i am part 13 of the chart project and i would like to say hello

#11
Mantovani and His Orchestra, 'Moulin Rouge'
1953
If cinema has taught me a few things it's that Moulin Rouge is a place of sexual thrills and exploratory hallucinogenic weirdness in basques and stockings. And if cinema has taught that then it is therefore true, so why is Mr Mantovani attempting to insinuate that Moulin Rouge is actually a place of dreamy but ultimately quite staid intrumental orchestration featuring a Gitanes-smoking accordionist to replicate the feel of France on heroin? Why would he lie like that?

Seriously, why?
(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUF0Pf4ZAiw
  

#181
Supremes, 'Baby Love'
1964
Oh wow the lyric 'why you do me the way you do'! I thought that relative grammatical quandary was recent but here it is in 1964 on this totally amazing record by Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson and written by the lawyers over at Holland-Dozier-Holland and musically backed by the irresistable Funk Brothers. There are only a few stories in pop but ultimately I think Goethe had it right when he said "everything has been thought of before. The problem is to think of it again" because there is, in reality, infinite mileage in the 'crummy boyfriend' lyric. A fine example of that thing we call 'humans doing music' all around.  
(9)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23UkIkwy5ZM
 

#597
Rick Astley, 'Never Gonna Give You Up'
1987
Newton-le-Willows is a town whose identity is based on confuson. A small town that sits in historic Lancashire whilst acting as a commuter town for the Greater Manchester workforce, though its proximity to St Helens (which identifies with Liverpool and Merseyside) and Warrington (which is at the northern gateway to Cheshire and her rolling fields and footballer homes) means that the burgh is eternally confused about its civic identity and position in the world.

The town proved too confused for its most single-minded native, one Mr. Rick Astley. He is NEVER going to give you up. He will NEVER let you down. No fingers in several pies for Astley. He knows what he likes. Music? Pop with an RnB lilt to showcase my voice please. Lyrics? Earnest and memorable. Style? Noir insurance salesman. Hair? Jet age. Who better to solve Newton-le-Willows existential geo-crisis? A man of such hard-headed direction - and diction - surely could weigh in at tables of international diplomacy, such is his statesmanlike appeal. But have the townspeople asked him to do anything other than switch on their Xmas lights? Have they fuck.

Also this song used to make Bill Hicks phenomenally irate because he doesn't understand music in a more relational and less hierarchical manner, the dead idiot.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

#259
Mary Hopkin, 'Those Were The Days'
1968
Quite a bold manouevre to render a Russian folk song in the Western pop idiom, but one that paid off given its featuring in this round-up, the dream of many a Welsh pop singer in the 1960s. Laced with folksy strings and lamentations in the verses before shifting into Full Cossack dancing mode in the choruses. An entertaining and enduring novelty, approaching almost 100 years of ubiquity.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg

#671
George Michael and Elton John, 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me'
1991
An element of mantle-handing in the pantheon of sophisticated UK popular music here as Michael updates John's 1974 hit; a ballad writ of despair and rejection that cleverly/annoyingly can appear as if an appeal to the listener's sense of charity: the pair originally duetted this at Live Aid and then renewed their musical association for this version which benefitted ten organisations in education, health, etc. As a song it doesn't press all the buttons, rather waiting gamely for the giant chorus of renewal and hope for everyone on earth to sing along. Status of sun: not gone down on either some 21 years later. A victory then.
(5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKqMNDoR4o

#1139
Flo Rida ft. David Guetta, 'Club Can't Handle Me'
2010
Inferring wildly I may be but I think that the title means "I am currently looking so physically excellent and feeling so jolly sprightly that other people in the night spot I will be visiting will be impressed, jealous and desiring of sex with me" rather than "I am quite literally in a state of being unable to be handled by a building that has no hands or perhaps a defunct UK pornographic magazine or a biscuit that was a staple of most children's lunchboxes in the 1990s". The song: dated and anemic dance fare untroubled by wit or anything to say.
(2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgM3r8xKfGE

#125
Shirley Bassey, 'Reach For The Stars' / 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain'
1961
As much as I find Ms. Bassey an entertaining and endearing presence in the world of light entertainment for over half a century, it is songs like these that make me feel uninspired. Side A is a treacly orchestrated ballad written by an Austrian. Side AA, culled from Sound of Music - famously taking place in Austria, is an orchestrated treacly ballad. Bassey gives it the Full Bassey on both; wonderful enunciation and clarity and control with no shortage of power. A technical masterclass, if little else.
(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ1dSesX4tc


