Hits 21 - 2006 (3): Ne-Yo, Gnarls Barkley, Sandi Thom

Episode Date: December 10, 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] Vault: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O5MHJUIQIUuf0Jv0Peb3C?si=e4057fb450f648b0 Piehole: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2FmWkwasjtq5UkjKqZLcl4 Daz Sampson: https://youtu.be/Uko7Rfgu4Xw?si=jEg7vw6NYXwOexpO So Sick Crazy I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker

🎵 Hi 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 on Twitter. We are at Hits21UK. That is at Hits21UK. And email us too. Just send it on over to Hits21Podcast at gmail.com. Thank you so much for joining us again. We are currently looking back at the year 2006. This week we will be

flying through 2006 because we'll be covering the period between the 26th of March and the 10th of June. Everybody knows what's coming. Last week's poll winner by one vote was Sorry by Madonna. Just pipping Orson to the post. Zero votes for Chico. Poor Chico. It's not his time. Chico has had his time. Speaking of Sorry by Madonna, little email that's come in.

From Madonna? Yes, yes. Thank you, Madonna, for this email. No, it has come from a listener who does get in touch with us every now and again after listening to our episodes. And they have enlightened me, particularly on one comment I made about the Madonna song I think that me and Andy were talking about where we hoped that the translations of Sorry would reveal a slightly hidden message that we felt didn't really come to fruition. But this person kind of disagrees or at least has added some information which has caused me to reconsider a few things.

The Dutch line of sorry, which is where she says, ik ben droevig, like that. So apparently in Dutch, sorry is just sorry. So while droevig can mean sorry, apparently it's more common translation is just sad. So, you know, like a sorry situation, a sad situation, I suppose. apparently it's more common translation is just sad. So, you know, like a sorry situation, a sad situation, I suppose.

So, hmm, I'll need to go back over those lyrics and see if any literal translations offer any more insight into Madonna's mind state during sorry. I hadn't thought about this, you know. And that is actually the case for quite a few European languages. I think German and French, and probably quite a few more, use sorry as the colloquial, like, oh, sorry. Whereas, like, I am sorry, please forgive

me, is like a more formal thing, like, you should say desolée or astute melitis and things. But quite a few European countries say sorry colloquially. So I don't know if that's maybe just a quirk of the language, but that is interesting. I hadn't thought thought about that yeah yes thank you very much for that email do continue to email and get in touch with us um on to this week's episode now and as always it's time for some news headlines and we're covering a big period so you know might have to sit there for

a second and be patient with us a smoking smoking ban comes into effect in all enclosed public spaces in Scotland, and a swan with the H5N1 strain of bird flu is discovered in Fife. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 80th birthday at Windsor Castle. Prime Minister Tony Blair makes big changes to his cabinet with Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw both replaced. Meanwhile, Fathers for Justice protesters invade the set of the National Lottery just before Eurovision is set to start. Meanwhile in football, Chelsea win their second Premier League title under manager Jose Mourinho.

in football, Chelsea win their second Premier League title under manager Jose Mourinho. Liverpool win the FA Cup on penalties after a 3-all draw against West Ham at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. And Barcelona beat Arsenal 2-1 at the Stade de France to win the Champions League. Meanwhile, Steve McLaren agrees to become the next England manager after the conclusion of the World Cup. The films to hit the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows. Inside Man for two weeks, Ice Age 2 The Meltdown for four weeks, Mission Impossible 3 for two weeks, The Da Vinci Code for one week, and X-Men The Last Stand for one week.

Graham Norton hosts the sound of music themed reality competition how do you solve a problem like maria the way you solve that problem is through televoting and on coronation street mike baldwin dies in the arms of longtime rival ken barlow with actor johnny briggs leaving the soap after 30 years. Very moving scenes I have to say. Yes. No you don't Baldwin. No you don't. Yeah great stuff. And in Eurovision

Finland prevailed with Lordi's Hard Rock Hallelujah beating competition from Bosnia and Herzegovina Russia and Sweden. The UK was represented by Stockport's very own Daz Sampson and his song Teenage Life but it finished in 19th place

with just 25 points on the night Oh Daz Not only was he Stockport's own Daz Sampson but he was Edgley's own Daz Sampson I tell you it is so weird to watch a guy walk his dog around the

estate and see him fairly regularly and then have him wind up on eurovision and then come back to walking his dog around the estate uh within the year um there is an absolutely incredible bbc3 documentary on daz sampson which i will leave a link to in the description um i was at school the day that they came to our school to film the documentary because years before daz sampson had been a pupil of Avondale High School and I was taught by a person whose first name I do not know but his second name was he was known as Mr. Tominy and he was a history teacher I didn't have him regularly but I had him a couple of times whenever our main history teacher was off sick or whatever and so the Mr. T getting told off Mr. t about how my life would be as das sampson says in the song is this mr tommy and i remember being in school the day the bbc showed up

to film um which is why occasionally you'll get funny shots in the documentary of kids kind of like staring at the camera even though they know they're not supposed to be looking, and little things like that. We were very well kept out of the way, though. I think those incidents were kind of kept to a bit of a minimum. But it was very strange to have a kind of minor, you know... In 2006, Daz Sampson, you would say, was a B-to-C list celebrity for about a month. And it was very odd.

It was a very very very surreal experience and i just wish looking back that like the whole thing had had any level of dignity because i don't know if it's anything to necessarily uh be proud of anymore what are your memories of das sampson well i just wanted to point out that on the Making Your Mind Up, he beat competition from Kim Marsh of Hearsay and also Anthony Costa of Blue. Yeah. So that's a big achievement, I think. My main memory of teenage life is me and my friend Jay

used to endlessly take the piss out of it because we were in our peak kind of alternative, reject the mainstream, we hate chavs, we hate rap music kind of phase. You know, nothing without guitars is worth listening to. And so Daz Sampson was the absolute epitome of everything we hated at the time. And I will say, I do think, looking back,

the song is absolute garbage. Like, it really is. It is. And I think particularly because he was a bit of an older gent who was hanging around with kids and like doing you know um kind of what you might perceive as youth music it came across a bit cringe so i really like to take the piss out of it to be honest but now that i live in stockport too and i've got quite a bit of local pride for stockport, my tune has changed considerably. And I think that's lovely that we've got a Eurovision entrant from around here.

So yeah, sorry Daz. And yeah, let's make up. We'll take what we can get. Andy, how are the album charts looking for this fairly lengthy period of 2006? Yeah, you sure you want to ask me? this fairly lengthy period of 2006 yeah you're sure you want to ask me so i think this is a record um that i have nine number one albums to talk to you about this week so i will race through them as fast as i can but some of these are like oh these are lovely little throwbacks so for one week at the end of march going single platinum we've got Journey South with their debut album Journey South

remember Journey South just yeah they were X Factor also rams who had their brief moment in the sun and then they were taken off number one by Embrace with their album This New Day which was number one

for one week and just went gold and the next two albums also were only one week at the top and just went gold. We had Morrissey with Ringleader of the Tormentors and then The Streets with The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living. So they were all number one for one week with gold status. And then we got a platinum album from Shane Ward with his debut album, Shane Ward. Platinum album from Shane Ward with his debut album, Shane Ward. Apparently, it seemed to be the contractual rule that everyone from that series of the X Factor had to release self-titled debuts. We've had Journey South by Journey South and Shane Ward by Shane Ward.

