23rd August: SLEEPING WITH THE LIGHT ON - Busted

 

Well, this is annoying. Not just that it's them again, but because the version that was actually a hit (called the 'New Version' on the CD single) is irritatingly missing from youtube and instead all the videos contain the album version, similar but longer and much more chilled out. Thankfully NME have the music video with the proper track on it, as do Dailymotion.

 

Back again after What I Go To School For, by now they were certified megastars and any initial enjoyment I'd had with 'Year 3000' has now long since made way for irritation. This one though isn't completely terrible for once and has a nice tune to it, a bit closer to the kind of stuff McFly would later do (who I hated just as much as Busted at the time but listening back Tom Fletcher was much a better songwriter than the Busted boys). Probably the second best of theirs I've heard, if not quite as good as Year 3000.

 

Here's the best version on youtube I could find, no video (just lyrics) and, as said earlier, the album version instead of the single remix. Google it for the proper version!

 

30th August: LIFE GOT COLD - Girls Aloud

 

The Popstars: The Rivals winners during one of the most remarkable top 3 runs I can think of for any artist - between their 2002 debut and the end of 2004, every one of their singles charted in the top 3. Indeed this was the only one to "just" peak at #3, all the others were #1 and #2!

 

They would of course basically go on to define the noughties, getting tons of top 10s right through the decade and only properly split earlier this year. This is their first downtempo number and infamously shares a chorus so similar to 'Wonderwall' by Oasis that Noel Gallagher ended up getting a writing credit for it. A huge fan favourite, my opinion is that it's a nice song but the Wonderwall similarity is just a bit too close for comfort and takes me out the song and makes me want to listen to that instead. Give it a different chorus and I'd have enjoyed it a bit more, shame as the rest's pretty good. And some pretty brilliant singles were to come!

 

As an extra bit of trivia, this I'm pretty sure is the last #3 hit that had a release on cassette tape. Elton John's 'Are You Ready For Love' would be the last #1 hit later that month. And the first #3 not available on CD single? Possibly 'Human' by The Killers in 2008, although it got a 7"/12" release.

 

One more for today, then five more from 2003 which I'll have ready by tomorrow before we move on to 2004!

 

6th September: LIKE GLUE - Sean Paul

 

Sean Paul's released some epic songs in his time. 'Get Busy' is great, 2004's 'I'm Still in Love With You' equally so and 'Breathe', his chart-topping collaboration with Blu Cantrell, is perfection. So it does mystify me a little why this is one of his biggest hits as it's definitely not his best, it's got a cool electro riff running throughout but in general it falls a bit flat and doesn't quite either a strong enough rhythm or melody to stand out like his other stuff. Good for the occasional listen, but...nah. What it has done at least is rediscover the awesomeness of his other songs...

 

3rd May: DON'T LET GO - David Sneddon

 

With ITV's Pop Idol having flooded the charts with its contestants the previous year, the BBC decide to do their own version and call it Fame Academy, which had a few differences from Pop Idol - notably that the contestants were called "students" and allowed to write their own material - but in general followed a similar talent show formula.

 

I actually don't mind Don't Let Go at all, but Stop Living The Lie was horrendous!

 

7th June: I KNOW WHAT YOU WANT - Busta Rhymes & Mariah Carey feat. The Flipmode Squad

 

I liked All I Want For Christmas Is You before it was cool. There was genuinely a time, probably from about 1995 to 2002-ish when it could be seen as a bit of an underrated track that wasn't anywhere near as played as much as the Slade/Wizzard/Band Aid/etc dominators, along with The Pogues. It was the noughties when both AIWFCIY and 'Fairytale of New York' really ramped up their popularities and became the top-level festive smashes they are today, 'Fairytale' because of Kirsty MacColl's sad death and AIWFCIY perhaps because of the film 'Love Actually' (released later this year) bringing it back into fashion.

 

I was in this boat too, it was one of my favourite Xmas songs from the first time I heard it in the 90s and I wheeled it out every year before it really became absolutely huge!

