Best of 2007

Alright, first of all apologies for posting an end-of-year list in early February - one of the major changes for 2008 chez moi is no more internet in the flat so it's been a trifle complicated to post new articles up here (not that this has stopped me from writing, I compiled the following list right after New Year but in typical style did not stick to my resolutions and post it straight away). So sorry for being such a slackarse and I hope you enjoy it.

xxx John

Best of 2007

The View – Hats off to the buskers

My favourite record of the year, hands down. First saw these guys on the TV footage of their Glastonbury appearance and they blew me away – went out and bought the album straight away and was not disappointed when I heard the recorded version. Great pop tunes, cheeky Scottish wit and the kind of relentless run of singles I haven’t heard since the first Supergrass record – it came out back in January and had consequently faded from the spotlight by the time the end of year polls came round, but for me this is easily the best album of 2007. Bonus points for having the first ever top three single containing the word ‘cunt’ in the shape of ‘Same Jeans’ (check out the second chorus !).

Underworld – Oblivion with bells
Dropkick Murphys – The meanest of times

If your favourite bands have already notched up several faultless albums over the course of their career, why hesitate in picking up their latest release when it comes out ? Both Underworld and Dropkick Murphys have laid down what to my mind are some of the greatest ever records in their chosen genre, and neither have released a weak album so it goes without saying that I bagged both of these as soon as they hit the shelves. What’s more, they’re both absolutely amazing live so the chance to check them out when they tour these albums is one I shan’t be missing either.

MIA – Kala
Klaxons – Myths of the near future
New Young Pony Club – Fantastic Playroom

It’s easy to be cynical about all this fluo new rave business but you can’t deny that there are some decent tunes in there beneath all the scenester bullshit. Both MIA and Klaxons have been the subject of considerate music biz adoration over the last twelve months – I won’t go into whether or not I think they’re the future of music or not, let’s just say that their records are fucking cool (I particularly like Klaxons’ revamp of rave classic ‘The Bouncer’, even though it isn’t included on their album). NYPC are more of a standard electropop affair, but their music is pretty ace and their live show supporting Happy Mondays a couple of months back gave me and my friends a good oppurtunity to discuss which of the three female band members we would like to shag the most. All three at the same time would be my personal preference, not wanting to upset anyone.

Bloc Party – A weekend in the city
Arctic Monkeys – Favourite worst nightmare

The wave of angular guitar bands that came out of Britain in 2004-05 are now at the point where they can no longer ride the slipstream of hype that took them to the top a couple of years back - they actually have to prove they can write more than one decent album. The Monkeys laid down a faultless second record without even sounding like they were trying that hard, whereas Bloc Party made their sophmore album a more complex, personal listen. Like their first record, I was initially fairly cynical about the whole thing as they sounded like they’d sanded down their edge à la Razorlight to hit more radio playlists, but one listen to ‘A weekend in the city’ is enough to dispell those fears – the music is as immediate as before but the difference is that the lyrics are a lot more specific, which kinda adds a whole new dimension to them that I never noticed before. Good stuff guys.

Municipal Waste – The art of partying
Megadeth – United Abominations

Seeing as fluo is the new thing, it was inevitable that a bunch of Hoxton trendies would latch onto thrash metal and try to kickstart a revival, unaware that headbangers around the world had never stopped listening to it in the first place. Municipal Waste became the flagship act due to their big dumb fun approach and their records provided the soundtrack everyone was waiting for, but Dave Mustaine’s return with a proper line-up was equally devastating when the ‘deth unleashed ‘United Abominations’ this summer. The right-leaning political stance of the reformed Mustaine probably kept him out of the NME, but the tunes were just as solid as anything else out there – in any case, I’ve never noticed an artist’s political bias affect their ability to shred like a bastard and there were certainly no problems here.

Gogol Bordello – Super Taranta !

2007 was the year that New York socialites suddenly latched on to Balkan Gypsy punk, and Gogol Bordello were the band to reap the biggest dividends from the new trend, even getting to hang out with Madonna. This sort of stuff has been around for ages though, and Bordello are hardly the only ones playing it – Emir Kusturica has been on the case for years – but a bit of media exposure certainly didn’t do it any harm. I saw this guys at Hungary’s Sziget festival along with loads of other similar sounding bands, and as the soundtrack to some Central-European beer lairiness it was pretty much unbeatable.

Radiohead – In rainbows
Prince – Planet Earth

What was the coolest thing to happen in music in 2007 ? Major league artists releasing their material for ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL, that’s what ! Actively silencing the lazy industry fatcats who’ve been complaining about downloading for the past few years, both Prince and Radiohead proved that making their music available for free wouldn’t kill off their careers in the way many had feared – indeed, they only become stronger : Prince sold out 21 consecutive dates in London and the ‘head still topped the album charts when ‘In Rainbows’ came out on CD. Whereas donuts like Lars Ulrich got themselves singled out as money-grabbing company boys when they kicked up a fuss about downloading, Prince and Radiohead have only gained credibility and respect for their decision to trust the customer – hopefully, 2008 will be the year that the industry catches up with them.

Worst of 2007

Mika – Grace Kelly

OK, the album wasn’t all that bad and I suppose I’d be being a little unfair to call out wee Mika for making one of the year’s worst records – that said, if I ever hear this excruciatingly irriting song once more, I am going to track down the guy and shove the fucking CD down his throat.

The Fray – How to save a life

I swear that music in general is getting weedier every fucking year that passes. Back at the beginning of the decade we had Chris Martin foisting himself and his drizzly brand of radio rock onto the world and ever since we’ve had to put up with increasingly bland, faceless radio knob cheese that sounds like the modern equivalent of Barry fucking Manilow ! Starsailor, Keane, James Blunt, James Morrisson and now these guys – if music gets any more neutered and flacid, the next batch of pussweed popstars to arrive are going to be physically bereft of any balls whatsoever !! Listen guys, any band featuring a bloke playing the fucking piano is always going to suck ass, whatever way you try to present it – this dreary spunkstain of a record sounds like a Christian rock band in one of their less dynamic moments !! Even Cliff Richard would probably call you guys out for being boring, you gormless gaggle of fucking geeks !!

Hoosiers – Worried about Ray
Hellogoodbye – Here in your arms
Scouting for girls – She’s so lovely

When did rock music turn so fucking congenial all of a sudden ?? I like rock stars to be relatively approachable, but first and foremost I expect them to fucking ROCK and these guys are a long way from fulfilling that particular requirement. When you ask bands who inspired them to pick up their instruments back in the day, most people come out with stuff like The Clash or Oasis or at least something with a bit of bite to it – with these guys, you half expect their moment of rock ‘n’ roll epiphany to have occured whilst watching Let Loose mime ‘Crazy for you’ on Saturday morning telly ! Where’s the fucking edge ?? I recommend dropping all of these bands down the front at a Gallows concert and seeing how long it takes them to run screaming back to their bedrooms and their Lighting Seeds records !

Linkin Park – Minutes to midnight

Who, I repeat WHO still gives a flying fuck about Linky Pinky Park these days ??? This sort of petulant teenage squeaking over a bunch of two-note riffs and freeze-dried turntable samples might have been in vogue about seven years ago, but I would have imagined that most of the original fans had grown out of slamming their bedroom doors to this wanky tantrum-metal by now ! But no, apparently they’re still selling out arenas and topping the album charts !! How can these tossers still take themselves seriously after building a career on the sonic equivalent of throwing their toys out of the pram when they’re 30-something millionnaire rockstars who should be busy worrying about their mortgages and going fucking bald !!!

Concert for Diana/Live Earth

A head-to-head tie in the race for this year’s most nauseatingly overwrought attempt to right the world’s wrongs by staging an enormous rock concert with all the artistic relevance of the Royal Variety performance – as if Elton John hadn’t already reminded us that rock ‘n’ roll dedications to Diana are the death of credibility, we now get an endless procession of musicians indulging in the sort of Ben Elton-style toadying that should get you kicked out of the serious artist club for all eternity. And as for Al cunting Gore and his little eco-shindig, I’ve got about as much time for his environment speeches as I have for the Jehovah’s witnesses that come banging on my door on Sunday morning when I’m hideously hungover ! You help your frigid bitch of a wife to actively censor mainstream music for most of the 80s and then you expect a new generation of music fans to take you seriously just because you got Genesis back together ??? Al, I never thought there would be a contender for the title of most hollow-voiced, pretentious bloated monstrosity involved in the music business but you’ve made me think again ! Bono, you’re off the hook for now !

Spice Girls – Headlines (Friendship never ends)

So, Take That reform minus their most punchable member and defy expectations by raking it in with a tour and subsequent new album….Record industry fatcats were soon rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of new profits off the back of the Spice Girls’ back catalogue, so a reunion was pushed through without further ado along with a Greatest Hits compilation, assorted TV specials and no small amount of media hoo-ha. OK, the concert tickets might have sold impressively (although I reckon that was just because people had bets on which one of girls would break a high-heel first and ended up falling off the stage with her tits hanging out of her dress) but as for the comeback single…..one week at number eleven. ONE WEEK AT NUMBER FUCKING ELEVEN !!! You call that a comeback ??? After the cynical marketing campaign behind your original period in the charts gave you nine number ones and a ‘flop’ number two, the best you can manage is number eleven ??? Even Chico would be fucking disappointed with that !!! And your Greatest Hits album stiffed too, not surprisingly seeing as most of the music on it is total fucking toss !!

Tokio Hotel – Scream/Room 483
Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend

Look, for the last time, I keep telling you kids that guitars are for grown-ups, not punkoid ankle-biters who’ve eaten too much fucking chocolate ! If I wanted to listen to squeeky little chipmunks playing crappy punk-pop about refusing to do their homework, I’d go babysit my neighbour’s kids and listen to them trying to learn the latest Fall Out Boy single on guitar – at least I’d get paid for putting myself through all that torment ! I’ll look the other way for Tokio Hotel seeing as they’re all about 12, but as for Avril Lavigne, you’re a fucking married woman playing mall-punk songs about the trials of being a teenager ! Grow up and get a proper job ! Haven’t you got some curtains to put up or something ?

Britney Spears – Gimme more
Amy Winehouse – Back to black

If one thing’s become apparent in celebrity culture, it’s that we’re more eager than ever to watch stars fall flat on their arses in public so that we can all have a jolly good laugh at them. Nothing wrong with that at heart, but reading some of the media backlash against these two after they hit the skids, you’d think the press had some sort of personal vendetta that had been brewing for years ! It’s all starting to get a little bit uncomfortable – should, heaven forbid, one of them finally confirm our worst fears and pop their clogs in some celebrity drug orgy, you half expect the staff of Heat to be found dancing on their fucking grave ! OK, I can sort of understand why you might want to have a crack at an arrogant stage-school brat like Winehouse (especially after she warned her own audience what would happen ‘when my husband gets out of incarceration’ when they booed her at a crap gig – what do you think this is, Menace 2 Society ???), but the fact is that most of the snide, poisonous journalists writing about her are probably leading the same sort of lifestyle themselves. If we rounded up every spoilt media bitch in London who spends most of her free time doing designer drugs, attacking her boyfriend and falling out of taxis, most of the celebrity magazines would close down in a week ! And at least Winehouse can carry a tune – that’s more than you can say for Britney, who managed to top even her most embarassing moments this year by shaving her head, driving her SUV around Hollywood completely shifaced and to top it all, showcasing her comeback single at the MTV awards looking like she’d just come out of a 36-hour drug binge with Happy Mondays’ road crew !! That dance routine of yours had all the sex appeal of a 13 year-old Ukrainian prostitute doing an anorexic lapdance for some sweaty old accountant in a sticky-floored porn parlour ! Please, take whatever dignity you still have and disappear from the spotlight forever before it’s too late – if there’s a new low you haven’t reached yet, it’s only a matter of time and you can bet the paparazzi will be there waiting for you !

R. Kelly & Usher – Same girl

Remember a few years back when all the mainstream rock periodicals suddenly got all guilty about only having records by white guitar bands in their collection and developed a love for R’n’B almost overnight ? They might have uncovered a couple of decent albums from Missy Elliot and NERD in the process, but overall you can’t deny that R’n’B as a genre is pretty fucking tired these days and nowhere more so than in this risible duet between two of the scene’s most established crooners. Both of these guys have laid down some decent tunes in their time but we’re talking a while back (in R.Kelly’s case, almost a fucking decade) and it’s pretty obvious they’ve run out of ideas. As you can probably imagine, the two protagonists find themselves amourously linked with the same lady and proceed to bear their souls over some identikit MTV production – the results sound like the love theme from some cheesy 50s musical with a few synths thrown in for good measure, and conjures up about as much genuine romance as a plate of cold spunk ! Enough of all this fucking barrel-scraping guys ! You’ve been hammering the whole boy-girl bump ‘n’ grind bullshit for about fifteen years already – get some new ideas !! Hey R, how about writing a track about you boffing 14 year old schoolgirls, that’d be pretty entertaining !!

Annie Lennox – Songs of mass destruction

Oh how very politically scathing !!! ‘Songs of mass destruction’ eh ?? Not only is that title almost impossibly pretentious, it’s also about four years out of date !! Pretty much everyone from Green Day to Faithless has hijacked the whole ‘mass destruction’ metaphor and milked it for all it’s worth, but now for some reason you still think the general public needs to hear the musing of a 45 year old industry hag on the state of global politics ??? I bet a fucking four year old could come up with something more profound than this hopelessly self-aware pile of rhinocerous diarrhoea !! You think you’re going to lecture us all on politics after you spent most of the 80s soundtracking yuppie coke orgies and Jeremy Clarkson drivetime rock radio ?? What’s next, a world tour on your carbon-guzzling private jet to remind us all of the dangers of global warming ??? Fuck off back to the 80s wilderness along with Simple Minds, Midnight Oil and all the other bloated music casualties who still think they’re relevant in 2007 ! The only thing destined for mass destruction is gonna be the enormous reserve stocks of this album that HMV has to dump in a landfill when nobody buys the fucking thing !!

Just Jack – Stars in their eyes
Kate Nash – Foundations
Jamie T – Calm down dearest

Not bad tunes if the truth be told, but it’s kind of hard to take all these London stage school brats seriously when they lay on the Cockney minicab driver accents so bloody thick. Over the last year or so it’s become practically obligatory to develop some designer accent to get your music on the radio if you’re a young solo artist, but in most cases the kids in question are actually privately-educated snotlings from one of the nicer bits of the suburbs rather than Dickensian urchins rummaging through the fucking dustbins. I guess it’s just another reminder that Britain’s music scene is inextricably linked with the capital – let’s just imagine that this weren’t the case for a moment, and that the national music industry was based in Newcastle rather than London…..Would we be listening to droves of public schoolkids rapping in imitation Byker Grove vernacular ? I somehow doubt it. Look, there’s nothing wrong with being middle class and sounding it – Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s managed to forge a career out of home counties disco vocals, so why don’t you posh kids just drop the fucking chim-chimminy accents and sing in your real voices for once ?

Norah Jones – Not too late
Michael Bublé – Call me irresponsible
Katie Melua & Eva Cassidy – What a wonderful world

Another year, another gaggle of million-selling lounge jazz muppets clogging up the album charts – I’ve had a pop at this sort of stuff before, but it keeps selling by the truckload so I see no reason to avert my wrath elsewhere for the time being. Norah Jones is gacky Ally Macbeal soul for yuppie scumbags in plasma screen wine bars, Michael Bublé is neutered by-the-book 21st century Ratpack bullshit and as for Katie Melua, as if it weren’t enough having to deal with her insipid vanilla soul squawking on local radio every fucking day, she has to go and dig up Eva Cassidy for a beyond-the-grave duet available solely via that graveyard of musical creativity, the music section in fucking Tescos !!! What more proof do you need that this dreary wet fart of a record is the sonic equivalent of another pack of overpriced organic cress to be devoured by the vapid middle classes as they meander towards the fucking checkout ??? Listen Katie, placing your own soulless Blue Peter crooning next to the late great Eva just highlights what a piss-feeble talent show muppet you are in comparison – take your odious drivetime radio turd of a record and fuck off back to Children’s TV ! This sort of fuck-tedious dinner party chintz should be made illegal ! Anyone who comes round my flat for dinner expecting to hear shite like this is gonna be treated to Slayer on full whack and a plate of dismembered kittens for fucking starters !


Leon Jackson – When you believe

Simon Cowell, I am going to kill you.

This blog is not dead

Hi folks,

A quick word just to point out that this blog is still active, I haven't posted anything in yonks but I have been doing a lot of writing recently so some new stuff will be forthcoming fairly soon.

Stay smiling!!

xxx John

Pump up the 00s

1. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever people say..../Favourite Worst Nightmare (2006 & 2007)

It's always tough to pick a favourite, and especially tough when the obvious choice for best band of the decade has released two records which are equally deserving of the accolade. So let's just make this simpler for ourselves and share the prize between the two - I love both of these albums just as much and most people I've spoken to about the Arctic Monkeys feel the same way. Delivered onto a market that was more than accustomed to their style of music amidst a storm of media hype over their Myspace fan page, the Monkeys have still managed to carve their own niche simply by providing a fuller, more attractive package of the same ingredients that countless others have used in the past - their dramatic arrival on the scene would have been slightly shocking were it not for the simple fact that it all made perfect sense : these guys were just loads better than their contemporaries and deserved to sell more records.

I'll admit to having a personal preference for their Yorkshire wit (it's always comforting to hear a singer use the phrase 'berserk as fuck' in a pop song) but I don't think you need any connection with their homeground to appreciate the Monkeys - their line in dry humour can appeal to anybody, and their music references the sort of everyday occurrences in British life that provide an added dose of realism without the whole thing slipping into grey-tinged Ken Loach melodrama. The lads are just singing about normal life, complete with all the sarcasm and one-liners that lighten up everyday conversation. As for the music, the band prove that their punk rock chops are sharp as ever but refrain from pushing too hard on the pedal to lose some of the finesse from the rest of their musicianship - their records hang together on the sort of rapid fire yet impossibly tight song structures which belie the fact that they're such a young band. They may trade in dour Northern stage presence as part of their act but you can still tell that they're having a great time doing what they do, and the fun shines across in the music despite the dismissive attitude of the bandmembers.

There's no socio-cultural backdrop I can weave around the Arctic Monkeys and their immense success to explain why it all came about when it did - maybe it's too soon to say, but in any case I don't think we really need a fuller explanation to help us understand why they're such a great band. The only thing that matters is that they simply haven't released a weak track yet, and their recorded output brings together the edginess of punk and the lyrical wittiness of classic indie to provide us with a potent cocktail of modern rock music. Not rocket science, not reinventing the musical wheel and not even doing anything that wasn't already being done before they arrived, the Arctic Monkeys just have the kind of songbook that disarms any potential critics - the only band that have come close to their kind of watertight hit rate were Oasis in the mid-90s, but even then they were more focused on commercial domination rather than doing anything that clever. The Monkeys by contrast just seem naturally brainy, whilst the commercial potency of their material seems to concern them about as much as the price of peanuts in their local - young, aloof and ridiculously talented, there's no reason why they won't be able to keep on churning out records as good as these for years to come. The current musical and social climate might make their output particularly relevant now, but I very much doubt that their charm will fade with the passing of time - these are records that we'll be listening to for quite some time.

Also :

The View - Hats off to the buskers (2007)

Melodic, quirky and totally infectious, these lads sound like they'd been plucked from their local pub playing indie rock infused with in-jokes and obscure references and thrust straight onto the stage at Glastonbury. Which is pretty much what happened, come to think of it.

The Fratellis - Costello Music (2006)

Hardly the most intellectual release of recent years, the debut from these Weegie rascals is still the ideal soundtrack to a night of alehouse goonery with your indie chums. Bonus points for having a drummer called Mince.



2. Eva Cassidy - Songbird (2000)

If you think about it, millennial art was dominated by one over-arching theme that infiltrated every aspect of popular culture as we moved into the new era : death. Whilst music and cinema endeavoured to capitalise on a forward-looking branch of optimism and hope for the future, the public's imagination was entrenched elsewhere, in the realisation that existence itself was only a temporary state and that we would all at some point have to confront the end of the game. The atmosphere of unease led to various artists preaching Revelations-style apocalyptic visions but they were missing the point - what the public were looking for wasn't a reflection of their panic or paranoia but rather a soundtrack to the winding down of life, the final broadcast before the lights went off for good. 'Songbird' wasn't the record anyone would have picked out as the ideal musical backdrop for the passage into the new era, but once it had begun to rise from mail-order obscurity thanks to a brief TV plug, the sheer potency of it as a recording became impossible to ignore.

I love this record precisely because the fucking record industry didn't see it coming - a compilation of cover versions released posthumously after Cassidy's death from cancer in the 1990s, it came on the market via indie label Didgeridoo in 1998 but lay dormant until 2000 when Steve Wright selected the closing version of 'Over the Rainbow' for an edition of Top of the Pops 2. Watching the performance, myself and countless other viewers experienced one of those extremely rare moments where music transcends the boundaries of mere entertainment and turns into a force capable of draining the air from your lungs and making your heart stop beating. She may have been singing a cornball Judy Garland standard, but Cassidy's haunting version of the track went deeper in, infusing every note with an emotional sincerity that only a handful of vocalists ever truly master. It was utterly, totally stop-in-your-tracks beautiful. I went out and bought the album straight away.

'Songbird' was initially a success on the indie charts on the back of that one transmission, but repeated viewer requests to see the performance again brought the record business onto the scent and the compilation soon hit high street shelves, eventually rising to the top of the UK album charts in early 2001. I chose to include it in the new decade's list despite the original release date because the public recognition of the album came later, and it belongs in the period where a copy could be found in every home rather than back in Cassidy's days of open-mic obscurity. The original TOTP2 crowd may boast about picking up on it before everyone else but the power of 'Songbird' as a record is that everyone could find something to connect with - and they did, leaving the album as the 3rd best-seller of the year in 2001 and propelling two subsequent Cassidy anthologies to #1 in the UK charts.

The saddest thing about Eva Cassidy's untimely exit was that it probably could have been avoided - she was diagnosed late with cancer and couldn't fight back before it was too late. But despite the melancholy surrounding 'Songbird', it defies categorisation alongside Joy Division and company due to the sheer life you can hear on the record. Its release may be inevitably associated with the theme of dying young, but for many it became more of a soundtrack to the process of coping with death and loss, less of a tragedy and more of a comforting influence faced with such an issue. Despite her undeniable talent for performance and the obvious loss to the music industry in her passing, Eva Cassidy seems nevertheless best-suited to singing from beyond the grave - her haunting voice is imbued with a kind of heartbreaking sadness that only seems fitting to hear in such circumstances.

The success of 'Songbird' may have inadvertently kick-started the trend for easy listening female artists in the post-millennial charts - with typical cynicism, the music industry recognised the target market that lay across a countersection of the record buying public and proceeded to plug the likes of Norah Jones, Dido, Katie Melua and numerous other artists tailor-made for the music section in Tesco in an attempt to replicate the album's crossover success. None came close to matching the sheer potency of Cassidy's posthumous output, but this is hardly surprising - the success of 'Songbird' wasn't the product of marketing consultant brainstorming, it came about because the record buying public found themselves slowly but surely drawn to the closest musical depiction of the post-millennial mindset. Make no mistake, the public made this record the success it became and Cassidy's memory lives on through everyone who felt something when they listened to her voice - keep that in mind the next time you're confronted with the industry's self-nominated 'Next Big Thing' and remember that the truly exceptional performances often take place a long way from the public eye. Rest in peace Eva.

Also :

Johnny Cash - American 3/4 (2000 & 2002)

Cash could have shelved his career for the final years of his life but instead he chose to revisit classics of the younger generation to make sure everybody had something to remember him with. Several artists found themselves unable to fully reclaim their own songs once he'd finished with them.


PJ Harvey - Stories from the city, stories from the sea (2000)

Polly Jean undergoes her 19th image change and sees in the new decade with arguably her darkest set ever - weirdly enough, it was also her most accessible with some of her best singles ever ('Good Fortune', 'This mess we're in').


3. The Streets - Original Pirate Material (2002)

As of 2007, we practically expect every new British band to weave tales of existential angst about their life as a frustrated poet working in Burger King over recycled Jam riffs or retro-rave bleep samples, hoping that the NME will brand them as 'groundbreaking'. The thing that most of these scenester muppets will never grasp is that true innovation rarely involves anything truly new, rather a personal twist on an already established formula - attempting to re-invent the musical wheel whilst attempting to analyse the cultural zeitgeist will more often than not leave you looking like a complete tool. Mike Skinner's strength lies in the fact that 'Original Pirate Material' was less of a musical visionary's call to arms for disenfranchised youth and more of a brutally honest, funny, eloquent account of his daily life over the sort of UK garage production that was soundtracking 'Top of the Pops' at the time. Amidst all the posing, he was someone we could actually all relate to.

'Original Pirate Material' follows on from the emergent UK garage trend of the millennial charts and can probably be traced back to the club culture of the 90s - the thing is, Mike wasn't trying to be the next trend himself, he was more interested in describing his observations on previous periods in his own music. Hence 'Let's push things forward' rips on the commercial garage hitlist of the era whilst 'Weak become heroes' harks back to the halycon days of 90s clubland where Skinner first encountered the sounds he grew up on. This was stuff we could all relate to rather than the sort of pseudo-philosophical waffle that circulates round rehearsal rooms full of stoned musicians, told by someone who'd actually been there as a spectator and could touch a nerve with his public. Skinner's style is all the more engaging because he talks with the same reference points as your mates, never turning pretentious when he risks alienating his audience and maintaining the dose of humour that is indispensable if you want to have a conversation about serious stuff with a group of blokes. Indeed, his status as gentleman raconteur is cemented by his ability to transform standard lad leisure activities into the lifestyle of a discerning connoisseur - drinking, raving, pulling girls and taking pills become the very essence of existence rather than something to be patronised by the media. In this sense, Skinner goes some way to redefining post-millennial masculinity - he talks about this things because they are important, never condescending to his audience and successfully evaluating the everyday tribulations of young British males without turning the whole thing into amateur sociology.

