Roo.
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Post by Roo. on Jul 3, 2020 22:59:57 GMT 1
I love Rihanna, but... both these songs are amongst her weakest for me.
S&M I find to have the same problem as the Sia track did for others - it feels like a hit-by-numbers, with faux-provocative nonsense designed to get the masses feeling edgy for buying it.
And Rude Boy is the same - an obvious "hit" that ends up weirdly out of place on Rated R, her best and darkest album - plus I've heard several mash-ups with things like Papa Roach and Pendulum, and they always improve on the original! Mostly by doing away with the awful backing music.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 5, 2020 14:39:43 GMT 1
737 - Never Enough by Loren Allred No. 24 in 2018
Well, here’s an odd one. This is one of a handful of songs on the list which have never made the UK top 20. You would think to achieve that it must have been selling consistently low numbers for many years, but no, it’s barely two years since it was released.
So what’s going on then? Well, there’s various ways of answering that, but the key thing to recognise is that this is taken from the massively successful Greatest Showman soundtrack album. At a time when albums on the whole seem something of an outdated concept, that one has bucked the trend and been streamed in its entirety millions of times. Every stream of every track contributes to the singles chart too, so a lot of this track’s “sales” will have come via that route. That said, people must have been seeking it out in its own right to some extent because otherwise every track on the album would be on this list, but they’re not.
Enough of the technical stuff, what’s the actual song like? Well, not that great actually. I have sat down with my kids and watched the film, and can see the appeal, of both the film and the music. This song didn’t stand out at all though, not particularly memorable, which makes the fact that it’s one of the best selling singles of all time just seem odd.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 5, 2020 15:57:16 GMT 1
I must admit, when I saw the name of the next song to feature here I was like "Who the Hell is Loren Allred?". On listening I realise that I have heard it before - although I have never actually sat and listened to the full 'Greatest Showman' soundtrack. It's not my favourite song from it, but it's pleasant enough - although I'm not sure it deserves to be a million seller on it's own merit.
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Roo.
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Post by Roo. on Jul 5, 2020 18:51:16 GMT 1
It's an okay song... until it gets to the "never! never!" bit, and then I have to turn it off - something about that bit really grates on me. I'm usually a musicals fan too, but that one has very little about it that I like.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 5, 2020 22:11:52 GMT 1
some boring big ballad, nothing particularly good about it and I'd never heard it before nor am I sure I ever want to hear it again.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 5, 2020 22:27:23 GMT 1
SheriffFatman has correctly pointed out that this is a completely illegitimate millionaire. And I'm not whining about the OCC's poorly calibrated streams to sales ratio. It is the absurd situation caused by somewhere between one third and one half of this track's sales arising from whole album streams which annoys me. Listening to the song as a standalone amongst the Rihanna hits reveals it for what it really is. It is the overly-emoted ballad that every hit musical needs. It is depressingly formulaic. It has lyrics which must have taken all of ten minutes to write, and that includes the time it took to find a biro. It is a technically competent performance, but one which is so lacking in individuality or charisma it comes as no surprise to discover that Loren Allred's career discography amounts to this track and a couple of featuring appearances behind nobodies. I liked the Greatest Showman far more than I had expected. I think some of its songs are very strong - we'll get to them sometime in the next year or three - but this is the point in the film when I nip out for a wee break.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 6, 2020 13:46:53 GMT 1
736 - Suspicious Minds by Elvis Presley No. 2 in 1970 (originally charted in 1969)
I was born 5 months before Elvis died, so I've kind of formed my own opinion without ever reading much about him or understanding who liked him at the time. He just seems to have had an incredible natural talent as a singer, his voice comes across as effortlessly brilliant and always very listenable. On top of that he was a captivating performer, and the combination of the two was enough to make him the biggest star on the planet.
Interestingly, that summary, whether or not it's a fair account of his total ability, doesn't include him having any particular creative input into his records - he didn't write songs or play music, he just turned up and sang. In modern times that would be enough to have him considered by many an inauthentic puppet of the music industry. A significant number of 21st century music consumers shun music like that without even listening to it, on the assumption it will be bad. It wasn't always so though, and some of Elvis' output is amongst the best pop records ever made, a bold statement but one I would definitely apply to Suspicious Minds.
