One of the fundamental rules of The Internet goes something like this; if Bill Hicks said it, it is therefore gospel, and Unquestionably The Right Thing To Think. One of the things people like to link this to most often is his "you do a commercial, you're off the artistic roll-call forever" statement from Rant in E-Minor. Now, despite the fact that he only brandished his statement at celebrities who already have too much money, people like to throw this in the face of anyone involved in an advert, ever.

BrokenFM would like to stop slurping from a bottle of Orange Drink™ for a moment, and introduce it's own stance on the matter; IT'S OKAY TO 'DO' AN ADVERT, AS LONG AS IT ISN'T A REALLY, REALLY SHIT ADVERT. So, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie escape punishment for their old Alliance and Leicester adverts, as they were quite good. Armando Iannucci gets a suspended sentence for directing at least some of the Mark Benton Nationwide adverts. Mitchell and Webb serve a couple of months remand for "I'm a Mac" "I'm a PC", but are subsequently allowed a return to society.

But, and it pains us to say so, The Pixies might not be so lucky. When watching a VHS recording of the enjoyable John Simms drama Never Never from space year 2000, we stumbled over a prime example of a Smug Advertising Spunkwipe, advertising Smirnoff. The soundtrack? Tame, by the Pixies. Proof? Here:



Well, clearly it doesn't diminish the quality of their recordings, and this is hardly a revelation as we remember the advert going out at the time, but it still hurts. Especially as time had made us forget exactly how annoying that advert is. You can just picture an Advertising Suit sitting just off camera, ticking off all of the key demographics the advert is hoping to appeal to, probably whilst being lightly fellated.

The only thing that is getting us through the whole experience are the probabilities that:

(a) The Pixies themselves had no idea their music was being used in this way,

and

(b) The Stupid Smug Megatwat who 'stars' in the advert ended up auditioning for the role of monkey-faced-Lee-Evans-type-bloke in Torchwood, and failed miserably.

We can but hope.

The thing is, Velouria just works as a pop video. It's clearly rubbish, and yet, it's utterly great. But what does it look when run at 'proper' speed? As ever, YouTube has the answer:

Well...



The High Water Marks being a sort of spin-off band from Apples In Stereo, of course.

(Sorry, everyone. We'll try and do a non-rubbish update sometime soon.)

Well, according to the listeners of Virgin Radio, it's... Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

No, really: see?

They're right of course, and we full expect to see it remain in the top spot of next year's annual chart rundown of the greatest pieces of music ever composed. Unless David Gray or James Blunt bring out a new record before then, of course.

The BrokenFM list of our Top 20 Albums 2006. Written quite stupidly in a massive rush, because it's 6pm on New Years Eve. Well, like the Iraqi Prime Minister, we said we'd get it done by the end of the year, and hang the consequences. Eh? Oh. On with the chart, then.

20. Cat Power - The Greatest
Pop fact! We always used to get Cat Power slightly confused with Beth Orton, and weren't sure if they were a band that Beth Orton was in. Yes, we are idiots.

19. Adam Green - Jacket Full Of Danger
Not as tops as his last few albums. Yes, it had Nat King Cole, but that's no Jessica or Dance With Me, is it? (No, it isn't.)

18. The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
If all the tracks were as good as Pull Shapes or We Are The Pipettes, this would be nudging the small numbers at the top end of the chart, but as it is, there were just too many faintly annoying tracks to see us putting any higher than this. We'd hope

17. Jarvis - Jarvis
Hurrah. We were suspecting he's change direction into a properly 'serious' (i.e. dull) artist and then not sell many records, but this is a great album. It's even shifting a few copies. Shows what we know.

16. The Sounds - Dying To Say This To You
Sneaking under the wire at the end of the year, because we've only just started listening to this album properly, and it's a grower. In fact, we've just moved it up several places in the list after a few listens to Painted By Numbers and Night After Night.

15. Pet Shop Boys - Fundamental
A welcome comeback, but despite a few standout tracks (I'm With Stupid, Numb), while it's certainly better than Release, this isn't a patch on Nightlife.

14. Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
More top tunery from the ever reliable Mr Kweller. It's be better if he collaborated more often with fellow Ben, Ben Folds, mind.

