Happy New Year everyone! I've been on vacation, so these are a bit late, but we'll get back to the regular posting schedule this Tuesday.

The fact of the matter is, you didn't miss much. This week's free singles on iTunes are insanely horrible. I just finished listening to them and when I came too found that I had ripped my own ears off in self-defense. But they are free, right? And since that's all that really matters, let's review.

1. Buck Buck - DJ Envy and the Red Cafe

I can picture the recording session for this single now. They met a rapper who was great but his talent was handicapped by a slight stutter. Still, they let him into the studio, and gave him the mike for his big shot. "Buck, Buck, Buck, Buck, Buck, Buck" was all he could get out, sounding frustrated and angry, foam building up in his mouth as he tried to spit out the right syllables. But we are left bereft and aching at what mysteries he never got to reveal. Buck Rogers, perhaps? Bucking Cowboys? We'll never know...

Seriously, this is the single worst song I have ever downloaded from iTunes. You might want to download it for the sheer entertainment value. There's an incomprehensibly bizarre bridge in the middle of the song where some atonal singing begins and there's a bunch of gunshot noises. I guess sometimes with iTunes, you really do get what you pay for.

2. Sola - Insight
One of the reviewers on the iTunes site captured it best: this sounds like a cover band of Fall Out Boy singing in Spanish. Nowhere near as offensive to the ears as the first track, but a bit sloppy and lacking in any meaningful hooks. Maybe the lyrics are really moving, but my three years of junior high spanish only let me pick out the phrases "and where are you" and "I only think of you", so likely not. Still, worth the download.

3. Spring Again - Lanae' Hale

Lanae' Hale is mysterious. Is she a country, pop, or Christian artist? Why does she do that hiccuping thing with her voice at the end of a perfectly good note? Why does she have a seemingly needless apostrophe at the end of her first name?

Mysterious or not, thanks to this week's competition lowering the bar so low that we had to dig a hole six inches underneath the ground to accomodate it, she has contributed the best single of this week. It's a bit syrupy, but I can't say I disagree with the sentiment. I very much want spring to come again. And she has a quirky, but not quite-quirky-enough, way of singing about that. So, yea Lanae'!