Disco

1030. ‘It’s Chico Time’, by Chico

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

What time is it???

Well we’re about to have that question answered in a very cheesy, disco-funk fashion. It is, it turns out, Chico Time.

It’s Chico Time, by Chico (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 5th – 19th March 2006

Yousseph ‘Chico’ Slimani had been a contestant on the previous year’s X-Factor, going home in the quarter finals as Shayne Ward went on to win. Yet despite finishing nowhere near the final three, Chico was the only other contestant from that series to have a number one. He was the season’s novelty act, the blueprint for later ‘comedy’ turns from the likes of Jedward and Wagner, and came out with the sort of debut single that most would have expected. In fact, he had performed it on the show the previous November, and it was pretty rare for X Factor contestants to be allowed, or to even have ready, an original song.

‘It’s Chico Time’ is nonsense – a complete novelty – but it’s not awful. It reminds me of a so many other songs; so many little bits nicked here and there that I can’t name all its many influences. The strongest whiffs, to my ears, and from a chart-topping perspective, are from ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’, and ‘Who Do You Think You Are‘. And ‘Uptown Funk’, despite that song not existing for another decade. Maybe Bruno Mars is a Chico fan…?

What Chico Time actually involves, and what activities one might take part in at this hour, is left largely a mystery. Until the middle eight, which is all over the place musically, but is also when this previously family friendly track gets a little saucy. Shake it naughty, Come on baby bump my body… It’s probably worth mentioning here that a pre-fame Chico had worked as a stripper… At its heart, though, this song is a lesson in foregoing self-importance. You can get delirious if you take life too serious… There are worse mantras to live by.

Despite the stage name, Chico was not Spanish. He had been raised in Morocco, but born in Wales! He joins Sir Tom and Dame Shirley in the ranks of chart-topping Welshpeople. That is a Pointless answer if ever I heard one. He had one further Top 40 hit, a cover of ‘D.I.S.C.O’ (with the lyrics changed to ‘C.H.I.C.O.’) which made #24, but little else. An attempt to resurrect his biggest hit as ‘It’s England Time’ for the 2010 World Cup thankfully went uncharted.

His post-‘Chico Time’ career is an interesting mix of charity causes: Prince’s Trust, Cambodian orphanages, and water charities in Africa. I had to do a double take at finding out that his single ‘Curvy Cola Bottle Body Baby’, in which he celebrated the larger ladies, was released to raise money for an eating disorder charity! He’s appeared at religious events singing traditional Islamic songs, and at anti-Covid vaccine protests. He had a stroke in 2018 but made a strong recovery. There is never a dull day, it seems, when you are on Chico time.

Advertisements

1029. ‘Sorry’, by Madonna

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

Our third disco influenced number one in a row. And leave it to Madame Ciccone to show them all how it’s properly done…

Sorry, by Madonna (her 12th of thirteen #1s)

1 week, from 26th February – 5th March 2006

The question I’d like address before we finish today is thus: Is ‘Sorry’ better than ‘Hung Up’? Answers at the end of the post. The two records are cut from the same cloth, at least. This is a little more laidback, more electro/new-wave than its predecessor, more reliant on synths and bass than strings and an ABBA sample. But it is still a great dance tune.

Lyrically, it’s the flip-side of ‘Hung Up’. In the earlier hit, Madonna was largely gagging for an unnamed man. Calling him on the phone and being both literally and metaphorically ‘hung up’. On ‘Sorry’, though, she is reading the riot act, in a very disco-diva fashion. Don’t explain yourself, ‘Cause talk is cheap, There’s more important things than hearing you speak… is a great line, as is the withering: You’re not half the man you’d like to be…

And yes, it’s another shadow #1, following in the wake of an even bigger hit, like so many chart-toppers were in the low sales climate of 2006, as Britain slowly transitioned from CDs to downloads. Casual physical purchases were dropping, and so having a fanbase like Madonna’s, willing to hit the aisles of HMV, was vital. But again, I don’t want to bandy terms like ‘shadow number one’, or the even less complimentary ‘non-number one’, around with songs as good as this.

