Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 24, 2012 21:40:08 GMT 1
29TH JULY- UNFAITHFUL- Rihanna (2 wks)Co-written by Ne-Yo and entitled "Murderer" this was Rihanna's third No 2 hit within a 12 month period during which she couldn't quite manage a chart topper. Notable for a shift in gear towards balladry that she hadn't attempted before (singles wise) it seems now to be viewed as one of her finer singles but I had always thought it was a song that laid bare her rather thin vocals. Ironically having viewed several "live" versions of this she actually delivers a better vocal live than in the studio where she seems to struggle to hold the notes and you wonder how it could have sounded in the hands of Dion, or Lewis. Still in an era when the ballad rather seemed to be on its last legs (Lewis and a reformed Take That would rectify that by the year's end) perhaps it rather suffers for its subtlety in her cannon, but her nasal voice does grate overall.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 22, 2012 17:49:35 GMT 1
27TH MAY- FROM PARIS TO BERLIN- Infernal (1 wk)I apologise for this- wholeheartedly, but I LOVE THIS song! Tacky eurodisco had been missing from the charts for a while and this was a reminder of all things that school disco's etc should be about. Lyrically very.........simple, it was 100% earworm and was one of the songs that dominated the airwaves that summer thanks to its appropriation for the England football world cup "attempt" that year coupled with the viral campaign by Colin Murray and his dancing, which helped to spur the track into public conciousness. It spent 11 weeks inside the top 10 (no small thing in 2006) as the song refused to die, the folow up (and only other hit from them) was a cover of Laura Branigan's 1984 hit "Self Control" which is perhaps better forgotten. Of course it's all disposable disco music but there is an art to making earworm tracks and whatever that is you can count this as an example. Apols again!
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 22, 2012 17:38:11 GMT 1
20TH MAY- CONTROL MYSELF- LL Cool J Featuring Jennifer Lopez (1 wk)hands up ho can recall this before you click the vid below? I confess I have no recollection of this at all! Appearently it has a helping hand from Afrika Bambaataa and Granmaster Flash though you'd be pushed to recall the samples, in short it seems a rather odd inclusion in this list purely because the last song on this series of threads that I had no memory of at all was probably back in 1981 or something. Perhaps I'd grown out of the charts for a bit but this seems completely forgettable like much of Lopez's output in the mid 00s, with low sales enabling "niche" records to gain artificially high positions in the chart. It is, at heart, probably more of a thank you record, Lopez returning the favour to LL Cool J for guesting on her "All I Have" back in 2003 (which co-incidentally also reached No 2 here), but a more "generic" piece of mid 00s R N B you're unlikely to come across again.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 22, 2012 17:24:58 GMT 1
Well welcome along Roo!
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 15, 2012 22:49:28 GMT 1
13TH MAY- DANI CALIFORNIA- Red Hot Chili Peppers (1 wk)Well if you had my review of "By The Way" then you'll know my thoughts on RHCP, and I have to say that I like that song much better than I like this one. I shan't labour on my opinion of their merits but suffice it to say that feels like the treading of old water for the group. The narrative is at least moderately interesting following the tale of "Dani" who first appeared on 1999's "Californication" and again on "By The Way" with her death being the theme for this song. It's not a BAD song per se, it just leaves me cold, and yes I'm aware of the irony of that given my praise of Shayne Ward some reviews ago...
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 15, 2012 22:42:11 GMT 1
29TH APRIL- S.O.S- Rihanna (2 wks)Proving that 2005's "Pon De Replay" was no fluke, Rihanna's career got going in the UK with this track, owing more than a small debt to "Tainted Love" in the process. Originally offered to Christina Milian for her third album she passed on it (as was soon to be dumped by Def Jam) and it was handed to Rihanna who turned it into a US No 1 single almost going all the way here. The problem with "S.O.S" is that any review becomes in essence a review of "Tainted Love" such is the track's dependency on the song, of course Rihanna smoulders her way through the track singing as suggestively as she can but can she really claim that she's doing something original here? Well not really, but to charge her with that crime is to really miss the point of her ascendency, vocally she can sometimes sound nasal and quite weak, and OK she's passable here but she has a talent (or should that be her team has?) of picking the right song and choosing her singles, on the whole, quite wisely to fit what's going on musically at the time. She is, ultimately, a reminder of what makes a good "popstar" rather than a good "singer" and that's not always a bad thing....
