2004 pop songs

975. ‘Cha Cha Slide’, by DJ Casper

/ UK #1s blog / 2 Comments

Are you ready to cut some shapes? Cause this time, we gonna get funky…

Cha Cha Slide, by DJ Casper (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, 14th – 21st March 2004

I can truly see the appeal of a song that comes with a step-by-step, foolproof, IKEA-style guide to the dance. ‘The Timewarp’ springs immediately to mind. I’m an okay dancer, when freestyling, but get very stressed when following a routine (see my post on ‘Saturday Night’).

So, for DJ Casper to introduce this record with we’re gonna do the basic steps… is on one level helpful. But that’s all this record is. Three plus minutes of some very basic steps. Slide to the left… Slide to the right… Two hops this time… Hands on your knees… Even I can keep up. Okay it gradually speeds up, throws in some freezes, reverses, and something called a ‘Charlie Brown’; but it gets very repetitive, very quickly.

The ‘Cha Cha Slide’ has an interesting, and protracted history. DJ Casper, a prominent figure in the Chicago ‘stepping’ movement, wrote it in 1998 as a step aerobics routine for his nephew, a personal trainer. This chart-topping version is technically the ‘Casper Slide Part 2’, as Part 1 was just the steps performed to a track called ‘Plastic Dreams’, to which DJ Casper didn’t have the rights. So he recorded a new, fairly rinky-dink version with something called the Platinum Band. This version was released in 2000, making #83 in the US, but growing organically through local radio and mobile discos, not to mention exercise classes, to the point that it was released worldwide four years later.

And here we are. I don’t hate this, because it’s an old-fashioned novelty, and it feels like a while since we had a proper novelty number one. Was the last one ‘The Ketchup Song’, or even DJ Otzi’s ‘Hey Baby’? But also, like I said, it’s repetitive. On first listen, I checked the time remaining twice, so eager was I for it to finish. It just keeps going… And that’s only the single edit. The original is six and a half minutes long!

Despite DJ Casper’s long stepping career, this was his only real hit record (the name ‘Casper’ came from his penchant for wearing all-white, like the friendly ghost). In fact, the UK and Ireland were the only two countries where he ever had a follow-up hit, with his take on ‘Oops Up Side Your Head’. We really do love a novelty.

The story of this song’s creation, its long road to success, and its annoying nature, remind me of Fatman Scoop’s ‘Be Faithful’ from a few months earlier. Though ‘Cha Cha Slide’ is a lot more wholesome and kid-friendly. Speaking of ‘wholesome’, we have to finish on the Christian version of this record – The Bible Slide – which is so bad nobody can work out if it’s a parody or not. This time, we’re gonna get holy…

974. ‘Toxic’, by Britney Spears

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

All the best pop songs are weird…

Toxic, by Britney Spears (her 4th of six #1s)

1 week, 7th – 14th March 2004

That’s my sweeping statement for today. Glance down my list of the Very Best Number Ones, for a start. Yes, there are a few classic, fairly straightforward pop songs. ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’, ‘The Winner Takes It All’… These songs do exist, in the hands of the ultimates: The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, ABBA… Most of them are though, at least in part, weird: ‘Relax’s spurting, ‘Believe’s autotune, ‘Your Woman’s 1930s sample… all weird. ‘Telstar’, ‘Space Oddity’, ‘I Feel Love’… weird, weird, weird.

Enter ‘Toxic’, one of pop’s great, weird moments. It is so crammed with odd little bits: Bollywood strings, surf guitars, techno synths, so cluttered that it shouldn’t work. It at times sounds artificially sped up, then slowed down, and the beat sounds just that ever-so-slightly off. ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ was, apparently, a reference point. Spears’ voice is fed through every distorting, vocoding, auto-tuning software known to man. It comes dangerously close, time and again, to being too much.

