2000 Bob The Builder: Can We Fix It?

Spin off single from BBC TV's popular 'Bob The Builder' children's show, my core feelings toward this largely echo those I set out back on the Teletubbies single, so I'm not going to rehash them here. Where my views diverge are on the specifics; 'Teletubbies Say Eh Oh!' was a happy pill of a single engineered to generate smiles all round whereas, despite a scene setting "aaaahAAAAHH" 'Let's Dance' build up intro, 'Can We Fix It' prescribes more of a mogadon downer via a rickety song jerry built around a disinterested Neil Morrissey vocal. Bob's call and response "Can we fix it/Yes we can" catchphrase is repeated often enough to keep younger ears engaged, but to my more jaded sensibilities this is more functional than fun and is ultimately pretty unmemorable. And probably my biggest disappointment is that the opportunity to reference A Tribe Call Quest's 'Can I Kick It'? is missed and so goes begging. Not that it would have pulled this out of the mire, but it would have at least thrown us older folk a bone or two.

2000 Eminem: Stan

"Children have never fallen for my nonsense": Boris Karloff

Following the playful call to arms of ‘The Real Slim Shady’, Eminem's second number one flips the coin to show the darker side of both his own psyche and the consequences of taking his more outré antics too seriously via a tale recounted in the main through the eyes of uber fan/stalker Stan, a man who doesn’t know when to let go.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

Ah yes - before we start though, a word about his ‘co-star’ here; Eminem’s name might be there solo on the cover, but a large part of 'Stan's success is down to the atmosphere setting vocal sample from British singer Dido’s ‘Thank You’, albeit after filtering her voice through what sounds like a black sheet of rain until it’s ghostly. By itself, a ballad of introspective mope, Eminem selectively ‘borrows’ her first verse only and, by ignoring the positive affirmation of that song's chorus, effectively re-writes Dido by turning its repetition into the dread of dead end routine and casts her Greek chorus as a thousand yard stare overture to a life where each and every day is the same as the last with her relentlessness taking on ever desperate overtones as Eminem's protagonist loses grip on reality.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

That process is gradual. On first sighting Stan could be any fan writing an appreciative letter to his idol, though from the off Eminem sets up the one-sided delusion of Stan regarding this as a two way process ("Dear Slim, I wrote you but still ain't callin'.I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom"). It's lighthearted and fun in a 'look at the geek' kinda way, but the light dims when Stan’s growing impatience starts up a rant that reveals more and more about himself, his life and his attempt to reach out and make contact ("Dear Slim, you still ain't called or wrote, I hope you have a chance. I ain't mad, I just think it's fucked up you don't answer fans") only to be frustrated by the lack of the response he feels is due. I can just picture Stan, alone in his room getting angrier and angrier, knuckles getting whiter and whiter ("We waited in the blistering cold for you") until a tipping point comes at 2:52 and his "I even got a tattoo of your name across my chest", a confession startlingly punctuated by a sampled aside from Dido that plays out as a gasp of realisation that things are taking a turn for the worse and that joke isn't funny anymore.

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all"

And worse it gets - with no access to Eminem, and in taking out his anger on his pregnant girlfriend, Stan emulates him instead . After kidnapping her (a call back reference to Eminem's "Kim," a song that ends in him slitting his wife’s throat and throwing her in the boot of his car, though Stan changes his MO slightly: "But I didn't slit her throat, I just tied her up, see I ain't like you. Cause if she suffocates she'll suffer more, and then she'll die too"), locks her in his car boot then drives off with a boast of "Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?" (itself a reference to the "Am I coming or going? I can barely decide. I just drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?" from Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’) before hurtling off the road in a squeal of brakes and splash of water, killing all three in the process. Then, after the violence peaks and ends, Dido starts up again for the last time:

"My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all. The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all".

Life goes on, with or without Stan.

Eminem's coda, a response to Stan that comes weeks too late ("Dear Stan, I meant to write you sooner but I just been busy ") could have been a schlocky let-down of hand wringing appeasement (and the sudden "And in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to. Come to think about, his name was, it was you" ending is a bit 'Tales Of The Totally Expected' for comfort), but Eminem doesn't fumble the ball and uses the opportunity to not just address Stan in the context of song, but also the fans and critics in the 'real world' in a fourth wall breaking monologue of self awareness to explain why we shouldn't be falling for his nonsense and certainly not taking him as a role model ("I say that shit just clownin' dog. Come on, how fucked up is you? You got some issues Stan, I think you need some counselling").

Such denial was hardly new ground for Eminem; he'd done it before and would again, but never with such an absence of anger or sarcasm and his open honesty renders it drama rather than the usual pantomime. Through his own experience, Eminem knows that, no matter how he qualifies it, people do take him seriously and that Stan's do exist; he’s too intelligent to try and deny it. Though the hockey masked, chainsaw wielding rapper of past (and future) revelled in rebellion and violence, here he’s keen to distance himself from Stan’s over-zealous interpretation of his lyrics, not just by his usual ‘I’m only joking’ line, but by counterpointing them with Stan’s own misinterpretation (and mis-quoting) of Phil Collins’ hitherto harmless ‘In The Air Tonight’, a marriage break-up song that speaks to Stan's confusion in terms of actual violence ("You know the song by Phil Collins, "In the Air of the Night" About that guy who could a saved that other guy from drowning But didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a show he found him?") in where in fact it’s only metaphorical. In Eminem’s parlance, somebody with the latent capacity for violence can be triggered by anything and probably will; Eminem and his ilk are just a convenient scapegoat for wider social ills.

Regardless of any analysis or interpretation, ‘Stan’ can be enjoyed as a simple short story in song with a central character fully fleshed out by Eminem’s rhymes and increasingly agitated (and believably acted) persona. On that level alone it’s quite the creepiest single we’ve come across since ‘Every Breath You Take’s tale of obsession, and on its own merits such a creeping monolith of black dread would have struggled to climb to such popular heights. I'm happy to acknowldge that it probably sits at number one by virtue of that relationship – i.e. a post adolescent fan base getting off on his swearing and cartoon rebellion, but there clearly is more going on here than Gothic melodrama - is Stan in fact the Real Slim Shady, a mirror image of the person Eminem could have been had success not come knocking?

Certainly Stan’s life in song mirrors Eminem’s pre-fame in reality (a rap fan with absent father and a daughter) and would explain his reluctance to meet himself/Stan in the song ("And what's this shit about us meant to be together? That type of shit'll make me not want us to meet each other"). I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to claim any inside knowledge on this so suffice it to say 'Stan' is a complex, multi-dimensional, semi-autobiographical proposition that highlights the popular artist/fan relationship and the extent of the mutual need of both to function. All of which goes toward making 'Stan' as perfect a single as you’re ever likely to hear.

