05/02/00: Gabrielle - Rise

 

 

Surprise comeback time as Gabrielle hits the top immediately with one of her best, classiest singles, probably up there with 1996's 'Give Me a Little More Time' in greatness. Worldwide it's her best-selling track since her 1993 debut Dreams. hitting top 5 in Austria, Norway and New Zealand (yet only #76 in Australia, go figure). Little else to say other than it's a fab listen and for once appeals to the older music buyer given the usual pop and dance at #1 in this country.

Edited August 28, 201410 yr by BillyH

I definitely agree there, always thought that 'Rise' stood out among the #1s of 2000...the official ones anyway, but probably in your version as well! A fairly simple but great tune, I'm pleased to see it here!

04/12/99: Alice Deejay - Back In My Life

 

 

Can you believe it? We're in December already, the most important December in ten centuries as we are days away from entering the third millennium. Unsurprisingly the Christmas number 1 battle is as big as ever, but - thank god! - no Spice Girls this year although a few solo split-offs are having a go. The result is a rush of entries from around the world coming over the next few weeks, and presumably one that will resume in January as everyone competes to be the first #1 of the year 2000.

 

For now, did anyone expect Alice Deejay to follow-up Better Off Alone? They've shed the one-hit wonder tag with ease and surely bets are on now for them to carry on this luck through 2000, they've found a perfect middleground between pop and trance with their releases so far and while this doesn't quite have the killer melody of BoA, it's still a wonderful listen and sounding weirdly festive for a sound so generally summery. Can't help noticing though that the CD single features a short edit of, you guessed it, Better Off Alone though, so perhaps that was an extra incentive for people to buy it as you're essentially getting two songs in one. Otherwise if you didn't buy Better Off Alone while its single was still available in the summer, how else are you meant to hear it other than pay £15 for Now That's What I Call Music 43?

 

Adore this track, Alice Deejay's first two singles are absolutely amazing

Gabrielle was one of the only songs in 2000 (bar Bob The Builder) that sold more in week two than it did when it debuted.

 

Two weeks later was when All Saints smashed in at #1 with "Pure Shores" selling >190,000. It was also the week that my parents upgraded from analogue to Sky Digital and we finally got the internet, and thus my music obsession moved up a gear and I started compiling my own personal chart.

Almost the same time for the internet for me, end of March 2000.

 

Thanks for the comments all :) I've got a bit of a mad idea to just go the whole hog and carry this up right to the present day, then going back into the past and doing 1988-1998 (my first ten years alive) in the future. It means I need to write a lot ahead though so I have enough to do regular updates.

 

Meanwhile, in February 2000...

 

12/02/00: Armin van Buuren - Communication (2 weeks)

 

 

2000 gets its first future trance classic, confusingly named the same as Mario Piu's novelty hit in December. No ringing phones on this one though, just more euphoric brilliance in a constantly evolving and maturing scene, just beating Sash's 'Adelante' to the top. Armin could end up being the next Ferry at this rate, so long as he doesn't ever sell-out into bland pop music which would be a tragedy to all concerned.

 

Difficult to say yet what the defining sound of the year yet is going to be given the sheer variety so far, but then early 1999 was similarly a varying mix. The charts flood with new entries every week, from new acts trying to make their mark on the new century jostling with old desperately trying to stay relevant with them. Again thinking back to 1990 we had the Madchester craze but that had all but fizzled out by the following year, indeed it's hard to even sum up the music of the 1990s given how different the start of it sounded to the music of two months ago. Difficult to know at this stage what the legacy of the 90s will be and even harder to even attempt to predict what the...2000s? "noughties"? Whatever you want to call it - will be.

26/02/00: All Saints - Pure Shores

 

 

Comeback #2 and what a return for the Never Ever gang, William Orbit producing a single that's been critically acclaimed absolutely everywhere and has sold in huge numbers this week. Used in the film 'The Beach' and All Saints have crossed the millennium gap with ease. Is it too early to call it a noughties classic? Perhaps, but I do hope this is still remembered and played in years to come as it's heaven on the ears at every listen to the point where I'm worried I'm going to wear out the CD.

