Hits 21 - 2003 (3): Tomcraft, Evanescence

Episode Date: April 30, 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]

Hello there everyone and welcome back to Hits 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. 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.gmail.com. Thank you so much for joining us again. We are currently looking back at the year 2003. That's where you join us. This time we'll be covering the period between the 4th of May

and the 15th of July in 2003. So as we've remarked upon a couple of times, it's the third episode and we're already in the second half of the year. So this is what we get when songs actually stay around at number one, which is not really something we've experienced so far. Speaking of staying around at number one, our poll winner last week, it was Make Love by Room 5 and Oliver Cheetham, which was at number one for four weeks, as we discussed last week. And it seems it's a hit with our listeners as well.

It narrowly, narrowly beat You Said No by Busted. There were zero votes for Spirit in the Sky, unfortunately. All right, then. Cool. On to this week's episode. And as always, we are going to give you some news headlines from around the time that these songs were number one in the UK. Journalist Andrew Gilligan broadcasts a report on BBC Radio 4 stating that the Labour Party were aware claims Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes were dubious. As a result of the report, weapons

expert David Kelly becomes known to the public over claims that Alistair Campbell had insisted that the 45 minutes timeline be included in the government's dossier. Kelly was then found dead six weeks later at the top of Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire. Meanwhile the News of the World publishes an article that features a picture of murderer Ian Huntley in prison. A reporter from the paper had secured a job at Woodhill Prison in order to take the picture and elsewhere the first round of 2020 cricket matches take place and the format remains popular to this day. There is just nothing at all that I can add to that. I don't know a thing about cricket. For all I know, that news story is made up.

And in football, Manchester United are crowned Premier League champions. Arsenal beat Southampton 1-0 in the FA Cup final to win the competition for the second year running. AC Milan win the Champions League final beating Juventus on penalties in the final which was held at Old Trafford. Meanwhile, Chelsea are taken over by Roman Abramovich. A bit of a turning point in English football there with Abramovich coming in and also that AC Milan and Juventus Champions League final. Jesus Christ, one of the worst games of football I think I've ever sat through. Because it was like, it was a big deal that like, you know,

the Champions League final was going to be played not only in England, but it was going to be played in Manchester and like everyone was looking forward to it. And Jesus, like, yeah, just the early 2000s are a bit of a period for Italian football. You know, they end up winning the World Cup in 2006 and this is when defensive football is king at this time. You know, we're not far off. I mean, at this point, Jose Mourinho has just won

what is now the Europa League with Porto and he'll win the Champions League next year with a very defensive style of football. And that's very much in vogue at this time. And boy, did we know it when we sat through 120 minutes of football, nil-nil, and then eventually won on penalties by AC Milan. I do find it funny that within five years, AC Milan appear in both the worst Champions League final and the best Champions League final. Yes. The films to hit the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows.

The Matrix Reloaded for four weeks, Too Fast Too Furious for one week, Bruce Almighty for one week and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle for two weeks. for one week and Charlie's Angels Full Throttle for two weeks and on BBC2 they air a special called The Day Britain Stopped which is quite an interesting little sort of docudrama you know fake news kind of

thing it's pretty cool to watch back I think if you can find a clip of it on YouTube it's about like a train crash that causes a traffic jam and then the traffic jam like it spirals out to the whole country. Is this like a hypothetical what if this happens sort of thing?

Yeah, but they get like real people in to do it and stuff like you know there's loads of cameo appearances from loads of people on the BBC to make it seem like a genuine news event. It was quite interesting at the time. I think it fooled a few people as well.

They're like, wait, because there's this whole thing about an England game having to be called off because people can't make it to the stadium and stuff like that. And I think it did fool a few people. Like, is this, am I watching something that actually happened here? I can't remember, you know, because it wasn't just as easy as Googling it like you would now.

Do you know, I've not seen that, but I have seen a segment of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe, which I swear by, it's amazing, which I now realise is a parody of this, where they do a little fake docudrama called If Pens Got Hot that just explores, like, plays it out like a docudrama called If Pens Got Hot that just explores like plays it out like a docudrama

of what happens if pens around the world inexplicably are too hot to pick up and it somehow leads to the earth exploding at the end. It was very very funny I would recommend it to anyone. Meanwhile the BBC announces that Dirty Den Watts

will return to EastEnders after supposedly being killed off in 1989 actor Leslie Grantham had originally turned down several offers to return to the soap throughout the 1990s and he was eventually killed off for a second time two years later in an episode watched by 17 million people and I was one of them. I watched it when he was killed off, probably. It's interesting that we mention this, because there is another thing with EastEnders and killing off characters who then return from the dead that's happening at the moment. I don't know if you know about Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell,

who were very controversially killed off in a brutal way about five years ago. And there's been talk of them being brought back from the dead ever since and one of them is coming back but like for hallucination scenes and so it's like let characters die when they're dead they're dead this isn't lost you can let them go

and speaking of people dying on television the Eurovision song contest is won by turkey's entry sir trab arena with her song every way that i can the contest is particularly notable after the uk's entry pop duo gemini and their song cry baby scores null poir and i i did my homework i watched this with a couple of friends and i will say in fairness to gemini they were the worst on the night but a couple of other acts were a bit off key so i'm willing to believe their story that you know the the the um the earphones they had weren't working as intended

and one of the acts that did sound the worst on the night was tattoo in the russian century yeah the thing is this is notable because it's the first time we ever got nilpoir a feat that we have repeated a couple of times since but oh yes i'm always reminding people because this happened a few years ago with james newman in 2021 and i'm always reminding people that to get nilpoir it doesn't mean you were the very worst, it just means you weren't in anyone's top 12 you can be aggressively boring and be the 13th favourite

for every country but you'd still get nil-pois and I think Gemini perhaps slightly got the short end of the stick in that weird scoring system that Eurovision has but I've watched it back as well and it's really bad. It is really pitchy.

