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

UK SINGLES CHART 4/3/2012 from #100 to #91

or, WHY THE CHARTS ARE NOW COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY USELESS, EVEN MORE SO THAN THEY WERE WHEN PEOPLE ACTUALLY KNEW WHAT WAS AT #1.

Before I was even a teenager I had a school notebook in which I would write down the Top 40 Singles in the UK as counted down by Mark Goodier on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday evening. It is quite amazing to realise how many of these often transitory and seemingly inconsequential three minutes have stayed in the mind, but a cursory glance at this book in my late teens revealed that the more interesting names that would later be scattered around my record collection were usually found at the lower end of this chart.

We all know that the charts are somewhat meaningless as a gauge of quality but there's a coldness and logic about the format that automatically commands respect: it is undeniably the will of the people writ large. There was also a moment of genuine thrill in the early part of the 21st century when a local band named Moco scraped the lower echelons of the Top 100 on the back of some good reviews. For a moment the gap between the industry largesse and the dudes seen rolling around the local pub in front of 45 people was temporarily reduced. Even though Moco probably sold less than 1500 copies of their single at a time when the music industry was in one of its occasional pituitary funks. Here it is though, for posterity.

Since this occasion the rules on chart eligibility have changed to firstly include downloaded copies of the designated singles and then, before long, the ability to download any individual album track meant that any song on a downloadable album could end up at #1. This is why groups of campaigners for 'real, non-manufactured' music were able to upset the applecart by electing Rage Against The Machine to #1 over the simple pop thrills of Joe McElderry, and less wankerishly, why John Otway was able to get his 50th birthday wish of a second top ten single with 'Bunsen Burner'.

The situationist potential of the charts reduces with time as the charts retain less of a psychic grasp on the public consciousness. More simply put: the charts mean nothing and rigging the thing is a precious waste of time and energy, as amusing as it would be to have somebody like Anal Cunt forced into the nation's ears at Sunday tea-time. We could even have all of I Like It When You Die as the entire Top 40.

It's sad that this battle has been lost precisely because the opening up of chart eligibility theoretically was supposed to allow any old shit a go at the charts. Momentarily it worked: then-unsigned punk trio Koopa organised their fanbase sufficiently to become the first 'unsigned' band to reach the Top 40. However, these appeals and demands and cries to organise oneself shows the fundamental lack of unity, not existence of it, and how ultimately powerless it is for more than one week at a time when faced with the remorseless sense-battery of commercial radio.

The reduced appeal of the singles charts perhaps go some way to explaining why even the lower end of the charts resembles a major label advertorial. Where freaks once roamed on the selling out of their hastily deleted 7", ghosts of banal sentiments past loom at the window on the vicissitudes of commercial appearance: step forward 'Bring Me To Life' by Evanescence, 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane, and 'Bittersweet Symphony' by The Verve, appearing at #87, #86, and #59 respectively.

A quick count reveals at least 95 of the top 100 songs to be on major labels. The ones that I can identify as not being are Matt Redman at #12, a heavily campaigned-for Christian artist releasing a single for an anti-slavery charity. Arctic Monkeys are a strange anomaly at #22, being a guitar band with a new single in the charts, though they have major distribution and media on their side.

When an artist hits, they hit big, and often. Ed Sheeran has four singles in the chart. Emeli Sande is at least the featured artist on four, as is Rihanna. Adele has three. Rizzle Kicks have three. LMFAO have three. Nicki Minaj has three. David Guetta has three. Bruno Mars has three. Jessie J, Coldplay, LMFAO, Jennifer Lopez, and Pitbull all have more than one. It represents a real triumph for the grasp of commercial radio and television and the strength of the relationship that major labels maintain with them. Doubly so, considering that it is often considered that we're all supposed to be online with artists such as Harry Pussy and Whitehouse within just as close reach.