2000 S Club 7: Never Had A Dream Come True

After the cheery, candy striped bounce of 'Bring It On Back', S Club 7 seemingly age ten years in the space of one by serving up a more 'serious' ballad of broken hearts. But in so doing, their earlier funsized pop persona works against them, making it as hard to take this new maturity any more seriously than it would to hear Little Jimmy Osmond (circa 1974) singing 'My Way'. Which is a bit of a shame on one level - lead Clubber Jo O'Meara handles the "There's no use lookin' back or wondering how it could be now or might have been" with enough wistful force to hold the attention and the rest of the gang link arms behind her for strength, but Cathy Dennis's song never quite catches fire with emotion enough to smoulder, let alone burn and it fails to rises above the generic. And given just who made up S Club 7, that title is clearly not true. Maybe a solo voiced, paired down arrangement would have salvaged something, but this is all a bit too 'Kids From Fame' talent show audition fodder for my liking.

2000 Destiny's Child: Independent Women Part One

I think I've mentioned before how one of my all time favourite cover versions is Aretha Franklin's take on 'Respect'. More than a simple 'cover', it's a song she has come to own so completely that it can come as a surprise to find out that it is in fact a version of an Otis Redding original. Redding's version itself is no slouch, but it's a one dimensional ramble from a man at the wrong side of a misbehaving woman whereas Franklin puts a whole lot of fire in its belly and casts it as a hydra headed plea for respect from her man, for her gender and for her race. "All I'm asking for is a little respect"; not much to ask is it? And who could argue with Aretha at such a full throttle that Redding's original purpose gets buried like the self pitying whinge it basically was.

In a similar way, 'Independent Women Part One' works on a multi-level too, but instead of Aretha's tunnel visioned purpose, it serves up a self conscious muddle that works on none of the levels it aspires to. Firstly, though not a cover version itself but an original song taken from the soundtrack of this year's Charlie's Angels re-boot, its lyric namechecks that source data in a way that suggests Destiny's Child had less of a free hand in their presentation of an original song than Franklin did in her cover. But then not only does restrict itself to referencing the film itself ("Charlie, how your Angels get down like that?"), it namechecks the actresses playing those Angels ("Lucy Liu... with my girl, Drew, Cameron D and Destiny Charlie's Angels") rather than the characters themselves. Which at a stroke makes 'Independent Women Part One' part of both the film, it's promotion and the real world process behind it. How very post-modern.

To muddy the waters further, that scenario then slams up against the song's inherent central theme of promoting female independence (presumably from any pesky controlling males) in an emotionless, capitalist society consumerist role call of pride - "The shoes on my feet, I've bought it. The clothes I'm wearing, I've bought it. The rock I'm rocking 'Cause I depend on me. If I wanted the watch you're wearing, I'll buy it. The house I live in, I've bought it. The car I'm driving, I've bought it, I depend on me". But just who are these independent women? Destiny's Child? Charlie's Angels? Or Cameron Diaz et al?

If it's either of the latter two, then this gets a shoulder shrugging 'so what?' from me. Because who cares? But if its the former, then hearing Beyonce and co bragging about chattels bought from the proceeds of soundtracking film versions of ropy seventies television serials doesn't warm my cockles either. Better by far I think to take it on an Aretha level and regard it as an aspiration to feminine independence as a whole. That would work. But then expressing independence as being purely financial and in the context of promoting a megabucks Hollywood film that sells itself to a broadly male audience on the basis of the sexuality of its leads is.....what exactly? And I have to confess, I don't know. Franklin wanted something that money can't buy, I get that, but try as I might I can't penetrate the diamond hard surface that the above analysis puts between me and the song and all I hear in 'Independent Women Part One' is a soulless, drum tight song of shiny slickness that offers no point of entry to allow any appreciation other than what's there on that shiny slick surface. Which, given the rotten, throwaway film behind it, is quite apt I guess.

2000 LeAnn Rimes: Can't Fight The Moonlight

I tend to find that, just like buying a football mail order, most Diane Warren songs arrive flat packed and need some serious inflating before they're usable. In the pomp of her late eighties/nineties heyday, heavyweight puffers like Cher, Michael Bolton, Belinda Carlisle, Gloria Estefan and Heart were always on hand to provide enough air to round them out, but country star Rimes is not a lady known for unnecessary bluster. In fact, her chirpy vocal doesn't add a hell of a lot of oomph to Warren's 'Can't Fight The Moonlight', but the resulting boredom is not necessarily all Rimes' fault; if the song itself is a flat football, then it was delivered with a hole in its inner tube that not even a gutbucket Cher vocal could have overcome.

Usually the doyen of the soft rocker or power ballad, Warren's song this time slips into a hinterland between the two that ticks neither of those boxes with any satisfaction. Rimes gamely looks for the hook to snare the casual listener but it's simply not there and the lack of it makes 'Can't Fight The Moonlight' a watched kettle that never boils, while the "Well just wait until the sun goes down. Underneath the starlight there's a magical feeling so right, it will steal your heart tonight" lyric is as flat, contrived and taste free as the 'Coyote Ugly' bar of the eponymous film that this soundtracks; as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter how scantily clad the bar staff are or how suggestively they dance on the bar, it's no substitute for quick service on a Friday night when all you want is to get pissed I'm afraid. Similarly, Warren's faceless song is no substitute for.....well anything meaningful really.

2000 A1: Same Old Brand New You

I'm guessing that if a latter day Bontempi home organ had a pre-set rhythm titled 'Britney Spears Robopop' then the resulting sound would be very similar to 'Same Old Brand New You'. Part of it anyway; A1's second number one is a style grab bag that lurches from some opening Queen-like melodrama into a shifting pop beat that tries its damndest to build to a pay off chorus a la Ms Spears' signature tunes. That's the idea anyway, but instead 'Same Old Brand New You' bungles the momentum at every turn by picking the dead end of a wrong note or a wrong key, making for a jumble sale stall of mis-matched items which, although are set out as nicely as they can, have precious little utility either individually or as a whole. In fact, the battering clang this empty vessel makes as it struggles to latch onto some unity actually hurts my ears in a way that makes me nostalgic for Spandau Ballet. So not good then.

2000 Westlife: My Love

I've been a tad sniffy about Westlife thus far for their agenda of dressing up the trite in clothes at least five sizes too big, but on 'My Love', they finally strike the balance between overblown and underwhelming and turn in a 'wish I was there' 'Green Green Grass Of Home' re-write, albeit without the downer ending. True, the "So I say a little prayer, and hope my dreams will take me there. Where the skies are blue, to see you once again... my love" doesn't stint on the clichés, but the drab predictably of the lyric is camouflaged by a rousing swell of chorus to provide a frame that dares cynicism instead of inviting it. Because as rich as the production is, at heart 'My Love' is a simple song given just enough paint and polish to show it off at its best. The 'Westlife' banner will be an automatic turn off for many, but give it enough room to make its case and 'My Love' will reward more than it disappoints.

