The Chart Project Part X: like a new born baby it just happens every day

#1039
Beyonce ft. Jay-Z, 'Deja-Vu'
2006
OK so is this called 'Deja-Vu' because it has the same rhythm and guest-star as 'Crazy In Love'? Anyway, what I'd really like to talk about are my doubts about Beyonce and Jay-Z as the transformative presences in their chosen spheres of music (R&B pop and rap respectively).

What both seem to represent is a degree of taste with regard to sampling and a certain attention to contemporary, fashion-spread informed presentation, but musically and lyrically I'm yet to hear anything but a stream of slick danceable nonsense from either. Which is not to outright deride either - certainly everyone likes a bit of well-arranged fluff! A fun little song but no more fun than Slade, who did not appear on any covers of Vanity Fair.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ9BWndKEgs

#850
Madonna, 'American Pie'
2000
A uncompelling nadir: a bland, demo-quality version of Don McLean's iconic hit. This purely gets by because it makes journalists point out that the ever-changeable Madonna, an AMERICAN ICON is covering an AMERICAN CLASSIC and thus recontextualising AMERICA AS A WHOLE. Journalists are scum.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIAi3Oo7To

#547
Philip Bailey & Phil Collins, 'Easy Lover'
1985
Woah I had NO IDEA this was a duet and spent a good portion of my pre-pubescence wondering how Collins made his voice go all high in the verses (and now I realise that at times there are two distinct voices singing, but so enamoured of Phil Collins was I as a youth I was CONVINCED that if anyone then Phil Fucking Collins could).

This is from the epicentre of Phil Collins' kingly phase and the reason that he is lauded so heavily by the R&B and urban pop fraternity in the US: it's a slick piece of danceable soul music with a bit of grit and no less than three killer hooks and a chorus written at the department of WE'VE COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD HOW SONGS WORK. Marked down slightly for mid-80s misogyny.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Slcrcbci0

#704
Take That, 'Everything Changes'
1994
My best friend as a yoof - his sister was the typical Take That fan. Her favourite was Mark Owen. Posters all over her room, all the records, all the separate versions of the singles, live bootlegs (of a mere pop band!), down to the Take That bedspread. I first heard this song in her room (for whatever reason) and I seem to recall disappointment. "It's Robbie's first lead vocal, it's not as good as the others is it?" said she. She was 9 and she had articulated the central strife at the core of Take That: that the most egotistical member was simply one of the lesser talents of the outfit. I was only 11 so my natural inclination was to say "THEY'RE ALL RUBBISH SAMANTHA" and then run out of her room and back to her brother who was furiously playing Treasure Island Dizzy. What I meant to do was sagely agree with her: it's not as good as many of their other singles, and has a similar kind of previously unnoticed muzak quality in the verses. Uptempo polite pop without 'edge', the type that nobody really makes anymore.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzHIxigdlgQ&ob=av2e

#1011
Oasis, 'Lyla'
2005
Even as a 22-year old I hadn't quite realised that Oasis were a decade past their best and waited up one night for the C4 premiere of this video. After hearing this, a turgid mid-tempo caterwaul that strives to do nothing other than fulfil the empty signifiers of what Oasis THINK made them a good band (swagger, attitude, pastiche of the past) rather than actually writing the songs that made people give a fuck out of nothing at all, I effectively decided to shelve an entire part of my life. Britpop became a joke, the part of my past that I could hold up and lampoon for being so stupid to invest in this crap that, believe it or not, used to mean something to me and 10000s of people like me. Oasis post-1997 are nothing but a contemptuous joke and any pleasing sound they have made is pure rope-a-dope.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQZQ5MHehes

#932
Darius, 'Colourblind'
2002
Pleasant memories of performing a cover of this in a shortlived (1 gig, performed whilst sat on a suitcase as my flight left that night) acoustic/electric duo notwithstanding, this is a bland little R&B/indie piece of radio makeweight. Darius was a comedy figure of the UK popscape in the early part of the 00s and his many misdemeanours fell into the category of the 'being pretentious and lacking self-awareness', which enabled the British public to sucker him into a greater hubristic dive when this single hinted at lasting success, only for the man to hit the scrapheap a year later.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS4jg-Yv1XA

#454
The Jam, 'Going Underground' / 'Dreams of Children'
1980
"What song would you want played at your funeral?"
"Going Underground! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA!"
"But you're getting cremated."
"In that case Dreams Of Children! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"We're not friends anymore."

I never really knew what Weller's politics were. They seemed too generally 'anti' - we don't trust politicians, we don't trust the media, we don't trust society, we don't trust modernity. Then what do you trust? What is there to grab hold of? These issues aside, The Jam offer two pieces of tightly-wound guitangst: the A-side famous and explosive, the AA-side perhaps a little more exploratory and fulfilling. 'You will choke on your dreams tonight' says the latter song, with a smile and a hope of a pleasant future in its heart.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE1ct5yEuVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr-K2LJwG2M

#303
Diana Ross, 'I'm Still Waiting'
1971
Though initially ready to write this off as an overly-orchestrated melodrama, this song perhaps indicated a route that soul music never took; a softening into the dreamstate and the regretful. In many senses it's what's going on around Ross' commanding vocals that reward the most: the melancoholic backing vocals, the rousing drumwork, and the hallucinatory strings.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1iAtoX9DKk

#418
Brotherhood of Man, 'Figaro'
1978
End-of-the-pier-in-the-very-late-season sub-Abba shite from the 70s. Complete with barely restrained 'funky' guitar. WHO COULD RESIST?
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk0MwkDZhKs

#416
Wings, 'Mull of Kintyre' / 'Girls School'
1977
The very first song I learned on the Spanish guitar I was bought for my 13th birthday was the 1977 Xmas #1 written by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine of Wings that can be found on this release's A-side. A relatively rarity in pop circles - it is a waltz (3/4 time) and contains HEAVY use of bagpipes, pleasantly reverbed. The chords of A, D, and E major if you want to play along at home. It is very simple and repetitive, growing more sentimental and sickly by every repetition. Though I learned it at age 13, I did not hear the song as Wings performed it until 21, and I contend that my scraped version was better, a triumph against the odds and weak calluses. The AA-side is, like Brotherhood of Man, sub-Abba and overly orchestrated rubbish.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqAAfDCIV3c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYhTye_A9H0

#1166
Lady Gaga, 'Bad Romance'
2009
For a time in 2009 I would ring people up (people that I needed to speak to) and before I said hello, I would utter the hook from this song down the phone into their astonished ears - 'RAH RAH UH AH OH'. At the time I took this as me mocking the popular entertainments of the day, but now I realise that this song was part of the inner aspect of my daily discourse to an unignorable degree. Given that recent pop, generally speaking, disgusts me with its lack of melodic and conceptual ambition and naked embrace of the grimier end of capitalism, I think that there's something to be admired in Lady Gaga even if it is not always her music. Naive this may be, I genuinely think that Gaga wants to be brilliant, that she wants to be considered as a real artist and wants as many people to engage with this art to its fullest extent. And its a fair ambition, and songs like these offer how it could go either way in the long term - a huge, homely, familiar hook, but also there's a tonne of flab in the song's centre, with its ambling chat about 'being a free bitch now'.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

#703
Doop, 'Doop'
1994
Sometimes I hope that this song was a satire on the simplicity in eliciting a reaction in the weirdness that was 90s Eurodance. Effectively nothing more than a big beat remix of a small section of a charleston track with a one word lyric ('doop'), this song used to drive people mad at the time, ensuring that Doop's slightly better follow-up ('Huckleberry Jam') did no business whatsoever, crash-landing as it did at #95.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvLDm8821jQ

#353
George McCrae, 'Rock Your Baby'
1974
Written by Harry Casey of KC & The Sunshine Band and performed by George McCrae, a man of not inconsiderable talent himself, this is one of those 'best of the 70s' songs that has resulted in complete cultural resistance to that era. Attempting a listen now without prejudice is difficult, but focusing on the Booker T-ish organs and the vocals of McCrae help keep things sweet, especially if you ignore the slightly bland arrangement as I did not.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll0a1ZPI2cQ

#464
David Bowie, 'Ashes to Ashes'
1980
Bowie seems desperate to confess his prodigious drug-intake on this one. "Time and again I tell myself / I'll stay clean tonight / But the little green wheels are following me." That's just something I've realised in 2012 from reading the lyrics: from previous, unprompted listening, I simply thought it was a song which got by lyrically on its references to Bowie songs gone by (particularly 'Space Oddity'). So how did I miss the lyrics?

