Anna Evans pointed out that Depeche Mode has a video out for Wrong, the first single off their new album Sounds Of The Universe. They debuted the song at, I think, this year’s Echo music awards in Berlin, Germany. The Echo awards are given out each year based on the preceding year’s sales for both a German band or artist and an international band or artist in each category. In addition to Depeche Mode, the 2009 Echo awards included live performances from the Scorpions, U2, Katy Perry, Udo Lindenberg, Paul Potts, Razorlight, Helene Fischer, Silbermond, Sasha, Amy McDonald, and Die Toten Hosen, the last of which I believed to be a fictional band one of my degenerate punk rock friends made up when I first of them. Something about the name.

At any rate, as Anna Evans asked, what do you think of the new single from Depeche Mode? I’m always entertained by a combination of gloom pop and bad driving myself.

I kind of like this year’s female pop sound, but, for some reason, all the top-selling pop artists this years seem to sound oddly similar. Moreso than usual for such things, which is saying something. I don’t think that normally Britney Spears, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Rhianna, etc. all have nearly identical voices. I think this is one of those occasions where, if I knew more about how the female pop sausage is made, it probably boils down to just a few writing teams and just a couple of producers.

This year, barring visual cues, I can’t tell any of these chicks apart from their singing. The new Britney Spears single “Womanizer” is predictably stylish and expensive-looking. It is in the format of one of those videos where the girl wears a whole passel of different outfits to appeal to a larger variety of demographics. Britney Spears has always been marketed somewhat like this, but this vid kicks it up a notch.

There is even a sequence where Brit is all done up with a reddish pinkish bob for hair and fake tattoo sleeves. Basically, the scenario has her done up as a waitress who would have a lot of “friends” on MySpace. The temporary tattoos are what feel like they put it over the top, although certainly, as the meaning of having ink has changed, tattooed hotties like Masuimi Max and Kellie LaPlegua are getting their ink lasered off. So maybe there is no true permanence in counterculture beyond what is in your heart. The look can always be co-opted, often in ways which are glossier than the original.

They will gobble up fashion as fast as the underground can produce it, although genuinely individual and independent spirit is the part mainstream wants to leave behind. But, like, America’s favorite trainwreck Britney Spears is, like, sorta naked in the “Womanizer” video.

Edit: So apparently, although this video has been uploaded about a billion and a half times to YouTube, it is not embeddable the way most vids from there are. Blue Blood has a policy against linking pirated content, but Antiquiet has the Britney Spears Director’s Cut video and I’m linking that, despite Kevin Skwerl’s FBI arrest and indictment because him once again having special materials means that either (1) it’s all effing astroturf and thus the copyright holders want it approached this way or (2) Kevin Skwerl takes stuff from work.

I love music, or at least I used to, but the music industry sure makes me sick.