2000 Spice Girls: Holler/Let Love Lead The Way

Even though they'd never actually split up, this double A side was a comeback of sorts, being the first single from the Spice Girls in two years. That's a mere blink of an eye in cosmic terms, but twenty four months is a veritable aeon in the life of a pop group where any hint of foot 'off the gas-ness' can be fatal in terms of career longevity. Fans previous grow up quickly and are never keen to stay faithful while it's notoriously difficult to pull new audiences away from any new kids on the block. Perhaps recognising this problem, the returning Spice Girls play a mature hand that attempts to grow older gracefully along with their original fanbase while attempting to pick up any strays turned off by their previous 'girl power' shenanigans. Clinical maybe, but understandable all the same.

'Holler' tips its hat at urban R&B/hip hop with a lyric of female sexual domination: "Boy don't you hesitate, I won't keep waiting for you to come and let me take you to my fantasy room. You're gonna like it there and all the things that I do. I'll treat you right all through the night". Saucy. And to hammer home the point that we're not in playful Scary, Sporty, Baby or Posh territory any more, the video has the girls gyrating their booty's for all their worth in outfits from the S&M aisle of Mothercare. Which is a roundabout way of saying that none of this is particularly convincing. Mel C may have picked up 'Holler's bare bones from her solo collaboration with Lisa Lopes, but the sub Neptunes production clicks and drips where it should thump and flow, and any 'holler' is met by a hollow echo rebounding off the empty surfaces where the guts should be. For a song selling sexiness, it isn't and any initial surprise or enjoyment wears off long before it limps to a close.

If anything, 'Let Love Lead The Way' is even less successful. A sparkly ballad that sets its sights on the 'big issues', the song's obvious earnestness is cut down by a lyric of cod philosophising that, in its race to try so very hard to 'mean' something, winds up as a set of trite platitudes ("Why is there joy? Why is there pain? Why is there sunshine and the rain?") and vacuous "Just keep the faith and let love lead the way" statements of ideal living that wallow in their own meaninglessness like some B*Witched B side. Which is hardly a good point of reference when you're casting yourself as a set of Muses delivering the wisdom of the ancients. Whatever else the in-prime Spice Girls weren't, they were always fun and cartoony - a gang that every schoolgirl wanted to a member of and every schoolboy yearned to be noticed by. My main beef with 'Let Love Lead The Way' isn't just that it's no fun (and it isn't), but that like a latter day non violent, all speaking Tom & Jerry cartoon, there is nothing but a howling void to fill the gap where that fun used to be.

2000 Steps: Stomp

Before I start, I want to point out that I 'get' Steps, I really do. I 'get' the Technicolor, bargain basement ABBA, dance based pop of simple sophistication that kept one eye on the school disco and the other on the office party. In fact, I sometimes think I 'get' it better than the management team behind them - if ever an act cried out for a Monkees style TV show to flesh out the carefully selected, acceptably United Nations of England Scooby Gang line-up of the people fronting it, then it was Steps. Sadly, no such show was commissioned and so the personality of the 'stars' is relegated to what they could project onto their songs. And barring five pretty yet faceless faces, it wasn't a lot. But as I've said, that's fine. I get it. Steps weren't the new Beatles, never aspired to be and I'm not 'anti' them or any of their ilk because of it.

As another aside, I've often though that if Steps had been active in the seventies, their releases would be on KTel or Ronco, a suitable home for party music that needed no personality other than its own in-built party kazoos and streamers.* They weren't of course, but ironically if they were, then being very much a throwback to the string driven disco sound that held sway in the seventies, 'Stomp' would have fitted right in without much need for leverage.

Again, I don't have a problem with revivals or homage's per se, but what irritates about 'Stomp' is its shameless yet unacknowledged borrowing of its main themes from Chic's 'Everybody Dance', a song that, at certain moments, the band sound like they're about to break into before an unheard stage cough from their intellectual property lawyers brings them to their senses and they hold their tongues. This doesn't make 'Stomp' a bad song or any less danceable (which was Steps' whole raison d'etre after all), but it does make it a depreciated and rather tacky one, a song that will appeal most to those who only want to see the shadows flickering on the wall of Plato's cave and have no interest in turning to see (or in this case hear) the entities that cast them. Or for those not familiar with Book VII of The Republic, to those who think that brand Corn Flakes taste absolutely fine when they've never tried Kellogg's. In other words, to the inherently cheap. Which is what 'Stomp' is. Oh yes, I 'get' Steps alright......

* Those who have never heard of either of these labels wouldn't benefit from an explanation, but for music fans active in the late eighties/early nineties, then the fact that were actually on Jive is no less apt.

2000 U2: Beautiful Day

There's a joke of sorts here somewhere: when is a U2 single not a U2 single? Answer: never. No matter what U2 do or how far they try to push their particular envelope there is always a faithful predictability at the core of their music that stamps it as U2 as surely as a librarian studiously stamping a book before it leaves the library. Sometimes it's just some Bono bluster, sometimes it's that chiming guitar, but there's always something that gets me to roll my eyes in a 'here we go again' kind of way. And here we do indeed go again - following the band's dissatisfaction with/mixed critical reaction to the experimentation of 1997's 'Pop' album, U2 2000 strove to return to a more 'traditional' U2 sound. A laudable intent perhaps, but the irony is that in trying to return to their roots, 'Beautiful Day' is perhaps the most un-U2 single they produced in years.

The key is its apparent simplicity: what I like best about 'Beautiful Day' is its clean directness and genuine optimism. "It's a beautiful day, the sky falls and you feel like it's a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away" - unlike most of the band's output there's a complete lack of that usual knowing force of will that tries to automatically induct the song into a mythical rock and roll hall of fame via self conscious worthiness, hyperbole and bad metaphor. There's a straightforward honesty about it that I've not heard on a U2 song since their debut album way back in 1980 and for once all four members sound like they're breathing out in harmony to release the tension born of just being in U2. Of course, the tortuous writing, recording and mixing process behind the song belies the artless purity of the end result, but that's down to the production work of Lanois and Eno who inject the air between the tracks that make it float to an audience who might otherwise be turned off by the weight of the ballast they usually carry. Like me. And yes I know all this probably winds up the average U2 fan/obsessive, but as these are exactly the sort of people I enjoy seeing wound up then it's all to the good.

