James Silkstone

2nd April 2011 - The Black Eyed Peas - "Just Can't Get Enough" Peak: 3 Weeks in Top 10: 5 US Peak: 3 OK, before we get into this mostly positive review I feel I need to get across how much I utterly despised The Black Eyed Peas by this point in time. I didn't really touch much on it in my review for 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' because most of my 2010 reviews were terrible and I am so overwhelmed with hatred for that record in particular that I didn't really have time to touch on just how much the artists themselves were annoying the hell out of me at the time. The BEP were a favourite group of mine back when I was like 9, I absolutely adored 'Shut Up', 'Don't Lie, 'Don't Phunk With My Heart' and 'Where Is The Love?' but when I look back the rot began to sink in back in 2005 with the release of 'My Humps' which has got to be one of the worst songs of the 2000's. In 2009, they returned, and though I found various parts of 'Boom-Boom Pow' enjoyable and liked 'I Gotta Feeling' for about a week, by late 2010 they had begun to annoy the hell out of me with just terrible song after terrible song. I'm still convinced that 'Imma Be' was written, produced and released as some kind of dare. So, by early 2011, with their latest album flopping, their panned Super Bowl performance and rumours of a split or at least an indefinite hiatus doing the rounds I was pleased to say the least. All that said, their last top ten record was easily their best for about six years. It may be a song about wanting sex desperately but at least there's been an effort made to make it sounds like it's about something deeper in some way. There's a melancholy too it and it's also one of my favourite performances from Fergie; the whole thing is surprisingly sweet and very refreshing to hear from them until the beat drops and gives us the best dance BEP moment ever. It's just an all-round success of a record, not quite good enough to completely undo the damage some of the terrible releases did but it's certainly a nice looking band aid. OrTyD7rjBpw

Billboard are being a bit slow putting up the Hot 100 this week it seems

26th March 2011 - Parader - "Louder" Peak: 10 Weeks in Top 10: 1 I think this could become a serious contender for the most forgotten top ten single of the 2010's so far. Though it certainly rings a little bell, I couldn't tell you the first thing about this band or song other than their next single only reached #38 so I'm assuming they were dropped by whatever record label they were signed too. It's a shame in a way because 'Louder' is a very good pop song and better than anything the UK's premier girl band at the time - The Saturdays - would release over the course of 2011. There's potential in this group somewhere, some of the girls have pretty good voices and handle the song very well. BI62NlMa5V0

26/03/2011 - Dr. Dre feat Eminem & Skyler Grey - "I Need a Doctor" Peak: #8 Weeks in Top 10: 3 US Peak: 4 Look, for all I've said I enjoy serious and introspective Eminem more than funny and goofy Eminem, I do have my limits. If 'I Need a Doctor' is guilty of anything it's trying desperately to be a deep, personal introspective record about Dr. Dre's writers block and utterly failing on every level. Look, I don't doubt that writing block is frustrating - Hell, I know what writers block feels like - but the fact that this serious song that is played so unbelievably straight is about writers block kind of feels funny to me. It's just so melodramatic and I know that maybe they were striving for a metaphor here but it just utterly fails because all I can think is that Eminem's pained screams are about him wanting Dre to finish an album. It just doesn't work. This is probably my least favourite Eminem performance ever. He's pulled off anger well in the past - very well - but here he's just shouting and trying to sound as pained as he can and it just comes off as forced. Dre is no better, his verse contains about 90% swear words and he just sounds like a whiny little child who hasn't been given their own way. I normally like the female vocals in songs like these - most of the time I find them to be the god damn saving grace - but even Grey's chorus falls flat for me. This whole record doesn't work because it's trying so hard to be something that the source material just isn't strong enough to support. Also, if you can actually write a song about your writers block do you really have writers block? I don't think so. Also, the video. Dre crashes his car in the most unrealistic way ever. Like, fair enough he was going ludicrously fast but there was nothing in the road no trees, no rocks, no small woodland creatures how did he end up flipping several times? Did he hit a moose off-screen. This has always bothered me. VA770wpLX-Q

