BillyH

10: Little Boots - Remedy sSiXjkEUToE I do feel sorry for her, as no one seems able to say her name without the words "Whatever happened to..." at the start. The winner of the BBC's Sound of 2009 (beating La Roux and some bird called Lady Gaga) was predicted for megastardom, only to underwhelm everyone with debut single 'New In Town' which sounded disappointingly commercial and Kylie-lite compared to the tracks that had gained her early attention. But, briefly, things seemed to be back on track here with single #2, up there with the best pop of the year. Wonderfully 80s, fantastic melody all the way through and easily one of my songs of the summer, it charted at a respectable #6 and everything looked bright again for the future. She hasn't had a single top 40 hit since, and this seems destined to be one of those tracks people hear on second-hand Now That's What I Call Music compilations and go "Oh yeah I forgot about this!!", rediscovering the magic all over again. Saying all that, watch me be completely proved wrong by a future Little Boots/One Direction teamup single or something giving her the biggest hit of her career. Or not.

Ha, I thought I'd be the only one awake :P Thanks for reading! Was gonna do the rest tomorrow but screw it, here's 20 to 11: 20: Nneka - Heartbeat I think this charted on the strength of the Chase & Status remix, so that's the one I'm listening to, an 80s rock influenced song that also with its beat could well be called one of (if not the?) first dubstep songs to hit the top 20. Nneka's vocals are brilliant, at first listen it's not immediately grabbing me but it is more on second listen, and it seems that it's another track that's made for massive nightclub speakers rather than Spotify streaming so feel I need to hear it there to properly feel it. 19: Ian Carey Project - Get Shaky "Electro" dance music I really, really hated with a passion when it first started making it big as it seemed to spell the end of the trance I'd loved for so long. This new kid on the block, dispensing with the impeccably-made melodies and euphoric builds/breakdowns and instead going all weird and minimal was not something I wanted, and this was probably one of the last of its era before the likes of the Swedish House Mafia made things a bit more EDM-influenced the following year. Like a few songs earlier, it reminds me of being really in crap clubs that weren't playing the best music, although I'm enjoying this one a bit more today if still not something I'd call a dance classic. 18: Mr Hudson feat. Kanye West - Supernova This one's a bit of a guilty pleasure, overloading things on the autotune sound that got well overused around this time and eventually turned into a joke, but I adore that chorus. It doesn't matter that the verses just plod around a bit until it gets there again, it's worth listening to the whole thing just to keep hearing it. 17: Calvin Harris - Ready For The Weekend He'd had a #1 this year but I still wouldn't have predicted Calvin Harris turning into THE BIGGEST DJ MEGASTAR ON THE PLANET just a couple of years later, although very few of his 2011-present songs I'd genuinely call brilliant as he's yet to release something truly magical like 'Titanium' and seems happy just giving the teenage pop-lovers the usual generic stuff they'll constantly lap up. 'Feel So Close' was alright though. I really wanted to like this at the time but it always felt like something was missing, ironically in this case it could probably do with that big EDM sound as the production seems really lacking here, wanting to be a big punch-the-air pop anthem but feeling a bit wimpy, despite the big vocals on the chorus. Still miss this underrated, leftfield Calvin compared to the mainstream bollocks he does today though. 