John knows best

Best of 2011

2012-01-11T18:26:00.009+01:00

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to these year's countdown of the most bitchin' records in the universe. At least the ones I've taken the time to listen to - a man can only do so much. The following ten album all grabbed my attention at some point in 2011 and held on to it, so these are the ones I'd recommend to others - there's a few stock choices from the other 'Best of 2011' lists but also a couple of oddities that I chanced upon over the last 12 months, so I hope it gives you a few pointers or puts a smile on your face. Feel free to use the comments to suggest stuff I've missed - there's a list of an extra ten that nearly made it on the way plus the inevitable list of records that pissed me off too, but for the moment let's start with the good stuff.

1. The Vaccines - What did you expect from the Vaccines?

Probably a bit of an obvious choice for some, but if I had to pick one record that put a massive smile on my face last year then this is head and shoulders above the rest. I repeated the same error I've made countless times in the past by initially ignoring the latest pretty-boy indie sensation on the grounds that they were just another bunch of posh boys making shitty music that would be forgotten six months down the line - you'd think I'd have wised up seeing as I did exactly the same thing with The Drums, Bloc Party, The Strokes and various others only to adopt their cause further down the line. Anyway, once I'd pulled my head out of my arse and given their album a proper listen it turned into one of those records I played so much that I ended up having to wean myself off it so I didn't wear it out (figuratively speaking of course - I'm not sure you can wear out an MP3....).

'What did you expect....' rules precisely because it's nothing new - like most of the great indie debuts of the last two decades it's crammed full of potential singles and festival anthems, all of which are capable of prompting skinny jean stampedes towards the dancefloor. Growing up through Britpop and the noughties Strokes/Libertines fallout, I've been raised on this kind of shit so it's hard not to love it and it's probably even more endearing because nobody seems to make these kind of records any more, they're all too busy leaning over mixing consoles or growing beards and fucking off to live in the woods. The Vaccines know the value of short bursts of guitar pop, clever lyrics and massive anthemic indie choruses and they turn everything up to the max so that nothing gets stale, songs end before they get dull and singer Justin Young belts it all out at the top of his range (so much so that his vocal chords are apparently fucked already - go Justin!). 'Wreckin' Bar' sounds like the Ramones and probably sends the crowd mental, 'Norgaard' makes me smile because it's about a teenage supermodel, 'Wetsuit' gets me choked up, 'If you wanna' is on a par with 'I predict a riot' for indie omnipresence, 'and 'All in White' is probably gonna be used by the BBC sometime soon for one of their 'upcoming attractions' montages. There's no crap on here, and if guitar music hadn't totally disappeared from the singles charts then they'd probably have at least half a dozen hits at their disposal. This stuff is so catchy that the boy Sykes needs to be forcibly restrained when he hears it after a few drinks, lest his atonal singing along wake the neighbours and his poorly coordinated dancing result in him stomping on your foot and spilling your drink. The mark of a classic!

Check out : 'Norgaard', which just edges it as my favourite track. But check it all out and pick your own.

2. The Field - Looping State of Mind

It's all about the loop these days! Hypnotic repetition in 2011 was like mullets and saxophone solos in 1985 - indispensable to critical and commercial success. Which of course means that every fucker out there is trying to hop on the bandwagon and create the next 'classic', mostly to fairly tedious results. The one to break the mould and actually come out with something special turned out to be some weird Swedish guy known as The Field who totally knocked me sideways with this little gem (I normally make a point of ignoring anything Swedish and electronic on account of the long list of clever bugger hipster bullshit like The Knife that's come out over the years, although this dude gets a pass because he's ugly and his music rules). I liked the last Animal Collective record because they'd finally managed to merge the whole loop thing with tunes you could actually dance to but I still felt they didn't take it far enough - 'Looping State of Mind' does exactly that. This sounds like the stuff you'd hear emanating from the dance tent at some festival at 3am and end up wandering in only to get drawn into bopping away for hours, transfixed by the pulsating sounds that open up a private universe. Like The Orb's live record from '93, this guy establishes the arena he'll be working in upfront and then lets the hidden ingredients rise to the surface - only instead of appreciating all this whacked out on a bean bag in the chill-out room, it'll hit you when you're already out there on the floor. He's not trying to pump out anthems, he's in it for the three-hour DJ sets where the true experts can command the crowd like they're conducting an orchestra, like he knows what we want but only he has the skill to bring it out of us. Andrew Weatherall, Leftfield, Underworld.....only a chosen few can claim to do this, and I think this guy's on his way to joining them. And the coolest thing is that, as the title indicates, the whole album can be played on repeat without breaking the chain, meaning that you can loop this shit for hours until you finally get cramp and have to crawl back to your tent while everyone else is having breakfast. Maybe that's why he's called 'The Field'....it's already a festival classic!

Check out : Opener 'Is this power', a 9-minute orbit of this guy's planet. Stooopendous!

3=. Beady Eye - Different Gear, Still Speeding

3. = Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - s/t

I can't be arsed trying to choose between these two so I've just put both of them in to save argument. Which is perhaps ironic, seeing as Noel and Liam have spent most of their time slagging off each others' output in the press since Oasis fell apart a couple of years back. But, as is often the case when a decent band breaks up, the seperation yields better results than you'd expect. Instead of putting up with each other's shit for long enough to crank out another average Oasis record that their heart wasn't truly in, the two of them managed to go off in totally different directions and indulge themselves to come out with some cool new shit.

Both sound like they're free of the limits imposed by Oasis - Beady Eye is all about Liam pitching the tunes to his strengths as a vocalist, meaning lots of the Paul Macartney end of The Beatles in the melody department and some stonking Stones-esque rockers that the rest of the band can get their teeth into. 'Four Letter Word' boots the door wide open with some prime sonic sleaze, 'For Anyone' and 'The Beat goes on' sound tailor made for sweaty blokes in Reni hats to bellow along to at gigs and 'Bring the Light' sticks in a huge piano riff that Noel would've never allowed near an Oasis record. There's loads of retro revivalism going on here but it all sounds fresher than late period Oasis and with the band Liam's got behind him you know this stuff is going to sound great live - thumbs up to the boys!

Noel, on the other hand, gets a bit of peace and quiet for once and makes the most of it to lay down some seriously mellow stuff - whilst Liam is off perfecting his peacock strut, Noel's brought in strings and horns to augment his old-school melodic songwriting style. This is one to put on your headphones to smooth out a metro journey or a long car ride - catchy singalong tunes that showcase the dude's strengths not only as a songwriter but also as a singer (he only seemed to sing in Oasis when Liam couldn't cope with the vocal or didn't like the song - no wonder he's more chilled out now). This record's more Ray Davies than Mick Jagger, with Noel's lyrics planted in pastoral English pop - stuff happening on the village green, him living a dream in his record machine, that kind of thing. It could sound cheesy done by someone else but you know you're in good hands with Noel, just as with his political comments - he's an old-fashioned kind of guy but he's very rarely wrong.

So it's heads you win, tails you win with these two - who'd thought Oasis breaking up would turn out to be such a good thing? I'm still pissed off for these guys bailing on me at Rock en Seine a couple of years back but on this evidence I'm prepared to forgive them.

Check out : 'If I had a gun' from Noel and 'The Beat goes on' from Liam. It's a score draw.

4. The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

This nearly didn't make it on account of it being devilishly difficult to track down - I acually had to buy the fucking thing on CD in the end. On CD!!!! Are we back in 1997 or something???? Fortunately, Dutch 'Horror Soul' purveyors The Devil's Blood are worth the effort - I got a tip-off from Terrorizer magazine that this was worth a pop and it turned out to be the standout heavy record of the year. Built on the same premise as Japan's Ghost who broke through to the festival circuit in 2011, these guys play heavy psychedelic rock infused with a diabolic dose of Satanic imagery and occult mysticism coupled with a live act that will make you shit your pants with either excitement or terror, depending on what floats your boat. Their enigmatic female vocalist 'The Mouth of Satan' belts out the tunes like a creepier Grace Slick and regularly douses herself in pig's blood onstage, whilst the instrumental side of things is upheld by a leather-clad frontline of three hairy guitarists and a bassist sporting a similar stage garb of beards 'n' blood. You have to see this shit to believe it - she stands motionless onstage sporting a thousand yard stare while the rest of them trade solos and straddle monitors like modern day Iron Maiden, except that these folks are deadly serious. Their songs frequently rumble off towards the 10 minute mark and bear all the hallmarks of classic heavy rock - towering riffs, wild vocals and headbanging heavy metal rhythm. This is like an evil Jefferson Airplane, trippy psychedelia channeled through decades of sinister metal folklore and classic hard rock showmanship. Like a darker cousin to fellow psychedelic revivalists Tame Impala, The Devil's Blood draw on the same influences but take you somewhere different - if new psych rock is your thing, listen to Impala's 'Innerspeaker' on your headphones on the way to work and 'Thousandfold Epicentre' on the way home in the evening (dousing yourself in pig's blood while doing so will also guarentee you a seat on the metro). I can even recommend getting the CD version for the woo-hah batshit crazy artwork included with the deluxe edition - it's worth the extra investment, although there's no Ouijaboard included unfortunately. This is one intoxicating ride to the darkside - take advantage of their relative anonymity to catch these folks while they're a well-kept secret and indulge your senses in this diabolic delight.

Check out : 'Fire Burning' is the potential hit but check out the live show for a glimpse of the real deal.

5. The Horrors - Skying

If you'd have told me back in 2007 when their atonal goth-garage debut was one of the features in my 'worst of the year' list that The Horrors would be one of my favourite bands a few years later, I'd probably have punched you and poured my drink on your shoes. Times change I guess. There is also the not inconsiderable difference that these kids learnt to play their instruments in the meantime, allowing them to move away from the clunky scenester indie that had gotten them onto the cover of the NME before they'd even released anything towards richer fields of sonic scenery. It was a pretty steep learning curve too - 2009's 'Primary Colours' was a true shock to the system, prompting comments along the lines of 'Holy Crap! This is really good' from cynics such as myself. 'Skying' continues the journey, though it covers as much new ground as its predecessor - where 'Primary Colours' took in a love of drone and shoegaze, 'Skying' goes on from there to nestle in more synthetic, bass-driven elements. Their new sound is hard to put your finger on - weirdly, it reminds me a lot of The Human League, not just because Faris' voice sounds a fair bit like Phil Oakey's but more for the the way synths are the backbone of the entire sound rather than intrusive stabs into the song structure. If you check out 'Dare' it sounds like everything on there was built on top of the synth foundation and 'Skying' works the same way, keeping the guitar sound from the previous record but letting the keys lead the charge. It works astoundingly well - once again, the production nails it and you can really lose yourself in this shit on a good pair of headphones. In fact that's what I did coming up from a heavy dose of the flu over Xmas, much in the same way that I got into Underworld's 'Beaucoup Fish' over a decade earlier which ended up becoming my favourite record of the time. Sometimes it takes stuff like that to cement an album in your memory - if so, it was worth it, 'Skying' looks set to become my quintessentially 2011 record much like 'Beaucoup Fish' was all about 1999 (and, retrospectively, 'Dare' is totally 1981). Not bad from a bunch of kids I'd originally dismissed as clueless hipsters with shitty haircuts - I can't fucking wait to hear what this lot come up with next.

Check out : 'Endless Blue' - first you're floating on a lilo in the Tropics for a couple of minutes, then you get hit by a tidal wave of fuzz pedal. Best track by a country mile.

6. Arctic Monkeys - Suck it and see

Another band that's getting better with age, the Monkeys understood some time ago that songs about wearing trainers and getting beaten up in the queue for shitty nightclubs weren't gonna pay their way forever. Their position at the top of indie's food chain could only be maintained by changing tack, thus their Yorkshire stomping ground was abandoned both lyrically and physically for them to move Stateside and get Josh Homme on the case to beef their sound back up. 'Humbug' was a decent album but on the strength of their latest offering it seems increasingly transitional - 'Suck it' is a more solid setlist, free of any form of cultural jetlag and striking the perfect balance between their Northern feistyness and the encroaching influence of meaty US blues-rock. It's a totally logical evolution when you think about it - the Monkeys started out as a pretty funky bunch in their earliest days before tightly-strung indie was in vogue, and they now sound like they're taking their time and cranking out more potent, matured slabs of indie-rock rather than three minutes smash 'n' grab affairs about losing your bus fare. Alex Turner's always been good at writing from the crotch too, although here he's actually on more of a romantic trip - the title track sees him almost Elvis it up; 'Be cruel to me, cos I'm a fool for you'. That's probably why the quiff came in. Elsewhere, they get ballsy with cuts like 'Brick by Brick' and the ridiculous yet brilliant lead-off single 'Don't sit down cos I've moved your chair'. Their sound is seductively heavy and should sound amazing live - you tend to forget how tight a band they've always been - but the cocksure charm that brought them to the fore back in the mid-noughties hasn't dissipated, instead it's given them the balls to go out into the world and soak up other thrills. They're back stronger than ever, and this latest platter is meaty enough to satisfy lovers of solid, groovy rock without alienating the British indie crowd that fell in love with their wit back in 2005. Go get yer gums around this dear reader, you'll be glad you did.

Check out : The title track. I fucking love this song.

