Hip-Hop

942. ‘Dirrty’, by Christina Aguilera ft. Redman

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Louder, for the people in the cheap seats: If you ain’t dirty, You ain’t here to par-tay…

Dirrty, by Christina Aguilera (her 3rd of four #1s) ft. Redman

2 weeks, 17th November – 1st December 2002

Enter Xtina. Although last time we met her was in a boudoir in the Moulin Rouge, and although she’d always been the naughty one compared to rival Britney, I remember seeing the video to ‘Dirrty’ for the first time and being, as the kids say, shook.

Backing up my idea that 2002 was the moment the 21st century started, musically speaking, this is very modern pop. Gone are the staccato beats of millennial R&B. Gone is the bubblegum of the late ‘90s. In are clanking industrial chords, a scuzzy bassline, and huge vocals. This is the pop music of Rihanna, of Gaga, of a hundred other wannabes in the past twenty years. Pop music turned up to 11.

And yes, lyrically, it’s filth. I need that (uh) to get me off, Sweat until my clothes come off… Xtina announces before each chorus. It’s a classic good-girl-gone-bad song, in which a previously (semi)innocent pop princess launches headfirst into her slut era. Britney did it with ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’. Holly Valance made #1 with her debut single using the same trick. But nobody has done with as much as gusto as Christina. In previous posts I’ve taken issue with her over-singing, but here her belting works. This is no time for subtlety.

It’s also modern in its female singer plus guest rapper dynamic. Again, this is the format that many pop songs, and many number ones, will take over the next decade. I’ve no idea who Redman was, and doubt I’ve ever heard another song by him, but he’s a big part of this one’s success, from the If you ain’t dirty… call, to his line about being blessed and hung low, to him punching a giant rabbit in the video. In fact, the entire song is based around his 2001 original ‘Let’s Get Dirty’.

Ah, the video. As great as this record is in audio, it needs to be seen for it to have its full effect. Christina writhes, grinds, simulates masturbation, and invents the slut-drop, all while wearing some iconic, red leather, ass-less chaps. There’s foxy-boxing, mud-wrestling, female weightlifters, and signs in Thai that read ‘Young Underage Girls’ (a step too far, I will admit, and one which got a lot of criticism at the time).

Is it all a bit much? Is it vulgar? Is it pandering to straight male fantasies? To which I’d say: Yes, but who cares. Definitely, but who cares. And I’m not an authority on such matters. I will say though, a close (straight male) friend at the time spent hours a day requesting this video on music channels, waiting breath-baited on the edge of his bed for it to come on. He eventually recorded it onto a VHS… Which is a very hard to imagine scenario post-YouTube, but it was how we teenage millennials had to get our kicks. As for me, as much as I loved this song at time, it pretty much confirmed my homosexuality, as all I could think was how much Christina lived up to the song’s title, looking like she hadn’t showered in days.

I’ll end with the end, the final beat of the song after almost five minutes of writhing and grinding. In which Christina turns to the audience and asks Uh… What? As if daring you to criticise this gloriously inappropriate, slutty masterpiece.

939. ‘Dilemma’, by Nelly ft. Kelly Rowland

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Our next number one was a huge hit, a very popular song then that remains so now. Many of its lyrics and hooks are familiar to me, despite not listening to the song very often in the intervening twenty years or so. And yet…

Dilemma, by Nelly (his 1st of four #1s) ft. Kelly Rowland (her 1st of two solo #1s)

2 weeks, 20th October – 3rd November 2002

And yet, I can’t quite figure out why this was such a big song. And I don’t really know how to approach it. Is it cheesy? It is an unabashed love song… Or is it cool? One third of Destiny’s Child and the year’s big breakout rapper should equal pretty cool… Or is it a novelty? Any song that rhymes ‘boo’ with ‘you’ could be filed under that category… None of this is to say I dislike it. It’s smooth, it’s memorable, it’s so very rooted in my memories of my final year at high school. I just struggle to place it.

