From Mr Hudson to Cotton Mather – Music’s Most Underwhelming Proteges

Amy Winehouse is justly proud of her 13-year-old goddaughter album Dionne Bromfield, whose debut album comes out on Monday (October 12), through Winehouse’s own label, Lioness Records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kphnD7cl6ns

The record features covers of ’50s/’60s hits such as ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ and ‘My Boy Lollipop’. And it’s all perfectly sweet and inoffensive, clearly designed to appeal to the Fern Britton/Christmas-present-for-grandma market – although one fears Amy may have rather burnt her bridges with the mainstream granny demographic, what with the whole crack thing.

Still, Amy is by no means the first musician to exploit her fame to propel an underling into the public consciousness. It’s a noble aim – but the results tend to be distinctly disappointing, as these musical Mini-Mes demonstrate.

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Mr Hudson
Just when you thought Boris Johnson had cornered the market in annoying, bleach-blond Oxford graduates, along comes Mr Hudson, trumpeted by Kanye West as potentially “one of the most important artists of his generation” – despite sounding like Sting, only with less charm.

Jesse Malin
Bruce Springsteen’s Achilles’ Heel is a curious warped narcissism that makes him heap praise on copycat acts who ape what he does, only infinitely worse (see also: The Gaslight Anthem). God knows what possessed him to co-write a track with the dishevelled Malin, who is, at best, a very, very poor man’s Ryan Adams.

Kristeeen Young
Said Morrissey of this shrill Kate Bush-a-like: “We scan the British pop charts in the hopeless quest for something different. Kristeen Young frees us from this.” The pair duly toured together and things seemed to be going well – until Young told an audience that Moz “gives good head”. Weirdly, he booted her off the tour for that. Isn’t it a compliment?

Cotton Mather
Listing all the bands Noel Gallagher has championed over the years is the equivalent of compiling a CD called The Dreariest Trudge-Rock In The World…Ever! Jangly Texans Cotton Mather were probably the worst of the lot – although in Noel’s defence, back in 1998 he was doing so much coke, even ‘Magic Pie’ sounded acceptable.

The Mitchell Brothers
Mike Skinner’s short-lived The Beats imprint was an emporium for all manner of shonky wares – Example, Professor Green et al. Fortunately for everyone concerned, Skinner soon got bored and started spending his time on more rewarding things, such as making crop circles and dicking around on Twitter.

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Newham Generals
To his credit (sort of), Dizzee Rascal never misses an opportunity to promote these potty-mouthed grime geezers. It’s just a shame their oeuvre features tracks as repulsive as ‘Bell Dem Slags’, the worst example of cackling, porny misogyny this side of, well, Dizzee’s new album.

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