2000 All Saints: Black Coffee

If the languid bliss of 'Pure Shores' took All Saints away from their original remit, 'Black Coffee' takes them a good two steps further again - instead of the band/William Orbit co-written collaboration of the former, 'Black Coffee' was very much an outside entity, being written by former Miss UK Kirsty Bertarelli for her own use. Orbit's trademark production job takes band and song so far from their original conception that, despite headline billing, All Saints here are very much supporting actors on Orbit's interpretation of someone else's song. Orbit has fun with the song's inherent shifts of key and tempo to create an electric wash of trip hop for the girls to soak in, but once filled then just about anyone could have got into that bath with the same results. The girl's spunky attitude and streetwise independence that originally caught my ear is tamed by the sense of a band doing the record label's bidding rather than following their own muse, meaning that while 'Black Coffee' is a good enough single in its own right, it's a poor advertisement for the All Saints brand. Especially so as none of the girls - either as singular or plural - has a strong or unique enough vocal to stamp a distinction from within. Make of that what you will, but I make it disappointing.

2000 Mariah Carey Featuring Westlife: Against All Odds

My regular readers will have no doubt picked up on my antipathy to most things Phil Collins; it's no secret, I don't like the man. Collins and his earnest worthiness plagued my eighties the way the Harpies plagued Phineas, but despite my irritation I'm also big enough to confess that it wasn't always thus. I still have a soft spot for the post Gabriel/pre 'Duke' Collins led Genesis output as well as a grudging admiration for his 'Face Value' debut album. Why? Well I'm also happy to admit that the man is not totally without talent within certain parameters and it was in these pre-fame years that that talent was allowed to flourish before the walls were knocked down by the ubiquitous, larger than life everyman geezer character that took over and in the process spread that talent so thinly it became transparent.

You see, Collins has always known his way round a ballad. The 1973 'More Fool Me' (on Genesis' 'Selling England By The Pound') laid down a template that Collins' most successful work has followed ever since; fragile lyric of heartbreak sparsely arranged for maximum effect. Written over ten years later (it dates from 1984), 'Against All Odds' takes the same, simple self pity and applies it to good effect - Phil's woman is walking out on him but he's pleading for a Lot's wife glance back in the hope she'll remember what they had and reconsider. Phil knows he's probably wasting his time, but he's not too proud to beg ("I wish I could just make you turn around turn around and see me cry"), yet though we're not told if she does or not, it's a fair bet that by the song's end he's facing the wrong side of a closed door.

What always catches my ear is, in the middle of the careful build up of 'we're still good together' pathos, Collins lobs in a non scanning, non rhyming line of self interest that reveals a mask off vulnerability and long term thinking that's probably the root cause as to why he wants her to stay - "You're the only one who really knew me at all"; he's scared of the relationship ending not for it's own sake but because he thinks he'll never find anyone to replace her. It's a clunking line but it's meant to clunk, a moment of singular self pity drowned out by the shared empathy of the rousing "So take a look at me now" chorus that drowns it out.

It's a neat touch and it's one from a man confident in his craft. In 1973 in a played down tempo and minor key it would have been killer, but 1984 was the height of Collins' fame and Phil was too full of his own Phillness in 1984 to entertain that. Any fragile emotion inherent in the song was bulldozered by Phil's wailing wind through a rusty lock vocal and a typical, unconscionably heavy handed eighties production that insisted a sole piano had to resonate like an orchestra in an empty cathedral. Horrible in fact, and a good number of bricks in the wall between me and my liking of him. But whatever, it's a song ripe for rediscovery and re-interpretation. Unfortunately, Mariah Carey and Westlife are game for the former, but not the latter - their version of 'Against All Odds' is a cover of Phil Collins 'doing' 'Against All Odds' rather than covering 'Against All Odds' itself. And in so doing, Carey and Westlife, two acts for who 'restraint' is a word from a foreign language, make the same mistakes all over again, only moreso.

For a start, 'Against All Odds' is a song written for a single voice and splitting the lines into a 'duet' at a stroke whips away any building tension or emotion though linking the lines together and instead it becomes more of a duel between the lads and the lass as to who is the more overwrought in building their chain of hysteria (it's Carey, if you're wondering), completely losing sight of the fact that they're all meant to be on the same side. Add to this the usual power ballad bombast and 'Against All Odds 2000' puts me in mind of a tag team of heavyweight boxers taking it in turns to beat a disabled child into a submission it was already expressing. Frankly, it's ugly - 'Against All Odds' deserved better than the hand Collins dealt it and it certainly deserves better than this. But just what has caught Bryan McFadden's eye on that cover shot?

2000 Modjo: Lady (Hear Me Tonight)

More sample driven House music, this time with a track built around the guitar line from Chic's 1982 recording 'Soup For One'. Wise choice really - Nile Rodgers could make a corpse dance so it's never going to want in that respect, but then in adding their own ingredients to the pot, Chic's usual diamond hard sparkle gets muffled by Modjo's phased, bass heavy French House mix that underscores the endless "Lady hear me tonight, cos my feeling is just so right" refrain to strangle innovation with a relentless repetition that moves it not one inch from the foot it steps off on. Yes I know criticising a House track for repetition is like criticising a dog for wagging its tail - after all, it's the nature of both beasts - but 'Lady (Hear Me Tonight)' does nothing to pull in the casual listener or convert a fence-sitter like me either. And that's it's prerogative I guess. But when the main point of interest of what remains actually comes to me second hand, then it's MY prerogative to say I'd sooner get my Chic albums out first as last and leave this on the shelf if it's all the same to you.

2000 A1: Take On Me

Well it's nice work if you can get it. Or get away with it - 'Take On Me' is a cover version of a-ha's uber eighties number two hit (in 1985) by Anglo/Norwegian boyband A1. And when I say 'cover version', I mean that a few 'updated' William Orbit style gooey-wooey bleeps aside, it's note perfect identical. A1 provide sound but no heart and serve up a vanilla plate of water thin gruel that's to the gutsy ambience of the original what a cheap Poundstore poster reproduction is to an original Constable. All very depressing, but not as depressing as the thought of this being bought by a generation not even born when a rotoscope Morten Harket was pulling Bunty Bailey into his comic book world - if TS Eliot measured out his life in coffee spoons then I measure mine by the relative age of those around me to iconic events from my past. As I say, all very depressing.

2000 Madonna: Music

Conveniently ignoring the mss-step of the 'American Pie' soundtrack recording, 'Music' was Madonna's first new release since her comeback/re-birth 'Ray Of Light' album. Momentum gained can easily degenerate into momentum lost in the fickle world of pop and with William Orbit no longer on board, the teaming up with French producer Mirwais meant another step into the unknown.

The difference is palpable. Where Orbit's electronic treatments spun strands of sound between the spaces of the music like angel hair, Mirwais Francophile dance credentials ensures 'Music' itself is sparse, wired and comes stripped of background filler; if there are spaces, then they are left for the dancefloor feet to fill by themselves. Different, albeit not wholly original ('Music' reminds me of a one off collaboration by a Daft Punk offshoot), it's the most un-Madonna sounding Madonna single yet.