Any song by Madonna automatically qualifies for gay anthem status. What nudges this record into camp classic territory is when Madge shows off her impressive polyglotism, by reciting the title in various languages. And as a very (very) low-level speaker of Japanese, the one thing I can pull Madonna up on here is for getting the stress completely wrong on gomenasai.

But hell, it’s Madonna. If she wants to pronounce it wrong then Japan will just have adjust its language to suit. I love this song, I love Madonna. But. Is ‘Sorry’ better than ‘Hung Up’? Well, I am enjoying it today, especially because you don’t hear it half as much as its predecessor, but all in all, no. ‘Hung Up’ is the better track. Though this was a hell of a one-two for an artist over three decades into her career.

Advertisements

1028. ‘Thunder in My Heart Again’, by Meck ft. Leo Sayer

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

On to another number one with a disco groove, albeit a more family-friendly record than its predecessor ‘Nasty Girl’…

Thunder In My Heart Again, by Meck (his 1st and only #1) ft. Leo Sayer (his 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 12th – 26th February 2006

It’s been a while, but it’s nice to have a tacky dance song back at #1. This sound was all the rage back in 2003 and ’04 (also known as handbag house, but my woke self thinks that’s a bit misogynist), it usually involves an old disco or dance track tarted up with a modern beat by a young, preferably European, DJ. Think ‘Make Luv’, think LMC, think ‘Lola’s Theme’ and, of course, ‘Call on Me’. And anyway, ‘tacky dance’ can’t be much of an insult, as I quite like most of those songs. They remind me of nights out in my provincial hometown.

‘Thunder in My Heart Again’ ticks (almost) all the tacky dance boxes. A sample from Leo Sayer’s 1977 #22 hit ‘Thunder in My Heart’, a basic, pre-set rhythm, lots of swooshes and vocal effects… The only thing lacking is that Meck was British. I’d have sworn he’d be German or Dutch.

Meck didn’t have to work too hard to turn this into a nu-disco track, as Sayer’s original was pretty darn disco to start with. I do love the commitment with which he belts out the Do just what you wanna do with my love… line. In fact, listening to the original now, you start to think that Meck was a little cheeky in getting a credit on this record… I like Sayer’s quote from the time, in which he claims this remix “kept all (the original’s) integrity”. Leo, mate, it sounds almost identical…

Though Sayer had little reason to complain as his credit on the single brought an unexpected return to number one, exactly twenty-nine years after his sole previous chart-topper ‘When I Need You’. (Fun fact: Leo Sayer has only ever made #1 in February.) At the time it was a record, beating the twenty-six years between Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’ and ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’. He didn’t hold the record for long, and it has since been beaten by three acts with longer gaps between their number ones. Answers on a postcard, or in the comments, if you know who they are…

After this, we’ll continue on a disco groove. From hip-hop, to tacky dance, to a pop legend showing everyone how to do dance music properly…

This video is a masterpiece of the tacky dance genre. Gloriously cheap looking!

Advertisements

1022. ‘Hung Up’, by Madonna

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Let’s pretend that Westlife didn’t ruin what has been a great autumn for chart-toppers: Oasis, Gorillaz, Sugababes and Arctic Monkeys all with top quality number ones in September and October 2005. And now here’s Madge, wrapping the season up with the best of the lot?

Hung Up, by Madonna (her 11th of thirteen #1s) 

3 weeks, from 13th November – 4th December 2005

The sole impressive thing about ‘You Raise Me Up’ was Westlife scoring one of their biggest hits six and a half years into their career. Madonna sees that, thinks ‘cute’, and smashes it out of the park with ‘Hung Up’, a full twenty-three years on from her debut single.

What’s so good about it? It’s a dance anthem, but then so are many of Madonna’s hits. It’s neo-disco, but that’s yet another return for the genre in a new millennium that hasn’t been short of seventies inspired tunes. It’s a very ‘00s-era mash-up, but not the first to make the charts, or number one. Maybe it’s just the pure joyousness of it: it soars, it pounds, it flirts. It is my personal favourite of all Madonna’s thirteen chart-toppers.