Everything about this track is perfect. His vocals are absolutely glorious, that twangy guitar intro is brilliant, the song is fascinating, even the production trick near the end where you think it's finished but then it fades back in again is brilliant, it's so good that the initial fade was too soon for it to end. Popular music really doesn't get much better than this.
Obsessing over chart books like the Guiness Book Of British Hit Singles as a kid I was always impressed by the neat symettry of the fact that the two most famous chart acts of all time, Elvis and The Beatles, tied for quantity of number 1s, 17. Incredibly this song wasn't one of them, in fact many of his chart toppers were, in my humble opinion, deeply inferior to this one, but all Suspicious Minds could manage was one paltry week at number 2 behind Rolf Harris' Two Little Boys at the very start of 1970. Streaming has its good and bad points, but I am grateful to it for somewhat righting that wrong by making this now one of his all time biggest hits.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 6, 2020 14:15:25 GMT 1
This is a stark contrast to yesterday's entry, in that this is such a classic track that it feels crazy it's only just reached millionaire status.
I actually heard the Fine Young Cannibals' version first, and while that is still very good it never quite had the impact that Elvis's deep vocals had on it. He was called the King for a reason, and this is one of many examples why that was the case!
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Post by o on Jul 6, 2020 15:21:41 GMT 1
Suspicious minds is a classic, simple as.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 7, 2020 22:15:55 GMT 1
735 - Missing by Everything But The Girl No. 3 in 1995 (originally charted in 1994)
This is an odd one, I'm never quite sure how I feel about it. I mean, in one way, I can see how it's completely brilliant, it's a complete transformation of the original, turning it into something that appealed directly to a whole new generation of music consumers who probably had no idea who Everything But The Girl were. There's something strangely flat about the end result though, it's like something incredible has happened but then at the same time nothing actually happens at all. I find it a bit diorientating. Monotone brilliance, perhaps.
I've always been a bit bemused by the lyrics too. In what sense do the deserts miss the rain? In a literal sense the rain misses the desert, it falls elsewhere. Assuming we're being non-literal though, and granting the desert the power to feel emotions, I can see how it would desire the rain, but it can't miss it because it never had any. Did it? This is confusing territory.
Back in the day this track's 14 week run in the to 10 was absolutely astonishing, whereas these days there'd be nothing remotely surprising about it. When you realise in 1994 it was supported by purchases of a £3.99 CD single though it really does still seem quite an achievement. A well deserved milion seller I think, a genuine moment in pop history.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Jul 7, 2020 22:35:28 GMT 1
I don't know what it is, but there's something about 'Missing' that makes it really endearing in its remix form. It's not your typical dance record, which maybe why it's so popular - coupled with Tracey Thorn's voice, which is exquisite by the way!
I guess I'm just trying to say that I really like it. Sorry if I've been rambling, I've had a couple of drinks!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 7, 2020 22:52:18 GMT 1
I don't know what it is, but there's something about 'Missing' that makes it really endearing in its remix form. It's not your typical dance record, which maybe why it's so popular - coupled with Tracey Thorn's voice, which is exquisite by the way! I guess I'm just trying to say that I really like it. Sorry if I've been rambling, I've had a couple of drinks! I forgot to mention her voice. It has an almost hypnotic quality, on this track at least. She has a gorgeous voice but the song doesn’t allow her to demonstrate any range at all, which is strange but effective.
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Post by masenz on Jul 7, 2020 23:00:15 GMT 1
I think I was a bit young to appreciate it as at the time, but it certainly has sat with me and in the general public’s mind I’d say - the sign of an enduring, genuine deserving million seller.
These days I love it.
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Post by Smurfie on Jul 7, 2020 23:07:37 GMT 1
Missing is stunning. It’s absolutely heartbreaking. The fact Todd Terry remixed it and I could dance to it too made it a hundred times better - my favourite number three of all time.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 8, 2020 8:17:08 GMT 1
Suspicious Minds
I've always thought this was absolutely brilliant, but this thread has prompted me to work out why.