Maybe the best way to view is as classic hip-hop, an old-school slow jam in the tradition of LL Cool J. The crackly vinyl in the intro, the record scratches, the nursery rhyme melody, the cheesy lyrics, all become acceptable if this is a loving nod back to the hip hop of the eighties and the nineties. It’s strange though. Tracks like this were ten-a penny on top of the Billboard charts, but in the UK this type of hip-hop rarely had as big an impact as this.

In fact, still, even in 2002, the number of hip-hop chart-toppers has been limited. Eminem, sure, and some rapped verses in pop songs. Was Afroman rap? Shaggy? There’s UK garage too, like So Solid Crew, but that’s slightly different. The last pure US hip-hop #1 was arguably Run-D.M.C, way back in 1998, and that was a remix of an old tune. Beyond that there was Puff Daddy, and LL himself, in 1997.

And yes, the number one is only one record out of a whole chart, and rap songs had been featuring in the Top 40 for decades by this point, but still. If this was a blog on the US charts (where it was #1 for ten weeks) then ‘Dilemma’ wouldn’t stand out at all. But in the UK it does feel like a slight outlier among the talent show pop, the boybands and the dance. A nice outlier, though. A smooth palate cleanser after our usual fare.

‘Dilemma’ probably did better than your average rap single because of the first appearance of a solo Destiny’s Child star (although Beyoncé had released a song for an ‘Austin Powers’ soundtrack a few months before, this song’s success caused her to push back the release date of her debut album so as not to have to compete with her bandmate). Nelly too had just been responsible for one of the songs of that summer, the funky ‘Hot in Herre’. So momentum was behind both of them, leading to the biggest non-Pop Idol opening sales of the year, and 2002’s fourth highest-selling single.

It also seems to live on to this day, or has been rediscovered by Gen Z, as I see it crop up in reels where the ‘ahhs’ are synced with a variety of weird and wonderful things. And then there’s the now-infamous scene in the video, where Kelly appears to be using an Excel spreadsheet to write a text message, which has been doing the rounds online for years. As a songwriter you presumably want your songs to live on, but you have no control over the reasons for why they do…

934. ‘Crossroads’, by Blazin’ Squad

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In 2002, an S Club 7 spin-off was launched: S Club Juniors, a group of pre-teens singing similarly peppy pop tunes. Sadly, they won’t feature on this countdown (though seriously, ‘One Step Closer’ is a banger), but they’re here in spirit. For Blazin’ Squad, read So Solid Crew Juniors…

Crossroads, by Blazin’ Squad (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 25th August – 1st September 2002

A group of ten sixteen-year-old lads, covering a rap classic by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, #8 in 1995 (and eight-week Billboard #1). It’s easy to scoff – the band name is so clearly a teenage brainwave – and many did. “Self-proclaimed pioneers of chav culture” is a particular favourite. But I do like to take each number one we meet at face value.

And this is okay. It’s a lot poppier than anything from So Solid Crew, but that makes it better, in a way, for me. For someone so far removed from the target audience for an early-noughties hip-hop act. It’s also much poppier than the original, with the lyrics largely re-written. At the time critics mocked them for this, but it makes sense. They were ten boys from North London, not an American rap troupe from Ohio. Nowadays a largely white group like this would get in trouble for appropriating such a song if they didn’t change the words.

But that begs the question: were Blazin’ Squad real MCs, or posh boys cosplaying? I can’t find much background on the individual members, but their hometown was Chingford, which internet searches reliably tell me is a fairly middle-class suburb in north-east London. But then, many of the pop success stories of the 21st century are posh types who made it because they could always have been bailed out by daddy, so in that regard Blazin’ Squad were perhaps pioneers.

That may be pushing things but, as maligned as the Squad were, this record making number one set them up for a couple of years of chart success, and six Top 10 hits. I should mention here their second biggest hit, the genuinely fun ‘Flip Reverse’, one of pop music’s great odes to delivering via the tradesman’s entrance, as it were. If only that had made number one. We’d have had a great time getting to the bottom of it.

Anyway. One final question needs to be addressed. Were Blazin’ Squad a boyband? I ask that not because I particularly care – and yes, they were boys in a band – but because if they are then I think they mark the end of the golden age of ‘90s-‘00s boybands which had started with Take That in 1993, or even perhaps with NKOTB in 1989. The next new boyband we’ll meet at number one will be JLS in 2009. (And before anyone asks, I’m deliberately excluding Busted and McFly from the boyband equation, because they held – and I’m pretty sure used – guitars).

