2005 #1s

1025. ‘That’s My Goal’, by Shayne Ward

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

I talked in our last post about the ‘competition’ for Xmas number one 2005, with Westlife and Diana Ross, and the JCB Song, jostling for the title. Except, in reality, there was no contest. The festive chart-topper would cease to be a competition for most of the next decade.

That’s My Goal, by Shane Ward (his 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 25th December 2005 – 22nd January 2006

A year ago, the first ever X Factor winner, Steve Brookstein, took his cover of Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ to the top. But Brookstein was a middle-aged man, who by this point a year on had argued with Simon Cowell and was persona non grata, and anyway he didn’t make Christmas #1. It feels like he’s been erased from the history books. Here then is the first winner of the X Factor proper: young, handsome, endlessly promotable Shayne Ward, with an original song.

Well, I say ‘original’. Technically it was written for the winner of that year’s competition, but there’s nothing original about it. If you’ve heard any of the previous reality TV winners singles, from the likes of Will Young, David Sneddon, or Michelle McManus, then you know how this song goes. I’m here to win your heart and soul, That’s my goal… It is a mid-tempo, mid-range, mid-everything, common or garden pop ballad. (It is so bland that it makes Michelle’s ‘All This Time’ sound epic. She’s the true queen of winner’s single balladry.)

But, of course, this is the third fastest-selling single of all time, with the 5th highest weekly sale (since 1980, as before that records are patchy) behind Band Aid, ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’, Will Young and Gareth Gates. Considering how poor overall sales were in 2005, and that we’re mere weeks away from them hitting an all-time low in early 2006, it makes Ward’s opening week sales of almost 750k quite jaw-dropping.

For my sins, my flatmates at the time and I were very invested in this series of X Factor. Who remembers the heady days Chico (more on him soon), Journey South, and Andy Abraham the singing binman? We even, cough, went to the see live tour… And I remember thinking it obvious from very early on that Ward would win. I genuinely thought he could be a big star.

And yet, like most winners of the X Factor, he burned brightly for a while, then fizzled out. Two #2s, a handful of other Top 10s, but nothing post 2000s. He was dropped by Cowell in 2011 but kept releasing music independently, as well as moving into acting. He was in Coronation Street for three years. Who knew?

We may never hear Shayne Ward on top of the charts again, but there are several years’ worth of X Factor winner’s singles to come, and if you can tell one from the other then you’re a better critic than I…

Side note: I did wonder if a Xmas number one staying on top until January 22nd was a record, so I did a look through the annals. It’s relatively late for a festive chart-topper to still be hanging around, but a handful of records have gone longer. Can anyone name the only Christmas #1 to have still been topping the charts in February, though? Answers in the comments…

Advertisements

1024. ‘JCB Song’, by Nizlopi

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all the potential Xmas number ones were lining up for a shot at the crown…

JCB Song, by Nizlopi (their 1st and only #1) 

1 week, from 18th – 25th December 2005

2005’s left-field, indie contender for festive top spot – following in the grand footsteps of Housemartins, the Flying Pickets, Gary Jules and co. – was from folk duo Nizlopi, with their song about a bullied kid skipping school to drive with his dad in his big yellow digger. It’s a gentle acoustic tune, nostalgic in tone, written from the POV of a five-year-old. I can see why it was a big Christmas hit. 

Shame, then, that I’m now going to rip it to shreds. I hated this song at the time, and two decades haven’t improved matters. To my ears, what some people might argue as being ‘sweet’ comes across as cloying, twee, simpering… insert your synonym of choice. Sample lyrics: The engine rattles my bum like berserk… and My dad’s probably had a bloody hard day… It’s cynical heartstring pulling, is what it is. Holding up the bypass, Me and my dad havin’ a top laugh… the refrain goes. And of course loads of people will gobble up this sort of thing at Christmas like it was leftover turkey. (Though it wasn’t written with the holidays in mind. It had first charted at #160 in June, before growing in renown via the internet.)