7. Battles - Gloss Drop

Is it rock? Is it art? Is it a great big pink blobby thing? Battles' second record is a hard one to categorise - having started off as a sort of angular noise-rock project, they promptly disappeared for a few years before returning to dump this generous dollop of weirdness into your speakers. I found their debut (2007's 'Mirrored') a bit difficult to get into, it just seemed like another bunch of dudes playing sproingy instrumental stuff. However, this new one conquered me pretty much straight away, mainly due to the embarassingly catchy lead single 'Ice Cream' which landed early in 2011. Built around a warped ice cream van jingle gradually accelerating into oblivion before bursting into a jarring dancefloor smash, it was probably the year's coolest single. Buoyed by this discovery I bagged the album when it landed and, though a few listens were needed before I could claim it as a favourite, overall they've kept up the quality where it matters. I think the main difference (though I'm loath to admit it as someone who hates musos) is that these guys can really play their instruments - they're not afraid to veer off into territory that would put a smile of the faces of jazz buffs, though they fortunately stay the right side of pretentious and manage to balance the avant garde with the eminently danceable throughout. There's plenty of high-end stuff like steel drums, bells and tambourines to bring a pop feel to it all but there's nothing lightweight going on here - these guys could lock in and blow you across the room if they wanted to, but in exercising restraint with the feedback pedal they've actually come up with something way more potent. There's elements of world music, jazz, afrobeat and what sounds like kids' TV theme music in here but none of it is throwaway or token - everything these guys have mixed in has been absorbed from the beat upwards, they've spread the net wide and come through with their own multicolour end product. In an age of fake whiteboy Afro-rock, frigid electronica and plastic synth fetishism, here's a bunch of guys who figured out how to strap in and play tight, dynamic rock before getting eclectic - they came through the hard way and it's proven worthwhile. And there's even a Gary Numan cameo!

Check out : 'Ice Cream', obviously. But check out the Numanoid on 'My Machines' too.

8. Chelsea Wolfe - Apokalypsis

More spooky shit. I couldn't decide between this and the David Lynch record when I was compiling this list but Chelsea got the winning vote on the grounds that I had a pretty good idea what Lynch's 'Crazy Clown Time' was gonna sound like, whereas this was a real surprise. Female singer-songwriters are ten a penny these days, and that's totally a good thing - the wide variety of musical ladies out there means there's something for everyone, or at least there should be. The post-Winehouse nu-soul stuff like Adele isn't really my cup of tea (though I have no particular objection to it either) but towards the murkier end of the female pysche there's some dark, dazzling stuff coming to the fore. Lana Del Ray pretty much out-Lynched the Lynchster with 'Video Games' and she's odds on to drop a stonking debut LP in 2012, but the fact that the track swamped the end of year polls and even got a nod from David Cameron made me think that she's destined to become the oddity in a lot of bland music collections, the audio equivalent of guys who fast-forwarded to all the lesbian bits in 'Mulholland Drive' rather than embracing the dark heart of the film as a whole. Chelsea Wolfe is at the other end of that particular spectrum - she's like 'Wild at Heart', part Laura Dern in bright red lipstick but mixed in with a stiff dose of Willem Defoe blowing his head off with a shotgun and that guy who wants it to be Christmas all the time. There's an AAARGH factor here that will shake off part-timers (notably the feral shrieking on 30-second opener 'Primal/Carnal') built on the echoic vibe of a sultry cabaret act. 'Apokalypsis' reminds me of Jarboe, though there's moments where she gets closer to Beth Gibbons of Portishead in all her mournful and despairing glory. And she's not leaning heavily on production or A-list musical support - the backing band keep their distance throughout, leaving her voice to put in the work and dominate proceedings. The thing I like about this most is that Chelsea seems happy to play the role full time - she's not just some college girl going through a burlesque phase, this is the real deal. She even does Burzum covers when she plays live! I'll admit I have a weakness for girls like this - ones with flashing neon signs above their heads saying 'This bitch is crazy!' but who nonetheless remain fascinatingly seductive. They're always bad news bears of course, the sort that'll give you a great night but as soon as you pop out for a pint of milk they're painting your wardrobe doors in menstrual blood. Save yourself the heartache and pencil in a late night session with a pot of strong coffee, 'Apokalypsis' on your headphones and the door firmly LOCKED. Even Varg Vikernes would be hiding behind the mixing desk from imaginary Tippex-eyed sirens after such a session. Surrender to the Wolfe gentlemen, you know it makes sense.

Check out : 'Demons' is CW at her most radio-friendly, but check out 'Pale on Pale' for a swim in murkier waters.

9. Weekend - Sports

This year's obligatory shoegaze release. I set myself the challenge of buying records that didn't all sound like My Bloody Valentine early in 2011, though not before I'd bagged this little gem. Weekend have their priorities straight from the get-go, vocals low in the mix and waves of fuzz pedal and feedback upfront over relentless bass and drums that propel you forward through a veritable wind tunnel of gorgeous noise. They take the blueprint one step further than their forerunners A Place To Bury Strangers, phasing out the grandstanding and filling in any empty spaces with swathes of white noise and rumbling bass. You'd expect watching these guys live would be like drowning in sonic soup, there's no air in there anywhere and the echoic vocals sound like they've been recorded in the lowest sublevels of the shoegaze netherworld. Think the Stone Roses' 'Don't Stop' spliced with early MBV and Joy Division's rhythm section, all black and white cold case aesthetics - the singer even reminds me a bit of Ian Curtis, not a compliment you dish out very readily. 'Sports' isn't totally lost to the darkside, there's enough in the way of hooks to make this every bit as listenable as their shoegaze contempories but no extremes are tuned down on the way to making a catchy record, everything on here is heavy, heavy stuff. One for running at night, sliding into the heavy end of a red wine stupour or simply disappearing into yourself in the wee small hours, 'Sports' is 45 minutes of drowning in low-end lysergia at the end of the universe. Go get.

Check out : 'End Times' and watch the stars collapse around you.

10. Teeth - Whatever

'Y'all think we care? Cos we donnnn't....'. Cue screechy Chicks on Speed vocals and clunky synthetic bompf bompf bompf. Teeth's second record pretty much spells it out to you from the start - this is hipster London electro and they're way too postmodern and cool to give a shit if you don't like it. Thing is....it's actually pretty good. I should stop reading NME reviews - 'Like unexpected prison sex on Christmas Day, it may provoke a mixture of conflicting emotions but none of them are likely to be boredom' wrote John Doran, a better music scribe than I'll ever be. 'Whatever' is a full-on racket, ten slabs of thumping electro-rave jammed with frantic bleeps and early 90s car alarm hardcore. None of it sounds like a labour of love, but the lack of finesse makes it all the more appealing - this is the sort of stuff music students come up with over all-night programming sessions on the wrong sort of drugs, a frantic mix of their favourite records of the previous 10 minutes all mashed into a series of bite-size chunks ready to fling out during their next DJ set hoping for the best. It probably speaks volumes that the band couldn't even be bothered to come up with a proper title or album cover for their endeavours. There's more than a passing resemblence to Crystal Castles here, though in truth Teeth probably have more in common with Atari Teenage Riot in their full-frontal delivery and reluctance to deviate from their chosen formula, eschewing Castles' more varied take on electro-rave in favour of pummelling you into submission with more of the same. It doesn't do them any harm though - 'Whatever' clocks in at just over half an hour, every second put to good use and any of the tracks on show would slot right into a hi-NRG DJ set at your local strobe temple. Deicide used to record death metal records along the same lines - keep it brief, stick to one theme (in their case, Satan rather than glowsticks), hammer your point home then get the fuck out before you start to bore people. Teeth, the electro legacy of Glen Benton is yours to treasure.

Check out : 'Flowers', three minutes inside the mind of every hyperactive child.

There you have it folks - stay tuned for the (nearly as) good, the bad and the downright ugly of last year which should be up here shortly.

What I'm listening to now : Cobalt

2010-11-06T14:50:00.005+01:00

Cobalt - Gin

I just got this one on a whim as I'd read about their stuff in Terrorizer - I've fallen out of fashion with modern metal recently but I still try to check out new stuff from time to time. This album was listed at #2 in their best albums poll last year behind the latest Converge LP so I thought it'd be worth a pop.

At the risk of sounding hideously out of touch, I've found it hard getting halfway excited by any heavy metal records of the last few years - a lot of it just sounds like revamps of old school shit with more expensive production, and I can't be fucked wading through droves of 'core' bands with stupid names like 'Every time she screams my blood runs black' who spend all day trawling E-bay for skintight Possessed T-shirts so they can look cool in their next video. The only genre really worth spending your time over is Black Metal, although I have to admit that I generally find it more interesting to read about than actually listening to it. I spent Saturday a couple of weeks back looping some classic Emperor stuff on Spotify and it just sounded a bit overblown for my liking (plus having some irritating French sales chick trying to plug their new free jazz playlist just before 'The loss and curse of reverence' kind of spoils the moment).

'Gin' is sort of attached to BM in a loose manner, although the creators refer to it as 'Extreme War Metal' which sort of conjures up images of a bunch of Belgian dorks in corpse paint and bullet belts pulling faces in a cave. These guys are much less of a scene band though - two short-haired guys from Colorado who are both apparently ex-marines! I think the only thing linking this to typical BM is the mean, visceral soundscapes to some of your darker, uglier emotions.....the title track is about Ernest Hemmingway (whose photo also appears on the cover) and pretty much encapsulates the headspace of your average gin drinker - it's a melancholy, lugubrious drink at the best of times and sinking into a blue stupor on it can conjure up some pretty horrific reflections. Kind of reminds me of the Cerebus tome 'Form and Void' which is also about Hemmingway and turned up towards the end of the project where Dave Sim was dragging out storylines over entire years - it reads like spending all summer indoors with the windows closed. Not sure whether I recommend it.

Anyway, 'Gin' is satisfying in the same way that the uglier parts of Pantera's 'The Great Southern Trendkill' hit the spot - I'd class the latter as 'Whisky Metal' if we're getting to genre politics, as it conjures up the kind of angry, violent drunkeness that stems from a hard session on cowboy grog that you could imagine Anselmo and co using as a source of inspiration for their music. Cobalt, like their pigment namesake, mine a deeper blue seam of desolation than Pantera's red raw fury - I therefore motion that we term this 'Gin metal'. This in turn leads me to search for other categories of 'liquor metal' to investigate.....Anyone got any decent 'Vodka metal' to suggest?

Back to the 'extreme war metal' tag though - the fact that these guys are both marines took me by surprise, but if you think about it then who would be better candidates to make music inspired by the horrors of war than those who have actually experienced them first hand? This reminds me of a flick I saw on YouTube recently, the awesome Christian Bale vehicle 'Harsh Times' in which he plays a disjointed military tyke readjusting to life back in LA - check it out if you have time. His character in that film would probably be more likely caught listening to some crappy misogynist hip hop than the likes of Cobalt, though I think 'Gin' gives a better idea of what's going on in the guy's head during the film. Like most decent BM, the corruscating audio evokes the physical wherever possible and segments like the two part 'Throat' and 'Stomach' provide a pretty good soundtrack to a session on mother's ruin - elsewhere, the truly scary 'Pregnant Insect' harks back to the bloated putrescence of early Khanate. This is double-barrelled horrid all the way through, but brings the listener to a state of catharsis only acheived by getting your fingers well and truly dirty.

Hooray for 'Gin metal' then!

Top 40 of the noughties : Intro

2009-12-20T18:53:00.002+01:00

Hi again people,

Back online after a somewhat inconvenient computer mishap (thankfully now sorted out), I'm getting ready to post my selection of the best and worst singles of the decade - in the spirit of positive thinking, the list of best singles will be up first followed by the list of songs that made my blood boil, fists clench and swearing vocabulary expand even further.

In preparation for the first selection of top pop moments of the last ten years, here's a few ground rules I've laid down for my choices :

1. The song in question has to actually have charted as a single at some point in the decade - the rules governing the singles charts were modified around 2006 to allow songs to chart even if a physical version (such as a CD single) was not available in record shops to allow for the increasingly popular MP3 format to count towards chart placings, so any tune that has featured on the UK Top 40 between 1st January 2000 and now is eligible. Album tracks, live-only staples and other miscellaneous titbits are not.

2. No more that one song per artist (excluding collaborations).

3. Rather than just reflecting my own record collection (hey, who wants to read a list consisting of nothing but Slayer, The View and obscure Dutch Happy Hardcore?), the entries have been selected on the grounds that they either shaped or exemplified a trend in popular music at some point over the last decade. Which doesn't mean that I don't like them, it just means that I acknowledge their influence on pop culture over the last ten years. None of them should be obscure enough to make the average reader scratch their head in confusion - most were established hit singles upon release and the few that didn't become big mainstream hits were tunes that I thought should have been in a perfect world. Ideally, once we get far enough into the next decade for 'noughties nostalgia' to kick in (I'd predict about the second week of February 2010), these are the songs that I hope would be on the setlist for a noughties club night.

Hope all that makes sense. Let's get it started!

Top 40 of the noughties : 40-31

2009-12-06T17:24:00.010+01:00

40. Girls Aloud – Something Kinda Oooh ! (#3 October 2006)

Let’s kick things off with an admission that not all Reality TV pop is complete crap. If the artificial fame machine churned out a string of production line pop atrocities, the by-products weren’t always that bad : Hear’Say were outlasted by the infinitely superior Liberty X whose line-up was composed of the rejects from Popstars’ first series, and the sequel pitted two rival groups of girls and boys against each other in the run up to Xmas 2002 with the public using the singles chart as a means of deciding who was the better outfit. The winners’ debut not only secured the year’s Xmas #1 but also kickstarted a successful pop career that has yet to grind to a halt and produced some of the decade’s best singles.

Girls Aloud may have been conceived in the evil womb of Reality TV, but they managed to detach themselves from the concept fairly quickly – bypassing the variety performance ballad route taken by many of their solo contempories, the five-piece made their name in the kind of brash, colourful girlband pop that soundtracked the 1990s proving that teenypop could still work on the old model. Initial success granted them a string of hit singles and they soon came to dominate the pop market without reaching saturation point, which is probably the key to their longevity – even most of the big names in 90s teenypop struggled to make it past the three-album mark before everyone became whole-heartedly sick of them, and by the time the Spice Girls imploded in 2000 the gap between breakthrough success and calamitous fall from grace had narrowed even further. Where Girls Aloud succeeded was in their return to pop’s roots as good clean fun rather than a cynical marketing circus – they remained in the public eye for the rest of the decade, notching up cheery pop hits without ever getting in your face so much that you got sick of them. Rather than a post-2000 rehash of groups like All Saints and Eternal, they had more in common with their 80s predecessors such as Bananarama and Kim Wilde, artists who carved out careers at the forefront of pop for a full decade without ever slipping out of fashion. ‘Something Kinda Oooh!’ isn’t significantly better than any of their other releases, it’s just the first one that springs to my mind as an example of what they do well – check out this bombastic TV performance from Xmas 2007 if you need further explanation.

