Hits 21 - 2002 (5): Will Young, Elvis vs JXL, Gareth Gates

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

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]

The Wheels on the Bus All right there, everyone, and welcome back to Hitch 21, where me, Rob, me, Andy, and me, Lizzie, all 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 Hits21UK, that is at Hits21UK. And you can email us too. Just send it on over to Hits21Podcast at gmail.com.

Thank you so much for joining us again. Just like our previous episodes, we'll be looking back at some number one singles from the year 2002. This time we'll be covering the period from the 2nd of June to the 3rd of August so there's more space to cover, more time to cover

because in the last two episodes, I mean, what, we've managed to make about six weeks worth of progress in two episodes. So, um, yeah, glad that we've got a longer period of time to look at this week. Casting our eyes back to last week, our poll winner, Just a Little by LibertyX. Oh, gosh. Get in there. So, LibertyX beating out Eminem by only about three or four votes, but, you know, it's well done, Liberty X. I mean, if they won by three or four votes, I think I can explain that.

Probably every member of Liberty X has gone on and voted for just a little, whereas there's only one of Eminem. So the odds were stacked against him. okay on to this week's episode and as always we're just going to give you some news headlines from around the time that these songs that we're covering this week were number one the party in the palace gets underway to mark Queen Elizabeth II's

golden jubilee the Queen and Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh ride in a golden state coach from Buckingham Palace to St Paul's Cathedral for a special service to mark her 50 years on the throne. As part of the celebrations, the Empire State Building in New York is little purple in her honour. A man decapitates a statue of Margaret Thatcher at an art gallery in London. Paul Kelleher, a theatre producer, broke the statue's head off with a cricket bat and then a metal pole.

While waiting to be arrested, he was asked why he'd done it, and Mr. Kelleher simply replied, I think it looks better like that. He was eventually found guilty of criminal damage and sentenced to three months in prison, but punk band Jumba Wumba were inspired by the incident and wrote a song about it named I Did It For Alfie. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Games, hosted in in Manchester are opened by the Queen. The event also marks the opening of the City of Manchester Stadium. After the games the stadium would be remodelled and given to Manchester City FC who eventually moved into the stadium in August 2003. Events were also held at the newly opened Manchester Aquatic Centre, the Manchester Velodrome and Manchester Arena. And the 2002 World Cup hosted by Japan and South Korea is

won by Brazil after they beat Germany 2-0 in the final. Yeah, lots of very important sporting events. Yeah, very much so. Did you go to those games? I think I went to a couple of events. I seem to remember going to volleyball or netball, I think. It could be netball, actually. Yeah, I think netball at the Manchester Arena. I didn't go to any of the athletics events, as it was then named, at the City of Manchester Stadium. What about you two?

Well, I wasn't living in Manchester then, so no. And it sort of seemed like the other side of the world, Manchester. So no, I didn't go. I wish I had. I'd love to go to something like that as an adult. I think next time it's anywhere around this neck of the woods, I definitely will go. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember barely any of it, but I did definitely go to one of the track and field events. And I got one of the little, you know, the baton things? There's one that would like, you'd flick a switch and it'd glow. Oh, wow. God knows where it is. It's one that would like, you'd flick a switch and it'd glow. Oh wow. God knows where it is. It's probably in a loft somewhere. Who's loft? Who knows?

The films to hit the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows. Spider-Man for three weeks, Minority Report for one week, Scooby-Doo for two weeks, and Austin Powers in Goldmember for one week. And the Independent Television Commission bans an Xbox console advert after receiving 135 complaints from viewers. I think that might be crossing a few lines there. Just possibly.

Yeah. Maybe. In TV Soaps, ITV reintroduces Monday Night episodes for Coronation Street and commissions the reboot of Crossroads for one final season. Neighbours passes 4,000 episodes. EastEnders gets rid of Mark Fowler and Hollyoaks stages the longest ever on-screen kiss with the kiss between Ellie Hunter and Ben Davies

lasting a disgusting 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Ugh! I don't want to see that. A 3 minute kiss. Jesus Christ. Must not have had much content. I wonder if that's longer than any of the songs we're covering this week. Yeah. I think there's a good chance.

Yeah, well the thing I'm also wondering about as well is like, you know how when Family Guy have, like, they don't have enough content for a full episode so they just play a Conway Twitty performance for, like, three minutes just to pad out the time. Yeah. Is it the same thing with

this Hollyoaks episode where they didn't quite have 25 minutes and so they just made these characters kiss for, like, three and a half minutes? I mean, maybe, but, like, three minutes is so much longer than it sounds like do you remember that have you ever seen the video for danger high voltage by electric six where they have an instrumental bit for about 20 seconds that is filled by two of them just kissing like uninterrupted and it feels so long it's like oh my god stop

after about 20 seconds three minutes jesus christ there's so much you could do in that time you could boil an egg you could you know quickly go to the shop there's just so much you can do in three minutes wow and on channel four kate lawler wins the third season of big brother becoming the first female winner in the process on the bbc the first sport relief telethon is broadcast on the 13th of July And Channel 5 broadcasts The Great Dome Robbery A dramatisation of the raid on Millennium Dome in the year 2000 So, proof, if anything, that this weird sort of genre of TV

Where it's like, remember that news event from 18 months ago? Well, here's Kenneth Branagh's version of it. It feels like, you know, it seems like that event, that kind of TV has never really gone away. Like, there was that whole thing where they dramatised the whole, like, first six weeks of the pandemic with Boris Johnson. Yeah. It was, like, the main character.

There was that one about the coalition being formed as well wasn't there and about Brexit as well where Benedict Cumberbatch played Dominic Cummings which was just bizarre I think there was one about Waggath of Christie recently as well there was where

Natalia Tenner played Rebecca Vardy in a very fun bit of casting I meant to watch that actually yeah my to be honest andy my like drive to watch those kinds of shows are in minus numbers so just i'm kind of glad that like it's not just a new thing where it's like oh let's get on the outrageous hot button topics and make a tv show in like three weeks like it seems that they've just always been a thing um Andy how are the album charts faring at the moment yeah a bit more varied than the last few weeks mainly just because there's more time to fill it with

quite frankly um yeah so Eminem show was still very much at large um we talked about that last week and that was still number one for several weeks of the period that we're covering. Five weeks in total. Went six times platinum, was one of the biggest albums of the year, but it was eventually unseated by Oasis with Heathen Chemistry, the lead single of which was

The Hindu Times, which we've already covered a few weeks ago. That only spent one week at number one though, which is a very far cry from some of their previous albums. It went three times platinum, it was somewhere in the top 20 for the year, so it did okay, but again, that's a very far cry from Oasis's

glory days. They are kicked off the top spot one week later in mid-July by Red Hot Chili Peppers, who had an absolutely storming run with By The Way, which was only at the number one spot for three weeks, but did go seven times platinum.

It was an absolutely huge seller in the UK. And I remember seeing that everywhere at the time. It produced quite a lot of big, chunky singles as well that did really well. It was probably the most mainstream they've ever got, I think, at that time. But, yeah. And that was Unseated by Bruce Springsteen with The Rising in the first week of August, just before we finish. Yeah, that was Unseated by Bruce Springsteen for one week at number one. An album which I have never listened to.

I'm not a big fan of Bruce Springsteen. Can either of you shed any light on this one? Not on his recent stuff, no. I sort of stop around the mid-'80s, late-'80s, to be honest, with Springsteen. That's where my knowledge of him kind of stops. Just want to throw some shade on By The Way by Red Hot Chili Peppers,

which remains one of just the most thoroughly dull albums I've ever, ever listened to. Like, By The Way is fine, and The Zephyr Song is also fine, and Can't Stop is, you know, it's tolerable. But, like, the rest of it, it's like it may as well not have happened to me. Like, just a thoroughly... It's like a... I wouldn't have happened to me. Like, just a thoroughly...

It's like a... I wouldn't say like a negative experience, but it just feels like you haven't experienced something. Yeah, it's not my favourite album in the world. I do like the Zephyr song. I think that's quite nice, but I can't stop in particular. That song is the first song that I ever sang live in a band. It was the opening song of my ever sang live in a band.

