2000 pop songs

875. ‘Against All Odds’, by Mariah Carey ft. Westlife

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In which Westlife, the regional champions of power balladry, come up against the reigning world champion. A contest for the ages…

Against All Odds, by Mariah Carey (her 2nd of three #1s) ft. Westlife (their 6th of fourteen #1s)

2 weeks, from 24th September – 8th October 2000

And at first, Westlife give a good account of themselves. They’re clearly pumped up for this duet, with lead singer Shane coming out all guns blazing for the opening verse. When Mariah takes over, meanwhile, she’s struggling to get out of second gear. She’s either warming up slowly, or can’t be arsed, and doing that husky, breathy voice that she does when she can’t, or won’t, reach the high notes.

Second verse comes along, and Mark takes over for Westlife, again singing as if his life depended on it, while his bandmates gamely back him up. It’s actually looking like Westlife might be about to take the title from Mariah, in one of the biggest upsets in power-ballad history. Until Mariah wakes up for chorus number two, and puts the lads right back in their place with some eyewatering over-singing, reaching notes that even Brian McFadden’s dog couldn’t hope to match. By the end, Westlife are essentially backing singers, and order has been restored.

Sadly my imagined scenario is not quite the truth, however, as this record was made by tacking Westlife’s vocals onto an already recorded solo version by Mariah. Which means the video, with Mariah and her adoring backing band in a recording studio, must be fake. I’m imagining an unfortunate lackey suggesting to Mariah that she might want to re-record her vocals, a lackey who never worked in music again and who still suffers PTSD from la Carey’s death-ray stare.

Musically this duet makes sense. But commercially, I’m not so sure. Westlife were at the peak of their powers, and whatever they released as the lead single from their second album was going to be massive. Mariah, though, despite her huge success in America, had never hit the same heights in the UK: fifteen US #1s to two UK #1s by 2000 bears this out. Plus, this was the very end of her imperious phase, with the infamous ‘Glitter’ less than a year away. Maybe she needed this duet more than Westlife…?

Interestingly, this record didn’t chart in the States. But in Britain, of course, things were different. It was big enough to spend two weeks at number one – no mean feat in 2000. It also adds to our growing list of classic #2s belatedly making #1, Phil Collins’ original having made runners-up spot in 1984. And it’s not the last time a version of ‘Against All Odds’ will feature at the top the charts, either. Take that as fair warning…

873. ‘Take on Me’, by A1

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I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s definitely becoming a bit of a chart theme over the past year or so: classic #2s making #1 in inferior cover versions. We’ve had 911’s ‘A Little Bit More’, Westlife’s ‘I Have a Dream’, and Madonna’s infamous ‘American Pie’. But is this next chart-topping cover the most egregious…?

Take on Me, by A1 (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 3rd – 10th September 2000

Or is it a harmless tribute, bringing a much-loved classic to the ears of a new generation…? (Though there were only fifteen years between this and the original ‘Take on Me’, so I’m not sure enough time could have passed for it to have been forgotten.) The first thing that stands out are the reedy vocals, which simply cannot compete with Morten Harket, the ‘80s most crystalline voice. The producers try to paper over the cracks, by distorting, or by beefing them up with reverb and echo, and in the chorus Ben Adams makes a decent enough attempt at the high note (though the sceptic in me wonders if he didn’t have some electronic assistance…)

The original riff is of course, forever and always, a classic. So if you were to stumble across this version without ever having heard the original, then you might be impressed. But on top of the riff there are lots of pointless effects and window dressing. In fact, ‘pointless’ is the perfect word here. Why did A1 need to do this?

They had already enjoyed four Top 10 hits from their debut album, and the single following this – if I’m not mistaken – is something of a noughties pop classic. So, was it more of a statement? We’re back, with our second album, and a cover that’s bound to get us attention? I mean it worked, after all. Here they are, with their first #1. And they weren’t done meddling with the pop canon, as the B-Side was a Beatles medley.

