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“I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden [At Lausanne]. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotion of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame”.
So wrote Edward Gibbon after completing his magnum opus "The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire". I kind of know how he feels. True, I haven’t toiled for the twelve years that it took Gibbon to produce his text, but it’s been over three and a half years since I started this project, which is a good two and a half longer than I initially planned. And over the course of that time, what started as a labour of love has just become a labour.
But why stop now? After all, Gibbon was working to certain parameters with his tome; the Roman Empire rose, the Roman Empire fell and, having fell, Gibbon had a clear cut off point to put down his pen and get on with the washing. Clearly, 'Crazy' does not mark the 'end' of UK number ones; there was a 'next one' after it (it's Sandi Thom’s delightfully titled ‘I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)’if you're interested). Not only that, from my current vantage point in 2012, there are six years and counting of 'other' number ones waiting in line for attention that isn't going to come. Not from me anyway.
So, why stop now? Well, let me explain; I was browsing the second hand vinyl in a charity shop (as I'm wont to do) the other day and I came across this copy of David Bowie's 1972 'Starman' single in the box. Just seeing it there stopped me in my tracks. It only got to number ten in the charts so we haven't come across it on these pages, but there it was - orange RCA label, white/green RCA paper sleeve and 'Suffragette City' on the B-side. Two songs scratched into vinyl and sent out into the world to try its luck with the public, a perfect artefact from another era and an item of substance and meaning that would not look out of place hung behind glass. 
Which I guess is apt, seeing that it and its kind have become something of a museum piece. Give that copy of ‘Starman’ (or any other single) to your average clued up teen today and I've little doubt they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
And why should they - in a digital age of MP3 where Itunes and Spotify stream music straight down the phoneline, the thought of having two or three songs 'burned' onto a cumbersome plastic disc probably seems as ridiculous and cumbersome as the stack of eight 78rpm discs once needed to house Beethoven’s' 9th symphony at a time when the whole thing could be fitted onto two 33rpm discs. Or, as ridiculous and cumbersome as my own two disc box set of ‘Beethoven’s' 9th' (Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) would seem to anyone who has it on a single CD and can listen to it in one go without getting up to change any discs at all; give me convenience or give me death. Or better still, give me seven inches of vinyl.
You see, I've long thought that the 45” single was the best medium for music. Seven inches of plastic over which to make your definitive statement. Yes, people have made definitive statements over the course of an album too, but the extra space also encourages filler and patchiness - song one not up to scratch? Well song two might be, or song three. And so on. But a 45” single is a one shot at the title affair, a condensation of talent and conscious decisions that leads the artist to think that this song is the best statement we can make. It doesn't always work out that way, but even with the most horrendous of singles, somebody somewhere must have thought that it had a decent shot at the title.
Growing up, singles weren’t exactly cheap. Buying 10 or 12 singles cost more than buying an album of 10 or 12 songs, but there was little risk involved - you heard the song on the radio (not YouTube or Itunes) and thought 'I like that'. True, some rich folk may have bought them on a whim, but I wasn't one of them; if I bought a single there was a reason behind it and the thought of owning a 45 I didn't 'like' was as bizarre as going out without your trousers. Buying the parent album was a risk - the remainder of the songs were unheard and might be rubbish (and, as I’ve so often found out to my cost, most were), but you knew where you were with a single in your hand.
I can remember the first singles I bought ("Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" and ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper – one to be proud of, one not so), most people can, but how many can remember the last one I wonder? I can. For me, it was Neneh Cherry's 'Buffalo Stance' and it was bought from the leftover vinyl bargain rack of a local supermarket long after the song had dropped out of the charts and contention. It wasn't consciously my last - I didn't come away thinking 'this is the last single I'm ever going to buy'. It just turned out that way. Local shops had slowly stopped stocking them in favour of CD singles anyway so they weren't that easy to come by anymore and besides, my tastes had moved away from the top twenty by that stage. Where mine and popular opinion did converge, I was by then working full time and had money enough to buy the album without worrying too much whether the bulk of it was up to scratch or not. So I guess that for all my railing, I myself played my own small part in their downfall.
