00s rock music

923. ‘The Hindu Times’, by Oasis

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My intro to this next number one amounts to four simple words: Thank God for Oasis.

The Hindu Times, by Oasis (their 6th of eight #1s)

1 week, from 21st – 28th April 2002

Not just for cleansing the palate after the Pop Idol syrup-fests that had hogged the charts for several weeks previous, but for returning guitars to the top spot after what has probably been their longest hiatus. Not counting George Harrison’s posthumous comeback, I think this is the first rock #1 since, gulp, Limp Bizkit in January 2001.

Yes, this isn’t one of their classics. But I also think ‘The Hindu Times’, and anything Oasis released post-1998, gets unfairly maligned. They were great at side one, track one songs like this (and ‘Hello’, and ‘Turn up the Sun’, and ‘Fuckin’ the Bushes’), songs the sole purpose of which is to reassure the listener that, yes, they are listening to Oasis.

And I love it when Oasis are being Oasis. If you aren’t a fan then you might struggle with a song so droning, so snarly, so unrepentantly simple, but that’s your loss. If you can’t appreciate the way Liam drags out the you’re my sunshine you’re my rain… line in the chorus, presumably a knowing nod to ‘Live Forever’, then Oasis simply aren’t for you.

Experimentation feels like a dirty word in an Oasis context, one that soft southerners might use. But there is a bit of that going on. The ‘sitar’ riff, the droning, the gigantic wall of sound feel. It’s as big and beefy as they’d sounded since ‘Definitely Maybe’, and it’s not completely crazy to suggest that a higher tempo ‘Hindu Times’ wouldn’t sound out of place on their debut album. Despite the sitar sound, and the title, Noel had not been spending time with the Maharishi like his ‘60s idols; he saw the title as a slogan on a t-shirt.

With this single, and the subsequent ‘Heathen Chemistry’ album, Oasis debuted two new members in Gem Archer and Andy Bell (not the Erasure Andy Bell, though that would have been a direction I’d love to have heard Oasis go in…) Archer and Bell remained in the band until their split in 2009, and have returned for the reunion tour. The album is okay – sixteen-year-old me thought it was amazing – but second single ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ is probably the one 21st century Oasis single that people are happy to compare with their nineties output. For me, though, I’d go with the lovely ‘Songbird’, the album’s fourth single and the first to be written by Liam. I was very disappointed to see that the only post-1998 song they were playing on their recent tour was ‘Little by Little’, which I’ve always thought a dull plodder.

Despite rock music being back, baby, it won’t be hanging around for long. No Oasis #1 ever spent more than a week on top, and the next identifiably ‘rock’ chart-topper is more than a year away… Luckily though, we’re about to embark on a run of pretty decent, non-rocking number ones, starting with a ‘00s girl group classic.

918. ‘My Sweet Lord’, by George Harrison

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In the only occasion two posthumously released records (by two different artists) have made #1 consecutively, George Harrison replaces Aaliyah…

My Sweet Lord, by George Harrison (his 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 20th – 27th January 2002

It would feel odd to review the song, as I already did so five years ago: ‘My Sweet Lord’ having spent five weeks at #1 in 1971. So, I’d rather direct you towards my original post, despite the fact that I was a bit harsh on it. I claimed it ‘doesn’t really go anywhere’ and, while I get what I meant, I now realise that that is entirely the point of the song. It’s a euphoric chant, a mantra, an incantation. It is a beautiful song, despite my complete irreligiosity. In my book, it is by far the best solo-Beatle number one.

Harrison had died from cancer in November 2001, and thus ‘My Sweet Lord’ was given a rerelease. It means that the line I really wanna see you Lord, But it takes so long, My Lord… now hits differently, assuming that it originally referred to a religious awakening. But it is a fitting, and obvious tribute.

And it is the fact that it was a deliberate release, as a tribute, that means I’m featuring this as the 918th number one single, and not a belated return for the 296th. Like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ before it, again rereleased following the death of its creator, ‘My Sweet Lord’ becomes only the second song to return to #1 in a rerelease (though BoRap was paired with ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’).

This is something that needs clarifying as we move further into the 21st century. Soon there will be a series of Elvis rereleases making the top of the charts, and again they’ll be treated as ‘new’ number ones. However, when ‘Three Lions’, and then two Christmas perennials, return to number one later in the century they will not be gifted such special status as they are simply a case of the original hit returning to the charts. In fact, the streaming era has basically killed off the idea of the rerelease, as (almost) everything is now on permanent release via your streaming platform of choice.

