pop rock

972. ‘Who’s David’, by Busted

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

After enjoying the light-hearted ‘Crashed the Wedding’ much more than the angsty ‘You Said No’, I’m sad to find that Busted are back to being emo.

Who’s David, by Busted (their 3rd of four #1s)

1 week, 22nd – 29th February 2004

It’s worrying how a song released when I was legally an adult can be filed under ‘hasn’t aged well’. I must be old. Anyway, here we are, in 2026 – with misogyny and the ‘manosphere’ hot, hot topics – grappling with ‘Who’s David’, the whiny tale of a girl that has given the Busted boys the runaround. (David being one of her many conquests, along with Peter, John and Mike.)

First things first. Girls cheat on boys, and make boys sad. Boys have the right to be upset about it without being labelled misogynists. But several of the lines in ‘Who’s David’ really land with a spiteful clunk, including digs about her make-up, an admission that they ‘invaded’ her phone, and the piece de resistance: You stupid lying bitch, Who’s David? Some guy who lives next door? (They don’t actually say ‘bitch’ as it’s blanked out, presumably at a nervous record company’s insistence. When they re-recorded their greatest hits in 2023, all grown up, they said it.)

Worst of all, though, is the insistence that they don’t really care. You’re so cheap, And I’m not blind, You’re not worthy of my time… and You can’t hurt me now, I’m over you… It’s childish. If that’s really the case boys, then why do we need this song? The far superior ‘Air Hostess’ could have been the album’s second single, and your third number one!

It’s no secret that Busted were desperate to be seen as a proper band. It’s why Charlie Simpson walked out on them, while they were at the height of their popularity, to form post-hardcore act Fightstar. But it’s also frustrating that that led to songs like this, and that of their four #1s, two are fairly spiteful. This isn’t the goofy Busted that I remember, represented by pretty much every one of their singles that didn’t make top spot.

The petulant lyrics sadly also detract from the fact that this is probably their ‘realest’ rock moment, with a chorus that is catchy and actually quite heavy. But I hadn’t heard this song in over two decades, and neither have many others. It isn’t in Busted’s Top 10 on Spotify, an impressive underachievement considering they only released eight singles in their short time together. And at least this isn’t the last we’ll hear from Busted – a band I thought I remembered fondly until I actually had to write blog posts about them – and if I’m correct their final #1 should redeem things slightly.

952. ‘You Said No’, by Busted

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

I’d better come clean from the off. I really liked Busted back in the day. And was ready to head off down a rabbit hole of reminiscence this afternoon…

You Said No, by Busted (their 1st of four #1s)

1 week, 27th April – 4th May 2003

But listening to their first number one now, it sounds very lightweight. It sounds very processed, very studio engineered. Their faux-American accents grate. The lyrics, in which they whine like a bunch of snotty incels about the girl that turned them down (You’re so fit, And you know it, And I only dream of you, Cause my life’s such a bitch…) jar. What happened?

I’m reminded of an article I read at the time in a friend’s ‘proper’ rock magazine – ‘Guitar World’, maybe – which claimed to have studied and proved that the opening riff from ‘You Said No’ couldn’t possibly have been played on a real guitar. Now, to be fair, magazines like ‘Guitar World’ had a bit of an agenda against pop punk puppets like Busted, but they had a point. Is this how rock music had to debase itself to be a relevant chart force in the year 2003?

It’s still a catchy song, and isn’t without its charms. The na-na-nanas and the chorus are earworms, and it really has a sound that is very much of its time. Busted were the biggest male pop group in Britain between 2003 and 2004, and it’s right that they feature on top of the charts. But it isn’t hard to argue that this was a belated #1 – a ‘shadow #1’ I’ve called them, in previous posts – after their signature tune, and genuine pop culture moment, ‘Year 3000’ (which had stalled at #2 behind David Sneddon). It did guarantee, though, that Busted became the first act to have their first three singles enter the charts in ascending order: #3, #2, #1…

Maybe it’s just age. I was seventeen when this made number one (admittedly already several years beyond their target audience) and I am approaching a big birthday starting with four as I write this. Maybe it’s also because Busted, for all their charms, were to soon be eclipsed by their prodigies McFly, who started out in the same pop-punk mould but who proved to be a far more expansive band.

One final question that needs answering before we move on: were Busted a boyband? Well, the lyrics to ‘Year 3000’ show that they certainly didn’t think so, and I agree. They wrote their own songs, in part at least. They held (and presumably did sometimes play) their own instruments. And they didn’t have dance routines, or key changes. So no. What they do represent is how the mid-noughties indie and rock revival, which will start to feature eventually at the top of the charts, had filtered down to pop acts. And in my book any guitar, computer-enhanced or not, is always welcome on top of the charts.

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.