Which in a roundabout way is my answer to the question ‘Why stop now?’ Well, in one way the decision wasn’t mine at all; it's called itself to a natural halt really. You see, my own idea of what a 'single' is has been obscuring like the hazy horizon on a summers days over the past decade or so that I’ve reviewed. Singles in their traditional form have become marginialised and acquired the status of artefact. You can still buy them, even in the today that I’m writing in, but to do so has almost become an act of bloody mindedness when you can download the same thing without even leaving your bed. It’s akin to making your own furniture instead of buying it flat packed from Ikea. Some handy people do make their own furniture in the sprit of naturalness, but as George Orwell wrote “from the very start there is a touch of artificiality about the whole business, for the factories can turn out a far better table than I can make for myself. But even when I get to work on my table, it is not possible for me to feel towards it as the cabinet maker of a hundred years ago felt towards his table, still less as Robinson Crusoe felt toward his.”
There’s no doubt about it, buying singles is now the exception rather than the norm that downloading has become; the days of the top twenty set out in a rack at your local record shop have long gone. CD singles came first of course, arguably the same thing (albeit on a single disc) but arguably completely different too. When did they gain dominance? I'm not sure, but I've noticed that since circa 1994, it’s become increasingly difficult to find a true square image of the single sleeve to accompany each review I've written. In the majority of cases, all I've been able to find are the slightly rectangular images indicative of the rectangular CD case they came in which, in my own bloody minded way, I've compressed into a square. It's not ideal (or factually true), but it was enough to keep the ruse going - even though I wasn't buying them, I could still imagine that rack of vinyl down at Woolworth’s with the latest releases all nestling there in their paper sleeves and waiting for me to call in and browse them.
That all changed with 'Crazy'. With a fact of popular that's surely going to become as widely ingrained into common knowledge as surely as ‘Flowers In The Rain’ was the first song played on Radio One’ or ‘Here In My Heart’ was the first UK number one, 'Crazy' managed to reach number one on the strength of downloads alone. Which means, to put it bluntly, not one physical copy changed hands in order for it to be the best selling song in the UK. And that bothers me. As much as I've embraced electronic media myself, there remains something special about the physical act of buying and owning music, especially the definitive statement of that one shot at the title single. And now it’s gone.
But the music is still there and people are still listening, so does it matter? Well yes it does. The sense of loss is troubling – it is to me anyway. I still own all the albums and singles I ever bought from pre-teen to present day and, apart from the music within the grooves, their physical presence stand as ‘exhibits’ in the museum of my life. If I turn the sleeve to my copy of AC/DC’s ‘If You Want Blood’ to the light, I can still read the History homework indented into the cardboard where I’d used it as a laptop desk to write on back in 1979. That ‘Starman’ disc I found has ‘Steve’ written on the label in ink – who was Steve? Did he buy this disc? Was he given it as a gift? Does he know it ended up in a charity shop box and would he care if he did? Who knows – my point here is that even in something so incongruous and low-key, there’s a small history of someone there just waiting to be uncovered.
It’s not just the covers either. My well-worn copy of ‘Atomic’ has two big clicks on the intro, making it unique, my own personal Christian Marclay remix. Imperfect in itself maybe, but no other copy can boast the same. And even though I’ve not played that actual single in over twenty, those clicks have become so ingrained that I’ve been conditioned into thinking this IS how Atomic is supposed to sound and I mentally put them in place myself whenever I play my CD copy of ‘Eat To The Beat’, be it the 2001 ‘remastered’ version or the 2007 ‘Collectors Edition’ double disc set with DVD. Other examples abound, but you get the picture.
And not only that, in their own small way every piece of mass-produced vinyl I own has become personal to me and comes with its own associated memories. I can generally remember the shop I bought them from and the circumstance of why I bought it. You don't get that with downloads do you? You don't get the physical connection between you and the record, the needle and the groove, the personal touch or individuality. You don't get the hanging around the local record shop with your mates, the browsing through the racks, the reading the sleeves. (though on the plus side, there will be no more frustration courtesy of the disinterested shop girl's attempts to find the vinyl to go into the blank sleeve you offered to her. This might be nostalgic cliché, but it doesn’t mean it’s not fact. Because it is. All now it’s gone, like tears in the rain.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe people neither want nor miss it and clinging steadfastly to the ‘old ways’ is the domain of the same kind of 'special' person who dutifully pedals around on a penny-farthing rather than a light frame road bike. Or still listens to Beethoven’s Ninth over eight scratchy shellac discs on a wind up Gramophone. Or maybe I’ve just got old without knowing it. But whatever, I miss it. And though I may be a Luddite dreamer, I know I’m not the only one – as comedian Stewart Lee put it: "…….tapes and records and things. And for the younger people, a record was like a massive flat MP3, and there was almost no information on it at all. It was very impractical, it could break or warp in the heat or get scratched. But it was better than your life."