Well, by focusing on the excellent music. Songs like this are what convinces me that David Bowie and I could work out our long term differences: the light funk of the bass is heavily offset from the alien acid settings of the guitar and synth. There's also an excellent sense of occasion about the piece, transitioning from the confessional opening into the delusions in the bridge to the calm declamations in the chorus. And there's really nobody who sounds like this, is there? David Bowie's work stands alone, for better or worse, a lot of the time.
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMThz7eQ6K0

#215
Rolling Stones, 'Paint It, Black'
1966 
Like 'Mull of Kintyre', this song was in my 'Teach Yourself Rock Guitar' book and yet I did not bother to listen to it until much later. My version was inferior, omitting all of the things that make this song so distinct, particularly the sitar, drums, rhythm, and timing. That said, I completely rule at Singstar on this song - those 'hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm' sections are in my two-note range. Were I a crap journalist I'd say this song marries the best of east and west - the microtonality of the sitar creates this unusual tension in the verses which allows the choruses to really fizz when the band opens up into a standard R'n'B (60s defintion)/rock style. Brian Jones was still alive and functional and the band had yet to become a Grotesque Rock Parody - thus making this as good as mainstream rock gets.
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9DDpmyPZZA

THE CHART PROJECT: Part Nine.

#663
Chesney Hawkes, 'The One & Only'
1991

Chesney Hawkes has managed to retain a place at the edges of stardom, appearing in advertisements for washing powder and on reality TV, for the sum total of what appears to be one #1 single in 1991. It's ideas like that which propel this blog in all of its inanity and futility. That this one otherwise unremarkable dude (aside from his astonishing Dorian Gray-esque youthfulness) can just stick around by flopping the calling card of this semi-ok pop song that sounds a bit like the summation of a TV show about how an unremarkable dude managed to retain fame 21 yeas after any relevance: as the lyric says, "you can't take that away from me"
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_r0oQE5jEU

#530
Paul McCartney, 'Pipes of Peace'
1984
At primary school, the headteacher was given to playing a song as entrance for the day's assembly. Often the song was something very soft rock 'messagey' and for some reason the only ones I can remember both featured Paul McCartney in his post-Beatles era. One was the immortal 'Ebony & Ivory' with Stevie Wonder, and one of them was this. Maybe there was a Sting song in there too. The lyrics were chalked up on the blackboard. The deputy head would sometimes play along on the school piano. It was a magical time. Martin O'Neill (school friend, not the Sunderland manager) used to blow a raspberry throughout this song, and Neil Parr would 'armpit fart' the percussion. Now I listen back to the tune, they are missing those key musical elements, and all that is left is a preachy song with a weird video where Macca plays a bunch of soldiers.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVK_mJrLbmY

#702
Mariah Carey, 'Without You'
1994
The craziness hadn't quite caught up with Carey by this point and though not as famous as she would become, the general consensus was that she was a sweet-voice and good-natured pop star with a nice voice and line in summery pop like the awesome 'Dreamlover'. This song represents the transition between Mariah Next Door and Imperial Mariah. Nilsson's song is treated as nothing more than a platform for the singer to launch all kinds of vocal acrobatics and as such smothers the anguished howl of the original. By the time the gospel choir comes in after the second chorus, X Factor has a firm template for all of its future endeavours.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hat1Hc9SNwE

#148
Cliff Richard, 'Summer Holiday'
1963
Summery fluff soon to be wholly owned by the institute of lazy advertising executives stuck for jingles.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNP5yqg7hc

#694
Culture Beat, 'Mr. Vain'
1993
At one point (presumably 1993) I knew ALL of the words to this, which features TWO raps, which is therefore quite an accomplishment for a 10-year old. Culture Beat represent part of the then-nascent Eurodance trend that would peak with Whigfield, Aqua, Haddaway, Dr. Alban, & 2 Unlimited. This song was generally a little darker and expansive, borrowing the synth modules from Snap! and 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' and pushing them into a more fluid composition: the tempo remains constant and relentless but there's a definite shifting of the musical underpinning that makes this song a little more impressive than I had bargained for. Still no clearer on figuring out who 'Mr. Vain' is, but if I had to guess, I would say that it is a man who is hitting on the female singer with a lot of braggadocio and she's all 'whatevz dude'.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvgUdrzGNys

#209
Overlanders, 'Michelle'
1966
When I wrote out the 20 songs that this part of the blog would cover, this was the song that I was looking forward to the most because I had never heard of it before. Turns out that I have: it is a VERY straight cover of the Beatles song of the same name released one year previously. Many fans of the Beatles don't particularly like this song as an example of McCartney's burgeoning predilection toward cheese, but this channels a very light Django Reinhardt feel, all Belgian cafes and drunkenly raffish sentiments, and compresses it into a likeable short pop song.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEQaU8FnJIk

#286
England World Cup Squad, 'Back Home'
1970
An interesting take on the football song. Instead of cheering about the skills of the team and individual players, the lyric talks about how people 'back home' (as the team would be travelling to Mexico to defend their world title, unsuccessfully as luck would have it, owing to a rather prolific West German fella named Gerd Muller) will be really supporting the team quite a lot and hoping that they win.

I'm all for reasonable statements framed in pop songs and look forward to 'I married for love but stay together for the kids and societal pressure', 'I bought this car for good mileage and the insurance on the Audi was crazy', and 'I'll be mostly upset but will get on with my life should this relationship end.' A song of commendable brevity, opting to stop after realising that it was going nowhere and that Peter Bonetti's vocal range couldn't carry a middle 8 and key change.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYW9NmmiuOg

#73
Everly Brothers, 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' / 'Claudette'
1958
Never been a man of the Bros. Everly thing though there's no denying that this kind of music is one of those instant sonic signifiers of a certain era, and in possessing that direct connection with era and place, can be exploited by directors such as David Lynch: the music speaks of innocence so baldly and plainly, and in such impeccably performed musical terms, that there HAS to be an undercurrent of weirdness and murder and sex and death. Right? RIGHT? Right. Side AA is unremarkable, side A ubiquitous.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m24uUzJgfwQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Otk53qFwM

#52
Johnnie Ray, 'Just Walking In The Rain'
1956
Eulogised famously by Dexys Midnight Runners and possessing a bold blue-eyed tenor, Johnnie Ray sang pop that manages to be musicially of its era (whistling, close harmonies, tempos that induce torpor) and yet in terms of production, absolutely timeless, full of richness and depth and clear as a bell. Maybe it was all the carbohydrates we were eating in the post-war era but the slowness of all of these earlier singles makes them seem a little flat and dull at times: that said, the relentless up-tempo of the 2010s and over-mastered self-aggrandizement is just as much of a crappy sonic hallmark.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfBJunktsdI


#887
Rui de Silva ft. Cassandra, 'Touch Me'
2001
Ibiza music of its era (we've been through this) that got to #1 by being released in the first week of the year and riding a wave of collective apathy. Melancholy but uplifting, steady, unexciting, yawn.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FkApmj8K1M

#27
Dickie Valentine, 'Finger of Suspicion'
1955
This countdown is making me realise how bloody crap this country was in the 50s for any kind of art, ANOTHER slow big-band weepie croonerfest, thank you Bill Haley, thank you Elvis, thank you Lonnie Donegan. This is SO boring. Sorry for being all 2012 and short attention span over this OH WAIT I AM LISTENING TO 1192 SONGS FOR FREE AND WRITING 200 WORDS ON EACH, FUCK YOUR ATTENTION SPAN, WHERE'S YOUR BLOG 1955 MUSIC CRITIC?
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUzOomtEPlE

#600
T'Pau, 'China In Your Hand'
1987
AOR's cleverest move was adding very feint and mildly-distorted guitars and rebranding as 'soft rock', a complete oxymoron because rock is supposed to smash your ears up, not sooth them into a warm bath/played relentlessly by your mum in the car. T'Pau are soft-rock incarnate, all unsophisticated upward reaching replete with obnoxious sax solos and drudgery-affirming lyrics (your dreams are fragile, they will smash = don't dream) that chugs along gamely but never really achieves more than meme status.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvElWJJS6po

#243
Love Affair, 'Everlasting Love'
1968
REALLY hate this song. It may be 1968 and hippies-a-go-go but that smarmy-ass overegged production would ruin the next 7 years of popular music in its smooth orchestrated smuggery. I once DJed a wedding and refused to play it (no one asked, thankfully, but it is a go-to given the sentiment) because it makes me retch, mentally, if not physically. Is it well-written? Not particularly. I can remain objective enough to say that it never rises above the generic and is only bolstered by some over-enthusiastic horn playing and a chorus that is unforgettable in the way witnessing a car smash into a cyclist is.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Le8bH3Y8U