Whilst pop has changed hands over the course of the decade and undergone something of a rebirth since its low point at the start of the noughties, some constants remain and Girls Aloud are one of them. Girlband pop has endured where boybands have faltered – looking back at the girls’ original TV rivals, the hopelessly crappy One True Voice, it’s easy to see that the better side won. Whilst teenypop’s male contingent floundered in the early years of the decade only to resurface on a wave of 90s nostalgia later on, Girls Aloud along with their contempories the Sugababes have carved out admirably consistent careers of pop performance and left us with some cracking singles. Now that the decade’s nearly over, let’s give them the credit they deserve.

39. George Michael – Shoot the dog (#12 August 2002)

Every decade has its war, and previous ones have managed to carve out some decent protest songs to counteract all the bitterness and bloodshed. So it was disappointing that the war-mongering ways of our leaders in the early 2000s went largely unquestioned in pop music – there was nothing to rival Country Joe & the Fish’s denouncing of the Vietnam war in the late 60s or Bono’s emotive yarblings on the troubles in Northern Ireland….nobody seemed all that bothered. OK, Radiohead might have taken a half-arsed pot shot at Tony Blair on ‘You and whose army’ from ‘Amnesiac’ but you’re hardly laying your career on the line by whinging a bit about politics on an album track. It takes real balls to put out a single at the height of the conflict ripping on your country’s leader and his misguided toadying up to George W Bush, and surprisingly enough the only person to display sufficiently unfeasible gonad girth was someone hardly renowned for political protest.

George Michael’s star was on the wane in the early noughties, focused more on nostalgia for past glories in the aftermath of his immensely successful best-of in the late 90s than on what he could offer the new millennium. Musically he was stuck in limp R’n’B territory, but briefly broke free into calculated protest with ‘Shoot the Dog’ in 2002 – the track savagely criticized the master and servant relationship between Bush and Blair, backed by a 2DTV-produced cartoon video that ridiculed the hapless pair and poured scorn on the war effort. It was all too much for the flag-waving wankers on Fleet Street, with The Sun reacting particularly viciously to the star’s impertinence and lack of nationalist pride in Britain’s military intervention in the Middle East – their response to GM’s refusal to back our boys was to publish cheaply concocted photoshop images of his head disappearing down a toilet as his career crumbled in the fact of public outcry. Their smear campaign worked at least in the short term – the single fell short of the top ten, not a bad result but a proportional failure for someone with George’s pop pedigree and it triggered a general retreat from the pop charts for him which culminated in limiting future releases to internet-only download packages. Nevertheless, he returned with a couple more #1 hit albums and another best-of before the decade ended and retained his dignity throughout unlike the right-wing tabloid tosspots who tried to wreck his career for daring to disagree with them. ‘Shoot the Dog’ is more of a curiosity than a classic piece of pop, but it deserves its place on this list as one of the few real commercial risks of the decade and a testament to the power of pop music in challenging popular opinion. Nice one George.

38. Glasvegas – Daddy’s Gone (#12 August 2008)

Despite the fact that they looked and sounded like relics from Indie’s past, Glasvegas still sounded like a breath of fresh air when their debut landed in 2008 – against a backdrop of starry-eyed indie kids in tight jeans and ironic T-shirts, the band looked and sounded like grizzled veterans of the Glasgow indie scene of the late 80s, the perfect antidote to the excitable scamps clogging up the music press at the time. Their sound wasn’t anything radically new – the fuzzed-up guitar waves and black-clad dour delivery harked back to the Jesus & Mary Chain in their heyday, as did the band’s reverence for Phil Spector and 50s rock ‘n’ roll – but their sound stuck out like a sore thumb in the musical landscape of 2008, as did their morose choice of subject matter (social workers, racist attacks and Glasgow’s miserable sectarian bickering).

‘Daddy’s Gone’ preceded their impressive debut by several months and was picked up by the NME in late 2007 as one of their tracks of the year – it was easy to work out why on first hearing it, the track managing to craft a genuinely touching moment of pop tragedy on the thorny subject of absent fathers. It’s not easy to write a decent tearjerker without descending into schmaltz, and it’s even harder to put one into the upper reaches of the charts but the band managed it admirably – over a musical backdrop of Ronettes-style pop and thunderous reverb, singer James Allan bemoans the childhood realization that his dad has done a runner in a robust Glaswegian accent, packing in a hearty dose of bitterness and vitriol at the trail of destruction left in his wake. It was genuinely moving, bringing a tear to the eye of your emotionally-hardened scribe upon first listen and stands up to repeated plays as a finely balanced moment of pop sadness in the vein of ‘Every breath you take’ - it may not have matched Sting’s stalker anthem in terms of chart success but it set the stage nicely for their debut album to clean up both critically and commercially in 2008. They may have been guilty of laying it all on a bit thick in places, and reliable contacts of mine have remarked that they suck live, but Glasvegas still achieved the rare feat of cramming a universe of pent-up emotion into a four-minute hit single, one that will endure in the minds of many even if their star fades in future years.

37. Klaxons – Golden Skans (#7 January 2007)

Hit singles last the test of time, trends don’t – ill-advised haircuts and wardrobe decisions will have characterized the decade for many but they remain snapshots of what was in at the time and went out five minutes later. The whole ‘new rave’ movement was a classic example of this, another media launched trend that resulted in scenesters all over the nation covering themselves in ludicrous fluo and digging out their old Prodigy records. Many hopefuls laboured away at transforming the trend into a genuine crossover hit but few came close to Klaxons’ breakthrough success with ‘Golden Skans’ in early 2007.

In truth, there was nothing ravey about it – their cover of Kicks like a mule’s 1992 classic ‘The Bouncer’ would have been a better example of how dance music played through guitars could really hit home, but ‘Golden Skans’ was a safer bet for crash-landing the top ten. Built around a high-pitched vocal sample, the track detailed a night out back in the original rave era that the band were too young to have experienced first-hand – nevertheless, it struck a chord with indie kids everywhere and provided the soundtrack to many a night out for the new fluo-clad generation. NME creamed itself over the band’s pseudo-groundbreaking sound and named both the track and parent album ‘Myths of the near future’ as 2007’s best of the year – the album left me a little underwhelmed, leaving a lot of trendy pop fluff to pad out what was essentially a cluster of great singles of which ‘Golden Skans’ was probably the strongest. The cashing-in process was complete when the track turned up on a shampoo commercial earlier this year, leaving no doubt that the band had managed to pull a genuine hit out of what could have easily been nothing more than a passing fad in pop music. As the decade closes it’s still too early whether Klaxons and their 2007 contempories will be able to follow their original success with anything substantial but for the moment this track stands as one of the decade’s more palatable moments of trendiness transformed into accessible pop product.

36. System of a Down – Chop Suey ! (#17 August 2001)

This list is going to be filled with a predominantly poppy content due to its very nature – the selections have to not only be decent songs, they also need to have crossed over to a major audience in order for them to be considered. Heavy rock doesn’t feature particularly highly as it’s not best-suited to success in the singles charts, but there are a couple of notable exceptions where artists have managed to bag themselves an unconventional radio hit with something loud and skuzzy. One such example is Armenian-American heavy mentalists System of a Down’s breakthrough hit ‘Chop Suey!’ which thrust them into the unsuspecting confines of the UK top twenty in autumn 2001 and marked their passage from cult metal-circuit success to major force in international rock music, a field they would dominate in for the next few years.

The best thing about ‘Chop Suey!’ is the total randomness of it all – aside from the lack of any reference to the Chinese dish in the title, the track sounds like a Tasmanian Devil romping through a record store and chewing through various music styles over three frantic minutes of freeform mayhem. What starts off sounding like a ballad suddenly jackknifes into bulldozing metal bombast before breaking into rapid-fire stop/start noise bursts and vocals that go from operatic baritone to guttural brute force and 100 mph yelped diatribes. It was hard to work out what the fuck was going on upon first listen, but repeated spins left you in awe of one of the most bafflingly brutal slabs of heavy rock to make the charts since Rage Against the Machine first broke into the mainstream a decade earlier. The band would capitalize on its success in typical fashion – they followed the success of the single’s parent album ‘Toxicity’ with the gargantuan twinset of ‘Hypnotize/Mesmerize’ and the massive tour that accompanied it, then promptly disappeared from view completely. Many have striven to take their place at the creative forefront of heavy metal since then but none succeeded in marrying vicious delivery with accessible chart-friendly prowess in the same way that ‘Chop Suey!’ did back in 2001. This one stands as an example of how you can be loud, proud and crazy as fuck whilst still bagging yourself a hit single in the process. Result!

35. Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla (#24 May 2006)

There was a heavy weight of expectation on this decade to produce sonic marvels that had never been heard before, pieces of music so progressive and innovative that the human ear would not be able to handle them and would instead collapse in on itself out of sheer desperation. All of this was bollocks of course – apart from Radiohead basically alienating most of their original fanbase with a bit of guitar-free abstraction and people like the Aphex Twin carrying on doing what they had been doing for a while anyway, there wasn’t really any kind of post-millennial new form of music to usher in the new era.

We got close a couple of times though. The market for abstract, otherworldly rock music was growing as legions of listeners grew thoroughly bored with the trad rock ruling the airwaves at the time, and in the early years of the decade the more experimental factions of both indie and heavy metal drew away from recognizable song structures to favour something more ethereal and majestic. Metal gave us the mighty Isis, Cult of Luna and arguably later the much more commercially palatable Mastodon, but none were ever likely to batter the singles charts into submission – indie on the other hand has enjoyed a lucrative decade, bringing in a new generation of skinny Myspace-loving kiddies into the mix whilst retaining older fans who moved into the Observer/Radio 2 hinterland for those who felt a bit old at a Subways gig but still wanted to keep their finger on the pulse. The one band they all agreed on was Iceland’s Sigur Ros, a millennial variant on lo-fi, shoegazing and post-rock that modern indie fans embraced as their new favourite band that nobody else was supposed to know about. Their first album landed as the decade commenced and by midway through the noughties they had notched their first crossover hit with the twinkly end of the night classic ‘Hoppipolla’, a none-too-obvious choice for a single but one that seemed like it was always destined to be massive once it broke into the mainstream. Two separate chart runs saw the track peak at #24 in early 2006 but it was one of those whose chart longevity granted it classic status – and, in the vein of Moby’s ‘Play’ era material, it became even bigger thanks to numerous runs on adverts, film soundtracks and as the backing music to compilations of sporting moments, career highlights or anything that needed a bit of magic dust sprinkling over it to make it look majestic.

All this must have seemed odd for a bunch of Icelandic indie weaklings who didn’t even sing in a proper language (their material was delivered mainly in ‘Hopelandic’, presumably what Icelandic sounds like when spoken by toddlers before they actually learn to talk properly) and made zero effort to sell their records via press appearances and publicity campaigns. But then I suppose that’s what made them every indie boffin’s favourite band – you could whip out one of their CDs from amongst your collection of Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy albums and attempt to impress your mates with it : ‘Hey, have you ever heard of these guys? They’re really unique and great and….oh wait, you’ve had their album for a year already? Shit!’. And they also had the added bonus of not being Swedish – if this had been made by a bunch of clever bugger blond cherubs from some Ikea-furnished treehouse outside Stockholm, I’d have hated it on sight but there’s something a lot cooler about the Icelandic that makes this much easier for me to like. Oooh don’t get me started on the fucking Swedes! Those BASTARDS. Maybe I’ll save that for another post – let’s just state for the record that Iceland rules and so do Sigur Ros.

34. Scooter – Ramp! (The Logical Song) (#2 June 2002)

Stop sniggering at the back. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of Scooter. Some of us fell for the Teutonic techno outfit’s charms back in the mid 90s around the time that gems such as ‘Move your Ass!’ were notching up moderate success in the singles charts, and it was always somewhat of a surprise that they didn’t reap greater rewards for their efforts in what was a fairly commercial field. But as always, the wheel carries on turning and those who persevere always end up rising to prominence at some point, which is what happened when the boys finally split the UK charts in two with ‘Ramp!’ in 2002 and kick started their most lucrative period in Britain.

Scooter’s bombastic style of ‘Stadium Techno’ is now so easy to recognize that they could adapt it to pretty much anything – Supertramp were first through the mangle, their ubiquitous ‘Logical Song’ given the Scooter treatment and transformed into a barrage of squeaky samples, cacophonous keyboard noises and incomprehensible gibberish barked over the whole thing by their hilarious MC HP Baxxter. The end product was wholeheartedly ridiculous yet very difficult to dislike and it was quite satisfying to see the British public finally embrace the band when ‘Ramp!’ launched a string of hit singles for the band in the early part of the decade. Their success also paved the way for a resurgent wave of clunky Euro-Rave in the shape of Basshunter, Cascada and a cluster of other acts who seized on the commercial potential of boisterous techno pop, a sound that had faded from fashion before Scooter revamped it with their breakthrough hit. And it wasn’t just a flash in the pan either – their best-of compilation coined it in and they even managed the impressive feat of knocking Madonna from the top of the album charts in 2008 when their ‘Jumping all over the world’ album gave them a surprise #1.

Now an almost inconceivable 15 years into their career, Scooter’s charms are as irresistible as ever – their unmistakable brand of ludicrous techno pillaging looks unlikely to go away as new generations of ravers, toddlers and embarrassed serious music fans fall prey to their undeniably enjoyable records. They’re not exactly Radiohead in terms of musical complexity, but sometimes you have to cast all that to one side and drive off in a huge rave bulldozer blasting out ‘Siberia! The place to be!’ at ear-splitting volume whilst a field full of nutters lose their shit raving to the nonsensical gibbering of a platinum blond German. What could be more logical than that?