Amen to that. But with ‘Crazy’ putting that final brass screw into the coffin lid of the seven-inch vinyl, it’s time to close the lid on this project too. The hits still keep on coming, and I'll still keep listening, but if they’re no longer in a format that will be browsable in a charity shop box some twenty years hence, then I’ll leave it to someone else to do the writing. My work here is done.
Unique insofar as it's the first number one to date to be crowned the best selling single in the UK on the strength of downloads alone, Gnarls Barkley are/were a readymade combination of noted producer Dangermouse and funk soul singer Cee Lo Green. The input of both pronounced and obvious; Dangermouse provides a sprung floor of a beat built on the shoulders of a moody Reverberi Brothers spaghetti Western sample* that in turn provides the wide open sky room for Green to float through with a loose limbed (check out the chuckle at 1:20) vocal of gravel and honey that tips a hat to both Al Green and Sam Cooke. Instantly likeable with an impressionistic lyric ("Even your emotions have an echo in so much space") you can take as meaning nothing or everything, 'Crazy' is a work of organic timelessness that manages to sound spontaneous yet controlled, experimental yet traditional all at the same time. And it does it all in less than three minutes to boot - 'Crazy' is exactly the kind of song that modern day naysayers and deniers believe 'they' don't write anymore, and it really is rather fine.
"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs" sang Paul McCartney in 1976. And while by no means an 'answer' song (not that a question was being asked anyway), American R&B artist Ne-Yo (aka Shaffer Chimere Smith, Jr.) goes some way to addressing the point McCartney makes."Cause I'm so sick of love songs, so tired of tears. So done with wishing she was still here. Said I'm so sick of love songs so sad and slow. So why can't I turn off the radio?"; love then, or else its fond remembrance and loss at its absence is what keeps them coming. And on that score, 'So Sick' elevates itself above its own generic slowjam by virtue of a lyric of observational everyman hurt ("Gotta fix that calendar I have that's marked July 15th, because since there's no more you there's no more anniversary") and a vocal of genuine dark night of the soul fragility that, in a genre usually marinated in testosterone and battered by bump and grind, for once shows some respect by keeping its pants buttoned. As McCartney went on to argue "Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. And what's wrong with that?" - on the strength of 'So Sick', the answer Paul is 'nothing'. Absolutely nothing.
It would be easy to tag Orson as the American Busted, though while that description gives an idea of the genre they operate in, there was always more bite and a foundation in the poppier end of American Hardcore about them than that (think Green Day or Blink 182). 'No Tomorrow' is a case in point, being a short, sharp slap of contemporary teen hedonism; that title isn't a Sex Pistols "No future" shout of despair but live for the moment call that would have done the Situationists proud. Built around a tight but loose latter period Stones riff (try 1989's 'Terrifying'). 'No Tomorrow's sugar rush gallop might be too much of the Pepsi Max generation for some tastes ("I have a girl who thinks I rock and tomorrow there's no school, so let's go drink some more Red Bull and not get home 'til about 6 'o clock"), but there's snap enough about the no flab racket to make it shine in a genre that, by 2006, was massively oversubscribed.
Well we've had Hammer Time, now 'It's Chico Time'. Who he? Yousseph 'Chico' Slimani was a (non winning) 2005 X Factor contestant drunk on self confidence and the splendour of his own personality with a debut single that's the crudest slice of self promotion since 'Mr Blobby'. And like 'Mr Blobby', 'It's Chico Time' comes shat straight and fun free from the arse end of a pantomime horse onto the platter of a coprophilic public eager to tuck into the latest course of bad light entertainment, this time a platter whisked into a poppy froth by the whirring hyperactivity of a thirty four year old adult whose behaviour in any other context would see him branded a right twat. And rightly so.
Following the back to the clubs basics of 'Hung Up', 'Sorry' sets up a permanent base camp there with a pumping jog of a tune that pulls off the trick of sounding comfortably retro yet edgily contemporary. 'Sorry' has the confidence born of restraint and, sans the distraction of an attention diverting sample (though keen ears may pick out the bassline from The Jacksons' 'Can You Feel It' buried in there), is content to throb like a busy vein under the power of it's own sensuous pulse as Madonna lays down the law to a would be suitor ("I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna know. Please don't say you're sorry, I've heard it all before"). And by not trying to be ahead of the game, Madonna ends up leading the pack anyway - this is what Madonna does best, always has been, always will be.