I misremembered the ‘JCB Song’ as being for charity, which might have explained its lyrics and its success. Back in 2005, charity wristbands were all the rage. The white ‘Make Poverty History’, yellow ‘Livestrong’ (ummm…), and the blue ‘Beat Bullying’ are the ones I remember. It was how we virtue signalled before social media. So I’d always assumed that this – a song about a bullied child – was raising money to ‘beat the bullies’. But no. We can’t even give it a pass on those grounds.

For the coda, it transforms from gentle folksy ballad into a rousing rapped, hoe-down finale: I’m Luke, I’m five and my dad’s Bruce Lee… This bit sounds familiar. It makes me do a double take. It dawns on me why ‘JCB Song’ is so bad. A quick bit of research puts two and two together… When Nizlopi were starting out, their guitar technician was a certain Edward Christopher Sheeran.

Oh Nizlopi, what did you do? I could just about forgive this twee slop – it is Christmas after all – and appreciate the fact that you are all but one hit wonders (follow-up ‘Girls’ made #91). But to know that Ed Sheeran was sitting backstage at your gigs, taking notes, making his plan for world domination. That’s unforgivable.

Unlike the previous indie hits I listed in the intro, both Nizlopi and the ‘JCB Song’ seem to have been pretty much forgotten. And though they didn’t hold on to make Christmas #1, they did take one sizeable scalp when they consigned the twin powers of Westlife and Diana Ross, and their rejig of ‘When You Tell Me That You Love Me’, to the runners-up spot. This may be the only instance in recorded history when I would have preferred Westlife at #1…

Advertisements

1023. ‘Stickwitu’, by Pussycat Dolls

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

For their second number one, credit has to be given to the Pussycat Dolls for not giving us more of the same (apart from the weird spelling). After the boyfriend-stealing sass of ‘Don’t Cha’, they are now celebrating faithfulness and monogamy.

Stickwitu, by Pussycat Dolls (their 2nd and final #1) 

2 weeks, from 4th – 18th December 2005

Having said that, I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at more of the same, if the alternative had to be this sappy ballad. Nobody gonna love me better, I must stick wit’ you… ‘Stickwitu’ isn’t terrible, it isn’t even bad. The slightly off-kilter drumbeat, and the toy box riff are vaguely interesting. It grows into a bit of a power ballad in the middle eight, with impressive enough vocals from leading lady Nicole Scherzinger. But on the whole this is the sort of syrupy R&B that was more at home on the Billboard charts of the time, but which had started to crop up more often at #1 in the UK by the middle of the ‘00s.

It’s also a real shadow number one, a term I first used waaaay back in 1953, when the zany ‘Hey Joe!’ provided a chart-topping footnote to Frankie Laine’s humongously successful ballad ‘I Believe’. The concept remains unchanged, despite the years and the differences in music consumption: a song that wouldn’t have been a hit without the success of an artist’s previous single. Would ‘Stickwitu’ have been anywhere near the top of the charts had ‘Don’t Cha’ not existed? I’ll stick my neck out and say no.

Another bit of credit has to go to the producers of this track for not sticking a rent-a-rapper verse on it. I’m actually surprised they didn’t and, who knows, it might even have livened things up. A remix featuring someone called Avant was released, but not recognised by the OCC. The third and fourth singles from the Dolls’ debut album did return to the usual formula, with features for Will.I.Am (‘Beep’) and Snoop Dogg (‘Buttons’). Both those songs were Top 3 hits, and were returns to the group’s bawdy, Burlesque roots.

Beyond that, there was one more album and a few more Top 10 hits, but for the fourth highest selling Western girl group of all time, and ‘the heirs to the Spice Girls bedazzled throne’ (MTV), they never quite fulfilled their potential. Nicole Scherzinger was all too keen to start a solo career (she has one solo #1 to come), and there were ‘tensions’ between her and the other Dolls. However, they have reformed twice since their split in 2010, and are currently touring as a three-piece, with Scherzinger back in the fold. 

