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Post by Smurfie on Nov 16, 2011 20:48:49 GMT 1
I loved "I've Got A Little Something For You". In fact one of my friends left it as an answerphone message for me this week! But you're quite right, I couldn't even start to tell you how their other songs went.
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borneoman
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Post by borneoman on Nov 16, 2011 21:54:56 GMT 1
Haven't listened to MN8 in like 10 years for certain but I still remember I've Got a Little Something, not a bad song... they were kinda like the predecessors of JLS and I agree on Annie Lennox. For me, any artist having a 2nd album of covers is a no no no. It was a huge step back after the spectacular Diva. It was time to kill it, but she didn't. Actually after such a brilliant solo start, Annie Lennox has never ever released anything worth it imho Medusa was not bad but wasn't brilliant either... just ok for me, although I did buy it and played it a lot
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Post by evansabove on Nov 16, 2011 22:17:58 GMT 1
No More I Love You's is fantastic just like most of Annie Lennox's output. MN8 is just a bit meh and not really deserving of a #2
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 17, 2011 18:30:51 GMT 1
11TH MARCH- DON'T GIVE ME YOUR LIFE- Alex Party (2 weeks)
A song that always takes me back to my very early clubbing days. Yes I was now a grown up (well a 19yr old anyway) and clubbing meant a long bus trip to Northampton and Roxy nightclub as it was then back then with a floor that your feet stuck to and a punch up somewhere by the evening's end. Anyway I digress, "Don't Give Me Your Life" always takes me back to a good time, it's no "Set You Free" in fact put side by side it's rather a poor relative, but it's harmless fun, the group actually acheived a minor Ibiza hit in 1993 with "Read My Lips" which became their first top 40 hit before this came along.
Nostalgia aside the track is actually quite weak, OK chorus and rather forgettable verses the guys behind the track, The Visnadi Brothers soon dumped one front singer for another and turned thmselves into Livin Joy (well the two projects were running alongside each other in reality) so they finally got that chart topper in just 2 months time with the re-release of "Dreamer"- this song will never be more than just "meh" for me!
Incidentally apologies for the quality of the TOTP clip the best I could find.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 17, 2011 18:32:00 GMT 1
27TH MAY- GUAGLIONE- Perez "Prez" Prado & His Orchestra (1 week)
Proving what we knew all along that shoving a song onto a commercial would make it a hit all over again. "Guaglione" is actually a 1956 Neopolitan folk track which won the Napoli Song festival that year and translated means street urchin, and was translated into a mambo tune by Perez Prado who was at one time "the king of Mambo".
Prado is incidentally, the man responsible for "Mambo No 5" way back in the day and scored a UK No 1 single in 1955 with "Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White" yet I confess I really can't stand "Guaglione". It bored me at the time, and it bores me now, no more or less than Lou Bega did in 1999, I just don't "get" it - whatever "it" is and I don't really want to find it quite frankly.
NEXT
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borneoman
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love is tough, when enough is not enough
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Post by borneoman on Nov 17, 2011 19:00:12 GMT 1
agree on Gugliaone/Mambo 5... hate them both
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Post by evansabove on Nov 17, 2011 19:38:27 GMT 1
Alex Party was a club classic in its time. It has dated a little now but takes me back to mad times out clubbing whenever i could
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Post by Smurfie on Nov 17, 2011 21:59:33 GMT 1
Alex Party was a club classic in its time. It has dated a little now but takes me back to mad times out clubbing whenever i could Me too! Don't Give Me Your Life is all kinds of amazing and still love it. It reminds me of going clubbing in Swansea.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 17, 2011 22:21:54 GMT 1
Clubbing in Swansea? Sounds, er.
Prefer Alex Party to Livin' Joy. Work that one out.
There was a lawsuit over the advert that gave "Guaglione" its lease of life...a choreographer sent in a video to Guinness as an audition for an advertising campaign, that featured lots of jump cuts. He didn't get the gig, but the advert itself was very much in the spirit of his tape. He sued for copyright infringement and lost - the idea he had was too vague to be copyrighted.
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Post by Earl Purple on Nov 17, 2011 23:15:21 GMT 1
The real classics are just about to start as well as the "straight in at #2" ones, all of these early ones climbed except for Annie Lennox.