I don't think Leo Sayer was on too many minds in 2006. Not mine anyway, and it was with no small degree of incredulity that I found out he was back at number one that year (made all the more incredulous by being 'told' this by Tony Blackburn on the radio. Just for a second, time was out of joint and it felt like I'd slipped through a wormhole back to the seventies). Not with a new song mind - 'Thunder In My Heart Again' is a dance remix of Sayer's 1977 single 'Thunder In My Heart', and while this doesn't sound the most engaging of propositions on paper, it works Godammit! Sayer's vein bulging vocal always sat ill at ease within the polite, tacky mirrorball disco setting of the original where it seethed like a captured lion pacing up and down its cage. Meck's remix opens up the door to let Sayer out by blowing apart its low end glamour and reassembling it in a widescreen cinemascope that gives Sayer the room to roar like a man who's seen the sun for the first time in thirty years. It's not enough to fully exorcise the whiff of cheese that's part and parcel of Leo Sayer per se (it'll take more than this to rid my mind of 'You Make Me Feel Like Dancing' anyway), but it's more than enough to curb its worst excesses and make him sound relevant. Or at least as relevant as he's ever going to be.
In a neat squaring of a rap feud circle, former 2pac rival and East Coast rap star Christopher George Latore Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls aka The Notorious B.I.G.) gets his own posthumous UK number one some eight years after his own drive by shooting. Like 'Ghetto Gospel'before it, 'Nasty Girl' has undergone some post production from the original track to get here. A great deal more; Small's rap on 'Nasty Girl' is lifted from his own 'Nasty Boy' and then coupled to a completely different and decidedly un-hip-hop dance template borrowed from Chic (specifically, 'My Old Piano') and augmented by a pot pourri of living rap stars who chip in with their own ten cents worth on alternate verses in a kind of 'Rap Aid' but without the charity, making it far less of a 'solo' effort than the 2pac single was (there's a whole album of these posthumous duets should you be interested).
That new backing softens the menace of Small's original rap and fits it out with a commercial edge that rolls as smoothly as a tray full of ball bearings, yet for a genre forever keen to keep it real, 'Nasty Girl's new disco strut leaves it sounding remarkably false. The lads are on fine 'fuck dem bitches' locker room form throughout ("When I, whip it out, rubber no doubt. Step out, show me what you all about. Fingers in your mouth, open up your blouse, pull your G-string down South. Threw that back out, in the parking lot, by a Cherokee and a green drop-top, and I don't stop, until I squirt, jeans skirt butt-naked it all work"), but this brand of jock misogyny requires membership of a club I've never been keen to join; rap as a genre and B.I.G. as an artist are both better than this. Smalls himself is a big character but he's given so little room to breathe he becomes a supporting act, Banquo's ghost (literally) at the table of peers dining out on the weight of credibility his name adds to a song that neither they nor it really deserve; I don't doubt the intentions behind the whole 'Duets' project might have been pure, but this is all just so very unnecessary.
Now here's something that genuinely leaves me torn. On one hand (and for the purposes of my own self imposed brief for this project), I do not regard 'When The Sun Goes Down' as a 'good single'. A good album track in the proper context maybe, but a single? 'When The Sun Goes Down' would sound saw-toothed rough in almost any company, but to say it flings a fistful of gravel into the oil spill slick run of recent number ones would be understatement.
Because although other English singer songwriters like Ray Davies or Morrissey have documented the underclasses of England with no less a keen or unflinching eye, Alex Turner's lyric of prostitutes, their punters and the ever present threat of violence is scraped out with a Hogarthian socio-realist bluntness that jars in its lack of good humour or sympathy toward the dysfunctional lives he describes. "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" - it's heady stuff, delivered straight and raw as an open wound while behind him the band bash out their tune with the glee of drunken buskers on a Saturday night in town. Or a Lieutenant Pigeon with menaces. Whatever, as a post-Christmas comedown after the lights and tinsel have been put away then it doesn't get much lower.
