CD: Union J - Union J

Union J are a boy band consisting of George Shelley, Josh Cuthbert, JJ Hamblett and Jaymi Hensley. They finished fourth in last year’s X Factor.

In November 2012, after being voted off the talent contest, teen competitor Ella Henderson revealed to Look magazine that she had actually been hoping for romance with Union J’s Josh Cuthbert, not George Shelley as everyone had previously assumed. Jaymo Hensley, meanwhile, revealed to the Sun on Sunday the same month that he was gay and also growing close to Katie Price.

Twenty-five-year-old JJ Hamblett’s girlfriend, model Caterina Lopez, recently Tweet-shared an ultrasound of their unborn child. The band “can't wait to be 'uncles' and apparently are already thinking of names for the tot,” according to The Daily Mirror of September 19, 2013. The Daily Mail of August 20, 2013 explained that George Shelley leant in for a kiss with Little Mix singer Jesy Nelson at this year’s V Festival. This month’s Now magazine contains an interview with Shelley in which he reveals he visited Selena Gomez in her hotel room in Lisbon but nothing happened. His band mate Josh Cuthbert added that Gomez’s ex, Justin Bieber, is “Mr Cool”. Union J’s autobiography is out now, published by Penguin books, and undoubtedly contains all manner of revelations the equal of these. For instance Cuthbert recently told Heat magazine that he had seen David Cameron’s penis in the bogs at the Pride of Britain Awards. Heat had a riot with that. Just brilliant.

The above is what Union J are: a tawdry gust of cardboard fluff tumble-weeding around the sleb-o-sphere like psychic polystyrene, content-free nothingness carefully primped for pubescent oestrogen. Their album is bad plastic, flavourless radio candy, over-produced amnesia-inducing kaka. Worthless. It contains a song called "Beethoven" so outstandingly terrible as to be worthy of mention; “It feels like whisky and butterflies” runs the opening line and goes on to suggest “I play you like an instrument/Let me be your Beethoven”.

There’s nothing to hear here. That’s hardly the point of Union J.

Watch the video for "Beautiful Life"