BillyH

This is when I got back into music again, after the whole Will/Gareth domination had bored the hell out of me through most of the year, so remember lots of these well from music TV, TOTP and CD:UK! Notable ones: 1 - NEW - 01 - Christina Aguilera featuring Redman - DIRRTY I actually hated this...I think because I was such a big fan of Christina in the Genie In A Bottle days, when she seemed like she'd be a fun mate to have around...this radical "raunchy" revamp was a bit horrifying to 14-year-old me in comparison. She won me over again with the next few singles though. 05 - 03 - 02 - Nelly featuring Kelly Rowland - DILEMMA Hugely popular among friends but it always bored me. Appreciate it a little better now I'm not a moody teenager. 03 - 02 - 03 - DJ Sammy And Yanou Featuring Do - HEAVEN While this ROCKED. Big classic of the era and still a big guilty pleasure today!! 1 - NEW - 10 - Coldplay - THE SCIENTIST Loved this mostly thanks to the video, which got loads of airplay on music channels. Great song too though, the golden era of Coldplay before all the middling stuff of the last decade. 05 - 09 - 12 - Big Brovaz - NU FLOW Haha, I'm a little ashamed to admit I loved this too :P Remember the TOTP performance vividly, seems astonishingly forgotten now given how big it was at the time. 04 - 11 - 15 - Blue - ONE LOVE Another era-defining classic which I keep forgetting wasn't #1, definitely felt like one. Probably my fave Blue track just edging All Rise. 02 - 13 - 21 - Britney Spears - I LOVE ROCK AND ROLL I thought this was an original song from Britney and didn't understand why everyone hated it - thought it was the best thing she'd written in years :P So naive... 02 - 10 - 22 - H and Claire - ALL OUT OF LOVE / BEAUTY AND THE BEAST All Out of Love is basically a Steps track in name only...I enjoy it but christ this sounded dated by late 2002, especially coming after something like DJ. And Beauty and the Beast was covered because the film had just come out on DVD I think, the video was included on the disc. 03 - 21 - 28 - Jan Wayne - BECAUSE THE NIGHT "Jan Wayne's gonna MOOOVVEE YAAAA!" Fun dance remake but god knows why Cascada pointlessly covered it a few years later. 09 - 22 - 30 - Pink - JUST LIKE A PILL Utter brilliance. #1 on my 14th birthday and one of the best tracks of the year. Still my fave Pink song. 08 - 17 - 31 - Avril Lavigne - COMPLICATED My first teenage crush I think :lol: Another brilliant song that always takes me back! 12 - 24 - 32 - Atomic Kitten - THE TIDE IS HIGH (GET THE FEELING) Another one music channels played all the time, while channels like VH1 kept playing the Blondie version - it's nostalgic, especially as I've barely heard it in fifteen years, but a shame how Atomic Kitten fizzled out into a novelty covers group after something as good as Whole Again. 04 - 34 - 40 - Red Hot Chili Peppers - THE ZEPHYR SONG 'By The Way' is the only song I know that both my parents ever liked (both in their mid-30s at the time) - I really liked this follow-up too. As good as some of their songs are they do get overplayed sometimes, I'm totally sick of hearing Californiacation now in every retail job I've ever worked at <_< 04 - 33 - 49 - Who Da Funk Featuring Jessica Eve - SHINY DISCO BALLS I was surprised in the noughties dance thread (what happened to that BTW?) when pretty much no one liked this...I've always thought it was a great house track!! In the extended version especially it's gloriously hypnotic. 03 - 43 - 74 - Madhouse - HOLIDAY Distinctly remember this on the music channels and thinking "Eh, I swear I've heard this song before..." With the same group's 'Like A Prayer' and that bizarre Wheels On The Bus cover by someone called Mad Donna, it was a good time for random Madonna covers...

I would say a huge majority of those have never been played, let alone removed from the packaging, and are just bought as collectable items and novelties. Same reason why I've never been keen on the vinyl "revival". Physical media shouldn't be bought to just look good on a shelf.

LOL, so I just bought Now 96 for three pounds :D CeX are selling it that cheap and there was a copy at my local branch - down by over a tenner in just a few months! I've got all the CDs from about Now 20 onwards except a couple of recent ones (including 96 until today) so this was a great deal!

I'd say it sounds exactly like a top 17 dance hit from 1998 ;)

So is this going to be the new You Got The Love/Show Me Love and keep coming back every ten years :lol: I'm not keen on either version but I'm not a fan of that sort of dance music, the original/Platnum versions are bops though.

The difference between those two songs :lol: Almost every song I regularly listen to is an "oldie" these days. This one from '91 totally captured my heart again recently, one I'd dedicate to my partner if she actually existed: UrIiLvg58SY

Let me hear you scream if you want some more, like aaaah!

Proper Education still feels gloriously wintry to me, the soundtrack of cold January nights - a few dance tracks released in the winter sound like that to me, 'White Noise' from a few years later being another. Two obvious 90s links in the other two tracks - What You Do heavily samples Bizarre Inc's Playing With Knives from 1991, and that Rain Down Love video acts as something of a sequel to that of Daft Punk's Around The World!

To be fair, Robbie didn't seem like he was going to have a successful career for at least two years after leaving Take That - 'Freedom' did OK as a debut solo track (#2) but then came a series of less-remembered songs that charted lower and fell quickly. It wasn't until Angels arrived that he had a properly massive smash, and even then had to wait another year until Millennium brought him his first #1. Think 2018 will surely give at least one of them something genuinely colossal.