With her vocal largely strung out and strangled unrecognisable by the technology, it's hard to pick out the Madonna of old on the electronic yelp of the recurring "Do you like to boogie-woogie" refrain and "Hey DJ" intro. Not only that, the usual 'Madonna' persona and the forced sexuality that usually entails takes a seat far enough back in the mix until she blends organically into the music itself; 'Music' is never going to be a first choice for anyone on karaoke night. But that's fine - Madonna has been a frustrating proposition over the years, and by God she will be again, but when she gets it right she hits the bull's-eye with a satisfying THWACK loud enough to drown out some of her......less successful forays.

2000 Spiller: Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)

A Continental club hit buoyed on hype long before its official UK release, like so many recent dance songs, 'Groovejet' defines the present by looking to the past, this time through the borrowing of the clipped guitar rhythm track from Carol Williams' 1977 track 'Love Is You'. It gives the song an undeniable bounce of summer, but its heat is dampened by a water thin production and scratchy sheen that pales with each repetition. And boy does it repeat - by forty five seconds in, 'Groovejet' has shot every one of its bolts (barring a short middle eight) making the remainder a recycle of the same that could potentially loop to infinity. Or until people get bored. Former The Audience frontwoman Ms Ellis was drafted in purposely to break up the monotony, but while her metallic whine of a voice worked well enough within the confines of her previous band's indie jangle, it fares rather less well on a dance track of celebration, supplying all the emotion to what's meant to be uplifting sunshine of a Cadbury's Smash robot; at least they found great humour in the fact that humans still made mash with potatoes. Ellis, on the other hand, just sounds distant and bored, and if this is her "feel so good" then I'd hate to be around her when she's not. Iconic it may be, in certain circles at least, but I'll wager that most of the goodwill comes filtered through the rose tinted specs of holiday memories past rather than anything the song inherently has to offer. Whatever, there's not enough going on here for my interest to be anything other than passing.

2000 Melanie C: I Turn To You

From Hip Hop to Techno, Mel is nothing if not versatile, but while it worked fine sparring with Lisa Lopes on 'Never Be The Same Again', the relentless dance prance of 'I Turn To You' renders her thin vocal as overwhelmed as Jimmy Somerville fronting Led Zeppelin; the halting stutter of "I. Turn. To You." provides the space for the hammer swing to deliver the crack of the chorus, but Mel is caught up in its slipstream rather than riding it. The early nineties retro feel of the tune doesn't help with the sparkle either, but at the risk of sounding unduly negative, I can say that Mel's strained fragility adds a human touch and charm to what might otherwise have been robotic and rote. Couple that with 'I Turn To You's natural vivacity and I'm happy to call this a draw.

2000 Robbie Williams: Rock DJ

After the near miss of 'You See The Trouble With Me', 'Rock DJ' offers up another opportunity to say that it's nice to see Barry White back at the top of the charts, being as it is based on White's 1977 hit 'It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next to Me'. Alas, once again it's a missed one, but unlike Black Legend, Williams only samples the backing rhythm section before flavouring it with a side order of A Tribe Called Quest's 'Can I Kick It' and inflating it tyre hard for a powerball bounce. To complete the picture, Robbie faux raps gobbledegook ("Babylon back in business, can I get a witness? Every girl, every man, Houston, do you hear me?", and if "I don't wanna rock DJ, but your making me feel so nice" is a metaphor, then its sailed right over my head) over the top of it to a tune that sounds like some twisted offspring of Ian Dury's 'Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3' and the 'Tasty, tasty, very, very tasty' Kellogs Bran Flakes advert from the eighties. It's a hodge podge for sure and the mix tries my patience, but then it manages to save itself through its own self aware dumbness of purpose that extends no further than wanting to get the party started. I can live with that. Throw in a memorable video and you get one of Williams' more appealing efforts.

2000 Craig David: 7 Days

Ever the charmer, Mr David is at it again and this time it seems he can't walk out his own front door without bumping into a random babe with a hot bod and then wooing her into bed with Moet.* Yes, '7 Days' is another slick as you like R&B gambol through David's personal life set out in the mind numbing detail of a professional Tweeter convinced the world is interested in the minutiae of his life. "On my way to see my friends who lived a couple blocks away from me, as I walked through the subway it must have been about quarter past three" - Craig spares no details in revealing exactly what he gets up to; if he says he was chilling on Sunday then you'd better believe that's what he was doing, but it's the complete lack of self awareness or warmth in the telling that grates like sandpaper on skin. David is teeth grindingly sincere in all this and on that level '7 Days' is insular in the extreme, giving nothing of itself save a shameless, self satisfied smugness that pours its own cold shower over what set itself up as seductive and leaves me genuinely baffled as to why anybody should care about him, "this girl' and how she'd "love to unfold me all night long". Wonder what his mother makes of it?


* Though an incredibly dry precis of the song on Wikipedia believes that he took her out for a pint of mild. I have no idea if this summary is the result of someone's subversive sarcasm or the work of the genuinely deluded, but it doesn't matter; it makes me laugh either way.

2000 Five & Queen: We Will Rock You

In which all surviving members of Queen join forces with boyband Five for a spirited romp through the former's rabble rousing terrace chant of a song. Five do their bit to 'youf it up' for the kids of today with some hobnailed rapping but the Queen boys keep their hands firmly on the tiller by making no concessions to youth and partying like it's 1977. Replace May's May's grunting guitar with some dance beats and it might have caught my attention, but by being neither kith nor kin it's all a bit pointless to be honest.

2000 Ronan Keating: Life Is A Rollercoaster

I've written a fair bit of late regarding what I consider the criteria for a good pop song should be. The corollary of this of course is to consider what makes a BAD pop single. Luckily, I don't have to agonise over this too much; Mr Keating and his team have provided me with a cracking example to draw on. 'Life Is A Rollercoaster' is a bad pop song. A BAD one. Rick Nowels and Gregg Alexander phone in a piece of work that has all the ingredients of a forced exercise in producing something/anything to overcome a serious case of writer's block ("Hey baby, you really got me flying tonight. Hey sugar, you almost got us punched in a fight") while Keating himself phones in a vocal performance that delivers the "Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it" payoff with all the substance and conviction of a gossip rag astrology columnist. 'Life Is A Rollercoaster' trundles along with its belly to the ground relying solely on the blind goodwill of Keating's fanbase to sell its one key mediocrity - if anyone else deigned to front such a tepid shot of lacklustre tedium then I doubt even a promise of free sex with every purchase would have been enough to shift many copies. Which is not the hallmark of a good pop song. No indeed.

