Big Swap Songs is the newest campaign by chocolate makers, Cadbury (Yep, the one now owned by Kraft), in association with Fairtrade, to celebrate the Fairtrade Fortnight, which is from today for the next two weeks.

To celebrate it they’ve created an album featuring Mr. Paolo Nutini (Ladies, you may gasp if you like) with The Big Ghana Band, a traditional band from, well, Ghana. What the two have done is create eight songs, of which you know very well, and given them an African feel- and the results are brilliant, truly brilliant.

Tracks include a cover of “Pencil Full of Lead” featuring Paolo, along with versions of “Sound of the Underground” by Girls Aloud, “On a Day Like This” by Elbow, “Ooh La La” by Goldfrapp and Unbelievable” by EMF, with many others too. The covers are really magical, and give the track a whole new feel good mood, combining big drums and many other tribal and native instruments. I didn’t even cop-on that it was the Goldfrapp song when I first listened to it, as it sounds excellent in its own right.

The album has been released free of charge on the website, www.CadburyMusic.com. All you have to do is select which item, such as chocolate or clothes, that you have “swapped” in order to download it. For your information, I swapped a banana.

Seriously, go and get it now. Put this on your iPod or on a CD and slap it on your speakers as you make the commute to the office or college tomorrow. You’ll be in a great mood for the day, and these songs will be stuck in your head, in a good way.

And, while I’m here, a little update on my MTV for Dublin campaign: The lovely folks at Facebook have stopped our group being able to message all our members, due to the limit placed on groups of over 500 members. I’ve asked my tech-monkeys to help me find a workaround so that we can contact the members regularly (the main plan of ours), however we’ve reached a brick wall without success. I know that there are some third-party applications that we can use, not endorsed by the website, but we can’t find them. If you know them, please drop me an email: dave [at] MTVforDublin.com. I will reward you with a big virtual clap and a hug- what more could you ask for.