16: Sean Kingston - Fire Burning What a comeback for the singer of 2007's 'Beautiful Girls', joining forces with RedOne and being an early adopter of the EDM sound in its early electro phase before things got a bit more trancey later on. This sounded brilliant back then - I think it just astonished me so much to hear the same guy from Beautiful Girls on such a heavy dance track, although today it just seems to blend into the other 500 million songs that sound identical to this. 15: The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition Another rock track from the dying days of indie and quite a big one, but again I was finished with all this at the time so gave it little attention. Coincidentally it seems to work well as a song signalling the end of the indie phase itself, with its end-of-a-journey sound and "Don't stop til it's over" lyrics. It's a pleasant listen, and perhaps one that I'd enjoy more depending on the mood I'm in. 14: Esmee Denters - Outta Here More electro dance-pop from a Dutch singer and produced by Justin Timberlake. Esmee had three top 10 hits in the space of a year - this solo one, one featuring Timberlake and the biggest 'Until You Were Gone' featuring Chipmunk - and then since then, nothing. This is ok and Esmee does a good job on the vocals but it's all a bit meh and average, a shrug of a song. 13: Beyonce - Sweet Dreams God Beyonce annoys me. Sorry to say it as it may horrify some, but I never feel like I'm listening to a genuine popstar, I feel like I'm listening to a brand, the Beyonce Machine with every single beat and every second of every video planned meticulously for maximum attention. Rarely does she release anything that genuinely impresses me, it's very standard American R&B that people fall over with astonishment at while I'm standing bemused at the back. Crazy In Love and Single Ladies are key examples of this. This is dull, dull, dull, a song that's only big because of who's behind it and not something I'd want to ever deliberately listen to. And yet I'd still say it's up there with her best along with that year's Halo, which says a lot about how much I dislike the rest of her singles. Credit does at least go to 'Love On Top' from a few years later though, definitely my favourite of hers. 12: Tinchy Stryder feat. Amelle - Never Leave You Any credibility I may have had before now, see ya. I LOVE THIS, the one song Tinchy's done that's any good and it's all down to the killer chorus sung by Amelle, even Tinchy's usually godawful rapping sounding unusually brilliant here. It's cheesy and calling this a "rap" song is almost insulting, but my god is this a guilty pleasure and even one of my fave pop tracks of the year. 11: Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire Eh what? A #1 single in September 2008, a performance on The X Factor at a time when the show was the biggest thing on television - even I watched it back then and I normally can't stand that bollocks - put this right back into the top 10 a whole year after first release, only slipping five places here in the following week and giving it the sales push needed to make it cross past a million sales. It was and always will be an overrated bit of nonsense, and it's amused me greatly how the Kings themselves have grown to hate this track and been known to give deliberately crap versions of it live - there's a great one from that year's Reading Festival where they look at each other glumly and shake their heads in dismay as they start performing this, all the while as the huge crowd go absolutely crazy as they've waited the best part of an hour just so they can fling their arms in the air and scream "YEEEEAAAHHH MY SEX IS ON FIRE" and then leave and get the last train home. Listening to it now it's hard to even connect to it as I've heard it so much my ears have genuinely learnt to tune themselves out of it, but I will admit that, while it's a dumb as hell song, it provides me with a lot of memories from this time so I'll let it pass. You got lucky, song. Stay tuned for the top 10, and you're gonna get a video for every song!