 

28th June: NO LETTING GO - Wayne Wonder

 

Summer 2003 was hot. Before the last couple of years of summer after summer being a disappointing series of wet and windy floods, things were a bit more unpredictable. I remember the constant searing heat as temperatures would constantly pass the 30 degree barrier, and then on the 10th August came the hottest day in UK HISTORY, when South East London reached an insane 38.5(!!!) celsius. I was in Devon at the time where the cool sea air made things a bit more bearable at least but I definitely remember those very warm days and still hope we'll get a summer like that again. Come on, Mr Blue Sky, why do you have to hide away for so long?

 

I've come to love this song over time and you're absolutely right. I was working in the Asda bakery that summer and I seriously lost SO much weight sweating it out (delightful I know), it was absolutely BOILING.

 

9th August: SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL - Robbie Williams

 

Here we are, then, in Robbie's...well maybe not quite Golden Age, that was about 1997-2002 ('Angels' to 'Feel'), but still a very strong Silver Age which perhaps never saw him release anything truly as long lasting as his earlier solo years but would still hit the high chart spots with ease. This to be fair is probably one of the best things he's done in the last ten years, a great bit of retro Guy Chambers-penned catchiness that may never end up being in the most-remembered box of Robbie tracks but it's a lot better than some of his songs (*cough*Rudebox*cough*).

 

My favourite Robbie song from this era, has a real poppy charm to it.

 

30th August: LIFE GOT COLD - Girls Aloud

 

They would of course basically go on to define the noughties, getting tons of top 10s right through the decade and only properly split earlier this year. This is their first downtempo number and infamously shares a chorus so similar to 'Wonderwall' by Oasis that Noel Gallagher ended up getting a writing credit for it. A huge fan favourite, my opinion is that it's a nice song but the Wonderwall similarity is just a bit too close for comfort and takes me out the song and makes me want to listen to that instead. Give it a different chorus and I'd have enjoyed it a bit more, shame as the rest's pretty good. And some pretty brilliant singles were to come!

 

One of my early GA favourites!

20th September: SUNSHINE - Gareth Gates

 

By now I wasn't buying CD singles. If a song came out that I liked, I'd find the mp3 online. Unfortunately for the music industry that's what a huge amount of the main music-buying audience were doing, with only charity releases getting people to actually pay for the music instead like they'd done in the preceeding 50 or so years. The launch of the iTunes store was yet to come, as was the chart's slow mutation from CD to download, but gradually falling sales were by now becoming a bit hard to ignore. In 2004 they'd crash further and thankfully that's when things began to change.

 

I say this because one of the few CD singles I did buy during this time was, erm, 'Spirit in the Sky' by said Mr Gates, simply because it was a Comic Relief song. It holds an embarrassing place in my collection as I was never a fan of either him or Pop Idol, the previous year had been one of the most irritating years for number 1s ever as either him or Will bloody Young seemed to be number 1 every week, either that or some other Popstars/Pop Idol/Fame Academy contestant. If only I had known what was to come with The X Factor, but for now we're in the tail end of Gareth's imperial phase and his last top 3 hit. He'd have one more #4 at the end of 2003, but on his 2007 return faced a completely different musical landscape which saw him as a bit old hat and everything fizzled out, beginning a successful musical theatre career instead.

 

The warning signs were perhaps already there when the album this came from fell out the charts pretty quickly, unlike Will Young's second album which was another massive seller. Having one last go at cashing on the 2003 heatwave before autumn drew it to a close, it heavily homages disco-era Michael Jackson thankfully just before Jacko ended up being arrested a couple of months later. Memorable it's not, and for a lead single it's really pretty weak, compare it to Will's 'Leave Right Now' released at the same time and you can easily tell which would be the bigger hit. A drop to #15 in its second week perhaps shows that this only sold to the fans.

 

27th September: SUPERSTAR - Jamelia

 

While THIS is a pop classic!! Another one that you'd think was surely a number 1, this is most certainly Jamelia's biggest and most-remembered song and was a big worldwide hit, getting top 10 in a zillion countries and #1 in Australasia. Indeed it has a strong case to be one of the most well known pop songs of the early noughties, requiring no gimmicks, controversial videos or lyrics, just a breezy and insistantly catchy track that appealed to many. We do, however, have a #3 in a couple posts time that eclipses even this, as hard as that may be to believe.

