I Love #1's - 2000

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Last week Marvellous Marvin and his Gayers topped the ticks of '69 with 29 smackers for Heard It Through The Grapevine. Marmalade trailed in last with just 3. That's what you get for covering the rubbishest Beatles song! This week it's a new millennium and we have an ENORMOUS amount of songs for you to choose from, largely thanks to the major labels cottoning on to the fact that they could buy up a bunch of 99p singles themselves and propel their latest act straight to the top. But corporate spending power is no match for the legion of Manics fans...

[Poll #876983]

Comments

Points of order

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

- Spice Girls minus Geri! I was talking about this video the other day, each Spicer is an ELEMENT: Mel C writhing around on some astroturf with a snake is EARTH, Mel B is looking angry in a mirror = FIRE, Emma is standing infront of a blue curtain = WATER and POSH IS IN A WIND TUNNEL DYS. Of course Geri is the Mila Jojovich and not just because of her auburn locks etc.
- cis played Oxide & Neutrino at Popular the other week and it was STILL AMAZING! So Solid Crew, all is forgiven.
- A1: right idea, poor execution. But their follow-up was great!
- PUT IT AWAY MADGE

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

'Bound 4 Da Reload' is another track I HATED at the time but eventually came round to. it seems strange that they have been chart-absent for however many years it is now (5?)

Re: Points of order

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

They is all in the nick innit!

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

not Oxide & Neutrino themselves surely. also where is Zed Bias? i bet they're all making tedious dubstep :(

Re: Points of order

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

O&N have a new song out on Christmas DAY!

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

Bound 4 Da Egg Nog

YAY

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

It is on the interwebs! (http://jdtwenty10.com/sosolid/oxideandneutrino.htm)

Re: YAY

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

dear me that website is atrocious

Re: Points of order

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Both these Madge No 1s are GREAT. My theory - that she never ever went shit not even for one single - still holds true.

Spice Paradox - never made a good single sans Geri, but Geri is the only Spice to have made no good solo singles.

LeAnn and Billie - hurrah for the Golden Age of Baby One More Time copyists

'Black Coffee' - DEVASTATING EXISTENTIAL PINNACLE of All Saints' career

Gabrielle - at this stage has still never released a bad single. 'Rise' is THOROUGHLY INSPIRING & UPLIFTING

Can evvvveerrrrryyyyoooonnnne sssstttttoooppppp geettttttiiiiinnggg shhootttt?????

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

how would you go about arguing the greatness of Madonna's 'American Pie'? here's how i argue the badness:

Madonna doing low notes = dodgy. she sings the song low whereas Maclean was doing it lighter and maybe faster/not so tied to plodding 4/4. she's unable to put any life into it tho, it's merely a recital and a dull one at that. that combined with the production (Orbit-by-numbers, tepid and not dynamic or epic) makes no good.

the other reason i hate it is because it seems like a real failure of imagination for her (and Orbit). never understood the point of her doing it. to align herself with certain ideas about America, music and the relationship between the two? i prefer her to look forward not back (the disco-revivalism stuff of COAD sounds modern and still relevant thanks to Price) so saw this as a real waste of time and relatively lazy way to notch up another #1 (in the same way an X-Factor winner might). she's far better than that so what gives?

the COAD tour show on Channel 4 looked so great tho! i saw most of it but i'm guessing she did not perform 'American Pie'.

Re: Points of order

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think it brings out the quite good tune lurking within AP a lot better than its cursed originator.

But it was a marginal tick.

Re: Points of order

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

my argument for it basically boils down to Madge taking this absolute standard, a song which for better or worse (ie worse) is embedded in popular culture, a modern folk song of sorts, and completely ignoring all of that and turning it into her own song, as if it was always about her all along. The judicious lyric-pruning makes this obvious but it's also the way she foists the knocked-off 'Beautiful Stranger' autopilot arrangement behind it.

Madge is someone who can look forwards, backwards, sideways, underground, overground, and always pull it off.

I was meaning to watch the COAD tour but I fell asleep on the bus and woke up in Crouch End :(

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

i don't see how she makes it her own in any meaningful, worthwhile way (see also countless others covering songs in such namby-pamby ways). she reduces the vocal to a gentle drone as if an exercise in (boring) discipline for herself almost.

COAD tour show really was good, esp. the 'base jumpers' or whatever they're called leaping into the crowds for 'Hung Up'.

Re: Points of order

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Because the titular Miss American Pie in Madge's version is HERSELF! She prunes out all the nonsense poetry and rubbish incidental characters of the original and keeps in everything which could refer to herself, her own musical journey, how music and dancing set her free [from Catholicism]. It's basically a foreshadowing of the theme of 'Music'.

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

nice defending :) but i still think she should've just written a similar but different song about her own musical journey, with better music!

Re: Points of order

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

She did! Her very next single!

Re: Points of order

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

which makes 'American Pie' totally redundant for meeeee (i always liked 'Music', esp. when that bass kicks in after first chorus line)

Re: Points of order

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

COAD not bad -- drowned world is better i think -- but i haf come to HATE THOSE JUMPING PEOPLE!!

(ps weird ponysex subtext wtf)