#258
The Beatles, 'Hey Jude'
1968
And let it never be said that I am nothing but a massive hypocrite because this song from the same year with similar levels of swelling and overbearing production and a fairly obvious sentiment is something I DID DJ at an engagement party because I really like the song and it was also fairly appropriate for the occasion. In no way worthy of the seven minutes it takes to make its happy-clappy point but it's a pleasant journey nonetheless.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDdI7GhZSQA

#568
George Michael, 'A Different Corner'
1986
The still-presumed heterosexual and lesser-fancied one out of Wham! has a very versatile and pliable voice, able to convincingly switch between sensual pop croon to powerful (though rarely overbearing) range-crawling. It's this instrument that is showcased on this weird little single, all MIDI-strings and light keyboards floating like a coma dream with Michael just gliding through the mix on a gilded swan of clear-toned melody.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPWHkK-_a_A

#1053
Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud, 'Walk This Way'
2007
I think this was for charity so I will cut it some slack - it's hardly the sacred cow in either Run DMC or Aerosmith's back catalogue. That said, it is a breezy and lightweight cover of a pretty fun song that adds nothing to the original but takes much away.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jvrjd8DI-c

#23
Don Cornell, 'Hold My Hand'
1954
A snoozefest about being in heaven with a woman, christ, can you not just possess her on earth, what IS IT with you songwriters and your eternity shit?
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZqyLDTxgZA

#1050
Mika, 'Grace Kelly'
2007
An entertaining oddity from the recent past about genderfuck and sexual confusion sung in a voice that alternates between helium-voiced madness and homage to Freddie Mercury. It's all so dayglo and eager to please and assert how bloody different it is (and it is!) that it comes across a bit desperate and ankle-biting, though never becoming outright dislikeable or annoying, provided you can tolerate vocal gymnastics of the outer space kind.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHtPSmP5nLw

#873
A1, 'Take On Me'
2000
Boy bands were largely on their way out at this point, or the game was changing into more subtly-styled affairs that would later breed JLS and The Wanted, whereas A1 were fresh-faced pop muppets blithely singing whatever shit was poked under their nose. At no point can you imagine any of the group saying 'hang on, if we ARE going to cover this utterly ubiquitous A-Ha song, can we put in the power to the drums and the tempo?', instead accepting the bland gruel that is this song, garnishing it with their sparkling personalities which live on in our hearts to this day.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCsIKI6HEU

#442
Gary Numan, 'Cars'
1979
OK so this might say something weird about me but I quite like songs that sexualise and fetishise things that aren't human as long as they essentially comment upon an element of human dysfunction. No one wants to hear the bike fucker's lament purely for the bike-fucking. Anyway, this was Gary Numan's thing back then. "Here in my car / I can only receive / I can listen to you / It keeps me stable for days in cars." YOU DO REALISE HE DOESN'T MEAN CARS SPECIFICALLY RIGHT?

Numan's better songs of this era also had a really good musical trick of opening with a really big hook and then jumping to a more subtle emotive hook later in the song before merging the two late in the song. I guess because of his 'look' of the time and his self-isolated stance he is an easy target for bad nostalgising of this era but let's be honest, 'Cars' is a great song and really convincing in the way that it puts a firm finger on this disenfranchisement many would feel toward the government parachuting into power that year and the way it would isolate the vulnerable and enable a retreat into simulations of joy. OR SUTTIN.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldyx3KHOFXw

THE CHART PROJECT: part the 8th

#1175
Dappy, 'No Regrets'
2011

"I'm a changed man - Chris Brown." That is an actual lyric from this song, a mere foundation-stone for the mountain of hubris that the song attempts to climb. There's nothing but self-aggrandizement in this song that attempts to be self-aware and reflective. It's a horrible, grimy, pathetic little sketch of a song that I can't imagine anybody loving or even liking or treating with grudging respect. There's a sampled chime effect that recalls Xiu Xiu's 'Boy Soprano' but this must be incidental given that listening to that band requires turning away from the mirror for more than 30 seconds.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoImizvsj5w

#370
Tammy Wynette, 'Stand By Your Man'
1975
The iconic track of The First Lady of Country. I presume that most people reading this would be familiar with this ditty and hope that you, like me, wonder whether this lyric could ever exist had Wynette been born in 1980. It is often cited as an anti-feminist lyric given the sentiment - even though your partner may be a low down dirty dog, put on a strong public face and stay with him (though some debate exists over the aside "after all, he's just a man" and how that acts as a comment upon the sentiment vis-a-vis it being appropriately feminist etc.). Music is post-Independent Woman now, with your Lily Allens cutting up the clothes of the ex, Kate Nash chiding the former object of her affections that his friends are better-looking. I suppose that the key that links all of these lyrics, from Wynette to now, is self-determination, the retention of autonomy, that whichever decision you make over 'what to do with a shitty partner' is the act of a good feminist if it arrives free of patriarchal influence. Good tune too!
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxH2T8LpS2E

#730
Robson & Jerome, 'Up On The Roof' / 'I Believe'
1995
One of the earliest memories of the humanisation of actual murderers propaganda machine were the weirdly popular singles of lantern-jawed Soldier Soldier lead actors Robson Green & Jerome Flynn. Always double-A singles comprised of two covers of former hits done in a total skimmed milk style.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5V8ecsrxeY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b74A7BP6Rvo

#674
Shakespears Sister, 'Stay'
1992
A poperetta, if you will, the first act being Marcella Detroit being all bedside vigil ballad, the second act sees Siobhan Fahey enter stage left as the vampish spectre of death, and act three is the confrontation between good and evil while some dude is lying at death's door on the table, presumably trying to slip off this mortal coil because of all of the bleeding racket as the two singers compete for oxygen. The song is less complex than memory has it and a little bit flatter and musically uninteresting too, but it remains an oddity in terms of structure and presentation - at least I can't think of anything else similar.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYu3d_dsc40

#767
Olive, 'You're Not Alone'
1997
Previously I may have used 'Ibiza' as a cheap way of dismissing certain kinds of music and should probably cover the backstory of what exactly it is I am getting at for our younger readers. Ibiza is one of the Baleaeric Islands, famous as a hot-spot for young Europeans into a fairly specific kind of euphoric trance/house music. Many of the songs that would be played out with the most success in these big Ibiza clubs such as Manumission, Cafe Del Mar, and Pacha, would usually find some kind of UK release and go onto annexe radio for some time. There's nothing inherently bad about the music that could be characterised as 'Ibiza', but it is predominately generic dance music with a hedonistic post-club atmosphere tinged with melancholy, such as this track. Whilst underneath there is the skeleton of Detroit house, nothing really leaps out of this song that sees it as anything other than what a lot of clubbers bought to remind them of a good week in the sun.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6iYGUn06QE

#301
Middle Of The Road, 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep'
1971
One of those songs whose ubiquity makes you forget that someone would have actually written it - a staple of childhood taunts and football chants ("where's your mama gone?") and days better forgotten. This song features some WILD vocal vibrato and that awful 70s production that I'm really averse to. Novelty pish.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ENFi4QQHI

#889
Limp Bizkit, 'Rollin'
2001
So while in 2001 (and every year since) I hated Limp Bizkit with the fire of a thousand galactic infernos it's actually quite apparent that they are far more interesting than Middle Of The Road and their style is more in my own woodshed, so to speak. Personality helps sell, or not sell, music - and Durst's personality is complete marmite. An overgrown frat jock turned rich rock boor, but he had a nice hat so some people were duty bound to like him.

Rollin' is very emblematic of that whole 'nu-metal' thing when the NME were trying to call it 'sports-metal', being that it was rapcore played by dudes in tracksuits. It's quite a chunky and fluffy number, really, not worth the anger I previously heaped upon it, but I'm nothing if not a rock tribesman and anything under the metal banner had to be gunned on sight.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnFIRc0k6E

#1125
Scouting For Girls, 'This Ain't A Love Song'
2010
Since being a student stopped being this poverty-stricken three years of gradual accomplishment whilst coming to terms with a body of profound work and turned into an exercise in churning out docile education consumers, the musical expectations of our formerly vibrant educated 18-21 demographic have significantly reduced. Fresher rock is a thing that I have identified, groups that play this kind of populist denominator scum and then tour HEAVILY in the freshers' weeks to maximise their miniscule cache: see also Son of Dork, The Hoosiers.