928. ‘Without Me’, by Eminem

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Guess who’s back? Back again? Shady’s back with his third album, and his third British number one single.

Without Me, by Eminem (his 3rd of eleven #1s)

1 week, from 26th May – 2nd June 2002

My usual moral quandaries over his lyrical themes aside, this is my favourite Eminem #1. I even used to know all the words. It’s an elevated version of ‘The Real Slim Shady’, in which Eminem contrasted his vulgarity with his popularity, and took swipes at various famous figures. Here he plays up to his pantomime villain image again, seemingly more at peace with it than on his angrier, earlier chart-topper, and the fact that everyone wants the character of Slim over the real-life Marshall Mathers: I created a monster, ‘Cos nobody wants to see Marshall no more, They want Shady, I’m chopped liver…

In the video, and in the short Batman-theme interpolation, he positions himself as an inept superhero, Rap Boy, who snatches his own CDs from children’s hands, lest they hear his inappropriate rapping. Elsewhere the rhymes are airtight, the delivery precise, and all the right/wrong buttons pressed (choose depending on your tolerance for Eminem). Two people who might have been disapproving were Liz Cheney and her husband, and Vice-President, Dick, whom Eminem kills with a defibrillator in the video. Shots are also fired at NSYNC, Limp Bizkit, Moby, Prince, and his mum: Fuck you Debbie!

The second verse is a highlight, with one of Eminem’s best lyrics: Little hellions, Kids feelin’ rebellious, Embarrassed their parents still listen to Elvis, They start feelin’ like prisoners helpless, Until someone comes along on a mission and yells ‘Bitch!’ In ten seconds it goes from making an interesting comparison between the controversies around himself, and Elvis forty-five years earlier, to him yelling a rude word. Eminem in a nutshell.

Elvis reappears later, in another astute line: I not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley, To do black music so selfishly, And use it to get myself wealthy… Much was, and still is, made of the fact that the biggest selling hip-hop artist of all time is white. But again, just as the casual listener is starting to think Marshall Mathers might be more intelligent than he looks, the same lines are delivered in the video while a mini-Eminem balances on a giant turd that the King has just delivered into his famous toilet bowl.

In some ways, this record is typical Eminem. It wasn’t going to win him any news fans, unlike ‘Stan’, but he’s also at the peak of his powers. Many times over the years he has tried to release a ‘Without Me’ style caustically-comic single, and while many have been commercially successful, none have managed to come close to this. It’s also musically quite fun, with a grinding disco beat, and it may be the one Eminem song that you can actually dance to.

Because I can’t help myself, I have to do the now traditional Eminem Homophobic Lyrics Watch, and there’s just one example here, in which he calls Moby a bald headed fag. But then he asks that he blows him, so who knows. Perhaps the lady doth protest too much? Sixteen-year-old me noticed that lyric, though, never fear. It’s also still noticeable how much more explicit Eminem’s three number ones have been compared to almost everything else that’s made number one. He liked to revel cartoonishly in his status as a corruptor of youth, but he had a point. Few other stars could release chart-topping singles so explicit.

‘Without Me’ is the middle single of a triptych, between ‘Stan’ and his next (more serious) chart-topper, in which Eminem was untouchable. Although he has gone on to have an almost thirty-year career, nothing he’s released since 2004 has come close to these three. Not just three of the best hip-hop singles, but three of the best and most controversial #1s of all time.

911. ‘Because I Got High’, by Afroman

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It’s been noticeable how, as soon as the 21st century began, the top of the singles chart has been home to all manner of depravity. And here is yet more evidence of slipping societal standards…

Because I Got High, by Afroman (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 21st October – 11th November 2001

We’ve had the rock ‘n’ roll, we’ve had the sex, and now we have the drugs. Of course, this isn’t the first number one song to reference illegal substances, but usually they’ve been protected by innuendo, by a level of plausible deniability. This record, however, opens with someone asking us to roll another blunt. Less than a decade sits between the nudge-wink of ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, and this unabashed celebration of ganja.