It was the opening song of my teenage high school band's first ever gig. And let me tell you, that is not a fun song for a singer to sing for their first time out because it's at that one high note for so much of it. It's just like... All the way through. It was no fun at all. So I always look back on that song with just resentment It's just like... All the way through. Can't stop the rhythm of the shanty. It was no fun at all. So I always look back on that song with just resentment. Because it's like, why did I have to open my entire performing career with that shite?

But never mind. Yeah. Lizzie, how are the states? Well, in the singles chart, Ashanti's 10-week reign at number one was finally ended on June 29th. When Nelly took the top spot with Hot In Here for seven consecutive weeks. It was his first number one hit in the US, eventually going double platinum and finishing at number three on the year end list. But it got stuck at number four in the UK behind a song we'll be covering this week. Meanwhile, in the albums chart, we've got two albums to discuss this week. The US finally caught up to the UK and put The Eminem Show at number one for five weeks.

It was the best-selling album of 2002, not just in the US but worldwide. To date, it's sold over 12 million copies in the US and 27 million copies worldwide, making it the second best-selling album worldwide of the noughties and the third best-selling album worldwide of the 21st century so far so we'll come to the best-selling of the 21st century on the podcast in a couple of years time but do either of you want to take a guess of what the best-selling album of the noughties worldwide is? Oh, gosh. I'm going to think about this.

And I'll say my guesses once I've thought of them. I've got one immediate thought. I can give you a clue if you need it. Is it hybrid theory? Oh, my God, Rob, you've got it in one. Yes! It's Hybrid Theory. Yes.

It's sold 30 million copies worldwide to date. The only reason I said that is because, I mean, I'm a really big fan of Hybrid Theory. I love that record. I was listening to it literally just yesterday. But I nearly said Meteora, but I remember that not. I was listening to it literally just yesterday, but I nearly said Meteora, but I remember that not being quite as successful. I remember about, in podcast terms,

about a year ago when we were discussing the Nielsen ratings for the biggest selling album since they started taking figures, it ended up being Metallica. And I think my guess was Hybrid Theory or the Eminem show or something and it turned out to be wrong but I thought I'll try it again because I do

remember the numbers that Hybrid Theory shifted were massive just huge yeah good guess and finally this week Nelly's second album Nellyville took the top spot for three weeks it eventually finished at number three on the year end list behind Eminem at number one and Creed at number two, and went seven times

platinum in the US. However, despite spending 10 non-consecutive weeks in the UK top 10, it got stuck at number two on two separate occasions in the UK, behind Oasis's Heathen Chemistry in July and the Foo Fighters' One by One in November. Okay, right, on to our songs for this week. And the first up is this. You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you, girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on, baby, light my fire. Come on, baby, light my fire.

Try to set the night on fire Oh, the time to hesitate is through There's no time to wallow in the mire If I was to say to you That our love becomes a funeral pyre Come on, baby, light my fire Come on baby, light my fire Try to set the night on fire

This is Light My Fire by Will Young. Released as the second single from his debut album, entitled From Now On, Light My Fire is Will Young's second single overall to be released in the UK. It is his second single to reach number one after Anything Is Possible, double A-side with Evergreen, reached the summit earlier this year. It is not the last time we'll be covering Will on this podcast. The song is a cover of Jose Feliciano's arrangement of the 1967 song released by The Doors, which reached number 49 upon its original release and then reached number

7 in 1991. Jose Feliciano's version of the song reached number 7 in 1968. Light My Fire went straight in at number 1 as a brand new entry, knocking Eminem off the top of the charts. It stayed at number 1 for 2 weeks. In its first week atop the charts, it sold 177,000 copies, beating competition from We're On The Ball by Ant & Dec, which got to number 2, and Hey Baby Unofficial World Cup Remix by DJ Otzi, which got to number 10. I wonder what's happening in the world right now. In its second week at number 1, it sold 62,000 copies, beating competition from Be Cool by Paffendorf, which got to number 7, Blurry by Puddle of Mud, which got to number eight,

and Dove by Mooney, which got to number nine. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, Light My Fire dropped five places to number six, and by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 24 weeks. The song was officially certified gold in 2020 after it sold 400,000 copies in the UK. I think we're probably going to get a lot of those just because it gets nudged up by streaming figures. We have contributed towards its

certificate status just by listening to it this week in preparation for the episode. Andy, Like My Fire by Will Young. How do we feel? Yeah, can I just start by briefly paying tribute to On The Ball by Anton Dirk, because that's like

the main reason I can easily recite most of the 2002 England players, because that bit in the middle, it's Neville to Campbell! I'm not going to do the whole thing, but I could. Let me tell you. Anyway, so this, yeah, it's interesting, really me tell you. Anyway. So this, yeah. It's interesting, really, because you would look at this

on paper and think, okay, so there's this person who's just won a talent show. He did some schmaltzy winner's song. And now we're giving him a song by The Doors to cover. You'd be like, ooh, that feels like that's going to be controversial.

That feels like that is a little bit of a big, bold choice. But it really works, I think. I think that, you know, I've been very, very complimentary to Will Young last time we talked about him and I stand by it, that I do think he's got a really lovely, soulful voice. And the likes of Evergreen and Anything Is Possible was just not a match for his style, really. You know, he's not someone who does big you know westlife style you know stand off the stool and deliver the key

change that's just not him he does more soulful stuff and this is a really good fit for him and for most of let's say the first one or two minutes of this track i was like actually this is really nice this really suits him and he really kind of finds his own way around the song in a way that makes it sound like it's his own which is kind of the highest compliment you can give to a cover really then my opinion changes because they can't resist the urge to turn it into a big you know over the top pop song with the you know the strings piping in and this overproduction at the end and most of all this kind of running out of road very quickly where will just sort of trails off and does variations of the word light my fire in every

possible way for the last minute or so like i was listening to this in the car with mosman and we got to the point where that starts kicking in and um he said to me so how long have we got left this song and i was like we're two minutes in out of three and a half and already it's turned into like light light light my fire little little light give me a light give me a my give me a fire you know he just sort of trails off in a way that's really strange and it's such a shame because before it turns into that big sprawling thing that it's not designed to be you know it's actually really nice and if he just kept that tone all i say here no it's not his decision but if the song had just kept that all the way

and it just kept this as a nice sort of restrained guitar number where you know it's just sort of like a jazz bar kind of performance i think this would have been absolutely great and it was really good to start with and this is definitely a key indicator of where will young is going you know this is far more his thing than evergreen was but i do think it falls apart so quickly um that i have to be quite harsh on it because of that. You know, there needs to be more thought process into this rather than just, well, we've got a minute to fill. Just go for it. Just kind of do what you want. But you can only use the words light, my and fire and do it for a whole minute, which, by the way, is two minutes shorter than that kiss on Hollyoaks.

But my gosh, it feels longer. But anyway, yeah, it's good up until that point, but then it falls apart completely and it became kind of laughable, in my opinion. But it's a shame. I'd say the first two minutes of this song are like an eight. I really love this. And then the last minute or so is like a two or a three.