But it is not too much. It is just enough. Perfect, even, if the goal was to mimic the effects of being poisoned by something toxic. Its beauty lies in the little moments – the way the strings change direction in the second verse, the moments’ static before the second chorus. And yes, it set the tone for pop music to come. Every little bleep and squelch is intentional, and what pop music sounds like now in the attention-deficit age. Instantly ear-catching. No two verses or choruses identical. No patience for hanging around.

It’s why this decade has had some, largely female driven, brilliantly zany pop moments. It’s also why, say, ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ couldn’t happen in the 21st century, as it builds too slowly. (Though ‘She Loves You’ is thrillingly modern, the way it barrels in chorus-first.) ‘Toxic’ also provides a comparison with Britney’s debut single, at number one exactly five years before. ‘….Baby One More Time’ is a pop song in the classic sense, from the previous century, and sounds like it next to this record.

Britney probably had little to no input into how this song sounded, but that doesn’t mean it could have come from any old singer. It was written for Janet Jackson, and turned down by Kylie; but I can’t imagine either of them performing this. I’m not sure what Britney does, but she does something, and that’s star quality. No, actually, one thing she does is give us another iconically weird pronunciation. Step aside ‘baybay’; hello ‘talk Sikh’.

That intro was not quite me crowning ‘Toxic’ as my next Very Best, by the way; though it will of course be in the running. 2004 was Britney’s most successful chart-topping year, with another, very different, number one to come. One thing I’m fairly confident about is the next #1 won’t be troubling that particular decision…

973. ‘Mysterious Girl’, by Peter Andre

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Well over seven years since his last number one, Aussie-Cypriot adonis Peter Andre is back, back, back baby…

Mysterious Girl, by Peter Andre (his 3rd and final #1)

1 week, 29th February – 7th March 2004

What was behind this comeback, if indeed we can call it so? It wasn’t with new material, as ‘Mysterious Girl’ had been his breakthrough single back in 1995. It was a much more prosaic, and very 21st century, reason: an appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, and a subsequent campaign by Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles.

So, the reason behind the re-release may be tawdry, but make no mistake: ‘Mysterious Girl’ is a great pop song. Given the very average nature of Andre’s two original number ones, the fact that this had originally peaked at #2 could be seen as something of an injustice. But better late than never!

It’s interesting how, covering every number one single, you don’t really notice changes in sound as they happen. But surrounded by pop songs nine years younger, ‘Mysterious Girl’ sounds at once dated, and yet glorious. It’s easy to forget just how reggae-tinged the charts of the mid-nineties were, with acts like Chaka Demus & Pliers, Pato Banton and, of course, Shaggy, all making top spot.

Many must have originally assumed that it was Shaggy himself providing the rap on this track, but no. Bubbler Ranx has a great name, and is a big part of what makes this a good song, but he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry (or a credit on this record.) Meanwhile, Peter Andre acquits himself well, but it would be easy to argue that he is the least important part of this track, behind Ranx, and all the classic – and fairly cheesy – reggae and lovers’ rock touches.

Then there’s the famous video, which features a Thai model called, no joke, Champagne. Did Peter Andre ever get close to this mysterious girl? Not likely, if her facial expression through much of the video is anything to go by. Though even she had to play second fiddle to the real star of the show: Andre’s six-pack.

Though I do enjoy this song, its belated success was a double-edged sword… It meant that the seemingly forgotten Peter Andre was thrust back into the British popular consciousness. It meant we got to witness his relationship with Katie Price (anyone remember their cover of ‘A Whole New World’ – #12 in 2006 – or has everyone collectively bleached that from memory?) his descent into whatever reality TV show would have him, all the way to a job on GB News…

Finally – and this is the info you come to this blog for, really – I can reveal that this is only the second song in the history of the British charts to reach number one on February 29th. And if anyone can tell me what the first was (without checking!) I will be very impressed.

972. ‘Who’s David’, by Busted

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After enjoying the light-hearted ‘Crashed the Wedding’ much more than the angsty ‘You Said No’, I’m sad to find that Busted are back to being emo.

