Okay. This is not the first time we’ve met a sex offender at the top of the charts, and it won’t be the last. As with Rolf Harris, Gary Glitter, P Diddy, and Michael Jackson, and probably every rockstar active in the 1960s and 70s, we take a moment to acknowledge the crimes…

Ignition (Remix), by R. Kelly (his 2^nd of three #1s)

4 weeks, 11^th May – 8^th June 2003

We also take a moment to acknowledge that this is a proper old school jam. It’s the freakin’ weekend baby I’m about to have me some fun… R. Kelly would like us to leave our credibility, and our clothes too, before entering the Stretch Navigator, for three minutes of soulful R&B silliness. There’s crystal poppin’, there’s coke and rum, there’s an after party, there are toot toots and beep beeps… If you’ve ever seen an episode of ‘Trapped in the Closet’, R. Kelly’s hip-hopera, this record is much the same vibe.

The original ‘Ignition’ had been recorded a year previously, but had existed for several years before that, perhaps explaining its retro sound. Due to an album leak, Kelly decided to remix several of its tracks. It was a good decision, as the original ‘Ignition’ is dull and treacly. It also adds to the feel of 2003 as a retrospective year, with big hits like ‘Make Luv’, ‘Loneliness’, and ‘Beautiful’ harking back to various different eras (plus a cover of ‘Spirit in the Sky’ for good measure).

So yes, this song is fun and goofy. I am nostalgically attached to it as it was number one when I finished high school, and was one of the songs of that long summer before I went to university. However, it has to be said that a song about getting a girl drunk and taking her back to a hotel, as well as select lines – I’m about to take my key and stick it in the ignition – leave a certain ickiness knowing what we now know.

Although, Kelly’s crimes were already well known in 2003. Rumours had been around since he’d ‘discovered’ fifteen-year-old Aaliyah in the mid-nineties, even before his 1^st chart-topper ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ and in 2002 he was prosecuted on child pornography charges. Thus, the remix to ‘Ignition’ made #1 with the public in full knowledge of Kelly being a wrong ‘un. There’s no way that would happen today. (I am going to cast no moral judgement on this. Listening to a criminal’s songs does not mean you endorse the crimes, but I respect those who refuse to.)

Before we finish, note how this is already the fourth number of the year to stay at the top for a full month, with another four-weeker along straight after this. In my last post I mentioned plummeting sales, which might have contributed to these longer-running #1s (the early ‘90s was another time of low sales and long stretches at the top). But compared to a few years ago, when the year 2000’s fifty-two weeks gave us forty-two number ones, it’s another big shift.