political exile

Following the topic about forgotten Top 40 hits initiated by St Andrews 1875, I'd propose an altogether trickier, er, proposition. I'll start (or, in this case, restart) with the four year 2000 #1's I posted in the aforementioned topic. bS-S-YSEpso Yy5cKX4jBkQ PruP58FuYmM Z9LjOQVBFmA Let the games begin!

I remember all four too. But Tom, Dick and Harry or Sharon and Tracy? Doubt it.

There are actually forgotten #1's, much less forgotten Top 40 singles which didn't go Top 10! Who even remembers these from 2000 anymore? bS-S-YSEpso Yy5cKX4jBkQ PruP58FuYmM Z9LjOQVBFmA I could go on...

Have you read my (very late) titbits on what was left of the 90's #2's thread? We still see very much eye to eye! :D

Am I on time to do my bit? :lol:

Get ready... for the punch (in the face)! Everybody probably expects me to rip S-Club a new arsehole. Afraid to disappoint you here! :D Doesn't mean I like them very much (for the record, their only truly decent tune is "Don't Stop Movin'"), but I don't loathe them either. They were what they were: not so much teenpop, but PREteenpop. Besides, I can't knock a group with Rachel Stevens in it! B-) Anyway, "S-Club Party" was completely in tandem with all this: jolly, breezy, harmless family-friendly fun. Auto-Tune had already been in use in That Record By An Ageing Female Star That Shall Remain Nameless. An in use it is here too. Before you jump to conclusions, I'm not one of those anti-Auto-Tune zealots, nor am I an unabashed patriot for it. For me, it's just another instrument, like the vocoder once was. What matters to me is the WAY it is used. Here, it's used in the most nagging way, I'm afraid. Besides, as a song, this is as paperthin as they come. Where to start with such a character as this one? Personally, his 1991/1995 period (i.e., before he truly went big all over the place) is his best. It's certainly "purer" R&B than most of the records with which he came to chart (especially outside America) from 1996 onwards, and all the better for it. Still, some good was made afterwards; just not, by definition, when it came to ballads. Besides sounding like an even poorer relation to "I Believe I Can Fly", "If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time" sees him singing with all the emotional investment of someone going through the motions. The original is probably one of the greatest examples of the wave of female singer/songwriters which emerged in the late 80's, of which Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant (in her 10 000 Maniacs days) and, of course, Edie Brickell came to shine the brightest in the mainstrem firmament - if only for just one moment. Tin Tin Out, on the other hand, were just continuing their job of butchering radio staples. They started in earnest in 1995, when their cover of the Bacharach/David standard "Always Something There To Remind Me" reached #14. Three years later, the victim was The Sundays' masterful "Here's Where The Story Ends". And in 1999, this one. Not only is their electronica MOR production dull, they added insult to injury by featuring the second most thin-voiced Spice to the mix. Result: a record as devoid of emotion and, indeed, purpose as they came. Thous shalt not murder "Rock the Casbah", ever! Deary old me, what is here to even slightly criticise?!?! :o Not the first UK garage record to reach the upper eschelons of the chart - that would probably be the very same year's irresistible "Sweet Like Chocolate", by Shanks & Bigfoot -, but it was certainly one of the most memorable. First of all, those jittery beats were just too undeniable. Then there was Craig David's voice, sweet as honey dripping. And to top it all off, a bassline to die for! Icing on the cake: the way David swoons "hardcore". Coming from his mouth, it was as if hardcore was actually a term of endearment! Really: not even remotely liking this is almost equivalent to being quite, quite dead inside, in my book. What a unheralded classic, through and through! Could the decade (if not, FACT, the millennium) end up on a higher note? Yes: if it went all the way!