 

What may not be as widely known is that it's a cover version, originally recorded by a woman called Christine Milton and was a massive hit in Denmark at the start of that year. Jamelia's team simply saw its further hit potential and did their own version. I remember there being some amusement of the main chorus line being similar to a Spice Girls song - compare "I said who do you think you are, some kind of superstar" to "I don't know who you are but you must be some kind of superstar" - but hey, that's equally great a song so we'll let it pass. Surely one that'll get a new cover in years to come once the noughties revival begins!

 

8th November: IF YOU COME TO ME - Atomic Kitten

 

Back with their third album, it may be fair to say that we're at the beginning of the end for Atomic Kitten now. Given their second single was a novelty cover of 'Ladies Night' you can already see the ideas were running out and the top songwriters were moving onto the likes of Girls Aloud and the Sugababes to bring in the hits. So what we have here is a pleasant enough midtempo ballad that to be honest is better than 'It's Ok' we looked at from last year, just lacking in energy or any serious attempt to make it stand out from the crowd. It's just...there, like a tiny chip shop in the middle of a massive high street. Nice chips, but why would you want to go in it when there's so much better around?

 

22nd November: HEY YA! - OutKast

 

...but not quite yet. On said 22nd November, this in fact debuted at number 6, dropping steadily down to number 22 by the end of the year. Then, in early 2004, something quite remarkable happened. Just as what had happened to Toploader's 'Dancing in the Moonlight' a few years earlier, the song was majorly rediscovered in the New Year lull and it eventually climbed up to reach the #3 spot, spending practically the entire winter season in the top 10 and only dropping from the charts in the Spring. It seemed to appeal way beyond your average chart-buying audience to the point where everyone - mum, dad, Grandma, dog etc knows it, and had it not spent its chart run in the critically low sales climate we then existed in, would have surely easily cleared a million sales.

 

I briefly really enjoyed it. But man did it get overplayed quickly and to this day I find it a bit annoying, there's a lot better songs out there from this time I'd have much preferred to be widely remembered today. Listening to it now, the first time I've properly done so in ages, I can definitely hear its charms. The "shake it like a Polaroid picture" bit always irked me a bit as I never actually used to do that, I'd just take the photo and just leave it on a flat surface and watch it gradually form in front of my eyes. Amazing to think that there's a generation of teenagers around today that will find the very idea of a 'Polaroid picture' incredibly bizarre and baffling! "Touch it like an Instagram filter" doesn't quite work as well :P

 

Was I the only one to believe the computer trickery of the video and not realise that every one of these guys are all Andre 3000? So naive...

 

29th November: MAYBE THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES - Alex Parks

 

I watched the second series of Fame Academy, choosing it over the rather underwhelming second series of Pop Idol. Although it was slightly tainted by some slightly desperate attempts to copy the competition and some bizarre 'arguments' with the host and I'm-not-pretending-to-be-Simon-Cowell-honest judge Richard Park, It was pretty clear who was going to win from the outset. 19 year old Alex Parks was blessed with remarkable vocal and talent throughout, and it would have been somewhat of an injustice had she not won. Thankfully she did, and proving her immense popularity her debut single went straight in at number...oh. Three.

 

I remember watching a documentary about her made a few months later, where she expressed disappointment that it hadn't made #1. To be fair on her it was a bit of a surprising chart position as I and perhaps many others had assumed she'd hit the top with ease. If HearSay, Will Young, Girls Aloud, even David Sneddon could then surely so could she? Sadly not, which is a shame as this could have easily done it, a fabulous ballad maybe not quite right up there with the A-list but strong enough and with enough passion to be a worthy topper. So surely, I thought at the time, follow-up 'Cry' will do it? Nope, #13 despite being just as brill (if not better), and we haven't seen her in the top 40 since. Sometimes life in the charts can be immensely cruel.