The main dude from Scouting For Girls once claimed in an interview that I read that his 'thing' was attempting to emulate the great Brill Building writers of the 50s and 60s. Goffin and King and Bacharach remain untroubled by this incredibly minor piece of piffle that would rank among Beady Eye's lesser b-sides.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=886AQqcM8Tk

#123
Helen Shapiro, 'You Don't Know'
1961
Shapiro had a very good voice, a little deeper than you might expect from a female pop singer, and all the richer and worldly-wise for it. That said, this is still very much the polite end of the 1950s hangover that took a long time to clear out (and arguably never died, given Robson & Jerome's success) where everything just parps along in a very functional and stiff way. Could have been better.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I2cG-ed6hw

#1168
Cher Lloyd, 'Swagger Jagger'
2011
Now if this isn't an actual welding of two formerly separate songs into one semi-coherent whole then I will eat a large pie with Cher Lloyd's face baked into it. The first part is a very ebullient attempt to emulate the spartan hip-hop of the early 80s with the kind of semi-yelled call to arms that Le Tigre made a speciality (the production's flatness makes the reality of this way less cool than it sounds), where the choruses wade into the waters generic R&B populism with uplifting Euro-synth.

The two parts don't work together, they are diametric, and the result is charmless given that the lyric is mostly unwarranted bragging about Lloyd's 'haters' (Cher Lloyd came 4th on a national star search format television show) and does nothing to suggest that these naysayers might not actually be onto something.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdbyG2MrBHk

THE CHART PROJECT PT. 7: let the world see what you have got / bring it all back to you

(slight quality drop-off near the end, blame the dreadful music)


#61
Lonnie Donegan, 'Puttin' On The Style' / 'Gamblin' Man'
1957
A big hoorah for the first double A-side of the countdown! An underrated but obviously troublesome format for mass comprehension. Side A is a rambunctious skiffle number, skiffle being an apparently European cousin of bluegrass. Side AA is also a ripping dandy of a Woody Guthrie cover done in the traditional skiffle style.

Both performances contain lots of energy: this is real age of railways stuff, the percussion rattles and scrapes and Donegan's syllables imitate the rumbling of trains bobbling up and down on the recently constructed tracks. Where many singles of the era now seem like museum pieces, both of these songs stand-up now just in terms of pure physicality.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW9KUeMaJRQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynnhBUOHkg

#493
Shakin' Stevens, 'Oh Julie'
1982
The McDonalds Elvis continues with another 50s rock'n'roll exercise. To throw a spanner in the works, an accordion makes an appearance. You're fooling no one son.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AtOcWOPT50

#966
Will Young, 'Leave Right Now'
2003
The joy felt when Will Young won Pop Idol, a star search format of yore, has not translated into a continued relationship with his music. 'Leave Right Now' is a ballad with a lyrical conceit about a pragmatic decision not to fall in love with a person which may prove problematic in the long term, which seems like a very modern and insincere thing to do. You can choose this? I suppose you can. 'I don't want to be in a relationship right now'. 'I don't see myself as the marrying type'. Life just happens, everyone, you're going to be mostly powerless to stop such forces.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbrSLLv0AlA

#1003
Eminem, 'Like Toy Soldiers'
2005
I've never been unfortunate enough to have my best friend and childhood inspiration shot dead on a street corner and I sincerely hope that I never have to face that kind of problem. Eminem, or Marshall Mathers, is a human being and many of his songs do bring into focus the disparity between the front of the rapper and the background of the man - and often with no little humour and memorable music. But this song, this song is no good. It's maudlin and trivialising and it serves as a launchpad for Eminem to try and attack various bugbears once his lamenting is through. The 'beat' is all military snares and the interconnecting fluid of the sample is Martika's 'Toy Soldiers' and Eminem's dead friend is referred to as a 'soldier'...heavy-handed metaphors a speciality here.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lexLAjh8fPA

#200
The Beatles, 'Help'
1965 
Taken from the soundtrack of the superior Beatles film. It is a Beatles song that we all know and love and well bloody done The Beatles.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s-F7ZmmGbY

#851
Chicane ft. Bryan Adams, 'Don't Give Up'
2000
Oh wow when Ibiza became so big that even rock magazines had to take notice. The process by which Bryan Adams' voice appears on this record must be an interesting story. I imagine it probably went a little something like this.
"Hi, this is Bryan."
"Oh, hi Bryan, Chicane here. I got the memo from your agent saying you were looking to cred up your image."
"That's right."
"OK. Well, I've got this total mid-set nonentity of a dance track. I propose putting a 96kbps MP3 recording of your voice on this track."
"That's just what I'm looking for. Thanks Chicane."
"Don't mention it Bry."
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNlrACY3--0

#97
Adam Faith, 'Poor Me' 
1960
The backing on this is quite spirited and moody: strings groaning up and down the scale like voices emerging from a haunted castle wall, pizzicato violins plucking like hair standing up on your neck, a band which clatters along remorselessly. The problem is the vocal and the lyric, which are just cheap Buddy Holly knock-offs and don't fit with the unusual rollercoaster ride written by one Mr. John 'James Bond' Barry. Shame.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThWY6jsiJ4

#371
Windsor Davies and Don Estelle, 'Whispering Grass'
1975 
A song originally written in 1940 and made famous by the vocal harmony group The Ink Spots and re-released and performed in character by stars of the UK sitcom 'It Ain't Half Hot Mum', a japefest about the Burmese conditions of WW2. Don Estelle has a fine voice for imitating the range of the original, and the song is a fine enough remnant of pop eras alien to our own, evoking Dennis Potter more than dance party. However, what was the point in Windsor Davies even getting a credit on this? He literally speaks a couple of vaguely comic lines and gurns throughout the TV performances of it. Hilarious.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThWY6jsiJ4

#953
Tomcraft, 'Loneliness'
2003 
Ministry of Sound fodder with a refreshingly unfunky beat and deadpan vocal, though unlovable in its anonymity.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QV8cOmsTdI

#673
Wet Wet Wet, 'Goodnight Girl'
1992  
Who else remembers when Wet Wet Wet were a legimately huge presence on the UK pop scene? I have two specific memories of the group, one which I shall save for their other, more famous #1 hit. The other is when the man 'being' Wet Wet Wet's Marti Pellow on Stars In Their Eyes actually won. Oh, and didn't Pellow go and get all 'rock star ego' and go off to do heroin like a proper musician even though he was just singing these breezy nothingy AOR pop songs? Weird. One striking thing about this song is the total absence of percussion. Once you get over the fact that the drums are going to come in, you wonder whether anything is going to happen other than these medieval-type harmonies and Poundland lyrics.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_94Q4yt8Y4

#65
Harry Belafonte, 'Mary's Boy Child'
1957
Slow and dreary. Who IS it who keeps saying that the 1950s were better? To hear any of the decent music of the day you'd better have been damn well plugged into the underground or attending a musical conservatory in Paris or Munich or Moscow because it sure as HELL wasn't happening in the pop charts. Fair play to Boney M for kicking this song right up the arse.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGQsy8pN48U

#99
Lonnie Donegan, 'My Old Man's A Dustman' 
1960
Cockney knees-up singalong by skiffle hero Donegan, the song punctuated with little jokes and asides to the audience, sort of reflective of the vaudeville beginnings of pop music rather the gleaming future it was heading toward. Still, MILES better than Belafonte. Sheesh. Wake that dude up.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7GeZ3YmONw

#705
Prince, 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World'
1994 
It is a truth universally known that Prince is a phenomenally talented human being who, since changing his name to a funny squiggle and then back again and then finding God in a fairly priority-altering manner, has had some difficulty in discerning between a good idea and a bad one. The name change occurred in 1993, so this song finds on the darker side of that line, in and amongst 10 minute guitar jams, fanclub-only albums declaring Abraham Lincoln to be a racist, and jazz albums whose songs all begin with the letter 'X'.

