gooddelta

Somethin' Stupid. A rather one note performance from Nicole, Robbie sounds nice on it but it's hardly essential.

I've put a 5-star review on iTunes to try and balance out these negatives, although it hasn't been published yet. It's not a 5-star album, but it's by no means a 1-star album, Disc 1 is a fair job for a start considering what they probably had available. The Now compilers won't be reading the 1-star reviews and even if they did see them they really won't care or take anything on board as feedback, partly because their hands will be tied anyway as to what they are able to include. However unfortunately consumers might well be reading them and be put off buying them, leading to even weaker sales and ultimately lowering Now's budget and making their job even harder to license hits. All the bad reviews are doing is hastening the decline of the brand and I don't want the series to fold before they get all the Yearbooks out.

Bravo Hits hasn't got ANOTR or Prospa either and they tend to be heavy on the dance, even dance that hasn't made the German charts they use for filler, and ANOTR has gone top 70 there so would be a prime pick. So perhaps licensing wasn't yet open to the compilers of Now and Bravo for these songs yet and they will be on Now 125 instead. I'm sure they will be on the MOS Annual too, no doubt there is some holding back from Sony going on of songs for that to give people more of a reason to buy it. The Eurovision exclusions are more puzzling to me, particularly Bangaranga. However this too is not on Bravo, and it got to No.1 in Germany, so who knows what is happening with licensing there.

I adore The Wrong Place, I voted for that in 2021 (having not been fussed on Release Me). I love the lyrics too and it was completely robbed with 3 points from the public. O Julissi is incredibly unique and charming indeed, I loved that. Judy Et Cie sounds nice, and good storytelling, surprised the juries didn't rank that higher.

Congratulations Spain, a just result after that performance for sure.

Hard to root for Argentina here, aggressive play and have had almost no possession. That red card was deserved, hopefully Spain can finish this off quickly now, they've been super unlucky not to score.

A very middling and forgettable No.1 for me but it was nice for Eva Simons to actually get a UK No.1 three years after many BuzzJack posters predicted she would with a song that never charted in the end. I far preferred the following will.i.am single, Scream & Shout, with another No.1 in the middle for him on Hall Of Fame to essentially give him a hat-trick.

That was Vanessa, and she's gone already :(

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.

I liked Payphone myself, I do take the point about the whiny chorus vocal, but I thought the production and melody was strong and I found Wiz Khalifa's rap quite a nice laidback summery addition to it. But sure it works fine without it too. Funnily enough Payphone is their biggest song on Spotify, above Moves Like Jagger (2.7bn streams to 2.2bn) so while that song opened the door, Payphone was certainly hugely popular in its own right and remains so. I don't really consider it a halo hit (for me those are songs that pop in at No.1 off the back of a bigger song and then quickly disappear), more that MLJ reopened a door which had very nearly closed for them to continue the success they were having previously. A bit like Kylie's singles that followed Spinning Around in that manner.

Staying with Shakedown.

Not Vanessa 😭 one of my go to uplifiting anthems! Sticking with The Bravery.

Unexpectedly one of the best games of the tournament, it would have been such a worthy final. Nice consolation for England to get third place and Bellingham with that last ditch goal. Watch tomorrow's final be a low scoring snoozer now. Impressive win against the team that had been expected to win the tournament, and with all the chat of England never being able to beat teams ranked higher than them.

On the plus side, I have now finally achieved it all All that matters anyway (still missing a few lower half final positions).

Confirmed (again). It’s amazing how many songs I consider instrumentals do have some sort of small vocal element to them. Or they use a vocal sample as an ‘instrument’ even when lyrics are not discernible, like my first confirmation.

Notion and X CLUB, massive banger. I did like Overmono x John Joseph Holt a lot too, spoken word is always appreciated on dance.

You'd think World In Motion might have shown up in the top 100 after doing that well in the lead up to Wednesday's match. Perhaps it wasn't removed from ACR. Quite something to see the likes of Ant & Dec, 442 and the awful Shout charting on streaming, even if due to passive playlist listening.

Wow, that is a top three full of some serious swagger. Britpop is back! It is nice to see an all British top three, it doesn't happen a lot these days. Brilliant to see Shakira back in the top five after so long, Dai Dai has grown on me a lot. It's not Waka Waka but is catchy. And it feels like she's been knocking on the door of scoring a big hit again for a few years with the Bizarrap top 40, Zoo lingering at the lower end and her continued massive Spanish language success. Legend. Good to see Danceteria cling on for a second top 75 week for Madonna too.

Glorious is epic, shame he was a one hit wonder here because he sent some great songs to Melodifestivalen later in the decade, and was very close to winning on a couple of occasions. I still follow his music. Rise is effortlessly good, although I do prefer Out Of Reach overall, that really deserved to be a No.1. She was such a radio darling in 2000 and 2001 with these two songs and When A Woman (plus Dreams still being rinsed). I liked The Great Beyond too, a great REM single. Adelante less so, not one of my favourites from Sash! And I really disliked Daphne & Celeste. Hammer To The Heart was the weakest Tamperer hit for me, Madonna definitely used the ABBA sample far better. Quite a nice, well produced cover from Fierce. My mum loved that one and bought their album off the back of it. Girl On TV is so incredibly corny, but has a charm I suppose, but Summer Girls was far better and deserved a higher peak than this. Don't Falter is really lovely, nice to see the performance of that, it ended up becoming a bit of a cult classic in the end at least. Hated that second performance of A Little Bit Of Luck with the woman adlibbing over it. At least we have the first performance without it. Impressive longevity for that track.

Weirdly this was a rare X Factor winner's single that broke out and was a big success globally. No.1 in a few other European countries, No.2 in Australia. It was possibly so big because the Shontelle original was a hit in far fewer countries, and a much smaller hit where it charted. I always found its success baffling. I don't like his voice or his treatment of this song at all. I know it's regarded as one of the more successful and likeable X Factor winner's singles but it's not for me.

I believe Daniel O'Donnell charted a new album every year from 1988 to 2023.

This is kind of late-00s Kelly vibes, nice to hear it. Walk Away vibes to the verse but the production is more something in the middleground between My December and All I Ever Wanted. I like it!

Biology, what a song <3 I love it even more now than I did at the time, think I had veered away from GA slightly in their mid 2005 dip (I wasn't super mad on Wake Me Up or Long Hot Summer, though have a lot more time for the latter these days) and this song took its time to really wow me, I suppose because it is so unconventially structured. But they were well and truly back on track with this indeed, ignoring See The Day perhaps, and elevated their career a level. One Thing is great too, Amerie had some great brassy singles, I just wish Gotta Work had peaked higher as that to me sounded like a global hit, not a midtable one. Red Dress is decent but was never a big favourite of mine. Forgot to comment on a couple of others. Pon De Replay is fine, catchy but Rihanna had much better to come and it really sounded like a one-hit wonder type song to me. Crazy Chick was such a great and unexpected swerve for Charlotte Church, I thoroughly enjoyed that album.

Watch it run away with it after all now!

They really had some horrible entries. I hate Copycat, With Love Baby and Mother. Sister and Love Power were also not good at all. Some lovely songs too, I really was fond of Me & My Guitar, The Wrong Place (robbed), City Lights. Because Of You and Je T'adore were great, O Julissi so underrated and glad to see it in your top 20, and Sanomi so striking and unusual (and close to being a shock winner!) I never really loved 1 Life, although on paper it should tick all of my boxes but just didn't. It was one of the favourites to win and completely flopped but can't say I was upset about that. Interesting how long that French/Dutch back and forth went on in the 20th century, with the switch of broadcaster each year.