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

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 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

THE CHART PROJECT PT. 5: The rain goes on (on on and on again)

#580
Europe, 'The Final Countdown'
1986 
I shan't bother transcribing them but the lyrics for this song are complete nonsense. To be fair to Europe, English is not their first language. It is their third, behind Swedish and Keyboard-led Soft Rockish. It's a chirpy enough entrance theme for sports teams but at best it is an okay but quite mundane piece of stadium 'rock' (in inverted commas because it doesn't really rock at all) which ambiguously deals themes of relationships and space travel.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

#183
The Beatles, 'I Feel Fine'
1964
A confident and freewheeling number from a band transitioning from the clubs and 'beat combos' and toward something more original and satisfying. George Harrison's chummy lead line chugs along underneath a snappy and brief pop song. COME ON THIS IS THE BEATLES WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpMs_R3P6U

#1138
Ne-Yo, 'Beautiful Monster'
2010
It certainly wasn't force of personality that won Ne-Yo the #1 spot. This, from the strange moment when US R&B popsters were borrowing very heavily from long-established trends in French house and German techno (via Ayia Napa & Ibiza) - all filter sweeps, arpeggios, four to the floor where the beat sub-divides to indicate transition into the 'epic' portion of the song. It's a competent production but completely lacking in any form of lovability or expression. It just happens, it doesn't offend, it gets by, it will do, it will progress a scene or two.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J2dwFVZHsY

#1157
Adele, 'Someone Like You'
2011 
A song has officially happened to the Great British Public if my mum knows it. I have told her this. I said "you're a barometer for whether something is widely known." I don't think she knew what I meant but it wasn't a dig. She largely ignores music. Never listens to the radio. Her CD collection totals 30, all music she liked before I was even born. My father, a musician by trade for 45 years now, doesn't particular seem to like music much at all. Artists my parents and I share as 'likes': Roxy Music and The Beatles. She dislikes much of what I listen to and refuses to listen to the band I have played in for nearly half a decade. It's cool though, I don't particularly want to help her play Gardens of Time on Facebook.

However. Adele has happened in my parents' household. In a big way. 21 was purchased, quickly followed by 19. The lounge stereo has long been mere facade, the wiring faulty and neglected, so a new CD player was purchased merely to facilitate the listening-to of Adele's work. My mother goes out once a week with her friends: her 'getting ready music' is Adele. She prefers the stompier songs such as 'Set Fire To The Rain' and 'Rolling In The Deep' but I secretly think that she likes this song the most.

And to be fair, it is the least oblique and most direct song of the Adele singles to date. The song deals with the regrets that linger long after a relationship has ended. A universal sentiment. A universal chord sequence indicating sorrow and melancholy and the crepescule of hope. A performance containing the universal signifiers of an emotional and professional performance: starting small and personal, becoming large and inevitably universal.

And therein lies the problem: there's nothing unique about it. It is simply an execution of a well-stitched together pattern of long-established tropes. In its desire to touch the heart of everyone with a scintilla of emotional regret it fails to have any kind of likability or individual charm. It wants to touch so many hearts that it compromises on any sonic indicators of regret, musical moments where real pangs of panic and sorrow rise up and accompany the supposed sentiment. Undoubtedly Adele is a technically excellent singer but technically excellent singers are often the singers that don't understand that the emotional centre could be located in the vulnerability of the 'wrong' note or the untidy phrase.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwuLj33YyPk

#820
Mr. Oizo, 'Flat Beat'
1999 
To some 'Flat Beat' was a very mono-level piece of music that did nothing but repeat a sub-bass WHOOMP over an 808 beat. That's unfair. A closer listen reveals that there are Reichian flourishes, tiny counterpoints that pull the beat sideways and recast the monolithic low-end against jittering synth bleeps that play in the spaces created by unforgiving uniformity. It's also quite fun despite all that muso-wank I just wrote!
(6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv6Ewqx3PMs

#468
Barbra Streisand, 'Woman In Love'
1980
"Life is a moment in space / When the dream is gone." This is just a mess. 'Life is a moment in space'. Mixing the values of time and dimensionality in the opening line puts the listener on very shaky epistemological ground vis-a-vis dealing with the complexities of quantum theory. 'When the dream is gone'. Is Streisand arguing for solipsism despite previously arguing a quite dense quantum argument in the opening line? Yet the remainder of the lyric wants nothing to do with this bold opening gambit, leaving the listener flailing in their armoury with little other than pseudo-science and caterwauled balladeering.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ppc_dT-J5E

#204
Ken Dodd, 'Tears'
1965 
Ken Dodd is famous in the UK for being a hard-working stand-up comedian who performs marathon sets of over 4 hours in length, during which it has been known for the ambulance to make repeated trips to the venue of the performance to cart out audience members who have collapsed either from fatigue or sincere bouts of laughter fitting. He is also quite famous for having issues with the tax man. He is far less famous for his smooth orchestrated balladeering, which at least shows a side of the man rarely seen: professional, suave, technically competent, and not terribly amusing.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg6gD2ZJuss

#394
Abba, 'Dancing Queen'
1976
Man, you know what is totally shit? When people go on about 'guilty pleasures' in music. That is totally bullcrap man! What is basically says is 'I know that those old white guys with the tweed elbow patches know more about music so the music they like is 'better' but I put this on because it's like the musical equivalent of a can of Irn Bru'. No! Taste is totally totally subjective! So when I say something horrible like 'Matt Cardle is a subhuman' I am just trying to be entertaining and start a conversation because that's how ideas are passed between people. So don't take it personally. Unless you're a propagater of this 'guilty pleasure' nonsense, then you should go and EAT SHIT.