All of which kind of suggests 'When The Sun Goes Down' is no more than a throwaway B side that got lucky, but it's not. Turner's writing is too whipsmart to rely on luck, though what Turner hasn't written for it is the same hook to hang on of 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' that offered the safe ground of a recognisable link to something approaching traditional pop; 'When The Sun Goes Down' eschews such niceties and instead adds an extra layer of grime to bury the melody and spits out a chorus tagline more suited to shouting along to than whistling. It's a 'WTF?' moment for sure and the closest point of reference to date is Mungo Jerry following the good time spring of 'In The Summertime' with the caveman jive of 'Baby Jump' (which was a throwaway B side that got extremely lucky). But 'When The Sun Goes Down' is a far more calculated and belligerent kick in the shins than that.
Ah but so effing what? 'Good' single or not, on the hand other than the one I opened with I take considerable pleasure at something so red in tooth and claw appearing at number one. A greater contrast with the production line pledges of life long love Shayne Ward promised you could not possible imagine, and in such company a breath of fetid yet honest air ("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 that he's got a nasty plan") can smell remarkably fresh.
With the finals of TV's 'X Factor' screened each November, by 2005 it had become a hellish tradition that the winner would be 'rewarded' with the previously fiercely contested Christmas number one - Shayne Ward won, Shyane Ward got the prize. Not only that, Ward's debut became the third fastest selling single in the UK. Ever. Which must mean that the 'X Factor' is strong with this one? Well on the evidence of this, then as long as you consider mid period (i.e. not vintage) Elton John as the benchmark for quality then you're in luck; 'That's My Goal' is exactly the kind of vacuous, piano led ballad that John would have taken to number 17 at any point in his career post 1982. Which doesn't make 'That's My Goal' a 'bad' thing, just one that's a tad dull; That's My Goal' is hack work through and through ("Please don't go, you know that I need you. I can't breathe without you, live without you") with a lyric that Ward's own phoned-in brand of doe eyed sincerity barely lifts above parody. "So when I say I love you, I'll mean it forever and ever, ever and ever" - 'That's My Goal' is as perfectly functional and solidly purpose built as a multi- storey car park. Unfortunately, it's got the same amount of personality too.
"I'm Luke I'm 5 and my dad's Bruce Lee, drives me around in his JCB" - and that's a line that just about sums up Nizlopi's song; a first person childhood reminisce of a boy riding with his father in his JCB. Whether that's an actual memory of writer Luke Concannon or purely a work of fiction matters not - 'JCB' has a folksy charm and innocence enough to make its source material irrelevant. I was briefly tempted to brand it the number one Jonathan Richman never had, but on reflection that would be doing both 'JCB' and Mr Richman a disservice I think; 'JCB' is too controlled, too plotted and too carefully written to equate to most of Richman's looser, almost spontaneous output that frequently border too close to twee for comfort. It's that same level of control and writing that keeps 'JCB' away from the trite and the childish with lines like "And we're like giants up here in our big yellow digger, like zoids or transformers or maybe even bigger. I wanna transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and eat up all the bullies and the teachers and their pets. And I'll tell all my mates my dad's B.A.Baracus, only with a JCB, and Bruce Lee's nunchuckers" taking it into the realms of the best of Dahl, Disney, Postgate or Pixar; that is, a work ostensibly for children that carries far beyond it's obvious target audience to resonate with older minds. Like mine. Which finds this an absolute delight. The fact the name of the band is the name of a Hungarian girl Concannon had a crush on in school just makes it resonate all the harder.
Oh dear. After the sassy strut of 'Don't Cha', the Dolls go all ickle wickle and profess their undying love, devotion and emotional dependence on their men in a Disney Club ballad that's conservative to the core and drips its goo with all the charm of drool dribbling from a sleeping tramp's mouth. And that's no charm at all. I'll tell you something for nothing though ladies, if any of you were my girlfriend and u wanted 2 stickwitme then u wouldn't be going out dressed like that.
It's with a wry smile that I remember the 1989 version of me debating Madonna with a work colleague just before the 'Like A Prayer' album was released. As far as he was concerned, Madonna was a short-term concern with a shelf life that was about to expire. For my own part, I countered with the view that I thought she had a few years left in her yet. In the event, we were both wide of the mark (though him more than me, HA!), because even though I was prepared to cut her some slack (a few years indeed!), I would never have predicted she'd be still having number ones over 15 years later.
