Despite the best efforts of us journos back in the UK, the Wanted/One Direction feud that had so much potential has never really taken off (and despite Wanted associate Capital FM banning 1D from its airwaves), but not to worry, the Wanted boys have started a new feud. With Christina Aguilera.

Aguilera is a judge on the US version of ‘The Voice’, on which The Wanted recently guested. Apparently she was pretty sullen throughout their performance of ‘Chasing The Sun’, and her reaction didn’t go down well. Especially given that Jennifer Lopez gave at least one of the boy band a sneaky kiss when they performed on ‘American Idol’.

Says Tom Wanted, speaking to New York radio station Now FM: “She [Christina] is a total bitch. She might not be a bitch in real life, but to us, she was a total bitch. She just sat there and didn’t speak to us. She wouldn’t even look at us”. Meanwhile, referencing their meeting with Lopez at the ‘Idol’ recording, George Wanted added: “J.Lo’s hot, Christina’s nothing special!”

You know, I have a new found respect for Christina Aguilera this morning. Though her records are probably being banned from the Capital airwaves as we speak, and J.Lo Monday could be a regular feature by next week.

Despite calling his children Peaches, Fifi Trixibelle and Pixie, Bob Geldof is not impressed with the former’s decision to give her new son an unusual name. Peaches Geldof has called her son by fiancé Tom Cohen, born earlier this month, Astala.

Geldof Senior seemingly told The Sun when asked about his daughter’s choice of name for his grandson: “Yuck! I’ve actually been begging them to change it. What’s he going to be called in school? Ass? Stella? It’s a girl’s name, let’s face it”.

But, despite the naming, Geldof is, obviously, delighted to have a grandchild, and even more so to have a boy in his family, having lived with four daughters for so long (his three own children by Paula Yates, and her other daughter Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, who he adopted). He continued: “I’ve swam in oestrogen my entire life, and now finally a little chap comes along. It’s great”.

Canada’s own Grimes, aka Claire ‘Third Eye’ Boucher, has designed a jewellery line in collaboration with Montreal-based artist Morgan Black. Her first creation? Why, what else but ‘Grimes Pussy Rings’. Obviously.

The collection isn’t available to buy online yet because, says Boucher, Black “refuses to have a website so I don’t have any link”. Boucher herself doesn’t do any such thing though, so you can still view an image of said rings, which have nothing to do with cats of any kind, here.

Not that I’m a fashion authority or anything, but I think they look like ‘adult’ wine gums.

You may remember that Aerosmith appeared in an edition of US documentary series ’60 Minutes’ back in March. It made the headlines not only because the band were very candid in their interviews, but because frontman Steven Tyler said after it went out that the band felt like they’d said too much.

A section of the programme focussed on tensions between Tyler and the rest of the band, in particular guitarist Joe Perry, which, while never a secret, were laid out in front of viewers very clearly. Asked if these tensions had ever led to a full on fight, Perry said: “That would damage the relationship too much; besides he needs his jaw to sing”.

When the filmmakers showed Tyler this, along with other footage of his bandmates badmouthing him, in a separate interview, he responded: “I always sleep with one eye open with him”, adding: “I think my busting everyone’s chops is what got this band to where it is. I get the hits. Yeah, I’m that good”.

After the programme was aired, Tyler told Access Hollywood that he and his bandmates regretted being so open about their relationships in the interviews, saying: “We all realise we might have said a little too much. Being Italian, you know, there’s some things you don’t say. There was stuff we were going through”.

True, but this band are always going through something. Two years ago they got through a particularly rough patch by sitting down together with their respective managers and lawyers to argue it out. Although the really big issues were seemingly resolved after that meeting, tensions still emerge from time to time.

But how did ’60 Minutes’ manage to get the band to speak so candidly about their problems with each other? Was it that everyone was in a bad mood that day and needed to vent? Was if the strain of years of battling to make things work showing through? Was it hard-hitting journalism? No, none of these things. According to bassist Tom Hamilton it boiled down to clever editing and devious clothing choices.