13. Hot Chip - The Warning
Mmm. We quite fancy some chips around about now. What do you mean, shut up and talk more about the records?

12. Elke Brauweiler - Twist A Saint Tropez
A nice little collection of French language cover versions, including great ones of Laisse Tomber Les Filles and Joe Le Taxi. Pop fact! April March would be in the top three albums of this year, only we've discovered her Chrominance Decoder album about eight years too late. There's nothing like a good sense of timing, eh our petit amis?

11. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
A rallying cry for the likes of Davidson and Daniels during the pre-election part of 1997. If David Cameron wants to win the 2007 election, he should get them to say it again, only for the Tories this time!!!!1 Sorry.

10. The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
The Lips are back. And while they're performing at slightly less than a Yoshimi level of form, this is still very good indeed. Plus, their drummer wore a T-shirt with 'Cymru' written on it on the Jay Leno show, so bonus points for that.

9. Headlights - Kill Them With Kindness
In a year without albums from The Postal Service or Ms John Soda (that we can blimming well get hold of, anyway), this isn't a bad alternative at all. One of our most pleasing accidental eMusic finds of the year.

8. Various - Pop! Justice: 100% Solid Pop Music
Empirical proof that Pop! (always include that exclamation mark) is back, and better than ever. Yes, we know compilations shouldn't be included here. What are you, Gallup?

7. Chick Habit - More! More! More! More!
Excellent! Loud! Shouty! Girlpunkpop! From! Stockholm! Yay!

6. Grandaddy - Just Like The Fambly Cat
And with that, they were gone. Four (proper) albums in nine years, but four of the best albums in BrokenFM's collection. And what a way to go out.

5. The Russian Futurists - Me Myself & Rye... An Introduction To The Russian Futurists
We weren't expecting much (we'd heard the song Paul Simon in passing, but didn't know who it was by), until this turned up as part of a bargainous 'five random albums for a tenner' from their record label. And even though it's a "Catching Up With..." style compilation of their earlier work, it counts. Not just because it's ace. Well, mainly because it's ace, to be fair.

4. Graham Coxon - Love Travels At Illegal Speeds
Its loudness is matched only by its goodness. His best waxing yet. By this rate, he'll have an album containing twelve tracks every bit as good on Song 2 by 2009, and he'll conquer the world.

3. Babybird - Between My Ears There Is Nothing But Music
A wonderful return, with an album arguably stronger than any of their previous ones. Yes, including the lo-fi solo stuff, because Stephen Jones always spent too long singing in his 'tiny' voice on most of them. What with the entire marketing budget for the album amounting to a ten minute session appearance on 6Music, no-one bought this. We don't think it even got a review in Word. Or a shamelessly crowbarred plug in VideoGaiden. For, as we so often say in such circumstances, shame.

2. Cansei De Ser Sexy - Cansei De Ser Sexy
Might even have been number one if Art Bitch wasn't so utterly shit that it drags the rest of the record down with it. That's the harsh reality of the BrokenFM Good-o-meter.

1. Metric - Live It Out
Yes, look surprised that we haven't made The Best Of Tatu our album of the year. Metric get in there with a record we've been listening to almost non-stop since the summer - it's only the fact most of that was done illicitly at work has prevented it from sweeping the board for BrokenFM's LastFM data. A pacy, tight album of indie rock tunes, it has an accessible and immediate feel without feeling too throw-away, to blatantly steal a quote from Amazon. Well, we've nicked all the cover images from them, so why not, eh?

To think we were thinking of doing full Good-o-Meters for each of these albums, eh? Here's to next year, when Tatu probably will be number one of our best of 2007 charts. But until then: toodle-pip!

With YouTube links where possible, so we don't have to bother telling you what each song actually sounds like. Technology benefiting the endemically lazy, there.

20. Jarvis - Running The World
To get the list going, here's a pop song with the word 'cunt' in the chorus. All very good, even if the track doesn't appear on the download versions of Jarv's debut album (and only as a hidden track on the 'proper' version). We'd still kind of like to approach the Cockmeister and ask him why he technically recorded a single calling Nelson Mandela a lady's part, though, just for a laugh.