26th March 2011 - The Wanted - "Gold Forever" Peak: #3 Weeks in Top 10: 2 'Gold Forever' is a weird entry into The Wanted's canon. I've always maintained that for the most part these guys were more of a 'lad band' than a boyband. It was very seldom that The Wanted would descended into the usual boyband tactics of insincere flattery love songs, and of all the boybands I can think of they're the only one that seemed to be aware of an existence outside of being in a relationship or pursuing a girl. As much as I do like them nowadays, One Direction have always been very relationship centric. As were JLS. And pretty much every other boyband without exception. The Wanted are unique in this way, I guess, and it's probably why they remain my favourite boyband of the decade so far. That said, 'Gold Forever' is a weird addition to The Wanted's canon because it's pretty much the only time they descended into average boyband territory. Well, second, after 'Heart Vacancy'. Another thing that set The Wanted apart in my eyes was the fact that whenever they did speak about relationships, it seemed to come from a more mature and rounded place than your average boyband track. Mostly about sex I grant you, but it's better than certain songs will be covering in the future. 'Gold Forever' is odd for them as it pretty much ticks every cliché on the boyband ballad checklist and this makes it feel odd for me because that's not who The Wanted were. They, to me at least, represented normal lads - by which I mean, The Wanted weren't idealized and marked as saints like every other boyband member is. They were just normal lads* and well, normal lads don't say things like "we'll be gold forever" they make stupid puns about being pleased a girl came to your party. Overall, I can't fully decry 'Gold Forever' because it's a pretty solid pop song with some very enjoyable parts. It's just not The Wanted. *(Note; as much as I enjoyed The Wanted's music overall, I do think they came across as particularly horrific people at times. Except Nathan. ily) I also spent about six weeks thinking the line was "Sunday's stay gold forever" which was confusing. XvGHtcjQZec

11th March 2000 - Lene Marlin - "Sitting Down Here" Quite a nice little folky affair, Lene Marlin charted her first and only top ten single in March 2000 with this track. I was four when this was out, and it's probably the first record we've come across thus far that I actually have memories of from the time. My Dad really liked the track for whatever reason, added it to a seemingly endless tape he always played in the car and as he drove me to school most mornings, I became very familiar with the song - though, my Dad's insistance on singing the track in a exaggerated Cumbrian accent and adding the F word between "can't" and "see me" has annoyed me in recent years despite amusing at the time. In 2015, I still have a lot of time for this. In the hectic and loud year of 2000, it struggles to standout, though blaring it from my iPod in a Uni friends car on a road trip to the beach this summer suggested it is actually a quite fondly remembered track, the fact it just quietly got on with being a reasonable sized hit against the Britney's, the Geri's and the Madonna's only makes me appreciate it a lot more. I'm always a sucker for folk-pop records, there's something ever so warm and comforting about them and 'Sitting Down Here' is absolutely no different. ZI1VF9E-Uvw

11th March 2000: Madonna - "American Pie" Controversial opinion here, this actually could have been half-way decent, in theory. Most people roll their eyes and look uncomfortable whenever Madonna's cover of this standard is brought up but I believe that's only because we have got so used to this version being terrible but I think that a William Orbit version of 'American Pie' really could have been something unique and special but....we ended up with this, so here we go. I'm not 100% sure why this version exists to be totally honest. Madonna's never struck me as being someone who would fold and be a lap dog for her record label, especially not by 2000 by which time she was 42 and had been the biggest music artist in the world for 15 years. Madge has blamed everyone from her record label to co-star Rupert Everrett for the existence of this cover but some of the blame has to lie on her shoulders because no matter who persuaded her, she still did the damn thing and did a really botched job of it - and this is coming from somebody who is actually pretty so-so on the original! On their best day (i.e. 'Ray of Light') Madonna and Orbit could have made something really unique and special, but the fact there hearts weren't in it shows and it's of no surprise to me that Madonna has totally disowned this sQVieEO6GuU

I hated this at the time but absolutely loved it on re-listen. It doesn't scream single though.

26th March 2011 - Nicole Scherzinger - "Don't Hold Your Breath" Peak: 1 (1 week) Weeks in Top 10: 5 US Peak: 86 I don't know if this still happens, maybe it's because the people I was 16 with in 2011 are all 20 now, maybe it was just a passing fad but I remember back around the time this song came out people always used to make a deal about posting song lyrics as Facebook status in order to express their feelings. I never did so because I find that to be stupid and frankly if you have to rely on the words of others to properly illustrate your feelings on a Facebook status of all things then I'm tempted to go all Natalia Kills on you. But yeah, back in March 2011, it seemed that every girl who was having relationship troubles in my year and the ones below seemed to copy and paste the lyrics from the chorus of this song into their Facebook status to....well, I never really got why and my girlfriend at the time was mature and just used to text fight with me whenever we had a disagreement. Maybe this was a fad that died out, or maybe it was exclusive to sixteen year olds of 2015, but I wouldn't know that because I'm not friends with anyway as I feel uneasy associating with people born after 1998. Anyway, my point here is that it confused me to some extent that this song seemed to strike a chord with that many people.....until now. Don't get me wrong I think this is actually a very good pop record and easily the best of Nicole Scherzinger's rather clumsy solo career, but it's not exactly....personal or deep. It chucks every cliché in the book out that it can and as much as I like Nicole, she's not exactly brimming with personality and this song could very well have been sung by anyone as Nicole has little to no musical identity. But then, it hit me. The fact it's so cliché and personality-less is the reason so many people I knew related to it at the time; this is going to sound ageist and I apologize to anyone whom it may offend but sixteen year olds are not particularly known for their depth. Some can be I'm sure, and lot seem to think they are, but this song taps into the top of the ice berg break up wise. Sure, we know Nicole's left her boyfriend and she's angry because she thought she could change him but he didn't but it doesn't get down to the nitty gritty of the situation Should it though? I'm not going to condemn it for not doing so. If music aims to be a unifying force it should at least strive to be a little objective, and Nicole was hardly aiming to be some dark indie artist who only catered to certain individual taste. She was aiming to be as mainstream as she could, and she succeeded. z4nKOzk8qbw

