April 29, 20232 yr Author ub9RosJU-BM #10. Call Me | 5.583 Highest Scores: 8: (gooddelta, DrizzyMack), Lowest Scores: 0: (lewistgreen) At the #10 spot & taking a bigger leap in average is Call Me, released in June 2000 as the 3rd single from Jamelia's debut album Drama. Despite critical praise and strong promotion the track would just miss the UK top 10 by peaking at #11, making this her 2nd top 20 hit and spent 5 weeks on the UK singles chart and followed a similar production style as her previous hit 'Money' & was seen as the perfect follow up single choice. Jamelia's debut album Drama was soon released in the same month with positive critical reviews & would just scrape the UK top 40 by peaking at #39. This song is a classy little soulful number that while wasn't quite as memorable or impactful as her previous hit 'Money', its still a decent tune with warm melodies & Jamelia's poised yet tender vocals really shines on the sophisticated production. Okay the track gets rather repetitive at times, but you can't deny its catchy as hell. A cute little R&B bop that feels rather underrated in Jamelia's discography.
April 29, 20232 yr Call Me is the first good song out IMO - I actually preferred it to Money at the time but now I think Money is a bit better.
April 29, 20232 yr I was initially going to give that more points because the video is great but the song lacks any interesting progression for me lol.
April 30, 20232 yr 'Call Me' is the only vaguely decent song she did pre-Superstar. 'Bout' is absolutely awful and deservedly bombed.
April 30, 20232 yr I need to remind myself of some of her songs - I remember liking Call Me (side note, I've only just about forgiven her for bailing on my Uni's May Ball way back when!)
April 30, 20232 yr Author OVtRB4t80q0 #09. No More | 6.277 Highest Scores: 10: (Lee J11), Lowest Scores: 2: (Jessie Where) At #9 is No More, released in March 2007 as the 3rd & final single from Jameia's 3rd studio album Walk With Me. The song was built around a sample of The Strangler's 1981 hit "Golden Brown" & was written by Jamelia, Stuart Crichton, and Tommy Lee, while production was handled by Crichton. Upon release the track was given a slightly altered single of mix & received generally positive reviews from critics & despite gaining a strong amount of radio support the track flopped by peaking at #43 on the UK singles chart, making this her lowest charting single in 7 years. Ultimately this would be Jamelia's final single of her career. Taking another large leap in average is this classy little soulful number that uses the 'Golden Brown' sample rather effectively. The simple melodies set against the gospel wall of sounds really gives this a mature sound along with Jamelia rich vocals layered all over the track. However in hindsight releasing this as the 3rd single was a mistake considering her previous hit already used a prominent sample & felt like it was treading familiar ground which could have been a factor as to why it underperformed. Personally I would have chosen either 'Do Me Right', 'Know My Name' or 'Hustle' as the 3rd single instead. But on the whole 'No More' is still a decent track nonetheless.
April 30, 20232 yr 'No More' sounded a bit better than it did at the time but not exactly amazing and no surprise it didn't do well really ie lowest charting single in the top 100 oops.
April 30, 20232 yr Call Me is the best out so far for me. Thought that was pretty good R&B back in summer 2000. I feel like Golden Brown has such a distinctly recognisable bassline that it's not a great idea to sample it, as it's always going to be associated with that song. It doesn't help that No More was far, far weaker than its source material too.
May 1, 20232 yr Author VupHxrP4XME #08. Money (ft Beenie Man) | 6.361 Highest Scores: 10: (vibe), Lowest Scores: 3: (Jessie Where, One For Sorrow) At #8 is the last of the first era singles to feature here Money, released in February 2000 as the second single from Jamelia's debut album Drama & features reggae star Beenie Man and was co-written by Jamelia herself along with Colin Emmanuel & 'X-Factor' finalist Daniel de Bourg. The song is considered by many as Jamelia's breakthrough hit as it peaked at #5 on the UK singles chart making this her first top 10 hit and spent 9 weeks on the charts; it later won a MOBO award for Best Video in the same year. Originally "Thinking 'Bout You" was set to be the album's second single and even had a music video filmed with promo copies sent to radio stations across the UK, but the release was eventually scrapped and the video was never released to the public, and instead 'Money' was chosen to replace it. One of the song's co-writers & producer Colin Emmanuel managed to get Beenie Man to collaborate on the track after flying to Jamaica and after Jamelia heard his vocals she was very pleased and remixed the original track which was a standard R&B track into something completely different. Seen by many as Jamelia's real debut single as this was her first introduction into mainstream success & honestly surprised that this didn't do better on here, despite getting quite a few high scores it did gain quite a few lower and middling scores as well which brought the average down. Up until the last couple of scores this was below 'No More' & this deserves to be so much higher than some of the songs that are yet to come such as 'DJ' & 'Stop'. The song was something different and unique for its time with its mixtures of operatic sounds, 3 bass drums, harpsicords, bass-lines and vintage keys samples, with so much effort placed into the production the song is really good and for such young age Jamelia really holds her own with her fantastic vocals, a lesser artist would have got lost in all the chaos, Beenie Man's rap adds even more interesting layers to this rather brilliant number and while it may not be to everyone's tastes its still and will always be a creative piece of music and a fantastic introduction for Jamelia.
May 1, 20232 yr That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest Me neither, she didn’t put a foot wrong for three years from late 2003. She did well to revive her career and then have more success than with her first album because honestly I thought it was done after her fourth single missed the top 40 and we didn’t hear from her for three years. I do like Money though, it was a strong track and it used to amuse me that it was always placed next to Caught Out There by Kelis on every compilation going. And then in 2004, Milkshake always seemed to be next to Thank You.
May 2, 20232 yr Author SlWL-ZOMZKY #07. DJ | 6.527 Highest Scores: 8.5/8: (JulianT, lewistgreen, BananasInPyjamas, Nick F1), Lowest Scores: 4: (awardinary) At the half way mark now at #7 is DJ, released in November 2004 as the 5th and final single from Jamelia's 2nd studio album Thank You & was released as a double A-side alongside her cover of Sam Brown's 'Stop'. The song takes its main tune from Raymond Guiot's "Primitive Spirit" written Jamelia, Carsten Schack, Kenneth Karlin, Philip White, Alex Cantrall and Olivia Longott, while production was handled by Soulshock & Karlin. The track didn't feature on the original release of the album, it was one of the new track recorded for its March 2004 re-release. Upon release 'DJ' was released on one of the busiest weeks of the year November 1st competing with Eminem, Destiny's Child, Britney Spears, Usher & Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera & Missy Elliot. However it still managed to get a UK top 10 placement by peaking at #9, despite the stiff competition and became her 4th consecutive top 10 hit & capping off a very successful year for the artist. Not one of Jamelia's strongest singles from her peak period but its still a fun cute bop with catchy beats, funky basslines and strong, confident vocals and polished R&B production. Considering the many people involved on the writing and production of this track that could have easily been a jumbled mess. However this did get largely overshadowed when it was released alongside 'Stop', due to many factors firstly this having a proper music video while the former didn't, one of those lazy tour performance videos was used instead, and the fact that 'Stop' was used on a popular movie soundtrack and being a cover of a well known song, the radio stations tended to focus a lot more on them during this time period. Nonetheless 'DJ' is still a decent song in its own right, sure it's not as a memorable as her other hits from this time period, but still a solid number overall.
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