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 Pt. 2: do the things that lovers do!

#724
Take That, 'Never Forget'
1995
The further we are away from this song, we realise that it was much less universal and more straight autobiography. 'We're still so young but we hope for more.' They would all go on to new projects: solo careers, DJing, acting in Channel 4's 'Killer Net'. 'We're not invincible', they also sing, Robbie Williams' foot half out of the door. 'Safe from the arms of disappointment for so long'. All the members would come to understand this cruel mistress in the coming decades before their reunion.

This, the penultimate #1 of Take That Mk 1, contains a chorus that is instant, uplifting, and fairly undeniable. However, around the edges it is a little rougher than memory allows for. The lyrics are mostly hubristic, anticipating a simple step between various aspects of gargantuan fame as if it were merely a matter of self-belief. Pomp-rock musical-theatre maestro Jim Steinman mans production: presumably being responsible for the alarmingly chintzy child choir intro and outro, as well as a general tenor only raised a couple of notches above 'muzak'.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoO_1FFr56k&ob


#397
Showaddywaddy, 'Under The Moon Of Love'
1976
Every April, my mother's workplace sit down and decide where they would like to spend their Xmas dinner together. In April. You did read that correctly. They used to favour the former home of the Salford City Reds rugby club (The Willows) for their dinner + star combos. Sometimes it would be an Elvis act. Sometimes it was EDWIN FUCKING STARR (!). Often it was Showaddywaddy. A high-energy and melodic septet with catchy songs, their multi-coloured outfits, jokes + music shtick continues to delight audiences even in 2012, long after The Willows was condemned to rubble.

Sadly, and crucially, they were not very good at all. At a molecular level, this song mixes soul, doo-wop, and even a feint hint of rockabilly, but with such saccharine and mono-level abandon that it sounds like a stuck record after a mere 8 bars. Second listenings, though preferable for this project, were simply not possible.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N01Ki81lGew

#541
Jim Diamond, 'I Should Have Known Better'
1984
The first song that I had no prior knowledge of before this countdown. Though this is a sentiment ("I am hurt from this ill-fated relationship and possibly I am at fault") and a series of chords that we have all heard before, nothing about this song screams 'I AM A NUMBER ONE SINGLE FROM THE MID 1980s'. It is relatively understated and produced against the fads of the day. Diamond's vocals propel the song through the emotional waters, the song serene but for an occasional fretless bass flutter. Not bad.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af3G2cfYayY

#6
Guy Mitchell, 'She Wears Red Feathers'
1953
We're still pre-Elvis and rock'n'roll and Bill Haley and we're in post-war austerity, just about. A flash of underwear above the waistline can still shame a gentleman to his social disgrace. Here, Mitchell sings a quaint ditty about funny old colonialism where a London banker seduces an island girl who wears the eponymous red feathers and a 'hooly-hooly' skirt. It's pretty lame, though it manages to raise a smile by dint of its oldness and naive outlook. If you watch a lot of old films, you will have heard this a million times: I had never heard it before this project, yet it feels predictable, all camp entendres and censor-baiting eyebrows.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zqzvc7iyDg

#381
Billy Connolly, 'D.I.V.O.R.C.E.'
1975
The famous comedian parodies Tammy Wynette. This is just average Jongleur's opening act material. Is this the first comedy routine to get to #1?
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzZzGxReXmo

#1068
Duffy, 'Mercy'
2008
Remember what I said about Olly Murs and The Mark Ronson Effect wherein 'soul music revival' is just shorthand for 'having classic values'? I didn't use those exact words but that is more or less what I meant. Anyway, this song is a bit like that. Duffy has a pleasant enough voice but the masochistic edge to the lyric sours things a little.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ZEVA5dy-Y&ob

#9
Frankie Laine, 'I Believe'
1953.
A smoochy, weepy, schmaltzy number from an era that had not yet had sex beyond the missionary position and were still only getting dial-up at 48 baud. The shadow of God looms large over this song ("I believe that someone in the great somewhere hears every word") - effectively a pop idiom version of Cecil F. Alexander's 'All Things Bright & Beautiful'. It is brief, making its point before disappearing. If only it were the only time it would appear on the chart...
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDMYMbj8_4A

#504
Captain Sensible, 'Happy Talk'
1982
A cover version of a song from South Pacific by a member of The Damned that didn't even sing not only doesn't sound like #1 material: it doesn't even sound terribly appealing. It would be tempting to call this song 'ironic' and 'subversive', given that Sensible was a figurehead of 'punk', in all of its perceived nihilism and depravity and that the song remains a solid place within the established canon of 'old people'.