(re-digging this back up after a month - I managed to get up to July 2008 with just the #1s but I'm only on June 2002 with the descriptions, so I'll post a few a day up until the end of 2001 for now - if I'm done with 2002 by that time then I'll do that too :) )

 

04/03/00: Muse - Sunburn (3 weeks)

 

 

ROCK! At last, and already this group are being hailed as rock's saviours for finally breaking the drought at the chart summit that's been around since Blur a whopping twelve months ago, that's if you don't count the Thunderbugs. And of all places they come from exotic Teignmouth in the South West of England, led by 21 year old vocalist Matthew Bellamy. Not their first release, they built up a small following last year and released a fantastic track called 'Muscle Museum' in December that got completely lost in the Christmas rush, but a new year and they've charged into the charts with this opener from debut album Showbiz. Starting and ending with a memorable piano intro, it soon explodes into life with a singalong chorus and is made all the better from it being so long since we've heard anything like this so high up in the charts.

 

If this isn't the start of a glorious career for Muse then the world is a deeply cruel and horrible place. They surely now need to capitalise on this by releasing either new material or re-releasing the singles so far. Surely a second try of Muscle Museum wouldn't go amiss?

25/03/00: Dr Dre feat Snoop Dogg - Still Dre

 

 

2000 keeps throwing up surprises as a rare rap track replaces three weeks of Muse, the first for both Dre and Snoop. While it's not a genre I know too much about, it's about Mr Dre claiming that he's "still" several things that people claim he isn't and Mr Dogg backing him up on said claims. But riding the whole song is a killer basic instrumental riff that while simple jams itself into your head, making it, in a weird way, the gangsta rap version of Better Off Alone. Nice ending too where Snoop goes on a bizarre extended tangent about some of that real sticky-icky-icky, ooh wee! Put it in the air, air, air...

Edited October 3, 201410 yr by BillyH

01/04/00: Santana - Smooth (2 weeks)

 

 

A major chart battle between three contenders, all hitting top 3 - the others being Melanie C's 'Never Be The Same Again' and Moloko's 'The Time Is Now' - comes to an end with the veteran of the three just about emerging victorious. First charting way back in 1974, this collaboration with Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty was a massive hit in the States last year, twelve(!) weeks at #1 and duplicates its chart position over here. Extremely summery, it's a wonder why it wasn't held back an extra couple of months just to hit the season right but perhaps we've already waited long enough for it.

 

Indeed you've perhaps heard of a certain craze called 'Napster' that's been gradually building up among the techies in recent months, an on-line World Wide Web application that allows people to distribute and down-load low quality audio recordings of various songs. While some have marked this as a potential danger to sales I see no real future in it other than a fun novelty - it takes far too long to down-load even one song using the program, internet usage while steadily growing is still well under a quarter of the country and in general, if you want a song in the crystal-clear quality it was intended, you're going to buy the CD, surely? Chances are there's at least one if not two music shops on your local high street so at the most it's a quick bus ride away. 'mp3' files as they're called may be useful as the occasional digital backup just in case you don't have a CD burner on your PC, but that's about it I think.

15/04/00: Rank 1 - Airwave (2 weeks)

 

 

What a week!! A top 10 absolutely crammed with new entries, so many could have easily been #1s - Richard Ashcroft's 'A Song For The Lovers' and Steps 'Deeper Shade of Blue' especially but there can only be one winner, and at the end of the day it's Dutch trance that wins out once more. 'Airwave' may perhaps take the crown of one of the most beautiful trance melodies ever created, and other than a quick "I feel you over the airwave" near the start it's thankfully charted in a vocal-free version. Interest has gained on a bootleg mix of this featuring the vocals from an obscure track called 'True Love Never Dies' but it's unlikely that will get official release, especially now the original's out.

29/04/00: Hurley & Todd - Sunstorm

 

 

And once one gets big then it's unstoppable. Similar to this time in 1999, trance has recaptured the public's imagination and anything sounding remotely like it is hitting the top - this one takes the piano riff of Elton John's 'Song for Guy' and adds general trancey beats over the top. It's nothing huge and will probably fall quickly after this first week but for now it's the biggest seller in the country.

06/05/00: Dutch Force - Deadline

 

 

One-week trance wonders continue with what's actually from the same guy who co-created 'Airwave' with a similar track. Running out of different ways to describe what's essentially the same thing, this adds some more nice piano to the mix and in general keeps trance-heads happy.

Pure Shores is a beautiful song. I really love it :wub:

I also like the Muse song

 

I also read your 2009 review of that top 40 which was enjoyable and I loved reading it :)

13/05/00: Watergate - Heart of Asia (2 weeks)

 

 

It's interesting to compare this era with how things stood around eight or nine years ago, a time when instrumental rave music flooded the charts to the point where Top of the Pops began to look a little silly. Today's TOTP mostly just shows the videos instead, which is less daft than the days when a bunch of nobodies would mime the likes of "Woo! Yeah" and other samples but makes the programme a hell of a lot more boring in comparison. So to the current crisis where it's now been a month and a half since the number 1 single - traditionally the show closer - had an actual studio performance (Smooth), and even that wasn't actually live, instead a clip recorded internationally specificially for the show and seamlessly slotted into the recording. Once again rumours fly around that the show's going to be "axed", and yet again it survives, as it surely will do for as long as there's a music chart.

