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So, quite where the people who write Enrique's hits get the idea that every melody needs to be short and neat and end with a perfect rhyme for the end of the line before is anyone's guess. Regular ChartBlog readers will know that the one thing we don't care about here is whether an artist writes their own songs or not. But the assumption is that the songs they get aren't airbrushed and polished to such a high sheen you can't see the song for the work done on it.

So, before I get further into which shiny song-nodules are scar tissue, let's look at the face itself, shall we? Or to put it more clearly, this is what is good about 'Somebody's Me' by Enrique Iglesias.

1: Nice acoustic guitar twiddle. Sounds a tad Rolling Stones-y.
2: That's a good chorus, right there. It was a good chorus in 'Sometimes' by Britney Spears and it's a good chorus now.

But the thing is, the words are beyond Oasis in their nursery rhyme simplicity, and there's something creepy about a fully-grown man dribbling on in these perfectly-rhymed little nuggets about the girl he lost. Sure, the 'somebody needs you, and you'll never guess who' conceit is kind of neat, but it doesn't translate into actual emotion. No-one would actually say anything like that, not even Mr and Mrs Hallmark, getting married on Mrs Hallmark's birthday. Not even then.

So you're always aware that you're listening to a song about an emotion, rather than letting the song lift you and take you to that place, like it should. And the video doesn't help, seeing as it's all about Enrique and a girl looking probably too sexy and doing things which are DEFINITELY too sexy for a promo video.

I mean, the song's about missing someone and being sad about it. Did no-one think to tell the director? Or was the possibility of a tabloid hoo-hah about the video's sexual content too tempting to resist?

So, even though Enrique is squeaking away like the heartbroken sap the song demands that he be, it's very clear he is reading from a script, and not a very good one. And while it may seem unduly harsh to damn a really-not-all-that-bad song with such a poor rating as the one below, there's no alternative.

I mean how else are these people going to learn to leave the human imperfections in, if we don't make a fuss? Our ears and brains deserve better!

Released: December 10th

(Fraser McAlpine)