#861
Sonique, 'It Feels So Good'
2000
Coffee-table music: music exhibiting similar qualities to coffee-table books, works which gain their aura from recently hip phenomena but packaged as a sophisticated high-end mass appeal product designed not so much for the engagement with but the utilisation as a status symbol and signifier of cool; soon to be forgotten, artless, stilted, dated, contextualised incorrectly.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYW1YmfOHIM

#638
Band Aid II, 'Do They Know Its Christmas?'
1989
Maintaining this blog's policy of not rating singles conceived for charity here. Hard to believe that people bought this the second time around, though it does update the roster of singers and offer a light programmed drum machine.
(n/a)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_oz1-2mq14

#922
Gareth Gates, 'Unchained Melody'
2002
For two months in 2001 we, the British nation, were hooked on the Gareth Gates story. A nascent talent show - Pop Idol - had arrived to seek that one future unit shifter in chief in the wake of a successful group-search format named Popstars (which gave us Girls Aloud, lest we forget). Gareth Gates was the show's curio and star, if not the eventual winner: a boy in transition to manhood who could not articulate himself in speech owing to a particularly troubling stammer, but able to command articulation beyond the mere construct of words with his melancholic singing voice. It was gripping stuff with a very British ending: he became famous but saddled with piss-poor material (or, like this, songs we've heard a million times over and NEVER need to hear again), his affliction was fought, he had sex with many famous women before appearing in musical theatre. Whilst hardly the greatest triumph, it must be viewed by Gates as an ascent.
(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0EBj68dlak

#435
Gloria Gaynor, 'I Will Survive'
1979
Can I take this moment to apologise to my friend Jude for playing this at his wedding? So carried away was I on its promise of floor-trembling disco hi-hat and waves of soaring strings that I forgot all about its generally dour and post-relationship sentiment.

One of my earliest memories regards this song. My dad used to work in a care home and would organise the Xmas entertainment for the residents (usually himself singing a few ballads for the oldies). On a year which I, for some reason, attended (being some 65 years short of the mean age of the audience) they had two girls doing baton-twirling to this song. As a wee nipper desperate for attention I became so blindly annoyed that my parents and the old people were watching the girls with their amazing skills and not me with my adorable Will Sergeant fringe that I projected 18 years of piss and vinegar against this song and all baton-twirling related activities.
(8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I

#1112
JLS, 'Everybody In Love'
2009
Of all pop music from the point where I stopped paying close attention (let's say 2007 onward) I think that JLS are in my top three artists. And it's not because one of them has a tattoo of Peterborough Cathedral and another one takes time out to talk to young people forced into the position of caring for an aging or ill parent based on his own personal experiences, but entirely on merit. Sure, they're overstyled and edgeless and could rightly be accused of being a bit bland in the persona department. Regardless, whoever supplies them with material knows exactly what they're doing writing fat-free pop structures, as the group flip between unshowy unison vocalising and some crafty minor-key harmonies.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSryWcRD_tw

#178
Herman's Hermits, 'I'm Into Something Good'
1964
The human ability to recognise pattern and structure and intent and then replicate it in a multitude of languages is unparalleled, surely: no sooner was the pleasing template of good time rock music laid down by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and then later Buddy Holly and The Beatles that the entirety of contemporary pop music was trading on this currency alone. Memorable and derivative from nose to tail, though enjoyable.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxDh2sYQRpo


#529
Flying Pickets, 'Only You'
1983
By my estimation only two a capella songs have gone to #1 in the UK and they were both by bands publicly espousing hardline leftist views, making it a more successful genre for getting under the skin of the public consciousness than punk music. This, a cover of Yazoo's debut single, is an entertaining piece which expands the tightly wound electronics of the original into an expansive, ethereal ocean of melody and calm.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F139hh2LPz0

#478
Bucks Fizz, 'Making Your Mind Up'
1982
A song more about visual impact than musical: anybody who knows this song remembers the famous Eurovision-winning set piece where, upon singing the lyric "and if you wanna see some more", the two gents would rip off the skirt of the two females - who were thankfully wearing an extra skirt, which strikes me as wholly impractical on paper but a well-judged decision in practice. Up-tempo E-number pop that doesn't outstay any welcome but doesn't change the course of any history.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4-lKMGII_k

die chart projekt 11: warum ist meine mind?

