In which she propagates some leaks and spreads some news

Keeping up a good and steady one-month interval between posts here, it seems. But I've finally got some free time, so let's talk about leaks!

They never get old, at least not to me. Why not? Sonic packratism, maybe. Impatience. The slight-to-moderate transgressiveness that means I can hear them at all. Not all that ethical, perhaps, but I'm not the one originally leaking them. It's a weak justification but it works for me.

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At any rate, the biggest buzz in the blogosphere -- god, I hate typing that; it seems like the next thing I'll be doing is scraping Google Trends for the latest celebrity fuck news -- is for this leaked version of "Telephone" purportedly by Britney Spears. Well, actually, it isn't so purported anymore. We'd known for a long time that Gaga originally wrote it or Britney, and now, according to Darkchild on Ustream (skip to 3:15), we know it's probably real, albeit an early demo that hadn't been mixed yet.

So now that we've settled that question, how is it?

Well, it's a demo; of course it's going to suck when compared to the real thing. So it's really hard to call this anything but a testament to the power of mixing. The vocals are either AutoTuned to oblivion or barely-there wisps; her pronunciation is off ("sorry, I cannot hear you" in particular leaves a lot to be desired in the unslurred-words department); there's a large Beyonce-shaped hole that I know is just hindsight but nevertheless can't unhear. It's all off. If this was a sculpture it'd be at the "whacked a few blocks of clay off the block until it's kind of octagonal" stage.

But I will say this: the alto harmonies kind of kick ass. I almost want them, hearing this, to be higher in Gaga's final mix.

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Gaga's been silent on her leak -- there's probably no way to attribute it to her little monsters -- but the same definitely can't be said of Kelly Clarkson, who got rather upset at the leak of "Cleopatra".

According to Kelly, this was written for another artist and isn't actually hers, but I'm pretty sure it's her on vocals (sure, the verses sound uncannily like Pink, but so does her latest single.) It's a much cleaner demo -- as in, it stands alone as a song -- and it's kind of wonderful.

Sure, it has its derivative elements -- the intro is "I'm a Slave 4 U" and everything else is a melange of Middle Eastern-ish stylings (including the vocalise in the end out of "Naughty Girl"), but at least this time it sort of has an excuse -- if you're using Cleopatra in your lyrics, I can't really fault it.

And sure, it fits more with the early 2000s pop crop than the current one. But that just adds nostalgia value (for me) to everything else great here: the guitars that do what Jason Derulo's "In My Head" should have done, the protector-pugilist lyrics that provide a welcome dose of strength. Oh, and the fact that I've listened to this roughly fifty times on repeat without it getting old.

If there's a downside to the leak, it's that the full song will probably never see the light of day -- in a perfect world this would be retooled into WIP publicity, but it's clearly far too late for that to happen. But if I'm wrong, I know who I'm going to be listening to.

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"Cleopatra" may be an anachronism, "Naked Eye" definitely isn't. In fact, it couldn't be less of one, being a Guettafied update of "My Life Would Suck Without You" and its ilk. I like it well enough -- it's light years better than the Teddered-out Kelly -- but it's also utterly, utterly predictable.

(Side note: Is it just me, or does the chorus sound kind of like "So You Say" by Siobhan Donaghy?)

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Oh yes, and I had some news to spread. I'm contributing reviews for The Singles Jukebox and have been for a few days now. It's hardly an explanation for lack of posting, mind you, but, well, it's news. News I find fit to print. So there.