SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 19, 2020 13:04:57 GMT 1
711 - Dusk Till Dawn by Zayn featuring Sia No. 5 in 2017
I was completely lost with this one. I've heard of Sia, in fact this is the second of 7 songs she appears on that we'll be considering in this thread. Zayn however, was a mystery to me, and I required Wikipedia to discover he's from Bradford and used to be in One Direction. There you go.
First time I listened to this I thought it sounded incredibly generic, pretty much how everything seemed to sound in 2017. After a few more listens it's OK though, nothing spectacular and hardly deserving of a place in the list of the biggest singles ever, but still, not too bad.
I wondered how a song that only reached number 5 and didn't sound that spectacular had done so well. The clue is in its chart run, it actually entered at its peak position, but then went back there again 8 weeks later. In fact its first 11 weeks on the chart were in the top 10, moving 5-9-7-7-6-6-6-5-7-9-10. Incredibly consistent if not at any one point massively popular. Strangely, after that it only managed two more weeks in the top 40, I guess it fell victim to one of those chart rules about having streams halved if its sales are dropping. A very modern tale, which strikes at the heart of the well worn argument that the Millionairres list is actually meaningless. That's not something I wholly disagree with, but still, I'm having fun so we'll press on all the same and have another one tomorrow.
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Roo.
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Post by Roo. on Aug 19, 2020 15:24:25 GMT 1
"Strangely, after that it only managed two more weeks in the top 40, I guess it fell victim to one of those strange chart rules about having streams halved if it's sales are dropping."
It was also the week before the Christmas chart, so all those Christmas oldies were climbing up and pushed it down even further.
I actually really love this song, and I also love the video (mainly the dragon that pops up at 1:17) - I think their voices go well together and it's a great pop ballad.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 19, 2020 17:50:35 GMT 1
I don't even remember that Zayn and Sia song. It's ok, but there's nothing that sets it apart from much of the other chart music of the period.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 20, 2020 9:45:49 GMT 1
710 - Ain't Nobody by Rufus & Chaka Khan No. 6 (as a remix) in 1989 - originally charted in 1984
Interesting to see this one here, I don't recall seeing it in many people's "all time favourite" type lists but it's obviously gained a significant boost in the digital era, so people must like it a lot. That said, it was also a top 10 hit twice in the 80s, so I guess it had quite a strong physical sales base to work from. Considering it's from 1984, it's not a song that has aged much either, it doesn't sound as dated as most big hits from that year.
For me it's clearly a top quality record - pop style r&b has never really been my thing but there's simply no denying this one is a classic. The hook is immense, it just gets in your head and makes you want to move, and the vocals are absolutely perfect. A great, timeless record which I would have said tends to get a bit overlooked when considering lists of the best records ever, but given it's position on this list maybe I'm wrong. Then again given it's lowly position on this list maybe I'm a bit right too. I had assumed that this was an early example of a producer being given top billing over a singer, but apparently Rufus was a band of which Chaka Khan was the lead singer. You learn something new every day.
One thing that's notable about this track is the huge number of other people who've used it in some way or other. Gezza's current 1997 thread has already uncovered versions by LL Cool J and The Course which both went top 10 that year, but a quick search on the OCC website reveals multiple other versions, one of which, by Felix Jaehn and Jasmine Thompson, reached no. 2 in 2015. That's a shame in a way, I'm pretty sure all of the newer versions, including the 1989 remix which peaked higher than the original, are substandard. Still, I expect Rufus appreciate the royalties.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 20, 2020 12:51:44 GMT 1
I think Ain't Nobody was actually recorded in the late 70s, but wasn't a hit until 1984. Anyway, it's an absolute stomper of a tune and a total disco anthem!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 21, 2020 10:25:14 GMT 1
709 - Step Into Christmas by Elton John No 8 in 2020 (Originally charted in 1973)
When I was about 14 I bought a compilation tape of Christmas songs, and it's on there that I first heard this one. It was a single cassette, it must have been one of the really early ones. In amongst all of the massive hits I already knew by the likes of Slade, Wham!, Wizzard, The Pogues etc, Step Into Christmas very much felt like a bit of filler to pad it out so they could make up a whole tape. The Guiness Book Of British Hit Singles informed me it had reached number 25 in 1973 and never been seen again.
I read a really interesting post somewhere on Haven last Christmas, I can't remember where exactly, that detailed what a huge impact the selection for early Christmas compilations had on the fortunes of several relatively unknown tracks. The jist was that those songs, nestling between the million sellers on those enormously popular compilations, seeped into the public's conciousness, and then took on a life of their own in the digital era. That can certainly be said for this one - after its original lacklustre performance in 1973, it since reached...