19th March 2011 - Wiz Khalifa - "Black & Yellow" Peak: 5 Weeks in Top 10: 5 US Peak: 1 …….And we’re back. Apologizes for all this and I was totally ready to just abandon the thread all together but it kept eating away at me. Let’s get back in to it. Just fyi, turns out I did manage to save at least two files (this one and another) as for some reason I’d emailed them to myself which was a nice surprise. Just so you all know I write these reviews pretty far in advance mainly so I can double check them before I post them. As it is, between writing them and publishing them, things can change and let me tell you at the time of writing this I had a whole paragraph about how glad I was Wiz had never really had another hit of his own in the UK. So, naturally, about four days after I finished writing the review 'See You Again' shoots to the top of the iTunes charts and is now one of the biggest records of 2015 so far and I'm sitting here with pie on my face having had to re-write a majority of the review 'Black & Yellow' was a dark cloud looming over me at the time. It was number one in the US back in December 2010, and at the time I was subscribed to a YouTube channel called 'Billboard Goddess' who would weekly publish the Top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. So, naturally, I was aware of this song a few weeks/months before it started gaining any kind of traction in the UK and I wasn't happy about it. Rap's not as big over here as it is then, the UK doesn't really do non-commercial sounding rap, so whenever a rap songs big in the US before here, I'm always about 50/50 on whether the success will translate to our shores depending on how commercial the song sounds. That was not the case with 'Black & Yellow' unfortunately. I knew, from the second I heard it, that this was going to be big here because it very much fit in with the kind of rap music our artists' were producing and what was considered popular at the time. Needless to say by this point, but I wasn't overly fond of 'Black & Yellow' which seemed to outline pretty much everything I disliked about rap at the time. Four years on and it has grown on me too - although maybe it's just because I've seen Wiz be something other than gross and boastful now so I've warmed to him - but I certainly don't hate this now. I don't love it either, it has to be said. It wasn't even particularly massive in the UK in the end. Also, it says a lot about the state of my life in early 2011, that my biggest worry was how succesful a rap song was going to be. UePtoxDhJSw

'Sound of the Underground' is such an absolute classic debut single, kicking of an amazing career (save for the covers). Best girl group of all-time in my opinion, shame they never cracked anywhere outside of Britain and Ireland.

Both are gorgeous :wub: :wub: :wub:

You know what? f*** it, I'm not giving this up.

So less remembered I totally forgot it even existed

04th March 2000 - Kelis - "Caught Out There" This is marvelous. One of my biggest issues with a lot of man-hating breakup records from the likes of Beyonce and Pink that we'll be getting too in the future, is that they're angry and full of hate, but still try to paint their protagonist as a sympathetic and almost deity like figure. Particularly Beyonce. The issue with those songs is that they're revenge fantasies through and through and seldom deal with the nitty gritty and pure emotion of a traumatic breakup. Kelis's "Caught Out There" therefore succeeds for me because it is pretty much the entire feeling of anger summed up in a three minute record; Kelis goes there in a way that the likes of Beyonce always shy away from. She's not poised or dignified, she's pissed as hell and letting you know it. And that's OK. There's no better record to listen to when you want to punch a wall. N3JFwd1bk4Q

Skipping over Rebecca Wheatley's "Stay With Me Baby" as I do not recall it and can find bollocks all information on it. But for the record, it's very dull and I'd skip over the listen.

I remember 'The Ketchup Song' well - particularly big on the British primary school playgrounds I recall. The same as another girlband novelty hit that's just around the corner. 'Stronger' is one of the Sugababes' best ever singles. So gorgeous. Do not recall the B-side however.

26th February 2000 - Shania Twain - "Don't Be Stupid (You Know I Love)" Shania wasn't going to let a little thing like the passing of 3 years and sales of 3 million copies stop her from releasing everything she could from 'Come on Over'. My parents, like most people, owned a copy so I was already fairly familiar with this one by the time it came around to a re-listen for the purpose of this thread. By no means the strongest track on the album, the pop remix it recieved for a single release here really doesn't do it any favours and it ends up sounding like a mix of 'Belfast Girls' and 'Cotton Eye Joe'. Ending up becoming the last single from the album, Don't Be Stupid didn't quite match up to the success or legacy of the previous releases from the record and is arguably the most forgotten single from 'Come on Over' which is fair as it's by far the worst in my opinion. eVvjKA22MYs

Posted twice - ooops

26th February 2000 - Christina Aguilera - "What a Girl Wants" Following up such a big and memorable debut single is hard, and Christina provided us with this. Like Britney did with 'Sometimes', Christina puts her first foot wrong with this song in my book. As I said in my 'Genie' review, Christina pulled that off and it still seems very her but the rest of the singles from this era really don't because Christina was clearly never really comfortable being a bottle blonde teen pop starlet. She proves that she can do teen pop and do it adequately but her heart has never really seemed into it this first era for me, and it's the most obvious on 'What a Girl Wants'. This is perhaps the least fun and completely soulless teen pop song that I have ever heard; it's not exciting, Christina sounds like she's phoning it in and unlike 'Genie' it's not playfully done with a wink or nod as if to say - 'there's more to come from this girl'. No. This is straight up teen pop played 100% straight and whilst that certainly worked for some of her peers, it's just not Christina and it shows. hpspGHeLOPE

05th February 2000 - Gabrielle - "Rise" Never really been a massive fan of this one to be honest, though I was surprised when I realized this was actually a bit of a return to form (commercially) for her. Gabrielle's one of those singers that always seemed to be a lot bigger than she maybe actually was this to the extent when I was very surprised to learn that I only recognised about four of her singles, this, obviously being one of them. 'Rise' seems to be a particularly acclaimed record, I've never really been keen on it at all. I get what the intent of the song is, sure, but it goes about it in all the ways that just bores me. She sings it well and the message comes across as genuine enough, but it's just really, really, really boring. Rising up again has never sounded as mundane but I am aware this is probably a very unpopular opinion. na93MI5NFy0

One of the best double a-side singles ever :wub:

29th January 2000 - Britney Spears - "Born To Make You Happy" Our first entry for Britney now - and get used to her because she'll be popping up more times in this thread than any other artist. Britney has scored a whopping 22 top 40 hits on her todd since January 2000, the first of which being this one which became a bit of a shock number one for Spears in the first month of the new millennium. Fourth singles from already million selling albums don't tend to chart higher than the previous two singles, let alone peak at number one but coupled together with Britney's star power and a quiet January sales market, the song did just that, giving Brit her second UK number one. But is it any good? Well, I've always liked it. This is teenage melodrama at it's best - something at which Britney excelled during her early years - and whilst the tracks lyrics can make her sound desperate and needy, there's something very endearing about Spears' vocal performance here. Never a world class singer, Britney's voice succeeds because it fits very well around good hooks and she always sounds like she's genuine enough of these kinds of songs to give them what they need and ultimately, she makes a success of them. It's not my favourite Britney song - I stan hard for Britney so it's probably not even top ten to be honest - but it's a fine entry to her canon and one of my favourite number one's of 2000. Yy5cKX4jBkQ

I call dibs on male solo artists then :heart:

8th January 2000 - Geri Halliwell - "Lift Me Up" Boy, am I glad this ends up following 'Northern Star' here. Not because I like it or anything, but because it just shows how good 'Northern Star' is by being everything that could've gone wrong with the former track. Geri Halliwell is my least favourite of all the Spice Girls in every repsect - I think she has the worst voice (yes, worse than Posh) and the worst solo career (yes, worse than Posh) yet she was somehow the most commercially succesful and whilst I'm no fan of Cheryl's solo career - I am very glad she beat Geri's record of being the British female solo artist with the most number one hits. 'Lift Me Up' is lame, Halliwelll is just not a good singer at all and the whole thing comes across as trying too hard. If I was to give Geri one compliment it would be that she had the most distinct and loud personality save for Mel B, and that was what helped 'Look At Me' and her next single 'Bag It Up' be at least listenable/warrant existing but it's nowhere to be seen here and just highlights how weak Halliwell is in every respect. cVp9P1-fBy8