Who lost the Superbowl?

It wasn't Denver.

Even before the Super Bowl show, Bruno Mars was a highly successful young performer – he wouldn’t have been invited otherwise. Though the typical football fan might not have been aware of Mars before the half time show, he’s had a pretty good thing going for a few years now. But, however big he was before, the Super Bowl is bound to make him bigger – especially given the great performance he gave.

We all lost the Superbowl.

On the other hand...

It's possible that ContactMusic might not have been on top of its game when it wrote this.

Let's all think about Rod Stewart having sex

It's too late now. The thought is there.

Apparently, Penny Lancaster's been talking about how Rod does it:

The 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy' rocker may be 68, but he's still got the right moves in bed to please his wife, Penny Lancaster, 42.

Yeah, ContactMusic quoting National Enquirer. Your cock doesn't fall over when you reach 57. Who knew?

Penny reportedly told a friend: ''Rod's voracious! I knew he was a ladies man, but he usually tires me out!''

Nobody has ever said anything like that to a friend ever. That's not how people talk about fucking when they're with their mates. And nobody, outside of letters to porn magazines which were made up anyway, talks like that, ever, at any time.

The source said: ''Rod wrote a song about Penny called 'She Makes Me Happy' and two or three times a month he'll have the nanny watch the boys so he can whisk her off for a romantic night out. Sometimes they'll just take a walk on the beach, but other times he'll treat her to a lovely dinner followed by a night of passion in a hotel.''

Once every ten-to-fifteen days isn't really voracious, is it? Also, at their age, having a slap-up dinner followed by slap-and-tickle is just going to end up with a fumbling for the Pepcid.

The source added reformed ladies' man Rod - who has eight kids with five women - can't believe his luck and would never even think of cheating on his beautiful wife.

Hang about, though; this is meant to be Penny's mate, isn't it? Did Penny really say "Rod would never dream of cheating on his beautiful wife i.e. me?"

Miley Cyrus ruins anniversary; apparently shows how lovely she is

This piece from ContactMusic reeks of a press team rushing a story out to avoid the risk of someone else getting there first:

Miley Cyrus paid for a couple's meal after she disturbed them in a restaurant.
The 'Wrecking Ball' singer was reportedly noisy and caused a scene when she and a friend went into an upmarket eatery in New York, but after a couple complained, she immediately went over to apologise.

A witness explained to the National Enquirer: ''She went over and apologised and told the folks, 'I'm sorry, I've just had too much caffeine today.' Then she asked the couple about themselves.''

The pair were celebrating their second wedding anniversary, so generous Miley left $100 to cover their bill and posed for pictures with them.

Miley may be famous for her risqué outfits and twerking dance moves, but many people are surprised to find she is actually very down-to-earth and polite.

Yeah, because what could be more down-to-earth and polite than ruining someone's wedding anniversary, throwing money at the problem to make it go away and then leaking the story to the papers to show how great you are?

Daft Punk: Hold the front page

Contact Music has breaking news:

Robbie Williams: Now Menswear wade in

After Robbie Williams' attack on second-string indie bands has lead to a major skirmish.

Contactmusic is reporting from the frontline:

Menswear? Star? That's a bit of a stretch, surely?

It's the drummer, Matt Everitt, who has at least had a post-Menswe@r career in radio - he's the only one of the band who has his own Wikipedia page. On this basis, the Times have handed him an op-ed slot to start the fightback:

"I find it amusing that Robbie Williams... can let one comment from Brett Anderson... get his back up... It's quite endearing, but also slightly worrying...

"Menswear weren't manufactured, but I can see why people went on about the whole style over substance thing with us... We actually used to go on stage to Back For Good by Take That, a staggeringly great pop single. In the mid-nineties there wasn't really any rivalry between pop groups and the guitar bands...

"Traditionally your big pop acts allow record labels to invest in guitar bands, because they take longer to develop. Some rock bands take a few albums before they start making money and those tend to be the bands, like U2 and Radiohead, that in the longterm become important and fund everything. It's always been like that."

And that's an important point. It's worth remembering that even when Take That came off the production line, it took them four goes before they managed a hit; some of the bands slated by Williams didn't get given the same space to develop a following before the label pulled the plug.

ContactMusic overstate the Billboard rule change

ContactMusic is a little over-excited:

For the first time in its 55-year-history , the Billboard Hot 100 will not base its chart on record sales alone, now taking on-board YouTube plays to decide who tops the weekly rundown. The move comes just in time for Baauer's song Harlem Shake, which is expected to make is debut at No.1 this weekend after becoming the latest viral video phenomenon.