At the same time, I’m also deliberately ignoring the big pink elephant in the room. The ABBA sample. Madonna + ABBA (an ABBA song inspired by Donna Summer) = gay heaven. I’m not sure allowing Madonna to get her hands on the electronic pan-pipes from ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ could have gone wrong, but this was only the third time that Benny & Bjorn had ever permitted a sample from one of their songs. They needn’t have worried.

Cleverly, ‘Hung Up’ sticks to the spirit of the original, about needing a man in the middle of the night, so much so that it feels like Part II. But importantly, while Frida and Agnetha’s sexual tension is never resolved, Madonna quickly loses patience with her reluctant man. From Waiting for your call every night and day, I’m fed up, I’m tired of waiting of you… to You’ll wake up one day, But it’ll be too late…

In the video, Madonna runs through a particularly sexy ballet warm up, wearing a pink leotard. I remember some disparaging comments at the time, about a woman of her age blah blah blah, but watching it back now she looks amazing. If my arse looks that good at forty-seven, I will happily parade around town in a pink leotard. It is even more impressive to watch, knowing that she had broken eight bones in a horse riding accident weeks before filming.

It wasn’t just ‘Hung Up’ that brought Madonna back to the forefront of hit making. The ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’ album was seen as a big return to form, and potentially the best LP of her career. So good that it would offer one further #1, a song every bit as good as this…

Advertisements

984. ‘Lola’s Theme’, by Shapeshifters

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

A few chart-toppers ago, when writing about LMC’s ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’, I announced a new genre: ‘tacky dance’.

Lola’s Theme, by Shapeshifters (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, 18th – 25th July 2004

‘Tacky dance’ involves taking an old sample and splicing it with a disco-lite beat. It’s cheap and catchy, and goes down like a Bacardi Breezer. I’ve also heard this genre described as ‘handbag house’, though I think that sounds even more derogatory, conjuring up images of large groups of screeching women on a hen night.

Anyway, after writing all that, it feels harsh to tar our next #1 with that brush. Yes, ‘Lola’s Theme’ is two samples and a disco-house beat. But it works better than ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’, as the Whitney and U2 samples on that record felt gimmicky. Here, the Shapeshifters – a British/Swedish production duo – took two relatively unknown songs and created a much fresher sounding record.

The disco strings and horns come from Johnnie Taylor’s 1982 song ‘What About My Love’, while the I’m a different person… refrain comes from Anthony White’s ‘Love Me Tonight’ (neither song had been a hit in the UK). The result is a catchy, accessible dance record. Yes, it’s a bit basic. But being ‘a bit basic’ is essential when making a tacky dance record. And I remember it being everywhere in the summer of 2004, with the melody used as montage music on every daytime TV programme going for several years afterwards.

One thing I like about tacky dance is that it put dance diva vocalists back front and centre. The singer on this was soul artist Cookie, for whom this was a career highlight (though she has also been a live backing vocalist for Kylie, Ronan Keating, and Nick Cave). I do enjoy when she lets loose on the Turn my world around… line. I’m disappointed, though, to finally learn that the lyric in the bridge is You fired up my heart… when I had always heard it as You fag-burned my heart… A cigarette singed heart is the perfect image for the cover of a tacky dance single.

Before we go we must address the question that is presumably on everyone’s lips. Who’s Lola? She was the wife of Shapeshifter Simon Marlin, and ‘Lola’s Theme’ a placeholder title that was never improved upon. Still, very few people can claim to have a number one single named after them, so well done her. The Shapeshifters had one further Top 10 hit, and a few smaller hits, and are both still active today.

Never Had a #1… Part 4

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

Having already covered the 40th to the 26th highest selling acts never to have had a UK #1 single (check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you missed them), and having already met names as illustrious as Bob Marley, Van Halen and Johnny Cash, what artists sit just shy of the Top 20?

25. Tina Turner

Biggest Hits: ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, with Ike Turner (#3 in 1966), ‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ (#3 in 1984) & ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’ (#3 in 1985)

One of rock ‘n’ roll’s great voices, great females, great survivors: Tina Turner. I did an entire ‘Never Had a #1’ post on her a few years back, so enjoy that at your leisure. Of her trio of #3s, I’m posting ‘River Deep, Mountain High’. Which is technically not a solo record – given that Ike is credited and Phil Spector’s touch is all over the production – but you try telling Tina that this is not her song. She sings it like the song is the ragdoll in the lyrics, and no way she’s giving it up for anyone.

