A column dedicated to explaining Britain's manufactured celebrities to an American audience.

Friends of civilization, believers in freedom, supporters of self-serving celebrity visits to war zones, please brace yourselves for some disturbing news: al-Qaeda has a new enemy. She’s younger and perkier than The West, she’s a better dancer than The Jews, and she owns more jewelry than the Queen of England and Rudy Giuliani put together.

Wait, I sense your skepticism, but allow me to elaborate. The inflamer of whom I speak is a 28-year-old from the North-East of England by the name of Cheryl Cole. Ms. Cole, née Cheryl Ann Tweedy, is currently known to the American [...]

The new single from the British MC Professor Green, who just happens to be a veteran of Knifecrime Island's brutality, is the self-referentially titled "Just Be Good To Green." It is a hypercompressed track that is mostly notable to these ears because it features the ever-chiding voice of Lily Allen on the hook, although she's not singing her own keenly observed material; instead, she's taking on the hook from Beats International's "Dub Be Good To Me," which is itself an early-'90s remix of the S.O.S. Band's stone classic "Just Be Good To Me." And yet… Lily's voice here sounds a little too pitched-up and wheedly — like if [...]