He accused the producers of ’60 Minutes’ of editing together the worst of everything the band had said about Tyler in order to provoke a strong reaction from the frontman when shown the footage. “It was tough to watch”, Hamilton told US radio station 97.5 K-Rock this week. “They took comments we made during very deep conversations and sort of barraged Steven with them. I thought it was a little brutal”.

Despite this, he admitted that everything they’d said was true: “It was the truth. It was everybody speaking what they were feeling. We talked about a lot of things involving anger – yet a lot of other things involving brotherhood. So Steven got pissed off and said a couple of things that were demeaning to the rest of us. I cringed a little bit, yet the second it was over I texted him and said, ‘You did a great job’”.

But the question remains, even if the editing magnified what they’d said, if it was all true, how did ’60 Minutes’ manage to get them to say things they new would be likely to upset Tyler in the first place? How did the show push them to risk destroying the already tense relationship between five men who have otherwise managed to stick together (for the most part) for more than 40 years? How could Aerosmith have been brought to the very brink of imploding like this?

“Lara Logan, the correspondent, had a very low-cut top on”, explained Hamilton.

Oh, right. He adds that it was clear what Logan was up to right from the start, but he was powerless to resist her journalistic, er, clothes. He recalled: “I’m like, ‘Okay, this is sort of, get the band nervous with your cleavage and make them say stuff’. And if you watch the interview you won’t see that. That’s how they do it: they show their boobs and get you to talk about stuff. It works every time”.

Now, this is award-winning war correspondent Lara Logan we are talking about, who has reported from warzones and other areas of conflict around the world for the last fifteen years. In February 2011, while covering the Egyptian Revolution, she was attacked, stripped naked and assaulted by a mob in Tahir Square. In May last year she was interviewed on ’60 Minutes’ herself, speaking about the prevalence of sexual violence against female reporters in Egypt during the revolution.

This explains why, six months later, she was back in US and being embedded with Aerosmith, rather than the US Army as she was more used to, as they toured South America. Having taken a break from war and violence, I’d say getting a bunch of aging rock stars to say some stupid things just by asking them questions wasn’t beyond her capabilities. Though being able to do so without having them try to stare down her (actually fairly conservative) top throughout would presumably have been preferable for the reporter, even if their efforts to catch a glimpse did deliver the more controversial admissions.

Oh Tupac, what have you started? Now TLC are reportedly considering using that not-really-a-hologram technology to bring their late bandmate Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes back to the stage as part of a reunion tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the R&B trio’s debut album. Beethoven will be playing the Royal Albert Hall next.

To be fair, the hologram element of the reunion is just rumour (via TMZ), but some sort of live activity to mark the 20th anniversary of ‘Ooooooohhh… On The TLC Tip’ (and, sadly, the tenth anniversary of Lopez’s death in a car accident) has been confirmed.

The group’s T-Boz told Essence.com: “We’re going on tour; we are in negotiations now with LA Reid, so we’ll see what happens. A lot of cool things are coming up”.

Reid, now head of Sony’s Epic division, signed TLC to his La Face label at the start of the 1990s. By moving to Sony last year the La Face catalogue is now back under his control.

While live activity, and even some possible new recordings, are currently just being discussed, work on a biopic about TLC’s rise to fame is apparently already underway. No word on whether any holograms will feature.

Justin Bieber has revealed that one of the songs on his new album, ‘Believe’, was written about Mariah Yeater, the woman who last year claimed to have become pregnant by the singer after a brief backstage liaison.

Speaking at a press conference, BBC Newsbeat reports that Bieber told reporters: “[I was inspired by things like] that girl – Mariah Yeater – who said she was going to have my baby. I wrote about that situation. We’ve recorded like 40 songs. Every song has a piece of me, it’s hard to pick. I wrote almost all of them or co-wrote them”.

Unlike Yeater, who, it turned out, didn’t have a piece of him at all. As previously reported, Bieber tweeted about Yeater last week too. Let it lie, Justin.

Do you fancy a free pass to do as you please in Adelaide? Well this is your lucky day, because Cher’s key to the city is currently up for sale on eBay.

