In 2007, to celebrate their fortieth anniversary, BBC Radio 1 released an album of cover versions, featuring the big pop and rock acts of the day.
(For anyone not of a British persuasion, Radio 1 is the youth-oriented national radio station, which plays all the pop, rock, dance, and hip-hop hits of the day, as well as the Top 40 on a Friday afternoon. Radio 2 is for the middle-agers. Radio 3 plays classical and jazz. Radio 4 is news, documentaries, plays, and so on. And Radio 5 is for sports. They’re the five main ones that I grew up with. There are others, especially now in the digital age. Here ends today’s lesson on British radio stations.)
Anyway, the remit for the album was to include one song from every year that Radio 1 had been broadcasting, covered in a modern style. Interestingly for us, this coincides (almost) with the very point we are at in our countdown, and so we can feature some of the big indie rock groups of the day that we aren’t going to meet at #1. I’ve complained a bit that the mid-00s indie rock revival – Arctic Monkeys aside – hasn’t been represented on top of the charts. There are a few more indie number ones to come in 2006 and 2007, but not by these acts below.
Here then, are three old number ones, covered by hip new beat groups for Radio 1’s ruby anniversary. Well, hip and new sometime around 2007, anyway…
Kasabian – ‘Too Much Too Young’
One of the very biggest groups to come out of the 2000s, Kasabian are still going strong. All but one of their albums have made #1 in the UK, while on the singles chart their biggest hit was 2009’s #3 ‘Fire’. For this album they covered the Special’s 1980 punky, spiky, two-tone ‘Too Much Too Young’. And they did it in a very faithful, punky, two-tone style. It’s fine. I just wish they made it sound more Kasabian, as they were one of the more unpredictable-sounding of the landfill-indie era, especially their trippy, space-rock inspired debut album.
Gossip – ‘Careless Whisper’
In the mid-’00s I was a big reader of the NME. And for a year or so, between 2006 and 2007, it felt like the Gossip and their front woman Beth Ditto graced the magazine’s cover on a weekly basis. Like so many before them, they never quite lived up to their ‘next big thing’ tag, but their one Top 10 hit – the clattering, protest anthem ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ – is a certified classic of the time. Their take on George Michael’s eighties smoocher is cut from the same dance-punk cloth. Unlike the Kasabian cover above, it does do something new with the source material, and it’s quite nice to hear an over-played tune (that I’m not overly fond of) sound so different.
The Kooks – ‘All That She Wants’
Ah, the Kooks. The poster boys for ‘landfill indie’? Or one of the mid-00s more enduring acts? They’re still together, still touring and making music, and their signature song ‘Naive’ seems to have gained popularity with the TikTok generation. I did buy, and enjoy, their debut album ‘Inside In/Inside Out’ – especially the bouncy ‘You Don’t Love Me’. But there was always the whiff of art school (they formed at the BRIT school) poseurs about them, and lead singer Luke Pritchard always gave the impression that he thought he was Pete Doherty, minus the heroin.
But their cover of Ace of Base’s 1993 #1, ‘All That She Wants’, is serviceable enough, translating the original’s reggae lilt into a very 2006 indie riff. Of the three I like Gossip’s cover the best, but this is a decent second.
I hope you enjoyed these three covers. This ‘Radio One Est. 1967’ album is good for at least three more chart-topping covers, so I’ll return to it in the new year.
Interesting cover versions. I neither knew any of them nor the bands who performed these renditions. To my ears each of these renditions sounds more exciting than their originals.
I have a feeling you might like Kasabian, of the three.
Thanks, I’ll check them out!
I still rate Kasabian highly and Sergio’s spin-off The SLP, so many bangers back then or right up to the last album. That they dont get hits with fab tracks like Coming Back To Me Good is a shame. Beth Ditto always worth a listen too, in collab or otherwise. The Kooks not quite up there for me, but I liked them at the time, quite jolly.
I do remember in the mid-to-late-2000s these landfill indie bands getting a push in Australian music media but honestly me and my friends thought they were kinda lame (though tbf we were in kindergarten/primary school and everything that wasn’t cartoons/anime and video-games and Pokemon, Yugi-Oh and Halo was lame).
I know who The Kooks are, but I’ve never actually listened to any of their songs (I’m one of the few people in my 20s who doesn’t use Tik Tok so I tend to miss out on the big Tik Tok songs, I had no idea who the band The Neighbourhood were until like six months ago and they have the third-most streamed song on Spotify with “Sweater Weather” and another song at 2 billion streams “Daddy Issues”, both songs I enjoy, but it’s nuts how nowadays you can legitimately not know songs that have 2-4 billion streams while still being fairly plugged into pop culture). Was quite surprised to open up The Kook’s Spotify and see a song at nearly 1 billion streams staring right at me. I listened to some of their singles and they sound like the 2000s indie rock version of Herman’s Hermits mixed with Madness. They sound like annoying prats too be honest, especially the lead singer. Their cover of “All That She Wants” is exactly how I’d expect one of these insipid precocious landfill indie rock bands to cover that song.
Never heard of Gossip. I actually really like this cover. I don’t think the lead singer has the propery feeling of the lyrics compared to George Michael in the OG – which I absolutely love – but the instrumentation is great on this. Really bouncy and upbeat garage rock/post-punk/dance-rock. Probably my favourite of the three covers honestly.
Kasabian are the one I’m most familiar. I haven’t delved super deep into their catalogue, but I really like them. Really fun cover. Like you said, really faithful to the OG, but I like it a lot.