Advertisements

1022. ‘Hung Up’, by Madonna

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Let’s pretend that Westlife didn’t ruin what has been a great autumn for chart-toppers: Oasis, Gorillaz, Sugababes and Arctic Monkeys all with top quality number ones in September and October 2005. And now here’s Madge, wrapping the season up with the best of the lot?

Hung Up, by Madonna (her 11th of thirteen #1s) 

3 weeks, from 13th November – 4th December 2005

The sole impressive thing about ‘You Raise Me Up’ was Westlife scoring one of their biggest hits six and a half years into their career. Madonna sees that, thinks ‘cute’, and smashes it out of the park with ‘Hung Up’, a full twenty-three years on from her debut single.

What’s so good about it? It’s a dance anthem, but then so are many of Madonna’s hits. It’s neo-disco, but that’s yet another return for the genre in a new millennium that hasn’t been short of seventies inspired tunes. It’s a very ‘00s-era mash-up, but not the first to make the charts, or number one. Maybe it’s just the pure joyousness of it: it soars, it pounds, it flirts. It is my personal favourite of all Madonna’s thirteen chart-toppers.

At the same time, I’m also deliberately ignoring the big pink elephant in the room. The ABBA sample. Madonna + ABBA (an ABBA song inspired by Donna Summer) = gay heaven. I’m not sure allowing Madonna to get her hands on the electronic pan-pipes from ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ could have gone wrong, but this was only the third time that Benny & Bjorn had ever permitted a sample from one of their songs. They needn’t have worried.

Cleverly, ‘Hung Up’ sticks to the spirit of the original, about needing a man in the middle of the night, so much so that it feels like Part II. But importantly, while Frida and Agnetha’s sexual tension is never resolved, Madonna quickly loses patience with her reluctant man. From Waiting for your call every night and day, I’m fed up, I’m tired of waiting of you… to You’ll wake up one day, But it’ll be too late…

In the video, Madonna runs through a particularly sexy ballet warm up, wearing a pink leotard. I remember some disparaging comments at the time, about a woman of her age blah blah blah, but watching it back now she looks amazing. If my arse looks that good at forty-seven, I will happily parade around town in a pink leotard. It is even more impressive to watch, knowing that she had broken eight bones in a horse riding accident weeks before filming.

It wasn’t just ‘Hung Up’ that brought Madonna back to the forefront of hit making. The ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’ album was seen as a big return to form, and potentially the best LP of her career. So good that it would offer one further #1, a song every bit as good as this…

Advertisements

1021. ‘You Raise Me Up’, by Westlife

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Sigh. The charts do like to bring us down to earth. Straight after Arctic Monkeys’ lightning bolt of a debut, here come Westlife…

You Raise Me Up, by Westlife (their 13th of fourteen #1s) 

2 weeks, from 30th October – 13th November 2005

2004 was the one year in eight, between 1999 and 2006, in which Westlife didn’t have an autumnal #1. Like clockwork, October or November saw the lead from a new Westlife album, to be released ahead of the Christmas shopping period. In 2004 they had recorded a ‘rat pack’ inspired album – the heinously titled ‘Allow Us to Be Frank’ – which had no singles and only made #3. But it provided a convenient line in the sand, and meant that when the boys returned a year later, they were a fully-fledged man band. This was also their first #1 as a four-piece, with Brian McFadden having quit the year before.

Allow me to be frank. ‘You Raise Me Up’ is not my cup of tea. To quote Miss Jean Brodie: ‘For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing that they like.’ There have been many versions of it recorded over the years, and I’ve listened to several of them for this post, trying to find one I could stomach. I haven’t managed. It is cloying, it is overwrought, it is pompous, whoever is singing. Every version has a mournful Celtic accompaniment that makes it sound like a reject from the ‘Braveheart’ soundtrack. It sounds like a hymn, but it isn’t. I don’t like that. I don’t like feeling as if I’m being tricked into listening to religious music. It should nail its colours to the mast (or the cross, as it were) and let us know, with a label that reads ‘Secular Guidance: Religious Content’, or something. 

