Totally Deluded?

MTV UK might be a load of Yank-centric rubbish most of the time (does anyone outside the US know who Master P is? So why do we need to see his "Cribs" about ten times every week?) but it really does excel when it comes to commissioning their own reality shows. After the excellent car-crash series that was Totally Scott-Lee comes the follow up, Totally Boyband.

The concept is simple. To follow around a newly-created boyband supergroup made up of five singers who combined have "apparently" sold 80 million records worldwide. But you wouldn't be able to laugh at the show if it were former pop stars who actually had talent, Gary Barlow, Tony Mortimer etc. So instead we get a group made up mostly of people who never actually sang on their records. Now I'm no expert on these particular groups but I don't ever remember hearing Jimmy Constable singing on a 911 record, the same with Danny Wood for NKOTB and Lee from Steps (apart from the rap on 5,6,7,8 of course).

Now Bradley from S Club 7 did sing on quite a few singles but he will always be etched on my memory for his astonishing tone-deaf rendition of Don't Stop Movin at the Queen's Jubilee concert which made Geri Halliwell sound like a choir of angels. It was that bad.

So you do have to feel sorry for the only genuinely talented member of the group, Dane Bowers, who was the frontman of Another Level and is the only one to have actually had a solo, however brief, career. At the beginning of the decade he had worked with Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah. Now he's working with a former-drug addict midget, a man approaching 40 whose last hit was probably when Bowers was at primary school and Lee from Steps. It could have been worse I suppose. It could have been H.

Anyway, in last night's first show, it was made clear that the majority of them were pretty embarrassed about their pop past which is a shame as Steps, S Club 7 and Another Level have all had their moments of half-decentness. But now it's credibility they're after and so we now get lots of pretentious talk like "we need to feel the vibe," "I can't wait to jam in the studio" and how they want to write their first single.

Well you can hear a minute of their finished single on their official website http://www.upperstreet4u.com/news/content.asp?NewsID=3". Needless to say, it's Dane Bowers on lead vocals, and even though it's not particularly bad, it still sounds like a Blue b-side from 2001. They're 9/2 at the bookies to get to #1. I'd go evens they won't even reach the top ten.