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

CHART PROJECT RETURNS FOR PART 12 THIS IS IT PART 12

#637
Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers, 'Let's Party'
1989
Can't remember if we've explained the Jive Bunny 'thing' but he was definitely a rabbit with a 'thing' and that 'thing' was that he was not actually a rabbit but two men, a father and son team no less, who made party fodder medleys out of existing records that for a period in 1989 were all the rage. Whatever your take on the art of sampling and its position upon a tentative venn diagram of art and crime, it's quite apparent that the Mastermixers were none-too-subtle exponents of this technique. This is the Xmas edition of their 'thing': sleigh bells coat everything, and every segue features stock oompah music sped up to a tempo ideal for sherry-fuelled merriment with your aunt.
(2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77JEC0CnSh4

#587
Mel & Kim, 'Respectable'
1987
Whilst not liking the majority of the Stock Aitken and Cough Spit Fuck Off Pete Waterman and their corpus of arid brutalist dayglo pop interrogation techniques, sometimes, akin to Clarice Starling in the denouement of Silence of the Lambs, they will happen blindly upon the trigger of their gun and aim it square at the psychopathic skin-farmer chasing them through the dark.

Arguably it's the personalities of Mel and Kim that sold this one as much as the remorseless and familiar musical underpinning; they were bright, relatable, unapologetic and fun in a pretty understated way. 'We're never gonna be respectable', they sing in untruth. Credit to the producers for that awesome mangling of the vocal for the main hook, they 'tay-tay-tay-t-t-t-t-tay-tay' though
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykDsmAqExH8

#596
Michael Jackson, 'I Just Can't Stop Loving You'
1988
It's high time that I faced up to the 'man in the mirror' (lol guys) admitted to myself that Michael Jackson is not an artist that I have much time for. Certainly [redacted] plays its part but what am I supposed to do with a man who has - at best - four pretty cool songs that I hear more often that I hear artists that I'm really into simply because of their cultural saturation? The man was a purveyor of schmaltz outside of these songs, smooth risible schmaltz, which this song epitomises. As a sucker for sincerity in music (stupidly, you might counter) it gives me pause to hear the title lyric sung; given what we know of the man, whom, or what could he simply not prevent himself from loving? It's a chilling thought.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tai2j3dVSUQ


#237
Englebert Humperdinck, 'The Last Waltz'
1967
Leicester's finest crooner with half-truth song title (it is in 3/4). My uncle is a bit of a crooner, he loves songs like this: smooth orchestration and a restrained vocal that progressively becomes a bellow to give the impression of climbing the musical scale.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0fQHSqoD9Q

#67
Elvis Presley, 'Jailhouse Rock'
1958
If I had been alive in the 1950s I would have thanked the lord above for Elvis Presley. Of course in retrospect his songs lack the musical sophistication of Slade or the sexual suggestivity of a Rick Astley but he was a vindaloo in the age of meat and potatoes three times a day, a Maserati in an Asda carpark. This playful rockabilly number recasts a prison as the centrepiece for a sudden outbreak of musicality, inaccurately I'll wager, but nonetheless cute and antic.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj0Rz-uP4Mk

#358
Sweet Sensation, 'Sweet Sad Dreamer'
1974
A new one on me and yet crushingly familiar; a British approximation of the Philly soul sound of the time. Problematically, the soul sound of the time was beginning to sound corny and anathema to the things that made soul & RnB so vital, making the full transition from the edgy youth clubs to the supermarket intercom, otherwise known as 'The Feargal Sharkey'.
(3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=788BOtx_-Nw