One thing that surprises me about ‘You Raise Me Up’ is that it was only written in 2001. I’d have assumed it was much older. It had grown in infamy, from the original by Norwegian-Irish band Secret Garden, through Josh Groban’s well-known cover. Prior to Westlife, another Irish icon in Daniel O’Donnell had had the biggest British hit with it, making #22 in 2003. I wouldn’t say Westlife’s version is any better or worse than the others, but it makes me look back fondly towards the days of ‘If I Let You Go’, and ‘My Love’. Even their cover of ‘Mandy’ was palatable compared to this hard, lumpy stodge.

And yet, ‘You Raise Me Up’ was the first Westlife single to spend more than a week on top for five years, since their equally crappy cover of ‘Against All Odds’ with Mariah Carey. Had Arctic Monkeys released a week later, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against this juggernaut, which sold 1.5 times what ‘I Bet You Look Good…’ had in its first week. Even their second week sales were higher. It currently stands as Westlife’s third highest-seller, which is an admittedly impressive feat for a boyband, sorry manband, on their sixth studio album.

It would also have been the perfect way to bid them adieu. But alas, we have one final Westlife chart-topper to get through. Another MOR cover. Next autumn, obviously.

Advertisements

1020. ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’, by Arctic Monkeys

/ UK #1s blog / 15 Comments

Here we go! Arriving with a jolting, ascending guitar intro, an intro that conveys the sensation of sticking a fork in a toaster, comes British rock’s last hurrah.

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, by Arctic Monkeys (their 1st of two #1s) 

1 week, from 23rd – 30th October 2005

We’ve heard hints of the arrival of a mid-‘00s indie rock revival in number ones from Stereophonics and Oasis. But both those bands pre-dated the movement by several years. By 2005, indie rock had been a rising force for a while, since bands like the Strokes and Libertines appeared circa 2002, but the genre’s biggest act – the one band from this time who became properly, globally famous and remain a huge deal to this day – took their time in coming along.

That is probably down to the fact that they were still teenagers when this, their debut single proper, made number one. Arctic Monkeys are, famously, from Sheffield, and Alex Turner sings in an accent so thick that it makes the Gallaghers sound posh. That’s one of the things that makes this record great, and allows me to call it British rock’s last hurrah. It takes elements from everything that went before – the Beatles’ tight harmonies, the Jam’s melodic punk, the Sex Pistols’ spit and vinegar, Oasis’s working class schtick – and still turns out something new. You can tell that the Monkeys grew up listening to rap, in the way that they lyrics are delivered, and were influenced by that very northern British, kitchen sink realism, in the way the song tells its story of an unglamorous dancefloor encounter.

Mid-‘00s indie was a very modern musical movement in general, in that it grew organically on early social media sites like MySpace, and through illegal file sharing services. To the uninitiated, it might have felt like ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ arrived out of nowhere to debut at #1 in October 2005, with the band having just been signed to a label that June, but in truth their reputation had been growing steadily ever since they’d first released music on bootleg CDs in 2003.

And, in a sign of what pop music was to become, the Arctic Monkeys brought their fans along with them. Their debut album was full of very specifically teenage lyrics, and specifically Yorkshire references. (One of my favourite lyrics of all time is from ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’, taking aim at poseurs: You’re not from New York City, You’re from Rotherham…!) ‘I Bet You Look…’ doesn’t have a line as good as that, but No there ain’t no love no, No Montagues or Capulets, Just banging tunes and DJ sets… is up there for its clever gaucheness. And, at the end of the day, like all great rock ‘n’ roll, it’s a very horny song at heart.

