(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
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