Hits 21 - 2000 (6): Robbie Williams, Melanie C, Spiller & Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Madonna, A1

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to Hits 21, the show that's taking a look back at every UK #1 hit single of the 21st century - from January 2000, right through to the present day. Twitter: @Hits21UK Email: [e-mail] Rock DJ - Robbie Williams I Turn to You - Melanie C Groovejet (If This Ain't Love) - Spiller & Sophie Ellis-Bextor Music - Madonna Take On Me - A1

All right there again everyone and welcome back to Hits 21 where me right there again, everyone. And welcome back to Hits 21, where me, Rob. Me, Andy. And me, Lizzie. Look back at every single UK number one of the 21st century from January 2000 right through to the present day. If you want to get in touch with us, you can find us over on Twitter. We are at Hits 21 UK. We are at Hits21UK. That is at Hits21UK. And you can email us as well if you want to.

Just send it over to Hits21Podcast at gmail.com. Thank you so much for joining us again. Just like our previous episodes, we're going to be looking back at five uk number one singles from the year 2000 this time we'll be covering the period between the 6th of august through to the 9th of september before we get going with this week's episode um i just want to mention that i'm very sorry i forgot to put a listener's poll on the last episode that's my fault for uploading in a bit of a hurry on sunday instead of just scheduling it on a friday but never mind and the other thing is that we are not going to

be here for the next couple of weeks because the first week i'm away at a at a family wedding in london and the second week andy you're away is that right i am yes yeah we should have coordinated this beforehand. That's distinctly unprofessional of us. And I can only apologise. Please forgive us. So we'll likely be back on the 28th of August. I think that's right.

Because I'm away on the 11th. You're away on the 18th, Andy. We'll be back to record on the 25th. And then we'll upload on the 28th so apologies for all those people who didn't want to spend most of the month of august without us but we just just couldn't find a way around it i'm afraid meanwhile i'll still be here so if you want to forward any email to me then or do the podcast on your own make it like Lizzie's TED Talk for two weeks, do it on your own oh I could do

you can imagine what we would have said and assign a course to what we might have said yeah I'll just do the number twos for this period yeah we could briefly change our name to Bones are Runner Up and that could be When Andy and Rob

are away it's a quick you know mods are asleep post the number 2's podcast yeah let's start a spin off with Lizzie and two other guests

who talk about number 2's every week and then I'll stop while we're doing the number 3's why would they listen to our podcast just to boo us

anyway we are going to get on to this week's episode just with some news headlines from around the time period that we're covering in this episode. Four months after the death of his older brother, Charlie, earlier in the year, murderer and former gangster Reggie Cray is released from prison on compassionate grounds due to his worsening bladder cancer. prison on compassionate grounds due to his worsening bladder cancer. Cray was in the 32nd year of his life,

sentenced upon being given a couple of months to live, and was allowed to die in hospital. And Reggie did eventually die on the 1st of October at the age of 66. Meanwhile, the Boycott the Pumps campaign, a protest against rising fuel prices, continues. Protesters blocked entrances to oil refineries in Cheshire, Pembrokeshire and in Bristol, while fuel supplies to Yorkshire, North West England and the Scottish borders

were also halted. Further protests took place in 2005 and 2007 and recently took place again in April 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine resulted in skyrocketing fuel prices. And Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott approved the demolition of a Grade II listed building, the Baltic Exchange,

so that it can be replaced with a new 41-storey building. That 41-storey building will eventually become colloquially known as the Gherkin and will become a defining feature of the London skyline started there yeah in pop culture the films at the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows gone in 60 seconds X-Men snatch and scary movie Madonna gave birth to her second child Rocco her son while Eminem filed for divorce from his wife Kimberly and Scott the couple would remarry in January 2006 then file for divorce again

in April 2006 it is confirmed that 11 year old Daniel Radcliffe 10 year old Emma Watson and 11 year old Rupert Grint will take on the roles of Harry Potter Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley in the upcoming movie adaptation of the fairly obscure unknown children's novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone which none of you will ever have heard of. The cast are unveiled at a press conference in London

where Daniel Radcliffe says that he thinks he's a tiny bit like Harry because he'd like to own an owl Aww Isn't that lovely? Yeah He's a tiny bit like Harry because he'd like to own an owl. Aww. Isn't that lovely? Yeah. And on the 14th of August, the first episode of The Weakest Link was broadcast by the BBC. The first winner, David Bloomfield, won £1,880 in prize money.

On the same day, Ainsley Harriot presents his first ever episode of Ready Steady Cook, taking over from Firm Britain. Ainsley would continue to host the show until its final episode in 2010. The series was revived in 2019 and hosted by Ryland Clark-Neal, but would be taken off the air again in 2021. Okay, and Andy, could you give us a report from the album chart, please? I certainly can, Rob, yes. It's all familiar territory for the album's chart this week,

by which I mean that the singles chart and the album's chart, they're in almost perfect alignment. Just a little, a few weeks behind, possibly people like the singles have bought the album because it's quite uncanny, really. First of all, Ronan Keating's ronan remains at number one at the start of this period the less said about that the better before craig david's born to do it takes the number one spot again for two weeks returning to the top spot uh and it

because it's there for two weeks it robs me of the opportunity to say that it was at number one for seven days damn you cra, finally, with the advent of one big, big success on the singles chart, Robbie Williams' Sing When You're Winning hits the top and stays there for three weeks remaining on top well past the end of the period that we're covering this week

and well into next week. It would eventually achieve eight times platinum in the UK charts and it's the first release since Moby's play five months earlier. That's managed more than two weeks at the top of the album chart. So a big hit there. I was obsessed with the liner notes of the album and the sleeve, just like all the pictures of Robbie and like, well, a whole football team of Robbie Williams is at Stamford Bridge, whole football team of Robbie Williams is at Stamford Bridge

just sort of jumping around on each other and celebrating and appearing in various roles of football staff and football sort of coaching and playing staff yeah my mum bought that album she was a big

Robbie fan. I always think more than anyone else perhaps maybe a big statement but Robbie Williams' choice of what he does with albums, artwork and titles and just the way he presents his music is such an interesting view into his psyche

I mean the Robbie Williams Swings Both Ways album cover is quite memorable as well. He really likes to grab people's attention, doesn't he? Lizzie, what's going on stateside? Yeah, on the Billboard Hot 100, NSYNC are still at number one on the week of the 6th of August

with It's Gonna Be May. This will eventually give way to two weeks of Incomplete by Cisco. And then we round off this week's period with three weeks of Janet Jackson's Doesn't Really Matter, which featured as the theme song for the hottest summer blockbuster of 2000, Nutty Professor 2, The Clumps. Am I right in thinking she was in that?

She's in that movie? Oh, she was. Yeah, that was my next note. Oh, sorry. It's all right. She would herself appear in the film as Denise, but it was met with poor reviews compared to the 1998 remake, scoring just 26% on Rotten Tomatoes

and being described variously as obnoxious, lowbrow, bloated and unfunny. That's the film, not Janet Jackson, right? Well, depending on who you ask. Because that would be quite mean. When did that kind of comedy stop where it was just, ha-ha, people in fat suits and that seemed to carry the entire movie?

Because there's stuff like Norbit and things like that that come shortly afterwards. Yeah, we've got a long way to go on that. I think we just stopped laughing at fat people and we laughed at other cheap things instead. It became like, oh, look at Mrs. Brown's boys, look at that man in a dress. I think we found different cheap things. Instead, it became like, oh, look at Mrs. Brown's boys, look at that man in a dress, or, you know.