Having said all that, and having given this track a deservedly glowing write-up, Arctic Monkeys are a band I struggle with. I bought the debut album, and the follow-up, and thought they chose their singles very well. But after that I struggled to love their music, and their last two albums have been a slog to listen to. On the one hand I admire their desire to move between genres, on the other I do think that there’s an element of them disappearing up their own arses. But we’ll have time to consider that after their second #1, coming up soon as part two of a quick fire chart double.

Advertisements

1019. ‘Push the Button’, by Sugababes

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Two huge girl group number ones in a row. And after Pussycat Dolls’ ballsy and bouncy ‘Don’t Cha’, the Sugababes go for something similarly seductive.

Push the Button, by Sugababes (their 4th of six #1s) 

3 weeks, from 2nd – 23rd October 2005

And in doing so, they come up with a really, really good tune. ‘Push the Button’ is a modern girl group classic. The rising chord progression, the semi-melancholy, yearning upward motion of it. It feels like a three and a half minute key change, especially in the bridge. After waiting patiently for him to come and get it, He came on through and asked me if I wanted to get with it… (Note that our British girls have been waiting demurely, unlike those hussies in the Pussycat Dolls… How obvious should a girl be? they ask in the first verse, making the record actually quite an astute commentary on straight dating culture.)

Then comes the chorus, and an extra chugging bass synth, and before you realise it you’re listening to one of the decade’s – nay, the 21st century’s – best pop songs. All three of Sugababes’ previous chart-toppers have been good to great, but ‘Push the Button’ tops them all with its catchy simplicity. For it is simple. The lyrics are basic, the production nothing fancy, the video with the girls dancing in a lift is predictable… But it has layers, little touches of sound and some really nice harmonising, that lift it up. Plus it has a spoken-word section, done in the same key-changing style, which is always a welcome addition to a song.

I joke about how brazen the Pussycat Dolls were, and if they weren’t back-to-back #1s then we probably wouldn’t be comparing the two. But really, this song is just as saucy. It’s just much more British. Mutya delivers the line My sexy ass has got him in a new dimension… in a way that is equal parts understated and silly. Nicole Scherzinger would have squeezed the life out of that lyric. Even the song’s title could be seen as a good old-fashioned, end of the pier double entendre. 

And my US vs UK comparison can be taken further, when we note that despite ‘Push the Button’ being a huge hit around the world, a Top 10 from Hungary to Australia and everywhere in between, it did not chart in the USA. In fact, Sugababes solitary appearance on the Hot 100 was for ‘Hole in the Head’, which made the heady heights of #96. Oh, America.

Having mentioned Mutya Beuno earlier, we should also mention that this was her final Sugababes’ single for some fifteen years, as she left the group that December to be replaced by Amelle Berrabah. Keisha Buchanan was left as the only remaining original Sugababe, and this line-up will see out their chart-topping careers over the next couple of years.

Advertisements

1018. ‘Don’t Cha’, by Pussycat Dolls ft. Busta Rhymes

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

The 2000s were, I have already somewhere claimed, the decade of the girl group. All Saints, Atomic Kitten, Sugababes, Girls Aloud… All big, all girls, all British.

Don’t Cha, by The Pussycat Dolls (their 1st of two #1s) ft. Busta Rhymes (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 11th September – 2nd October 2005

Here though come the Yanks. Not to suggest that the States have no girl group pedigree, of course. The Supremes, Ronettes, Shangri Las all say hello. But even the sassy Shangri Las would have blushed at something as strident as ‘Don’t Cha’. The Pussycat Dolls are very much a new, 21st century version of the all-American girl group.

Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me, Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me…? I mean, British girls would never be so brazenly forward (cough cough). But it was definitely a chat-up line that embedded itself in the zeitgeist for a while. The rest of the song is similarly sultry, with raunchy horns, an X-rated rap from Busta Rhymes, and lines about black and blue balls, and sharing partners. It was released in three versions: a kid friendly edit (without Busta), the original, and a ‘more booty’ mix.

