Underachiever

Anyone who has ever watched American Idol, or indeed it’s UK equivalent the X Factor, will know the concept all too well. It’s a phenomenally successful and lucrative machine, churning out a string of albums comprising mostly naff tunes, which sell by the absolute bucket load across the globe.

No matter what you think of the manufactured pop industry, credit must be given where it’s due to the likes of Cowell and Fuller for knowing exactly what the majority market likes. And in 2005, they struck gold in a fashion that eclipsed all their efforts before and since, and discovered Carrie Underwood, the Oklahoma girl who went on to take the US by storm.

Now, three years on, the UK gets it’s first taste of Carrie Underwood, with the release of her first two albums on the same day. Sadly for Carrie, and indeed Simon, it seems highly unlikely that her incredible US sales record will go even close to being matched this side of the Atlantic, for one main and essential reason - she’s utter pants.

Both albums are fundamentally lacking in tunes of any interest or passion, and are simply country pop cheese for the masses. Whilst we Brits can be accused of allowing some rubbish to slip through the net into the charts, we can certainly consider ourselves to be somewhat more discerning than our American friends, and Carrie Underwood is too sickly sweet to be taken seriously here.

She may have more Billboard number ones and Grammy awards than Girls Aloud have had hot dinners, but our manufactured pop usually comes with a slice of style and a modicum of substance, not to mention a degree of catchiness and edge. The likes of All American Girl and Crazy Dreams are vomit inducing, and any song called Don’t Forget To Remember Me should simply never have been written. Messrs Cowell and Fuller didn’t bring Carrie Underwood to the UK for three years after her American Idol success with good reason. If only they never had.