(patience wearing thin, will pick it up soon)

#321
Lieutenant Pigeon, 'Mouldy Old Dough'
1972
Of all songs that have gone to #1 I would like to wager that this is the song that is most unlikely to ever do so again. Of course, it is more-or-less a novelty song, and novelty songs are very much attached to their era in which they are considered a novelty. The 40 years that have elapsed since this song ascended the charts to now have stripped whatever comic corona was attached to this hit, leaving very much a wave of bafflement as to what exactly the joke was and at whom it was aimed.

The track begins innocuously enough with a military fife (or reedy instrument with similar soldiering qualities) and snare imitating a parade ground march, before a sidelong collapse into a long and slow boogie section that calls to mind Chas and Dave without the vocals, musicianship, or wit. The song just lurches aimlessly, its lyrics half-hearted ('take it away, dirty old man, moldy old dough'), plodding anemically back to the start and around again. The more it is heard, the more maddening it becomes because whatever the joke was has now been lost in time, leaving only a really weird and ramshackle piano-jam that would barely pass muster opening up for Status Quo. And yet in this amateurishness and half-arsedness, there is hope that this somehow represents a multi-faced universe chart wherein any old toss can climb above the scrapheap and plant its flag in the ground.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy32skBSHs0

#805
Spacedust, 'Gym & Tonic'
1998
More Ibiza toss, we've covered what that means. Not worth dissection, the song just does not stand up at all.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6RQbhNQ6ko

#766
Gary Barlow, 'Love Won't Wait'
1997
Gary Barlow gets lauded in these terms by the majority of critics: he might be a Tory and a bit of a dick but he can really write a song. Largely I have agreed with this analysis. However, reapproaching some of the early Take That numbers alongside this particularly cruddy number has granted the realisation that Barlow really does not (or at least did not) have any ear for sounds that are 'timeless'. His chords and melodies are often at worst perfunctory and at best enlivening. Even his lyrics scan from time to time. However, the production, a key element of how a song sounds (certainly the most underrated) is quite far from the mark: ugly muzak synths, scratchy thin funk guitar that even wine-bar bands would reject as being 'too Eurovision', and cold MIDI elements that tie this song squarely to 1998 forever.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7kHpSTs0uo

#359
Ken Boothe, 'Everything I Own'
1974
A pleasant and unshowy rocksteady reggae song with melodies that clearly foreshadow the likes of Aswad and UB40. The instrumental break in the middle is notable and funny for building expectation toward a solo and then deciding against it.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5nzZy2LFE0

#25
Rosemary Clooney, 'This Ole House'
1954
A jaunty and thankfully upbeat number from the decade that slumbered longest.

OK, I wrote that sentence four days ago. Since then I have had a few things to do, but I honestly couldn't find much of interest to write. An analogy: I like to do a bit of running. Recently I decided to run from where I live in Wigan to a friend's house about 21 miles away in Manchester. I knew that beforehand it would be difficult but running is about long-term benefit and well-being, and I knew that afterward I would not regret it. During the run, after around only 6 miles, not only was I doubting the benefit of the run, but the whole pathway of life that had brought me to these kinds of decisions and actions. It was difficult and the rewards were not immediately apparent and I was tired and running out of motivational tactics, yet somehow I felt an invisible hand pushing me along, forcing me to finish.

So forgive me if I coast the next couple of miles and stop into the shops to get a drink because the next few songs are boring and I need to gather up my strength for a push. Did I mention that chart music isn't my thing yet?
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nstn4Wscl1w

#545
Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson, 'I Knew Him So Well'
1985
Sappy power-ballad with Vangelis synths and hideous over-singing. Is this from musical theatre? It sounds like the song a leading lady would sing as the leading man goes off to sail or something.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeMk7B46xg8

#385
Four Seasons, 'December '63'
1976
Fucking hell I always thought this song was called 'Oh What A Night', putrid bilious arse-end of disco's rotting cocaine corpse. Every corpuscle and strand of DNA is screaming to turn this off.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8QFNrTq9oo

#782
Usher, 'You Make Me Wanna'
1998
Usher is at his best when he sings R&B that is edged with melancholy, rather than attempting to work up a sex-lather on the dancefloor. This, his first hit, is one of the good kind of tracks, a tasteful sample of a minor-key acoustic guitar fluttering ambivalently, cutting through a mix of slightly over-sung backing vocals and generic beats. Hindsight does not scream 'a star is born' given better first efforts by many contemporaries, but heck, he's done it.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQRzrnH6_HY

#406
Kenny Rogers, 'Lucille'
1977
Aside from being surprised when country songs get to #1, this song just provides a big mental blank like this: _____________________ _________________________________ _______________________________ _________________ ______________________ ________________ ______. Rogers' longevity is baffling. An unremarkable voice and an everyman charm have been the preserve of many a journeyman, so why the massive fame and the chicken restaurants?
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKDFKRTdlo

#475
Joe Dolce Music Theatre, 'Shaddup You Face'
1981
Weird novelty hit from this Australian-based, American-born, Italian-acting guy - the music is all corny Sicilian restaurant and the lyrics are a bit silly and it's just a bit of fun, nothing to see here.