A1 had been formed by Tim Byrne, the mastermind behind Steps, and Paul Marazzi, who had failed the audition to be in Steps. In my mind, they were very much a second division boyband, more Another Level than Take That, but they stayed together for three albums and eight Top 10 singles in total. The A-ha connection goes beyond this record, too, as they had a Norwegian member, Christian Ingebrigsten, and were almost as successful in Norway as they were in the UK.

872. ‘Music’, by Madonna

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Maybe it’s just my age, and the fact that I was in prime ‘coming of age’ territory during the summer of 2000, but it feels like every chart-topper at the moment has a line, or a moment, that resonates to this day.

Music, by Madonna (her 10th of thirteen #1s)

1 week, from 27th August – 3rd September 2000

We’ve had Craig David’s seven days of wooing. Robbie’s ‘Rock DJ’. Will the real Slim Shady please stand up and If it ain’t love, Then why does it feel so good… To the list we can add Madonna’s command: Hey Mr DJ, Put a record on, I wanna dance with my baby…

When I claimed that her version of ‘American Pie’ wasn’t as bad as people said, but that it was also a bit too safe, I was looking ahead to this record. Imagine if she had bent and twisted that hallowed classic of rock ‘n’ roll using the grinding, whirring, blurping production that she employs on ‘Music’. It may have turned out terrible, but it would have been every bit as fun and provocative as her other most controversial moments.

As it is, we are left with ‘Music’, and for a woman in her forties, almost two decades into her chart career, it is a remarkably modern record. The video and the lyrics may reference disco balls and boogying, but musically this is forward-facing electro-funk. Again, Madonna shows herself to be bang on-trend, as this sounds both like Daft Punk circa 1997, and Hot Chip circa 2006. It also leaves room for a bit of cheese amongst the cool, in the heavily distorted Do you like to boogie-woogie refrain.

Lyrically this is standard sort of ‘music brings the world together’ stuff. Although she does try to reach for a higher plane of thought with the line: Music, Mix the bourgeoisie, And the rebel… Apparently Madonna was inspired to write this at a Sting concert, noting the euphoric reaction of the crowd when he started to play the old Police hits. The video isn’t one of her most thought-provoking either, featuring Sacha Baron-Cohen in character as Ali G (how very Y2K) driving her around in a pimped-out limo.

No, here Madonna isn’t trying to outrage or annoy, she just wants us up on our feet. And I, for one, will always head to the dancefloor when this one comes on. This record took her into double-figures in the total number ones count, the first woman in British chart history to manage it. She joined Elvis, The Beatles, and Cliff Richard in managing ten or more chart-toppers. Meanwhile ‘Music’ itself made history by becoming the first song ever to be played on an iPod.

I may have overstated it in the intro, or allowed nostalgia’s rose-tinted specs to influence my take. Perhaps the chart-topping lyrics of the day were no more memorable than any other era’s. Perhaps I was just of an age to remember them. But I do think the #1s of the summer of 2000 were an integral part of turn-of-the-century popular culture, one of those periods when the charts reflected more than just musical taste. And that’s something, in this fragmented, online age, that I don’t think we’ll ever see again.

871. ‘Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)’, by Spiller ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor

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The chart week beginning Sunday 20th August 2000 was supposed to be a Spice one-two. Victoria Beckham was to replace Mel C at the top of the charts with her (and Dane Bowers, and True Steppers) garage-influenced single ‘Out of Your Mind’. But as we all know by now, the path of true chart success never does run smooth…

Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), by Spiller ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th August 2000

For along came this incredibly catchy piece of nu-disco, from an Italian DJ and the lead singer of a little known indie band, to throw a groovy spanner in the works. Spiller, the DJ, had created the track in 1999, and named it after the Miami nightclub where he had first given it a spin, Groovejet. The backbone of the track is a sample of Carol William’s 1976 track ‘Love Is You’, and the vocals/lyrics were added by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, lead singer of Theaudience, and – once again involved in the unlikeliest of number ones – Mud’s Rob Davis.