I think we found different cheap targets, so, yeah. Meanwhile, in the US albums charts, Now 4, which we briefly discussed last week, is still at number one until mid-August, until eventually being taken over by Nelly, whose album Country Grammar

would stay at number one for five weeks and go on to be certified diamond after selling over 10 million copies in the US. Wow. Also, I guess this might be like a small correction, but some sources say that Country Grammar was the ninth hip-hop album to be certified diamond in the US. But I said a couple of weeks ago that there were only seven hip-hop albums certified Diamond. Looking around the internet, there seems to be different numbers cited.

Some say seven, some say eight, some say nine. And I probably should have got a definitive number before stating that. So please accept my apologies if I've got something wrong. Would Nelly fall under contemporary R&B instead? I think definitely R&B. That's the thing. I think that's probably where some people have fewer numbers because is Nelly technically rap?

Can you put him in the same league as Eminem or 2Pac? I would say no. I would say quite a strong no on that one. I'd say he's a singer, not a rapper. It's hard to say. Yeah, a bit like kind of Craig David where he does

the sing rapping kind of thing where he says if you think on one line and said you're just one word yeah right okay then

on to the number ones for this week and the first one up is this I got, you got, we got everybody. I got the gift, gonna stick it in the goal. It's time to move it by day. Baby, long back in business. Can I get a witness?

Every girl, every man. Houston, do you hear me? Ground control, can you feel me? Need permission to laugh I don't wanna rock, DJ But you're making me feel so nice When's it gonna stop, DJ? Cause you're keeping me up all night. Okay, this is Rock DJ by Robbie Williams,

released as the lead single from Robbie's third studio album that we mentioned before, Sing When You're Winning. Rock DJ is Robbie's 11th single overall and his third to reach number one, following his departure from Take That after Millennium and She's The One, Double A Side, It's Only Us, reached the summit in the late 90s. It went straight in at number one as a new entry, knocking Craig David off the top spot and fighting off competition from Time To Burn by Storm, which got to number 3,

and I Can Only Disappoint You by Manson, which got to number 8. When it was knocked off the top spot, it dropped one place to number 2, and by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 24 weeks. So almost half a year in the top 100. That's quite a feat there, Robbie me boy. Lizzie, what do we make of Rock DJ by Robbie Williams? Yeah, I'm surprised it's taken us this long to hit a Robbie Williams number one, to be honest. Some of my earliest memories of pop music are hearing his songs constantly on Key 103 radio in South Manchester.

And like me as a kid, assuming that he must have been the biggest pop star in the world because he was the one I heard the most often. Like, that kind of memory stronghold extends to his videos as well and this is another like very early example of a music video that's like seared into my brain despite not having seen it for about 20 years before this week. In fact Rob I think you mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that they played the uncut version on Top of the Pops. Yeah, primetime telly. Yeah, that might be where I first saw the whole thing. And every time after that,

every time after seeing it in full for the first time, I'd always be waiting for that bit towards the end. You know when it fades to black on the uncut version? Yeah. On the cut version, sorry. And I was always kind of slightly disappointed if Robbie didn't start to pull off his own skin and throw it at some roller skaters.

Like, it was gory, sure, but to be honest, at the time, I'd seen far worse in WWF, where it was like a weekly occurrence for someone to get bashed around the school with a steel chair and their heads to gush with blood to the extent that it would stain the ringlets.

But yeah, anyway, the song. Like the video, I was surprised to discover that I remembered pretty much every detail of it so vividly despite not having heard it for such a long time. Like I know Robbie's a big fan of hip-hop but I initially cringed when hearing back his opening verses like earlier in the week. I found myself thinking like surely he didn't think this was good enough as a hip-hop fan you know especially in a world where Eminem's blowing up in the charts and hip-hop's about to undergo like a new renaissance but then I read somewhere this week that the song was actually inspired by Reasons to be Cheerful Part 3 by Ian Jury.

Like the story goes that Guy Chambers who wrote the song heard it in a club and asked the DJ for the name of the track then sent the DJ a little thank you check when Rock DJ became a hit. And like this single came out only a few months after Ian Jury had died of cancer as well, so I'm guessing at least the rap sections of the track are meant more as like a loving tribute to Ian Jury than as a serious attempt at doing hip-hop. But aside from that, it's very catchy, but I'm really struggling to see as much more than a party anthem and specifically a hen party anthem at that you know they've even got that the you know the extended outro bit with the backing vocalist doing that

yeah yeah thing so yeah I get the sense that you know they know their audience they know like Robbie and Guy know exactly who they're targeting with the song and hey it paid off for them and as much as I don't love this and even find it a bit irritating after a few repeated lessons I have to at least give credit for Robbie to Robbie Williams for trying something a bit different with his sound. Like, can you imagine someone like Ronan Keating releasing a single like this? I laughed at that notion. Well, it's like, it's pertinent

because they both broke out of their respective boy bands around the same time, give or take a few years. But it's evident that Williams had much more ambitious ideas about how to approach a solo career and sure he believed his own hype quite a lot and made some regrettable decisions along the way but he was much more successful and much more memorable as a result and like I'll try to save some of the Robbie discussion for another time because I'm sure this isn't the last time we'll encounter him on the podcast but I'll round off by saying that I would definitely rather have Rock DJ which is an ambitious song that I don't love than have Life is a Rollercoaster which is an unambitious song which I don't even

like so that's score one to Robbie in my books yeah yeah that video feels weird to kind of look back and remember how much of a holy grail that that full video was like how yeah yeah dangerous and scary it seemed and yeah there's just that episode of top of the pops from around this time where they just play the full thing on primetime telly and they do that weird skit where like they cut back to the studio and they've assembled all of the audience and the other party goers in this skit in the background so they're all sort of staring

at the TV like being you know looking like they're disgusted and Robbie just sort of takes the mic and goes it's alright innit? Anyway here's the chart they're all covered in blood yeah it's a bit of a bit of a moment uh yeah video i think um as for the song i could definitely see why this would rub people up the wrong way because it's very smug and self-satisfied in the way that quite a lot of robbie williams persona is and i think if you're

a serious kind of music head then you won't really buy into the rapping and the sort of yeah unearned cocksure attitude and i think the song kind of lives and dies on how much you can tolerate robbie as a presence in this and how much you can deal with him as a protagonist in the song. Yeah, for sure. So I kind of grew up on Robbie Williams because of my mum, and so I can sort of tolerate him. And I think rock DJ, as you said, it's very catchy, very infectious, sort of in spite of the guy performing it,

and I think when people describe something as a well-constructed pop song, I imagine that this is what comes to mind, because you get the fun introduction, the sort of like the bouncing piano note, and a pretty memorable verse uh even if the rapping isn't that great um but then you just get that bridge section when he comes into a more melodic vocal and there's a bit of variation already and there's a bit of tension just rising and then a chorus that achieves something of a cathartic release and then when it does need to add some variation we get a pretty cool bridge section that ends with the um selling it selling it selling it to raise more and more tension before the jump back into the bonga bonga bonga and it's like

is there a reason to listen to this song beyond the second chorus? Yes, I think so. And it feels sort of strange to speak about rock DJ as something that's 22 years old, because this has always felt ever-present. I feel like it's been played at every wedding I've ever been to since the year 2000. Perhaps, ironically, at every 18th party that I went to while i was in college still hear it on the radio every now and again and people who weren't really into robbie at the time or even chart music really they seem to know every word of this somehow um yeah its appeal is very understandable and sort of undeniable and i i kind of i guess i you know I hate to repeat myself but I do think it's a well

constructed pop song I don't I don't love it I think the the call and response in the verses is a little bit annoying the I don't know why they go for that kind of mannerism with the the very squeaky vocals there's no real soul to them and it just sounds like they need to clear their throats a little bit i'm not really sure why they've done that but um yeah though i i am into this i am i am sort of into this not enough to vault it or anything like that but i am a i am a slight fan i will say that much andy how do? Yeah, I'm pretty much on the same page as you, Rob. And by that, I mean, I think both of us are probably warmer on it than you are, Lizzie. Yeah, I think so.

