The Hit Parade Issue Number One - by Joey Sarajevo
Well, it’s been – what? - fifteen years since The Wedding Present’s genius scam of releasing twelve consecutive limited edition singles in twelve months revealed just how few singles you actually needed to shift to get a Top Ten record, and still people harp on about the decline of the Singles Chart (and, by association, pop music) as though it’s news. Although if this decline were strictly true they couldn’t have spent sixteen years going on about it, you suspect such Cassandras will be delighted by the latest disastrous incarnation of Top of the Pops, which has now taken over from The White Room as possibly the most ill-judged music programme in the history of British television.
You really have to wonder what the people behind this latest embarrassment were thinking. The chief mistake of the programme’s last re-invention – abandoning a straight chart run-down format for magazine-style elements more suited to Top of the Pops Saturday – has not only been left uncorrected but actually intensified, with the show’s focus further diluted by subsuming the archive footage that used to get aired on Top of the Pops 2 and inviting older artists onto the programme in a bid to chase the Radio 2/Virgin audience. It’s difficult to see the rationale behind either; anyone wanting to watch TRL is going to stick to MTV, and anyone wanting to watch Paul Weller perform his latest single is going to wait for the next series of Later… instead.
On paper, at least, the presenting team must have seemed a better bet than howling-charisma-void-with-an-expensive-haircut Tim Kash, matching brash little popstress Fearne Cotton (for the kids) with Radio 6 DJ and sometime-comedian lardarse Phil Jupitus (for the dads). Unfortunately, they could clearly neither stand nor understand one another, and ended up looking bored and confused by the whole fiasco – much like the unlucky viewer at home. Like every other element of the new-look TOTP they just didn’t mesh together into a coherent whole – you could just about see what the producers were trying to do, but the overall effect was one of a bunch of half-arsed ideas strung together with no focus on what the actual point of the programme should be.
All this serves to illustrate, however, is that the problem with TOTP is not the state of pop music but the fact that the programme is run by morons who don’t know what it is or what to do with it. Take the choice of archive footage, which you might expect to show modern music up as a shameless corporate sausage line: in the event, they picked Madness (one of the greatest ever British singles bands, sure, but pretty much a one-off in their own day) and Take That. Fucking hell, Take That… I mean, Jesus, was it only ten years ago people dressed that badly, danced that badly, bought music that was so obviously shambolic, amateur and cheap? The production alone made most modern boybands sound like Phil Spector.
The fact is, the Singles Chart has always been a fairly ropey guide to the quality of the general musical climate: great singles tend to chart lower than people remember, and tend to be surrounded by some real dross when they do. Conversely, the idea that the real musical state of the nation is reflected by the Album Chart (quite a prevalent view in the mid-nineties which TOTP was only, er, a decade late cottoning on to) is virtually meaningless now you can buy Coldplay’s latest for a fiver in Tescos as well. What matters, as always, is the music that soundtracks lives – not trips to the supermarket.
Like every other British institution of the latter half of the twentieth century, people love a good moan about pop music not being what is was, when a) only a small amount of it was all that great to begin with and b) even so it manages to throw up records that are the envy of most of the rest of the world. Put it this way: Cotton Eye Joe was a UK number one in the nineties, a decade which produced Blue Lines, Screamadelica, Music for the Jilted Generation, Leftism, The Bends, and Vanishing Point. So the Crazy Frog had a number one a few weeks back? If I’m any judge, means we should have something to look forward to.
Anyway, enough of my yakking, here’s the official Straw Donkeys take on this week’s Top Ten:
10. Audio Bullys feat Nancy Sinatra: Shot You Down - The Nancy Sinatra bits are ace; the rest is sub-Crazy Frog laziness of the sort that used to make otherwise sensible people say things like ‘that dance music all sounds the bloody same’.
9. Inaya Day: Nasty Girl - Destined to end up annoying every right-thinking person by the end of the year, by which time it will be forever associated with bellowing, drink-sodden, fat-cleavaged harridans pawing at seventeen-year-old boys in provincial High Street bars. Despite this, not actually that hateful in itself – the combination of being written by Prince and sung by a right munter proving oddly charming.
8. Crazy Frog: Axel F - The reason God invented mobiles. And thumbs. And hammers.
7. MVP: Roc Ya Body (Mic Check 1 2) - More homoerotic posturing from the ‘hood, as yet another batch of emotionally stunted repressed Muscle Marys mistake ‘softcore bullfruit porn’ for ‘threatening’.
6. Kelly Clarkson: Since U Been Gone - Haven’t heard it. Apparently the video’s quite good, but since I’ve held an irrational prejudice against girls called Kelly ever since being dumped by one three years ago and left a virtually autistic social cripple, I’m saying it sucks ass regardless.
5. Charlotte Church: Crazy Chick - The music is passable, the lyrics execrable, and Ms. Church’s voice is clearly suffering the effects of the booze and fags. Give her ten years and a heroin habit and, fingers crossed, she’ll be another Marianne Faithfull.
4. Elton John: Electricity - Haven’t heard it, but I’m sticking my neck out and predicting a mid-paced piano driven rock ballad and not a cover of the awesome Spiritualized tune off Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space.
3. Mariah Carey: We Belong Together - Note to record producers: despite her undoubted vocal capabilities, Mariah Carey’s almost pathological solipsism means she will never, ever be able to sing a tender ballad convincingly; she just isn’t psychologically capable of the empathy required. Concentrate on using her as a kind of flesh synthesiser with big comedy breasts instead.
2. 2Pac feat. Elton John: Ghetto Gospel - Oh, just fuck off.
1. James Blunt: You’re Beautiful - The kind of song that rushes it’s way up the charts at the weekend when, after a night on the Stellas, Nuts readers up and down the country buy it to apologise to the girlfriend they smacked around when they got in from the pub.
This Week Straw Donkeys Have Been Listening To:
Joey Sarajevo: Jane’s Addiction’s 'Nothing’s Shocking', Anthony and the Johnsons’ 'I am a Bird Now', 'Pisces Iscariot' by the Smashing Pumpkins and 'Crying' by Roy Orbison because someone I work with doesn’t fancy me (and no wonder; what a fucking loser).
Liam R: The horribly unappreciated and criminally underated 'Peace And Love' by The Pogues, Mixmag's 'Road Trip 2003' CD and Gerling's 'Headzcleaner'
Dr. Pope: has taken a leave of absence due to the overwhelming stress of having to cover the site last week.