There's so much to take in on this record that you could pretty much launch a debate over each track - urban violence, drug use, romantic power struggles and even depression all get a word in, but the whole affair never gets too dramatic for its own good. If Skinner had been lamenting all this over an acoustic guitar, he would have doubtless been proclaimed the next Kurt Cobain but as he came across as a mouthy young townie recounting tales of Ecstasy and kebabs, the media reaction was predictably dismissive. That said, it probably did him the world of good in the long run and 'Original Pirate Material' proved to be merely the first chapter in the soundtrack to Mike Skinner's passage into adulthood. Subsequent episodes have been equally engaging and more than a few records have been sold in the process - the more Mike carries on living the life, the more material we have for future Streets releases. In the modern reality TV age, we can be thankful that there's one accurate depiction of life as it really is in the realms of entertainment - and as a poet, storyteller, musical maverick and all-round bloody nice bloke, Mike Skinner is a valued addition to post millennial music.

Also :

Gorillaz - S/T (2002)

Why release an album of supergroup indie-electronica under the guise of four cartoon monkeys? Well, why the fuck not? Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett put their creative necks on the line and come out on top. Good move guys.


OutKast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003)

Some way short of the double-barrelled masterpiece it set out to be, this twin-set is nevertheless a pretty impressive feat. Takes the personality stamp of each member to such an extreme that they couldn't even record the same album together!


4. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)

Before we rounded the corner of the new millennium, there was much media speculation over what the soundtrack of the passage into a new era would be - the dawn of previous decades had jump-started trends based on the belief that moving one calendar year forward should somehow instigate a major shift in the musical landscape, replacing old with new and passing the baton onto a new generation of visionaries. With this in mind, plenty of clueless media types were certain that faced with the encroaching Y2K landmark we were going to be in for something REALLY special. They just weren't sure what.

In reality of course, the crossover brought no radical shake-up in music other than numerous mediocre artists using the event as the basis for some ill-thought out foray into zeitgeist definition : in cinema we had various apocalyptic action productions and in music every dork like Will Smith and Robbie Williams was peppering his material with pseudo-profound references to the event like it were any more important than the start of the new football season. The real shift came in a widespread reluctance to celebrate the event publicly - if anything it triggered a retraction from the limelight for many major players, who preferred to sidestep the fireworks and empty rhetoric about a new era and mull the event over in peace and quiet. Whilst the 90s had started with a wave of explosive creativity and forward-looking optimism, the decade had given way to Blairite cynicism, crass exploitation and sinister personality cults fuelled by the general media. In addition to that, the fame machine was taking fewer and fewer prisoners - new recruits such as Britney Spears were thrust into the showbiz meat market before they'd barely finished puberty, whilst yesterday's heroes found themselves subject to public ridicule (Michael Jackson) or total disintegration (Kurt Cobain, Richey Edwards). With the vultures circling for their next victim, it wasn't surprising that many acts wanted out from the spotlight before they became the next course.

Radiohead weren't the only act to ditch commercial paydirt to plough their own musical furrow - Pearl Jam and Prince had both opted out of the system before them and would continue to exist on their own terms for years to come, but neither were going into the new millennium on the back of their biggest commercial success. The Head, by contrast, had gone from strength to strength over the course of the 90s and had soundtracked the passage into Blairite Britain with 'OK Computer', a jarring, insecure study on alienation but nevertheless equipped with enough footholds in modern rock for most radio listeners to find a way in. It sold an absolute fuckload and propelled the album into the realms of 'timeless classics' determined by Q readers and Observer music critics, but for Thom Yorke and co that still wasn't enough - the rock landscape of the late 90s was over-run by bloated post-Britpop Match of the Day rock like Embrace, Travis and Stereophonics. Faced with such an audience, Radiohead decided to make things even more difficult for themselves and ditch rock altogether.

'Kid A', seven years down the line, should be seen in this context - it sounds positively mainstream these days, but back in 2000 most of the rock press had no idea how to handle it. Some treated it as a passing phase, a momentary flight of fancy before they got back to radio-friendly rock, whilst others saw it as an outright betrayal of their 'Bends' era fanbase and stopped listening altogether. Thing is, there's nothing reactionary or hostile about this record, it just sounds like Radiohead bypassing the mainstream because they just didn't need it anymore to make interesting music. 'Kid A' was never meant to be played in nightclubs or cranked up on car stereos as the ultimate act of defiance, it just sums up how faced with all the pomp and circumstance of millennial British music, it made sense to most people to retreat into their own personal headspace and try to work it out for themselves. Complex and innovative without being deliberately futuristic, 'Kid A' dispensed with hit singles, verse-chorus-verse structure and riff-centric songwriting in favour of a more freeform, almost jazz-like approach to music - it could so easily have turned out total pretentious bollocks, but Radiohead knew that their hardcore following would stick with it long enough to let it grow on them. Which it did, and subsequent releases have only strengthened their position as the only band really willing to chance their arm for artistic freedom and still produce hugely popular results.

'The Bends' and 'OK Computer' will doubtless continue to top best album polls, and to be fair neither of them are bad records but their praises have been sung to the point where there's really little left to discover. 'Kid A' by contrast was thrust upon an unsuspecting public and left for them to pore over at leisure - those who stuck with it long enough came to see it as progression rather than a panicky change of direction, whilst many fans put off by the band's radio rock staples came back round to listening to them again. It's aged remarkably well, perhaps due to the band's reluctance to actively soundtrack the era upon its release, and they have only continued to enlarge their musical universe over subsequent recordings. They're currently giving away their latest offering for nowt over the internet - who knows where Radiohead will go next? The only sure thing is that plenty of people will be willing to follow them in order to find out.

Also :

Aphex Twin - Druxqs (2000)

An acknowledged influence on the Head's millennial masterpiece, Richard D James celebrated in his own unique way by throwing out a double album of clattering electronic gobbledegook. Reassuringly perplexing.


Primal Scream - Exterminator (2000)

I nearly stuck this one in here on its own merits but decided against it on account of the band's alarming tendency to switch styles every few years. Nevertheless, 'Exterminator' catches them on a pissed-off creative high.


5. The Strokes - This is it (2001)

Indie guitar music went through somewhat of a fallow period once Britpop had breathed its last in the late 90s - the initial phase of creative fertility had given way to bloated, self important pomp and circumstance and by the time 'Be Here Now' decimated the market in 1997, a lot of fans were looking for their kicks elsewhere. Blur and Pulp set out to deliberately distance themselves from the mainstream whilst Oasis ploughed on regardless of growing disdain from the media, leaving the indie heartland of NME and Steve Lamacq to search for the next step in guitar music. They came up with various candidates for the next indie success story but none achieved any real dominance, the assembled suitors either plumping for intentional bedroom obscurity (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips) or moving into Britpop's slipstream to coin it in as the new soundtrack to 'Match of the Day' (Embrace, Stereophonics). Many former indie kids cast off the genre completely and drifted towards the more polarised movements of Drum & Bass or Nu-Metal, others just stopped listening to the radio altogether. Once Y2K was upon us, it was fairly obvious that the throne of indie rock was there for the taking and it came as little surprise when five well turned out youngsters from NYC came along in 2001 to claim it.

Indie is always heavily tied in with fashion - truly original product is pretty rare, and trends are generally set in motion by bands recycling elements of past glory in a newer, more relevant setting. The Strokes drew on late 70s US indie for their music and styled themselves as extras from a Martin Scorcese film of the same period - like the illegitimate offspring of Mean Streets' Johnny Boy clad in brown leather and skinny jeans, they brought back the posterboy appeal that mainstream indie had all but abandoned since the heady days of Britpop (let's face it, no schoolgirls were lying awake at night drooling over the bassist from Embrace at the time). The music was equally appealing, snappy pop songs that flew by quickly enough to retain their immediacy but still left the listener with a tune they could hum on the bus to work. The appeal of indie as a pop package had been undermined over previous years, with a music press sick to death of production line Britpop and increasingly hostile to anything too commercial - however, by 2001 there was a whole new generation of indie kids who needed a band to soundtrack their adolescence, and when five good-looking lads dropped an ultra-catchy indie rock album on the back of a considerable press campaign, it was obvious 'Is This It' was going to coin it in.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this record is was such a simple affair - the run of taut quickfire indie anthems reminded us that there was nothing wrong with writing an album full of potential singles and the band's snappy, straightforward sound was positively refreshing compared with their contempories who saw indie as the realm of orchestral bombast rather than simple pop songs focussed on guitar, bass and drums. Ever since The Verve had become the first post-Britpop success in the late 90s, everyone had been building up their recordings with horns, strings and ludicrous 'Hey Jude' end sections - it was a relief just to hear five lads bash their way through a set of catchy songs without trying to rope in the fucking BBC Philharmonic for their eight minute set closer. Several of the tracks duly emerged as singles and remain the staple diet of indie club DJs to this day, whilst everybody from John Peel listeners to mainstream pop journalists welcomed the band with open arms. Once the full-length album hit the shelves, it was the first debut to excite genuine interest from music industry for years (as opposed to bankable risk-free indie staples like Travis) and the band's reputation as scene leaders was only cemented when legions of imitators cropped up over the following months.

'Is this it' still sounds cool several years down the line, and its mark can be clearly heard in modern indie production whilst the band's line of fashion is still firmly visible in indie discos all over the world. They followed it with two solid successors but the Strokes' debut still stands alone as the record that set the mould for post-millennial indie bands from both the US and further afield - true to form, the British would try to steal the limelight with a shoddy London-based remake the following year (The Libertines, please stand up) but nobody can deny the longstanding impact of 'Is this it' on indie as a genre for the rest of the decade. They may have been five punchable examples of rich kid trendiness, but the Strokes had the tunes to silence their detractors and their faultless debut contains eleven examples of what they do best.

Also :

The Vines - Highly Evolved (2002)

Half wide-mouthed garage bluster, half sublime 60s-style psychedelia and fronted by one of rock's most unpredictable frontmen, these Aussie nutjobs stole numerous front covers but their debut had the tunes to back them up.


Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BRMC (2002)

Owing less to the 70s CBGB crowd and more to fuzzed-up British indie like Ride and the Mary Chain, these guys suddenly made it much harder for blond guys to get record deals. Dark, loud and irresistibly powerful.


6. The Darkness - Permission to land (2003)

Four years down the line, The Darkness' ludicrous debut seems like a passing fad from the distant past, although I'd be willing to bet that more people have a copy of this record than would admit it in public. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why their goofy revisit of classic rock became so enormously popular upon the release of their debut album, or indeed why they were chased from the limelight so ferociously two years later despite dropping a great follow-up, so let's just put it down to the fickle tastes of the British music buyer - no other country in the world would have allowed a band as ridiculous as The Darkness to dominate the airwaves the way they did for about 18 months in Britain, and nobody else would have grown so tired of them as quickly either. The moment may have passed, but the brief reign of tigerskin bodysuits and ludicrous falsetto nevertheless brought us some memorable performances and one cast-iron stonker of a debut in the shape of 'Permission to land'.

Ever since the demise of Bruce Dickinson's original run with Iron Maiden in the early 1990s, rock fans had been pining for the return of what can only be described as 'widdling' to mainstream music - the thrills and spills of old school rock had been largely discarded in the post-grunge landscape of the previous decade in favour of a more stripped-down, visceral brand of rock music. However, many forgot that aside from the breakneck aggression and composite musicianship that characterised heavy rock, one of the most important elements was a good dose of humour - especially in Britain where every major rock troupe from Queen to Maiden has remained keenly aware of the inherent silliness of stadium-sized performance rock. Faced with droves of po-faced heavy metal groups and nu-metal whiteboy rappers increasingly unaware of how fucking stupid they looked, Kerrang journalists welcomed The Darkness with open arms when they burst onto the scene in 2003 - what had previously been a guilty pleasure suddenly became the latest brand of rock to go global, surpassing even the reformed Iron Maiden in terms of chart success and cranking up the comedy factor to the max via some truly horrendous stage outfits and lyrics that sounded like they'd been written by Viz's Finbarr Saunders.

The weirdest thing was that The Darkness weren't doing any of this for comedy value - reared on hideously unfashionable British rock like Thunder and Foreigner during their adolescence in the provincial outpost of Lowestoft, the band members had been plying their shtick for several years before the press picked up on it and maintained throughout their spell at the top of the charts that the whole thing wasn't a joke, it was totally serious. And they weren't lying either - despite the media campaign that surrounded their trip to the top, there was nothing post-modern or clever about The Darkness, they were simply four blokes who enjoyed playing big, dumb rock 'n' roll and were coincidentally pretty good at it too. Frontman Justin Hawkins looked like the sort of bedraggled gonk that you'd come across at a small town kareoke contest, which is exactly what he would have been had his band's debut not come along at the same time as the British mullet revival of the early 2000s, where everything garish and embarrassing from the 1980s suddenly became frightfully cool to like again. The Darkness didn't orchestrate their rise to fame more than any other touring rock band, they simply turned up at the right place and at the right time to capitalise on the reigning mood in British fashion.

Not that 'Permission to land' doesn't feature enough tunes to justify its success mind you - Hawkins was well-schooled in the art of anthemic rock songwriting, and the album racks up ten immensely catchy rock workouts which are only made more loveable by the liberal injections of shrieking falsetto, widdletastic soloing and pun-infested lyrics. Indeed, you'd only get halfway to taking stuff like 'Growing on me' seriously before realising that it was about pubic lice. The band notched up three major hits from the album and narrowly missed out on 2003's Xmas #1 with the comedy festive bombast of 'Don't let the bells end', and they ended the year as press darlings in the British media. Which is a pretty precarious position at the best of times, something that became apparent all too quickly as their charm faded prior to the 2005 release of sophmore album 'One way ticket to hell....and back' which missed the top ten and was mercilessly panned by large sections of the press (Kerrang, as ever, stood by them but everyone else had been sharpening their knives for a while before the record hit the shelves). Justin Hawkins duly cracked up and hit rehab whilst the others returned to the obscurity they'd never fully stepped out of during the band's success.

Fashions may come and go but good tunes remain, and since The Darkness' dramatic fall from grace it's fairly likely that a lot of their fanbase has since revised its opinion on whether they were ever that good in the first place. But on the other hand there are plenty of bedroom rockstars who were waiting for a record like 'Permission to land' to hit mainstream radio and who still stick it on for regular bouts of air guitar and shower kareoke - I make no secret of falling into the latter category, and challenge anyone to name a better example of good time rock 'n' roll in post-millennial music.

Also :

Andrew WK - I get wet (2001)

Trimming off the most immediate, simplistic elements of his own favourite rock records and cobbling them together with about 56 guitar tracks and the drummer from Obituary, Andrew WK's debut sounded like a glam metal heart attack piped through military speaker equipment. Stonking!!

Dragonforce - Sonic Firestorm (2004)

The inevitable return of freeform widdling to heavy metal - these guys could appreciate cheese with the best of 'em but still knew well enough to keep their music heavy as fuck before laying on a generous helping on ludicrous guitar noodling, bringing younger fans to the genre for the first time in years.


7. Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Hip hop has always exists on the fringes of rock music, and any coverage in the mainstream press has generally been due to accessible qualities that rock fans can latch onto rather than being lost in a sea of alien reference points and misplaced aggression. Acts that have succeeded in crossing over have done so thanks to their connections with rock (Public Enemy, Cypress Hill) or sheer notoriety in the media (Snoop Doggy Dogg, 50 Cent) but despite their claims to equality with rock acts, they've never really been classed in the same league. In more recent years, artists like Kanye West and Jay-Z have managed to build themselves fanbases within guitar music without losing their hip hop credentials, but neither of them can claim the sheer market domination that came about with Eminem at the turn of the millennium. Whilst rock fans might have previously bought a rap record on a bit of a whim, acting either on curiosity or the urge to retain some kind of urban kudos, Eminem's music became instantly accessible to a wide range of music fans regardless of their previous affection for hip hop in a way that nobody has managed to the same extent - his cartoonish debut provided a way in, but it was his eponymous follow-up that really brought the point home.

Conceived as the second part of what would turn out to be four different takes on the rapper's personality, his sophmore release picks up from where 1999's 'Slim Shady LP' had started the ball rolling with a colourful, knockabout take on reality strapped with some memorable singles. Dr Dre's custom production ensured chart success and Eminem's lively and inventive lyrical style made for an entertaining listen, but beneath the goonish references to drugs, violence and general cheekiness there was already a visible dark side to his act that would fully surface on the follow-up. Titled to reflect the greater personal dimension to the work included, 'Marshall Mathers' managed to retain the subversive charm of his debut whilst journeying into some fairly unusual areas for mainstream hip hop - the effect of fame on society, the myriad hypocrisies of middle America and a variety of personal tangents into sexual politics, homosexuality and marital tensions. Not all of it was easy on the ear, but Mathers prided himself on being entirely candid in his presentation of things - where he borders on sounding reactionary, he's saved by his lyrical dexterity and you end up admiring his willingness to tackle nearly ANY subject on vinyl, no matter how complex the issue may be.

'Marshall Mathers' was hardly the first time hip hop had confronted tricky issues, nor was it the first example of a rapper examining different sides of his/her character over a series of releases. What it did represent was the beginning of thorough self-examination in rap, the willingness to evaluate the urges and frustrations of the vocalist and to label it as such without coating it in layers of metaphor or grandiose sentiment. Eminem was being brutally honest, and he was doing it knowing that the platform he was speaking from would provide him with the largest audience possible - everyone within distance of a radio would get a glimpse into his psyche in much the same way that his psychologist would. It was a ballsy move, not least of all because he knew that criticism would be on its way from all corners : the purist hip hop press, the moralist rock press and the standard reactionary blue rinse brigade of Christian America. His racial extraction was cited as a principal reason for his enormous success, and whilst the two are probably linked we should look a bit further in to see the real effect this had - up against a parade of potential press critics who he knew would never dare criticise the Wu Tang Clan for the same sins, Eminem saw that the knives were going to be out for him when he stepped into the ring. His reaction was therefore to come out fighting and prove that he could withstand their attacks, and 'Marshall Mathers' effortlessly disarms the nay-sayers whilst simultaneously predicting their next move in order to out-manoeuvre them once again.

Hip hop has always been a huge industry in the States as well as further afield, so we shouldn't blow up the success of 'Marshall Mathers' too much - other artists such as Nelly, Jay-Z and 50 Cent have come to dominate both the rap scene and the mainstream charts to the same extent as Eminem since he went global at the turn of the decade, but none of them succeeded in raising quite the same cult of personality that he managed at the height of his fame. The mark of a true rap maverick is to prove that you have already mastered the basics of the trade before consciously moving beyond them to leave a real mark on the genre - Eminem's cutting analysis of the showbiz industry and the perils of fame became his trademark and also chimed in with the then current trend for looking past the stage and into the personal life of entertainers. Fans were no longer prepared to stay on the surface with entertainment, they wanted access to the most intimate details of their pop stars' lives and were willing to pry if necessary - rather than resisting their demands, Eminem simply gave them what they wanted. There was little point interviewing him afterwards, his record summed everything up perfectly. Nowadays we assume that rappers are going to be examining their feelings and their place in the industry as a genre standard, but we shouldn't forget the new ground covered by Eminem on this release - neither before or since the release of 'Marshall Mathers' has any rapper bared his soul so candidly and coherently whilst keeping it commercially streamlined and accessible to all. Now that his routine has apparently reached its conclusion, it's high time we gave him the credit he truly deserves as an innovator as well as an entertainer.

Also :

Eve - Scorpion (2001)

Tapping into the same volatile energy channelled by her macho peers but still retaining her own ladylike take on affairs, Eve's explosive second album brought her to the world's attention with a sharp tongue capable of disarming any opponent.

Missy Elliot - Miss-E....so addictive (2001)

With the title referring indiscreetly to the rise of ecstasy use within hip hop, Missy's third record was suitably tailored to the dancefloor with the likes of 'Get Ur Freak On' alongside numerous other infectious dance gems.


8. Franz Ferdinand - S/T (2004)

Indie's post-millennial renaissance with the success of The Strokes' first album in 2001 had left many expecting guitar music to fully reconquer the airwaves in the same way that it did in the mid-90s with the rise of Britpop, but the reality of the situation was slightly less straightforward. The Strokes worked well as a fashion concept and brought back sartorial elegance to a genre that had spent too long in its bedroom, but the global movement in guitar music still lacked any real identity. The garage revival of the early 2000s had thrown up various NME approved acts (The Vines, Jet, The Hives, The Datsuns) who dominated festivals and dancefloors for a couple of years with some great singles, but the lack of solid album material and the geographically dispersed nature of the movement (with bands hailing from places as far flung as Sweden and New Zealand) made it difficult to see it as anything more than a passing fad. Britain's contribution had been even less noteworthy, focussing more on drivetime indie like Coldplay, Travis and a host of other bands that people 'quite liked' but were hardly going inspire poster shrines in teenage bedrooms across the country. What we lacked, quite simply, was a decent bunch of homegrown pop stars.

The next turn in the story can be read in one of two ways - either you subscribe to the NME-sponsored belief that The Libertines redefined modern rock and paved the way for the success of numerous British indie bands in their wake, or you regard them as a hideously over-rated fashion disaster thrust into the public eye by the London-based music media who are convinced that the most interesting musicians in the world always spring from the capital's local gig scene. Whilst Pete Doherty and co were the first band in a while to reappropriate feisty guitar rock for a British audience, they rapidly ceased to matter once you got outside the M25 and were hardly the catalyst for an international reappraisal of British rock - that would happen, but not for a couple of years.

When Franz Ferdinand dropped their self-titled debut in early 2004, it wasn't so much that their music was radically innovative or violently confrontational compared to the mainstream, it was just that both bands and fans across British indie were ready to reclaim the genre as their own. Their arrival on the scene prompted a return to art school indie, less focused on sweaty rifferama and more geared towards producing a complete pop package - their suave image, eye catching sleeve design and witty interview style made them a thoroughly appealing proposition, a band clever enough to inspire lyrical scrutiny and convert indie cynics yet commercial enough to fill dancefloors. And let's not beat around the bush, their debut is 100% geared towards crossover success - defining their sound as 'music for girls to dance to', Franz Ferdinand were never going to be content with underground notoriety, they were aiming for the upper reaches of the charts and when 'Take me out' breached the top three in January 2004, the wheels were already in motion for indie to take over once again. Whilst the London music media fell over itself scrabbling for the next big thing, the real actions was taking place further afield - a host of bands had formed in various outlying regional scenes, tapping on their collective indie heritage rather than the musical climate of the time and preparing their gameplan for a full-on chart assault. Ten years had passed since the birth of Britpop and commercial-geared indie suddenly seemed a less unpleasant idea than it did in 1997 - image became key once again, clever lyrics made a resounding comeback and the over-arching notion that any regional scene could yield future chart-toppers was capitalised upon to create some irresistible pop troupes.

Franz were perhaps simply in the right place at the right time to become the first British band to hit chart paydirt, but that shouldn't detract from the strength of their material - their debut racks up a faultless stack of potential singles, and perhaps more significantly they were able to turn out storming gigs on the back of one album without making it look like they were running out of decent material. Their debut hangs together so well because their sound is instantly distinctive - from the moment the first chord drops, everything is tightly-tuned and effortlessly memorable, each track retaining enough of their signature sound to be easily recognised as their own work yet still remaining adventurous enough to prevent eleven takes on the same theme from becoming repetitive. The lyrics were sexually ambiguous to chime in with their rakish image and contained enough of the classic British wit to make them a much more palatable option than four sweaty teenagers banging out ear-splitting rock 'n' roll, reaching further back through Britpop and back into 80s indie to connect with the shared belief that British pop could remain accessible enough to top the charts without dumbing itself down and losing its intellectual edge.

Once Franz had broken the seal on chart success in early 2004, British guitar music was suddenly omnipresent on radio playlists, propelled by music labels who communally woke up to the fact that bands from local scenes all over the country were making potential hit singles. Razorlight, Futureheads, Bloc Party and countless others made it to the top ten without it seeming like a fluke, and the current domination of homegrown indie had truly begun. We might be starting to get sick of some of these bands by now but it's worth considering that even the oldest of them are still only on their second album - the scene is far from going stale, and the music biz investment in local talent that followed Franz' success meant that we got to hear some stonking debut albums without their creators having to spend years in commercial obscurity before they got a record deal. British indie has never been more immediate, more prepared to take risks on the latest bunch of teenagers with guitars - there might be the odd misfire, but overall the national scene has never been so healthy. Franz Ferdinand might not deserve credit for setting the current trend in motion (and I very much doubt they would claim it), but their debut stands as the clear beginning on the new era in British guitar music. Crafty wee buggers.

Also :

The Futureheads - S/T (2004)

Retaining your own accent when singing might be less of a risk when you're from somewhere with an established scene like Glasgow, but Sunderland??? These Mackem lads defied the odds and produced a cracking debut infused with their own distinctive personality. Canny mint!


Razorlight - Up all night (2004)

Johnny Borrell might have given up any pretence that he was more concerned with art than success a long time ago, but Razorlight's debut is still a faultless set of tightly-tuned indie rock. His ego becomes inescapable on some tracks, but the guy's songwriting chops remain unbeatable.