I do actually, yeah, really quite like this. I always have, to be honest. It's interesting that when we talk about the video, I've got relatively little to contribute to that because it was successfully censored from me. There were only two videos, two music videos I can think of growing up that were flat out banned from the house. Like the second they come on, the TV gets turned off.

One of them was this because of all the gore. The other one, bizarrely, was Madonna's Beautiful Stranger because it was for the film The Spy Who Shagged Me. And in both those cases, I just genuinely loved the song. And I was like, I don't care about the video, Mum, just let me listen to the song. But anyway, but I did love the song. And I have this really happy memory of, I went down to London for a little holiday with my mum and my sister, and my dad didn't come with us. And so on the way back up at the end of the weekend, I was like, I can't wait to see my dad, I sister and my dad didn't come with us. And so on the way back up at the end of the weekend, I was like, oh, I can't wait to see my dad. I've missed my dad.

And then he was there on the platform and he said, I've got you a present. And the present was the single of Rock DJ, which I was like, yay, I love that song. I can finally listen to it. I was made up. And ironically, all that censorship was out the window because the cover of the single is the blood and guts

of Robbie Williams on the front of it single is the blood and guts of Robbie Williams so it was just completely moot but anyway the long and short of it is that it was actually about three weeks ago when I was in a bar that I finally saw the video for the first time in all of its entirety the very first time I'd actually seen it go right the way through to its conclusion with the face off and the skeleton and all that so i don't have the nostalgia factor with it um it's really really strange clearly just going for shop value clearly like it's totally incongruous with the song very very strange anyway onto the song itself um i do really like this um it's absolutely made of hooks like literally almost every line, particularly

in the verses. I'm always a fan of when verses aren't wasted. I think, particularly, I don't want to turn my nose about modern pop, but I do think that something that modern pop quite often gets wrong is the verses are just padding while you get to the chorus. And I think one thing that really elevates

pop music is when the verses themselves are very catchy, when they are as memorable as the chorus. And I think, perhaps controversially, that I think the verses in this song are better than the chorus. And what lets it down, I think, is the chorus itself. I don't think much actually happens in the chorus. It's all on that kind of one chord that slightly inverts and slightly goes into different kind of notes.

But it's all really on that one level in the chorus whereas every line in the verses is like you've got the call-and-response thing you don't never really repeat anything twice you really get caught up in it and I think that does deserve praise I think objectively it's well put together as a song and like I say particularly in the first minute or two you really get swept up in it and I think and I think that deserves huge credit I do think though like I say, particularly in the first minute or two, you really get swept up in it, and I think that deserves huge credit. I do think, though, as I say, that it could do with a little more oomph

on those choruses, but I will forgive it that, because he sells it with all the showmanship. It is the peak, I think. I can't think of another song where Robbie's showmanship is on sale to the listener as much as this song let me entertain you possibly and perhaps candy as well which I'm not a fan of but this one it

is literally just like you're buying into Robbie as a sex object and he's buying into you as a sex object as well where you know it's one of those songs where you're supposed to find it attractive that he's a bit of an arsehole, where he's got quotes like, oh, I don't want to be sleazy. Baby, just tease me. I've got no family plans. So basically saying, I'm here for tonight, but I never want to see you again. And don't you dare get pregnant.

It's like, oh, right. OK, that's attractive of you, Robbie. Thanks. But I do think that kind of swagger is really, really, it comes across really strongly in the song, and that's probably the most memorable thing about it, really. I do think that the song is well put together enough that you could give it to basically anyone,

and it would still work, and it would still be quite good. Not Ronan Keating. I agree with that, because Ronan Keating is like, he could release In a Garden of Eda, and it would be boring somehow. But it is one of those songs that's hard not to enjoy and hard not to be swept up in but I don't think it's vault worthy purely because

I just think it's not got that special X factor, it's a very very solid pop song and it is a good example of if you wanted to show people how to do a well constructed pop song I completely agree with what Rob said of if you wanted to show people how to do a well-constructed pop song I completely agree with what Rob said that this is one to show people but in terms of how interesting it is in terms of how special it is in terms of really reinventing the wheel that's not really

there um I will say that when um I listened to this week's five tracks in the car with my husband as I always do he was saying we really should put this in the vault. He thinks it's like up there in terms of innovation. And I disagree. So I'm not going to put it in the vault. But I do think that this is a very solid pop song. It's not surprising at all in terms of how successful it's been, how much longevity it's had, because it's kind of one of those songs for everyone. Really, it's kind of hard to disapprove of it, really.

Yeah, it gets a thumbs up. It doesn't get it. Oh, my God, it's had because it's kind of one of those songs for everyone really it's kind of hard to disapprove of it really um yeah it gets a thumbs up it doesn't get it oh my god it's amazing rave from me but it gets a big thumbs up i like rock dj yeah cool all right then next up is this You You You When the world is darker than I can understand When nothing turns out the way I planned When the sky turns grey and there's no end in sight The sky turns grey and there's no end in sight When I can't sleep through the lonely night I turn to you Like a flower leaning toward the sun

I turn to you Cause you're the only one who can turn me around, when I'm upside down, I turn to you, I turn to you. Okay, it is the radio mix of I Turn To You by Melanie C. Released as the fourth and final single from Melanie C's debut album Northern Star, I Turn To You is, of course, Melanie's fourth single overall and her second to reach the summit after her departure from the Spice Girls after Never Be The Same reached the summit earlier in the year 2000.

You can listen back to our second episode in the year 2000. You can listen back to our second episode for the year 2000 to hear our thoughts on that one. It went straight in at number one as a new entry knocking Robbie Williams off the top spot and fighting off competition from Doesn't Really Matter by Janet Jackson which got to number five and I'd Feel For You by Bob Sinclair which got to number nine. It stayed at the top for a week, and when it was knocked off the top spot, it dropped down three places to number four. And by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 18 weeks.

Not to timestamp this episode, but it is kind of appropriate, I think, that we cover Mel C in the week that the women's Euros was won by England. I think that was quite appropriate. Not only was Mel C at the game, but I think it is a mark of how far back the women's game was held for so very long that Mel C was the first woman i ever saw in popular culture kick a football the only one i think the only one of our childhoods i couldn't think of

anyone else no bend it like beckham was the on the other example yeah point two which by the way this song gets played in this song is in bend it like beckham yeah yeah i i i am actually thinking of starting a campaign that garinda chada is should be the only person who is allowed to direct british coming of age films because she's got yes um blinded by the light angus thongs and perfect snogging and bend it like beckham it's a brilliant brilliant set of movies there for teenagers. Yeah, solid track record. Andy, how do we feel about the version that actually got it to number one,

as opposed to the album version of I Turn To You? Yeah, well, first of all, just on that point, this is one of those very rare examples, isn't it, where the remix of a song, which did come after the fact, it wasn't on, I believe it wasn't on the album, this which did come after the fact. It wasn't on, I believe it wasn't on the album. This did come slightly after the fact.

