gary numan

924. ‘Freak Like Me’, by Sugababes

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

Back in my post on All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores’, I crowned the ‘00s as the decade of the girl group. All Saints, as great as they were, were a bit of a false start (and they were technically a ‘90s group, anyway) but we’re finally off and away. Forget Destiny’s Child, forget Atomic Kitten. The two greatest girl groups of the decade (of all time?) score their first #1s in 2002, starting with…

Freak Like Me, by Sugababes (their 1st of six #1s)

1 week, from 28th April – 5th May 2002

No more covers of ‘Eternal Flame’, or songs about well you’re ‘surviving’. The Sugababes grab a sample from Tubeway Army and have their wicked way with it, whipping it into a whirlpool of echo, churn and industrial synths, while singing about how they want it every which way with a bad boy. This is what I want from my girl groups. Filth!

I wanna freak in the morning, freak in the evening… I need a roughneck brother who can satisfy me… The lyrics are nothing revolutionary, even if they are a world away from the kid-friendly Spice Girls. Though the Spiceys are there in spirit, in terms of their Girl Power message. This is girl group pop for the 21st century, in which the women are in charge, and parading their men around like dogs, apparently. Come on and I’ll take you around the hood, On a gangsta lead…

As fresh as All Saints’ hits sounded, I don’t think we’ve heard anything like this on top of the charts before. I’m going to use the word ‘original’, despite the fact that the Gary Numan sample is so front and centre. And despite the fact that the song itself is a cover of a US #2 hit from 1995, by Adina Howard, which itself samples and interpolates snatches from Sly & the Family Stone and Bootsy Collins. DJ Richard X had created a mash-up of Howard’s version and ‘Are “Friends” Electric’, but couldn’t secure Howard’s permission to use her vocals. Instead, he turned to desperate-for-a-hit Sugababes, who had been dropped by their label following an underperforming debut album, and who had lost founding member Siobhán Donaghy a few months earlier. For what it’s worth, Gary Numan claims that this song is better than his original.

So, a girl group. A DJ. A bootleg mash-up. Is this the #1 which officially announces the ‘00s as up and running? I probably claimed the same thing when Hear’Say became the first reality TV winning group, but I much prefer this version of the noughties. This reminds me of university, of the decade’s indie revival where pop and guitars collided, of the hits to come, of the days when I’d go out four nights a week… (nowadays, four nights a year is more likely…)

How much my coming-of-age influences my opinion of this record, and pretty much every #1 between now and 2008, is a good point to raise. But also, it’s a pointless question. Music is memory. The charts are one way of recording the soundtrack to our lives. Had I been born a decade earlier and I might have dismissed this as a gimmicky nothing, but I hope not. I hope the quality of this record can exist beyond my nostalgia.

Like Atomic Kitten with ‘Whole Again’, Sugababes were in danger of being consigned to the dustbin had ‘Freak Like Me’ not been a hit. Thankfully it was, and it set the MK II (and III, and IV) versions of the group up for sixteen further Top 10 hits between now and 2010, five more of which will make #1. And, as good as this record is, I think at least one of their later chart-toppers is better.

On This Day… 8th March

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

For our second On This Day feature, we start with a birthday. New wave, synth pop, goth rock legend Gary Numan celebrates his 66th today. He is probably best known for his solo number one ‘Cars’, but I’m going to link this to his slightly earlier chart-topper with Tubeway Army, the eerie, industrial ‘Are “Friends” Electric’.

Looking back, I think the period between 1979 and 1981 had some of the strangest, most un-commercial sounding #1s, and this has to be one of the strangest, most un-commercial sounding of the lot.

On this day in 2016, the world bid farewell to producer Sir George Martin. He is of course most famous for his work with the Beatles, but he also sat behind the desk on #1s for Billy J Kramer, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Cilla Black, and on the best selling single of all time, ‘Candle in the Wind ’97’. Here though is his first chart-topper, the completely unexpected, yet quite magical, ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, by the Temperance Seven.

While in 2003, March 8th saw the death of one of the first modern British pop stars, Adam Faith. He had two number ones, the second of which, ‘Poor Me’, also happened to be at the top on this day in 1960. I remember quite liking the dramatic strings and Buddy Holly-inspired vocals when I wrote my post on it, and it remains a striking number one record. Faith moved into acting, and remained on stage and screen right through to his death. And on the anniversary of his passing, it would be remiss of me not to quote his supposed final words: “Channel 5 is all shit, isn’t it?” Few truer words have ever been uttered.

442. ‘Cars’, by Gary Numan

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

Gary Numan returns to the top of the singles chart, after doing so alongside his Tubeway Army a few weeks back, with another outsider anthem.

