Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 5, 2012 21:20:01 GMT 1
9TH JULY- CRAZY CHICK- Charlotte Church (1 wk)This isn't, of course, the beginning of Church's singing career (that came in 1998 after performing over the phone on "This Morning") but this is perhaps her launch as a "popstar" proper. Having been only 12 at the time Church spent the early 00s in a kind of limbo, producing classical/ carol albums and still being in the public eye, mainly thanks to dating bad boy Kyle Johnson and being caught smoking pre 16, the press rubbing their hands gleefully at the fallen angel. So at the grand old age of 19 a full on attempt at the charts was made, not getting off to a bad start in all fairness. "Crazy Chick" is an odd song, the hooks are there, the blaring trumpets direct you to the chorus, and Church puts in a more than adequate vocal performance and yet for all that something is just "missing". Perhaps it tries to tread the line between pop and indie "chic" too self consciously and as a consequence falls between two stools (so to speak) or perhaps at this point Church is still experiementing with music and hasn't found the real vehicle for her vocal range yet, or even that in attempting to distance herself from those operatic roots it prompted too much of an overkill in the other direction. Whatever the reason it fails to ultimately convince me that this is where her heart is and subsequent moves into TV and the chat show arena has proven to be better for her in terms of image and getting her personality across. She also suffered of course from being very "heat" friendly, that relationship with Henson resulting in Church being as much a media personality as a singer, or maybe firstly BEFORE a singer may also be holding this back, so whilst it's a passable enough single there's a real emptiness behind the bright and breezy track that can't really be ignored.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 5, 2012 21:39:01 GMT 1
16TH JULY- WE BELONG TOGETHER- Mariah Carey (2 wks)It's a well acknowledged fact that Mariah's star has never shone as brightly on this side of the Atlantic as she has stateside, in a way that's the way it had to be. As the US moved in a more urban direction in the mid 90s Mariah had to adapt to ensure success in her homeland whilst sacrificing it in the much more dance/ pop dominated UK charts. By the mid 00s though RNB was very much in flavour but oddly enough Mariah struck gold again with an old fashioned ballad, I'm not a Mariah fan (beyond the bounds of about 1998) but I have to give it to her here this is a cracker of a tune. I put this down to the fact that she actually sings this song rather than either squeeling or doing that odd whispery vocal thing which spent most of the 00s perfecting for no-one's benefit. Vocal gymnastics are employed only once really in the whole track and at the appropriate time as the song reaches its climax, Carey seeming to finally understand that it can be employed FOR A PURPOSE and used effectively to produce something of the old magic. Her problem of course that too often the tune is sacrificed for the opportunity to showcase her register. Speaking of the voice, it clearly isn't what it used to be, (hey we all get older) Carey having the benefitted from started out with a much better set of pipes than most so it's still admirable but classy and understated isn't often something that can be said from a Carey performance but sometimes, just sometimes, she does surprise!
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Post by greendemon on Oct 6, 2012 0:45:30 GMT 1
never was a fan of charlotte church's poppy stuff - frankly i've never thought she had the voice for it. she should have stuck with classical - but maybe destroyed her voice from all that underage smoking
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 10, 2012 18:55:06 GMT 1
6TH AUGUST- BAD DAY- Daniel Powter (3 wks)So it's late summer 2005 and if you were anywhere near a radio then the two songs you would have heard every 10 minutes would be this and "You're Beautiful" incidentally the track that held this off the top. "Bad Day" had already been a 5 wk US No 1 hit and a hit all over europe thanks to its use in a coke advert by the time it made it to our shores, perhaps it was one of those tracks that came back with the tourists that year? Anyway we were clearly loving men with ballads pouring their hearts out that summer and Powter spent 3 wks in the runner up position waiting for our hatred of James Blunt to reach boiling point (which it would but not until long after the threat from him had long since subsided). Listening to it now with the benefit of some years between us, "Bad Day" is passable enough, a rather touching video about love panning out in the end despite all the stresses of the working life and a suitably cheery and warm vocal all communicated with a catchy enough tune to get us in the mood for the day. At the time though deeply annoying and wearing very thin by the time September came around. Powter sells it with enough conviction to be believable ad it's hard to get angry at its anodyne qualities now especially given some of what is come before the end of 05....
