Disintermediation

The buzz has been intense for the video for the Kidz Bop cover of Since U Been Gone, as it was for their cover of "Float On." Also recently buzzed about? Ted Leo covering Since U  Been Gone. Could we not cut Kelly Clarkson out of the equation and just have Kidz Bop cover Ted Leo songs?  I'd go with this tune, which would be real educational  (lyrics here) for the Kidz, and the video with the Kidz dressed up like T.E. Lawrence, Sierra Leonean warlords, and hard fellows from Belfast would rule. And it would be cool to hear them belting out the chorus. Seriously, though, this is quite a tune--imagine Holidays in Hell imbued with the conscience of some tortured bastard American scion of Graham Greene, and you have a pop song that makes you feel as if you have seen a movie. In my experience, the last to pull off the trick as successfully was Jim Carroll's "Freddy's Store" from the criminally neglected I Write Your Name.
  Ted Leo + Pharmacists "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" Hearts of Oak, Lookout!, 2003
Buy Hearts of Oak from the man himself. Better yet, catch them on tour. Or, best. see them at an all-ages show. You'll find that youthful enthusiasm is more engaging than the PBR-guzzling, arm-folding, head-nodding disaffection of your peers. The cinetrix and I took them in at the Earl in the fall,  and there was a knot of young fans who were eager to point out to us that they had dressed in black with roses in their hair as an hommage to "Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead." Awesome!