CHARLOTTE Church is 19 and likes a fag and a party and a Cardiff catfight.

Brooke Valentine is 19 and a bootilicious Texan R & B princess, whose breakthrough single, Girlfight, has Lil Jon and Big Boi fantasising over a pulchritudinous punch-up. Brooke has delivered the devilish record that the Welsh voice of an angel craved in her transfer from classical church music to the pop playpen. Charlotte is bitchy and funny and lively in interviews but is yet to find her new singing voice; at the moment it is auditioning in the mid-Atlantic, and her songs are too serious, slick and adult, whether pondering therapy on the faux-Motown single Crazy Chick or striving for a Robbie Williams tear-jerking finale on Confessional Song. Where Church is no better than Geri Halliwell, Brooke Valentine has teenage fun flirting and bragging on Taste Of Dis, cooing gorgeously on Cover Girl and slamming doors in the revenge kiss-off I Want You Dead.

Updated: 08:55 Thursday, July 28, 2005