Real shame, real shame. I feel like they had the makings of something really nice really authentic here but then they wanted that number one they wanted to get that sort of pop factor into it and shied away from making something truly authentic and truly true to the artist and just got lost just got lost so yeah it's a real story of two halves for me and I feel quite sorry for Will, because I feel like he would have really embraced this and been like, oh yeah, yeah, really kind of like this choice for me, and then this production that gets done to it,

it's such a shame. But yeah, yeah, I don't think Will is to blame for it at all. It's okay, on the whole, it's a very mixed bag of a song um yeah so it's a sort of not a thumbs up or a thumbs down really it's a kind of i don't know it's a mess so yeah yeah you've got some really good points there andy like with this and another artist we'll be talking about later on i'm surprised they've popped up again on this podcast so soon and I must not have been paying enough attention to the charts around this time because I'd misremembered this as being released much later on but what's actually happened is that the AA side has only just left the top 40 and Simons, Cowell and Fuller must have had itchy trigger fingers and been desperate to keep will young in the public consciousness

it's surprising to me that they took this approach given what happened with hearsay the previous year where they crashed into the charts and crashed straight back out again within a matter of months presumably because of burnout on behalf of both the group and the public but like given that I would have assumed that Willie Young would have been given more room to grow and find his own identity as a performer but then I realised something quite obvious that neither Cowell nor Fuller actually wants that for their performers because when that happens they inevitably start to realise that they can make a go of it on their own with more freedom to express themselves and more opportunity to make money for themselves instead of whoever is breathing down their necks that week like with fuller especially we've already seen this happen

with the spice girls all of them had strong personalities and identities and so were much better equipped to break off from Fuller and manage their own affairs. You compare the Spice Girls to S Club 7 and Will Young and Person Will Be Discussing Later, spoiler alert, and you start to notice that Fuller began to prefer singers that didn't have strong outward personalities. He preferred singers who were affable and nice because they were more likely to be malleable and subservient and therefore less likely to break off without Fuller having the final say. So we end up discussing Will Young again only a matter of weeks after his previous number one and admittedly I do like this more than Evergreen and a lot more than anything is possible even though it's another cover of a cover

that we've had so much of lately on the show like Will's warm voice suits this song really well so much so that I'd even say that I like this vocal performance just as much as the Jose Feliciano cover, if not more so. My main issue with the song, as you say, Andy, is the production, which overextends itself and adds unnecessary complications to a song that doesn't really need it. Like where the Feliciano version shines is that combination of his finger-picked guitar and the string arrangements just drifting through the song like a gentle summer breeze and the barely there percussion keeps it grounded and lets those aforementioned elements stand out. On this version it starts out quite similar for the first

verse and chorus but then a sharp tinny drum loop kicks in and for some reason it's distractingly high in the mix and it cuts through all of the other bits of the arrangement and leaving only a bit of room for Will's voice to poke through and as you mentioned Andy it runs out of steam towards the end and it goes on for about a minute too long with Will just ad-libbing excessively and embarrassingly as the song fades out for about a week because he's just going light my fire

light my fire light my fire which Jose Feliciano does in fairness but then he starts to go light light light come on girl light do it you gotta do it light what are you doing just just fade the song out earlier. It's this kind of production misfire that exposes an otherwise good cover, where an artist with more creative freedom would have been able to look in the mirror

and take one thing off before leaving it on record. But again, that's nothing against Will himself himself who more than holds his own on this song but just a couple of decisions production wise hold this back and it's a bit of a shame really but overall i i like it it's a mild thumbs up yeah i mean some great points there lizzie i the thing is what's weird is that it does have a fade out. It's just a really, really long one. It's so long. It's like 40 seconds to fade out. Yeah.

It's stupidly long. It's one of those ones that's so long that you sort of almost don't realize it's happening. And you're kind of surprised when it ends because you haven't even realized it's fading out. It's very odd. Yeah. The only thing I would say about the Simons and their kind of approach to this is that we do have the benefit of hindsight now and it's quite important to remember that actually yeah the idea of how successful talent show winners work in terms of that you know with the x factor where they would do that one winner single

then go away and make an album and become an artist and then relaunch themselves that obviously is what works and we don't know that at this point and if i can see why it would be the immediate attraction to be like right well we need to get them straight out there or people will forget about them which we know is actually not the case you could give these things six months after the first single and it would be okay so i do kind of want to give them a slight pass on that they didn't know that at the time that you could take a break but that doesn't excuse it it's still as you, it's still a very kind of brutal, numbers-led and very much not artist-led way of managing music. And, yeah, I do feel quite sorry for both Will and Gareth here

that they are just grist to the mill. They're just being churned out here. Yeah, I do agree with you on that. I maybe slightly disagree with you there, Andy, because I do think if you know that the artist has the talent to back it up you can leave them as long as you want look at someone like kylie minogue who went away for a bit and came back and completely reinvented herself it's it's a possibility to to go away and people might sort of forget you a little bit but then you come back and if you're confident enough and you can make a bold enough statement,

then you're straight back in there. I feel like I'm sort of in between you a little bit. I like the fact that this kind of changes the flavour of the original and goes for the more flamenco feel of Jose Feliciano's version, which is something I appreciate. Like you, Andy, I imagine myself in a kind of low-key bar where there's no actual lights, it's all candles, and whatever drink you buy is at least a pound more

than you think it's going to be. They've not gone for the obvious cover version of the Doors original. They've picked one that was recorded a year later. It makes it a little more colourful, I think, the particular arrangement that they've gone for. I agree, though, that by the end it kind of feels a little bit overblown, it feels like they're a little bit anxious about how to develop it, and so they just think, we'll just'll just do the again it just feels like there's a lot of artists around right now who their writing team are just going well whatever westlife are

doing it's looking pretty good in it so we'll just do what they do and it kind of takes the life out of of the song by the end but the thing i'm really really distracted by is, I can't tell if Will makes this so much worse, or so much better, just by being there, like, his over-pronunciation of things like fire, and mire, and hire, like, when he does it the first time, it's like, oh, okay, that's an interesting, like, inflection you've gone for there, and then he keeps doing it, and it's like oh right okay so it wasn't like a one-time thing just for a bit of variation it's like you're just going to keep doing this and you become i've never been so aware of words like maya and pire

before just i just like it's not like they lose meaning but it's just a bit like oh i thought it was just gonna be this thing you did once at the start of the song, and nope, turns out you're just going to keep doing it. And it sort of gets annoying after a while, and you start to think, surely he must know how annoying this is, but he keeps leaning into it as much as he can, and then when you get to the end, it's like something else snaps. And honestly, I think if the track didn't fade out,

somewhere in the uk will young would still be going lie lie lie lie do it yeah do it yeah bye and he just would not have stopped i feel like it's someone needs to like turn the volume down and come put his hand on his shoulder and just sort of go well it's done now you know you know like that um that scene in the simpsons where um lenny's like boy homer you are slow and then homer's like something said not good and then he thinks about it for ages and then it's suddenly it's four hours later boy homer are you still here you really are slow and it does feel a little bit like will will come out of whatever zone he's wandered into and be like um or when um at the end of i think

it's the first episode of the thick of it where hugh comes out of his office and the whole the whole office the whole uh office is empty and he goes where are my people where are my people and terry just sort of wanders over to him and goes um they've gone home secretary it's 5 30 and it just fits a little bit like that, where Will would be like, oh, where's everybody gone? It's like, well, you've been doing this for five hours. And it's like they play the footage back to him, and it's like Apu when he thinks he's a hummingbird or something.

It just feels like he goes off somewhere. And I can't tell if I love it or hate it for that reason, but it is distracting. I don't know if I enjoy how much I'm distracted by it, it just feels like it's, yeah I can't tell if I like this or dislike this and so I'm just like, I'm gonna sit

on the fence and try to just remember the first two minutes and like you and me. They really are lovely aren't they those first two minutes, like I, yeah I almost feel weird about admitting it but it really is like really nice I was really enjoying those first two minutes so it's yeah, I almost feel weird about admitting it, but it really is, like, really nice. I was really enjoying those first two minutes. So it's frustrating for something like this to happen.

I still say first minute just because I don't like the drums on this. That's fair, yeah. The only other thing that I wanted to say on this one is about the fact that it's not just out of nowhere, it's not a random choice, that Will had performed this twice on Pop Idol. And it's sort of his signature song, that he'd sung this in one of the,

I think it's the episode where he stood up to Simon Cowell, was after he'd sung this and said, I don't think you can say that that was boring. And then he sung it again in the final, apparently. And Gareth Gates' Unch gates unchained melody that was sort of his signature song that he'd sung several times on pop idol as well so we're still very much in the phase of cashing in on them as a pop idol winner and not really concentrating on them as an artist yet but i do think there's still something to the fact that like this suits

will more like i'm not surprised that he sung this twice like this is definitely more his jam than evergreen is. But that's just interesting as well, that maybe that's why it took off and got to number one, because people already associated this song with Will. So, yeah. True. The thing I read on the Wikipedia page as well

that it sort of unlocked a memory a little bit that I'd forgotten about, which was that he performed this on World Idol, which was a really brief one-time event thing where like yeah completely bombed yeah yeah like again it's i think it's something that we have just kind of forgotten about culturally where it's like you know members of pop idols from wherever they just kind of do a one-off thing and then was a winner decided i I have no idea. I've got no idea.