"No More I Love Yous" is a good cover version but her problem was that she did an all-covers album rather than an album with at least a fairly large content of original material. There was a mini-Eurythmics revival in 1999 but that was pretty much it, and by 2009 or so she was involved in politics and doing dodgy Ash covers.
Of course none of this is as bad as the man who destroyed the soul of music watching a TV series where a couple of actors in their roles as soldiers perform a bad karaoke, and then getting them to record it and release it, which is why last and the next 2 #2s failed to reach #1.
I hated Living Joy for denying Oasis its rightful second week at #1. It had sold more copies and the formats thing was stupid. I also didn't like Dreamer but Don't Stop Movin' was ok.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 18, 2011 18:24:16 GMT 1
3RD JUNE- COMMON PEOPLE- Pulp (2 weeks)Sometimes a record comes along at just the right time. "Common People" was one of those records, Britpop was, amongst other things, a movement which took teh ordinary and made it something which became glorified. Post "Parklife" the idea of the working class subculture being something aspirational became highly fashionable, who would have guessed that the most biting criticism would come from within the movement itself. Of course "movements" aren't really that, they are most often incidental and identifiable only in retrospect, but as much as it can be "Common People" is a critique of mid 90s culture, Cocker taking wry shots at it, part of its charm is of course that let's us in on the joke. Writing about this song isn't an easy task, it's multi-layered, far too clever by half, and of course a stonking tune to top it all off. Based on a real life story of a girl Cocker used to know who thought it was trendy to slum it, it emerged from nowhere really and kinda captured the summer of 95 far more than the record that held it off the top (Robson & Jerome), Cocker was instantly thrown into the A List celebrity circle as some kind of modern day oracle and spokesman of the zeitgist, a role reiterated by his appearance at the BRITS in early 96 and THAT Jackson affair! I recall in the "Sun" newspaper it illustrated how to dance like cocker such was the image he had given birth to, indeed it seemed like a time when us Brits had triumphed over all that American music, indeed that Britpop didn't really translate around the world looking back was rather beside the point, the point is that for a few years at any rate it didn't matter to us what was going on over there, Britain became self absorbed, self analytical, and also slightly arrogant. For a nation which always been slightly coy about trumpeting its own successes it became (paradoxically) quite American in its bombast. Of course the old problem didn't too long to rear its head- if your stock in trade is the ordinary and the perils of the mundane, then once fame has found you your experiences are different, you gain entry into a lifestyle that few people have access too, it's hard to write about being poor and being aspirational if you have wealth and desires fulfilled. Anyway that's still to come, and Pulp back in 1995 were a band with something to say, the underdogs who were laughing with us at the establishment, and "Common People" is therefore more than a record in reality, it's a record entirely of it's time musically, but timeless in its theme
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 18, 2011 18:24:46 GMT 1
17TH JUNE- HOLD ME, THRILL ME, KISS ME, KILL ME- U2 (2 weeks)Recorded for their 1993 "Zooropa" sessions, U2 had by this time become more than the sum of their parts. This is my first opportunity to write about U2, always far better when not being political in my opinion, they had made the fantastic "Achtung Baby" by this point, after which the rest of the decade seemed rather pointless for them apart from the rather sweet and innocently loveable "Sweetest Thing" in 1998 which was an 80's composition in any eventuality. It was with a hint of appropos that they recorded this track as the theme to "Batman Forever" considering that back in 1989 their song "All I Want Is You" was stopped at No 4 in the charts behind amongst others, Prince's "Batdance". Never a favourite of mine, this ALWAYS seemed too long as a record, and in a summer of new fresh talent U2 looked curiously old fashioned and non relevant to what was going on at that time. I suppose that that is what makes a great band, not that their fame rises and falls through these changing pop times but that they can survive them all relatively unscathed, indeed their star seems only to have seriously wained these last five years, but for me post 1991 they lost their shine. "Hold Me" is therefore a walk through old familiar territory, it isn't going to appear to a new audience, for a group so political it is somewhat ironic that they have been the "establishment" for so long and of course this corporate tie in highlights the paradox of taking such a stance. It doesn't wound my ears but if I never hear this song again no tears will be shed!