But, actually, is this a celebration? Superficially, yes. But then you listen and notice that this song is a list of unfortunate events brought about by smoking too much weed. First verse: I was gonna clean my room, Until I got high… Second verse: I was gonna go to class, Before I got high… It’s not long before he’s being chased by the police, crashing his car, and ending up a paraplegic.

Obviously, all this is tongue in cheek, a fact highlighted by the fact that the paraplegic verse is followed by one about being unable to function sexually: I was gonna eat your pussy too, But then I got high… (Sadly, Afroman is forced to take matters into his own hands, if you catch my drift.) This is no anti-drug song, no inside job to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. But it works as a satire nonetheless, with Afroman and his homies skewering the reasons that those in authority give to warn people off marijuana. By the end, the fourth wall has been broken: Imma stop singing this song, Because I’m high… And if I don’t sell one copy, I’ll know why…

So I like this record on one level. I also like how stripped back it is, just a bassline and vocals. It’s almost a cappella, with some doo-wop backing touches. But the backing vocals, his gang of stoned buddies whooping and hollering, are also the reason that this song grows old, and quickly. Unless you’re actually high when listening, then you might think that this was the greatest song ever recorded. Which I suppose means that ‘Because I Got High’ is doing its job.

Afroman had been rapping since the 8th grade, when he allegedly recorded a diss track about the teacher who had him expelled for wearing sagging jeans. Which seems unlikely, but it’s a fun origin story… ‘Because I Got High’ could be said to have gone viral, by the standards of the time. It had originally been released a year and half earlier, and had slowly grown in popularity on file-sharing websites. This belated major label release came after the track was featured on the soundtrack to ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’.

Afroman was good for one more Top 10 hit, ‘Crazy Rap’ in early 2002. And if ‘Because I Got High’ is at the limit of your tolerance, or if you’re a Dolly Parton fan, then I’d say best avoid it. After the hits dried up he started releasing his music independently, and remains active to this day, with his beloved Mary Jane still very much a strong lyrical theme (his album titles include ‘Drunk ‘n’ High’, ‘Waiting to Inhale’ and ‘Marijuana Music’).

905. ’21 Seconds’ by So Solid Crew

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Garage music continues on its mission to be as annoying a genre as possible…

21 Seconds, by So Solid Crew (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th August 2001

The three hardcore UK garage number ones – ‘Bound 4 da Reload’, ‘Do You Really Like It?’, and now this – feel like the musical equivalent of a teenager playing their music out loud at the back of the bus.

I could argue that I’m just an old fogey; but actually, I was fifteen when this made number one. I could easily have been that twatty teen. And while I’m sure me and my schoolmates were plenty obnoxious, none of us were ever into garage music. It felt very inner-city London; not small-town Scotland.

Like the two earlier garage #1s, this has lots of MCs spitting rhymes over a minimal 2-step production. The title refers to the fact that each performer gets twenty-one seconds to deliver their verse. Which at least keeps things quite fast-paced, and if one rapper doesn’t grab you then you know they won’t be on for long. Problem is, none of them grab me. And this isn’t me speaking as someone who doesn’t like rap music. There are rap songs I love. I named a rap song as my most recent Very Best Number One. It’s just that none of the rappers involved on this track have anything interesting to say.

What the title doesn’t refer to is there being twenty-one MCs on this track, though it starts to feel like it. There was actually a mathematical formula involved in creating the record. According to Wikipedia: “21 seconds is arrived at as the song’s tempo is approximately 140BPM, has a key of G minor, and each rapper has 12 bars of 4 beats (48 beats at 140BPM, when worked out to the nearest integer, rounds to 21 seconds).”

So Solid Crew had, at any one time, somewhere between nineteen and thirty members. Which makes them by far the biggest group to reach #1, although fewer than ten were involved in this track. The one member of So Solid that I can name with any confidence is Lisa Maffia, who is the only MC who sings her verse. Turns out I also recognise Romeo and Harvey, who had decent-ish solo careers away from the Crew. Interestingly, Oxide & Neutrino (of ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ fame) were So Solid members but didn’t feature on this track.