A very rare example of it being considered the sort of official, canonical version. The only other one I can really think of is, around the same time actually, is 19-2000 by Gorillaz, where the remix of that is generally considered the official one. Amazing song, that, by the way. Yeah, so this, this is a bit of one. Amazing song, that, by the way. Yeah, so this, this is a bit of a shame

for me, this, because as people who listen to episode two will know, Mel C was a very big figure in my childhood. I adored the Spice Girls, and Mel C was my favourite a lot. She was my imaginary friend, and I just could not say anything

bad about her. I just worshipped her. Now putting my analytical head on and listening back to this more objectively, this is frustrating because it's a perfectly okay song. I wouldn't go any further than that. It's a perfectly decent kind of mid-tempo, moody, sort of companion piece to Never Be The Same Again. I think it kind of has that moody sort of companion piece to never be the same again I think it kind of has that same mood about it where it's sort of a

little bit melancholic a little bit wintery if you know what I mean that it's just sort of a bit moody and it's fine for what it is I wouldn't go any further than that but it's a perfectly nice pop song but then we get this whole drum and bass shebang put over the top of it for this remix and they really if you compare the original to this they really do very little to it other than put that pretty much pre-programmed drum beat and some very cheesy little synths in particular places of it they do very little to it and i think it completely spoils the effect. I think having this big all the way through combined with this relatively soft song, I think it's a

total mishmash. I don't think it goes together at all and I thought it made for a really uncomfortable experience. I don't hate it. Like I say, it's still a perfectly decent song in terms of the melody, in terms of Mel C's work on it. I just really wish that we could be analysing the original version, which doesn't have all that faff done to it. I think that's a real shame.

I also think as well that in both forms, in the original and the remix, despite the fact that it's shorter, I think both of them are too long. It's a thin song. There's not enough content in here to sustain itself, which I think that might possibly be why a remix was thought to work better for a release, because there isn't much going on in this, really.

It is quite a slow song. It's quite uneventful, really. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Some really, really good songs that that's necessarily a bad thing, you know, some really, really good songs have relatively little happening in them, but I think they possibly thought, oh, this needs a bit more oomph before we release it, so let's do a remix. People like remixes, don't they? And I think it just pushes it right over the cliff, and I think it's a big shame. I'm not a fan. I don't absolutely hate it. It's not going in the pie hole or anything but I think this is really

this is really a case of going too far workshopping something a little bit too far to the point where it's like you know well exposing my gayness here but that old fashioned thing

of when you've got when you finish getting self-dressed take one thing off that old kind of idea of when you finish when you finish producing a song maybe sometimes take one thing off. And I think that applies to this perfectly.

That's the note that I would leave it on, really. Lizzie, how do we feel about I Turn To You by Mel C? Yeah, I agree with a lot of your points, Andy. I think this is a good song, but the Hex Hector remix, which was released as the you know as a single version takes something away from that moody atmosphere of the album mix and replaces it with like squelchy synths and a generic thudding trance beat like when we were doing our first listen through last week I actually heard the album mix first and loved it I thought it was like a massive improvement on never be the

same again which i know you both liked but i was sort of lukewarm on and i was ready to say that it might just be the best spice girls solo single and i still do believe that about the album version maybe i don't know bag it was up there but there. I was going to say, have you forgotten Bag It Up? No, no, I've not forgotten Bag It Up. It's definitely still up there. But yeah, the remix sounds cheap and dated to me. It doesn't add anything, but it just takes away some of that... You know, the production has that room to breathe, and that's not a bad thing at all.

I kind of get why they would do that for a single release but then like why release it as a single at all if you don't believe in it exactly that exactly that that's what i was trying to articulate of why do this if you feel like it needs more yeah yeah i mean well enough about the remix anyway i still do think this is a great song i think mel c's performance is particularly beautiful. It reminds me a bit of some of, I don't know, Robin's performances with that slight quiver that sounds like someone barely holding themselves together,

but just about managing through sheer force of will. And the lyrics are pretty standard, but again, not necessarily a bad thing. I'd say Never Be The Same Again was more complicated lyrically and it required Mel C to like keep up with it but again this has plenty of room for her to breathe so this should you know so that she can belt out those high notes in the chorus without obscuring the backing track too much. So yeah I'd say to our listeners go and seek out the version from the Northern Star album for

what I think is the definitive experience you know put it on with a good pair of headphones and just let it wash over you it's much better than this remix version hmm yeah I kinda gotta agree actually because I do like

this version, but I have to caveat my enjoyment of it by saying that I don't think the remix is entirely necessary, because the original version is a lovely and understated, if slightly long, song. It's very subtle and tuneful, and this just kind of pushes everything into the red and makes it faster. And I think the bones of the original are strong enough to creep through here, which means that you do end up with a pretty fun kind of pop club trance, you know, it's very emblematic of a particular period, but I think it's a shame that the original wasn't the one that got the push. Like, I know that Mel C gave consent to have this done, and she kind of sees the remix as the definitive version

because she thought that this would be a good summer hit, suitable for, like, Ibiza and stuff like that. But I just kind of prefer the original. I think it is a bit long, the original. I think it starts to run out of ideas a little bit when she says i turn to you when fear tells me to turn around i turn to you because you're the only one like it's like they came up with a new idea as a bit of a variation on the theme for that final chorus but then you just they just abandon any potential couplet and just go back to the original chorus that they've been doing the whole time um but i do like the effort that this song makes to put you into a surrounding

and an atmosphere immediately with the kind of the quick blast of the like quite early on and i completely understand why they did what they did with this but it's i like it just about as much as rock dj but i have the roughly the same number of caveats with it and i think in future i will just go to the original even if this is no doubt yeah even if this is if this is the one i remember more But having recently listened to the original version of I Turn To You Just this past week, I'm thinking Yeah, the original version is more to my taste these days Alright then, the third song up this week Is this 🎵 Holding you closer

It's time that I told you Everything's going to be fine Know that you need it And try to believe it Take me one step at a time Hey, don't just say love What does it feel about? Why does it feel bad? Why does it feel bad?