Yes, that went number one for one week and went platinum. Interesting that we've still not hit the cycle that we're used to with X Factor winners, that that's still being released early for what we would usually expect they usually used to come out like august september this is released in april so maybe that's a big factor potentially and why it didn't quite work out as well but i digress because then we have a double platinum number one album from one niles barkley with saint elsewhere uh i wonder if we'll ever get a chance to talk about Niles Barkley. But are you ready for the highest selling album of 2006? Eight times platinum and number one for just one week for now. It's Snow Patrol with Eyes Open.

Oh, fucking hell. I know. Just, I know. That's disappointing, isn't it? I'm sorry I built you up so much there it's disappointing but yes and then we've got three weeks

at number one actually all of that what I've just gone through only made one week but we had three weeks at the top for Stadium Arcadium by Red Hot Chili Peppers which went triple platinum and then finally closing out this lengthy period

we've got an album that my husband is very fond of but no one else really bought. Well, they did because it got to number one for one week, but good luck getting a copy of this these days. I've tried. It's expensive. It's Bright Idea by Orson, who didn't quite get recognised,

as they should have done last week, dear listener. But anyway, yes, Orson went to number one with Bright Idea for one week, and it went platinum. So that is your lot for this week. A lot of indie, a lot of X Factor, a lot of classic rock, and a little bit of the streets. There's something for everyone this week, really. Lizzie.

As Andy has mentioned, this is quite a long period we're covering this week. So I'll go with singles, first of all. First up, we have Temperature by Sean Paul, which got to number one for one week and was his third US number one single overall. In the UK, it just missed out on the top ten, where it peaked at number 11 around this time. Next up is Five Weeks at Number One for Bad Day by Daniel Powder.

Oh. This got to number two in the UK the year before while You're Beautiful by James Blunt was at number one, which also got to number one in America a couple of weeks before this. So America's finally catching onto the coffee pop wave in spring 2006, apparently. After that, we have Rihanna.

She scored her first US number one with SOS. It stayed at number one for three weeks over there but was sadly held off the top spot in the UK reaching number two while Niles Barkley dominated the charts. More on that later. And finally for singles this week, Chameleon Air scored his first and only number one with Riding. It stayed at number one for two weeks in America and narrowly missed out on number one in the UK, reaching number two in August of 2006. Over to albums. First up, we have 3121 by Prince. One week at number one, number nine in the UK. Then we have King by T.I. One week, number 83 in the UK. Me and My Gang by Rascal Flatts.

Three weeks, did not chart in the UK. Four by Godsmack. One week, also did not chart in the UK. 10,000 Days by Tool. One week, number four in the UK. And finally, Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Two weeks, also got to number one in the UK, as Andy mentioned. All right then, thank you both very, very much.

We are going to now press on and get to our first song of the episode. And it is this. Gotta change my answering machine Now that I'm alone Cause right now it says that we Can't come to the phone And I know it makes no sense Cause you walked out the door But it's the only way I hear your voice anymore

It's ridiculous It's been months For some reason I just Can't get over it And I'm stronger than this, yeah Enough is enough No more walking around with my head down I'm so over being blue, crying over you

And I'm so sick of love songs, so tired of tears So done with wishing you were still here Okay, this is So Sick by Ne-Yo. Released as the second single from his debut studio album titled In My Own Words, So Sick is Ne-Yo's first single to be released in the UK and his first to reach number one, and this is not the last time that we'll be discussing Ne-Yo on this podcast. So Sick first entered the UK chart at number 18, reaching number 1 during its second week on the chart, knocking Orson off the top spot. It stayed at number 1 for one week. In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 28,000 copies, beating competition

from Nature's Law by Embrace, which got to number 2. When it was knocked off the top of the charts so sick dropped one place to number two by the time it was done on the charts it had been inside the top 100 for 23 weeks the song is currently officially certified two times platinum so double platinum in the uk as of 2023 so andy open the show with neo Yeah, interesting one this it's I think it's interesting that we started this just before we went on the air, we had a brief chat

saying that, you know, basically everything now, we're at the era now where basically everything brings back quite strong memories for us but for me, not this actually, this is a little bit of an aberration when I look at what's coming up over the next four or five weeks or so this is a little bit more an aberration when I look at what's coming up over the next four or five weeks or so. This is a little bit more of a vague memory for me. I think probably just because the two that follow up were much bigger stories

and kind of linger longer in the memory for various reasons but yeah this one sort of passed me by a little bit but I do recognize Neo's voice very well. There's something quite endearing about his voice, it's very sort of nice and listenable. Some people might call it a little bit moany, a little bit earnest, but I just think it's quite pleasant and quite likeable. So, cards on the table straight away. I don't really have any huge problems with this, but I do have some minor problems with it, which kind of add up to a little bit of a greater meh feeling about this. First of all, like like an observation about all three songs this week actually that I think this is probably just the production habits of the time

and what was kind of trendy with producers at the time starting to come to the fore like things obviously coming in out of fashion and I've noticed that with all three of the songs this week I feel like they're quite heavy on the the treble and the bass and the mids are a little bit not there i mean not so much with the last song we're covering this week but um certainly with the other two it's like there's there's just not that much in the middle it seems like it's being made for tinny gummy headphones you know where it's like very very high um frequency like hand claps and melodies and then bass at the bottom and not a whole lot in the middle and that's not always a problem it's kind

of personal preference for me but it's not always a problem certainly not with one of the songs coming up but with this it is a bit of a problem I think it feels a little empty I just feel like it needs a little bit of extra fizz and like I say that is personal preference I like a rounded production I like a kind of meaty heavy um feeling to my songs but yeah it's just the sound of it is just not really for me and of course I've said loads of times that the whole kind of earnest uh and well earnest man pain thing for starters but also the R&B thing of hand claps and you know clicks and really really thumping heavy over the top percussion is not really for me and i really thought we were past this to be honest but thinking about it we're

not are we this kind of sounds a bit like take a bow by rihanna which is still in the future you know we've got a few more of this kind of thing really um and it's not particularly to my taste i do like though um the sort of irony thing of the song. Like, it joins quite a nice little Hall of Fame of songs that have done that kind of trick of, oh, it's a love song, but I'm sick of love songs, but I'm doing a love song. Like, joining the tapestry of, like,

you're so vain, I bet you think the song is about you and stuff like that. And I like that. I like songs that sort of play with the listener a little bit and are kind of self aware in that way but I don't really have that much to say about this to be honest just because it kind of gets swallowed up by the bigger stories that have come

this week but it's a nice little ballad which I really haven't listened to for a very long time and I might give it a few more goes like I gave this enough goes this week that I was like yeah I'm not getting anything more out of this, to be honest. It's just kind of nice but ineffective, really. And I wish it went a little bit heavier on the production

