It's nearly Christmas! And, along with the rest of the country, we're beginning to wind down and can't really be bothered doing anything that actually involves putting some effort in, as yesterday's Sugababes piece amply demonstrated. Of course, we'd still like to provide new content for the site, so we've done a bit of thinking about what would be the best way to write something that seemed fresh and interesting, but which actually involves as little original thought as possible. It seems, to our minds at any rate, that the best way to disguise a whole host of rehashed jokes and opinions under the guise of top quality brand new writing is, of course, in the time honoured tradition of an end of year round up! So here is part one of our look back at this year's major pop events. Well, the ones we bothered covering at any rate.

JANUARY - The coldest month of the year found us turning our equally cold hearts towards the Brit Awards created shortlist for the best song of the last 25 years. 12 months later and we still can't work out why most of the songs, and Simply Red's Holding Back the Years in particular, were nominated. If, as we suspected at the time, it was all a big Space Cadets style practical joke, then they've waited far too long to do the big reveal. Fortunately we had other things to occupy our mind, as Kenzie entered the Big Brother house. What we figured would just be a one-off throwaway joke about the homoerotic nature of Jeremy and Kenzie's friendship swiftly became an overriding theme for his time in the show, and even our cynical mind became somewhat touched by the closeness of their friendship. Not touched enough to actually vote for him, you understand, but touched enough so that we felt a pang of sadness when they were finally separated. More sadness was to come when Busted split up, though as Busted news stories went it was as inevitable as one involving Pete Doherty. Elvis Presley, figuring that if rap artists can carry on making money long after they're dead, why shouldn't he, began his overlong campaign of re-issues, which served mainly to irritate Top of the Pops producers, while Destiny's Child released Soldier and promptly became one of the music world's most irrelevant bands, and as this month included released by Rooster and Darius, that took some doing. And finally, Girls Aloud turned up on Top of the Pops riding motorcycles. Hooray!

FEBRUARY - Busted had clearly set a trend, as Mis-Teeq, Pop! and V all decided to join James and Matt at the job centre, desperately trying to convince the assistant that being able to dance while moving their lips was a transferable skill. No matter though, as we fell in love with a girl band called Bloke who, after our rapturous write-up, promptly fell apart before they had a chance to actually release anything, at least Verbalicious managed one single before vanishing off of the face of planet pop. The Brit Awards happened, as they tend to do at this time of year, and for a change people who actually deserved the prizes got them. Well, Scissor Sisters won a couple of gongs at any rate. Valentine's Day came and went, and so did Matt OTV in the last Slash! piece we ever wrote. We might do more in the new year, though.

MARCH - March brought with it the exciting and surprising news that Javine was to represent us in the Eurovision Song Contest. If only the rest of Europe had shared our enthusiasm, then perhaps we wouldn't have suffered the ignomy of her not exactly impressive finishing position. Poor Javine. Again. And poor Vs, The 411 and Geri Halliwell, who also found themselves without record contracts, even if our inclusion of Liberty X in the list turned out to be more wishful thinking than anything else. Another band we declared our love for, The Faders also proved to be something of a lame horse in the chart success stakes, demonstrating exactly why we shouldn't gamble, other than the fact we don't understand anything about betting, of course. At the time though, we didn't know that, and our optimistic mood for them was buoyed by the fact we also enjoyed rather fantastic gigs by both Natasha Bedingfield and Mark Owen. We probably enjoyed Natasha more though, mainly thanks to the *sigh* factor.

APRIL - Rachel Stevens came back this month with Negotiate With Love but, despite it's brilliance and our best efforts, it headed towards the number one spot with a sponge bullet, eventually hitting the not exactly dizzy heights of number 10. Equally disappointing was the news that Girls Aloud were planning on releasing a cover of Wicked Game, as the howls of indignation and anger threatened to overwhelm pop music message boards the world over, this plan was quietly shelved and everyone was happy, except possibly Chris Isaak's accountant. ITV stumbled upon a new way to persuade the public to part with their hard earned cash by launching Hit Me Baby One More Time, a chance for washed up old school pop stars to have an opportunity to kick start their careers. Things started off well with Tiffany, but soon went downhill the minute Shakin' Stevens and Hue and Cry started to get involved. It wasn't all bad news though, as FHM announced their annual list of the 100 Sexiest Women, and all five Girls Aloud members made an appearance, even if the inclusion of Anastasia casts some doubt upon the credibility of the voters.

MAY - A month of such fantasticness it's hard to know where to begin. First of all the ever mighty Helen Love released a new single which was so many kinds of wonderful that questions would have been asked in parliament about the unfair distribution of said wonderfulness had all the politicians' minds not been focused on the General Election instead. And while Helen love releasing an amazing single isn't exactly new in itself - it happens every time they can be bothered going into a recording studio - the news that Kelly Osbourne had somehow stumbled upon one of the tunes of the year was so earth shattering that people began to ask questions about her whereabouts when the boxing day tsunami struck. Then - as if that wasn't enough - Girls Aloud went out on tour and proved to pretty much everyone - bar a few indie-hipster-snobs who wouldn't know a good thing if it came up to them and said "Hello! I'm a good thing!", while wearing a t-shirt declaring same - that they really are the most exciting thing happening in music at that moment. And we still get goosebumps when we think about their version of Teenage Dirtbag. And it was more than just the Girls, of course, as their supporting line-up also introduced us to Kute, who we also raved about and, as is now traditional with bands we rave about, have promptly released nothing whatsoever since then. In fact, the only down side of the month was the fact that Shakin' Stevens won Hit Me Baby One More Time, but given that the competition had pretty much faded into irrelevance at this point, it was hard to get too worked up about it.

JUNE - We were kept busy in June by the foolish decision to stage a second Live Aid concert and our equally foolish decision to try and provide 'hilarious' write-ups of every band taking part in the 8 gigs which took place around the world in July. As plans went, it started off quite well, before spluttering to a halt some point around Canada. Equally ill-advised was our 5 songs that changed the world mini-feature, of which only 3 appeared, a decision which was probably best for everyone involved.

Join us tomorrow for a look at the second half of 2005, featuring things which happened so recently they could almost have happened yesterday and, in the case of the Sugababes split, did.

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