The reasons why this unlikely dance track got caught up in one of the most famous chart races of all time with Posh Spice are various (and I might explore them in a future post). But I’d suggest that the most important reason is very simple: ‘Groovejet’ is the much better song.

It’s an effortlessly chic track, one that blends perfectly the need to be cool with the need to be accessible. It balances an authentic disco beat, some very ‘Year 2000’ production chops and swishes, and Ellis-Bextor’s beautifully detached vocals. It works as a chillout, by-the-pool track as much as it works as a floor-filler. It is retro, it is modern. It is disco, it is house. (Wikipedia lists it as ‘handbag house’, which is now my new favourite genre of all time…) It is, and this may be pure recency bias but who cares, the year’s best chart-topper.

My biggest problem with dance music is that it can sometimes get repetitive. Spiller avoids this by filling his track with lots of little touches to keep things busy, such as the strings in the old school middle-eight, and the hand drums at the end, not to mention the just silly enough aeroplane sound effect.

Back to release-week, then, where Victoria Beckham (and Dane Bowers and True Steppers) were announced to be leading the race midweek. Both women did promo, with the battle billed as ‘Posh Vs Posher’. In the end, Spiller and Sophie won out by 20,000 copies, and secured the highest weekly sales of the year so far. That was as good as it got for Spiller, who bookended his biggest smash with two #40 hits. But it set Sophie Ellis-Bextor up for much more solo success, including six Top 10 hits across the noughties (seven, if we count the two times that classic ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ has peaked, agonisingly, in the runners-up position…) Meanwhile, this was as close as Victoria Beckham got to a solo #1, and she remains the only Spice Girl not to manage one.

869. ‘Rock DJ’, by Robbie Williams

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In my intro to ‘7 Days’ I suggested that Craig David’s signature tune was the year 2000’s best remembered song. I wrote that, though, in the full knowledge that I’d say the exact same thing about the following chart-topper…

Rock DJ, by Robbie Williams (his 3rd of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 6th – 13th August 2000

Craig David was a popular young upstart; but this was the lead single from the biggest pop star of the day’s third album. And it’s Robbie at his Robbiest. If you don’t much care for his music, then ‘Rock DJ’ is probably one of the songs you care for the least. I got the gift gonna stick it in the goal… Cheeky nonsense like this in the verses – which he half-raps in a delivery that reminds me of Ian Dury – and a dancefloor-filling chorus. I don’t wanna rock DJ, But you’re making me feel alright…

For me, anyway, this is undeniable pop. Robbie Williams has made so many of these songs: songs that I would never look for but when they come on I’m forced to admit that, yep, they’re undeniable tunes. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time I’ve listened to ‘Rock DJ’ through headphones, and thus the first time I’ve noticed how nasty the bassline is.

Speaking of the beat, we need to give another shout out to Barry White, who (sort of) features on his second chart-topper of the year with a sample from his 1977 hit ‘It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me’. There are also small borrowings from a Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Can I Kick It?’ and a track called ‘La Di Da Di’ by Slick Rick.

The video was, I remember at the time, also big news. Robbie is doing what he does best: demanding attention, this time at a roller disco. An uninterested female DJ remains impassive as he takes off his vest and jeans, and then strips off completely. But a naked Robbie Williams isn’t the story (it’s all tastefully blurred out anyway, in the Japanese fashion). Next he wrenches off his skin, before tearing off his muscles and organs and chucking them into the blood-spattered faces of the female roller-skaters. In the end, the DJ eventually deigns to dance with his skeleton. I think it’s maybe a comment on his fame, and everyone wanting a piece of him, but it’s completely bizarre. And to this day I don’t think I’d ever actually seen it in full, as the music channels of the day always cut it after he took off his pants.

