New entries this week – Turin Brakes #35, Shy FX & T Power with Kele Le Roc #34, Skin #30, Dizzee Rascal #29, Ginuwine #27, and Biffy Clyro #26 (the
fuck is up with that, precisely?).
It’s one of those “big shake up” kind of weeks, with fourteen new entries resulting in several old stayers avalanching down the scale, gratifyingly including The Androids, Plummet (ho ho ho), Room 5, Sonique, Bon Jovi, Mr Redz & DJ Skribble, Busted, Lisa Scott-Lee, Good Charlotte, Bhangra Knights vs. Husan, and, particularly gleefully, The Stereophonics, who thankfully (for me) only manage one week in the top 20 and go down 17 to #21 this week. Fuck you, Jones! Fuck
you!!!
So here we go:
20) DMX – X Gon’ Give It To Ya
Ooh, I am in a well good mood now. And here’s good ol’ X, still sounding like he’s sat on a syringe full of rabies, with the beat that just cannot tell the bottom from the top… lovely stuff. Almost certainly not in the top 20 next week, though, which makes me a wee bit sad. We’ve grown close over the last few weeks, me an’ X. Well, I have, anyway.
19) CRAIG DAVID & FALLACY – Rise & Fall (Blacksmith remix)
Radio 1 still insist on playing the Blacksmith remix, which doesn’t go with Craig David’s vocals at all, and they still seem hellbent on claiming that Sting’s on it instead of Fallacy. Caught Trevor Nelson doing it yesterday. Shame on the man. SHAME. Still, at least Wes didn’t fucking talk over it this week. He is so gonna get his one of these days…
18) DAVE GAHAN – Dirty Sticky Floors (NEW ENTRY)
Hmm. He’s the singer in Depeche Mode, he is, but this is his solo stuff. It’s not very good, in that it sounds a wee bit like Natalie Imbruglia, but ‘darker’, with references to ‘drugs’ and ‘despair’ and ‘that’. He’s really digging the dirtiness and stickiness of the floor, cos he’s going all breathy and stuff, but it just sounds like he’s got a wee bit of asthma. Sad really.
17) CHEEKY GIRLS – Take Your Shoes Off
Then again, who really sounds older – Dave, or these two? The amount of references to them being teenagers… suspicions are aroused in these quarters. And the whole ‘disco music!’ thing… if I were in Chic, I would be really, really pissed off right now.
16) LOVE INC. – Broken Bones
Oh dear. This isn’t shaping up to be a classic. It’s more drug references, I think, but this woman insists on grunt/growling every syllable of every word and it just makes me want to cry… please take it away. Please.
15) JEMINI – Cry Baby (NEW ENTRY)
Bloodyfuckinghellcuntybollocksbollocks. It sounded wretched at Eurovision, and lord knows it’s even worse now. It all just screams “fortnight of constant downpour in a caravan at a Pontins in Prestatyn”, horrid cod-disco beats, with shittily oversung male and she-male vocals over the top with the world’s most banal lyrics (“Cry cry baby, you lied to me baby, must’ve been crazy, baby bye bye…”). Deserved all the points it got at Eurovision… horrid. The Paul McCartney performing arts academy is responsible for the whole thing. Ringo was the talented one.
14) TATU – Not Gonna Get Us
Next to what has come before, this is the best thing ever, and even taken out of that context it’s still a very good single. This is how you do it, Mr Gahan. Except their cover of How Soon Is Now does it billions of times better. But hey. It’s not any of the previous five songs, and as such it rules.
13) TOMCRAFT – Loneliness
This is another one I’ve got really quite close with, too. A raft of Quite-Good in a sea of Jesus-Fucking-Christ-No – it’ll never be my favourite record in the world, but it still makes me smile. In a sort of “Oh, German electro about being ignored by selfish bastard men and it’s raining and they’re re-running Peak Practice” kind of way.
12) 50 CENT – In Da Club
This is going back up the chart. After eleven weeks. He’s releasing another single at end o’ month, but really, he shouldn’t bother. This’ll be around forever. Oh, and his next single is shit as well.
11) GIRLS ALOUD – No Good Advice
Ooh crumbs. Now you know there’ll be trouble. This is still one of the best singles in a while and everything, but it only manages two weeks in the top 10… album got to #2 though. Perhaps there won’t be trouble at t’mill just yet. But it could be coming. Let us hope and pray Walsh doesn’t decide to turn them into the female Westlife, cos that’d just be really sad…
And now – the top 10 – six new entries… smell the anticipation yet?
