2000 Bob The Builder: Can We Fix It?

Spin off single from BBC TV's popular 'Bob The Builder' children's show, my core feelings toward this largely echo those I set out back on the Teletubbies single, so I'm not going to rehash them here. Where my views diverge are on the specifics; 'Teletubbies Say Eh Oh!' was a happy pill of a single engineered to generate smiles all round whereas, despite a scene setting "aaaahAAAAHH" 'Let's Dance' build up intro, 'Can We Fix It' prescribes more of a mogadon downer via a rickety song jerry built around a disinterested Neil Morrissey vocal. Bob's call and response "Can we fix it/Yes we can" catchphrase is repeated often enough to keep younger ears engaged, but to my more jaded sensibilities this is more functional than fun and is ultimately pretty unmemorable. And probably my biggest disappointment is that the opportunity to reference A Tribe Call Quest's 'Can I Kick It'? is missed and so goes begging. Not that it would have pulled this out of the mire, but it would have at least thrown us older folk a bone or two.

2000 Eminem: Stan

"Children have never fallen for my nonsense": Boris Karloff

Following the playful call to arms of ‘The Real Slim Shady’, Eminem's second number one flips the coin to show the darker side of both his own psyche and the consequences of taking his more outré antics too seriously via a tale recounted in the main through the eyes of uber fan/stalker Stan, a man who doesn’t know when to let go.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

Ah yes - before we start though, a word about his ‘co-star’ here; Eminem’s name might be there solo on the cover, but a large part of 'Stan's success is down to the atmosphere setting vocal sample from British singer Dido’s ‘Thank You’, albeit after filtering her voice through what sounds like a black sheet of rain until it’s ghostly. By itself, a ballad of introspective mope, Eminem selectively ‘borrows’ her first verse only and, by ignoring the positive affirmation of that song's chorus, effectively re-writes Dido by turning its repetition into the dread of dead end routine and casts her Greek chorus as a thousand yard stare overture to a life where each and every day is the same as the last with her relentlessness taking on ever desperate overtones as Eminem's protagonist loses grip on reality.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

That process is gradual. On first sighting Stan could be any fan writing an appreciative letter to his idol, though from the off Eminem sets up the one-sided delusion of Stan regarding this as a two way process ("Dear Slim, I wrote you but still ain't callin'.I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom"). It's lighthearted and fun in a 'look at the geek' kinda way, but the light dims when Stan’s growing impatience starts up a rant that reveals more and more about himself, his life and his attempt to reach out and make contact ("Dear Slim, you still ain't called or wrote, I hope you have a chance. I ain't mad, I just think it's fucked up you don't answer fans") only to be frustrated by the lack of the response he feels is due. I can just picture Stan, alone in his room getting angrier and angrier, knuckles getting whiter and whiter ("We waited in the blistering cold for you") until a tipping point comes at 2:52 and his "I even got a tattoo of your name across my chest", a confession startlingly punctuated by a sampled aside from Dido that plays out as a gasp of realisation that things are taking a turn for the worse and that joke isn't funny anymore.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

And worse it gets - with no access to Eminem, and in taking out his anger on his pregnant girlfriend, Stan emulates him instead . After kidnapping her (a call back reference to Eminem's "Kim," a song that ends in him slitting his wife’s throat and throwing her in the boot of his car, though Stan changes his MO slightly: "But I didn't slit her throat, I just tied her up, see I ain't like you. Cause if she suffocates she'll suffer more, and then she'll die too"), locks her in his car boot then drives off with a boast of "Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?" (itself a reference to the "Am I coming or going? I can barely decide. I just drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?" from Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’) before hurtling off the road in a squeal of brakes and splash of water, killing all three in the process. Then, after the violence peaks and ends, Dido starts up again for the last time:

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all".

Life goes on, with or without Stan.

Eminem's coda, a response to Stan that comes weeks too late ("Dear Stan, I meant to write you sooner but I just been busy ") could have been a schlocky let-down of hand wringing appeasement (and the sudden "And in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to. Come to think about, his name was, it was you" ending is a bit 'Tales Of The Totally Expected' for comfort), but Eminem doesn't fumble the ball and uses the opportunity to not just address Stan in the context of song, but also the fans and critics in the 'real world' in a fourth wall breaking monologue of self awareness to explain why we shouldn't be falling for his nonsense and certainly not taking him as a role model ("I say that shit just clownin' dog. Come on, how fucked up is you? You got some issues Stan, I think you need some counselling").