I might have to check that out before we next encounter Will. Yes. Not long now. Because we do encounter him again so we're going to get a chance, aren't we? Yeah. I'm looking forward to that one. Okay then, next up is this. Thank you. A little more spark, close your mouth and open up your heart And baby, satisfy me Satisfy me, baby Baby, close your eyes and listen to the music Dig through the summer breeze ¶¶ Okay, this is A Little Less Conversation by Elvis vs. JXL.

Released as the lead single from his third studio album entitled Radio JXL, a broadcast from the computer hell cabin, A Little Less Conversation is JXL's fourth single overall to be released in the UK and is first to reach the top of the charts. It is also his first and only single to reach the UK top 40 and therefore his only song to reach number one. The song was also included on the compilation album Elvis 30 Number One Hits, credited to Elvis Presley. It's

not the last time we'll be discussing Elvis Presley on this podcast. A Little Less Conversation is a remix of the song released by Elvis Presley in 1970, but did not chart in the UK at the time. A Little Less Conversation went straight in at No. 1 as a brand new entry, knocking Will Young off the top of the charts it stayed at number one for four weeks in its first week at number one it sold 279 000 copies beating competition from that week's number two which was love at first sight by kylie minogue so close in its second week yeah in its second week atop the charts, it sold 201,000 copies

and beat competition from that week's number two, Stop Crying Your Heart Out by Oasis. In its third week at number one, it sold 188,000 copies, beating competition from that week's number two, The Logical Song by Scooter. Damn it. I know.

And in its fourth and final week, it sold 136,000 copies, beating competition from that week's number two, By the Way, by Red Hot Chili Peppers. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, A Little Less Conversation dropped two places to number three. It left the chart after 14 weeks in 2002, but then re-entered the charts in 2005 for six more weeks.

As of today, it has spent a total of 20 weeks inside the UK Top 100 and has sold 1.2 million copies in the UK, which means that it is certified double platinum. And just another note, which is that at number four, it was Nelly's Hot In Here, which we mentioned before in the episode. So this was the song that kept Nelly off the top. Not that Nelly would have got to the top,

because he would have been stopped by one of the songs that we mentioned. So, Lizzie, Elvis and JXL, number one for four weeks. So, yeah, how are you feeling on this? Yeah well for me this song is the soundtrack to the last summer of my childhood around this time would have been when I had just

finished my SATs, I'm not sure about either of you but we had to do an end of year play just after our SATs were over and done with in our year we had to do the Tem-of-year play just after our sats were over and done with. In our year, we had to do The Tempest in the school sports hall. Christ! Primary school kids doing The Tempest? Yeah.

God! We just did, like, Joseph and the Technical Adrinko. Oh, you cowards. But yeah, I was in The Tempestest and I was chosen as one of the witches who I'm not even sure were in the original. And we all had to wear pink tie-dye t-shirts and dance around a cauldron while casting a spell of some sort,

all while being careful not to bump into the, you know, the apparatus that was against the wall, which every school seemed to have but never used. Yeah, the sort of undefined series of chains and bars that just no one knows what they're there for. What were they? And if you touched them, it'd be like, I don't know, an alarm would go off and the PE teacher would rush in like,

no, get off it! Yeah, right next to the rolled up gym mats that were never unrolled. And the benches with the little knobbly bits on the sides. So if you had to sit on it, you'd have gotten stabbed. And like, I mean, I barely remember the sats themselves or the last day of school, but I recall being optimistic about the future. And the summer itself was a long and warm one, which felt like the last taste of true freedom.

That summer I spent another few weeks in Malaga with family, spending days by the pool with slush puppies and nights on the square, running back and forth from the arcade to the bar to ask for more money to spend on the Simpsons arcade cabinet, or Tekken 2 if I was feeling really confident that night. And they'd also have these traders on the square of an evening. In particular, I spent a fair bit of money on... It was a henna tattoo of a cross for some reason.

I wasn't particularly religious, but I thought that's the thing people get tattoos of, so I guess that's my choice. As well as on pirated CDs from one of the traders like I remember noticing that there were two albums with heathen in the name one by Oasis and the other by David Bowie but I didn't buy either of those I eventually settled on a pretty shonky copy of a Queen greatest hits compilation because I'd usually be spending more time with older family on these holidays. I found that I got on with them better than I did most kids and listening to Queen with

them in the apartment was something I'd often end up doing in the middle of the day when the sun was at its most blistering before getting ready to go out in the evening for food and drinks. Once or twice we'd even end up at a karaoke bar as a family. I was told by my dad only recently that I'd got up a few times to perform some songs, namely a couple of Queen songs and this song, A Little Less Conversation, which I was quite fond of at the time and had on constant rotation on my mini disc player. I was so well liked in fact that my dad had been asked by the bar owners if I could come back another evening which we did

and I did I think some more Queen songs and It Wasn't Me by Shaggy and I'm not sure if they asked me to come back after that one but it doesn't matter because we're not talking about that we're talking about this song

which is the perfect summer jam for a fledgling 11 year old not yet blighted by social pressure and a struggle with identity because it's big and loud and stupid sounding of its time but with enough of a link to the past

that you could play it to your older family and they wouldn't outright hate it and they might even strike up a conversation with you about Elvis and other music from their own childhood. All well and good for an 11 year old but 20 years on it's still big, it's still loud, it's still stupid but I also find this a bit obnoxious and irritating. It's an example of that big beat sound that had already been done to death at this point, in particular by the likes of Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and many others, including Junkie XL. And by 2002 this sort of thing was kind of old hat and it's

easy to see why. If you set aside the novelty of this being the first legal remix of an Elvis song outside the Presley organisation, I find this pretty difficult to get excited about. It's a dead artist being reimagined by a dead genre, swept up by a multi-billion dollar corporation to, I don't know, sell more football boots. And so, as much as I would have happily listened to this song when I was 11, I probably wouldn't have admitted to listening to this song as I turned 12, and certainly not as I turned 13. Because that pre-teenage phase is where you become most susceptible to influence by others in terms of your own taste in music.

So that last summer of childhood meant the last time that my own personal taste in music was shaped by what I heard on the radio, and this was the predominant sound of that period in my life. So for that reason, while I don't particularly like this song, I can never hate it. It's a soundtrack to a moment in my life where everything seemed new and exciting, where the possibilities were endless, where I could close my mouth and open up my heart, and maybe life

would satisfy me. Come on, Andy, I'm tired of talking. Oh, what a story! Oh, I don't know what to say. I just feel like I've listened to a genuine slice of your life there. Just, wow. I don't know what to say. I just feel like I've listened to a genuine slice of your life there. Just, wow. I don't know how to follow that.

And that was an excerpt from the life and times of Lizzie from Hits 21 on sale next week. By favour and favour. Yeah, it does. It honestly feels like an excerpt from some kind of book. Although what it has, i think to be honest what it's presented me with is the fact that my uh music tastes were influenced by the radio a lot further into my life than i think yours were you say that around the age of like 11 or 12 you start

moving away um well yeah this would have been the peak of it and I think starting high school you know I started to make new friends and obviously was introduced to different kinds of music particularly hip hop right because I'm still very much a radio kid until I'm about 14 there is a very clear cut off point that we'll get to

I'd also listen to a lot of music from games as the years go on as well you well like Tony Hawk and a couple of others yeah right, okay, I know that makes sense Andy, yeah Andy, go ahead yeah, oh great, well I'll follow that brilliant, thanks very much for that yeah, I don't have nearly as much to say about it

except that I also although it wasn't in the same time in my life, I think I was a year behind because I left school the year after this, but I do remember this being everywhere. Like this song was absolutely massive. I would maybe say, well, there's another song or two

coming up later in the year that I might say this about, but I would maybe say this is sort of a defining song of 2002 for me, just in terms of what seemed to be the most dominant song what do I kind of think about the most in terms of 2002

I would say it's probably this and yeah, also similarly to Ulysses, although I liked it at the time when I was a kid, I never really revisited it and listened to it. It's come up a few times on Spotify, and I've always been like, oh, yeah, it's quite fun.

