As part of this ongoing project I'm gonna be rewinding the clock back 23 years ago to 2002 and there's talent show winners/contestants galore, big dance hits, big returns and soppy love songs the public mulled over. There were 32 chart toppers in Britain in this year so as per usual we'll go from very bottom...

32

So last in the pack we see Blazin Squad with their cover of the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony song from 6 years prior (didn't realise or remember it was a cover ! ). It went straight to the top in August. Found it to be rubbish then and still do now. A low point in the great year this was generally.

The last place I both expected and agree with. One of my all-time least favourite singles. A very cheap sounding cover with very little charm, but I suppose it was a way to introduce rap to younger teens, my sister was obsessed with them (and this song).

Thankfully they had much better material to come.

Looking forward to the countdown Rob!

12 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

Thankfully they had much better material to come.

Erm…

Maybe 'much' is a bit generous, but they progressed from a 0 to a 3 with a couple of future releases.

Blazin! It was a very camp #1 for what it was.

31

At 31st we have another cover and it's from the winner and runner up of Pop Idol respectively in Will Young and Gareth Gates. Released as a double A-Side to Gareth's Elvis cover 'Suspicious Minds' it was first recorded by The Beatles in 1969. I do think they sing it nicely but it just suffers from generally not being a special song for me anyway.. it's a plod.

I'd agree with that placing too, a real plod indeed and I doubt a song either wanted to release, certainly not Will with his third cover in a row. I guess a duet between them was always going to happen but they could have taken any song to No.1 at this point, so I'm sure an original would have been a better option.

No disagreement so far - both dire.

I am fond of the original “Long And Winding Road” but this takes everything special out of it and does weird unnecessary harmonies and vocal flourishes.

My least favourites : Freak Like Me, Dirty, Just A Little and maybe More Than A Woman.

The Corrs and S Club 7 also released covers of The Long And Winding Road as b-sides in 2001/2002, prior to the Will and Gareth version. Not quite sure why it was the Beatles song of choice for pop bands at the time to cover.

30

The first of two number ones for Westlife to appear for 2002 and it's their November release 'Unbreakable'. This is another dull ballad from them but they weren't letting up as the years went on...

3 for 3 I agree with. All I'll say is that it's better than Queen Of My Heart from a year before, but is still boring. There was no way they wouldn't release a ballad at this point after the No.5 underperformance of Bop Bop Baby in the summer.

Well, I wasn't the target audience for a bunch of kiddies skiving their GCSE's on TOTP with a lesser cover of a decent original, and I was the target audience for the cover of an absolute fave Beatles track - I was 12 when that came out and The Beatles had split already, and I lived away from the UK at the time, so the song always has sweet happy-sadness at it's core for me. As opposed to boredom by 2 reality TV singers who I disliked on principle, not having watched the show. Plus side, I felt the original should have been a single and sold as well as it did in the USA, so slight case of justice served in appearing as a chart-topping song.

I do at least remember these two tracks, which is more than I can say for Westlife's. Playing it now out of curiosity. Formulaic but reasonably made. I don't hate it, but then I'm not going to be hearing it 5 times a week for the next 6 weeks.

29

Everything else for me is at least okay now. It Feels about accurate to place the 2001 Christmas #1 at 29th as I don't associate it with 2002 at all. A fairly alright cover of the Frank and Nancy original by Robbie Williams and actress Nicole Kidman and I do have slight fondness for it cause of that festive period.

Forgot you would be ranking this one. But it's fair, it's an ok cover as I mentioned when it turned up in the last thread. I've always found Nicole's performance on it a bit one-dimensional but Robbie sounds great and it had a fun video.

The music video from Blazin' Squad makes me laugh. Bunch of kids standing on a unfinished flyover trying to look hard and singing a song they barely know. 😄

Edited September 6Sep 6 by montyj

28

The third number one for Blue was them linking up with Sir Elton John who recorded and released 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word' originally. It's a decent enough cover but again not one I'm overly enthusiastic about and wouldn't seek out. Seem to be a running theme atm.

6 hours ago, montyj said:

That music video from Blazin' Squad makes me laugh. Bunch of kids standing on a unfinished flyover trying to look hard singing along to a song they barely know. 😄

Sure I read it was filmed in South Africa too, like surely London wouldn't have been hard to find a suitably atmospheric looking flyover.

Fair position for Blue, the Stargate production with the harmonica is probably the most decent thing about it but I wouldn't put it much higher, maybe a Pop Idol single or two below it, that's all.