I’ve never quite decided if this single’s any good, so I’ve stuck it at No.12.  Obviously.  I like the Scissor Sisters, in theory, but they don’t half churn out some rot.  At least half of the first album, for a start.  I’ve not braved the second.  This single’s enough, and I like it even if I do suspect it of feebleness; there’s a poignancy, a world-weariness, some camp fatigue.
 
For Junior, this is a pretty familiar tune and she greets it with enthusiasm and limbs akimbo.  It’s a pretty familiar tune for the rest of us too.  The Four Seasons’ ‘December ‘63’, in fact.
 

From the painfully naff to the excruciatingly hip, here’s a bunch of girls and their winningly hairy male friend, all hailing from Brazil and knocking out a brilliant postpunkdisco single.  Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) means ‘tired of being sexy’.  It IS a bind, I can assure you.
 
It’s a frantic record, careering around the electro spectrum, offering opportunities for laughing at the funny foreigner’s accent- ‘we call it a curmback’- and pinging little people across the floor.  Junior did her mad, fast tapdance, the one she uses for ‘shake my feet like that’ in ‘Dingly Dangly Scarecrow’, and generally rocked her body to the bleeps.
 
Ace title too.
 

Junior blessed this with post-ironic swaying.  It’s true that The Feeling flirt with schmaltz, cheese, the uncool and the naff, and Junior is a painfully sharp satirist, but she did allow it some more leeway as the song pressed on.  In fact, at the end of the Warmest Guitar Solo Ever she even gave a round of applause.  See, given time, they’ll win over the harshest cynic.
 
Still, don’t be fooled into buying the album.  This is the song that made me do it, being played in Fopp on the day of the album’s release, but it’s an overwhelming standout on a record chock full of polite Supertramp homages.  I should’ve known this.  I was fooled by that guitar solo, the heart-melting hooks of the verse, the cascading harmonies at the end, but I’d heard other lesser songs.  I’m just too forgiving.
 
To any girls reading this: yes, sorry, album of the year, you’re right.
 

This is Junior’s own personal favourite single of the year, hands down, no question, no argument, no bananas.  She’s a bit blasé about it now, a little chicken strut from the confines of the highchair and a bit of singalong on the chorus, nothing more.  Up ‘til now, it’s made her perk up every time she’s heard it.  She’d drop everything and dance when it appeared on MTV, she’d even stop crying in the car if we stuck it on.  God bless you, Lil’, but not your dad.
 
I’m sure many viewers here hate Ms Allen, yadda yadda yadda.  Well, it’s a great single, a perky album and a girl who’s kept us amused all year.  If I was a proper journalist, I’d have erected a shrine to her by now.  What a gob.
 

I always thought Muse were overblown, bloated, rock operatic, leather-coated, pompous prog queens.  How right I was.  They’re great fun, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.  Luckily, ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ is a taut, spacefunky beast of a record, with the band channelling their inner Prince.  Didn’t see THAT one coming.
 
A record incorporating The Funk and The Rawk is a ratings winner with Miss J, who gives it the full highchair-based repertoire.  She can’t see Matt Bellamy’s silly rat face ruining everything for everybody, so just gets on with it.
 
We’ll speak no more of Muse.
 

I know bugger all about The Kooks, so I’ve been checking Wikipedia for a bit of ‘colour’.  If I hadn’t bothered, I’d only be able to say the fellow has a funny accent but the band seem to have a happy knack of beating The La’s at a game they abandoned long ago.  Now I can say the singer has a funny accent for a Brightonite and he used to go out with Katie Melua.  Doesn’t research make this place so much richer?
 
Junior’s mum plays this in the car every time she picks up J from nursery- so Junior tells me.  It’s familiar, then.  Very familiar, in fact.  Junior sings along with the uh-ohs and boogies in all the right places.  She starts crying halfway through, but that’s only because her mean old dad won’t let her ruin all the Christmas cards.  She likes the song and so do I: it doesn’t kick down any barriers, but it’s sweet, catchy and has a tune I can listen to every day.  Hurrah.
 
It’s all hotting up now.
 
The Top Six starts in 12 days’ time.
 
Toodle pip, pop primpers.
 

Junior’s mum made me drop Guillemots’ ‘Trains From Brazil’ from the Top 20 because it was originally released last year.  To be honest, I was thankful for the room; the last six records in this chart are good enough without more quality pop complicating the issue.  So, here we are at last.  Jukebox Junior’s Top Six Singles of 2006.  Hope no one’s died from over-anticipation.
 
Guillemots- the band, not the avian lads who keep getting caught in oil slicks- divide the punters.  There are those who find them a touch zany and self-conscious, and there are those who are right.  Their album is a thing of real heart-on-sleeve beauty, combining the controlled restraint of The Blue Nile with the unfettered passion of Dexy’s Midnight Runners at their peak, and ‘Made-Up Lovesong #43’ (nothing self-conscious about that title), shows it at its best.  Yeah, singer Fyfe Dangerfield can overdo the tortured, mad artiste schtick in their performances, but most of the music really does make you want to fling yourself about and pull faces.  In a good way.
 
Junior picked up a load of new dance moves from her Granny on holiday, and I suspect they’ll be cropping up in most reviews this week.  There’s the twirl, the sway, the toe-point, the knee-bend and the march- all already in her repertoire, but now honed to searing precision.  This morning there was an airing for all these steps, as well as an ecstatic hand-in-hand gallop with her dad.  It’s an ecstatic record.