 

No video, but sounding great on this audio upload.

 

Goodbye then to 2003 and just one more year to go! 2004 was a year of terrible, terrible chart-toppers and sales, but a couple of positions down we have a much better line-up, still a few stinkers but surrounded by many gems.

 

I'll try and make a start tomorrow - some massive indie anthems coming up, some Romanian cheese, Welsh rapping and just as 2003 ended, we'll be beginning with a shock #3 that many tipped for the top!

2004 is awesome. Can't wait, everything below the top 2 positions was mostly fantastic

Ok, these next four are perhaps the most interesting set of songs I've reviewed here to date, sorry if people don't disagree with some of my rather extreme opinions in the next few posts :)

 

10th January 2004: THIS GROOVE/LET YOUR HEAD GO - Victoria Beckham

 

"Hi. It's me. You won't *believe* what I'm doing"

 

Mel B, 1998. Geri Halliwell, 1999. Mel C, 2000. Emma Bunton, 2001. Victoria Beckham? Erm...never. So was it that each of the solo Spice Girls had their first number 1 single, all except poor Posh.

 

Things could have been very different had 'Out of Your Mind' hit the top spot as planned back in 2000, before pesky Spiller and an unknown Sophie Ellis-Bextor stole it from her at the last minute. A year later she tried again with 'Not Such an Innocent Girl', but the sheer power of Kylie's Can't Get You Out of My Head, as well as, erm, the rest of the top 5 meant it only reached #6. A third attempt in 2002 (A Mind of It's Own) reached the same position.

 

This time there would be no doubt. A double A-side with two brand new songs. Major promotion started in November for a release at the very beginning of January, many weeks for hype to build and with almost no one else releasing songs in the traditional New Year sales slump surely it was a foregone conclusion that she'd finally get the number 1 hit the rest of the Spice Girls had by now long since achieved. Surely. Yes?

 

Well, no, otherwise you wouldn't see it here :P Let's look at 'This Groove' first, which starts with a slightly terrifying spoken-word intro as quoted earlier, before launching into a highly sexually-charged track with a video of her writhing around on a bed in a nightdress. It's alright but seems incredibly try-hard and a little desperate, there's only so much 'sexiness' you can cram into a track before any subtlety disappears and it gets a little overwhelming. In comparison, Kelis's 'Milkshake' came out at the same time and accomplishes the task in far better a fashion and was rewarded with a much more popular and long-lasting hit.

 

'Let Your Head Go' is the one I remember the most and goes for a bit more of an upbeat pop sound. This one's much better and could have easily been a hit if recorded by a group like Girls Aloud, but still doesn't *quite* do it for me and stays mostly on one level, like she's scared of using anything more than one octave just in case it sounds a bit silly. You've heard the whole thing within about a minute of the song, which is never good for repeat playings unless said minute is really impressive.

 

I think also the problem, sadly, was simply Victoria herself. Far from the fresh megastars the Spices were in the late 90s, or the nostalgic icons at last year's Olympics ceremony that sent Twitter crazy, by 2004 they seemed so old and out of step with chart music that interest really was wearing thin by the time this got released. Someone, say, 8 years old in 1996 (when 'Wannabe' came out) would be turning 16 by 2004 and they're hardly gonna be listening to the same music, save for the occasional long-lasting megastar like Robbie Williams. The massive "campaign" that was built up over the end of the previous year seemed very forced and desperate and rather than seem like a strong pop star it was like someone practically on their hands and knees begging us to buy this song so the other girls would stop laughing at her. She did pretty well to get #3 - the highest chart position for any solo Spice song in three years (Geri's 'It's Raining Men' for those wondering) but it wasn't enough for the media, branding it a slightly unfair "flop" and the album this was meant to come from never even getting released. She's never released anything since, except that awful Spice Girls 'comeback' track in 2007 that missed the top 10.