Firstly, it is a country & western song at heart. Just listen to those twangy guitars and the lyrical sentiments. The horns owe as much to Johnny Cash's mariachi arrangements as they do to Memphis soul.
Then we have the Sweet Inspirations' gospel-soul backing vocals. If there is a heaven, then it surely sounds like this.
The song is developed by the drumming. Towards the end you worry that the drummer might be about to launch himself into orbit. The song is nothing like how it started, and yet we seem to have got there seamlessly.
What binds all of this together so effectively is, of course, Elvis. By the late 60s and early 70s, the initial Vegas era, his voice had become the richest, most expressive there has ever been in popular music. At his best, I genuinely believe him to be the absolute greatest. Even ahead of Otis Redding. His voice has warmth, emotion, subtlety and power. (Even, in this clip, humour). It is, on Suspicious Minds, an extraordinary instrument.
And so, in stark contract to Rihanna's Rude Boy, we have very different genres coming together to produce a whole that if far greater than the sum of its parts. It is absolutely brilliant.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jul 8, 2020 8:27:05 GMT 1
Missing
I'd paid passing interest to EbtG over the years. They were, after all, one of those earnest semi-successful indie bands that students like me were supposed to underwrite. I owned their first greatest hits, and really liked their Rod Stewart cover. When Missing was first released I thought it was another solid effort.
Then along came Todd Terry. The Missing remix sounded totally novel. I don't recall any tracks that came before it which managed to bring so much melancholy onto a dance floor. In 1995, every other dance record was an off-your-nut frantic banger likely to bring on an epileptic fit, or a wedge of cheese so stinky it needed hazard warning stickers. Missing simply didn't fit. But it certainly worked.
That it took three months to convert music buyers to its beauty is no surprise. It still is a slow burner, and I never tire of hearing it.
Ben Watt watched Todd very closely. The next two EbtG albums are in the mould of this track, and are, as a consequence, unsung classics. Check out Walking Wounded and Temperamental on your streaming service of choice, and then buy them next time you see them in a charity shop.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 8, 2020 8:42:39 GMT 1
Suspicious Minds: This song and "In The Ghetto" marked a "comeback" by Elvis Presley. Not that he had been away, but he wasn't being taken seriously anymore.
Rock And Roll had moved on and he'd been left behind, so the only sensible path was to reinvent himself as a country singer, mixing in a bit of "gospel" because he'd always done that, and possibly keep some of the characteristics of Elvis's rock and roll style.
This song and "In The Ghetto" were both very well received at the time and for good reason. This is the kind of song you'd expect to find on this list.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 8, 2020 8:44:24 GMT 1
Missing: A song that achieved nothing until Todd Terry's remix. Quite often I find a remix is almost pointless and has a negative effect but there are a few occasions where it goes the other way, and this is one of them.
It revived their fortunes too going forward to have more hits, but don't really think they went on to anything that great, "Walking Wounded" was ok.
Still this song also belongs on this list as being memorable as a big hit.
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Post by o on Jul 8, 2020 8:54:49 GMT 1
I'm with your comments Sherriff, "There's something strangely flat about the end result though, it's like something incredible has happened but then at the same time nothing actually happens at all. I find it a bit diorientating. Monotone brilliance, perhaps."
That sums up my feelings, I've never really got it.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 8, 2020 10:37:03 GMT 1
734 - Sweet Disposition by The Temper Trap No. 6 in 2009
A surprise million seller for me. I absolutely love this and have been playing it regularly for the best part of 11 years, I just didn't realise so many other people felt the same. Its modest no. 6 peak and 2 weeks in the top 10 are unrepresentative of its true popularity - between October 2009 and June 2012 it spent 60 weeks in the top 100.
So what is it about this one? The tune is incessant, the high vocals make it stand out, and it's almost symphonic in the way it builds. Really, it's just lovely, I could listen to it all day. Class.
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