#1019
Sugababes, 'Push The Button'
2005
It says in my manual that we're sort of supposed to like Sugababes but the rationale section is curiously absent so I'll have to guess my way through this review. It's pretty clear to me after reading back a few of my reviews that I have hang-ups about production, structure and vocals: this song just about meets likeability in all three aspects; it sounds like a demo (I like things that sound like anyone could have done it), it's tightly packaged and wound (no section sticks around long enough to become boring) and the vocal run in the bridge ('after waiting patiently for him to come and get it' is really well phrased and done in a way that pays attention to the momentum of the song, rather than the technical ability of the singer) is exemplary. However, it's by no means a total banger: the last time it was heard was at its original time of landing, and if 7 years pass until the next one I won't mind.
(7)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDGcxAf9D8

#706
Tony Di Bart, 'The Real Thing'
1994
My mum, as a fairly constant smoker, used to get these free CDs as a reward for maintaining allegiance with one brand of self-murder, though to facilitate this exchange she had to cut out the front of the package and send them back to the manufacturer. What did the cig companies used to do with all those cig packet fronts? Stick them on the wall?

Anyway, this song was memorably on one of those CDs, nestled right next to 'Love City Groove' by Love City Groove from the album Love City Groove. The song has Di Bart warbling about his desire to mate with only one person only and if that person is unavailable or unwilling then he shall depart from the sphere of physical encounters forthwith. Entirely appropriately, he chooses to voice this kind of tense dramatical situationism over a light Korg M-1 house piano and a very mild break.
(4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI4apNznQ4U

#1013
2Pac ft. Elton John, 'Ghetto Gospel'
2005
Though I'd never be accused of being the world's biggest fan of Mr. Shakur, I certainly have a great deal of respect for i. his predicament as a sensitive man cast in the world of machismo, a role in which he possibly acquitted himself only too well ii. his acting iii. his prolific output that not even his untimely death could halt iv. the following lyric:

And since we all came from a woman
Got our name from a woman and our game from a woman
I wonder why we take from our women
Why we rape our women, do we hate our women?
I think it's time to kill for our women
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies, that make the babies
And since a man can't make one
He has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one
So will the real men get up
I know you're fed up ladies, but keep your head up

which pretty much cuts through all the bullshit (counter: lyrics for 'Hell 4 A Hustler') and why when I read Pitchfork I'm incredibly disappointed when they're all like "check this Tyler guy out" and I do and hear "Punch your bitch in her mouth just for talkin' shit / You lurkin' bitch? Well, I see that shit / Once again I gotta punch a bitch in her shit / I'm icy bitch, don't look at my wrist / Because if you do, I might blind you bitch" - and okay this could be a character or a portrait of a scene - but the lack of self-reflexivity in the lyrics around it make me think 'oh okay this is just idiotic' and furthermore those words don't even scan.

So this song by 2Pac featuring a sample of Elton John from 1971 when his voice was a little more reedy and thin, but his melodic ability was at its height, is a nice reminder that Big Rap doesn't need to be Personally Troubling Rap even though it strays into Formulaic Rap, as Tupac pleads for the end of street violence and the futility of intra-community conflict.
(5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nLzG7fsRM

#823
Backstreet Boys, 'I Want It That Way'
1999
'Poptimism' is this douchey recent quasi-doctrine in which people (casual observation: those whose major musical concerns actually lie in left-field) can hold out hope and seek joy in the giddy thrills of the pop sphere generally pitched in opposition with rock that declares itself to be authentic (which is stupid and someone needs to have a word with rock music but only in the way that a teenager needs perspective to become adult). There's nothing wrong with that in a sense except for the insincerity of the applied intelliectualism: eclecticism isn't for everyone and nor should it be. There are no prizes for liking everything or only one thing. It's okay to not move on as much as it is to embrace the zeitgeist. Both 'rock' and 'pop' are real and fake and stupid and smart. Everything is permissible and it doesn't need a name.

That paragraph has sidetracked me somewhat. This is the most popular and famous song of the Backstreet Boys canon, a lilting pop-meets-RnBallad, all gently swung drum machines and dreamy harmonies and nonsense lyrics. It touches upon these unspoken universals of western pop music even when set aside from the sexual aspect of how boybands sell records: everything is invisible, you never sense the hands of construction within, the song as a canvas to project desire upon, nothing too specific to be sung. It's feintly charming and completely functional and shall outlast the group as it is built upon the very DNA of pop music.
(6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fndeDfaWCg

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

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

THE CHART PROJECT: Part Nine.