and kind of gave a bit more of a heart-on-its-sleeve vibe to it rather than just a simple, straightforward love song that's pretending it's not a love song. It's fine for what it is, but I was kind of left yearning for more, a little bit bit elizabeth you're normally kind of weak for this stuff and so i when we cover these kinds of songs i often you know wonder about how you're gonna feel about it so how is so sick with you well andy just first of all i'm glad you mentioned take a bow because do you know who wrote that song was it neo yes it was there we go well i didn't know it but yeah i'm quite proud of myself yeah well i i mean with neo i always

kind of thought of him a bit unfairly as like a poor man's usher but that's fair actually that's fair yeah but like in you know on the plus side i have to admit that this sort of r&b slow jam is his strong suit as a songwriter i'd actually say that this song is largely hampered by the fact that it's not as good as some of the songs he did for other artists around this time like i don't think it's as wistful as let me love you by mario which he did yeah nor does it soar the way that irreplaceable by beyonce does which he also did yes i think his vocal performance is clearly the best part about the song like usher comparison the side he's clearly got good range and he's got velvety smooth delivery, he hits all the

right notes all the right times. The problem here I find, like a couple of his early songs actually, is that there's no point of release or catharsis in the song. The bridge on this is nice, you get some kind of Jackson-esque harmonies but after that you crash back into the chorus and you feel like you're back at square one going back to Irreplaceable the structure is very similar but you don't notice it as much purely because of how much emotion and drama that Beyonce brings to that performance so yeah it's a shame really, because like you say, Rob, I'm usually a sucker for this sort of thing, but I think this is just nice. I think it's a mild

thumbs up, but not much more than that. There's better Neo to come. Yeah, I sort of agree with you both. I think that this carries on the themes and atmospheres that we've been treated to by the likes of burn um i don't want you back things like mario winans i don't want to know let me love you um which obviously we've just mentioned um very polished and prepared sad ballad about the end of a relationship where you get a soft male R&B vocalist come in and emote tunefully for three minutes. And I think this is maybe the strongest that we've covered so far. I think I'd have to think about that a little bit more, but it's definitely up there. know i think it's layered with the little details that flesh the relationship out and you know get into the turmoil and periods of indecision uh that strike when you're reeling from a from a breakup

like the calendar being marked uh july 15th having to change the answering machine message and all these you know the all the mundane things that take on like greater significance because of a change of circumstances like i like it you know i think it has a decent you know portion of character and individuality i think it stands out a little bit from the crowd that it's part of mostly because of neo's performance um i'm also keen on the way this grows without ever really feeling like it's keen on the way this grows without ever really feeling like it's overwritten um but i kind of agree lizzie that there is no it tries to have that point of release where neo's going like turning off the radio because i'm and like you know trying to go up at the end to come back into the final chorus yeah and i like the way that it winds down and it strips away all the decorative

parts of the mix to give the effect that it's kind of slowly fading away where you get the bit at the end where it's basically just the drum beat and neo in the back going hey you know in the background you know i think if there'd been a bigger chorus just before that um the effect might have been felt a little bit stronger i think my issues with this though stem from it not quite going far enough into the like interiority of the of the there's some specific lyrical details but there isn't enough of them like i think we end up cycling through various platitudes about it you know it doesn't make any sense and she's walked out of the door and you know they turn up in a lot of these kinds of songs and it's all a bit dime a dozen um when it comes to like the

actual like you know all of the lyrics you know half of the lyrics interest me, the other half are I've-been-here-before kind of territory. I always think that I'm kind of as well, I'm a little bit at arm's length with this. I find myself unable to really get, like, intimate with this and feel its emotions. Like, I think everything's nicely presented, but I never quite feel Neo's pain to the fullest extent that I should. I can form, like, a decent enough picture of everything,

but I struggle to live in the story beyond the line about the calendar and the line about the answering machine message. It ends up becoming a bigger issue, I think, as the song goes on. Maybe it has something to do, Andy, where you were saying that the middle is a bit you know that there's like a there's a center to this that's not quite there both in the story and in the presentation um it's a bit like a bit like a polo if you know what i mean it's just there's just there's a slight void at the center of this, which I don't think is a huge issue,

but does kind of stop me from being any more positive towards it, unfortunately. All right, then, we will move swiftly on to our second song this week. And you should probably brace yourself for this one, and I should brace myself for this one, because I've got a lot to read out about this one So let's go And so much space And when you're out there Without care Yeah, I was out of touch But it wasn't because I didn't know enough

I just knew too much Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Possibly Okay, this is Crazy by Niles Barkley. Okay, this is Crazy by Niles Barkley. Released as the lead single from the group's debut studio album titled Sent Elsewhere,

Crazy is Niles Barkley's first single to be released in the UK and their first to reach number one. It is also their last and this is the last time that we'll be discussing them on this podcast. But not the last time that we'll be discussing CeeLo Green. Crazy went straight in at number one as a brand new entry, becoming the first number one single to reach the top spot on downloads alone. It knocked Neo off the top of the charts, and it stayed at number one for nine weeks. Across its nine weeks at the top of Mount Pop, it sold a total of 661,000 copies. The songs to reach number two, or be the highest new entry, during those nine weeks,

were as follows. You Have Killed Me by Morrissey, which got to number three one by you two and mary j blige no promises by shane ward sos by rihanna from paris to berlin by infernal which got to number three danny california by red hot chili peppers control myself by ll cool j and jennifer lopez say i by christina milian and young cheesy, Say I by Christina Milian and Young Jeezy that got to number 4, and I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker with Flowers in My Hair by Sandy Tom. After its ninth week at number 1, Crazy was officially removed from music stores by Niles Barkley and their record label, which caused it to drop one place to number two. It then fell a further three places to number five and fell out of the chart completely the

following week. At the time, it was the largest drop out of the chart in British pop history. However, the song re-entered the top 100 in 2007 2007 meaning that by the time it was done on the charts it had been inside the top 100 for 21 weeks the song is currently officially certified three times platinum so triple platinum in the uk as of 2023 lizzy um it stands in front of you like a hundred story building but discuss it yeah I mean god what a song and what a story as well incredible

the song itself is probably well in my opinion one of the best we'll cover on the run of the podcast oh you bet I think it's tight it's funky it's full of mystery and intrigue, and it's perfectly packed into three glorious minutes. There's not a moment wasted here.

I think CeeLo's gorgeous voice and the looming beat underneath complement each other perfectly, and that prominent, I think it's Reverbery Brothers sample is used to great effect. There's a comment on YouTube about the Scott Walker song The Old Man's Back Again that always stuck with me, specifically about the bass line.

All credit to Chris Leddy for this, who describes it as, quote, like a stranger rummaging in your backpack. I get the same kind of vibe here and it's not often that you hear the bass so prominently in a pop track but to me it works perfectly to establish this creeping sense of dread like following your every footstep and CeeLo's vocal as well works to establish a sense of unease both in the lyrics themselves and the way he delivers them. In the verses he crams lyrics into bars that don't have the space for

them and even repeats some of them as if his mind is racing trying to find the words to say and I really like the subtle shift in the chorus subjects as well, where his fixation on who's really crazy first lands on him, then extends to you, and then finally to us. I'd encourage people to check out interviews with CeeLo actually about the lyrics, and more specifically, the fine line between eccentricity and abnormality when it comes to public perception of certain individuals, many of whom CeeLo considers heroes, as he mentions in this song. So yeah, I think it's a brilliant track. I also don't want to go on for too long, because I know you both probably have a lot to say about this as well.

But I do just want to say, before we move on, I feel I need to mention a lyric in this that I misheard for the best part of a decade. You know on the part where he sings ha ha ha bless your soul? Yeah. I always thought the lyric was ha ha ha that's

your soul. Ah yeah that's your soul, yeah. i thought that being laughed at by your own soul was quite a striking mental image yeah i quite like my version but i digress i think this is amazing well do you know funnily enough there's one that i've got of those that's coming up in about four years time uh you know ayaz replay well yeah because he says it's like my ipod stuck on replay but i always thought that it was it's like my eyes are stuck on replay which i thought was a much more you know like a much scarier image like that you can't get this person out of your head but nope just plug in an ipod and his lyrics um With this, with Crazy, I mean, where do you start?

Exactly, where do you start? I mean, I suppose I could try and talk around the song because I think this is probably one of the biggest turning points in the recent history of British pop. You know, a song going to number one without needing to sell any physical copies is a huge deal and heavily heavily indicative of where the pop charts were heading like as a result of the move towards

digital and away from the analog and physical technologies um and for it to have such a stranglehold on the chart at this time when pop music trends are faster and more ephemeral than ever it's quite something it really was one of those moments that kind of froze the country on the spot and i think this yeah like this gets into how i feel about crazy years on which is that as much as its success is part of a larger shift going on in british pop at the time i think it stands entirely on its own in terms of like everything like especially in the 2000s landscape like i remain eternally fascinated by how a rapper and singer from a 90s rap group a goody mob who had no real success in the uk before this and a sort of moderately known producer

could conjure up the longest run at number one since love is all around in 94 because this is so strange this song is so unnerving and uncomfortable not the kind of thing that people usually buy let alone want to hear for nine consecutive weeks that got so popular that niles barkley and the label decided to kill it before people got tired of it you know that the main sample comes from a soundtrack of a 1968 italian spaghetti western movie called django prepare a coffin like you know all the strings are so nauseous and paranoid silo green is just wailing in that chorus. Yeah. And yet we're talking about one of the biggest selling hits

of the entire decade. Like, okay, it got picked up by Warner, which explains it becoming known in the first place, but nine weeks? Like, people get sick of things way faster than that usually. And I think that speaks to how powerful its usage of pop conventions are like you were saying lizzie it packs everything that it has into three tight minutes you know it's it's a

really effective crossover hit you know it manages to take everything all of its unusual component parts and channels it into something that's fast effective and exciting and it is still to this day um like covered by everybody who plays acoustic sets in bars up and down the country these people who do super emotional covers of it i was um well i say i was at one of the um the ashes games over the summer uh at old trafford it was rained off but for the three hours that we were there there was this um girl on a stage just outside the stadium who was playing to the crowd who were just sort of waiting to know whether the game would start because that's the frustrating thing with cricket where it's like it stops raining and they don't all go on the pitch

they wait for 45 minutes to see if like to see if it's inspected by that point it started raining again and there's probably someone somewhere doing it as part of a set right now you know yeah as we're recording it's past six o'clock on a thursday there's probably somewhere someone somewhere playing it but i remain kind of fascinated by how it came from nowhere how niles barkley kind of came from nowhere. Apart from like a bit of hype on the internet and stuff. And then sort of disappeared to nowhere. I mean, I love Smiley Faces, the follow-up.

And it got to number 10. And St. Elsewhere did very well off the back of Crazy. But The Odd Couple, which was their follow-up album wasn't that much of a success, like the only song off that I remember is Run, or Run Away the run away, ah run away, that's the only one I really remember

I was going to say, CeeLo Green's success I think is entirely incidental to this, I think the vast majority of people didn't even know that Niles Barkley and CeeLo Green were one and the same I think most people would have had no idea about that at the time so i think that was a complete coincidence to be honest yeah certainly by the time forget you comes about i think yeah people had forgot

well there were a lot of people who thought that niles barkley was just a person yeah exactly yeah not a group that there is this like enigma thing with them like with the um the is it the rorschach test in the video i forget how you pronounce that word but yeah yeah and there's all this again this mystery and you know vague implications of psychiatry and things that people don't understand it is a bit frontier psychiatrist it is unnerving in the same way yeah yeah where the same like you know soundtracking old movies those strings and then just like doing like proper bollywood style like overblown strings that clip and make it and conjure up very strange sensations i actually thought it reminded me a bit of um

your woman by white town do do do do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. But then after this, like, CeeLo went solo, anyway, while Danger Mouse just sort of went back to producing for bands like The Black Keys and Beck. Well, acts like Beck. And he also did some stuff with Gorillaz, obviously. He was on Demon Days around this time. And he also did the album with Mf doom which was the danger doom uh thing

and yeah just just a very strange and amazing moment in british pop that somehow lasted for nine weeks like i was trying to think of like what an equivalent of this would be you know like a member of a hip-hop group slash posse if you will from 15 years ago teaming up with a producer who is very well known and very well respected in independent and alternative circles but has that crossover appeal anyway and the best i could come up with was like tyler the creator or like pusher t teaming up with like katherine marks or james ford and getting a nine week hit out of it it's a this is a total anomaly and a wonderful one for that there's on chart music every now and again they whenever like the smiths are on or echo and the bunny men or something like that and they say that like back in the 80s that felt like one of our groups is on top of the pops one

of our groups not one of their groups one of our groups is on top of the pops and looking back this feels like one of those moments where it's like that's one of ours at number one at the moment not one of theirs yeah it's been number one for nine weeks and sold like a million copies but it's still one of ours like that kind of thought that you would have if you were like an alternative team in the 2000s you'd be like whoa yeah pretty cool breakthrough success there hope they don't sell out you know that sort of insecurity that you have when you're 15 this is just the kind of thing that i think unfortunately is harder and harder in today's pop market because of things like the way that streaming and the way that entire cults of personalities are built around pop stars that it's very hard for anything to kind of break

through those like you know those impressive that would like break through the wall that artists have put up where like they're guaranteed millions and millions of streams within the first week and they kind of shut everybody else out and i feel like this getting to number one on downloads alone like there would need to be a thing beyond streaming for something to break the mold if you know what i mean because there will i'm sure be a point in the future that we get to where there's a first song to get to number one based entirely on streams and hasn't even sold any physical copies or even digital copies like you know that that is the norm now it's just 95 streaming unless you're like you know the beatles or whatever you know re-releasing an old track but yeah it's a very very mysterious and wonderful moment uh this uh in british pop um andy how do you feel about crazy it is such an immaculate construction it really is i i just

want to correct myself by the way from um the previous segment when i said it was the third song of the week that didn't have an issue with the mids no it does this is the one that doesn't have an issue with the mids which is because i think it actually adds that sense of tension to it a little bit like what lizzie was saying that it's a little bit just off a little bit kind of unusual in a way you can't quite quantify because it's so heavy on that bass but then also so heavy with that wailing voice and those screeching strings at the top that both of them are so effective and so engaging that you almost don't need that much in the middle, really. Like, you can have that gentle,

ooh, that is through it a little bit, and all you need is that through line, and with that, you get carried away with it. And there is so much to get carried away with. I mean, his voice is incredibly expressive. Like, he is one of those singers who could probably sing the phone book, to be honest, and make it sound interesting.

I think that bass line is just stunning. The very first, dum, everyone would know that it's Crazy by Niles Barkley. That's an extraordinary achievement. Considering that kind of thing, you would usually cut out on the radio, but because it was so effective, everybody knows it from this one. I think the fact that the lyrics and the structure of the lyrics and the rhythm of the lyrics are changed in virtually every line means that almost every line

settles and is iconic in its own particular way this is one of those songs where a lot of people know every single line of it because everything sparks a memory it's not a case of having to remember the lyrics all you have to do is remember the rhythm

and the lyrics come with that which is a really interesting thing that I can't say of many other pop songs really that like the sort of who do you who do you who do you think you are is a different thing to what a diddley did like there's all these different rhythms throughout and all you have to do is follow that rhythm and you get carried with the flow of the song and with the lyrics it's almost like a kind of storytelling thing it's like a memory game it's so lyrical all the way through that it's just really, really,

it's just so effective in that way. It's got that one bit, which I have to say, the compliment bit, which I'm determined is what we're going to call that phenomenon, which is the ha-ha-ha, bless your soul, or that's my soul, which I hear Shane Ward sing as,

ha-ha-ha, that's my goal. He's not here to say he's sorry. And by the way, on that, my misheard lyric from my childhood, I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, was in Baby One More Time. I used to think it was, my lonely nurse is killing me, as in a sort of Nurse Ratched scenario. That's weird. It's a weird lyric for a random school girl to be singing but anyway

yes there's just so much in this that is oddly done in a way that you don't usually hear it like those strings there's not really much attempt to integrate with the song they are supposed to sound shrill and like they're from a different decade that bass line

is supposed to sound invasive and overly high in the mix it's just it's teetering on the edge of not working at all but because it's just on that edge it works completely it's such a complete piece of work the only only only thing that i would mark it down for is just that i just personal preference i just would like a little bit more in the middle but that's just personal preference. I just would like a little bit more in the middle, but that's just personal preference. This song absolutely doesn't need it. And that's just me.

But this is, it's just an absolutely fantastic piece of work. And I really just have no other criticisms of it at all. It's, it's one of the few songs so far that I think genuinely deserves to be described as a classic. I think that word gets thrown around relatively easily, but you know, if you were to use the yardstick of what's a song that our kids are going to know from when we were young, and this is one of them, you know, and there's probably

only a list of about five or ten songs that I could be absolutely sure of that, but no, this is one that will live on for a long, long time. I use my mum as a bit of a barometer for these as well, and my mum, hands down, she would know every single word of this. She absolutely adored it at the time, she would still adore it now and my mum is not like, she's not like uncool or anything but she's quite discerning, she doesn't really listen to like anything past the 70s, 80s. When something hooks her like that you know it has broken through into the mainstream in a big, big way and I think all you can really say as to why if you have to sum it up in one sentence is that there is genuinely nothing else like this on the landscape

at this moment obviously there will be a lot more to come that does imitate this um but this is a a real totem of the era that has just landed in our laps and everyone who was there at the time will take this with them so yes it's fantastic it's bloody brilliant yes yeah i do think that the the two most important years in the 21st century for pop music are 2006 and 2013 and this is this song and the fact that it got to number one without selling any physical copies the first song in history to do that is part of the reason part of my argument for why 2006 is so important the other thing is kind of coming up later um like a passing of the torch from one era to another if you will and 2013 is a similar one and we'll discuss that a lot when we get there too i guess the only other thing i

would have to say is just because these days obviously it's a lot more common for songs to have massive runs at number one and there are other songs that have had massive runs at number one that you know for whatever reason they they they stayed there for a while but they might not have had the kind of cultural impact and being as all-encompassing as this and for anyone listening who wasn't there at the time really really, like, it really was just everywhere. Absolutely everybody loved this song. Everyone! To the point where I remember getting sick of this, I was like, oh, I'm so fed up with this song, like, it's just everywhere, like, and I kind of rejected it because it was just so, so all-encompassing,

and I've come back to it years later, obviously, and I'm like, yeah, it deserved to be, it was brilliant, but oddly enough, the other big, like, massive, massive chart mainstay of the era, which was Umbrella, at the time, that somewhat passed me by. Like, I knew it, but it wasn't like it was not on the same level as Crazy for me at all, nowhere near. And then all these ones these days that get, like, 10, 12 weeks number one, like Flowers and Dance Monkey and all that,

no, not the same at all. Not the same effect. Like this was a genuine phenomenon. And I don't think that all of the songs that have had long stays at the top can say that. But this really was a phenomenon. Well, I remember with Umbrella, there was a big thing about it happening. Like it was number one for what, six, seven weeks? Longer.

And it did not stop raining for that entire period yeah yes i do remember that because i well i was on holiday in a tent during like its seventh week at number one oh thank you yes it was it was over a rainy summer and i remember that much i remember it coming out of the car and i'm like oh this is umbrella i've heard people talking about umbrella so that was like whereas crazy it was just like oh not crazy not Crazy again. Turn it off, let's put Kerrang on. Turn it off, put Sandy Tom on. Well, funny you should say that, Lizzie. Because the last song up this week is this. Oh, I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.

with flowers in my hair. In 77 and 69, revolution was in the air. I was born too late into a world that doesn't care. Oh, I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair. When the head of state didn't play guitar Not everybody drove a car When music really mattered And when radio was king When accountants didn't have control And the media couldn't buy your soul When computers were still scary And we didn't know everything

Oh, I wish I was a punk rocker With flowers in my hair 77 and 69 revolution was in the air i was born too late into a world that doesn't care oh i wish i was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair okay this is i wish I Was a Punk Rocker, in brackets, with Flowers in My Hair by Sandy Tom. Released as the lead single from her debut studio album titled Smile, It Confuses People, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker is Sandy Tom's first single to be released in the UK and her first to reach number one. However, it is her last, thanks Radio 2, and this is the last time we'll be discussing Sandy on this podcast.

I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker first entered the UK chart at number 55, eventually reaching number one during its sixth week on the chart, knocking Niles Barkley off the top spot. It stayed at number one for one week. In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 40,000 copies, beating competition from All Over Again by Ronan Keating, which got to number six, and Maneater by Nelly Furtado, which got to number eight. When it was knocked off the top of the charts i wish i was a punk rocker dropped one place to number two by the time it was done on the charts it had been inside the top 100 for 28 weeks the song is currently officially certified gold in the uk as of 20 23 have you noticed by the way that in the last two years songs have been charting and then jumping to number one

way more often than three or four years ago? It's kind of like the old days, where it would sort of gradually climb up the charts. I quite like that. Gather a bit of momentum, yeah. Andy, Sandy Tom, take it away. Well, I mean, if I wanted to, I could write a whole essay about this, to be honest,

because there is a lot to unpack here. There really is. I think the central concept is not... Well, I'm going to choose my words carefully. It's not inherently a bad one, because there are a lot of variables to take into account. The idea of looking back on a previous era and thinking, wouldn't it have been nice to have lived then? That can sort of work. However, this fails on every level. This fails on

a level of authenticity. It fails on a interest level, as far as I'm concerned, and it fails on a level of actually representing that era. I think there's a lot about this that is really insidious that really reeks of a corporate grab for authenticity that is just nakedly obvious and i think there is a lot about this that just it represents the worst parts of the music industry and the worst parts of modern culture yeah to be honest oh i think in sandy tom you've got someone here who clearly is one of those artists who's like oh yeah i'm a real musician and i'm a real musician because i like real music whatever that is and so she goes on this diatribe about this time when everything was better they're anchored by that central

line which is just hideous which is born too late to a world that doesn't care and i just keep asking myself well how would you know? If you were born to it, this is the only world you've ever lived in. And let's not go over the top here, right? This is not the movie Threads. Like, you've not been born, like, in some sort of hellscape, right?

You were born about 10 years after this period that you're describing, at most, right? It's not like chalk and cheese. It's not like you've missed out on the renaissance and you've been born 500 years later you're singing about 1975 or whatever you were born in about 1981 boohoo get over it right and the other thing about that is that they're just they can't get past this core thing of all the stuff that she's recalling with such fondness she doesn't remember she doesn't even know about because she wasn't there and it the fact that the whole song is just basically

made up of listing things from the 60s and 70s it's just like it's kind of like the musical equivalent of a peter kaye stand-up show and even that like has authenticity to it and it's funny because peter kaye's recalling things he actually remembers. Like he's drawing on things from his past. It's like, oh, you know, remember Hobnobs or whatever. I don't know why I just said that, but something like that. Well, there is a sketch about Hobnobs. I know, that's why I said it, because it could have spooned you. But, you know, Sandy Tommy's referencing things that she has no frame of reference for at all.

All she's done is hear about it in the same way that other people have. And I get that you can long to be born in a different era but you can't do that while like openly sneering at the modern landscape because she is in the modern landscape she's an artist now who is getting number one now she is sneering at the very thing that is propelling her to popularity which makes her just seem like she wants to be above it all. But then she is a big mainstream success here who's backed by a major label. She is as much of a corporate object as anyone else is, as much as Westlife is, as much as Bloody Snow Patrol are.

Niles Barkley before this is far, far more alternative and interesting than this is. Simply naming things from the past and saying I'm not like the rest of the people does not make you in any way alternative. It just doesn't wash with me at all. And there was so much of this at the time. There were so many artists who came out of the woodwork with like, I've got this soft, gentle little voice in which I'm going to express, you know, oh, aren't trees lovely? Remember when we used to have trees? You know, that's just like,

just longing for a time that was never there, longing for things that were never there. And just go into our kind of base level emotions of like, oh, I'm a bit odd, you know? And me and my husband kind of make fun of stuff like this sometimes because he used to know someone who was very much like this

and used to wear t-shirts with things like, don't touch my spoons, cat face. It's like, there's a lot of that sort of vibe with this. Like, with that album title, Smile, dot, dot, dot, it confuses people. Like, oh, God. You're not the big I am, love. You're really not.

And the one thing I haven't really touched on is just how unbelievably selective this is about the era that she is singing from she is not singing about you know the height of the Roman Empire here she's not singing about Babylon she's singing about 60s and 70s Britain it was not the be all and end all and this is the thing that you can't have that sense of grit you can't have that sense of lived experience if you haven't got the lived experience like if you compare it to something else observational and simple and just about things that you are seeing that's entertainment by the jam is something that i would think of with this

where it's like that's real because it's there in the moment and it's not just celebrating the nice things it's also mentioning the rough things you see along the way. If you look to a contemporary example with this, you've got LDN by Lily Allen, which again references the things she loves about London, but also things that are there that are not so lovely. But that's kind of part of the package. And you just don't get that with this. It's all very twee and very oh wouldn't it be lovely to live in the past so i thought i'd balance this out by suggesting some alternative

lyrics of issues that sandy tom might have wished to discuss if she had a few more verses here so i've got when you could be fired for being gay and there were blackouts every day and margaret thatcher won in a landslide when unemployment reached its peak and the national grid had a four day week and on a Portland toilet Elvis died oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair no statutory maternity

pay and smog was in the air the black and white minstrels had the highest album sales of the decade that's really true genuinely look it up oh I wish I was a fantasist with nothing but Wikipedia summaries and I Heart the 70s badges and twee corporate commodification

of a complicated, difficult time to live in in my hair. That's how I would sum it up. And final point, the production is shocking. Where are your mids? All there is is percussion and a voice. Sorted out.

Awful. Piehole. Next. After that, Andy, I wanted so very much to be charitable towards this, so I'm going to try to be, because I don't think there's anything wrong with nostalgia i actually think it's a really valuable emotion to feel i'm even interested in the idea this song

posits that you can feel nostalgic for a time period you never experienced and you're veering over the edge of hauntology there which is a very interesting like thing to get into our parents and grandparents always loved to tell us about how it was better in their day and so you can understand why an impressionable child would start to believe it especially when that nostalgia is reinforced by images from the past that have been preserved in a vacuum and all the bad stuff has been airbrushed out and just conveniently forgotten about because it was bad. The mundane everyday stuff that nobody remembers is because it was mundane and everyday.

Like, but what I'm trying to say is that it is entirely human to think that the world was better and that things could only get worse. And hey, you know i have been through periods in my life of what has been described as depressive realism this idea that like if if you know the people with depression are the ones who are like the ones who see the world correctly you know because if you if you were to look at the world and all of the horrors in it and the state of the planet etc etc cetera, et cetera, you would feel depressed. And the people who aren't are living in a candy land, you know, delusional world, et cetera. That's, you know, kind of that school of thought.

And so on some level, I sympathize with the protagonist in this song. And sometimes people like to pick holes in the image of this punk rocker wearing flowers in their hair because punk rockers didn't do that. And people who wore flowers in their hair because punk rockers didn't do that and people who wore flowers in their hair definitely did not go around looking like punks or acting like punks or hanging around with the punks it was all it's two completely separate scenes but you know i think it's her deliberately conflating those two things to produce an image of two separate periods of history summed up by her referencing both god save the queen and white a shade of pale in the same line although white a shade of pale was released in 67 but fair enough but and i've written the button

capital letters as much as i can look past the fact that she's nostalgic for two eras she never experienced like you andy i think the selective memory of this song coupled with this like oh so authentic vibe that she gives off it rubs me up completely the wrong way there is another version of this that andy you have just performed wonderfully that exists in a parallel universe where instead of celebrating footballers who still have long hair and dirt across their face it condemns the violence and the hooliganism and the misogyny and the racism of football in the 70s when black players like Clyde Best, Garth Brooks and Cyril Regis were subjected to horrendous abuse by members of the National Front who infiltrated football crowds and that doesn't celebrate the days where the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail but instead remarks

on the treatment of women and members of the LGBT community in workplaces and the rest of society throughout the entire era. Like I say it's not unnatural to think fondly of the past, but this kind of goes beyond thinking fondly of the past. This is just pandering to a particular subset of people, stroking their bellies, telling them that they're right. Celebrating a period of time that not only did Sam Dutton not experience, but that never existed in the first place. This fantasy land that she's conjured, it never existed. Whenever we look back at history, we're only looking at like less than like a third of the picture. And like, I think it's important to stress maybe that like, it's unfair to expect a song to cover all bases, but I think this does attempt to cover all bases by shoving as many references in as possible

it only contains about like five percent of what the 70s actually were despite reaching so far and wide like that the whole thing is a very annoying fantasy and on top of that these these periods of revolution that he's talking about as you mentioned andy the uk and the us voted in two of the most notorious republican and conservative governments of the entire 20th century like nixon at the end of the 60s thatcher and reagan at the end of the 70s yeah and i also don't like how she seems to draw an equivalence between anarchy and just like playing out in the street or sending a letter in the post or not watching as much tv like i think what she's done is confuse anarchy and revolution with a childish lack of responsibility and decreased stress levels

like she's not dug into the political movements of 69 and 77, hasn't done any research because her idea of revolution in this very clean, very sanitized, very pop culture focused amalgam of symbols and memories that don't really add up to much, it all reminds me a lot of, like, Kenneth Branagh's recent movie that's Belfast, which looked at the troubles and the violence in Northern Ireland, but channeled it almost exclusively through, like, upbeat cuts by Van Morrison and seeing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time. Like, the tonal shifts in that movie are never balanced and always very jarring, and I feel like, for the same reason as this, I couldn't get on with that movie as much. And then there's the issue as well of how like sandy tom was

introduced to the british public by this weird kind of like astro turfy marketing campaign that made a lot of noise about her playing songs in a piss stained basement although there's no evidence of those shows ever really happening lizzie you were sort of telling us that like no not even on youtube is there a document of one of these shows. And it all sort of gets rumbled as a fabrication after that, which, fine, okay. Publicity stunts and lies are pop. Like, that's the whole point. It's artifice.

It's creating a character. It's telling a few lies to sell a few records. Great, whatever. But the character they built with Sandy tom is just so unconvincing i can see through it straight away the material she wrote was not good enough to forgive the transgressions that she and her label made i find this all so navel gazey and false i i think that i will give it some credit for being slightly you know in terms of number one singles that we've covered we haven't had a number one single that's like a stomp and holler record you know that's you know just drums and percussion another percussion and a couple of voices like you know like okay fine there's something to be

said there for this kind of like it's almost like kitty daisy and lewis kind of thing that came around a couple of years after this you know but and so it kind of but the thing is that it's only different in the way that nisloppy was different which is that it it sort of was in terms of presentation but in terms of all the buttons that it tried to press, it's exactly the same as everything else. But I will say that I prefer Nisloppy to this because Nisloppy wasn't smug. It was just like personal and a bit twee and a bit annoying. But I find this very smug and that I have not been able to look past because when I'm sat listening to it,

I'm just sort of like, well, it's not offensive to my ears or anything, but it is offensive to my brain and it is offensive to my mind and it is offensive to the way that the world actually is can i pick up on that rob because i mean i was i thought maybe i would be you know dicking on it too hard and getting too carried away if i said this but you've you've kind of taken this around with this so i do want to mention as well that um that maybe I'm taking the song too seriously. Maybe if I take life too serious, I will get delirious, as Chico would say. But this whole thing with looking back fondly on an era that never existed,

it is worth pointing out that that's like a really big problem with the present day that we live in now. A really big problem. That's what's given rise to populism. It's this rose-tinted looking back on the 70s or beyond that that just did not exist and enabling that kind of thing is not helpful to the world it's not helpful to culture it's not helpful to society but i would give that a pass and just write it off as a tweety little pop song if it wasn't for that central lyric of born too late to a world that doesn't care because that is actually

a little bit offensive that's quite insidious because it's like what you too late to a world that doesn't care because that is actually a little bit offensive that's quite insidious because it's like what you mean born to a world that didn't care it's kind of the other way around that past the 70s is when we started caring about a lot of things that we didn't care about back in the 70s like minorities and like welfare and like social causes and like climate change if you're saying we're born to a late born too late to a world that didn't care are you saying like we should care about different things like what is it that you think we should care about and that rubbed me up the wrong way that like looking back on a period of time where if you were anything but frankly frankly anything but a straight white male you were doomed to a life of

hardship i think that actually shouldn't be glazed over and she shouldn't really get away with a lyric like that to to be honest. It's very easy for her to say on her ivory tower, but I will stop now. Yeah. Lizzie, are you any kinder on this? No. Just picking up on what you've said

about sort of looking back at the past, like the nostalgia for the time you never lived in. I can sort of forgive that if you're like a teenager, especially because I could think of people like myself, kids who didn't really fit in, and because of that you had to sort of forge your own identity and often that did mean digging into the past, whether it be music, film, art, TV, whatever. And occasionally that can slip into that sort of, oh, I was born in the wrong generation mindset. But the important thing is that most of those people grow out of it.

And the ones who don't are the ones I really worry about because they're the ones who eventually start voting for Reform UK. 100%. Like, smashing 5G towers. Like, it's a bad road to go down. And I raise this point because Sandy Tom is 25 at this point. She's too old for this. And, like, the analysis of the lyrics

has been done to death at this point, so I'm not going to add to that. But when the song itself is this sparse it's hard not to focus on them more than you ordinarily would yes that's a very very good point yeah and also on top of that i spent far too much of this week fixating on how sandy tom grew to fame i'm thinking surely there's no way 100,000 people as the label claimed showed up to her webcasts in like late 2005 early 2006 when hardly anybody had the bandwidth for that sort of thing let alone a struggling artist and even the biggest streamers on like Twitch today would struggle to get anywhere near those numbers. Like you say Rob,

it was kind of ultimately debunked and it doesn't really matter because she's gone after this. This is the end of the road because as we mentioned with Chico last week, gimmicks tend to wear off very quickly. One fluke hit wasn't enough to cover for Sandy Tom's lack of distinctiveness as an artist. I hate to say this, I listened to the rest of her debut album. Oh, God. And it is third-rate Katie Tunstall at best.

Yeah. It's not good. I wish I could say that she grew as an artist over time but she's revisited this song with new lyrics in recent years and they're just as bad as the original so she released a song called punk rocker reborn in 2019 um just a sample of some of the lyrics. When music played under a kiss, Prince and Bowie will be missed. George Michael got us on our feet, gay or straight or bi. Oh, God. You would think that someone would tell her that referencing other artists

when you're not of equal stature will always make you look worse by comparison but old habits die hard i suppose i think this is a dreadful song really do um i think you've summed it up perfectly especially on the lyrics front like some of the worst we've ever encountered like they're down there with fuck you right back by frankie well my my thing is that um in around 2010 ish i was on um a a networking site for like gay teenagers like a chat room sort of thing and there was someone on there who i quite fancied who was talking to quite a lot and so you know when you want to sort of you know get in with the person you fancy and you pretend you like the things that they do his favorite artist was santee tom and um so i was just like oh yeah i love her she's great like even then i was

like no she's fucking awful and i was kind of mentally judging him i was like maybe this won't work out if that's his idea of taste but anyway and then he said to me oh what's your favorite sandy tom song it's like oh shit mate you got me there and I can't remember what I said probably this and I can't believe I said that because

this is maybe my least favourite song we have ever done on the podcast so yeah it's bad yeah

it's really bad god is this below Ronan for you Andy uh it's oh god uh it's a real Sophie's choice there

Yeah that really is like Choose your method of execution that one I don't know Back to back same bullet Yeah Rob you referenced this at the top Of our coverage Sandy Tom's rant

Against Radio 2 Yeah Do we think this was a gimmick like a marketing ploy or do you think she genuinely thought she deserved to be on radio 2 and the only reason she was not there was because of anti-scottish bias well i didn't know she was scottish until i saw the video for one thing maybe that's my ignorance but it's hard to tell isn't it it's one of those where it's like it was in that early period of mass social media about 10 years ago where artists would do things like this yeah and to be fair people still do it now but singers used to do this as well and other people who were just looking to build a platform the other person i always come back to with stuff like this who has absolutely mastered

this kind of shit is mark goldbridge who pretends to be and has pretended to be very successfully for 10 years a manchester united fan but he's actually a nottingham forest fan an ex-police officer and his real name is like brett de cesare or something like that he completely changed his identity made a false identity and a character basically in order to make money for himself and he is absolutely exquisite at it and whenever you mention this to him on twitter he blocks you and and tries to delete the tweet and stuff like that but so with the sandy tom thing it's like i would not know about this earthquake song of hers if she hadn't done that video that's all i'm gonna say but i think it might be giving her a bit too much credit

and yeah also as well is that we're also in that because it's also comes from that period of social media where people were uploading videos of themselves in compromising situations without really understanding the permanent wide-reaching consequences of it we were still in that weird period that learning period where everybody was like whoa phones have got cameras now and we can video things with like infinite memory this is cool i'm going to video everything i do all the time and even in moments where like i'm crying because everybody appreciates honesty and and so it's it comes at that period where it's hard to tell it is hard to tell but i did then go and listen to this earthquake song out of curiosity and it's a it's at least at that point in 2014 it's at least 16 years out of date

it's like at least very yeah it's very um lizzie we were kind of talking about this and andy like it's very shania twain very shania twain but like without the kind of catty personality that a lot of shania twain's biggest hits had like man i feel like a woman that don't impress me much etc oh no it's not shania twain i'm thinking of it's cheryl crowe oh sh yes yeah very cheryl crowe as well it's just yeah mean, maybe this is the whole born too late thing that she's on about. Maybe she wishes that she was famous in the 90s where this kind of stuff was more lucrative or something. And that's where the song comes from. But, yeah, like, I don't know.

Because, I mean, obviously, I don't know Sandy Tom. I've never met Sandy Tom. And this all could, you know, and so we could be casting aspersions on like her character and stuff like that. And we may get some angry emails if anybody ever stumbles across this or anything like that. But yeah, it's not like,

I'm being very careful not to like attack who Sandy Tom is. Yeah. I mean, it's like that old joke, isn't it? In comedy where it's like make fun of what people do not who they are and so i think that yeah it's i'm more critical of the things that she's done because i don't know sandy tom it feels like we've come down very heavily on sandy tom but it's fair enough to have work deconstructed like this i think that because this is the

harshest i think we've ever been on the song on the podcast i think this is the lowest score that we're ever going to have given out until songs in the future um but yeah i just don't think i really tried to be charitable with this all week and it just annoyed me more and more me too and i think it just annoyed all of us more and more and i i think it's hard not to come down really hard on a song that has such a like strong manifesto of rubbishing everything basically that has happened since the 1980s like how can you not respond strongly to that because she's proper staring a stall out there and like i say there are things strongly to that because she's proper status doll out there and like i say there are things about this that genuinely ticked me off it's like a lot of very

good stuff happened since the 1970s that was very much needed and to just rubbish all of that in the face of nostalgia i feel like you have to come down heavily for that like real world you know like lizzie said she's 25 she's not a little kid who's like singing about daisy chains like she's 25 she knows about the power of the words that she's saying here just going back to that as well when you grow out of it you don't just go into like a doomed state of like oh i'm stuck in the present and everything's crap you've got to learn to get to a point where even if you do recognize that things aren't great you have to look at it like what can i do to improve it what can i do to make my own small mark on the world while i'm here

in the present i think she probably thought that releasing this song was like part of the destiny if you know if you know i mean like that's how she was going to affect the world and okay fair enough we can only all do our own little bit but sometimes this does happen a little bit and like you say the teenagers of today will grow out of this but every now and again because obviously I spend a lot of time hanging around albums and forums discussing albums of the height of like the emo period if you will the emo pop period that we'll come to later this year and people say oh i wish i could have been an emo in the 2000s and it's like no there's there's people like who were emos in the 2000s who were like if you were a boy wearing

nail polish and had your hair like past your chin you'd just get pushed into a corner and have a homophobic slur yelled at you that was just like what it was like oh I wish I was an emo kid with overstrained hair with long term depression and lots of bullying in 2007 and 2009

emo music was in the air I wish I was an emo kid with thrown chewy in my hair. But like that is, I imagine how the, so we say more enlightened folk of the 60s and 70s just sort of look back and go, I don't wish it was like that anymore. No.

I don't want the world to be like that. The world is a much kinder place now than it used to be. I lived through that. It wasn't great. So many good things now that we didn't have then. Exactly. Not just the big things, like LGBT rights, but things that we just didn't have then.

You can get tangerines all year round. We've got hash browns. We've got The Chase on ITV. It's the place that does ramen in Manchester now. It's brilliant. It is time to call time on this episode of Hits 21. So I'm just going to ask, just going to ask now. So, So Sick by Neo.

Andy, is that going in the pie hole or the vault for you? Nah, I may be so sick of certain other songs this week but i'm ambivalent about neo um lizzie um i'm not so sick of this song but i'm not so high on it either it's going nowhere cool um so i guess we're all vaulting crazy by nels barkley based on what we've said you'd be be crazy not to. I'm crazy for crazy. Yeah. Andy, you've already told us about how you feel and where Sandy Tom is gonna go. You said piehole rather, you know, proper full stop at the end of your comments about it. I'm also pieholing it. Lizzie? Yeah, I'm also pie-holing it, but Sandy, just so there's no hard feelings,

her new single, Silence, is out now. Yes, yeah, we'll repay her a bit. We'll say that her new material is there. She is still recording, has carried on recording after this point, has released a few albums. Not that I've listened to

much of anything, but it's there. You can go and find it. Of course. So thank you very much for listening to this week's episode. When we come back, we'll be continuing our journey through 2006. We will see you then. See you.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Distant dust Evacuate and turn to rest When you released me from the pain I never ever felt the same again Crown of summer, paralyzed by fear I've waited in silence all these years I'm holding on to deserate Slip inside and silently washing my pain I need to believe in something I say

I feel like I'm living a new life today When you release me from the bed And never ever felt the same again I can't find a way through all of my tears And I'll read in silence all these years