billie piper

860. ‘Day and Night’, by Billie Piper

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

The biggest pop comeback of the new millennium. Step aside Madonna, All Saints, Oasis, and Britney… It’s Billie. Piper.

Day and Night, by Billie Piper (her 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th May 2000

She’s added a surname, as well as beefing up her sound. While her team may, just may, have been listening to Ms Spears. And perhaps a bit of Backstreet Boys too… Okay, in fairness this is a pretty wholesale ripping off of that big-chords, big-chorus Max Martin sound. It is the female version of ‘Backstreet’s Back’. I did check to see if Martin had been involved here, but no. ‘Day and Night’ was written by English songwriter Eliot Kennedy, as well as two members of Dead or Alive, and produced by Stargate, who will become one of the biggest names in ‘00s pop. (And who are from Norway, so there is a Scandinavian influence after all…)

So, yes, this is a lot more muscular, a lot more mature, a lot more internationally appealing, than Billie’s two teeny bopping hits from 1998. The beat is chunky, the production slick, and the chorus lands like a big slab of granite. But despite all this I’m finding it fairly forgettable. Twenty-five years on I vaguely remembered the chorus; and after listening to it three times in succession I still only vaguely remember it. Compare it with ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’, a song it longs to be but that it falls far short of matching.

This track is also, inadvertently, evidence for the defence in the ‘Britney can’t sing’ case. Billie performs this competently, but her voice also sounds a little stretched. Brit could have sung this in her sleep. It also goes to show that while people may write off all pop music like this as disposable, it’s actually quite hard to locate that hidden ingredient which promotes a song from ‘decently catchy’ to ‘proper classic’.

The video is going for an ‘all grown up’ message (bear in mind she was still just seventeen when this made #1), with Billie and her friends partying in some sort of damp, underground garage. And a laundrette. This video debuted, according to Wikipedia, on 9th March, well over two months before the single was actually released, which gives another glimpse into why the turn-of-the-century charts were so fast-moving.            

Billie released two further singles from this, her second LP. By the summer of 2001 she had announced her retirement from music in order to focus on her acting career. And a pretty successful acting career it has been, twenty years in. She’s most famous for her role as Rose Tyler on ‘Doctor Who’, but has starred on both stage and screen without ever being tempted back into the recording studio. No matter, to a generation of Brits rapidly approaching their forties, the name Billie Piper will always bring to mind ‘Because We Want To’s chanty chorus, and some low cut jeans.

804. ‘Girlfriend’, by Billie

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

Right after B*Witched, the year’s second biggest teenybop act returns for another crack at the top…

Girlfriend, by Billie (her 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th October 1998

I thought ‘Rollercoaster’ was a big improvement on ‘C’est la Vie’, a record I detested. Is the same upswing evident with Miss Piper, bearing in mind that I didn’t find ‘Because We Want To’ anywhere near as bad as B*Witched’s accursed debut? Um… Not particularly. It’s more of the same, really.

It starts off fairly promisingly, though. Some excellent vintage record scratches, and some shoobydoobydoopdoops reminiscent of the classic girl groups. There’s a bit of sass in the verses, and I can certainly hear a bit of All Saints in there (as with B*Witched, Billie’s second single was clearly trying to add a little more edge). The song’s premise is that Billie has seen a boy that she likes, and she isn’t going to play it coy: Playin’ hard to get takes too long sugar, So I told my friends that I’ve found a man…

While I admire the confidence (very Girl Power), the song is let down by another chanty chorus. Do you have a girlfriend…? Can I have your number…? I don’t think it suits Billie’s voice particularly well, which adds to the grating effect. And I’m not sure this aggressive approach would have worked, romantically speaking.

I’ve lost count of how many pop songs in 1998 have had the same vaguely hip-hop backing beat and squelchy bass synths. It’s another step towards what I would call truly ‘modern’ pop music (i.e. the Max Martin sledgehammer approach). This is a bit more minimal than what’s to come, the simple beat decorated with various horn parps and string flourishes.

Billie Piper has an interesting post-pop career, but we’ll hold off on that for now. She has one final number one, with a big and beefy Y2K sound, and that will make an interesting contrast with her first two chart-toppers. It’s worth mentioning, before we go, that ‘Girlfriend’ put Billie out and clear as the youngest person to make #1 with their first two singles.