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 10, 2012 19:12:20 GMT 1
3RD SEPTEMBER- PON DE REPLAY- Rihanna (2 wks)Translated as "Play it again" from Bajan Creole this was one of the tracks that Rihanna recorded for her demo tape to flog her to record companies. Now I have to confess that I never thought much to Rihanna back in the day, a conversion of sorts never happened until the greatness that is "Disturbia" in 2008, up to that point I considered her a popstar who relied on a judicious use of samples and little clothing in videos. Even now some of the live performances reveal a paper thin vocal which is quite nasal in delivery but despite myself some the tunes are damn catchy! "Pon De Replay" was catchy, but in a bad way, never a song that I loved or liked for that matter it seemed to really aimed at an altogether different demographic. This isn't the first time that it had happened, I dare say "Teletubbies say Eh-Oh" wasn't aimed at a 21 yr old me (though I was a student at the time so maybe) but what I mean is that it was around this time that I started to become really aware that the charts were now being marketed at people younger than me! That didn't stop me enjoying it or participating in it but it's kind of like your best friend gets other best friends and wants to spend time "all together"- it's rather weird and I hope that made sense otherwise I'm coming across kinda freaky now, but in 2005 and at the age of 29 it seemed that I was yesterday's chart news. None of this I can blame on Rihanna, it has nothing to do with the above revelation, more that it is just coincided, "Pon De Replay" is aimed at that new kid on the block with the flash moves and the disposible income to have all the latest gadgets, I hate him and now Rihanna appears to be flirting with him....
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Post by Earl Purple on Oct 11, 2012 0:53:55 GMT 1
Bad Day was a good song, perhaps not as good as REM's song of the same title (which in my chart peaked at #2 whilst this Bad Day peaked at #3).
James Blunt was good most of the time but You're Beautiful was horrible.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 19, 2012 22:54:56 GMT 1
24TH SEPTEMBER- WE BE BURNIN- Sean Paul (1 wk)If there is a downside to noughties music, and there undoubtedly is, it's an over reliance on the lowest denominator, the quick gimmick over the sturdy tune, it's part of the explanation as to why single sales dropped off, though of course the transfer to downloads helped considerably with this. Sean Paul is sadly a reflection of this, in 2003 the guy was ubiquitous, seemingly popping up on every other top 10 hit to the point of saturation. Come 2005 we'd had a break but here he was back with a new album and his biggest solo hit ad a sensitive plea to legalising marijuana (in it's original form) before a "radio" version was produced altering references and making it appear about women. The problem with this track is that all sounds very 2003 still, that break doesn't seem to have inspired him into any new musical avenues. Ok the album hosted a veritable who's who of RNB (very much flavour of the month in the mid 00s) but his choice of lead single was interesting as it illustrates perhaps a lack of his conviction, best to stick with what people know. He's not the first to suffer this fate and he won't be the last but it convinced enough people he had no other string to his bow so that the next album (2009's "Imperial Blaze") was a damp squib here barely scraping the top 40, perhaps the rise of electro pop helped to dull his star. The point here is that much of the music of the mid 00s only played on, rather than challenged, musical stereotypes and cliches of its respective genre (this went for indie as much as reggae) as this is a prime example of that laziness, with music this predicitable you have to ask what was the point?
