gooddelta

The album has been removed from Spotify in the UK for some reason, only the singles are still available to stream from it. I listened to it Monday and enjoyed it, particularly the last few songs.

Not all the silent voters going for the great Faithless track, probably my favourite 00s single from them.

Martine, it's ok but a fairly standard cover that doesn't excite me or ever make me want to listen to it. Fool No More was reasonably popular at the time and seen as a step up in maturity for the band, I doubt I'd target it for a bit.

Airplanes has very warm verses and delivery from B.o.B that remind me more of 90s rap, like Skee-Lo or something. The soft rock/pop chorus from Hayley is a nice contrast, and it was good to see her on a UK No.1. Overall I like the track, and I did buy the B.o.B album on the strength of the two No.1s and remember enjoying it, as well as Magic.

I went Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Bon Jovi I considered but don't feel like they are as influential as the three above to me? Not sure about The Killers, remove Mr Brightside and I wouldn't have even thought about them as a contender above about 20 others on here. They only have four or five iconic songs, as good as they are.

Jako grew on me quite a lot with the live performance, which was really energetic and magnetic, a great act to watch. LoveWave was a strong entry too, 2016 was a very high quality year in terms of songs and staging. Dubstep could be found in a couple of other entries in 2014 too, albeit to much lesser success than Not Alone. Lithuania's Attention was one. Eurovision is said to be 2-3 years behind musical trends, so it figured that dubstep showed up 2-3 years after its commercial peak.

I've been playing this Taylor song several times a day, it's probably my favourite from her since Anti-Hero. Really lovely track. Hopefully it will stabilise and climb again once Toy Story 5 is out.

One more to stick a pre-order in for, out on 17th July. Nice tracklist, good to see Wax make it, I love that track and like that the 'hold it' bit is used to good effect in the 12" mix.

Don't two versions actually exist, each with a couple of different tracks on it? I think they got as far as pressing and releasing it, and then quickly put out replacements. I would have preferred Doolally and Utah Saints but got Garbage and The Wiseguys. The latter edititon seems to be worth slightly more.

Is there a more iconic pop era/look than Rihanna's Loud era in the last 20 years? I had just moved up to north Wales at this point and from about November through to March, every time I went out I saw maybe 30 or more women with the exact same shade of dyed red hair, it was such an influential look. It helps that Loud is also one of the best pop albums of the last 20 years and Only Girl is a banger indeed although was quite low down in my end of year chart at the time as it felt a bit pedestrian in many ways initially, but Rihanna elevated what could have been quite a generic song in the hands of many others. I still remember one of my cheesier friends actually trying to chat a girl up with the immortal line 'I wanna make you feel like you're the only girl in the world'. It didn't work. I'll get to my favourite song on the album in the 2011 thread, but the combined force of Only Girl, What's My Name, Who's That Chick, S&M and the still lingering Love The Way You Lie really made it feel like Rihanna was constantly everywhere for about a year, yet it was all good, the songs were high quality and she was a force. I miss her imperial phase a lot - one of the best pop music ever saw.

It's coming in a few weeks, and is in my top five PSB songs, so underrated.

Yeah, I think Not Alone was an accidental favourite in the end. After all it did come 4th, but is probably one the most forgotten top five hits in the contest since the 00s. Sanna was second favourite but I don’t think anyone really expected Sweden to quite get over the line with Undo. So it did feel like Armenia could do it, even though the track didn’t sound like a winner particularly. Conchita/Common Linnets didn’t come alive in the odds until both delivered brilliant performances and staging. I think based on studio version alone they were deemed dated/too subtle to contend, but they both really wowed live, along with Sanna and her brilliant performance and vocal, so Aram MP3 (not a great artist name too) quickly faded away from view on the final week and actually did well to come 4th after that.

Jan Jan especially and Qele Qele were highlights for me, but generally I'm never a huge fan of what Armenia send. Apricot Stone was a nice one too, and I liked Not Alone at the time (while also not quite getting why it was the odds favourite) but the dubstep production has not aged too well. Snap was wildly overrated commercially for me, it's the definition of 'ok' - I wasn't exactly shocked by its low finish at Eurovision, there were no signs it was about to become a global hit based on that imo.

Good Times is certainly full of lyrical nuggets. 'bad times can't match it'! Oh I forgot Bad Romance was still to come, I guess by default it was my favourite No.1 of the year then! A classic pop gem in every way and nice that it had that second wind in the new year.

Confirmed. I did have a real dig round, and saved 15 new Turkish songs I heard among them to my playlist, but one gem really stood out, and it's a little uninspired but worth it.