But I've never really revisited it. And it'd been probably a good four or five years at least since I'd listened to this when I revisited it for the show. And I just really, really had a lovely nostalgic time. Because it was so big at the time, because I was a fan of it at the time, despite the fact that I hadn't listened to it for years, I knew it inside out.

I knew absolutely every bell and whistle of the song. I knew what was coming at every moment. And it was almost just kind of like being at karaoke, you know, just sort of knowing this song so well and really kind of being back in your childhood shoes is a lovely feeling. And so I'm going to go very lightly on it because of that because it's just a real nostalgia factor for one

for me this. I do have my problems with it I think that for one thing the I don't know whether it's to do with the original track or whether it's something to do with the juxtaposition between the remix and the original but Elvis' voice being absolutely soaked in reverb i think causes

problems like it makes it really obvious that this is a remix rather than an original track and like it's kind of got an audible 60s 70s sound to it clashing against the um 2002 production and that's a problem for me i don't really like that um but overall i think this is really nicely put together i think it retains just enough of the original while adding enough new stuff that it feels like a fresh twist that's respectful to the original song. I think it's really, I don't know whether I'm just kind of adding two and two together in my head to make five but I do feel like there's a big influence here from the Soulchild remix of 19 2000 by gorillas which was quite a big hit in 2001 i have to mention it

because i was a huge fan of that that was like one of my very favorite songs of the early noughties and i do think this sort of sounds quite similar it has a similar kind of feel to it as that remix where it doesn't turn it into full-on big you know dance smash but it just kind of adds some lift to it adds some beat to it makes it more of a sort of song that you can dance to on the dance floor rather than the original track which is a little bit more mellow than that um i do think you know having listened to the original and listened to the remix i do think it really does add energy to it i think it really does make the song so much more fun um but it's really hard to say because this is one of those songs that to me is just so washed

in nostalgia and it's so of its time that it's almost it's very hard to look at it in isolation really and I have to be kind of led by feelings on this one which was that I love this at the time I still think it's very fun to listen to now partly because of that nostalgia and that's all I can really say I cannot separate the two in my head similar to what I said about Eternal Flame last year where to me that's just a very specific thing for my life that I can never detach the song from

so it will always get praise from me I don't have a great connection to it or anything but this is just so emblematic of its era of an era when I was a child and the time i look back on very fondly that yeah of course i'm gonna enjoy this and i genuinely think it's a really nicely put together remix i think that it doesn't kind of squash the original in any way um although like i, there is that sort of clash of styles in production between Elvis' voice and what JXL does with it. But that's quite a minor point, really.

I can see why this was such a big hit, because it really is something quite unique and different for the charts at this time. It's not the last time we'll see something like this get to number one, as well, that the public really likes this stuff in terms of you know old songs that are given a fresh lick of paint that just go massive you know there's a couple of other number ones that are exactly the same um that do exactly the same thing that are coming up in the late noughties so i will be sure to refer back to it then but yeah i really like this um yeah i've got nothing else to say i just really like this. Yeah, I've got nothing else to say. I just really like this. Yeah, I think it's really fun. Oh. I kind of land in the middle of the two of you.

I think... I find it interesting that the samples pitch down. Yeah. That is odd. Yeah, I think it plays into this myth of Elvis that exists today, rather than the reality of Elvis that

occurred especially around the late 60s, which is that of Elvis that exists today rather than the reality of Elvis that occurred, especially around the late sixties, which is like, you know, the, the period that the song was like originally recorded. And then I think it was released in 1970. It was on an album or a compilation or something like that.

Um, and it makes it sound like he's mid seventies Vegas Elvis, you know, the, the, the thank you very much Elvis, rather than the post-comeback elvis who had a much lighter voice and was more vivacious and had a bit more energy um for

obvious reasons um but like have you ever have you ever actually heard the clip of elvis saying thank you very much you know the the thing that people always say is thank you very much. It's nothing like that. It's become this thing that Elvis was incapable of talking without pressing his chin into his Adam's apple. That's

not really what Elvis ever really was. I feel like it feels like an Elvis impersonator the way that Elvis sounds in this song. It's sort of like Elvis ever really was. I feel like there's this, it feels like an Elvis impersonator, the way that Elvis sounds in this song, that it's sort of like pitched down to sort of like make him sound more like this, this, like he doesn't really talk like that. It sounds more like Johnny Bravo.

Yeah, exactly. Well, Johnny Bravo was clearly a riff on Elvis, right? Of course, yeah. Yeah. And so, I don't know, I feel like that has sort of cemented that thing for an entire generation where it's like

it feels like for our generation I think that this song being pitched down to come on baby I'm tired of talking it feels like it's kind of cemented it for us and it's not it's not really a criticism I'm not really praising it either

it's just kind of like an interesting observation because when i went back and listened to the original i was like oh why has he done that you know especially with like um modern sampling as well um i mean we're just uh we're just at the point uh where as it's now known as chipmunk soul begins to take off and so pitching up for the sample becomes very popular. As for the song, the sample flip is great. It's decorated with lots of little 21st century bells and whistles, and it's restructured slightly so that the new surroundings are suited. It updates it really nicely while remaining respectful to the original.

I think it captures the fun of Elvis. I think it captures the sex appeal of Elvis. I'm really into this up to and just about including the second chorus, but then it starts to run a bit long. I think once it repeats that really good bridge section, the come on baby I'm tired of talking once it repeats that I think it's a little too comfortable with itself.

Yeah. And it builds tension twice in the same way and it means that the effect of that very last chorus is diminished somewhat by the radio edit like because you get the that that it's one of my all-time probably all one of the all-time great bridge sections just the come on come on come on come on come on come on and then they do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do and you like begging for the release but when it does it twice you're like begging for the release, but when it does it twice,

you're like, oh, we sort of did this earlier, didn't we? Like, I don't know. I think as much as it captures, like I say, the fun and the sex appeal of Elvis, I do kind of have a hard time feeling it by the second half of the song. I don't feel excited or moved by this it's like how i feel when like i stand in like 99 of art galleries where it's like stand and appreciate everything for what it is but i don't really paintings don't move me in the way that they can move other people

you know i mean i forget the name of the guy who hosts or he's a judge on the great pottery throwdown but like he'll be holding a piece of work in his hands and he'll start crying i know i know the guy yeah and yeah and like i'm like oh well that's you know it's it's beautiful that somebody could be so moved by that but i don't get it and i feel like it's a similar thing with this song where it's like i can stand and appreciate it and be like oh well it's clearly very talented whoever made this and i couldn't do this but i'm sort of like thinking you know my legs are aching a bit and i want to go to the gift shop and that sort of thing and so yeah it just it's it's fine and i appreciate it and stuff but like and i get why it was so massive, helped partly by that 2002 The Cage Nike advert.

Yeah, the secret tournament. Footballers of the day, like all the football players I grew up wishing I could be, especially like Thierry Henry and Francesco Totti and Crespo, Mendiator. Less so Van Nistelrooy and Scholes, because I'm a City fan. I was never going to want to be a united player but i think yeah i talked before on this podcast about synergy um and i can't really imagine this song without in my head without also imagining the advert and i feel like the single artwork being silver plays into the fact that the ball they play with

in the advert is shiny silver and the whole thing feels like it has a grey filter on the lens as well. I think it's silver because it's 25 years since Elvis died. Yeah yeah Okay well that, it still all plays in really well. I know it does but I think

that, yeah just to say I think that's probably the other reason why, yeah. Yeah so it's just, yeah it's quite. No, it does, but I think that, just to say, I think that's probably the other reason why. Yeah. Yeah, so it's just, yeah, it's quite, it's, it was a bit of an experience. I seem to remember at the time just sort of like

wanting to watch the advert quite a lot because it's really hard to choreograph and shoot football, but I think they do it quite well in the advert.