But I feel sorry for them, because they were from Liverpool, so obviously me growing up in Liverpool, I was seeing so much of them. It was a big promo campaign. We were all very proud of them. And then that happened. Yeah, I can't help but feel sorry for them. It's a tough gig, Eurovision.

You have to be quite brave to put yourself on the line and do it. By the way, it was a very difficult watch because I feel like every song had a key change that night. It doesn't happen anymore. But yeah, 2003, it's all about that key change. Andy, how are the album charts looking at this point in uh in the well in in 2003 yeah well strap yourselves in because i've got a lot for you this week um what with it being such a long period that we're covering again um so we start with an artist who surprisingly well maybe

not surprisingly because they were big in the 90s But we've not yet mentioned them on the show at all, I don't think. We've got Blair at number one with Think Tank, which only sold gold and was only number one for one week. But just good to have them here, because it only occurred to me that we've got all the way through the decade so far and never mentioned them, and they are still a going thing. So, yeah. That is replaced at number one after one week

by Justified by Justin Timberlake once again, which that's the third time it's done that now. So if anyone's getting déjà vu, that's why. You can feel vindicated with that. Spends another three weeks at number one, impressively

enough, which I think coincides with a certain single release, which we may mention later on. After three weeks we get Stereophonics at number one with their latest album You Gotta Go There To Come Back. I hate that title, that's rubbish. What does it tell you? It doesn't tell you anything. Yeah, it's two times platinum and is number one for one week and is then replaced by Radiohead with Hail to the Thief which goes single platinum and was number one for just

one week. Funnily enough I listened to this very recently because I reached the letter H on my listen through every single CD I've got project and Hail to the Thief is alright yeah it's okay. Yeah it's decent yeah I wouldn't go much right yeah it's it's okay it's decent yeah i wouldn't go much further than okay but it's okay yeah i think it's i think it's really underrated in their like

discography i think it's excellent um it's all right i see why it's not for everyone but yeah it always feels a bit underrated by radiohead fans i don't really know why but it's the same with think tank by blur as well i always feel like that's a bit underrated by Radiohead fans, I don't really know why, but it's the same with Think Tank by Blu as well, I always feel like that's a bit underrated compared to the rest of their discography, I prefer it to like Park Life and The Great Escape and stuff God yeah

Yeah, anyway, after one week we get a brand new artist at number one, who we've not discussed at all yet, which is Evanescence with their album fallen which was a big hit it went four times platinum but was only one week at number one so it was a sort of consistent seller throughout the year behind the scenes um yeah evanescence that's a name worth bearing in mind isn't it and then finally uh concluding this week

and telling and taking us well into next week, by the way, is Beyonce with Dangerously In Love, which goes four times platinum and stays at number one for an impressive five weeks, taking us all the way through to August. Dangerously In Love is the album that, well, it was Beyonce's debut solo album and had some pretty big singles come off the back of it which we will be discussing in the future but yeah five weeks at number one so there won't be nearly as much for me to talk about next week

okay thank you very much Lizzy how are things over there in the States yeah well first off the singles chart where 50 Cent finally left the club in early may when sean paul took the top spot with his first number one single get busy it went platinum in the us and stayed at number one for three weeks but was held off number one in the uk by robert

sylvester kelly after that 50 cent reclaimed the top spot with 21 questions featuring nate dog it stayed at number one for four weeks and went four times platinum in the us but only got as high as number six in the uk in july of 2003 and finally for singles this week got a bit of an odd one um american idol runner-up clay aiken scored his first number one with this is the night it so this, it became the 11th song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 and the first by a debut act to debut at number one on that chart.

And it also beat Flying Without Wings by that year's American Idol winner Ruben Studdard to the number two position. I remember Ruben Studdard and he was briefly quite big but I don't remember Clay Aiken at all. I only remember Clay Aiken just because when I was about 13, 14 I was really into well the band One Republic but mainly their singer and songwriter Ryan Tedder because he did a lot of work in the background and he wrote a few songs for Clay Aiken. And so it was him that I was following around and Clay Aiken kind of moved in the same circles around that time.

All right. I'm never going to get a chance to mention this again. So I have to put this in here because we're not often the name Ruben Stoddard is going to be mentioned. My main memory of him is, have you ever seen the film Scooby-Doo 2 Monsters Unleashed oh yeah there's a bit at the end where it's like the kind of dance party to celebrate the happy ending at the end of the film and inexplicably

Ruben Stoddard is just there as the singer and I just vividly remember this really funny moment where an animated Scooby-Doo is on stage going take it, Ruben! It's really silly. Just quickly in terms

of albums, there's a lot this week. So every album I'm about to mention got to number one for one week. So I'm just going to name them in order. So we have American Life by Madonna, a re-entry for Get Rich or Die trying by 50 cent body kiss by the eiseley brothers the golden age of grotesque by brian warner 14 shades of gray by stained

how the west was won by led zeppelin sentanga by metallica dance with my father by luther van dross after the storm by monica and finally to sort of round it all off, Dangerously In Love by Beyonce. Excellent. All right then. So we're going to jump in to this week's episode. And the first song that we'll be covering this week is this. Thank you. Happiness And loneliness Happiness And loneliness And loneliness Happiness seems to be lonely