Why does it feel so good? And I'm just saying love Why does it feel bad? Why does it feel bad? Why does it feel bad? Why does it feel so good? Why does it feel so good? Okay, so this is Spiller and Sophie Ellis-Bexter with Groovejet and then in brackets, If This Ain't Love. Released as Spiller's second single in the UK after Spiller from Rio, in brackets do it easy reached number 40 in 1997. groovejet is the first and only song by spiller to reach the top of the uk charts as for sophie

ellis baxter this was the first time she had ever appeared in the uk charts and it would be the only time she claimed a uk number one as well groovejet went straight in at number one as a new entry knocking melanie c off the top spot and staying at the top for one week, fighting off competition from Out of Your Mind by the True Steppers and Dane Bowers featuring Victoria Beckham, which got to number two, and Lucky by Britney Spears, which got to number five. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, it dropped one place to number two, and by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for an impressive 30 weeks that's a big number i think that's the longest we've had so far for uh for any one particular song i know that um the token various

versions of toka's miracle added up to about 42 weeks so to get to 30 weeks with one song that's very very impressive and it represents I think the kind of quality that this song has that a lot of people understood and definitely got on board with I think this is another song we've had recently that Disco is doing just fine in the early 2000s I do love New Disco and I think it says a lot that my parents and their friends do as well like acts like Jamiroquai and Kylie and Daft Punk and this song super classy really sleek provides proof that very very simple ingredients can create something pretty great when applied like this it's that really quick and repetitive guitar lick and revolves and repeats so much to the point where it maybe could grow a bit frustrating and a bit grating on the ears, but it's so easy to get lost in it. It's very hypnotic and mesmeric

and I always love hearing it whip back around. Just the... And it just finds its way back around and nestles in really nicely. And then you have Sophie Alice Baxter who breezes in and really suits this place, like gorgeous vocal performance with some interesting production applied to it. It kind of sounds like they double track her voice but then they obscure the second track which makes it sound like she's singing through the end of the toilet roll tube and I like that quality, slightly woozy and comfortingly dizzying that way and I think the song has had such an impact it's hard to believe that this was before Murder on the Dance Floor and

Take Me Home because I remember in my mind this all the spiller groove jet stuff happening after she'd broken out because she sounds so sure of herself here like it's seductive and it's sexy and it's suggestive but it's restrained and it kind of teases you instead of giving you everything up front and like don't like get me wrong like i love songs that are sexual and very upfront about that like i mentioned on the podcast a few weeks ago i went to saw slater the other week and a lot of her songs are about how much she likes pulling men in clubs and going home and having great sex with them and there's a lot of very intense and graphic details in those songs and they're amazing for that but i think this sounds like music for decadent wine bars rather than nightclubs

and Sophie judges her performance on that and it sounds just right to me I think I don't... There's something about the way the beat continues to revolve right to the very end that makes me wish for a little bit of something different maybe if it were heading a different direction, but it's very minor, my complaint.

And I think I'm happy to nudge this forward for the vault. I don't know about you, Lizzie. How about you? Can I actually pass over to Andy because I have a lot to say about this one. I don't want to dominate the segment too early. Cool, yeah, all right. Andy, is this vault worthy for you? Oh, I don't know. It's really on the edge.

It's really, really on the edge. The thing I keep coming back to is that neither I or either of you, I don't think, nominated Don't Call Me Baby for The Vault. And this is very much comparable to Don't Call Me Baby. And I personally think that one's better. So if I didn't put that in The Vault, I don't think I'm going to put this in The Vault either.

So I'm just trying to be consistent there. But I totally get it. It's really good. It's really, really good. I do think the best thing about it for sure well the two best things about it first of all sophie ellis bexter's performance i think she is i think she's really underrated as a performer and i think it's mainly because she has this very kind of quiet very kind of sultry almost bored sounding voice which i totally mean as a compliment, actually,

because it's hard to do that. It's hard to make yourself sound that kind of free and easy with your voice. And I think actually it's a testament to the fact that actually not everybody has to be a Celine Dion. Not everybody has to absolutely boom out their lyrics. To be very, very restrained and very kind of British and BBC in your performance actually sometimes make songs really, really elevated and really add something new to them and that has always been Sophie Ellis-Bexter's USP. I think it's

Take Me Home is pretty much a direct sequel to this song. It's kind of trying to recapture the same thing and it does it well there as well. Murder on the Dance Floor, I think one of the reasons we all love the song is how many times she says the word dance floor i think i just think that always comes across really well as well i i think that the other really good thing about it

is the not not just the disco style because obviously you know that that's obvious but the particular little moments where i just think oh that is just so disco that little orchestral breakdown in the middle there where the strings just really pipe in i just think that you could take that right out of any disco song regardless of what it may have been sampled from that just feels like it's out of everything it's it's made with real care this song that everything in there has a purpose i look negatively on i turn to you when i say that that in this song everything in the production has a purpose everything is really well combined i do think it could do with varying itself up very slightly i just think there is there

could be a little bit more development there could be a little more variety throughout um but it's a really really minor point that's the only thing that keeps me back from putting it in the vault is that i just think it could do a little bit more with its time than it does but what we do have is is is so so catchy so endlessly listenable and so enjoyable and really takes you back to this moment in time where this very specific genre that stopped almost instantly after this year seemingly um it was really just firing on all cylinders i think this and don't call me baby combined it just absolutely wonderful companion pieces to each other and yeah i i don't think it's vault worthy but i do think this is really really gorgeous pop music really like this

okay lizzie the floor is yours oh god okay is it going to be murder on the floor uh well maybe yeah well okay uh i guess i'll right deep breath um so yeah this is an amazing single and I love it with all my heart. And best of all, it's got an amazing backstory and it's a story of triumph over adversity as this almost never saw the light of day as a single. The story goes that in 1999, Cristiano Sfila found the sample track Love With You by Carol Williams

on a CD compilation of tracks from the South Soul label. He met up with a friend of his, the DJ Boris Lugosz, I really hope I'm pronouncing that right, who came to pick him up at the airport in Miami. Boris asked Spiller if he had any new music and he put on a CD he'd burned the night before his flight which featured an early version of the track without the vocals. Spiller forgot about the CD and left it in Boris' car but unbeknownst to Spiller, Boris had played the demo in a Miami nightclub that same day. When Spiller showed up at the nightclub later that evening during Boris' set, people in the club were approaching him and rhapsodising about his new single which he didn't

quite understand until Boris revealed that he played the demo earlier in the set. The name of that nightclub you ask? Groove Jet. My only. I did wonder about that. Yeah. So, skipping forward a bit, some indie labels approached him to release the track, but South Soul were asking for a cut of the royalties and $20,000 up front just to clear the Carol Williams sample. Eventually it was picked up by EMI who paid for the sample clearance but then South Soul waited until the record was top of the charts to claim that Spiller had no rights to use their sample because the title was now Groovejet brackets if this ain't love and not just Groovejet

so now he was faced with a choice go through with a legal case which they'd likely win but would mean withdrawing the single while the case is ongoing for an undetermined amount of time or reluctantly pay for a new license with even higher price tags for the advance and the royalties. Like this wouldn't be the last time that Sal Sol would be causing trouble but that would come later in the decade. In the meantime they decided to go ahead and just pay the money and Spiller had to find a single for the vocal version that he'd envisioned but wanted a voice different from the usual soul diva that you found on house tracks at the time. Enter Sophie Ellis-Bexter, who recorded an early demo version with slightly different verses and a completely different chorus before the two worked together on a rewrite. So Spiller was resident DJ for a club in Italy around the same time and by this point his crowds would wait impatiently

for the the instrumental version of Groove Jet which was almost a year old at that point. So according to Spiller quote, I played the vocal version for the first time the club exploded when the music started but the very second the voice came in everybody stopped and looked still. It was panic. They looked at each other lost and disappointed and the dance floor cleared. So luckily the audiences warmed to the vocal version eventually and so it was time for the big single release. Just one problem. In the form of a Spice Girl in search of her first solo number one, pulling out all the stops to promote her new single. That Spice Girl was Victoria Beckham, and that single was Out of Your Mind,