#663
Chesney Hawkes, 'The One & Only'
1991

Chesney Hawkes has managed to retain a place at the edges of stardom, appearing in advertisements for washing powder and on reality TV, for the sum total of what appears to be one #1 single in 1991. It's ideas like that which propel this blog in all of its inanity and futility. That this one otherwise unremarkable dude (aside from his astonishing Dorian Gray-esque youthfulness) can just stick around by flopping the calling card of this semi-ok pop song that sounds a bit like the summation of a TV show about how an unremarkable dude managed to retain fame 21 yeas after any relevance: as the lyric says, "you can't take that away from me"
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_r0oQE5jEU

#530
Paul McCartney, 'Pipes of Peace'
1984
At primary school, the headteacher was given to playing a song as entrance for the day's assembly. Often the song was something very soft rock 'messagey' and for some reason the only ones I can remember both featured Paul McCartney in his post-Beatles era. One was the immortal 'Ebony & Ivory' with Stevie Wonder, and one of them was this. Maybe there was a Sting song in there too. The lyrics were chalked up on the blackboard. The deputy head would sometimes play along on the school piano. It was a magical time. Martin O'Neill (school friend, not the Sunderland manager) used to blow a raspberry throughout this song, and Neil Parr would 'armpit fart' the percussion. Now I listen back to the tune, they are missing those key musical elements, and all that is left is a preachy song with a weird video where Macca plays a bunch of soldiers.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVK_mJrLbmY

#702
Mariah Carey, 'Without You'
1994
The craziness hadn't quite caught up with Carey by this point and though not as famous as she would become, the general consensus was that she was a sweet-voice and good-natured pop star with a nice voice and line in summery pop like the awesome 'Dreamlover'. This song represents the transition between Mariah Next Door and Imperial Mariah. Nilsson's song is treated as nothing more than a platform for the singer to launch all kinds of vocal acrobatics and as such smothers the anguished howl of the original. By the time the gospel choir comes in after the second chorus, X Factor has a firm template for all of its future endeavours.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hat1Hc9SNwE

#148
Cliff Richard, 'Summer Holiday'
1963
Summery fluff soon to be wholly owned by the institute of lazy advertising executives stuck for jingles.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNP5yqg7hc

#694
Culture Beat, 'Mr. Vain'
1993
At one point (presumably 1993) I knew ALL of the words to this, which features TWO raps, which is therefore quite an accomplishment for a 10-year old. Culture Beat represent part of the then-nascent Eurodance trend that would peak with Whigfield, Aqua, Haddaway, Dr. Alban, & 2 Unlimited. This song was generally a little darker and expansive, borrowing the synth modules from Snap! and 'Rhythm Is A Dancer' and pushing them into a more fluid composition: the tempo remains constant and relentless but there's a definite shifting of the musical underpinning that makes this song a little more impressive than I had bargained for. Still no clearer on figuring out who 'Mr. Vain' is, but if I had to guess, I would say that it is a man who is hitting on the female singer with a lot of braggadocio and she's all 'whatevz dude'.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvgUdrzGNys

#209
Overlanders, 'Michelle'
1966
When I wrote out the 20 songs that this part of the blog would cover, this was the song that I was looking forward to the most because I had never heard of it before. Turns out that I have: it is a VERY straight cover of the Beatles song of the same name released one year previously. Many fans of the Beatles don't particularly like this song as an example of McCartney's burgeoning predilection toward cheese, but this channels a very light Django Reinhardt feel, all Belgian cafes and drunkenly raffish sentiments, and compresses it into a likeable short pop song.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEQaU8FnJIk

#286
England World Cup Squad, 'Back Home'
1970
An interesting take on the football song. Instead of cheering about the skills of the team and individual players, the lyric talks about how people 'back home' (as the team would be travelling to Mexico to defend their world title, unsuccessfully as luck would have it, owing to a rather prolific West German fella named Gerd Muller) will be really supporting the team quite a lot and hoping that they win.