Such denial was hardly new ground for Eminem; he'd done it before and would again, but never with such an absence of anger or sarcasm and his open honesty renders it drama rather than the usual pantomime. Through his own experience, Eminem knows that, no matter how he qualifies it, people do take him seriously and that Stan's do exist; he’s too intelligent to try and deny it. Though the hockey masked, chainsaw wielding rapper of past (and future) revelled in rebellion and violence, here he’s keen to distance himself from Stan’s over-zealous interpretation of his lyrics, not just by his usual ‘I’m only joking’ line, but by counterpointing them with Stan’s own misinterpretation (and mis-quoting) of Phil Collins’ hitherto harmless ‘In The Air Tonight’, a marriage break-up song that speaks to Stan's confusion in terms of actual violence ("You know the song by Phil Collins, "In the Air of the Night" About that guy who could a saved that other guy from drowning But didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a show he found him?") in where in fact it’s only metaphorical. In Eminem’s parlance, somebody with the latent capacity for violence can be triggered by anything and probably will; Eminem and his ilk are just a convenient scapegoat for wider social ills.

Regardless of any analysis or interpretation, ‘Stan’ can be enjoyed as a simple short story in song with a central character fully fleshed out by Eminem’s rhymes and increasingly agitated (and believably acted) persona. On that level alone it’s quite the creepiest single we’ve come across since ‘Every Breath You Take’s tale of obsession, and on its own merits such a creeping monolith of black dread would have struggled to climb to such popular heights. I'm happy to acknowldge that it probably sits at number one by virtue of that relationship – i.e. a post adolescent fan base getting off on his swearing and cartoon rebellion, but there clearly is more going on here than Gothic melodrama - is Stan in fact the Real Slim Shady, a mirror image of the person Eminem could have been had success not come knocking?

Certainly Stan’s life in song mirrors Eminem’s pre-fame in reality (a rap fan with absent father and a daughter) and would explain his reluctance to meet himself/Stan in the song ("And what's this shit about us meant to be together? That type of shit'll make me not want us to meet each other"). I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to claim any inside knowledge on this so suffice it to say 'Stan' is a complex, multi-dimensional, semi-autobiographical proposition that highlights the popular artist/fan relationship and the extent of the mutual need of both to function. All of which goes toward making 'Stan' as perfect a single as you’re ever likely to hear.

2000 S Club 7: Never Had A Dream Come True

After the cheery, candy striped bounce of 'Bring It On Back', S Club 7 seemingly age ten years in the space of one by serving up a more 'serious' ballad of broken hearts. But in so doing, their earlier funsized pop persona works against them, making it as hard to take this new maturity any more seriously than it would to hear Little Jimmy Osmond (circa 1974) singing 'My Way'. Which is a bit of a shame on one level - lead Clubber Jo O'Meara handles the "There's no use lookin' back or wondering how it could be now or might have been" with enough wistful force to hold the attention and the rest of the gang link arms behind her for strength, but Cathy Dennis's song never quite catches fire with emotion enough to smoulder, let alone burn and it fails to rises above the generic. And given just who made up S Club 7, that title is clearly not true. Maybe a solo voiced, paired down arrangement would have salvaged something, but this is all a bit too 'Kids From Fame' talent show audition fodder for my liking.

2000 Destiny's Child: Independent Women Part One

I think I've mentioned before how one of my all time favourite cover versions is Aretha Franklin's take on 'Respect'. More than a simple 'cover', it's a song she has come to own so completely that it can come as a surprise to find out that it is in fact a version of an Otis Redding original. Redding's version itself is no slouch, but it's a one dimensional ramble from a man at the wrong side of a misbehaving woman whereas Franklin puts a whole lot of fire in its belly and casts it as a hydra headed plea for respect from her man, for her gender and for her race. "All I'm asking for is a little respect"; not much to ask is it? And who could argue with Aretha at such a full throttle that Redding's original purpose gets buried like the self pitying whinge it basically was.

In a similar way, 'Independent Women Part One' works on a multi-level too, but instead of Aretha's tunnel visioned purpose, it serves up a self conscious muddle that works on none of the levels it aspires to. Firstly, though not a cover version itself but an original song taken from the soundtrack of this year's Charlie's Angels re-boot, its lyric namechecks that source data in a way that suggests Destiny's Child had less of a free hand in their presentation of an original song than Franklin did in her cover. But then not only does restrict itself to referencing the film itself ("Charlie, how your Angels get down like that?"), it namechecks the actresses playing those Angels ("Lucy Liu... with my girl, Drew, Cameron D and Destiny Charlie's Angels") rather than the characters themselves. Which at a stroke makes 'Independent Women Part One' part of both the film, it's promotion and the real world process behind it. How very post-modern.