Cars, by Gary Numan (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd September 1979

Here in my car, I feel safest of all… He’s locking the modern world away behind four doors and a boot. It’s the only way to live, In cars… It’s another memorable electronic riff: still clanking and industrial, but a little perkier than ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’, poppier even. Numan’s vocals are have lost the conversational tones of his earlier #1, and are full-on Kraftwerk-robot chic.

Here in my car, I can only receive… Is this, maybe, a little bit of a novelty? Is Numan hamming up the extra-terrestrial image he had seen grow around his live performances of ‘Friends’? I don’t know – perhaps that feels harsh. He was inspired to write this song after some unsavoury types had tried to drag him from his car… Had ‘Cars’ come first then maybe it’d sound just as ground-breaking. But… if you were to write a piss-take of a song by Gary Numan, it might sound a lot like this record.

As in ‘Friends’, there are variations on the main riff throughout the song. One is the grinding, clanking trip through a car factory without noise-cancelling headphones. One is a high-pitched counterpoint to this; that one sounds as if you’re speeding down a motorway at night. And then there’s the disco bit, the riff that reminds me of ‘Funkytown’, by Lipps Inc (which wasn’t released until November ’79 – maybe they’d heard ‘Cars’ while recording…)

This record is actually two-thirds instrumental. Once Numan has intoned his way through three verses (no choruses here), the synths take over and you just got to let them wash over you, man. I want to like this more; but with each listen I find my attention wandering by the end. Who am I to judge, though? ‘Cars’ has charted three times in the UK, and remains a staple of adverts, Best Ofs, and Numan’s live shows to this day. And it’s certainly a fine addition to the rich tapestry that is 1979’s chart-toppers.

This is credited to Numan, solo, but still features half of the Tubeway Army on the record. You could argue that both of his quick-fire #1s could be credited to either Numan or his Army, but hey. He remains active to this day, a synth pop legend, and many of the acts who will make this the sound of the early eighties owe him a debt. And if that’s not cool enough for you, how about the fact that, after helping invent synth-pop, he got his pilots’ license and set up own airline, Numanair, in 1981…

439. ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’, by Tubeway Army

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

Symbolically whacking Anita Ward’s trashy disco ditty off top-spot… Time for something a bit different. The eighties have arrived.

Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, by Tubeway Army (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 24th June – 22nd July 1979

There have been synths right through the seventies, from Chicory Tip through to ‘Gonna Make You a Star’ and, most memorably, Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’. But even Giorgio Moroder didn’t use them as aggressively as this. These churning and grinding synths leave you feeling kind of woozy. A riff hammers away, going low like a grinding gearstick, then high like a wonky police siren.

There’s no chorus, no verses or bridge. Just different themes on the same dreamy, trippy riff. But – and I don’t mean this to sound negative – this is a bad dream; one bad trip. Over the top of it, Gary Numan… Sings? Chants? Announces? It’s cold outside, And the paint’s splitting off of my walls…!

What this song is about I have no idea, really. Numan tells a story of a ‘friend’ – note the inverted commas – who may or not be human. The friend is broken down, and he’s lonely. So I head to Google to find out a little bit more… Numan is autistic, apparently, and struggles with interpersonal relationships. So he wrote a song set thirty years ahead, in a dystopian future, in which robots have replaced lovers (hence the ‘friends’). The title references the Philip K. Dick novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ Numan puts it best: “I had a number one single about a robot prostitute and nobody knew it.”

For large parts of the song he also talks, making it a fairly spoken-word heavy #1. So now I’m alone, Now I can think for myself… He sounds – and maybe this is just me – a lot like Marc Bolan. ‘Plummy cockney’ is the way I’d describe it. You see this meant everything to me…

Is it my imagination, or does this song slow down and speed up at random? Each time I listen to it, I notice this effect but in different places. I think I’m just getting lost in its rhythm. I think I might have a nightmare involving this song tonight, and I’m ready for it. Of course, I’m no stranger to the main riff, sampled for Sugababes’ first chart-topper ‘Freak Like Me’, one of the early-2000’s finest pop songs. (Apparently Numan himself classes it as better as this original.)

Tubeway Army were originally a punk act, but Numan found himself increasingly drawn to electronic music. ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric’ was their first single to make the charts; and their last. However, almost the same band will be back in the number one position in just eight weeks… with a single credited solely to Gary Numan.

Finally, I make this the 5th number one by a New Wave act in the last six months… And if they all haven’t sounded completely different to one another! A fertile time for popular music. I know we have six months left to go, but I’m sticking my neck out now and naming 1979 as the best year of the whole decade, in chart-topper terms…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzSM3pRtgcM