9. 2 many DJs - As heard on radio Soulwax (2003)

Let's be honest, nobody listens to nothing but dance music - even the trendiest clubbers out there have at least some grounding in rock, and the inevitable merge between the two came about in the early 2000s with the emergence of 'mash ups'. Enabling the less club-savvy music fans to dance to tunes they would otherwise feel too unfashionable for whilst simultaneously retaining the creative element of a DJ mix set to please dance music purists, the new trend provided a comfortable crossover between mainstream radio pop rock and the more selective areas of clubland - many tracks did the rounds over the early years of the new millennium, but the definitive setlist remains 2 many DJs' supersonic compilation mix from 2003.

True zeitgeist definition rarely comes from a press campaign, and many would argue that Dangermouse's 'Grey Album' (a mix of The Beatles' 'White Album' and Jay-Z's 'Black Album') was the more important release as far as mash-up culture goes, but personally I prefer to pick the CD that was on at practically EVERY party I went to for a few months solid. The creators hardly had the credentials to support them - a Belgian duo better known for indistinct indie rock, they swapped guitars for turntables on a whim and managed to perfect the formula without even trying that hard. Dancefloor staples like Peaches and Royksopp merge seamlessly with classic cuts from Dolly Parton and Iggy Pop, never failing to raise a wry smile from the listener yet still falling short of the point where it all gets a bit too clever for its own good. Remarkably, the could reproduce it all live without losing any of the potency - I saw them headline a Belgian festival two years in a row, improvising with tracks from the other acts on the bill without disrupting the flow of their set and maintaining the party atmosphere that runs through their mixes from beginning to end. I personally would attribute this to the fact that Belgians (and to some extent the Dutch) live and breathe dance music and have a part of their brain permanently tuned to the party frequency - whilst a rather humourless lot outside the dancefloor, they excel when placed in control of the music and 2 many DJs' success seems all the more significant due to the fact that they pretty much fell into it rather than constructing some elaborate plan to achieve widespread acclaim.

Various acts have tried to reunite guitar music and dancefloors over the last few years with varying degrees of success - some have attempted to carve out entirely new genres in the shape of Electroclash (Fischerspooner) or New Rave (Klaxons) whilst others such as Kasabian and The Music have gone back to past scene leaders such as Primal Scream and Stone Roses for inspiration. There have been some great moments along the way and we've surely not seen the end of the current trend towards mixing guitars and beats, but for my money the synchronicity between the two genres has never been balanced more effectively than on 2 many DJs landmark mix project. Perhaps not one for the traditional 'best album' polls, this set is nevertheless a solid example of the soundtrack to countless soirées across the musical spectrum - it might not be rated as the best of its era, but chances are that if you were there at the time, you'd have had a copy of it somewhere. How you choose to define classic is up to you - as far as I'm concerned, this one deserves its place on the list just as much as any of the more reputed selections for the decade's finest.

Also :

Kasabian - S/T (2004)

Looking like the sort of blokes who'd come up to you on ecstasy at a Primal Scream gig and blether on about how they were experiencing some life changing moment, it was actually quite surprising when Kasabian's debut turned out to be such a strong set of lagered-up baggy revival anthems.

The Music - S/T (2002)

Had they broken into the mainstream a couple of years later, these Leeds lads might have been even bigger - regardless, their debut merges manic Reni-inspired beats with echoic guitar loops and frenzied vocals to create one highly danceable stew of sound.


10. Scissor Sisters - S/T (2004)

Pop, as a genre, had been pretty much reappropriated by the producers by the beginning of the decade - Max Martin had colonised teeny pop and returned it to the faceless state that Pete Waterman had left it in at the end of the 1980s, whilst Simon Cowell's global talent show franchise had violated the upper reaches of the charts with a succession of bland kareoke pishwank. Even the slightly more respectable hip hop producers such as Timbaland had prompted a market trend towards bankable security rather than creative risk-taking - every record executive knew that their performers were guaranteed success with the right person twiddling the knobs on their new record, regardless of how much the artist's personality actually corresponded to the material. The idea of actually getting a 'band' together as a touring pop ensemble seemed so outdated as to be really rather quaint - it might have worked with a Saturday night TV special backing it or as a lapdance cabaret act with a top name producer on the controls, but no record company was going to shell out for a genuine autonomous collective of musicians to take on the pop market.

Scissor Sisters crashlanded the market around the same time as Franz Ferdinand, breaching the UK top ten in January 2004 with their disco cover of Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb'. Like Franz's own 'Take me out', it was the sort of record that took you by surprise before you realised how catchy it was - the idea of a Bee Gees style rehash of Floyd's established anthem provoked many a disdainful snort from cynics before they'd sat down and listened to the record long enough to realise that it actually worked really well. Public interest piqued, the band proceeded to construct their chart campaign via a series of media-savvy public appearances and some truly brilliant singles ('Take your mama', 'Laura', 'Mary', 'Filthy Gorgeous'). Vocal duo Jake Shears and Ana Matronic were provocative enough to attract press interest and yet articulate enough to draw in fans from outside the pop/cluband market - the Sisters' broad appeal was down to the fact that rock fans weren't put off by their disco kitsch factor, it actually worked in their favour rather than restricting them to G.A.Y. tours and kiddie pop cameos. NME duly latched onto the band alongside the mainstream pop media, with both sides perfectly happy to share the group rather than squabbling over who their 'real' fans were.

By the end of 2004 they'd achieved the sort of comprehensive market domination that record producers across the country would have killed for, but in contrast to the ruthless press campaigning of Cowell, Louis Walsh and company the Sisters had managed to top the charts via the somewhat old fashioned technique of building a fanbase over the course of several months of touring and releasing decent records. Despite the absence of a 'straight in at #1' release to rival the Pop Idol puppets, Scissor Sisters nevertheless outsold their contempories to notch up the year's best-selling album (edging out the considerably less flamboyant Keane at the last minute) which was no mean feat for an unashamedly gay pop group named after a lesbian sexual position. The fact that their album outshone Will Young and Robbie Williams was a statement about the British record buying market in itself - often decried as closed-minded and conservative, British music fans were still prepared to champion a provocative group that would have been restricted to niche market status in places such as the USA (can you imagine Tipper Gore buying an album with a track called 'Tits on the radio' for her kids???).

'Scissor Sisters' by no means revolutionised pop music - indeed, the band would soon become a mainstream staple and lose much of their subversive appeal but the success of their debut stands as a good example of personality and provocation winning out over industry-sponsored production line pop. The massive success of pop acts a diverse as Gnarls Barkley, Lily Allen and The Killers would have been less likely before the Sisters' debut woke everyone up to the commercial potential of pop as a creative force, and over the last couple of years we've seen a resurgence of pop acts ploughing their own very individual furrow to both critical acclaim and commercial success. You may or may not regard this as a good thing, but faced with an otherwise bland radio playlist of identikit R'n'B and reality TV pop, I for one am glad that Scissor Sisters came along when they did.

Also :

Lily Allen - Alright still (2006)

After years of fuck-tedious female artists like Katie Melua and Dido examining their lovelives over Lighthouse Family-style acoustics, we desperately needed a girl you could go for a pint with to level things out a bit. Lily's debut brought a vital dose of wit, sarcasm and partytime energy to the charts.

The Killers - Hot Fuss (2004)

More in synch with the rock press than with pure pop, these Vegas boys nevertheless managed to romp home on the charts with the sort of stadium sized anthems that had 'Smash Hit' practically written all over them. Grandiose and slightly pretentious but infinitely better for it.

Pump up the 70s

1. Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti (79)

Think of 70s music and what comes to mind? Preposterous concept albums? Riff-heavy classic rock? Glitter-encrusted disco gurning? Partridge Family MOR cheez-o-rama? Freestyle tangents into cosmic hobbit metal? If one thing characterised the 70s, it was the sheer ludicrousness of much of the recorded output - whilst the music released was undeniably charming, there was plenty of scope for some fairly liberal piss-taking from the more cynical observer. Enter the sultan of satire, Mr Frank Zappa.

Zappa's records aren't mere rehashes of mainstream music biz successes with a few jokes added on, here was a bloke who was as well-versed in popular music as anyone else but instead of subscribing to any one fashion movement, he chose to remain in his own artistic space and re-process every emergent trend into his own unique package. Humour played a big part of course, and he was never afraid to poke fun at the pompous and preposterous excesses in chart music whilst reproducing the signature styles with his own brand of wit and wordplay. His 70s output covered every conceivable area in popular music over the course of the decade, retaining the most appealing elements and channeling them through his own particular take on the world - the ever-present social commentary and ridicule of public figures inside and outside the world of music provies an outlook on the decade that few other artists could give as they were way too caught up in their own pretentiousness. Zappa, on the other hand, was watching them all make fools of themselves and taking notes.

'Sheik Yerbouti' isn't significantly better than any other FZ release, but it ranks as probably my favourite album of his due to the sheer range of music territory covered. The record begins with the savage soft-rock parody 'I have been in you' and proceeds to rip on Dylan, romance rock and teeny pop within the first four tracks. The mid-section indulges his band's improvisational comptences and we are treated to some wacked-out live tracks which provide a more organic, visceral quality to the middle of the album - and at the heart of it all we find perhaps the classic Zappa piss-take track in the shape of 'Bobby Brown', a tale of an all-American fratboy tragically emasculated and reduced to life as a bondage cripple (seriously, you have to hear this tune!). The remainder of the disc picks up the pace nicely and races through manic rock'n'roll freakouts ('Wild Love', 'Tryin' to grow a chin'), sycthing disco piss-takes ('Dancin' Fool') and none-too-PC skit pop ('Jewish Princess'). Best of all are the spaced-out live setpieces 'City of Tiny Lites' (a favourite of mine from the days of all-night Mariokart spliff sessions) and the closing 'Yo Mama' which ends things on the back of a mind-boggling set of solos. As a perfomer, Zappa's strength was perhaps that he mastered so many styles whilst maintaining enough distance to see their fallacies and flaws, but 'Sheik Yerbouti' has to be the only record where he succeeds in cramming everything in his repertoire into one coherent album. Cool title too!

Zappa's music went largely unnoticed in the 70s and continued to evade the mainstream (intentionally, most of the time) for the rest of his career. Nevertheless, his recordings remain a good chronicle of the decade's excesses and hypocrisies without losing sight of what made it all great in the first place. History often blinds us to the complexity of different periods in the past and presents movements in popular culture with liberal doses of simplicity in order to make it fit into some pre-assigned box. If you want a running commentary on how the whole thing looked from the cynic's vantage point - along with a stonking soundtrack and some laugh-out-loud comic relief - there's no better place to start than right here.

Also :

Weasels ripped my flesh (70)

From back in the Mothers of Invention era, 'Weasels' features some organic woodwind versions of classics like 'Let's make the water turn black' (My favourite Zappa tune ever!) as well as some flat out weird shit like the acerbic title track. Great cover art too!


Overnight Sensation (73) / Apostrophe (74)

Frequently packaged together and featuring the same musicians, these two showcase Zappa's knack for wacky storytelling ('Don't eat the yellow snow') alongside some of his most stonking rock cuts ('Cosmic Debris', 'Dirty Love').


Zoot Allures (76)

The most riff-heavy release from his 70s period, Zappa enlists one of his tightest rock line-ups for a muscular romp through tales of rubber sex dolls ('Miss Pinky') and lame chat-up routines ('Disco Boy'), capping it all with one of his most complex performance pieces ('The torture never stops').


Zappa in New York (78)

A stonking double live album from the fertile late 70s era, showcasing elaborate orchestral pieces alongside bad ass versions of concert staples like 'I'm the Slime' and 'Honey don't you want a man like me?'. Also features narrative led classics 'Titties and Beer' and 'The Illinois Enema Bandit'.


2. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (77)

A lot of people remember the 70s for the rise of 'heavy metal', whether you define it as the blues-influenced lunge of Sabbath & Zeppelin at the start of the decade, the proto-NWOBHM rumbles of Motorhead and Judas Priest at the end or any of the labyrinthine Deep Purple style proggery in between. I'm not denying that there was plenty of great head-banging material back then, but for me the decade is better defined by the radio-tailored pop rock that dominated airwaves whilst the hardcore rivetheads were playing air guitar in their basements. The early 70s saw the rise of a new genre labelled 'soft rock' due to its laidback soundscapes and general lack of references to Satan, motorcycles or hordes of rampaging vikings. Numerous acts targeted the radio dollar with mellow FM rock with the focus more on organic, natural instrumentation and warm vocal lines rather than the stadium bombast traded in by many of their peers - and at the top of the pile, we find 'Rumours'.

The Mac had begun life as a wacked-out 60s psychedelic rock outfit best appreciated whilst tripping yer nuts off but once Peter Green fried his brain beyond all recognition and jumped ship, the remainder of the band found themselves constantly reshuffling their line-up in an attempt to regain some sort of coherence. The click came when vocal duo and real life couple Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks entered the fold in the mid-70s, allowing the band the chance to trade off male/female vocal lines and fully diversify their material (it also probably didn't hurt to have some genuine sexual undercurrent between singers, rather than another run of romance clichés and fake vocal orgasms). The coupling didn't end their either - Christine and John McVie (keys/vocals and bass respectively) completed the two-on-two configuration, leaving Mick Fleetwood towering awkwardly in the background and fiddling with his drumsticks. Let's face it, given the social context of the album's release in mid-70s America, we can pretty much label this the ultimate wife-swapping record.

Not that the tunes are insignificant mind you - the revolving door vocal policy and liberal space accorded to all five members to leave their mark on the music makes 'Rumours' sound like a truly complete record. Everyone has their own favourite track on here depending on their own personal taste : the anthemic radio rock of 'Go your own way', the drifting melodies of 'Dreams' or 'You make loving fun', the drivetime groove of 'The Chain', the jangly fraggle folk of 'I don't wanna know' or the plaintive balladry of 'Songbird'. Seriously, there's a song for every mood on here and you don't have to be a hardcore Carpenters freak to connect with what's going on - 'Rumours' is just one of those perfectly put together records where everything is in its right place and there is no weak track to pick out. It all sounds irretrievably 70s and the kitsch factor is impossible to ignore, but taken as a record on its own merits you can't find much to criticise - even the band's transformation into bloated Hollywood musos since its release shouldn't detract from its potency as a recording.

I bagged this LP for a quid back at one of the Lawnswood car boot sales back home years back and rarely have I invested money so wisely - the tracks on this album have been recycled ad nauseum to allow other artists to flex their musical muscles, which is surely a testament to the strength of the original songwriting. Beautifully crafted, complete in every way and laid down by a band in their absolute prime, this album is pure soft rock perfection.

Plus, Stevie Nicks has a cracking pair of paps on the back cover photo.

Also :

America - Live (77)

Best known for their radio hits 'Horse with no name' and 'I need you', these guys cut a mean line in warm, organic soft rock - this concert piece captures the whole brown leather FM experience nicely.



Peter Frampton - Frampton comes alive! (76)

Wanna know where Johnny Borrell got his dress sense from? Peter Frampton baby!! Framps shows how to soft it with the best of 'em on this live set which decimated the US charts in the mid 70s and made him every schoolgirl's fantasy rockstar shagpiece. Eat yer heart out Johnny!




3. The Clash - London Calling (79)

The probably with picking classic choces for your own best of lists is that every wingnut journalist for Q, Rolling Stone etc has already reeled off pages and pages of toadying nonsense about how the record in question saved them from certain death or whatever. Let's keep things in perspective though - 'London Calling' didn't change my life, make me discover politics or inspire me to start a band...it's just a fucking great album!

Speaking of Rolling Stone, their best of the 80s list featured 'London Calling' at #1, which is coherent enough seeing as the US release was January 1980 - however, it arrived on UK shelves in late 79 and so I'm leaving it in the previous decade's selection. This makes more sense to me in any case as the claustrophobic, nervous atmosphere of 70s Britain comes across much more on the record than the larger-than-life showbiz hoopla of the following decade. If the Clash's debut had been a brash, gobby shock to the system and follow-up 'Give 'em enough rope' had showcased their talents for writing finely crafted pop songs, 'London Calling' was the first time where their considerable ambition and imagination were granted free reign over a double album to show us what they were truly capable of. Musical diversity was always the band's trademark, and the consummate mish-mash of styles of this record has already been the subject of much music press adulation - don't worry, I'm not going to go there, let's just say that the record's strength lies in the fact that you can click on at any point over the course of 19 songs and find someting accessible, original and crafted to stand alone as a single track or as part of a larger set. We all know the staple songs here ('Guns of Brixton', 'Jimmy Jazz', 'Death or Glory', the immortal title track) but it's the lesser known tracks that pull you in for repeated listenings : the melancholy keyboard-pop of 'Lost in the Supermarket', the cabaret pomp of 'The Card Cheat' or the infectious disco strut of 'Train in Vain'. The topics covered are no less adventurous too - aside from the standard 'down with authority' banter there's a more complex look at politics, alienation and the choices faced in the inflammable atmosphere of Britain facing a new decade under the watchful eye of a newly elected Margaret Thatcher.

'London Calling' is that much of a complete snapshot of the times surronding its release that you half want them to start teaching it in schools along with George Orwell and Wilfred Owen - the only downside of course would be that thousands of kids would be instantly put off its merits by their teachers rabbiting on about how great it is. I came to the same conclusion a while back after listening to nostalgic 40-somethings who bought it when it came out witter on about how everyting released when THEY were 18 is somehow better than the stuff around today - while they're not totally justified in their nostalgia, there was still an over-arching trend towards innovation and pop music as serious artistic fare around at the time and 'London Calling' is perhaps the best example of this. Don't believe the hype until you're ready to give this record the time it takes, but mark my words - you will get it in the end. Adventurous, complex but never anything less than totally immediate, 'London Calling' is, alas, every bit as good as the tossers say it is.

Also :

Ramones - End of the century (79)

Everyone bangs on about the early Ramones records like they're the only ones worth listening to, but I personally like their forays into pop just as much. 'End of the Centuty' is the musical result of Johnny Ramone and Phil Spector trying to kill each other - fortunately, neither succeeded and we got a cool album to boot!

Sex Pistols - Never mind the bollocks (77)

Over-rated, sure, but 'Bollocks' still stands up to repeated listens even though it's now older than the group were when they recorded it. Punks worldwide have drawn inspiration from this, something we should never forget.



4. Pink Floyd - Meddle (71)

Sure, everyone loves 'Dark Side of the Moon' and 'The Wall', but as per usual I am tempted to play the contrary bastard and pick this one as the finest of the Floyd. Before the total globe conquest that came later in their career, Pink Floyd had been trading in some of the finest eccentric pop rock at the tail end of the 1960s - by the end of the decade however, they had evolved into what certain critics termed 'Space Rock'; an amalgam of their previous pop influences and pastoral pomp along with a hearty dose of planet-sized prog rock.

Earlier releases such as 'Ummagumma' and 'Atom Heart Mother' were pretty well-suited to all-night bong sessions with your mates, but 'Meddle' is perhaps the first point where Pink Floyd started to resemble the global rock titans that they would later fully evolve into over the rest of the decade. Whilst 'Dark Side' is undoubtedly a better-formed, more complete rock record, 'Meddle' leaves more space for the band's unbridled eccentricities (after all, we are talking about four posh blokes from Cambridge), meaning that they get to run the gamut from pocket-sized pop ditties ('San Tropez') to 25 minutes of wanking around ('Echoes') without it seeming in any way disjointed. More to the point, the bass-heavy rumble of opening shot 'One of these days' is perhaps the best example of music that makes you want to turn your stereo up so loud that the entire planet can hear it. Stratospheric stuff!

'Dark Side of the Moon' followed two years later and proceeded to eclipse its predecessor with its long-standing influence and Herculean chart success - nothing surprising about that I guess, but I probably like 'Meddle' more due to its slightly less accessible nature and wanton trips into the lands of sonic self indulgence. You have to be paying full attention to even get a handle on what's going on here but once you've hooked into the not inconsiderable gravitational pull on the end of 'Meddle', the effects are truly planet-sized. An enduring reminder of the first time Floyd went truly MASSIVE - the rest of the world is still catching up.

Also :

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (73)

NOBODY would get away with this sort of shit these days, but back in the bonged-out halycon days of the early 70s everyone had a copy of Oldfield's triptastic tour de force.



Yes - Tales from the Topographic Oceans (73)

Pompous, overblown, self-indulgent prog wank-o-rama - yet somehow this is so up its own arse that it becomes cool after all. The bonkers fold-out cover art reminds us why 70s rock freaks love their vinyl too.


5. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (73)

Rock fully blossomed as an art form in the 60s and you probably need to go back that far to find the real risky, ground-breaking advances that formed the genre as we know it today. The 70s were less about innovation and more about expansion - rock undeniably got better over the course of the decade, but even when it didn't it certainly got BIGGER. The thrill of grooving along to LP recordings of the earliest Sabbath 'n' Zeppelin tracks in your bedroom as the decade began soon gave way to the unspeakably enormous arena tours organised as the aforementioned acts embarked on their conquest across middle America a couple of years later - heavy rock was no longer a niche market phenomenon, it was an unstoppable force capable of attracting tens of thousands of sunburnt meatheads from miles around to planet-sized open air shows across the big country. 'Houses of the Holy' came out just as the Zep phenomenon was entering its biggest phase of commercial success, and it is for that reason that it gets my vote as the finest example of true 70s rock humungousness.

Zep's first four records are all equally brill of course and a full evaluation of their respective merits would be better suited to a late-doors alehouse session with some of my like minded peers so we'll skip that for now. I will say in defence of my choice however that the 'Stairway to Heaven' phenomenon didn't necessarily kick off as soon as 'Four Symbols' hit the stores - like every other trend set in motion by middle American sensibilities, it took a couple of years to filter through before becoming a true anthem to a generation of rockers, by which time 'Houses' was already in the stores to pick up the trail. Led Zeppelin's strength was perhaps that they didn't retrace their steps each time they released a record, and so instead of backwards glances to their previous triumphs 'Houses' manages move into new territory with some tricks of its own. This record doesn't have a user-friendly lay out to highlight the epic track, the stadium ballad, the radio rock anthem etc - there are shades of all that in each song, meaning that you end up listening to the whole thing as a set instead of simply picking out whichever song you feel like on any given day. Hardcore Jimmy Page addicts can freak out over the feasts of riffery in 'Over the hills and far away' and 'The Ocean' but the tunes are just as effective as pastoral soundtracks to another sunshine bong session, and the mellower numbers such as 'Rain Song' and 'No Quarter' can similarly be enjoyed in full stadium tilt as well as in chill-out mode. The slightly less orthodox cuts like 'The Crunge' and 'D'yer Maker' tend to split audiences more visibly - you're either OK with Zep's slightly erratic ventures into new territory or somewhat uneasy with Robert Plant jabbering 'Where's that confounded bridge???'. I personally like to think that 'Houses' captures the band at the pinnacle of their power and influence, with Robert in his 'Golden God' phase and Jimmy totally unfazed about spending half an hour wanking around over 'Dazed and Confused' in concert - Zep without any restrictions on what they wanted to do, however ludicrous.

Picking one Led Zep record (at least from the first half dozen or so) is always going to be an impossible task, so all I can say is that if you haven't dipped your toes into their musical universe yet then I envy you the experience - poring over those albums in a cloud of pot smoke is one of those things you really have to do at some stage in your appreciation of modern music. Other rock acts of the 70s have doubtless refined the various elements on R'n'R to become experts in their chosen field, but Led Zep were far and away the best combination of the ingredients present in rock music - nobody could even come close to matching these four guys when they were at full tilt. 'Houses of the Holy' showcases exactly why Led Zep were so astronomically huge at the time of its release and its power has scarcely diminished nearly 35 years down the line - if you're looking for a way into their captivating universe, there are worse places to start.

Also :

Aerosmith - Toys in the attic (75)

Stateside, Aerosmith were the finest homegrown rock act of the 70s and 'Toys' provides the perfect soundtrack to cruisin' round your local suburban town trying to pick up high school cuties (see Richard Linklater's 'Dazed and Confused' for correct cinematic context).

Black Sabbath - Paranoid (70)

Probably Slabbath's most solid collection of riff-mongering, aside from its immortal title track 'Paranoid' features some of the band's best cuts such as 'War Pigs' and the elephantine 'Fairies wear boots'. Heavy shit man!



6. Elvis - Aloha from Hawaii (73)

The thing with Elvis is that, whilst he produced some undeniably great material, a fair chunk of his commercial output was pretty fucking ropey. Once the thrill of his randy farmboy stageshow had faded in the late 50s, the next decade or so of the king's career was devoted to making increasingly shitty movies and pumping out accompanying soundtracks to line Colonel Parker's coffers with little regard for the music that made him famous in the first place. The '68 special changed all that and showed the world that he could still cut it as a performer, but the musical landscape had changed irretrievably since his arrival on the scene. It was perhaps inevitable that he would end up back on the cabaret circuit like every other faded star, but even so the King's Vegas years produced some impressive performances and 'Aloha from Hawaii' captures him on a latter period high before the wheels came off for good.

In keeping with Colonel Parker's 'Elvis as a market brand' exercise, 'Aloha' was syndicated live across the world as part of a record-breaking TV broadcast, something altogether new at the time. The commercial venture paid off and the show has since passed into folklore, but the performance serves best as a snapshot of the King teetering on the brink between immortal pop icon and risible lardball decked out like a sequined circus donkey (ever wondered why nearly all Elvis impersonaters pick this particular incarnation to imitate? You'd have to try hard to look less of a dork than Elvis did first time round). That said, it's actually quite sad to watch the whole spectacle with the hindsight granted from modern viewings - this is the last time Elvis appears as even vaguely cool, and he would retreat from the media spotlight over the following years as he piled on the pounds and became increasingly reliant on chemical stimulae to perform. The Hawaii special brings him back to the scene of some of his more watchable film ventures a decade earlier, although it's a bittersweet comparison when you pitch the young, handsome Elvis of 'Blue Hawaii' against the slightly sheepish looking post-divorce figure strutting the stage in '73. Elvis always had his roots in American country music as much as black R'n'B, and the live show brings out shades of deep blue melancholy ('I'm so lonesome I could cry') to accompany the revamped rock hits from his 50s heyday ('Hound Dog', 'Blue Suede Shoes' etc). Then there's the latter period gems in the shape of his frantic live version of 'Suspicious Minds' and the gut-busting croonerama of 'American Trilogy', with his 70s showband re-working of 'Can't help falling in love' closing proceedings on a high note.