2000 The Corrs: Breathless

There's always been something about The Corrs that I just can't take to. Whether it be the perfectly pitched B*Witched's older sisters/finishing school Cranberries gap in the market they aimed to fill or their tendency to lace everything they touched with fiddle de dee Irish tin whistles and reels, I could never find a way through the glossy Home and Country crossed with Vogue magazine cover to find anything worth reading within. And though that cover always had surface class and professionalism enough to ensure they were farting through silk, it was never enough to disguise the smell.

'Breathless' at least has a winebar unfriendly AOR rock urgency that distances itself from some of the more over earnest sermons in their catalogue, but when that rock urgency is borrowed/stolen wholesale from Mary Chapin Carpenter's 1993 'Passionate Kisses' then my interest is doomed to pale regardless. But even if it didn't, Andrea Corr's twee hiccup delivery on the "So go on, go on come on leave me breathless" is a ladle full of sugar with no accompanying medicine that offers not so much a slick come on as a throwback reminder of Mrs Doyle forcing yet another cup of tea on Father Ted. And it generates a similar reaction from me as Mrs Doyle tended to get from Ted; irritation mixed with the wish that she'd just shut up and go away.

2000 Eminem: The Real Slim Shady

“I could tell you about my life
And keep you amused I’m sure”

Let me say straight off the bat that I have a lot of time for Eminem. An awful lot of time in fact. In the months and years ahead there will be occasions where the mediocrity of what I’m called to listen to and then write about will weigh heavily. But then just when things seem irredeemably hopeless, like a cavalry charge over the horizon a new Eminem single will arrive to banish the badness and restore my faith in popular music. But that’s to come – for his first appearance I think there are some other points to address that are more pressing.

Unless you’ve been living under a stone for the past ten years or so then there are at least two facts about Eminem that are likely to be regarded as common knowledge; that he’s one of those rappers and that he’s white. By themselves alone these two facts are enough to furrow brows aplenty in certain circles and to raise the question as to whether both are meant to co-exist within the same being, or should they be mutually exclusive? Bottom line question – can white men rap? We have to go back to 1990 and Vanilla Ice for the last example on these pages, but Mr Ice’s infamous effort doesn’t exactly do his ethnicity proud.

Then again, being predominantly black in origin and predominantly a product of the inner city born from the inventiveness that poverty can bring then maybe the question should be ‘do white folk have any business rapping’? The same simplistic analysis can be applied to the blues too, and that genre has witnessed its own long raging debate over whether white men can play it. Is there any value in (for example) the Rolling Stones’ take on ‘Little Red Rooster’ over any version by Willie Dixon or Howling Wolf? Probably not; the Stones smoothed out the edges to make it more palatable to a white audience, but while Jagger caught and carried the sexuality of the “Cause little red rooster is on the prowl”, the front facing ‘down on the farm’ lyric is not something a white boy from Dartford is going to invest with any believability. And he doesn’t, but I think a line can be drawn between playing the blues and covering them. Certainly, musicians from the Home Counties would like to think they’re steeped in the Mississippi Delta culture that spawned it, but that’s not to say they don’t have their own hardships to sing about.

And that’s why I opened this review with some lines from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Man Of The World’. To this writer, Peter Green is probably the single most definitive statement or example to illustrate that white men can play the blues. “I guess I’ve got everything I need. I wouldn’t ask for more. And there’s no one I’d rather be, but I just wish that I’d never been born” - I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that believes if a black man is singing about hardship then it’s ‘the blues’ but a white man doing the same is just whingeing. Green’s blues (sorry) are no less real or heartfelt than Howling Wolf’s, and the fact he’s working within the medium and fashioning it to his own ends rather than copying it is important. Green wrote ‘Man Of The World’ about his own mental state and experiences rather than trying to impose them onto an existing blues standard and then processing through some dust bowl, sharecropper with a failed harvest imagery or persona, a gimmick of ‘authenticity’ that rarely works and is frequently embarrassing. Early White Stripes managed to pull it off to an extent, but such examples are the exception rather than the rule.

So, whither Eminem – can white men rap? Hailing from Missouri and raised in Detroit, the one time Marshal Mather’s background was no less impoverished or broken than any of the acts that rap made famous, but what separates him from the pack is that, for the most part, Eminem’s raps are as personal as the blues were to Green. “I could tell you about my life and keep you amused I’m sure” – Eminem does, and Eminem does. Sometimes acerbic, sometimes humorous but always honest, Eminem has detailed his personal trials and tribulations in excruciating detail on his releases in a way that’s unique to him; rather than try to copy black rap he avoids rap cliché and fashions the genre after his own ends by celebrating his own white trash culture with a style that at a stroke puts paid to any wannabe accusations in the same way that Peter Green did by not singing about dust bowls and boll weevils.

On ‘The Real Slim Shady’ Eminem is in a playful mood, adopting his ‘other’ slim shady persona to detail the trials and tribulations of himself and your average white jock filtered through the medium of rap. As a song it has the jovial jaunt of a fairground cantaloupe as Eminem throws up his hands in mock despair at the world around him with comments tuned to appeal to the outsider “Screaming "I don't give a fuck!" with his windows down and his system up” and reduced to minor acts of rebellion (“And every single person is a Slim Shady lurking. He could be working at Burger King, spitting on your onion rings” – a line that always reminds of Johnny Rotten’s own simplistic brand of “Give the wrong time, stop a traffic line” anarchy and I’m always struck at how both artists are seen as equal parts court jester and antichrist) to get through the day and exert some control over a world they otherwise can’t.

There are no blings, beefs, ho’s, bitches, niggas, working the corners in the hood or playing ‘the game here’; it’s a tongue in cheek state of Eminem’s nation address of all that’s wrong with his world where figures from the white side of the tracks (Britney, Christina, Fred Durst, Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee and Carson Daly et al) are name checked as cameo role models and marshalled by ringmaster Eminem in the low rent, throwaway three ring circus that he and his ilk inhabit. And by singing about his own world within the medium of rap, Eminem climbs inside the genre and wrestles with the controls until the machine does his bidding instead of letting it control his presentation and delivery. Can white men rap? Hell yes; that's one question that Eminem has successfully put to bed.

2000 Kylie Minogue: Spinning Around

I will be the first to admit that I've not had many kind words to say about Miss Minogue to date, but I'm happy to stand by all that I've written; Minogue and her opportunistic honk have enjoyed success in the form of a number of hit singles I sometimes find literally too painful to listen to. Her last entry on these pages 'Tears On My Pillow' is a prime example of everything that was wrong with her output that traded on soap opera stardom rather than any natural talent - there'd be tears on all our pillows if we had to listen to this to excess. Ah but 1990 was a long time ago now and sometime during the intervening decade Kylie had crept off to the crossroads at midnight to get credibility lessons from the devil in exchange for her immortal soul - how else to explain the sudden appearance of something as good as 'Spinning Around'?

