25 Years of Swygart – 1999 – Ricky Martin, “Livin’ La Vida Loca”

The original video won’t embed, but can be found here.

My predominant recollection of this one actually takes place three years after it topped the charts, when Ricky somehow found himself as the opening act at the Party at the Palace. And he performed this, his only number. I sat there bemused, trying to figure out the thought process that would have led anyone to connect a three-year-old hit song about going out with a crazy lady who makes you take your clothes off before drugging you, robbing you and abandoning you at a Travelodge with the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. Not cos I was offended at the lack of decorum or anything, but just because it was all so very incongruous, so very… crap. Or, as the BBC News piece puts it, “probably the greatest night for British rock and pop since Live Aid”. Here’s Ricky doing the air-ass-smack:

And then it dawned on me – Ricky Martin was available. Three years after the fact, he remained willing to haul his raggedy ass to any corner of the world to churn out all his hit to an audience ready to be lightly entertained.  So he turned up, sounded knacked, the BBC News site described him as a “Latin idol”, there was a certain amount of twisting in the Royal Box, the Queen pulled what I would describe as the “why am I at the pub when I’m on the verge of getting Eastleigh to the FA Cup Second Round on FM08″ face,

“Tom Jones performed Sex Bomb and You Can Leave Your Hat On” and

“Prince William found some of the artists a bit too much”.

But yes, this was very much about assembling the most impressive line-up that was available, and Ricky was exceedingly available to trot out his 2-for-1 Mojitos at Wetherspoons routine, just like those late-night football programmes that offer you five-minute interviews with Lionel Messi where he doesn’t actually say anything and every fourth word seems to be “passion”.

Maybe it’s not the record’s fault, though. It has acquired its tedious, grating connotations with time, and was not necessarily born with or of them. It’s a brisk wee thing, very rarely exhibiting any tendency to cut its frantic, uncle-at-wedding pace, and there’s some nice cartoon low-end on the guitars. Ricky certainly throws himself into things, prowling and growling with gusto, alternating between sly winks and orgasmic bellowing in an appropriately professional manner. The trumpets sound like they’re being played by that wolf-whistling feller out of Droopy.

And yet, somehow, there’s no kick to it, just a huge swell of noise. When Ricky curls his mouth around “black cats and voodoo dawwls“, he sounds like nothing so much as Troy McClure, or perhaps Brooks & Dunn or Big & Rich, or possibly Joe Dolce. He’s bustling, he’s sweating, he’s repeatedly going “C’moan!” or “Awright!“, and after a while it gets to sounding exceedingly desperate.

Cos, y’know, if we’re all having so much fun, why is it I don’t even feel remotely like dancing?  It’s too fast, too furious. There is no beat, no pulse, just frantic slapping about with the guitars and so on and so forth. Ricky’s “man, these women be cray-zee, eh fellers? FRENCH champagne! Of all the things, etc.” schtick isn’t annoying, exactly; rather, it’s distancing, impersonal. It’s all so sheeny that I just can’t connect with it. “Livin’ La Vida Loca” has always been like that, for me – just something that’s there, incapable of arousing any emotion, opinion or reaction. It’s pop for pop’s sake, and it’s all efficient and box-checking but absolutely not one tiny bit more than the sum of its parts.

If I were American, this would have been:

Christina Aguilera, “Genie In A Bottle” – the original is here, but won’t embed. It’s kinda slinky, it actually has a bassline, this project is now pretty much exactly one month overdue. It’s better than Rickaaaaay, but I still do not feel owt for it. Is that worth a point? Oh, why not.

American Me: 9
Actual Me: 6

Other notable UK number ones of this year:

These years were particularly notable for the decline in UK singles sales as nicking stuff off the internet became preferable to forking out £3 for a CD that contained three songs at most. The turnover in number ones thus began to reach levels that could best be described as “silly”, and as a result there were 36 different number ones in 1999. Most of them were utter bollocks. Four were by Westlife, two by Boyzone, one by Ronan Keating. Also: Martine McCutcheon, Geri Halliwell (twice), 911, LENNY FUCKING KRAVITZ, The Vengaboys (twice), The Backstreet Boys, The Wamdue Project, “The Millennium Prayer”… Ugguggugg.