And loneliness killed my world How could you miss When you're only thinking of yourself And how you look to other girls This is How could you miss when you're only thinking of yourself And how you look to other girls This is Loneliness by Tom Craft. Released as the lead single from his second studio album entitled M.U.C., Loneliness is Tom Craft's first single to be released in the UK and his first to reach number one. The song features a prominent sample of Andrea Martin's 1999 single Share the Love,

which was never released in the UK. This is the last time we'll be discussing Tom Kraft on this podcast. Loneliness went straight in at number one as a brand new entry, knocking Busted off the top of the charts. It stayed at number one for one week. In its first and only week atop the charts, at number one for one week. In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 37,000 copies, beating competition from Rise and Fall by Craig David and Sting, which got to number two, The Long Goodbye by Ronan Keating, which got to number three, and Can't Nobody by Kelly Rowland, which

got to number five. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, Loneliness fell three places to number four. The song initially left the charts in fell three places to number four the song initially left the charts in 2003 but re-entered the chart for three more weeks in 2004. by the time it was done on the charts it had been inside the top 100 for 18 weeks but the song has never been awarded any certification by the british phonographic industry so second song running for that not to happen andy how are we with loneliness by tom craft yeah interesting that you mentioned that about the low sales there because this um has the dubious distinction of being one of the very very few singles we've ever covered on the show that i

just don't know at all i don't remember this this at all. Completely new to me, this. I'm having a look back and I think this is the first one since You See the Trouble With Me from 2000, which I just don't know at all. So yeah, quite a rare thing. And I was trying to think about why that is. And I think it's because this is such a specifically go out and dance in a club to it kind of song. And obviously, you know, I was a kid at the time. I would have been 10 years old. And so I think maybe I just was not the audience for it, so it passed me by entirely, because it's not really kind of breakfast radio stuff either,

which is how I used to absorb a lot of my music at the time. So although it's a number one single, it doesn't have the same kind of pathway to number one that so many other songs have had recently um i mean am i alone in finding this a little bit of an obscure one did you two find it obscure as well i remember it i don't know if that means i don't find it obscure though yeah it's an interesting one i mean i do like this just to sort of you know but because at the table straight away. It took me a while to get into it.

I've had to listen to this a good few times to get into it because I couldn't really unpick it because I just, having no context for what it was, I was just like, so why was this popular? Why did this get number one? And I think it has a very interesting sound. It sits in a very odd place between two genres of i'm not going to say dance music because it's kind of more specific than dance music really but kind of two

sorts of sound eras that one was in 2000 where we had a lot of kind of french house kind of French house, kind of bar pop, as we described it then. And then you get stuff in like 2005, 2006, which is a lot more heavy and a lot more kind of stuff like Call On Me and Satisfaction and stuff like that. And I think this sits right in the middle of that, where it seems like it's later than 2003 in many ways. Like it feels like a more recent song than that. But it also just kind of feels a little bit out of place. I don't think we've had anything so far that sounds exactly like this, which is a good thing,

but it meant that I was coming at this from quite an odd point of view. I was like, oh I don't really have anything to compare this to, and I sat and thought about that and I thought what I would most compare this to, what it feels most reminiscent of, is some stuff like, you know, likela i need a la la la it kind of feels a little bit like that it feels a little bit like some of that kind of stuff that we got in the late noughties which means it's very progressive for its time that like i say it does feel quite ahead of its time there's more going on in this than first appears. There's a lot of work going on in the background in terms of different synth sounds,

different ways of developing it. It doesn't outstay its welcome. It flies by pretty quickly, to be honest. I wouldn't really have much more to say about it than that, except that this is a new song that I've picked up, which is a bit of an anomaly for the era, I think. I think it does stand out like a sore thumb but I quite

liked it, yeah it gets a thumbs up from me Alright then Lizzie how about you? Yeah I'm a really big fan of this, like I spent way too long this week trying to figure out what sort of genre it fits into because like you Andy I think it

is a bit of an outlier like I even it is a bit of a bit of an outlier like I even went on a bit of a deep dive about the differences between like house versus techno and as expected you get a range of different answers you get some which are straightforward like disco influenced versus electro influenced you get some more philosophical like using machines to sound like a band versus using machines to sound like a machine or you just get some onomatopoeic like boots and cats and boots and cats versus boots and boots and boots and boots and I think what makes this track stand out is that it doesn't neatly fit into either of those genres, nor does it fit within trance in the way that something like Heaven does. What it does is it kind of borrows aspects

from each of them to create a song that sounds frantic and agitated. It's like the sound of your mind going a mile a minute. It's got the throb of a techno track, it's got the soulful vocals of a house track, it's got the sweeping synths of a trance track and it's got that sharp buzz of an electro track. When you put all of that together you get something quite exciting and addictive. Like the most obvious comparison I could think of was Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation which was sadly held off number one by the piehole classic that is Against All Odds by Mariah Carey and Westlake which I'm still mad about but whereas that's more like straightforward techno I feel like Loneliness shares some of that specific German flavor of like pounding, robotic dance music that goes all the way back to the likes of

Cannes and Kraftwerk like decades before them. And yeah, this was a bit of a grow for me as well. I initially listened to this about a week and a bit ago. I thought, yeah, it's all right. And I sort of found myself, it became a bit of an earworm. I was like, right, okay, I'll go back and listen to it again, and that became again and again, and I found myself kind of listening to this just in my spare time, regardless of what I've been writing for the podcast, because I think

it is really good, and, like, there's a couple of different mixes as well, which I think helps, like, Like there's a couple of different mixes as well, which I think helps. Like there's the club mix, which is more like just straightforward, hard trance, like club version of it, obviously. There's the album mix, which has a bit more of that, you know, the breakdown with the piano where it gets a bit more quiet before it just sort of roars back in. I think there's a really nice progression to it and um yeah like i say it's something i don't think we've really had up to this point on the podcast

and i don't i'm i'm racking my brain trying to think do we get anything like this again and i'm coming up blank it's a it's a really unusual little track and i i've grown to love it this week yeah i don't think we do get anything like it again no just that that piano bit as well that you uh were mentioning that for me again it's weird that's parts of this are really ahead of their time and really feel like something that you might get in like 2005 six seven but then that little piano breakdown it really reminded me of do you know Sunshine by Dario G? Hey ya na na na

it sounded a lot like that to me so suddenly we were in the 90s for a moment. It's very anomalous this song, it's very very odd, it combines a lot of different sounds and I guess what took me so long to get into it was deciding whether I like that or not because it does have quite a unique sound to it,

