Kicking off this weekend’s offerings with a bit of acoustic meandering courtesy of the ever inoffensive Paulo Nutini. ‘Candy’ is out on May 18th as a precursor to his new album ‘Sunny Side Up’ which follows on June 1st. There is little about this track that inspires me to praise or viciously assault it. The fact of the matter is “it just is”, inoffensive with fairly warm production and a vocal that sometimes sounds like he’s juggling Murray Mints in his mouth. It’s the kind of song that exists for people who aren’t necessarily passionate about music but like to have something in the background at dinner parties while they serve pretentious food and talk about their tumbling stock portfolios.

Next up is Alesha Dixon with her new single ‘Let’s Get Excited’, there’s a part of me that always thinks she was perhaps destined for grander things than this. And yet her post ‘Strictly’ career has yielded a bounty of frankly lukewarm pop singles that sound as though they have been bolted together on an assembly line somewhere in Dagenham. Sadly there is no change in formula here and while Dixon can sing this offering hardly shows her working hard. Tedious, but I suspect if you are an vastly overpaid footballer you might like this (not sure where that came from it, but I’m sure I’m right).

Next up is Flo Rida (feat Wynter) with his new single ‘Sugar’ also out on May 18th, regular readers will know my feelings on Mr Rida and anybody expecting this release to change that will be sorely disappointed. As always this is pure ringtone fodder, once again aided and abetted by another anonymous female vocalist he samples Eiffel 65’s song ‘Blue (Da Ba Dee), what he fails to recognise however is that the original song was pretty shit and exhuming it for his own purposes isn’t going to magically make it any better. The musical equivalent of jamming a hot soldering iron into your forehead. Avoid!

Finally we have Laura Izibor’s latest single ‘Don’t Stay’ which is out on May 11th, fair comparisons are being drawn between Roberta Flack and Candi Staton (although I draw the line at Aretha Franklin), vocal and musical performances alike are more than competent but the material once again is about as pedestrian as something that died by the roadside. It’s a shame really, with the right material and a desire to stop pleasing a Radio 2 demographic she could be a contender.