Fortunately, it is a good song. Soft and more in the arena of contemporary smooth soul, yes, but with those little sophisticated chord changes that Prince is semi-famous for (seriously: check any guitar tab of Prince songs, they contain chords that I have never ever heard of and when I do play them I think 'how could this chord be of any use to anybody? It sounds like the noise a dog makes when it whimpers.') and with a pretty cool and sincere sounding sentiment, ensuring that that year many non-verbal men had an audio shortcut to more sex than they had bargained for in this song.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoo2KioueCQ

#328
Gilbert O'Sullivan, 'Get Down'
1973 
Everybody has a musical style which jangles their last nerve and I have to announce that mine is soft-rock/soft-disco/soft-boogie rock. This song falls headlong into all three categories, recalling Status Quo with free access to a Rhodes organ.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdd7W-jP2GQ

#916
Blue, 'If You Come Back'
2001
There's just nothing here to be funny or snooty or clever about. Boring song that has dated terribly.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG5guNz9AVU

#117
Floyd Cramer, 'On The Rebound'
1961
A cool little instrumental with a convincing bar-room atmosphere: barrelling piano, whipping violins, surfy rhythm section. Neat!
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WHUbV2uFJY

#1117
Rage Against The Machine, 'Killing In The Name'
2009
Nominated by the people as the official anti-X Factor song, lest we forget. Buying this song was a symbol to Simon Cowell that his power can be subdued and that is why this song has entirely prevented Mr. Cowell from having any success since. Irony about RATM's major label status entirely withstanding.

This song and I go farther back, to the days where my friends and I would spend every other Friday in a local rock club as the golden hits of the rapcore/nu-metal era would be played until 4am. As a consequence not only have I heard this song 1000+ times, but every parallel world version of this song as written by Spineshank, Adema, Trust Co., Fear Factory, Puddle of Mudd, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, POD, Everlast, Soil, Soilwork, Mudvayne, Amen, Alien Ant Farm, Incubus, Hed-Pe, Guano Apes, Static X, and countless other complete fucking berks who were just pointlessly angry about shit all.

OK, OK, so you might point out that Rage were a political band and therefore a little bit more conscious than the aforementioned berks and that they were attempting to shove a message into the machine in much the same way as I lauded White Town for. I'd disagree purely because the way the semiotics of teen rebellion and histrionics completely overwhelm the nobility of any potential message. This appearance at #1 might seem like a black eye on asinine pop forever, but check the charts and there's only one winner, and it isn't the people who shat themselves to buy this complete snorefest of a record.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWXazVhlyxQ

#492
Bucks Fizz, 'Land Of Make Believe' 
1982
Faint italo traces in the bassline here that grant this song by dayglo Eurovision winners Bucks Fizz a degree of weird sensuality, at least before it piles on the ersatz Abba guitars and percussive mayhem. No idea what the verse about 'nesting in your garden' is all about though.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sP_I2_E0C0

#212
Spencer Davis Group, 'Somebody Help Me'
1966
This Brummie pop-rock-soul combo fronted by Steve Winwood were pretty underrated: they churned out a few zeitgeist dancefloor shakers over their time and their songs stand the test of time. This song doesn't particularly do anything special but it sounds good doing it.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvQ-EjN8Rt0

#827
S Club 7, 'Bring It All Back'
1999
Maddeningly chirpy plastic pop for masochists and children.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PUI3TMFvNA

THE CHART PROJECT PART SIX: tonight's the night! let's give it up!

#601
Pet Shop Boys, 'Always On My Mind'
1987 
Can a song be considered a 'standard' if it was written post-1960? You don't need to answer that. If it is possible, then this song surely is a candidate. Originally a country song written in 1972 and made famous by Vegas Elvis, the song crops up at irregular intervals to remind us about an unspoken universality of pop music values. Whether performed in a low croon like Elvis, in a country fashion like Willie Nelson, or in a brash arena electropop style as featured on this particular version, the song is the star. Perhaps it could be argued that the flashy nightclub treatment is at odds with the flickering regret of the lyric, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a more modern reading than the old whiskey-soaked slow versions: the music says 'here I am in my life which has continued apace because this is the modern world and it doesn't stop for heartache' whilst the lyric says 'I am hurt' with a middle 8 that just SMACKS you between the eyes.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2aMaMkDwTA

#483
Shakin' Stevens, 'Green Door'
1981 
Shakin' Stevens is as near to a graverobber as pop has seen. Elvis was not long since dead when Shakey emerged with quiff, lip curl, similar dress sense, and music all 50s R'n'R pastiche. Imagine that in a couple of years time there is a pop star whose thing is to just jump back to the beginning of Michael Jackson's career, looking like Michael Jackson, performing songs that sound eerily similar to Jackson's early output, and that for a brief moment this whole phenomenon gets by without any kind of questioning. Not a terrible song though.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQasoWm7Kg

#274
Rolling Stones, 'Honky Tonk Women'
1969 
The more blustery and bluesy the Stones got, the less interested I became. That said, they're a good two or three years from being completely unbearable here, all the while establishing the template that would see bands like Free and AC/DC develop 40 year careers: low-slung Keef riff guitar, bass enters in the chorus to give the song a WHAM into second gear, songs about women and they no good way. It's the stuff that goes on just outside the rock band template that make this song a little more interesting: the percussion that sounds like banging biros on paintcans, and the sax player who sounds deeply troubled by a potential embolism.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kve_N8rmmQ

#757
White Town, 'Your Woman'
1997
Pop is, effectively, the artform of the the absolute majority. It is the North Korea that marginalises all dissenters for everything except the wealth that they can extract from it. It is the Borg that assimilates anything useful to its collective whilst disregarding the rest. And this majority artform is strictly controlled by a small ruling class of shareholders and directors and producers and songwriters, effectively social elites, who appease their own gods of wealth by pressing their ear to the railroad of human desire for entertainment, converting this sincere and fervent lust into money.

The experimental cannot compete or expect to overturn this because it operates with an economy of quality and a distinction of taste. 'This thing is right and that thing is wrong.' People don't like rules that they cannot easily understand. People do not like to be tricked. So pop music and popular cinema and popular journalism are the modes of communication that most people are familiar with.

So, how best to interrupt this communication or to change the message which it communicates on a daily basis? To get inside the machine. To visit North Korea. Not to marginalise it or laugh at it, but to operate from within. To sincerely appreciate the inherent beauty of the form without getting the messiness of the message into the bloodstream. And that is what Jyoti Mishra, aka White Town, has done so successfully.

'Your Woman' may reverse or even blur the gender roles of the typical love song (Mishra sings from the perspective of a woman to an errant non-gender specified partner) but he does not 'subvert' as has often been claimed. Subversion indicates derailment of common intent: this flip puts the message into the mouth of the machine - gender play is normal, gay is normal, Marxist is normal. The sleeping operator at the wheel of the machine sees the queues of people lining up to buy this sentiment and assumes that the machine is working correctly. A quiet conversation later reveals what the problem was and one week later the song is deposed of its #1 spot by a cheese-making wanker and his mates.

I've been Gilles Deleuze and my book 'Listening To Pop Music With Felix Guattari' is available in all good stores.
(10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQWt3oMids

#55
Frankie Vaughan, 'The Garden of Eden'
1957
They had some great singers in the 1950s but by golly by gee did they love to pile on the orchestration and saccharine. This one starts of all happy and spartan and just doing its thing mixing Jesus and sexy woman metaphors and soon becomes this gigantic Sands Casino stomper with the half-expectation that an elephant will come out juggling on a unicycle as 5000 strippers mount 5000 poles attached to 5000 motorbikes jumping through 5000 hoops of fire.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toIJ3Lls7jw

#846
Britney Spears, 'Born To Make You Happy'
2000
Lyrically troubling. Like Mr. Vaughan, sex and Jesus metaphors are mixed. Was she born to make God happy, or some jerk boyfriend? It's deliberately ambiguous. 'If only you were here tonight.' 'I don't know how to live without your love.' Either way, as far as giving a generation of girls some notion of self-determination and individual identity, it's a complete Shiva The Destroyer. Girls as servile, humanity as forever penitent, unable to reverse the decisions of history. Fuck that. Fuck this song. It is a really bad song, I'm not just cross at some words here.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy5cKX4jBkQ

#533
Lionel Richie, 'Hello'
1984
The music video for this ballad has become a bit of a joke, where Lionel plays an arts teacher helping kids express themselves to the extent that a blind girl makes a fairly accurate-if-chunky sculpted bust of Richie's tightly coiffed barnet. Step away from that video (the way I didn't manage to) and listen. Richie has always been a very good writer of adult-orientated music for many a year, with a fine voice that never becomes overwrought or over-burdened with a show-off desire.