19. TV On The Radio - Staring At The Sun
We put our TV on our radio the other day. One broken £950 LCD set and a squashed Binatone later, we saw the folly of doing so. Lucky we hadn't been listening to Death From Above, like CSS suggested to us, eh?

18. The Sounds - Painted By Numbers
A late entry to the chart, we're listening to their album as we bash out these words in a pre-new year hurry. Which is why we can't think of much interesting to say about them.

17. The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
One of the highlights of the first episode of Torchwood was the scene where a massive pub brawl takes place as this song is playing on the jukebox. We could make a point about pub jukeboxes never having any songs as good as this on them, and they only ever contain Coldplay and Now 764, but nowadays there are plenty of massive hard-drive based ones, so we can't.

16. Hot Chip - Over and Over
We make a comment here spelling out a phrase like "we really like this record it is good" one letter at a time, like they do in this song. But it wouldn't work in print. We do, of course.

15. Babybird - Lighter and Spoon
They're back. And they're good. And this is the best track on the album, we reckon. No video evidence of the song available, so you'll have to go out and buy it.

14. DJ Yoda - Wheels
This stays in the chart, even if it does kind of remind us of that shit "DJ Santa on the wheels of steel" advert that has been on for the last few weeks. Hardly DJ Yoda's fault, to be fair.

13. Graham Coxon - Standing On My Own Again
Why is Graham Coxon not more famous? Oh yeah, because society is fundamentally flawed, and most people would rather listen to Snow Patrol. *Sad smiley face*.

12. The Flaming Lips - The W.A.N.D.
This might have been The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, only we used it as a ringtone for about two months, and duly got very sick of it.

11. Flatpack - Sweet Child Of Mine
A great cover version, and not just because it'll probably really annoy po-faced fans of Guns And Roses. Well, partly that. Because we hate Guns And Roses. So much, we can even be bothered typing their name in correctly.

10. Grandaddy - Jeez Louise
Standout track on their final album, and not even released as a single. We'd like to think this is because the band know it's a song far too good for radio 'jocks' to witter over the end of, and more likely because it's too loud for them to force their inane chatter over the top of.

9. Beth Orton - Shopping Trolley
Beth Orton had been off our personal radar for quite some time, until we'd heard this. It's stupidly good. A pity she'd spent so much time on underwhelming collaborations with The Chemical Brothers it took her this long to product something so wonderful. Still, better late than etc.

8. The Presets - Are You The One?
Also the recipient of BrokenFM's Best Pop Video Of The Year award, this excellent slice of electronic goodness had us dashing to the shops (ie. looking to see if it was on eMusic. It was!) for their album. Which is a bit of a let down. Oh well.

7. Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken
Great song, coupled with a interestingly grumpy performance in the promo video. Cheer up, you've made one of the best tunes of the summer. Tch.

6. The Russian Futurists - Paul Simon
We've looked on YouTube to see if there's a clip of this song being played along to Stephen Colbert dancing behind the back of a grumpy Congressman. There isn't. There should be.

5. Cansei De Ser Sexy - Let's Make Love and Listen To Death From Above
The problem is, Death From Above 1979 are rubbish.

4. Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends
Kanye West doesn't care about collaborations between... oh, you know where we're going with this.

3. Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Ooooh
It's been a good year for pop, as the entire contents of the Pop Justice album prove, and as far as manufactured pop goes, this is up there with Daydream Believer. No, really. Really.

2. Robots In Disguise - Turn It Up
More textbook pop. The last rock song in this list was all the way back at number ten, you know. And that was from a band who don't exist any more.

1. Pet Shop Boys - Numb
Oh yes. By far the standout track on their comeback album, and quite possiblty the best thing they've ever recorded. The soundtrack to a nation's misery (and the soundtrack to another three smaller nations' Celtic smirking) as England got dumped out of the World Cup in front of the years' biggest TV audience. So, with classic style, they waited another five months to release it as a single, and ruined it by bunging a load of extra vocals on top. Tch. So good, the new year celebrations in Sydney have just been on, and this was the song used to welcome 2007 to Australia. And quite right, too.