BBC Two now for The Biggest Hits of 2000 and then The Story of 2000 straight after

Currently playing 'Groovejet'.in The Biggest Hits of 2000.

Just watched both the BBC Two "Biggest Hits" and "Story of" shows for tonight. Alright overall, but some glaring revisionist editorial choices. That Joey Negro record could hardly be considered a massive hit of 2000. I would have more readily given that slot to Fragma "Toca's Miracle" or Darude "Sandstorm" which were actually big. No Madonna either. Also no offence to the Eels but their two top 10s were in 1997, only one of which could be classed as widely known ("Novocaine for the Soul"). Crowbarring them in as one of the big music stories of a year where they really weren't isn't it.

And my God I'd forgotten just what a self important knobend Chris Cowey was. Whilst he did a decent job in his first couple of years, his obsession with turning the show into something it didn't need to be oftentimes verged on the cringe a little bit and clashed awkwardly with where music was at the time and ultimately played a part in what happened to the show's eventual fate. Mate. You were producing Top of the Pops, not The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Edited July 11Jul 11 by ThePensmith

We already have Gezzas thread for this?

1 hour ago, Jester said:

We already have Gezzas thread for this?

Where is that sorry? I checked a few pages back on this forum and couldn't see anything

It’s the top 10 sales thread - we discuss TOTP there as it’s posted weekly in line with the 2 episodes shown.

10 hours ago, ThePensmith said:

Just watched both the BBC Two "Biggest Hits" and "Story of" shows for tonight. Alright overall, but some glaring revisionist editorial choices. That Joey Negro record could hardly be considered a massive hit of 2000. I would have more readily given that slot to Fragma "Toca's Miracle" or Darude "Sandstorm" which were actually big. No Madonna either. Also no offence to the Eels but their two top 10s were in 1997, only one of which could be classed as widely known ("Novocaine for the Soul"). Crowbarring them in as one of the big music stories of a year where they really weren't isn't it.

And my God I'd forgotten just what a self important knobend Chris Cowey was. Whilst he did a decent job in his first couple of years, his obsession with turning the show into something it didn't need to be oftentimes verged on the cringe a little bit and clashed awkwardly with where music was at the time and ultimately played a part in what happened to the show's eventual fate. Mate. You were producing Top of the Pops, not The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Yeah it was a nice mix of artists, although not sure I'd have considered Eels an essential part of the 2000 story, although I really do love Mr E's Beautiful Blues and it turned up in a lot of films around that time too so felt bigger than its No.11 peak.

I laughed when S Club said they didn't want to do Reach initially as it felt like Rainbow. Presuming they mean the children's TV show theme, and I completely get that thinking about it! In essence it's a very corny song that you could even imagine Lolly or Tweenies or someone doing, but they really turned it into a classic, and one of those cheesy songs that everyone loves. Such unlucky timing to go up against Sonique for three weeks because both should have hit the top.

I'd completely forgotten about that Joey song until it popped up on Big Hits, agree that it would have been nice to have Fragma, or Oxide and Neutrino, or any other dance act really. I liked that it was pointed out that come 2000 dance performances became more elaborate, because even in the 1999 shows dance was either completely ignored or just a sharply cut down edit of a song with a DJ standing behind a box. You can't really continue to pay it dust when dance tracks were at No.1 for so much of the year.

Argh at the big section devoted to We Will Rock You at the end. "Probably their best track," says Cowey. Errrr, no.

I always like the wider context shared in these shows, like the mad floods and petrol strikes (which both had a huge impact where I was living), and the incoming effect of downloads and file sharing although I didn't download any MP3s myself until 2002.

We Will Rock You is so bad, people should be arrested 🤣

I watched the first of the two episodes (before the big match) so will catch up on the second one today.

I enjoyed the show though, and pretty much every song was a decent sized smash… until Joey Negro 😂 can’t say I even remembered it at all which was odd! Shame we didn’t get either of Mel Cs 2 number ones either as I was expecting her to pop up at some point!

I am a massive fan of Five but by no means is "We Will Rock You" their best single. Honestly they belonged more on the 1998 or 1999 episode.

Also. No Robbie "Rock DJ" (given that's where the video premiered and where the whole controversy around it started), Coldplay launching or even Westlife given their string of number ones / defeat at Xmas to Bob the Builder that year being on this episode were choices as well.

I just felt the overall editorial on the retrospective of 2000 let the side down massively.

Edited July 12Jul 12 by ThePensmith

1 hour ago, ThePensmith said:

Also. No Robbie "Rock DJ" (given that's where the video premiered and where the whole controversy around it started),

Rock DJ did feature on the first episode at least?! (Complete with Robbie dropping trow) 😂

1 hour ago, Lee_J11 said:

Rock DJ did feature on the first episode at least?! (Complete with Robbie dropping trow) 😂

I know it was on the Biggest Hits show but it was such a key talking point regarding the show that year when they showed the video. I remember one of the first issues of Heat magazine my eldest sister had it was all over that with "the screen caps they tried to ban" etc!

10 hours ago, Jester said:

It’s the top 10 sales thread - we discuss TOTP there as it’s posted weekly in line with the 2 episodes shown.