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Post by evansabove on Nov 18, 2011 20:33:56 GMT 1
Ugh at the U2 song. Overblown and with very little substance
Not much to be added about Common People except that its place in Britpop foklore is guarnteed
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borneoman
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Post by borneoman on Nov 18, 2011 20:48:35 GMT 1
I love love love Pulp so much, saw them finally live this year and Barcelona and they were just brilliant!!! Different Class is such an incredible album, Jarvis was the storyteller!!!!! this has to be one of the best #2s ever...
on the other hand, Thrill Me was U2 at their worst. As bad as it gets...
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 18, 2011 21:37:28 GMT 1
I love love love Pulp so much, saw them finally live this year and Barcelona and they were just brilliant!!! quote] hope it wasn't raining like it was for me in Barcelona this week
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Post by andrew07 on Nov 19, 2011 2:26:20 GMT 1
Common People, such a fantastic song and such brilliant lyrics too. Jarvis is a genius. I loved Different Class and it's certainly one of the defining albums of the 90's.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 19, 2011 12:05:14 GMT 1
15TH JULY- ALRIGHT/ TIME- Supergrass (2 weeks)Like an annoyingly happy teenager "Alright" was overplayed to the max during the summer of 1995, and to be honest it didn't do it any favours. Maybe I'm a miserable old sod but anything good that song possessed was soon stripped from it in my eyes by the cloying perkiness, my thanks to Wikipedia for providing me with the band's own view on it ""it wasn't written as an anthem. It isn't supposed to be a rally cry for our generation. The stuff about 'We are young/We run green...' isn't about being 19 but really 13 or 14 and just discovering girls and drinking. It's meant to be light-hearted and a bit of a laugh, not at all a rebellious call to arms.....It certainly wasn't written in a very summery vibe. It was written in a cottage where the heating had packed up and we were trying to build fires to keep warm." Perhaps if it had been written about being 19 then I could have related more but the "fun" to be had in this song seems too forced to be natural, the scene is too disconnected from real life really but perhaps not to a 13 year old, but regardless "Alright" got very annoying very quickly for me. On the plus side until just now I never listened to "Time" (well not that I recall anyway) and was pleasently surprised. Much more laid back in tone and reserved in theme I quite enjoyed it, if only I'd paid attention to it back in 95 eh! so it's not all bad news in this review, the plodding nature of the song seems to amble along agreeably and whilst I can see fully why it was lost in the clamour for the brighter, poppier, "Alright" it's a song which I greatly prefer.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 19, 2011 12:06:28 GMT 1
29TH JULY- SHY GUY- Diana King (1 week)I DO NOT UNDERSTAND A WORD THIS GIRL IS SINGING ABOUT. I think I've made that abundantly clear now, what is the point in this song? It's on this list in the main due its use in the "Bad Boys" Film which was in box offices at the time and I know it's sung mainly in Patois not English but this just seems a bit too reggae tastic to slip through the net for me and it's a song that I always turned off when I listened to the radio/ charts or found something else to do for 5 minutes. I'm sure this has it's place, actually 1993 would have been perfect for it, but by 1995 it was all about Britpop for me by now, though Summer is always a spell that matches the reggae beat nicely and when it used to have its greatest successes. A couple of equally pointless covers extended her career to three hits before it was time to say goodbye to Diana, can't say I miss her.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 19, 2011 12:37:57 GMT 1
Pulp was a triumph that would never be allowed now - how many years had they been trying to break through? A couple of minor hits paved the way for their coronation.
But it missing out on the top - I thought it would go top ten, never dreamt it would be so successful - is something I always think about whenever there are stories of pensioners freezing over Christmas. "Serves you right," I think, "for wanting that bloody Robson & Jerome crap..."
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 19, 2011 13:27:07 GMT 1
Pulp was a triumph that would never be allowed now - how many years had they been trying to break through? A couple of minor hits paved the way for their coronation. But it missing out on the top - I thought it would go top ten, never dreamt it would be so successful - is something I always think about whenever there are stories of pensioners freezing over Christmas. "Serves you right," I think, "for wanting that bloody Robson & Jerome crap..." I know I shouldn't but I'm going to LOL at this!
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