What's more interesting is that Dolce had a legitimate career as protest singer in Australia - singing a song called 'Boat People' about the treatement of Vietnamese migrants in Australia. I can't imagine he did it in this Dolmio-style waiter-voice, otherwise that would have been a mite insensitive. What journey set him sail on this path?
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFacWGBJ_cs

LIVE! Stewart Lee.

Stewart Lee
The Lowry, 29th April 2012

The comedian Stewart Lee is a comedian that I like the comedy of TIMING IN COMEDY IS ESSENTIAL and I think that his comedy is an interesting mix of structure and timing and bitterness but he absolutely does not tell jokes TIMING. He will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians and will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians will repeat pieces of information and mock the implied cultural logic of other comedians but do you see how when I did it (TIMING!) then it was really boring and you got annoyed? He does it and 95% of people will still get bored but the other 5% will laugh. All of that 5% are in the house tonight and repetition is another thing his comedy uses.

As a quasi-Marxist who will probably look like the collapsed remnant of several pop stars of my era I will not mention that Stewart Lee looks like Gene Vincent on crisps that is ardently political as well. Stewart Lee is subtly arguing a leftist point of view and I fully expect or even demand given a certain level of beer that his next show be called STEWART LEE'S COLLECTIVISED FARMING CO-OPERATIVE or STEWART LEE'S FIVE YEAR PLAN or perhaps even STEWART LEE WILL DEFEND THE MOTHERLAND WITH RECOURSE TO DIDACTIC AND EXPLOSIVE CINEMATIC TECHNIQUES THAT ACTUALLY MOST REGULAR CITIZENS WILL FAIL TO UNDERSTAND. The last would work best because it is truer. Reptition! Timing!

What does he hate? He says: other comedians named Russell, the dilapidation and homegeneity of the UK high street, Twitter, you, some people who insult him on the internet, the audience he has accrued in the wake of being a more famous comedian of comedy in the last 10 years where his comedic comedy-style comic parody with words as well has been on the television. In reality and according to the fundamental(ist???????) logic of the comedy stylings of the comedian Stewart Lee he does not hate anyone, even the business man in his suit and tie (a reference bordering on oblique very much in keeping with the Stewart Lee phenomenon sweeping up and down UK pubs and clubs) because he wants society to be made of carpet remnants. Hence his show title: CARPET REMNANT WORLD. Timing?

Where are the jokes asks the 95%? Stewart Lee he no Bernard Manning of the racism. Bernard was timing in human form. Stewart eats up time like a hungry clock. Bernard would say 'jokes up your mother-in-law's bum'. Stewart would say 'no jokes'. Jokes are beneath him and beyond him. He cannot tell a joke to save his life. His body, sick from operations, will not allow him to tell a joke. That is why his crowd and I love him. He loves people and loves comedy by hating people and telling no jokes with timing. Timing. Timing. And repetition. And structure. And cadence. And repetition. And hate. And timing. And love. And love. And love. And love. And love. And a man with a mind made out of those hole reinforcers you can buy for ring-binding. And repetition.

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

The Chart Project: Part 1

Part one is only brief. Later editions will contain 10-50 reviews at a time.


#460.
Don McLean, 'Crying'
1984.
The least-known of Canadian crooner McLean's 'big three' is a cover of the timeless large-spectacled one known as Roy Orbison. For half of its duration it is doggedly faithful to the original, a forlorn lament in which the song's protagonist leaks discharge from his eyes without cessation. McLean later goes off-piste a little with swelling strings and a goofily-overblown falsetto remniscent of the excellent and goofily-overblown songs of Robin Gibb, whom I always felt was held back by his be-bearded siblings in the Brothers Gibb, or 'Bee Gees'. There is simply not enough palpable vocal quivering in music.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpQmrUxwiF8

#1009.
Tony Christie ft. Peter Kay, '(Is This The Way To) Amarillo?'
2005.