But there were a few redeeming features:

And, well, Isaac Hayes wasn’t dead when this post was originally meant to go up, so if we were to ignore this one it’d just be rude:

And with that, we finally hit the 2000s. Huzzah! Only nine more of the sods to go…

25 Years of Swygart – 1998 – Spice Girls, “Viva Forever”

It’s strange, innit, how girl-group split rumours always seem more prevalent than boyband ones. Think: how many times are Girls Aloud meant to have broken up over the course of their existence? How often have you seen it written that Sugababes are capable of tolerating each other’s company? Should we even bother mentioning All Saints? (It was never really a problem with B*Witched, of course, but that’s mainly cos in order to have personality clashes the individual members would have needed personalities first)

This was the last song the Spice Girls released with Geri Halliwell. It starts well. Their voices melt into violins, and slow, weird space-synths coast in… then the flamenco guitar. There has, probably, been a half-decent British pop single with a flamenco guitar on it, once (maybe “Oblivious”?), but most of the time it’s one of the most dreadfully dull cliches the music industry can throw up. Horrible images of men in black v-neck long-sleeve t-shirts with chin-fuzz and sandals in the tent at Glastonbury doing exclusive acoustic live sessions live while Jo Whiley zzzzzz

Sorry, yes. Anyway, the problem is that it sounds as though they were aware Geri was fucking off and therefore decided that going through the motions would be plenty. Geri’s own vocal at the end is a prime example – presumably put there to suggest that the split was entirely an amicable thing, Friendship Never Ends etc., but she sounds like she’s slung herself an octave too low and now has no idea what to do other than buzz like a fridge for a bit. Mel C is allowed to squawk all over the chorus, as tended to be her wont (see also the outros for “Goodbye” and “Say You’ll Be There”, for instance), and more than ever it sounds like over-compensation. This is meant to sound tender and regretful, but they’ve just taken that as shorthand for “a bit quiet”. Sentiments get mumbled. Someone goes “haaa-staaa man-yaaa-naaa”, and that bit seems to happen more than the other bits, so maybe that’s meant to mean something, cos otherwise one would imagine they’d not be doing it so often.

This is goop, basically. Nothingy, nothingy goop. I don’t believe or care about any of it, nor, I suspect, do they. It happened, it was number one for two weeks, and is possibly preferable to listening to Boyzone’s “No Matter What”, which succeeded it at the top.

If nothing else, though, it did set the precedent for the remainder of the Spice Girls’ singles. First, there was “Goodbye”, wherein they tried and failed to act like they definitely missed Geri and were still totally cool with her, and Mel C squawked all over the chorus, and it got to number one; then there was “Holler”, where they tried and failed to act like they were delighted to be working with Rodney Jerkins and were still totally cool with each other, and it got to number one and spawned one of the worst album sleeves ever:

See? Totally enjoying being in the same room. They’d definitely not be holding hands if they weren’t. See how far Mel B’s stretching in order to clutch one of Mel C’s fingers? That’s commitment, that is. That’s togetherness. That’s Friendship Definitely Not Ending.

And then… “Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)”. The reunion. Totally they were all delighted to be there. Would there have been an accompanying BBC documentary entitled “Spice Girls: Giving You Everything” otherwise? Would the chorus have decided that “Friendship Never Ends” would be the lyric to be lifting from their past?

It got to number 11, and so their career ended with their first ever single to chart outside the top 10. In with a bang, out with a whimper, then back with a damp, damp fart. “Viva Forever” is the sound of dreams slowly and pathetically dying.

If I were American, this would have been:

Brandy & Monica, “The Boy Is Mine” – as UK number ones started to have shorter and shorter runs at the top, this reigned o’er the Hot 100 for 13 weeks. Brandy and Monica find the most fantastic way to express their enmity – taking their assigned words and lobbing in additional notes and syllables so that they wind up extending all over the top of each other’s parts. They could run the Olympic 100 metres final in the time it takes Monica to sing the word “took”. Never mind that Brandy has the charisma of a J-Cloth; this is so far out of “Viva Forever”’s league that it ain’t even funny.

American Me: 8
Actual Me: 6

Other notable UK number ones of this year:

Between them, Cher’s “Believe” and the Jason Nevins remix of Run DMC’s “It’s Like That” spent a quarter of the year at the top of the charts, getting seven and six weeks respectively. Apart from that, though, the year was characterised by increasingly brief tenures of the number one spot, with 26 other singles getting a slice of the pie. This led to Usher, All Saints, Robbie Williams, Billie, B*Witched, Jamiroquai, Another Level and The Manic Street Preachers getting their first ever number ones. Somehow it doesn’t feel quite right that Texas aren’t in that list, but never mind.

Anyway, the high turnover also resulted in this getting to number one:

I rushed out and got the album in anticipation of similar stuff, then discovered that actually, Cornershop sound like this:

But that is also cool.

Britain found out that Aqua sounded a bit different sometimes, too:

And The Tamperer got to redefine flashing up lyrics on the screen, sort of:

Actually, from that clump we mentioned earlier, “Never Ever” is pretty great, really:

I’ll add links for some of the other stuff later. Anyhow, that only tookfive days to get round to, and 1999’s up next – only 10 left! It’ll all be over by Christmas. Possibly.