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Posted by: JCM20 19th May 2016, 06:47 AM

I still think this is a brilliant song.

Back in the early '00s, one way of ensuring your single would be a hit was by getting heavy rotation on music video channels.

And if like us you spent your days flicking between MTV Hits, The Box, TMF and the like back in 2000, one video that was unavoidable was Madison Avenue's Don't Call Me Baby. It certainly did the trick though, as the track stormed to Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart precisely 16 years ago this week.

Madison Avenue were a short-lived Australian duo comprising of writer/producer Andy Van Dorselaer and singer Cheyne Coates - she was the one wearing those skimpy outfits and delivering a sassy dance routine in said video.

Don't Call Me Baby charged to the top spot with opening-week sales of 93,794, knocking the previous week's Number 1 - Britney Spears' Oops! I Did It Again - down to second place. Here's how the rest of the Top 10 looked this week in 2000 (hello Sex Bomb) - and you can click on the image to see the full Top 100:

Don't Call Me Baby's lifetime chart sales stand at 365,605, and it seems some of you are still discovering it - last week 67 people downloaded the song in the UK alone.

But what became of Madison Avenue? They followed up their Number 1 with Top 10 hit Who the Hell Are You?, but they called it quits shortly after their album, called The Polyester Embassy, stalled at Number 74. It was probably for the best, as they were never going to top that album title, were they?

Still, Madison Avenue leave a legacy of two solid pop songs, and this incredible Top of the Pops performance (and this one where she dances around a glass of water, but let's not talk about that):

http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/number-1-today-in-2000-madison-avenues-dont-call-me-baby-knocks-britney-off-the-top-spot__15095/

Posted by: mr_pmt 19th May 2016, 07:07 AM

This song is an all-time great. I still listen to it regularly!

Posted by: vidcapper 19th May 2016, 09:00 AM

Well, I kinda guessed it wasn't *him*

I do love that song, though!

Posted by: Colm 19th May 2016, 10:40 AM

While 2000 was packed with very good number 1s - and I don't say that every often - I didn't like Don't Call Me baby at all.

What a year for good number 1s, though.


The Masses Against the Classes
Born to Make You Happy
Rise
Pure Shores
Don't Give Up
Never Be the Same Again
Fill Me In
Toca's Miracle
It Feels So Good
The Real Slim Shady
7 Days
I Turn to You
Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)
Lady (Hear Me Tonight)
Independent Women Part 1
Stan

Posted by: JCM20 19th May 2016, 11:02 AM

Absolutely, higher number of chart choppers than any other year in chart history - 42 of them. As well as 36 the year before. Looks like staying at number 1 for a second week was a monumental achievement back then.

Posted by: danG 19th May 2016, 03:59 PM

There really were far too many #1s that year

'Don't Call Me Baby' is great anyway

Out of the other new entries Sexbomb is very fun and the Paul van Dyk song is fairly good too.

Posted by: JCM20 19th May 2016, 04:51 PM

Also amazing to see that Iron Maiden had a top 10 hit this century!

Posted by: vancey 19th May 2016, 05:52 PM

I never understood why, in performances like the one above, they have a DJ spinning decks? Is he pretending the music is coming from him mixing? Is he pretending that that's how the song was produced?

Posted by: Ethan 19th May 2016, 07:10 PM

what a fabulous tune!

Posted by: Euphorique 19th May 2016, 09:34 PM

Classic.

Posted by: Mango 19th May 2016, 11:02 PM

'Don't Call Me Baby' is a tune! Also, according to spotify, Madison Avenue released a new album called Madisonavenue a couple of weeks ago?

Posted by: Doctor Blind 20th May 2016, 04:54 AM

You missed out “Black Coffee”

Huge amounts of dross though: “Bag It Up” and dire opportunistic covers such as “We Will Rock You”, “Take On Me”, “American Pie” and who could forget “Against All Odds” where opportunistic was taken to a whole new level by Mariah Carey.

Posted by: Colm 20th May 2016, 08:35 AM

They were all awful.

Posted by: gooddelta 20th May 2016, 08:39 AM

Breathless by The Corrs was a great 2000 #1 too.

I love Don't Call Me Baby, was so glad it got the re-release as when it charted at #30 the winter before I remember wondering how on earth a song that sounded like such a big smash had ended up so low. Guess it just didn't get the radio support first time around. I really liked Who The Hell Are You too.

Posted by: liamk97 20th May 2016, 09:39 AM

This is one of the defining songs of my childhood and I still get such a nostalgic feeling when I listen today. The singer was perhaps one of my first crushes!

Posted by: Gambo 20th May 2016, 11:58 AM

I agree that was a frequently-anachronistic sight on TV performances of dance tracks from that era, and of course it is true that live spinning of records on decks would not have been used in the studio to create a track like 'Don't Call Me Baby'. However, I suspect it was perhaps a nod to the fact that the entire song was in fact built around a little-known song by Italian singer Pino D'Angio, called 'Ma Quale Idea' from the early '80s. If you take a listen you will discover that bar the vocals and contemporary programmed rhythm, the hook and all other musical parts were directly lifted from this track, looped and edited, and simply sped-up. This was much the same money-for-old-rope technique that Spiller used on that other often so-well-regarded 2000 No 1 hit 'Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)', which was a fairly clumsily-hacked-up looping of excerpts from an equally-obscure disco track called 'Love Is You' by American diva Carol Williams from the late '70s, with the only original - and so creditable to the artists billed - part being Sophie Ellis-Bextor's vocal.

As appealing on the face of it that these sort of tracks might be as catchy and danceable pop tunes, especially if they sound new, it simply won't do to credit the artists that produced them with any significant musical or compositional merit! Personally I don't see it as that tricky to lift an old disco lick, which most current audiences won't even recognise, put it through a sampler (as opposed to the decks on TOTP etc - looks marginally more exciting on stage than having an Akai propped-up on a desk!) to create a repetitive unimaginative edit based on a single riff, and then write some catch-all, easy-come-easy-go lyrics for a new vocalist to sing over the top, and then have kids assume they're wholly-responsible for it. All these plaudits for numerous hits from the 1990s and 2000s that routinely used this cheap trick make me despair, as the very things that rendered them at all worthy or memorable were usually the instrumental melodies that they ripped-off in the background! At least save the bigger credit for the original artist and writers who came up with the essential basis of the song from scratch, rather than some producer or DJ who is conversant with obscure dance numbers and how to operate technology.

Don't get me wrong, there are some artists using sampling in a very creative manner, so that the original extract is barely recogniseable when it's blended in with other original music. But I'm afraid these chancers just cashed-in on a lazy but effective trend for entry-level chart hits that saved them from having to be that creative - and they still do, although such tracks are now mercifully far-less conspicuous in the charts now than they were then. Good luck to the vocalists who do write and perform the only novel parts of such hits, and perhaps carve a more genuine career on the back of it; sometimes talent will triumph longer-term. Happily, we're still hearing new music from the likes of Sophie E-B, but have heard nothing from Spiller since 2000!

Posted by: Colm 20th May 2016, 12:04 PM

Dance music has often been money for old rope. If you follow this thread http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=179328 you will see a multitude of sampling references.

Posted by: Gambo 20th May 2016, 12:13 PM

Oh yeah; it's sadly nothing new - and increasingly very little in modern pop music is, because let's face it, after 60-odd years, most things that could constitute commercially-appealing music in the 3 or 4 minute format have already been done, often to death! It's very hard to be truly original in the pop confines now, even if you are a trained and proficient musician. Even those making original compositions have for the bulk of the last 25 years been recycling earlier music and just putting a bit of spin on it to re-sell it to a new generation of potential fans. Dance isn't the only genre where this applies. Whether it's cover versions, sound-alikes, sampling, recylcing is now firmly here to stay. Hell, even The Beatles and The Stones, both mega-commercial culture-defining bands that are always credited with musical and lyrical competence, launched their stellar careers with quite a few covers of American blues numbers, and their earlier material was patently them trying to sound like some of their 1950s forbears - something they've never denied.

Actually, on reflection, with regard to 'Don't Call Me Baby', we shouldn't give the Italian guy too much credit either, as the bassline they sampled from his record, surely the most memorable part of the production as it carries the whole thing through, was a pretty-obvious cover of 'Aint' No Stoppin' Us Now' by McFadden & Whitehead - the only difference is that I think the Italians used a session musician to play it, almost note-for-note, rather than sample it direct. As you say, nothing new under the sun. But I just hate the idea of so-called 'artists' who really do little more than take a four or eight-bar riff and repeat it courtesy of a machine and call it a new song to receive too much respect or critical praise, however well-loved the results might've been. At least with the money, if it's all above board the original writers will receive a share of the royalties!

Posted by: fiesta 20th May 2016, 12:37 PM

This works out to have sold 58000 downloads, which is more than Janet jacksons Together Again at 50000.

Posted by: SKOB 20th May 2016, 12:48 PM

Those two are basically one song

Posted by: N-S 20th May 2016, 03:36 PM

The track that it samples sold 2 million copies on Contintental Europe and was #1 in Spain