Of the three garage chart toppers that I mentioned, I would rank this in the middle. It’s not as intentionally annoying as DJ Pied Piper, and there is a lot of cultural relevance here. It’s punk for the new millennium, the sound of rebellious youth. It’s extremely modern, and there’s a clear line from this through to modern UK rap hits from the likes of Stormzy or Central Cee, while the I got twenty-one seconds to go, I got twenty-one seconds to flow chorus went just as viral, by 2001 standards, as Do you really like it, Is it is it wicked... I don’t like this record, but that’s down to personal taste. I must say, when I reviewed ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ I never thought I’d be placing it top of any list, but there was a joie de vivre in its ‘Casualty’ sampling novelty that is lacking in this song’s charmless slog through five minutes’ worth of identikit rapping.

One other thing worth mentioning here is the first appearance of the N-word in a number one single, in Megaman’s opening verse. I’m a big fan of tracking offensive language in chart-topping singles, from Lonnie Donegan’s ‘bloomin’’, to John Lennon’s ‘Christ!’, to Paul Weller’s ‘bullshit’. It feels like a switch was flicked the moment we hit the 21st century, with Oxide & Neutrino, and then of course Eminem, cramming their chart-toppers with vulgarity. All that’s left is the debut appearance of the c-word on top of the charts (and I don’t mean Coldplay…)

900. ‘Lady Marmalade’, by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa & Pink

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We are officially 900 number ones not out! Thanks to everyone who has ever read, commented, liked and followed. I’m not sure that I ever imagined when I started writing these posts back in November 2017 (!) that I’d ever get this far. But, to paraphrase an old football cliché, I’ve just been taking it one number one at a time…

Lady Marmalade, by Christina Aguilera (her 2nd of four #1s), Lil Kim, Mýa & Pink (her 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 24th June – 1st July 2001

Our 900th is not the most original of chart-toppers, a cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’ coming barely three years on from the last chart-topping cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’. Have two other versions of the same song ever made #1 so close together? Anyway, while All Saints’ take played fast and loose with the LaBelle original, this all-star re-imagining is much more faithful.

One big difference, though, is that Lady Marmalade no longer plies her trade down in old New Orleans. She’s been transferred to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, just in time for the big glossy Baz Luhrmann movie musical of the same name. Different brothel, same story. Kitchy kitchy kitchy yaya dada. Mocha chocolatey yaya… Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?

It would be easy to look down on this OTT, fairly superfluous take on a seventies classic, in which four bad-ass chicks from the Moulin Rouge try to out-diva one another. And I won’t claim that it is better than LaBelle’s. But I enjoyed it back in 2001, and I still do enjoy it now. It strips all subtlety from what was already a fairly unsubtle song, adds a grinding industrial synth riff, and some well-placed cowbells. Mýa warms things up with the first verse, Pink (feeling quite out of place here, and in her suspenders in the video) ups the ante with the second. Clearly things were being set up for Christina, by far the biggest name of the four at the time, to blow everything out of the water for the finish.

Except, for my money, the show is stolen by Lil Kim’s rapped verse, the song’s one big change from the original, in which she delivers the immortal line: We independent women, Some mistake us for whores, I say why spend mine, When I can spend yours…? It’s a very modern female rap, a full decade ahead of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, that even Xtina’s explosive belting can’t overshadow. But boy, does she try. And it works, doesn’t grate, because, again, this ain’t the time for subtlety.

This record is a lot like the movie it came from, and like a lot Baz Luhrmann’s filmography: good fun, as long as you don’t stop and think about it too much. My biggest issue with it is why Missy (Misdemeanour here) Elliott, who acts as the MC for the outro, doesn’t get a credit, and therefore her second number one single?

It’s been customary, every hundred number ones, for me to look back at the marker posts that have gone before. But there’s a recap up next, and I’d like to save any retrospection for then. What is worth noting is how short the gaps between each hundred are getting. There were over seven years between the first chart-topper and the hundredth (November 1952 to April 1960), but less than three between numbers 800 and 900 (September 1998 to June 2001).