To muddy the waters further, that scenario then slams up against the song's inherent central theme of promoting female independence (presumably from any pesky controlling males) in an emotionless, capitalist society consumerist role call of pride - "The shoes on my feet, I've bought it. The clothes I'm wearing, I've bought it. The rock I'm rocking 'Cause I depend on me. If I wanted the watch you're wearing, I'll buy it. The house I live in, I've bought it. The car I'm driving, I've bought it, I depend on me". But just who are these independent women? Destiny's Child? Charlie's Angels? Or Cameron Diaz et al?

If it's either of the latter two, then this gets a shoulder shrugging 'so what?' from me. Because who cares? But if its the former, then hearing Beyonce and co bragging about chattels bought from the proceeds of soundtracking film versions of ropy seventies television serials doesn't warm my cockles either. Better by far I think to take it on an Aretha level and regard it as an aspiration to feminine independence as a whole. That would work. But then expressing independence as being purely financial and in the context of promoting a megabucks Hollywood film that sells itself to a broadly male audience on the basis of the sexuality of its leads is.....what exactly? And I have to confess, I don't know. Franklin wanted something that money can't buy, I get that, but try as I might I can't penetrate the diamond hard surface that the above analysis puts between me and the song and all I hear in 'Independent Women Part One' is a soulless, drum tight song of shiny slickness that offers no point of entry to allow any appreciation other than what's there on that shiny slick surface. Which, given the rotten, throwaway film behind it, is quite apt I guess.

2000 LeAnn Rimes: Can't Fight The Moonlight

I tend to find that, just like buying a football mail order, most Diane Warren songs arrive flat packed and need some serious inflating before they're usable. In the pomp of her late eighties/nineties heyday, heavyweight puffers like Cher, Michael Bolton, Belinda Carlisle, Gloria Estefan and Heart were always on hand to provide enough air to round them out, but country star Rimes is not a lady known for unnecessary bluster. In fact, her chirpy vocal doesn't add a hell of a lot of oomph to Warren's 'Can't Fight The Moonlight', but the resulting boredom is not necessarily all Rimes' fault; if the song itself is a flat football, then it was delivered with a hole in its inner tube that not even a gutbucket Cher vocal could have overcome.

Usually the doyen of the soft rocker or power ballad, Warren's song this time slips into a hinterland between the two that ticks neither of those boxes with any satisfaction. Rimes gamely looks for the hook to snare the casual listener but it's simply not there and the lack of it makes 'Can't Fight The Moonlight' a watched kettle that never boils, while the "Well just wait until the sun goes down. Underneath the starlight there's a magical feeling so right, it will steal your heart tonight" lyric is as flat, contrived and taste free as the 'Coyote Ugly' bar of the eponymous film that this soundtracks; as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how scantily clad the bar staff are or how suggestively they dance on the bar, it's no substitute for quick service on a Friday night when all you want is to get pissed I'm afraid. Similarly, Warren's faceless song is no substitute for.....well anything meaningful really.

2000 A1: Same Old Brand New You

I'm guessing that if a latter day Bontempi home organ had a pre-set rhythm titled 'Britney Spears Robopop' then the resulting sound would be very similar to 'Same Old Brand New You'. Part of it anyway; A1's second number one is a style grab bag that lurches from some opening Queen-like melodrama into a shifting pop beat that tries its damndest to build to a pay off chorus a la Ms Spears' signature tunes. That's the idea anyway, but instead 'Same Old Brand New You' bungles the momentum at every turn by picking the dead end of a wrong note or a wrong key, making for a jumble sale stall of mis-matched items which, although are set out as nicely as they can, have precious little utility either individually or as a whole. In fact, the battering clang this empty vessel makes as it struggles to latch onto some unity actually hurts my ears in a way that makes me nostalgic for Spandau Ballet. So not good then.

2000 Westlife: My Love

I've been a tad sniffy about Westlife thus far for their agenda of dressing up the trite in clothes at least five sizes too big, but on 'My Love', they finally strike the balance between overblown and underwhelming and turn in a 'wish I was there' 'Green Green Grass Of Home' re-write, albeit without the downer ending. True, the "So I say a little prayer, and hope my dreams will take me there. Where the skies are blue, to see you once again... my love" doesn't stint on the clichés, but the drab predictably of the lyric is camouflaged by a rousing swell of chorus to provide a frame that dares cynicism instead of inviting it. Because as rich as the production is, at heart 'My Love' is a simple song given just enough paint and polish to show it off at its best. The 'Westlife' banner will be an automatic turn off for many, but give it enough room to make its case and 'My Love' will reward more than it disappoints.