The people who run the music channels here in the UK have, by law, to subtitle a small proportion of their “output” or “music videos” as we call them when not in hell-media land, and part of my job as a subtitler is to add captions to 6 or 7 new songs a week for them. This week, I have been chosen to pick through them.

1. The Feeling, “Rose”
What a dreary video, and dreary song, sorry. Do young people like The Feeling? They were the ones with the 70s album cover that made me feel sick, I think. I have no idea why bands think anyone wants to watch them play their instruments; I’d rather watch them making a pot or digging, or flying in the air. Or eating dinner. The highlight of this video appears to be a pink light in the top left hand corner of the screen when one of them is looking into the middle distance, probably trying to remember the melody to the song, which it turns out appears to be about pink wine, as it’s actually “Ros-ay” but we can’t put in accented “e”s on subtitles as they are considered to be “errors” in the file and mean they won’t be broadcast. Which means some people wouldn’t be able to share the joy of The Feeling’s new lyrics, which I think you’ll agree would be a shame. So lay off the circumflexes, graves, cedillas and accents, guys, if you want the hard of hearing to like your songs too. And tildes.

2. Lil Chris, “Figure It Out”
He sounds like Pat Benatar. Which was a bit of a surprise. And he has the same spade-face as Linda Robson off top slag-com Birds of a Feather. I can’t think of anything else to say about L’i'”‘il’ Chr’is’ because his music was like egg falling off a dirty car bonnet.

3. The Fray, “How To Save A Life”
Hmmm, more piano. More boys with guitars. Except the One Defining Feature for this band appears to be the singer is singing through a toilet roll tube and singing like he’s at some sort of Musical Notes Trolley Dash, grabbing all of them on the way up and all of them on the way down but never really settling on the one he meant for, so it’s the equivalent of only ending up with some bog roll and a KitKat. The video is like a cross between an educational video for people who have been brought up in a sealed-off design museum about what the outside world must be like and an advert for skin cream. The singer looks like he writes poetry where every single poem he writes starts with the word “..And”. It features very pretty adolescents, probably all having mp3 blogs about Keane, crying on an off-white background and lit to look vaguely ugly and “normal” when they’re nothing of the sort and is therefore all about real emotion, and is thus very real. Words appear in that revolting way like “23.Accept” and “11. Be someone”. Jesus Christ, one of you, just fucking smile, it won’t kill you. It also seems to last roughly an hour. Music to cock your head slightly cutely to in Starbucks with your hands wrapped round the mug like it’s your heart, actually. It has an ugly black fat person crying at the end. A work of hideous genius. “86. Open up.”

4. Guns N Roses, “Sweet Child O Mine”
I actively looked forward to this song, which is, by the way, brilliant. It has that brilliant thing that everyone did in the 90s of having a colour camera and a black+white camera for “effect”, all grainy, from a slightly different angle. I believe it was known as “Shakycam” on Adam and Joe, and I think it was actually the law between 1990 and 2000 to have grainy B+W footage cut into your video from a slightly different angle, the desired effect of which was similar to the reason why people stonewashed their jeans or wrote on their schoolbags - authenticity - the actual effect being it looked like you specifically had stonewashed your jeans or written on your schoolbag - tragedy. I like that high bit that Slash plays. I am good at reviewing music. The person doing the subtitles for this song appears to have got the lyrics from a Slovenian palindromes site. The out-of-character-for-the-song guitar solo in the middle should have had Gary Moore ringing his lawyers. If he’d had lawyers. Which he probably did. Like I say, I’m good at reviewing music, me. The “Where do we go now?” bit is ripped off, I am 99% sure, from Jesus Christ Superstar.

5. Guns N Roses, “Welcome To The Jungle”
Nahh. “I wanna watch you bleed”. Well. That’s not very nice, is it? He looks like Russell Brand in this one. It’s a bit boring. Again, it’s making me think of the song Judas sings at the end of Jesus Christ Superstar. That’s not right, is it? That said, it does have:

# Feel my, my, my serpentine

..as a lyric, so you know. It’s not all bad. The video appears to be about Axlotl going into the “city” and watching TV and seeing bad stuff going on. Some sexlicious saucepots in black are lying in a non-contextual bed and looking at the camera. And there’s a bad key change. That said, the bit where Axl/Cartman sings “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby! You’re gonna DIE” could be useful over loudspeakers on I’m a Celebrity after the “Eat As Much Peyote As You Can in 2 Minutes” round, when they get really desperate for viewers. Jesus, this song’s about an hour long too.

6. Take That, “Shine”
In which Mark, the not-right one, is allowed to dance down some stairs on his own to a Moby B-side while the others make sure he doesn’t trip up and damage his little face on the sharp metal edging. Meanwhile, Gary sits at the bottom rather overstatedly pretending to play a piano he’s never sat at before while the other two make sure the remaining sides of the video screen have someone in them too, which is very important. This said, I love very low piano notes played in quick and rhythmic succession, it flicks a weird little switch in my brain and seems to release some sort of powerful gladness enzyme, so you know, it all works out in the end. I can’t help thinking that’s a very large staircase though, and they only use a bit of it. Then it pretends to be The Beatles a little bit, which is cute, then you think, “Oh, hang on, was that the chorus? The verse was much better.” And then the verse comes again, and the one in white looks a bit like the Aphex Twin with his big flappy mouth if you don’t look at the screen properly, but you know what, it’s fine. I don’t mind this at all. Look at the smile on little Mark’s face! Makes me want to give £2 a month to something. They even let him shout a bit at the end before the Sunshine Coach turns up to take him back to Doncaster, or whatever postcode lottery it was he won.

7. Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
Opening shot: helicopter, big tall building, break of day. The helicopter has “Nelly Furtado”, the words, emblazoned on the side. She strikes me as the sort who doesn’t lend it out. Ooh. Neptunesy type blopping. Clapping. Oh, is it going to be like Maneater again where she went to a sewer and danced with the gang from Police Academy? Oh, no. It’s a ballad. Urgh, she’s gone a bit um, angular, hasn’t she? Oh, now she’s in a sequinny evening dress on a helipad. Is this what counts as aspirational these days? Helipads?
This song sounds like a Belinda Carlisle record at 3/4 speed. There’s a bit in the video where she’s in the rain! No, really! She looks kind of sad and she’s dancing in the rain. I wish more people would do that in videos, really. Oh! It faded out like she left the oven on or something. That was quick.