Ah sorry, if a mod wants to merge the posts here into it then that would be fine

21 hours ago, ThePensmith said:

And my God I'd forgotten just what a self important knobend Chris Cowey was. Whilst he did a decent job in his first couple of years, his obsession with turning the show into something it didn't need to be oftentimes verged on the cringe a little bit and clashed awkwardly with where music was at the time and ultimately played a part in what happened to the show's eventual fate. Mate. You were producing Top of the Pops, not The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Agree with this. I appreciate the point of the show is to promote the weekly shows but I think it also needs to reflect what went wrong with TOTP. Truth is that by 2000 it had largely lost its selling power overtaken not only by specific music channels but also terrestrial TV like CD:Uk and it was too late to make some changes whixh may have helped (for example moving the show to Sunday) which by the time they got round it had no effect at all given the damage was done.

I think also it moving away from showing what was in the charts to "exclusives" didn't help as it should have reflected the charts and kept the prestige of appearing on the show only when you had a hit. I won't even mention showing the same performance sometimes 3 times! It wasn't like there was a dearth of new hits to promote weekly....

9 hours ago, Gezza said:

Agree with this. I appreciate the point of the show is to promote the weekly shows but I think it also needs to reflect what went wrong with TOTP. Truth is that by 2000 it had largely lost its selling power overtaken not only by specific music channels but also terrestrial TV like CD:Uk and it was too late to make some changes whixh may have helped (for example moving the show to Sunday) which by the time they got round it had no effect at all given the damage was done.

I think also it moving away from showing what was in the charts to "exclusives" didn't help as it should have reflected the charts and kept the prestige of appearing on the show only when you had a hit. I won't even mention showing the same performance sometimes 3 times! It wasn't like there was a dearth of new hits to promote weekly....

I was gonna say CD:UK was miles ahead for me at the time, because it was more reflective of how things were moving a bit faster compared to four years previously. Plus it being attached to SMTV Live worked massively in its favour.

One thing a conversation I had with someone yesterday over DMs on Instagram about regarding the absence of Fragma that I mentioned above on the "Biggest Hits" show did give me pause for thought.

Because Coco who did vocals on the original "I Need A Miracle" that was sampled on "Toca's Miracle" has had a lengthy and well documented dispute over lack of royalties paid from the single, and she has a reputation for actively yanking it down from YouTube etc (I know "Toca's Miracle" is on DSPs as of a couple of years ago, but it had a re-recorded vocal from another singer). (I also inadvertently found out I was blocked by her on Instagram. Go figure)

It does therefore make me wonder if the episodes when it's number one will potentially be skipped as a result. I guess we won't know for another month or two until the reruns resume after the Proms but something to bear in mind.

I think it was settled about 10 years if I recall correctly. I think it should be fine, also I don't know the technical aspects of it but it seems that TOTP owns the right to broadcast their own shows rather than the acts on it. Hence the fact that whilst the promo for Fragms was not on youtube, the TOTP performances of the track always were

TOTP: Biggest Hits and The Story of 2001 are on tomorrow night on BBC Two - 10pm and 11pm - then Biggest Hits and The Story of 2002 next Saturday at 9:30pm and 10:30pm.

The 2001 show was strong and covered all bases pretty well compared to 2000 with a lot of the guests being behind the biggest hits.

I think I’d have paid a bit more attention to Can’t Get You Out Of My Head but at least it opened the Big Hits show.

I do love that story of how It Wasn’t Me came to be a hit, through internet sharing of an album track and then organic growth. Almost an early viral hit.

All Rise is interesting in that the harmonica part and backing track was nearly wholesale lifted by Stargate from another song they had a hit in Norway with in 1999 called Not For The Dough by Multicyde. It was a little bit cheeky to just reuse it but I guess it was their property! Funny that the show made it out like that part (which ended up becoming a distinct part of Blue’s own sound too) was just something that came out of nowhere.

I noticed some of the later year hits were finally widescreen so I suppose the show eventually went widescreen during the summer, maybe with the move to Television Centre they were talking about? All of the performances are starting to look a lot more modern now in the way they are filmed.

Edited Sunday at 11:315 days by gooddelta

Much better set of episodes than last week overall - although it felt like Hear'Say were somewhat skimmed over compared to some others on The Story of... episode. Like them or loathe them, without them, and without that first series of Popstars, a lot of what's to come on future episodes of this wouldn't have happened.

Although given Myleene has often alluded in recent years to saying she's silenced on talking about certain aspects of what happened with them career wise (notably on the We Need To Talk podcast with Paul Brunson last year) I'm guessing that was out the question. Ditto some of the other members - Suzanne and Noel - who've been quite vocal about not wanting to go back and revisit the past.

I feel like there would have and should have been space for Kylie as mentioned above and Atomic Kitten on this Story of episode too, given they both had two of the biggest number ones of the year and both had equally a big moment behind it - "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" being the moment Kylie transcended everything she did before and became the icon she is today, "Whole Again" being a record that really did save the Kittens at the eleventh hour despite having everything against it.

Re: Stargate reusing a riff for Blue "All Rise". Nothing would surprise me listening to that Multicyde track if that was the case, they also sort of reused it about a year later on a track called "Easier Said Than Done" which was their attempt at launching an in-house vanity project and just missed the top 40 despite heavy rotation on The Box:

Blue on their first couple of albums were absolute fire though. Now those two albums - "All Rise" and "One Love" - both long overdue a vinyl pressing.