produced by Truthsteppers and featuring Dane Bowers. And as we've seen a number of times on this very podcast, including in this episode, the solo Spice Girls could do no wrong at this point. They scored a number one single in the UK, like with a former Spice Girl in 2000, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. But still, Victoria Beckham would pull out all the stops

to make sure that she would reach the summit of Pop Mountain. In an interview with BBC News at the time, Sophia expects them to make note of the promotional tactics being used by Victoria Beckham, including bringing her husband David along for an in-store promo appearance, and even just stopping short of accusing BMG of buying up copies of the single to propel it to number one that week. In fact, as recently as 2020, Dane Bowers has accused Spiller and his label of doing exactly that, sending people out on the Saturday to bulk buy copies and flipping the outcome from 10,000 copies in True Step's favour on Saturday

to 2,000 copies in Spiller's favour by Sunday. And so here we are, a dance track that was quickly stitched together for a demo and almost never released to the public ends up beating one of the biggest names in music to number one with a debut solo track that was all but guaranteed to hit the top spot. And guess what? It still sounds great. It sounds fresh. It sounds cool. It sounds sophisticated. It sounds heartfelt. Like when Madison Avenue's Don't Call Me Baby came up a few episodes back, I spoke about how the best dance tracks of this time managed to balance that nightclub house vibe with some solid pop hooks, seamlessly blurring the lines between the two contexts.

Like this sounds just as good at a hot nightclub in Paris as it does heard on the radio while you're doing the dishes. Like just much like Don't Call Me Baby it is such a basic formula around I don't know 10 seconds worth of a disco sample from the Aventis, an unintrusive backing beat and a sleek vocal to carry it along. I'd say there's more variety in the use of the sample here though, particularly that gorgeous swell of strings at the end of the chorus and then again in the middle eight when you get that blooming harp sound at the start of each line. And of course, you know, Sophie Alice Peck's performance on this is just pitched perfectly. Like, she's consistently been one of my favourite singers

in pop music and I can't imagine this song with any other vocalists it's another rare example of a prominent british regional accent in the number one singles you know one of two that i picked up on this week the other being robbie williams and his potteries pop like usually british singers fall back to that kind of faux American singing style but Ellis Baxter has that instantly recognizable quote-unquote posh London accent which is bordering on like BBC received pronunciation you know dance floor and that kind of thing but yeah it's incredible to me that the audiences in the nightclubs initially didn't like the vocal version you know having listened to that early demo version this week it still sounds good but I found myself longing for Bexter's gorgeous bittersweet sighing vocal. I think it complements the track perfectly and combined with the lyrics

it juxtaposes the kind of bubbly sunshiny production of the backing track with drama and a sense of mystery and without Bexster ever sounding like she's above any of it. Like that main chorus line is so simple but so effective. Like, if this ain't love, why does it feel so good? You know, it fits into this track just as perfectly as it would in, you know, a track by, say, ABBA or Robin. You know, it fits into this track just as perfectly as it would in, you know, a track by, say, ABBA or Robin. You know, just based on that line alone, there's a number of conclusions that you can draw about the relationship being portrayed here, but ultimately in the context of the song, none of that really matters. The questions may still remain, but right now, all that matters is the shared moment between Ellis Fexter and the other person, or even, you know, Spiller and the audience.

And the question is, just as long as are you both willing to go along for the ride? Darling, darling, now what do you say? I fucking love this song. So much. That was amazing. That was lovely. I didn't have a clue about that backstory either. Yeah. Yeah, me neither. Yeah, ace.

All right, I really don't think there's anything else to add. No, no. Next up is this. Hey, Mr. DJ, put a record on. I want to dance with my baby. Thank you. to DJ, put a record on, I wanna dance with my baby. And when the music starts, I never wanna stop, it's gonna drive me crazy. Music, music, music, music, music, music, music, music Music makes the people come together Music makes the bush go free and the river Okay, this is Madonna with Music,

released as the lead single from her eighth studio album of the same name, Music is Madonna's 51st single overall and her 10th number one in the UK, and we're still not up to her last number one in the UK just yet. Music went straight in at number one as a new entry, knocking Spiller and Sophie Alice Baxter off the top spot and staying at number one for one week. It hit number one during a week when there were no new entries to the top 10. The highest new entry was a reworking of Alice Cooper's Schools Out by Daphne and Celeste, which got to number 12.

When music was knocked off the top of the charts, it fell one place to number two, and by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 24 weeks which is a long time uh andy music madonna how are we on it yeah um so i'm i'm a big fan of madonna um like i say beautiful stranger from before that was kind of what got me started to madonna and i've always had a soft spot for her i mean i kind of have to really don't't I but it's this I never listened to this although I listened to Madonna quite a lot I never listened to this because I think I've probably been a bit snobby about it in the past to be honest and I've probably considered it a bit basic. Basic in terms of the components and basic

in the modern sense. Oh you're a bit basic aren't't you I think it's like I've sort of had the attitude to it of you know like if people say the best Beals song is I want to hold your hand I'm like is it though you know I've sort of had that kind of attitude to it um and so I've not listened to it for quite a long time and actually I was pleasantly surprised this this is I still have the same fundamental issues with it that I've had before, but far less so in terms of how much they bothered me, really. I mean, just really, my main problem that I have with this is that it's a bit bare. It's a bit thin in terms of content. It's not really sing-along type material, really. I don't think it's the kind of thing that you could really get a whole club singing along to it, really. I don't think it's the kind of thing that you could really, you know,

get a whole club singing along to it, really, because it's just too small in that chorus, really. There's just not enough to it. And that kind of bothers me because I like a song that, you know, I can recreate on the piano, that I can possibly do at karaoke, you know. That's kind of what I go to Madonna for. And you can't do that with this. This is very sort of different. But it does still have quite a lot going on,

particularly around the edges. I mean, there's not really any way for me to explain it without trying to imitate the noises. But the... That bit is really fun. And the... At the end, particularly like that siren as well. I hope everybody knows what i'm talking about with

those noises there um no no idea no not at all no should i try again yeah do them again um it does it did actually keep me interested and by the time the song finished i was surprisingly like oh is it over already like i was expecting it to really outstay its welcome because the Hey Mr. DJ line and then the chorus, which is only two lines, is sort of all I kind of remember in terms of content. So I was quite surprised how much it was able to keep me interested. It's another one of those futuristic sci-fi type productions that William Orbit influenced, showing its face once again you can clearly hear this existed in the same kind of sound universe as sadly as American Pie but also as Ray of Light

and other stuff from around the era you know Pure Shores as well which of course was in that category as well and it's very of its time and it's quite surprising to me that i think it still sounds quite fresh it still sounds quite cool um i don't love it it will never be one of my favorite madonna songs um but it's okay it's okay um i i don't have it anywhere near as big a problem with it as i thought i did one thing i will say about it but before i say this actually that i do sometimes take the piss out of mad Madonna a bit because she kind of sets herself up for it. And whenever I make a joke about her, just know that I say it with love because she puts herself out there so much. Like she's prepared

to be made fun of quite a lot. So, you know, it's fine. But my chief memory of this song is whatever year it was, about five five six years back when she was a guest on Eurovision she was the interval act at Eurovision and she took it upon herself in the green room to start a sing-along in the arena of the chorus of music which just didn't happen for her it just didn't take and she was basically just stood alone with a camera right in front of her kind of half-heartedly like he was in a pub like, come on, yeah, music, mixed up, come on, you know the words, come together. Yeah, you all know this, don't you? Wow. And she was trying to make a point of how like, oh, Eurovision is, it's all about the music. And she kind of did it as a punchline of like,

I only have one thing to say about how great Eurovision is and about how important it is to our culture. and this is what I have to say and then she started singing music and no one joined her and it is it and this is tough competition for Madonna but this is possibly the number one cringe moment in her career for me and it makes me laugh every single time I see it but having said that it is still it's just it is still quite a nice song and I'm nowhere near as cool on it as I thought I would and it might enter my rotation a little bit more now certainly better than American Pie I think we can all agree on that can't we yeah so oh yeah yeah not bad at all yeah Lizzie how are you on it don't worry. I've got less to say about this one.

