Pop Corner

TRACK OF THE WEEK:This Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen

A Call Me Maybe follow up was always going to be tricky, but CRJ’s nailed it. A little bit less Pollyanna, a bit more Prince, our gal Carly has got her eye on someone else’s boyfriend. Singing above some ’80s synths, she’s got smooching on her mind. She’s gone all out on the vocabulary too, rhyming ‘sentimental’ with ‘detrimental’, which alone should be incentive enough for anyone to listen to it.

* Christina Aguilera’s been scoring high on the quotability meter recently. She’d like to move into acting, at some point, she told a Billboard and Hollywood Reporter conference. “I want to do something where I can really sink my teeth into something a little more challenging. Really outside of myself, outside of music. I sort of had this personal aspiration to do film, but I said, ‘I never want to do a musical! It’s too much like myself.’” In fact, the further away from her normal life the better, she continues. “I want it to be honest and genuine in expanding my wings and doing something really, really different. A crackhead on the street or a drug addict. Or something crazy and meaty and juicy. Something that really took me out of myself.” Well, at least with the video for Your Body, shes been pushing her acting skills to new heights . . .

* It was only a few weeks ago that Barack Obama was mediating between Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj (check out Pop Corner from the 19th of October for more details), and now hes helping Beyoncé and Jay-Z keep the peace at home. “I’ve gotten to know these guys over the first several years. They’re good people. Beyoncé could not be sweeter to Michelle and the girls. So theyre good friends,” he told radio station Z107.9. “We talk about the same things I talk about with all my friends. I made sure that Jay-Z was helping Beyoncé out , and not leaving it all with Beyoncé and the mother-in-law.” Obama: President, problem-solver, nappy-changing advocate. Amazing.