The key and accompanying plaque were presented to Cher in 1990 after she performed at the Formula One Grand Prix in the city. Now, 22 years later, it’s clearly been decided that Cher doesn’t need to go back there.

Adelaide’s former mayor, Steve Condous, who presented Cher with the key, was not impressed, telling local newspaper The Advertiser: “I think that’s pretty poor. I’m disappointed. I would have thought that getting the key to a city like Adelaide would have had some value to her, but obviously it doesn’t because she wouldn’t have got rid of it. I’ve been given a couple of keys to cities and I felt pretty privileged to be given those. If she didn’t want to keep it she should have returned it back to the city”.

The city’s current mayor, Stephen Yarwood added: “[I am] exceptionally disappointed. I just think that it is more a reflection on her than the city of Adelaide. It must be very embarrassing for her if she is selling it because she needs the money”.

Cher, however, insists that she doesn’t know how the key came to be up for auction on eBay. Presumably she’d been turning her house upside down looking for it until the matter was brought to her attention. She tweeted: “I’m upset too and trying to get to [the] bottom [of this]! I think my office fucked up”.

For all of that, the auction is still live, so if you have a spare £60,000 you could have Cher’s freedom of Adelaide for your very own.

With the live music market already cluttered with bands needlessly reforming, the last thing we need is dead musicians getting in on the act.

Thankfully then, Dr Dre has said there are currently no plans to take his Tupac Shakur hologram on tour. Speaking in a video recorded backstage ahead of his second performance with the virtual Tupac at the second outing of the 2012 Coachella festival at the weekend, he said that the much talked about projected computer animation of the long dead rapper was “strictly for Coachella”, despite rumours of a tour being planned.

“It was strictly for Coachella, get it right”, he said. “I want to get rid of all the rumours out there. This was not done for a tour”.

Before you all breathe a sigh of relief though, he did add: “If a tour happens, we’ll see”. So, basically, Tupac is probably going on tour.

Also rumoured to be heading out on tour via the not-really-a-hologram technology is Michael Jackson, who may ‘join’ his brothers for a Jackson Five reunion. Speaking about all the chatter that erupted around Tupac’s digital appearance on stage, Jackie Jackson said that it could quite easily have been his brother who caused all the fuss. He told The Sun: “It could have been Michael – absolutely. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? As a matter of fact, we had that idea two years ago for Michael’s Cirque du Soleil show”.

Of course, where Jackson Five reunions tread, disputes generally follow, which could delay or put a stop to any hologram shows. Though if it looks like it could generate a lot of money (which sadly it could) then the possibility of it happening shouldn’t be ruled out.

Watch Dr Dre’s video message here:

Other than a few firm denials via his publicist and on American TV, and plenty of stern libel warnings sent out via his lawyers, Justin Bieber has not said a great deal about those allegations made last year that he had a brief sexual liason with a fan backstage at a gig in LA, and that said fan had a child as a result.

She sued for paternity; he threatened to sue for defamation; she withdrew her paternity suit but said she stood by her allegations and would pursue child support from the teen star; and then all went quiet. Various lawyers came and went, the Biebster handed over some DNA, but nothing much else has happened over the allegations that always sounded highly dubious.

But this weekend the Beiber sent a little message to his accuser, Mariah Yeater. Via the tweets, the pop star wrote: “Dear Mariah Yeeter (sic)… we have never met… so from the heart I just wanted to say…” He then linked to a bit of audio of Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego Borat taunting: “You will never get this, you will never get this, la la la la la!”

Perhaps that’s five months of pent up frustration and anger released on Bieber’s part, which is probably understandable. Though I think had he run his tweet through the probably-should-be-developed ‘PR advice app’ before pressing send, it might have flashed up “just let sleeping dogs lie”.

Playground pecking order’s a funny thing, isn’t it? There’s always a bigger, meaner kid ready to put down the one you’re already scared of. So discovered One Direction this week.