33. The Automatic – Monster (#4 June 2006)

The line between addictively anthemic and horrendously irritating is a fine one, and staying on the right side of it depends on whether or not prolonged exposure to your biggest hit makes the public want to turn on you and beat you to death or not. The Automatic managed to stay just the right side of that line with ‘Monster’ in 2006, a track that proved so massively successful that it almost became their undoing – fortunately, it fell just short of passing into the realms of records that make you want to smash your radio into tiny pieces when you hear them and will instead go down as one of the decade’s most infectious singles.

The band emerged onto the fertile indie scene of the mid-noughties with a sound tailor made for the pop charts, a territory that had become newly accessible to guitar pop in a way that hadn’t been seen since the peak of Britpop ten years previously. Bands like The Kooks and Razorlight were making inroads into the upper reaches of the singles charts and challenging the most established pop acts for position at the very top of the chain – ‘Monster’ landed at the right time for a young band like the Automatic to decimate the mainstream with their debut single, and it soon became so unavoidable that even the band’s critics had to admit that they had penned a classic. Some indie bands looked on scornfully at the band’s commercial delivery, but they seemed largely unaffected by any negative press and capitalized on their success with a hit album and a string of high-profile TV appearances – but it was the song rather than the band that stuck in people’s minds and became so widely reappropriated that you heard it everywhere from football games to nightclubs to festivals and anywhere in between. Rumour has it that the song was even taken up by inmates to welcome sex offenders into prison at the height of its popularity. Now there’s notoriety for you.

Inevitably, they couldn’t follow it up with anything quite as successful and the band have faded from the limelight since their 2006 heyday although they are still touring and releasing records – some will saddle them with the tag of one-hit wonders, but in truth there’s nothing negative about the way they managed to conquer the mainstream so easily. ‘Monster’ remains four of the decade’s most infectious minutes and will live on in parodies, reproductions and compilation appearances for years to come. In the end, the beast they created fell some way short of destroying them – its status as a classic is assured.

32. The Ting Tings – That’s not my name (#1 May 2008)

Pop took on various new forms over the course of the last decade, and many of them saw it stepping away from big studio production and back towards making music in your bedroom. The original peaks of punk and rave both saw newer, more immediate channels to success opened up to generations of kids who didn’t have years of classical training behind them but did have some basic ingredients and a couple of good ideas – fast forward to the present day and we have a similar situation where thanks to internet publicity and easily accessible technology, you can fling out a #1 single in about five minutes if you put your mind to it.

The Ting Tings emerged seemingly from nowhere in 2008 with their addictive debut single ‘That’s not my name’, five minutes of squawked vocals, thumping drumbeats and rhythmic sampling that stuck in your head as soon as you heard it for the first time. Hyped up as one of the next big things that year along with a cluster of other hopefuls, they were the only ones to coin in with a genuine hit – the immediacy of their debut gave rise to the image of a fresh art school music project who had hit the big time, rather than a calculated studio affair (which was in fact a misconception – drummer Jules de Martino had been on the music scene since the mid 80s whilst singer Katie White previously supported Steps and Atomic Kitten in failed girlband TKO). Whatever the reality behind it, ‘That’s not my name’ showcased a duo with enough understanding of what works in pop to crank out hits in their sleep – parent album ‘We Started Nothing’ (another chart topper) contained ten potential hits and no filler, and success on the global pop market soon followed.

Some scoffed at the über trendy gimmickry of it all and you had to concede that the group were not going to be palatable to fans of the mainstream rock spectacle, but they proved their doubters wrong with a string of strong festival appearances and equally faultless follow-up singles, establishing themselves as one of pop’s heavy hitters as the decade closes. The best example of crafting a #1 out of nothing since White Town’s ‘Your Woman’ in the late 90s, ‘That’s not my name’ not only brought in quick returns in the singles charts but also set the group up as one to watch in future years.

31. Just Jack – Starz in their eyes (#2 January 2007)

You can hack away at crafting a hit single for years without ever hitting the target - most success boils down to either plain luck or hitting on an idea which leaves your rivals scratching their heads and wondering why they didn’t think of it first. Step forward Jack Allsop, aka Just Jack, a British hip hop artist who had been labouring inoffensively for several years until an appearance on Joolz Holland in 2007 launched him into the public sphere with a hit single that nailed the decade’s most prominent musical trend with a bit of savage analysis.

‘Stars in their eyes’ bit back at the rise of Reality TV which by its release in early 2007 had already dominated the media for the best part of a decade and was beginning to get a bit tiresome – as I’ve pointed out in other articles in this series, the TV phenomenon had also spilled into the singles charts which had suffered five years’ domination by the Pop Idol/X-Factor stable acts by the time Just Jack popped up and beat them at their own game. The track ripped into the artifice of taking glorified karaoke singers and mass-marketing them to the point of total saturation, leaving behind nothing but a trail of half-baked C-list celebrities and shitty records – sure, we were all thinking it but it took someone to actually knock together a hit single saying it. Allsop may have been one of the numerous middle class white kids trying to craft a convincing cockney accent to conjure up some previously non-existent street cred, but his delivery was smooth enough for us to overlook the Dick Van Dyke impersonation – ‘Stars in their eyes’ harked back to the nice guy hip hop of Jurassic Five and their ilk, the sort of people who you wish would breakthrough and put twerps like 50 Cent in their place but never seem to succeed. Follow up releases failed to match its popularity but ‘Starz’ remains one of the decade’s more likeable hit singles and one whose appeal will endure a lot longer than that of the Reality show muppets it derides.

Top 40 of the noughties : 30-21

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30. The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't let the bells end) (#2 December 2003)

What used to be a genuinely interesting contest over who would grab the prestigious mantle of Xmas #1 has long since descended into a dull one horse race dominated by the X-Factor’s build up over the weeks approaching the festive season leaving little doubt that the winner of that musical popularity contest will also walk away with the top slot in the Xmas charts. And if we’re being completely honest, even before reality telly took over the battle for the festive charts there was little in the way of interesting competition for the top slot, inevitably another notch on the chart bedpost of teenypop acts like Westlife or the Spice Girls or some ghastly toddler-friendly novelty record like Bob the Builder.

2003 stands out as the only year any of this would change, with the reality TV franchise cobbling together a weak cover of John Lennon’s ‘War is over’ only to finish third to a gripping face-off between two half-decent bids for the treasured festive top seller. The winner of the duel was the Donnie Darko-inspired remake of Tears for Fears’ ‘Mad World’ (more on that later) but the more vigorously festive of the two records was undoubtedly The Darkness’ barnstorming glam rock masterpiece ‘Christmas Time – Don’t let the bells end’. Reaching the end of 2003 on a massive high after a string of successful singles and a breakthrough debut album, the boys had made their name in the business of loud retro rock anthems and schoolboy humour, a style they would arguably showcase to greatest effect on their Xmas effort, a stadium-sized rock show closer packed with Finbarr Saunders style puns (‘Don’t let the bells end….just let them ring in peace’). It seized on the inherent silliness of the British Xmas experience and drew on the past classics of the 1970s where glam rock heavyweights duked it out for the top slot, giving a new generation another festive classic to indulge in bouts of drunken air guitar to at the office party for years to come.

Coining a Xmas classic is often confirmation of your ascension to pop royalty, yet for The Darkness conquering the festive charts would be the turning point in their career as the public began to get tired of the whole joke metal thing – they bagged one more hit from the first record before embarking on their troubled second album which, although not actually all that bad, met with critical savagery upon release and fell some way short of replicating the success of their debut. Nevertheless, Xmas compilations still honour their biggest moment and they can rest easy in the knowledge that Justin Hawkins’ rehab bills and hair transplants will surely be covered for years to come with royalties from this festive favourite.

29. My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade (#1 October 2006)

Certain #1 hits surprise audiences, presenting us with proof that sometimes the most unlikely songs tap into the public mindset and become best-sellers. Others are so obviously written to become chart-toppers that it would seem a monumental under-achievement to even see them come in at number two, and ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ belongs firmly in this category. A pompous, overblown broadway-style set piece created to usher in their third album, the single took the band from Kerrang-approved Goth Rock middleweights right to the top of the pop charts and made them into one of the biggest acts in mainstream rock for a while, turned singer Gerard Way into a genuine celebrity and pissed off most heavy metal fans so much that they became hate figures for the scene they were supposed to represent.

Crossing over from scene success to genuine mainstream fame takes a number of things, namely an accessible radio hit that draws in new audiences amongst kids who’ve never heard your music before whilst retaining enough of your original appeal to not alienate your more longstanding admirers. It also helps if you have a nice MTV friendly video and a look that chimes in with movements in pop culture – MCR had risen to prominence as standard goth rockers coated in eyeliner and black hair dye, but they revamped their image slightly in the run-up to their third album and presented their new look to the crowds at Reading 2006. The crowd turned on them violently, pelting them with bottles and slagging their poppier new direction, but behind the scenes they had put together a commercial package that would make it all worthwhile – ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ landed at the end of festival season and shot straight to the top slot. Just as The Offspring’s ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’ had thrust its creators into the mainstream after years of singles chart invisibility with a sanitized version of the music that made them famous and made pop punk a lucrative sales device, ‘Black Parade’ marked the point where the whole Hot Topic Emo Vampire thing became officially mainstream and therefore not cool anymore unless you were about 12. The press started freaking out that teenagers were now being drawn into some kind of sinister vampire suicide cult and suddenly you couldn’t sell anything to teenage girls unless it featured black hair, fake blood and cartoon goth imagery. The band soldiered on regardless and, if I’m being totally honest, actually managed to knock out a few decent singles in their new Broadway Emo style – punk purists sneered at them, but for my money MCR are easier to deal with as a massive mainstream rock spectacle than they were as just another vaguely ambitious goth rock troupe prior to the single’s success. At least when you’ve had a #1 single you don’t have to justify whether your new direction is working or not. Let the bottle throwers do their thing, MCR proved their point with this record and walked away as winners.

28. So Solid Crew - 21 Seconds (#1 August 2001)

Eek ! Scary gun-toting cockney oiks top the singles charts! Head for the hills tabloid journalists and prepare your fear-mongering articles about how it’s no longer safe to leave the house! These days almost a decade later, the whole UK Garage thing looks a little ridiculous and most of its leading lights have long since faded into obscurity but it’s worth remembering how big and threatening it all was back in 2001 when bad boy posturing, copycat American gangster rap and 2-step breaks ruled the airwaves.

‘Grime’ as a musical concept had an air of the ridiculous about it, but back in the early noughties there wasn’t much else going on in dance music to write home about and it was genuinely quite exciting to have something distinctly British dominating radio at the time – and where the music journalists left off, the tabloid press eagerly picked up the baton and spewed forth endless column inches panicking about the nefarious influence was having on the country’s youth. OK, So Solid were perhaps not the best role models for kiddie Britain – the posturing in their videos was not just a front and the distinctly unpleasant activities of many of the members soon stole the limelight from their music – but up against the distinctly inoffensive likes of Craig David, Artful Dodger and that excruciating ‘Do you really like it?’ record, ’21 Seconds’ stands out as the strongest single of the movement. Based around the principle that none of the featured rappers would get more than the title’s time slot to leave their mark on the track, it sounded like the equivalent of eight twokkers trying to chat up the same girl in a loud nightclub – none of them were particularly skilled lyricists and most of the content consisted of wholesale pilfering from the likes of infinitely superior Yank rap acts like the Wu Tang Clan. Yet for all its faults, the single was a memorable moment in chart history and one of the few examples of an original idea translating into massive chart success.

The Crew didn’t stay at the top of pop’s pecking order for long, due to various reasons including the fact that they never seemed to be able to decide how many people were in the band and the obvious drawback that those who were designated members seemed to spend more time in jail than onstage. Nearly ten years down the line, ’21 Seconds’ sounds as daft today as 2 Unlimited did at the end of the 90s but we should remember them for the force in pop they briefly were back in 2001 – the British record industry was thrown off balance for a short while in the face of this lot, and it’s good to shake the lazy buggers up once in a while.

27. The Gossip – Standing in the way of control (#7 April 2007)

The media was maybe getting hungry for another style icon in the mid-noughties – the airwaves and magazine pages were full of skinny little indie boys twanging guitars and penning odes to their mundane everyday existence. It was probably time for a sea-change, and what better way than to pluck the physical embodiment of the polar opposite to malnourished male indie adolescence and thrust it straight onto magazine covers?

Another NME staple, fronted by the lady voted ‘coolest person in rock 2007’ by scribes of the aforementioned indie rag/lifestyle guide, The Gossip made their presence felt via this particularly head-turning rock’n’soul moment in late 2006 – the track rose slowly to prominence, making a gradual ascent towards the top ten the way records used to back in the good old days before peaking at #7 in early 2007. Tapping into the nightclub friendly disco indie popular at the time, the band stood out for a number of reasons but the most obvious one was that their vocalist was HUGE – Beth Ditto, a product of trailer trash America looking like the lovechild of Roseanne Barr and Pavarotti, got people’s attention straight away with her larger-than-life stage persona and devastating vocals. However, it wasn’t just a gimmick – let’s not forget that one of the inherent advantages of being stacked like a sumo wrestler is that you can pump out vocals that the skinny girls can only dream of matching – Aretha Franklin, Jocelyne Brown, The Weathergirls, fat chicks have always had a place in pop as they’re the only ones whose physique allows them to spill drinks at the back bar with their voices. Ditto’s trademark yowl backed with the track’s pummeling indie disco production made it an instant dancefloor classic and a gateway to the charts for the group – though it outstripped their other singles by a long way, The Gossip are in no danger of fading off the back of one successful single as their more recent output and bitchslap brutal live show have proven.

Media sleazebags may have made a great deal about how awfully progressive they were being by promoting Beth as a style icon despite her noteworthy girth, but it all would have been totally token if she didn’t have the tunes to back it up with – and thankfully, she did! No Rik Waller this one! And if the by-product was that magazines decided to ditch the boney bitches for a while in favour of ladycurves then so much the better – The Gossip became your girlfriend’s favourite band overnight because she could bust one out on the dancefloor to their music and then go home and feel comparatively slim looking at the CD cover. Everyone’s a winner!