 

Much has already been written about the dominance of instrumental trance music since last year but it is simply a chart-topping and winning formula, evolving *just* enough to still sound fresh although it's difficult to know how long that'll last. This track by 'Watergate' - actually an alias for late 90s pioneer DJ Quicksilver - adds a Japanese feel, sampling the classic melody of 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence' with a 4/4 beat over the top and shouldn't work but achieves its goal effortlessly and brilliantly. Have to say I'm starting to miss vocals at the top though.

27/05/00: Billie Piper - Day & Night

 

 

Hooray for Billie Piper, pop's saviour who out of nowhere makes a big comeback with easily her best ever single!

 

There's nothing new about 'Day & Night', following your standard Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys pop template, but what it does do is cram in catchiness in shedloads, allowing you bypass its lack of originality and just hear a killer, bang-up-to-date pop track from a revitalised star who has still to turn the age of 18. By the time this decade finishes she'll be 29, an age when she could very easily be still having hit singles. It's very hard not to imagine Billie Piper potentially being a future defining star of the new decade if she keeps on getting material this strong, but of course pop fame can disappear as quick as it arrives - remember the Thunderbugs? Exactly.

03/06/00: S Club 7 - Reach (3 weeks)

 

 

Oh now this is slightly glorious and perhaps S Club 7's finest hour. After three weeks you and everyone are perhaps sick of it but this surely is another future classic from the group who brought us the likes of Bring It All Back and S Club Party last year. Sounding similar in points to of all things the Phil Collins cover of 'You Can't Hurry Love', its optimistic joy is something hard to sneer at - as we enter our first summer of the new millennium, it's difficult not to wonder if perhaps most of the bad times are behind us and the 21st century will be one of peace, wealth and unity. Let's reach for the stars together!

24/06/00: Darude - Sandstorm

 

 

"Bloody hell" I think are the words most people thought on hearing this, an astonishingly hard and pounding dance tune based for the most part on the same couple of notes being hit a few hundred times. It's achieved something of a miracle in working both as a club floorfiller but being poppy enough to grab a huge mainstream audience, as its chart positions all over Europe are showing - already one of the biggest sellers across the *entire continent* after debuting in its Finnish homeland last November. Give it a listen but perhaps wear a crash helmet and gloves if you do, as just one play of even the radio edit may well leave you exhausted.

 

Darude - Sandstorm.

Day & Night is one of the best pop songs of the 2000's. I feel contractually obliged to love 'Reach' because I'm a child of '92-'96 but it's actually never been a favourite of mine, still like it though

 

Sandstorm is, obviously, flawless

01/07/00: Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power of Love 2000 (Rob Searle remix) (2 weeks)

 

 

I now wish at the start of the year I'd have placed bets on which artists would get to number 1 over the next twelve months, as the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, Santana and now these guys few would have predicted. To be fair in this case it's not actually a new release from them at all, indeed I feel a bit sorry for Rob Searle as he's sidelined at the end of the title when this is very much his work on remixing their 1984 ballad. And, erm, it's certainly a difference which has divided people, many no less than horrified as to what the hell's happened to the track but I and others adore it. It's a bit like Ferry's version of Adagio for Strings at Christmas but a smaller gap between original and remix, again it starts off with the mostly unaltered original and then builds into a immersive electronic masterpiece. And Holly Johnson's vocals still sound good sixteen years on. Which version will truly last in the years to come isn't sure, perhaps the original in the winter and this remake for hot summer days to come - a song that, thanks to Rob Searle, now sounds good in all seasons.

15/07/00: Matt Darey's Mash Up Presents Marcella Woods - Beautiful (3 weeks)

 

 

A dance force under many different names over the last few years, Matt Darey's only recently started releasing singles under his real name and for this has brought in the talents of Marcella Woods for vocals, sister of fellow trance DJ Michael Woods. And as the title suggests this is indeed beautiful, Marcella giving her all over a cosmic explosion of the now standard trance synths. With the sound building in power with seemingly every release, you have to wonder what heights it will eventually peak at before everyone inevitably gets bored of it at some point in the future.