In fact, the entire song is slower and more seductive than I remembered. I thought it was faster, poppier; but in reality it has a swing beat, and a Latin-inflected guitar line. This is much more in keeping with the Dolls’ pre-chart history. At the time, the one thing everyone had to say about PCD is that they were strippers. They themselves liked to call it ‘neo-burlesque’, but you can definitely imagine someone slowly removing their clothing to the rhythm and tempo of ‘Don’t Cha’.

They had been around since the mid-‘90s, but it wasn’t until 2004 that they tried to move into pop music. And they were a near instant success. ‘Don’t Cha’ was huge, unavoidable that autumn. But, at the same time, though they had a few years of decent success, and one more #1, PCD never turned into the chart force that their debut hinted at.

Their lead singer, Nicole Scherzinger, on the other hand did become a household name. Even at this early moment it was a bit of a Diana Ross situation, and they might as well have been named Nicole & The Pussycat Dolls. She has the chops for it, and sells every line in a manner so extravagantly sexy that it actually sounds quite funny. Burlesque, even. Listen to the way she rolls her tongue around every syllable of the Your secret is safe with me… line, for example.

For rapper Busta Rhymes meanwhile, this would be the only chart-topper of a career that was surprisingly more successful in the UK than in the States. This was his 9th Top 10 hit since debuting in 1996, and he would continue to have British chart success well into the 2010s.

Anyway, as enjoyable as this track is, though it is a little try-hard, up next we have some British ladies showing these American upstarts how to do a proper girl group banger. 

Advertisements

1017. ‘Dare’, by Gorillaz

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Ten years on from the Battle of Britpop, and Oasis are knocked off the top by one quarter of Blur…

Dare, by Gorillaz (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 4th – 11th September 2005

Gorillaz were the ‘band’ that Damon Albarn had formed in 1998, and had run concurrently with the day job until Blur went on hiatus in 2003. I say band in inverted commas, because they were completely virtual. Albarn took care of the musical side of things, while artist Jamie Hewlett took care of the visuals and designed the band’s members: 2-D, Noodle, Murdoc, and Russel Hobbs. (I believe this makes them the 5th animated act to top the charts, after The Archies, Jive Bunny, The Simpsons, and Bob the Builder.)

Reading that paragraph back, you can imagine what the Gallagher brothers made of all this arty silliness. It would have been quite funny if ‘Dare’ had been released a week earlier  and had held ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ off number one, though by 2017 relations had mellowed enough for Noel to duet with Gorillaz. Anyway, even if proper rock groups would have turned their noses up at an animated alt-rock, art pop, trip-hop group, at Number Ones Blog we’ll do no such thing. For ‘Dare’ is a great track.

For a start, it’s a lot more upbeat and faster paced than many Gorillaz tracks, being both danceable and yet slightly melancholy. It’s got a filthy bassline, and a kooky beat that reminds me in places of White Town’s leftfield classic ‘Your Woman’. Then there’s the contrast between Noodle’s falsetto (provided by guest singer Roses Gabor, not Albarn as I’d always assumed) and Shaun Ryder’s more, shall we say, dulcet tones. It’s not quite pop, not quite dance, not quite a straight forward electronic song. It’s… dare.

Legend has it that the song was originally titled ‘It’s There’, but Ryder’s thick Mancunian accent prevented him from saying the word properly. Shaun himself has denied this, saying that it was because he’s dyslexic, and in text messages always writes ‘there’ as ‘der’. Either way, he’s the star of the show, both in his ranting vocals and in the horror movie inspired video, where he sings the song as a disembodied head. (All I can think of when I see it is Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…) Though uncredited on both, Ryder gets his second number one appearance of the year, after he’d been one of the many celebs marching with Peter Kay on ‘Amarillo’. It was something of a swansong for him, as his biggest chart hits had come fifteen years earlier with the Happy Mondays.