26. The Killers - Mr Brightside (#9 September 2004)

Indie has historically been the refuge of those cast out from the mainstream due to their reluctance to compromise artistically in favour of musical sincerity and sticking to their vision. This is all very well if you’re a bunch of Wakefield holier-than-thou types like The Cribs (don’t get me wrong, they did some good singles too but none of them made this list) but when you’re a mormon cabaret act from Las Vegas it doesn’t really cut it spending years doing the upstairs at the pub circuit when your music is tailor made for gargantuan stadium venues and moments of indie disco ephiphany where entire dancefloors bellow your lyrics out at the top of their voices, eyes shut and fists raised like participants in some religious cult with snakebite spilled down their T-shirts.

That The Killers were aiming for the stars from the very beginning is hardly surprising. That they succeeded in reaching them is what’s impressive – even the indie luminaries of the early 2000s (Strokes, White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand) pitched their product at the NME set of punters, and though their records sold in massive quantities they still failed to bring in the sort of not-too-bothered-with-music types who were buying Lightning Seeds albums in the 90s. This is where the Vegas boys, and ‘Mr Brightside’ in particular, came in – despite the fact that their keyboard-propelled Hollywood indie seemed rooted in a land far, far away and lacked the kitchen-sink realism that virtually everyone in British indie was trying to cram into their material, The Killers were the sort of immense proposition that became accessible to pretty much everybody whether or not they were Match of the Day slobs or pretentious indie hipsters. ‘Mr Brightside’ was their breakthrough success and took over the mantle from James’ ‘Laid’ as the kind of record that could ignite indie club dancefloors despite being more of a mainstream chart hit than anything else. Impressively, it was far from the only solid gold pop hit on their debut album ‘Hot Fuss’ – they bagged another two massive hits and even managed to lodge album track ‘All these things that I’ve done’ into public consciousness (it even returned to the charts this year as a charity ensemble effort, surely proof that they’ve entered pop royalty).

‘Mr Brightside’ isn’t the band’s only great moment – like many entries on this list, it was simply the first of their singles to cross over into the mainstream and many others since then have done the same. As the decade closes they remain one of the nation’s best-loved groups, still able to rope in serious indie audiences and Tesco music section plebs whilst their music stays just the right side of pompous and ridiculous. If we ever get a ‘Life on Mars’ style TV series set back in the noughties several decades down the line, you can bet that one of their songs will be playing in the background whilst proto-mulleted youngsters lounge around playing Sudoku on their I-phones. The soundtrack to an era? Probably.

25. Michael Andrews & Gary Jules - Mad World (#1 December 2003)

Pop music is at its most satisfying when something truly unique and unexpected rises to the top of the charts just because it strikes a chord with the public. Nobody would have bet on a minimalist rehash of Tears for Fears’ 80s classic ‘Mad World’ becoming a massive success over the festive period in 2003, and for that matter I don’t think most people expected Donnie Darko, the film whose soundtrack provided the track to make much of an impact either. Just goes to show that we need to sit back and let nature take its course sometimes, letting film and music make their waves with the general public without interfering too much with them and surveying the results afterwards.

Culled from the same Xmas chart campaign as The Darkness’ marvelous ‘Christmas Time (Don’t let the bells end’), ‘Mad World’ actually pipped the glam rockers to the top slot and romped home to massive sales in the lucrative festive singles market. It seemed an odd choice for Xmas #1, a bit of a morose number for what is usually a fairly jaunty time of year – however, take Xmas out of the season and you’re left with the bleak mid-winter, a period where folks like to curl up in the warmth and chill out to something peaceful. The unlikely 80s cover tapped into that mindset perfectly – one of the reasons 80s chart hits have been such popular choices for cover versions since their first spell in the top 40 is that a lot of the originals were so marked by the production of the time that a modern rehash can turn them into totally different tunes – the new version of ‘Mad World’ stripped the track back to its bare bones and brought out a hitherto unseen element of sensitivity and reflection at the heart of the song, putting this at the fore over a stirring piano backing to pretty powerful effect. The subject matter of madness at the heart of society chimed in with the film’s own theme, one that many audiences completely misunderstood when they saw it – and I’m glad they did, it’s nice to have to dig for meaning a little rather than to be slapped round the face with ‘message movies’ just to make sure you weren’t asleep during the key moments. The mates who watched the film with me spent most of it cackling at the giant bunny rabbit and thought the whole thing was a waste of time but it struck a chord with me and has stood up to repeated viewings – ‘Mad World’ works for the same reasons, it’s not an obvious choice for a festive hit but it stands out as one of the only truly memorable Xmas hits of the decade and one that it would have been hard to predict even weeks before it landed. Try imagining that when you’re watching X-Factor’s blanket TV coverage in mid-November and see how exciting the whole thing feels in comparison.

24. The View - Same Jeans (#3 January 2007)

If I were compiling this list based purely on personal preference and filling it with the tracks that crop up on my I-Pod most frequently, this would be top by several country miles. Not exactly the most original indie anthem from the fertile post-Arctic Monkeys period of 2006/07, ‘Same Jeans’ was derided by purists for nicking the chord structure from Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’ – whether it did or not is irrelevant of course, a good riff is a good riff, it’s what you wrap it in that determines whether or not the song is going to be a hit. Which ‘Same Jeans’ was, shooting to #3 in early 2007 to complete a trilogy of fantastic singles from the young Dundonians and paving the way for their debut album ‘Hats off to the buskers’ to top the charts a couple of weeks later.

Performers over the course of the decade have made a lot of their supposed origins, laying on exaggerated versions of their own actions to lend their music a gritty, real quality and provide a sense of location to what could otherwise be empty, vapid sentiment. The View may have let their distinctly Scottish twang seep into their music but there was nothing forced about it – their debut album focused almost exclusively on stuff that happened on the Dundee estate in which they grew up, yet there was none of the kitchen-sink melodrama you’d expect from such subject matter, rather a glorious collection of pop songs and nuggets of everyday life for the boys. ‘Same Jeans’ picks a snapshot of personal philosophy amidst all that, extolling the glories of being an essentially scruffy bugger and staying true to yourself, saluting buskers for their tenacity in the face of grim reality and generally reveling in the moment at hand. It was as life-affirming as it was deceptively simple, all topped off with a ‘Paradise City’ style wig-out tagged on the end to pump up concert audiences to a state of delirium. And, as I have pointed out elsewhere on this blog, it remains the only top three hit ever to feature the word ‘c*nt’ (listen to the second chorus – that’s Scotland for you). Despite flinging out what to my mind was a brilliant second album earlier this year with several potential smash hits on it, the band have faded from view (no pun intended) since their meteoric rise with this single but I wouldn’t bet on them staying away from the charts for too long. In the meantime, this slice of Caledonian rag-tag indie rock remains one of the most ‘barry’ moments of the noughties.

23. Lily Allen - Smile (#1 July 2006)

The decade would have been considerably duller without Lily, a fine example of British womanhood who showed the world why our females are so great – she’s a good laugh, she likes to party and she doesn’t take any crap from people. Another star to seemingly emerge from nowhere with a smash hit single, ‘Smile’ launched her into the charts in 2006 where she has managed to stay since then without losing the cheeky appeal that made her stand out from the pack in the first place.

Having spent most of her childhood getting kicked out of public schools for drinking and smoking, the singles charts seemed to be a natural outlet for Lily’s bratty persona and ‘Smile’ gave her the perfect vehicle to take her there. A four minute paen a dead relationship where her estranged lover seeks to reconcile with her, she takes great pleasure in rebuffing his miserable arse and rubbing his nose in it – such subject matter in the mouth of an American R’n’B diva would have seemed unnecessarily bitchy, but Lily managed to make the whole thing quite endearing and it brought her cheeky personality into the limelight for the first time. Future releases have only built on this, even making a minor celebrity out of her younger brother Alfie thanks to her ode to him staying in his bedroom all day smoking dope and wanking. Her brash, colourful debut ‘Alright Still’ featured an impressive roster of similar jabs at life around her, backed up by an online blog on which she seemed to take potshots at virtually everybody – her most popular target remains Girls Aloud’s Cheryl Cole, darling of the media but an obvious hate figure for a generation of young women for whom she’s just too bloody pretty. I quite like Cheryl Cole and there’s even a Girls Aloud tune in this countdown, but I’m still glad that ladies from both ends of the spectrum get to co-exist in pop music – Lily, at least when she first arrived on the market, broke the mould from what was expected from female performers and surprised many by becoming a sex symbol despite being obnoxious, lairy and not exactly skeletal. She’s lost a bit of podge since then (boo!) but she’s retained the status of the sort of bird you could go for a pint with and still take home at the end of the night. Good girlfriend material overall, although as more than one person has pointed out you’d have to be careful if you ever dated here – one false move and you’d find yourself the subject matter of a song on her next album where she goes into great detail about how crap you were in bed. Maybe best leave her to songwriting then, and ‘Smile’ remains the finest slice of gobby chart bothering of the last few years. Without Lily, the charts would be a much more boring place.

22. Sean Paul - Like Glue (#3 July 2003)

Reggae is one of the few chart trends that never truly goes out of fashion, it just comes around again and again. Roughly once every ten years to be exact : Bob Marley’s first ascent into the European charts dates back to the early 70s, the wave of Jamaican influenced British Ska laid waste to the UK charts in the early 80s with The Specials, Bad Manners et al and back in 1993 you couldn’t move for Shaggy, Shabba Ranks and co at the upper end of the charts. Back in 2003, it was the turn of a Jamaican former water polo player to pick up the baton and stamp his mark all over the global pop music scene.

You literally couldn’t escape Sean Paul when his commercial breakthrough album ‘Dutty Rock’ landed in 2002 – it gave him four massive hits in his own right and also provided him with lucrative guest vocal slots with Beyoncé and Blu Cantrell, clocking up half a dozen global smashes in barely twelve months. As with most Jamaican musicians, it’s the delivery that does it and Paul’s pop-ragga intonation struck a chord with worldwide audiences to the point where it seemed he could read out the contents of his tax return in thick Jamaican brogue and it would probably go top ten. ‘Like Glue’ is the third of his hits from 2003, landing in the middle of summer to provide the soundtrack of many a bump’n’grind dancefloor session and bringing in outside audiences to an extent not seen since Shabba’s infamous ‘Mr Loverman’ and Reel 2 Real’s equally inescapable ‘I like to move it’ ten years previously. Even if you didn’t like ragga, it was hard not to have a bit of hip wiggle to this one.

The success of ‘Dutty Rock’ and its faultless run of singles was always going to be tough to repeat, although he did have a decent go with 2005’s ‘The Trinity’ which provided the infectious ‘We be burnin’ and US Chart Topper ‘Temperature’, but by then his status as the man to turn your song into a hit had been usurped by the likes of Timbaland and Kanye West. As talented as those two are, they haven’t given us anything that can plaster a silly grin over you face like Sean Paul’s chart-friendly Jamaican pop, and ‘Like Glue’ remains one of those tracks you can whack on at a party and get everyone winding and grinding in unison.

21. Kelis - Milkshake (#2 January 2004)

There’s a key moment at the end of one of my favourite films of the decade, ‘There Will Be Blood’, where Daniel Day Lewis’ terrying incarnation Daniel Plainview turns on his nemesis Eli Sunday and works himself up into a fit of murderous rage as he details how he has already drained his rival’s oilfields. The metaphorical use of the milkshake has never been quite so powerful – that is, not since Kelis rolled it out for her signature tune in 2004 and sent booties across the globe into a state of uncontrolled shakyness, leaving carnage in its wake and providing us with one of the most infectious records of the decade.

‘Milkshake’ is one of those annoying records that I had to include on this list despite not really being able to describe why I like it so much. It’s just fucking cool. I don’t even know what exactly she is referring to as her ‘milkshake’ (although I have my suspicions that it might be quite rude) but it sounds really quite alluring and in any case she is quite insistent on the fact that her milkshake is infinitely better than mine ever could be, so much so that a full explanation on why this is would be the subject of a fee-bearing service. The nerve of this lady! Anyway, using a fast food pun with such panache deserves no small amount of credit – imagine a male R’n’B artist like R.Kelly attempting acts of seduction with his ‘Flame-Grilled Whopper’ and the results would certainly not be the same. Having already established herself as a force in pop with the cathartic masterpiece ‘Caught out there’ (you know, the one where she yells ‘I hate you so much right now! AAAARRGH!’ over a funky beat) and her groovetastic collaboration with the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard on ‘Got your money’, ‘Milkshake’ heralded an unstoppable run of three top three hits in 2004 and made her into one of pop’s biggest treasures. Like Jamelia’s utterly fanastic ‘Superstar’, which I nearly included on this list but elected to leave out in place of Sigur Ros at the last minute for the sake of diversity, ‘Milkshake’ is one of those instances in pop where the ingredients just seem to gel perfectly – R’n’B as a genre can be a bit hit and miss, but those rare moments where you chuck the right combination of elements into the mixer and whisk yourself up a classic single are satisfying in a way other styles cannot match. This was one of them, and should be treasured as such. And for the record I would gladly take up the opportunity to partake in some milkshake with Kelis, or indeed any other beverage of her choosing. No please Ma’am, put your wallet away, it’s my treat. Shall I call us a taxi?

Top 40 of the noughties : 20-11

2009-11-16T23:21:00.013+01:00

20. Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb (#10 January 2004)

The sign of a true landmark pop group is that it often becomes impossible to imagine mainstream music without them around, infiltrating public consciousness to the point where it seems the artist has always been at the forefront of the market selling shitloads of records and turning up on the radio everytime you go to the supermarket. Scissor Sisters occupied this position for much of the middle part of the decade, their fun-packed debut album landing in early 2004 and spawned numerous hit singles before follow-up 'Ta-Dah!' and its inescapable lead single 'I don't feel like dancing' continued the trend two years later. Both albums topped the charts and dominated sales, their debut edging out Keane's infinitely less cheery 'Hopes and Fears' to claim the mantle of 2004's best-seller whilst its successor came close to repeating the feat in 2006, and their reign over the world of pop seemed impregnable for a good portion of the mid-noughties.