10) ABS – Stop Sign (NEW ENTRY)
Well, that’s sort of killed it. Abs wasn’t even meant to be the talented one in 5ive, was he? This is sort of alright, cos it’s got the whole retro-60’s thing going on, but then Wes tells us it’s a cover of a hit from… the 60’s. And then we realise that it’s been run through Pete Waterman’s anaesthetic plant a few times. And now… it just seems really, really rubbish. Sigh.
9) XTM & DJ CHUCKY presents ANNIA – FLY ON THE WINGS OF LOVE (NEW ENTRY)
As Arab Strap once said, “It’s officially summer.” Yes, here comes the first unbearable Euro-shite reworking of an old tune featuring vocals by a girl singing into a milk bottle. This won Eurovision for Denmark a few years ago, and it was shit then. Now… it’s… well, it’s worse.
8) BIG BROVAZ – Favourite Things
Assuming this’ll be around for a few weeks, here beginneth a weekly series – my Least Favourite Things About Favourite Things by Big Brovaz. Firstly – the way the opening verse not only rhymes “hold my hand” with “understand”, but immediately follows up by rhyming “things” with… “things.” Craig David featuring Sting, ladies and gentlemen!
7) SEAN PAUL – Get Busy
Whew. Relief at last – not grinding this week, but it’s still wicked. However, it’s also been victim of a horrendous ‘thugged out’ remix that I’ve started hearing quite a bit on the radio lately, which might get popular, and that would be tragic indeed. Let’s remember the good times while we still can…
6) JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE – Rock Your Body
I still don’t trust the man. On a slightly unrelated note, heard Like I Love You again for the first time in ages earlier – that’s not really very good either, is it?
5) EMMA BUNTON – Free Me (NEW ENTRY)
This is not a Bond theme. This is the Pebble Mill Big Band doing the theme to the Great Antiques Hunt, while Emma Bunton seems to be doing her vocals as a rehearsal for the speaking clock. Let’s get this straight, OK – Justin does not want to rock my body. And you most certainly do not long to seduce me. Now piss off.
4) RADIOHEAD – There There (NEW ENTRY)
Much as I remain largely unmoved by most Radiohead stuff, isn’t it just fantastic how something this odd can parachute into the top 5 more or less by default? I mean, most of this week’s top 10 is utter cack, and while this isn’t amazing, by this week’s standards it just seems really lovely. Good on yer Mr Yorke. For now.
3) BUSTA RHYMES, MARIAH CAREY, AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE – I Know What You Want (NEW ENTRY)
And now, I am really appreciating Radiohead. Because this is in the running for Worst Single Of 2003, if only because it’s taken Busta Rhymes and turned him into… what, exactly? Why is he singing? Why is Mariah Carey doing those fucking ‘alluring’ breathing noises all over the shit? Who are these other talentless shites going on about how they love you even though they’re always on tour? Why is Mariah Carey singing? And can someone just find a copy of Fire It Up, or Whoo Ha! or Gimme Some More, and play it at whoever was responsible for this SHITE and play it to them till they realise precisely what they’ve done? Cunts.
2) S CLUB – Say Goodbye (NEW ENTRY)
YES! YES YES YES! Of all the big upsets R Kelly’s pulled off in his improbable run at the top, this is the sweetest by a mile. All this horrendous revisionism about how S Club were in some way a cornerstone of British culture – bollocks were they. Aside from Don’t Stop Movin’ and possibly S Club Party and Reach, what have they done that actually mattered? Jon, Hannah, Paul, Tina – can you really say something interesting about any of them? Rachel Stevens is apparently going to have a solo career. What’s her voice sound like again? That’s the really, really weird thing – there were seven of them, and it was only Jo and Bradley that ever seemed to do lead vocals. The thing they did change was the trend for bands to go on every telly show, every radio programme available, absolutely blanket the media with publicity of their shit, and the whole pre-arranged split was meant to be the big finale of it all. This song is shit. And so were S Club. Bye bye, fuckfaces.
1) R KELLY – Ignition (Remix)
Ah man. Bless his wee cotton socks, but R Kelly has done us all a service today. And this is still quite good and everything. Next week, though… I made a prediction a little while ago that Electric Six would come out of nowhere to knock this off number one. And I’ve got this feeling they still might… this could b
― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Sunday, 1 June 2003 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)