According to TMZ, and I hope this story is true, at the point in the clearly manufactured feud between The Wanted and One Direction before The Wanted had come out and said it all existed in the imaginations of the British tabloids, 1D were apparently genuinely scared of their rivals. And being young, naïve boys with nice haircuts and fresh faces, One Direction might well be frightened of a band like The Wanted, who look they were plucked for stardom after being discovered in an alleyway kicking a tramp.

So, anyway, One Direction were rehearsing for their appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’ at CentreStaging in Burbank, California when their security were alerted to the fact that The Wanted were due to arrive in the same studio complex to rehearse for their performance on ‘American Idol’.

Afraid for their lives, One Direction quickly packed up to leave, but before they could grab all their stuff and run out of the door, The Wanted arrived. Quick as a flash, their security guards (yeah, that’s right, they were apparently scared of being beaten up even though they had security guards – stop doubting the validity of this story, would you?) went and had a quiet word with The Wanted’s security guards.

I imagine the conversation (which definitely happened) went like this:

1D security dude: Hi Dave, how are you?

The Wanted security dude: Oh, I’m good thanks Johnny. How are you? How’s the wife?

Johnny: Ah, you know, can’t complain. The kids are driving me up the fucking wall though.

Dave: Yeah? Well, they’re at that age I guess. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have twins that old. Especially when you have to work such long hours.

Johnny: Yeah, and now Sarah’s had to take on a part time job too. It’s hard, man. Anyway, look, we’re looking after these guys called One Direction. I’m not really sure who they are but the girls, they love them. To be fair, they do have really lovely hair. But anyway, they’re really fucking scared that your boys are going to come over and fuck them up, so could you make sure that doesn’t happen?

Dave: Really? I don’t know who the fuck these Wanted guys are, they’re just some skinny British guys. They couldn’t even kick a tramp to the floor in an alleyway.

Johnny: You haven’t seen the ones I’ve got. Seriously, they cry when they see me, and I’m supposed to be looking after them. Honestly, I don’t know why we put up with this shit. It’s not worth the hassle. All this fucking dancing and singing all the fucking day. Fuck! Oh well, it’s a job I guess. Gotta feed those twins!

Dave: Yeah, you’re right there. Well, nice to see you. I’ll make sure nothing happens. Ha ha ha! These skinny British kids, they crack me up. But, God, the loneliness I feel in my heart when I go to bed at night. Oh well, see you soon.

Then Dave went back to The Wanted and told him that some guys called One Direction were scared that they were going to beat them up and were trying to run away. The Wanted found this hilarious and Max from the group immediately ran over to his rivals’ studio so that he could laugh at them. Laugh at them right in their faces. Except Liam from One Direction, who he apparently hugged instead. Because apparently one of The Wanted and one of One Direction are friends, which kind of makes you wonder why anyone was scared (because remember this story definitely happened).

Anyway, The Wanted were the bigger kids in that situation, but there are always bigger kids out there. The bigger kid in this case is Tyler, The Creator. As a guest host of MTV’s prank show ‘Punk’d', the Odd Future leader was tasked with making life a misery for The Wanted. Something he seems to have done gleefully.

“They’re big in the UK, but this is their first time in America. And I’m about to fuck that up”, Tyler tells the ‘Punk’d’ cameras in a clip that appeared online this week. And fuck it up he did, sending some actors dressed as police to ‘arrest’ them and generally not be nice to them. “He’s about to cry”, Tyler chuckles at one point as he watches them in secret from a nearby van.

So, the Odd Future/The Wanted collaboration the world has been clamouring for has now happened. Not a studio project, but rather Tyler’s prank on the ‘Glad You Came’ heartthrobs as part of his guest hosting spot on MTV’s ‘Punk’d', the set-up for which sees the Brit boyband detained by fake police officers under false pretences.

We already knew The Wanted – the serious pop group who don’t go in for tacky TV promotions – would appear on MTV’s prank show. And also that the new series would have guest pranksters. The Tyler/Wanted tie up has been confirmed by a new clip that has emerged online. “They’re big in the UK, but this is their first time in America. And I’m about to fuck that up”, Tyler tells the ‘Punk’d’ cameras, later observing of a mystery The Wanted member: “He’s about to cry”.