just like Lizzie said. That piano bit almost reminds me of... You know when Aphex Twin on a really chaotic track will just bring it down and sort of make it all quiet, and then it just kicks back in again with double the force? Yeah. As for me, like you, Liz Lizzie this has grown on me not to the

extent that I'm going to put this in the vault but it got close like I really appreciate the fact that this is a you know it's a dance like a club anthem as it were but it's called loneliness you know it's such an interesting contrast between form and content

you know a genre that is so geared towards large crowds and mass audiences with lyrics in this version which are just so focused on internal feelings um i think that through the choice of the sample that tom craft uses a really interesting picture gets painted about happiness and loneliness kind of coming from the same place which is exactly how it feels in a relationship that's unfulfilling and it also kind of reminded me of the the breakdown in zero by smashing pumpkins which is the um cleanliness is loneliness and you know whatever and god is empty just like me yeah and so set but like having all this set against i've also referenced um kern craft 400 like those kind of throbbing and abrasive electronics and dance like beats i get this really strong image in my head of a woman in the middle of a

dancing crowd at a club like strobe lights and everything like dancing along but kind of like with a thousand yard stare not really engaging with anything because she's distracted by whatever problem she's going through and like when those synths rise up like the kind of faithless zombie nation style you know the synth leads there's a real rush of anticipation especially when it allows itself to fully let go into that like i wish it kind of did that sequence a bit more um i also love the sudden vocal harmony on only thinking of yourself yeah yeah only thinking of yourself and that use of piano was really elegant in the second half which is why i wish this song unleashed

that its secret weapon more which is that throbbing undercurrent of the do do do do do do do do do do i wish it did that more it doesn't seem to want to let itself go i feel like listen to the club mix yeah i was thinking of you know going and listening to that because obviously the radio and if I thought, you know, maybe it's because I'm infected by years of being raised in a world that considers the drop to be king. But, you know, I stand by my point anyway, is that I feel like it never quite brings its main elements together in a way that to me feels like there's a cathartic release. It feels like and I, you know, i appreciate songs that build tension and never deliver i often think about songs like pneumonia by danny brown where it builds and it builds and it builds and then it stops and then it builds and it builds and it builds and then it stops and it never ever gets to a point where you think right come on you know like you know and so i appreciate

songs that do that but i feel like with this it kind of lacks the emotional potency that it's would be required for me to put it in the vault but yeah i i enjoyed this i remembered this anyway but i enjoyed this more than i think i remember doing uh so i'm I'm pleased that we got to it. Now the next song on hits 21 would usually have been Ignition remix by American singer Robert Sylvester Kelly better known of course as R Kelly. It was number one for four weeks in 2003 and it sold a total of 269 000 copies during its time at the top of the charts i think it eventually sold a million copies however um in 2019 numerous accusations against kelly finally resulted in several historic charges being brought against him um as a result of a subsequent court

case in fact there were many court cases cases kelly was convicted of racketeering possessing child pornography and three counts of enticing a minor he was sentenced to a minimum of 31 years in prison and for this reason we've taken the decision to acknowledge that ignition made number one but not cover it in our usual fashion um instead we're going to shine a light on the songs that were kept off number one by ignition at the time and discuss those instead um before we do um i just want to address something though which is that we have covered and will cover in the future a lot of artists on the show who have done bad things or said bad things but we thought that we kind of had to draw a line somewhere you know it's always going

to be in a kind of arbitrary place and so we thought that being sent to jail for the crimes that robert sylvester kelly committed that kind of constituted a place to draw that line so we hope you're okay with like the next few minutes of the podcast but the the singles to reach number two during those four weeks were favorite things by big brothers no good advice by girls allowed rocky body by justin by Justin Timberlake and Say Goodbye by S Club 7. So we decided to look at a couple of them. Do we have any memories at all of Favourite Things by Big Brothers, by the way? I sort of do. Yeah, me too.

Yeah, where they updated the lyrics to be more bling, but yeah. Isn't there this weird thing with the sound of music being continually drawn on in the 21st century as a source for pop music we've got

favourite things by Big Brothers we've got Wind It Up is a call by Gwen Stefani the High On A Hill we've got

The Club Is Alive by JLS why don't these artists completely independently of each other, draw on the sound of music? I mean, with Gwen Stefani it's understandable because she does Fiddler on the Roof, but everybody seems to come to sound of music.

And I find, sorry, but I find sound of music really boring, so I don't get why people draw on it. Didn't Ariana Grande recently, well I say recently, a few years ago, didn't she do a song that is sort of favourite things? Yeah. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't understand why people do that.

Yeah. Has it fallen out of copyright or something? Maybe. It is about 60. It must be about 50 years old. Oh, 60 years old, probably. Yeah. Yeah.

Either that or it's just, I don't know, kids who grew up with it sort of thing. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, kids who grew up with it sort of thing. Maybe. So what about no good advice for us all? I feel like when I was listening to this

it could easily be dismissed as a rehash of Sound of the Underground, but I seem to like it just as much. I think it's great, especially when that twangy guitar lead comes in in the second half. That's my favourite moment. I love that. I think it's lead comes in in the second half that's that's like my favorite moment i love that i think it's a rehash in the same sense that like back to the future 2 is a rehash of part one in that it's like it has all the same component parts like all the same bits but it is a different

thing and that's what no good advice is it's like yeah it's like very similar to Sound of the Underground but it feels very different it feels like it's a different type of song that guitar is still right at the heart of it that lead guitar that just feels a bit sexy and alluring and I do love that yeah I like No Good Advice

yeah it's a good one what about you Izzy? yeah like you I don't have much to add really but i think i like it just as much as the original it's a shame it didn't get to number one yeah lizzy what do you make of uh rock your body uh justin timberlake oh it's one of the constants of this year it's so frustrating to see justin timberlake come up short and when he does finally get one it's with someone else yeah um yeah it's not quite on the level of crimey river which would have been an instant vault if that got number one but yeah around this time like i think

i think there's rob you said that the neptunes were just untouchable at this point and yeah this is more evidence of that yeah i. And you sent me that rather interesting YouTube video of somebody AI mimicking Michael Jackson's voice as if he'd performed it, because that was obviously the original intention. And yet you can still just hear Justin performing it. So, yeah. Yeah, and I prefer Justin's version.

