Gezza's Review Of Every No 2 single 2000-2004

[Gezza]

9TH OCTOBER- I HOPE U DANCE- Ronan Keating (1 wk)



Now this was for charity (Breast Cancer Fund) so well done Ronan, but on EVERY other level this is WRONG. One suspects at his house during 2000-2004 he had a list of US Country Chart toppers which he would cover and release onto us poor souls for the first half of the naoughties. This particular "treat" was first recorded and released by lee anne Womack in 2000 but barely scrapped the top 40 here, clearly Ronan one of the few to take note of the song.

By this time I suspect he knew he was running on empty and the top10 hits were about to come to a shuddering halt leaving little option for him other than a Boyzone reunion which was still 4 years away, but a GH set was ready for Christmas and a re-recorded version of "Father And Son" but we'll come to that later. So more of the same anodyne balladry than flew down the charts after its first week, somebody should have been telling him to STOP by now!

[Roo.]

I Hope You Dance is awful, but, even more awful is your suggestion that Love Machine is anything other than incredible! One of the finest songs from recent years, imo. I'm gonna have to have a lie down to recover

[Gezza]

23RD OCTOBER- I BELIEVE MY HEART- Duncan James & Keedie (1 wk)



I suppose in a way you have to at least acknowledge that Duncan James tried something a bit left field as a first solo effort after the break up of Blue. This pairing with the freshly discovered Keedie Babb (yes she's from the West Midlands- how fitting) on this musical number from the (then) new Lloyd Webber musical "The Woman In White" is suitably far from the urban lite pop that Blue had peddled since 2001, tragically it's completely forgettable and bland. The musical itself was one of Lloyd Webber's worst performing ones lasting only 19 months in the west end so that should be the warning sign that this is going nowhere.

Yes the musical is based on the Wilkie Collins classic novel, but really that's as interesting as this gets, James barely manages to keep up with Keedie who clearly has her eyes on some role, and though she was much touted as a new Lesley Garrett, she never quite pulled it off and was last seen auditioning for X Factor under her married name Keedie Green.

[Gezza]

30TH OCTOBER- THE LOVE OF RICHARD NIXON- Manic Street Preachers (1 wk)



By 2004 the Manics were in a quandry I rather think. Though they were around pre Britpop it was during that explosion that the band found there biggest period (in terms of sales and praise) and scored a couple of No 1 singles in just 18 months. That was all now behind them, and in truth they were only playing to the die hards, trouble is (though not for them) the collapse in sales that occured between 2004-07 made it much easier for fanbase acts to score big chart hits whilst shifting 20k a week (this opened with a sale of just 18k).

Onto the song at any rate, and to be honest I had to remind myself how it went, completely bypassing me, and I suspect the greater majority of the record buying public at this time, it's a lament to many things, a reappraisal of Richard Nixon (obviously) and also an expression of the band's regret that they were never viewed as well as Radiohead. In interviews Wire commented that they were as seen as Nixon to Radiohead's Kennedy, the band who had to try the hardest to get any noticed and compete.

In any eventuality, this is a little self indulgent for my tastes, and it's hard to bring myself to care about their plight, certainly by 2004 anyway, it's chart trajectory of 2-22-45-75 is probably an accurate reflection of how much it sung into the national consciousness, but that's the problem which the music you make falls on deaf ears, they had a good choon left in them but we'd pretty much stopped listening.

[Roo.]

I Believe My Heart is a favourite of mine actually! Although Keedie is much stronger vocally than he is.

As much as I adore the Manics completely and utterly, Lifeblood was not good, and neither was this song. One of their worst singles.

[Gezza]

13TH NOVEMBER- LOSE MY BREATH- Destiny's Child (4 wks)



You have to wonder exactly what was the point of this particular reunion as Beyonce and Rowland had launched successful solo careers so there wasn't exactly a NEED. However they had promised to return after their haitus in 2001 hence the album title "Destiny Fulfilled" adn this lead single showed they had lost none of the sassyness that had made them a big player in teh charts of the early noughties, in actual fact it's a final hurrah for the band who all seemed to rapidly lose interest in the project as soon as 2005 came round with the final singles "Girl" and "Soldier" doing the business of honouring their promotional duties in respect of the album, then it was full steam ahead with the solo careers.

But what of the actual song, well the regimentated almost military feel of the beat plus the vocal delivery seems to imply steely resolve that if the guy can't "keep up" then he's a goner *gulp*, yes we've come a long way from the days of "girls just wanna have fun" and "Borderline" my friends. It isn't as though I dislike the song but I've never really cared for DC, thematically they seem to be a one trick pony, like a rerun of a Sex And The City episode but it doesn't compare badly to the rest of 2004.

[Gezza]

11TH DECEMBER- YOU CAN DO IT- Ice Cube Featuring Mack 10 & Ms Toi (1 wk)



Don't remember this one? Well neither do I, and I barely could at the time. For a record to sell just 20k and be at No 2 just a fortnight before Christmas showed the poor state of sales in 2004. There is, allegedly, a sample of "Rappers Delight" in here somewhere (perhaps for the irony) but this is just awful and just about as unfestive as you can imagine. It was in fact already a 5 yr old rap track that was remixed by some dj's and created enough interest for All around the world record label to license it from EMI and give it an official release, but I have nothing good to say about this I'm afraid.

