I get the feeling things will be getting distinctly less embeddable from now on – original is here.
“Watch your back, we got Queen on this track!” Oh, Five. What we have here, in essence, is the closest that this series is going to get to featuring a track by Scooter, except all the bits that Scooter do well it does rubbishly. The rapping, for instance – now, HP Baxxter’s lyrics are often nothing short of nonsense, but they’re delivered with love, rhythm and no small amount of humour. When Five rap on this one, they basically sound like they have one hand down their trousers and they’re not making much progress. Their voices are flavourless, characterless grunts, slowly rattling out “some words” about, erm, collaborating with Queen. There’s not even anything to match J asserting “Ain’t got no manners cos I eat with my fingers!” from “Everybody Get Up”. It’s just plod, plod, plod…
Then, in the Scooter tradition, we slam from the rapping into the bit from the old pop hit. Except, instead of twisting it into a helium voiced refrain from HP’s War On Those Who Are Not On The Floor YEEE-UH!, the beat continues to flump on and we’re stuck with Richie sodding Neville. Richie has yet to become an estate agent in Colchester, but throughout his pop career you always got the feeling he was on the verge of it. He wasn’t just bland, he was aggressively, threateningly bland, always looking like someone had just stuck him with a needle full of something or other and it was making his skull want to escape through his face. And here… oh Lor’, here he’s trying to act hard. He’s got this idea of what him getting a growl on would sound like, but his pipes can’t match, and so he’s left sounding like he’s left his Strepsils on the bus.
Unfortunately, in a break from the Scooter-accepted norm, there is not very much of the bosh. Instead, the beat is constructed entirely from reverb’d handclaps and drums, which leaves the lads sounding ever so slightly lonely. And then it’s Enter Brian May, Stage Left. And they cut up his guitar riffery a bit. And then things go on as normal while Brian makes with the solo. And, er, that’s about it.
What we have here, basically, is a bunch of component parts that haven’t really added up to anything, because no-one’s added them up in the first place. They’re just sort of stuck there, not hanging together, just moving from A to B to C to D. It all has the air of something someone might put together for the Brit Awards. Which is because… it’s something someone put together for the Brit Awards. And then, two years later, they made it into a musical. Based on this evidence, I have no desire to see it. This, I feel, is supported by more or less any other evidence as well.
And now, this is how it should be done:
YEE-UH!
If I were American, this would have been:
*NSync – It’s Gonna Be Me: original here. Wow, Timberlake sounds like a really, deeply unpleasant little man here, doesn’t he? For a song that’s about how they’re gonna make the girl realise how lovely they are (albeit that pop music is quite good at making that concept sound oh-so-creepy normally – hiya The Script!), he sure is sneering a lot. Maybe it’s the Swedish influence, but his pronunciation of “me” as “mej” sounds almost Smeagol-esque in its insidious horrible-ness. Still, though – it’s got a hook, it’s got a chorus, and it doesn’t seem to thinkthat “If Five brings the funk then Queen brings the rock” is in some way an acceptable statement, so…
American Me: 10
Actual Me: 6
A four-point gap and only eight years to make it up? Things is gonna get hectic…
Other notable UK number ones of this year:
In 2000, the number one situation officially became silly. Forty-two songs reached the top. The longest-running number ones of the year were by Sonique and Bob The Builder, each racking up a whole three weeks on top.
This also meant that some good stuff did get through, though – in chronological order:
So if we’ve learnt anything from this exercise thus far, All Saints really do need to get recovered by history quite desperately.
Also good: this, this (sit him here next to Britney Spears, yes).
But an especial mention for this, which might be one of the most perfect music videos ever.
Ah, sweet, elusive mystery of youth. So awesome in so many ways.
Anyway, 2001 should be up next, eventually. Let’s just check what it is…
Ah.
Don’t expect a follow-up tooo soon…