Oh dear, I suspected this might end in tears. See a preview of the episode in question, which airs in the UK this summer, here.

John Lydon has hit out at Universal’s announcement that it plans to re-release Sex Pistols track ‘God Save The Queen’ for the upcoming Diamond Jubilee. The single famously caused outrage, of course, when it was originally released around Liz II’s Silver Jubilee celebrations 35 years ago.

Confirming he did not endorse Universal’s re-release campaign, Lydon said yesterday: “I would like to very strongly distance myself from the recent stories and campaign to push ‘God Save The Queen’ for the number one spot. It is certainly not my personal plan or aim. I am proud of what The Sex Pistols achieved and always will be but this campaign totally undermines what The Sex Pistols stood for”.

Well what do you know, jobbing actor/singer/golfer/MySpace Creative Director Justin Timberlake is now also an interior designer. Yes, it’s true.

In collaboration with his personal design guru Estee Stanley, JT has co-curated a collection of domestic desirables to be stocked on members-only homeware site, HomeMint.com.

The duo’s creations – which share a “European” motif – include rugs, jugs, a nest of stackable stools (priced at $750), and a blue ceramic cereal bowl containing half a lemon. Though thinking about it, the lemon is most likely sold separately.

Says Justin: “If we wouldn’t put it in our homes, we’re not going to ask people to put it in theirs. You don’t have to spend your whole bank account to make your home look amazing but also be comfortable and reliable”.

He adds this revelation: “I’ll sit and I’ll look at hardware for hours. Literally, for hours, I’ll sit and compare hardware. The devil’s in the details. I mean, it’s your home, it has to be your own”.

You can browse selected photos of the range here, and then let’s never speak of it again.

Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson claims that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain had been working on a solo album before he died.

Speaking to Fuse about his new book, ‘Letters To Kurt’, Erlandson said: “[Kurt] was headed in a direction that was really cool. It would have been his ‘White Album’. That’s really what he was going towards, a solo album but working with different people. I was really excited about some of the stuff he was working on. I got to see him play it in front of me. That’s why I was really sad [when he died]. I was like: ‘Oh man, not only are you cutting off a life, but a message to the world, a musical path is just left with … Bush and all this other stuff [laughs]. He was cut short. Who knows where the music would have gone”.

Some of the demo recordings for the album were amongst tracks included in the 2004 Nirvana boxset ‘With The Lights Out’, said Erlandson, but he hopes for a full release at some point: “I’m not in control of things. I just wish something would come together. I think the fans would be a lot happier. If nobody ever hears those songs, except for like three people, then … that’s the way it goes”.

According to TMZ, One Direction nearly fled a US TV studio earlier this month because they were scared that The Wanted were about to arrive and beat them up. I know, it sounds unlikely, but that’s what TMZ says.

One Direction, so the story goes, were rehearsing for their appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’ at CentreStaging in Burbank, California when their security were alerted to the fact that The Wanted were due to arrive in the same studio complex to rehearse for their performance on ‘American Idol’.

This was at the point when the total non-feud between the two groups was raging in the British tabloids and it had seemingly put the wind up 1D. Well, all except Liam. TMZ notes that he was the only member of the group who wasn’t scared in the slightest. Whether this is because he has an acute understanding of how the tabloid press works or because he’s hard as nails isn’t clear. I suspect it’s neither.

Anyway, the One Direction boys, afraid for their lives, decided to end their session early and run away, but The Wanted arrived while this was all still going on. One Direction’s security team, in an attempt to keep things under control, went and spoke to The Wanted’s security guys and told them about 1D’s concerns. The Wanted’s security team then passed this information on to The Wanted themselves, who apparently found it very funny.

Max from The Wanted found it so funny that he immediately went over to One Direction’s studio in order to laugh right into their faces. Not Liam’s face though, apparently he hugged Liam. Because you don’t mess with Liam. For some reason.

Courtney Love’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain has proposed Twitter ban her mother from the micro-blogging platform to stop her from spouting nonsense. Of course Love did once ban herself from the social network, partly after being sued for defamation in relation to some particularly bitchy tweets, but she subsequently returned.

