UK TOP 40 PREDICTION LEAGUE - Week 5

I heard that Kitten song on the radio for the first time yesterday and it's actually really good! Will wonders etc. (Wayne Wonders etc.)

You really are not pleased aobut Fatman Scoop, are you?

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #32
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #27
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #5
KELIS - Milkshake #14
PINK - Trouble #3
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #22
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #12
PHIXX - Hold On Me #10
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #7
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #13
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #18

I'd like the Nextmen to chart highest of those, but I'll go with BRMC. Sneddon will make a not-at-all-hilarious #42, I think.

I missed today's chart, so can't comment on Fatman Scoop, which I've not heard yet bizarrely... Ashanti's "Rain on Me" is a record I really love; caught this back in September on an MTV channel; very darkly lit, 'blue' video... fantastic production.

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #39
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #29
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #10
KELIS - Milkshake #6 (this is wonderful... come on; it's got to get Top 10! ;-))
PINK - Trouble #4
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #18 (some residual success here, but slipping)
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #14
PHIXX - Hold On Me #12
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #8
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #7
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #21

#37: Ashanti

Which of the following will chart highest?: BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB - We're All Love

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me - #3
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream - #42
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel - #33
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) - #4
KELIS - Milkshake - #8
PINK - Trouble - #2
KYM MARSH - Sentimental - #11
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You - #17
PHIXX - Hold On Me - #7
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind - #5
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along - #20
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 - #37

I'm going with... Sned.

And the Fat Man to be #1.

Scores as we stand:

1)Flowersdie 115
2)Alex 105
3)Neil FC 100
4)Siegbran 99
5=)Fishman 92
5=)Stevem 92
7)Me 83
8)Joni 79
9)Ed 76
10)Tom May 62
11)Ian 54
12)Jel 42
13)Carmody 31
14)Dom 30
15)Scott James 13
16)Lid 2

Can I just say that not only is that Mark Owen single even better than his last one, but there are at least three more absolute stormers on his album, which is just fantastic?

No? Shit.

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #3 (great, just like every Atomic Kitten single that isn't "Love Doesn't Have To Hurt" or "Eternal Flame".
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #40
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #34 (see, the idea of singles is to make people buy albums. This is the wrong song, Elbow peeps! "Not A Job" or "Grace Under Pressure" next time, OK?)
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #10
KELIS - Milkshake #25 (Kelis is the world's most underrated popstar and this is fantastic. But it won't do well)
PINK - Trouble #5
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #14 (quite decent, but she's a bit.. over.)
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #9 (oh, a thing of gorgeous beauty.. I'm almost in love, people!)
PHIXX - Hold On Me #7 (better than it ought to be, really)
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #2 (because she looks great in the video)
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #11
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #24

#1 Fat Man
#37: The divine genius of Sophie Ellis Bextor.

And SPECIAL BONUS ROUND FOR THE PURPOSES OF LAUGHING:

David Sneddon. (you UK people actually PREFER him to Sinead Quinn? You fools!)

Oh and for the three people who are interested, the three other Mark Owen stormers are "Close To The Edge", a great swooning pop-rock ballad with a killer chorus, the mildly troubling "Head In The Clouds", in which Mr Owen rhapsodises about being in love with someone who treats him like shit and hates his cooking whose chorus is great but the verses are even better, and best of all, "Gravity" a three-minute bliss-bomb of pop about some girl bringing him back down when he wakes up somewhere he'd rather not be because she's his graaaavityyyy.

Wrong place for it, but if I started a thread it'd get no response and the meme would die.

# 37 - Craig David

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #28
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #36
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila)#9
KELIS - Milkshake #27
PINK - Trouble #3
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #12
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #11
PHIXX - Hold On Me #13
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #5
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #23
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #32

Random number: #37 Ian Van Dahl - I Can't Let You Go

No.1 :- Fatman Scoop - Be Faithful

Highest:- DAVID SNEDDON - Baby Get Higher

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me (i wish they'd fuck off & die, bunch of talentless, pran-faced mingers.) #6
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #34
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #36
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #12
KELIS - Milkshake #11
PINK - Trouble #2
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #28
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #8
PHIXX - Hold On Me #9
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #3
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #13
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #30

#37 - Craig David
#1 - Fatman Scoop

Which of the following will chart highest?:
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB - We're All In Love

No honest the AK single is good! 3rd best thing they've ever done.