30: Lady Gaga - Paparazzi She doesn't really need much introduction today, but on the off-chance that someone, anywhere is for some reason reading this many years or decades in the future, this lady was absolutely massively hailed as the huge new thing in pop music at the time and by now she could genuinely claim to be a megastar. She started cautiously with the standard late-noughties, Gwen Stefani style pop of Just Dance, went a bit more interesting with the mega-selling Poker Face, and by the time Bad Romance came out at Christmas she'd absolutely made her mark and seemed completely unstoppable. Much has already been written about her supposed 'downfall' since, to be fair she did release the best song of her career two years later with Official Summer 2011 Anthem The Edge of Glory, but you can't seriously say that, here in 2014, she's anywhere near the force she was half a decade ago. It's not too late but if she wants to stay relevant she better release something good. This was single number 3, and like Boom Boom Pow earlier it's difficult at first to remember what all the fuss was about but this really did sound *so* different at the time, it was never my fave on The Fame - that would go to Poker Face - but this one is blessed with one a hell of a killer chorus which does show she can at least actually sing better than anything released so far. 29: Lady Gaga - Lovegame Oh hey again. Yeah, two tracks in the top 40 shows that we really couldn't get enough of her at the time, this was single number 4 and if you wondering what it's doing below Paparazzi, it was actually climbing up the chart as Paparazzi was falling, eventually hitting a respectable #19 given everyone already had the album by now. The "wanna take a ride on your disco stick" is still a mad if oddly brilliant lyric today, but I'm not quite as keen on this one as I was at the time and prefer Paparazzi. 28: La Roux - Bulletproof And so to my favourite without doubt act of all of 2009, absolutely stunning me with both In For The Kill and this, which I'm not only proud to own on 7" vinyl but signed by Elly Jackson herself - for some reason HMV were selling signed copies of it off at the now-closed Oxford Street branch for a couple of pounds each! The version on my iPod and iTunes has been copied directly from my first and only play of the vinyl on my USB turntable, for that extra 80s retro feel. In For The Kill might have lit up dancefloors the most, particularly the Skream remix which sold almost as much as the original, but this one seemed to attract a younger, poppier audience, hitting #1 when In For The Kill got to #2 and I remember hearing various kids singing it on tubes and buses as they had done with Katy Perry's 'Hot & Cold' before and Idina Menzel's 'Let It Go' today. The whole album is wonderful, seeing her at 2010's V Festival was a joy and I'm sad that her recent comeback has been all but ignored, both perhaps leaving it a bit too late and having no real big singles up her sleeve this time. Says a lot how much I still enjoy their singles half a decade on despite playing them so much five years ago, easily a whole noughties highlight for me. 27: Jason Mraz - I'm Yours First charting at the very beginning of the year, it's radio ubiquity ensured it simply would not die and it stayed in the charts for a crazy amount of time, by now becoming something of a hate figure as it re-appeared again and again. Some even to this day may never want to hear it again, but having missed a lot of its overplay I still really like it today, a fun little inoffensive tune with a melody that warms even my bitter, quarter-century old heartstrings. 