We have had a full calendar month to get used to the new Christina Aguilera single, readers, and it hasn’t got any better. If anything it’s deteriorated, like a scrap of food that’s got stuck under the sofa and gone so mouldy you can’t be sure what it used to be. I mean, it was probably just a crisp – but if that’s the case why does it smell so strongly of mackerel?

Anyway, Christina has just unveiled the video for said single, Not Myself Tonight. There is a huge (ie pointless) debate raging about whether she is trying to copy Lady Gaga, but if you ask me the whole enterprise is a 15-rated tribute to Madonna’s Express Yourself video. Let’s have a look at the evidence:

Blonde woman sees something shocking through her monocle

Woman in catsuit drinks milk from a bowl, like a cat

Bare-chested men dance in the rain, observed from an elevated viewpoint

Rumpo! Full-on, uncensored Rumpo! (with rude bits covered up)

Inadequately dressed woman removes coat to reveal her BRA!

“Oh no, I have spilt this saucer of liquid all over my shoulder. Clumsy me“.

As you can no doubt tell from the screenshots, the Madonna version wins on such factors as lighting, shot composition, artistry, class, iconoclasm and sex appeal. In Christina’s favour… erm… er… the picture is sharper??

Embedding for both videos is disabled “by request”. So watch the Christina one on the other side of this link and the Madonna one over here.

“Hold up, hold up, hold up,” shouted Wyclef Jean five minutes before the end of the Hope For Haiti Now telethon on Friday night. “Enough of the moping, let’s rebuild Haiti now!”

If only he’d thought about that message two hours earlier, we’d have been spared some of the music industry’s most recognisable names putting on their “serious face” and singing their most po-faced, turgid songs at a funereal pace. If it wasn’t Shakira murdering I’ll Stand By You, it was Justin Timberlake playing a drowsy version Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah that lasted seven whole years.

Surely the point of these fund-raisers is that the juxtaposition between great, uplifting music and the horriffic human tragedy compels us to pick up the phone and do something. If the stars just sit there sobbing into their mineral water, then the viewers at home will just feel miserable and helpless. (I could be wrong about this, of course, because the televent has raised an encouragingly robust $57m so far).

The only person who seemed to have realised this was Madonna, who judged the mood perfectly with an acoustic choral version of Like A Prayer.

If you have the stomach to endure the rest of the performances (U2 and Rihanna is particularly bad), there’s a helpful Youtube playlist here.

And you should definitely donate to the relief effort if you can. The Disasters Emergency Committee page is a good place to start.

They have a history of awkward interviews, but Madonna appeared relaxed, warm and witty on last night’s David Letterman show. Granted, she barely makes eye contact with the star, and she’s a little bit nervous, but it’s the most “natural” Madonna has looked in a long time.

CBS have posted the highlights on Youtube – how very 21st Century – so without any further ado, I have cut and pasted the embed code. It’s a hard life, this blogging thing.

By the way – the car-crash 1994 interview they refer to (“I think it may have had something to do with the joint I smoked”) is one of the best / worst bits of television you will ever see. Imagine watching a train derail in super slow motion, with David Letterman at the controls desperately trying stop it from toppling over. Or, alternatively, watch these videos.

There are so many new videos floating around today that you could be forgiven for thinking everyone had come back from their summer holidays and remembered that they make music for a living. But it’s probably just a coincidence, right? Right?

In descending order of brilliance, then.

1) Eels – The Look You Give That Guy
In which Mark Oliver Everett is jealous of his dog because it is getting lots of attention from Salman Rushdie’s wife. The final scene is one of the most digusting things you will ever see.

2) Radiohead at the Reading Festival
They do a (practically unrecognisable) cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Maps, sollowed by a stunning version of Everything In Its Right Place. I will never tire of this song.

3) Madonna – Celebration
The weird dance remix suggests this won’t be the last video we see for this song, but the bit where Lourdes is dressed up like her mum in the Like A Virgin days made us do an “awwww“, followed by a “ewwww“.