For the first time in its 55 year history, eh?

I suppose if you ignore the inclusion of digital streaming in 2007.

And the inclusion of digital downloads alongside record sales in 2005.

And the fact that radio airplay has always been included in the Hot 100 number crunching.

And that just last month they added streaming from non-on-demand services like Spotify and MySpace.

Yeah, then it's a really historic change.

Rihanna nearly burns alive (except, of course, she doesn't)

London's burning, London's burning, fetch the engines, fetch the engines:

Rihanna has been evacuated from a London hotel fire.

The 'We Found Love' singer and 300 guests were rescued from the Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall Place in the early hours of the morning (27.06.12) after a blaze broke out in a lift shaft.

"Rescued", you say, ContactMusic?

As so often happens, this turns out to be 'minor incident in a place where celeb was staying; fire alarm goes off; people stand around in the street for a bit' rather than a rescue:

London Fire Brigade have confirmed that no one was injured, and Clare Durnford, the hotel's public relations manager insisted the incident was not serious, and evacuation was just a safety precaution.

She said: ''At approximately 6.30am, one of the service elevator motors at Corinthia Hotel London burnt out. There was a slight discharge of smoke and because of our robust fire management policy, the alarms were activated and a full evacuation of the building was carried out.

''As a matter of procedure, the fire brigade were called to carry out full safety checks throughout the building. All guests were safely accounted for and were allowed back into the hotel soon after 7am.''

Not only was there no rescue, then; there was no fire, either.

Ms Allen changes trains

The ContactMusic headline screams:

Lily Allen Caught Up In Rail Drama

The story, though, turns out to be 'woman sits on train delayed by incident many, many miles away'.

Still, Channel 4 have got three-part documentaries out of less.

Beth Ditto: Spokesperson for a generation, when she gets her head out the bucket

I've tried reading this from ContactMusic a dozen times, and still can't understand how anyone thinks it is a sequitur:

The Gossip frontwoman admitted while she has grown up in many ways over the past few years, she hasn't become any more respectable.

She said: "I got drunk and simultaneously puked and pissed my own pants recently.

"If anything I have more opinions now because I'm not a kid anymore and I know what I'm talking about. I just think about things a lot more now."

No matter how many your opinions are, nor what quality they might be, if you're sat in a pool of vomit and urine, you might find it difficult to get people to take you seriously, Beth.

Will Smith suddenly becomes a protective parent

Will Smith is stepping in to make sure Willow Smith doesn't find out how terrible her song is:

Willow Smith tells news show Access Hollywood, "Whenever I'm on (video-sharing website) YouTube trying to look at my song to show my friends, he's like covering the comments and I'm like, 'Dad, what's wrong?' And he's like, 'Nothing, it's just there's people out there who really don't like it.'"

I'm not sure going 'there's a tonne of shit reviews here, don't look at them' is quite protecting your daughter - they HATE you so bad you can't even see how bad; and it might have been better to have stepped in when the idea of releasing Flip My Hair was first suggested.

By the way, nice to see that ContactMusic feels its readers might need the concept of 'YouTube' explained to them.

ContactMusic know what they're doing here

In a story about N-Dubz launching a brand of cheap clothes with their logo on:

The male members of the band - Fazer and Dappy - will release t-shirts, trousers and accessories through their line, Nanawear, while Tulisa will work on a womenswear label called TFB.

The male members of the band? Yes, that would be about right.

Cruel headlines: Peter Andre

ContactMusic with a headline that's all punchline:

Peter Andre Planning Picture Book

The rest writes itself.

ContactMusic nods and types what it's told

Admittedly, they're right about Biffy Clyro having a stupid name, but:

The Scottish band, who are named after a Welsh astronaut who attempted to become one of the first men on the moon, believe their "stupid" moniker has made them try harder to do well.

At no point, Contact Music, when you were entering that into the content management system, did you think how unlikely that might sound?

Nolans: They were big in Japan, you know

The coming back of bands you thought broken before belief continues: now here comes The Nolans. Again.

ContactMusic sees this as important:

British pop group THE NOLANS have reunited for the first time in more than 25 years - with plans for a comeback tour later this year (09).

The first time in 25 years? But they were on Brookside, weren't they?

It turns out that when ContactMusic says "25 years", it actually means, erm, four:

The singing sisters began their career in 1974 as a five-piece - Anne, Denise, Maureen, Linda and Bernie, with younger sibling Coleen joining in 1980.
Denise was first to quit the band, leaving in 1978, followed by Linda in 1983. Coleen and Bernie left in the 1990s, while Maureen and Anne, together with Anne's daughter Amy and unrelated singer Julia Duckworth, carried on the group until they disbanded in 2005.