So, there you go. Andy, what about you? Because I know you're big on Justified. Yeah, I love this. I agree that Cry Me A River is the standout from that album, probably the standout of Timberlake's career, really. But I do love Rocky Body. It's one of those songs that I feel utilises every moment.

There is never a second where there isn't something Going on like he slips lines between lines and there's like just little inflections and little bits of development throughout It's just such a Richly constructed song and plus it's just an absolute bop it really gets in your head as well It's great. I love Rocky Buddy. And I was really mad for it at the time as well. I used to listen to this all the time. I remember wanting to get it on single and I don't know why I never

bought the single. If I had, maybe it would have got to number one. So I feel personally responsible for that. I also remember from my local radio station which was Radio City in Liverpool. They had this thing of they would fall in love with mashups and just play them

instead of the original songs and they would always play a version of this that was mashed up with Indie Club by 50 Cent which wasn't great but I kind of always hear bits of Indie Club playing in between the choruses of Rock Your Body because

my radio station just listened to it all the time and they also had a mashup of I Begin To Wonder by Danny Minogue with You Spin Me Right Round by Dead Or Alive which is they those two go together very well and that was quite a good mashup but yeah weird that they used to do that but I used yeah I loved Rocky Body and I still do it's not the standout off the album, that's Cry Me A River, followed by Senorita, I think. But Rocky Body is really good.

I do love it, yeah. And Say Goodbye by S Club 7 is our last of the number two songs, which feels like an experiment to see if Kathy Davis can write Never Had A Dream Come True, but make it even more sentimental somehow. songs which feels like an experiment to see if kathy davis can write never had a dream come true but make it even more sentimental somehow um and she definitely achieves it whether that makes it a good song is neither here nor there with me it but it is way more like i've never i can't think

of a band since who have just kind of openly acknowledged like we are splitting up this is the goodbye song it's like they i like that though but like they're so they're such a corporate entity they're so controlled that like it's like i said i said this a few weeks ago about paul it's like they have to give notice for splitting up it's like they have to sort of wind out their contract and do a handover. It's really weird. I can't think of another example of a band that formally served out a notice period in this way, where they were going on interviews as a group, being like, yeah, this is our last few months together.

It's so strange. It's really, really weird. And this song is fine. I think it's more similar to Have You Ever than it is to Never Have A Dream Come True but those two songs are very similar anyway but it's weird you don't often get a distinct

this is our last song and the song is about how it's our last song there's very few examples I can think of you could sort of argue goodbye by Spice Girls but then they carried on after that unexpectedly um but yeah the whole thing it just feels like a very controlled exercise just like everything with s club did but it was nice to talk about them one last time um i think we've you know

said everything we have to say about them really but lizzie what do you think yeah um i i do like this i like that it's like one of my biggest complaints whenever we've covered S Club is that the others don't have anything to do and they all get a bit here and it's really nice like they're all saying goodbye individually and like one of my favourite bits in the song is you know Hannah and Tina, that second verse, like, In a year from now, maybe the things we'll wish we never said. That's really beautiful. And then, obviously, it is just kind of Kathy Dennis by numbers, but I think we maybe view this differently now,

given that this is a farewell song, well, mainly to Paul, but then also by extension to the listener. But now that we've lost Paul, I think it kind of takes on an extra bit of poignance and I'm sort of curious to see if they bring this out, you know, if they decide to go ahead with the tour, which I really hope they do. They supposedly are going ahead with the tour, but I really hope they do. They supposedly are going ahead with the tour, but

I wondered that as well about this song that I think if they were to ever have a Paul tribute section of the tour, it will probably be to this song. But that would be maybe a bit too much to ask of them. It is quite raw at this stage, isn't it? And it's, yeah, any discussion

that anyone has of this song has to be kind of looked at in the light of paul um it's just so terribly sad i still i still can't quite believe it to be honest yeah yeah okay then so that means that we are going to come through to our last song of the week and the final song we'll be covering this week is this. eyes like open doors leading you down into my core where I've become so numb My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold Until you find it there and lead it back home Wake me up, wake me up inside Wake me up inside

Call my name and save me from the dark Bid my blood to run Before I come undone Save me from the nothing I've become Okay, this is Bring Me To Life by Evanescence. Released as the lead single from the band's debut studio album titled Fallen, we heard about it before, Bring Me To Life is Evanescence's first single to be released in the UK and their first to reach number one. However, it is their last, so this is the last time we'll be discussing Evanescence on this podcast.

Bring Me To Life first entered the chart at number 79 reaching number one in its fourth week on the chart it then stayed at number one for four weeks in its first week at the charts it sold 57 000 copies beating competition from gay bar by electric six which got to number five in its second week at the summit it sold 48 000 copies beating competition from fighter by christina aguilera which got to number three and don't want to lose this feeling by danny monogue which got to number five in its third week at the top it sold 36 000 copies beating competition from fast food song by fast food rockers which got to number two that would have been in the vault wouldn't it oh yeah straight in and lost without you by delta goodroom which got to number 2 that would have been in the vault wouldn't it oh yeah straight in

and Lost Without You by Delta Goodrum which got to number 4 in it's 4th and final week at number 1 it sold 34,000 copies beating competition from We Just Be Dreaming by Blazing Squad which got to number 3 when it was knocked off the top of the charts

Bring Me To Life dropped 1 place to number 2 the song was initially off the charts and it charts, Bring Me To Life dropped one place to number two. The song was initially off the charts and it left the charts in 2003, but then subsequently re-entered the charts in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 38 weeks.