It's really hard to film football and make it look natural but they make a really good go of it i think in that advert they have to do a lot of fast cutting but it's better than like i mean i'm watching the first season of the sopranos at the moment and that episode with meadows football team where like meadows stood in meadow stood as being the goalkeeper and she stood with her arms out permanently. Like, she's assumed the position to make a save before anyone's actually taken a shot. It just feels a bit unnatural.

And, like, the goal movies gave it a decent go but still kind of came short. And in the end, they had to just film footage of live Newcastle games and put it in the film and then pretend that it was part of the plot and but with this i feel like they make a good go of it the song really suits the um because you know that there's a when you're watching good football skillful footballers in full flow because i think like lewis figo is on this advert as well and like uh yeah you know i think might be in the adverto is on this advert as well and like uh i think might be

in the advert too yes yeah about that yes um and freddie jungberg and players like that like there's a certain suave to the way that they hold themselves when they're dribbling with the ball like it looks really aesthetically pleasing and there were just little moments in the song like especially the call and response bits from the elvis original that sort of think like yeah it's amazing how it translates from 1968 all the way through to the the point in football where it really started to become what it is now this idea of global superstars from football like the you know as for football being an international game all the time not just when the world cup's on admittedly the world cup is on and that's you know a big because i think that's why for some sort of inexplicable reason they've got um a

south korean player um involved who like played a few games for anderlecht. Oh, yeah, yeah. Solki Hyun, that's it, Solki Hyun, because he was, like, the big star of the South Korean national team, and so, like, you know, there's kind of, like, a cross-marketing thing with the World Cup and stuff. But, yeah, the song is fine. I think, like, you both, a long time has gone between hearing this as a kid and listening to it now like and sort of having anything to associate with it in terms of memory um i mean lizzie and andy your

memories are going to be way stronger than mine just because i was eight at the time this song came out so i'm a bit you know behind you i you. I don't do my stats until 2005. Yeah, all right. Show off. Just to say, by the way, I too have never cried over pottery. And I cry over everything. I cry over reality TV. So it really is quite rare to cry over pottery.

No, seriously, the other thing I wanted to say was about this image of Elvis. And I just so agree on that. I know that Elvis was an extremely problematic person, to say the very least. But in terms of his music, it was to sort of separate the art from the artist. I do think that, you know, the early music of Elvis

is so exciting and it's so, like, has so much raw energy and sex appeal to it you know it's it's so much fun to listen to and Elvis in those days was such a renegade was such a kind of rogue figure who was genuinely very thrilling you know very enthralling person and I absolutely hate that the universal image of Elvis is in that white suit with the shades and the bouffant hair playing Vegas, which I get why because that's how his career finished and that's how things ended up for him

but it's just so completely unrepresentative of his career and it probably lasted about four or five years that he was doing that kind of shtick in Vegas and it was utter garbage the stuff he was doing that kind of shit in Vegas and it was utter garbage you know the the stuff he was putting out at that time but I hate how it's really just

become the overriding image of Elvis like it drives me so mad and it existed before this it did exist before this like this is sort of what the image that I grew up on of Elvis um you know where and it happened even while he was alive, you know, the image of him took over the reality of him very, very quickly. You know, he told the story himself that he, at one point in the 70s, he entered an Elvis lookalike competition and came fourth. Like, the idea of Elvis has completely overtaken him, you know, while he was still alive. And it's a very depressing thing to look back on that the really exciting, really fantastic era of his career

has been just completely overridden by this sort of generic, weird, sort of leotard-wearing guy. And I feel like it makes him a really tough sell to people to say, go back and listen to Elvis. He was really good. Because people will think of him as the kind of person laughing while singing are you lonesome tonight or doing you know it's now or never or the wonder of you and it's like no no go back and listen like it's so frustrating and I just had to say that I know that we're going to talk about Elvis much more but I do think that

this song is kind of yeah representative that but it was a thing long before this, and I really hate it. It really drives me mad. Yeah. I mean, I tried to pinpoint the turning point, and I think it's that picture with Nixon. Yeah, I think that's what it is. Well, that's pretty much at that time where he transitions to that kind of stuff as well.

That is around the time he's come back from the army and starts going for the power ballads. I think those two things are sort of one. But yes, I think it's the picture of Nixon. Although that's when he becomes an establishment figure, really. Well, exactly, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, to save the vein in Andy's forehead,

we'll move swiftly on. I'll cry over it. And we'll finish up this week with this I've been letting you down down girl I know

I've been such a fool given into temptation I should have played it cool The situation got out of hand I hope you understand It can happen to anyone of us Anyone you think of

Anyone can fall, anyone can hurt someone they love Hearts will break, cause I made a stupid mistake It can happen to anyone of us, say you won't forgive me Okay, this is Any One Of Us in brackets Stupid Mistake by Gareth Gates. This is Anyone of Us, in brackets, Stupid Mistake by Gareth Gates. Released as the second single from his debut studio album entitled What My Heart Wants to Say, Anyone of Us, in brackets, Stupid Mistake, is Gareth Gates' second single to be released in the UK overall, and of course his second song to reach number one after Unchained Melody reached the summit earlier this year. Go back and listen to our episode on that if you want our thoughts on it. It's not the last time we'll be discussing Gareth on this podcast though. Any one of us went straight in at

number one as a brand new entry knocking Elvis and JXL off the top of the charts. It stayed at number one for three weeks. In its first week atop the charts, it sold 241,000 copies, beating competition from Foolish by Ashanti. No! Which got to number four, and Here I Am by Bryan Adams, which got to number five. Don't really have any interest in that. Oh, no. In its second week at number one, it sold 105,000 copies,

beating competition from Shooting Star by Flip and Phil, which got to number three and your song by elton john and alessandro safina which got to number four in its third and final week at the top it sold 67 000 copies beating competition from automatic high by s club juniors which got to number two just missing out on the top spot again, Underneath Your Clothes by Shakira, which got to number three, and Livin' It Up by Ja Rule and Case, which got to number five. When it was

knocked off the top of the charts, any one of us dropped one place to number two. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 16 weeks, and the song was certified platinum in the UK in 2018. Thank you very much once again, streaming figures. Andy, any one of us, Gareth Gates, go ahead.

Yeah, just to say, by the way, that I think we've kind of reached a turning point with me, you know, because I've noticed that every song that didn't make it to number one this week, I think this is the first time where I've remembered all of the songs very vividly. I think we've now reached a point where my memory of pop music at this time now will recall all of these songs, which hasn't always been the case in 2000 and 2001. I think we're there now where stuff like Automatic High, I'm like, yep, remember that very well. Underneath Your Clothes, remember that very, very well. I couldn't believe that both of those were

number ones. So yeah, we've reached a turning point with me I think yeah as for this ah so I don't really know what my opinion is on this because we have a very young singer here fresh out of pop idol who is sort of newly famous obviously needs a lot of steering and a lot of direction from his management. And they just don't really know what to do with him. That's the problem, really, because we've had Unchained Melody, which was a sort of guaranteed hit. He could have released the alphabet or the wheels on the bus and he would have got number one with that one. Now they have to actually do something with it. I don't know why I said the wheels on

the bus. Random aside, do you remember that there was a Madonna impersonator called Mad Donna who around this time released the wheels on the bus yes and because everyone thought it was Madonna it got to like number 10 and it was just a woman

who released the wheels on the bus knowing that people would think it was Madonna anyway that's why the wheels on the bus is in my head because I was reading about that last week I've gone on such an aside here already. So derailed. That's so good. Yeah, it got to number 17.

