BillyH

Seem to recall a fair bit of rage when So Much Love To Give came out - not only did it completely rip off the Together track, but they even had the cheek to call themselves the Freeloaders!! Dave Pearce (whose show by now I was listening to religiously on Radio 1 every weekend) gave the Freeloaders and Together versions fairly equal plays during this time. Adagio for Strings was indeed huge despite its peak, still getting played when I first started going to clubs in 2007-08. Don't think it was available on downloads at all at the time and you had to buy it physically, but it still got heaps of radio play. I'll always prefer Ferry's version but Tiesto's is pretty damn great too, even if it makes me a little sad remembering how brilliant he was in the early-mid noughties compared to the chart bollocks he was coming out with nine years later...

Wouldn't say Eurovision's reputation was damaged by Lordi, it was the first winner to chart top 40 in the UK since Charlotte Nilsson - admittedly downloads may have helped with that, but it still got a physical release because you still needed one then. It was more a combination of a) underwhelming UK entries and b) Terry Wogan's increasingly bitter/moody commentaries, which probably started around the time Jemini flopped.

I'm guessing it just started out as a fun 80s track that got 'revived' in clubs (as many did) in the early-mid noughties, as a kind of ironic/nostalgic throwback to people's childhood. Do they still do that? Six/seven years ago it was S Club, Backstreet Boys and the Pokemon theme...what is it now, Chico and the Crazy Frog? I'm so out of touch and out of time :P Pretty sure that by now, the theme from Baywatch was getting hammered in clubs for similar reasons to the above, and various DJs around the world begin to have an idea... I think the original (non-electro) 'I See Girls' was used in an advert around this time, or at least just before the remix was released? I remember hearing it for the first time and recognising the lyrics but not the instrumentation. What a bizarre chart run though! Is this the first dance #1 in the download era?

Anyone else see a situation where in five or ten years, all major artists will only be available to be streamed on Premium, and the free service will just feature a load of obscure songs and artists that few care about? So instead of paying £9.99 once to listen to an album, you'll be paying £9.99 every month for the rest of your life...

A few from before the majority of us were born: Bill Haley & The Comets - Rock Around The Clock (1955) Catapulted rock & roll music into the British mainstream, making many sit up and take note. First ever charting song with 'Rock' in the title - but definitely not the last! The Beatles - She Loves You (1963) From Me To You might have been a significant earlier #1 for them, but this is the moment they turned from a popular fad into era-defining megastars. Biggest selling song in the UK until 1977!! Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (1966) Seen as a masterpiece then and still today, its groundbreaking production led to increasing amounts of experimentation in pop and rock music, the power of editing and multi-track truly beginning to be recognised. T-Rex - Hot Love (1971) A major "What is THAT?" moment on its first Top of the Pops performance, T-Rex's second hit single is seen as the true birth of glam rock, a genre which would define the early 70s. Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody (1973) The first "modern" Christmas song. Wizzard released theirs at the same time, but Slade's radical update of festive music set the ball rolling for the next few decades worth of Christmas classics. George McCrae - Rock Your Baby (1974) First disco song to reach #1 in the UK, leading eventually to its later decade chart dominance. Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen (1977) The peak of the furore surrounding punk rock and a major chart moment when it - just - missed #1. Commercial radio and record labels take notice. Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric? (1979) As previously mentioned in this thread! David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes (1980) First heard this twenty years later, and it still sounded amazing and alien. The 1980s arrive with a bang with a groundbreaking video to boot. Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas? (1984) First truly massive charity/allstar record. Biggest selling single of all time until 1997. Many have followed since!

One of the best dancepop tracks of the 90s, heading for a high chart position but it got disqualified due to allegations of bulk-buying. A reissue a year later only just sneaked in at #40. 9CCvEjRctTA Samantha Fox did a Sash/DJ Quicksilver-inspired cover a few years later, which also only just went top 40. Love them both! cssv7JXMXUs

Yeah, Duffy looking back basically arrived at the perfect time, when everyone wanted a new Amy Winehouse album but she wasn't in any state to make one. There were a fair few "new Amys" being hyped up in the late noughties making that 60s soul sound, one of which being someone called Adele...

