2000s rock

Cover Versions of #1s… Indie Rock Edition

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In 2007, to celebrate their fortieth anniversary, BBC Radio 1 released an album of cover versions, featuring the big pop and rock acts of the day.

(For anyone not of a British persuasion, Radio 1 is the youth-oriented national radio station, which plays all the pop, rock, dance, and hip-hop hits of the day, as well as the Top 40 on a Friday afternoon. Radio 2 is for the middle-agers. Radio 3 plays classical and jazz. Radio 4 is news, documentaries, plays, and so on. And Radio 5 is for sports. They’re the five main ones that I grew up with. There are others, especially now in the digital age. Here ends today’s lesson on British radio stations.)

Anyway, the remit for the album was to include one song from every year that Radio 1 had been broadcasting, covered in a modern style. Interestingly for us, this coincides (almost) with the very point we are at in our countdown, and so we can feature some of the big indie rock groups of the day that we aren’t going to meet at #1. I’ve complained a bit that the mid-00s indie rock revival – Arctic Monkeys aside – hasn’t been represented on top of the charts. There are a few more indie number ones to come in 2006 and 2007, but not by these acts below.

Here then, are three old number ones, covered by hip new beat groups for Radio 1’s ruby anniversary. Well, hip and new sometime around 2007, anyway…

Kasabian – ‘Too Much Too Young’

One of the very biggest groups to come out of the 2000s, Kasabian are still going strong. All but one of their albums have made #1 in the UK, while on the singles chart their biggest hit was 2009’s #3 ‘Fire’. For this album they covered the Special’s 1980 punky, spiky, two-tone ‘Too Much Too Young’. And they did it in a very faithful, punky, two-tone style. It’s fine. I just wish they made it sound more Kasabian, as they were one of the more unpredictable-sounding of the landfill-indie era, especially their trippy, space-rock inspired debut album.

Gossip – ‘Careless Whisper’

In the mid-’00s I was a big reader of the NME. And for a year or so, between 2006 and 2007, it felt like the Gossip and their front woman Beth Ditto graced the magazine’s cover on a weekly basis. Like so many before them, they never quite lived up to their ‘next big thing’ tag, but their one Top 10 hit – the clattering, protest anthem ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ – is a certified classic of the time. Their take on George Michael’s eighties smoocher is cut from the same dance-punk cloth. Unlike the Kasabian cover above, it does do something new with the source material, and it’s quite nice to hear an over-played tune (that I’m not overly fond of) sound so different.

The Kooks – ‘All That She Wants’

Ah, the Kooks. The poster boys for ‘landfill indie’? Or one of the mid-00s more enduring acts? They’re still together, still touring and making music, and their signature song ‘Naive’ seems to have gained popularity with the TikTok generation. I did buy, and enjoy, their debut album ‘Inside In/Inside Out’ – especially the bouncy ‘You Don’t Love Me’. But there was always the whiff of art school (they formed at the BRIT school) poseurs about them, and lead singer Luke Pritchard always gave the impression that he thought he was Pete Doherty, minus the heroin.

But their cover of Ace of Base’s 1993 #1, ‘All That She Wants’, is serviceable enough, translating the original’s reggae lilt into a very 2006 indie riff. Of the three I like Gossip’s cover the best, but this is a decent second.

I hope you enjoyed these three covers. This ‘Radio One Est. 1967’ album is good for at least three more chart-topping covers, so I’ll return to it in the new year.

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…

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.