Obviously when you're operating in a year when you have Black Flag destroying the country and Frankie Goes To Hollywood desperate to turn everybody in the UK gay it's quite easy to skip over the subtler aspects of how pop songwriting can be quietly transformative at a more reflective and intuitive level - at his best this is Richie's gift. 'Hello. Is it me you're looking for?' is an easy punchline for the boldness of the gambit - but what if it is? It could change your life.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ILDFp5DGA

#1069
Estelle ft. Kanye West, 'American Boy'
2008
Hey a fairly recent pop song that doesn't make me want to throw up all of innards into an ocean of discontent. Estelle plays the street-hardened wiseacre with the turned head toward the flashy American superstar making a play toward her. It's quite easy to see this as straight-up and cut from real life given the relative status of the performers and though the sentiment is never really more than the future projections caused by a serious romatic headrush, the gaiety of the melody and the straight-forward beat allow the performer's actual personalities to emerge. A minor victory.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5vxw3eijY

#1015
McFly, 'I'll Be OK'
2005
One of McFly's better efforts: a sunny guitar pop anthem that definitely recalls a sunnier and better-looking Teenage Fanclub. I realise I'm pulling a comedy thing by mentioning the hitless Teenage Fanclub every five minutes but there's obviously going to be some correlation when your DNA is 1960s guitar pop with harmonies. A tidy 3 minutes in which the earth is not shattered nor built anew but nonetheless a pleasant ride.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yle1YEjmGf0

#1102
Black-Eyed Peas, 'I Gotta Feeling'
2009
My friend Brendan (I think) once said to me: "are the Black-Eyed Peas the group that get the most reward for the least effort?" I still think about this very economically inclined question all of the time because it has some implications for a possible direction for music. There is no doubting that the music of the Black-Eyed Peas since their entry into the world of enormo-fame is incredibly simplistic: 'Boom Boom Pow', 'My Humps', 'Where Is The Love?' and this are all built on very very simplistic musical elements that could be repeated by the pre-lingual (e.g. babies).

And it is not like they are incapable of writing more complex fare: Will.i.am wrote John Legend's 'Ordinary People', so there's evidently some desire to be more base, more simple, less inclined to make the effort, because clearly it has been decided that ease of imitation is far more important than innovation (these are not necessarily criticisms, by the way, just points). This song is now ubiquitous. It is played before many different kinds of occasion where fun is expected to grease the wheel of social interaction because as the song hopes/promises 'tonight's gonna be a good night'. Now every occasion will have its triumphant song of expectation. 'I expect this will be a good piss'. 'The show you'll watch will be great'. When songs start to instruct and bully rather than hint, I am immediately suspicious. (exception to rule: 'Rise Above').
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

THE CHART PROJECT PT. 5: The rain goes on (on on and on again)

#580
Europe, 'The Final Countdown'
1986 
I shan't bother transcribing them but the lyrics for this song are complete nonsense. To be fair to Europe, English is not their first language. It is their third, behind Swedish and Keyboard-led Soft Rockish. It's a chirpy enough entrance theme for sports teams but at best it is an okay but quite mundane piece of stadium 'rock' (in inverted commas because it doesn't really rock at all) which ambiguously deals themes of relationships and space travel.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

#183
The Beatles, 'I Feel Fine'
1964
A confident and freewheeling number from a band transitioning from the clubs and 'beat combos' and toward something more original and satisfying. George Harrison's chummy lead line chugs along underneath a snappy and brief pop song. COME ON THIS IS THE BEATLES WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpMs_R3P6U

#1138
Ne-Yo, 'Beautiful Monster'
2010
It certainly wasn't force of personality that won Ne-Yo the #1 spot. This, from the strange moment when US R&B popsters were borrowing very heavily from long-established trends in French house and German techno (via Ayia Napa & Ibiza) - all filter sweeps, arpeggios, four to the floor where the beat sub-divides to indicate transition into the 'epic' portion of the song. It's a competent production but completely lacking in any form of lovability or expression. It just happens, it doesn't offend, it gets by, it will do, it will progress a scene or two.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J2dwFVZHsY

#1157
Adele, 'Someone Like You'
2011 
A song has officially happened to the Great British Public if my mum knows it. I have told her this. I said "you're a barometer for whether something is widely known." I don't think she knew what I meant but it wasn't a dig. She largely ignores music. Never listens to the radio. Her CD collection totals 30, all music she liked before I was even born. My father, a musician by trade for 45 years now, doesn't particular seem to like music much at all. Artists my parents and I share as 'likes': Roxy Music and The Beatles. She dislikes much of what I listen to and refuses to listen to the band I have played in for nearly half a decade. It's cool though, I don't particularly want to help her play Gardens of Time on Facebook.

However. Adele has happened in my parents' household. In a big way. 21 was purchased, quickly followed by 19. The lounge stereo has long been mere facade, the wiring faulty and neglected, so a new CD player was purchased merely to facilitate the listening-to of Adele's work. My mother goes out once a week with her friends: her 'getting ready music' is Adele. She prefers the stompier songs such as 'Set Fire To The Rain' and 'Rolling In The Deep' but I secretly think that she likes this song the most.

And to be fair, it is the least oblique and most direct song of the Adele singles to date. The song deals with the regrets that linger long after a relationship has ended. A universal sentiment. A universal chord sequence indicating sorrow and melancholy and the crepescule of hope. A performance containing the universal signifiers of an emotional and professional performance: starting small and personal, becoming large and inevitably universal.

And therein lies the problem: there's nothing unique about it. It is simply an execution of a well-stitched together pattern of long-established tropes. In its desire to touch the heart of everyone with a scintilla of emotional regret it fails to have any kind of likability or individual charm. It wants to touch so many hearts that it compromises on any sonic indicators of regret, musical moments where real pangs of panic and sorrow rise up and accompany the supposed sentiment. Undoubtedly Adele is a technically excellent singer but technically excellent singers are often the singers that don't understand that the emotional centre could be located in the vulnerability of the 'wrong' note or the untidy phrase.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwuLj33YyPk

#820
Mr. Oizo, 'Flat Beat'
1999 
To some 'Flat Beat' was a very mono-level piece of music that did nothing but repeat a sub-bass WHOOMP over an 808 beat. That's unfair. A closer listen reveals that there are Reichian flourishes, tiny counterpoints that pull the beat sideways and recast the monolithic low-end against jittering synth bleeps that play in the spaces created by unforgiving uniformity. It's also quite fun despite all that muso-wank I just wrote!
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv6Ewqx3PMs

#468
Barbra Streisand, 'Woman In Love'
1980
"Life is a moment in space / When the dream is gone." This is just a mess. 'Life is a moment in space'. Mixing the values of time and dimensionality in the opening line puts the listener on very shaky epistemological ground vis-a-vis dealing with the complexities of quantum theory. 'When the dream is gone'. Is Streisand arguing for solipsism despite previously arguing a quite dense quantum argument in the opening line? Yet the remainder of the lyric wants nothing to do with this bold opening gambit, leaving the listener flailing in their armoury with little other than pseudo-science and caterwauled balladeering.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ppc_dT-J5E

#204
Ken Dodd, 'Tears'
1965 
Ken Dodd is famous in the UK for being a hard-working stand-up comedian who performs marathon sets of over 4 hours in length, during which it has been known for the ambulance to make repeated trips to the venue of the performance to cart out audience members who have collapsed either from fatigue or sincere bouts of laughter fitting. He is also quite famous for having issues with the tax man. He is far less famous for his smooth orchestrated balladeering, which at least shows a side of the man rarely seen: professional, suave, technically competent, and not terribly amusing.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6gD2ZJuss

#394
Abba, 'Dancing Queen'
1976
Man, you know what is totally shit? When people go on about 'guilty pleasures' in music. That is totally bullcrap man! What is basically says is 'I know that those old white guys with the tweed elbow patches know more about music so the music they like is 'better' but I put this on because it's like the musical equivalent of a can of Irn Bru'. No! Taste is totally totally subjective! So when I say something horrible like 'Matt Cardle is a subhuman' I am just trying to be entertaining and start a conversation because that's how ideas are passed between people. So don't take it personally. Unless you're a propagater of this 'guilty pleasure' nonsense, then you should go and EAT SHIT.