I'm all for reasonable statements framed in pop songs and look forward to 'I married for love but stay together for the kids and societal pressure', 'I bought this car for good mileage and the insurance on the Audi was crazy', and 'I'll be mostly upset but will get on with my life should this relationship end.' A song of commendable brevity, opting to stop after realising that it was going nowhere and that Peter Bonetti's vocal range couldn't carry a middle 8 and key change.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYW9NmmiuOg

#73
Everly Brothers, 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' / 'Claudette'
1958
Never been a man of the Bros. Everly thing though there's no denying that this kind of music is one of those instant sonic signifiers of a certain era, and in possessing that direct connection with era and place, can be exploited by directors such as David Lynch: the music speaks of innocence so baldly and plainly, and in such impeccably performed musical terms, that there HAS to be an undercurrent of weirdness and murder and sex and death. Right? RIGHT? Right. Side AA is unremarkable, side A ubiquitous.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m24uUzJgfwQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Otk53qFwM

#52
Johnnie Ray, 'Just Walking In The Rain'
1956
Eulogised famously by Dexys Midnight Runners and possessing a bold blue-eyed tenor, Johnnie Ray sang pop that manages to be musicially of its era (whistling, close harmonies, tempos that induce torpor) and yet in terms of production, absolutely timeless, full of richness and depth and clear as a bell. Maybe it was all the carbohydrates we were eating in the post-war era but the slowness of all of these earlier singles makes them seem a little flat and dull at times: that said, the relentless up-tempo of the 2010s and over-mastered self-aggrandizement is just as much of a crappy sonic hallmark.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfBJunktsdI


#887
Rui de Silva ft. Cassandra, 'Touch Me'
2001
Ibiza music of its era (we've been through this) that got to #1 by being released in the first week of the year and riding a wave of collective apathy. Melancholy but uplifting, steady, unexciting, yawn.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FkApmj8K1M

#27
Dickie Valentine, 'Finger of Suspicion'
1955
This countdown is making me realise how bloody crap this country was in the 50s for any kind of art, ANOTHER slow big-band weepie croonerfest, thank you Bill Haley, thank you Elvis, thank you Lonnie Donegan. This is SO boring. Sorry for being all 2012 and short attention span over this OH WAIT I AM LISTENING TO 1192 SONGS FOR FREE AND WRITING 200 WORDS ON EACH, FUCK YOUR ATTENTION SPAN, WHERE'S YOUR BLOG 1955 MUSIC CRITIC?
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUzOomtEPlE

#600
T'Pau, 'China In Your Hand'
1987
AOR's cleverest move was adding very feint and mildly-distorted guitars and rebranding as 'soft rock', a complete oxymoron because rock is supposed to smash your ears up, not sooth them into a warm bath/played relentlessly by your mum in the car. T'Pau are soft-rock incarnate, all unsophisticated upward reaching replete with obnoxious sax solos and drudgery-affirming lyrics (your dreams are fragile, they will smash = don't dream) that chugs along gamely but never really achieves more than meme status.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvElWJJS6po

#243
Love Affair, 'Everlasting Love'
1968
REALLY hate this song. It may be 1968 and hippies-a-go-go but that smarmy-ass overegged production would ruin the next 7 years of popular music in its smooth orchestrated smuggery. I once DJed a wedding and refused to play it (no one asked, thankfully, but it is a go-to given the sentiment) because it makes me retch, mentally, if not physically. Is it well-written? Not particularly. I can remain objective enough to say that it never rises above the generic and is only bolstered by some over-enthusiastic horn playing and a chorus that is unforgettable in the way witnessing a car smash into a cyclist is.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Le8bH3Y8U