So let's trace the campaign back to its origins - emerging from the New York gay scene and named after a slang term for lesbians, the band announced their arrival on planet pop with the strangest possible choice for a debut single : a Pink Floyd cover. Their high-pitched disco revamp of Floyd's stadium staple 'Comfortably Numb' defied doubters by managing to respect the spirit of the original despite changing it into an almost unrecognisable beast - Roger Water's drugged-up paranoid lyrics were yelped out Bee Gees style over a pulsating club beat, dragging the song onto the dancefloor and into a new era. Many critics expecting to hate it were surprised at how much they liked the band's cover, and its release in Janaury of 2004 set things up for the band to dominate the rest of the year with a string of excellet singles to emerge as lords of the manor as it drew to a close 11 months later. The high-octane fun of their debut may have been dulled through over exposure and the slightly disappointing follow-up, but back in the halycon days of their first album the sisters were pop's brighest sparks - after years of lumpen guitar rock like Travis and white bread soul à la Dido, the charts had been taken back over by a pop act worthy of the name. Say what you like about Scissor Sisters a few years down the line - the decade would have been boring without them.

19. O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei (#3 April 2004)

One thing the last decade has lacked has been a bit of decent Europop. After the 90s provided us with an absolute deluge of cheesy yet loveable Eurodance in the shape of 2 Unlimited, Aqua et al, the noughties have been a barren land for all that is goonish, continental and generally ridiculous. The genre has been revived slightly towards the end of the decade with the rise of acts like Cascada but even they seem to fling out more crappy cover versions rather than original material. The one bresh of fresh Euro air came in 2004 from the most unlikely of places and went on to utterly dominate the European charts in the way that only the massive Eurodance hits of the previous decade could have managed.

Moldovan pop trio O-Zone had notched up success in Eastern Europe in the decade’s early years but they were understandably invisible anywhere further West due mostly to the fact that their songs were all in Romanian – however, their style of brash bouncy Europop coupled with flambouyant videos and metrosexual pop attire endeared them to many and their hopes of notching a truly international hit were realised when ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ hit airwaves in 2003. The track, a ludicrous Euro dance club hit whose lyrics read more like a folk song than a pop hit (the title translates as something along the lines of ‘Love under the linden trees’), was one of those tunes that tapped into the collective light-heartedness of every European territory – including the UK where it reached #3, a virtually unheard of feat for a non-English language record. The track, backed by a decidedly silly video featuring the three band members dancing on the wing of a plane, reached the top of the charts in virtually every European country – the only exceptions were Italy and Sweden, where imitation versions were rush-released to beat the group to the domestic charts. We hadn’t seen this since the halcyon days of Whigfield and KWS in the 90s, where summer dance tracks swept the continent so quickly that record companies could hardly keep up with things and multiple versions of the songs would jostle for position on the charts of every country. Viral video versions of the track swept the States whilst a Spanish parody version conquered the South American market, and for a while it seemed like you would have to try pretty hard to find anywhere on planet Earth where the song wasn’t a hit single.

‘Dragostea Din Tei’ is hardly the most well-crafted song on this list, but I decided to include it as a novelty as it’s one of the hits from the last decade that nobody really saw coming. Having the entire planet bounce around to the same (admittedly not very good) tune gave us all a brief sense of unity under the same banner of cheesy pop music. For a short period it felt like you could stop wars with this tune, and although it will doubtless go down as one of the cheesiest tracks of the era I would rather pick it out as an example of how penning a catchy hit can catapult you to the top of every chart on the planet if you pitch it right. Moldova’s best export since……erm….well…..

18. Missy Elliot - Get ur freak on (#4 March 2001)

For reasons best known to themselves, NME writers decided to forgoe guitar music at the dawn of the decade and instead begin fawning over R'n'B and Hip Hop records to an unprecedented extent - maybe this was because there was only so excited you could get by the likes of Starsailor and Toploader, but the new focus on Black American music revealed some decent tunesmiths and captivating performers, none more loveable than Missy Elliot. Having arrived into the chart landscape of the late 90s alongside Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, Missy eschewed the edgy gangster rap trappings of the former in order to cater her music towards pop radio and club dancefloors, flinging out two decent albums, a cluster of memorable hits and some groundbreaking videos in the process.

By the time the new decade dawned, she had forged a partnership with new producer extraordinaire Timbaland and unleashed 'Ger Ur Freak On' in early 2001 to instant chart success and critical acclaim. The production was hailed as groundbreaking at the time, combining Indian tablas and Hindi vocal samples with Elliot's trademark delivery but what made the track a breakthrough hit was the catchy vocal hook and the stop/start rhythmic bounciness of it all. The title of parent album 'Miss E....So Addictive' pretty much encapsulated the direction of Missy's new material - it was full of infectious,
immediate pop hits, and also gave a slightly confusing nod towards the emergent trend of ectsasy use in Hip Hop circles. Whether drugs had any role in the creation of 'Get Ur Freak On' is besides the point though - you wouldn't need to be chemically refreshed to become seized with the irrepressible urge to boogie to this, it was practically impossible to sit still when it came on the radio. Still sounding fresh nearly ten years down the line, the track laid things out for a decade of pop princesses à la Beyoncé, Kelis, Rhianna and countless others to come along and clean up with super-production R'n'B megahits - whilst they produced some undeniably great moments, few could rival Missy's breakthrough success in terms of sheer originality and unorthodox appeal. Classic pop for the noughties, this one will run and run.

17. Britney Spears - Toxic (#1 January 2004)

We all love a bit of Britney don't we? Mind you, you can pick and choose your moments - whilst she's been the mouthpiece for some of the catchiest pop tunes of the decade, she's also found herself thrust into the foreground of some truly awful pieces of cynical pop-exploitation, vulgar image rebranding and shittier-than-actual-shit plastic pop music. Since emerging clad in Catholic schoolgirl garb in 1999, her image is one that has run throughout the decade in pop culture - from her debut as a wide-eyed nymphette sworn to pre-marital chastity through to her failed marriage and ensuing shaven-headed single mother blunderings, she's been the quintessential image of the decade much in the same way Madonna was in the 1980s (although you have to admit that Madge in her heyday did seem a little more worldly wise than Britney in the noughties, who seemed happy to frolic around doing pretty much whatever her producer told her if it would sell records).

'Toxic' captures the blond bombshell at a mid-career high - taken from her fourth album 'In the Zone', the track repeated the trick of Missy Elliot's 'Get Ur Freak On' (see previous entry!) in sampling Bollywood breaks and crafted a slinky, sexy dancefloor number for Spears to frolic over in the memorable video (feast your eyes on it here). It marked her passage to a different period in her life as a perfomer - whilst her beginnings were mired in clunky Max Martin Disney pop production, by 2004 she was starting to morph into a slightly more credible perfomer, freed of the squeaky adolescent naivety of her debut and newly matured into a sassier, seductive perfomer who could take on a potential hit like 'Toxic' and give it the delivery it needed to go global. Much like Kylie's image rebranding circa 'Better the devil you know', 'Toxic' cast Britney in a different light and made many onlookers cast aside their cynicism for a moment to admit how much they actually liked the track. Follow-up ballad 'Everytime' was equally effective and the video showcased Britney in an apparent suicide attempt, and it looked like the starlet was headed towards a new performance era as a relatively serious pop prospect.

Sadly, it didn't last - a crap Bobby Brown cover came and went before her premature Greatest Hits collection landed in late 2004 to effectively draw the curtain on the first act of her career. A prolonged absence would follow during which she spent more time in the press for her bumbling actions in her troubled private life than for her music, but she returned later in the decade with another global hit ('Womanizer') and seemed good for a few more years onstage before she finally loses her marbles permanently. As the noughties draw to a close, let's try to remember her as the nubile supervixen of the 'Toxic' era rather than the calamitous descent into Hollywood purgatory that followed.

16. t.A.T.u - All the things she said (#1 August 2002)

Despite what seems like an endless stream of soundalike British and American acts dominating the pop landscape, the noughties have actually been quite musically diverse, at least in the geographical origins of the decade's biggest stars. Aside from longstanding strongholds such as Jamaica and Sweden, some of the biggest acts internationally have succesfully made the transition from stars in their own backyard to global pop phenomena - whilst Shakira is the most obvious example having traded in Latin American ubiquity for planet-straddling megastardom and a string of hits, Russia's t.A.T.u were the first to really step up a notch internationally back in 2002 with the notorious debut English-language release.

Having been groomed for pop stardom by a pop svengali in their homeland much in the same way Britney and Christina were in the States (plucked from kiddie pop troupes and marketed as a slightly salacious pop music act for the global market once they became legal), the girls shared many characteristics with the likes of Miss Spears - their debut video saw them dolled up as schoolgirls in the pouring rain, engaging in a spot of girl on girl snogging designed to back the somewhat unconvincing idea that the two were lesbians (later debunked by the girls themselves, claiming 'We've always advocated love with boundaries'). Weirdly enough, it wasn't actually as crass as it could have been - whilst Britney Spears prancing around in schoolgirl garb despite preaching pre-marital abstinence had all the trappings of middle American morality, t.A.T.u's take on the formula seemed to have a bit more Soviet mystique around it - bizarre follow-up moves such as their cover of the Smiths' 'How Soon is Now?' and narrowly failing to win Eurovision in 2003 only enhanced their image as one of pop' more weird and wonderful creations, as did the fact that the English translation of their lyrics often made very little sense. Success in the UK faltered after the mid-00s but they continue to pull audiences in South America and Japan (surprise!) and as the decade closes they rank as Russia's most successful pop act of all time. Their debut ranks as one of the biggest international hits of the noughties and ranks alongside Roman Abramovich's arrival in London as Russia's greatest cultural gift to the decade - Lord only knows what those crazy Kremlinites have in store for us over the next ten years.

15. Fischerspooner - Emerge (#25 July 2002)

We’ve been a wee bit short-changed for dance music since the turn of the millennium – compare the myraid trends and shifts over the course of the 1990s to the feeble attempts at crafting something new in the post 2000 landscape and you have to admit that there’s not really anything on a par with breakbeat, jungle or trip-hop. However, that didn’t stop people trying and there were a couple of bubbles of fresh air in there – UK Garage, New Rave and the neon beast that briefly threatened to devour the charts in the early 2000s : Electroclash.

There wasn’t really anything particularly complicated about Electroclash, it was just another shift in club culture that allowed dance music to gravitate towards festival stages and mingle with the big name rock acts. Acts such as The Rapture and Chicks on Speed succeeded in filling hipster playlists with their take on the formula, but it was Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner who set their sights on Rolling Stones-sized venues with their new band of stadium electro. ‘Emerge’ was their mission statement, a slow building club thumper that gradually whipped up into an absolute frenzy. Although their confrontational interviews took place largely in the rock press, the tunes were 100% suited to the dancefloor – unlike the later New Rave explosion, the best parts of electroclash could work in any club across the world without relying on the hipster contingent on the dancefloor to get things started. Immediate, ambitious and self-consciouly massive, the track should have been #1 across the entire planet but in the end just stalled in the mid 20s and disappeared soon afterwards. Consider this one of the decade’s great injustices – for once we had a track set to split the mainstream in two like the best rave classics of yester year but it missed the moment for some reason. Like Andrew WK’s awesome ‘Party Hard’, the tune pinpointed a moment in time and whilst it wasn’t an anthem to millions, it became a party staple for the privileged few. A tinge of nostalgia creeps over me when I think of nights out spiraling out of control to this one – as the soundtrack to a nightclub boiling over into total neo-rave frenzy, there was nothing better suited.

14. Bloc Party - Helicopter (#29 October 2004)

Indie underwent quite a transformation over the course of the decade, losing its way early on in a deluge of thrashy, tuneless 'garage rock' à la The Hives, The Vines, Jet, The Datsuns and many more like them penning two minute guitar fests extolling the virtues of being young, reckless and really rather dumb. Student Union types were bound to reclaim the dancefloors after a while and their flagship band became Bloc Party, themselves a bunch of skinny introverts looking like the Physics department reps on an episode of University Challenge.

I'll admit to judging Bloc Party on their appearance and dismissing their music as trendy student bollocks before actually listening to it properly - once I bought their bombastic debut album on a whim, I was pleasantly surprised at how much it actually rocked. Jam packed with potential singles and future live favourites, 'Helicopter' remains my favourite track on the record as it embodies what the band do so well - tightly wound and rhythmically vibrant, it chops along much like the vehicle in the title and comes suited to both indie dancefloors and bedroom philosophy sessions for the timid student in all of us. Whilst the acts that had dominated indie in the years prior to BP's emergence had favoured big, dumb and loud over intimate, clever and complex, the band marked a sea change in the genre by favouring emotional depth and sober analysis of the world around them (the track, according to some, is about George W Bush). What's more, it is perhaps the best display of the band's nimble fingered musicianship - unlike two-chord trogs like Jet, these guys were pretty handy with their instruments and didn't shy away from showing it (I saw 'em live for the first time this summer and the stage show ups the ante even more - these guys are tight).

Like many of my favourite bands (Stone Roses, Smiths), the band have declined to rely soley on the album format and have put out many of their best moments as non-album singles (Two More Years, Flux, Little Thoughts) - 'Helicopter' may not have been one of them, but as one of five tracks on their debut album to grace the singles charts, it stands as one of the moments that launched them as one of the best singles bands of the decade. Five years and numerous hits down the line, the band's future remains uncertain - even if, as rumours suggest, we may have seen the last of them the memories triggered by their music will only be positive ones. Choppy, danceable and intelligent, 'Helicopter' is the sound of indie shedding dead weight and re-emerging lean and mean for its strongest period of the decade.