In reality, Sensible was quite given to mass appeal and music that reached beyond the parameters of the punk sandbox, into colourful material with a wider purview: being the resident musician on ITV kids' show Top Banana and re-recording the Big Break theme tune. Backing group Dolly Mixture keep the melody strict whilst Sensible's bare-bones drum-machine and untrained vocals lend a song damaged by the seachange in youth freedom a playful, heartfelt edge.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF2ImyQjzyc

#348
ABBA, 'Waterloo'
1974
Is this the greatest entrance to the public consciousness in the history of all music? Nobody really knows what the first instance of knowing about The Beatles or The Stones was; they were written about and they were heard of by hipsters here and there and then a year later everybody knew both bands. Abba's insertion into mass-mind is definite, placeable, quantifiable. It is Brighton, 1974. The event is Eurovision. Agnetha and Anna-Frid stride forward with the ease of two girls approaching an Ibiza bar in an evening. "My my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender!", they sing, with easy confidence in the direction of the metaphor. The blonde one is in a sapphire-blue satin pant-suit with silver space boots. The curly brown-haired one has stolen all of the beads from the pensioners at the sea-front. They sing in unison rather than harmony, doubling the power behind the melody.

Up to this point Eurovision had been part of a British self-belief building programme that confirmed one third of a holy trifecta of national superiority: those Europeans can't do food, humour, or music like we Brits. But our stand-up comedians were inveterate racists, our food was spiceless and bland, and now our music was being shown up for the joyless plodfest it had become - and in our own backyard! Is it any coincidence that we would enter the European Economic Council that very year? For this to work, you have to assume that Sweden were also in it as well, which they were not.

The songwriting is peerless here. Has any band before or since announced themselves so strongly as being richly talented in all the marketable departments whilst seeming so natural and lovable into the bargain? I think not. 'Waterloo' is a masterpiece, and yet it is not even the best Abba song.
(8)


#1062
Sean Kingston, 'Beautiful Girls'
2007
When I first heard this, I thought it was a joke. I could not take my focus from the 'suicidal, suicidal' part of the refrain. It is a serious song, sampling a butchered version of 'Stand By Me' by Ben E. King. Kingston does not believe that relationships with women can work because beautiful women make him want to kill himself. THIS WAS A NUMBER ONE SONG FOR WEEKS. And yet people consider rock 'depressing'????
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrTz5xjmso4&ob


#628
Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson, & The Christians, 'Ferry Across The Mersey'
1989.
A charity single for the Hillsbrough disaster. I can't rate this really. It's not a great version of the song, that's all I can say, but for a good cause.
(n/a)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV-oyZP-0o8

#789
All Saints, 'Under The Bridge' / 'Lady Marmalade'
1998
By the release of this double-A single, All Saints were riding the crest of a wave that would last until their sixth single ('Pure Shores'). Established as a multi-national, multi-ethnic, and allegedly 'better at feminism' version of Spice Girls (e.g. they only exposed cleavage rather than leg as well), their debut and follow-up singles grabbed the commercial ear well. They would later marry idle rich rock stars and cough out an unbroken stream of unmitigated filth (the film Honest, the Appleton record) whilst compounding the notion that females in bands can't get along by, well, not getting along. Both sides of this single are covers, the A-side trumping the AA-side insofar as it is marginally less pointless. Some dated 'scratching' effect that cancels out half of the original guitar riff ensures 'Under The Bridge' doesn't blindly follow the Chili Peppers' version: 'Lady Marmalade' anticipates the Aguilera/Mya version to come by hamming up the hen party cacklefest elements to the highest level of the dial.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bzKO8kNUhI / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm_3MXb5ClI

#908
Bob The Builder, 'Mambo #5
2001
You can't really insult charity or childrens' songs without appearing like a gigantic killjoy. They're not competing in the same way. A #1 chart placing is a like a 'best trier' award. However, we can still reflect the song and its quality in the mark that we give it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XerLpcnkVVk
(2)

#919
Enrique Iglesias, 'Hero'
2002

A ubiquitous pop hit of the era of my own personal anti-pop virulence. A power-ballad laden with cliches and platitudes. As a formula exercise, it does everything machinic perfection: the first chorus rises up, gives way a moment of silence before ushering in the first snare hit. The building blocks are simple and familiar, but stitched together with such gossamer thread that we can't see the invisible manipulative hand of pop familiarity lulling us into acquiescence. Pop as anaesthetic, a theme I feel that will develop throughout this project, I expect.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koJlIGDImiU&ob

#565
Billy Ocean, 'When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going'
1986
You have disembarked the aeroplane at the Carribbean airport and you are feeling that warm Sargassan breeze kissing your neck and some employed local lady who is nonetheless doing a very good job of looking pleased to see you greets you by name and wishes you a pleasant holiday. Your partner squeezes your hand and tells you that this will be the best 3 weeks of your life. This song emerges from the airport and you smile and look forward to your first beer on the beach.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Aj0sInq5A