be reeled out again and again.

Yes. Assuming, of course, Perry spends her days Googling to find throwaway comments to goad her boyfriend with. I can't escape the feeling that this might tell us nothing about life in the Perry-McCoy household, and more about someone else's day-to-day life.

I bet you wouldn't leave wet towels all over the floor if you were with Liam...

Gym Class Heroes: henceforward performing in pants and vests

The Gym Class Heroes actually end up with more clothes than they start with by the end of their live sets, what with the girls and boys throwing their nethergarments at them. So they're going to scoop them up and donate them to charity. They're probably letting us know so that, in future, fans will thrown more warm coats, fewer unwashed gussted-items.

Where everybody knows you're lame

Pete Wentz has trouble with New York clubs, it seems:

"When I go to New York I always have to pick between crappy clubs and then call the promoter ahead of time and then still get hassled at the door and get stuffed into some cramped stupid VIP section and hear bad techno."

Perhaps the solution would be to not imagine that you're in anyway special, queue up with everyone else and go into the non-VIP section, Pete. And choose clubs where they'll play music you like?

Oh. Or you could open your own bar. He's teamed up with Gym Class Heroes and The Academy Is... to open a nightspot, Angels and Kings. We imagine that there will still be an over-grumpy door staff, a small roped-off VIP segment and godawful music on the PA, but don't imagine the only difference between this hole and other New York holes is that Pete Wentz can get in easily. Oh, no, it's going to be themed:

"We have a couple of Fall Out-based ideas for drinks. There's this song called Where Is Your Boy Tonight, so I was thinking we could have a Where Is Your Beer special night."

Erm... yeah. And you could have Two For One on all Shorts Fast And Loud. And My Heart Is The Worst Kind Of Bloody Mary and...

Or, since the legal drinking age in New York is 21, it might be a good idea to not aim your drinks menu at the younger end of the teen market.

New friend request

You'll be familiar by now with Gym Class Heroes, of course. Less familiar, though, may be sometime keyboardist Tyler Pursel's side project, Ladybirds. They describe themselves as like the Postal Service on diet pills, but really it's more like the Postal Service on happy pills. Surprisingly jaunty.

New legal representation request

Up until now, the Gym Class Heroes rise to the creamy top of music in 2007 has had little more than an endorsement from Colin Murray to hold them down. Now, though, they've entered career stage two, where all their misdemeanours become public property.

So it is that we all know Matt McGinley has been arrested in Mexico. Nobody seems to know why, but he has got a local lawyer going in to bat for him, which we suppose it something.