No. 53 in 2007 No. 64 in 2011 No. 75 in 2012 No. 84 in 2014 No. 58 in 2015 No. 37 in 2016 (its first appearance in the top 40 fror 43 years) No. 11 in 2017 (its first ever appearance in the top 20) No. 10 in 2018 (its first ever appearance in the top 10) No. 8 in 2019 (although the peak position, according to the vagaries of the calendar, was actually on the first week of 2020)
It is, therefore, not only something of a Christmas standard by now, but actually getting more and more popular as time goes on. It's also notably more successful these days than most of those massive Christmas hits to which I originally considered it an inferior also-ran (Boney M, Slade etc).
In keeping with the streaming era, the song itself is pleasant but fairly bland. It is background music to a cool festive dinner party, as opposed to the all out shouty in your face inescapable Christmas celebration of Slade or Shakin' Stevens. There's no denying that they do seem a bit dated these days, whereas this one sort of gets cooler every year. How long before it's challenging for number one I wonder?
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 21, 2020 13:02:58 GMT 1
I refuse to listen to a Christmas song in August, but I think I've heard that one sufficient times to remember every note of it! I was born in 1973 so can't remember what the general feeling was about it at the time... but I'd agree that it's inclusion on Christmas compilation albums has helped secure its place as a Christmas standard forever more.
The sound is very Elton John, there's no mistake of that, but he happens to be one of my favourite singers so I don't see that as a bad thing. I think the song itself is good rather than great - it's certainly not the best thing he's ever done, but overplay means I'd happily go without hearing it for a good few years!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 21, 2020 13:08:03 GMT 1
I refuse to listen to a Christmas song in August, but I think I've heard that one sufficient times to remember every note of it! I'm back from my summer holiday, and the weather's taken a decisive turn for the worst, so I'm alright with Christmas songs any time now
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Roo.
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Post by Roo. on Aug 21, 2020 14:44:06 GMT 1
I can't stand Step Into Christmas! It isn't the worst Christmas song out there (Stop The Cavalry and especially Wonderful Christmastime are worse) but it is very grating, and then hearing it hundreds of times every year over and over... it's now at the point where I never want to hear it again!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 21, 2020 14:57:45 GMT 1
I can't stand Step Into Christmas! It isn't the worst Christmas song out there (Stop The Cavalry and especially Wonderful Christmastime are worse) I love both of those! Stop The Cavalry is an anti-war classic, and Wonderful Christmastime is bizarre electronic minimalism way ahead of its time.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 23, 2020 8:59:25 GMT 1
708 - Rise by Jonas Blue featuring Jack & Jack No. 3 in 2018.
New one for me. This is a fun if pretty incidental pop song, sounds like a boy band but apparently isn’t. Not massively catchy, but good enough. It has a positive, happy message, one of those songs you can imagine being popular at school leavers assemblies.
I am grateful to Wikipedia for the knowledge that Jonas Blue is a 31 year old DJ from London. I am posting from my phone today so it’s hard to search the whole list, but the fact that my Apple Music account has 4 of his songs in it suggests that he will appear 3 more times in this thread, I certainly don’t remember downloading anything by him for any other reason. Jack & Jack are a pop-rap duo from Omaha, Nebraska who appear hear only once.
Amusingly for a song which goes “we’ve gotta ri-ri-ri-ri-rise ‘til we fall”, this song had a very old fashioned chart trajectory, entering low and climbing every week until peaking at number 3 for a fortnight, then dropping every week until it was gone. Life imitating art. Years ago such a chart run would not be remotely worthy of mention, now it seems quite odd.
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 23, 2020 9:03:34 GMT 1
I like Step Into Christmas, one of Elton John's many #2s in my chart in the 1970s, peaked behind Wizzard in a year when those two and Slade all came out together and had my whole Christmas top 3, but was the only one of the 3 not to get to #1 in my chart as Wizzard got 3 weeks and Slade 1 week over that period.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 23, 2020 9:17:59 GMT 1
Jonas Blue is one of those artists where, if he were on at a festival I would think I didn't know anything by him - but this would come on and I'd be like "Oh I know this one!!!"
I'm sure there are a few more I know by him too, but this is actually rather good so I'm surprised I didn't make any effort at the time to find out who was behind it.
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 23, 2020 10:35:15 GMT 1
Jonas Blue sounds like a boy-band... yeah maybe it isn't but the typical arrangement of what was popular in the 2010s and that I don't like about that kind of music. It has its moments but well it has to be arranged and structured as a 2010s song I guess to be popular.