It is certified double platinum in the UK as of May 2020. massive deal really massive deal like this was huge so so huge um lizzy evanescence bring me to life yeah this is a classic like with the new metal era kind of coming to an end around this time, Evanescence do something that most other nu metal or even alternative metal bands would ever dare to do, which is to take that sound and turn it into like an emotional tour de force goth power ballad that would arguably sit comfortably alongside something like Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler or I'd Do Anything for Love by Meat Loaf. In fact, the song would be just as effective if you

removed the most overtly nu metal aspect of it. There's two kind of issues I have with this song which keep it from being like perfect perfect. One is that I think Amy Lee is a little bit too low in the mix but the main thing is the decision to tack on paul mccoy's chorus interjections and his third verse like nothing against mccoy or evanescence themselves but i can't help but shake my head at whichever label exec decided that the song needed some aggro bloke for marketability because to quote Amy Lee, Amy Lee is a girl singing in a rock band. There is nothing else like that out there. No one's going to listen to you. You need a guy to come in and sing back up

for it to be successful. Like, sure, you could make the case that the person in question was proven right by its success, but I'm sure the song was perfectly capable of being a success on its own merit. Like, it's right there in that paraphrased quote. There's nothing else like that out there. And Amy Lee's performance in this song blows everything else in that genre out of the water. A genre by which this point had it become a sea of faceless white blokes growling over tuneless sludge. And like what makes her performance here so real is that the song is based on her own experience of being in an abusive relationship. is based on her own experience of being in an abusive relationship. Interesting that we've got two songs this week which are about being in kind of loveless relationships.

I guess this one more overtly so. And in Emily's experience, it's something which she thought she hid well until a friend looked her dead in the eyes and asked her if she was truly happy, you know, hence the opening lines of this song. And I suspect that experience is something that a lot of people are still able to relate to, even 20 years later, now that the video's racked up over a billion views on YouTube.

Like, everyone and everything has a breaking point, but this song proves that a breaking point can also be a turning point i think it's yeah i think it's one of the greats um it's not it's not one i think's perfect but yeah there's a reason it's stood the test of time i think the yeah the thing with the male vocalist i guess is isn't the song supposed to be like a conversation or something yeah it's like an argument it's based on a conversation or something kind of yeah i got yeah i kind of go back and forth on the male vocalist stuff in this and even like um what you were saying there before lizzie um about the you know the sort of the heavier elements being taken out,

which is that they basically do this with My Immortal, which is the one that they do where it is just her and a piano and that's it. And like you say, they do the big kind of goth ballad thing. I think more than anything, though, Bring Me To Life is an interesting song to discuss because i feel like it's gone through loads of life cycles in its time like it was a global smash then it was a bit of a joke and then everybody kind of moved on from new metal and alternative

metal like we're only what two months or three months away from results may vary which is like the the moment where the new the new metal boom kind of just flattens out the nail in the coffin yeah a little bit because you know you know you got meteora and fallen they were both massive records that year um and obviously new metal it doesn't exactly go strong or anything like that but one of its big like big commercial acts like lincoln park they're just moving on to alternative rock by 2006 like you know it three years from now it's over and new metal is a joke um but then you know in the years when people tried to pretend that there was no value in new metal it this song

kind of survived as a meme and now it's kind of reached that final stage of ah do you remember And now it's kind of reached that final stage of, oh, do you remember? Which is kind of where I find myself with this. Like, I, like you Lizzie, sort of love this nowadays. Like, I'm generally weak for nu metal anyway. Have been since just about before the, well, I'd say before the pandemic, but it was around the time when I was finishing uni. But even if I wasn't, I think I'd find a lot in this because there's a lot of emotional immediacy amy lee brings a hell of a lot of it um as well um hugely memorable chorus just the wake me up inside um i think the two moments that really seal this song for me as like a fully grown adult at the start of the second verse when those staccato syncopated riffs

come in um because in the first verse obviously you've just got the piano underneath and then eventually the guitars come in and then it's boom into the chorus but it's just straight power chords in the chorus that kind of just gets strummed once and then ring out for a bar that kind of just gets strummed once and then ring out for a bar whereas in the second verse you get the guitar kind of charging up doing that and it just gives that second verse a kick like a proper kick and then the second thing that really really grabs my attention is in the final chorus when everything except the drums and the strings drop out behind amy lee's vocals and you feel like you're on the edge of that balcony in the video trying to stop yourself from falling into the gaps that have been left by the guitars

going away and those moments are kind of it feels like a bit of an oxymoron to say this but they're kind of like quietly theatrical and they're so propulsive and they keep you engaged and interested in the construction of the song um until the very end like you lizzy i go back and forth on whether the male vocals work as well like i would like to hear the song without the male parts you'd maybe need a guitar lead, like a solo of some kind, instead of the guy's verse. Yeah. But the other thing is that there is footage on YouTube of me performing this song at a school talent competition,

and I did all the male vocals and so without them i guess this wouldn't have happened where a friend of mine um she was a fan of evanescence we were about 17 at the time uh maybe 18 um and we did this school i think it was like a school x factor or like a britain's got talent thing it was 2011 i think um or early 2012 and there were 10 acts from the whole school from year 7 to year 13 i think i was in uh year 13 at the time um and a friend came to me and said listen i'm i'm wanting to do evanescence would you mind doing the male parts and i I said, oh, sure, yeah, okay. And so I listened to it over and over and over again. And we, at least in the

hall, we went down a storm. I'll play the audio of us performing it live at the end of the episode, but, you know, we sounded good and it went over really well in the hall but the thing that really takes me out of it is that the song felt old when we performed it and that was nine years after it was released and now it's been 11 years or 12 years nearly since we made we did that performance um the footage is on youtube i probably won't leave a link to it in the show notes because the channel the youtube channel of the person who uploaded it um is kind of private and so i'll do the the um i'll do the audio at the end of the episode so you can hear us performing it, but you won't see me wait for the male part to come in

and hide off stage until I have to go, wake me up, and then I run onto the stage at the same time. And then we just kind of do-si-do around each other, but like 10 yards apart for the whole performance. And me doing like little guitar mimes and attempting a death metal scream of the uh there's nothing inside like that sort of thing and then going to do it but then deciding not to do it and it's great fun um you'll get all of that at least on the on the audio and people like laughing but then kind of turning it into cheers by the end

which is something i always like to hear when you go out and people think oh god I don't quite know how to go with this and then thankfully by the end they've all gone with it so yeah I just have nice memories of this lovely so Andy

what about you? Bring me to life yeah it's it is a biggie, it's a really big one, it is a classic this and not just a classic in terms of quality and memorability but in terms of its importance, I think

we briefly touched on this last week when we were talking about Busted and how that was a sort of gateway for a lot of people our age into guitar music but that's a very different thing obviously but I mean the rise of guitar music in the noughties where it all reached that peak in about sort of 2006 and 7 it's it's not one thing there is no one thing you can point to with it I think it's probably the most complex, indefinable event that's happened in music

in our lifetimes really there's so much to talk about there, how you had all these many different genres of rock music that were all peaking at the same time, all storming through the charts. I'd love to sit down and write a book about this one day because I think it's fascinating how it all happened

but if I had to pick a moment where this really gets started, I think it probably would be this. Not because it's like the first example of this kind of music appearing, because it's not in any way. You know, it's fairly arbitrary as a starting point. But the fact that this is such a big hit and that it straddles quite a few different genres quite successfully while also

being you know much heavier than the kind of thing you would usually get at the top of the charts i think if nothing else it sends a very clear signal to the music media and to broadcasters and to um you know the arbiters of taste out there in the industry. It sends a very clear message to them of, we want more of this kind of thing. I think the reason why I would kind of point to this as the start of a greater movement is that if this hadn't been such a big hit worldwide, I don't think there's any way that all the songs off American Idiot

would have got the kind of play that they did. I think there is a door being opened here in terms of actually people want stuff like this. We've seen glimmers of that before. I don't think it's a coincidence that the male vocal section is quite reminiscent of Limp Bizkit, I think. It sort of leans on that a bit.

I think one thing that's quite impressive about it in terms of making it a little bit more mainstream in sound is that if you were to strip out Amy Lee's vocals and just listen to the instrumental of those verses, it's actually it sounds quite a lot like Lose Yourself, actually, in terms of that sort of building tension with the drone and guitars. There's a lot baked into this that sort of makes it a mission statement of a kind of wider musical movement. And I know that that's all hindsight and it wasn't intended to be that but that's just my experience you know having grown up during these times that it felt like whoa this song this is like well this feels like proper grown-up music this and then you know it opens the gateway to everything else you know without this song getting big I don't really feel like you get success for the likes of Paramore, really.

I think there's a straight line between several of these things. And like I said, you can't pinpoint any of that wider musical movement in the mid-naughties with rock music to any one thing, but this is an important stage, and I do kind of want to acknowledge that.

As a song, I think it's really good. The big downside of it i think is that male vocal section i i agree with what's been said i think it's just a bit sort of like do we have to have a man singing on this like you know boys will buy music by girls like they'll do it it happens you know i just don't think it's necessary. It certainly didn't bother me as a child. I certainly didn't feel like this song needed a man on it to have any further authenticity. No, I didn't approve of that at all.

But I do think that it's a really, really catchy song. It's produced very well. It has the right kind of level of distortion that it's very clearly a hard-boiled song without getting scratchy or obnoxious. It manages to be theatrical without being overblown. I think it

straddles the line of these things of it almost goes too far in quite a few places, and it is a big over-the-top song, but it never quite pushes it too far. It never turns into self-parody or never turns into farce. Like I say, the only bit where I think it does is when it has that male vocal section.

It really kind of feels like the bit on Friday by Rebecca Black where the rapper suddenly comes in. It's like, this is not necessary. This comes from a different song. This is clearly a label decision to have this happen so i've just got like a noise in my head going on right now of a guy going pass it by it's a school bus dead metal vocals but it's the same basic principle and you know a lot of new female artists who who um come onto the scene during the noughties have to deal with that you know Lady Gaga has to have

good old Colby O'Donis on Just Dance for like no reason at all he adds nothing to that song no offence to him but he doesn't it kind of bugs me that that happens on this song but like I say the fact that it presumably enabled this song to get released

and get promoted and be the massive success that it was you know it was a means to an end but yeah i really like this um i think it's interesting how it was so adopted as like a sort of household favorite that you get like piano covers of this on britain's got talent now and like people dancing to it on strictly and like people playing it at weddings and things like that like i can't think of a song song that comes from such a specific niche as this that has become such a household favourite.

It's just travelled so far from its roots. It's really interesting, the journey that the song's been on. I can't really think of another example of a song that has come from such a niche place, but it's now so commonplace everywhere. But yeah, I think the fact that it has that status is because it was a gateway into so much more stuff of this kind. So yeah, I really, really like it.

I respect what it stands for and what it does to the industry going forward. And it's just a really great song in its own right. Yeah, really good good really like this cool just to follow up on that I was just thinking then about like the mainstream popularity of it and I wonder if

that like okay I think new metal was kind of winding down at this point anyway but maybe this contributed the fact that here was a new metal song that your mom might like yeah yeah i mean there is that isn't there there is a big element of crossover on this i agree there is that and you know that i i wondered whether to bring this up really because it's like there's a wider conversation to be had here about you know i'm raising quotation marks

my fingers here about selling out and i i just don't think that's a thing. You know, I've always just rejected that as an idea that, you know, everybody wants to be successful. Everybody wants to make music that people like. And I think, you know,

if a, if, if the sound of a genre or the sound of a particular artist has to slightly adapt to be more accessible to then sell 20 times as much as it would have previously, well then that's fine. You know, and like I say, there's so much more music that we got exposure to that we would never have if this song hadn't existed.

I do think that there will have been a lot of people turning their noses up at this at the time, and probably still to this day turn their nose up at this because it's like, oh, yeah, whatever. It's like, whatever whatever it's too mainstream it's not a bad thing it's not a bad thing every genre and every

kind of musical movement has to have a song that flies the flag for it more than anything else and that's probably this for New Metal and for this stage of where we are but yeah I just I thought that was worth mentioning as well that this kind of where we are um but yeah i just i don't know i just i thought that was worth mentioning as well that this kind of whole watering yourself down selling out i just

i've just never bought into it as a thing and i don't think that's a fair criticism to be level tied it really but you are right lizzie that i do think that that will have contributed to the decline of new metal because it's like oh well we've kind of peaked a bit now haven't we with this so yeah i think even people would turn a note about it now because it's a quote meme song but the thing is it's actually good when i say it's a classic i mean it's a classic because it is the best exam or one of the best examples of its genre it's not like i don't know like africa by toto which i don't think is very good but people deem as a classic because it's just got this status where everybody knows about yeah i mean there's other songs from this era that we've absolutely loved that probably it's

not a particularly cool thing to say you know that that i don't know i think the difference between the the quality of a song and how it's perceived is really different with this song but like it's probably not a very cool song to look back on these days this people probably do see this as a bit old hair but it's really good it's really really good there's nothing wrong with that yeah but so far this year i've just sort of noticed that like you know there's this there's this, there's loneliness, there's all the things she said. It's a very angsty year so far, 2003. It's got a lot of pent up angst about stuff.

And there's all these... It's very varied, though, isn't it? They're all like different styles. Totally. Different variations on that theme. Although I will say, I just had another weird thought. different variations on that theme. Although I will say, I just had another weird thought.

I think the first number one we're covering next week is almost like the popular girl version of this song. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I do think that there is a broader point there, that it feels like teenagers, and maybe slightly younger than that, and maybe slightly older than that, are really kind of controlling the conversation so far in 2003. And again, it's one of those indefinable things that i don't know why because okay we you know the three of us were all becoming teenagers at that time but there's always been

teenagers you know there's always been angsty teenagers around but it feels like there's a level of angst and you know stuff that specifically relates to sort of people between the age of 12 and 20 that's at the top of the charts at the moment and i don't know how this happened but it is a thing that's happening at this time well we've talked a lot recently about the iraq war and i wonder if that's played into a lot of young people's fear because it's what they're being exposed to 24 7 on the news and in the the i don't i'm not saying teenagers read the papers but they'll they'll see them like if they go in a shop or something it's something that they're being exposed to all the time and there's also a lot of unknowns like the internet is starting to become kind of a constant in people's homes.

It's this, it is like a transition era. And that usually means uncertainty. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah, I don't think, I think in a world without 9-11 or the Iraq war, I don't think any of this happens. But I just can't quite put my finger on how that all worked, how that all actually played out

but I do feel like yeah there's a link there yeah I don't think it's like, it's an acceptance of those feelings rather than like what we get in like 2008 during the credit crunch where it is just denial music

it's like let's just party anyway even though everything is fucked and we're never going to be able to buy a house where it seems like the charts basically kind of stop during covid yeah exactly yeah it's really do you know it's strange there's a song i don't know who sings it but i think it's called weekends or something but it's out at the moment there's this hook and it's like i don't really have friends don't go out on weekends or something like that and i was thinking i don't really have friends don't go out on weekends and i'm like i'm trying to put myself in like 2012 and i'm just like there's no way a song like that gets to number one i think it is because while the bank while the banks are all crashing and being bailed out there's this great tweet that i'll need to find um but it's sort of something

like um it's from the year 2020 and they were playing um music from the year 2012 and it was sort of like god 2012 was just like the year of denial in pop wasn't it like katie perry's got no concept of mental health as she and it does feel a little bit like that in the sort of denial in pop, wasn't it? Like, Katy Perry's got no concept of mental health, has she? And it does feel a little bit like that in the sort of late 2000s and early 2010s. But I guess, you know, we'll cover that when we get there. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening this week. Before we go, we're just going to check.

Loneliness by Tom Craft. Is that going in the vault or the pie hole for anybody? Not for me. I'm going to put it in the vault. Cool. Alright then. That's one vault vote for Loneliness by

Tom Kraft. Like I said, we acknowledge that it got to number one. Can't pretend that it didn't. But Ignition Remix by Robert Sylvester Kelly will not be eligible for the poll this week, which brings me to Life by Evanescence. I'm putting it in the vault. So am I.

Yep, yep. So is that a three? It is. Is that a three? It's a triple. It's the second triple of the year. Yeah. Yeah. We're in the year yeah we're in good times we're in good times

so that's it for this week's episode thank you very much for listening once again when we come back we'll be covering the period between

the 6th of July and the 2nd of August so everything's juddered to a halt so we'll only be covering a couple of weeks or three or four weeks

on the next episode as opposed to three or four months like we have done so far this year so glad it's slowing down so yeah, thanks so much we will be back next time, see you then see ya, bye bye Bye! I've become Now that I know what I'm without You can just leave me

Breathe into me And make me real Bring me to life Wake me up Wake me up inside I can't wake up Wake me up inside Save me

Call my name and save me from the dark Wake me up Feel my blood to run I can't wake up Before I come undone Save me! Get me from the nothing I've become Bring me to life I'm living a lie

There's nothing inside Bring me to life Into light Frozen inside Without your touch Without your love Darling, only you Are the light Among the dead All through this time You are the light from under the sun

All this time, I can't believe I couldn't see Can't see the dark, but you were there in front of me I've been sleeping a thousand years to see Got to open my eyes to everything Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul Don't let me die here, there must be something more Bring me to life Wake me up, I can't wake up

Wake me up inside, save me Call my name and save me from the dark Wake me up, feel my blood surround me Can't wake up, before I come undone Save me, save me from the nothing I've become. Bring me to life. I'm living a lie. That's a fake sign.

Bring me to life