You can't. Good on you, Mad Donna. Anyway, so because he needs that steer and that management, what they've kind of given him here is something that is completely at odds where it's a song about kind of adult emotions of kind of yeah i i'm so in love with you and i'm so sorry i cheated on you but please take me back it's very much like back for good you know that kind of thing um you know quite a very well-worn trope but this kid is 16 i'm saying kid because he is basically still a child he's 16 years old you know he he's never

had a story to tell like this and if he he has, it's been like, you know, he snogged someone at the school disco while he was still seeing someone else. You know, it's, come on. He's never been in a proper relationship. It's just, it just doesn't really jive with me at all. He's got this really, really young, sweet and innocent voice that's like apologising for doing something quite bad to his girlfriend. It's like, what image

of Gareth are you trying to convey to me here? And this is sort of my second problem. That would be my first problem. Then my second problem with the song is that Gareth is being positioned as a very sweet and innocent young guy who is kind of boy next door who you can take home to your mum. But then we've got a song

about how he's not trustworthy. About how, oh oh i'm sorry i cheated on you but i promise i won't do it again anyone could do it you know anyone is capable of cheating and i'm listening to it and i'm like son of gareth i've never cheated not anyone is capable of cheating own your mistakes you know i think it's kind of comes it comes across as quite unlikable from the lyrics where he's sort of deflecting, saying, like, well, it's normal. You know, everybody cheats. Everybody makes a stupid mistake.

Like, come on, I'm singing, like, a love ballad, so it's time to forgive me now. It's like, no, it's not. Sorry, Gareth. No, you've done wrong. And I just don't, I really don't like it. It really just sort of annoys me. So that's sort of my second problem with it.

And overall, the whole thing is that, yeah, they don't know what Gareth's identity is as a singer and I think this is what eventually finishes him off that he's just too generic he's too bland very very likeable, endearing young singer but there's just no real substance that we can get behind

where there is with Will because Will has a voice that has a lot of character to it and Will finds a genre quite quickly that we can get behind where there is with will because will has a voice that has a lot of character to it and will finds a genre quite quickly whereas gareth is still in this pop mold where he's singing songs that are written for people it feels like written for people far older than him quite literally with his next single you know where he's releasing stuff from 20 30 years ago and yeah i think this is gareth's big problem as for the song itself I think it's okay

I think it's one of those songs in this era that is very much trying to be Westlife I think I was getting very strong

Westlife vibes from this throughout like it sounds very similar to something like My Love or to perhaps

Fool Again it kind of feels similar to one of those songs yeah right down to the fact that it has a key change and boy howdy to perhaps Fool Again. It kind of feels similar to one of those songs. Yeah. Right down to the fact that it has a key change, and boy, howdy, that key change hits you like a freight train. Like, I just did not see it coming at all,

because I didn't remember that it had one. And I just don't think it's signposted in any way. Like, I will harp on about this. I already have harped on about this many times. But the key to a successful key change is knowing that it's coming, but not knowing exactly when it's going to come, and sort of being fooled by it. This is like, not there. This is like, whoa, a key change? Didn't expect that. It doesn't work at all, it makes the whole thing really overblown and silly at the end, and yeah, it's a bit messy really. I do think

the actual song for the first couple of choruses and verses is nice enough um i like this kind of slight european influence that i can't quite put my finger on what it is but it sort of has you know some nice some nice styling to it i'm not gonna go as far as saying nice production because it's quite generic and i do think gareth is a very nice singer but I wouldn't go any further than that this is sort of bang on average for me and then it gets really cheesy at the end couple that with the fact that I don't like the lyrics at all and it plays into this trope of you know men can be forgiven for their mistakes because of man pain you know that can just get

in the bin I hate that as a trope and this is a very very clear example of it and yeah i overall i'm not a huge fan of this one it's it's it's very average with real stinking lyrics yeah yeah i agree with a lot of your points andy and again i'm very surprised to see gareth gates popping up again so soon like i won't repeat myself but i think a lot of what I said about Will earlier also applies to Gareth who's perhaps the the nicest of those pop idol big names from that year and I mean this is just as overblown and melodramatic as his cover of On Chain Melody but Gareth can pull off that style in a way that I don't think the more soulful and down-to-earth Will Young could.

And the arrangement here is quite nice as well, along with a surprisingly complex chord progression that jumps between various keys to add a bit of tension. But like you, Andy, my biggest problem with this song, though, other than the blinding key change, are lyrics like you mentioned Andy which I think are you know too self-pitying and ignorant of the problem like I totally agree with something you said there Andy that it doesn't seem right for sweet and innocent Gareth's to be singing this unsympathetic song about admitting to infidelity but deflecting and dodging the issue so much that you're not

actually accepting any responsibility just saying well nobody's perfect and shrugging off something that would undoubtedly cause long-lasting damage and trust issues in someone his age like yes anyone can hurt someone they love but it's how you take ownership of it when that does happen to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Unless you do that you'll be stuck in a vicious cycle where that infidelity is inevitably going to happen again and again because you haven't addressed the root cause of the unhappiness in your existing relationship. addressed the root cause of the unhappiness in your existing relationship. Even if the other half of this song decides to make up with Gareth, if the dissatisfaction isn't addressed and dealt with properly, the cycle starts over again. So all in all, this is a really odd case. It's a good

performance of a morally dubious song, but then again, maybe that was the whole point like the sweet and innocent image of Gareth surely can't last forever and the Simons might have already been trying to figure out the next steps for Gareth's career in hindsight I think it's a lot easier to see a path forming for Will's career than Gareth's and we see the culmination of that much sooner than you might have expected at this point in 2002 where they both seemed unstoppable yeah

I just want to add by the way there's one thing that I kept you both teased about before and which I really have to address now which is that my mum absolutely hated this song at the time and I really have to mention it because it's my main memory of this song and there's one very specific reason she hated it which is my mum really hates americanisms in songs she really really doesn't like it when people you know who are

british like go all american in their songs and she hated the fact that every time the line comes up, he goes, stupid mistake. It just drove my mum nuts. And I used to wind her up with it by turning the radio up for that bit where he goes, stupid mistake. So yeah, I just had to get that in there. Because every time I hear it now, I can't unhear it,

that it is quite annoying how he always says stupid. But yeah. Andy, I'm just picturing your mum pointing out of a window like lloyds for marcy yes the limmy sketch yes yeah uh hmm stupid mistake uh probably gonna end up going over a lot of ground that you two have uh have already covered um although one thing i will say is that funnily enough considering we've just done elvis i think this tries to go for something like Suspicious

Minds which Gareth ends up covering yeah a little bit is part of being a triple A side number one that we'll end up talking about and it ends up on the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack anyway I think

somewhere in the song that you can see that it's kind of what they're going for, like all the strings and luscious instrumentation, and it feels like it's trying to evoke, like, Motown ever so slightly, but only slightly. performed in such a way that I am surprised that it's not a cover if if you know what I mean like it just it just feels a bit like it's somebody else's song and Gareth just kind of recording it um I guess my other issues with it are we're in an era of pop right now that persists for like another couple of years, where everything sounds like it's been produced for those, I've mentioned this on the podcast before, those little mobile stereo units that everybody used to have in their bedrooms, that were like a radio, and a tape player, and a CD player, like all in one, and they came in all

sorts of colours, but mostly silver or pink for the girls and they all sounded like crap and like I do mostly subscribe to the idea that if a pop song doesn't sound good coming out of a transistor radio then it's not worth much but that doesn't mean that you need to forget about bass frequencies completely like this is where I think that if this song is truly going for something Motown-ish, then one of the biggest aspects of every Motown song is that it has something. The bass is doing something. A lot of the Motown instrumentation is really organic. You can tell that there's a lot of room mics. Not a lot of the stuff is that closely mic'd.