Around 2018 a new "boy-band" called Tailormade emerged in my chart with one massive hit and a few big ones, and far more of the pop-rock style I like. I don't know what became of them as I stopped following new music shortly afterwards. Never mind :PM who had a massive hit in my chart in 2017 and another big one in 2018 that peaked at #2 - well behind Tailormade.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 24, 2020 9:53:58 GMT 1
707 - Fill Me In by Craig David No. 1 in 2000
The debut solo single from an artist who for occasionally bizarre reasons has gone on to be one of the most well known pop stars of the 21st Century in the UK, and, happily, it's a belter.
I've always thought this record's strength lies partly in the fact that it's a little bit silly. The story has a Shaggy like, Mr Lover-Lover style improbability about it, you feel that this tale of a boy with a 4x4, and a girl with a jacuzzi and rich but vaguely suspicious parents might have a little bit of embelishment about it. It's certainly not music that's coming straight from Britain's mean streets, as successful hip hop & r&b often has in the past.
The level of detail he goes into also seems faintly ridiculous - "red wine bottle half the contents gone" - so that's about a glass and a half each then, steady on! It's hard to imagine exactly why this girls' parents would be upset about her going out with a wealthy, respectful young man from the same neighbourhood as them who pays for her taxi and lets her wear his coat when she's cold. Either they are excessively protective or he is over emphasising their concern.
This single was his first following his uncredited appearance on Artful Dodger's equally excellent but maybe even more ludicrous Re-Rewind: The Crowd Say "Bo! Selecta". Well I say uncredited, he did sing his own name all over it, he just wasn't mentioned on the sleeve. Fill Me In was his first of 2 number ones in 2000 and kicked off a career which has given him 15 top ten hits, with an 8 year gap in the middle where he became something of a figure of fun thanks to the mystifylingly popular comedian Leigh Francis (aka Keith Lemon, Avid Merrion and various other incarnations at which I have never ever laughed, not even once).
Taking it all of that in his stride and bouncing back with a genuinely popular career rennaissance is perhaps the most impressive measure of all of Craig David as a person, and his increasingly National Treasure like status is entirely deserved.
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Post by greendemon on Aug 24, 2020 10:02:35 GMT 1
I went through UK garage phase as a young teen and as part of that I really loved 'Fill Me In' but wasn't big on most of Craig David's other singles. I enthusiastically bought Artful Dodger's debut album too!
The whole Bo Selecta/make fun of Craig David thing kind of passed me by; I never saw the show but the caricatured face was everywhere for a while and it seemed pretty mean-spirited and also very weird. It must have been a very difficult thing to deal with.
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 24, 2020 10:04:43 GMT 1
I saw Craig David live on New Years Eve!
I suppose he was fine at what he did, it's just not my kind of music. No more I can say really.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 24, 2020 10:23:29 GMT 1
I listened to 'Fill me in' recently for my 21st century #1s thread, and was amazed at how fresh it still sounded - some 20 years😱 later!! I actually like it more now than I did back then.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 25, 2020 9:25:59 GMT 1
706 - I Miss You by Clean Bandit featuring Julia Michaels No. 4 in 2018
The second of 6 Clean Bandit songs we will consider on this list, all of which were hits over a 4 year period from 2014 to 2018. That's pretty much the definition of a phenomenon, and all I really know about them is that the best song by them I ever hear, Mozart's House, came before any of their big hits, barely scraped the top 20 and is now long forgotten.
They seem to make inofensive upbeat pop / dance music with a classical leaning, perhaps taking a more traditional approach to song writing than many of their peers but with the end results not being dramatically different, they certainly fit into the sound of the time. It's hard to imagine anyone absolutely loving songs that sound like this, but there's not much to seriously dislike either, and I guess therein lies the key to their success. Have you ever met a massive Clean Bandit fan? Maybe there are some out there, I guess I wouldn't necessarily be aware of them anyway.
Julia Michaels, for the record, is a 27 year old singer and songwriter who was born in Iowa but raised in California. She's had a few hits as a featured artist, but her only other foray into the UK top 10 was a solo single called Issues which reached number 10 a year before this one took her 6 places higher. Maybe it was that which brought her to Clean Bandit's attention.
This doesn't seem like a very exciting post in this thread at all, I almost feel like breaking my own rules and doing another one today to make up for it. I won't though, I'll allow us a whole 24 hours to ponder the inanity of this one.
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Post by Earl Purple on Aug 25, 2020 9:31:38 GMT 1
"I Miss You" was Clean Bandit's one and only hit in my chart, reaching #17 in 2017.
Having just listened to it, I think #17 is about as high as it deserves. It has some pleasant parts, and no doubt fitted in well with the rest of my chart at the time, which all sounded different to it, rather than the UK chart where all the songs sound like this, i.e. the production side of things.
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