Hope that makes sense. Anyway, let’s just enjoy this classic re-appearing at number one, completely out of place in the early ‘00s soundscape. It is also worth noting this fact: ‘My Sweet Lord’ remains one of only two truly solo UK #1s that any of the four Beatles enjoyed during their lifetimes!

889. ‘Rollin”, by Limp Bizkit

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Alright, partners. Do we know what time it is…?

Rollin’, by Limp Bizkit (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 21st January – 4th February 2001

Time for the UK’s first and only nu-metal number one, that’s what time it is. And on one level, any sort of metal chart-topper is to be celebrated. There haven’t been many… Iron Maiden, for sure. Stiltskin? The head-banging bit from ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? The Kinks inventing the genre with ‘You Really Got Me’?? So, yeah, any number one this heavy is worth a moment of appreciation.

And yet, most fans of heavy metal would want nothing to do with this song. Many metal heads want nothing whatsoever to do with nu-metal as a genre, and even if they did, grudgingly, then they might accept Linkin Park, or Slipknot. Korn, maybe. But not Limp Bizkit. Not Fred Durst, with his backwards Yankees gap and his douchey goatee.

Not these processed guitars, which you could easily believe were completely computer generated. And not the rapped lyrics, which reach spectacularly moronic levels. In the space of three chart-toppers we’ve gone from ‘Stan’s Shakespearian tragedy, to: So where the fuck you at, punk? Shut the fuck up! And back the fuck up, while we fuck this track up… (And if you think that’s bad, then don’t google the etymology of the album this single appeared on: ‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hot-Dog Flavoured Water’. Or, for that matter, where the band’s name itself allegedly comes from…)

So, yes, on one level this is a God-awful number one. An offensive new nadir for the new millennium. And yet… and I’m sure you know what I’m about to say… I love this song. I love how dumb it is. I love how processed and fake it is – the rock music equivalent of a Big Mac – and I love the fact that it somehow made number one. Not only that, but ‘Rollin’ was on top of the charts for my fifteenth birthday, which I’m sure you’ll agree is the prime age for appreciating garbage like this.

But also, it feels musically relevant that at least one nu-metal song appears on this countdown. It was one of the touchstones of the millennial teenage experience. Between 1999 and 2002, my high school playground was a sea of black Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Slipknot and Korn hoodies. Like it or not, grandad, this was the sound of a generation.

The rock version of ‘Rollin’ is technically the ‘Air Raid Vehicle’ remix, the original ‘Urban Assault Vehicle’ mix being a purely hip-hop version featuring rappers DMX, Redman and Method Man. And we have to mention the video, which is a time capsule of early 2000’s nonsense, featuring Ben Stiller and some faux boy-band dance moves. Plus, it also has one of the very last pop culture appearances of the World Trade Centre in New York, on top of which Fred and his gang filmed just a few months before 9/11. (I tried out a couple of edgy closing sentences, but I think they all went too far. Please insert your own tasteless jokes here.)

(Or if you’d prefer it swears intact…)

877. ‘Beautiful Day’, by U2

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A rock band! With guitars! On top of the singles charts in the Year 2000!

Beautiful Day, by U2 (their 4th of seven #1s)

1 week, from 15th – 22nd October 2000

The extended nature of our journey through this year has distorted things slightly, as we’ve had both Oasis and the Manics on top of the charts in recent months, not to mention the Corrs, but still. Rock music has become a highly endangered beast around here.

For someone who wouldn’t count himself as much of a U2 fan, their first three #1s all had merit. The raw, bluesy hum of ‘Desire’, the industrial prog of ‘The Fly’, and ‘Discotheque’s, well, disco beats were all enjoyable curios, oddities almost, which is a strange position for the biggest band in the world to be in. But here, at last, is U2: Biggest Band in the World ™.

And my heart sinks, because songs like this are why I don’t count myself as a big U2 fan. At least, not of 21st century U2. For this soaring, uncomplicated (undeniably catchy) rock music is not just setting U2’s manifesto for the new millennium, but that of rock music in general. From here we can draw a line to Coldplay, to Snow Patrol, to Imagine fucking Dragons… To U2 themselves foisting an entire album on unsuspecting iPod buyers. To stadium gigs at 300 quid a pop (or more, thanks to dynamic pricing). To streaming algorithms. To the death of indie clubs and small venues, and nightlife in general…

Okay, okay. I don’t lay all of this at the feet of U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’, but I’d say it represents a shift. They’re not the first band to soften the edges – in fact, the production here isn’t a million miles away from All Saints with William Orbit – but this does feel like a huge grasp for ubiquity. It’s a beautiful day…! Don’t let it get away… Of course, radio ate it up, and of course it featured as background to sports montages, adverts, and political campaigns, for years. (In fact, a big part of the reason I dislike this song is that it reminds me of when ITV had the rights to the Premier League highlights. This, versus the Match of the Day theme? No contest.)

