dance pop

933. ‘Round Round’, by Sugababes

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

In which Sugababes cement their sudden rise to becoming Britain’s biggest girl group, with another cool chart-topper.

Round Round, by Sugababes (their 2nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 18th – 25th August 2002

The energetic Spice Girls were a big exception to this rule, but generally the best girl groups are the ones that make it seem effortless. Like they don’t have to try, and can just conjure classic pop songs out of thin air. Watch great sixties groups like the Supremes and the Ronettes performing live: no wild dance routines, just sparkly dresses and a knowing smile. By the ‘90s the US rap-pop girl groups like TLC and En Vogue had the same haughty spirit, while All Saints turned looking like they couldn’t be arsed into an art form.

Sugababes were firmly in this camp. Listen to the way Mutya almost whispers her opening verse. Calling it husky, or sultry, can’t quite tell the whole story. She sounds like she’s just gotten out of bed, three hours late to the studio. It drips in attitude. I think the kids today might call it cunty. Whatever, it works.

I like that the beat scythes like a huge blade – one of those big wind pylons – swooping ‘round round’ every couple of seconds. The entire song spins as the title suggests it must. It’s the perfect follow-up to the great ‘Freak Like Me’, enough of a similar vibe – same tempo, same attitude – but sufficiently different to suggest they weren’t turning into one-trick ponies. There’s no sample, no cover version, here. Or at least, not an overt one. The backing beat is based on a track called ‘Tango Forte’, which in turn is based on ‘Whatever Lola Wants’, a song from the 1955 musical ‘Damn Yankees’.

Which is another great argument for sampling not just being lazy snatching of someone else’s ideas. For who could listen to that mid-fifties showtune and hear a pop song from forty years in the future? But for all this bigging up, I have to admit: I don’t think it’s as good as ‘Freak Like Me’. It’s good, very good even, but just not as ear-grabbing as its predecessor. Apart from, that is, the middle eight. In which a completely different song, a piano ballad, is transplanted in right into the heart of this record. It jars, but it works, and the way it slowly morphs back into that ‘Tango Forte’ beat is great.

This chart-topper confirmed that Sugababes Mk II were off and away. Three years of solid hit making were in store, until Mutya left the group in late 2005. Two of them we’ll cover as #1s in the not too distant future. But I should also point you back in time, to Sugababes Mk I, and the singles from their ‘flop’ first album: ‘New Year’, ‘Soul Sound’, and one of the best from any stage of their careers: ‘Overload’.

878. ‘Stomp’, by Steps

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

The nu-disco movement, which has popped up time and again in the year 2000, reaches its peak. Because if Steps are referencing a trend, then you know it’s nearly over…

Stomp, by Steps (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th October 2000

Actually, no. I love Steps, and will hear no word against them. I am definitely going to do a ‘Best of the Rest’ post, as they were so poorly served by their two number ones. We had the okay cover of ‘Tragedy’, paired with the okay ballad ‘Heartbeat’, and now this. Everybody clap your hands… (clap clap)… Get on up and dance, We’re gonna stomp all night now…

I mean, it’s fine. I like the rampant tempo of it, that forces you to do the full repertoire of classic disco hand gesture moves to it. I like it the pew pew effects, and the strings. Hand claps, and thank God for the weekend… In fact, it throws almost every cliché into the mix, including yet another of the year’s Chic samples (for which Nile & Co. didn’t initially receive a credit). So much disco, in fact that it promptly kills off the current revival. I’d be surprised if we hear much more at number one any time soon.

But ‘Stomp’ also can’t escape its sheer basic-ness. I know, I know, Steps were one of the most basic groups going. Which is true, to an extent. But most of their classic (yes, classic) songs are rooted in those late nineties pop sounds – a reason why they are fairly beloved by those who grew up with them – and so to hear them go disco feels like a lazy choice.

I also can’t help turning my nose up at this, knowing the Steps songs which failed to make #1. Twelve other Top 10 hits, five of which stalled at #2. ‘One for Sorrow’, ‘Last Thing on My Mind’, ‘Deeper Shade of Blue’… Meanwhile ‘Stomp’ sits at #11 in the Steps all-time sales table, and at #10 on their Spotify most played tracks. It also fluked its week at number one, with the lowest first-week sales of any of the year’s forty-two chart-toppers.

Steps split-up on Boxing Day 2001, but reformed with actually quite surprising success in the 2010s, remaining together (plus Michelle Visage, for some reason) to this day. They may have been ‘ABBA on speed’, in the words of Pete Waterman, but they bunged out some very decent pop records, and were in their own way a soundtrack to the turn of the millennium.

852. ‘Bag It Up’, by Geri Halliwell

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

Fresh from not giving up, we’re now bagging it up…

Bag It Up, by Geri Halliwell (her 3rd of four solo #1s)

1 week, from 19th – 26th March 2000

I overused the c-word in my post on Geri’s previous number one ‘Lift Me Up’, so I will endeavour to describe this record as anything but ‘camp’. Problem is, ‘Bag It Up’ opens with what may be the gayest line ever recorded: I like chocolate and controversy… Don’t we all, Geri.

What is this silly slice of disco-cheese about? Why is she treating her man ‘like a lady’? What the hell does I don’t take sugar on my colour TV mean?? It’s clearly some extension of the ‘Girl Power’ message, about how women don’t have to take crap from men. But like ‘Girl Power’ it falls apart under close inspection, and turns into the aural equivalent of a rowdy hen party entering a pub, even if the line Just a bad case of opposite sex… is wonderful.

Not that this record was ever meant to be closely inspected. It’s complete fluff. The video is even gayer, if such a thing was possible, as Geri advertises ‘Girl Powder’, which she uses to spike her boyfriend’s drink and turn him into a topless servant. She then dances around her factory with lots of pink-haired, six-packed oompah loompahs. Meanwhile, at that year’s Brit Awards, she performed the song after emerging from between a giant pair of legs.

Musically it sounds much like the Spice Girls’ ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, in its poppy, nu-disco beats. In fairness, all three #1s from Geri’s debut solo album have brought something a bit different to the party, while remaining utterly disposable pop. I don’t mean that to be rude, either: I love Geri, and I love disposable pop.

What I might have questioned, had I been a bit older in 2000, was Geri’s relentless pursuit of gay icon status. It’s fun and all, but if anything it’s a little too much. She’d secured it anyway, what with being a literal Spice Girl, and so didn’t have to try so hard. I wonder if in the end it cost her some longevity. (As I write this I’m just remembering that her final chart-topper will be a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’…)

Still, ‘Bag It Up’ is fun, and Geri was admirably serious about not taking herself seriously. Compared to self-obsessed modern pop, it’s been very refreshing to revisit the time when she was the biggest female pop star in the land.