And it sounds all natural and you get a lot of the stuff is that closely mic'd um and it sounds all natural and you get a lot of natural reverb and stuff and that's what really works for like motown recordings whereas with this it's like a lot of this feels like it's direct input the pianos especially um but it just ends up meaning that the song has no heft or weight um everything that's happening is on the surface there's no secrets, there's nothing to unpack as much as I think this is pretty and quite nicely constructed like the bridge

section for example I quite like the rise into the situation got out of hand it just kind of steps up a little bit and that's lovely I wish that bit was longer um but the subject matter it like you and said andy it feels like they can't decide what they want gareth to be i think he was a little older than 16 by this point i think he was 18 um yeah i think he was 18 as well yeah but do they want him to be a teen heartthrob or do they want him to be a

cheater like you know whether we like it or not pop artists are characters invented by record labels and pr companies to make lots of money for lots of apparently important people but what character do they want gareth to be it feels like there's an uncertainty about his future here already like is the katie price story out at this point what is that in the news i don't know that's a good question that's a good thing like does he need rehabilitation you know it feels like he was presented and introduced to the world as just like you said andy i can't believe we almost have exactly the same note which is like he's someone that you'd want to take home under your arm. And now he's doing this.

Like the tone feels wrong. It feels like it's run off somewhere. And I feel like the melody and the lyrics don't quite vibe. because, okay, like, you know, the argument that anyone can cheat, we're all human, we're all capable of giving into temptation is, I actually think it's reasonable, but not when you want to, not when you want someone to forgive you, like, if all your mates were judging you and you wanted a break and you just wanted, like, a kiss offline to shut them all up after something like this you know a kind of like let who let he who is without sin cast the first stone like if you're around your mates and stuff and they're all kind of giving you a rib or sort of like going oh mate like what were you doing like what are you playing at like you're an idiot you

know that sort of thing that kind of defense works in that situation but when you're pleading to your apparently ex-girlfriend as gareth is here that you wanted to forgive you i don't think it holds water and i don't know this from personal experience because this hasn't happened to me but i know from you know you'll go on ask reddit or something like that and there'll be a question like people who've been cheated on what's the thing about it that annoyed you the most or you know like you know what's something that you know people have been cheated on what's something that people don't realize it's actually really offensive when you

someone's trying to make up you know and i've heard people say in the past that people say the man in the situation saying or even to be fair you know if women have cheated if it's like oh they mean nothing to me like when people say that apparently that's like a whole thing where it's like don't put down the other person like they're not the villain in this and clearly she does mean something to you and it's like you're trying to dispose of the other human being and it's like it kind of rubs me up the wrong way and like i get it you know it gareth's wrong way. And like, I get it, you know, Gareth's trying to play a character in this song.

It's not like he's really singing about a situation that's happened to him. It may have done, but this song has been written for him. And so, you know, it's people pulling on influences and pulling from experiences they've had and, you know, whatever. So she means nothing to me. It's appropriate for the character in the song, but like, I just think it all feeds back into like this whole who do they want gareth to be like and said with hindsight you know i said this the last time we covered him but less than a year from now

he's doing songs with the kumars and yeah the kumars were a big thing in the UK at the moment, but people who do pop singles with them tend not to be serious. You know, like it just, it feels like Gareth Gates' legacy as a pop star is someone who wasn't quite managed correctly and just sort of ended up, you know, being tossed out and by I think his third album, he's on a different label having to make his own way. And now he's made his own way in other ways

he's in his late 30s he's turned this into a very nice life for himself and a fair play to him for that but I feel like he's a bit mismanaged and I think this exposes it even more than the Kumars thing because if he'd have stuck with the

Kumars thing and just stayed as a novelty act, he could have had a decent run with that for a while. But this feels like it's gone too serious too fast, too grown up too fast. He's 18. He should be singing songs about, I don't know, what do you do at 18? He should be getting something like Baby by Justin Bieber,

because that's the market for Gareth Gates That's the kind of thing he should be getting Should be doing a song about his A-levels Yeah Yeah pretty much Stuff that teenagers care about It feels a little bit like they're trying to do to Gareth Gates What they're doing to Ronan Keating at the moment

Which is that they're trying to Make him 40 before he's 30 Or in Gareth's case before he's 20 yeah it feels like making him grow up a bit too fast um the song is quite nicely constructed but he failed his a-levels because he made a stupid mistake on them it could happen to any one of us yeah it could happen yes there's one more thing i want to say on that as well but i have to mention this this is a huge pet hate of mine that hasn't really come up so far

on the show and this is the first real culprit for me, is unnecessary brackets in song titles it drives me nutty I understand that songs have brackets sometimes for if it's like if the original title is a bit vague and you want to make it clear

which song this is, like Groove Jet, brackets if this ain ain't love I'm fine with that but this it's like any one of us brackets stupid mistake it's like well well which is it what's the song called is it called any one of us or is it called stupid mistake like you kind of feel like you're trying to have both there and it really I don't know why it bothers me so much it really annoys me so this is my first example of unnecessary brackets in songs. Cut it out. Commit to your song title. I actually hadn't thought of that, but I agree with you.

It does feel a bit like the emphasis being on any one of us and stupid mistake. It does feel a bit like they've gone, oh, if we call it this, it might distract from the other. And if we call it that this it might distract from the other and if we call it that it might distract from the first one so let's, why not both? why not both? it's that little girl in the McDonald's advert do you know what it is?

there's this quote from Peep Show which is said in jest but is a line that has stuck with me forever because it's so useful in daily life where there's a lap dancer who's dancing for Mark in a peep show and he's trying to write a business plan and

she says well you need to sum up all your aims in the first line well I can't do that and she goes well if you can't sum up all your aims in the first line then they're too diffuse and that has just stuck with me forever if you can't sum up your song title with one title then the song is too diffuse.

Before we finish the show a bit of a hits 21 first and before we go into the vault and everything like that we have an email from Gillian who

was from Northern Ireland but now lives in the Netherlands and so our podcast has not only reached Hungary and Slovenia but has reached the Netherlands too, although admittedly the Netherlands is closer

but Jillian has said hello Rob, Andy and lizzie wanted to say thank you for your podcast i started tuning in after rob was on popmaster and i've been binging all the episodes ever since i think you all do a really good job have really interesting discussions and instigate a lot of thoughts um the bob the Builder Mambo Continuum and Yelp review just annihilated me Gillian says also into my music analysis

and stuff but I could probably only muster up a oh yeah nostalgia tune reaction to the songs so fair play to you guys for your great on point analysis it's so nice to hear a uk-based perspective in the music analysis field and from the uk but live abroad so this podcast gives me a place to

reflect on those formative years in a way i can't really share with friends here it's quite special for me also the simpsons references um and she's asked if we can find a way to mention bought license plates at some point in the future i'm'm working on it, Jillian, don't worry. So, yeah, and then she signs off and says, much respect and keep up the great work. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Jillian. Really, I've got across the airwaves there. Thank you so much.

Yeah, hits 21. Big in Benelux. big in Benelux but I'm sure Gillian that you can muster up more than oh yeah nostalgia and tune or whatever we all feel the same way but clearly if we're having an effect on you then you would have the same effect on us

if you started talking about music so why not start a rival podcast and we'll have a feud and we'll make it like mutually beneficial for us both, like most rap feuds tend to be these days when there aren't as many guns involved as there were in the 90s.

But anyway, moving on to the pie hole and the vault. We're going to see if any songs from this week are going to end up going up or down. So, first up this week, Light My Fire by Will Young. Is that going up or down. So, first up this week, Light My Fire by Will Young. Is that going up or down into the vault or pie hole for anyone?

Not for me. No. I'm not throwing it into the pie hole. No. Yeah, me neither. A Little Less Conversation by Elvis and JXL. Yeah, I'm putting it in the vault. Yeah, I'm putting that in.

Okay. It's got one vault, nom. I just think it's quite a standout song from this era that I just kind of want to acknowledge that, really. So yeah, it's going in. You just think it's neat. I do, I just think it's neat.

And Any One Of Us, in brackets, stupid mistake by Gareth Gates is that going anywhere no nope me neither so that brings us to an end it brings us to the end of this episode thank you very much

for listening wherever you are in the world whether it's the Netherlands, Hungary Slovenia you know Monster Island so when we come back we'll be covering the period between the 4th of August and the 31st of August in 2002

and I should say that Monster Island is actually a peninsula we'll see you next time bye everyone bye bye