#258
The Beatles, 'Hey Jude'
1968
And let it never be said that I am nothing but a massive hypocrite because this song from the same year with similar levels of swelling and overbearing production and a fairly obvious sentiment is something I DID DJ at an engagement party because I really like the song and it was also fairly appropriate for the occasion. In no way worthy of the seven minutes it takes to make its happy-clappy point but it's a pleasant journey nonetheless.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDdI7GhZSQA

#568
George Michael, 'A Different Corner'
1986
The still-presumed heterosexual and lesser-fancied one out of Wham! has a very versatile and pliable voice, able to convincingly switch between sensual pop croon to powerful (though rarely overbearing) range-crawling. It's this instrument that is showcased on this weird little single, all MIDI-strings and light keyboards floating like a coma dream with Michael just gliding through the mix on a gilded swan of clear-toned melody.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPWHkK-_a_A

#1053
Sugababes vs. Girls Aloud, 'Walk This Way'
2007
I think this was for charity so I will cut it some slack - it's hardly the sacred cow in either Run DMC or Aerosmith's back catalogue. That said, it is a breezy and lightweight cover of a pretty fun song that adds nothing to the original but takes much away.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jvrjd8DI-c

#23
Don Cornell, 'Hold My Hand'
1954
A snoozefest about being in heaven with a woman, christ, can you not just possess her on earth, what IS IT with you songwriters and your eternity shit?
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZqyLDTxgZA

#1050
Mika, 'Grace Kelly'
2007
An entertaining oddity from the recent past about genderfuck and sexual confusion sung in a voice that alternates between helium-voiced madness and homage to Freddie Mercury. It's all so dayglo and eager to please and assert how bloody different it is (and it is!) that it comes across a bit desperate and ankle-biting, though never becoming outright dislikeable or annoying, provided you can tolerate vocal gymnastics of the outer space kind.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHtPSmP5nLw

#873
A1, 'Take On Me'
2000
Boy bands were largely on their way out at this point, or the game was changing into more subtly-styled affairs that would later breed JLS and The Wanted, whereas A1 were fresh-faced pop muppets blithely singing whatever shit was poked under their nose. At no point can you imagine any of the group saying 'hang on, if we ARE going to cover this utterly ubiquitous A-Ha song, can we put in the power to the drums and the tempo?', instead accepting the bland gruel that is this song, garnishing it with their sparkling personalities which live on in our hearts to this day.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbCsIKI6HEU

#442
Gary Numan, 'Cars'
1979
OK so this might say something weird about me but I quite like songs that sexualise and fetishise things that aren't human as long as they essentially comment upon an element of human dysfunction. No one wants to hear the bike fucker's lament purely for the bike-fucking. Anyway, this was Gary Numan's thing back then. "Here in my car / I can only receive / I can listen to you / It keeps me stable for days in cars." YOU DO REALISE HE DOESN'T MEAN CARS SPECIFICALLY RIGHT?

Numan's better songs of this era also had a really good musical trick of opening with a really big hook and then jumping to a more subtle emotive hook later in the song before merging the two late in the song. I guess because of his 'look' of the time and his self-isolated stance he is an easy target for bad nostalgising of this era but let's be honest, 'Cars' is a great song and really convincing in the way that it puts a firm finger on this disenfranchisement many would feel toward the government parachuting into power that year and the way it would isolate the vulnerable and enable a retreat into simulations of joy. OR SUTTIN.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldyx3KHOFXw

THE CHART PROJECT: part the 8th

#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

THE CHART PROJECT PT. 7: let the world see what you have got / bring it all back to you

(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

THE CHART PROJECT PART SIX: tonight's the night! let's give it up!