Who’s David, by Busted (their 3rd of four #1s)

1 week, 22nd – 29th February 2004

It’s worrying how a song released when I was legally an adult can be filed under ‘hasn’t aged well’. I must be old. Anyway, here we are, in 2026 – with misogyny and the ‘manosphere’ hot, hot topics – grappling with ‘Who’s David’, the whiny tale of a girl that has given the Busted boys the runaround. (David being one of her many conquests, along with Peter, John and Mike.)

First things first. Girls cheat on boys, and make boys sad. Boys have the right to be upset about it without being labelled misogynists. But several of the lines in ‘Who’s David’ really land with a spiteful clunk, including digs about her make-up, an admission that they ‘invaded’ her phone, and the piece de resistance: You stupid lying bitch, Who’s David? Some guy who lives next door? (They don’t actually say ‘bitch’ as it’s blanked out, presumably at a nervous record company’s insistence. When they re-recorded their greatest hits in 2023, all grown up, they said it.)

Worst of all, though, is the insistence that they don’t really care. You’re so cheap, And I’m not blind, You’re not worthy of my time… and You can’t hurt me now, I’m over you… It’s childish. If that’s really the case boys, then why do we need this song? The far superior ‘Air Hostess’ could have been the album’s second single, and your third number one!

It’s no secret that Busted were desperate to be seen as a proper band. It’s why Charlie Simpson walked out on them, while they were at the height of their popularity, to form post-hardcore act Fightstar. But it’s also frustrating that that led to songs like this, and that of their four #1s, two are fairly spiteful. This isn’t the goofy Busted that I remember, represented by pretty much every one of their singles that didn’t make top spot.

The petulant lyrics sadly also detract from the fact that this is probably their ‘realest’ rock moment, with a chorus that is catchy and actually quite heavy. But I hadn’t heard this song in over two decades, and neither have many others. It isn’t in Busted’s Top 10 on Spotify, an impressive underachievement considering they only released eight singles in their short time together. And at least this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Busted – a band I thought I remembered fondly until I actually had to write blog posts about them – and if I’m correct their final #1 should redeem things slightly.

971. ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, by Sam & Mark

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Where a Pop Idol winner is, the runners-up can’t be far behind. Two weeks behind, to be precise…

With a Little Help From My Friends, by Sam & Mark (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, 15th – 22nd February 2004

Sam Nixon and Mark Rhodes had finished second and third respectively behind Michelle McManus, and had wasted no time in deciding that they were stronger together. Simon Fuller signed them, and they quickly cobbled together this pointless cover of the Beatles classic.

Pointless, because it’s hard to outdo the Beatles when you’re talented, much less when you’re Sam or Mark. And pointless because ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ has been at number one twice already, through Joe Cocker’s definitive cover, and Wet Wet Wet’s peppy charity version. But the sinister minds behind reality TV puppets rarely show much imagination, so here we are.

This record is certainly pointless, but is it bad? Well, yes, and no. It’s bad, because it’s cheesy, and cheap, and unnecessary. It has lots of Beatles-y touches, as if you’d asked AI to play a Beatles song but to make it sound like it came from a Pop Idol act in 2004. Except in 2004 we were blissfully AI free, and so someone must have actually sat down at a mixing desk and created this trash. At the same time though, there’s still a decent pop song buried in there. It’s catchy, and perky, and appealing if you’re eleven years old and completely unaware of this song’s history.

‘With a Little Help From My Friends’, and the very literal video in which Sam and Mark move into a house together, with a little help from their friends, was the first example of what would become a popular X-Factor trope: the cheeky chappy. Despite the gay subtext of the video, Sam and Mark weren’t a couple; they were two jack-the-lads, here for a good time not a long time, as long as all the fun was PG-rated. These cheeky chaps often came in duos – off the top of my head I’m thinking Journey South and, um, Jedward – but not exclusively. X Factor’s ultimate lad star was, of course, Olly Murs. None of this is original, X Factor never was, and you could argue that Simon Cowell’s Robson & Jerome were the prototype of this dynamic, while Robbie Williams made ‘loveable lad’ his own personal brand in his early solo years. But reality TV really went with it, as it was a character type that appealed both to the teenage girls watching, and their mums (and probably even their grannies).