This is a joyful and sweet song. Christie was an excellent pop tenor of his era, which was much before the 2005 revival of this song for the UK charity Comic Relief. What it is not, however, is a comedy or 'novelty' song. This is the Peter Kay effect. His face, mugging along with various British celebrities, in accompaniment with this song has ensured an enduring legacy as novelty. Britain is now a visual culture, so the opening bars recall Kay (who does not perform on the record, only its promotional clip) and his gurning more than it does any anticipation of Christie's versatile performace. It seems churlish to quibble when this simple equation has raised money to aid domestic and internation charity projects though.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqLLDZvbG-U

#1180.
Olly Murs, 'Dance With Me Tonight'
2011.
This desequencing of the chronology does not allow me to talk about The Mark Ronson Effect with adequate recourse to its creeping malignancy over prior years. Essentially it is a re-tooling of the signifiers of Motown and soul music: energetic mid-tempos, sharp suits, tight structures, & universal-sounding lyrics – but with none of the substance: the history of societal oppression and the performers who spent years paying dues. The digitisation of this music led to it becoming ersatz and reduceable to a mere pop trope that is audio shorthand 'party time'.

Mr. Murs appeared on the UK star-search format 'X Factor'. His 'thing' was that he was a local everyman with a winning smile and cheerily awful dance. His role in this song is practically incidental.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3EG4olrFjY&ob

#1154
Bruno Mars, 'Grenade'
2011.
This song is about a man with the biggest martyr complex possible. In the opening verse he establishes that the dramatic subject, an errant female companion, has left. The signs were there from the start. The first time they kissed, her eyes were open. "Why were they open?!" asks Mars, not unreasonably, though perhaps not establishing why obstructed ocular organisms equate with a more sincere kiss. From this low start, Mars establishes a lengthy list of things that he would do for this girl: e.g. catch the titular grenade, take a bullet through the brain, jump in front of a train - and in a chilling denouement to this chorus - she will NOT do the same.

Well, Bruno, I am guessing that is because she is a fairly reasonable person. It seems that she simply was not that into you in the first instance. It wouldn't be remiss to presume that from your desire to pursue high levels of risk that you were probably a bit high pressure to begin with, so she strung you along a bit, hoping that you would go on tour so she could move on with her life. Mars' piety is accompanied by a very generic formulaic hi-gloss pop gronk and his superlative proclaimations are made in a shrill and unappealing whinny.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR6iYWJxHqs&ob


#72
Vic Damone, 'On The Street Where You Live'
1958

Who among us has not had that stomach full of butterflies in the knowledge that the object of our affections is even only POSSIBLY nearby? It is a strange and abstract feeling and often its representation in art falls short. "And oh! The towering feeling / just to know somehow you are near / the overpowering feeling / that any second you may suddenly appear!" The temptation to read this as a stalker's manifesto must be resisted as Damone manages to simultaneously convey the sense of wonder and sensational overload at the THOUGHT of this love and the clumsy dry-mouthed reality of the love's appearance. This is a daffy little number that calls to mind a young Scott Walker somehow transplanted into the fantasy segment of Mary Poppins.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNwlc8F7wOQ

A Bon Iver review.

- Where have you been?
- I've been learning how to write.  
- But you know how to write.
- Yes. I know that I can write. Sentences are often correct and in the right order but I've never been happy with the things that they say or the style in which they're said. Even this paragraph is disappointing me.
- Then why don't you just write the right thing?
- If only it were that easy.

(almost as if to prove what I am talking about, I have deleted a long confessional paragraph because the wording was making what seemed like a deeply-felt statement into a trite whinge)

Put simply, I have been feeling like there's a disconnect with what feels like a complex and fully-formed thought in my head and the way I put this into language. Not long after writing most things do they begin to gnaw at me. 

There's also the issue of over-analysis and over-thought. For nearly a decade I have been mentally composing what was meant to be an amazing piece of writing for an audience of one. More than a simple letter, it would sever mental defences erected with its clear-blue depthlessness. It turns out all I ever wanted to say was much simpler: I like you, I am sorry, you were right, I was wrong.

For all my arts writing and criticism and moaning, the most significant contribution was actually releasing a record. This has not stopped me lurking around music websites and attempting to create dissensus.

The last 12-18 months has been a very strange ride. The next three years promise to be stranger.

Bon Iver is shit.