#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
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