And recently she’s apparently been using her Twitter account to accuse her late husband’s former bandmate Dave Grohl of trying to seduce her nineteen year old and currently engaged to be married daughter. Grohl then took to Twitter to deny the allegations, which he called “upsetting, offensive and absolutely untrue”.

And Frances herself – who usually ignores her estranged mother’s more random remarks – also felt the need to clarify things, saying via the tweets: “While I’m generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I’m in a monogamous relationship and very happy. Twitter should ban my mother”.

In election year, Barack Obama must reckon siding with Jay-Z is more of a vote winner than joining the Kanye West camp. Not that there’s really any need to take sides when it comes to friends and collaborators Jay-Z and Kanye West, and presumably a cynical politician, if asked to pick between the two rappers, would answer “I like ‘Watch The Throne’ the best”.

But Obama picked Mr Z this week when asked which rapper he preferred, reaffirming his opinion that West is a “jackass”. Albeit a talented jackass. Said the Prez: “Jay-Z [is my favourite]. Though I do like Kanye. He’s a Chicago guy, smart. He’s very talented”.

Reminded that, after West’s infamous stage invasion at the 2009 MTV awards event where Taylor Swift had won over Beyonce, he had called the rapper a “jackass”, Obama clarified: “[Well], he is a jackass. But he’s talented [too]“.

To kickstart the launch of its new Play Button feature, Spotify yesterday announced a number of partnerships with various online media, which will embed Spotify playlists in their websites.

One such site was The Huffington Post, whose founder Arianna Huffington wrote an impassioned piece about Spotify and music in general. However, across social media networks people mainly concentrated on one paragraph, in which she wrote: “My iPod is my constant travel companion, and last week Kathy and Tom Freston (my go-to world music guru) gifted me with a new iPod pre-loaded with 11,000 songs from Tom’s collection. I put it on shuffle and discovered whole new worlds”.

Did Huffington admit to owning an iPod containing thousands of tracks she copied from someone else? That someone being no less than former MTV CEO Tom Freston? No, I’m sure that she meant that Freston bought the iPod AND 11,000 tracks to go on it. I mean, it must have cost him several thousand dollars and taken a considerable amount of time to buy them all, but I’m sure that’s what she meant.

Under US copyright law, of course, record companies are allowed to seek between $750 and $30,000 for each track found to have been obtained illegally, while juries can raise that to $150,000. That puts Huffington’s bill at somewhere between $8.25 million and $1.65 billion. Luckily for her, the RIAA stopped taking individual file-sharers to court. Oh, and her music was definitely purchased legally. Definitely.

Read the article in question here.

Rapper 2 Chainz appeared on US TV show ’106 & Park’ last week to discuss his new Kanye West-produced single ‘Mercy’. But part way through the interview the rapper stopped to invite West himself out to give more insight, because he was “tired of explaining” the track. Though if he was looking for some help, it didn’t really work, because Yeezy refused to say a word.

Actually, it was clearly pre-agreed that West wouldn’t speak, as between being welcomed onto the show and being thanked for appearing 2 Chainz and the show’s presenters carried on as if he wasn’t there. It does make for a weird few minutes of telly though.

Watch here:

Well it took them long enough. Hallmark has just announced a range of Justin Bieber greetings cards – 48 of them, to be precise – which are available in Wal-mart stores now and will go on sale throughout the US next month.

Hallmark Licensing Director Jenny Hofeditz said of the new range: “We are thrilled to finally share this special line of Hallmark cards with Justin’s loyal and passionate fans today, giving them a fun new way to connect while celebrating their love of him and his music. Hallmark Justin Bieber cards come in bright colours, include photos of Justin and express a variety of playful sentiments, such as ‘Hope your big day rocks like never before’, and ‘You must be one of my biggest fans cos you blow me away, girl!’”

Yeah, they’re not really designed for any specific occasions, despite there being so many of them. Although I assume there is some sort of ‘Sorry you walked into that door‘ card.