 

Sorry, Victoria, you gave it your best shot but time had simply moved on too much for those needed to care. Here's both tracks of the double A-side to listen to, tho :)

 

 

17th January: SOMEBODY TO LOVE - Boogie Pimps

 

Before I even talk about the song, take a look at the video. Yep, that's a model dressed in nothing but black underwear writhing on grass as sky-diving infants drop onto her breasts. Compare this to any dance track's video we've looked so far, and you'll see that this marks the moment dance music died.

 

I mean, you know, forget the song. Forget any kind of originality or actual songwriting or composing or anything, just take an old sample and piss about with it for a few minutes and stick a drum track over the top. Will they buy it? Of course! As long as you put some scantily-clad models in the video and release it as a 'DVD single', so everyone can be like "Cor mate, have you seen that Boogie Pimps track? That bird's so fit!", ignoring the song but buying the single to watch and, erm, enjoy the video. Repeat, endlessly, for years! Or at least until Youtube gets big and makes it all a bit redundant.

 

Ok this is turning into a bit of a rant, sorry :P But even as the hormonal 15 year old I was when this came out I wasn't fooled and that's exactly what I thought, watering down dance music to rely on stupid visual (visual! it's a song!) gimmicks instead of the creativity we've seen in the past. And, actually, after all that the song does have at least some charm to it, taking said old sample ('Somebody to Love' by Jefferson Airplane, which I wasn't aware of at the time and thought it was completely new songwriting) and using a bit more imagination than the endless looped-house hits that would dominate the mid-noughties would, repeating the "Don't you want" about a million times in various clever ways before letting the beat drop back in. If it comes on in a club I'll happily dance away to it as it's got a fun catchiness to it.

 

But then I think that even just a year before this we had 'The Opera Song' hit the same chart peak, and the difference between that, an expertly produced and heartstopping trance anthem to something I could probably do in Audacity in a few hours is just immense beyond words. By 2005 I honestly thought dance music was beyond hope, at least chart-wise, and by then I was listening to lots of underground trance and hard house tracks on late-night Radio 1, then watching with dismay as they charted at #106 or something ridiculous while some dull looped-house remix would go top 10.

 

Not saying the Boogie Pimps, Eric Prydz etc had this evil agenda to ruin everything, indeed back in these early days they possibly thought they were doing something pretty original and a refreshing change from the norm. But the amount of lazy copycats that rose in their wake did horrible damage to dance music that wouldn't get fixed for years. Thankfully today we're in a much better situation, and even if you think something like Disclosure's 'White Noise' is annoying, just imagine if it solely consisted of the lyric "Just noise, white noise" repeated over and over again and the video was some bikini-clad models playing baseball or something. That, at one point, was all there seemed to be.

 

God, sorry about that, rant over! I have quite strong opinions when it comes to good and bad dance music :P Here's the infamous video...

 

24th JANUARY: TAKE ME OUT - Franz Ferdinand :wub:

 

So pop's gone a bit dead. Dance music, don't get me started again. Urban/R&B continues to do brilliantly but it's not really my thing. Ladies and gentlemen, ENTER THE INDIE.

 

This for me is some of the best music of the middle of the noughties, the defining sound that the decade will perhaps mostly be remembered for. Manufactured pop was strong in the early 00s but is more a late-90s thing, ditto urban dancepop starting at the end of the noughties but really dominating in the early 2010s. Indie, at least this definition of it, is noughties, noughties, noughties all the way.

 

Like all musical trends it would start strongly with some of the best records ever made of the genre, become quickly swamped with inferior if still ok copycats and eventually fizzle out as people get bored. This is firmly in the first camp and is a monumental, almost chart-changing track. We'd had the beginnings of this right since The Strokes first charted in 2001, but 2004 was surely the time the indie floodgates opened.

 

The intro is one of the things that's genius about it, in that it's a little underwhelming at first and you think it's gonna be a fairly chilled easygoing track. Then things start to slow down. Then...DUM, DUM, DUM, DUM DUM DUM-DUM comes that drumbeat and the track proper begins. Like all the best indie hits it's credible and "cool" enough to enjoy at home as well as energetic and poppy enough to dance your socks off to at a club. I've seen many posts online of people who's whole musical tastes changed or at least were significantly boosted thanks to listening to their eponymous debut album, and although they haven't had as many hits as you might think - they've only ever had three(!) top 10s of which this is the biggest - when they make something as good as this they achieve indie perfection. Best track of 2004? Certainly in the top 5. And yes, this came years before a certain irritating ITV show!