'Aloha from Hawaii' may appeal more to Elvis historians like myself than regular fans, but its strength as a live document should not be under-estimated - the King's voice has never sounded so powerful yet there's a fragility in there that reminds us that Elvis was on the way out and he knew it well. Less than five years later he would be found dead on the toilet, estranged from his loved ones and cast aside by a showbusiness industry that had no further use for him. Ironically, his legacy has only grown stronger since his demise and 'Aloha' stands as one of the cornerstone moments of the King's illustrious career. Lay your cynicsm aside and give this one a shot, you'll thank me for it later.

Also :

Johnny Cash - Live at San Quentin (69)

I'm blurring the boundaries a little to let this one in, just because I think it taps into the same melancholy energy as the Hawaii set - having said that, Elvis would have probably sounded different if he was performing in front of a bunch of tattoed 25-to-lifers.

Various - 'Nashville' soundtrack (74)

Robert Altman's mid-70s exposé on the US country scene brings to light the freakish, unstable reality behind the sequins and apple-pie purity - the soundtrack provides some equally fascinating slabs of schizoid Americana.



7. Michael Jackson - Off the wall (79)

Like Elvis before him, MJ's career has seen him develop less as an individual artist and more as a catalyst for the showbiz developments going on around him - take either out of their period context and they quickly lose much of their relevance, but when left in the frame of their own entertainment eras they remain completely untouchable. Whilst the King has long since left us, Michael remains a living embodiment of the highs and lows of life-long showbiz notoriety, although only time will tell whether or not he can hack it in the realms of tangible reality.

In pop music terms, 'Off the wall' is the point where the 18-year old Michael first cast off the shackles of his taskmaster father and became a perfomer in his own right. He had already been singled out for solo spots whilst in the Jackson Five which remain kitsch classics in their own right, although the puppet strings were still clearly visible - his solo career took its baby steps with the weeny-pop classic 'Ben' in the mid-70s, but few are those who will honestly admit to liking it these days. No, 'Off the wall' showed us MJ as a young adult for the first time, one that had done his time selling toddler-pop dressed like something off 'Sesame Street' and was now ready to hit the dancefloor without a chaperon. Of course, it's likely that Michael was granted no more freedom than before in his personal life when it was released, but by this point his producers were keen to market him as a more credible, adult product - just check out the front cover : 'Yeeeeah baby! Michael's ready to hit the town!!'.

Later releases 'Thriller, 'Bad' and 'Dangerous' would acheive huge commercial success trying to crowbar every style popular at the time of release into one easily accessible MJ album, but the resulting music often lacked any creative coherence - Michael often sounded like he was impersonating several different entertainers on his own version of 'Stars in their Eyes'. Up against all this, 'Off the wall' can perhaps be seen as the most consistent MJ release as it sets its sights squarly on disco-pop and ventures no further, leaving Michael and the producers enough room to fully master their chosen theme. Which they do, leaving us with rollerdisco classics 'Rock with you' and 'Don't stop til you get enough' alongside numerous other floor-fillers to pulp out the record. It may lack a certain amount of balls, but considering that featherweight disco was order of the day back in the late 70s we can hardly call that a valid criticism - consider this above average disco-pop, the last MJ record that didn't sound like a compilation and overall his final outing as a one-man stage act before the advent of MTV in the early 80s saw him swallowed up by video-centric marketing and processed into the plastic freakazoid we see today. The end of innocence, as it were.

Also :

Various - Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (77)

The Bee Gees head a star-studded line-up providing the musical backdrop to this coked-up fashion abortion of a film. Can't fault the tunes though!




Donna Summer - Live and more (78)

Disco's first lady busts out her best ones live : 'I feel love', 'McArthur Park', 'Love to love you baby' etc. Respect!




8. Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell (77)

The 1970s saw the record and film industry grant hitherto unknown freedom to artists, allowing those of a more eccentric disposition the chance to fully realise their own visions - sure, it yielded some pretty wanky results but there were also some mind-bogglingly grandiose ideas that became reality as a result of the industry taking risks they probably wouldn't do today. For instance, Jim Steinman's ludicrously pompous rock-opera 'Bat out of Hell' was laughed out of various record company boardrooms before the could convince anyone to bankroll it, but eventually someone did - the rest, as they say, is mutli-platinum radio rock history on a silver black phantom bike.

It's not like the original formula was a blueprint for success - beef up the Lloyd Webber West End production format with contempory radio rock delivery and homo-erotic Hell's Angels aesthetics, then draft in some fat sweaty bloke in lace cufflinks to do vocals. Let's face it, Simon Cowell wouldn't have given these dudes 10p for their idea, but then again when did he have anything worth saying about music? Once 'Bat' was snapped up by a record company, it took a while to take off but once it did there was no stopping it - rock radio and the emergent heavy metal scene latched onto it and kept it in the charts for so long that it joined the hallowed ranks of 'Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Saturday Night Fever' where presence on the album charts is measured in years rather than weeks. The title track's romping narrative runs through numerous key changes in the same style as 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'Stairway to Heaven', both staples of the epic songwriting style than everyone went nuts for in the 70s - the listening experience became more akin to sitting and listening to someone reading you a story rather than just sticking on another rock LP. As for the rest of the LP, the storytelling style remains in place over the course of several more lengthy slabs of rock opera including 'Two out of three ain't bad', 'You took the words right out of my mouth' and the immortal dogging anthem 'Paradise by the dashboard light'.

Not content with decimating the album charts for the best part of a decade, Steinman and the Loaf brought out a follow-up 15 years later - despite the sequel dropping in 1993 when post-grunge hostility to radio rock was at its peak, it still outsold everything else on the shelves and repeated the success of the original. The balls on these guys!!! A third installment came out last year to general public indifference, but overall there's no disputing the series' status as one of rock's crowning acheivements - or indeed, as a reminder that back in the 70s NO idea was considered too daft to be given a shot at success. Those were the days....

Also :

Jeff Wayne - Musical version of 'War of the Worlds' (78)

Created with the same delusions of grandeur as Jim Steinman's motorcycle saga, you expect 'War of the Worlds' to be a load of pompous old bollocks, yet for some reason it totally rocks!! Go figure.


Queen - Jazz (78)

Freddie and co at their most coked up and ludicrous - contains some of their most stonking material ever ('Fat Bottomed Girls', 'Don't stop me now', 'Bicycle Race') alongside some serious nutjob numbers ('Mustapha'). Weirdest of all, there's no jazz on it! Is that a private joke or something???


9. Marvin Gaye - What's going on? (71)

When you think of the musical output of the late 60s, the image that comes to mind is often one of doped-up hippies clad in tie-dye preaching meaningless bollocks about peace, love and spiritual enlightenment - with the passing of time a lot of it has become a total caricature, disjointed from reality and virtually impossible to take seriously. As meaningless entertainment it was OK for a while, but once the cloud of pot smoke lifted it all seemed a wee bit vacuous.

'What's going on' dropped just as the 70s kicked in properly, when flower power had fizzled out and many of the luminaries of the late 60s music scene (Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin) had proved that they weren't immortal after all - as a wake-up call against a backdrop of Nixon, Vietnam and an increasingly unstable American society, it takes the hippy peace ideals out of the bedroom bong session and plants them directly into reality to see how they hold up. Marvin wants a peaceful world and you can hear it in his voice, but he's not lost the anger he feels at the mess he sees all around him - I always like to think that the cover photo depicts him on a Sunday morning stroll in the rain after a mad night out, sobered up and faced with cold reality but still clinging on to the happiness he felt the previous evening and wishing it were more visible in everyday life. It's at that sort of time that you really start to take stock and question things, wondering what is indeed going on in the world around you. Taking that as a starting point, this can be a peaceful, positive record or alternatively a pissed-off plea for justice and equality - taking it one way doesn't necessarily negate the potency of the alternate interpretation, hence its longstanding widespread appeal. You could probably find this album alongside Dido or Rage Against the Machine, depending on whose record collection you're looking at - what more proof of classic status do you need?

Marv would go on to unleash the incendiary 'Trouble Man' and the shagging-as-political-subversion classic 'Let's get it on' over the next few years, cementing his reputation as one of Black music's key figures, but 'What's going on' remains his most faultless set. The numerous half-baked rehashes of his material by the likes of Ben Harper and Fred Durst in recent years only serve to highlight the fact that Marvin Gaye was a one-off deal, and 'What's going on' captures the man at his peak. A soulful experience indeed.

Also :

Sly & the family Stone - There's a riot going on (71)

The 70s would have been considerably less funky without Sly, and 'Riot' sees him showcasing his not inconsiderable talents over a dark snapshot of America at the dawn of a new decade.



Stevie Wonder - Innvervisions (73)

Stevie often seemed just too bloody nice to be taken fully seriously but poke below the surface and there's as much social conscience here as anywhere else, coupled with tunes that remain masterclasses in booty shaking.


10. Slade - Sladest (73)

I'll admit to bending the rules a little bit to allow this in as strictly speaking it's a compilation record (of the band's first eight singles, from 'Get down and get with it' through to 'Skweeze me Please me') but there's no way I was going to compile a 70s list without these guys getting a nod somewhere along the line. Think of the music from the 1970s and many images will come to mind, perhaps 'Ziggy Stardust' era Bowie or classic brown-plaid Stevie Wonder funk workouts - indeed, many of the decade's stars have remained cool against the passing of time and maintained their charm to generations of new listeners. Slade, on the other hand, seem such a ludicrous proposition these days that it is borderline impossible imagining how their ear-splitting trog rock was ever considered cool in the first place.

Thing is, the very fact that Slade aren't a cool music press-approved act is what makes them so appealing - back in the early 70s, they stomped their goonish influence all over Britain and were the first act since the Beatles to effortlessly top the singles charts with nearly every release. It's not hard to work out why when listening to their music - whilst prog rock dominated the album charts, Slade kept things simple and effective : catchy, chunky riffs and choruses, heavyweight rhythm section stomp-o-rama and a set of vocals that sounded like a medieval town crier singing through a set of industrial megaphones. They also provided a much-needed (and quintessentially British) dose of comic relief within their music - if the 'brickies in fancy dress' aesthetic wasn't enough to raise a smile, their lyrics were hardly Joy Division in terms of seriousness and the intentionally mis-spelt titles enforced the idea that this wasn't po-faced art rock, it was big dumb fun.

All this was perhaps more than mere coincidence mind you - Noddy Holder himself admits that the carefree revelry of Slade's music crossed over so well in early 70s Britain precisly because a lot of what was going on in everyday life (poverty, labour strikes, IRA bombing campaigns, football hooliganism etc) was considerably less amusing - hence the need for some quality entertainment. There are many listeners who still consider Slade an embarassing relic of the past along with Benny Hill, platform shoes and 'The Comedians' - fair enough I suppose, but for my money they're pretty hard to beat when it comes to soundtracking loud, unruly sessions of alehouse goonery. Get yer boots on and bag a copy of this!

Also :

The Sweet - Desolation Boulevard (74)

The strongest set from the late great Brian Connelly and co, 'Desolation' also ranks as one of Tommy Lee's favourite albums, cementing its reputation as a truly troggish release.


T-Rex - The Slider (72)

Marc Bolan's biggest hit in the US, 'The Slider' features UK #1 hits 'Metal Guru' & 'Telegram Sam' alongside a host of other classics to boogie along with.

Pump up the 80s

Following on from my earlier piece on the finest albums of the 90s, here's my take on the previous decade's musical output for your delight and delectation. Feel free to add comments about my choices and offer some alternatives of your own if you feel like it (just don't blame me if you have shitty taste in music!).


1. The Stone Roses - S/T (89)

Ok, I know you're sick to fucking death of people weebling on about how great this album is so let me start with an apology. I am sorry for every inebriated Mancunian who has latched onto you in an indie club and lectured you on how this is his favourite record. I am sorry for every pub jukebox that has been programmed to loop this album in its entirity by the locals. I am sorry for every Match of the Day compilation featuring liberal cuts from this record. I am sorry for every birds-nest haircut, sweaty trainered Scally band that has claimed inheritance of some cosmic urban wisdom by copying every single chord progression on this album. I am sorry for the fucking Seahorses.

You happy now? Cos it's still the best album ever.

My relationship with this record goes back a LONG way - it was one of the very first albums I had as a young kid, maybe not the first (that particular honour goes to A-ha's 'Stay on the Roads', itself a not-half-bad slice of Nordic pop-rock) but it was definitely the one that piqued my interest in indie as opposed to chart-based pop. Not that this isn't a pop record of course, it's relentlessly commercial and instantly memorable, but not without a hearty dose of Manc monkey-magic and R'n'R histrionics. Alongside the unquestionable pop classics like 'Made of Stone', 'Waterfall' and 'She bangs the drums', we have slow burning stadium indie ('I wanna be adored'), backwards-masked psychedelia ('Don't Stop'), majestic quiet-loud urban romanticism ('This is the one') and to top it all, my generation's answer to 'Stairway to Heaven' ('I am the resurrection'). Everything about this album has entered into common folklore - the iconic lemon sleeve design, the Madchester marketing phenomenon and even the singles' promotional campaigns which saw the SAME video of the band tromping around the Moors trotted out for every track they released off the bloody thing. Not only did it define an era, it set the standard for perfection in guitar rock which has not been bettered since and probably won't be either. I fucking LOVE this record and I have never grown tired of it despite the passing of time - I got a lot of shit from guys at school for liking this, before Britpop made it cool again and it has weathered numerous trends and shifts in fashion since to the point where it can truly be seen as an immortal collection of songs. Cynicism aside, you can't find fault in anything contained herein and I challenge anyone who isn't fucking deaf to come up with a decent reason for refuting its status as the best record of all time.

Also :

Happy Mondays - Bummed (88)

Blissfully incoherent and all the better for it. It was always a mystery how these guys even figured out how to open the door to a recording studio, let alone lay down a great record inside it.


Inspiral Carpets - Life (90)

I'm going over the border for this one, although a lot of the tracks were popularised the previous year so it's 80s in every other aspect. The final part of the Manchester Holy Trinity.



2. Prince - Purple Rain (84)

Any 80s list without a mention of the Purple One would surely be incomplete (stop sniggering back there, I'm talking about Prince fools!) and there are quite a few of his albums that could have made this list. However, as far as complete, well-formed products go you have to admit that 'Purple Rain' is probably his strongest effort of the decade - the seriously mucky 'Dirty Mind' and the ambitious yet slightly overblown 'Sign of the Times' are close runners-up but the soundtrack to his 1984 biopic wins over sheer lack of weak points. The film is a load of old wank of course, but it does serve to highlight Prince's lofty ambitions and the music segments are all pretty entertaining. The soundtrack reminds us of what made pop such a powerful force in the 80s - the infectious dance tracks like 'Let's go crazy' and 'When doves cry' dominated radio playlists whilst the more complex and romantic numbers like 'I would die 4 U' and the title track were better suited to bedroom headphone sessions where the listener could relax in layers of MTV fantasy. Best of all was the album cut 'Darling Nikki', discovered by an unsuspecting Tipper Gore after she'd bought the record for her daughter blissfully unaware that it contained blatant references to FEMALE MASTURBATION. Cue a nauseating media campaign organised by a frigid bunch of Nanny State senators' wives known publicly as the PMRC who successfully prevented the free sale of anything other than bland radio pishwank across middle America for most of the decade whilst their husbands pushed through tax bills on the quiet and took backhanders from the record industry. Frank Zappa humiliated the pressure group in court and unwittingly launched the range of 'Masturbation is not a crime' T-shirts, but Prince chose not to get involved - understandable, as he was busy cranking out great music that would soundtrack the remainder of the decade. But subtle references to 'varnishing the harpsichord' aside, 'Purple Rain' still stands as a rock-solid rack of 80s pop tracks and a fond memory of a time before pop got spoilt by the parents.

Also :

Cyndi Lauper - She's so Unusual (84)

Strapped with memorable hit singles including one penned by Prince, the artist fondly referred to by my dad as 'Sidney Lauper' kicked off her career with one of the decade's best set of pop tunes. Good hairspray job too.



Bangles - Different Light (86)

Also strapped with memorable hit singles including one penned by Prince, the band referred to by my French friends as 'Ze Bongles' also kicked off their career with a corker, fronted by the eminently desirable Susannah Hoffs. Hairspray and shoulderpads also featured prominently.



3. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (85)

I love all of Kate's stuff and it's pretty tough picking out one album that stands above the rest, but I reckon 'Hounds' is probably the keypoint in her career when she transformed from foxy wicca ballet nymphette to full-on Earth Goddess playing music that made you forget everything else in the entire world. Basically this is were Kate stopped doing kooky pop music and turned into Galadriel. Every female vocalist who has traded in flouncy tangents into the realms of romantic dreamscape since then (Tori Amos, Björk etc) owes her a creative debt, not least for breaking the mould on what women can do in pop music without becoming a total laughing stock. Kate's style never faulters, she's eccentric and evocative without being poncy, and the planet-sized production typical of the mid-80s put her more in the sphere of grandiose theatre rather than mere pop music (imagine the sort of dry ice stadium echo that they put on Dire Straits records to make it sound like you were hearing it at a MASSIVE arena gig, although minus the headbands and Top Gear connotations). The even more impressive thing is that Kate (or rather her producers) could have chosen to go for total commercial paydirt and kept the whole record limited to her radio-friendly side but instead they allowed her to go fully bonkers on side two, resulting in a first half that ranks amongst the strongest tracklistings ever and a second part that sounds like her jamming with a bunch of pixies and flower elves in the studio. I always thought it would be cool to meet a girl who was well into Kate Bush along with Victorian literature and kinky lace underwear so we could get it on listening to this album - I never found one, but a fella's got to dream....

Also :

The Police - Synchronicity (83)

Similar to 'Hounds' because it employs the same total discrepancy between the two sides of the record - Side B features a run of Sting's finest ever compositions ('King of Pain', 'Synchronicity 2', 'Every breath you take') and Side A is either freestyle innovation or unlisteable bollocks depending on how charitable you're feeling.

The Cure - Head on the Door (85)

I'm more of a 'Disintegration' man personally, but 'Head on the Door' is probably the better example of Fat Bob's talents in creating a musical otherworld where his fears and fantasies potter around in clouds of dry ice. If him and Kate had made babies together, the offspring would have probably qualified for the status as 'weirdest kids on the planet'.


4. Metallica - Master of Puppets (86)

Every time Kerrang or one of the other metal rags does a survey on the best albums of all time, you can bet that the trad metal vote from those with memories stretching back to the 80s will be piled behind either 'Puppets', Slayer's 'Reign in Blood' or one of Iron Maiden's cartoon-metal capers. In terms of outright 'heaviosity', Slayer win hands down and as a die-hard fan of theirs I should really be singling out 'Reign' for another shower of praise, but you know what....I've probably played 'Puppets' more since I first got it. Slayer's key work stands as a benchmark for exactly how quickly a bunch of metalheads can clobber the fuck out of their instruments whilst offending anyone within earshot, but even the speed purist in me has to admit that 'Puppets' stands up better to repeated listenings. Weirdly, I always hated the way thrash songs used to drag on but the strength on 'tallica's masterpiece lies in the fact that they fill every minute with ideas - there's nothing under five minutes in the eight tracks here, yet each track succeeds in creating its own little universe that the impressionable teenage metalhead can disappear into. The aspiring musicians in my circle of teenage friends spent hours dissecting each song and learning the individual parts, but you don't have to be a muso dork to appreciate what's going on here. I first got a tape of this along with the equally stonking 'Ride the Lightning' on the other side and spent hours looping the fuck out of both of them whilst lying in a darkened teenage bedroom fug. For those discovering Metallica in the post-therapy years, it's hard to imagine them being anything of a threat but back in the day these dudes were the most intriguing entrance into the sweaty, macho, lagered-up moshpit world of heavy metal as it stood in the late 80s/early 90s. Put in simpler terms, every geekoid metalhead who gets WAY too obsessed over 'tallica probably started with this record - it's legacy remains intact twenty years on.

Also :

Slayer - Reign in Blood (86)

Imagine four Tasmanian devils playing a fusion of Discharge and Judas Priest. Yeeeeeeaaah baby.




Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (88)

The dorkiest record they ever made but paradoxically one of the best ones - the most palatable elements of prog rock and heavy metal unleashed at their commercial peak.




5. They Might be Giants - Lincoln (88)

The 1980s provided some serious treats this side of the Atlantic with European indie treats like the C86 bands, post-punk and the onset of Madchester at the end of the decade. However, as usual the Yanks had their own pot on the boil and produced some equally fascinating records lumped together under the banner of 'college rock' (ie the sort of music Buddy Holly specs-wearing 'Revenge of the Nerds' types would rock out to in their dorm rooms, scared to venture outside and interract with their peers who were busy chugging Bud and pumping out Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen from their car stereos). There were zillions of whiteboy (or occasionally whitegirl) groups from this period but my personal favourite has to be the nerdiest of them all, New York's They Might be Giants. Most famous for the 1990 radio hit 'Birdhouse in your soul' (my little brother Alex's favourite song ever) as well as later career revival 'Boss of me' from the TV series Malcolm in the middle, the duo began life as one of the off the wall indie rock acts plying their trade to college radio stations. Whilst many of their peers touched on more adult topics like relationships, politics and general happenings in the real world, TMBG were firmly enracinated in their own fertile imagination and have remained there over the course of subsequent releases, something I find highly admirable. Basically whilst everyone else was wrapped up in Student Union politics and gacky coffee shop romance, these guys were in their bedrooms writing songs about pencil rainstorms and underwater cow colonies. 'Lincoln' is probably my favourite record of theirs and it chimes in nicely with the period too - major record labels were snapping up college bands left right and centre at the time and TMBG broke a couple of years later along with many of their peers. However, the thing that made these guys special for me was their dedication to weird ideas and concepts, clinging on to the sort of dumb notions you generally dismiss in an instant long enough to forge them into proper songs. 'Lincoln' contains 18 samples of their creative weirdness, ranging from highly danceable pop to wacky cabaret pomp to downright fucking silliness (their track 'Shoehorn with teeth' was an anthem of early adolescence for myself and my friend Michael). Most people didn't get it and dismissed them as dweeboid one hit wonders, but their not inconsiderable fanbase has stuck with them over the years (including most of my immediate family and several friends who got into them at the same time as me) to the extent that their status as a cult act is firmly intact. I even wrote them a letter when I first got this record to tell them how much I liked it and they sent me back some free stuff in response. Great musicians and bloody nice blokes to boot!

Also :

Pixies - Come on Pilgrim (87)

Their first release, way out in the realms of wacky and a sign of the potential they would fulfil later - I still like this one best though.




REM - Green (88)

Before their later descent into eco-friendly anally-retentive radio rock, REM were actually capable of cranking out a tune or two. Plenty here to enjoy in the shape of 'Stand,' Orange Crush', 'Pop Song 89' etc...




6. Public Enemy - It takes a nation of millions.... (88)

Another staple choice for 80s polls I know, but let's not be to cynical about this - whilst large factions of the music press were practically falling over themselves to claim that PE where their favourite band in the entire world a few years back, the guilty whiteboy kudos granted to these guys shouldn't detract from the enduring potency of their early material. Debut 'Yo! Bum rush the show' was innovative and intelligent, but the follow-up gave us the first hip-hop record strong enough to compete with the rock bands of the period (indeed, you got the impression that Chuck D and co were specifically aiming to steal the audiences of many of their contempories at the time). Rap is one of those things that often takes time to fully appreciate, especially in this day and age when we're bombared with high-gloss MTV clips packed out with bitches 'n' bling, but 'It takes...' reminds us of what the genre is truly capable of - the upfront political content and instantly accessible production practically lurch out from the stereo and grab the listener round the throat, not relenting until 'Party for your right to fight' finally brings the collection to a halt. It's difficult to explain the sheer boot in the nutsack that this record delivers on first hearing - let's just say PE's later pairing with New York thrash troup Anthrax goes some way to explaining the subtely (or lack of) that characterises most of the content here. The band even sampled Slayer's signature tune 'Angel of Death' on 'She watch Channel Zero', and it almost seems like they're making absolutely certain that no patronising sneers from the rock press would be forthcoming when they heard the finished product. Whatever the motivation behind this set of tunes, it has certainly stood the test of time (unlike some of the group's later material) and almost 20 years on it's still a rock-solid set of classics. If you are looking to trace the point where the potency of rap fully materialised in the world of rock, start here.

Also :

NWA - Straight Outta Compton (87)

Less politically savvy than PE but ultimately more entertaining, NWA's shit-stirring debut may symbolise everything that's wrong with rap music but it's nonetheless an essential listen.



De la Soul - Three feet high and rising (89)

Substituting uzis and flak jackets for daisy-age hippywear and librarian spectacles, De la Soul can still spread spontaneous grins across dancefloors to this day.




7. Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness (89)

Look at any Top 40 listing from the tail end of the 80s and you'll be confronted with a seemingly endless parade of utter SHITE - strange then, that there was so much fascinating stuff bubbling under in the various pockets of the musical spectrum. Baggy, Hardcore and Gangsta Rap would all break the surface over the course of the early 1990s, but it was Death Metal that provided the most perplexing window into the underworld - just what sort of fuck-up would listen to music that sounds like this??? Admittedly, it took me a while to come round to Morbid Angel and their kin (Obituary, Suffocation, Sepultura etc) but once I'd popped my metal cherry it wasn't long before I started getting a taste for the prime-era DM of the late 80s/early 90s. There was no shortage of cracking records released at that point but 'Altars' stands above the pack as my favourite Death Metal album of all time (indeed, maybe my favourite metal record full stop....) due to its perfect balance of trad metal's cartoon craziness and DM's bowel-quaking tempos and frequencies - all in all, one mean package. A lot of DM became tiresome once you'd got past creaming over how fast the band were playing their material, but Morbid Angel managed to ripsnort their way through their songs with such utter ferocity that the experience became the closest sonic equivalent to watching Giger's Aliens disembowel a fleet of Marines. Add to that a considerable psychedelic influence (like watching an evil version of 'Dungeons and Dragons' where Venger wins every time) and a genuinely scary dose of Satanic mysticism, and 'Altars' is pretty much all you could ask for in a DM album. What's more, they managed to go away and produce some pretty decent follow-ups in later years too. Many continue to keep their distance from the genre as a whole, but if you're curious then it's safe to say this is the only Death Metal album you NEED to hear. Ask my buddy Satan if you want proof.

Also :

Obituary - Slowly we Rot (89)

The grizzliest, hairiest low-end fuzzbomb of an album on the market. All of these guys look like Otto the bus driver from The Simpsons. They rule!!




Sepultura - Beneath the Remains (89)

Brazil's finest unleash their first truly classic moment. Later gems 'Arise' and 'Chaos AD' are both similarly essential but this one has the edge for the unfeasibly stonking title track.




8. Human League - Dare (81)

Electro-pop often tends to be written off as easily disposable chart trash once a few years have passed since their original release, mainly due to the fact that the creators had the temerity to aim for major success rather than spending years ploughing the upstairs-at-your-local-pub circuit. Like their Steel City contempories Heaven 17 and ABC, the League set out to make pure pop but soon altered their trajectory to prove to the rock press that they could cut it in album format as well as in the singles charts. Everyone who's staggered around a wedding dancefloor to 'Don't you want me' (included here as the closing track) can appreciate the Human League's ear for pop narrative and electronic pulse, but don't let that cloud your vision and detract from the potency of the album tracks here. 'Open your heart' and 'Darkness' combine instantly memorable pop choruses with some of the most innovative synch hooks of the period - ones that would be sampled or imitated for the remainder of the decade. 'Seconds' even borders on full-on trance (not bad for a record made in 1981!) and the rock-solid singles include 'Sound of the Crowd' and 'Love Action' alongside the immortal 'Don't you want me', which finished the year as Xmas #1. There's entire sections of dance music, video game soundtracks and rave culture aesthetics that can be traced back to this album - whilst the League weren't inventing anything strictly new, their pop take on Kraftwerk's electro-stylings and renewed focus on 'music to listen to before you go out clubbing' makes 'Dare' a founding release in British music. Rock critics are often too caught up in their fawning over 'Joshau Tree' and 'Brothers in Arms' when picking out their 80s favourites to even notice this - their loss, our gain.

Also :

Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (81)

The soundtrack to a million sleazy nights on the town, Soft Cell's debut encapsulates a whole lifestyle in ten tracks featuring some truly legendary singles cuts ('Tainted Love', 'Bedsitter', 'Say hello wave goodybe' etc...)


ABC - The Lexicon of Love (82)

Fellow Sheffield drama queens, Martin Fry and co provided perhaps the most concrete example of how electropop could master the concept album format without losing its potency.



9. The Smiths - Meat is Murder (85)

I had an absolute arse of a time choosing between the first three Smiths albums for this list, but let's just say that this one is closest to my own personality - there's plenty to wallow in on the other two, but 'Meat' is the more direct, punchy affair that exposes their strengths from start to finish without getting too caught up in the sort of Morrissey melodrama that put loads of people off the Smiths in the first place. Even when he gets whiny on this one, Moz still keeps it within the confines of cracking pop tunes ('Headmaster Ritual', 'How Soon is Now?') and there are maybe some of the most danceable Smiths tunes up here too ('Rusholme Ruffians', 'I want the one I can't have'). There's the lyrics too of course, and some of my absolute favourite Morrissey lines are on this one but quoting them in a review kind of defeats the point of the whole thing - you can be as clever as you like with the words but that don't mean squat if you don't have a decent tune backing you up, and as per usual Johnny Marr does the biz on here. There's also the biggest flashback to smelly 80s Student Union politics in the title track, a mournful ode to vegetarianism (of all crazy ideas!!) which only highlights this as a period piece. Indeed, I probably like this album more than their other records just by the virtue of it being most other people's least favourite Smiths album - a contrariness that Morrissey himself would no doubt approve of. 'The Queen is dead' will still top all the 'Best Album' polls but don't let that blind you to the considerable charms of 'Meat' - there's plenty to chew on here!!

Also :

The Smiths - The Queen is dead (86)

People bang on about it all the bloody time but you can't deny that this is a pretty faultless set - also contains the best song ever made about not getting any in the shape of 'I know it's over'.



The Smiths - S/T (84)

The lads' debut is less upfront on first listen than their later stuff, but stick with it and this is maybe their most fascinating collection.





10. The Pogues - Red Roses for me (84)

I was deliberating over whether I should stick any Clash records on here, as for me the period covering late 70s/early 80s was soundtracked by nobody better than them. I elected to leave them off this list for two reasons : firstly, 'London Calling' is going to be on my best of the 70s list so it's just labouring the point sticking them on here and secondly, post 'Combat Rock' they'd pretty much shot their wad and left others to pick up where they'd left off. Enter The Pogues - a ragtag bunch of Anglo-Irish punks and piss-artists who tapped into the energy of both modern punk rock and traditional folk to produce perhaps the ideal soundtrack for many a night getting raucously drunk and flailing around the dancefloor. As with many artists on this list, most of their 80s output is great and I could have easily included the more complex and compelling 'If I should fall from grace with God' or nautical alehouse singalong of 'Rum, Sodomy & The Lash' - however, 'Red Roses for me' trumps the lot by virtue of it being the earliest, roughest example of what the Pogues did best : piss-drunk folk punk. Sure, they couldn't have repeated the same set for years on end to the point where it got boring, but their first collection of tales of drunken rampages across London and folklore-inspired tales of action and adventure is undeniably enjoyable, all the more so thanks to its relative simplicity (indeed, upon their rise to fame the band themselves remarked that they were surprised nobody had come up with the formula already). There's glimpses of melancholy too it the shape of closing number 'Kitty' and the potential Shane Magowan would later fulfil as a romantic songwriter is hinted at here, but overall it's balls-out punk-o-rama with a liberal sprinkling of trad influences, combining to make the ideal soundtrack for a raucous night on the town or the following morning's dreams of faraway lands. A potent cocktail indeed.

Also :

The Clash - Sandinista! (80)

Not everyone's favourite Clash record but well worth a go if you haven't already had the pleasure - sprawling, adventurous and varied with plenty of tunes lining the walls.


Dead Kennedies - Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables (80)

Manic, irreverent and overall a whole lot of fun - the Kennedys' debut is essential listening for all aspiring punkers out there.

Gig Review : Arctic Monkeys + The Coral, Paris Zénith July 3rd 2007

The path up to the Zénith from the metro stop always gives you the impression that you are about to partake in an event of not inconsiderable importance – the long, straight path flanked by ticket touts and hooky merchandise salesmen feels synonymous with a major cultural happening, something with a serious amount of attention focussed on it. We could be on our way to a football match or a political rally, but the Strokes-style indie attire and flamboyant adolescent hairdos on show make it clear that tonight’s focus is placed firmly on the next big thing in popular music. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the Arctic Monkeys….

Assorted Left Bank indie brats and visiting Brits flock into the confines of the Zénith for the first stage of tonight’s Northern invasion – for the opening slot is filled by none other than fellow Brits The Coral, now five-year scene veterans in contrast to the still relatively fresh-faced stars they are here to support. The Sheffield/Liverpool contrast in terms of musical heritage is fairly clear from the outset – firmly grounded in the Scouse culture of mystic merseybeat and lolloping, dope-laced psychedelia, The Coral’s set provides a much-appreciated gentle start to the evening’s proceedings and as second fiddle tonight they duly trot out their not inconsiderable list of hits to a grateful crowd. Still looking very much the gaggle of skunk-stewed 6^th formers that they were when they first rose to prominence, you easily forget that they’ve been pretty much a constant feature in the charts since their emergence in 2002 and their prolific output since then has fleshed out their live act to make it seem like they’ve been on the circuit for even longer than that. Mop-topped vocalist James Skelly monkeywalks his way through a series of hits including the immortal ‘Dreaming of you’ and the increasingly mesmeric ‘Don’t think you’re the first’, and they finish with a new number which suggests that their best years may indeed lie before them.

The mellow start to the evening is probably a good thing, as most of the pent-up energy in the room has yet to disperse by the time the lights go down after a long pause between sets, by which time the crowd are more than ready to go seriously bananas for tonight’s simian superstars. A well-documented meteoric rise to the top coupled with two rock-solid albums and a string of classic singles which successfully combine witty lyricism with punk-rock bludgeon has made the Arctic Monkeys the ideal concert draw – the excitement built up by the surrounding hype coupled with the taught, jarring dynamics of the music we’re about to hear sends ripples through the assembled throng (featuring some seriously young bucks clearly terribly excited over what may well be their first ever gig) and by the time the opening couplet of ‘A view from the afternoon’ and ‘Brianstorm’ pops out in a matter of minutes, the crowd has transformed into one Taz-style whirlwind of skinny arms and legs. Dropping the first tracks from both your albums as an introduction may seem arrogant, but the Monkeys have never claimed to be anything other than boldly confident and unconcerned with noses put out of joint by their performances. Indeed, stage banter is kept to a strict minimum tonight and there’s none of the shape-throwing normally associated with rock spectacles of this size – instead the band just plough straight into their faultless set-list and let the crowd do the rest. The throng prangs and pogos at the drop of every wiry guitar riff and percussive rattle – whilst the band don’t move around on stage much, they gel together with such airtight precision that the sound produced is more than enough on its own (particularly perma-grinning drummer Matt Helders, who punishes his kit with the zeal of a black-clad Duracell bunny and even manages to lose his grip on a drumstick mid-song to send it flying right across the stage towards an unsuspecting roadie).

The lion’s share of both albums is duly dispatched, as well as ‘Leave before the lights come on’ – no surprises, but then again nobody was really expecting any and the non-stop barrage of instantly recognisable classics leaves the crowd with little room to draw breath. Indeed, the Monkeys’ headline quality tonight is most obvious in the fact that they just haven’t penned any weak tracks yet – whilst The Coral’s set selected their most successful hit singles from the past few years, the Monkeys sound like they’re playing a greatest hits set composed predominantly of album tracks. Given the correct release campaign, there’s little doubt that anything they play tonight would have trouble crash-landing the top of the charts as a stand-alone single release. Not that we should underestimate the potency of their faultless run of singles, and the opening bars of ‘I bet you look good on the dancefloor’ ignite the sort of crowd bedlam normally associated with tattooed Motörhead fans pummelling each other to the tune of ‘Ace of Spades’. The only regret is that they have to choose between album closers to finish up and therefore the poignant ‘A certain romance’ nudges out the equally memorable ‘505’ from what would otherwise have been a faultless setlist. Having said that though, the lack of encore is all for the best in the long run – after one hour twenty of relentless frontal assault, there’s really nothing more the band could throw out to the exhausted crowd and their succinct, no-nonsense showmanship means that the spectacle is over as quickly as it started. The Monkeys’ strength can be seen in their reluctance to indulge in rock star pretensions – throughout tonight’s set, it feels like they’re playing a particularly large club gig rather than a massive arena and at no point does their tightly-strapped poetic punk ever attempt to ascend into the spheres of rock deity. There’s not a trace of pretentiousness here tonight, just straight-up solid delivery of their faultless back catalogue – the critics will continue to weave webs of convoluted twaddle about how they’ve nailed the cultural zeitgeist or revolutionised music publicity but the Monkeys stand for something a lot simpler than all that : a great rock show.

Hit the road Jacques!

Born about a month after the Tories' election victory in 1979 and consequently a couple of weeks too young to vote in Tony Blair in 1997, I am a true child of Thatcher in terms of datelines - I lived out my entire childhood and adolescence under Conservative rule of Britain without ever being able to do anything about it. Them's the breaks I guess.

Curiously, I am currently in a similar position as an 'adult of Chirac' as his reign as French president draws to a close after twelve years taking shifty backhanders and smiling earnestly at the French public whilst occasionally pausing to make xenophobic comments at international summits. How I shall miss him! Despite spending one Blair term of office at university before I moved across the channel, French politics has arguably exercised a stronger influence on my life over the course of the last decade than its British equivalent. Now that Chirac is two days away from handing over the controls to one of the twelve hopeful contenders looking to swipe his job as President of the Republic, I find myself again left to watch the action without being able to intervene directly and influence how the cards will fall - it would seem that fate has left me in the age bracket where I am destined to watch from the sidelines during the most important elections of my lifetime.

Still, the sunny side of all that is that I get to sit around ripping on the prospective candidates whilst everyone else has to furrow their brows over who they choose at the ballots - musn't fucking grumble eh???

On that note, here's my run-down on the twelve candidates looking to play merry hell with my country of residence over the next five years (complete with the graffiti from my local neighbourhood's election posters for added gritty realism!) :

Nicolas Sarkozy

Like the British Premiership, the French Presidentials this time round feature a group of four high-flyers with any sort of realistic chance of claiming the title and a whole bunch of second-tier muppets who are pretty much just playing for pride.

Top of the list in the polls as I write this is Sarkozy, current Interior Minister and France's most recognisable political personality. Most of you outside l'Hexagone will know good old Sarko
for his cheeky 'racaille' comments during the 2005 race riots, which earned him no end of support amongst taxi-drivers, traditionalists and the sort of conservative shirt'n'tie types who want the country to pull it's collective socks up and jolly well get on with it (Eoin, if you're reading this then think of Mr Jakubovic from school but with a French accent). His law and order policies are currently verging on Judge Dredd stomp-o-rama at the slightest provocation, a stance that has made him public enemy number one in the Paris suburbs as well as a hate-figure for pretty much the entire French left (check out the poster graffiti from outside my local primary school - I wish I could have caught the kid who drew that cock'n'bollocks combo so that I could have bought the wee tyke some sweets!).

Despite the tidal wave of left-wing opposition to his alpha-male posturing, Sarko has played the media perfectly over the last 18 months - topless early morning jogs, effortless domination of TV interviews and high-profile electoral campaigning has made him a feature of everyday life here and most of my friends seem practically resigned to the fact that he will probably romp home at the presidentials. However, there is still time to stop him - his presence in the second round is practically guaranteed but eventual victory will hinge on the person France chooses to stand in his way. If he does get in (and it may already be inevitable), France is going to get all shook up on a national scale and we are in for some serious clobbering time when his riot squads get unleashed on the suburban population just waiting for the opportunity to kick off bigstyle if he wins. Seriously guys - a serious shit/fan encounter is in line if he takes over as head of state. The French electorate can still stop him, but right now I get the impression that he's got them on the ropes already....

Ségolène Royal

Leading the left's campaign this time round is 'Ségo', the Socialist Party representative who has been matched head-to-head in a battle for media attention with Sarkozy since they emerged as the two main candidates for France's next president. I was totally stoked when Ségolène became identified as the left's main candidate - not only was she set up to take on France's notoriously macho political upper echelons, but she looked pretty fantastic in a skirt for a lady the wrong side of 50. Plus, her politics were a modernised version of trad leftism along the same lines of Blair's New Labour but with firmer roots in the French social model - by way of a dream package, she seemed unbeatable.

Trouble is, once she was unleashed into the political minefield of electoral campaigning, Ségo has managed to Royally fuck her chances of winning via a series of foot-in-mouth press comments and one seriously nondescript style of delivery - even those willing to vote for her admit that her public speaking is about as engaging as listening to the shipping forecast. I reckon that critics have perhaps been too hard on her as the lone female candidate with a serious bid on the presidency - a lot of people seemed to be waiting for her to fuck up so that they could write her off as an amateur. Nevertheless, she's played right into their hands and even though she's second in the polls right now, the notoriously fragmented French left would not necessarily rally behind her in a second round face-off with Sarko. If she takes the presidency then I will get the drinks in, but I reckon the chances of her winning are pretty slim.

François Bayrou

The surprise latecomer to the typically two-horse left/right electoral face-off, Bayrou's aim to bridge the traditional gap between the two camps has brought him a pretty large surge in support over recent weeks and he could well beat Ségolène into a second round against Sarkozy. However, his critics highlight the fact that his fence-sitting stance between left and right leaves him with fuck all in the way of actual policies (the poster graffiti desribes him as 'droiche', a halfway house between left/'gauche'
and right/'droite').

Bayrou's credentials are pretty solid as a man of the people - he comes from a hearty farming background and the fact that his dad got mangled to death in a tractor accident only enhances his image as the rootsy, grounded everyman candidate as opposed to the media-catered images of Ségo & Sarko. Imagine the UK Lib Dems if they ever stood a realistic chance of winning the elections and you probably have a decent idea of where Bayrou stands right now - what's more, I reckon he might be in with a real chance of dicking Sarko out of the presidency if the two of them go head to head in the second round (maybe that's wishful thinking but I can see France rallying behind him more than Ségolène Royal in similar circumstances). If I had a say in these elections then I reckon I'd go with Bayrou, for my money he's the only one capable of standing as a serious obstacle to five years of Sarkomania in the Elysée. Fingers crossed for the country boy!

Jean-Marie Le Pen

I probably don't need to describe this bozo to you, but in case anyone has ignored French politics completely over the last 30-odd years then let's just say Le Pen is the troublesome political turd that France has unsuccessfully tried to flush over the last few elections. He regularly polls between 15-18% (which for a unashamed racist bigot in a country of 63 million people is pretty fucking scary) and is shaping up to pose a similar threat this time round.

Most of my French friends have written off Le Pen and his Front National party this year, but the same mistake was made in 2002 when France seriously underestimated his level of support and he bagged a place in the second round at the expense of Socialist Lionel Jospin. I'm hoping the frogs won't piss on their chips in similar fashion this time round, but the FN menace still seems far away for most of my friends - trouble is, a lot of FN voters don't declare their political affiliations until they hit the ballot box, by which time it's too late to conspire against them. I sincerely hope that this bog-eyed Nazi fuckhead does not reach the second round of voting this time, but FN voters have a habit of clinging to their convictions and he may well surprise us all again. There is little chance that he would ever reach presidency, but many of my left-leaning friends claim they'd vote FN in a Le Pen/Sarko second round in order to keep Sarko out because they refuse to believe that the population would accept Le Pen as president and would instead storm the palace to declare revolution. Romantic dreamscapes aside, the only solution should he win would be for the rest of us to isolate the entire FN electorate along with their leaders on one of the Atlantic coastal islands which would then be renamed 'The Independent Republic of C*ntopia' and promptly towed off by the army to be moored off the coast of Greenland. Seems like a winning solution for all!

Arlette Laguiller

As for the rest of 'em, let's start with Arlette - Trotskyite scourge of the ruling right for nigh on 30 years now. As the head of France's 'Workers' Struggle Party' she has made a name for herself over past years storming out of political summits in a huff, dressing like a female version of Arthur Scargill and spouting ludicrous policies aimed at redesigning the Elysée palace as a collective turnip plantation. Seriously, even my commie mates refer to the 'Lutte Ouvrière' as a sect, with all the negation connotations that the French use of the word suggests. Cynics would rate her chances of winning around the same as those of a hedgehog trying to breakdance across a 12-lane motorway, but you never know - the revolution might happen after all!

Frédéric Nihous

France's Countryside Alliance candidate, Nihous has basically built his campaign around the active promotion of hunting, fishing and the general wanton slaughter of small furry animals - seems to be what they call playing for the rural vote. Whilst the main four candidates have spent a long time prattling about the suburban riots, Fréd has been quick to denounce such bias towards urban issues at the expense of countryside problems and the preservation of long-standing rural traditions (such as wife-beating, incest, drink-driving, suicide and bestiality to name but a few). I had to walk around for a while to find a poster of this dork that hadn't been plastered over with animal rights stickers and photos of mangled roadkill - he's no serious threat either but fair play to the guy if he can leech off some of the National Front support in the notoriously right-wing French countryside.

Olivier Besancenot

Winner of the prestigious John Sykes 'Presidential candidate I would most like to go for a pint with' award, Besancenot stands as representative for the 'Revolutionary Workers' Party' - at the tender age of 32, he is the youngest of this year's electoral crop. An employee of the French post office (that most reliable of public services), his policies revolve around protecting social privileges at the expense of the money-grabbing directorial classes. You can't quite see the clouds that someone has drawn around his head on the poster I photographed, but that pretty much sums up the amount of realism present in his politics - nevertheless, he will probably poll highest of the outsider candidates and much of this is down to his laidback approach in the media and all-round 'bloody nice bloke' qualities.

José Bové

A cult figure in France due to his tireless support for anti-globalisation issues (which even bagged him a brief stint in prison), Bové will probably pull in a few votes but as a serious presidential candidate he is somewhat unconvincing - voting for this wurzel would be like supporting the singer of your favourite rock group in a bid to run the country. Similarly, his takes on French agricultural issues and European interaction are scarcely more open-minded than those of Le Pen and the idea of him actually running the country would be scary were it not so completely fucking ludicrous.

Marie-George Buffet

French-style communism is difficult to explain to those unfamiliar with this particularly Gallic twist on the formula - let's just say that the deep-rooted belief system that accompanies it stems all too often from being raised in a commie family or moving in predominantly red social circles. The Frogs don't seem to see the totalitarian trampling of human rights practiced in 20th communist states as something that could happen over here - we're far too open-minded for that sort of thing! The impact of a communist president would more likely be a slavish clinging-on to the French social model where we can all work 3 hours a week and retire at 45 whilst the country spludges into an economic compost heap and gets colonised by the Chinese to be used as a giant carpark. If you want to check out French communism in action, come over for Fête de l'Humanité and sit in on one of their debate sessions with a bunch of smelly hippies amongst sponsorship banners for Ricard and France Telecom. Marie-George might poll higher than the miserable 3% the commies managed last time, but even her trouser-suited media campaigns won't push her much higher in the polls.

Philippe de Villiers

'P2V', as the French call him, is basically a Gallic version of Kilroy - all puffy-chested nationalist posing, back-to-basics traditionalism and a shit-eating grin plastered across his face at all times. His connections to the French nobility only further his reputation as a snobby, uptight twat with little of interest to say about the modern world (this time, the poster graffiti simply describes him as 'crap'). The rising tide of nationalism has been capitalised by many of the other candidates so Phil's campaign trail has been pretty much ignored this time round - expect some hardcore support but not much more.


Dominique Voynet

I love the way the Greens have to trot out a candidate every election like any of the rest of us would even notice if they disappeared off the map completely. Unlike in Germany where they command a more serious position in government, the French Greens just sit around talking about who grows the best courgettes or whose moustache stinks of rollies the most. Their candidate Dominique Voynet can't even muster a credible smile for her campaign poster, leaving what may well be the same person that defaced the Sarkozy poster earlier on to add a penile space-exploration vessel launching into the atmosphere behind her. I must remember to ask the Greens about their plans for the space programme next time they flyer me in the street....

Gérard Schivardi

Who the fuck is this guy???? All I can find out about him is that he's been nominated by the workers' party and that he's anti-EU - and what's more, his posters suck ass!!! I could have knocked you up something more inspiring on my computer in the time it takes the kettle to boil, you bog-tedious nondescript tosser! Fuck off for your general lack of noteworthy characteristics!

So there you have it folks - the entire French electoral landscape explained in layman's terms! I'll be drinking just off Place de la République from Sunday lunchtime onwards, so feel free to join me while I wait for the results to come in - I might pop out later for some merguez and water-cannon action if it goes to Sarko/Le Pen in the second round. Keep your eye out for me on the telly!

Boy/Girlband Purgatory - Part Five

Westlife

Years active : 1999-present

Biggest hit(s) : 14 #1 singles and counting

File under : Singing potatoes with impressive hit single/hot dinner ratio



The highly contested title of king boyband could be attributed to a number of worthy contenders : Backstreet Boys or N-SYNC for periodic domination of the world market, Take That for media saturation and relentless hit-rate, or New Kids on the Block for pioneering the formula as a sales device. But if you're looking at the genre from a statistician's point of view, there's really only one serious contender - originally dismissed as a bland latecomer to the game, Westlife have maintained their incomprehensible level of chart success for nigh on a full decade now, systematically proving the exception to any rule I could come up with for teenypop lifespan and they currently stand level with the similarly intimidating Cliff Richard as the act with the biggest tally of chart toppers behind the cosmic pop deities of Elvis and the Beatles. It stands as one of pop music's biggest mysteries that these five (later four) lumpen specimens of bog-standard Irish 'Ideal Husband' stock managed to rack up such an immense tally of #1 singles despite the obvious obstacles of none of them being that much to look at and their music being by and large a relentless torrent of ghastly over-sentimental kareoke pishwank without even a decent dance routine to distract the casual viewer. Nope, Westlife are the peg that refuses to fit into any hole I might try to cram them into in order for them to fit in with my teenypop definitions - these guys are truly a law unto themselves, and what's more they are still selling so short of some kind of natural fucking disaster swallowing up their tour plane, chances are they will continue to defy the odds and keep on hitting the top for years to come.