Big love, huge nostalgia, reminds me of a fun summer 2002 with my friends. Now where is my Gamecube so I can get Super Monkey Ball on

Cliff climbing to No.1 is a memory I prefer to supress... Moving on, Alice Deejay had by far my favourite debut of the fortnight. I remember hearing that Back In My Life was going to premiere late one night on my local radio station so I stayed up all night to hear it and tape it, and I was absolutely stunned by it. That Eurodance riff and warm vocal was music to my 12-year-old ears, bringing a cozy nostalgic feeling for the dark winter period and I love that it did so well climbing the following week too. After releasing two of my favourite songs of 1999, I developed quite an obsession with Alice Deejay and even did a school project about them (!), shame they only released the one album. Northern Star is a killer track from Melanie C, and a great course correction after Goin' Down to get the album to start selling, a beautiful single. Not so fond of the Boyzone ballad which was a bit of a damp squib to go out on. They could have called it a day after Comic Relief and let Ronan do his own thing properly (which he already was anyway), rather than releasing this and the other dud, You Needed Me. I wasn't too keen on the Martine or Lolly double a-sides. Love Me is ok, I found Talking In Your Sleep to have very dated production for late 1999 and I struggled to get into it. I just found Lolly very twee and didn't really buy into any of her singles in a big way, and these two were each naff in their own right. The following week I'm sure I would have been expecting Celine, Whitney and The Corrs all to go top ten. And they should have done, I love all three of those songs a lot. Not sure how they all faltered so badly, Celine's is up there with her very best, excellent Cheiron production with a powerful delivery, Whitney's is a great power ballad, and Radio is so beautiful and great storytelling, I don't understand how the lead single from Unplugged barely scraped the top 20 after all their recent success, maybe because it was a live track? Re-Rewind was a great, classic debut from both Artful Dodger and Craig David, I'm quite sure I expected it to get to No.1 at the time and not be blocked by Cliff, gah. Communication is a pretty annoying track, indeed I used to wind up my family with it whenever the phone started ringing. Love that Jamie Theakston called the mobile phone 'the accessory of the 90s', where these days it's more of an extra limb than a mere accessory. Right Now was a fab disco pop debut from Atomic Kitten, their first few singles were a lot of fun before Whole Again sent them off in another direction. There's a great gem on their debut album called Turn Me On in the same vein sonically that I'd have loved to have seen get a single release. Glad it managed to scrape into the top ten, and it's cool that even this late into the 90s we were seeing the arrival of some of the biggest stars of the 00s in Craig David and Atomic Kitten.

Thriller. Beverley shoula woulda coulda made the top three, it's a classy gem.

Will stick with Kaisers.

I thought about it, but didn't go in the end, they must have been struggling to sell it out because I saw hundreds of tickets going for £18 on Thursday on Ticketmaster. I saw them on their prior 'farewell tour' at the Palladium in 2019 which I really enjoyed. I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed this much, I've seen clips of Mikey appearing for four songs only, tacky AI graphics all over the big screens, and a guest appearance by Brian McFadden to perform a new Boyzlife single with the always out of tune Keith. Looked like there was a nice tribute to Stephen though, and the setlist was strong for the fans, it's good that they performed every single that charted apart from Love Will Save The Day. In 2019 they missed a fair few singles.

Exactly this. The amount of winners in those early few years before proper veto rules were introduced that were already high in rotation on the radio/music channels and clearly on the way to smashing was frustrating when very often some really inspired songs ended up 2nd or 3rd behind this stuff. I was a BJSC mod in those years but the concept of vetoing stuff was wildly unpopular so we could only take it so far with various measures that let plenty of songs slip through the net. Granted some of the measures we came up (like the Banlist) are laughable looking back, but efforts were certainly made to try and make the contest more inspired in those years. I've still not got over coming 2nd to Alphabeat's The Spell with one of my favourite ever songs, Music Everywhere by Anna Abreu. Even if it's been 84 (well, 17) years! Like, imagine nowadays not vetoing the lead single from one of the forum's favourite bands in their previous era.

I still prefer Green Light myself, but really enjoyed both of these Roll Deep songs, good clubby fluff with fun raps and a catchy and melodic chorus, sometimes it was all I needed. I can't recall without checking but feel like it lucked out on fairly low sales weeks during its time at No.1, certainly past the first week and looking at its EOY position? So maybe a run of 1-2-3-3-9 etc would have been more expected for it in a more competitive time. I don't like Scouting For Girls at all, with only two exceptions - the album track Michaela Strachan, which was just a very funny/unexpected subject to write a song about, and this song, which I charted for a few weeks, quite low down but I was relatively pleasantly surprised by it at the time. I never thought of it as rock particularly but guess it ticks the guitar band box in a way we haven't really seen much since the 00s. The lower peaking songs from their debut album are definitely better remembered though.

Great for Ariana, I actually really like this one. I downloaded two of the versions yesterday in a bid to help. I still like it, but we're a year in now, Rein Me In can hopefully start to go.

Really strong song, the bridge melody is so lovely and love the use of harmonica. It's quite understated compared to her recent releases so hopefully it will do well and stick after the first day. The film exposure is bound to set it up for longevity I guess.

I took this from it too. Indeed, I have New Music Friday on shuffle today so wasn't aware it was the new Madonna single until the vocal started. The intro gives me Clubland 7 vibes, or like Shapeshifters had decided to unearth a lost house gem they made in 2005. It fits that kind of era perfectly sonically, so it's very me <3 The vocal production is the weak link unfortunately, it sounds a little buried in the mix at parts. But still, I'm enjoying it. The first three songs are more up my street than anything Madonna has done in a long time. Sure it's not going to come close to Confessions on a Dancefloor based on these songs, but feels like a step in the right direction and I like that it's dance music inspired by the 90s and 00s that doesn't directly try to copy the dance sounds of the original album.