1. rejecting Heidi
2. doing quite well in Japan

Actually I just visited a fan site and I'm amazed how many of the singles I like. Edward O is right!

Surely that Phixx single isn't going to go Top 20! (for all that I like it quite a lot)

it's been on The Box a lot and they've probably played at G.A.Y. already - guaranteed top ten i'd say

incidentally I reckon (read: hope) that Fatman Scoop will get a second week at #1, though it was probably obvious from what I wrote upthread ...

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me 3
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream 12
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel 19
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) 18
KELIS - Milkshake 22
PINK - Trouble 4
KYM MARSH - Sentimental 16
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You 11
PHIXX - Hold On Me 32
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind 14
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along 6
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 10

Random number: #37 S Club 8

And SPECIAL BONUS ROUND FOR THE PURPOSES OF LAUGHING:

Which of the following will chart highest?:

#1 Fatman scoop
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB - We're All Love

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me - #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream - #36
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel - #28
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) - #11
KELIS - Milkshake - #31
PINK - Trouble - #4
KYM MARSH - Sentimental - #20
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You - #10
PHIXX - Hold On Me - #9
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind - #5
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along - #18
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 - #25

Random number: #37 - Bext0r
#1 - Fatman Scooop

And SPECIAL BONUS ROUND FOR THE PURPOSES OF LAUGHING: I think Sned also.

In just world Kelis would be number one for all eternity but alas she doesn't have even the vaguest hint of a prayer. Nice that she's up against Pink again though, to think that back in heady days of early-2000 they were commercially on a par, and Kelis looked set to kick the pertendah to tha kerb, so flimsy was her pedigree. HOW TIMES CHANGE.

(I realise Kelis has sustained relatively-significant fame-level for last few years and is again the greatest popstar in the world pretty much, but after Caught Out There people have any of her records sold in any real quantity at all? It's Food Parcel Season people, do spare a thought for shivery Kelis at this time of year)

Nope. Good Stuff only made #19 (WHAT! I hear you cry) and, even more tragically, her most gorgeous moment, probably the Neptunes' peak too, "Get Along With You" made #41 I think.

Love Atomic Kitten as much as I do, I'd gladly relegate them to a career of missing out on the top 100 if Kelis could just get a decent sized hit again. Milkshake is the good!

i'v just found out that former Loft member & journalist Andy Strickland set up Dotmusic, where i go to look at the charts. I shall play 'up the hill down the slope' as i compile my guesses carefully weighted judgements.

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #29
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #22
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #8
KELIS - Milkshake #23
PINK - Trouble #7
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #15
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #11
PHIXX - Hold On Me #16
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #5
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #10
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #13

#1 - fatman
#37 - craig david

Which of the following will chart highest?:

UB40 ft. UNITED COLOURS OF SOUND - Swing Low (special jangly guitar remix)

Get those picks in quick like...

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #22
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #30
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #7
KELIS - Milkshake #20
PINK - Trouble #5
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #12
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #8
PHIXX - Hold On Me #23
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #14
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #18
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #35 (is this the Oakenfold or Atomic Hooligan mix?)

Random number: #37: Texas
#1 the Fatman

DAVID SNEDDON - Baby Get Higher ...will get higher.

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me - #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream - #24
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel - #34
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) - #14
KELIS - Milkshake - #10
PINK - Trouble - #4
KYM MARSH - Sentimental - #20
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You - #11
PHIXX - Hold On Me - #8
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind - #3
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along - #13
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 - #37

#1 - Fatman Scooop

Sneddon for highest entry out of the four nominees

ATOMIC KITTEN - If You Come To Me #2
THEA GILMORE - Mainstream #29
ELBOW - Fugitive Motel #18
ANGEL CITY - Love Me Right (Oh Sheila) #9
KELIS - Milkshake #15
PINK - Trouble #5
KYM MARSH - Sentimental #13
MARK OWEN - Alone Without You #19
PHIXX - Hold On Me #17
HOLLY VALANCE - State Of Mind #3
WAYNE WONDER - Bounce Along #7
UNDERWORLD - Born Slippy 2003 #37

#1 - Fatman
#37 - S Club

Sned will be highest

Right, so I've seen the midweeks - BETTING ENDS.

And Kelis would appear to not be out this week. Piss.

Both Mark Owen and Kym Marsh outside the top twenty in the midweeks!

The chart is gonna be rubbidge this week. Oh well.

It's be alright. The pop kids all buy their singles on saturdays.

actually i don't think it's pop kids who are buying Mark owen and Kym Marsh

I have weird sense of foreboding with both the Kelis single and album, they're not really turning up on places like amazon except in import form, and the guy in Virgin said that Kelis had nothing due in foreseeable future, you start to wonder if the record actually exists at all or if you want it so much that you have dreamed some fiction of it into existence (also: American Sweetheart).

If Mark Owen doesn't go top 20 I think I might weep uncontrollably.

Sned is #38.
Chingy is #37.
Dave Gahan is new at #36, but that wasn't on the list.

Kym Marsh is #35.

Wes has skipped over Sophie Ellis-Lovely and is now playing Big Brovaz in full. The chart is dragging like fuck, and it's only #30. I'd say we can abandon any hope of Elbow, Thea Gilmore or Underworld being anywhere in the top 40 now.

OK, scratch that, Underworld #27.

Alex scores the first point of the afternoon for that.

Ed - get the tissues - Mark Owen #26.

Ashanti is *great*; I'm glad in a way that it has proved 9 places higher than my prediction. Owen #26... yeah, it ain't bad actually.

Times like this make me want to empty my life savings, fly to Englandland, stand outside a large record store harassing everyone who walks out without buying a Mark Owen single while screaming "How can you call yourself a music fan when you let Mark Owen - MARK OWEN! - fester on the slag heap of pop? You unthinking fuckhole!".

Ahem. I'm a bit emotional, sorry.

I mean, first Siobhan Donaghy's career goes arse over tit, and now this! It's almost enough to make me give up on pop and start listening to indie.

Phixx... quite nice! Retro '80s electronica in the top. 10... RC's spot-on!

#8 holly valance
#7 pink (first one i've got right for three weeks!)

Have we had Sophie Ellis B yet?

She was around #31...

Dear me...
Competition-winning Girl: "You're a complete star!"
Wes: "Yeah, I know..."

:-/

Sugababes at #6.

sad to say that Sophie seems to have shot her bolt commercially - her album only went in at #19, and Wes played "Mixed Up World" as an album track even though it's still in the singles chart! still, I was right with my prediction that *something* would happen to the Tory party while "Mixed Up World" was in the charts, even though the literal death I imagined (cf "Land of Confusion" / Macmillan) has failed to materialise.

Wes has an ego that would have done Gary Davies proud. the amusing thing there was that he seemed to think the girl had a posh accent, which compared to (say) Twinkle in 1964, she certainly didn't. but then what is Twinkle to Wes? he is, after all, the man who implied that "posh people" have only just started making pop records - 39 years is a bloody strange "only just started" ...

Blimey...

Yeah, I had dinner, so I'm currently two or three down.

We will have a new leader this week, BTW. Flowersdie only picks up 1, for Angel City, whereas Alex gets 10 for Angel City and 5 for Phixx. Both picked the Kittens for 2 and Scoop for #1.

Kittens at #3, putting me level with Steve, but that's not really relevant cos Joni's overtaken both of us.

Wes doesn't know his pop frankly - at least beyond about the last 5-10 years. He he, he could do with listening to the BBC's "Pick of the Pops", which is a fine education in charts past.

Yeah, she wasn't posh at all really - fairly well spoken, middle class; sounded a bit like a fellow English student of mine at my Cambridge college, a girl who hails from Lancaster. Certainly not posh in the Alec Douglas Home sense! ;-)

btw; it was obvious wasn't it from my picks that Fatman Scoop was my #1?

Gawd... the 'Kittens are so far below the 'Babes in terms of pop spark I'd say. Hints of dub reggae and a good tune, up against a really quite dull overwrought workout of a ballad... not a contest.

and Fat Bastard is #1. Hoo-rye-ay. I'll find Thea and Elbow's positions in a minute.

Tom... no, it wasn't. Sorry.

I rather assumed that Tom implied that Fatman Scoop would stay at #1, but I think you should point it out - I did, after having missed it out in my first posting :).

oddly enough, there are uncanny parallels between Tim Westwood and the man who plays an earlier era of black American music on Classic Gold up against the Saturday night rap show - Tony Blackburn. at any rate, not only was Blackburn part of the great levelling-out movement of public school and/or Oxbridge people getting involved in pop culture (see also Peter and Gordon, the aforementioned Twinkle, Jonathan King Mark 1, and Oxford graduate Paul Jones of Manfred Mann) which coincided with the appointment of Edward Heath as the first non-public-school Tory leader, but he openly admits that he changed his voice utterly from his original public-school accent to the era-defining mid-Atlantic twang on the encouragement of Radio Caroline management. in the week when the prospect of the first general election since 1959 with both Tory and Labour leaders having been privately educated has seemingly been scuppered (Michael Howard went to grammar school in Llanelli) it's worth remembering that 1964/65 moment, however irrelevant to this thread it is!

Ah... hasn't Westwood played Fatman Scoop before...? I have actually heard this before! I like it actually. :-)

Wes' pronounciation of R. Kelly's "Thoia Thoing" is TOTALLY FUCKING WRONG - LISTEN TO THE RECORD BUTTERS FOR FUCK'S SAKE. oh, and Williams won't make number one next week - when did the fourth single off an album get to the top when none of the others did?

Tom - Westwood has been playing the Fatman Scoop track since the late 1990s! I've probably heard him play it hundreds of times - it's been a ubiquitious party track for every hip-hop DJ in the world, practically, and it's one of those songs that just come out from the underground and rewrite the rules, one of the things that makes the UK chart so great at its best.

(cringe) R. Williams next week. Unsurprisingly, I see that Wes omits any mention of Johnny Cash's "Hurt"... am I right that that's out next week? If it so, I'd hope that it does well, 'tis magnificent.

Robin - Ah... I must admit my listening to Westwood hasn't been consistent, and indeed I only really started listening to it this year. It's certainly great to see it being such a big 'crossover' hit.

Top40Charts describes Johnny Cash as an "ageing troubadour".

............

Elbow #44, Thea #50. Kelis not out this week as already established - scores etc. to follow...

Robin - Sadly, a literal death of the Tories was never *quite* on the cards. Methinks the falseness of their newly-found bonhomie will be shown up in the next 2-3 years, and trouble is still very much ahead for them. They are a factionalised grouping at the moment, with an uneasy truce in place as they know they cannot afford, for the moment, to have a prolongued bout of bickering. They know how close the LDs are to displacing them, or at least to catching them in the popular vote.

Sophie Ellis Bextor; 'tis a shame, as the goodwill we generally have for her was earned. "Murder on the Dancefloor" particularly, and also a few others, were fine singles that tapped a gently new vein in British pop. "Mixed Up World" was an effective pop single, though as someone's said - imagine her tackling that Emma Bunton song, it would have been fab and probably a bigger hit. All the fuss over her being 'posh' is ludicrous as she's nothing of the sort in the genuine sense of the word; it's merely that she's well spoken and clearly has some intelligence. All of which = no bad thing really.
What would people put her seeming failure down to?

Ah, you misunderstand, Tom - I wasn't invoking the actual demise of the Tory party as a whole, but suggesting that one particular old Tory grandee would die while "Mixed Up World" was in the charts, cf the death of Harold Macmillan while the last song by anyone from a public school background with a similarly resonant title, Genesis' "Land of Confusion", was at #16 in the last chart of 1986 (simultaneously two artists from that Thatcherite heartland of Basildon - Vince Clarke, by then in Erasure, and Alison Moyet - were in the Top 10, and the new number one was a Jackie Wilson song originally released the year Macmillan became prime minister; also two artists who topped the charts during the 1957-63 period, Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney, had newly-recorded songs in the chart). It didn't even have to be a former MP - in my last blog entry I suggested that it might be Antonia "Red Deans" Forest, or another writer of that ilk.

Of course I agree with you about the falseness of this "manufactured consensus" in the Tory party. As for Sophie, I really don't know; certainly her speaking voice has vaguely Australian and quasi-Estuary influences which would have been considered the very opposite of "posh" a mere quarter of a century ago (it's a sign of the death of the pure upper-class accent that it can be seen as such). Maybe the current commercial backlash against others who were MASSIVE in the very late 90s / early 2000s, cf Travis and Texas? But Sophie emerged more recently than them ... it's a curious situation. I wouldn't say there's any class revenge theories being applied to pop music; for a start, if people generally did that she wouldn't have become successful in the first place.

also Joni seems to have been the only one to predict accurately that UB40's rugby song would be the highest of those four new entries - a mild round of applause, methinks.