The Offspring sure could use their own advice, methinks! yzLT6_TQmq8 Advert or not, you could pretty much cut and paste my Fatboy Slim review here. Madonna had had some really good-to-great soundtrack singles: "Into the Groove", "Crazy For You", "Live to Tell", "Who's That Girl", "Causing a Commotion", "Vogue". Starting with A League of Their Own's "This Used to Be My Playground", however, the quality of such releases has been more miss than hit. "Beautiful Stranger" is neither. It's competent and insidious enough to lodge into your brain and the retrodelic influences give it not only a nice-enough touch, they actually complement William Orbit's trance-infused production through a not-so-subtle nod to what was, effectively, much of modern dance music's own spiritual ancestry. Still, after it does its job, it just can't help but leave quite a neutral impression. But then, this was Madonna in her second wind, tying herself with a film franchise reaching its mainstream cultural peak, so a #2 peak thus was. Her heart was surely in the right place. And her attempt at staying current by tapping Wyclef Jean to write and produce this also demonstrated that Whitney wasn't trying to rest on her laurels. Still, "My Love is Your Love" is just a nice, forgettable piece of fluff. I guess her death somehow lent this some gravitas, but it doesn't prevent it from its own irrelevance. Another soundtrack tie-in. From the days when such things still seemed to matter - nowadays, adverts, TV shows and the odd viral video practically took over film as the main provider of cross-marketing hits. Anyway, looking at the cold hard facts: 1999, Will Smith on his way to become Mr. Hollywood, a very successfully reignited music career = success. A snapshot of the day, basically. As for the song... how did it go, exactly? After a forgettable Will Smith ditty, Steps is a head plunge into Nightmare Land, more like it! The pathetic rap aspirations were left intact. And so was the over-reliance on tired sampling motifs. Which is to say that all was normal in 5ive Land. Let's not lose sight of the fact that "Better Off Alone" already sounded like your typical Euro-trance anthem by the time it was unleashed on the charts. And yet that synth motif was just too earwormy to deny. More than the "do you think you're better off alone" vocal, it was that durr-dur-nur-nur-nur-nur-nur that sealed this track into your ears. Proof of its seemingly neverending appeal? This: 82kGsIzcWp4 I knew this existed, just couldn't really remember how it went. Now I understand why!

First up, the question that did not get asked: what in feck's name was Ghostface Killah doing here?!?! :wacko: I remember this better through the Full Intention Radio Edit, as that was the version that received any kind of airplay around here. As for either the original and/or GK-featuring remix, they're quite the nondescript R&B tracks, with no more than a marginally memorable chorus to them. I'd wager it was the traditionally slow January market that brought this to #2 more than anything else. For some reason, I thought this had been an actual #1 single! I pretty much mirror Gezza's thought on it: earwormy for sure, but its novelty appeal wore rather fast, if only because the one version that made it a single (the Mint Royale Remix, as already disclosed) was the exemplary prototype of a generic "big beat" production. In fact, come to think about it, the whole thing had an eerie air of desperation about it, the sound of a once-marginally relevant neo-pub rock band trying to "get on wiv' The Kids". Whether it was The Kids or not, it worked, if only very temporarily. If there is a band against which we probably should be nastier towards to is The Corrs! :D Music so mind-numbingly dull already deserves its fair share of jokes. But when married to such a barely-disguised self-satisfaction, that's when nastiness should creep in. Maybe that makes me horribly inhuman, but there you go. Actually, "Tender" is very much about Damon's by-then ex-squeeze Justine Frischmann - her out of Elastica, as you probably know. More specifically, about Damon's own demons about that relationship (see my take on "Song 2" to find out how it all went bonkers) and his hard time moving on from it. Of course it's a dose of self-pitying, but one redeemed by a faint hope of redemption in the coming future. As such, the gospel feel of the track is more than warranted, giving it the kick up the arse it needs, especially taking into account how, as Gezza put it, it's a song that takes its time. In many ways, it's a song that fits us human beings, so full of contradictions it is. And all the better for it. In my book, Steps were the very definition of pointless, so shall we just move on? Aqua, I find you guilty for musical crimes like these! If there would be anyone Eminem reminded me of, that would be Axl Rose. No, come back! Like Rose, Mr. Marshall Mathers was a white trash screaming out his (mostly) misdirected primal rage with a certain kind of idiot-sapience. As such, whether you liked it or not, you couldn't help but become fascinated by their characters. Of course he seemed like a novelty when "My Name Is..." came out. But that was only if you were not listening attentively. Behind all the seeming goofiness, some pretty disturbing (and yes, fascinating) echoes of the other side of the American Dream (which is to say the Capitalist Dream) lurked very much in your front. And that's what prevented this song from descending into paltry comedy and raised it to cunning black comedy. As we all know, this was only the beginning. If you are going to apply the "can't be nasty towards it, but really can't support it either" logic, this seems more appropriate, as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, the recent Cube Guys remix does seem to imply that this track somehow became a dance music staple, and I don't disagree. Still, it's as inoffensive and mobile disco-friendly as you remember it being - and that's not such a bad thing in itself. Now THIS is more like it! And actually, a fair number of Fatboy Slim's singles and even the You've Come a Long Way, Baby! album are somehow considered modern classics - just not in a conventional way. Anyway, "Right Here, Right Now" was but a grand end to a run of brilliant singles from one album few would match ever since: "The Rockafeller Skank", "Gangster Trippin'", "Praise You" and this. Many more could have been taken from it: "Build It Up - Tear It Down" (this one was actually a promo single and even had a video to it), "Kalifornia", "Soul Surfing", "Love Island" - pretty much the whole album, really! And as "Right Here, Right Now"'s darker edges and slightly eerie atmosphere demonstrates, it wasn't all necessarily dumb, stupid fun around Fatboy's corner - there really was a certain multidimensionality to this character. I can understand why people would say that this sounds quite like 1998/1999 - after all, the whole big beat thing was very much a product of the times. Still, the best music doesn't really have to feel "timeless" - whatever timeless in music actually means! Quite the contrary: some of the best music is actually the one which reflects its context the best. Such is the case with the best Fatboy Slim.