#601
Pet Shop Boys, 'Always On My Mind'
1987 
Can a song be considered a 'standard' if it was written post-1960? You don't need to answer that. If it is possible, then this song surely is a candidate. Originally a country song written in 1972 and made famous by Vegas Elvis, the song crops up at irregular intervals to remind us about an unspoken universality of pop music values. Whether performed in a low croon like Elvis, in a country fashion like Willie Nelson, or in a brash arena electropop style as featured on this particular version, the song is the star. Perhaps it could be argued that the flashy nightclub treatment is at odds with the flickering regret of the lyric, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a more modern reading than the old whiskey-soaked slow versions: the music says 'here I am in my life which has continued apace because this is the modern world and it doesn't stop for heartache' whilst the lyric says 'I am hurt' with a middle 8 that just SMACKS you between the eyes.
(8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2aMaMkDwTA

#483
Shakin' Stevens, 'Green Door'
1981 
Shakin' Stevens is as near to a graverobber as pop has seen. Elvis was not long since dead when Shakey emerged with quiff, lip curl, similar dress sense, and music all 50s R'n'R pastiche. Imagine that in a couple of years time there is a pop star whose thing is to just jump back to the beginning of Michael Jackson's career, looking like Michael Jackson, performing songs that sound eerily similar to Jackson's early output, and that for a brief moment this whole phenomenon gets by without any kind of questioning. Not a terrible song though.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQasoWm7Kg

#274
Rolling Stones, 'Honky Tonk Women'
1969 
The more blustery and bluesy the Stones got, the less interested I became. That said, they're a good two or three years from being completely unbearable here, all the while establishing the template that would see bands like Free and AC/DC develop 40 year careers: low-slung Keef riff guitar, bass enters in the chorus to give the song a WHAM into second gear, songs about women and they no good way. It's the stuff that goes on just outside the rock band template that make this song a little more interesting: the percussion that sounds like banging biros on paintcans, and the sax player who sounds deeply troubled by a potential embolism.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Kve_N8rmmQ

#757
White Town, 'Your Woman'
1997
Pop is, effectively, the artform of the the absolute majority. It is the North Korea that marginalises all dissenters for everything except the wealth that they can extract from it. It is the Borg that assimilates anything useful to its collective whilst disregarding the rest. And this majority artform is strictly controlled by a small ruling class of shareholders and directors and producers and songwriters, effectively social elites, who appease their own gods of wealth by pressing their ear to the railroad of human desire for entertainment, converting this sincere and fervent lust into money.

The experimental cannot compete or expect to overturn this because it operates with an economy of quality and a distinction of taste. 'This thing is right and that thing is wrong.' People don't like rules that they cannot easily understand. People do not like to be tricked. So pop music and popular cinema and popular journalism are the modes of communication that most people are familiar with.

So, how best to interrupt this communication or to change the message which it communicates on a daily basis? To get inside the machine. To visit North Korea. Not to marginalise it or laugh at it, but to operate from within. To sincerely appreciate the inherent beauty of the form without getting the messiness of the message into the bloodstream. And that is what Jyoti Mishra, aka White Town, has done so successfully.

'Your Woman' may reverse or even blur the gender roles of the typical love song (Mishra sings from the perspective of a woman to an errant non-gender specified partner) but he does not 'subvert' as has often been claimed. Subversion indicates derailment of common intent: this flip puts the message into the mouth of the machine - gender play is normal, gay is normal, Marxist is normal. The sleeping operator at the wheel of the machine sees the queues of people lining up to buy this sentiment and assumes that the machine is working correctly. A quiet conversation later reveals what the problem was and one week later the song is deposed of its #1 spot by a cheese-making wanker and his mates.