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 19, 2012 23:17:30 GMT 1
1ST OCTOBER- GOLD DIGGER- Kanye West Ft Jamie Foxx (1 wk)I've never felt the need to admire either the man nor the music of Kanye West on the basis that he clearly has enough admiration for both of his own to need anymore from me. A few parts of his earlier cannon midly interested me ("Diamonds from Sierra Leone" being an example), and I also know that "Gold digger" is one of his more critically admired pieces and it has many fans, a ,judicious use of Ray Charles's "I Got A Woman" certainly makes it distinctive and there is some merit in the charge often lay at West's door, namely that the success or otherwise of his tracks depends on which sample he uses. Neither do I claim that the man isn't talented, he clearly is, but the strength of his music is also its downfall, namely that is so enthused with the cult of his own personality that the two become inseparable. There is nothing unscripted going on here, West clearly calculates his every move with a cold calculating hand designed to generate the publicity to fill that ego and occasionally he does do the job it just comes at a high price, and a price too high for me personally.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 24, 2012 20:42:55 GMT 1
15TH OCTOBER- TRIPPING- Robbie Williams (2 wks)As Neil Tennant pointed out in the early 90s every act has their "imperial phase" where everything they release, good or not, seems effortlessly successful and Williams's imperial phase had lasted longer than most (98-02) but come 2005 his star was already diminishing and the commercially awful (for him) "Rudebox" period was just around the corner. All that's for the future and in late 05 Robbie was back, still self assured and to give some credit slightly less formulaic, the undoubtedly clever songwriting of Chambers being pushed aside for a new sound with a helping hand from faded 80s popstar Stephen Duffy, one of the founding members of Duran Duran. Perhaps then it should come as little surprise how 80s "Tripping" sounds! I was racking my brains trying to pinpoint exactly which songs I can hear in the track, it's like Eddy Grant meets Men At Work and Madness which may be no bad thing but "tripping" in trying to be everything ends up being a slightly damp squib. The greatness that it appears to have is just the glories of the acts that it borrows so heavily from, and for all that it's rather charmless and perfunctory and Williams's persona, once so affable and charming, here grates with passive acceptance of his self perceived greatness. "Tripping" maybe a departure in style, and the singles from "Rudebox" (with the exception of the title track) may be unwarranted failures, "Lovelight" and "She's Madonna" are amongst his best IMO, there was a reason why all that happened and hubris was that reason and Williams 04-05 was a prime example of that!
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 24, 2012 21:08:12 GMT 1
10TH DECEMBER- LET THERE BE LOVE- Oasis (1 wk)Oh you're still going are you? "Let There Be Love" topped off what was a very successful 2005 for the band who had just scored two No 1 singles on the trot, one of them entirely deserved if only for its blatent Kinks rip off. Anyway the kinks done it was back to apeing to the Beatles with this track which sounds like......well an Oasis ballad by numbers really. It isn't bad as records go but this is autopilot Oasis with feeling taken out, it plods along without really reaching a climax and says goodbye. In truth they should have said goodbye around 2002 and perhaps they'd evoke fonder memories in me but too many years making the same record can't really be applauded (hear that U2) and much like Williams, the halycon days of racking up No 1 hits were behind them now. Listen to this an compare it to anything from the first two albums and you'll see just how much they lost the appetite and drive that made them big, of course fame and money does dull the creative zest, and it happens to all the greats, but the sadness isn't lessened by that.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 24, 2012 22:03:29 GMT 1
As Neil Tennant pointed out in the early 90s every act has their "imperial phase" where everything they release, good or not, seems effortlessly successful ... Hm. Wonder when Stump are going to have theirs.
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vya
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Post by vya on Oct 24, 2012 22:19:28 GMT 1
faded 80s popstar Stephen Duffy, one of the founding members of Duran Duran. "faded 80s popstar" indeed! Well...I guess it is true that his subsequent band The Lilac Time never got much more than a cult following (oh didn't they get to no 84 in the charts once - and with lots of Radio 1 airplay with "American Eyes" back in '89 - not that that was really representative of what they were best at. - - checked - got to no 77 with another, inferior, overproduced, single too a little later)....but he was (and is) still active, albeit in a less pop-orientated, more verging on folk - "middle age, it's all the rage", as the opening line of the opening track on their 2001 album lilac6 put it....they even played a public gig this decade (on the London South Bank, 2007, apparently their first for more than 15 years) I thought the Duffy-Williams tie-up was a great idea (yeah I am admittedly a bit of a diehard Lilac Time fan)...and actually really appreciated this phase of Robbie's career - which at least seemed to be taking chances, and being...interesting... Mostly it worked, too, musically, in as much as these things do. TBH I reckon Duffy must have been doing a "going back to the 80s" thing when he wrote "Trippin'", so unlike the stuff he was writing and performing in his own band...there is a definite hint of "Icing On The Cake" among the mix, as well as the things you mention. Obviously this was far too good, and a little too complicated for a mass audience. And the "Rudebox" era singles even more so....