This piece isn't so much an argument for the violent overthrow of the ranking system or major label structure as it is a snapshot for anybody who was wondering what is still going on out there. The charts have always favoured those with commercial muscle because that is its function: to map that dispassionately. Besides, the independent community generally focuses upon the the longer format and live performance because it is still where prestige and the ability to make a living (just about) lies, reducing the single to a position of forced fetish product, given the relatively high costs of making such an eminently disposable format seem paradoxically worth owning forever on hard copy.

Funnily enough, when I began writing this piece, I did not begin with the intent of sniping about the charts or confirming what most of you suspected but had not bothered to check out out of the simple desire to not be depressed. Quite the opposite. My intent had been to look at the bottom end of the charts to see whether it was full of off-pop, pop that aims to match the structure and style of its more popular brethren but somehow fails, or to see whether it was full of unheard-of gems and bands like Moco that had risen beyond the position the industry could reasonably expect of them.

So, here is the countdown from #100 to #91 in the charts as compiled 4th March 2012 by the Official Chart Company.

100. Beautiful People, 'Turn Up The Music'

Not much information really exists on this song, other than to say that it is in fact a Chris Brown remix. Perhaps that's another sad-or-as-yet-unexplored consequence of open chart eligibility: remixes of songs forcing their way into the charts as a way of exposing the original to a wider audience. Imagine an anthemic synth version of 'Two Towers' by Lightning Bolt ft. Tinchy Stryder! It could work! Let's get this happening everyone!

99. Bruno Mars, 'Just The Way You Are (Amazing)'

A mere 76 weeks on the chart for Mars. Who is only just getting to this song? The kind of people who still lose their dial-up connection every time someone in the house wants to use the phone, I'll wager.

98. Bruno Mars, 'Marry You'

A mere 58 weeks on the chart for this one. Less memorable than its cousin one place below, though no less saccharine for it.

97. Beyonce, 'Halo'

A mere 97 weeks on the chart for this one. I can't bring myself to hate Beyonce but come on everybody, nearly two years? She has done stuff since!

96. LMFAO, 'Sorry For Party Rocking'

At first with LMFAO I was like 'ok, it's for kids, this is their music, let it go' but this is just BEYOND dismal. I think what annoys me the most is the way they look like they couldn't even be arsed styling themselves convincingly, as if they're saying 'oh, they'll buy any old shit as long as we work it like it's the shiz'. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!

95. Black Keys, 'Lonely Boy'

The kind of 'real rock' that pushes some ardent guitar wankers into pretending that they love 'artificial' pop music more than they really do, because to side with this is siding with white privilege and nostalgia for the unremembered in quite an overt and grotesque fashion. At first it seemed like an anomaly that this song would wind up charting at all in the UK, but it is formulaic and marketable alongside the White Stripes, so perhaps not all that surprising.

94. Monkees, 'I'm A Believer'

It would be churlish to complain about this in the wake of Davy Jones' death. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make somebody aware of a body of work they may have been unaware of, and besides, 'I'm A Believer' is a fucking TUNE.

93. Skrillex ft. Sirah, 'Bangarang'

The saddest entry in all of the Top 100 is Skrillex and The Doors at #89. That whole 'is Skrillex dubstep' argument is hilarious. The answer was obvious when I got off the train at Wigan Wallgate and saw a 14 year old kid in nu-rock boots, a long leather jacket, and Skrillex t-shirt and realised without hearing a note that Skrillex is essentially 2012's Limp Bizkit and 'real' dubstep will always remain the preserve of people who know the names of the people who work in their local record shop back room, let alone the guy who actually owns the place. They are so far apart, it barely infringes trademark.

92.  Whitney Houston, 'I Will Always Love You'

See #94, only with less enthusiasm.

91. Ed Sheeran, 'You Need Me I Don't Need You'

A pathetic 77 weeks on the chart for this one. I saw Sheeran play this live before he became astronomically popular. It was an industry showcase and in a raft of horseshit rock music, he stood out as being a bit more breezy and self-sufficient, effortlessly singing/rapping/beatboxing/playing guitar. Had I known what I know now, seeing the psychic wreckage wrought upon the daily workplace, I would have rushed the stage.