Originally put onto the market by the diabolical pair of Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh (the most notorious purveyors of anodyne teeny trash from Britain and Ireland respectively), the group at first seemed far from a serious prospect - an existing vocal troupe from Sligo was re-tooled to cater towards chart trends in the late 90s, but they didn't look like anything special (even their name, modified at the last minute from 'Westside' as someone had already laid a copyright on it, seemed like a clumsy effort to provide the band with hint of otherwise inexistant credibility). However, Walsh was in the process of successfully steering his previous project Boyzone away from tacky teeny pop to embrace more 'adult' musical styles (wedding band crooning, C&W covers and variety performance showpieces geared toward audiences split equally between toddlers and pensioners) - his move with Westlife was to avoid the bleepy funk-pop and garish dance routines that usually constituted a boyband's debut, and instead go straight for the stools 'n' ballads market with a soundtrack of slushly, string-laden rom-pop that allowed the bandmembers to croon earnestly into their mics whilst clad in dark suits and shiny shoes. In boyband terms, Boyzone were one chart flop away from a one-way trip to the vet by the end of the 90s, so instead of trying to prolong their success Walsh instead allowed them to unofficially disband and freed up Ronan Keating to prime Westlife to pick up where Boyzone had left off. The grim-faced Boyzone backline suddenly found themselves on the pop dole, and Westlife were drafted in to capitalise on the opening granted to them by Walsh & Keating as fresh-faced successors to the boyband throne.

All they needed was a formula to cater their performances to. By the time their debut 'Swear it again' came out in 1999, pretty much every gimmick in boy/girlband pop had been wheeled out and exploited to the very limits of endurance, so Westlife reverted to a more traditional form of pop presentation - instead of streetwise US-style hip-hop togs, the lads came packaged as wholesome Irish bachelors that looked like they had just stepped out from behind the front desk at some health spa and were offering to take your luggage. Compared to the grizzled likes of East 17 and 911, Westlife positively radiated healthy, three-shredded-wheat pleasantness - instead of gyrating suggestively around some sticky-floored Canal Street porn parlour, you could imagine the boys taking long walks along the coast with their rosy-cheeked Irish sweethearts and offering up tokens of their undying love as birds gently twittered in the background. No matter how politely suggestive the lyrics of their songs were, there was no way you could imagine these guys singing about fucking - it just didn't fit. They'd probably have insisted on getting married first.

Their first four singles all topped the chart in 1999, culminating in the millennium-straddling double A-side 'I have a dream/Seasons in the sun' which also claimed the year's Xmas #1. The latter of the two songs was an obvious choice for the band as by this point they had practically trademarked the musical 'gear-shift' which is repeatedly used in Terry Jacks' 70s original to bludgeon the listener into a state of emotional submission. Westlife patented the formula in most of their chart-toppers, leaving room for a climactic section in the final stages of each song where the music would go up one octave and the boys would rise triumphantly from their stools and surge towards the front row in a passionate display of earnest croonery. I may be the only one to spot an undercurrent of fertile suggestiveness in all this surging, but it didn't detract from the overall wholesomeness of the spectacle and Westlife racked up chart topper after chart topper with the formula - by mid-2000, you sensed that they would have needed to intentionally unleash a record of unspeakable crapness à la Father Ted's 'My lovely horse' to actually avoid getting to number one.

US success has always evaded the group, but they broadened their appeal to European audiences somewhat when Mariah Carey's previously solo revamp of Phil Collins' 'Against all odds' was refashioned as a duet between the boys and the aforementioned Yank spunk-gargler. The track cleaned up across Europe, as did the follow-up 'My love' which leaned more towards traditional Irish wedding-party folk, always a vote-winner in Eurovision and still a good way to conquer the continental charts. Their run of consecutive number ones was held at seven when their stab at a second festive chart-topper with 'What makes a man' was held at bay by none other than Bob the Builder, echoing Take That's festive submission to Mr Blobby seven years earlier. They came back with a Comic Relief cover of 'Uptown Girl' which returned them to the top (Boyzone similarly reactivated their career with an 80s Comic Relief cover two years earlier, in their case they ripped of Billy Ocean rather than Billy Joel), and by the time they had bookended three albums' worth of slush with a greatest hits set in 2002, their tally of #1 hits stood at an impressive 11.

Hereupon, pop vultures began to encircle the group - four years of constant chart activity had gained them as many sworn enemies as they had loyal fans, and many were waiting for their time to run out so they could be hounded from the charts once and for all. The rules of teenypop stipulate that three albums and a defiantly named best-of collection (in their case it was titled 'Unbreakable') was the limit before you either split for solo projects, went into acting or attempted an ill-fated comeback as a 'serious R'n'B outfit'. Westlife perhaps survived by sheer luck, although the decision to tap their role models for inspiration was probably a good one - they returned to #1 in 2003 with their cover of a previous hit by the master of 70s slush, Barry fucking Manilow. However, fate struck back when block-headed blond goalpost Bryan McFadden decided to go solo, thereby removing a founding member from the ranks (a move which has signalled the end of many a boyband in the past) - the remaining four floundered briefly and flung out a clumsy collection of Ratpack classics to get some new product on the shelves. The record did reasonably well but yielded no hit singles, and the move seemed somewhat desperate after Robbie Williams had essentially done the same thing a few years earlier. Salvation again came in a return to their standard ballad fare, this time with the world-conquering tearjearker 'You raise me up' which returned them to pop supremacy in late 2005 - the track was classic Westlife schmaltz, all windswept romantic bombast and that all-important key change at the end, and it became enshrined as a classic in pub carparks, wedding kareoke sessions and as last song of the night at primary school discos (even fellow Irish pussweed Brian Kennedy re-recorded the track for George Best's funeral a couple of months later, returning it to the top five for a second run). They repeated the feat when Bette Midler's 'The Rose' hit the top the following year after a standard Westlife reworking (its parent album also defeated Oasis, U2 and the Beatles in a pre-Xmas chart battle around the same time). Founding member Mark Feehily even admitted in 2005 that he'd been boffing a member of second-tier boyband V for several years, but Westlife's chart status barely trembled at the announcement - by that point they seemed resistant to any form of media attack or chart trend, and short of all-out chemical warfare there appeared to be nothing further that the pop world could inflict on them in the hope that they would finally go away.

Westlife's current status is beyond the limits of teenypop - they now exist as a vessel for wedding-band schmaltz, capable of transforming the right set of ingredients into a shiny, new product which will duly rocket to number one upon release. The list of possible pop corpses that could be thrown into the machine for chart reanimation is potentially endless - West End show-closers, American C&W standards, local radio 'Our Tune' classics....All we need is another high-profile celebrity funeral for these guys to be wheeled out to croon on command and they'll be right back at the top once again. McFadden has nestled into a life of domestic bliss with former Atomic Kitten poptart Kerry Katona, but the remaining four continue unperturbed and will no doubt be back at number one before too long. Music critics like myself who were initially hostile to their releases have ended up accepting Westlife's success as a permanent fixture in pop - like fans witnessing another England penalty shoot-out, we know that no amount of pleading and protest is going to change the outcome of what is painfully inevitable. There are just things in this life you have to accept.

Craig McLachlan

Years active : 1990-93

Biggest hit(s) : 'Mona' (#2 1990)

File under : Barrel-scraping Aussie sheep farmer doing boyscout campfire pop

You can't blame them for giving it a try - Kylie & Jason had already successfully crossed over from 'Neighbours' to the British pop charts, so keen to maximise the sales on pop acts bouncing off the soap opera springboard, Stock Aitken Waterman decided to fling a record deal at this bumbling Aussie beach trog to see what happened. Initial chart success was forthcoming when his debut 'Mona' hit the fertile chart landscape of summer 1990 and peaked at #2 - McLachlan strode into previously unchartered territory for soap stars by actually playing a bit of grade one acoustic guitar on his records, accompanied by his 'real' backing band Check 1-2 (catchy name! whatever happened to them I wonder?). The single was the kind of excruciatingly jolly campfire bollocks that stuck in your head despite your best efforts to forget it, and the lyrics plumbed new depths of meaninglessness - a four-year old kid could have scrawled something more profound on the back of his colouring book (you may remember the catchy chorus : 'HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY MONA!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH MONA!! etc).

Future collaborations with Check 1-2 failed to raise him to the same level of acclaim as Dylan & The Band, and he duly disappeared from our screens until a London production of 'Grease' paired him up with fellow faded pop idol Debbie Gibson for a final hit covering 'You're the one that I want' in 1993. However, neither vocalist regained any significant chart footing (let's face it, doing a West End production of something like 'Grease' or 'Rocky Horror' is just a jazzed up version of playing Widow Twanky in some provincial hellhole on the panto circuit), and it was back to celebrity lifeguard status for old Craig.

Scooch

Years active : 1999-2000

Biggest hit(s) : 'More than I needed to know' (#5 2000)

File under : Carry-on air hostess troupe in Eurovision comeback bid



I'm including these guys out of sheer completism - their debut single cracked the top 40 in October 1999 making them barely eligible for this list, but they have recently returned to pop prominence as the UK's 2007 Eurovision bid. Deuce were the last true teenypop outfit to make an attempt on Eurovision victory, so I will be interested to see how well these guys do. Their brief spell in the pop charts began in 1999 as one of the many groups caught up in the slipstream of such mixed-gender gaybar staples as Steps and S Club 7 (although their inane grinning and garish outifits made them a closer comparison to the former than the latter). Their debut single stalled at #29 but the blistering disco kitschathon of follow-up 'More than I needed to know' took advantage of the habitual lull in record sales to break the top five in January 2000 and hit #1 in Japan (the ultimate accolade for cheesy pop music). Later singles failed to consolidate their position amongst pop's movers and shakers and they faded from the limelight only to reappear earlier this year as Eurovision hopefuls. Their reappearance seems to suggest that the current climate of pop nostalgia has not reached its peak yet - if we are prepared to bankroll a comeback from these second-tier day-glo gibbons, heaven knows where it'll all end....

Ultra

Years active : 1998-99

Biggest hit(s) : 'Rescue me' (#8 1999)

File under : 'Serious' Vanilla pop-rock from Blue Peter pantywaists

Straddling the divide between boyband pop and radio rock, Ultra repeated Let Loose's error in not falling firmly into either camp which left them as an unattractive proposition lacking the required dose of fun to fully integrate the universe of playground pop but also bereft any trace of credibility likely to get them a foothold on rock station playlists. Consequently, they were left doing roadshow sets in piss-drizzly provincial shitholes and performing on 'Live and Kicking' whilst Emma Forbes simpered at their unthreatening rock posing and anodyne lyrics. Their lead singer boasted the same kind of blond eunuch appeal as Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys, lending him a certain mystique as viewers struggled to determine how old he was, whether he was straight or gay, or indeed whether or not he was infact a struggling lesbian artist forced to disguise herself as a hetero teeny icon to pay the phone bill. Their debut album yielded four hits, none of which had anything in the way of balls and even though their final single 'Rescue me' benefited from the post-Xmas chart lull to go top ten in early 1999, their record company killed them off shortly afterwards.


EYC

Years active : 1993-95

Biggest hit(s) : 'Black book' (#13 1994)

File under : Yanks promoting self-expression via crotch-centric dance routines

One of the more entertaining boybands of the decade, EYC were a refreshingly straightforward American bodypop trio who gyrated their way into the charts in 1994. At the time, Take That were at the peak of their 'Everything Changes' chart dominance and even East 17 were starting to clean their act up with 'Steam' - such a maturing process left the market open for younger, dumber but ultimately more entertaining acts to crash the teeny pop scene which was keen to draft in some new recruits. Crass, loud and slavishly commercial like their scene peers Bad Boys Inc and Two Thirds, EYC were an unmistakeably American tilt on the formula, all baggy jeans and jerky, aggressive dance routines - they covered all requisite bases with a blond toothpaste model, a dreadlock-sporting black guy and a long-haired lummox with a six-pack. Even their name was typically American - the group would rejoice when asked to explain the significance of their acronym, pointing out that it was a mission statement encouraging fans to 'Express Yourself Clearly'. Oprah would have been proud. Bombastic debut 'Feelin' Alright' rose up the ranks in the final weeks of 1993, and the following year gave them four more hits including slinky follow-up 'The way you work it' - whilst their tunes lay firmly rooted in boyband pop, their more upbeat numbers wouldn't have sounded out of place alongside some of the more credible R'n'B acts of the time. Alas, too many of their later singles leaned further towards windswept melodrama and they faded from the public eye in late 1995, but their brief spell in the pop charts is fondly remembered by many.

Cast of 'Eastenders'

Years active : Various appearances throughout the decade

Biggest hit(s) : Martine McCutcheon - 'Perfect Moment' (#1 1999)

File under : As if the soap wasn't bad enough....

Anything the Aussies can do, we can bloody well do better, so the producers of 'Eastenders' must have thought when they witnessed Kylie & Jason climb the chart ladder - and in its time the bi-weekly dose of televised cockney wittering actually managed to send even more of its former stars chartwards, though none acheived the success of their Australian counterparts and the musical projects always seemed like a commercial afterthough rather than the star's true calling to a career in pop.

The crossover between British soap operas and the pop charts was of course nothing new by the time the 90s rolled around - Nick Berry and Anita Dobson had both nailed the upper reaches of the charts in the mid-80s, but the marketing oppurtunity was put to more lucrative use post Kylie & Jason and a series of former soap actors found themselves nurturing a record deal on the basis of their somewhat flimsy connections with pop music. Whilst 'Coronation Street' remained distant from movements in pop (intervening only with the kind of unmistakeably Northern pop spin-offs such as Bill Tarney's reinterpretation of funeral kareoke classics such as 'Wind beneath my wings' or Adam Rickitt's Happy Shopper Canal Street popper-techno), 'Eastenders' profited from its London backdrop to link its stars with the musically diverse composition of the capital - sometimes it worked, but more often it fell flat on its arse.

The first ex-Ender to breach the pop charts was Michelle Gayle, who launched a debut album strapped with diverse pop influences onto the market in the mid-90s - her first appearance dates back to 93 with the Eternal-esque 'Looking up', but it was pop-soul gem 'Sweetness' that provided her with her biggest hit the following year, peaking at #4 and ranking among the year's best-sellers. Weepy Xmas ballad 'I'll find you' broke up her otherwise uninterrupted run of top 20 hits later in the year, but she returned with the sleek US-styled 'Freedom' and the disco vamp 'Happy just to be with you' in 1995 and maintained her hit rate. A second album yielded the more rock-angled 'Do you know?' (featuring a video rivalling Kylie's 'Confide in me' in the Japanese businessman fantasy stakes) which gave her a second top ten hit in 1997, but after that she was scrapped as a musical entity.

Her peers were hot on her heels though - Sean Maguire also tried his luck at the charts, also his output was a little less endearing and whilst Gayle's hits each managed to foster their own charm in a variety of different musical genres, Maguire's reliance on a seemingly random set of styles smacked more of desperation than genuine versality. He started off in 1994 with some pretty rotten 'Stars in their eyes'-style vanilla soul (along the lines of linen-clad cretins such as Simply Red and Go West) before putting out a routine reworking of Real Thing's 'You to me are everything' and then plumping for feel-good trumpet pop ('Good day', 'Don't pull your love'). By this point he'd breached the top thirty no less than seven times but had still failed to make the top ten, and his final release in 1997 ('Today's the day') smacked of straw-clutching opportunism, chucking in some Oasis-style 'Na na na' vocals and drafting in some session guys in leather coats to back him up. It stiffed at #27 and he avoided further embarassment by giving up after that.

The largest commercial kickback was saved for Martine McCutcheon, who prior to her tenure in 'Eastenders' had been part of ultra-tacky girlband Milan who failed to get off the boards in the early 90s whilst she was still a teenager. All grown-up and keenly searching for post-soap fame, she bagged a record deal and recorded string-laden ballad 'Perfect Moment' in early 1999 - the track, previously recorded two years earlier in its original Polish language version to little success abroad, featured the ex-TV barmaid doing gasping over lavish orchestral backing before going in for some serious bawling as the work reaches its climax. Bold, sensual and filled with bring-the-house-down emotional bombast, 'Perfect Moment' hit #1 and set Martine up for a short-lived career doing similar fare (a TV comic commented at the time that her style was better suited to entertainment slots on ferry journeys than the pop charts - he later added that he was not referring to high-class cruise ships but to the fuck-ugly confines of the Hull-Rotterdam budget routes). She bagged four more top ten hits but they were mostly ropey cover versions or lame charity affairs, and after two albums she moved back into acting. Albert Square may not have sent its last star chartwards, and future generations may well succeed in transferring their not inconsiderable acting skills to the world of pop performance. I can hardly wait to see what else they come up with....


2wo Third3

Years active : 1994

Biggest hit(s) : 'I want the world' (#20 1994)

File under : Short-lived test-tube techno gene-splicing experiment



Not a boyband in the classic sense, these guys were more of an avant-garde twist on the boyband formula - their bleepy Pet Shop Boys-style technopop was fronted by a rather strange looking frontman clad in a bowler hat and tweed jacket, whilst the remaining two members bopped around in the background dressed in identical outfits. Indeed, a fourth member was also featured in interviews although in what is probably the only instance of non-human boyband membership, the character (named 'Biff') was manifested solely in the form of a smiley face drawn in felt tip. Don't remember these guys? Look 'em up if you can find them on the net - I don't know who signed them but he must have woken up the next day and thought 'How the fuck am I going to market this lot? They look like some kind of boffing-shop acid-flashback!'. The first two singles missed the top 40 but third release 'I want the world' breached the top 20 and brought them to the nation's attention via an entertaining appearance on Top of the Pops - as a strobe-lit statement on total global domination, it was really quite overbearing. Sadly, they couldn't maintain any kind of chart presence and one more low level hit was all they could muster before stepping back into obscurity - nevertheless, these guys were one of my personal favourites of the decade, and it's a shame that their club-flavoured teenypop didn't crossover more effectively along with Deuce and D:ream to greater commercial standing.

Seriously, look these guys up - they were thoroughly fucking weird.

Ultimate Kaos

Years active : 1994-98

Biggest hit(s) : 'Some girls' (#9 1994)

File under : Council estate Jackson Five kept off the streets doing roadshow workout pop

Another British attempt to clone the Jackson Five and pimp the output to teenage Britain, Ultimate Kaos were relatively harmless fun for their brief period in the spotlight in 1994-95 - the group featured five well-meaning urban youths doing Fresh Prince style hip hop-pop, all crowd-pleasing singalongs clad in basketball jerseys. Indeed, their recorded output sounded like the sort of stuff that should have been twinned with a S Club-esque kids' TV series
with the band members performing their singles in between bouts of wooden acting and poorly-scripted pranks along the lines of a teenage British version of the Cosby Show. However, as I recall they didn't get any more TV exposure than their teenypop peers and thus had to survive on the strength of their music (this may help to explain their short shelf-life....).

Rollicking debut 'Some girls' peaked inside the top ten in late 1994, featuring a lecture on the female psyche delivered by their miniscule lead vocalist who sang about girls 'who don't like it when you're kissing them on the back......mwaaah!' despite being too fucking short to reach that high up on most ladies. Future releases switched between sugar-coated romance pop to a similar vein of overtly suggestive R'n'B that was perhaps ill-suited to lads of such a tender age (heaven knows what these urchins got up to in their spare time!) and unsurprisingly the novelty wore off within the year. A brief re-appearance in 1997 with comeback single 'Casanova' failed to regain their previous stomping ground inside the top twenty despite considerable success on the continent, and once they'd released it twice just to make sure nobody cared anymore they decided to call it quits in 1998. A 'where are they now?' TV special is probably going to pop up sometime, but I fancy that most punters would have trouble remembering this lot so chances are financing is going to be withheld for the time being unless one of them gets arrested for chinning someone in a nightclub and pops up in the tabloids as a disgraced ex-kiddie popstar. You never know....

Spice Girls

Years active : 1996-2000

Biggest hit(s) : 9 #1 singles between 1996-2000

File under : Five strapping examples of pre-millennial womanhood

Whilst the 90s may have been mainly characterized by a series of planet-conquering boybands monopolising the charts, the Spice Girls' presence in both popular conscience and the singles charts was arguably stronger during the latter half of the decade, and their market-dominance as an all-out pop product set many records that have yet to be beaten in the UK. Their success was built on crafty marketing techniques, but their emergence in 1996 caught Britain bang in the middle of a cultural transformation - once their records had started selling, the group quickly found themselves associated to a series of themes such as feminism, British identity and political bias that had previously had little or no connection with pop music. This crossover was due more to the press and the band's management than the girls themselves, who were a fairly standard horde of hopefuls gathered together from various parts of the British pop wilderness, but their status as pop music icons is perhaps stronger than any other performers of the decade - for a few years, both in Britain and abroad, these five ladies were practically inescapable.

Originally put together as a relatively standard pop venture by manager Simon Fuller, the girls could have charted a course of total mediocrity had their arrival on the pop market been less noteworthy - drawing on the success of Take That and NKOTB, Fuller made every effort to brand the girls as five separate personalities, bringing out previously inexistent qualities in order to provide a parade of different identities from which fans could pick their favourite : Emma (London, white mini-skirt and inane grin), Geri (Essex, flame-red locks and pouting confrontation), Mel B (Leeds, tongue stud and leopard-skin suit), Mel C (Liverpool, tracky bottoms and backflips) or Victoria (Home counties, little black dress and disdainful scowl). The idea worked like a charm - by the time 'Wannabe' came out, saturation playback of its accompanying video on music channels prior to release had thrust the group's multicoloured membership upon numerous record-buyers and the record was an instant success. Whilst 'Wannabe' could have been over-processed and cumbersome in the hands of a more 'serious' R'n'B act (the subject matter of friendship over courtship having been touched on many times by various urban US outfits), the Spice Girls' treatment of the song was geared up to maximise the loud, party-based dimension of the record, and the basic structure was developed to include vocal parts for nearly all the members (Posh was the only one to miss out on a solo section) as well as a rap interlude highlighting the personality traits of the five members. The video featured the girls storming a classy soirée and imposing their inherent spiciness on all present - filmed in one single shot following the group around the venue, the effect on the viewer was one of being pummelled into submission by successive waves of noise and colour. The group's subsequent appearance on Top of the Pops only enhanced the focus on diversity within their membership - lined up against the stage's backline, the girls proceeded to lurch into the camera during their individual vocal sections and whilst they were hardly the world's greatest singers, the different vocal styles were easily distinguishable in the finished product (most notably Mel B's piercing shriek of 'Yaaaaaaaaaall tellyawhattawantwhattareallyreallywant') and the single became instantly recognisable as did the girls themselves. Entering the chart at a healthy #3 in July 1996 based on heavy video promotion, the track rose to the top the following week and remained there for nigh on two months - it missed out on best-seller of the year to the Fugees' cover of 'Killing me softly' but by the end of 1996 the girls had three different tracks within the year's top 10 best-sellers, something even Take That never managed during their time at the top.

I could go on all day about 'Wannabe' - whilst hardly 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in terms of musical inventiveness, as a pop package it was something completely new at the time and it stood out from the teenypop crowd so boldly that it was virtually impossible to ignore. I remember seeing the video on the Chart Show and being blown away - the music was loud, brash and catchy, whilst the members were all instantly recognisable in their own way (I was particularly impressed how no two of them had the same hair colour - that felt like a definite first). The track appealed to a wide cross-section of the music community - aside from the traditional target market of pre-pubescent girls, the single was rated highly in various factions of the rock press and the group even appeared on the cover of mainstream music weeklies. The track even figured amongst the end of year polls for 'single of the year', virtually the first time a teenypop release had been allowed to mingle with more 'adult' rock and indie stylings. Aside from the UK, the track also topped the charts in 30 different countries worldwide (including the US in early 1997) and stands as one of pop's crowning achievements.

Upon their ascent to nationwide fame, the girls consolidated their position with the second phase of their marketing strategy - as the first case of a girlband experiencing the kind of runaway success previously the sole province of male groups, the girls used their press interviews to promote their new sense of feminine self-worth. The notion of 'Girl Power' thus became part of the pop landscape, and the group's speeches on female solidarity and independence resonated throughout the British press. It was difficult to take all this entirely seriously, and the 'Girl Power' slogan was more of a marketing device that anything else, but the technique again provided the group with bankable success - their fanbase, composed predominantly of young girls, no longer simply adorned their walls with posters of their favourite pop personality, they took to imitating their Spice Girl of choice on the basis of which member they felt best corresponded to their own personality. Critics complained of the reversion to stock female stereotypes, and it is true that the group featured little of the defiant re-branding of femininity that Madonna had pioneered via her music over the course of the previous decade - however, the band-member-as-sales-device concept was hardly unique to the Spice Girls and had been ruthlessly exploited with previous success stories such as NKOTB. Indeed, the difference between the boybands of the early 90s and the Spice Girls was that the press actually bothered interviewing them at all - when Geri admitted fervent admiration for Margaret Thatcher in an interview, many chins were stroked in concern but the significance lay in the fact that someone even thought to ask her the question in the first place (Take That, even at the height of their fame, were rarely quizzed on anything more complex than what their favourite dinosaur was). OK, the notion of female emancipation via garish dance routines and ruthless marketing was hard to swallow (the slogan 'Girl Power' had infact been used prior to 'Wannabe' by the vastly superior Shampoo in 1995 as the title to one of their moderate hits but failed to take off as a concept) but if the Spice Girls did gain any ground for female performers, it was that their pre-fabricated personalities were granted unlimited press space and their status as sex objects was relegated to second place (the reverse was true with Fuller's next project, the much more cynically marketed S Club 7 whose sex appeal was exploited much more blatantly from the outset whilst any personality traits the members might have were kept firmly in check). Additionally, all this talk of nouveau-feminism chimed in nicely with the equally artificial discourse of Tony Blair's New Labour ranks, who were quick to re-appropriate the Spice Girls' international success as a great example of a revamped Britain successfully exporting its culture to foreign shores. Whilst we were once again firmly in the realms of crass commercial exploitation here, it was something very new for politicians to even comment on pop music - if the Tory government of the early 90s were even aware of the existence of the pop charts, they regarded them with patronising disdain and were certainly not about to mingle with proletarian pop stars in order to curry favour with the general public. The Spice Girls' emergence as important figures in culture, politics and gender identity was as much to do with the changing times as it was with any marketing campaign - as it was, they came along at exactly the right time to graduate from plastic teenypop to all-out cultural phenomenon, and their rise to fame marks perhaps the beginning of the era where the public started to expect more from their pop stars, with future press articles on pop acts becoming infinitely more fascinated with the members' opinions and backgrounds rather than just which one had the nicest teeth. Pop as a sociology experiment was born, and teenypop celebrities became objects of an increasingly close scrutiny in later years.