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 25, 2012 17:41:22 GMT 1
24TH DECEMBER- WHEN YOU TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME- Westlife & Diana Ross (1 wk)You'll already have a view of Westlife I'm sure and this record will only confirm what those thoughts are/ were. A completely pointless cover version of a record that I found too saccharine back in 1991 let alone in 2005, a more than competent vocal performance by both parts but really all life and emotion has been stripped from this to leave a cold shell doing nothing but ensuring that they shifted a lot of copies of "Face To Face" over the Christmas period. With the advent of "X Factor" the Christmas No 1 spot was a foregone conclusion during the mid 00s which naturally meant that a new Westlife single had to be put out a week before Xmas now obviously with an X Factor performance to bolster sales, and after the overwhelming success of their previous single "You Raise Me Up" Westlife might reasonably have expected another No 1 but I have to admit to rather enjoying the spectacle of Nizlopi defeat them in the dying weeks of the year. Make no mistake this is AWFUL, purely because no thought has gone into it and Ms Ross quite frankly I'm appauled you allowed this to happen!
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Oct 25, 2012 18:51:43 GMT 1
This is shaping up to be the worst page of linked music in the history of the internet.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 25, 2012 19:28:36 GMT 1
Stick around it gets worse.......
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 30, 2012 23:57:41 GMT 1
11TH FEBRUARY 2006- RUN IT- Chris Brown Featurign Juelz Santana (1 wk)Ah little Chris Brown starts us off in 2006, long before he turned into the Rihanna bashing anti-christ, here he is at the tender age of 16 with the best song Usher never released (read that as you will). Indeed it bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to the aforementioned rapper's "Yeah!" from two years prior, perhaps a testament to the overwhelming influence that his "Confessions" album had on R N B of the time. Nothing spectacular to see and hear in all honestly, with a passable enough tune, but it suffers from much of what the mid noughties suffered from, a long procession of ultimately rather forgettable songs that got this high due to low sales which allowed "less mainstream" genre's to aquire a far greater presence than perhaps their true "popularity" would warrant. Maybe this is however over-analysing the issue, we were where we were in 2006 and so a promising if unremarkable beginning for Mr Brown before the s**t hit the proverbial.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Oct 31, 2012 0:06:45 GMT 1
4TH MARCH- PUT YOUR RECORDS ON- Corinne Bailey Rae (1 wk)Another record that I know I'm supposed to love if I were a "true" muso, or certainly it seemed at the time, perhaps its release in March though sounding far too summery was just an odd step for me but it never jelled. Perhaps its that light reggae-ish lilt that gets my back up, though its delivered with far more credibility than the cod reggae of, say, Peter Andre, it is nevertheless just as hollow to my ears. Truth is I find this kind of stuff kinda dull, a bit like Katie Melua with a more uptempo drummer, so I apologise if you're a fan but it's a no no from me, things are about to get a lot worse before they get better i warn you now!
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Post by Earl Purple on Oct 31, 2012 0:18:41 GMT 1
faded 80s popstar Stephen Duffy, one of the founding members of Duran Duran. "faded 80s popstar" indeed! Well...I guess it is true that his subsequent band The Lilac Time never got much more than a cult following (oh didn't they get to no 84 in the charts once - and with lots of Radio 1 airplay with "American Eyes" back in '89 - not that that was really representative of what they were best at. - - checked - got to no 77 with another, inferior, overproduced, single too a little later)....but he was (and is) still active, albeit in a less pop-orientated, more verging on folk - "middle age, it's all the rage", as the opening line of the opening track on their 2001 album lilac6 put it....they even played a public gig this decade (on the London South Bank, 2007, apparently their first for more than 15 years) I thought the Duffy-Williams tie-up was a great idea (yeah I am admittedly a bit of a diehard Lilac Time fan)...and actually really appreciated this phase of Robbie's career - which at least seemed to be taking chances, and being...interesting... Mostly it worked, too, musically, in as much as these things do. TBH I reckon Duffy must have been doing a "going back to the 80s" thing when he wrote "Trippin'", so unlike the stuff he was writing and performing in his own band...there is a definite hint of "Icing On The Cake" among the mix, as well as the things you mention. Obviously this was far too good, and a little too complicated for a mass audience. And the "Rudebox" era singles even more so.... The Lilac Time had a #3 in my chart in 1999 with "A Dream That We All Share". Stephen Duffy also reached #4 in my chart in 1985 with "Icing On The Cake" with "Kiss Me" peaking at #6.
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vya
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Post by vya on Oct 31, 2012 14:35:01 GMT 1
"A Dream That We All Share"'s a lovely song
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borneoman
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Post by borneoman on Nov 1, 2012 10:31:26 GMT 1
oh poor Corinne!!!!!! Love her album, especially the slowies (Like a Star, Butterfly)... where did Corinne go??
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