ContactMusic tries to suggest that the fact they've barely had a chance to drop their stage outfits round the dry cleaners isn't that important:

But now four of the original group are back - Coleen, 44, Bernie, 48, Linda, 50, and Maureen, 55 - to play a string of U.K. dates to mark the 30th anniversary [of I'm In The Mood For Dancing].

But you just said that Coleen wasn't an original member.

But they were big in Japan.

And let's never forget that they did this:



Yes, that's the Nolans doing Panic on Tonight With Jonathan Ross.

Hannah Montana scandala

ContactMusic announces the end of innocence; indeed, what might be mankind's second fall:

Teen sensation MILEY CYRUS has shattered her clean-cut image by...

Any guesses, anyone? Not you, Mike Skinner.

... by having her nose pierced.

A nose piercing? Don't even the Girl Scouts do a badge in nose piercing these days? Is that really so shocking for a sixteen year-old girl?

I mean, unless she paid for it in kind, or something.

And she didn't. Because Billy Ray took her to the piercers:

He tells talk show host Larry King, "Her daddy took her (to the piercing studio). She said, 'Daddy, would you take me to get my nose pierced?' I said, 'Did you ask your momma?' And she said, 'Yes. Mama said I could do it if you would take me.' I thought kind of it was one of those bizarre moments. But honestly, my life and what we're going through and the things that we've been through, it's like being in The Twilight Zone. So I just kind of roll with the punches."

Starting from the way Cyrus calls himself "her daddy", this whole explanation of what is "teenage girl does teenage girl thing" sound curiously as if Cyrus was a captured war criminal trying to explain a carboot full of skulls.

Contact Music welcomes Chinese Democracy

The good people at Contact Music know who the release of the Guns N Roses album is all about...



It's, erm, all about Sara Cox.

It could, just as easily, have been Melissa and Daughter

Yusuf Islam has accepted a libel payout from the World Entertainment News Network after the service published a story that extrapolated wildly from his name and claimed he wouldn't speak to women who didn't wear the veil. Oh, and even if women did wear a veil, he'd still only speak to them through third parties.

Which doesn't even make sense - why would it be okay for the "third party" to speak to women if Islam couldn't? Or did WENN think that he used a different third party each time? "You've spoken to women now, so effectively, you're as bad as them."

Islam is giving the damages to his charity. ContactMusic, which also ran the story, is going to chip in, too.

That's going to hurt

ContactMusic pick up on Jay-Z's meeting with Gordon Smart - or, probably, Smart brought it to their attention - but, oh, at a cost:

Showbiz reporter Gordon Smart agreed with Noel Gallagher about Jay-Z not being "right" as a Glastonbury headliner in the paper.

Showbiz reporter? Are the not aware that Gordon Smart isn't some tuppenny ha'penny reporter, but an editor and the Prime Minister of Showbiz, actually. Where's the respect?

ContactMusic speculates after Roberts ends engagement

Sure, sure, we'll bet there's a good few slashfics written along these lines, but in reporting the ending of Nicola Roberts' engagement, ContactMusic seems to have assumed a little too much:

GIRLS ALOUD star NICOLA ROBERTS is seeking comfort in the arms of her bandmates after splitting from fiance CARL DAVIES.

Do they really mean "in the arms of", popular journalistic euphemism for 'shagging', or did they mean the slightly-less lesbian-orgy-esque "from"?

Unless they really are making her feel better with intimate touching, in which case we apologise wholeheartedly to ContactMusic.

Contact Music contradicts itself in seconds

We know there's a load of stuff posted to web of variable quality every second of the day, but are the team at Contact Music even reading their stuff in their head as they write it?

Take, for example, their piece on Martha Wainwright's marriage. Here's what Martha said:

"Female needs are no different from male ones. They want to get laid every night... only not by a different person."

Contact starts out by filtering this into the following:

Canadian singer MARTHA WAINWRIGHT only got married so she could enjoy regular sex.

Now, let's set aside the surprise we might feel at the rather loose reinterpretation of her words, as in the very next sentence, the website contradicts itself:

The 32-year-old wed bass player Brad Alberta last year (07), and admits one of the key reasons she went through with the nuptials was so she no longer needed to worry about her love life.

So, in the space of half a sentence, she's gone from only marrying for the sex, to the sex being one of the reasons she got married.

Actually, let's not set aside the reinterpretation of her words - why would it be an "admission" that one of the reasons you get married is to be always close to another person? Isn't that like saying "she admitted she went swimming to keep fit"?