4) The Temper Trap – Sweet Disposition
Essentially a cool, indie version of I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper.

Like Passion Pit, the Temper Trap have used the formula “emotion + hole in the ground” to invent a band name. We’re looking forward to their forthcoming world tour woth Rage Chasm, Exasperated Trench and Happy Shaft. The t-shirts will be awesome.

5) Basement Jaxx & Sam Sparro – Feelings Gone
As the guys Hard Candy pointed out, this looks like an episode of 80s children’s TV classic Button Moon, only with worse music.

6) Kylie – Chiggy Wiggy
This one is just weird. Really, really weird.

Do you get the impression that Madonna had to be cajoled into recording this trail to her new Facebook page?

In slightly more encouraging Queen Of Pop news, the track listing for the Celebration: Greatest Hits DVD has just been released, and it’s something of a corker. 47 tracks, 27 of which have never been released before and (ooo-er) a new, extra-filthy version of Justify My Love.

1) Burning Up
2) Lucky Star
3) Borderline
4) Like A Virgin
5) Material Girl
6) Crazy For You
7) Into The Groove
8) Live To Tell
9) Papa Don’t Preach
10) True Blue
11) Open Your Heart
12) La Isla Bonita
13) Who’s That Girl
14) Like A Prayer
15) Express Yourself
16) Cherish
17) Vogue
18) Justify My Love
19) Erotica
20) Deeper and Deeper
21) Rain
22) I’ll Remember
23) Secret
24) Take A Bow
25) Bedtime Story
26) Human Nature
27) I Want You
28) You’ll See
29) Frozen
30) Ray Of Light
31) The Power Of Good-Bye
32) Beautiful Stranger
33) American Pie
34) Music
35) Don’t Tell Me
36) What It Feels Like For A Girl
37) Die Another Day
38) Hollywood
39) Love Profusion
40) Hung Up
41) Sorry
42) Get Together
43) Jump
44) 4 Minutes
45) Give It 2 Me
46) Miles Away
47) Celebration

Usually, when I disappear off on a sabattical**, nothing happens. Over the last week, however, there have been up to three (three!) big events on planet pop.

Here are they:

1. SHAKIRA BREAKS HER SPINE

During the filming of her new video, She-Wolf:

It’s all incredibly sexy, in a “there is no way I would let this woman into my house” sort of way. I would embed the clip here but the UK exclusive has been given to MSN, who operate the world’s most ugly video streaming site. Here is the link, Click on it if you dare.

2. MADONNA RELEASES MEDIOCRE SONG
Celebration is the title track of Madonna’s latest Greatest Hits album, and is almost certain to be her last number one for Warner Bros (unless Tinchy Stryder has something out the same week). Produced by Paul Oakenfold, it’s what old people would call a ‘banging club tune’ and the kids would call ‘a bit dated’.

It brilliantly recalls the summery vibes of Everybody and Holiday – and there’s a clever nod to Into The Groove in the lyrics – but the tune is a bit of an afterthought. In fact, when Jo Whiley played it on Radio One last week, a lot of texts came in saying it would sound better withough the vocals.

For those naysayers, here is the dub mix (which, it has to be said, is a vast improvement).

US readers can buy the track now on iTunes. Everyone else has to put up with a preview on Madonna.com until later this month.

3. SUGABABES DO A QUITE GOOD VIDEO

Like Monty Don, the Sugababes new single is a grower (yes, even though it is basically a club mix of Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy). When you watch the video, you will come to the realisation that, following a brief internal struggle, the group now belongs to Amelle Berrocca, or whatever her name is.

In the panoply of British girl band videos, it is a solid 7/10. But, because the song is so obviously a top-dollar US R&B; production, you can’t get away from the niggling suspicion that Rihanna would have done it better.

At the very least, she would have spent another fiver on the choreographer.

* “random blogger”
** attempt to drown myself in alcohol