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 14, 2012 21:34:09 GMT 1
22ND APRIL- NO PROMISES- Shayne Ward (1 wk)OK, there's no way to say this nicely so I'm just gonna come out with this- I rather like this song if not entirely for musical reasons . The original is by Bryan Rice, a danish popstar who released it in 2005 to quite reasonable success in his homeland, however it failed to make the transition outside of Denmark, Louis Walsh must have liked it and handed it to Ward to record for his second single. Of Course with Ward it's little more than showboating for his vocal range to evidence that we were all right to vote for him on "X Factor". Ward turns in a competent performance and in a normal week in 2006 would have made No 1 but it ran into the juggernaut that was Gnarls Barkley so stood little chance. It won't change anyone's mind about whether or not you think reality shows ever find "real" stars but it's a pleasent enough song and not everything has to be thought provoking surely?
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 14, 2012 21:21:44 GMT 1
15TH APRIL-ONE- Mary J Blige & U2 (1 wk)Written by U2 some 15 years before this, "One" was of course soon picked out by the press and fans as one of the standout tracks on "Achtung Baby" and dutifully became the group's third single in early 1992 making the top 10 with donations going to AIDS research. Taking inspiration from internal factors (the disagreements in the band over where the group was heading as Bono/ Edge wanted a more dance orientated direction) and external factors (the reunification of Germany post the Berlin wall) "One" is a genuine example of very clever songwriting, one of the factors which made U2 a massive band in the first place. THIS however is utterly pointless. Invited to sing on stage in 2005 Mary J Blige doesn't disgrace herself vocally on the song but neither does she contribute much either and at the end it seems rather like the emotion has been stripped out of it- a quick comparison to the original should highlight this point only too clearly. The fragility of Bono's voice seems to be lacking, he appears to be singing to the stadium rather than to an individual, and Blige is little more than a foil in this relationship. They were still more than capable of getting sizeable hits on their own at this point which only makes this all the more baffling.
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 10, 2012 13:53:43 GMT 1
1ST APRIL- NATURE'S LAW- Embrace (1 wk)Now this is much more like it, Embrace were a curious band, after some truly great records in the 97-98 period they suddenly seemed to run out of ideas and weren't really rejunvinated until Chris Martin gave them a helping hand with "Gravity" in 2004. Perhaps it was the rather inflated ego of Danny McNamara in the 90s (an equivalent of a 00s Johnny Borrell) that seemed to turn people off the band, or merely that they didn't have the talent of that other powerhouse of ego during the late 90s Oasis. At any rate "Nature's Law" is nothing outstanding and you've heard it all before I'm sure yet it is sung with a tenderness and a sincerity that genuinly does convince. Indeed if you compare it to our previous entry it should be clear why this song is clearly superior, one is going through the motions, whilst with this track there is some genuine feeling and warmth here, and yes a little pathos in the lines. Perhaps some would describe this as "indie landfill" but it would be no bad thing to have more of this kind of stuff in the charts now, and yes I know I'm sounding old now.....
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Gezza
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Post by Gezza on Nov 10, 2012 13:35:10 GMT 1
11TH MARCH- BEEP- Pussycat Dolls Featuring Will.i.am (1 wk)Ah the Pussycat Dolls! Let me start by saying that I loved "Don't Cha", a sassy piece of mid 00s pop that had just a slice of fun to it and was all rather enjoyable, then the slide happened, or as I like to call it, Scherzinger's quite evident push to be a solo star. Ths songs basically became nothing more than vehicle's to push her "sex appeal" with a string of gimmicky throwaway tunes that became increasingly generic (yes that word again). "Beep" is of course co-written and co-performed by Will.i.am (with a big dollop of a ELO sample courtesy of "Evil Woman"), and is little more than extension of BEP's "My Humps" from 6 months before, a lot of this smackes of laziness though, no attempt to really write a song and by bleeping out the last word of the sentence then of course everything rhymes, the call and response between Will.i.am and Scherzinger is painfully one dimensional and by the end you are throughly convinced that there is absolutely no sexual attraction between the pair, or at least no attraction beyond the boardroom that thought it would be a good idea to pair these two up. Thoroughly unconvincing on every level.
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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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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 25, 2012 19:28:36 GMT 1
Stick around it gets worse.......
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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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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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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 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 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 17, 2012 9:12:05 GMT 1
no kylie, I won't be there lol
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Post by Gezza on Oct 10, 2012 21:00:49 GMT 1
Yay!! Unquestionalbly one of the best pop acts of the 00s- Huzzah!
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