[vastar iner]

Jul 20, 2012 17:54:36 GMT 1 Gezza said:

30TH OCTOBER- THE LOVE OF RICHARD NIXON- Manic Street Preachers (1 wk)


In any eventuality, this is a little self indulgent for my tastes...

Manics? Self-indulgent? Really?

[vastar iner]

Jul 19, 2012 18:28:54 GMT 1 Gezza said:

9TH OCTOBER- I HOPE U DANCE- Ronan Keating (1 wk)
Now this was for charity (Breast Cancer Fund) so well done Ronan, but on EVERY other level this is WRONG.

I would say it's wrong on that level as well.

If Keating wanted to do something for the charity, why not give something from the vast amount of money he was given off the back of other people's efforts? Rather than have someone else spend a fortune hiring out a studio and engineers and then getting people who have a hundredth of his wealth to spend money on promoting HIM on the pretext that their money was going to charity?

Nothing more than self-indulgent, self-publicizing hypocritical tripe.

[Roo.]

Lose My Breath is an awesome song, although these days I kinda prefer the mash-up with Mardy Bum by Arctic Monkeys What's with the terrible hats on the cover though?

You Can Do It was crap at the time, and nothing's changed.

[andrew07]

"Love Of Richard Nixon" isn't one of the Manics' best songs, but I quite liked their next single that followed, which we'll see in 2005.

[Earl Purple]

Not in this topic but Gezza may decide to complete the series with 2005-2009

[vastar iner]

Depends on how depressed he can take.

[Gezza]

18TH DECEMBER- I BELIEVE IN YOU- Kylie Minogue (1 wk)



Come the end of the first half of the noughties Kylie's rebirth had been complete and to celebrate it was time for a new GH set, the first proper one in 12 years. For the project Babydaddy and Jake Shears of the Scissor sisters (very HIP in 2004 anyway) were asked to co-write a track and produce Minogue and this was the result. It's everything really that you would expect from such a collaboration, camp, fun, killer hooks, an electronic pulsating gem that screams "hit" and so it turned out to be. The fact that it was released a fortnight after "ultimate Kylie" doubtless harmed its chances at becoming a No 1 hit for her but it did the job of promoting the album which saw its sales drive past the million mark.

This remains, for me, one of the best things she produced in the decade, Kylie's vocal sound quite etherial here, as the music swirls around them and the music builds to a suitable climax and the whole thing is quite "gorgeous", personal misfortune was about to hit Kylie very shortly but there is little doubt that the period 2000-04 wa a period when Kylie was back at the centre of pop.

[Gezza]

25TH DECEMBER- FATHER AND SON- Ronan & Yusef (1 wk)



Now I have to confess that I rather liked the boyzone version of this in 1995, and perhaps because of that I find this version rather lacklustre though it is far closer to the original than the Boyzone version. Much like Kylie, Ronan had reached the point of a GH album and this is really his last big solo hit ,so perhaps fittingly he returns to hi early days. Roping in Cat Stevens (as was) in a bit of a steal adding a bit of credibility to the version, and of course famously rectifies in part the glaring oddity of the Boyzone version, namely that this is suppose to be a "duet" between father and son whereas Ronan sings it all on the 95 version.

In truth it's OK but as soon as it's over you have no desire to hear it again, and it's rather a damp squib when all is said and done but then perhaps that does sum up Ronan's solo work, certainly after the first few initial hits. Louis Walsh allegedly tried to turn him into an Irish Cliff Richard through the song choices, I suspect Cliff, by 2004, would have been mortified by this thought.

[borneoman]

^agree, Kylie at her best!!! and surprised the SS did something so good when their own songs have been kinda meh after album one...

from the last singles, I kinda liked the MSP song although they were going a big downhill compared to their stuff in the 90s... didn't the parent album do kinda poorly??

and I'm still amazed at how long Ronan lasted with his strategy of covering (murdering) all the US country classics

[Gezza]

So there we have it another 5 years finally complete- thanks for bearing with me through time, I know it took a while! I may or may not return to complete the last bit over the autumn/ winter but thanks to all who contributed and kept me from thinking I was typing to myself in this dark corner of the forum!

[Earl Purple]

and in my chart "I Believe In You" went one better and gave Kylie Minogue her only NM #1, which she held on to for just 1 week...

And actually it was only because I felt a bit sorry for her because in reality Morrissey had caught up and overtaken her by the end of the week. In my chart though, unlike the UK chart, it was Morrissey who had been a regular at #1 whilst she had never had one. She'd never had a #2 either before so would have at least have had one of those, but in any case the following week Morrissey was given his rightful position at #1 with "I Have Forgiven Jesus".

[vastar iner]

FIX!!!

[Roo.]

I Believe In You is stunning.

Father and Son is far from it.