But enough of all my post-modern prattle - let's get back to the music. The group's first three singles all topped the charts in 1996, with 'Wannabe' and Xmas #1 '2 become 1' going on to sell over a million copies each. 1997's comic relief AA-side 'Mama/Who do you think you are?' also reached #1 and parent album 'Spice' cleaned up worldwide to rank amongst the biggest-selling British albums of all time as well as 1997's best-seller in both Europe and the US. The group were even honoured at the Brit awards (where Geri unveiled her tabloid-approved Union Jack mini-dress, perhaps the first sign of the group starting to piss people off) and by mid-1997 they were pop's ruling entity. But any such immense success can only be followed by an equally poisonous backlash, and by the time their fifth single 'Spice up your life' was released in autumn 1997, people were starting to get sick of the whole spectacle. Geri's ill-thought-out press comments and jingoistic stage attire had started the ball rolling, but the single's clumsy lyrics on world domination (famously referencing the 'yellow man in Timbuktu' amongst other potential conquests) rallied many fans against the group - the track's video also featured the girls flying triumphantly over a futuristic cityscape and parent album 'Spiceworld' only enforced the notion that the group were being rammed down the throat of the general public to an excessive degree. The gargantuan promotional campaign behind 'Spiceworld' (including an ill-fated film project) was so aggressive that it practically felt like the girls were being forced upon you on a daily basis as a pop product - the notion of 'Spiceworld' started to feel like some Orwellian society where resistance to the girls' omnipresence was only going to be met with further force-fed publicity. In the end, most of the public got so fucking sick of the whole affair that they became eager for the day that the girls would disappear from the public eye completely.

Thus the downfall began - the girls' second festive chart-topper 'Too much' was culled from their lame film project and whilst successful, has to rank amongst their most forgettable singles. Their reign of consecutive number ones stalled at 6 in 1998 when 'Stop' was held in second place by Jason Nevins' re-working of Run DMC's 'It's like that', and the statistic only served as a chink in their armour indicating that their position at the top of pop's food chain was becoming more and more precarious. Geri, always the group's biggest ego, began to quarrel with the other members and jumped ship in mid-98, leaving the promotion of the group's next single 'Viva Forever' in tricky territory. In the end, a cartoon video was produced for the song's release (previous clips had all featured the members in prominent fashion) and the single defied doubters by returning them to #1. A third successive Xmas #1 followed with 'Goodbye', featuring the four remaining members repackaged as a solid unit - the single sold well and remains one of their more endearing releases, and it represents a peak in late-period sales for the group in many countries.

By 1998, the Spice Girls were beginning to look like a spent force as a group and increasing promotion was put behind them as solo artists - once Geri jumped ship, both Mels teamed up with stars outside the teenypop genre to chart as solo artists in late 1998 (Mel B hit #1 with Missy Elliot whilst Mel C went top five with Bryan Adams). Geri rebranded herself as a gay icon the following year and after her cynical comeback 'Look at me' stalled at #2 despite an intensive marketing campaign, the increasingly exploitative nature of millennial teenypop allowed her to push her next four singles to the top - whilst successful, her solo releases represent the dearth of new ideas in the singles charts circa 2000, and she rallied her fanbase so closely that practically anything she released would be snapped up immediately regardless of quality (the nadir came with her cover of 'It's raining men' in 2001, surely one of the shittiest pieces of plastic pop ever created). Mel C produced a much more diverse debut album as a solo artist, stalling at first but eventually coining it in over the course of 1999 with two solo #1 hits (the lesbian aerobic strut of 'Never be the same again' and the Ibiza-rave coloured 'I turn to you'). Later releases were occasionally clumsy (her Xmas release 'If that were me' was especially toe-curling) but she maintained her position as the most versatile of the group as a solo artist. Emma guested on dance act Tin Tin Out's remake of 'What I am' which stalled at #2 but she went on to top the charts in 2001 after the group's official demise, Posh also waited for the Top Shop dance wars of 2000 to launch her solo career in an ill-fated face-off with Sophie Ellis Bextor and Mel B failed to follow-up her achievement as the first Spice Girl to hit #1 when her next release, a crappy cover of Cameo's 'Word up', stiffed at #14.

With budding solo careers all over the place, the group's management decided to give them one last outing as a collective and roped in some expensive producers to put together a third album. The result, 'Forever', must rank as one of the most soul-destroying records ever released - the remaining four members were forced into ill-conceived roles as R'n'B divas to match current trends, and the resultant music just sounded fucking dreadful. Lead single 'Holler/Let love lead the way' gave them a final chart-topper in 2000 but fell off the ladder quickly, and the group officially disbanded later that year to a generally indifferent public reaction. The members began to concentrate full-time on their solo careers, keen to replicate Geri's success (her headstart by leaving early allowed her to notch up four chart-toppers by the time the Spice Girls officially split). Mel B was the only one to remain in her 'Forever'-era role, attempting to relaunch herself as a serious R'n'B artist - the results were pretty risible on the whole and she netted two more top tens in 2000 before being dropped by her record company when nauseating childbirth anthem 'Lullaby' stiffed at #13 (A comeback attempt in 2005 fared even worse, failing to even penetrate the top 40). Posh faired marginally better, guesting on hits as part of the emergent UK garage movement - she remains the only Spice Girl not to have made #1 solo, but still bagged four top tens before devoting her time to becoming an emaciated footballer's wife. Mel C's first album success faded in the new millennium and her repeated attempts to be taken seriously as a solo artist have failed to take off convincingly - nevertheless she still charts occasionally. Emma has perhaps had the most consistent success as a solo entity, her blond stage school looks lending themselves well to frequent identity-changes, and her periods as windswept country sweetheart, 60s sex kitten and West End variety performer have all granted her sizeable hit singles. Geri's initial run of high chart positions faded when everyone got sick of her gay disco covers and fucking diet books, and with any luck we won't see her back in the charts anytime soon.

So there we have it, probably the longest entry on this list (excuse the extensive tangents, I got a bit carried away back up there) for what was probably the most notorious example of teenypop triumph over the course of the decade. The Spice Girls are impossible to forget, though the memory of their high-period is not necessarily a fond one - most people will get up to turn the radio off if 'Wannabe' comes on, and the rest of their singles have been forgotten in the mists of pop folklore. What remains is the nasty aftertaste of what became an overbearingly intense marketing campaign, and their rise and fall perhaps best demonstrates the calculated risk of pushing a pop group to the fore only for the public to get so wholeheartedly sick of them that they can't wait for their reign to end. Their success is perhaps best taken as an indication of how times were changing in the latter half of the 90s - the somewhat sinister reliance on teenage sexploitation and underhand marketing tricks that characterized pop at the turn of the millennium can perhaps be traced back to their chart conquest in 1996-97, but it seems inappropriate to take them out of the context of this period. If any group on this list reflects the times of their ascent to pop pedigree, it is the Spice Girls - all the more reason for any talk of a reunion to be ceased forthwith. I for one do not want to go through all that again.

Damage

Years active : 1996-2001

Biggest hit(s) : 'Wonderful tonight' (#3 1997)

File under : Cockney minicab quintet doing stage-school R.Kelly

Alongside Honeyz, Another Level and a selected group of similar London-based teeny R'n'B acts, Damage were perhaps the group most likely to replicate the success of their American influences - however, some ill-thought out choices for single releases and their record company's obvious reluctance on bankroll the whole operation properly left them forever languishing in Saturday morning TV purgatory.

It all started well though - debut 'Love 2 love' (note Prince-style numeric interplay!) just missed the top ten upon release and their next three singles all managed higher chart placings whilst invitations to pop's premier parties were also secured for the group when one of their number started boffing Emma from the Spice Girls. By mid-1997 they looked poised to clean up as one of the country's leading boybands - however, their choice of singles left them looking like somewhat of a one-trick pony, oscillating between pedestrian dance numbers and slightly girly ballads (did we really need a fucking R'n'B cover of 'Wonderful tonight'??). They ascent to higher levels of success was also scuppered by their record company's decision to produce their videos on the cheap - aside from the aforementioned Clapton cover, their singles were accompanied by naff promo clips shot in nightclubs or garish computer graphics depicting the band members suspended in green clouds like they were on a commercial for some posh brand of coffee or chocolate. They even managed to rope in Christopher Lee for a cameo in the off-kilter video for 'Love guaranteed', although presumably his participation cost most of their budget as the rest of the clip looked like it had been produced for about 10p.

Following three consecutive top tens, their next single 'Love lady' stiffed dramatically at #33 and the group retreated from the spotlight to plan their next move - they didn't return chartwards until 2000, but by then their sound had been refined to a more polished yet streetwise take on US-style R'n'B (for once, a logical progression). Comeback single 'Ghetto romance' silenced doubters by returning them to the top ten for the first time in three years, an absence generally lengthy enough to kill off most boybands (unless they break up and subsequently reform that is) and they notched up three more moderate hits before calling time a year later. Their legacy left two albums of inessential yet undeniably pleasant R'n'B pop, and they at least managed to retain their dignity by not fizzling out slowly via a series of increasingly low-profile guest vocals on the crappy UK garage singles flooding the charts at the time of their demise.

Fierce

Years active : 1999-2000

Biggest hits(s) : 'Sweet love 2K' (#3 2000)

File under : Manic banshee R'n'B trio on pre-millennial urban bandwagon

Yet another British stab at US-style teeny R'n'B, Fierce were perhaps aptly named due to their somewhat intimidating make-up stylings and alarming tendency to leap around the stage like possessed voodoo priestesses (which at least made for interesting viewing on Top of the Pops). Built to the same model as fellow Britgirl trio Honeyz, they eschewed slinky soul numbers for dancefloor-friendly R'n'B with vocals that made them sound like they'd just eaten Cleopatra and were about to start on Peter Andre for dessert. Brash debut single 'Right here right now' broke the top 40 in early 1999 and they proceeded to notch up two more higher chart entries before their insane cover of Anita Baker's 'Sweet love' hit #3 the following year - however, their record company was clearly perplexed at how to follow up such a teeth-gnashing climax to their career and they were promptly dropped in summer 2000 to little fanfare (although it is said that children who tuned in to their performances on millennial editions of TOTP still have nightmares to this day).

Eternal

Years active : 1993-1999

Biggest hit(s) : 'I wanna be the only one (featuring Bebe Winans)' (#1 1998)

File under : 'Inspirational' London choirgirls busking for the Pope


For a while the lone girlband in a sea of boyband tag-teams, Eternal were Smash Hits' favourite female act until the Spice Girls came along in 1996 and they successfully navigated line-up changes and shifts in the chart landscape to remain popular for most of the decade. Their sound stemmed from London's cosmopolitan music heritage and quickly drifted into mid-Atlantic pop soul, allowing them to act as a link between the pop scenes in Britain and America - the group frequently took songs from established US acts and produced their own version for the UK market, a technique that suited them a lot better than it did their boyband peers whose remakes of American R'n'B hits often sounded surprisingly toothless. Even the loss of arguably their most popular member one album into their career didn't knock them off track, and it took until another of the original members jumped ship in 1998 for the wheels to fall off completely.

Originally comprising churchgoing sisters Vernie and Easther alongside stage school brats Kelle and Louise, Eternal broke onto the pop charts with their infectious debut 'Stay' in late 1993 - marketed with their 'Charlie's Angels'-style logo and bouncy, streetwise charm it gave them an instant hit and set up the formula for their debut album 'Always and Forever' which yielded five more hits in a similar vein - in the otherwise barren landscape of girlband pop at the time, the group cleaned up and seemed primed to continue reaping in some serious pop crop. However, second album seriousness loomed on the horizon and in an attempt to redirect themselves towards (you guessed it) more adult R'n'B, the group dispatched baby-faced token white Louise to a solo career whilst the remaining three concentrated on fawning around in silk nightshirts and singing about God and female emancipation. Louise's departure was cynically viewed as a tactical sacrifice so that the band would be better primed to crack the US charts (typically hostile to mixed-race acts playing music considered to be the sole preserve of all-black groups) but both sides have always denied this - in any case, when you look at Louise's solo success alongside that of her previous band, it's fairly obvious that her producers were just plumping for the most lucrative option by separating the two.

Second album 'Power of a woman' saw the core trio with their hair fluffed up and their videos refashioned as US-style white-teeth soul-pop affairs where the band members strutted around proclaiming their independance and making very vague references to sexual activity (but in a strictly 'none of that sort of thing before you put a ring on my finger' sort of way). Contrasted with Louise's gradual descent into crass commercial fuck-pop, Eternal's second period smacks of slightly nauseating Yank-style morality play - always a religious bunch at heart, the God references in their music rose to the surface in a more prominent manner, culminating with an audience with the Pope himself during promotion for ballad 'I am blessed'. Disney soundtracks and simpering gospel pop flowed freely for a while and the band charted impressively, racking up a full set of ten top tens before 'I wanna be the only one', their gospel duet with parachuted-in Yank vocalist Bebe Winans, gave them their only chart-topper in 1997. The track pretty much dispensed with pop altogether, relying instead on the 'We learnt to sing in church'-style of gospel shrieking popularised across the Atlantic by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey et al - nevertheless, we Brits lapped it up and the group suddenly found themselves at their strongest commercial standing since the start of their career.

Another piece of Yank piracy gave them a final top five hit with 'Angel of mine' later that year whilst Monica's version topped the US charts, but their resultant greatest hits set indicated that their reign was pretty much at an end - whilst they were going out on a high note with an impressive hit ratio, the girls had pretty much run out of steam after three albums and when founding member Kelle also jumped ship in 1998 there seemed little hope of recapturing past glories. Vernie & Easther gave it one more try in 1999 as a duo but only secured one more top twenty hit before disappearing down the drain, whilst Kelle nabbed a top twenty hit of her own the same year but met a similar fate. Louise managed three solo albums post-Eternal, mirroring her former group's chart placings aside from their number one zenith (well, to make up for that she got to marry a footballer) and the foursome's mark on 90s pop remains impressive - compared to the all-out commercial stranglehold exercised by the Spice Girls a couple of years after they emerged, Eternal seem much more of a gentle, pleasant memory of teeny pop Elysium before it was all Union Jack mini dresses and pinching Prince Charles' arse. Aaaaah them were the days.

All Saints

Years active : 1997-2002 then a reunion in 2006

Biggest hit(s) : 5 #1 singles between 1997-2000

File under : 8-legged NME-friendly combat trouser commercial

The culture shift in the mid-90s that brought the Spice Girls to world prominence also produced some interesting aftershocks, not least the advent of an entirely new style of girl group in the form of arch rivals All Saints who crashed the market a year after 'Wannabe' broke big - in contrast to the Spice Girls' focus of maximum commercial kickback via none-too-subtle marketing tricks, All Saints were geared more towards the fashion-conscious consumer, partial to a bit of teeny-pop but not entirely comfortable with the publicity steamroller of Geri & co. Whilst the Spice Girls showed themselves up as crude, clumsy and cynically marketed towards droves of little girls or slobbering page 3 readers, All Saints catered the formula to the tastes of slightly less dizzy females and lads who might have felt uncomfortable pinning up Spice posters in their university flats but were perfectly happy to put up portraits of the Saints clad in slightly less tarty apparel. Their trend-savvy twist on the formula produced arguably the decade's most versatile girlband and some excellent singles, though in hindsight the project is perhaps remembered as too clever for its own good - despite their myriad qualities, All Saints lacked the runaway fun element of bonkers toddler pop like B*witched, an element that pop artists ignore at their peril. The band's failed attempt to reconquer the charts last year is perhaps testament to their status as a sign of the times in late 90s chartland - back then, we desperately needed a group like All Saints but in this day and age do they still really mean anything?

As I have mentioned before, the London-based musical heritage of many teenypop troupes has been used to lend their product a more credible edge (as opposed to the goonish roadshow performances of their Northern counterparts) and All Saints capitalised on this, their very name taken from a street in the capital where the four members supposedly met for the first time. The final foursome comprised Canada-born sisters Nathalie and Nicole, half-French pouting dwarf Melanie and enigmatic songwriter Shaznay, a veritable melting pot of cosmopolitan London - compared to the Spice Girls' clattering parade of stereotypes seemingly recruited from provincial talent contests, All Saints seemed a lot more of a serious music-biz style proposition (they were Londoners right down to the disdain they seemed to hold for their peers in the business, believing 100% in themselves as fashion pioneers and role models for disenfranchised pop fans). Had last year's comeback album not stiffed (its creation can surely only have been thought up during an all-night advertising executive cocaine blitz in one of the capital's trendy lap-dance clubs), the group would have gone down as one of the cleverest, most shrewdly-handled pop projects in history - even with the aforementioned blip on the radar, they still managed to second-guess the cultural zeitgeist for a good few years and reap maximum rewards while they were doing it.

R'n'B flavoured (or should that be 'flava'd') debut 'I know where it's at' crashlanded the top five in September 1997, around the time the rather crass 'Spice up your life' was starting to lend a somewhat sour taste to the Spice Girls' initial success, paving the way for follow-up 'Never ever' to take up residency in the charts over the end of the year, peaking at the top but yo-yoing up and down for so long that it figured amongst the best sellers for both 1997 and 1998. The track, a slow-building pop-soul number built around a lament for some departed loverboy, was the sort of song that didn't stampede out of the speakers to insist that you went out and paid for a copy without further ado (à la 'Wannabe') but instead subtly forced its charms upon you via repeated listenings until there was simply no choice but to admit you liked it. As the lead track from their awesome debut, it also acted as many people's introduction to their diverse pop universe - the album proceeded to furnish the charts with two further number ones : an AA-side covers single featuring the group's brave yet brilliant take on the Chilis' smack anthem 'Under the bridge' and their less-spectacular revamp of Labelle's 'Lady Marmalade', as well as the jarringly lascivious US-style dance number 'Bootie call'.

Coupled with their wily, post-modern take on pop, All Saints had the image to match their sound : instead of day-glo mini-skirts and garish trowel-applied make-up, the band favoured stringy-tops and combat trousers, retaining their femininity without thrusting it right into the camera lens as some other groups did. This tactic won them fans amongst the pop cynics repelled by 'Spiceworld' opportunistic marketing strategies, not least those in the indie press who gleefully put them on the cover of their magazines alongside the guitar bands of the time, feeling pleased with themselves for finally identifying a group making teenypop that you could admit to liking without having your 'righteously hip music journalist' badge confiscated for all eternity. Melanie even insisted on doing stage performances whilst pregnant with the baby of the bassist from Jamiroquai, taking many people by surprise but forcing them to confront the question : when girlbands spend most of their time on stage singing about fucking, should we really be surprised when one of their number turns up visibly up the duff? Similarly, shy retiring lead songwriter Shaznay was a long way from fitting into the standard girlband mould - whilst far from physically unpleasant to look at, her combination of dental braces, face-concealing fringe and awkward stage presence made her an unorthodox choice for a girlband compared to the other three, something that granted her cult status and brought her a legion of followers all of her own (I personally thought Shaznay was really cute - the other three were a bit too London blond for my liking).

The first album's zeitgeist-nailing success granted them chart domination over 1997-98, still as second fiddle to the Spice Girls but whilst the multi-coloured pop quintet's marketing campaign seemed to be becoming increasingly desperate, the Saints simply coasted along on their own kudos. By the time post-Geri Spiceworld had floundered with the disastrous 'Forever' album, All Saints were reconquering the charts with their slow-burning second effort 'Saints & Sinners' which yielded them two more chart toppers in 2000 : the clubland-catered 'Pure Shores' (culled from the soundtrack to the film of Alex Garland's 'The Beach' and pipped at the post for best-seller of the year by Bob the Builder) and slinky follow-up 'Black Coffee'. However, as a group so dependant on timing their next move correctly, All Saints could only ride the wave of fashion for so long and in 2001 they ended up splitting acrimoniously - the Appleton sisters undertook a new career as a duo, hitting the top five twice before dropping off the radar, and Shaznay also notched up a top ten hit of her own whilst Melanie did guest vocals on a garage track with Artful Dodger, peaking at #6 in 2001. Their 2006 comeback was perhaps an unnecessary addition to what was otherwise a shrewdly-mastered pop career, and though their individual releases might not bring a smile to the face of your average popaholic in the same way as 'C'est la vie', 'Wannabe' etc, we must give credit where it's due to one of the decade's most unusual and unique pop commodities.

Boy/Girlband Purgatory - Part Four

East 17

Years active : 1992-1999

Biggest hit(s) : 'Stay another day' (#1 1994)

File under : Malnourished East End twokkers raised on NWA

Brought onto the market around the same time in the early 90s as Take That, East 17 represented the brattier, tackier end of the market but were perhaps all the more charming because of it - their debut album featured some of the finest tunes of the boyband era and their reliance on goofy East End hip-hop as well as the standard ballads 'n' breakdancing formula made them eminently lovable for a while. They also had arguably teeny pop's most perceptive character in the shape of principle songwriter Tony Mortimer, who sounded like he was shrewd enough to see through the machinations of pop marketing and managed to inject a rare dose of individuality into their music - on the other hand, their ranks featured Brian Harvey, a rat-faced cockney with the intellectual capacity of a tin of prunes (he is probably the only person on this list to have successfully run over his own head). There were also two other blokes in the band who did backflips and pretended to play bass sometimes, but I can't remember what they were called.

Pedalling a 'harder edged' sound than Take That's gaybar aerobic-pop, East 17 first graced the charts with 1992's 'House of Love', a manic rave-era rap track in which Mortimer bemoans the encroaching nuclear apocalypse outside his local dog track whilst Harvey interjects with some singy bits. The track was an instant success and brought the band's day-glo bombast into the public eye - they followed it with a string of hit singles in which the same template was repeated : Tony provided the deeply reflective rap verses (piping on about various subjects from war to romance, with what often seemed like a barely-suppressed evangelical streak), Brian sang the chorus and the other two bopped around in the background. The halcyon days of their early period brought forth such gems as the smoothly suggestive 'Deep', the dancefloor-friendly stompathon 'It's alright' and, later on, the stadium-sized gospel pop of 'Steam'. Debut album 'Walthamstow' topped the charts, and after five top ten hits they finally topped the singles charts with ballad 'Stay another day', complete with tinkling bells and mournful piano backing - such credentials lent it that extra bit of festive charm and it became 1994's Xmas #1 single as well as the band's best-seller.

The band were now established stars in the UK as well as in various far-flung territories such as Australia and Eastern Europe, but the novelty of their bratty boyband pop was wearing off - such circumstances called for a tactical change of direction, and the logical choice was to play up their R'n'B credentials and tailor their sound to a more US-influenced model (their earlier releases, whilst steeped in rap culture, were still unmistakeably British). Their final album 'Up all night' attempted to play down the clanky rave-pop sound of their earlier singles and move towards a smoother sound, though its sales were less impressive than its predecessors and the singles culled from it were unremarkable (apart from lead release 'Thunder' which featured some bizarre pretentious lyrics describing a sort of Guinness-advert hallucination full of purple skies and galloping horses). Their '96 best-of (again denying their impending doom by tagging on 'The story so far' to its title) effectively bookended their career, though it did spawn their second biggest hit in the Gabrielle duet 'If you ever' which hit #2 the same year, successfully ripping off a US act unknown on this side of the Atlantic (Shai) and repackaging their song to European audiences in the same way that Blue, Another Level and Blazin' Squad did in later years.

The band were effectively skewered when Brian Harvey admitted to casual Ecstasy use in a radio interview in 1997, and amid a somewhat out of proportion media backlash he was kicked out of the band - however, they had pretty much run out of steam by then anyway and Tony Mortimer also decided he'd had enough later that year. The remainder of the band, understandably apprehensive about continuing on the merits of their own contributions to East 17's back catalogue, decided to get Brian back in and the band changed their name to 'E17' and attempted to launch a comeback as a straightforward R'n'B act. Surprisingly, it worked (although not for long) and their next single 'Each Time' charted at #2 in 1998 - however, parent album 'Resurrection' (enough with all those clever titles!) flopped and their next single missed the top ten. Brian and co called it quits for good the following year.

Since their split, Tony has gone into producing, the back line started their own roofing business and Brian guested on a couple of moderate hits for other people before becoming a regular feature in the tabloids via his somewhat troubled personal life (aside from the aforementioned automobile accident, he has survived a machete attack to the head in a pub carpark as well as a couple of suicide attempts). The three members of the final line-up still tour student unions and gala events in ex-Eastern bloc countries (check out the poster photo in the 'Intro' piece for this list that my mate Dave took of me next to a poster for their concert in Latvia last year) but they look destined to remember a distant yet undeniably fond memory for the rest of us.