24. Gloria Estefan

Biggest Hit: ‘Don’t Wanna Lose You’ (#6 in 1989)

Many of the acts in this Top 40 are US artists who sold bucketloads in their homeland but not so much elsewhere. And yes, Gloria Estefan is Cuban, but she moved to the US when she was two, so we can claim her for America whether she likes it or not! Anyway, she has multiple Top 10s and three #1s on the Billboard Hot 100, but never climbed higher than #6 in Britain.

‘I Don’t Wanna Lose’ you is a by-numbers late-eighties power ballad. For every classic power ballad that decade gave us, there are nine lesser examples. This is fine but largely unmemorable. Estefan’s voice is the best thing about it, by far. I was sorely tempted to post ‘Dr. Beat’ as her biggest hit (another #6, in 1984) but the OCC credits it to Miami Sound Machine, without a ‘ft.’, and rules are rules.

23. Genesis

Biggest Hit: ‘Mama’ (#4 in 1983)

Amazingly, one of only four British acts to feature in this Top 40 (they are all ‘classic rock’ groups, of one shade or another) Genesis took their time over singles chart success. Their first single release was in the late sixties, but it took until the late ’70s before they made the Top 10, and it was over fifteen years into their career that they had their biggest hit.

‘Mama’ is a deeply weird, synthy, sexy epic, about a young teenager’s obession with a much older prostitute. Phil Collins delivers the haha-ha-urgh refrain like the girl from ‘The Exorcist’, yet still has plenty of competition for the song’s creepiest moment. Personally, I think the intro is the eeriest part, with the industrial drum machine rubbing against some proper horror soundtrack synths.

22. Def Leppard

Biggest Hits: ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ (#2 in 1992) & ‘When Love and Hate Collide’ (#2 in 1995)

And straight away, here’s British act number two. For a band best know for ’80s hair metal classics like ‘Animal’, and ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’, it is disappointing that Def Leppard’s biggest hits are a couple of average #2s from the following decade.

I chose ‘Let’s Get Rocked’ as the video choice because I do admire their commitment to the clunky ‘rock’ innuendo (Let’s get the rock outta here…). And because the once cutting-edge CGI in the video is now utterly, utterly terrifying. Whereas ‘When Love and Hate Collide’ is a plodding power-ballad.

21. Earth, Wind & Fire

Biggest Hits: ‘September’ (#3 in 1978) & ‘Let’s Groove’ (#3 in 1981)

I am suprised that Earth, Wind & Fire are sitting so high up this list, above some legendary names and some huge-selling stadium rock acts. Seems that groove must count for something… Once again, they were much more popular in the US than across the Atlantic.

Since everyone and their dog has heard ‘September’, I’m going for the second of their joint-highest charting singles, the aptly named ‘Let’s Groove’. It’s got a filthy baseline, and great distortion on the opening vocals. It’s a perfect bridge between seventies disco and eighties synth pop. And there’s still the classic EW&F horns. What more do we need?

So, we’ve reached the halfway point in our Top 40. Twenty acts remain, and we’ll cover them in four further parts in the coming year or so. Of the twenty, two acts are British, one is Australian. The rest are American. Twelve are groups, with seven solo acts, and one duo. And only three females are left to appear – two as solo artists, and one as part of said duo…

Random Runners-Up… 6th April

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Time for another trio of randomly selected (thanks to Random.org) number two hits from this date in chart history. Or, as I like to call them, our Random Runners-Up…

‘You See the Trouble With Me’, by Barry White – 2 weeks at #2, from 28th March – 10th April 1976 (behind ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’)

First up, a perfect marriage of disco and soul from the master of merging disco with soul, Barry White. In this song, the lyrics are limited, and way back in the mix, as if the most important thing here is the beat, and that’s hard to disagree with. The final minute of what is only a three and a half minute track is just grooving. Just what is the trouble with Barry? He can’t do nothing without his baby…

This was White’s fifth and final UK Top 10 hit, though he remained very much active until his death in 2003. A few years before that, ‘You See the Trouble With Me’ had been reduced to something of a novelty by dance act Black Legend… and reached to #1. They had to use a Barry White soundalike, as he refused to clear a sample, saying the remix was “cheap, and had no soul”.