Joke! See previous paragraph! Anyway. Routinely shoved into the guilty pleasure pool are Abba. Why? Because they're not a proper rock band and had a keen sensibility toward fun and the mass ear? And? They knew how to write songs and repeatedly proved this over their long and storied career. They also knew how to perform the songs and also how to do all of the above without appearing like gigantic awful jackasses. Where 'Waterloo' bashed the door down and said 'here we are!' with bright lights and zero restraint, 'Dancing Queen' is more sensuous and luxurious. It also features another key feature of music that is great (for the first in this series, please read the entry for 'Moon River'): the double chorus! Realistically the 'you are the dancing queen / feel the beat of the tambourine' is enough for most bands, but the Ulvaeus/Andersson combo cannot RESIST the 'you can dance! / you can jive' section, sending the tune stratospheric. This is songwriting, ladies and gentlemen! It is a real artform and if you can do and perform it appropriately then world can still be yours!
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s

#115
Elvis Presley, 'Wooden Heart'
1961
A funny little rinky-dink quasi-oompah number from post-army Elvis, who sings some of the original German folk song's lyrics in a Swabian dialect quite accurately to this ear. A curio if anything, one to sate the thirst of a crowd deprived of the icon that made them realise that within their loins was FIRE.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7XZwDMS0G0

#819
B*Witched, 'Blame It On The Weatherman' 
1999
Is this the last vestige of innocence in adult boy/girl groups? Aside from some mild cleavage, there is nothing overtly sexualised about the group, even in a latent sense. One of them holds a dog lovingly. They look like happy, normal people, pleased to be singing a sweeping little acoustic-pop ditty with light Eurovision style orchestration. Everything since this single in the non-instrument playing pop idiom has quite literally been rubbing genitals in the face of the listener.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LXUsQNzSL4

THE CHART PROJECT PART 4: No matter what they tell us, I know what I believe

#715
Rednex, 'Cotton-Eye Joe'
1995
The first CD I ever bought with my own money was ON A DANCE TIP VOL 3 because it had that 'Reach Up' by Perfecto All Starz on it which to my mind has lessened with age. Looking through the tracklist of said CD now there are some songs I remember fondly ('Let Me Be Your Fantasy'' by Baby D, 'Run Away' by MC Sars & The Real McCoy) and songs I don't even remember despite this being the ONLY CD I OWNED FOR A YEAR.

Rednex

Regardless, Danish country-techno tossers Rednex are the worst thing on here, on a record brimming with mediocrity. Sadly, everytime I think of Rednex I cannot help but remember their follow-up single 'Old Pop In An Oak' and it gets stuck in my head for weeks at a time. Formative years? Yes, but only of regrets.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tIMGBI6oYA

#24
Vera Lynn, 'My Son My Son'
1954
Is it possible to to criticise Vera Lynn without it appearing that you're engaging in a calculated effort to egregiously insult the dead of WW2? That might sound harsh but in my mind at least, Dame Vera is inextricably linked with wartime propaganda and practically doesn't exist outside of this arguably more important paradigm. That said, I have heard this weepie before. Our primary school did a project where we had to ask the old people at the tea dances in the cricket club across the road about the war (see!) and this song was played and all of the olds broke off to have a dance and a smooch to this. So, what does this song remind me of? It reminds me of being 9 and watching old people kissing whilst sipping orange Kia-Ora.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BTeKk36-Ys

#1120
Owl City, 'Fireflies'
2010
So when this came out the world of indie, in its desire to not enjoy music anymore and merely just POSSESS it and possess the greatest memories of it and possess the largest quantity of records regardless of quality (LOLOLOL @ Animal Collective), rose up to decry this song for kind of borrowing the aesthetic of mid-00s indie-glitchpop group The Postal Service. Well, so fucking what? Is that the best/worst you could say? Were they that good? Maybe it does bear some similarities to the sonic hallmarks of The Postal Service, and I suppose the lyrics bear Ben Gibbard's forking turn-of-phrase, and the video looks a lot like 'The District Sleeps Tonight', and yeah he does sing a little similarly and the song pays off in much the same way as 'Such Great Heights' oh wait actually this is just total plagiarism and I insulted indie people for no good reason. OH WELL.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psuRGfAaju4

#264
Fleetwood Mac, 'Albatross'
1969
INSTRUMENTAL ROCK IN THE HOUSE. This is from the era before Fleetwood Mac got good and added women to the band and started GOING THEIR OWN WAY etc. I jest slightly. This is a very uncharacteristic kind of track to get to #1 in the singles chart, a mark of being seriously popular in an era where you had to actually get off your arse and go and buy the thing. This song is heat haze, a mirage, a ship bobbing, divested of its crew mid-ocean, calm, but lost. Three guitarists all playing very carefully, a drummer just happy to add melancholy waves of cymbal and tippety-tap drums. It goes nowhere, but that's probably the point. It is a summary of placidity and of ache.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viqr6KHwJjc

"Are you SURE we're watching The Dirty Dozen?"

#367
Telly Savalas, 'If'
1975
File under WTF. Telly Savalas as singer? Not quite. This is pure spoken-word. Savalas' chocolatey-rich voice just SPEAKING calmly about a girl he loves with some generic 70s soft orchestrated rock underneath. There's nothing really remarkable about it once the novelty of fucking KOJAK SPEAKING A LOVE SONG RIGHT IN YOUR ASTONISHED FACE wears off.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J94-_w9ARX0

#1152
Matt Cardle, 'When We Collide'
2010
Indie fans rose up in horror when X Factor 2010 winner not only covered Biffy Clyro but did them the ultimate grave injustice of changing the name of the song from 'Many of Horror' to 'When We Collide'. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give this straight down the barrel to Biffy Clyro fans out there and I mean you no disrespect as human beings: the band that you love is a pile of shit.

Matt Cardle: the chef's choice

Your correspondant saw them at the Leeds Festival in 2001 and even though back then they were supposed to be 'alt-rock', there was obviously a band struggling not to write incredibly chintzy arms-aloft prog-indie desperate to emerge. And then they did. And this song was the natural conclusion of that transformation. So do NOT act surprised, tearful Biffy fan, that the X Factor machine has chewed this DREADFUL and UTTERLY MEANINGLESS song up and spat it out like something out of Ghost In The Shell because that is all it deserves. Matt Cardle is clownshoes, a mock-rock puppet, and this song is probably still beneath him.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hri715W56I&ob

#960
Black-Eyed Peas, 'Where Is The Love?'
2003
The Black-Eyed Peas were formerly a decent conscious hip-hop crew with no hits. You can hear the DNA of this in the first verse. It is quickly overwhelmed by the pseudo-ecstatic melancholy of the tune and Fergie's choruses. Banal. They're now absolutely humongous.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdcg

#944
Eminem, 'Lose Yourself'
2002
"If you had just one shot to seize everything, just one moment, would you capture it or let it slip?" This is the false dichotomy that Eminem offers in his latent support for an American dystopic reality. There is one dream and one chance, there is nothing else and you should "not miss your chance to blow." Perhaps in some instances this is true but at the advantageous end of Western capitalism is there really only one opportunity?

Of course in support of an accompanying film (8 Mile) in which the dramatic capital bound up in this version of life is exploited as Eminem's shadow self realises his one shot and is catapulted into fame. Except for the beginning of the film, which neatly depicts the character failing, ie. another opportunity. The denouement of the film presents opportunity #2. It also fast-forwards over the bits where the young Em attended school, developed linguistic skill, formed early relationships, had his ideologies tested - moments in themselves transformative and laden with opportunity. Perhaps I might be overanalysing this manifestly rubbish rap-as-triumph song to a degree unwarranted but I cannot help feel that the millions reading this will change their minds about capitalism.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97wFqZPmYn8

#531
Frankie Goes To Hollywood, 'Relax'
1984
The first of the greatest triumvirate of singles to open a career. How much of the song was down to Frankie and how much was down to Trevor Horn and the bassline provided by Norman Watt-Roy is a question for a different kind of article. Some say that pop is about "moments" and the way those moments seem to characterise the spirit of the age. If that is the case, then Holly Johnson's ebullient grunting "UHHHH!", followed by the camera cutting away to him riding on the back of a leather-clad pile of men using a tie as a choke chain, then that would basically indicate that humanity peaked in 1984 and we've been on a downward spiral ever since.

I'm sure it has been written about like this before, but Frankie were great because it ultimately boiled down to politics. Sure, the pop moment in isolation is pretty good, but one Frankie is worth 1000 Britney Spears simply because there was something greater at stake. Liverpudlian gay socialists living under the open homophobia that would lead to Section 28, under the watchful eye of southern Conservatives. Their next two singles were more transparently political. This was the holding the fire to square society's feet: banned by Radio 1, telling the press they would make Duran Duran 'lick the shit off their shoes'. The band claim it was just about sex but the sex we're having reflects the age we're having sex in. That it all seemed so dirty to so many was surely a sign that they were doing it right.
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPLrXFw76Qg

#869
Robbie Williams, 'Rock DJ'
2000
I'm 17. I work in a supermarket for £3 an hour. I stack shelves every Saturday whilst my friends are off out and partying and playing sport. The supermarket is not signed up with an official publishing house to broadcast music so the only tape we are allowed to play is one sent out by HQ featuring versions of current hits sung by a man with long grey hair and the melodies changed a little bit so they're not exactly the same. This song was the first one on the tape. This song, therefore, is me putting out the endless pallettes of bread onto the shelves, before walking 30 yards away and having a local come up to me and ask where the bread is.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylcuscJ6jQQ

#1055
Timbaland/Nelly Furtado/Justin Timberlake, 'Give It To Me'
2007
This one passed me by. I'm guessing this is from that Timbaland & guests record that had all kinds of shitty collaborations such as Timbaland & The Hives together at last? Timbaland is a pretty decent producer - there's always some subtle complexity within the rhythm section ('Get UR Freak On', for instance). The lyrics here are totally pointless - let it be stated ANY song that goes on about being 'in the club' will automatically lose points. That said, this song bubbles along prettily and the melodic shift into the choruses has a notable heft to it, though the guests are phoning it in.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgoiSJ23cSc

#632
Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers, 'Swing The Mood'
1989
A strange concept behind Jive Bunny. A really crudely-animated cartoon rabbit would feature in stock footage videos for medleys of old jazz and swing standards. In a way it was a way of visualising songs that didn't have the opportunity to make it to MTV, but in reality who was screaming out for this in 1989? Peter Hook told me personally that Manchester was the happening thing then. What a dick.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc9Mdt6hjaE

#300
Dawn, 'Knock Three Times'
1971
The kind of soft-rock orchestral production that calls into mind the colour brown and velour flares and deep pile carpets. Fodder for Smooth FM. I did hear a cover version of this by Kato Kaelin, who was a witness at the OJ Simpson trial, who allegedly heard Simpson 'knocking' three times, which I suppose is worth a chuckle. AT THE EXPENSE OF TWO DEAD INNOCENTS. SHAME ON YOU.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Jvsbcxunc

#53
Guy Mitchell, 'Singing The Blues'
1957
Last time Mitchell was reviewed in these pages, he was all about the colour red. Now he's got the second part of his 'own ALL the primary colours' partwork and ready to move on in the world. In-keeping with the theme, this is a very blue-eyed rendition of a country song complete with gallstone inducing whistled melody which prevents this otherwise decent song from being listened to ever again.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vubJL1BbBn8

#606
Pet Shop Boys, 'Heart'
1988
From the Pet Shop Boys' run of excellent singles. Chris Lowe (synth) opts for the rarely-used 'human voice' keyboard setting, Neil Tennant does that dry, nearly-spoken Neil Tennant thing. This probably suffers by dint of being released amongst a glut of excellent and memorable song -  there's enough here to provide ballast for 100 lesser bands to sail along for 5 years on. The middle 8 is pretty funny, just a robotic voice repeating the word "BEAT", deconstructing the word HEARTBEAT from inside, playfully ironising the criticism regarding synth music having no heart. Very arch, very PSB, very good.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K19j1aeREw

from the video of 'Heart'

#138
Ray Charles, 'I Can't Stop Loving You'
1962 
Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is from the Ray Charles country album and subsequently re-released as an A-side having previously appeared as a B-side in the late 1950s. Ray Charles is a very difficult person to dislike and I shan't even try. All I am going to say is that I really don't like Ray Charles' country exercises and am going to pass on any further critique.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFeB7zTGesk

#896
S Club 7, 'Don't Stop Movin'' 
2001
Another song whose title can be thought of as a North Korean governmental punishment. DO NOT STOP MOVING. YOU, IN SECTION C OF THE CITY OF CRUSHED DREAMS, YOU HAVE STOPPED MOVING. COMMENCE MOVEMENT OR FACE THE TOTAL CONTROL ZONE. Thinking of it in these terms help forget that it is a soft-disco pop atrocity that people of my age still dance to in clubs at the weekend without a shred of dignty to their collective name.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2q3FJTFgtk

#731
Michael Jackson, 'Earth Song'
1995
"What about killing fields? / Is there a time?" Just as much time as you have to commodify misery and preach at us you miserable SHIT. CAN SOMEONE WAVE THEIR ARSE AT HIM PLEASE? "Earth Song" was accompanied by a lavish music video shot on four geographical regions." AND I BET YOU FLEW TO EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE. What a massive pompous arse.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAi3VTSdTxU

#1025
Shayne Ward, 'That's My Goal'
2005
Conveyor-belt balladeering from X Factor winner Ward who would be flushed down the dumper by an uncaring and fickle audience desperate to anoint a new spiritual king every time they turn on the TV.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhHY3sA8G-0

#380
David Bowie, 'Space Oddity'
1975
1975? I always wondered why in the video he performed it as Aladdin Sane even though the song was released in 1969. Somewhere along the line it was re-released for reasons best known to people at the time, presumably it fit with the aesthetic that Bowie was touring with and needed some material to pad out the gimmick. Something I only just noticed about this song is the dual vocals performed by Bowie at sections, one voice a fairly standard reading of the lyric, the other quite tense and paranoid.

This must be one of the weirdest songs in our general western collective consciousness, right? If someone is having a scattish day and generally forgetting things, it's not uncommon for 'normal' people to say 'ground control to Major Tom' as if to say 'wake up, get with it'. Nobody really writes songs like this anymore, do they? Songs that are just weird and unique and yet there's a chance your mum might like them. Strange. Maybe all the ideas have been used up.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYMCLz5PQVw

#290
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, 'Tears of a Clown'
1970
Poor Smokey, always crying. We tracked the tracks of his tears to here. Soul is on its way out, funk and disco are on their way in, but Smokey won't go down without a fight. His rich, keening voice is the star here, no mean feat given the stellar song-writing and backing band. It's always a pleasure to listen to such excellent songs but less so to write about them given the ubiquity of writing about them on the open market. After all, which critic doesn't like Smokey? Probably a jobless one. Go on, critics, call Smokey Robinson a talentless wanker and try and keep your job. I dare you.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kxlZDOHeQ

#196
Sandie Shaw, 'Long Live Love'
1965
MUCH better than 'Puppet On A String'. Take a look at the video too. Cult popstar potential, never smiling even during a jaunty TV performance that 100000s of girls would have self-mutilated for a like opportunity.

(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=118RJuRTzU0

#552
Sister Sledge, 'Frankie'
1985
Now this is bad music. It sounds like a Sesame Street backing track fronted by Sister Sledge. There is no power behind it at all and everything about it - the production, the melody, the sentiment, the lyric, the perfomances - is completely insipid. So unremarkable. How did this get to #1? It must have been tied in with a cereal promotion or something like that. Ugh.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tl-c_puzbM

#701
D:Ream, 'Things Can Only Get Better'
1994
Two very good reasons to hate this song. i. It was the song that Labour played at their 1997 election victory. This would not be so bad in itself had that so-called socialist government not gone into two illegal wars and killed thousands of innocent people. The song is indelibly linked to that celebration and those wars are literally two steps away from this song. ii. Dr. Brian Cox, TV scientist, is often referred to as some kind of 'rock and roll scientist' because he's got a mop-top haircut and played keyboard in D:Ream. That's KEYBOARD. The wimpiest instrument. In D:REAM. The wimpiest band. That isn't rock and roll. If there's a dude in his lab who is all 'yeah, I hate music', then that guy is more rock and roll.

Objectively the song is a bit annoying but it's just a sweet love song bit of fluff, totally meaningless.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-ai9HuR60

#798
Boyzone, 'No Matter What'
1998
Tempting to read this as a Nazi manifesto: "No matter what they tell us / no matter what they do / no matter what they teach us / what we believe is true." The omission of what it actually is that Boyzone believe and devote 12 verses to defending is canny. In fact, it's apposite. Boyzone believe in nothing. Not in a Nietzschean way, but in a way that offers banality as a standard to aspire to. So when nasty critics kick them with their mean-spirited and accurate barbs about the band's ineffectuality at raising passion in anyone, they simply rise above, much as Henry Rollins did. Rollins rose above banality in the name of art. Boyzone rise above art in the name of banality. They are the twin towers of constant diametric opposition.

Also: why does the song open with Stephen Gately breathing the nonsense lyric 'chicki-chee-ha-ha?' It has been a source of bafflement for 14 years.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eul_Vt6SZY