The middle eight introduces a bit of edge, as Bono casts an omnipotent eye around the world and sees the oil fields at first light and the tuna fleets cleaning the sea out… But this feels more like an in-joke, to see if anyone will actually notice, than a statement. The rest of the song, unless my sarcasm detector is on the fritz, is pure motivational schmaltz. Pure corporate rock, the sort that the world’s worst CEO listens to in his Mercedes, on his way to making five hundred people redundant.

For anyone who thinks that I’m being harsh, or that I’m letting an anti-U2 bias cloud my judgement of one of their biggest hits, I will state that I really rate the two singles that followed ‘Beautiful Day’: ‘Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ and ‘Elevation’. But neither of them made #1, and so we are left discussing this record. I’ll leave the final words to a quote I heard once (I wish I could remember where from): If it is a beautiful day, then I don’t need Bono telling me about it…

865. ‘Breathless’, by The Corrs

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

Our next number one feels very much of its time – the Corrs were probably playing on at least one British radio station at any given moment between 1998 and 2000 – but also a bit of an outlier among the chart toppers we’ve been working our way slowly through.

Breathless, by The Corrs (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 9th – 16th July 2000

‘Breathless’ isn’t dance. It’s not hip-hop. It’s not bubblegum. Instead, we’ve got some good old-fashioned MOR pop-rock. With actual guitars! And it’s a welcome sound!

At the time, as an unsufferable teen, I thought this track was a bit naff. And yes, it has lots of unfashionable touches. There are some cheesy synth fills, revving guitars, and that naggingly catchy (but also pretty annoying) Go-ooh on! Go-ooh on! hook. But the driving riff, and the sheer breeziness of the song wins me over, belatedly. I’m just disappointed that I’d written it off for a quarter of a century!

The fact that I wrote it off, and didn’t pay much attention to it, is probably tied to the fact that, despite being chart-obsessed from the age of eleven, and despite owning every ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’ album between… I think… Now 35 and Now 44; by my mid-teens I’d lost interest. I went from taping the charts from the radio and writing them out in notebooks every week to not really knowing who was who in the Top 10. I knew the big songs, from the radio and from classmates, but couldn’t have told you who was #1 on any given week. This lasted until around late-2002, when my interest in the charts suddenly burst back into life, and has never left!

Anyway, back to the song at hand. It also has some vaguely Celtic touches, which every Irish act had to have at this time, but these are dialled well back from some of the Corrs’ earlier hits. What it reminds me of is Shania Twain’s huge ‘Come On Over’ album from around the same time (now she really should have had a couple of number ones out of that…) It’s no surprise then to learn that this was produced by ‘Mutt’ Lange, producer of, and husband to, Shania. And thanks, presumably to Lange, we are treated to a guitar solo! When was the last time we heard one of those?? (Oasis, a couple of months ago, but you get my point…)

The Corrs are a family group, consisting of siblings Andrea, Sharon, Caroline, and Jim. The three women are raven-haired Irish beauties, which meant the jokes in the playground at the time were mainly at Jim’s expense… ‘Breathless’ was the lead single from the follow-up to the hugely popular ‘Talk On Corners’ album, and so was always positioned to do well. I’m glad it did this well, though, as I’ve been able to rediscover a fine slice of power pop. It represents the pinnacle of the Corrs’ chart fortunes too, as they only managed one further Top 10 hit. They split in 2005, but reformed a decade later and remain a touring and recording concern.

848. ‘Go Let It Out’, by Oasis

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New millennium; new Oasis…

Go Let It Out, by Oasis (their 5th of eight #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th February 2000

I mean ‘new’ in the sense that they had lost Bonehead, their rhythm guitarist, and bassist Paul ‘Guigsy’ McGuigan’, as well as forming their own record label, Big Brother. I don’t mean it in the sense that the Gallaghers had made many huge changes in sound for the year 2000. It’s largely business as usual.