So, huge lead single, controversial video: odds-on number one. And thus it came to pass. But even this massive record couldn’t break our run of one-weekers. The turnover in the summer of 2000 was relentless, so on we go…

868. ‘7 Days’, by Craig David

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Of all the year 2000’s many, many number ones (this being twenty-four out of forty-two), is Craig David’s ‘7 Days’ its most famous…?

7 Days, by Craig David (his 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 30thJuly – 6th August 2000

There aren’t many Brits of my vintage who can’t still recite Craig’s week of wooing: I met this girl on Monday, Took her for a drink on Tuesday, We were making love by Wednesday, and on Thursday, and Friday, and Saturday… (sounds exhausting, to be honest…) We chilled on Sunday…

Like his first chart-topper, ‘Fill Me In’, this is light and airy commercial garage. The Spanish guitar riff and insistent beat make it more instantly appealing than its predecessor, and the chorus is as memorable as they come. It’s calmer, more confident, a fact also reflected in the lyrics. No longer is Craig David creeping around behind his girlfriend’s parents’ backs. Oh no, here he’s picking up a twenty-four year old ‘cinnamon queen’ in an underpass… She asks him for the time, and the rest is history.

The call and response bit, in which his friends quiz him on his conquest, is fun too, Was it for real…? Damn sure… It’s like ‘Summer Nights’ for the new millennium. Elsewhere, though, it does meander a little. Again, this is garage’s problem, in that it is so breezy in places that sometimes it fails to land. But, I’ll stick with my initial claim, in terms of the record’s sound being peak-2000, and the chorus being an era-defining earworm.

It also feels very old-fashioned too, twenty-five years down the line, when everyone now meets their romantic partners on the apps. Imagine approaching someone in a subway (he’s using the word in the British sense, rather than the American) and asking them out on a date. The 2025 version of this song wouldn’t get past day one, and would probably end in a restraining order.

It would be easy to argue that Craig David’s career peaked early, with his first two solo singles giving him his only two number ones. But he’s had a near twenty-year stretch of Top 40 hits, and thirteen further Top 10s. I’ll give a shout out to ‘Walking Away’ and ‘Don’t Love You No More (I’m Sorry)’ as two favourites of mine. However, he is probably just as well known in Britain for being played in caricature by Leigh Francis on ‘Bo’ Selecta!’, a massively popular comedy. David has both claimed to have been fine with his portrayal in the show; and has described it as “racist blackface”, and “hurtful beyond belief”. He probably does have a point, though, in claiming that it affected his career.

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.

866. ‘Life Is a Rollercoaster’, by Ronan Keating

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Straight on from the Corrs, it’s more Irish joy at the top of the charts. In fact, 2000 might just be the best year on record for Irish number ones, with Ronan Keating becoming the year’s third, with three more yet to go…

Life Is a Rollercoaster, by Ronan Keating (his 2nd of three solo #1s)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd July 2000

And while, yes, this is already Groanin’ Ronan’s eighth appearance in less than four years, I’m not feeling too apprehensive about this record. For, finally, Ronan is going upbeat. Strap yourselves in folks, because This. Is. Not. A. Ballad!

Like the Corr’s ‘Breathless’, ‘Life Is a Rollercoaster’ was a song impossible to escape when it came out. Radios nationwide blasted Ronan’s dulcet tones from dawn to dusk, all summer long, or so it seemed. So on one hand, it’s easy to groan when you think of how over-exposed this song became. But on the other, we should admit that this is actually quite a good pop tune. Nothing amazing, nothing revolutionary; but given the singer, it’s a welcome change of direction.

Strangely, I’d always remembered it being faster-paced. I thought it was more of a rollicking pop number, much like an actual rollercoaster. Listening to it now it feels slower, with a dreamy quality in the way Keating’s voice echoes against a wall of sound in the chorus. It’s somehow otherworldly, to the extent that I had to check I wasn’t listening to a remix, and ‘otherworldly’ is not a word you often associate with Ronan Keating. (Any otherworldliness, though, is undone by the fairly trite lyrics. Life as a rollercoaster. Because of all the ups and downs. Duh.)