Well that would be a nice legend anyway, and even though Kylie does her best to back me up with her "I'm through with the past, isn't no point in looking back, the future will be. And did I forget to mention that I found a new direction", it's sadly all a bit fanciful. Because she hasn't really been away and her direction toward the more palatable wasn't new. Granted, there have been no number ones, but her presence in the top ten has been a constant and a glance at her nineties discography shows a growing maturity and better grip on quality control in terms of what was released in her name. 'Better The Devil You Know', 'Shocked' 'Confide In Me' - all were all leagues ahead of the 'I Should Be So Lucky' pop pap and all would have been worthy chart toppers in their own right.

The work of four writers, 'Spinning Around' continues the upward trend and handily re-enforces my earlier comments about a good song not requiring any particular artist to bring it to life. 'Spinning Around' was originally planned as a Paula Abdul (one of the writers) comeback single, but it's hard to imagine that she could have done a better (or worse) job than Kylie; as a song, 'Spinning Around' is prime seventies disco overlain with contemporary electronica to neuter the cheese to create a Formula One racing car that drives itself.

Wisely, Kylie knows a gift horse when she sees one and doesn't treat the song like she's the bigger star of the two, choosing to settle into the dance groove to let it carry her instead of forcing herself over the top like mustard on cream. Not that it gives her much opportunity to do her own thing anyway; 'Spinning Around's air glide sparkles like Kylie's hotpants as it slides from verse to chorus and back again with nary a chance to catch breath. But despite her deference to the quality of the song, her "I'm spinning around. Move out of my way" are delivered as defiant statements of intent that brook no disagreement and perfectly catch all the hedonism and all the fun of disco's glory years. "I know you're feeling me, cause you like it like this" - yes Kylie, I am and I do. Well done.

2000 Black Legend: You See The Trouble With Me

Another song on it's second go round, 'You See The Trouble With Me' was a number 2 hit in 1976 for Barry White now given a tribal house make-over by Italian DJs Enrico Ferrari and Ciro Sasso. It would have been nice to say that it's nice to see Barry back at number one again, but I can't - although the original version of this mix sampled his vocal directly, White was miffed at the non-prior clearance before they used his recording and all copies were withdrawn. This hit version uses a soundalike in the form of Elroy 'Spoonface' Powell who does a credible job of filling the big man's shoes, but not having the actual Barry White up front somewhat diminishes any appeal this might have had, along with most of the point. Truth be told, White's vocal was more or less the only thing to carry over from the loverman soul of the original and the shifting house beats swamp the seduction with force enough to give any would be paramour a headache for the night, which would be the last thing Barry would want. No wonder he was pissed. I'm not terribly impressed myself; neither remix nor mash-up with a Barry White impersonator guesting on someone else's tune reduces it to a halfway house built on novelty. And that's not something I'm ever going to get excited about.

2000 Sonique: It Feels So Good

Second bite of the cherry for Sonique (this was originally released in 1998), I've seen 'It Feels So Good' variously described as a trance, house and garage dance anthem, but all I hear is an euphoric celebration of love wrapped up in a beautifully understated pop tune. In fact, what I like most about this is that Sonique has confidence enough in her song to carry it herself with minimal assistance from any dance beat. Hell, she could have presented this acapella and that wonderful shift down gear change into minor key at the chorus break would still soar off into hyperspace on the "Your love it feels so good, and that's what takes me high". And hyperspace is where it belongs; 'It Feels So Good' glides on air rather than bounce on a beat and its sheer joy and exuberance has not dated one day.

2000 Billie Piper: Day And Night

With added 'Piper' and smouldering look at the cover, all that's missing is a 'Ms' pre-fix to seal the deal in confirming that our Billie has grown up a bit since we last met. And sure enough, 'Day And Night' is more than one step away from the sunshine rebellion of 'Because We Want To' and one into harder pop territory with an eighties American rock edge where Laura Branigan meets Britney Spears in a desperate game of catch-up with an original fanbase growing older by the day. Which is fine, or at least it would be if the juddering template wasn't lifted wholesale from Spear's own signature tunes and, as Piper 'does' sensual about as well as Britney does (i.e. not very) then an opportunity to at least partly trump her at her own game goes begging. No one can really blame Billie from wanting to grow up, but it's a pity it had to be in such a cynical and charmless way.

2000 Madison Avenue: Don't Call Me Baby

First number one from an Australian band since Men At Work back in 1983 is a busy house/dance hybrid with a relentless bass churn and sunnyside up vocal that gives more than a casual nod to DeeeLite's 'Groove Is In The Heart' (a song cruelly kept off number one in 1990 by Steve Miller) but without the inventiveness. Which means that, despite its pneumatic pump, there's a retro feel about 'Don't Call Me Baby' that renders it more kitsch than cutting edge, but it's still good fun.

2000 Britney Spears: Oops!....I Did It Again

The life of your average pop star is, to quote Sir Elton John, but like a candle in the wind. A here today, gone tomorrow existence; the charts are littered with the remnants of those who once ruled supreme over all they surveyed but whose career turned to Ozymandian dust when the fickle winds of popular culture blew the other way. You could say that this is hardly surprising, that such acts were always meant as a quick fix not built for the long haul and, no matter how much bile I flung in their direction a few months back, there was something almost Shakespearean in the tragedy of seeing Lindsay from B*Witched's 2005 'solo' 'comeback' flopping harder than a whale off a diving board.

As a general rule of thumb, such acts produce some monster early singles and a debut album that flies off the shelves like the hottest of hot cakes. Which, after all, is exactly what they are. It's album number two that's make or break time - if it sells well then the boat can steady enough to build some sort of career on. If it flops, then the boat sinks and them along with it. In 1999 Britney Spears had such a monster series of singles and a debut album that sold in phenomenal quantities (fourteen times platinum in the US). Now in 2000 there was a new album in the wings and, in the light of the above analysis, it's obvious that no one was resting on their laurels. A re-imagination was never going to be on the cards at this stage in her career, but in an attempt to ensure history repeated, Team Spears pulled out all the stops to ensure Britney's did just that.

For a start, like '....Baby One More Time', lead off single 'Oops....I Did It Again' had the same title (and ....spacing) as the parent album, so free publicity galore there, but away from such trite observations it's uncanny at just how similar 'Oops....' and '....Baby' are. True, 'Oops....' tries to build the anticipation of an 'event' by dragging out a teaser introduction of Spears croaks and groans, but once it leaves the traps proper it quickly latches limpet-like onto the same lurching, robotic beat a la 'Baby' that builds to the same tension releasing chorus with Britney's "I'm not that innocent" would be leer taking the place of the schoolgirl kit (and a tease to those who swallowed the 'I'm still a virgin' line) to leave us hanging until the cycle resumes from the bottom once more. There's even a middle eight change of key - I mean really, 'Oops' is 'Baby' slightly re-arranged with a fresh polish but at heart they share more DNA than not.