Looking at them now, Sam and Mark feel quite familiar, but also very foreign. Reality TV, despite creating ‘famous’ people by the truckload, was the start of the end for old-school celebrity. Social media accelerated the cull, and now everyone seems to want their celebs to be normal, and relatable, and just like them. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’d much prefer my famous people to have pet chimps and at least five marital partners. At the same time, and without wanting to get personal, Sam and Mark still appear ordinary. Social media has made ordinary people famous, but they don’t look ordinary nowadays. In 2026, Sam and Mark would both have six packs, and fades, and Turkey teeth, and probably a protein drink brand. In 2004, they genuinely look like people you’d meet down the pub. (Actually, writing this post has caused me to dredge up long-supressed memories of finding chubby-cheeked Sam quite cute back in the day…)

Moving swiftly on. As with Michelle McManus, Sam and Mark’s voices are begging a question… How did they end up almost winning a singing competition? Maybe it’s the banal material, but neither of them sound like particularly good vocalists. And to be fair, their singing careers didn’t last long. For one more single, to be precise. They moved into TV and radio, both as a duo and alone, and managed to stay in national-level work well into the 2010s. Mark’s most recent Wikipedia entry has him as a DJ on BBC West Midlands, while Sam was last seen as Buttons in ‘Cinderella’ at the Theatre Royal Wakefield.

One final piece of housekeeping: many sources list this as a double-A side with something called ‘Measure of a Man’. Thankfully the Official Charts Company do not, and so I haven’t had to listen to it, and can clock off early today.

The audio quality in the above video is a bit off, so to hear Sam & Mark in the 4k quality a song like this deserves click below:

970. ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’, by LMC Vs U2

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In previous posts on dance #1s, I had noticed a trend in the genre as we moved towards the middle of the 2000s. Gone were subtle house and disco revival beats, replaced by thumpingly unoriginal remixes of old non-dance hits, jazzed up with trance-light beats and cheap rent-a-singer vocals…

Take Me to the Clouds Above, by LMC (their 1st and only #1) Vs U2 (their 5th of seven #1s)

2 weeks, 1st – 15th February 2004

Well, our next number one is the perfect way to illustrate this slump, as it is a cheap dance mashup of not one, but two eighties classics, complete with a very of its time ‘Vs’ in the title. The bassline is a sample from U2’s ‘With or Without You’, while the chorus is an interpolation from Whitney Houston’s ‘How Will I Know’. And for anyone still not sure of the distinction, the sample is the reason why U2 get a featuring credit, while the interpolation is basically a re-recording (though the composers of ‘How Will I Know’ did get writing credits).

So I guess the fact that this is two borrowings in one, and manages to make two songs that you wouldn’t have necessarily imagined going together go together – merging Whitney’s girlish lyrics and U2’s melancholy bassline – makes this record slightly more original than, say, DJ Sammy’s ‘Heaven’. But it is still far less than the sum of its parts.

The dance dressings are all cheap swishes and swooshes, loops and echoes. It’s pretty tacky. The vocals were recorded by established dance diva Rachel McFarlane, who had been around since the early nineties and had worked with Loveland and N-Trance. She does lend a retro feel, a hark back to the days of Black Box or Livin’ Joy, though I wish she had been allowed to exercise her lungs a little more.

LMC meanwhile were a trio of English producers who had worked with all the greats of tacky dance – my new name for this genre – such as Lasgo, Flip & Fill, and Scooter. This was their only hit under their own steam, until they teamed up with McFarlane again two years later.