‘Love Shack’, by the B-52’s – 3 weeks at #2, from 18th March – 14th April 1990 (behind ‘Dub Be Good to Me’ and ‘The Power’)

On this day in 1990 – though not a song you could possibly date just by hearing it – the B-52’s were enjoying their biggest UK chart success in an already decade-long career. Wikipedia lists ‘Love Shack’ as pop rock, dance rock, surf rock and funk rock, as well as new-wave. (The B-52’s were originally new-wave, but I don’t think you could still have called them that in 1990.) Anyway, that melange of genres pretty much sums up this devilishly catchy tune.

‘Love Shack’ was a comeback for the band, after less than stellar chart fortunes, and the death of founding member Ricky Wilson in 1985. With lyrics about partying in a rusty shed, it is exuberant, and danceable, even if I have to be honest and admit that I’ve always found it a little irritating.

‘Richard III’, by Supergrass – 1 week at #2, from 6th – 13th April 1997 (behind ‘I Believe I Can Fly’)

I will argue long and hard for Supergrass as Britpop’s fourth best band… Okay, maybe 5th, after Suede. This banging track is now long forgotten, while the similarly heavy Britpop classic that made #2 the week after (‘Song 2’) lives on and on and on.

Supergrass could blend proper rock with perfect pop melodies, and this is one of their greatest songs, in a peerless run of singles between the mid-nineties and the mid-noughties. Oh, and it features a theramin, which always sounds fun. It is not about the famously hunchbacked king, nor about the Shakespeare play on the subject. It is a placeholder title – Supergrass gave all their tracks-in-progress people’s names – though they have since drawn a connection between the dark and menacing lyrics and the much-maligned historical character. And tell me that a line like Spent too much time, Wondering why, I got an opinion… isn’t Shakespearean-level thinking for the modern age.

Hope you enjoyed this threesome of #2s… Back to the regular stuff in a couple of days!

959. ‘Are You Ready for Love’, by Elton John

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

Another chart-topping remix, in a summer full of them…

Are You Ready for Love, by Elton John (his 6th of ten #1s)

1 week, 31st August – 7th September 2003

Although, I think calling this a remix is generous. It’s more of a remaster, a sharpening of the mix, cleaning the tapes, that sort of thing. Even though it has been ‘remixed’, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the 2003 chart-topping version and the 1977 original.

Which is a good thing. This is a slice of late seventies disco, almost unknown and unearthed, crashing incongruously to the top of the charts twenty-five years too late. All the flourishes that we remember from the golden age of disco are present and correct: a frisky beat, a natty bassline, swooshing strings… It begs the question why this didn’t do better than reaching #42 at the time.

John had recorded it in ’77, but released it in 1979 on an E.P. of songs recorded with legendary soul producer Thom Bell, during a period in which he and Bernie Taupin were not working together. The Spinners recorded a version, and also guested on a special mix of the song with Elton.

Fast-forward to 2003, and a remixed version of the song was being used to advertise Sky Sports’ coverage of the coming football season. Demand built up and, hey presto, Elton had his sixth chart-topper. It was also his third, and final, completely solo number one (though Ashley Beedle, the DJ who remixed it, might argue with that).

This great but slightly random #1 adds to the sense of 2003 as being the year for great but slightly random #1s… From Russian lesbians, to disco remixes from adverts for Lynx deodorant (and Sky Sports), to Bollywood covers of ‘Spirit in the Sky’ and proper heavy, emo rock, there’s a feeling of falling sales allowing the charts to breathe, and indulge in something more fun, rather than being an endless week-by-week parade of the biggest names in pop.