I loved ‘Dare’ at the time, was very happy a song as odd as this had made #1, and am glad that it still sounds enjoyably weird all these years later. It was definitely a shadow number one though, coming on the back of the much more popular #2 ‘Feel Good Inc.’ In fact, not many would be able to name this as Gorillaz’s biggest chart hit, and would probably go for ‘Clint Eastwood’, their 2001 debut.

Once again I have to try to separate nostalgia from cold, hard fact but… Despite the misty eyed memories I have of the autumn of 2005, as I started my third year at university and fast approached twenty, I do think that with Oasis and now Gorillaz, we’ve hit a rich seam of chart-toppers, and the quality will keep up for much of the rest of the year.

Advertisements

1016. ‘The Importance of Being Idle’, by Oasis

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

Well how about this… Almost forty years on from their final number one, a stunning, chart-topping comeback for the Kinks…

The Importance of Being Idle, by Oasis (their 8th and final #1)

1 week, from 28th August – 4th September 2005

Nah, course not. And to be fair, while this is clearly a Kinks pastiche, it’s not a rip-off of one particular song. If you did have to be specific, you could probably call ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ the bastard offspring of ‘Sunny Afternoon’ and ‘Dead End Street’ (the video is certainly influenced by the famous clip the Kinks did for the latter). Noel also revealed that he borrowed from the La’s ‘Clean Prophet’, in which they too had done their best Kinks impression.

But what of this Frankenstein’s monster of a song… Is it good? Well, yes. Given the parts it’s stitched together from how could it not be? It’s also unlike anything else in the Oasis canon, let alone any of their previous chart-toppers. It’s light and breezy, with a musical hall air and a sense of silliness. In fact, I’m tempted to use a word that has never come within ten feet of any Oasis record up to now: it’s kind of camp. 

For a start, it’s a play on an Oscar Wilde title. But it also has slide whistles, and big boinging drums, and Rhys Ifans prancing around as an undertaker in the video. If only they’d gone the whole hog and put Liam in drag, a la Dave Davies in the Kinks’ original. ‘Lyla’ was a slight musical shift for Oasis, but this is a real hint at what was to come for Noel in his solo career, especially with the High Flying Birds.

We can also, perhaps surprisingly, draw a comparison between this and the McFly song it deposed from the top, as both deal with depression, in their own ways. While McFly had a positive mantra, Noel seems to be wallowing in his life of unpaid bills, frustrated girlfriends, and general laziness… Give me a minute, A man’s got a limit, I can’t get a life if my heart’s not in it…

Continuing the trend of low sales benefiting fanbase acts, Oasis follow U2, Britney, Nelly, McFly and Eminem in taking two singles from their latest albums to the top. This was the third time Oasis had done this, but the first time doing it with consecutive singles, and in the same calendar year. In my post on ‘Lyla’ I wrote of how well Oasis did big, bolshy lead singles. But ‘The Importance of Being Idle’ is a welcome addition to their three non-lead chart-toppers, which have all been a bit different (‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ and ‘All Around the World’ being the other two). This, their eighth #1, tied them with the Stones, making them the rock act with the joint-third most number ones, behind the Shadows (eleven) and the Beatles (seventeen, at the time).

And this was it from Oasis, from the chart-topping side of things. In fact, it was almost the end from them musically too, with one further album to come before they finally imploded in 2009. Despite the brothers’ recent reconciliation in a touring capacity, there have been no suggestions that they will be getting back into the studio. And it’s a shame that on their recent tour, they pretty much ignored anything released post-2000, meaning that classics like this remain somewhat buried under their biggest hits. Oh what I’d give for this to have a resurgence, and not bloody ‘Wonderwall’ yet again… 

I’m back from a month’s travels, and so we’ll hopefully be picking up the pace again and posting a little more regularly!

Advertisements