Gordon in the morning: Singing from the same sheet

Girls Aloud can't remember their own songs, apparently:

GIRLS ALOUD were never going to be candidates for Mensa – and they proved that again at yesterday’s Jingle Bell Ball.

CHERYL, KIMBERLEY, NICOLA, SARAH and NADINE needed lyric sheets to remember their tunes and what parts they each sing.

If you're going to start accusing people of being a bit thick, you might want to not be confusing membership of Mensa - which is obsessed IQ - with being able to remember things, a different mental discipline altogether.

More curiously, this introduction suggests that the group were reading the lyrics while they were playing the Jingle Bell Ball. But read the quotes the story is built upon:

Cheryl, who also sang solo at the ball with WILL.I.AM on Saturday, admitted: “In rehearsals I was singing Kimberley’s lines and she was like, ‘Cheryl, you don’t sing that’ and I was like, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

Kimberley added: “We needed lyric sheets for every single song — it was so funny.”

That makes it sound like they needed lyric sheets in rehearsal. Which, while surprising, is surely the sort of problem that groups hold rehearsals to deal with?

Jackson: Luckily saved for posterity

Now, here's a funny thing, as Karl T points out:

Fear not, MJ fans! Despite the singer's death, AEG aren't going to deprive you of new product!

Now, obviously, there are reasons to have cameras at a dress rehersal (performer feedback, making of.. documentary, blocking of shots for the actual performance etc etc), but to have captured Jackson's final performance in "multi-camera high-definition video and multi-track surround-sound audio" is fortuitous indeed.

If only the guys involved in formulating digital strategy for the major labels had had that kind of foresight.

It's popularly believed that AEG didn't have an insurance policy for the fifty nights... it turns out that maybe they did after all.