3T

Years active : 1996-97

Biggest hit(s) : 'Anything', 'Why?(duet with Michael Jackson)' (both #2 1996)

File under : Dickless Jackson nephews with weird eyebrows

Billed as a new generation of Jackson-clan talent, 3T were purportedly the sons of former Jackson 5 member Tito (although from looking at them I feel more inclined to believe that they were illegitimate love children from dalliances with extra-terrestrial fans during the Jacksons' mid-70s tour of the solar system). They all had first names beginning with the letter T, making them sound like some sort of musical learning device from 'Sesame Street' - I can't remember the individual members but I do recall that there was a short one who wore a backpack onstage that he used to fling to the ground in a fit of passion at moments of heightened emotion during their set). Their appearance on the charts coincided with the tail-end of Michael Jackson's 'HIStory' era, itself a frantic attempt to keep him relatively trendy for a few more years whilst he completed his transformation from globally-worshipped king of pop into some sort of porridge-faced gimp who spent suspicious amounts of time around nappy-clad toddlers. Though he was still selling high quantities, Michael was no longer cool in the way he had been throughout the 80s and even Janet was beginning to flag, so the house of Jackson brought in these three dorks to get more of their stock on the market. The novelty was enough to grant them a few hits but, predictably, they weren't around for that long before we all got bored.

Debut single 'Anything' was standard Jackson-style ballad pop, and was tuneful enough although it committed the cardinal sin of crowbarring in individual vocal parts for all three members making it sound like one of those fuck-awful talent show presentations were everyone onstage has to have a go at singing. I fucking HATE it when people do that. The relatively barren chart landscape of early 1996 allowed the single to linger within the top five for ages whilst Babylon Zoo's 'Spaceman' ruled the roost, and they managed two more significant hits with the typically anaemic MJ duet 'Why?' (soulfully questioning the existence of stuff that sucks) and the outrageously pompous Broadway bollocks of 'I need you'. Further singles lingered on the cusp of the top ten and they soon disappeared from the UK charts, though Wikipedia reliably informs me that they continue to draw huge crowds in the Netherlands (surely one of the ugly side-effects of an ultra-liberal society).

N-Tyce

Years active : 1997-98

Biggest hit(s) : 'We come to party' (#12 1997)

File under : Eastenders tea-girls doing fake homegirl soul



Another group set up to cash in on the trend for N-prefixed names in the 90s (how come nobody ever thought of doing a death metal boyband called N-TOMBED? That would have been ace!), N-Tyce were thrown together in an attempt to replicate the success of previous London-based pop acts such as Eternal and All Saints who had managed to pimp US-influenced girlband pop to British audiences. The formula was closer to Stateside acts like Jade and SWV, though it was tinkered to a British demographic by sticking in some white East End princess amidst the otherwise black line-up. No amount of sports bra & combat trousers dance routines could make up for how totally unforgettable their music was, and after a respectable four top twenty hits and an unremarkable album they went back to their jobs at the launderette.


Backstreet Boys

Years active : 1993-2002, then 2005-present

Biggest hit(s) : 'I want it that way' (#1 1999)

File under : Persil-washed Yank cum-suckers doing 5-part harmony


Quite possibly the most typically American group on this list, the Backstreet Boys came along in the post-New Kids wasteland of US teeny pop and unlike of many of their peers who peaked with their debut release, they managed to climb the ladder slowly over the course of the decade to arrive at the end of the 90s as the biggest boyband internationally. Though they seemed to be styled towards maximum commercial kickback, their teeny pop was desperately out of fashion in the music charts of mid 90s America and it took a wave of success in Europe before they could go back home to properly clean up - however by the time they finally hit big Stateside later in the decade, their records were selling in quantities previously unheard of in boyband pop and they proceeded to break numerous records for first week sales, concert capacity and sheer concentrated promotional overload. To be fair to the lads, they could hold a note between them and weren't that bad looking, but the rather weedy, Disney-soundtrack nature of their material made them the ideal target for the venom of the rap & nu-metal hordes that they jostled for place with on the US charts at the turn of the millennium.

Assembled by salad-dodging boyband svengali Lou Pearlman after he witnessed the New Kids phenomenon and decided to make his own fortune pimping emasculated pop-soul to malls full of drooling schoolkids, the lads were sent on relentless promotional tours around grade schools and shopping malls early in their career but no commercial success was forthcoming. It took further promo work in Europe to get them to catch on, and before long continental audiences were warming to their pristine, kiddie-friendly eunuch pop. The boys' success seemed well suited to MTV Europe - they looked so totally American (bright white teeth, spotless complexions and softly-lit videos featuring them riding around on bikes wearing sensitive knitwear) that you half expected them to turn out to be from fucking Sweden or somewhere else where everything's perfect. Whilst British boybands such as East 17 prided themselves on carrying a tangible odour of everyday life around everywhere they went, Backstreet Boys looked like they'd stepped right out of a cartoon - none more so than blond cherub Nick Carter, plucked from obscurity by Pearlman at the tender age of 12. This guy looked like the sort of kid who'd last about five minutes in the school playground, and the rest of the band weren't much more imposing (even supposed hardnut AJ looked like most British 13-year olds could slap the fuck out of him with one hand while they used the other to film it on their cameraphone).

It was all good clean (yet slightly wimpy) fun for the first couple of years, and they nailed 6 top five hits in the UK between 1996 and 1998 whilst simultaneously breaking through on the other side of the Atlantic, flooding the US market with previous European hits in an exact reversal of the marketing trick that brought NKOTB to Europe from America several years earlier. Slickly produced dancefloor numbers such as 'We going it going on' and 'Everybody/Backstreet's Back' (the latter with an awesome 'Thriller'-esque video) ran back to back with saccharine pop ballads like 'As long as you love me' and 'Quit playing games', and whilst you were never going to own up in front of your mates in the pub that you quite liked a couple of their songs, there was relatively little to violently oppose.

Their commercial peak came with global #1 'I want it that way' - surprisingly, their sole UK chart-topper out of 16 top tens - which along with parent album 'Millennium' broke records in the US and many other territories for first week sales. The mid 90s lull in the US pop market had now given way to a more fertile period after the Stateside success of the Spice Girls, and the boys were in exactly the right place when the Max Martin-produced ranks of Britneys and Christinas broke in 1999 to wade in and claim their place at the top of the pop food chain. It's difficult to appreciate how huge these guys got in the US around the turn of the decade (alongside N-SYNC) as by then their grip on the UK pop market was slackening, but across the pond their music was being distributed by burger chains, fans were getting trampled at their concerts and American cities were creating official Backstreet Boys days in honour of their fan conventions. I kid you not. To this day, they have outsold all other boybands in the US as well as many other countries hooked up to American video channels.

Downfall was always imminent though - tensions rose between the boys and Pearlman (who always looked a bit dodgy hanging round with such a fresh-faced bunch of youngsters) and they sued him repeatedly for ripping them off, whilst both Brian and AJ also admitted regular drug use during their busiest commercial era. The deathknell of their greatest hits compilation in 2001 (cunningly titled 'chapter one', but they were fooling nobody) hinted that they were running to a slow halt, and in 2002 they decided to call it in for a bit. The silence didn't last for long though, and in 2005 they reformed as a 'mature' pop act (meaning that they started wearing dark suits instead of reflective sportswear) and returned to moderate success both in Europe and America. Nick's younger brother Aaron (possibly the most irritating object in existence) also hit the bigtime with some tuneless chipmunk hyperpop in the late 90s but is probably fucked in celebrity kiddie rehab with Lindsay Logan these days, whilst the others all got married to finally settle the argument over whether they were gay or not. Brian recently moved into Christian pop and named his firstborn child 'Baylee Wylee' (Nurse! Straitjacket!!), Nick has put out some solo records and Kevin left the band last year to do acting stuff in Canada. Having managed to stay squeaky clean despite the requisite drug habits, break-ups and over a decade singing like complete pussweeds, the Backstreet Boys look set to continue their reign for quite some time.

N-SYNC

Years active : 1997-2002

Biggest hit(s) : 'Girlfriend' (#2 2002)

File under : Back-flipping eunuchs doing saccharine Max Martin teeny pop



Born into the same Yank boyband tradition pioneered by NKOTB, N-SYNC (note the streetwise acronym) erred more towards the aforementioned quintet's tightly choreographed dance routine workouts rather than the sickly sweet ballads pushed by peers such as Backstreet Boys. Whilst the achieved enormous success in their homeland in the fertile boyband landscape of late 90s US charts, full-blown notoriety in the UK evaded them until Justin went solo.

Another Lou Pearlman project (and, like Backstreet, they also ended up suing the fat fucker for dodgy business practices later in their career), the group were originally a rather geeky looking bunch of body-poppers who looked like they'd stepped right out of an episode of 'Saved by the bell' - the cover of their first album captures the sheer dorkiness perfectly (see photo) but was only used for the European release before being restyled for the US version. Incidentally, the Germans were the first to really catch on to the band's charms and they blew up there before even cracking the US market (moral : NEVER consider a band to be any good if the only people who willingly buy their records are the fucking Germans). They bagged several Stateside hits upon the album's release in 1998, including later UK top tens 'I want you back' and 'Tearin' up my heart' which both featured perhaps the first airings of producer Max Martin's clunky keyboard funk-pop - he would later match the style with other US pop puppets such as Britney Spears to such immense success that it seemed like pretty much every pop record released around the turn of the millennium had been produced by him.

A cheesy Xmas album followed (par for the course for American teeny pop acts) but they went full blown stratospheric with their second album 'No Strings Attached' which shifted a staggering 2.4 million units in its first week of release Stateside, a record unlikely to be bettered now that nobody can be bothered paying for CDs anymore. Shame that such an accolade should belong to a record so crappily put together - the success was built more on the band's cult status as teeny pin-ups with cool dance routines than the actual music, most of which was forgettable plastic pish. Lead-single 'Bye bye bye' was a huge success in the US and peaked at #3 in the UK, again repeating the thumping synth riff from their earlier singles - at this point, all that mattered was that it gave the chaps something to gyrate around on stage to whilst their slobbering teenage fans fainted in the front row. Their sophmore success was followed in typical fasion by the post-millenial 'Celebrity' which made a lame attempt at analysing their pan-global notoriety (especially lead-off single 'Pop' which challenged doubters to dislike it on the grounds that it was merely harmless pop music), but again the music was swiftly-knocked together to soundtrack their videos. Their final single 'Girlfriend' made a curious shift towards a more R'n'B-based sound and featured a guest slot from Nelly, bringing it a late injection of credibility and giving the band their biggest UK hit - the single's style would later be further refined on Justin Timberlake's solo releases to even greater success.

The band called it quits after the requisite three albums, and Justin promptly launched a solo career doing more 'adult' R'n'B tunes (again, this transition to manhood was based solely on the fact that he cut off his pube-wig curls and started growing a bit of designer stubble) and managed a steady hit-strike with his first three singles, all of which peaked at #2. At this point, the cult of the superproducer was in full swing and Justin's sleekly fashioned pop tunes became acceptable purchases for grown-ups as well as little girls, and suddenly a new generation of drooling hags were desperate to get into his underwear. Some clever marketing there. Aside from his own solo hits, he popped up alongside the Black Eyed Peas on the infuriating save-the-world bestseller 'Where is the love?', toured with Christina Aguilera and finally topped the charts on his own with 2006's 'Sexyback'. He is still a massive solo star and seems to be suitable fodder for magazine covers in much the same way Robbie Williams was in his post-Take That years before he turned into a bog-eyed junkie trainwreck. As for the others, JC went solo to considerably less success, Lance is now a trained astronaut, Chris manages indie bands and the amusingly named Joey Fatone managed to wangle himself a couple of bit parts in shit American films you wouldn't watch unless you were stuck in hospital for a haemorrhoid operation.

Hanson

Years active : 1997-present

Biggest hit(s) : 'Mmmbop' (#1 1997)

File under : Castrato midgets in need of a sound thrashing


Whilst not strictly a boyband in the purest sense of the term, these three brats deserve a mention nonetheless due to the thoroughly teeny-targeted nature of their music. A trio of Mormon crackers from Oklahoma, they were perhaps unique in that they were actually about the same age as most of their fans (upon their first rise to fame they were aged between 11 and 16), a factor not unimportant in their musical stlyings which were fashioned on the sort of squeaky vocals that males can only produce before their plums drop. Their debut hit 'Mmmbop' straddled the line between excruciatingly irritating and undeniably lovable, refusing to fall fully into either camp, and parent album 'Middle of Nowhere' yielded several hits of a similar ilk before they faded from the limelight only to reappear as a more adult-oriented act later on.

Upon first hearing, 'Mmmbop' was the sort of record that made you wonder whether or not the source of it all was rooted in the human race or some combination of pitch controllers, cartoon chipmunks and helium-fuelled drug orgies. In the end, it turned out that the record was the work of three blond Yank teenagers : Isaac (guitar, iffeminate enough to pass for a girl were it not for his enormous chin and visible zits), Zac (drums, young enough that you expected his drumkit to conceal a secret compartment for discreet potty breaks) and Taylor (keyboards/vocals, a real-life 'boy/girl' dilemma not helped by his parents' choice of androgynous name). Together, their collective squeak propelled the record to the top of the charts in 1997, and came as a breath of fresh air in the pop market otherwise saturated by wall-to-wall Spice Girls coverage and cumbersome Britpop. The song was pop in its purest form, yet held enough roots in 60s rock to allow it to cross over to rock/indie audiences (compared to the synthetic approach to boy/girl pop at the time, it seemed positively ballsy) and it even found a niche market in heavy metal clubs - my skater girlfriend of the time amorously taped me their album, which took up pride of place in her collection alongside Rancid and Deftones. The album spawned four more hits before they stepped out of the limelight for a couple of years, only to reappear with mediocre sophmore record 'This time around' (note subtle reference to musical progression in title) - it gave them one instantly forgettable top 20 hit and then sank without a trace. However, a 2005 revamp saw them return to the top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic with the more composed 'Penny and me', and they now eke out an existence as full-fledged popaholics in adult American chartland. As if this didn't emphasise their eminent rise to manhood enough, all three are now married and squeaky voiced vocalist Taylor has THREE FUCKING KIDS. Expect second-generation synthetic chipmunkery in the charts as soon as these nippers can be kept in a recording studio long enough to lay down a single without one of them puking on the mixing desk.

Cleopatra

Years active : 1998-2000

Biggest hit(s) : 'Cleopatra's Theme' (#3 1998)

File under : Big-mouthed teen R'n'B goblins in black lipstick

Manchester's Moss Side area, previously well-known for guns, crack and unprovoked street murders, managed to provide itself with a more respectable export in the form of three-girl pop rocket Cleopatra, a black sister act who managed to claw a few chart placings doing thunderous kiddie-pop in the late 90s. Drawing for the same strain of British urban music that brought Eternal to the fore, their music was less self-righteously nauseating than the aforementioned act and they were perhaps more of a black alternative to the bonkers toddler pop being primed by the likes of B*witched around the same time. They were fronted by pint-sized singer Cleo who handled most of the high-pitched vocals, whilst her two sisters lurked in the background like a couple of prop forwards with voodoo make-up and curly black wigs.

Self-referential debut 'Cleopatra's Theme' (featuring the somewhat intimidating refrain 'Cleopatra! Comin' Atcha!') crashlanded the top five in 1998, swiftly followed by the less endearing heal-the-world pity anthem 'Life ain't easy' and their nutso cover of the Jacksons' 'I want you back', in which their 15-year old female vocalist managed to sound more like a bloke than Michael Jackson did singing the original. The next track stalled in the mid-20s and their debut album crawled inside the top 20, but that was as far as it went chart-wise. They blossomed Stateside after their initial wave of UK success and netted a TV show and a record deal with Madonna's label, but their appeal seemed better suited to cheesy family-based TV comedy than the world of the pop charts and they haven't been back on the airwaves since summer 2000.

Billie

Years active : 1998-2000

Biggest hit(s) : 'Because we want to', 'Girlfriend' (both #1 1998), 'Day and night' (# 1 2000)

File under : Buck-toothed Swindon jailbait still reeling from ginger paedo-trauma

Primed for fame by the Sylvia Young stage school from an early age, the goofy youngster from Swindon netted a lucrative spot on an ad campagin for Smash Hits magazine in her teens and was soon groomed for a pop career - she was given a record deal at age 15 and in 1998 she became the youngest female to top the UK charts with her infuriatingly squeaky debut 'Because we want to'. Her pop career stayed buoyant for another couple of years before she hit burnout and went into celebrity marriages, airport biographies and a second career as an actress.

Billie's debut was perhaps a stroke of clever marketing in that it perfectly captured the irritating obstinence of recalcitrant kiddies refusing to go to bed early - however, it also stands as proof of why the aforementioned age bracket should be prevented from contributing to the outcome of the pop charts (if they're gonna buy stuff this fucking awful, why let them buy anything at all? Send the little bastards up the chimney I say!). Follow-up 'Girlfriend' also went to #1, and her next two singles also broke the top five whilst parent album 'Honey to the B' notched up moderate sales. Oafish Radio 1 personality Chris Moyles later used the title track to test new chart regulations in early 2007 to see if literally any track could chart as a download if backed with an appropriate publicity campaign. When the single re-appeared briefly at #17 and then vanished again, the only theory strengthened by the whole exercise was that nobody gives a toss what that witless fucking lardball thinks about anything.

Back to Billie though - whilst her records where flying off the shelves, the youngster found herself faced with a somewhat venomous backlash : first from the rock-based music press who poured scorn on her records, then from teenage girls who disapproved of her fingers & tops relationship with Richie from 5ive and booed her offstage at the Smash Hits party. She found consolation in the arms of another eminently punchable radio personality, this time a ginger egomaniac skidmark of a human being by the name of Chris Evans who she encountered whilst promoting her second album. The record showcased a departure from her kiddie-pop roots and attempted a transition to more mature R'n'B - surprisingly, it gave her a third #1 when 'Day and Night' topped the charts in 2000, but future releases began to chart lower and lower, and she hit the skids good and proper when her frantic touring and bacchanalian relationship with Evans left her physically wrecked to the point that she was admitted to hospital pissing blood (Cool! How come we never saw that in her videos?). Bereft of hit singles, fucked on diet pills and vodka and trapped in wedlock to a ginger twat 16 years her senior, the future looked bleak for Billie as she moved into womanhood.

Happy endings are what TV is all about though - once she'd cleaned herself up and dumped Evans, the BBC granted her a reprieve from showbiz obscurity and she netted the role of Dr Who's assistant on primetime British telly. Since then, she's managed to bag a number of albeit second-tier acting roles in film and TV and dropped a tell-all biography aged 24 detailing her troubled youth. Moyles' chart-rigging antics aside, we probably won't see her back in charts anytime soon and for that we can probably all be grateful, not least of all Billie herself.

Worlds Apart

Years active : 1993-94 then a late 90s comeback in Europe

Biggest hit(s) : 'Could it be I'm falling in love?' (#15 1994)

File under : Proof that shitty music exists all over the planet

A short-lived boyband project in the early 90s, Worlds Apart were supposed to be a new twist on the formula by incorporating members from various different countries (What haven't we done already? Siblings? Racial Stereotypes? I know! Foreigners!!). A diverse selection of young bucks was duly selected, the drum machine was plugged in and the band were put through their paces doing horrific kareoke versions of the kind of cheesy soul tracks you can buy on petrol station compilation tapes for 20p. Their look reflected all that was dreadful about fashion circa 1993 - all pastel colours, stone-washed denim and ghastly Vidal Sassoon haircuts. They managed four moderate hits in the UK before dropping off the radar, but a rejiggled line-up returned to conquer Europe later on in the decade, this time switching to French as their singing language (in the same way that Aussie pin-up Tina Arena did when her career dried up in English-language territories, preferring to opt for piss-feeble French variety music in order to pay the rent). Their cover of Jean-Jacques Goldman's 'Je te donne' tore up the continental charts in 1998, but their vanilla soul reworking of French drivetime pop couldn't cross back over to the UK market and they remain a distant memory for most.

Adam Rickitt

Years active : 1999-2000

Biggest hit(s) : 'I breathe again' (#5 1999)

File under : Captain! The Gayometer's giving off some alarming signals....

When Rickitt launched himself as a day-glo gay pop icon in the late 90s, it was rumoured that his previous tenure in 'Coronation Street' was merely designed as a springboard to the pop charts in the same way as Kylie & Jason had reached mass audiences before the even released a record. It's unlikely that this was true seeing as once his pop career died on its big gay arse, Rickitt returned to the soap resumed his acting duties as if nothing had happened.

With the advent of Britney Spears' rather sinister ode to schoolgirl iniquity 'Baby one more time' in early 1999, as well as the consistent popularity of gay bar troupes such a Steps, producers of the time seemed to be thinking 'Hmm, exactly HOW crass can we make this record in order to attract attention?'. Rickitt, seemingley bereft of any serious music credentials aside from his plastic Ken-doll chest, was hastily paired with a squeaky popper-orgy synth disco soundtrack and his debut 'I breathe again' shot straight into the top five, complete with a video of the scantily-clad star writhing around in a cage. Squealing kiddies and squealing gaybar loiterers went mental and covered their walls with posters of the blond bombshell, however the momentum soon faltered and his next two singles stiffed, leaving parent album 'Good Times' languishing at the bottom of the charts. Rickitt emerged unscathed from the wreckage and now divides his time between doing panto, soap acting and campaigning for the conservative party.

Honeyz

Years active : 1998-2001

Biggest hit(s) : 'Finally found' (#4 1998)

File under : Three-way chart-friendly British girlie night R'n'B


Again aping the Stateside success of female vocal ensembles such as Brownstone, Zhané et al, Honeyz (note risqué urban spelling) succeeded in pimping an essentially American sound to British audiences, again helped no doubt by their willingness to play cack-arsed chartiy roadshows in faceless British cities without having to jet in from Miami. Active at the same time as fellow Londoners Another Level, Honeyz were perhaps the female counterparts of the aforementioned and enjoyed similar chart success (though the never hit #1) before fading from the limelight once the musical landscape changed around them at the turn of the decade.

More of a classy, wine-bar option that their female peers B*witched and Atomic Kitten, Honeyz capitalised on the popularity of cheesy urban soul in the late 90s (the sort you'd find on 4-CD compilations called 'Ultimate Love Unlimited Classics' advertised at 3am between Bollywood films and the James Whale show). Like Another Level, they were merely aping their US influences but again it all came together quite nicely and they racked up five consecutive top ten hits over a two-year period at the end of the decade. Whilst Another Level played up their US hip-hop connections, Honeyz drew more from that great American musical tradition of divorcee girlie-night white wine binge soundtracks - after Cher's global success 'Believe', the charts were swamped with righteous female power anthems about booting your man out and doing things your way (see also Destiny's Child 'Independant Woman', Whitney Houston's 'It's not right but it's OK' as well as Honeyz' own 'End of the line' and 'Won't take it lying down') featuring lots of hands on hips and fingers waved dismissively at the camera. Success was duly forthcoming though, and the girls remained a permanent feature in the pop charts for a good couple of years.

Frantic line-up changes destabilised the project after a while, and unlike Sugababes who later used the revolving door membership policy to their own advantage, Honeyz fell out of favour with the press because you could never tell who was in the band at any one time. A musical shift to the American market circa 2000 gave them a couple more appearances on Eddie Murphy film soundtracks, but their style soon became passé and by the time they threw out career-stopper 'Talk to the hand' in 2001, most people had wised up to how ridiculous the whole thing was. A reconstituted version of the group still exists but chances are they will remain in the pop archives.

Another Level

Years active : 1998-99

Biggest hit(s) : 'Freak me' (#1 1998)

File under : 'Stars in their Eyes' Jodeci doing cockney wine-bar slush

Another Level were perhaps slightly outside the boyband bracket due to their music having a slightly more credible edge to it (a direct result of their record label being heavily affiliated with American rap music, leading to a number of guest slots on their records by the likes of Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah), although cynics would argue their exclusion from the boyband canon was more down to the fact that all four members were pretty fucking ugly. Nevertheless, they racked up 7 top ten hits over two solid years of chart presence before splitting at the end of the decade.

The crossover success of US vocal groups such as Dru Hill highlighted a market in late 90s Britain for the sort of streetwise R'n'B that had already blown up Stateside - in contrast to persil-washed Nickelodeon muppets like N-SYNC, the wave of black R'n'B combos such as Next, Immature and (earlier on) the mighty Jodeci showcased a slightly more dangerous take on the formula where the music was slightly roughed up and the band members didn't look like complete pussies. However, we Brits are insular by nature especially when it comes to music so instead of buying into the original acts, we had to have a London stage-school version reproduce the sound for us (with added multicultural membership to make the transition to the UK's pop charts all the more smooth). The formula worked, and Another Level broke the top ten with their very first single 'Be alone no more', proceeding to top the charts with their follow-up 'Freak me' - another example of direct musical piracy from the US, the song having been an American #1 for the band Silk who never managed to export the track across the Atlantic. The cover wasn't that bad, it just sounded a bit weird coming from the mouths of four cockney wideboys - could you really imagine Dane Bowers sliding up to someone in a club and persuading her to come home with him so he could 'get freaky' with her? I think not.

Later hits included Notting Hill ballad 'From the heart', a close shave with a second #1 with Ghostface Killah duet 'I want you for myself' and further Stateside reproduction in dancefloor hits 'Bomb Diggy' and 'Summertime'. Despite the somewhat cheeky thievery from their US influences, the band's sound wasn't half bad and their singles have dated surprisingly well compared to those of their peers in the late 90s. They split after second outing 'Nexus' and Dane Bowers managed to knock himself up a couple more hits doing guest vocals on singles scaling the charts as part of the UK Garage movement at the turn of the decade (most notably on garish electronic Posh Spice duet 'Out of your mind', kept off #1 only by Sophie Ellis Bextor's sublime 'Groovejet'). The other three disappeared and so too did Dane, unable to find another bandwagon to jump on once everyone got sick of his hideously-overproduced Top Shop dance numbers. He attempted a return as part of überboyband Upper Street in 2005, but I don't need to tell you how successful that was....