13. Kaiser Chiefs - I predict a riot (#9 August 2005)

There’s about a zillion quizzes on Facebook asking you to name celebrities based on photos of them from back before they were famous, culled from high school yearbooks or childhood sports team photos. I haven’t checked out whether Kaiser Chiefs are in there yet, but chances are I’d be able to pick out at least a couple of them quicker than I did when I saw them on the cover of the NME on a plane back from Dublin – hungover and slightly confused, I had to flip backwards and forwards between the band interview and the cover photo before it eventually dawned on me : ‘Holy Crap! That’s Ricky fucking Wilson!!’.

Which, ironically, was exactly what he was hoping would happen in the interview inside – a frustrated pop star who’d been treading water for years as front man to the thoroughly unremarkable Runston Parva, Wilson and his cronies underwent an image re-tuning in the mid 2000s and re-emerged as an out-and-out pop group and set to work chronicling their everyday lives in Leeds on their debut album ‘Employment’. ‘I predict a riot’ was one of four incredible singles culled from the record and is arguably the most recognizable, a bombastic pop headrush detailing a night out in central Leeds in impressively witty fashion – sure, it was in vogue at the time to make your lyrics as familiar as possible to young British audiences but nobody did it in quite as clever a fashion as Wilson with couplets like ‘I tried to get to my taxi/A man in a tracksuit attacked me’. You didn’t need to have spent your formative years against the backdrop he was singing about to get the joke, and thousands did as the album sold by the truckload and the singles ruled the airwaves for what seemed like forever.

Wit is a valuable commodity in pop music – not everyone has it, Alex Turner has certainly retained it and Ricky Wilson may have seen his contributions reap lesser returns as the decade has progressed but he will still be remembered as one of the era’s cheekier raconteurs. ‘I predict a riot’ still gets a dancefloor going to this day and remains a timely reminder of that point in the middle of the decade where it seemed the British indie kids that had been struggling to gain recognition for years all suddenly got their dues at the same time. The subject matter may have been a less than glowing image of modern Britain, but the musical output was a great example of the kind of thing us Brits can be fiercely proud of.

12. Andrew WK - Party Hard (#19 October 2001)

A passing fad to the cynics out there, for his followers Andrew WK was a hairy bolt of energy into an indie scene too wrapped up in itself to just knuckle down to some serious rocking for a change. Once The Strokes had broken through to the mainstream, the NME had acts queuing up at the door begging for a spot on the cover as the next big thing – Andrew WK was one of the first in line and duly bagged his space on a double fold out cover in late 2001 under the banner ‘so good we have to put him on the cover twice!’ and the hype machine was in motion.

None of this would have mattered if he didn’t have the tunes to back it up, but one spin of his unspeakably fantastic debut single silenced all doubters – ok, maybe not all of them but anyone trying to voice criticism over the deafening wall of guitars that ushered in ‘Party Hard’ would have had a job making themselves heard. Seeing him perform the track live brought home exactly how simple the whole thing was – three enormous guitarists all playing the same riff, bass and drums straight off the death metal circuit (tubthumper Donald Tardy previously warmed the drumstool in Florida DM legends Obituary), plinky plonky piano lines and vocals that sounded like a werewolf coaching a rugby team, the track was the most thrilling three minutes in years and duly sent nightclub dancefloors into sweaty delirium every time it was played. I can’t describe how much I loved this record when I first heard it, and I still stick it on fairly regularly when I’m on my way to work half awake. Parent album ‘I get wet’ (featuring an infamous cover shot of WK bloodied from the nose down after a stage-diving mishap) was full of more of the same and Andrew briefly became the new face of fun for the indie renaissance of 2001.

Many didn’t get the joke of course (tour mates The Coral derided WK as a ‘sweaty fucking gimp’ during their nationwide jaunt the following year) and the chart performance of ‘Party Hard’ (an impressive yet still slightly underwhelming #19) contributed to his swift categorization as a one-hit wonder. It was never going to be career-building stuff, but this list is all about moments that have marked the decade and for me, ‘Party Hard’ sticks out like the memory of a particularly good night out. Loud, brash and thoroughly irresponsible, it’s still the quickest way to put a smile on my face after all these years.

11. Kasabian - Club Foot (#19 May 2004)

The musical landscape of the decade hasn’t been marked by a wave of never-heard-before trends like those seen in previous eras – much of what has topped the listings over the last ten years has been stuff that those of us who’ve been around a while have heard before plenty of times. The thing is, we’re probably not the ones out there buying the records – as has always been the case, the people deciding what gets into the singles charts are ‘the kids’, and they have pretty short memories. Plus, they don’t spend ages analyzing what are essentially floor-filling, crowd-pleasing mass appeal anthems trying to find some hidden meaning – they’re too busy out there having a good time to care whether the soundtrack has been around before.

I’m maybe being a little hard on Kasabian here – they’re not totally unoriginal, but a large portion of their style has been pilfered wholesale from the likes of Primal Scream, Stone Roses and any number of indie bands whose time in the sun dates back to the early 90s. But if we’re going to compare them to anyone from the previous decade, the obvious choice is Oasis whose fanbase they had succeeded in casually usurping over the course of the last few years – the Gallagher brothers weren’t re-inventing the wheel either when their debut landed in the charts, but they did succeed in bringing droves of lagered-up football fans into the record shops to partake of the phenomenon, something most of their contempories failed to do. Kasabian preached to the same congregation and saw their music instantly coupled with pissed-up festival crowds, smelly soccer hooligans and clusters of beery blokery at kicking out time in pub car parks across the nation. These are people you would rather not get stuck next to at a gig but it was hard to begrudge them their band of choice – Kasabian’s familiar blend of indie and dance provided the ideal soundtrack for a lairy night out or the half-time lull at Premier League games, it was entertainment for the masses and there was nothing round with that. ‘Club Foot’, to finally get onto the record at hand, was their debut statement of intent and pretty much sums up what they do well in four minutes – the lyrics are meaningless drivel, the music blunt force proto-Madchester thuggery and the delivery verging on boorish and irritating, but the end product was irresistible. More would follow in the same vein, but nobody’s looking tired of it for the time being.

Now that Oasis have finally closed the book, the lads from Kasabian wasted no time in declaring to the NME that they were now Britain’s biggest band – they might have some way to go before matching Noel & Liam’s vice-like grip over the nation’s airwaves back in the day, but for the moment you’d have to agree that there are few other serious contenders for the place at the top of British guitar music’s food chain. With a third hit album under their belts and pummeling live show to back it up with, there’s no sign of these guys dropping the ball any time soon.

2000 : The Death of Pop

2009-11-15T14:11:00.008+01:00

Reality TV pop is going to come in for quite a bit of (richly deserved) stick on this blog, but we should at least acknowledge that it only conquered the pop landscape of the early noughties because there was very little to stand in its way. Pop music at the turn of the millennium was in such a sorry state that someone needed to come along and put it out of its misery so that the genre could be stripped back to its roots and revived at a later date to greater effect - which it was, at least in my opinion. It was hardly surprising that given the dearth of new ideas and industry preference for quick fix gimmicks, cheap and tacky marketing techniques and a universally recognised decline in the quality of hit singles (it's not just me, honest), pop would be taken over at one of its lowest ebbs to be rebranded and repackaged for a new generation of punters.

Those of you who've perused my laborious trawl through 90s boy and girlbands will have picked up on the perceived sea change in general culture over the course of the decade which I feel was reflected in pop music, most obviously in the lucrative sphere of teeny pop. Pop music has always been important as a soundtrack to the times, even if the general quality of the recorded output can vary drastically. Look back at the 1980s and you'll find no end of great pop music from the first half of the decade (Early Hip Hop, New Romantic, Synth Pop, British Ska, New Wave, MJ's 'Thriller', Prince, Kim Wilde, Cyndi Lauper, Blondie, The Police, The Jam, the list goes on) - whilst most of the aforementioned produced sounds that were configured for maximum chart success, they nevertheless allowed room for creativity and innovation, allowing popular music to evolve and advance at the same rhythm as popular culture in general. Go to any 80s night on the planet and chances are you'll hear a lot of stuff the pre-1985 era, pop gems you can throw shapes on the dancefloor to without indulging in any kind of raised-eyebrow post-modern irony. Look at the later years of the 80s however and you'll be struck by a shift towards production line SAW pop in the UK (Rick Astley, Kylie & Jason, Bros, Sonia etc) and the emergence of shopping mall teeny pop in the US (Debbie Gibson, Tiffany) - the charts were swamped with grinning, inane pop muppets plying the kind of faceless, plastic crap that provided a quick sales fix at the time but sounded cheap and tacky only a couple of years down the line. Sure, hen night parties still go mental to 'I think we're alone now' but you can't compare the finished product to 'Thriller', 'Dare' or even 'Welcome to the Pleasuredome' - the latter are finely crafted pieces of universally accessible yet stylistically complex pop music, the former is tacky, plastic musical afterbirth that only sound goods on a sticky nightclub dancefloor as you screech along to the lyrics with your similarly tasteless cronies and spill Reef down your bra. Case closed.

This was the musical climate that we inherited as the 90s dawned - pop as a sales device, not as a cultural artform. New Kids on the Block were at their global peak, notching the decade's first #1 and dominating the charts of 1990 with back to back hits - their competition came in the form of Kylie, Jason and anyone else from 'Neighbours' that Pete Waterman could get to stand in front of a drum machine for 3 minutes flashing their dental work and lip synching to some tinny disco garbage. Jason Donovan had brought home the best-selling album of the previous year, a nadir in pop terms which also brought us the exruciating Jive Bunny, Big Fun and a host of other musical atrocities - the final blow was the revival of Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Xmas' in December 1989, a neat summary of everything that was chronically wrong with the state of pop at that dark time. The first outing of the charity classic succeeded in creating a landmark moment in pop culture, one that can be seen as the last piece of classic 80s pop before the second half of the decade before things went pear-shaped - the second was an example how bad things had become since then. Check out the video here to take it the full undiluted shittyness of it all. The only redeeming feature is the Bono isn't on it.

Things needed to change, and change they did - the stars of 1990 faded quickly, with NKOTB all but finished a year later and Kylie & Jason forced into frantic image rebranding as SAW struggled to match their earlier hit rate. The mantle passed to British boybands such as Take That and East 17, themselves the product of UK based production companies keen to replicate the global success of New Kids on the Block - they would conquer domestic markets but fall short of planetary domination, something the Spice Girls would acheive a few years later as Britain reached the peak of the 'Cool Britannia' marketing frenzy. The ladies' sales stranglehold over the worldwide charts in the middle of the decade (alongside the rise of Blair, Euro 96 and Britpop's similar success in foreign climates) represented a peak in British popular music unseen since the early 80s - singles sales were at a high due to new techniques such as multiformatting (releasing 3 CDs with different B-sides for each single) and the exposure of chart music to new audiences via bastions of lad culture such as Loaded and TFI Friday or the increasingly important ankle-biter market wedge (the average age of a the person buying a single in the charts of the late 90s was about 8 years old).

But it was never going to last, and true to form it didn't. 2000 saw pop plough new lows of creative laziness and cynical marketing - the boy/girlband phenomenon of the previous decade had evolved from innocent fun into either postmodern image manipulation or predatory sexploitation. 1999 had seen the emergence of a new breed of American pop performers such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who had learnt their trade in the squeaky clean confines of Disney's 'Mickey Mouse Club' - now older and barely legal, they burst onto the pop music scene cooing lasciviously over Max Martin's studio production line backing with a sound aimed at the pop charts but an image that turned more than a few heads. The infamous video for 'Baby one more time' brought the slightly uncomfortable premise of kiddie porn into pop for the first time since 'Like a Virgin' - the difference being that, whilst Madonna was well into her 20s and fully aware of what she was up to when her debut hit the charts back in the mid 80s, Britney Spears hit global paydirt at the tender age of 16 with the inherent naivity that you'd expect from someone that young (and, unlike Madonna, her pretensions to virginity were deadly serious). Back in Britain, we had the likes of Steps and S Club 7, the former a charmless sales device pitched somewhere between gay men, hen night tarts, ironic students and squealing schoolkids, the latter a more blatant persil-washed pop gangbang backed by a TV show that topped ratings amongst both pre-pubescent kiddies and the readership of FHM, who broke the mould when they began doing raunchy photoshoots of Rachel Stevens et al in 1999. Pop had been sexed up and deprived of its innocence in favour of bluntforce marketing techniques aiming at getting your attention and your cash quickly.

The results were clear to see - 2000 saw a relentless turnover of #1 singles, 43 in the space of 52 weeks of the calender year, a record which has yet to be beaten. And if 2000 raised the bar in terms of sales turnover, it also plumbed new lows in the quality of material hitting the upper reaches of the charts. Westlife begun the year at #1 and would bag themselves a brace of identikit ballad chart toppers before the year was out, whilst the Spice Girls' era as solo performers yielded #1 hits for Geri (once), Mel C (twice) and a high profile near-miss for Victoria whose 'Out of your mind' garage tangent famously lost out to Sophie Ellis-Bextor's infinitely classier 'Groovejet'. Whilst their days as a pop juggernaut in the mid 90s had yielded a run of memorable hit singles which will be forever linked with the era, the ladies' solo output was a directionless attempt to rebrand each of the five as independant recording artists in their own right - though it didn't backfire in purely sales terms, the results were toe-curlingly dreadful : Geri veered between chubby showgirl, anorexic aerobics instructor, faux-latin vamp, gaybar cabaret tart and woefully unconvincing human rights activist, whilst the others hacked away frantically trying to rebrand themselves as serious R'n'B (Mel B), 60s style sex kitten (Emma), mainstream pop rock (Mel C) or classy club diva (Victoria). Whatever the direction, the recorded output was plastic pop bereft of any kind of personality, hopelessly grasping for relevance and individuality in the cynical pop landscape of 2000 but ending up looking as clueless and two-dimensional as Kylie and Jason did ten years earlier. The tragic spectacle of all five members clogging up the singles charts with their unlistenable attempts at musical rebirth almost made you long for the time when they functioned as one combined unit (after all, one shitty record in the chart is preferable to five) - however, the girls put paid to that little fantasy by unleashing the unspeakably awful 'Forever' album and their final chart-topping single 'Holler/Let love lead the way' in October 2000, a hapless attempt to rebrand themselves as a credible R'n'B collective in the vein of Destiny's Child who had begun their spell in the limelight around the same time. Check out the video here and see if you can make it to the end without barfing.