It also adds to the sense of Elton John’s later career being marked by slightly strange hits, such as this. It follows on sharply from his duet with Blue a few months earlier, the first time he had ever had two chart-toppers within a year. Stranger number ones are to come for Elton, before very long…

951. ‘Make Luv’, by Room 5 ft. Oliver Cheatham

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

Cast your minds back to 2013, when ‘Get Lucky’ by Daft Punk’s Pharrell and Nile Rodgers-featuring ‘Get Lucky’ was everywhere…

Make Luv, by Room 5 ft Oliver Cheatham (their 1st and only #1s)

4 weeks, 30th March – 27th April 2003

Well, I always thought that mega-hit was just a poor man’s ‘Make Luv’. Ten years earlier, Italian producer Room 5 had sampled US R&B singer Oliver Cheatham’s 1983 hit ‘Get Down Saturday Night’, had it featured in an advert for Lynx deodorant, and enjoyed one of those huge, slightly random, hits that 2003 would be remembered for.

This is the other side of mid-noughties dance, away from the trance heavy beats of DJ Sammy: an old sample, tarted up with some swooshes, drops and fades. There’s not much to it, and lyrics like I like to party, Everybody does… were never likely to win an Ivor Novello, but it doesn’t take much detective work to see why it was such a big hit. It is catchy, just the right side of cheesy, and remixed with a lightness of touch that lets it float by. Plus, it has that all-important multi-generational appeal.

And if this isn’t yet another disco revival! We’ve only just got past the turn-of-the-century disco revival, to the point that we should probably just acknowledge that disco never really needed reviving. ‘Make Luv’s success won’t lead to many other disco chart-toppers in the near future, but the charts of 2003-2006 were stacked with fairly cheap knock-offs. Oliver Cheatham found himself co-writer of another similar hit the year after this, for example: Michael Gray’s #7 smash ‘The Weekend’.

Who was Oliver Cheatham, the man who had only ever featured once before on the UK singles chart, when the original from which this was sampled made #38? He’d been recording throughout the eighties, with little chart success, and had spent much of the nineties as a backing singer for various artists. He was fifty-five by the time this became an unexpected #1 smash, and he embraced it with gusto, appearing with Room 5 as they promoted it. I believe this made him the third-oldest (living) male to top the charts, behind Elton John and Louis Armstrong. 2003, in fact, will be a year of old men making number one…

Room 5, meanwhile, also struggled for further hits, teaming up again with Cheatham for a much less successful (and very similar sounding) follow-up ‘Music & You’. He had more success as his alter-ego Junior Jack, and scored a number of Top 30 and Top 20 hits under that name, before and after his one and only chart-topper.

906. ‘Let’s Dance’, by Five

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

Five (sorry, 5ive) return for album number three, and in boyband years three albums equals… Well let’s just say it’s almost time to go to that big boyband concert in the sky.

Let’s Dance, by Five (their 3rd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 19th August – 2nd September 2001

‘Let’s Dance’ is a swansong, then, and as a swansong it ticks all Five boxes. Rapped verses, catchy chorus, a hint of disco, cheeky swagger, Abs’ bucket hat in the video… Job’s a good ‘un. There’s even a spot of very du jour Daft Punk-influenced vocoding, perhaps borrowed from S Club 7 (and their far superior disco reboot) a few months earlier.

It’s a decent enough tune, then. But it’s all a bit calculated, fairly 2001-pop-song-by numbers. It lacks the personality, the vim and vigour of Five’s earlier hits, and again I’m left to lament that they had to wait so long for a #1, and that the likes of ‘Everybody Get Up’ and ‘If Ya Getting’ Down’ fell short.

It has the feel of a boyband on their last legs, basically, and that’s before you get to the fact that one of them, Sean Conlon, had already left the band due to exhaustion. This hadn’t been announced to the fans, and so he’s represented by a cardboard cutout in the video. Something that Conlon felt was a bit insulting, and that’s probably fair enough.

And on their last legs they were, as the split was announced just a month after this record had been sitting at number one. Various reunions took place over the next couple of decades, but always with one or two members missing. Earlier this year, though, they announced they’d be getting properly back together for a tour. News that was greeted more excitedly than most pop reunions, because I think Five were generally well liked by everyone, even those who were usually immune to boybands’ charms. They were fun, they were fresh, and they were – let’s be real for a moment – all pretty fuckable. And, most importantly of all, praise be: they kept the ballads to a minimum!

The strange, mockumentary official video:

The actual song: