rank the songs on basement jaxx's "rooty"

1. romeo
2. wheres your head at?
3. breakaway
4. get me off
5. sfm
6. do your thing
7. broken dreams
8. jus 1 kiss
9. i want u
10. all i know
11. freakalude/crazy girl

From the pre-poll days, this thread!

Revived because: happy official 25th anniversary, "Romeo." You're still the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2wUbgAAydY

it's funny how we all used to rate romeo so high and i hear it now and i'm like.. eh, i guess? i mean it's fine?

where as "where's your head at" still feels totally heavy, totally vital, a million little doorways in it. i had no idea there was a video hahaha good lord that's a very disturbing little piece of pop culture.

My broad recollection is that "Romeo" being unleashed on the world as this defiant ecstatic pop number (referencing a whole bunch of things while not sounding very much like any of them) felt very much like a statement at the time, an implied manifesto about how innovation and populism could work with rather than across one another.

But its vibe was cannibalised a lot subsequently, not least by Basement Jaxx themselves ("Oh My Gosh" etc.), and it sounds less distinct/exciting now. It's difficult to recreate the headspace of mid-2001 where tunes like Tim Deluxe's "It Just Won't Do" or DB Boulevard's "Point of View" (basically: songs playing in the background at a Fitness First gym) didn't exist yet.

Whereas "Where's Your Head At" is perhaps the beneficiary of the opposite dynamic: in 2001 it felt like a reply record to Armand Van Helden's "Koochy" (as well as a companion record to Par-T-One's "I'm So Crazy") - but as that context has disappeared from the rear view mirror it has been left sounding rather more sui generis than it seemed at the time.

Both are great tracks. "Get Me Off" and "I Want You" and "All I Know" are even better.

i hear it now and i'm like.. eh, i guess? i mean it's fine?

I'm with you until it gets to the synthy 'let it goooooo' breakdown. That part is sick.

"Romeo" still sounds pretty uniquely electric to me, but maybe I haven't heard many of the tracks in its vein. "Oh My Gosh" I don't hear as drawing from the same place, though it's also a great track. It's Rooty as a whole that doesn't strike me the same way it used to. used to love the whole album, now I only love about half

“Oh My Gosh” was the point where I started falling out of love with Basement Jaxx. There was something about that song that just didn’t gel with me.

Also not a fun of “Hush Boy” and pretty much the entirety of Scars except the title track

I don’t think it is strictly necessary to disavow Scars, that is just a standing presumption unless people make statements to the contrary.

lol fair

for some reason my mental association is "where's your head at" -> tv commercial placement and "oh my gosh" -> movie soundtrack placement

Phenomenal album in a run of phenomenal albums.

My first mental association with Where's Your Head At is disc 2 of New Pepsi Chart 2002, as with everything else that's on that CD. I recently discovered a picture of kiddy me holding that compilation. I did already own Romeo on the edition before it but I don't really remember hearing it for another few years.

Hardly a controversial stance but WYHA is a real advance on Koochy because they're Jaxx so their instinct is to completely layer it in unpredictable noises and different vocal parts, each sound at a funny angle to the sound preceding it. It has the odd effect of making Koochy seem quite tasteful IMO, the excellent but pared-down I'm So Crazy doubly so.

Fav song on Rooty is Breakaway, which was my immediate if flawed reference point when I first heard SOPHIE. Scars has Raindrops which is the last Jaxx single I really love.

“All I know” is prob my fav song on this atp

Used to be jus 1 kiss

WYHA has not aged well for me at all I must say but Tim nailed it on why it appealed so much at the time ('I'm So Crazy' has aged a lot better for me tho). Always liked 'Romeo' fine. 'Breakaway' is actually the one I've played the most.

Part of that re 'I'm So Crazy' may just be that the sources of its samples are still relatively fresh to me (I didn't actively seek them out in the 00s for whatever reason, 'discovered' much later) whereas I ended up hearing and loving 'M.E.' almost immediately after Rooty came out what with it being the peak p2p file sharing era.

there’s a rough frission to how the samples brush against each other on WYHA that seems kinda premillenial or something

opening with Romeo and Breakaway is such a gut punch

i don't think i listened to Breakaway once without turning the volume all the way up immediately, what a track

I had no idea they put out so much stuff after Kish Kash, which is the last one I heard. Is the later stuff good?

My older daughter latched onto Rooty when she was 8 or 9 and she still loves it. I think it's my favorite of the first three and it strikes a nice balance. KK was good but a little frantic in comparison.