Chosen Words: G is for GetReadyForThis!

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

Attempts to bring underground electronic music to the mainstream usually ends in disaster.

It is generally better for good musical styles to remain obscure. For example, jazz and funk are popular genres but that doesn't mean that's an excuse for Omar.

When 2 Unlimited brought techno to the charts with Get Ready For This, it nearly killed all music forever. In a later single, their choppy rave chords were accompanied by an annoying new playground phrase "techno, techno, techno, techno", just in case you were unsure which musical style they were debasing.

When proponants of a genre boast of the commercial dominance of their music, that usually means it is awfully obscure. So no, jungle is not massive.

All underground movements become commercial, but it is usually a softer version of the original. Even now, it's difficult to discern Justin Bieber's terrorcore beginnings, while Coldplay's progression from glitch through happy house to mortgage rock is not well documented.

If you created a new underground electronic genre today, you are likely to have a number one hit within five years.

(Actually, this is not true, because you are crap.)

Top five drum 'n' bass crossovers:

- Olive's You're Not Alone
- Pendulum's Watercolour
- Roni Size & Reprazent's Brown Paper Bag
- Shy FX & T Power's Shake Ur Body
- Alexandra Burke's Bad Boys, Dead Horse Rape Nosebleed Mix (can someone please create this? It would definitely be a hit.)

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant

This year, the pop chart will deposit its territorial wastage on another milestone: the thousandth UK number one album.

But before we get all rose-tinted about the South Pacific spending sixteen months at number one, Simpsons-ified versions of Beatles album covers and Orbital showing everyone how a dance music album should be done, let me first spray a phialful of caution in your face.

The album is officially dead.

Kaput. Extinct. Its tongue is lolling. It has crosses for eyes. The album is exactly six feet lower than the soles of your shoes. It is dead.

Simon Cowell's bungalow

This is nothing to do with the much-fondled arguments about unbundled mp3s and the like. Everyone knows great albums are still being made and it will be a cold day in Simon Cowell's bungalow before the general public gives up on the idea of the pop album.

No, this is because the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

They have made me want to squeeze out my eyeballs with my buttocks before repeatedly eating and then regurgitating them until I puke out every last one of my internal organs only to use the resulting colon-mush to smother my ears in damp, decaying human insides because, and I repeat, the last few number one albums have been beyond horrible.

Let's look at the evidence. In October, we had yet another number one album from a woman who has the most appropriate surname since James Blunt: Alexandra Burke. This was quickly followed by an emaciated megamouth in red PVC, Cheryl Cole. She may have called Lily Allen a "chick with a dick", but that doesn't make her 3 Words album any less noisome.

If only she had some tunes, it would smell better.

Poor death metaphors

Then in November came the idiocy that was JLS by JLS, in which a doctor tells them they are about to die because of an embarrassing abundance of poor death metaphors in Beat Again ("I need love CPR," they waffle, although performing chest-pumps on a healthy adult can lead to broken ribs and internal damage… let's hope, anyway).

When JLS lost the top spot after one week, there was even more X Factor nonsense with consecutive number one albums from the franchise's out-and-out stars, Leona "Does Anyone Remember Me" Lewis and Susan "Same Nickname As Leona" Boyle. Between them, there's more screech than a box set of Saved By The Bell.

And so, as 2009 reached its disgusting climax to make way for the post-coital cigarette of 2010, who saved us from such X Factor nonsense? Who, dear reader, who?

Sinatra-defiling cheese-monger

Only award-hoovering, Timberlake-mimicking, Sinatra-defiling, Santa-impersonating, cheese-mongering muzak-churning ice hockey bore Michael Bublé. There is nothing crazy about his Crazy Love album. He provokes fan comments such as "thats ridiculace, michael bublé is amaing" (sic). In this Darwinian world, he should not exist: he is rubella / Betamax / Nightmares On Wax's cutting edge.

And yes, Bublé appeared on X Factor.

The next number one album was Sunny Side Up by Paolo Nutini, a six-month-old album of beigeness that makes Travis' The Man Who look like death metal. And if you think his music exists solely to soundtrack montages in Scrubs and One Tree Hill, you're right, it does.

The current number one is by Florence And The Machine and, sweet sweet reader, I don't need to tell you that she's seventeen levels of wrong. The Source are probably rolling in their grave at her treatment of You Got The Love. It least, though, it's a proper album by someone slightly more contemporary than Cliff Richard.

We'll probably get our thousandth UK number one album in May, and it will warrant some column inches from geeky Guardian journalists.

I can guarantee you, though, it won't be as influential as the 100th number one (John Lennon's Imagine) nor as stylish as the first (Sinatra's Songs For Swingin' Lovers). It will simply be a little poot of air in a vast chasm of nothingness because, on the basis of quality number ones, the album is well and truly deceased.