26: Lily Allen - 22 I don't know about youuuu! But I'm feeling twenty t...wait, this isn't it? Yeah, years before Taylor Swift released a song about the same age, Lily had already done this bitter tale of a 30 year old already feeling past it in comparison to her recent early twenties past. It's something that, age 20, I couldn't really relate to but I'm slightly getting it more today. Unfortunately it was released in place of what should have been the third single from the album, "F*** You* which was given a European release but not here, although a video was made. That's the one I remember playing a huge amount on a new thing called 'Spotify' a Scandinavian friend recommended me to a few months later - and seeing her live at Hyde Park's Wireless Festival in 2010, everyone raising their middle fingers in the air and singing "F*** YOU! F*** YOU VERY VERY MUUUUCCHHH!" at the top of their voices may well be a bit of a festival highlight for me. 25: Shakira - She Wolf A big hit of late 2009, I wasn't sure what to make of this at the time as I listened expecting another Whenever Wherever/Hips Don't Lie stomper and instead get a chilled house track with Shakira singing in a bizarrely high voice, and then Cher vocoder-style, before the song suddenly ends mid-beat. It's never really hit me and I always feel a bit too baffled to properly enjoy it, it ended up going top 5 though so the experiment worked. 24: Booty Luv - Say It Down from its peak of 16 and must be up there with the more obscure top 20 hits of the year, I was really impressed with Booty Luv at first as I loved all their first four singles from late 2006 to early 2008. This was their "big" comeback and I'm slightly embarrassed to say I saw them sing this live all the way back in early April that year, as part of a bumper pack of acts including Sash and Basshunter. So why it didn't get released until the 31st August is a bit of a mystery, unfortunately it pales in comparison to any of their earlier singles and if this really was the best they could come up if it's no wonder the second album was cancelled due to the comparative underperformance of this. But number 16 isn't too bad, indeed I'm surprised to find out that it charted that high as I seemed to come and go without anyone caring. Very much album filler, going through the motions territory, but play Boogie 2nite/Shine/Don't Mess With My Man/Some Kinda Rush and I'll be on the dancefloor in no time. I even bought their first album! 23: JLS - Beat Again Remember when JLS were a thing? Here's their first single and boy was I underwhelmed, a plodding bit of dull R&B with a video showing off a needlessly convoluted dance-routine, which looked like it had far more effort put into it than the song. But then boybands were pretty rare at the time so JLS were briefly huge by simply having something of a monopoly, fading from grace very soon after One Direction completely stole their thunder a couple years later. I will quietly admit there's a *couple* of JLS songs I think are kinda ok, but I won't tell you what they are :P I do at least have a memory of being in Tesco of all places, this playing on the store radio and a small kid in the checkout singing along with *every single word* of the song, so it made an impression on some I suppose. 22: Just Jack - The Day I Died I always thought this was a bit of a shock comeback for someone who seemed destined for one-hit wonderland with early 2007's 'Starz In Their Eyes'. But it turns out he did actually have two top 20 hits in 2009 and this was his second, the bigger one too at #11. And as I read the name just now I realised I don't actually have any memory of listening to it, so it's a bit of a revelation as I Spotify it and hear a genuinely clever story-telling song of a fictional tale of someone's last day alive. It's the first real positive discovery I've had from looking back at this chart and may well join my iPod playlist in the future now. 21: Wale feat. Lady Gaga - Chillin And she's back again and I'd completely forgotten about this, some long-forgotten rapper who got lucky by recruiting the biggest popstar on the planet, getting her to sing a couple of lines in the style of MIA's 'Paper Planes' and then him rapping some bollocks over the top. There's some nice instrumentation in the background but that's about it, and there's no way this would have got anywhere near the UK charts had Gaga not been on it. Not too horrific a listen but nothing special.

Five years ago this weekend, I took part in a project where you wrote a letter to yourself that would be posted through your door in five years time, along with a Polaroid photograph(!) of you with the letter. A couple of days ago, having long forgotten about it, I received an email reminding me of it and asking me for my current postal address so they could send it off! So either today or tomorrow I'll be receiving a letter that I wrote to myself when I was 20, almost 21 years old, as I'm about to turn the age of 26 in a couple of weeks. I have absolutely no memory of what I wrote but I'm looking forward to finding out. Gordon Brown was prime minister, David Tennant was Doctor Who and I thought I'd look back at the top 40 announced that Sunday evening, week-ending 19th September 2009 - helped by the fact that there's some astonishingly good tracks particularly as we reach the top 10. But in James Masterton style, let's start with #40 and go upwards from there: 40: Livvi Franc feat. Pitbull - Now I'm That Chick Starting with one I don't remember at all, #40 was as high as this got - the title's the radio edit version of a song that's actually called Now I'm That Bitch. Spotify has it though, and giving it a listen it's an average bit of end-of-the-decade electro-pop by someone who was clearly attempting to be the British Rihanna (same age, part Barbadian and they're both styled the same) and slightly failing, never appearing in the chart since. 39: Daniel Merriweather - Red Ah now this one was alright, a big "new face of 2009" after first being heard on a Mark Ronson track, he had a minor hit with 'Change' but this was obviously meant to be the big solo breakthrough, peaking at #5 and having a major chart run after being released back in May and would have a couple more weeks top 40 around the end of the year and beginning of the next. And, erm, we've never heard from him since, being one of a host of talented singers who brush with brief success only to be immediately thrown out the door when everyone loses interest. Shame as this is nicely above average if not spectacular. 38: Biffy Clyro - That Golden Rule A group that passed me by completely at the time, only being aware of them after Matt Cardle covered Many of Horror, it's a mildly upbeat rock track just before the genre almost completely vanished from the charts in favour of urban dance-pop for a few years. Something that could have been a hit at any point in the noughties, but by this time I was sick of all this having had a decade dominated by indie and much preferring the electro-pop being released. 37: Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow Instead it was things like THIS that soundtracked 2009 for me, probably my fave song of the year at the time though I think In For The Kill's overtaken it these days. This absolutely blew me away at the time and it took me a while to work out what the hell the BEPs were doing, returning after a long absence and producing a song so weird it sounded like they'd gone nuts. The power of Boom Boom Pow may have faded a little since, but I still love it just for seemingly being about six songs in one, changing style every 30 seconds or so and I actually prefer the radio edit for adding to the weirdness by not just silencing out the swear words but digitally messing with the surrounding vocals to sound like the track's glitching like mad. Not to everyone's tastes but I think this is fantastic stuff, and blows the much more commercial follow-up single out the water - as charming as that may also be. 36: Cascada - Evacuate The Dancefloor The first group I ever saw live, at the Hammersmith Apollo in March 2008 having spent the preceeding year or so being OBSESSED with 'Everytime We Touch' soundtracking many a pre-clubbing adventure. Words cannot describe the absolute dismay when they came back with this, a desperate, ugly attempt to stay relevant by copying Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance' in all but name - and what's worse was that they ended up being bloody rewarded by it by not only becoming their first and only #1, but beating Michael Jackson's Man In The Mirror to the top! They've failed to come anywhere near since despite other copycat attempts at nicking other people's song ideas. For me, Cascada's golden age spans Everytime We Touch to What Hurts The Most and everything after that I'm trying to forget ever happened. 35: David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland - When Love Takes Over He'd been in the charts for years, I'd been a fan since 2005 and he'd reached as high as #3 with Love Don't Let Me Go, but this track was truly the start of Guetta mania and when everyone started jumping on the bandwagon to make so-called EDM songs, actually your standard European dance music but given a cooler name so the previously dance-phobic Americans could get on board. And yet this didn't really seem like the start of anything at the time, it's a fabulous summer track but seems very much a typical noughties dance song - it could have come out as far back as 2006 and done just as well. It was his follow-up that really did sound a bit different and much more part of the next decade, but you'll have to wait for that :P 34: Jeremih: Birthday Sex Oh god this is dire, thankfully the end of the bland, needlessly sexual R&B that bored me to death through most of the decade before things got more upbeat in the following years. There's a big following for it but it's never a genre that's appealed to me, maybe because it takes me back a bit too much to the dying few minutes at the end of overpriced, slightly sleazy Central London clubnights I visited a few of around this time. Never again. Peaked at #15 here but a much bigger hit in the US where it reached #4. 33: Jamie T - Chaka Demus EP One hell of a weird singing voice but there's some good tracks and clever ideas during his brief bit of late noughties fame, the lead track here was probably his most commercial to date but it's what made me first take notice of him and introduced me to the brilliant 'Sheila' from a couple years earlier. It's a brilliant, carefree pop song despite some slightly angry sounding vocals and I'm mystified as to why it only peaked at #23 and slid out the chart soon after, surely it deserved a top 10 place? 32: U2 - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight What was at one point one of the world's biggest rock groups made a huge misfire at the start of the year with one of the worst comeback songs I can remember, the bewilderingly bad 'Get On Your Boots' which flopped majorly by their standards. This is single number 3 and by now they're back to standard U2 fare, but perhaps it was a little too late as this only got to #32 - better at least than second single 'Magnificent' which missed the top 40 altogether. None of them are first single material in a Beautiful Day/Vertigo sort of way, and with downloads putting an end to fanbase purchases from 'legacy' acts such as Bon Jovi, Kylie, the Pet Shop Boys etc, their hit single career seems to be over. Perhaps that's why they've resorted to sneaking their new album onto every iPhone... 31: Pitbull - I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) Some songs I can't claim to have ever been a proper fan of but they do at least take me back to some good times, this song was hammered in every club I went to that summer - hearing it on slightly worn-out headphones in my room late at night can't really compare to it being blasted out of bass-heavy speakers on a crowded dancefloor, buying drinks at the bar and wincing at the prices (bearing in mind we're talking about £4 a pint here, standard in London today but on the expensive side back in 2009). It's still something I'd not actually make the effort of listening to but I close my eyes and I'm back to being 20 years old again, living my mid-university life with the quest to get as drunk as possible while *still* waking up bright and refreshed for studying the next morning. Good, slightly messy times. 30-21 to follow in the next post!