898. ‘Do You Really Like It?’ by DJ Pied Piper & the Masters of Ceremonies

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Our next number one poses us a couple of questions… Do you really like it? Is it, is it wicked? And if these questions refer back to said next number one then my answers are no, and NO.

Do You Really Like It?, by DJ Pied Piper & the Masters of Ceremonies (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th May – 3rd June 2001

It’s hard to underestimate how much, back in 2001, this song’s hook became engrained in the popular conscience. We’re lovin’ it, lovin’ it, lovin’ it… We’re lovin’ it like that… It’s also hard to underestimate how annoying it became. Or maybe it isn’t hard. Maybe all it will take is one listen for the uninitiated to realise how terrible this record is.

At least the Do you really like it? and the Lovin’ it, Lovin’ it sections are memorable. They’ve been living rent free in my mind since I was fifteen. They’re only ten percent of this song, though. And I never realised, or had blanked out, how bad the rest of this record is: repetitive, nonsensical, unlistenable, with ugly, lurching changes in direction and tempo that make it difficult to even call it a song.

I thought that Oxide and Neutrino’s ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ was a low-point for 2-step garage, but I think that ‘Do You Really Like It?’ is even worse. At least the former had a kind of novelty value in the ‘Casualty’ theme sample, and the sweary spoken word bit from ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’. Not a song I’d ever want to hear again, but sort of amusing at the same time. This though… Yeesh.

Though it is interesting how that 2-step beat has become a sort of early 2000’s shorthand, used by everyone from Craig David, to Bob the Builder, to this. And how garage can be incredibly hardcore, like I suppose this is, and also very poppy. DJ Pied Piper was the main driver behind this song, and was joined by four Masters of Ceremonies: MC DT, Melody, Sharky P and the Unknown MC. Maybe that explains its messiness, with all five members given their slot in which to impress. Sadly none of them do.

They got back together for one further single, ‘We R Here’, later in the year, but that failed to chart completely. And so DJ Pied Piper and the Masters of Ceremonies go down as gold star one-hit wonders. We will, however, have to grapple with further garage records in the near future. We can say with some confidence that none of them will be as bad as this.

885. ‘Stan’, by Eminem

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The end of the longest year in chart-topping history is in sight: here we are at the forty-first and penultimate number one of 2000. And of all the zeitgeist grabbing #1s we’ve met along the way – Craig David’s seven days, Robbie’s rocking DJ, Destiny’s Child and their independent women – we’ve reached the ultimate pop culture reference. For none of those other records’ titles have entered the OED, as both a noun and a verb…

Stan, by Eminem (his 2nd of eleven #1s)

1 week, from 10th – 17th December 2000

With ‘The Real Slim Shady’, Eminem announced himself, for better or worse, as a foul-mouthed, parent-baiting, attention-demanding cartoon character. With ‘Stan’ he announces himself as something else entirely. It’s a study of fame, of fandom, of what we would now call toxic masculinity, much of which is even more pressing today than it was a quarter of a decade ago. And it was almost a Christmas number one.

I don’t love Eminem, and I’m not the biggest fan of hip-hop. But I am a writer, and the way he constructs a character, a backstory, and a narrative with not one but two twists, in four verses is one of pop music’s great feats. One little detail stood out to me on this re-listen: in verse one Stan mentions how sloppy his handwriting is, while in the third he calls back to it and claims he wrote the address on his letters perfectly. That’s some proper plotting.

The tension builds as the letters from Stan pile up, unanswered. (The fact that Eminem manages to make some weirdo writing letters this gripping is another great feat.) The start of the third verse (the best of the four) is my favourite moment: Dear mister I’m too good to call or write my fans…! Stan then launches into a rambling rant about how he’s like the character in Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight’, with Eminem capturing perfectly how someone on a fistful of downers and a fifth of vodka would sound.

Then there’s the twists. First that Eminem hasn’t been ignoring Stan’s letters, he’s just not had the time to reply. And then Eminem remembering in the final lines that he’d heard about some guy on the news who’d driven off a bridge, killing his pregnant girlfriend. Come to think about it, His name was… It was you… Damn. Thunderclap. It’s an almost theatrically, dare I say camply, abrupt ending. But it works, ending a near seven-minute record in a flash.