One from the 90s - Coolio's 'Gangsta's Paradise' was the first genuinely huge crossover rap hit in the UK. Obviously you'd had Vanilla Ice/MC Hammer/Snow etc before, but I think rap in this country before 1995 was either seen as a novelty genre for kids, or home to explicit politically-themed records (NWA, Public Enemy etc) critically acclaimed but selling little as radio wouldn't go near them. Gangsta's Paradise sold a million, got massive radio airplay (helped by having nothing to edit out!) and everyone from kids to adults loved it. Definitely proved that credible rap could finally become a major chart force in the UK.

Heartbeat completely passed me by at the time as a ten year old, but 'Tragedy' and 'Better Best Forgotten' I remember hugely - it was the upbeat hits that appealed to me the most as a kid, but then I adored It's The Way You Make Me Feel in my pre-teens! This I'd say was their most well-known top five: 1. Tragedy 2. 5,6,7,8 3. One for Sorrow 4. Deeper Shade of Blue 5. It's The Way You Make Me Feel

Only just heard this for the first time - yeah, if this wins then well deserved for Italy, even without the "LOL dancing gorilla!!" gimmick it's an awesome pop track, and full credit that they've kept it in Italian as I do miss the old foreign-language winners that fizzled out (for obvious reasons) in the late 90s. One of my friends is part Ukrainian and part Italian, so she'd be over the moon if this won a year after Jamala! Would finally give Italy a chance to rectify the hilarious chaos that was the 1991 contest too :P "MR NEFF!!"

Brilliant!! In love after the first listen, plus Belgium for once would be an easy-as-hell destination to reach for next year's contest (Eurostar or cheap coach)! Agreed that it might appeal to jury voters more than televoters, and Italy are a bit overly ahead of everyone in the odds to see anyone other than Francesco winning, but put a stunning live light show/performance in this and it would be an incredible (& deserved) shock win.

Now 96 might as well include Ed Sheeran's album for free.

What a complete mess that whole Star To Fall thing was, and you have to feel sorry for poor Cabin Crew who basically had their idea completely nicked by a big-budget record label. I remember the 'sample battle' going on at the time, but Cabin Crew got next to no airplay as opposed to Sunset Strippers who you heard every ten minutes - I do genuinely think that most of the sales of Cabin Crew's version were just people buying the CD assuming it was the Sunset Strippers track, given it was released a week earlier. Wonder how it would have charted had the two came out the same time? Then Mylo did his own version soon after with In My Arms! Was this a 'Baywatch' style case where the original 80s track got revived in clubs and everyone cashed in on it? I have a vague memory that someone from LnM Projekt was a regular on CoolClarity, giving us updates about 'Everywhere' and expressing some disappointment when it wasn't quite the massive chart smash they hoped it to be. Might have been a bigger hit a few years later when Fleetwood Mac started getting adored by irritating hipsters wearing Rumours t-shirts, around the time the original recharted.

I'd agree with 'Wake Me Up' the most here - although most of those dance/country hits were by Avicii himself :P Was 'Timber' influenced by it or was that just a lucky coincidence? I'd say Adele's 21-era hits (and Make You Feel My Love) paved the way for irritating pop-ballads far more than Thinking Out Loud.

Definitely Firestone for tropical house. Nneka - Heartbeat (#20) charted here in its in September 2009, which sounds pretty close to dubstep to me if not quite the sound that truly commercially peaked circa 2011. Magnetic Man had a top 10 hit with I Need Air in August 2010, followed soon after by Katy B's Katy On A Mission which went top 5. Then things went insane the following year with Nero, DJ Fresh, and, erm, Britney...

First song I associate with noughties indie to chart is The Strokes - Hard To Explain (#16, w/e 07/07/2001), but admittedly that's a good while before the sound truly starts to dominate the charts. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out entered at #3 on w/e 24/01/2004, just ahead of the rest of big indie hits that year - I'd go with that I think.

Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric (1979) is a pretty obvious one for synthpop, although arguably it only got truly colossal once Visage - Fade To Grey arrived at the end of 1980. M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume kickstarting commercial house in 1987. Not the first house hit (Love Can't Turn Around), or even the first house #1 (Jack Your Body) but the moment the floodgates truly opened for the genre, leading to a few million hit singles with the word "house" in the title during late '87/early '88. Probably The Prodigy - Charly (1991) for breakbeat rave. Again there'd been others before, but this smashing into the top 10 in late summer ensured the sound dominated the chart for the rest of the year and into '92. Oceanic's 'Insanity' debuted the same chart week at a lower position. Snap - Rhythm Is A Dancer (1992) as the missing link between early-90s rave and mid-90s Eurodance, commercial dance slowly losing the breakbeats from then on and transitioning to frantic synth riffs and the female singer/male rapper format. Snap obviously had a #1 hit with The Power two years earlier, but that sounded pretty different. M-Beat feat. General Levy - Incredible (1994) ushering in jungle to the charts, which might not have lasted long in the mainstream but for at least two summers ('94 and '95) was a colossal force. Robert Miles - Children (1996) bringing in all sorts of 'dream house' copycat records, later transitioning into early trance from the likes of BBE. Faithless - Insomnia (1996) - not quite a whole new genre, but that distinctive pizzicato string sound it uses being everywhere for the next couple of years, used by Sash, Brainbug etc. Rosie Gaines - Closer Than Close and Tina Moore- Never Gonna Let You Go (both 1997) bringing speed and 2-step garage to a chart audience, the latter getting truly huge when Shanks & Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate arrived two years later, setting the course for the likes of Craig David and the Artful Dodger to dominate the start of the noughties. ATB - 9pm (Til I Come) (1999) basically doing for trance what M/A/R/R/S did for house two years earlier, the first truly massive crossover trance hit in its evolved late 1990s form. Also around the peak of Ibiza's popularity for clubbers. Someone more informed than me can help with the noughties and beyond!

Started out cool and different, loved him when I saw him live in 2009, then started cosying up to America and everything he's released in the last five years has been shit. Feel So Close was his last genuinely OK track.

Yeah this missing the top 10 was a big shock IIRC, had airplay for months and months before release - I first heard it in late 2004 so it's odd to think it didn't get released until March! Indeed it got played so much that I was a bit sick of it by the Spring, sounds brilliant today though. Found the CD single of this randomly four years later on the last day of Woolworths, who were selling it and every other CD they had in stock for 20p - absolute bargain! The Thrillseekers remix is the one I remember hearing the most, a little more trancey: huCbkk3mSxY Poor Delline Bass has had a bit of a horrifying few years since, as a quick Google of her name will reveal.

I'd forgotten how late 'Jai Ho' was released compared to the movie the original song's taken from - Slumdog Millionaire came out in UK cinemas right at the start of January, but the song didn't peak until April!

So when exactly does a song stop being recent and become retro? What's the cut-off date between a new song and an old one? I remember in the early days of this forum someone posting a Vengaboys song and getting somewhat slated because it wasn't seen as Retro at the time (circa 2007-08), the cut-off point seen as being around the millennium. But I think we can safely put the first half of the noughties here now, right? For me, 2005 is the last year I genuinely see as being far off in the past, 2006 being a bit transitionary and 2007 being the start of recent music, probably because I turned 18 in late 2006 and things like Facebook and Youtube (and Buzzjack!) emerging online, meaning the late noughties seem far more familiar to me than the mid. But that must sound bizarre for someone age 20...if someone in 2008 had told me that they considered 1998 onwards to be 'recent' I'd have laughed at them! So I suppose it depends on age as well as musical trends. Your thoughts?

'Destroy Rock and Roll' was such a bizarre hit, hadn't heard it for a while but the moment I saw it here I immediately remembered the "Missing Persons, Duran Duran" bit! Mylo was randomly huge for a couple years in the mid noughties only to disappear soon after. This is the remix of 'Attention' I remember hearing more at the time than the original: G9s1F7djdNw 'Sunrise' I haven't heard for YEARS, I probably mentioned it earlier in the thread but I had a major teenage crush on Lara :P Was thrilled when I saw her perform live at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2008! 'Winter' underperformed from what I remember, an absolute ton of airplay on Radio 1 and the CoolClarity forum predicted it to chart much higher. I've barely heard it since it was released so the 2005 nostalgia is strong! 'Shine', 'Strings of Life' and maybe our next song in this thread were all seen as potential #1 contenders, probably expecting a winter dance #1 in the same way 'Touch Me' and 'Take Me To The Clouds Above' had achieved in recent years.