Professor Green hasn't made an original-sounding hit in his life. He's gone from novelty dance-pop covers of 80s song, to 'Love The Way You Lie' rip-offs with Read All About It, to the point where he's now ripping off his own songs from three years ago. ...but I can't hate it because, as mentioned, it sounds so 2010 it gives me a weird sense of early-20s nostalgia just listening to it.

I think I'm starting to accept that I will never truly understand why Happy is the big seller that it is. I can't blame it on being for charity, or the X Factor, or used in a major film (fair enough it was in Despicable Me 2 but I'd only say a small percentage of buyers have actually seen that). It's just, so...bland. Generic, inoffensive, it's a nothing of a song. But it's been played and appreciated like the biggest three minutes of genius in the history of the universe. 'Someone Like You', while not a huge fan, I could understand its success. 'I Gotta Feeling' as well. The only positive thing I can find about Happy being at the top is that it's kept Blurred Lines away from it.

'Communication' charted in a vocal mix in the UK, the others just had one line (or in Gouryella's case one word) added to the song so people knew what it was.

Yeah I felt embarrassed to admit it but two acts there who released some fairly brilliant stuff in 2011 - particularly for two pop acts - although in my case I never found those two singles examples of them. Grenade's ok but my least fave of anything Bruno released around that time, and JLS's annoyed me in that it seemed a massive rip-off of Calvin Harris's 'You're Not Alone' from two years earlier. Absolutely astonishing to think that as late as this, you could still call Calvin Harris underrated!! We're a few months from 'Bounce' being released and all hell slowly but surely being broken loose.

It's one of those songs that you always remember where you were the first time you heard it, in my case on the radio late at night around late 2004/early 2005 (just before Tiesto's arrived) listening to the introduction and wondering what the hell this beautiful if familiar piece of music is - and what it's doing in the middle of loads of dance tracks - and then the beats came in and I lost myself for a couple of minutes. I did like Tiesto's too when it arrived but it's nowhere near Ferry's, and it somewhat annoys me today when Tiesto gets all the credit when it was done so much better six years earlier.

Lights On initially felt a bit of a disappointment as 'Katy On A Mission' was so weird and unique it seemed a backward step for Katy B to produce something so mainstream and poppy for her second single. But I warmed to it quickly around the time I saw her live in July last year, she's still up there with my fave acts of the 2010s. God, I remember thinking that we were in for a hell of a crappy year if Do It Like A Dude was the shape of music to come, but Jessie majorly redeemed herself with her second single. And, erm, never again after that :P She's got one masterpiece but it ain't this one.

Being three years old in '92 a lot of this music I didn't actually hear until years later, but listening to old Now albums is strikes me that despite an absolutely mindblowing dance scene of pounding, relentless rave anthems up there with the best tracks of the decade, everything else is absolutely dead. The pop is either watered-down rave with teenybopper vocals over the top (early Take That), or still stuck in the 1980s with lots of piano licks, slap bass and kick drum, and there's no rock scene to speak of - Britpop was a few years away, and grunge was always much bigger stateside than it was here. It says a lot that there were a *huge* amount of old songs re-issued in the early half of the 90s, primarily because it was the first time they were available on CD but also a lot of them were so much better than any of the non-rave stuff around at the time. You can really sense the relief when Britpop does arrive and definitely from about 1994 things thankfully start to pick up steam again. But then it's all subjective and if I were a few years older I'd have probably loved everything that was out :P And indeed that's quite a good top 10 - 'Stay' is a fantastic song, the best #1 of the year. 'One' is U2 at their finest, New Atlantic and Opus III as nice pop-rave tracks and I adore everything the KLF ever released. That What Time Is Love remix blew me away in the mid-noughties when I first heard it, god knows what it sounded like back then!

As emo as it sounds, January to September 2011 was to this day the last truly 'happy' era in my life - it's the last time I had unadulterated youthful optimism in everything I did and the world genuinely felt like an exciting happy place. From September 2011 onwards my final year at uni began, and then from the summer after that I've been stuck in a post-graduation world of jobs, househunting and other boring adult things ever since. Similarly all the friends that I used to get drunk with every weekend in 2011 - and many weekdays too - are now all settling down into similar routines. It's really kinda sad when I think about it and I'll have some very mixed feelings as I read some of these posts as almost every track for those first nine months will provide some sort of happy memory for me (and the last three months unhappy memories of studying, exams etc <_< ) but it'll also take me back to a time that, while only three years ago is now a long-distant wistful memory. Sigh. Oh yeah, and New Year 2011 was my best New Year ever for reasons I won't go into on a public forum :P

Buzzjack in 1990:

26/02/00: All Saints - Pure Shores dVNdTXEJv1A Comeback #2 and what a return for the Never Ever gang, William Orbit producing a single that's been critically acclaimed absolutely everywhere and has sold in huge numbers this week. Used in the film 'The Beach' and All Saints have crossed the millennium gap with ease. Is it too early to call it a noughties classic? Perhaps, but I do hope this is still remembered and played in years to come as it's heaven on the ears at every listen to the point where I'm worried I'm going to wear out the CD.

Almost the same time for the internet for me, end of March 2000. Thanks for the comments all :) I've got a bit of a mad idea to just go the whole hog and carry this up right to the present day, then going back into the past and doing 1988-1998 (my first ten years alive) in the future. It means I need to write a lot ahead though so I have enough to do regular updates. Meanwhile, in February 2000... 12/02/00: Armin van Buuren - Communication (2 weeks) 2mD7-V5foZI 2000 gets its first future trance classic, confusingly named the same as Mario Piu's novelty hit in December. No ringing phones on this one though, just more euphoric brilliance in a constantly evolving and maturing scene, just beating Sash's 'Adelante' to the top. Armin could end up being the next Ferry at this rate, so long as he doesn't ever sell-out into bland pop music which would be a tragedy to all concerned. Difficult to say yet what the defining sound of the year yet is going to be given the sheer variety so far, but then early 1999 was similarly a varying mix. The charts flood with new entries every week, from new acts trying to make their mark on the new century jostling with old desperately trying to stay relevant with them. Again thinking back to 1990 we had the Madchester craze but that had all but fizzled out by the following year, indeed it's hard to even sum up the music of the 1990s given how different the start of it sounded to the music of two months ago. Difficult to know at this stage what the legacy of the 90s will be and even harder to even attempt to predict what the...2000s? "noughties"? Whatever you want to call it - will be.

This is a Reuters news article from March 1997 about what was seen as a worrying state of the charts at the time, interesting reading:

Poor Surfin' Bird...I think I'm alone in thinking that original Trashmen song is something rather joyous, a quirky-as-hell party track that had never charted here and the campaign should have focused on giving a previously obscure song a chart position it deserves after being helped by a memorable episode of Family Guy. But by coming a year after the Rage Against the Machine campaign it came across to many as an inferior, immature copy, getting ignored quickly and now every time it's mentioned its with rather hushed embarrassment - I think a certain vocal group of obsessive, rather young online fans didn't help at the time, hyping it up to be THIS HUGE THING when it was always nowhere near Matt Cardle in the midweeks. Without all the hype I think it would be remembered more fondly as a fun festive novelty song, certainly it got played at a lot of Christmas parties that year with everyone doing the Peter Griffin dance.

Looking at the chart itself, 1997 was a weirdly transitional time, wasn't it? A year earlier would be much more Britpop, a year later much more late 90s manufactured pop. That's a massively varied chart even in just the top 10 with no real musical trend or sound standing out. I would have been eight at the time and remember liking Men In Black, Tub Thumping and Picture Of You the most, but today it's all about Freed From Desire, Ecuador, and Karma Police, three awesome tracks I didn't discover until a few years later. Then of course you had the madness of the end of the year with all those million-selling singles!

Yeah it's just a bit of a nothing track for both Guetta and Rihanna - see also Robbie Williams and Dizzee Rascal a few years later, a combination that back in 2010 you'd think would be a massive million seller, not a low-selling #5 that zooms straight out the chart. Both Guetta and Rihanna released brilliant follow-ups though.

It did get a bit scary around this time how genuinely huge The X Factor had become - even if you absolutely hated it you couldn't avoid it. The last series I'd actually properly watched was 2009's after which I got a bit sick of it, but I still remember every contestant from the following year and every staged "controversy" even though I didn't watch a single full episode that year! Every Facebook status, every Tweet, every Monday morning conversation was about it - it had got as big as Big Brother had been a few years earlier. And literally every "live" performance of every song would make it zoom to #1 at the soonest opportunity - Simon Cowell could have badly karaoke sung 'Thong Song' and it would have been a #1. Both shows still exist (ridiculously in Big Brother's case, didn't they make a big deal about it "ending" like five years ago?), both still get mentioned but thank god they're not as big as as they were.