The fact that Stan references Eminem having written songs about killing his ex-wife Kim, inspiring him to do the same, is worth mentioning. Eminem knows the controversy he causes, knows the monsters he might create. But he doesn’t apologise, doesn’t judge, doesn’t celebrate. He offers us a glimpse of a life lived, and ended. And it’s art, quite high art, of a level that not many #1s can achieve.

The only thing that feels forced is the P.S. line about Stan wanting ‘to be together’ with Eminem. I covered the homophobic side of Eminem in my last post, and again maybe this is just the repressed fears of fourteen-year-old me, but I don’t think the song needs a gay element to it. Stan is already unhinged enough without wanting to literally fuck his idol. It just feels like an excuse to allow Eminem to reject him in the final verse – That type of shit makes me not want us meet each other… – a chance for him to prove, yet again, that Marshall Mathers is definitely not homosexual.

Beyond Stan’s story, what makes this record stand out is one of the great uses of a sample. Dido’s ‘Thank You’ had existed since 1998, and had been used in the soundtrack to the film ‘Sliding Doors’ (which gave us an earlier chart-topper in Aqua’s ‘Turn Back Time’) A DJ put the chorus to a hip-hop beat, and the demo found its way to Eminem who was inspired by the line got your picture on my wall to write about a deranged fan. In the wake of ‘Stan’s success, both ‘Thank You’ and Dido’s debut album raced up the charts, establishing her as one of the biggest British stars of the new millennium.

But as great as ‘Stan’ is, I am glad it didn’t hold on to become Christmas number one. No, after this tragic tale we all needed some light relief…

867. ‘We Will Rock You’, by Five & Queen

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First of all, let’s get some things straight. I love Queen (who doesn’t?) I like Five (a fun boyband who tended to avoid ballads). I – and I hope my posts on the previous eight hundred and sixty-six number ones have proven this – am no purist. So why does this collaboration annoy me so…?

We Will Rock You, by Five (their 2nd of three #1s) & Queen (their 6th and final #1)

1 week, from 23rd – 30th July 2000

I don’t think it annoys me musically, as it is big, and beefy, and features a nice crunchy guitar solo. Plus, it begins and ends with a massive thunderclap, and has piped in crowd noise. It is not a song which holds back, or is interested in subtlety, and I appreciate that. I think it keeps the energy of the original, but updates it for the early noughties. As Abs so succinctly puts it in his rap: Five bring the funk, Queen bring the rock…

What annoys me is the fact that both acts had far better songs than this which failed to make number one. Five released a great run of hip-pop hits in the late nineties that fell short. Queen have a multitude of huge, household classics that never made #1. It feels that this record made it on novelty value, rather than merit (and it wouldn’t have made number one at all had Ronan Keating not released his dodgy enhanced CDs).

What also annoys me is the fact that Queen are featured and credited. If this was a sample – as Five did very well when using ‘I Love Rock n Roll’ on ‘Everybody Get Up’ – I might view it more favourably. But Brian May and Roger Taylor play their guitar and their drums, scoring Queen a number one to rank alongside ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Under Pressure’, and it just feels a little cheap, a little tawdry. This is how one of Britain’s most legendary rock acts end their chart-topping career: whoring themselves out as a backing band. It may be wishful thinking, but I wonder if Freddie Mercury would have allowed this, had he been around? And given John Deacon’s retirement from the band, and his subsequent comments on their later work, we can assume he wasn’t overly impressed either.

But what annoys me more than anything, really, is the fact that I can’t now listen to the original ‘We Will Rock You’ without wanting to add the moronically catchy We’re gonna rock ya baby! line to the chorus…

Anyway, whatever my objections, this did make number one. The two groups had performed the track together a few months earlier at the Brit Awards, too. Amazingly, Queen now have as many chart-toppers without Freddie as they managed with him. Plus, since we were keeping track of Kylie’s three chart-topping decades, we should mention that this record’s success meant that Queen joined Cliff Richard in having made top spot in four different decades.