Yeah, with this song, An American Pie, early in the year, this, like in hindsight, it feels like the first time in over a decade that Madonna isn't leading the way forward for pop music. It feels like she's trying to catch up, if anything. You know, it used to be that Madonna was someone who would make the world of pop music just stop and listen when she had something to say. It's a bit like, you know, Beyonce or Adele in the modern era. And we kind of touched on it briefly when we discussed American Pie in the second episode about how her Ray of Light album was, you know, a bold new direction after a few years of more low-key output in the mid-90s

following the controversy around her erotica period. Like, Ray of Light was the sound of Madonna leading the conversation, making a statement in pop music like nobody else could, and doing it seemingly effortlessly, even though you know that behind the scenes everything is controlled and is you know wound tight as a drum. So yeah this song marks the beginning of a long period working with French producer Merwais Ahmadzai and much like William Orbit before him his fingerprints are all over this single like the backing track on this is very 2000 but not necessarily in a bad way like i think it has a good build-up to that squealing synth line at the end and i'm a big fan of the mechanical rhythm backing of this which was apparently inspired by

craftworks trans europe express and, I can see that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and I would say that, you know, Madonna's vocal is a little bit low in the mix, but with all the electronic manipulation on her voice, I'm guessing that's like an intentional decision to treat her vocal as like another ingredient in this electro soup, if you will.

And it might also explain why the lyrics are so sparse like the mission statement of this song is barely a statement at all it's like it's a vague suggestion that music and dance brings people together which is already well trodding ground for Madonna at this point and in which she already stated definitively on Vogue ten years earlier like I suspect this might be trying to harken back to that, you know, a dance track with an affirming message of unity. But Vogue has so much more to say

because it represents an important time and place in LGBTQ history, especially, you know, black and Latino LGBTQ history, with the New York ballroom scene, you know, black and Latino LGBTQ history with the New York ballroom scene, you know, contrasted with a sharp rise in deaths from HIV AIDS in those same communities. That was Madonna as voice of the voiceless, you know, raising the profile of an underground platform of underprivileged people to almost global scale.

Like, instead, this is Madonna as like chart mainstay, still capable of putting together a good pop song but no longer the most important voice in pop music. Still, looking back at Madonna's output from the next few years after this I can safely say that I would rather have Madonna with nothing to say than Madonna with too much to say and increasingly clumsy ways of saying it. Is this American life? Yes it is. Yeah.

Can I just, can I just, sorry, sorry Rob, before you start, can I just question one thing there Lizzie, where you said that she, you know, with Vogue she was kind of more transgressive and here she's a chart mainstay. Could you possibly rephrase that as she was a rebel and now she's the bourgeoisie? Oh! You've nailed it.

And could I ask as well, just for the three of us, if we all take a vote, which did music make you? Did it make you a rebel or did it make you bourgeoisie? Yeah, I'm going to mention these lyrics in my analysis. Personally, it made me bourgeoisie. I think this is all right. I think this felt exciting at the time

because it was Madonna doing sort of semi-futuristic dance music for a new millennium. Like, you know, it's Madonna, it's a new millennium, and she's back, and, oh, she's got a different image now, and it tries to capture that sense of opportunity and possibility that we probably felt around that time. The lyrics contain that sense of enthusiasm and collective optimism that, oh, we could all achieve something together in this millennium, music makes the people come together etc and the instrumental is probably supposed to make you think whoa madonna doing acid house

in electro clash like whoa where's this come from but then like you actually read what she says like because when you hear the the line music makes the bourgeoisie, and then you think, oh, what's the punchline to this? And it's just, and the rebel. And I thought for years it was music makes the bourgeoisie, wanna rebel. It's a really strange line, isn't it? It makes them as in it creates them,

but you feel like there is another word there that she didn't say it's really strange yeah it's it's it's not quite are we human are we dancer um but it's a little odd reading it because i was a little underwhelmed when i actually read it this week and i was like oh that's what she said i thought it was something a bit more I don't know just subversive than that but never mind in hindsight I appreciate the experiment and generally enjoy the vibe

the chorus melody has become embedded in my brain over the years it just doesn't feel that exciting to me anymore like when we were listening to Eminem last week he's another artist who just does not excite me anymore but going back to the real Slim Shady and the Marshall Mathers LP like his early material still feels very unpredictable and you're quite wary of it and people still get

quite upset and distressed about it quite topical for this week because of the news headlines that we read they still get quite upset and distressed about kim the song kim um because of the the lyrical content in in that one and whereas with this it just kind of like oh yeah remember when madonna did that like um but i will say that one thing i do like about this and i wish it brought in earlier it's that screeching wiry synth right before the end i like that added piece of very abrasive variation in what is quite a minimal composition but i think it also kind of has the reverse effect that it reveals the i don't know if it's deliberate minimalism or if it's just like a lack of invention but the song is built on the um do do do do do do for a long time and i'm not sure it has quite enough

to sustain itself i think that synth could maybe come in earlier and then something else could happen in the coda but i said it before i do like the the vibe of this one it's definitely not a song i've forgotten but i think it's it has stuck around in my head over the years and i think that's a measure of it so fair enough i think i think fair enough it's not my favorite but it's fine like a light thumbs up on this one i think for for match yeah same yes one final thought on this that i've only just realized when you're talking about the lyrics before isn't it quite remarkable that we have two songs in the same episode where the artist directly addresses a dj and calls them by the name dj that's quite

a specific thing to happen twice in one week. I guess we're at the height of, like, you know the way in the late noughties it was everybody put your drinks up in the club. In the early noughties, I guess it's the DJ. Talk to the DJ. Hey, DJ. Yes. I mean, yeah, this was the era of, like, the super DJ, right?

Yeah. You know, the Pete Songz and Fatboy Slimz of the world. And interesting that Robbie and Madonna have Slims of the world and interesting that they kind of that Robbie and Madonna have the sort of opposite joke in that Robbie's joke is oh I don't want to dance DJ but you're kind of going to make me whereas Madonna's opening line

is oh come on play a song DJ I want to dance. Weird sort of comparison there. I mean that's what they're paying me for. Alright then our final song this week is this Talking away I don't know what I'm to say, I'll say it anyway. Today's another day to find you. Shine away, I'll be coming for your love again. me okay this is take on me by a1 released as the lead single from A1's second album, The A-List, Take On Me is a cover of A-Ha's classic pop song, which reached number two in the UK

and eventually went on to sell over a million copies. It's A1's fifth single overall to be released in the UK, and their first to reach number one, but it is not their last. Take On Me went straight in at number one as a new entry, knocking Madonna off the top of the charts, and it stayed there for one week, beating off competition from Big Brother UK TV Theme by Element 4, which got to number four, and Say It Isn't So by Bon Jovi, which got to number ten. When Take On Me was knocked off the top of the charts, it fell three places to number four,

and by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 18 weeks. Um, I don't have much to say on this. I think it's a brave decision to take on Take On Me. Um, it's one of those sacred cows that you're not really supposed to touch. Um, but they give it a go. They try to modernise it a bit with those synths that are having a good time along in

the background. I don't think they completely destroy this, but I think it's only marginally better than Westlife's renditions of I Have a Dream and Seasons in the Sun. I don't really have much to say about this. I've barely thought about this this week, to be honest. I'm kind of glad that it's last just so we can sort of wrap up and go home. Andy, what would you make of it? I have a lot more to say about it. I have a story about this one.