Petition for Ed Sheeran's next album to be sixteen different versions of Electric!

When I first heard Galvanize - end of '04/beginning of '05, shortly before official release - I'd heard about an upcoming song called 'Strings of Life' and assumed this was the one as it had strings in it! Absolutely fantastic track, amazing to see the Chems so high in the chart this late into their career. Seeing them live in 2011 was a huge highlight for me!

Ok, 4 page catchup... Babycakes - God. :P First heard this at my cousin's house the week it came out and thought it was just some local pirate radio DJs having a laugh or something. Got back home that night and found out the damn thing was #1. Did NOT know it beat 'Can't Stand Me Now' to #1!! I know this is a dance thread, but one of the greatest indie anthems of the noughties lost #1 to THAT? Up there with Vienna vs. Shaddup Your Face, Common People vs Unchained Melody and an infamous May 2005 #1 that'll probably be in this thread soon! Call On Me - Admittedly liked this a lot as it sounded different (at the time), as mentioned the production's awesome (that beat sounded HUGE back then!) and it did deserve it's #1 status. I don't revisit it that much nowadays but it was refreshing to hear a genuinely good sounding dance track at #1. Out of the other tracks during CoM's run, 'I See You Baby' was ok but got overplayed to death from those damn Renault Megane adverts that were on all the time, 'Slash Dot Dash' was about the last decent thing Fatboy Slim did until Eat Sleep Rave Repeat came along (and even that was thanks to someone else's remix), 'Flashdance' was AWESOME and didn't leave my bloody head for months, 'Do You Know' is a bit of an insult to one of the greatest dance tracks of the 90s, 'Drop The Pressure' I preferred more in its 'Doctor' mashup a year later, 'You Won't Forget About Me' is one of the greatest tracks Dannii's ever made and deserves way more recognition (and that video - wow!!), 'Pump It Up' was all kinds of hilariously brilliant, and Eyeopener's 'Hungry Eyes' will always be one of my alltime guilty pleasures - awesome Eurodance track with a memorable CGI video The Box loved! The Weekend - #7 seems amazingly low for this as it didn't seem to be off telly and radio for months, another one I did enjoy at the time but compared to some of the tracks we've seen earlier on in the noughties there's no contest, for me we're nowhere near at the heights scaled during 2000-03 by now. Out of Touch - I think this was the last looped house track I genuinely liked before the floodgates opened in early '05 (well, maybe one in early 2006 I'll happily still bop along to as well), another that got tons of airplay right into the New Year...hence its bizarre chart run for the time as it kept selling steadily well into January! I remember my bafflement when I got a second hand copy of Now 60 a couple years later, and 'Out of Touch' starts playing...with a full female vocal track?! Not a mix I remember at all, the video as linked earlier in this thread is the one I remember playing on both TV and radio. Seems odd that Now 60 would include the 'wrong' version, unless I missed it completely at the time. Brief break to share a couple tracks I really liked around this time that failed to go top 40. Brad Carter's house masterpiece 'Morning Always Comes Too Soon', which only seems to be in its full mix form on Youtube but there was a much shorter radio edit: pZbZZW7Gdoo And Public Domain's 'Love U More', cover of the old 90s Sunscreen hit that blew my mind when Radio 1 blasted it out one late night/early morning over Christmas '04: gMRigNKXiNY Into 2005... Object of My Desire - Ok, yeah, ADORED this - felt so refreshing to hear something gloriously cheesy and high-energy after too many dance tracks taking themselves a bit too seriously at the time. By now I was lurking on a forum called CoolClarity (basically the precursor of this forum) and remember being proper chuffed when the initial midweeks had it safely top ten! Maybe one of the most obscure top ten hits of the decade today - took me ages to track down as iTunes didn't have the proper version for years - but I still love it. Strings of Life - This I remember a fair few people predicting as a #1 hit, and being a bit surprised when it didn't even make top 5 - I certainly heard it a ton of times over that winter so I'm surprised it didn't chart higher. As much of a fan I am of the early house music it's inspired by, I never really took to this, too poppy for my tastes. 'When The Dawn Breaks' on the other hand I loved, as I think I've mentioned it earlier on this thread. Hugely evocative of that winter for me and deserved a much higher chart placing.