Wednesday 2 September 2020

50 years of song: 2000-2009

I will be 50 soon. I can scarcely believe it. To mark the passing of time, and all of its sickening crimes, I'm going to be counting down (or, rather, up, I suppose) the tracks that were number 1 in the charts on my birthday, starting from the day I was born and working up to the present.

What will be #1 on my 50th? I don't care really - chances are I'll loathe it anyway. Anyway, here goes - part four:

  1. Take On Me - A1: awful (and a bad cover version)
  2. Mambo No.5 - Bob the Builder: awful (and a bad cover version)
  3. The Tide is High (Get the Feeling) - Atomic Kitten: awful (and a bad cover version)
  4. Where is the Love? - Black Eyed Peas: not a cover version, at least
  5. My Place/Flap Your Wings - Nelly: I have no recollection of this
  6. Dare - Gorillaz: not Dirty Harry, but not bad
  7. Sexyback - Justin Timberlake: I feel dirty saying it, but I don't mind this
  8. Beautiful Girls - Sean Kingston: no, me neither
  9. I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry: God, this was twelve years ago? Cherry Chapstick indeed...
  10. Run This Town - Jay-Z featuring Rihanna and Kanye West: I have no recollection of this either

I think I stopped listening to the charts around the turn of the millennium and, on this evidence, that was a good call. Here's the only track I would want to listen to again out of that sorry lot. Hobson's Choice. Tune in next week for ten even worse tunes.

Source: officialcharts.com

12 comments:

  1. You mean there are songs worse than these?

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    1. Hard to imagine but yes... dear God, yes...

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  2. Replies
    1. Isn't it just? What did they used to say at the end of Crimewatch? "Don't have nightmares..."

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  3. Pretty awful collection there but the charts just didn't mean the same/weren't as important by the turn of the millennium. I think you could sell around 10k copies of something and reach the top spot. That said I do remember many of these well as these were the songs that covered my daughter's junior school years. We often used to buy a CD single in town on a Saturday for her and she was a fan of Atomic Kitten and Katy Perry back in the day. (We also have the full set of Pop Party 1-7 CDs!).

    As for me, I have a bit of a thing for Justin Timberlake (he has real stage charisma) so don't mind Sexyback and the other half definitely bought Where Is The Love? The inclusion of Fergie to the Black Eyed Peas was a clever move.

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    1. Sexyback is a pretty decent track and, if Gorillaz hadn't shown up, would have been the embedded song for this week's post.

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  4. I sometimes have visions of being on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and being asked something about 21st century pop as the first question and being unable to answer it!

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  5. What surprises me is how many of these I know. Justin, Katy and Black-Eyed Peas are all pretty good pop tunes, though I'm too old to want to own them. The awful covers are just awful covers - but I guess it's the quality of the original song that carried them.

    Bob The Builder did Mambo Number 5? I had to go listen to that, and it made me chuckle.

    I feel the same as CC. Back in the 90s, I used to host an annual Christmas pop quiz in my workplace (which was a radio station, so competition was pretty fierce). But I knew the charts inside-out from the 50s to the 90s. After that, it just became noise, and I wouldn't have a clue where to start in the last 20 years.

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    1. Noise, that's how I feel about a lot of it from the last 20yrs. Good to know I'm not alone in this.

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  6. The Man Of Cheese7 September 2020 at 21:37

    You think this is bad-wait until you look back at number ones from age 50 to 60! Petrifying that it's not really that far off. Ye gods.

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    1. Ha, yes, true enough mate. Mind you, I'll probably be deaf as a post by 60, so not able to pass judgement on the charts of the day. And no, not that far off.... what happened, eh?

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