EOIN BUTLER'sguide to downloads, singles and free audiostreams

PAUL MCCARTNEY & NIRVANA

Cut Me Some Slack (live on Saturday Night Live) ***

If someone had told us 12 months ago that Nirvana would reunite, with Paul McCartney parachuted in to replace Kurt Cobain, we’d have assumed they were taking the Pennyroyal Tea. But then, we probably didn’t think a Korean-language pop video would top the charts, or that Clint Eastwood would lose an argument with a chair. Shit happens. We roll with the punches. This one-off collaboraiton was written by McCartney with the surviving members of Nirvana. Would Kurt have approved? Probably not. But then, Kurt probably forfeited his right to an opinion on these matters when blew his own brains out in 1994.

LADY GAGA

You and I (Jazz Version) ***

This jazz interpretation of the track from her Born This Way album was posted to Twitter earlier this month with a note, from Lady Gaga, explaining that it was recorded “after too many whiskies with Newman”. Whether she was referring to the plus-size mailman who was Jerry’s nemesis on Seinfeld I cannot say. But let’s just say she was . . . Newman!

THE XX

Last Christmas XL ***

A late, late, late contender for the coveted Christmas No 1 slot. The xx turn festive convention on its head by stripping the Wham classic of its trademark sleigh bells and turning it into a sort of minimalist electropop thingy and, er, not actually releasing it in time to qualify for the Christmas chart. Well, better luck next year.

DJ EARWORM

United States of Pop 2012 **

Finally, San Francisco-based DJ Earworm says goodbye to 2012 by mashing up 25 of its biggest hits, including Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe, Fun’s We Are Young, Bruno Mars’s Locked Out of Heaven, Taylor Swift’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and – of course – Psy’s Gangnam Style. (Now let us never speak of that last song ever, ever again.)