Joke! See previous paragraph! Anyway. Routinely shoved into the guilty pleasure pool are Abba. Why? Because they're not a proper rock band and had a keen sensibility toward fun and the mass ear? And? They knew how to write songs and repeatedly proved this over their long and storied career. They also knew how to perform the songs and also how to do all of the above without appearing like gigantic awful jackasses. Where 'Waterloo' bashed the door down and said 'here we are!' with bright lights and zero restraint, 'Dancing Queen' is more sensuous and luxurious. It also features another key feature of music that is great (for the first in this series, please read the entry for 'Moon River'): the double chorus! Realistically the 'you are the dancing queen / feel the beat of the tambourine' is enough for most bands, but the Ulvaeus/Andersson combo cannot RESIST the 'you can dance! / you can jive' section, sending the tune stratospheric. This is songwriting, ladies and gentlemen! It is a real artform and if you can do and perform it appropriately then world can still be yours!
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s

#115
Elvis Presley, 'Wooden Heart'
1961
A funny little rinky-dink quasi-oompah number from post-army Elvis, who sings some of the original German folk song's lyrics in a Swabian dialect quite accurately to this ear. A curio if anything, one to sate the thirst of a crowd deprived of the icon that made them realise that within their loins was FIRE.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7XZwDMS0G0

#819
B*Witched, 'Blame It On The Weatherman' 
1999
Is this the last vestige of innocence in adult boy/girl groups? Aside from some mild cleavage, there is nothing overtly sexualised about the group, even in a latent sense. One of them holds a dog lovingly. They look like happy, normal people, pleased to be singing a sweeping little acoustic-pop ditty with light Eurovision style orchestration. Everything since this single in the non-instrument playing pop idiom has quite literally been rubbing genitals in the face of the listener.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LXUsQNzSL4

THE CHART PROJECT PT. 3: The highs and lows

#1132
Shout ft. Dizzee Rascal & James Corden, 'Shout For England'
2010
PRO: This song samples that cool-as-fuck piano bit from Blackstreet's 'No Diggety'. Dizzee Rascal is an endearing presence. The song shoehorns the chorus of 'Shout' by Tears For Fears out of absolutely NOWHERE. The lyrics address and attack the comfort in nostalgia. All fair enough.
CON: James Corden is on it singing 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHq3vy_7cJQ

#289
Elvis Presley, 'The Wonder of You'
1970
"You know who likes Elvis, son? Thick people." For years I disliked Elvis. Oddly, this was not really based on anything other than the wilful transliteration of my own parents' hatred into personal prejudice. Essentially, they both hate large, dark-haired crooners: Robbie Williams, Dean Martin, and Tom Jones are both on the extensive hitlist of my parents' musical taste. But they're wrong. Elvis had a wonderful voice. And more than having a wonderful voice, he brought rock'n'roll to the demographic with the most money. He didn't invent sex, as has been claimed by earnest critics, but he did help people realise that the feelings inside themselves, the baser emotions, were just as valid as the noble courtesan mode that pre-50s romance is depicted as. We could even argue that Elvis begat latter extreme acts such as Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse in the way he helped knock down psychic barriers to expression.

This song, a cover of a 1959 hit by Ray Peterson, is fairly schmaltzy stuff from Vegas Elvis.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyrQqmc5UT8

You can tell he's crazy by his anachronistic biker gear! Wacky!

#1012
Crazy Frog, 'Axel F' 
2005
Oh how did I forget that ringtones became chart-eligible? Man didn't society have a laugh about that? Hahahaha. This is a remix of Harold Faltermeyer's 'Axel F' with the sound of a cartoon frog making 'engine revving' noises over it. On one hand you could say that it is bound to no cohesive history and eschews easy narrativity: the decisions and economies of taste and distinction created over 5000 years of artistic development are disregarded and the putative explosion of joy is condensed into 3 minutes of nonsense. On the other hand you could blow a raspberry on a dog's stomach and make a more edifying sound.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85mRPqvMbE

#232
Sandie Shaw, 'Puppet on a String'
1967
Morrissey may still listen to this song on 78rpm on a daily basis but all these ears can hear is a committe-written factory line shoehorning of 'that hippy thing that the kids are doing' into an inoffensive and bland pop song with a maddeningly jaunty melody.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrs8CgpH980

#1044
McFly, 'Star Girl'
2006
In theory I don't mind McFly: they're cute, they write harmony-laden guitar songs that, if you're being wilfully ignorant, could be said to sound a bit like Teenage Fanclub. This song, however, is a little over-written and eager to pile on the saccharine "moments", as if they're afraid that the melody isn't strong or unique enough - which it isn't. It has been heard in every Beatles knock-off from the Monkees to The Crescent. The hi-def production is audio monosodium glutamate, trying to give the impression of taste from bland ingredients.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w2_3-iYhOU

#524
Paul Young, 'Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)'
1983
Fretless bass nightmares overtake me! Also I've never seen a picture of Paul Young in a hat. Possibly because he's laid it at home before popping out to the studio to mangle a perfectly fine Marvin Gaye song with the kind of music that used to overlay the BBC2 close when it would just be Ceefax for 4 hours.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_a2-Pve4g&ob


#1026
Arctic Monkeys, 'When The Sun Goes Down' 
2006
The vaunting of Alex Turner's lyrical genius in EVERY FUCKING QUARTER is incredibly misplaced and I shall submit this song to the jury.

Just something the internet made earlier

"I wonder what went wrong / so that she had to roam the streets / she dunt do major credit cards / I doubt she does receipts." Do you get it? She's a sex worker. They wrapped that fact up in the first two lines, so the next two are just a bit of swollens glans lad banter. 'I doubt she does receipts' is such a contrived lyric too, trying desperately to rhyme with streets whilst being a major chronicler of our life and times. He repeats this contrivance twice in the next verse: "And what a scummy man / just give him half a chance / I bet he'll rob you if he can / can see it in his eyes / yeah, that he's got a driving ban / amongst some other offences." You can see in his eyes that he has a driving ban? Even trained policemen have to radio back to HQ for this kind of info, but Supercop Turner can just fucking SEE poor driving in the eyes of the common pimp.

And how do we know he's a pimp? "And I've seen him with girls of the night / and he told Roxanne to put on her red light / they're all infected but he'll be alright / 'cause he's a scumbag, don't you know." That reference to The Police is sheer cringe. Not just because it's 'hey guyzz I'm totally going to reference this old song that also talks about prostitution and reward the audience for the intelligence' in the way a total Uncut writer would masturbate for HOURS over, but in the way it hands down from The Police to Arctic Monkeys the same kind of 'white male observer flaneur antihero' trope in songwriting.

However, the tune isn't too bad. Get past the embarrassing opening slow verses and it buzzes along happily and riffily as gay as anything. Is this the most recent guitar band whose guitars actually sound like guitars song that got to #1? I'm going to guess that it is.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBbk9IjRdO0

#379
Art Garfunkel, 'I Only Have Eyes For You' 
1975
Sometimes, in my darker days, I imagine this song as Garfunkel's twisted revenge fantasy on Paul Simon. Chasing him down the road with his own eyes gouged out screaming I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU. Opening a butcher's shop in Simon's neighbourhood, and when Simon comes in, Garfunkel gives him only eyes and screams I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU!

Except it's a jazz standard given an adult-contemporary read by a man with a lovely voice shorn of its natural home i.e. on Paul Simon's songs.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrl3T8MaX8E

#787
Run DMC/Jason Nevins, 'It's Like That' 
1998
Essentially a beefed-up Ibiza version of the original and nothing more. Except that the original is FUCKING BRILLIANT, 10/10 kind of stuff, any change is taking away from it.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLGWQfK-6DY&ob

#505
Irene Cara, 'Fame'
1982
Moroder-does-Abba. Songwriting meets technology. Substance suppressed by style's gigantic strides: though realistically inseparable from the film and video featuring lithe young things dancing here and there, the audio alone suggests 'montage' better than Team America's 'montage' song ever did. Fretless bass though. Also not very good.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1xO7RwTV4k

#1150
The X Factor Finalists, 'Heroes'
2010
This project may as well end now if we're just going to openly dismiss Simon Cowell and his reality show underlings. They exist and are a part of the pop landscape as much as The Buggles, Aretha, Lieutenant Pigeon et. al. This is a cover of the David Bowie song featuring about a dozen forgettable names and voices who made the final of that year's star search format. Also the song serves the charity Help For Heroes: branding, synergy, KPI in quarter 3, all of those images that make music so potent. Obligatory key change! Melismatic singing! Video of soliders being brave! No questioning why the government can't fund their aftercare if they can fund sending them off to LITERALLY MURDER PEOPLE.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHsCGoZst-w

#784
Celine Dion, 'My Heart Will Go On'
1998
Unstoppable big-budget market forces in action. One of the biggest films of all time. One of the biggest voices of all time. One of the biggest ships of all time. One of the biggest icebergs of all time. The result is one of the biggest yawns of all time. Schmaltz ballad complete with gentle flutes and strings.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmbw8OycJrE


#579
Berlin, 'Take My Breath Away'
1986
Another huge film tie-in. Just replace the flutes and strings with synthesized strings. Formulaic.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_6x3EW3FC0

#866
Ronan Keating, 'Life Is A Rollercoaster'
1999
From that bizarre episode in pop music when the guy from The New Radicals was considered THEE POP SONGWRITER OF THE ETERNAL NOW. Ronan, freshly divested of his anodyne chums in Boyzone, gets asinine up in this unthreatening mid-tempo number. The song is kind of well-written. Imagine it played a bit heavier, looser, and faster by a great pop group like Teenage Fanclub or Guided By Voices and it'd probably be a good b-side. Personality and production are key though, and this song lacks either.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsN5MtKtWcg

#831
Ronan Keating, 'When You Say Nothing At All'
2000
I thoroughly detest this song. The sneaky hellgate between the adult-contemporary market of Europe and US mainstream country needs to be abolished with nuclear weapons. This song goes deep, way to deep for me to expose on this blog: it has been at the centre of personal embarrassment and exposure ON TOP of already hating the song before said incident went down. A song so heinous and awful that it ruins my day and makes me grumpy and unfair to songs that may follow.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuJrEBtmM1Q

#131
Danny Williams, 'Moon River'
1961
Phew. This is one of my favourite songs of all time - not necessarily this version, which is heavy on the strings and vibrato. The Andy Williams version is a little better. The swelling optimism, the wanderlust for the joy of the wander, the ambiguity of the relationship of the central characters are all supporting players in this song and its contentment. The lead actor is the repetition of the chord sequence underneath the lyrics "we're after the same rainbow's end / is waiting round the bend / my huckleberry friend." This is one of the great pop musical techniques; when a fantastic song and its essence can be condensed within the song to a phrase or a mantra or a re-iteration of a melody or sequence within it. Nearly perfect.
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkyDYbMUPj4

#526
UB40, 'Red Red Wine'
1983
UB40 had moved past their credible phase by this moment and this song remains the finest distillation of their 'popular era' animus. It is competent and memorable and understated in the pop reggae department, which is not to lavish it with indelible praise, though not to damn it forever. The watery synth sounds are a curious joy.
(5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXt56MB-3vc&ob

#1030
Chico, 'It's Chico Time'
2006
Chico was an X Factor contestant that bridged the gap between entertaining lunatic, Mediterranean waiter with ideas above his station, and endearing presence. 'It's Chico time' was his gimmick of sorts: his claim being that the time that it is now is the time that belongs to Chico and as the man named Chico it is also a time with Chico as its emblem. His personality kept him in the contest when his voice would have otherwise had him exit. "You can get delirious when you take life too serious" was his grammatically troublesome but ideologically decent catchphrase. In this spirit, I hope he remembers this manifesto when reading the mark for the song.
(3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_-isKzt4O4&ob

#872
Madonna, 'Music'
2000
Madonna, since Bedtime Stories, has put out an endless stream of crap. Before then, she was practically untouchable. So what gives? We'll return to this subject on later Madonna singles. This song represents the apex of her collaborative era with French nonentity Mirwais, who would marry a mild inclination to glitch music with strident R&B synths and that weird absence of low-end that came to characterise crunk. This song sounds crummy and dated 12 years on.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJO-SGeb7yE

#817
Britney Spears, 'Baby One More Time'
1999
I recently read Britney Spears described as 'what humanity did between Madonna and Lady Gaga'. It's an entertaining diss but it ignores the absolute planet-enslaving hugeness of this song. It was pop as pure phenomenon, easily the biggest song of the era in which it was released. Indie bands lined up to perform their sad reading of the emotional plight of the lyric, desperate to touch the hem of Spears' garments. Though released one year before Madonna's 'Music', it sounds fresh and wide-eyed where Madonna in 2000 sounds jaded and cynical. Formulaic? Yes. But that would be to miss the point. It transcended formula. It became such a qualified success of the power of branding and repackaging of formula, it made the formulaic seem a little bit cooler.
(4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4

#1189
DJ Fresh ft. Rita Ora, 'Hot Right Now'
2012
A jacked Amen break from Pendulum's cast offs and a laboured and pitch-corrected vocal does not even a remotely interesting song make.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7OPZOBJZyI

#514
Men At Work, 'Down Under'
1983
FACT TIME. This was #1 when I was born. What else happened that week? Shergar was turned into dog food by the IRA. The first £1 coin was minted. It was a hell of a time. Men At Work are one of those unfortunate groups written off because their most famous song seems a bit novelty (see also: Dexys) when in fact there was some formidable songwriting backing the catchiness rather than a technological or thematic gimmick. It's a funny, confident song that mocks European ignorance and asserts a strong self-identity for an Australian music that was really throwing out some solid artists.
(7)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lq7QzLdkSc

#965
Westlife, 'Mandy'
2003
Westlife are androids and not even in the cool way that Kraftwerk or Sarah Brightman are. Puppets programmed to sing in the key of the eternally banal. There's nothing accidentally amusing about them. They look like the substitutes' bench of a Championship football team. Their voices are cold and expressionless. Their songs are all in the same tempo range. Their dress sense is 'uninspirational salesman'. They are an empty office, a broken printer, a telephone order for more staples. Covering Barry Manilow is probably the most radical thing they ever did.
(1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ShlE-xobyw&ob

Westlife holding something more musically relevant than themselves

#897
Geri Halliwell, 'It's Raining Men'
2001
People thought that at the beginning of the Spice Girls that Geri, with her braying Home Counties voice, Union Jack dress, and flame red hair was the most radical and therefore most feminist one of the Spice Girls. In reality she was the loudest and most annoying and the least talented after Posh, who at least knew her place. Halliwell was more like a cackling hen-night artist with a weirdly flat and not terribly pop-friendly voice. This cover of the Weather Girls' natty little number removes some of the innocence and adds in the raw sex vibe of an Ann Summers party.
(2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqXUpe3jlkA

#124
John Leyton, 'Johnny Remember Me'
1961
This could be the novelty of never having heard this one before but this one is brilliant. Leyton laments a dead girl and then an all-girl chorus sing 'Johnny...remember me!' in a deathly echo, ghostly. It's chilling. There is no charity or saccharine or sentiment in the beat and rhythm, which rattles along in a skeletal fashion. Leyton ramps up the tension and it never gets released, the distance between his verses and the ghostly cries closes and closes and the song fades out before any resolution...wow! This is an excellent song 1961! Well done all concerned!

John Leyton you don't remember me either

Oh, I just had a look, it's a Joe Meek production. Of course! A genius!
(9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e4JXwd7XMo

The Chart Project: Part 1

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

LIVE! Doug Stanhope and Xiu Xiu

Two brief live reviews: when I say brief I mean 'I am trying to write them both during one play of 'Marquee Moon' (the song) by Television'.

DOUG STANHOPE + Henry Phillips
6th March 2012
Albert Halls, Bolton 
Doug Stanhope has been rightly resistant to playing too much in Britain. Britain treats comedy differently than the US. Britain intellectualises and demands more than mere clownishness and dick jokes. Her critics sting and barb and carp about stagecraft and insight and conceptual rigour, often without irony at their own situation. Comedy takes place as much in theatres and arenas with strict seating, where social rules about getting hammered kick in that bit harder.

Stanhope is fighting against that. He wants you sneak in your own booze: too late for this show, but if we take to Twitter we can aid his passage through the UK by generating some looser audiences. He also resists a narrative framework for his show, firing a shot across the bows of comedians who doggedly stick to a thematic concept, leaving them powerless when the news demands a comedic response and they're glued to their prepared act about being an imaginary ghost dog. Stanhope revels in playing the guttersnipe, bringing along an opening act that neatly fits the anti-concept concept.

Henry Phillips exudes an easy, erudite charm that neatly veneers a couple of decades of road-weariness. He's funny too: a musical comedian keen to the vagaries and ridiculousness of musical performers, finding joy in a hurricane of hubris. It's a craftsman's performance. The obvious 'jokes' hit home and the song structures are convincing as pastiches, but it's the subtler gestures, such as the facial expressions and altered voice to mock the mode of the 'sincere rock performer' that stay in the mind. He playfully mocks Britain to his friend, the headline act, watching in the wings.

Relatively sober and recently off the plane, Stanhope seems less animated than his years of fiery recordings would have him be. Quick to self-criticise though he is, Stanhope works almost as well when forced into roles he capably plays but never sells himself as: the raconteur, the veteran of clownish showmanship, the contrary armchair politician. Some audience members seem ruffled when Stanhope goes to bat for Republican/libertarian weirdo Ron Paul, but it's all part of the shtick: I am not your Bill Hicks, you cannot easily box me.

The show finale seemed to ruffle more (online, I checked, take my word for it) feathers than any specific political endorsement could. Easy to read as 'flag-waving for the USA' if you ignore the bit where he says 'ignore the whole government, bombs, flag-waving, foreign policy, crazy stuff' and focus on where he says 'AMERICA IS GREAT'. And he's right. Britain is still snooty about the USA. It's a great bit of comedic sleight-of-hand; he appeals to everybody's baser desire to be somewhere warmer, freer, easier, sexier in a way that skilfully insults how Britain culturally romanticises ugliness, stale morality, coldness, and visual austerity as some kind of act of ascetic brilliance. It works because in this bit, as he dreams about cocktails on Floridian sand at sun-up, he's mentally there and we've not taken that journey with him. We're in the stuffy British theatre and he's in the dunes and he is the one laughing at us.


XIU XIU + Trumpets of Death
13th March 2012
Ruby Lounge, Manchester
Running into a friend at the bar, he asks what I think of Trumpets of Death. 'A bit passive-aggressive', I say. This was an imperceptive, first-glance read. The Leeds trio variously recall Windy & Carl, The Telescopes, and late-period Talk Talk in their swooping, elegant set. At worst you could accuse them of lacking identity (and indeed shunning it altogether), but at best they're immersive and hypnotic, working up a cerebral lather with mechanical rhythm and trance-inducing saxophone runs.

There are two Xiu Xius. Alike in dignity, one follows in the mope-rock pantheon of The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Cure. The other owes more to a crossroads between Eastern modes and modern composition, and as such can be easily characterised as 'difficult music'. When Xiu Xiu begin with an abrasive number with bowed electric bass, nerve-jangling percussion, and abstract guitar scribbles, an audience braces itself and checks for the exits.

Three songs later, Jamie Stewart (singer, effectively he IS Xiu Xiu) is politely asking permission to perform a New Order cover that ushers in a full hour of the accessible side of Xiu Xiu to everybody's secret relief. New single 'Hi' is among highlights: an impressive 3-minute stab containing the coiled-up energy and pop nouse of younger bands and their initial efforts. Stewart still wants this.

A curious cove of a performer, Stewart calmly sips tea between songs to preserve his hesitant yelp of a voice, largely refuses audience engagement, and there is no encore. What really surprises to this newcomer to the Xiu Xiu live experience is that the band on record, with its array of ethnic instruments and songs led by autoharp, is reducible to the classic four-piece guitar-band line up without trading any of their signature fragility or tonal idiosyncrasy. This allows for a more direct and familiar experience, comparable to many an outsider band that have insisted upon faithful live recreation of their multi-instrumental experience in a way that induces deep tedium (naming no names).

Historically, for me at least, seeing a band live often marks the end of a spurt of a period of time spent listening to their work and sees the band steadily acclimatise into a kind of rota alongside previous likes and loves. The days since Xiu Xiu's performance have been the reverse: a binge across the nooks and crannies of their output, finding previously unheard collaborations and split albums of consistently high merit. A genuine treat.

ART IN MACRO COMPLETE BUYER'S GUIDES #1: The Fall.

Skip to around two minutes into the above video and the case for the cultural significance of The Fall is made; that the tastemaker of tastemakers, the spiritual cool uncle of music, should name the group as his favourite ever. Also fans: Frank Skinner, David 'Bumble' Lloyd, the members of any half-decent US group of the last 30 years, etc.

We're not here to question The Fall's position in the critical canon. Let us assume they are as unimpeachable as Shakespeare, Keats, or Philip Schofield. We're also not here to teach you in detail about the tumult and the firings or even use the word 'curmudgeonly': other people have written books on those subjects. And while we're here, don't buy Mark E. Smith's "auto"-biography. It's one of the worst books ever ghosted.

The problem is: what to buy? No band can cough up thirty records (not mention endless compilations, bootlegs, sessions, and live albums) and not have a stinker amongst them and The Fall are no exception. We at AIM are industry leaders in objectivity and championing the consumer and are subsequently not afraid of any challenge. So here it is: every Fall record in 50 words.

LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS ****
Step Forward, 1979
Angry dock clerk Mark E. Smith adds the syllable '-uh' to every line. His drably-dressed friends make 'punk' music that only shares 20% of its DNA with punk (energy, attitude) but little else: they've heard Beefheart, some German stuff. Cheap keyboards, curious rants: soon to be left behind. Excellent though.
Key lyric: “We are The Fall. Northern white crap that talks back.”
Killer track: Two Steps Back

DRAGNET ****
Step Forward, 1979
Looser. Weirder. At times impenetrable. Blackly humoured, proud to be slack, notes flubbed left and right. The amateurish performances and mix sound fantastic though – a happy accident of anti-technique and confident direction. Dragnet marks the debut of key member Steve Hanley, whose bass often sounds like an industrial accident.
Key lyric: “I don't sing. I just shout. All on one note.”
Killer track: Before The Moon Falls

GROTESQUE (AFTER THE GRAMME) ****1/2
Rough Trade, 1980
Weirder still. They now throw their own warped take on rockabilly into the mix (which they call 'country and northern'. Get it?). Hard to describe in mortal words, so I'll try something pretentious – like Bosch re-imagined by LS Lowry. Images of terror and anger softened with humour. Best one yet.
Key lyric: “You think you've got it bad with thin ties, miserable songs synthesized, or circles with A in the middle. Make joke records, hang out with Gary Bushell.”
Killer track: Container Drivers

The Fall, Nijmegen, 1981: (l-r) Steve Hanley, Mark E. Smith, Karl Burns, Marc Riley.

SLATES *****
Rough Trade, 1981
Six-track mini-album/EP that has a reasonably solid claim to being the greatest achievement of all mankind. That is not an exaggeration. 'Slates, Slags, Etc.' takes The Stooges' template and improves upon it by not giving into rock & roll cliché. The three Rs in full, mesmerising effect: repetition, repetition, repetition.
Key lyric: “Academic male slags ream off names of books and bands. Kill cultural interest in our land.”
Killer track: Leave The Capitol

HEX ENDUCTION HOUR ****1/2
Kamera, 1982
Two drummers! Nerve-jangler 'Hip Priest' would find its way into the denouement of Silence of the Lambs at writer Thomas Harris' request. Loose. Some spaces dense with conventional chord changes and others stark and open and minimal. Generally considered their best by the beard-stroking contingent. On some days I agree.
Key lyric: “Made with the highest British attention to the wrong detail.”
Killer track: Fortress/Deer Park

ROOM TO LIVE ***1/2
Kamera, 1982
Unpolished and spontaneous, this record sounds like the run-time is all the time it took to commit this to its finished entity. That results in some brilliantly unforeseeable moments where instruments clash unexpectedly, creating new sounds. It also results in some slightly indulgent moments where 'spartan' and 'boring' are interchangeable terms.
Key lyric: “The sweetest sound she had ever heard was the whinging and crying due to the recession.”
Killer track: Solicitor In Studio

PERVERTED BY LANGUAGE ****
Rough Trade, 1983
The last of the two drummer records, sadly. Some definitive rants and some crucial stuff that almost grooves conventionally ('I Feel Voxish') are interspersed with slow, percussive tracks that routinely shatter the eight minute mark. A disciplined effort with no languers. Who is that female singer on 'Hotel Bloedel' though...?
Key lyric: “The best firms advertise the least.”
Killer track: Smile

THE WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF... ****
Beggars Banquet, 1984
So, Mark married an American (Brix) who plays a jangly Rickenbacker like Peter Buck. She must be in the band, decides Mark. A drummer goes missing and sunshine breaks the clouds over Salford. The first brushes with pop, whilst Steve Hanley keeps it dour at the low end. A palate cleanser.
Key lyric: “Used table leg to club son-in-law.”
Killer track: No Bulbs

THIS NATION'S SAVING GRACE *****
Beggars Banquet, 1985
THE starting point. Every idea works. Every track hurts. In a way, their least coherent record – the sum of thousands of influences. The pop of Brix, the grinding of the band, the playful experimentation of Mark...this should be every high school year seven set listening for one whole year.
Key lyric: “Was over accountant's and on business, then I woke up and I decided to recommence my diary. Then I read Paula Yates On Vision Mopeds. Then I found out we were not going to Italy. Later Mam said “Those continentals are little monkeys”.”
Killer track: My New House



BEND SINISTER ***1/2
Beggars Banquet, 1986
The first record without any real difficulties for the listener: this is a band that thrives on chaos! Instead: same line-up, same producer, same label. None of these songs would make the record before – no surprise - but age shows it to be no mere facsimile of a successful effort. Underrated.
Key lyric: “I really think this computer thing is getting out of hand.”
Killer track: Riddler!

THE FRENZ EXPERIMENT ***
Beggars Banquet, 1987
All over the place. The opening trio sound transplanted from 1981, before giving way to a diabetes-inducing version of The Kinks' 'Victoria'. Side two (vinyl fans) drags due to their first real stinkers, some clock the ten-minute mark. Nobody signed up for happiness: The Frenz Experiment reeks of it.
Key lyric: “Diluted Jesuits pour out of mutual walkmans - from Elland Road to Venice Pensions and down the Autobahns.”
Killer track: Frenz

Brix Smith, 1988

I AM KURIOUS ORANJ ****
Beggars Banquet, 1988
A huge curveball: a ballet score! Admittedly for maverick choreographer Michael Clark, this record besmirches ballet more than it does the band. There's a perverse sense of 'let's the see the bastard dance to THIS' running throughout, challenging the band to experiment for the first time in three years. Great!
Key lyric: “I was very let down with the budget. I was expecting a one million quid handout. I was very disappointed. It was the government's fault.”
Killer track: Bad News Girl

EXTRICATE ***1/2
Cog Sinister, 1990
Lead single 'Telephone Thing' isn't really The Fall: it's Mark singing over a Coldcut song. One song tenderly laments the divorce of wife Brix, the rest actively celebrates the divorce of wife Brix. Angular and tightly-wound, with two covers of pioneering garage-rockers The Monks. Another underrated effort; no real lows.
Key lyric: “Does the Home Secretary have barest faintest inkling of what's going down?”
Killer track: Bill Is Dead

SHIFT-WORK **
Phonogram, 1991
Arguably the most nondescript Fall LP: forgotten by all but die-hard fans. Transition from guitars to synths, a sense of the band trying to compete rather than just be. Moving Steve Hanley onto acoustic bass is like telling Mozart to try his hand at funk drumming. Effort? Yes! Reward? Little.
Key lyric: “California has Disneyland. And Blackpool has a Funland. And Flanders had No Man's Land. This place idiot show bands.”
Killer track: High Tension Line

CODE: SELFISH **1/2
Phonogram, 1992
I'm an ass for criticising Smith for bringing techno into the band's sound: they were always concerned with amphetamine-influence music, being a bit speedy themselves. 'Free Range'/'Everything Hurtz' was an essential double A-side single: the rest is a decent grab of garage and pop recorded in a watery '90s style.
Key lyric: “Your brain is software. Your brain is Game Boy. It's filled with excrement.”
Killer track: Everything Hurtz

THE INFOTAINMENT SCAN ***
Permanent, 1993
Popular! They've finally cracked the top ten on the crest of the Madchester house revival by throwing in some bouncy Korg-M1 piano sounds amongst the choppy guitars, grunting bass, and bizarre covers of songs by novelty artists and reggae stars. Personal theory: Animal Collective's 'Fireworks' develops this album's 'Light/Fireworks'.
Key lyric: “At my feet, one who laughs at anything. And at my head, one that laughs at nothing. And I'm just in-between.”
Killer track: Service

MIDDLE CLASS REVOLT ***
Permanent, 1994
The house direction made them popular. Being The Fall, they bring back the guitars and turn the synths way down. Mark sounds fairly restrained throughout an album full of angry content: class discomfit, anti-student resentment, and a cover of Cambridge alumni Henry Cow's 'War'. At times on autopilot, often inspired.
Key lyric: “Heinz is guilty on the borders of your imagination.”
Killer track: M5 #1

CEREBRAL CAUSTIC ***
Permanent, 1995
Earns three stars for sheer gumption: turning their back on the dance zeitgesit and sticking two fingers back up at the prevalent Britpop taking over their city and country by playing repetitive garage rock. Oh yeah – his ex-wife is back on guitar, slightly ruining some songs with her 'singing'.
Key lyric: “We have Richard and Judy's bastard offspring - baseball cap reversed.”
Killer track: One Day

Craig Scanlon played guitar in The Fall from 1979 to 1995.

THE LIGHT USER SYNDROME ****
Jet, 1996
The keyboards and samples are back, but this time they're being used less forcefully. Lots of space in the mix: tracks like 'Hostile' and 'Oxymoron' are monolithic creatures, approaching remorselessly. A word can be used that is not often used in the presence of Smith and his pirate band: subtle.
Key lyric: “Don't ever follow the path of being hard and tough when your heart is soft.”
Killer track: Hostile

LEVITATE ***
Artful, 1997
The closest the band got to an out-and-out dance album (not counting Smith's Von Sudenfed project). Slightly maddening production (by Smith himself) means some tracks have real bite, where others have a slightly watercolour feel to them. The songwriting is mostly encouraging, considering their impending implosion. Currently out of print.
Key lyric: “I thought about my debts. He was talking about his house in the Lake District.”
Killer track: The Quartet of Doc Shanley

THE MARSHALL SUITE ***
Artful, 1999
Big fight in New York in 1998: Smith gets jailed and the the band leaves – including Steve Hanley. Features 'Touch Sensitive' (remember the VW advert with the 'hey hey hey' song? That.). Surprisingly manages to be decent in spite of losing THE GREATEST BASSIST EVER. MES = a fool.
Key lyric: “And in dreams I stumble towards you. Knees knocked, as you evaporate. Though I am teed up, I am in the next room with you always.”
Killer track: Birthday Song

THE UNUTTERABLE ***1/2
Eagle, 2000
In a word: frontloaded. The first nine tracks represents their strongest start to an album since 1985! The final six never do much, including a turgid pub-rocker that Smith doesn't even bother to sing. Smith's newest girlfriend is in the band: her keyboard sounds are all six years too late.
Key lyric: “I was in the realm of the essence of Tong.”
Killer track: Two Librans

ARE YOU ARE MISSING WINNER *1/2
Cog Sinister / Voiceprint, 2001
American fight #2 and now Smith's girlfriend is out of his life: so are the rest of the band. The new guys sound like they've had two days with no electricity to learn a sixties garage album. It shows, but without the charming amateurism. Hyper-indulgent, mostly nonsense. Best track: a cover.
Key lyric: “The editor bedraggled, stumbled, some hurt, some days with film crew.”
Killer track: Gotta See Jane

THE REAL NEW FALL LP (FORMERLY COUNTRY ON THE CLICK) ****1/2
Action, 2003
All killer, no filler. Where they pulled this one from after years of diminishing returns is beyond comprehension. Another new girlfriend (later to be wife) is on keyboards and she's really good! Feels like a sequel to This Nation's Saving Grace: accessible, but obviously made by a complete original. Exquisite.
Key lyric: “So I went fishing. A note from a fish said: 'Dear dope, if you wanna catch us you need a rod and a line. Signed the fish.'”
Killer track: Janet, Johnny + James.

Eleni Smith (née Poulou): keys since 2002

FALL HEADS ROLL **1/2
Slogan, 2005
Perhaps that low mark is related to the fact that I paid £16 to buy it and hated it. Subsequent re-appraisal: too many two- and three- chord 'rockers'. Mark seems to think the band were once a conventional garage band: they were always too weird for that. Beauty found within.
Key lyric: “People in Great Britain, please don't get me wrong.”
Killer track: Midnight In Aspen

REFORMATION POST TLC **
Slogan, 2007
ANOTHER fight in America: band leaves. Seriously Mark, just don't go! You always mess up! His support act learned the songs and then he flew them to sunny Stockport to record this. A genuinely unremarkable effort, if anything: still not convinced about the Fall = garage-pop thing. Strangely lauded elsewhere.
Key lyric: “I've seen POWs less hysterical than you.”
Killer track: Fall Sound

IMPERIAL WAX SOLVENT ***
Castle, 2008
STILL going with the garage-pop thing, though at least there are some firsts: the opening track flirts with jazz. The new Mrs. Smith continues her strong showing behind the keys, displaying at worst an up-to-date knowledge and at best, pushing some sloppier tracks into the thumbs-up zone! A good find.
Key lyric: “The spawn of J. "Loaded" Brown and L. Laverne: with the dept. of no name.”
Killer track: Alton Towers

YOUR FUTURE OUR CLUTTER ***1/2
Domino, 2010
Their dullest rhythm section to date. They sound like two blokes at jam night. Fortunately, Mark, Eleni, and the new guitarist are all in sparkling form. New guy plays like Duane Denison, all bent notes and menace. Though he drops back to please the boss, he secretly steals the show.
Key lyric: “She has lips like Fedde Le Grand.”
Killer track: Chino

BONUS MATERIAL