Should we be surprised? Frankly, yes - after all, there's no precedent here; pop acts do have a limited shelf life before they're replaced and there was nothing in Madonna's presentation back then to suggest she'd be anything different. Of course, she'd already re-invented herself enough times by 1989 to show that she was savvy enough to not stay still, but even so, female singers with longevity tend to be cut from a more sophisticated cloth than a crop top and 'Boy Toy' belt buckle and one that improves and gains gravitas with age; it's easy enough to picture punters paying top dollar to see a Shirley Bassey belting out 'Goldfinger' for as long as she was capable, but I could never quite picture anyone wanting to see a Madonna of the same age creaking out 'Like A Virgin'. Who would?
The closest point of reference we have is the benchmark set by the ever reliable Rolling Stones, but even they don’t provide a precedent that does her justice; Jagger and co haven’t had a number one since 1969. And though they do release new albums on a semi-regular basis, as a catalyst for another world tour they’re met with little more than a respectful interest; nobody expects another 'Exile On Main Street' and nobody is too disappointed when one duly fails to arrive. Madonna doesn't get such an easy ride; each new album is trailed with expectation, if just to see what she's going to do next, and there's palpable disappointment whenever it fails to meet the expected mark.
In 2005, her forthcoming ‘Confessions Of A Dancefloor’ album was seen as another 'comeback' of sorts after the perceived disaster of her 2003 'American Life' album and so was waited for with baited breath. What exactly were people expecting I wonder? What do they still expect (at the time of writing, her 'MDNA' album was generating similar column inches)? I honestly don't know. I don't think Madonna does either - lest we forget, this pop star at 46 malarkey is new ground for her too and Madonna's position is a struggle that can be summed up by 'Hung Up's promotional video.
In it, Madonna pitches up at a dance studio with a leotard and ghetto blaster (a la 'Call On Me's infamous promo film), and then performs an energetic, quasi erotic aerobics workout to her own song…. while still wearing high heels, full make-up and a straight from the hairdresser's chair blow dry. And there you have it, the dual desire for youthful pop relevance countered by an urge for class, sophistication and a nagging sense that she should be growing old more gracefully; there's no doubt about it, Madonna wants it both ways and, in striving for both, she frequently winds up pulling herself in two. With unsatisfactory results.
As far as 'Hung Up' goes though, by retreating back to her natural territory of the dancefloor with a back to basics circling of the wagons to show the world she hasn't lost her dance chops, Madonna plays it safe. And as far as that goes, it’s a success. As clean and precise as a metronome, ‘Hung Up’ derives its glitzy roll from a keyboard riff sampled from Abba's 'Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie' which adds a sparking fulcrum for Madonna to skip around like the eighties club singer she wishes she still was. Nostalgia of a kind then, but it's not all plain sailing - that sample dominates to the point of it becoming a gimmicky crutch rather than a conduit, for innovation, and for anyone over-familiar (like me) with the Abba original, then ‘Hung Up’ is tainted with a sheen of Europop tackiness that takes off whatever gloss Madonna adds. And whatever I myself expect from Madonna, it’s always something more than a borrowed song.
"You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains, you raise me up, to walk on stormy seas. I am strong, when I am on your shoulders, you raise me up... to more than I can be"; less a song and more a corporate motivational tape delivered as mantra and overlaid with a religious fervour, 'You Raise Me Up' is not a 'pop' song by any definition other than that of it being 'popular'. Sure there's a tune that's hummable (based as it on a traditional Irish folk song), but to experience it is like sitting through a self help class delivered by a clutch of trendy vicars doling out enlightenment with one hand while collecting payment for services rendered with the other. Because with its secular/humanist, humanist/secular lyric of thanks to a lover/friend/parent/deity,'You Raise Me Up' is money in the bank for Westlife delivered over five minutes of solemnity that virtually dares you to question its integrity. So is there any point in my doing so? Not really - fans of this kind of thing will be immune to my brickbats and, as Westlife are doing nobody any harm here, throwing them in the first place would leave me with the same cheap and grubby feeling I'd get if I'd been caught haranguing little old ladies with a Richard Dawkins rant as they leave church on a Sunday evening; there are more deserving things to hate after all. So suffice it to say 'You Raise Me Up' does not speak to me on any level save one that kick-starts a subliminal voice deep in my head that whispers 'For God's sake turn it off' into my ear. And though I don't tend to respond well to being told what to do, on this occasion I'm happy to oblige.
I'm getting a sense of deja vu here; just like Oasis in the nineties, Arctic Monkeys seemed to drop fully formed from a mould fired by a readymade fanbase built word of mouth and live performances with the corresponding white heat of media hype and critical expectation fanning the bellows. Just like Oasis, I'd heard of Arctic Monkeys before I'd actually heard anything by them. And then just like my initial reaction to 'Supersonic' (Oasis' debut single), hearing 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' for the first time left me bemused with an overriding sense of disappointment; just what was all the fuss about? In Oasis' case, their times benefited them and their crash glam wallop came as, if not exactly a breath of fresh air, at least an offering of recycled coolness and last gang in town identity that added a welcome freshness and bite in a chart awash with aimless, faceless dance acts and no guitar europop. Arctic Monkeys had no such helping hand; the mid 2000's had any number of indie rock acts with a whinge or a shout out for everyone. Most are now buried in nameless graves over in the indie graveyard.
But then again, the band can hardly be responsible for other the weight of other people's expectations, and it's clear from its opening chords that 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' will itself be making no concession to the contemporary; on its own, the lyric namechecks 1984 electropop and Duran Duran hits from before chief Monkey and songwriter Alex Turner was even born ("I said, I bet that you look good on the dancefloor, dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984"). It's all metaphor of course, a twisted 'Teenage Kicks' of Turner imagining the cold and disinterested girl who's winding him up ("I wish you'd stop ignoring me, because it's sending me to despair") looking good dancing to cold, disinterested music is a put down of sorts.
But to look at it another way (whilst wearing my post-modern hat of pretension), it could also be reference to the dystopian, no love future ("Oh, there ain't no love, no Montagues or Capulets are just banging tunes and DJ sets and dirty dancefloors, and dreams of naughtiness!") Orwell predicted in 'Nineteen Eighty Four', giving reassurance that if this girl doesn't like him then who cares? She's not going to be liking anybody. Is that pushing it too far? Maybe, maybe not - hindsight has revealed Turner to be a songwriter of no small talent, and subtext is a sign of strength for any lyricist. Regardless of the 1984 references though, this is no La Roux or Ladytron style new romantic revival; in tone, 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor's wendy house garage harks back further again to the jerky guitar shuffles of late seventies/early eighties post punk Postcard or Fast Records acts, albeit with added muscle and purpose that's as rock and roll as Turner's quiff but with an earthy, do it yourself charm that's almost skiffle.
And that's kind of my problem with all this; although Turner doesn't outright rape his influences the way Oasis did, 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' still flashes with the magpie approach of a songwriter trying on other people's glass slippers for size. Orange Juice, Josef K, The Pop Group, The Mekons...even Bogshed (listen to this back to back with 'Fat Lad Exam Failure') they're all here in a who's who of classic indie pick and mix that renders 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' prime C86 material updated to C2005. Crucially though, it's not updated by enough to pull it free the gravity field of its obvious influences or for it to lose its hesitant stutter born of an artist yet to find his own voice. A good debut rather than a great one.
I've taken no small pleasure in the jerky, off the wall-ness of Sugababes singles to date, it's been a trademark of unpredictability that's set them apart from the legions of boy/girl bands they jockey for attention with. Cause for concern then when that unpredictability is replaced by a straight pop edge that's almost conservative in comparison? Not really; deceptively simple in its refrigerator hum and toy gun spark, 'Push The Button' finds its groove early then rides it like a rail to the end - you need to be sure of your moves to dance to this one. And though it might lack the angles of old, the low heat simmer of the climb to the implied raunch of the "If you're ready for me boy, you'd better push the button and let me know. Before I get the wrong idea and go, you're gonna miss the freak that I control"chorus is no less a delight. And rare for a genre always keen to push personality over content, the girls forever hover just below the radar and refuse to break cover, opting to keep the tension firmly bottled yet still managing to make that "boy" the best 'female in control' put down since Tanya Donnelly used it with a sneer on Belly's 'Feed The Tree'. Top stuff.
Originally recorded by session singer Tori Alamaze the same year, Anglo American all girl band Pussycat Dolls do very little with her template save add a rap from Busta Rhymes. To be honest, it's neither needed nor wanted - your views on 'Don't Cha' are going to hinge on your reaction to the brassnecked chutzpah of the "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot/raw/fun/a freak like me?" chorus hook that's present in both versions and around which the whole song revolves. Alamaze takes it sultry and slutty, giving it an R&B sleaze tease but while the Dolls add a titanium pop backbone, they are necessarily forced to split it six ways until it becomes more of a competition between themselves than a tempting come on to whichever lucky lad they're singing it to. But no matter how hard Pussycat Dolls or Busta's flow stopping interruptions inadvertentltry to derail it, 'Don't Cha' is wired to the mains R&B pop with an attitude that's irresistible.
Though they have a number one apiece, Gorillaz are a 'cartoon' band who've never been burdened with the baggage of bile that fixed itself to The Archies. Quite the opposite in fact, but then the comparison is not a level one; despite the cartoon similarities (and both acts had equally well developed back stories for each of the 'band member characters') nobody was ever left in any doubt as to who the people pulling the Gorillaz strings were (chiefly Blur's Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett ). Their names or faces might not have been on their covers, but for all the media hype and promotion surrounding them, they may as well have been. Would The Archies - either now or then - be regarded in a new light if it were revealed that its was actually Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Brian Wilson and Jim Morrison behind the drawings? Ah, I doubt it - The Archies (and 'Sugar Sugar') played it for pop fun, not critical kudos. And through never seeking the credibility edge that Gorillaz thrived on, there would have been little opportunity for any drops of that creative talent to seep through.
But apart from all the obvious, 'Sugar Sugar' and 'DARE' share a lot more DNA than they would care to admit. 'Sugar Sugar' might be less cryptic, but neither song has much to say for itself beyond a self generating, good time dance vibe. 'DARE' though is a hip hop/dance hybrid with a shuffling funk that fair drips with sweat. Only that sweat doesn't drip from its dance groove but from the tension of its own pretension and studious attempt to be so very 'now'. And if it's unfair to say that 'DARE' never breaks free of the straitjacket of its own conceit, it's certainty stymied by it (which is something that never bothered The Archies). 'DARE' sounds like a track that was born, gestated and worked up entirely in a studio following a pre-conceived remit with one eye on the zeitgeist; a fine approach if you're 10CC, not so in this field. Having Shaun Ryder guest is another careful tick in the credibility column, but his vocal only serves to remind of the Happy Monday's own loose fit, yet no less bone rattlingly inventive, take on the genre. In comparison, 'DARE' is as loose as a tourniquet with a 'beats in splints' rhythm that's too stiff for its own good with a constant repetition and lack of adventure that renders it something of a bore long before it finishes. Anything but DARING in fact.
I have to confess that I've been coming to almost every Oasis single to date with a very heavy heart; not so much because I'm always able to predict what I'm going to get or that I'm rarely disappointed in my prediction, but more because in being presented with more of the same, there are only so many ways I can express that disappointment. Which is why I'm pleased to report that 'The Importance Of Being Idle' does confound my expectations by providing me with something different. Not that different, but different enough; 'The Importance Of Being Idle' sees the band shifting away from the rock snarl of old (aided in no small part here by Noel handling lead vocal duties) to something altogether more - dare I say it - interesting. 'The Importance Of Being Idle' is very English rustic but with an urgent drive that belies Gallagher's laziness praising lyric ("But I don't mind, as long as there's a bed beneath the stars that shine, I'll be fine"). True to form, precedents are being followed here, but in crossing the kitchen sink music hall of The Kinks' 'Dead End Street' with the controlled, ramshackle charm of Small Faces' 'The Universal', 'The Importance Of Being Idle' manages to be derivative without acquiring the immoral taint of counterfeiting. Or plagiarism. But add it all up and you get one of the few (for me anyway) Oasis singles that rewards repeated plays.
Harder edged than previous, McFly's latest has the spiky bop of a crossover indie hit that almost beats Busted at their own game. Almost, but not quite; as fun as it is, 'I'll Be Ok' follows too many dead ends in its race for the prize, throwing too many spare themes and loose ideas into the pot when one really good one would have done. Maybe that's its origins showing through - 'I'll Be Ok' is an assemblage of the 'best bits' of two earlier McFly songs welded together in a musical cut and shut. But with the joins not sealed with due care, 'Ill Be Ok' fun is rendered fun without being overly memorable.
“I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden [At Lausanne]. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotion of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame”.
Which I guess is apt, seeing that it and its kind have become something of a museum piece. Give that copy of ‘Starman’ (or any other single) to your average clued up teen today and I've little doubt they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