Here we go, before long! True: they'd still go on for a few years after this. But in retrospect, maybe the song's title should have functioned as some sort of warning. Not claiming the song itself actually deserves its moniker - it doesn't, as it was pretty much standard-issue Beautiful South. Still, it was the good kind of standard-issue, as "Perfect 10" rides on its biting lyrics, bouncy backing and Paul & Jacqui's wink-wink-nudge-nudge delivery. Even still, that was what we already expected from them, right? And sure enough, what came next just didn't so much carry on up the charts, but just carry on, period. Maybe they should have just called it a day after this. It's a neutral kind of tune, this. Decent enough to sound good while on the radio, but - and I agree - not leaving much of an impression either. Reason why it reached the runner-up slot? Maybe it was a slow week, I don't know. People often say there really are no coincidences in life. As we all know, it's been pretty much two-and-a-half weeks since The Bee Gees were reduced to a single pronoun, as Robin Gibb joined his twin Maurice in the ranks of Heaven. And I'm back in this forum just as it's my turn to comment on this. Hmmm... Anyway, bad jokes aside, Gezza already put it best: by the time this was released, a Bee Gees cover had already somehow become standard boyband fare. None of the previous Take That and Boyzone covers were much to write home about, to start with; and sure enough, it would not be some second-tier contenders who would turn it into aural gold. As such, 911's "More Than a Woman" is just what it is: a timepiece of sorts. And speaking of timepieces... We're not going to beat around this bush more than it already was at the time: this was, of course, GM's obvious post-coming out single. Moreso than the song, it was the memorably funny promo that gave it all away, as GM gave one 'ell of a f*** you to all haters, and then some! As for the song itself, it was fine as an exercise in style over real substance, as it wore its retro-disco sensibilities on its sleeve. As Gezza put it, GM sounds as relieved as a man can be and is just all too happy to wear his newfound freedom on his naysayers faces. All points considered, the whole "controversy" probably did provide this song much more gravitas than it would otherwise. But then that's what art is all about too: context. Deary old me, why did they even bother in the first place? Even by boyband standards, East 17's music and image weren't really known for their substance; so an attempt to do some kind of "mature" version would always sound awkward, really. Then there's the choice of new moniker. I mean, had they forgotten all the tabloid furore over Brian Harvey and his musings about taking X number of E's in one night and how it was the kind of drug that made you a better person? Weren't they aware of all the obvious jokes? Anyway, "Each Time" is what it is: a forgettable piece of pop fluff which actually sounded kind of dated by the time it was released. So no wonder their second incarnation went to shit. I didn't even remember this existed anymore! And if you have the time, you can search for my rant of "Everybody Get Up" and see what I think of them in a nutshell. Last time they'll appear here, right? I've slagged them enough, so let's move on, please! :lol: As I said earlier, people usually say there really are no coincidences in this life. And as I come back here to finish my job, talks of an Annie film remake produced by Will Smith and starring his daughter Willow are making up the rounds. To add to it, the soundtrack will be provided by... Jay-Z! :D Which, of course, takes us to this. The man whose ID shows Shawn J. Carter was already pretty hot property in his native America, as 1996's Reasonable Doubt pretty much achieved classic rap album status from the get-go and the following year's In My Lifetime, vol. 1 reached platinum status in no time. 1998's Vol. 3... Hard Knock Life, though, was another commercial level altogether, having reached near double platinum status in America by the time this single was released in the UK. And sure enough, "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" was also the Jiggaman's first stab at success outside his land, as this reached the Top 10 not only in Britain, but in a lot of European countries, becoming a solid Eurochart hit in 1999. What matters, though, is that this song is bonkers, in the best possible way! Taking a children's standard and turning it into great sampling material is no mean feat, and that's what producer Mark "The 45" King achieves here with brilliance. And then there's Jay-Z's cutting, biting rhymes, delivered in his signature style. As one of his songs went: what more can I say? It's records like this that built not only his current megastar status, but also provided the means for him to become as much of a touring evergreen in the future as any classic pop/rock act you'll remember. You just watch!

