From the chart-topping giddy blast that is 'Crashed The Wedding' to the goofy valentine that is 'Nerdy', this is as dizzy and grinning a fuzz-guitared album as you'll ever find at Tesco. On its own merits, for its squealingly appreciative target audience, it's a winner: by any yardstick, it's a peach of a pop experience.
On the muso face of it, of course, Busted's lot seems unenviable. Sure, they're the second-biggest act in Britain on the strength of their sugar-saturated punk-pop 2001 debut, the argument goes, but fer Chrissakes, they're three 18 to 20-year-old blokes forced to make music not for spotty melody-dodging peers, but for girls! With tunes and harmonies! A boy band, damningly, with Blink-182 knobs on! Never mind that a boy band called The Beatles started out doing largely the same thing - minus, of course, Busted's spiky-hair business.
Admittedly, in an era well-versed in the notion of pop artistes being pawns in a cash-register game - disposable 'Pop Idols', Sugababes and their ilk replicating Busted's marching orders in reverse by making music for middle-aged men in mental overcoats - it's hard not to wonder what music Matt, James and the raspy-voiced, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy-loving Charlie might make in some imaginary world of artistic freedom.
Certainly the initial blast of hyperactive buzz-guitar in endearingly horny album opener 'Air Hostess' hint that, left to their own devices, our lads might be making more noise, less engagingly. On the other hand, when they're older and wiser and serving up furrowed-brow-man music or panto, they may look back on their mayfly moment of plastic pop glory with all the affection this shiny, sweet-natured album deserves.
Meanwhile, the rest of us should thank our lucky stars for the tweenie girls this particular Monkees-style car is being driven at, and the fact that Busted's punked-up template is far more glorious than the gloopy radio-R'n'B that boy bands from Take That to N*Sync got lumbered with. From that perspective, Busted have drawn not the short straw, but the plum in a pudding that even the most muso-approved curators of power-pop - Redd Kross and Fountains Of Wayne spring to mind - would drool over.
And no wonder: 'A Present For Everyone' is pretty much the perfect pop package, from its dorky self-deprecation and anguished romantic setbacks ('Where's David') to raging glands ('That Thing You Do', 'Falling For You'), the wisecracking, bloopy-synthed 'She Wants To Be Me' (girlfriend buys red guitar, boyfriend ends up in a nightie) and some heartrendingly-harmonised acoustic-and-strings love letters ('3AM', 'Over Now').
If the devil has all the best tunes this month, he's nicked them off an army of understandably pleased eleven-year-old girls. Mug one, if you have to, for a copy.
