pop rock

936. ‘Just Like a Pill’, by Pink

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

God, I haven’t heard this song in years. But within three notes of the intro, I am sixteen again.

Just Like a Pill, by Pink (her 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th September 2002

September 2002, and I had just started my final year of high school, where Pink’s (sorry, P!nk’s) ‘Missundaztood’ (sorry, ‘M!ssundaztood’) was one of three albums that seemed to be on constant rotation, along with Red Hot Chili Peppers’s ‘By the Way’, and No Doubt’s ‘Rock Steady’.

And I can see why it appealed to us teens. It’s moody, it’s got big beefy chords, it’s got lyrics about bad trips, and morphine, and a ‘bitch’ nurse (is Pink the first woman to curse in a #1 single?). It’s emo-pop, a couple of years before that was an actual genre. But it’s still very much a pop song, crammed with hooks.

Listening to it now, ‘Just Like a Pill’ feels both slightly lightweight, and slightly too polished; but has also held up pretty well over the intervening two decades. The chorus is one of Pink’s best, and her voice suits this sort of pop rock much more than the R&B she started her career off with. It frustrates me that the middle-eight, setting up a soaring final chorus, is just a repeat of the bridge, though. It leaves something lacking.

Not that it should matter, but Pink wasn’t just cosplaying as a drug addict for credibility, having had a near-fatal overdose at sixteen. Although she was often lumped together with the other female pop stars of the day, she always had an edge to her, which for me made her one of the more interesting, but also slightly overlooked, singers of the ‘00s. And yet… having just checked her discography, colour me surprised to see that Pink has had twenty-one Top 10 hits in the UK, across twenty-one years! I’d guess that’s way more than many of her contemporaries.

I need to do a Pink deep-dive, because looking down her singles discography there are some great tunes which – like this one – I haven’t heard in an age (including one more classic pop-rock #1 to come). And actually, the fact that ‘Just Like a Pill was her first solo number one is surprising, given the ubiquity of the album’s two earlier singles – ‘Get the Party Started’, and the even more emo ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’. So why do I overlook her? Is it because she never quite fit in with the female pop star image? Because she went her own way? Because she was, dare I say, m!ssundaztood?

932. ‘Colourblind’, by Darius

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

We’ve had the ‘Pop Idol’ winner, and the runner-up. Why not have the bronze medallist…?

Colourblind, by Darius (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 4th – 18th August 2002

Darius Danesh had never really been in the running to win the contest against the big two, but he made it to the penultimate round. Then he did the unimaginable, turning down an offer from Simon Cowell and striking out alone. Which means we have the first self-penned reality TV chart-topper.

Under the guise of authenticity, we’re often encouraged to approve more of music that is written by the people singing it. When I was a teen it was a big indicator of an artist or groups’ talent. “Yes, but do they write their own songs…?” Yet, every song is written by someone. There is no such thing as a song tree. And nobody criticises actors for reading somebody else’s lines. Why does it matter if you sing someone else’s song? It worked for Dusty Springfield, the greatest singer Britain has ever produced. It worked for Elvis, who wrote about three songs in his lifetime.

All that is a roundabout way of saying “well done Darius” on writing a number one single; but also of saying that the song is no better than Will Young’s version of ‘Light My Fire’, and is not as good as Gareth Gates’ ‘Anyone of Us’. It has a big pop chorus – You’re the light when I close my eyes, I’m colourblind… – and a modern, very pop-rock feel. This is the future of rock music, really. For guitars to appear at the top of the charts later in the 21st century, they’ve had to soften their edges and exist in songs like this, or by One Republic, or (shudder) The Script…

But it’s let down by the fact that it sounds written-to-order for a rom-com (a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes sort of rom-com), and by the gauche lyrics, in which Darius lists all the colours he feels when he sees the girl he fancies. Feeling black, When I think of all the things that I feel I lack…

Darius was born in Glasgow (in Bearsden, the posh bit) to a Scottish-Iranian family. Post-singing career I remember him always popping up on Scottish TV, as we do love a local kid done good (see also: Michelle McManus). Following ‘Colourblind’ he managed two albums, and four more Top 10 singles, before moving into both said TV career, and a successful stint in musical theatre. The fact he had any sort of career at all is testament to his perseverance, after his legendarily bad performance of ‘…Baby One More Time’ while auditioning for Popstars in 2000. He died very young, aged just forty-one, in 2022, from a suspected accidental overdose.