Lots and lots of catching up to do here! :lol:

Oh, feckin' shite, 5ive! Where to start? The laughable rap aspirations? The faux-macho posturing? The simple fact that they never really had anything close to actual tunes - bar "When The Lights Go Out", "Keep on Movin'" or, if I'm being charitable, "Let's Dance"? Anyway, "Everybody Get Up" is just typical of 5ive: the aforementioned rap aspirations, the over-reliance on over-familiar sampling material, the absolute air of half-heartedness about the whole affair. Quite how they managed to be so popular as to even achieve a double-platinum album with Invincible is beyond me! No one should expect too much out of Eurodance, ever. But even with limited expectations, this track is just pure unbridled litter! The faux-reggae backing, the incompetent MC, the no-voiced "diva"... really, if there's anything even remotely redeeming about this, tell me, because it just escapes me!

As one-offs go, this one is certainly up there with M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up The Volume". The work of Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter, Alan Braxe (who'd have a Top 40 hit in conjunction with Fred Falke two years later with the brilliant "Intro") and singer Benjamin Diamond, Stardust were, like many good things, a happy accident. Bangalter was DJing one of these nights, with Benjamin Diamond doing his thing singing over any instrumental parts. There, Bangalter plays Chaka Khan's "Fate" and Diamond starts improvising the now-famous words that are forever etched in the minds of all those who heard it in real time. Watching the crowd reaction, Bangalter pitched the idea of making a track from the very same premises and asked his pal Alan Braxe for help. The rest, as they say, is history. "Music Sounds Better With You" became a monster hit all over Europe, and deservedly so. Stardust took only the necessary parts from Chaka Khan, melding them perfectly together and creating a monster groove out of hit over a production so pristine, it almost felt like our ears were shining! On top of it, Benjamin Diamond sang lyrics which could be easily described, when heard attentively, as a love letter to E: Oooooh baby I feel right The music sounds better with you Love might Bring us both together I feel so good And so on. Think about it! Dear old me, there aren't words to describe how much I loathed (and still do) Steps! To be honest, I never really thought of them as being ABBA for the late century, but more as the worst parts of Bucks Fizz (i.e., everything not called "Land of Make Believe") and Brotherhood of Man (everything) with updated production. "One For Sorrow" was but one example of such putrid combination. I don't care what anyone says; for me, Steps represented not so much the return of "pure" pop so much as pop really eating itself. That this was masterminded by Pete Waterman was just proof that he should have just let the past be the past and rest content with the fact that, in the middle of a lot of forgettable fare, he did help to create some of pop's with a capital P greatest late 80's moments.

This (and a whole host of other tracks) is why no one was really sorry when Puffy/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy/whatever faced possible jail time around 2000 over the whole nightclub fracas. OK, just taking the piss! :D Still, Sean Combs' fancy for taking whatever shopping mall favourites and turn them into lazy examples of sampling work was certainly on full display here. Whereas he used to take both musical backing AND chorus on other occasions, only the first is done here, if only because the original "Kashmir" didn't have a chorus to speak of. Still, the method was pretty much intact, as "Come With Me" was basically "Kashmir" redux with some inane babble done in Puffy's unmistakably limp style. And here it is: Sash!'s other decent tune in his life. Shame he hasn't done more like this, as "Mysterious Times" places him squarely on what should have been his territory since the very beginning and afterwards: straight-up POP music. And in that light, this track is almost a revelation, as Sash!'s trance-lite tendencies get filtered through Tina Cousins' longing vocals and an actual song that doesn't really say much, but does it stylishly. Unfortunately, as I already said, it would turn out to be a one-off for Sash!, as it was back to mediocrity land in no time.

The one thing that makes this song is the one that's already dead. That's right: ODB was the real reason anyone should care about this, as his gonzo delivery is what gives it the necessary gravitas to pull off what would be essentially a run-of-the-mill pop-rap fest, with a charisma-free rapper (Pras) leading the way and a non-entity like Mya in the chorus. Charisma, on the other hand, is something Will Smith shouldn't complain about too much. What he should complain about, though, is the fact that, as soon as he changed his rap moniker from The Fresh Prince into his birth name, his music increasingly took a turn to the dull as dishwater. Apparently that wasn't a problem for many, as the album which marked that transformation, Big Willie Style, easily became his biggest ever. Whether this particular fact had as much to do with his then recently newfound film celebrity as it had with his ever-increasing turn towards what could be described as MOR rap (and he was never a hardcore rapper to begin with) is certainly debatable. What's doesn't merit discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is another thing: where tunes like "Parents Just Don't Understand", "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson", "Summertime" and even "Boom! Shake The Room" and "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It" were breezy good fun, others like "Just The Two of Us", "Miami" and a couple of others which we'll discuss later just fell listless and limp all around. Maybe money does make people too comfortable after all.

Hmmm, I'm on the fence with this one. Everything here screams standard-issue all over: the disco-flavoured handbag house beat, the two not-particularly memorable divas, the whole air of calculatedly-crafted hands-in-the-air dance anthem about it. And yet, "Horny" doesn't sound half-bad. Of course the lyrical content here is what it is, but no one goes to dance music expecting biting poetry of the Jarvis Cocker kind now, right? I guess it ends up being a decent tune for what it tries to achieve, which isn't really much and definitely not artistically ambitious. Just one thing, though: don't try to hail this as the dance classic that it really isn't, OK? In some ways, this song's promo pretty much gave it away. By parodying The Verve's iconic "Bittersweet Symphony" video, Fat Les managed to kill two rabbits at once: send up both the mind-numbing simplicity of football chants and the lad culture associated with them and pretty much football in general. The fact that this ended up being adopted as a football chant itself during England's dismal World Cup campaign (but haven't they all been post-1990?) probably proved its point even further. As such, you can't really fault this record for its apparent zaniness, as that was pretty much its principle anyway.

Another surefire contender for best #2 record of 1998, hands down! After a first half-decade in the semi-wilderness, Madonna came back smoother, better, slower, stronger. A combination of motherhood, Kabbalah, William Orbit and the finest set of songs since Like a Prayer gave her back her edge over any opponents, making sure that La Ciccone would secure a few more years in the Pop Throne. "Ray of Light" was certainly one of the better examples of her renewed sense of self. Even though there's a furious dance beat beneath, it's a song which exudes an inner peace in a way previous Madonna songs never really did. More than anything, though, "Ray of Light" is everything a true pop record should achieve to be: glorious and ambitious, panoramic and anthemic. An absolute classic! And here's contender #3 for best #2 record of 1998 - how golden was this year, exactly? Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins had his first, and probably most lasting, hit record of his career here. And his authorial stamp was surely here: the lush, synthesized orchestral arrangements; the spacious atmospherics; the mild-mannered beats. All of this weaved together in a harmonious and inventive way, signalling what the next few years of unbridled creativity within American mainstream Urban music would be. On top of this, two teen-aged divas giving their mostly-subdued emotional all, fighting for their boy as if they saw him The One and Only for Life. Another absolute classic!

So, a chance to talk about the biggest pop phenomenon of the decade, eh? Tell you what: the Spices got everything right: the image, the concept, the whole wrapping, really. They just failed at the one single most important thing: the music. For all of their carefully constructed personas, the Spice Girls' music was memorable and full of hooks, alright; but it didn't mean that it wasn't quite limp-wristed in its construction and, really, a considerable afterthought in regards to everything else. "Stop!"'s poor nth-generation Motown pastiche was just as significant of such as any other song in their catalogue. Its failure to become #1 might be more a result of the backlash that had already set in by then. But one cannot underrate the fact that that same backlash was probably just as much to do with their audience finally realising how little substance there was in their whole shtick as it was with simple overexposure. One thing (among a lot, if we think about it) where me and Gezza/Dasher are at odds is rap. Unlike him, I'm a fan, through and through. Good thing that the #2 position was occupied by such a firing track, no pun intended! This was Busta Rhymes still on top of his game, spitting his signature stream-of-consciousness rhymes in his unmistakable mad-as-a-hatter style over the kind of sampling material few would still dare to tackle at the time. One thing must be said, though: this "Knight Rider Theme"-sampling track wasn't the song's original version, but rather a remix specifically created for single release and radio/video airplay. Still a prime contender for best #2 record of the year hands down, regardless.

If I recall correctly, this was the third and last single to be released from what was their second album to the world outside America, Backstreet's Back. And it sure felt like that, as "All I Have To Give" carries with it the distinct air of non-description. Produced by Full Force it might have been; but this was Full Force in the late 90's. Quite far from the ones who, along with Jam & Lewis, helped define the sound of American urban contemporary music in the mid 80's, laying the groundwork for what would become new jack swing's ultimate collision between R&B and hip-hop - thus setting the foundations for most of we now know as modern pop music. It's as if everybody involved (label, management, the boys themselves) wanted to hurry this album's promotion ASAP, since Mother America was finally taking to them in a big way and Backstreet's Back had already outsold the debut by almost double in half the time anyway. And here it was, Natalie Imbruglia seemed like she was actually emotionally involved with the material she was singing - the fact that she co-wrote it might have something to do with it. Still, Gezza/Dasher already exposed the problem very well: it wasn't so much that this wasn't where pop music was headed, more that this sounded like an Alanis Morissette doppelgänger two or three years too late. In itself, it's a perfect fit to explain Natalie Imbruglia's pop career issue: she always lacked a clear identity.

Don't ask me to repeatedly beat a dead horse, please! Let's put it this way: I didn't even remember this existed anymore! And now that I heard it again for aeons, I can see why: it's not really that memorable. It's a functional little handbag house record which, as already said, took advantage of the post-Xmas lull to grab itself a #2 placing. One thing, though: this samples "Get Down Tonight", indeed; but by KC & The Sunshine Band, NOT Kool & The Gang.

See my comment for "Ecuador". I can't quite tell if it was the massive overexposure this song got at the time that made me feel the way I do. But quite frankly, I find "Torn" to be a, er, torn in my side. Hey, one thing we can agree on: Natalie Imbruglia looks mighty good, whatever her hairstyle is! ^_^ But there's just something too flimsy about this that just can't manage to connect with me. I guess it's just that, for a song which speaks about a relationship achieving dead-end status, Imbruglia doesn't seem to actually sound very much engaged with the whole thing. Of course I'm not asking anyone to screech or put some over-dramatic spin on anything to somehow sound "emotional". But with such powerful lyrics, the delivery simply sounds staid and quite neutral, really. I guess the lyrical content was enough to connect it with listeners, as the song went on to become a monster hit all over the world. To be fair with her, it's just too bad she didn't have any hand at composing the song, or else she could be living pretty comfortably from its royalties by now. Such is this (torn) life!

You know what? Looking back, I have to concede that the Older album probably wasn't as impressive as mainstream pop got in 1996. Through the ears of today, it just sounds like someone desperately pleading to please, please take him seriously as an artist. Even the heavy-handed Listen Without Prejudice, vol. 1 didn't seem so determined to prove to us just how much of a "real" artist he was. Or maybe he just had better songs in Prejudice to back up his ambitions. All of this to say that, apart from "Fastlove", "Jesus to a Child" and the title-track, everything just seems designed to imply that not only you should take him up as a "proper" artist, you should also buy that he's more mature, as the album title itself screams so obviously. Too bad that George Michael's idea of maturity is such a stereotyped idea of sophistication and class. This single does nothing to change my perception, I'm afraid. This is pretty much The Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town"'s main hook set to a standard-issue superclub-era handbag house backing, innit? It's still better than everything he did afterwards, though - which doesn't really say much, but there you go. For all the talk of Be Here Now being a flop, it still sold bucket-loads, didn't it? But then, what could possibly topple (What's the Story) Morning Glory?'s numbers and cultural impact? Then again, there definitely was a sense that Oasis thought that cranking everything up to 11 would be the solution to move ahead. "Stand By Me", in many ways, was one of the guiltiest parties in this assumption. What sounded like the half-bred mutant child of "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" turned up as a nightmare to those of us who could forgive Oasis' obvious derivativeness because of how undeniable those hooks, that energy and that joie de vivre which poured out of their music. Here, that derivativeness degenerated into a band completely bored of itself and going through the motions, hoping that the loud guitars would somehow disguise the obvious lack of inspiration on show. It was the sound of a group falling apart at the seams and somehow knowing of their future as once-cultural behemoths turning into a tribute band to themselves. It wasn't pretty to witness!

C'est la vie, they say. And they said at the time that this wasn't really much of a cop. Looking back, I agree it isn't. It's definitely Robbie sounding like he's trying to find his feet out of the Take That prison and using Britpop as his safeboat. Better things would come along, of course, so "Old Before I Die" was just a tremulous beginning. Never had a lot of love for this in either the original album version or the '97 single edit. Even then the lyrics stroke me as pompous pontification coming from someone who wasn't exactly known for modest behaviour or anything like it. The music, on the other hand, was competent enough mainstream pop, but nothing more. Now THIS is more like it! I had already heard this back in its original Summer '96 release and, quite frankly, I was just amazed at how it didn't become a hit-single right there and then, such was its ear-catching mass appeal so evident. Of course closer inspection reveals this song to be as masochistic as can be, especially in its infamous "pretend that you love me" line. But then that was exactly part of its charm: that such disturbing lyrics could be dressed up under a cod-disco pop backing. Of course such peculiarity could only result in The Cardigans falling into pretty much one-hit wonder status, as their music was always a bit off-centre to really sustain a prolonged life in the limelight. Being a continental European, I was already pretty well familiar with this rubbish. This piece of over-dramatic popera bears all the hallmarks that gave Andrew Lloyd-Webber's musicals such a dubious fame, as it indulges itself in pretty much any cliché it pleases, adding insult to injury by doing it with all the pomp of those who seem to think they have something really important to say. Why such thing was a hit in the first place, I don't know! If you're going to over-blow everything, might as well do it in style! Even in those Britpop-heavy days, the thought of what had been once a third-tier indie/guitar act which had just reunited achieving such prominent success would be considered unlikely. But that's exactly what happened, and you can truly say that, however good some of their earlier singles had been ("All In The Mind", "Slide Away", "On Your Own" and "History" in particular), "Bitter Sweet Symphony" was another level altogether. Where most Britpop acts seemed content to ape their parents' record collection in a dispirited way, The Verve actually seemed to take those classicist influences and dress them up in a way where ambition and contemporaneity were jolly good partners. This song in particular drove that point home better than most, by taking the strings out of Andrew Loog Oldham's take on The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time" and looping it to a beat that could be best described as DJ Shadow morphed into a classic rock band format. It could have been a disaster, but it wasn't. Far from it, actually. It was a brilliant tune, through and through, full of gravitas, purpose and inspiration. Of course, it was all to go down it one fell swoop, starting with the Andrew Loog-Oldham royalties story. It was just a sign of how fast The Verve's second life (and their one in the Sun) was to be. Wherein Sash's full-blown descent into LCD mediocrity started. Allow me to have a pet theory about why Hollywood's take on Mr. Bean was such rubbish: it had Boyzone on the soundtrack. Another one which, being a continental European, I was very well familiar with by the time it hit the success trail in the UK. Let me just say that the best thing about this song is the face on the single's cover. And I have a feeling some of you will actually agree with me. ^_^ I guess Chumbawamba wanted a little piece of the action too. Or maybe it's just too easy to see this as just another drinking song, when the famous chorus "I get knocked down, but I get up again/You're never going to keep me down" probably points you to another meaning in the song: that however you try to push it down, the working-class always finds a way to resist and, when seeing the chance, to fight back against the pricks. Of course Chumbawamba's place in the mainstream spotlight was never meant to be lengthy, but it surely was fun for a lot of us while it lasted.

The lyrics here are really an afterthought; it's all about those furious guitars and those pounding, relentless drums. It has a chorus, yes; but it actually doesn't feel like your typical verse-chorus-verse tune. In some ways, Supergrass seemed to know that the false dawn of Britpop was already becoming an all too inevitable sunset and went supernova weird - by their unpretentious standards, anyway. It most probably reached this high because of fanbase dedication and expectations borne of I Should Coco's big success, but have no doubt: this move was needed. And so it went that the little band that couldn't actually had more longevity than most of those who were seen as the forerunners, only terminating their activities last year. And here's another band that did the sensible thing and reached out of the comfort zone, in case they wanted to have a career outside of a short-lived "movement". Much was made of how "Song 2" sounded like either a homage, a pastiche, an ironic twist or just a straight-up jacking of Nirvana. No matter: "Song 2" brimmed with an energy, a vitality and a joy that seemed so absent from The Great Escape. It was also a testimony of what would become Damon Albarn himself's modus operandi from then on: take whatever fancy he was having at some given point and insert it in your own work. At the time, it was the American indie lo-fi scene, with Pavement at the forefront of his obsessions, even going so far as to strike up a friendship with frontman Stephen Malkmus. The pay-off was quite the one: Albarn caught Malkmus shagging his then-girlfriend Justine Frischmann of Elastica!

"Na-na-na-na-na-na-na Na-na-na-na-na, baby Na-na-na-na-na-na-na" "Brazen with ideas" indeed. It's just that that brazenness was from the very beginning. "Pardon, Monsieur, le disc-jockey Sash! est de retour". Question was, return from what? From a complete flop of a first single called "It's My Life", that's what. And hereby I say that this is one of only two Sash! songs I have time for - we'll have time for the other. In this, Sash! still isn't ready to completely fall into the LCD conundrum into which he more than happily joined once the money started pouring and he probably sought to maintain a certain lifestyle. Yes, it's Eurodance, but with some "proper" clubbing music pretensions still retained in the form of a punishing beat and a furious synth groove, laid along by Sabine Ohmes part ominous, part ravaged vocals. As the "Raindrops" revamp showed, it's still Sash!'s most fondly remembered tune to this day, and for a very good reason. For a song which took the Tina Tur... oh, wait! This is more like it: for a song which took the Bob Marley, etc. ...that this is another shot of dullness?! And with this, I'm FINALLY in tandem with the thread! :lol:

What did I say about nepotism previously?... Like I previously said, looking at the History of Pop through the lens of the charts can sometimes give you some surprises. Almost any recount of the era will tell you it was almost all about Britpop and occasionally the rise of the superclub era in dance music. For some reason, they tend to shove aside facts like the most successful George Michael solo album in the UK being from this same era. As people say: whatever. What needs to be said though is that "Spinning The Wheel" isn't one of the strongest cases for Older's success. Not a bad song by any means, just a tad bit too cocktail lounge-sounding to truly hit any buttons, despite its suggestive lyrics. FINALLY! One of the main reasons for my strong scepticism towards Britpop is here. I mean, was there an act as devoid of real personality and as much up its own arse and derivative as all hell as Kula Shaker? Probably there was, but none as readily mockable as them. Nothing against showing your love for Indian culture, it's just that the way they did it sounded far more like appropriation and a gimmick rather than genuine affection. Besides, didn't "Hey Dude" sound more like a pre-metal Deep Purple rip-off than anything else? In many ways, East 17's writing was already on the wall. This standard-issue cover of the great Shai original just furthered that point even more, with the whole "I took X amount of E's in one night" bollocks just serving as a nice excuse to just hasten the downfall. As for poor Gabrielle, what was she doing here exactly? For a song which took the Tina Turner original and adapted it to serve as a critique of music industry politics, the execution actually sounded as cynical as Warren G's recounts. Furthermore, this one might be one the active responsibles for the deluge of half-arsed karaoke rap records that followed and of which the then Puff Daddy was the biggest repeat offender. Speaking of which... If Toni Braxton actually had a hand in songwriting, maybe she wouldn't be declaring bankruptcy as often as she does, for this song is now serving as one of the multiple of Babyface's pension funds. Anyway, "Un-Break My Heart" might have been a big hit, but it just doesn't do a lot for me, I'm afraid. It's one of those typical AC-friendly ballads that once in a while seems to click with the public, however full of clichés and/or half-hearted turns of phrase they are.