It's a risk free release that kept the Spears star burning, but while a manager might get short term results through playing the same team in the same formation week in week out, others soon get wise and in any case over reliance on the familiar can backfire when the first team ages in one fell swoop. Like when that fickle wind starts blowing the other way. Which, for Britney, it would do soon enough.

2000 Oxide & Neutrino: Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)

Another offshoot of electronic dance, dubstep was a bass heavy genre that borrowed liberally from R&B, drum and bass, UK garage, techno, reggae and jungle et al to create a defiantly inner city sound that I've seen described as "filthier than fingering your sister and finding your Dad's wedding ring". Charming. Clearly, it's not something that's going to be to everyone's taste, so what's to be derived from seeing a prime example of it at number one? Elation at the eclectic tastes of the UK public and their willingness to embrace the new? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Oxide & Neutrino were seventeen year old members of South London's So Solid Crew, an outfit that functioned in the early 2000's like a British Wu Tang Clan. A bit. But whatever aspirations that above quote might aspire to, some sampling the theme from BBC TV's 'Casualty' and dialogue from gor blimey guvnor Brit gangster movie 'Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels' ("Can everyone stop getting shot") gives 'Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)' and its would be aura of menace a campy cartoon quality that's barely a 15 rated version of Ant and Dec, a novelty representation of the genre that provides smiley access to a mass audience through an otherwise closed door the way that my Gran got a toehold on punk by laughing at Sham 69's 'Hurry Up Harry' on Top Of The Pops. 'Daft buggers' she used to call them, and despite the hard edged, genuine article beats on display here, I think she'd have said the same about Oxide & Neutrino. I'm guessing that's not the response two characters with names like that were aiming for though.

2000 Fragma: Toca's Miracle

With the increasing ubiquity of affordable and easy to use software, musical mash-ups born of bedroom programmers were incredibly popular at the turn of the Millennium. Something more than just sampling, mash-ups took a part of Song A, coupled it with another part of Song B to create 'brand new' Song C. The best examples spun gold out of what was, on the face of it, chalk and cheese (for example, The Evolution Control Committee's mixing of Public Enemy and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass), but not every instigator showed half as much imagination or wit. Such as 'Toca's Miracle'.

Basically a straight layering of the vocal from Coco Star's 1996 'I Need A Miracle' dance track over a musical backing from German act Fragma's 'Toca Me', the seamless mix of the two generates no friction or sparks or points of interest and is content to simply create a.n.other trance anthem that, in 2000, sounded about five years out of date. And without that lightbulb over the head realisation that you're listening to twains that were not supposed to have met, the absence of all components of the thesis + antithesis = synthesis equation begs the question as to the merit of bringing them together in the first place when all you get at the end is more of the same. Frankly, I'd rather listen to both pieces in their orignal formats.

2000 Craig David: Fill Me In

Something of a teen prodigy who was working in the UK garage and R&B scene at age sixteen, David's debut solo single is a tale of slipping around his girlfriend's bedroom behind her parent's back. Racy enough fayre if you're fourteen years old perhaps, and I'm afraid 'Fill Me In' is aimed squarely at that demographic - i.e. an audience considerably younger than myself. David's rapping is slicker than oil on a beach, but just like that beach it's not somewhere I particularly want to go. As a genre primer it's fine, but to my ears it's akin to a metal band riffing about drinking pop and playing kiss chase, a slightness amplified by the plastic sterility that pervades 'Fill Me In's beats; there's a functional coldness about it all that provides a hard to penetrate, reflective surface keeping any warm heart the song might have well away from the surface. And I don't think there is one anyway - David's story is his song, a 'look at me' celebration of his Lothario virility and smarmy charm that can seduce the girl next door at will with bottles of red wine and the keys to his 4x4 - that's the star he really wants the world to see, and his smugness is more annoying than endearing. And I find it very annoying indeed.

2000 Westlife: Fool Again

With 'Fool Again', Westlife notch up their fifth consecutive number one and in so doing wrote a fresh chapter in the record books. An impressive statistic on paper, but dig a little deeper and you'll find that as of 2011, it has managed to sell 215,000 copies, a grand total that does not compare favourably with (to take a random sample) Slade's 'Cum On Feel The Noize' that debuted at number one in 1973 after selling half a million copies in the first three weeks. But whatever.

Given the fist clenching angst of their previous four singles, a title like 'Fool Again' sets the scene nicely for tragedy and heartbreak on an operatic scale, but for once Westlife wrong foot me by stepping back from the brink by instead peddling four minutes of polite pop that could be the work of almost any other contemporary boy band. And by toning it down, Westlife not only deny me the chance to stick my usual knife in, but also deny the song itself any essence of substance or memorability, of which 'Fool Again' has neither. What really irritates is the boy's grinning and flirting with the camera on the video when they're meant to be delivering the heartbreak of "Can't believe that I'm the fool again, I thought this love would never end", a cynical ploy that covers all lovestruck bases which, to paraphrase Aneurin Bevan, meant they were wearing a crown of thorns and taking the thirty pieces of silver,* though the biggest irritation is that they were preaching to an audience so bewitched that they let them get away with it.

* Though he wasn't talking about the new Westlife single when he said it. Obviously.

2000 Melanie C featuring Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes: Never Be The Same Again

It's become accepted currency that, of all the Spice Girls' solo careers, Mel C's is the only one worth the candle. After sitting through the last three Ginger Spice efforts, I find it hard to disagree, though I will caveat that by saying that I've always thought Mel B's single has been unfairly overlooked and that Mel C herself has more than her fair share of stinkers in the cupboard. Not so this though; built around a gritty, rat-a-tat-tat R&B rhythm, at first blush it's startling just how far removed 'Never Be The Same Again' is from both the Spice Girls canon and (as a serendipitous point of reference) the Halliwell confection that it dethroned. Whereas Geri always tried so desperately hard to be everyone's friend, 'Never Be The Same Again' is all about the attitude, a song that demands you take it seriously and on its own merits instead of riding the hype surrounding the name of the woman fronting it. By taking the pop/rap/R&B road, Chisholm is jumping onto a bandwagon sure, but she does it with a confident style, and, like Mel B before her, drafting in a rapping Lisa Lopes as co-driver gives it a shot of urban street credibility that the rest of the Spices would never come close to. "It's not a secret anymore. Now we've opened up the door, starting tonight and from now on we'll never, never be the same again" Mel's stripped of sweetness staccato bark is 'woman in control' girl power of the believable kind, but 'Never Be The Same Again' would have been a hit even if Mel hadn't been caught up in all that nonsense baggage of old.