Scene

Absolutely. I said it once and I’ll say it again, it’s total madness they didn’t use Xenomania, who produced most of each group’s biggest and best hits to come up with something exciting and fresh. It could’ve been a collaboration for the ages but no. 😭

15 Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud Walk This Way #2s held off #1: The Sweet Escape (Gwen Stefani, Akon) By 2007, the sea of UK girl groups birthed from Spicemania was suffering a drought, with the vast majority of early 00s girl groups long disbanded by this time. It was up to Girls Aloud and Sugababes to represent for the latter half of the 00s, both still going strong after having collectively accumulated 6 number ones by the beginning of 2007. Both groups released their first greatest hits collections the previous Autumn, with Girls Aloud securing their first #1 album, while the newest incarnation of the Sugababes were yet to prove themselves without Mutya, but nonetheless scored a top 3 compilation album, and a #8 hit with Easy (underrated sexy bop!). So naturally, when discussions for the Comic Relief single of 2007 emerged, it was none other than Richard Curtis who suggested the girl groups unite. Legend has it several songs were in contention, including Blur’s Girls & Boys and Candi Staton’s You Got the Love, but these were thrown out in favour of Aerosmith’s 1975 single Walk This Way. Walk This Way was originally a top 10 US hit in the mid-70s for Aerosmith and would remain a domestic hit for the next decade, before a collaboration with Run DMC would see it become an international smash in 1986. The collaboration scored both acts top 10s across Europe, Australia and North America, with a number 8 peak in the UK (perhaps a shockingly low peak for such a classic). Fast-forward 21 years and the two flagship UK girl groups of the time finally managed to propel the song to number one. With opening sales of 51,500, Walk This Way earned Girls Aloud and the Sugababes their third and fifth number ones respectively. The track failed to stick around, falling from 2 to 14 in its third week, before swiftly exiting the charts. I’m not even sure it’s cleared 200,000 after all these years! This is definitely one of those cases where a dream collaboration fails to live up to hype and expectations. Similarly to Leon, the song choice does them no favours. Why they couldn’t have just asked Xenomania to cook up an original track instead? Or at least as one half of a double A-side release. I guess not a lot of thought was put into the song choice, given the small timeframe, but it could’ve been something good. Instead it falls flat, with none of the girls providing the vocal oomph the song needs and the instrumental is just noise to my ears. Way too overproduced while also somehow lacking any punch. Perhaps all involved just phoned it in? I’d put this firmly in the “unlistenable” category with the other three songs, though ranked higher only for the iconic moment of the two biggest groups of the era uniting and scoring a number one in the process. The song also prevented the far more grating The Sweet Escape from bagging a week at #1, thus denying Gwen Stefani her first solo UK chart topper. I’m not mad about this as I much preferred LAMB-era Gwen to the singles released from her sophomore album.

About damn time! It’s mad to think the last time she released an album was before Trump ever became president. Like WTF.

Woohoo!!! Hopefully the last minute Xmas shopping rush will work in JADE’s favour and she can hold a top 10 place!

Yeah you’re right, the “suicidal” line is more throwaway than anything else. I was just scraping the barrel for a positive. 😂 Definitely a worthy argument for ranking it last tbh. Actually, I’d rank my bottom 4 as equal amounts of s*** if I really could. 😋

Was it?? I had no idea lmao!! I've not seen anything even suggesting that would be happening. Yes cheesy, but necessary!! Never thought I'd see the day tbh.

16 Sean Kingston Beautiful Girls #2s held off #1: Hey There Delilah (Plain White T’s); Ayo Technology (50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland) During the early months of 2007, after being discovered on then-rising video-sharing platform YouTube, 17-year-old Sean Kingston was swiftly signed to Sony Records and lined up for stardom. His choice of debut single was the crooning Beautiful Girls, a midtempo doo-wop number backed with the sample of Ben E. King’s 1961 classic Stand By Me. The song proved an instant success and in turn propelled Sean to immediate fame, spending 4 weeks at the top in the UK, and also reaching the summit in the USA, meaning Sean became the first artist born in the 1990s to reach #1 on the Hot 100! The song centres around Sean feeling mistreated and cheated on by the object(s) of his affection. He speaks of the insecurities and pitfalls of dating good-looking girls, including being told lies and driven to suicidal thoughts. The song’s lyrics are melodramatic if not juvenile but, to give it some credit, I have to admire a male-led song to touch on feelings of bad mental health and vulnerability in an era that was still brimming with toxic masculinity. That said, a 2025 re-read of the lyrics give incel vibes a little, no? Maybe it’s the lack of a balanced perspective – instead he sings at length about being the victim constantly (“I’m feeling slighted”, “you have me suicidal”, “they only wanna do you dirt”). And what even is the line about him “going away for a crime” back in 1999, when he was 9 years old? No wonder these girls aren’t staying Sean! Red flag. Red flag. Red flag. One of the worst aspects of this song though has to be Sean’s vocal. It’s more of a whine than anything else and detracts from an otherwise pretty harmless song. From the way he sings “girls” (guuuuurls) to the way he drags out the end of each line of the verses. His vocal delivery honestly puts me off to the point I never checked out any future releases from him lmao. Despite the huge success of Beautiful Girls, he always struck me as an obvious one-hit-wonder at the time. The song definitely felt like the star, rather than he did. He would struggle to find another hit from his debut album but would bag a top 20 as a feature on Natasha Bedingfield’s Love Like This the following spring. It would take him another two years to crack the top 20 again as a lead artist (with Fire Burning), and a collaboration with Justin Bieber to crack the top 10 (with 2010’s Eenie Meenie). Sean's music career would soon fizzle out and nowadays he makes the headlines not for his music, but for his crimes and convictions. Him and his mother were convicted in March this year on wire fraud charges, after obtaining over $1 million dollars of items they fraudulently paid for! Looks like the beautiful girls had the right idea. I can’t say either of the number twos to miss out from a week at #1 are an injustice. Ayo Technology left zero impression on me at the time, which is odd since I was into both Timbaland and Justin’s recent music. Hey There Delilah is probably my favourite of the two. It’s always a pleasant listen, especially on a summer day, but its never been an essential. If the Plain White T’s had reached number one, they’d have joined the undesirable club of acts having a #1 single but no other top 40 hit to their name. So maybe it was for the best...

Kylie

City High

White Stripes

I won’t spoil it but OMFG that ending!!! WTAF!!! Incredible!! Cannot wait for tomorrow’s episode now. It’s definitely an episode you want to go into blind so avoid spoilers!

Awwww so so SO close!! Congrats Lewis on your win and thanks for a fab contest Doctor! Super happy with runner-up position! My highest placing and points in a Club Bizarre ever - and my highest position across all the other forum contests! I can’t remember how I stumbled across Moon Over Moscow but it grabbed me immediately so was an easy choice to send.

Yay top 10 on lock!!

eeeeeeeek

Thank you Julian for the 5!