Going back to ‘tacky dance’, and hot on the heels of Scottish sweetheart Michelle McManus at number one, I think Scotland holds more than its fair share of blame for the success of songs like ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’. I read an article once that detailed how dance tracks were bought in higher quantities the further north you went in the UK, and from my experience if you went to the one remaining nightclub in my provincial hometown in 2026 you’d get short odds on hearing this track (or DJ Sammy’s ‘Heaven’, or anything by Ultrabeat). I can’t remember the article, but I have found an interesting Reddit forum discussing the phenomenon…

Also worth noting again is the fact that U2 got a credit, and scored their fifth number one, without lifting a finger. Compared to some of the stars that have contributed a lot more to recent number ones with no recognition – Jay Z, Justin Timberlake and Faith Evans – it does seem a tad generous. And in the end this is the one U2 chart-topper that spent more than a solitary week on top, for which Bono and co. can presumably thank the record buying public of small town Scotland…

969. ‘All This Time’, by Michelle

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Into 2004 we leap! Into what is officially the mid-2000s! And, as with 2003, the year’s first new #1 is the previous year’s TV singing contest winner…

All This Time, by Michelle (her 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, 11th January – 1st February 2004

Michelle McManus, a ‘larger than life’ travel agent from Glasgow, was the winner of the second series of Pop Idol. Her win caused quite the stir, with judge Pete Waterman storming off the set. Her size was both credited as the only reason she won, and blamed as a sign of Britain’s moral degeneracy. But, of course, she still had enough goodwill to spend three weeks at number one with her winner’s single (although with barely 10% of the first week sales that her predecessor Will Young had managed).

Listening to ‘All This Time’, I am immediately put in two minds. The first is telling me that this record is, inevitably, shit. But the other is telling me that it is perfect in its shittiness. We’ll hear many more number one in this style, on this theme; but none will top ‘All This Time’, the ultimate tossed-out in thirty minutes winner’s single.

The stupidly dragged out, faux-grandiose intro. The cheesy reverb. The gospel-lite backing singers. The OTT opening line: This time yesterday, I thought I was gonna die… and the actually quite uplifting chorus: All this time, We’ve come a long, long way, I’ve waited a lifetime for today… And, of course, the key change. I think every winner post-McManus should have been made to record their own version of ‘All This Time’. It should have become the national anthem of TV ‘talent’ show champions. The best thing about it isn’t even musical though… It’s the fact that it was released under a single-name – Michelle – as if she was already fit to take her place alongside Cher, Madonna or Beyonce.

While the criticism around her weight was undoubtedly ugly, it is hard to hear anything in this recording to suggest why Michelle McManus had just won a nationwide singing contest. Her voice isn’t bad, but I’m pretty sure you could hear similar at any karaoke night along Sauchiehall Street. It’s reedy, and a bit strained on the middle-eight, though perhaps a full-throated ballad like this wasn’t in her comfort zone.

And yet, unlike 90% of TV talent show winners, Michelle still has a career. I was back in Scotland over Christmas, and on Hogmanay there she was, twenty-two years later, singing her lungs out on the BBC. She may only have had two hit singles, but she has hung in there largely by agreeing to appear on whatever platform will have her. She has been a pop singer, an actress, a radio presenter, a TV presenter, a talent contest judge, a choir master, and a columnist for the Glasgow Evening Times. She has performed with Rod Stewart, Lulu, and Robbie Williams, and has sung for the Pope. Her TV credits range from ‘You Are What You Eat’, to ‘Loose Women’, to ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’.

You could view this as symptomatic of celebrity in the 21st century, the sheer graft required just to stay relevant at all costs; but I prefer to see it as testament to McManus’s personality. She seems like a nice person, someone you’d happily share a bottle of wine with. I do have a slightly personal connection to this song, too, as it was number one on my eighteenth birthday. It’s simultaneously a terrible, and yet somehow almost fitting, song to come of age to.