The X Factor final is to be investigated by Ofcom after the broadcasting standards watchdog received some 2,750 complaints from viewers about suggestive performances by both US singer Christina Aguilera, and Barbadian R&B star Rihanna.

So blank she almost fades to white, so slender she almost disappears from view, Rihanna is the archetypal modern pop star: the spindly skeleton of an umb-er-ella-ella-ella over which any canvas can be stretched.

Perhaps trying to distance it from the darker world of sexual violence that dominated Rated R, Rihanna has described Loud as "really sassy and flirty", though listening to tracks like the masochist drama "Love the Way You Lie" and the bluntly-titled "S&M", this seems somewhat disingenuous.

Willow Smith, the nine-year-old daughter of actor Will Smith, has signed a record deal with rapper Jay-Z and her first single is already kicking up a storm on the Internet.

What'd be nice, after the umpteenth Eminem album about Eminem, would be a record that stands on its own legs and addresses the world beyond.

The American singer Chris Brown has been denied a visa to enter Britain, days before his tour was due to start.

As apparently the only person in the western hemisphere not to have seen an episode of Glee, it's hardly surprising I found myself neither angered nor elated by the karaoke-pop repossessions of rock history that comprise this soundtrack album.

Comedian Russell Brand and his fiancée, the pop star Katy Perry, fooled around with Rihanna at Hollywood's pre-Grammy bash at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

"Premier League boss caught in a brothel!" screamed The Sun. It's a salaciously poised headline offering just enough to whet its readers' appetite, satisfy lawyers and allow the guilty subject some short-term anonymity to plan his defence.

Born in the mid-Sixties to lefty London parents, I am a fully paid-up member of Generation X. We've been called the slacker generation and, until 9/11 at least, we were pretty apolitical.