I'm starting to think it was a random piece of library music, still haven't been able to trace it. One day I'll try making an actual professional (ish) sounding version that sounds as close to how my mind remembers it as possible, see if that brings up any result!

The video posted is the one I remember, but I think there was a completely different mix around as well that soundtracked a few music channel plays? Booty Luv possibly one of the more embarrassing acts I saw live, in 2009! To be fair their hit-making career was surprisingly long, surely no one would have predicted they'd have a top 20 hit every year for the rest of the noughties...

One of my best school friends (Montana) was in this, she played Justine. Tempted a few years back to message her on Twitter and see if she remembered me, but never did...

Sounds like Tatjana - Santa Maria.

Electro did feel a bit tired for me by the end of the noughties, it was certainly the genre I heard the most in London clubs during this time - dubstep began arriving at the end of the decade but peaked in popularity at the start of the next. Up north and Eurodance seemed much more popular, to the point where I had to travel up to Birmingham to see some Clubland/Hard2Beat acts as that was the furthest south in the country they were performing!

I'd been listening to the original full-length mix of Detroit all summer, before it got its full chart release. I remember really liking it but being aware it would probably never chart highly as it didn't sound commercial enough...imagine my utter shock when it finally climbed up to #2 then #1! Almost a similar story with Bodyrox, I think the first version I heard of that didn't have Luciana on vocals and was just the instrumental...once I heard the full vocal version though it sounded like an obvious hit. The other big track I remember during this time didn't reach its chart peak until early 2007, once it got a vocal added to it...but let's not exceed our timeframe right now :P

Also the last really hot summer of the decade - a lot of the last few songs remind me of struggling to move in 30+ degree heat! 2007 was (infamously) wet, 2008 almost as bad and 2009 pretty average...

We're now - very slowly - transitioning from songs I heard exclusively in my room as a teenager to those I actually heard in clubs at the time, although we're still a few months away from when my regular clubbing days began as I'd just turned eighteen in late 2006. Rock This Party was a staple for years, right through to the end of the noughties! Always loved the beginning with the shouted vocals/C&C samples, but the rest of it always underwhelmed a little. Going back a bit, Moving Too Fast was one I really liked at the time, it was refreshing to hear an 80s-looped sample backed up with a full vocal track for once! That and Supermode's Tell Me Why are two of the most evocative dance tracks of Summer '06 for me.

The last time I saw a music cassette outside of charity shops was Christmas 2007, when WHSmith randomly had a few old copies of Now 58 on the format marked down to £3. I bought it for the novelty value and was odd hearing songs so recent on a tape! I think cassette singles were quietly discontinued in about 2003, albums carrying on a bit longer.

Edit: Never mind, mistake

You're comparing bands when they were brand new, signed to major record labels with huge publicity at the peak of their fame, to the completely different musical world of today - both in terms of the sound of popular chart music and the way it's listened to. As talented as the likes of Adele, Ed Sheeran, Drake etc are, a major part of why they're all currently so popular is that a huge amount of money and effort is being put into them, the same that Blur had circa 1995, The Libertines circa 2004 etc. All these artists could easily write and record their best ever songs in a decade or two's time, but if they don't have the support and backing behind them, they'll struggle to chart as high as they currently do - and after a few years it's hard to keep that momentum going, no matter what the quality of your musical output is.

"Cheesy" as it is, EVT will always hold a special place in my heart for the fact that Cascada headlined the first ever gig I saw: http://i.imgur.com/gGjHyEl.jpg (actual scan of my ticket!) As I think I've mentioned before, they were on the same bill as Scooter, Ultrabeat, Flip & Fill and N-Trance, with a ton of other minor acts to boot - including Samantha Mumba for some baffling reason, who I think was attempting to reinvent herself as a club act! I just absolutely loved it, and have fond memories of it blasting through car speakers when on my way to my first few clubs around this time. And yeah, I admit I did have a fairly big teenage crush on Natalie - or "Cascada" as I also thought she was called :P (see also many thinking HP Baxxter is "Scooter"!) Would never have known she was German as she spoke on stage with a fairly clear English accent, but that's explained by her parents being English. For me it's one of the absolute iconic vocal dance tracks of the noughties, right up there with Castles In The Sky, Heaven etc, and one that will always be a major guilty pleasure for me!

Fade had been around for *years*, first got released in 2001 although the '06 release was an remix. Wasn't going to get anywhere with that video though, which looked cheap even at the time - standard "Look at these hot girls!!" marketing ploy who are blatantly miming to someone else's vocals. The CD cover was as you'd expect, four bikini-clad women and the words "INCLUDES THE VIDEO" in big letters. Yeah, but what about the song?

In The End is one of those iconic tracks most would assume went #1 or at least top 3 with ease. #8 is astonishing.

System F - Out of the Blue. Silver and Bronze go to Silence and Set You Free.

Dance music as we know it today for me 'begins' with Farley Jackmaster Funk - Love Can't Turn Around, #10 in late 1986. Not sure if the below version is original, as that buildup at the start sounds insane for the time and might be a later remix, but it's the first version I heard about thirteen years ago! wKZT0x6iTCg Then it's 'Jack Your Body' a few months later, 'Pump Up The Volume' and by late 1987 we're truly into the house age.