Oh, good. We like stories. I'm just going to temper expectations. It's nowhere near as good as Lizzie's Groove Jet story, but it's a story nonetheless. Not to do with the making of the song. Just for me personally. This is going to start at a place

where you'll have no idea how it relates, but trust me, it gets there. Which is that as a kid, I was a huge fan of Blue Peter. I was really like, every single day a Blue Peter viewer. I held bring and buy sales for Blue Peter in my local Cub Scouts group and they were big successes. But anyway, so you can imagine my excitement when on a holiday to Scarborough in August 2001

we're just walking down to the beach and suddenly there's like a big crowd there. It's no, it's no Woodstock, you know, but it's a crowd and there's a stage where you think, oh, something must be happening here. And to my delight, I discovered it's the Blue Peter Roadshow, which is like a televised live stage episode of Blue Peter, which was going on the air. So I was like, oh my God, I'm going to stand in the crowd. I'm going to be in an episode of Blue Peter. And then out of nowhere, it turns out that also in between every one of the little bits they were doing,

A1 were on stage performing live. I managed to get very close to the front. So out of nowhere, me as a kid, just having a great time on the beach, singing and dancing to A1. And it was the first gig of any kind that i'd ever been to it wasn't a gig at all let's be honest it was just an episode of blue peter but it was a1 performing live on stage it was my first experience of proper live music and i thought wow i was just really swept up in it and and for a very brief period of time i became like

completely obsessed it was a really happy memory for me so just to recreate it I ended up getting the very first album I bought with my own money was A1's The A-List purely so I could just listen to the songs again and kind of recreate what was a very very happy memory for me but none of that was about the music itself it really wasn't and I think considering that story and considering it's still something i look back on as a really happy memory it's quite remarkable that this cover of take on me doesn't hold any kind of place in my heart at all in terms of the actual song i really have no faithfulness to this at all and i've not listened to it ever since 2001.

Like, never, ever. And to be fair, I don't think many people have. It completely disappeared from the radio. You would never hear this anymore, would you? You would never hear this past about a year or two after it came out. I think A1 in general, you'd never hear again past about 2002, 2003-ish. Yeah, they are one of the forgotten boy bands, I think. They're not quite as forgotten as One True Voice, but they are around,

they're not going to come up against NSYNC or Backstreet Boys or Blue or anybody like that from around the time. They started well. I mean, they had two number ones off their debut album, but then that was it. They just disappeared. I couldn't tell you what happened to them after that debut album. I've never looked into it um but yeah so i come to this with very

very happy memories of it but in terms of actual sitting down and listening to this cover oh i'm not happy i'm not a happy chappy with this one um i think there's a good reason why this song is considered a sacred cow which is that it's the original is I don't want to use the word masterpiece because that sounds kind of silly but it kind of is in terms of it's a real testament to the production of the time that they use the materials they had the synthesizers they had the instruments they had to put together something genuinely unique and something really properly interesting which really really captures the imagination and

sounds so so good for the era it really really does and I think it's really kind of sacrilegious to then hear a version of it that doesn't contain any real instruments at all and that the artists themselves as in the singers themselves will have had absolutely no involvement in creating i think i'm not saying aha are like you know the peak of innovation in music but that song took some real work you know the original it was a really really good piece of work that was put together by what I imagine was quite a lot of imagination and this just isn't this is real by the numbers recreation of the song in a very soulless way yeah they kind of do some bubbly synths and make it sound a little bit different

in the rhythm and things like that but I don't think that's because of trying to do something different I think that's just aping the current style, where if you told me, oh, imagine what a noughties boy band cover of Take On Me would sound like, it would be exactly this, like exactly this. Nothing about this is surprising at all. And I think that's the condemnation of it, that a song like Take On Me should not be, by the numbers, unsurprising, generic generic and i think it's so sad to hear it

reduced to this um it's not like the worst cover i've ever heard but i just think don't take on a big boy like this if you're not going to elevate it or you're not going to at least try to make it your own i think the comparison to i have a dream is a very good one, Rob. And yeah, it's songs like this that give covers a bad name. There are some excellent covers that exist. I do think that covering classic songs is an art form that is perhaps underappreciated, and there have been some fantastic ones over the years, which we will

be covering on the show. There have been some fantastic ones in the noughties and the tens, but this is not one of them, and why did they do this? This is not good. I'm glad that it's forgotten, but it will always live on in that Scarborough Beach memory of mine.

Lizzie, what about you? Yeah, completely agree with what you said, Andy. To cover a song and keep it true to the original is not a bad thing as such. I'm sure we've all heard plenty of covers where the artist has taken one of those big 80s power pop sacred cows and made a complete shambles of it in various ways you know either it might be like turning it into a brainless magaluf thumper or a smug acoustic cringe fest I've heard fucking hundreds of those but there is a valid complaint to be made that you know the song doesn't do quite enough to differentiate itself

from the original and therefore struggles to justify its own existence as a single and it's not like this was an unknown song or anything although it may well have been to the audience that A1 were aimed at so it just kind of begs the question why listen to a similar version of a song I like when I can just listen to the original. This is okay in its own right but I think I might have appreciated something more gutsy from a boy band in an already overcrowded pool of boy bands and because I've got nothing else to really say about the song I went and looked at the video and like

okay you know the classic video for Take On Me by A1 you all know that right? yes of course it's proper like inside of a cheese grater material isn't it? yeah absolutely so picture that in your head and then It's proper like inside of a cheese grater material, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, so picture that in your head and then don't because this is not that video. This is something completely different. But get this, the A1 boys have to go into the computer all Matrix style to stop a computer virus, which, I promise I'm not making this up, is thought to have been created by an AI and which is ravaging the Nikkei stock markets in Japan.

What? Yeah, it's mad, isn't it? Yeah, I'd run the whole thing down, but I've already fucking chanted too much in this episode and it has to be seen to be believed. It's a fabulous piece of Early noughties pap That is just weird Did someone just watch Minority Report And think okay let's just do that

And put it with take on me Well they even do the They do the matrix bullet thing You know where he bends backwards But it's like a little blob of computer virus I know that songs don't have to have Anything to do with the video but come on when you're doing a song

that is known for having a classic video I know come on it's so good wow well unbelievably that brings us to the end of this week's episode and

yeah so we're going to be away for a couple of weeks now. Next time, when we do come back, we'll be covering from the 10th of September through to the 28th of October in the year 2000. We're still tunnelling through the

year 2000 and eventually we'll be rained on. We are getting closer. We're nearly there now almost out but yeah, thank you very much for listening this time I promise I'll put a listeners poll on it and you can make your selection

and we'll see you next time, bye for now bye bye, see ya