 

28th February: SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW - Keane :wub:

 

Ok I think I might explode. What a duo of songs, this too is surely one of the best best BEST things to come out of this year.

 

Keane are an odd one in that they made it big at the start of the indie explosion, but their music is much more closely rooted in the post-Britpop sound we've seen with the likes of Travis and the Stereophonics. What makes them stand out though is their sheer power. Debut album 'Hopes & Fears' sold in the millions, and though it's never really been very cool to like them, I've loved them from the moment I heard it.

 

The sheer imagery this song conjures up is breathtaking. When I hear it, I see forests, waterfalls, falling leaves and gusty winds, perhaps helped by the fact that they sing the song in a forest in the video :P Even so it restores the euphoria and power that dance music loses around this time and takes you on a journey with every playing, less of a song and more a spiritual experience. Not only does it bring back memories of early 2004, but the cold, cold winter of December 2009, when I rediscovered the track and it played almost continuously on my iPod all that Christmas season, to the point where even listening to it now I see the falling snowscape that festive season brought in bucketloads.

 

Gotta talk about the rest of the album too while I'm here, follow-up hit 'Everybody's Changing' is equally as beautiful as its predecessor with much of the same applying, 'Bend and Break' could easily have been another high-performing single had it not been released about a year after the album was, while 'She Has No Time' is a stunning piece of work, heartbreakingly simple and seems to work best on quiet night bus journeys through North London, which I often end up taking if I've missed the last train. Underwhelming pop music? Irritatingly bland and repetitive dance music? Never mind. Listening to the likes of this, Franz Ferdinand and the rest of the year's indie/rock anthems gives me a lot more hope for the next 11 months :D Video!

 

Fully agree on Somewhere Only We Know and Take Me out. Phenomenal records and its the indie boom mixed with the rise f pop rock that really makes 2003-2007 some of my favourite years in music

Take Me Out is truly overrated. I honestly can't listen to it these days, it's one of 2004's very few duds.

 

However, Somewhere Only We Know is BEAUTIFUL. :wub:

Double post - for some reason this one messed up o.o - Ignore

Edited June 26, 201312 yr by Jade

11th March: BYE BYE BYE - N'Sync

 

Featuring its "puppet mistress" video so memorable that The Wanted are spoofing it thirteen years later, it's not my fave N'Sync track (that would be Tearin' Up My Heart) but it's still lovely nostalgic fun, surely proved one night when I was out clubbing last year, the DJ played this and everyone sang along with glee, 12 years after release :D

 

"Everyone sang along with glee"

 

They actually mashed up this song on Season 4 of Glee so that's the first thing that came into my head when reading this sentence. :lol:

 

On a side note, awesome thread! :D

Edited June 26, 201312 yr by Jade

No probs! Thanks everyone for the comments so far, good to know it was worth doing the thread :)

 

6th March: OBVIOUS - Westlife

 

Oh well, the fun was bound to end at some point :P Unlike the huge entries of the last four tracks I don't have much to say here except my heart sank when I read their name on the list. Just as it seemed their star was fading they had another #1 with 'Mandy' at the end of the last year, although they'd only get a couple more before their split so thankfully their #1-with-every-release era was now over. It's also the last song to feature all five of them before Brian McFadden left the group, not specially recorded for that reason but released with a 'tribute' of a medley of his favourite songs as the B-side.

 

Again, why break from the formula if it continues to win spectacularly with their fanbase every time? More balladry this time featuring some backing vocals suspiciously similar to Take That's 'Back for Good'. Maybe I shouldn't be too harsh as if a new band had released this as their debut song I'd probably like it a bit more, it's one of their more above-average releases though not one right up there with the classics. For Westlife though it's business as usual, which would continue past Brian's departure right until the end.