05/02/00: Gabrielle - Rise na93MI5NFy0 Surprise comeback time as Gabrielle hits the top immediately with one of her best, classiest singles, probably up there with 1996's 'Give Me a Little More Time' in greatness. Worldwide it's her best-selling track since her 1993 debut Dreams. hitting top 5 in Austria, Norway and New Zealand (yet only #76 in Australia, go figure). Little else to say other than it's a fab listen and for once appeals to the older music buyer given the usual pop and dance at #1 in this country.

22/01/00: Scooch - More Than I Needed To Know (2 weeks) YLncxyCXPsU New year but the manufactured pop that's dominated the end of the 90s seems definitely here to stay based on the latest mixed group, following the Steps and S Club 7 tradition even to the point of starting with the letter S. At least I say the above except I then think back to ten years ago, January 1990 starting with a #1 by Stock/Aitken/Waterman act Kylie Minogue only for the late 80s powerhouse producers to fall greatly in popularity over the next few months. So maybe the pop bubble is about to burst? Who knows. Waterman continues to have success with Steps while his former partners Stock and Aitken write and produce for Scooch, who already had a minor chart hit with 'When My Baby' late last year. This follow-up is so Stepsalike that I wouldn't be surprised if those hearing it on the radio assume it's a new one by the likes of H, Claire and the rest, another slice of optimistic pop cheese the kids adore and buy in their tens of thousands. New it ain't, but it's so lovingly inoffensive how can you hate it? It makes you wonder how many sales would be made by a Steps/S Club/Scooch supergroup single, although given that would involve sixteen voices singing at once perhaps it's for a good reason that has yet to be done. For now, well done to Natalie, Caroline, David and Russ for making their mark on the pop scene and let's see how well 2000 goes for them.

15/01/2000: Pet Shop Boys - You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk ZHQ2BMGq0Ss Recovered yet? It'll take me a while to adjust to writing a '2' at the start of the year, but here we are. The year 2000! And the first number 1 of the new century is an act very firmly from the old, hardly spring chickens as they approach their late 40s but they've taken advantage of the January lull to make chart history. As much as I love them - they're my favourite group of all time - I hate to say that their most recent album, Nightlife, is their worst. Going for a 'modern' dance sound recruiting the likes of Rollo, their Faithless-style songs sounded dated even by the time the album was released, and their first two singles failed to capture the public's imagination - 'I Don't Know What You Want But You Can't Give It Anymore' (god that's long) nicely produced but too bleak and tuneless, while the upbeat 'New York City Boy' went too far the other way and while fun was perhaps a bit too over the top for casual purchasers. And worst of all, neither sounded enough like Pet Shop Boys songs, meaning both hardcore and casual fans were put off in equal measure. Then out of nowhere they release a third single of utter brilliance. Fitting in perfectly with the mother of all hangovers the country's been in since January 1st, YOTMYLMWYD is up their with their classics, getting the melody right and finally Neil and Chris sound at their best again. Credit to them both for first arriving on the charts in 1986 and still - just - achieving big hits to this day. Hopefully their next album will sound like them at their 80s and early 90s peak after their more recent experimental efforts.

Thinking Of Me and What's My Name = SNOW. Acres and acres and acres of snow EVERYWHERE, trudging through it all over London to get to various Christmas parties and then, even more ridiculously, spending the season itself in Devon only to find snowmen on the beach!! It was the snowiest winter of my lifetime beating the one before, and I may never see the likes of it again - 2011 was completely snowless in London, 2012 just one ridiculous Saturday night in February and then it returned for the first half of 2013 (seem to remember it even snowing in April?!) and none since then. Waking up on Christmas Day that year to see an actual White Christmas was utterly astonishing. Not a Rihanna fan and What's My Name isn't a song I often play but as gooddelta mentioned it definitely defined the end of the year and indeed the beginning of the next. Thinking Of Me I've loved since I first heard it - Olly's probably got the best track record for songs out of any other X Factor contestants.

Awesome, but god at you being only four years old when the 2000s started :o Wasn't that long ago I felt like one of the younger people on this forum and I was 11 at the millennium! Will def check that blog out. (it's 'century' by the way, might want to change that if it's possible)