Elsewhere, the teeny pop genre showed its age with a general lack of creativity in the form of tired cover versions such as A1's 'Take on me' (the first of their two #1 singles that year), Westlife's versions of gear shift classic 'Seasons in the Sun' and Mariah Carey duet 'Against All Odds' (2 of their 4 #1 hits in 2000), 5ive's ham-fisted rehash of Queen's 'We will rock you' (#1 in July) - even Madonna got in on the act with her career-low cover of 'American Pie' (#1 in March). Stars of yesteryear were reheated and served up to varying degrees of success : All Saints managed to bag two more #1s ('Pure Shores' in February, 'Black Coffee' in October) whilst preserving the classy, urban edge their debut had trademarked in the late 90s, whilst Billie Piper inexplicably returned to the top with the faceless 'Day & Night' in May, offering no further clues on what her fans saw in her than her original sales peak in '98. Perhaps significantly, neither artist would reach the top ten again. Post boyband figures such as Ronan Keating and Robbie Williams both hit #1 with their solo efforts ('Life is a rollercoaster' in July for the former, 'Rock DJ' in August for the latter), and although their records continued to sell large amounts, it became obvious that both had permanently abadoned pop to move into new territory (Country & Western and Variety for Ronan, an endless string of flavour of the month genres for Robbie). Britney and Christina continued to dominate with their Max Martin-branded slut pop (the former bagged two #1 hits, 'Born to make you happy' in February and 'Oops...I did it again' in May) whilst their male counterparts N*SYNC and Backstreet Boys broke sales records with their albums and tours in the US over the course of the year on the back of the clunky key samples and breathy vocal routines characteristic of MM's studio production which successfully homogenised pop in the same way Stock Aitken & Waterman had ten years earlier.

If you still want proof that pop was in a wretched state in 2000, look no further than the year's best-selling single. The traditionally lucractive Xmas chart period has always meant that you can condense sales of several months at any other time of year into two or three weeks in December when the market becomes increasingly fertile as people buy music as gifts - it's also synonymous with the novelty pop record, the irritating likes of which would not be tolerated outside the festive season. 'Bob the Builder' had been a runaway hit on kids' TV that year and the theme song was released unaltered as a single in the hope that its charm might replicate the programme's success in the music charts. It provded a wise investment - the track was Xmas #1 and outsold all other singles that year.

This prompted a reflection amongst the casual observer - how can a self-consciously irritating novelty hit comprised of the theme music to a kids' TV show outsell EVERYTHING else on the market? The track hadn't been tampered with or remixed, it was a straightforward version of the theme music yet it was more popular than any of the studio engineered pop singles released that year. 90s kiddie TV crossovers had scored high returns in the pop market before (Mr Blobby, Teletubbies etc) but none had been so successful that everything else paled in comparison - pop always had one trick up its sleeve to outsell the TV themes. Until now.

The status of 'Bob the Builder' as 2000's best-selling single coupled with the rapidfire turnover of forgettable pop records at the top of the charts hinted that something had to change if pop was to be regarded as a threat in the musical landscape of the future. A look at the end of year charts revealed an emergent trend in urban pop fronted by some bloke called Craig David, the continued domination of club culture (Modjo, Fragma, Zombie Nation, Sonique) and Eminem's rise to prominence with his potent form of hip-hop self analysis - all would leave their mark, but none could claim surpreme power over the pop landscape in the same way that Take That and the Spice Girls had back in the 90s. Reality TV pop would land the following year with the screening of 'Popstars' in early 2001 culminating in Hear'Say's 'Pure and Simple' becoming the fastest-selling non-charity single of all time in the UK (a record Will Young would break a year later, again following weeks of relentless talent show promotion). Mainstream pop music, a bright colourful genre back in its heyday of the 80s and 90s, was about to sidestep into bland variety performance and shameless imitation of past glories - once Reality TV laid its mark on pop, things would never be the same again.

So let's remember why things go that way in the first place - pop music in 2000 sucked ass, it's as simple as that. Something else was bound to come along and take its place, and that's what happened with the TV talent shows. If the Simon Cowell-sponsored hordes are ever to vacate their spot at the top of popular music's foodchain, one they've held for the rest of the decade, it'll take either something really potent and new to dislodge them or we'll need a public acknowledgement that the whole reality TV thing has gotten dull, repetitive and faceless. Not wanting to be the eternal cynic, but we might be waiting a while longer than ten years for times to really change again. I for one am not holding my breath.

Reality TV Bites

2009-11-12T21:11:00.003+01:00

When George Orwell was writing the original draft of what would become his masterpiece of dystopic fiction set in a nightmarish version of the future, he predicted a lot of things that would happen in the second half of the 20th century - ironically, he also provided the worldwide media with a tag name for a phenomenon that would irrecovably alter the broadcasting landscape into the new millennium. 'Big Brother' first hit screens in Holland in 1999 where it was originally conceived, and the craze spread to almost every other TV-savvy country in the world over the next year or so - contestants went from everyday nobodies to overnight stars, and although for most their fame was short-lived, it lit a fire inside many heads : this is how to get famous (and potentially rich) very quickly.

It also introduced the concept of audience voting to mainstream TV - sure, phone votes were hardly unheard of prior to BB but they went from a peripheral feature (opinion polls, phone-in discussions) to the centre of the programme. The audience was now seemingly in control, able to select who they would like to continue the on-screen adventure....and perhaps more significantly, who they would just love to see shot down in fucking flames. From the very first season, BB provided us with pantomime villains, scheming tricksters and gormless bigots whose shortcomings were exposed on national television for all to see - the pleasure to judge these fools for having the temerity to expose themselves in such a way took many of us by surprise, and we were suddenly given the possibility of contributing to the downfall of our hate figures for the cost of a text message. 'Big Brother' and the subsequent rise of reality TV as the decade dawned showed us that the apparent democratization of primetime TV was an attractive development, as was the chance to fuck over the contestants we didn't like without the chance of them ever catching up with us to exact revenge. Screaming the telly now seemed like wasted energy - you could clusterbomb the voting polls to make these fuckwits suffer! Hoorah!!

But, you might ask, why are we talking TV when this is supposed to be a music blog? Well, dear reader, my answer to that would be that wherever TV goes, popular music follows. Ever since the dawn of the pop charts in the early 50s and the profileration of TV around the same time, the idiot box has proved the most effective way of sending people bouncing off down to the record shop to buy your product. From Elvis prompting legions of teenage girls to cream themselves by strutting his shit on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956, through 'Top of the Pops', TV commercials, soap opera stats turning to music, MTV and much much more, telly took over as the best way to bring your pop product into the homes of millions of viewers. And then getting them to buy your music.

The impact of reality TV was slow at first - whilst the producers of 'Big Brother' eschewed musical sidelines aside from the obligatory club remix of the show's theme tune, wisely acknowledging that whatever talents the contestants claimed to have, few were founded in music. However, around the same time a seperate production team was gearing up for another Saturday night media event called 'Popstars' tracking the formation of a new pop product, wittling down contestants from a field of thousands of hopefuls with the aim of producing the next big thing in pop. The concept was coined in New Zealand and had proven massively successful, prompting record-breaking sales from the acts it produced in almost every territory, although few acts from its stable notched up significant sales outside of their own country - prompting the reflection amongst cynical gits like myself that it was the TV and press coverage that appealed to the public rather than the generally fuck-awful music.

'Popstars' was a big event at the time - I remember billboards in Manchester advertising the encroaching start of the series and tuned in out of curiosity. What I saw made me long for the now familiar option of inflicting suffering on complete strangers - droves of shrieking hyenas turned out at the casting sessions, desperate to emulate the success of the major pop acts of the period (Steps, S Club 7 etc), most of whom specialised in the studio-tinkered hi-octane pop that dominated the singles chart at the dawn of the decade. Sadly, there was no such option at the viewer's disposal - a group of self-appointed pop experts presided over the auditions, which were broadcast as part of the show's format to highlight the gulf between the talented few and the punchable attention-seeking many. Seeing such a proliferation of gormless, big-mouthed gonks charge willingly towards their own high-profile humiliation like a pack of lycra-clad lemmings was undeniably satisfying at first - for a while, you wondered whether every village in the UK had nominated its idiot to take part in the proceedings - but we felt ultimately let down by the final product : five Argos-brand 'entertainers' whose individual characteristics made them vaguely likeable on their own merits but when packaged together came across as a bog-tedious hodge podge of faceless vanilla soul. The final selection were named 'Hear'Say' (pffff. I could have done better), their debut single and album sold shitloads over a brief period but they were soon discarded and forgotten because they were dull. And we didn't choose them.

However, a lurking pop svengali (or oppurtunistic, self-satisfied yuppie shitstreak depending on how generous you're feeling) latched on to the idea to allow public voting to determine the outcome of events the following year. Simon Cowell, attracted to the idea of huge ratings and huger record sales, decided to go one better and launch his own TV talent show 'Pop Idol' in 2002, tinkering the formula to accomodate public voting and allowing viewers to pick their favourite candidate who would ultimately be rewarded with a record deal at the end of the series. The reaction was seismic - huge audiences tuned in, voted and most importantly ran to the record shops afterwards to buy the end product. By the end of 2002, Will Young and Gareth Gates were household names and their string of hit singles dominated the charts to an almost embrassing extent - Hear'Say's debut 'Pure and Simple' ranked #2 on 2001's end of year sales lists behind Shaggy's tale of romantic indiscression 'It wasn't me', however 2002 saw Will Young emerge victorious, following by G-g-gareth who himself managed two entries in the year's top ten. Even 'Popstars' reject Darius Danesh got in on the act, himself notching up a chart-topper before the year was out.

Cowell's tilt on the formula also included another feature that would prove key to its success - the obnoxious twat of a judge. Presumably seizing on the public's appetite for judgement of their fellow citizens on 'Big Brother' and the tepid reaction to the the judges' choices on 'Popstars', Cowell created a role for himself on the new franchise where he would act as scourge to the weaker contestants, gleefully humiliating the talentless in front of a TV audience of millions. A few years' previously this might have all seemed a little cruel - a rich, arrogant businessman with an apparent contempt for any kind of creativity passing judgement over simple members of the public, grinning as he crushed their self-esteem at the drop of a hat. But, surprise surprise, in the post-millennial media landscape it turned out to be a huge hit - the public lapped up the tough love approach, and even if they didn't agree with Cowell's outbursts, the spectacle provided them with a pantomime villain to boo and hiss at in the same vein as the stock of baddies on each series of 'Big Brother'. Coupled with the rise of bitchy publications like 'Heat' to replace the more innocent likes of 'Smash Hits' in the field of pop music, the new merciless approach became the norm, allowing Cowell to not only maximise his profits as owner of the franchise but to also rise to celebrity status in his own right as Mr Bad Guy.

By the end of 2002, pop had changed hands entirely - the boy/girlband boom of the previous decade had pretty much breathed its last, with past high-sellers such as Atomic Kitten and Blue notching up their final chart-toppers. Only Westlife continued to conquer the singles charts, although even they suffered a fallow period over the middle of the decade - whilst they still made #1 with every release, I'd like to meet someone who can actually remember any of the fucking tunes (actually, cancel that - I'd rather not). Pop's mantle was taken up briefly by the emergent trend of boybands with guitars, and the likes of Busted and McFly bagged themselves a brace of chart-toppers over the course of 2003-2004 (with the latter going on to bag even more as the decade evolved) whilst a younger generation of female pop ensembles (Sugababes, Girls Aloud - themselves the product of series 2 of Popstars) began their own run of successful single releases. Solo artists also re-emerged as valuable commodities in the post-girl/boyband landscape, with past participants in the now dead genre revived as mature, fully-formed adult pop perfomers (Robbie Williams, Ronan Keating, Ricky Martin, Justin Timberlake or the similarly marketed Christina Aguilera & Britney Spears, by then grown-up veterans of USA's 'Mickey Mouse Club'). But nostalgia being what it is, the genre hadn't lain dead for too long before its corpse was revived by way of reunion tours for the likes of Take That, which to the surprise of many matched the peak of their 90s success and produced another brace of massive hits. Even Peter fucking Andre made a bewildering return to the charts with his cast iron turd of pop 'Mysterious Girl'. All flourished in their own way for much of the decade, but none could match the all-out market dominance of the 'Pop Idol' star stable (and its successfor 'X-Factor' which landed in late 2004), whose singles ranked amongst the year's top-sellers for the remainder of the noughties. If obsevers were waiting for a new era in pop music to dawn post-2000, the reign of the reality show provided us with one.

I'm gonna take a bit of time to look back over the last ten years and aim to pick out a few developments and trends, mixed in with a spot of well-earned vitriol directed at the individuals whose contribution to pop music over the last 10 years has to my mind been less positive than it could have been. If you feel like joining me, watch this space.

xxx John

Decade's End

2009-11-12T21:07:00.004+01:00

Hi folks,

Prompted to return from a lengthy absence by the slightly feeble splattering of 'best records of the noughties' lists that are starting to pop up in the press, I thought I'd mark a long-delayed return to blogging with my own review of the last 10 years in music.

Subjects currently lined up for my own unique brand of vitriolic deconstruction are reality TV talent shows, filesharing & streaming, the rebirth of British indie at the expense of heavy metal and dance music and a few others along with a retinkered version of my albums of the decade post. If you can think of any more, let me know.

That's all for now, watch this space for upcoming posts (promise).

xxx John

Best of 2007

2008-02-09T16:41:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-01T11:55:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-28T22:39:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-28T19:40:00.001+01:00

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

2007-10-28T15:34:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-12T17:16:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-04-20T18:18:00.000+02:00

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

2007-03-30T22:10:00.001+02:00

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.