There is a drum loop, but that’s as big a nod to the sounds of the new millennium as we get. The rest is pure Oasis: big, dumb chords; big, dumb lyrics; and some tricks nicked from the Beatles circa 1967. From this album, ‘Standing on the Shoulder of Giants’, onwards, every one of their lead singles will follow the same formula. To be as loud and as instantly recognisable as possible, announcing to everyone within earshot that the boys are back in town.

So ‘Go Let It Out’ is big, and loud, and Liam is on sneery form. It ticks all the boxes, demanding to be belted out by lads in pubs, with lyrics like We’re the builders of our destiny… But it never manages to rise above the faux-psychedelic sludge. There are some nice touches: the squealing guitars and whistle that introduce the final chorus, the wind-up riff in the fade-out, and the bit where Noel announces Feel the bass… (I have a soft spot for bands introducing their instruments and guitar solos). But overall, I’d say that this is my least favourite of Oasis’s eight chart-toppers.

Meanwhile, ‘Standing on the Shoulder of Giants’ is surely everyone’s least favourite Oasis album. (I have defended ‘Be Here Now’ in my earlier Oasis posts, and am prepared to do so again!) It has a couple of good tracks – ‘Gas Panic’ is a paranoid gem, while ‘Fuckin’ in the Bushes’ is perhaps their second best album opener after ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ – and a pretty decent single in ‘Sunday Morning Call’, which made #4 later in 2000. But it also has ‘Little James’, so…

Probably the most important thing about ‘Go Let It Out’ was it confirmed that the Oasis of 1994-1996, the biggest band in the land, were not coming back. This is the start of Oasis living on past glories. Noel Gallagher has gone on record as regretting how many good songs he used up as B-sides back in the mid-nineties, such as the three on ‘Some Might Say’ which I featured a couple of weeks back. The thing is, though… the B-side to this record, ‘Let’s All Make Believe’, is genuinely one of the best things Oasis ever recorded. Had it featured on ‘Standing…’ it would have been the best track by a mile. Let’s face it, Noel’s just loves being a contrarian.

845. ‘The Masses Against the Classes’, by Manic Street Preachers

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The new millennium. The 21st century. The two thousands. The noughties. Here we go. Off with a bang.

The Masses Against the Classes, by Manic Street Preachers (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd January 2000

Could it be any more Manic to combine rushing punk rock, some of the most instant chord progressions of this entire year’s run of #1s, and extracts from Noam Chomsky and Albert Camus? All in a song named after a quote by Victorian-era Prime Minister William Gladstone.

Whatever you make of the their politics (the sleeve art for this was literally the Cuban flag), you can hopefully admire the way the Manics unashamedly used it in creating some of the day’s best rock music. Their first chart-topper ‘If You Tolerate This…’ referenced the Spanish Civil War, but the band had also received criticism from some of their die-hard fans for allegedly selling out with a softer, more pop-leaning sound.

Which means that ‘The Masses Against the Classes’ works as a socialist anthem, but also as a middle finger to those that accused them of discarding their punk roots. Hello it’s us again… sneers James Dean Bradfield, after a distorted rip-off of the Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout’… We’re still so in love with you… Success is an ugly word, Especially in your tiny world… It all culminates, as the guitars splinter and distort, with that Camus quote: A slave begins by demanding justice, And ends by wanting to wear a crown… Which, if you think about it, is the best description of toxic fandom going.

For such an influential genre, punk rock has been very poorly served at the top of the charts. Which makes sense, for what could be less punk than having commercial success? I have at various points argued for ‘School’s Out’, ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’, and even Mr. Blobby, being the most punk number ones. Add to that stellar list, then, ‘The Masses Against the Classes’. Punk aside, it’s just nice to hear some freaking guitars back at the top of the charts!

Not this record’s success indicates in any way that the year 2000 is going to see a rock resurgence after the pop-heavy late-nineties. Sorry, things are going to stay just as poppy over the course of this year’s forty-two chart-toppers (a record turnover of #1s). The Manic Street Preachers were one of the few guitar acts that could break through to the top at this time, and they did so by releasing in dead mid-January, and by publicly deleting the single from production on the Monday it was released (which is also very punk, to be fair).

All this also means that it stands out as a bit of an oddity in the Manics’ back-catalogue. One of their two #1s, that very few casual listeners could sing the chorus to. There are far better known songs by the band that didn’t make it so high in the charts, but then isn’t that the way with so many acts? They would go on scoring Top 20 hits until the early 2010s, and are releasing their 15th studio album later this month. I feel a Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Best of the Rest’ is a post I’ll be doing soon enough…

The only video made was this live version, recorded in Cardiff on the Millennium’s Eve…

The studio version…