Also, because it’s not a ballad, he doesn’t feel the need to chew every single syllable like tough steak in an attempt to convey ‘emotion’. He just sings the words, doesn’t overthink it, and produces what is by far the best vocal performance of any of his, or Boyzone’s, number ones. He even lets loose at the end, adding a semi-saucy adlib: Life is a rollercoaster, Just gotta ride it… (All night long!) I’m sure it had grannies across the land reaching for the smelling salts.

In writing this post, I’ve just realised that this song owes a big debt to George Michael’s ‘Fastlove’, with its Hey baby! refrain, and its similar tempo. I’m sure I’m not the first to notice, but it doesn’t seem to have caused a fuss at the time. Where there was controversy was in the fact that one hundred thousand copies of ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’s enhanced CD single were deemed ineligible to chart, due to an obscure chart rule about what an ‘enhanced CD single’ had to include. This didn’t stop the song from entering at number one, but it did cost it a fortnight on top when a further fourteen thousand copies were discarded the week after. And as we’ll soon find out when we hear the next #1, this was a costly error…

865. ‘Breathless’, by The Corrs

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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.

863. ‘Spinning Around’, by Kylie Minogue

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And she’s back. Forget Billie Piper, this is the pop comeback of the year 2000. Surely one of the biggest pop comebacks of all time?

Spinning Around, by Kylie Minogue (her 5th of seven #1s)

1 week, from 25th June – 2nd July 2000

Amazingly, it has been over a decade since Kylie’s last number one (‘Tears on My Pillow’ in January 1990), and almost six years six since her last Top 10 hit (1994’s ‘Confide in Me’). Since her debut in 1988, we’ve had ‘Neighbours’ Kylie, Pop Puppet Kylie, Creative Control Kylie, Indie Kylie… and then a couple of years of silence. Was that, everyone wondered, that?

As an unashamed Kylie fan, I’m glad about what ‘Spinning Around’ did for the Princess of Pop. It brought her back, set her up for a glorious, and so far never-ending, second act. She was still only in her early-thirties here, but quite often early-thirties might as well be early-eighties for a female pop star. It was truly impressive the way she returned, with an updated yet familiar, utterly-commercial-but-critically-respected sound, as if she’d never been away. But…

As far as ‘Spinning Around’ is concerned, I’ve always found it a bit basic. A bit Radio 2. A bit hen-night in a provincial town. It’s catchy, for sure, and it’s funky bassline and sparkly synths are more proof that we’re in the midst of a disco revival. I like the middle-eight – the Baby, baby, baby… bit – but the rest of the lyrics are a whole lot of nothing, vaguely themed around this song as a comeback. I’m spinning around, Move out of my way, I know you’re feelin’ me cause you like it like this…

And let’s be honest, as reluctant as I am to reduce Queen Kylie to a mere sexual object, the one thing everyone remembers about this record are the gold hotpants she wore while writhing around on a bar top in the video. (Hotpants that were allegedly bought for fifty pence in a market, and which have since been displayed at the V&A museum.)

So the best I’ll say for ‘Spinning Around’ is that it’s a perfectly serviceable pop song which did what it had to do. Kylie was back, back, back, and free to release better songs in the coming years. Of course there’s the colossal lead single from her next album, but even the Latin-tinged ‘Please Stay’ was a better track from later in 2000, while there’s also the industrial camp of ‘Your Disco Needs You’, which really should have been a single. Still, maybe it’s just me. ‘Spinning Around’ seems to be remembered fondly, and was the first in a run of sixteen straight Top 10 hits for Australia’s highest-selling act, lasting right through until 2008. It also earned Kylie enty to a very exclusive club – the #1s in three decades club, which at the time consisted only of Elvis, Cliff, the Bee Gees, Queen, Blondie and Madonna.