I've been Gilles Deleuze and my book 'Listening To Pop Music With Felix Guattari' is available in all good stores.
(10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQWt3oMids

#55
Frankie Vaughan, 'The Garden of Eden'
1957
They had some great singers in the 1950s but by golly by gee did they love to pile on the orchestration and saccharine. This one starts of all happy and spartan and just doing its thing mixing Jesus and sexy woman metaphors and soon becomes this gigantic Sands Casino stomper with the half-expectation that an elephant will come out juggling on a unicycle as 5000 strippers mount 5000 poles attached to 5000 motorbikes jumping through 5000 hoops of fire.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toIJ3Lls7jw

#846
Britney Spears, 'Born To Make You Happy'
2000
Lyrically troubling. Like Mr. Vaughan, sex and Jesus metaphors are mixed. Was she born to make God happy, or some jerk boyfriend? It's deliberately ambiguous. 'If only you were here tonight.' 'I don't know how to live without your love.' Either way, as far as giving a generation of girls some notion of self-determination and individual identity, it's a complete Shiva The Destroyer. Girls as servile, humanity as forever penitent, unable to reverse the decisions of history. Fuck that. Fuck this song. It is a really bad song, I'm not just cross at some words here.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy5cKX4jBkQ

#533
Lionel Richie, 'Hello'
1984
The music video for this ballad has become a bit of a joke, where Lionel plays an arts teacher helping kids express themselves to the extent that a blind girl makes a fairly accurate-if-chunky sculpted bust of Richie's tightly coiffed barnet. Step away from that video (the way I didn't manage to) and listen. Richie has always been a very good writer of adult-orientated music for many a year, with a fine voice that never becomes overwrought or over-burdened with a show-off desire.

Obviously when you're operating in a year when you have Black Flag destroying the country and Frankie Goes To Hollywood desperate to turn everybody in the UK gay it's quite easy to skip over the subtler aspects of how pop songwriting can be quietly transformative at a more reflective and intuitive level - at his best this is Richie's gift. 'Hello. Is it me you're looking for?' is an easy punchline for the boldness of the gambit - but what if it is? It could change your life.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ILDFp5DGA

#1069
Estelle ft. Kanye West, 'American Boy'
2008
Hey a fairly recent pop song that doesn't make me want to throw up all of innards into an ocean of discontent. Estelle plays the street-hardened wiseacre with the turned head toward the flashy American superstar making a play toward her. It's quite easy to see this as straight-up and cut from real life given the relative status of the performers and though the sentiment is never really more than the future projections caused by a serious romatic headrush, the gaiety of the melody and the straight-forward beat allow the performer's actual personalities to emerge. A minor victory.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5vxw3eijY

#1015
McFly, 'I'll Be OK'
2005
One of McFly's better efforts: a sunny guitar pop anthem that definitely recalls a sunnier and better-looking Teenage Fanclub. I realise I'm pulling a comedy thing by mentioning the hitless Teenage Fanclub every five minutes but there's obviously going to be some correlation when your DNA is 1960s guitar pop with harmonies. A tidy 3 minutes in which the earth is not shattered nor built anew but nonetheless a pleasant ride.
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yle1YEjmGf0

#1102
Black-Eyed Peas, 'I Gotta Feeling'
2009
My friend Brendan (I think) once said to me: "are the Black-Eyed Peas the group that get the most reward for the least effort?" I still think about this very economically inclined question all of the time because it has some implications for a possible direction for music. There is no doubting that the music of the Black-Eyed Peas since their entry into the world of enormo-fame is incredibly simplistic: 'Boom Boom Pow', 'My Humps', 'Where Is The Love?' and this are all built on very very simplistic musical elements that could be repeated by the pre-lingual (e.g. babies).

And it is not like they are incapable of writing more complex fare: Will.i.am wrote John Legend's 'Ordinary People', so there's evidently some desire to be more base, more simple, less inclined to make the effort, because clearly it has been decided that ease of imitation is far more important than innovation (these are not necessarily criticisms, by the way, just points). This song is now ubiquitous. It is played before many different kinds of occasion where fun is expected to grease the wheel of social interaction because as the song hopes/promises 'tonight's gonna be a good night'. Now every occasion will have its triumphant song of expectation. 'I expect this will be a good piss'. 'The show you'll watch will be great'. When songs start to instruct and bully rather than hint, I am immediately suspicious. (exception to rule: 'Rise Above').
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA