Hits 21 - 2006 (6): Scissor Sisters, Razorlight, My Chemical Romance

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

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] Lizzy talking Blur on In Five: https://open.spotify.com/episode/11pzy6nV2KsOmBVEoakS4a Vault: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5O5MHJUIQIUuf0Jv0Peb3C?si=e4057fb450f648b0 Piehole: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2FmWkwasjtq5UkjKqZLcl4

🎵 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 you can email us too. Feel free to send it on over to H hits21podcast at gmail.com thank you so much for joining us again hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year period thank you

for being patient with us as we took a little break during the holiday season but it might be 2024 but we are currently looking back on this podcast at the year 2006 we are continuing our progress through 2k6 this week we'll be covering the period between the 10th of september and the 28th of october so about six weeks give or take a few days um last episode's poll winner it was sexy back justin timberlake not by much not by much but it was still a win for jt and timberland all right then it is time to press on with this week's episode and as always it's time for some news headlines from around the time that the songs we're covering in this episode were at number one in the UK. Tony Blair announces that he will step down as Prime Minister in 2007. His announcement

followed pressure to resign after several junior ministers themselves had already resigned, Blair had been criticised for a lack of resolution in Iraq and for not calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict. God, do you remember when politicians used to resign over things like that? Yeah. In Yorkshire, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond suffers significant injuries and is hospitalised for a month after crashing a jet-powered car travelling at around 300 miles an hour. Hammond did eventually make a full recovery

and was able to appear in the first episode of the next Top Gear series in January 2007. 300 miles an hour. Wow. Gosh. Yeah. And in Manchester, the Beetham Tower is officially opened and becomes the tallest building in the UK outside of London.

And I walked past it a couple of hours ago. And in York, one person is killed when a virgin cross-country train collides with a car that had strayed onto the tracks near the village of Corpmanthorpe. The films to hit the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows. Accepted for one week. Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Robbie for one week. Children of Men for one week. Click for one week, Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Robbie for one week, Children of Men for one week, Click for one week, The Devil Wears Prada for one week and The Departed for two weeks.

After Connie Fisher wins BBC One's How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, the show's host Graham Norton is then defended by the BBC after admitting to using recreational drugs in his past during an interview with Marie Claire magazine. Meanwhile, Matt Dawson wins the first ever Celebrity Masterchef. And users on YouTube are shocked to discover that they've been had by a hoax. The account known as LonelyGirl15 reveals that it's not a genuine video diary of a teenage girl, but a series invented by a group of college students. After revealing its true intentions, the web series ran for two more years. Andy, how are the UK album charts looking?

Yeah, not too much for you this week. A couple of repeats, a couple of newbies, but I will tell you that it's looking very 2006. It is very much, you would look at this list and go, yeah, that's 2006. We opened this period with a return to number one for Snow Patrol with Eyes Open, which, as we mentioned before, is the highest selling album of 2006 in the UK, went eight times platinum. But this is the last time it will be at number one. It turns out that it's so clear now that this is all that they have. I hate myself for that this is uh

replaced at number one by justin timberlake with future sex love sounds and we've had our say about that album title that went to number one for one week and went four times platinum in the uk before it was knocked off the top by tada by sciss, their second album, which went four times platinum and was number one for two weeks. And that was a particularly big album of this era for me. And another big album of this era followed right after it, going five times platinum and three weeks at the top. It's Sam's Town by The Killers. I definitely know which one of those albums I prefer these days,

out of Ta-Da and Sam's Town, but they were both I definitely know which one of those albums I prefer these days, out of Tadar and Sam's Town, but they were both biggies for me at the time. So yeah, Snow Patrol, JT, Scissor Sisters and The Killers. It's 2006, everyone. How is 2006 September-October in the States, Lizzie? Well, I only have one single to mention this week, as Sexy Back was at number one for most of this period, which we discussed last week. That single is Moneymaker by Ludacris featuring Pharrell Williams.

It stayed at number one for two weeks in the US and was eventually certified double platinum, but failed to chart in the UK. in the uk oh wow is this um i've never heard this but i can presume it's uh the main line is instructing somebody to shake their money maker or something along those lines i would assume so it'd be a safe guess i think so just quickly going over to albums and it's as busy as it usually is so let's get stuck in first up we have modern times by bob dylan one week at number one number three in the uk second up we have bidet by beyonce one week also number three in the uk and then we have future sex love sounds by justin tim blake which was number one for two weeks and it also got to number one in the uk as andy just mentioned then we have a release therapy by ludacris one week number 69 in the uk nice then we have the open door by evanescence one week

number two in the uk and finally this week we have still the same great rock classics of our time by rod stewart one week number four in the UK sounds like it's Melvin Bragg made an album Great Rock Classics of Our Time Jesus I've just had a look at the lyrics of Moneymaker by Ludacris and

shake your moneymaker like somebody about to pay ya I mean surely that's implied from Moneymaker that someone is about to pay you. I mean, surely that's implied from moneymaker that someone is about to pay you. That's like, you know, open the till as if someone is about to put money in it. That's implied.

It's a double meaning. Oh, dear. Thank you both for those reports. And we are going to crack on with this episode. And the first song up this week is this But I don't need another one You're like a dove and can only wear them gowns So I call my feel so lonely when you're up getting down So I'll play along when I hear that special song I'm gonna be the one who gets it right

You better know when you're swinging round the room Looks like magic's totally on the line But I don't feel like dancing when you're doing the plays My heart could take a chance and my two feet can't find a way You think that I could muster up a little soft shoe tennis sway But I don't feel like dancing No sir, no dancing today Don't feel like dancing, dancing Even if I find nothing better to do

Don't feel like dancing, dancing Watch a cricket tell when I'm out of the mood Don't feel like dancing, dancing Right at the heart with the one in the bed to die with you All right then, this is I Don't Feel Like Dancing by Scissor Sisters. Released as the lead single from the band's second studio album titled, ta-da, we heard about it before, I Don't Feel Like Dancing is Scissor Sisters' sixth single overall to be released in the UK and their first to reach number one.

However, it is their last, and this is the last time that we'll be coming to Scissor Sisters on this podcast. I Don't Feel Like Dancing first entered the UK chart at number four, reaching number one during its second week on the chart, knocking Justin Timberlake off the top spot. It stayed at number one for four weeks. In its first week at the summit, it sold 67,000 copies, beating competition from Promiscuous by Nelly Furtado, which climbed to number three, and Rudebox by Robbie Williams,

which climbed to number four. In week two, it sold 56,000 copies, beating competition from London Bridge by Fergie, which climbed to number three and featured shots of Tower Bridge in its music video, Fergie, I've got a bridge to sell you. And When You Were Young by The Killers, which got to number five. In week three, it sold 42,000 copies, beating competition from something about you by Jamelia which climbed to number nine and You in your hand by pink which climbed to number ten and in week four it sold

32,000 copies beating competition from checking it out by a little Chris which climbed to number three and Call me when you're sober byanescence, which climbed to number 4. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, I Don't Feel Like Dancing dropped one place to number 2. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the total 104, 42 weeks. The song is currently officially certified 2x platinum, so it is double platinum in the UK as of 2020. 23. What a collection of songs that didn't get

to number one this week not all for the right reasons but oh my god are some of them memorable rude box we have by the way ludacris and robbie williams finding two different words two different euphemisms for just bum or arse because we have moneymaker and now a rude box why are you so pissed jesus it is just the london bridge fergie again classic mistake of thinking that london bridge and tower bridge are the same thing

when you were young by the killers that's one of the few killer songs i really like the couple of singles off that album were very good i think uh read my mind when you were young very nice um and lil chris bit of a shout out to lil chris yeah rest in peace yeah i can't believe that um andy take it away on sister sisters i will say right from the start so this particular couple of weeks this particular well a couple of months

really but this time uh in history is a particularly vivid part of my memory um of my childhood it's probably one of the single happiest periods of my childhood um for a variety of reasons just a lot of nice stuff happening at this time but it was helped along by the fact that there were two songs that were absolute giants of the era that i was just obsessed with, adored them. And everybody else seemed to love them as well. And we're covering both of them this week. So you'll have to bear with me because it's quite hard to figure out how to do justice to these two songs. And there is another song that we're covering, but we'll glaze over that one.

but we'll glaze over that one. So starting with this I decided the best way to approach it was just to kind of look at it through my teenage eyes and what this song meant to me and why I loved it so much. So like I say this song came along very precise period in my life I was just turned 14 I was just starting year 10 I was just starting to understand myself starting to form attachments starting to identify my own interests and tastes rather than just what I was just starting year 10. I was just starting to understand myself, starting to form attachments, starting to identify my own interests and tastes rather than just what I was brought up with. And there were other things about myself I was starting to figure out too, which come into this. So a few years earlier, when the first Scissor Sisters album came out,

I just, I pounced on those songs in whatever way I could. This was music that was flamboyant, sexy, silly, it's really quirky and different and it was so exciting to me. It was just everything I wanted, I was just so thrilled by it and so taken away by it. But at that time I didn't have an iPod or anything and it was quite difficult to listen to music in a way that wasn't known publicly because of that, unless I got into the habit of like hiding CDs under the bed and I wasn't that kind of kid who really did that and I did sort of get the feeling that this was something that a teenage boy probably shouldn't shout from the rooftops that they love that they're really into the Scissor Sisters back when I was

12 years old and that first album had come out you know people might sort of raise an eyebrow if I sang along to Laura on the radio or if I asked my guitarist friends who like to play Iron Maiden and things like that, if I asked them if they could play the opening to Take Your Mama, that would sort of raise an eyebrow hugely as well. And I honestly didn't even realise that I was doing this at the time, but I understand now that I tended to kind of find excuses to access Scissor Sisters. It was the reason I bought the Live 8 DVDs, because I knew that they played Live 8, and it gave me an excuse to be seen watching a live performance of theirs.

I remember at one point I pretended to love an advert, just because the advert had Filthy Gorgeous in it, so I always liked that advert being on. I can't remember what it was for for it was some sort of perfume or something and by the way when I did finally get an iPod a couple of years after this the three first songs that I bought on iTunes were Laura, Take Your

Mama and I Can't Decide and we can thank Doctor Who for that last one but anyway in 2006 so their second album comes along, I haven't had anything from them for a while and what they give me is I Don't Feel Like Dancing and just what? Wow. It was everything that I already loved them for

captured in one song. It was camp as hell, it was incredibly fun it was subversive with very clever lyrics kind of ironic lyrics that I quite like it was super catchy, It was vocally challenging. You could dance to it, obviously. It just had everything. And I was just like, oh, if only I didn't have to keep my love of Scissor Sisters a little bit quiet.

But I didn't at all. Because this song was so undeniably good, so infectious and so joyous, that everybody I knew seemed to love it. Just everyone. This was, and that's extraordinary to me, because this was like a festival of queerness, this song, that was so excellent that it had transcended the culture that had birthed it, and it had taken over the mainstream.

And, you know, there was no need for me to wait for it to appear on the radio. I could ask my sister to get it off the line wire for me without any fear of questions. And, you know, there was no need to stop myself from hubbing it because everybody else was singing it all the time as well. I remember being at a family party a few months after this came out where those opening piano chords started playing and everyone got up. Kids, teenagers, you know, mums, nannas, everyone.

Everybody was getting up dancing to this. And even at that most discerning and brutal musical amphitheater, the Year 10 School Disco, it filled the floor with everyone from the cool kids to the emos to the scallies to the teachers. Like, just everybody enjoyed this song. That's what it felt like for me anyway. And with all of that massive breakthrough success that this silly fun disco track was getting I just kind of remember this incredible feeling inside me of somehow associating the song's success with my own value

and my own validation and I couldn't figure it out for ages but it felt like Scissor Sisters and this song in particular being celebrated was like I was being celebrated it was like I was having a spotlight shone on me and I'd never felt that from music before and it was like I was being celebrated it was like I was having a spotlight shone on me and I'd never felt that from music before and it was something I really did struggle to figure out until I finally got there with it and it's because music like this is made for kids like me at the time who were slightly repressed but very dorky kids who know deep down that they're as gay as a fucking flamingo and I sort of got that feeling of connection and celebration from it and that feeling of other people enjoying it was me taking my first steps into finding my culture really looking back and understanding

the joy that those kind of connections bring you so I guess you might remember a little while back I gave a very heavy monologue about all the things she said by Tattoo and how that represented all the sadness and dark times that came with being a queer kid. But this is the other side of the coin. This is the lighter side of the story. This is the joy, the self-discovery, the belonging, the theatricality, the fun that came with stepping into my gay life, basically. And that's what this song means to me. And so I will always adore it forever.

It will always be very special in my heart because I don't feel like dancing. It's everything that I hope to be. It's fun, joyous, gay as hell, and unstoppable. Yeah. Yeah. What a way to start. Oh, yeah, there we go.

That was good. Good pick me up at the beginning there, Andy. Well done. Happy New Year, everyone. Yeah, amazing, amazing story. Especially that little anecdote about it filling the floor at a year 10 disco. Everybody loved it. It was weird that it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't expect everybody to love,

but they just do. It was like Are You Ready For Love? It's like some old off cut from the 70s from elton john and all the teenagers are singing it at the school discos it's just it doesn't make any sense at all but it happens and it's just a nice thing to remember yeah you forget how subversive that is because this is a band who are you know named after a lesbian sex act we're only a couple of years removed from section 28 like yeah for you know year 10 kids who are notoriously quite cruel to be dancing along to this without a thought of it is yeah it's quite

something yeah yeah when it comes to albums um the scissor sisters have never really been my favorite band i've never really found them to be that consistent over like 12 tracks but their singles have always been like absolute like dynamite haven't they like i feel as though like a greatest hits collection of theirs would be excellent value for money because they put everything into their singles and i think they managed to pull so many disparate influences into like really interesting and memorable images you know the over homages to things like cabaret and vaudeville but also little flavors of things like disco and dance and glam and electro and you know they're all so they're sort of suspended in time an example of like a truly post-modern group using lots of different 20th century aesthetics

to produce something new for the 21st century and you know i think there was especially watching the music video something i'd sort of forgotten because scissor sisters are part of the you know the wallpaper of 2000s pop that i think we'd kind of taken for granted just how strange they were like the music video for this especially where like all their heads are in like wire frames and they're just like masks like um what's the face cassandra from doctor who uh the one that zoe wanamaker played where like their faces are all stretched out by cables and things like that and they're all doing these strange

movements and all sorts of weird imagery all over it. And as much as I think that all of their singles especially their early ones off these first two albums were really strong, this is probably well I'd say probably, it is their

crowning moment this and take your mama together um they both work for basically exactly the same reasons which is everything i've already mentioned about their ability to distill and utilize different aesthetics and that they really really know how to like i mean i know this sounds like a bit trite but they really know how to craft like a proper pop song because their songs are always filled their singles are always filled with such great content like and a lot of it as well like more specifically like just in the case of take your mama and i don't feel like dancing like their ability to write double choruses is the thing that has always thrilled me so much because they happen so rarely in pop you know because i think a lot of artists go for like

what they think is a double chorus and it just ends up being a post-chorus instead or they go for a bridge and then a chorus you know little things like that and with take your mama it has the um we're gonna take your mama out all night, yeah, that bit. But then it goes up again to the, do it, take your mama. And this does the same where you get the, I don't feel like dancing when the, that bit. But then you get, don't feel like dancing, dancing. And it's just, oh, so, so good. And then in the final chorus, you get don't feel like dancing and it's just oh so so good and then in the final chorus

you get that extra counter melody with the um i don't feel like i love that great great idea all these little things that when put together build to form something really genuinely huge that feels really massive like i was a little bit younger than you at the time andy i was about 12 but like i first encountered this while i was on like autumn half-term holidays in 2006 and it was number one for the whole time we were off but back then when i was mostly like you know doing most of my chart listening i was listening through radios and computer speakers which meant that i missed until years later that like when i finally put headphones on that throbbing arpeggiated undercurrent the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do that's underneath

that if it was any louder it would become very um very robin-esque i think it's kind of sneaked away in the background of the mix, and so years later, it had something new to give to me, and I think, like, that's what really seals it for me, which is that this composition is so dense with content, all sorts of noises and melodies and textures, and I think that is the Scissor Sisters at their best, you know, lots of stuff under one roof, the scissor sisters at their best you know lots of stuff under one roof channeled with a lot of enthusiasm and color and life and i think this might maybe my only slight hitch is that it may have been better off hiding that double chorus until after the second chorus you know just in the first instance you just come back after the original chorus and then you go into the verse

then you leave it as a secret for the end but like it's a minor quibble it's only minor because there are so many great ideas that appear in the back half of the song anyway that like sweeping phase out like synth solo the end is just oh yeah great stuff yeah no i really really love this i think this is probably their best amongst a great great selection of singles uh lizzy how about you i think this is great i think it's a solid modern disco track that doesn't come off as a pastiche which is surprisingly hard to pull off i will get a minor gripe of mine out of the way first i feel yet again like the vocals are a bit too low in the mix it's that old 2006 problem i think the combination of like jake shears is heavily accented falsetto and the the sort of 2006 mixing i must admit that i had no idea what the lyrics were for the longest time so as a kid i just kind

of heard them phonetically and didn't really think anything of it like i don't feel like dancing with the ojo and the plate i just assumed it was some sort of american thing that i didn't understand um but yeah it's a shame because i think otherwise this song sounds fantastic like like you mentioned the double chorus the the little bleepy bloopy sound effects in the background and my favorite bit of all is that synth solo in the bridge like and it just yes it's amazing um like a lot of other disco tracks like you say it's bright it's colorful and it's full of hooks but it kind of subverts the genre by being a song about not wanting to dance and not dancing in opposition to

so many of those big disco hits that are all about imploring people to dance like everybody dance you make me feel like dancing you should be dancing dancing, etc, etc. So in that sense, it's not unlike a lot of Northern Soul, where the melodies are upbeat and danceable, but the lyrics are all about heartbreak and rejection. And of course, it is not just a song about not wanting to dance, to me at least, it's a song about the long termterm aftermath of a breakup which I don't think we've come across very often come to think about it I thought of Rise by Gabrielle but beyond that usually when we cover breakup songs on the podcast it's set in like the immediate aftermath where everything is still quite raw somewhere between the denial and anger stages.

On this, I get the sense of an unexpected encounter, where the other person is very much in the acceptance stage, cutting up and carrying on, but the narrator isn't quite there yet, and has a slight hint of bitterness to their thoughts. All you do is change your clothes and call that versatile it's like he's trying to convince himself that he's better off without the other person but seeing them dancing brings all of the memories flooding back to him and i kind of think of that that solo in the bridge as being the moment where he's just looking wistfully at the other person and it's like oh god it's dawning

on me i'm still in love with this person and maybe seeing the other person dancing the night away without a care is making him feel jealous or perhaps it's helping him to reconcile with the fact that they've moved on and so should he it's never quite made clear but all that's left is a memory as the other person floats away into the shimmer lights i think it's a really beautiful song kind of feels like um like you say you know the lyrically anyway what you just said there reminds me a little bit of um sometime around midnight the um airborne toxic event which is basically exactly it's exactly the same lyrically where i mean it's a bit more you know wearing its heart on its sleeve a bit more you know minor key forlorn that kind of thing um it's a bit of a sort of like airs at you know like um

neighborhoods um arcade fire tunnels really a neighborhood one it's a bit of an air that's like that where the way that its composition kind of builds and stuff but it's a sweet you know sweet kind of bitter retort really basically about a guy drinking depressed at a bar and then he sees his ex-girlfriend it's like a less creepy lady in red should we say because it's not a oh i only find you beautiful now kind of song um which yeah lady in red feels a little bit like but um yeah no it's more like i'm happy for you but i miss you as well do you know that that vibe is why i will always die on the hill that dolly parton's original of i will always love you is better than whitney's version because whitney's version it's played like a love song like a big oh my god i love you so much whereas dolly's version because Whitney's version it's played like a love song like a big oh my god I

love you so much whereas Dolly's version it emphasizes the I'm letting you go and I hope you're happy kind of side of it and that's just so much more powerful I think of course yeah uh right okay we will move on to our second song this week which is this this What a drag it is, the shape I'm in Well, I go out somewhere, then I come home again A lot of cigarette cause I can't get no sleep There's nothing on the TV, nothing on the radio That means that much to me All my life

Watching America All my life Panic in America Oh, oh, oh, oh Trouble in America Oh, oh, oh, oh Okay, this is America by Razorlight. Released as the second single from the band's second studio album, titled Razorlight,

America is Razorlight's eighth single overall to be released in the UK, and their first to reach number one. And it's also their last, so this is the last time that we'll be coming to raise a light on this podcast America first entered the UK chart at number 15 reaching number one during its second week on the chart knocking Scissor Sisters off the top spot it stayed at number one for one week in its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 33,000 copies beating competition from Jump In My Car by David Hasselhoff

which got to number 3. Chris Moyles defeated on the battlefield there. Come To Me by P. Diddy which climbed to number 4 and Rock This Party by Bob Sinclair which climbed to number 5. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, America dropped one place to number two.

By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 33 weeks. The song is currently officially certified two times platinum, so double platinum in the UK as of 2023. Lizzy, your reaction there to David Hasselhoff, that makes me think that you don't know about this. No. Oh my god.

I didn't realise it got so... I'd heard it, but I didn't realise it was a genuine shark contender. Yeah, it got... It was part of a big campaign by Chris Moyles to get it to number one as a novelty, jokey song, and it got just a bit too close.

It's terrible, Lizzie, but you will have a great time listening to it. It is just... I don't even want to sing it, because I don't think I could do it justice. I will play it over the end of the episode for anybody who wants to wait like 40 minutes

and listen to that, have a bit of a trip back down memory lane to 2006. I do think if that had made it instead of America, not to spoil my feelings about America, but if that had made it, I think this would have been my favourite line-up of songs that we've ever had on an episode. That just would have been the pièce de résistance there.

Oh, yeah. No, it's weird. I've heard his version of the Pingu theme tune, but I've never heard Jump in My Car. This must have been around the time where I got an iPod as well, Andy, because I don't remember a lot of these being number one. And I would have been back at school, so I take it rather than listening to the radio on the way in, I would have just been listening to whatever I had on my iPod most likely the Beatles

I don't think Jumping My Car was all over the radio to be fair, I don't think it's that bad to have missed that It would have been on Radio 1, still the biggest station in the country Yeah, true Lizzie, how do you feel about America? The country or the song? As soon as I said it

I was like, I'll set that up, but there you go you just knock them down. The song. The song. Much like Dakota by Stereophonics, I feel that this is just a sound that leans on vague allusions to America to create a sense of intrigue that doesn't really exist anywhere else on the song. I think the production on this is quite nice and very expensive sounding but to me all that does is act as a smokescreen to cover up the lack of any real substance or fresh

ideas in the song itself. I think the lyrics are half-baked at best and the music isn't exciting or interesting enough to serve as a distraction. I find it quite slow and plodding and to me it never really seems to get out of second gear despite its best attempts. There's a real lack of momentum to it overall, I think, and worse still, to me that exposes Johnny Burrell's weaknesses as both a lyricist and a singer as a sound I think it's perfectly okay but as a song I think it's quite underwhelming sorry yeah I've not got too much more to add to be honest I pretty much agree with Lizzie um I think I'm going to qualify the statement that by I think there are quite a few nice songs about American cities like there's obviously few nice songs about American cities

there's obviously some nice songs about New York I really like I Love LA by Randy Newman but songs about America full stop I always dislike because America is a big complex confusing mess of a country

and you cannot do it justice in a song without either resorting to lazy stereotypes or being incredibly vague and I just don't think anyone managed to pull it off really, like David Bowie had loads of songs about America

like I'm afraid of Americans, this is not America and stuff and it's just incredibly intangible and vague it just talks about America as a concept and it's just incredibly intangible and vague and just talks about america as a concept it's just just not into it at all like these are musicians who get to go touring in america it's their first exposure to it and they come back like hey english people let me tell you about this strange place called america and it just i just really don't like it and um i would put this in that category. I don't think there's any exception. I definitely agree with the point that there's no substance here.

That's simply saying America and, you know, having some truisms like there's trouble in America. So, okay. When hasn't there been trouble in America? You know, there's a lot of trouble in America. there's a lot of trouble in America and I think in the nicest way possible I think Razorlight in general and particularly

this song and this album are riding the crest of a wave that they are very lucky to have got onto that wave if this song had been released one year earlier or one year later I'm convinced it would have had no chance at number one it's just we're here at the peak of that indie slash um slash rock music in general kind of

movement of people being back into it again and getting it back on the radio and i just think that this doesn't justify its place at number one really i don't think it's like a bad song but it just really stands out as like, why is this here? Really? Even at the time, did anyone have particularly strong feelings about this? It was just kind of the safe option, really.

It is a little bit catchy. I'd say it maybe leans more towards the annoying side of catchy than it does the genuinely hook kind of catchy. One thing I do like about it is those little guitar licks at the start and the end that are very, very sparse that it's actually quite difficult I think to do that

and still make it sound tuneful and not just a bunch of random notes you know like that it's quite a nice little sound wealth they've got at the start there with those little licks and I think they potentially do have quite a nice sound that you can really get into here but there's no substance there's

no substance at all um i have to acknowledge that i'm being i can't avoid being harsher on this than i should because it is surrounded by absolute monoliths of the noughties on either side this week um and there's nothing we can do about that so I just have to acknowledge it and say it's probably not as bad as all that but yeah this is one to swiftly move on from for me this week I'm afraid. I want to talk about the next one Can I just pull you up on something? Go on yeah. Because you mentioned that this wouldn't

have had a chance the year before and I will just say in 2005 they got to number two with Somewhere Else But I think that's a much better song. Of course it is. I was just about to say the same thing. Because there's no substance to that either, but there's energy to it. And it's like piped in crowd noise.

And by the end, you're like, yeah, Razorlight. No, no, it's a good point. But I hadn't forgotten that. That's why I said this song specifically. I don't think we'd have had a chance a year before or a year later. Oh, no, no, no. The wave they are riding is at such a crest right now that they... I'm not saying they could have released any old crap and got it to number one,

but it's a lower bar for indie music at the moment. Sam Stown has just come out. It's quite a big moment for kind of gentle guitar music. it's quite a big moment for kind of gentle guitar music so I think they had it pretty much in the bag to be honest and they wouldn't have had that last year

because somewhere else should have got number one I think based on that because it's much better than this I think the label have just thrown a lot of money at this this whole album, this whole promotion it seems very corporate and kind of cynical yeah yeah i i bought this album and like i played it like twice and then

that was it i bought it obviously like the year after um i bought like demon days and stuff you know went back to the trafford center and i remember buying this and Under the Iron Sea at the same time because I was into Keen at the time as well. And I really liked the lead single off that, the Is It Any Wonder one at the time with the music video where they stuck the camera on that trolley and they sent it round them while they were playing the song i always really like that but this raise a light i have never found much of an emotional attachment to despite you know sort of being there when you know when i was like 12 and 11 years old and first like really becoming an active participant with pop it's obviously like i love gorillas and like I hold such, I hold Demon Days in such high esteem and it holds a really special place in my heart. Keen, yes, to a lesser degree. Really like the singles off the first two albums. Everything else I can kind of give or take.

Whereas with Razorlight, it's like, I like Golden Touch. I like Somewhere Else, but beyond that, it's just a bit, like, hazy. I've never really been a fan of In the Morning, the, uh... Oh, you won't remember a thing! That one. I prefer that to this, because at least it's got that are you really going to do it this time, which I quite like that bit. Yeah, the coda section. Yeah.

With this, though, so I'm just going to be upfront. I'm not vaulting this this but i am a fan of it and i am gonna i'm gonna try and defend its honor and its corner um i've just explained like i'm not really much of a razor like guy but i was never much into their albums and like a lot like snow patrol i actually think that like their big breakout in 2006 they both followed it up with complete duds in like 2008 2009 which kind of signaled that the whole thing was over like nobody ever remembers what snow patrol do after chasing cars like nobody and nobody remembers what razor light do after this because they just really duds that

chart like at number five because they've got a bit of a fan base and then whoop that's it see ya like who the hell remembers take back the city by snow patrol except me because i remember being really struck by how annoying uh gary lightbody's voice was the um take back the city for yourself tonight my mom wanted that album for Christmas I bought that album for my mum for Christmas she loved Just Say Yes just say yes just say oh Jesus Christ

I cannot over time I've really come to not be able to stand Snow Patrol it was fucking awful I still kind of like Spitting Games off the first album.

The but even then, the big problem I have with them is that they're so slow and they are constantly on beat. They are so frightened of syncopation and all their albums are just

oh god. It's like just the most dull metronome you've ever heard in your life. And then I remember, like, last year they were like, oh, it's the 20th anniversary of whatever the fucking album was that they called. Final Straw, that was it. And they said, here's the demo version of Spitting Games. And I thought, oh, this might be quite interesting to hear, like, you know, like a raw recording.

And it's like they've slowed it down. The original version was just as slow as everything fucking else that they did. And so some other producer has clearly come in and gone like, okay, there's the bones of a good song here, guys. I'm just going to do this. And then they've had to play it at double speed for the rest of their lives. And then they've made sure that everything else is as slow as molasses um with it but anyway enough about snow patrol razor light the other thing as well is that johnny burrell his public persona makes him look like a right prick like and i

remember being about 19 and punching the air with glee when it was revealed that his first solo album, titled Burrell One, it sold less than 600 copies in its first week, and it didn't even chart. And as I grew up, it became really trendy to think that Razorlight were garbage, which, hey, you know, maybe they were, I don't know. But over time, I have grown to appreciate and quite like America more and more. I just think this is so pretty and sleepy. Like those guitar tones that swim about the place and twinkle a bit.

That lovely fairy dust, like, you know, sprinkling all over the mix. You know, they're like fireflies if we're going to go for an American image. Because I think that's the image that this is trying to capture, you know, they're like fireflies if you're going to go for an American image. Because I think that's the image that this is trying to capture, you know. It's a British band on the road, falling in love with things like roadside motels and hazy Texas sunsets and fireflies and whatnot. You know, Razorlight played a bunch of US dates in the early weeks of 2005, and you can tell that they were feeling things

when they had their first experience of america and yeah okay i imagine if i looked across the appalachian mountains i would feel something but the thing is is that when bands do this and you two are both right to point this out bands often put out their most obnoxious material that is self-indulgent in a way that is not interesting when they have these feelings about going to America for the first time. The two big examples from my life that I always come back to are Rattle and Hum and that Gorillaz album, The Fall. It's something that British musicians, and Irish musicians in the case of U2,

what they don't really understand is that nobody cares about their experience of America as much as they do. Which means that the more and more lyrical and aesthetic detail that they keep piling on isn't immersing us. It just makes them look pretentious. But I think America

Razorlight largely avoids this issue precisely because of how up his own arse Johnny Burrell is because his lyrics are more like vague abstractions they aren't really trying to force the listener into this American atmosphere that the music kind of takes care of that you know that the lyrics are more like observations from a distance you know there's a sense of detachment that I quite like about this actually like all my life been watching america all my life there's panic in america like i think it's trying to explain that like looking at america as a whole all you see is chaos but then once

you're there like you were saying andy it is an incredibly vast land with nuances and complications that are beyond solving or beyond interpretation from an outsider's point of view and i think it just about saves the song from being like a diary entry that i don't want to read um i think it's a smidge too long i'm not super keen on burrell's like over-emphasized emoting as well like it's not really singing after a point once he gets to the hold me he's just kind of leering at me a bit but like you know like uh yeah it's a bit uncomfortable i feel him a bit too close to my ears and i think that once the lyrics stop dealing with abstractions and observations of the kind of things that run through your mind when you're halfway along the highway in Nevada or Utah or

wherever the fuck, you know, and they start, when the lyrics start to become about feelings, that emotional detachment doesn't quite get extinguished, like, melodically and dynamically, the final coda, the tell me how does it feel thing it feels like a release but lyrically you're just kind of like could you not expand upon this could you not do more tell me how does it feel tell me how does it feel tell me how does it feel how does what feel yes like if i'm reading the liner notes of this i'm just like say something else mate but i do think that this is sweet and moderately transportive, and probably represents a bit of a UK indie, inverted commas, peak, in that Razorlight were topping the charts with a song about their American tour and such, and you know, you had big success for Snow Patrol, but also the Fratellis

and Arctic Monkeys, and so there's a little bit of a, you know, there's a little bit of a moment going on for this kind of music. And yeah, like you were saying, Andy, I don't think this kind of track really goes anywhere 18 months down the line, maybe even 12 months down the line. But it's there in a moment. There's loads of money behind it. It's memorable in a way from that particular era, at least for me. I think a lot of people do remember this um i mean two times platinum i guess that kind of speaks for itself but i do i do think that it's kind of like a a moment in time both for raise a light and for the wider british listening public

i i do like this i'm not gonna vault it i like it more than youtube but like i totally see where you two are coming from and actually to be honest I feel very similarly I think I just feel it less if you know what I mean I admire your defense of this Rob what I will say is that I think some of the points you've made come across as really kind of damning it with faint praise where kind of a lot of what you were saying was like well if he'd tried a bit harder it could have been worse so it's a good job he didn't no it's very true yeah no it's a very it's very very true yeah and that's not like I i get what you mean but i do think that that's like not necessarily a point of praise that's like it plays it so safe that it doesn't offend i don't think it's necessarily a good thing so i wouldn't i don't know if it's necessarily playing it safe

but i do get what you mean that like i find johnny burrell so like repulsive as a front man and as a persona and as a lyricist and everything that like it's kind of like a less is more approach i think it's stronger than the sum of its parts because if it had leaned into it any harder we could have been in dakota territory which isn't a song that i even dislike it's just that if dakota was more wishy-washy and a bit more interested in soundscaping I might find it slightly more appealing like I do uh with this you know I've said I've tried to avoid comparison to the other two songs surrounding this because they are so fantastic both of them but the lyrics like I think that just really stands out to me that

Scissor Sisters you know in that all of their songs really but particularly in don't feel like dancing like they're so much more verbose and creative with their lyrics than they have any need to be like in the chorus they could say words like oh groove in and bounce it around but they say you think that i could muster up a soft shoe gentle sway and then you get this it's just yeah how does it feel how does it feel it's like you can't not criticize that and i know that they're apples and oranges but you get something as creative as don't feel like dancing and then you get this which is it really does feel like uk indie written by written by ai to be honest yeah so i mean sometimes like very simple lyrics can be quite affecting.

Like, sometimes I feel very sad. Oh, yeah. There is a sort of simplicity to Burrell's lyrics. Like, I met a girl, she asked me my name, I told her what it was. It's like, what are you trying to say? No, I agree that it can be... I always say, it used to be so nice, it used to be so good, is an oddly lovely lyric from ABBA.

Yeah, it is, of course. But I generally know I don't like that. What's the one in this one? It's like, I go out and then I come back home again. Yeah. But is that not like trying to communicate a sense of monotony?

And like, you know, Is that something you want to convey with your lead single maybe not but i mean it sort of worked though i think you know if only for that moment in time i think if i'm being charitable like comparing it to dakota again i'd say that dakota is kind of like a city song and this is like a middle of nowhere type song where yeah you're just sort of on the road and it's the middle of the night and you're in some like a crap motel and you can't really go anywhere so you just come back again and and think and like stare at the walls i think over time or over the sort of three weeks that i've really spent you know closely listening to this in between episodes that like i think

initially i was frustrated that i didn't really know what this song was about and then i came to quite like what it was about because this could have veered very closely to like oh god that fucking version of have you ever heard the rattle and hum version of still what still haven't found what i'm looking for oh it is just i have oh god it just goes i mean i really like the original version and i was like oh i'm ready to hear this live and oh my god it just never ends. It does not end. And I just get the feeling that like, because, oh god, they get a choir in and they just go, they say the same,

like the last minute and a half is just the same thing over and over and over and over again. And it gets really, really tiresome. And it feels a little bit this way with Rattle and Hum as well. Like there are bits of Rattle and Hum I actually really like, but quite a lot of it is just, bono mate like yeah thanks like thanks yeah you think america's great good for you mate like the the joshua tree is a slightly more palatable version of that i think um because i mean i always think that you two albums suffer from being a bit

top heavy to be perfectly honest, but, apart from Acton Baby, which is why it's my favourite, but I feel like this gets, could be very close to that territory, and in the hands of Johnny Burrell, it's like, oh my god, this could have been really painful, and I'm glad that it wasn't, because there's, there's just not a lot of it, which I quite like, it's odd for a song to be so sparse then by the time it does ramp up it's still quite you know that all of its all of its parts are still quite sort of minimal and they're not it's not it's not too busy i feel like if it got too busy and gone too much into detail it could have just been a bit like shut up johnny which i feel a little bit like it is in the last little bit of the song, which is kind of why I don't,

I'm not vaulting this, um, just because of that last sort of minute and a half after the yesterday was easy. Yes. I got the news like after that bit, it's like the lyrics kind of go off a cliff as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, um,

do we have anything more to say about raiseorlight before we get on to the next one no so we're going to come to the final song this week now those that have heard the song that's coming up next will know that it is structured in a way that makes it like impossible to clip for the usual structure

of our episodes so I've gone for a slightly shortened version which is like the radio edit i suppose but hopefully what i do hopefully what i do works you could just play like the opening piano note it's like yeah and then just yeah and then everybody knows yeah right come on tight six minutes let's do this When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city to see a marching band. He said, son, when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten, and the damned? He said, will you defeat them, your demons,

and all the non-believersievers The plans that they have made Because one day I'll leave you A phantom to lead you in the summer To join the Black Parade. Sometimes I get the feeling She's watching over me And other times I feel like I should go Went through it all The rise and fall

Of the bodies in the streets And when you're gone, we want you all to know We'll carry on, we'll carry on And the reality of God, believe me, your memory We'll carry on, we'll carry on And to my heart I can't contain it Okay, this is Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. Released as the lead single from the band's third studio album titled The Black Parade, Welcome to the Black Par is my chemical romances seventh

single overall to be released in the uk and their first to reach number one however it is their last and this is the last time that we'll be coming to my chemical romance on this podcast welcome to the black parade first entered the uk chart at number 23 reaching number one during its second week on the chart knocking razor light off the top spot it stayed at number one for two weeks in its first week at number one it sold 34 000 copies beating competition from super freak by beat freaks which climbed to number seven and in week two it sold 29 000 copies copies beating competition from Something Kinda Ooh by Girls Aloud which got to number 5, It's All Coming Back To Me Now by Meatloaf and Marion Raven which climbed to number 6, Wonderful World by James Morrison which climbed to number

8 and Lonely At The Top by The Ordinary Boys, which climbed to number 10. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, Welcome to the Black Parade fell three places to number four. But by the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 100 for 26 weeks. The song is currently officially certified two times platinum, so double platinum in the UK as of 2023. platinum so double platinum in the uk as of 2023 so before we get going on this i just want to make a point that there was a bunch of stats that i managed to happen across that connected all three songs this week all the number all the number ones this week are both the first and last number ones for the artists that we've been covering scissor sisters razor light and my chemical romance they all enter the uk chart a week before going to number one,

and they've all been certified double platinum in the UK as of 2023. Strange little coincidence there. Andy, welcome to the Black Parade. How are we feeling? Thank you. I'll take a seat in the Black Parade and order some drinks from the Black Parade. Oh, this one. Woof, woof, woof. Yeah, this and Don't Feel Like Dancing in the Black Parade and order some drinks from the Black Parade. Oh, this one.

Woof, woof, woof. Yeah, this and Don't Feel Like Dancing in the same week. Wow, the pressure to get these right. I mean, where to start with this? I honestly I really, really don't feel like I could ever do this justice, to be honest. This is one of my favourite rock songs of all time,

so I'm gonna mostly focus on the one thing near the end of the song that I think takes this from a bloody amazing rock song into something really, truly special. So I'm just going to zip through the rest of the song. I say zip through, see how we go. I'm going to go through a whistle-stop tour of everything else I love so much about this song in bullet form. So that piano opening, so simple, so memorable. And I'm a pianist and it's pretty much the number one request that people give me when I'm sat at my piano. It's either that or Bohemian Rhapsody almost every time. But so, so often I will just play that G and everybody will be like, oh, you play Black

Parade? Even when I'm not. uh after that the syncopation of the vocals against the piano in that opening it's easy to miss but the when i was a young boy is following a completely different rhythm to the piano it's difficult to join up when you're performing it and it's made to sound very easy the gradual build of instruments on that first verse with one finger on the piano to start the whole song then to chords with vocals then to light snare drums to bigger drums to the guitars and then the full refrain with Gerard Way screeching out that verse brilliant and on that note Gerard Way's performance in general throughout I just think is absolutely brilliant exquisite emo madness

like no one else could have carried off this song in quite the exact way that he does and that is the biggest compliment i can give it really then once we're past that intro and into the song you know the main song as it were that sudden uplift in the tempo that kicks in there that only it only gives you a verse when it happens you think oh here we go it's the chorus but no gives you a new sort of second style of verse and really keeps you in anticipation about where the song is going until finally at about two and a half minutes in nearly you finally get the first chorus which is a really emotive but really simple chorus with

heavy power chords that you'll pick up very quickly because one of the keys to the song's success, one of the important things about it, is that you have to pick up that chorus very quickly. You have to already be singing along to it by the end of your first listen because of that special thing that's coming at the end. Quick shout-out to the inexplicable line in the second verse. Sometimes I get the feeling she's watching over me and other

times I feel like I should go. No idea. It's just such a weird line. It just feels like there's been a few words missed off the line and I just love the strangeness of that. And in general, I love how completely morbid, bleak, depressing, absolute emo wallowing in the mud that this is in terms of lyrics against this epic, uplifting musical backdrop. It's just really great irony. It's that emo spirit at its finest. I love it. And then the bridge, that till be dry, we'll never make it, with a whole new melody. You've never heard anything like that in the song up to this point. With a whole new melody, whole new rhythm, whole new meter that has this own anthemic quality to it. It's like a whole different song's just started

that you sing along to this one as well. You can just imagine a crowd of thousands singing along to the bridge, not just the main song. And that wild Brian May-style chromatic guitar lick that finishes it off that... It's such an unnecessary feature, but it's just such a lovely one as well it's full of them things that they don't need to do that just elevate it even higher and then after that catalogue we come

to the very special thing which is i hereby decree that this song officially has the greatest key change in the history of pop music i have never heard one better and more powerful and more satisfying than this it's perfectly executed genuinely perfect and it's executed it's genius i've said this and we've i think we've all said this about a few other songs in the past that the key to a great key change is making it feel needed and expected by inserting it earlier than you expect but this goes further even better than that is that they do inserting it earlier than you expect but this goes further even better than that is that they do insert it earlier without you really even recognizing that it's happened you don't even realize that the key change has happened because there's so much other

stuff around it it's right after that mad guitar lick the bridge starts again but suddenly in a different key with no fuss made of it at all. The thing that they make the fuss of is that the production keeps on building. There are strings in here. There are other things going on that take your mind off it, that distract you, that sweep you up in the moment. So that a kind of trick of the mind takes place where your brain refuses to really recognise the key change in the way that it usually does because key changes in songs are treated as the event, the big moment that you build to, and it's already happened around other points

of interest, so your brain kind of refuses to fully recognise it and release the, you know, the sensation that you usually do when key changes happen. You're just riding that energy train all the way up to finally reach what you know is the final chorus that's coming, but you're just riding that energy train all the way up to finally reach what you know is the final chorus that's coming but you're expecting the key change and you don't quite understand why you know that there is a key change coming because it's already happened it's just this weird trick that they managed to pull off and then they stretch it out as far as they possibly can with the i don't care where they're adding sevenths and ninths and they're pushing you right over the cliff edge right at the moment. And then it hits that final chorus in a new key with this huge wave of release.

And it is just so incredibly executed as a key change that I don't think there is really any single sequence, single moment that I think is as perfectly executed in a rock song as this i think it's just extraordinary um nothing makes me feel the endorphin rush that that does it's just it takes my breath away and i timed from this from the time that bridge comes in to the point which where we hit the chorus which is the whole sequence where that key change is developing it's a 38 second sequence quite a big portion of the song is devoted to starting that bridge changing the key building it up and then throwing us into the final chorus and that 38 seconds is one of my favorite sequences in all of rock music

and i just have to say what a crowning achievement this is for the emo movement and for rock in the noughties in general this is the great anthem of that culture it's anchored by one great musical magic trick but the whole thing is exceptional really and brings the whole genre to its peak at the top of the charts getting a number one from Mike Emelko Romance is just unbelievable really looking back on it and this song and I don't feel like dancing it's nice that they're in the same week of the show because I think they both represent sort of out-of-the-spotlight subcultures

that were sometimes considered vaguely laughable at the time, both of them being heard and brought onto the centre stage and celebrated. And Black Parade does that in genuinely epic style. It's incredible and it's unforgettable. Oh, incredible. Lovely breakdown of the key change there. Totally, totally agree. Just turn us off and go and listen to it.

Don't turn us off because Rob and Lizzie are about to speak, obviously. But after this, just go and listen to it like 10 times. Let's get it back to number one. Let's do it. This might sound like a bit of a paradox, and I'm going to sound stupid, but this is a strange one for me, and it also isn't. Because, like, this song and My Chem in general,

like, they mean a lot to, like, an entire generation of, like, serious music listeners. Like you were saying, Andy, that high g note is one of the most famous strikes of a piano in all of pop and like make no mistake like my chemical romance are a religion for alternative slightly nerdy millennials who lean into all those little subgroups where things like malcolm in the middle andateboards and Star Wars and Forbidden Planet and RuneScape etc and like Nail Polish even though you're a boy kind of like all intersect and I was one of those kids in school especially in the last two or three years of high school

I loved this song when it came out and I wanted to perform it in the 2006 school x factor um a year on from the stint uh that we did as double trouble doing a mcfly obviously we didn't give ourselves that name uh but there was a huge scandal at my school involving the music teacher and it all ended up being cancelled just before christmas there is a whole other podcast a true crime podcast if you will uh about that one no actual crimes took place but you know just build it up why did the avondale high school x factor break down two weeks before it was supposed to happen etc etc um and like around 2009 i had a full-on emo phase and like christ to say that my chemical romance were like worshipped in that emo subculture is oh my god even that's an understatement like it does it goes beyond devotion for some people it really does and i like them at the time as well i listened

to the black parade and three Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and I Brought You Bullets, etc. Listened to them a lot. But the honest truth is that, like, I don't feel the same kind of pangs of nostalgia for my emo phase from My Chemical Romance as I do from other kind of MySpace emo groups like Paramore or Mayday Parade or, you know,

that kind of whole scene. A Day to Remember, things like that. And Paramore is still, like, you know, my favourite of that whole scene. I think that they were the best out of that little collection, that scene. And to be honest, I really properly properly like sat down and interrogated my chemical romance and their on all of their albums in 2017 when i was already in my 20s like i didn't go to those gigs in milton keynes either haven't watched the umbrella academy i think i've listened to conventional weapons like once which was a compilation album that they did which is like a collection of singles they released in 2012 um all of which is to say is that i do like my chemical romance a lot but they occupy a funny space for me because

i love the black parade but there are the three albums or four if you count the conventional weapons thing as like a proper record they're just kind of pretty good in my eyes like i like them a fair bit but i've just never found it in my heart to say that any of them apart from maybe the black parade are like my all-time faves but as much as all that i've said is true there there's like five My Chemical Romance songs that I'm convinced are like some of the greatest rock songs like ever written, like the gap between this group of five and the rest of their discography for me is fairly significant, like most of their discography for me is like a decent like seven out of ten, and then there's like five songs where I'm like these are all ten out of ten stone cold classics. There's Helena,

I'm Not Okay, Famous Last Words, This Is How I Disappear, and this, My Chemical Romance with Welcome to the Black Parade. Like, at the time, to me, it was just another song in the charts that I liked. But looking back, like you, Andy, I cannot believe this got to number one. I really, really cannot believe this got to number one, you know, because normally people are put off by things like the relentless theatricality, the overwhelming operatics, like, and honestly, like, by this point, emo is at the point where, like, it's at the peak of its popularity, but moshes and sweaties were still being pushed into walls in school corridors and like girls aloud and robbie williams and nelly vitado in the charts at the moment and they're knocking around the top five and the top ten and my chemical romance are above

them but here we are like the commercial peak of my space emo probably the genre's defining moment in the sun i would say sun should we say moonlight that feels more appropriate for this um and we get to talk about it which is just marvelous you know this this shoots for something that is so massive so ambitious in scope and scale it piles emotional climax upon emotional climax it keeps building and building and building which which until you get to that key change, like, oh, just fabulous. Just a fabulously executed key change. Like you were saying, Andy,

it's like so many of the songs that we've had so far treat the key change as the moment, the key moment. Whereas with My Chemical Romance, it's like they stretch it out, they make that moment last forever, and it's a slow pull towards the release, as opposed to just doing the key change and the release at the same time, where too many things run into each other, it just, it feels like reaching the crest of a hill at full speed, like, and they throw in all the trumpets and bells and marching

band instrumentation afterwards for good measure like right at the end and oh but by the time they reach that last release the slow down there you're weary widow marches it's because oh jesus as much as this works on me compositionally i think it's a song that lyrically as much as i think it you know definitely does the wallowy emo-y kind of thing feels like on the quiet it's about standing up for yourself and carrying on in the face of adversity you know the whole song is part of this larger rock opera concept about like you know the black parade is the march to the afterlife it's what you are it's what you join after you die this this black parade this this place where you are joined by skeleton conductors and everyone who's passed on and you march on into the afterlife

you face death you go through the other side you reach the other side of the portal if you will and then press on and you'll carry on you You'll carry on. Your weary widow marches on, et cetera, et cetera. I think that as well, it's also obviously because it's part of this subculture. Like it feels like it carries on a little bit from the, um, I'm not okay video where they set it up like a movie trailer where it's the um you like dnd audrey hepberg harry houdini and croquette you can't swim you can't dance and you don't know karate face it you're never gonna make it and then he goes i don't want to make it i just wanna and then the song starts and you get the if you ever felt left out beat down etc etc and i do think that this song is all about like embracing the

fact that you can paint in your hair black and becoming obsessed with death and funerals and mortality and wanting to dye your hair because it's called mom it's not a phase you know but like in all seriousness i think this is actually a very simple song with a very resonant message given a huge expansive ambitious platform from which to be heard in this glorious cacophony, and I'm so glad it was heard, and I totally agree with you, Andy, that only MyChem could have done this, because MyChem embraced that kind of Queen glam side of themselves in a way that a lot of emo groups didn't. That's one thing I do love about my chemical romance which is that they are the they learned just as much from queen as they did from like the ramones you know that sort of thing

and it's like i i go up and down with queen i'm always struck by like how conservative they actually are outside of bohemian rhapsody i just think they're a very straightforward group um but i just saw, with this though, like, they take the best bits, like you say, the sort of the unwieldy, squealing Brian May things, like, you know, they do that in I'm Not Okay, I Promise, which is the best moment of the song, where they build up to the half-time, and they go, do, do, and then it crushes back down into that half time thing where those two guitars sound like they're screaming at the other end of a room oh it is probably that's probably the best moment in their discography i think as as amazing as this key

change is i think there's loads to be said about what happened after this with my chemical romance how the black parade was probably like say americanos, like, peak, but also the beginning of the end, because as much as I experienced it most fully in, like, 2009, 2010, it was sort of on the way out by then, it's like that Tony Soprano thing where he mentions, like, you know, I came in at the end, when the good days were over, etc, etc, I feel like I was kind of hanging around in the dregs, even though, you know i i came in at the end when when the good days were over etc etc i feel like i was kind of hanging around in the dregs even though you know that's just with hindsight even though in the moment it felt like i was living this man because all of my favorite records from that period had come out like two years before i even heard of them and got into them but the other

thing as well which i think is the big nail in the coffin, ironically, because it's My Chemical Romance, coffins, goths, lololol, is that My Chemical Romance came back with Danger Days, the true lives of the fabulous Killjoys, which, as far as I'm concerned, is emo pops like Be Here Now. trying to go bigger, longer, larger, giving it a good go, but just sort of burning up on re-entry and inadvertently letting everyone know that the party is dead, or at least almost dead, because I think it dies fully in 2013 when Paramore leave the genre behind and make a massive success of it, they grow up, they really change, and they leave emo behind, and they become just a larger power pop group and record what i am i think is the greatest power pop album of the 21st century and arguably the greatest power pop album of all time with that self-titled record and albums of a similar style to my chemical romance after this point kind of get referred to like they are henceforth referred

to as like post the prefix like not post emo exactly that's never really been coined but kind of like how everything after 98 is post brit pop everything after danger days is a bit like oh that scene but like it's done now and you're still kind of hanging around and then all time low come around with um dirty work which is a similar kind of big name and you're still kind of hanging around and then all time low come around with um dirty work which is a similar kind of big name from the genre just kind of going nah it's done not commercially viable anymore but this song is a few steps back from that and very much in a moment in time where a band is operating at its commercial and creative peak and doing something genuinely incredible with it um it's a scene i'm obsessed with still

to this day i all we all said it wasn't a phase and none of our parents believed us and here we are late 20s early 30s just because we dress different doesn't mean the phase is necessarily over um but yeah this is just wonderful i thought i would have a foible with this about like how the mix kind of drowns out the band instrumentation towards the end but like oh so what like it's just yeah it's so so fantastic um lizzie you have waited a very long time thank you very much for being so patient while me and nandy and especially me really kind of went on about no thank you for doing so yeah how do we feel about more welcome to the back parade well i wanted to leave the floor open for you because frankly i i never really got them at the time like i was probably a bit too late for them that by the time they got big i was sort of into other things you know some people

where if they're they're they're a bit more of an outcast they might go towards this sort of thing no i was the other kind where i just became a big contrarian and sort of started digging into the past as a way of shaping my own identity so yeah i didn't really get on with this because it's a combination of two things I don't really like which is pop punk and rock opera they've never never really been on my radar so I gave this album a try back in the day never really listened to it again it never sort of landed on my radar since until having to do this podcast and I tried the album again this week didn't get on with it again but I will say that this is one of the best songs on it and it did grow on me throughout the week um I think at first I did sort of find it quite

overwhelming it's like oh god it's all too much and then they throw in another element and then there's a key change that you mention it's like oh god but that's the point it is like turning the melodrama up to 11 that is the whole the whole idea of it and if that doesn't work for you then that's something i guess but yeah i did really grow to appreciate this as the week went on. And as the years go on, we will get less of this sort of aberration on the charts, less of this sort of thing where an entire fan base can go out and buy a record and it get like a fluke number one. So while we have them, I do really appreciate having them around. And yeah, as much as this this kind of passed me by in the charts at the time as well like I mentioned this would have been around the

time where I had an iPod and I was just digging into whatever music took my fancy and this completely passed me by but the fact that it did get to number one, yeah, I'm always going to stick up for these kind of outliers. And yeah, like you, I'm glad we got to talk about it because it is a very distinct sort of moment in time. And like you say, Rob, within about two years, a lot of these acts will have moved on. Like Panic! at the Disco, they're around about this time. But by 2008, they've released their best album but the one that sounds distinctly non-emo which is pretty odd yeah i love that album but it's because it's not this sort of thing like which i never got on with at the time but yeah

anyway um not really my thing but i will give it a thumbs up lizzie your eyes are the size of the moon i'm really glad you mentioned though about you know stuff like this becoming more and more rare as time goes on because that is so true that i think this is not just the peak of the emo movement but this is we are getting towards the end of an era for all of uk music really or all of the uk charts really where there are as far as i know there are only two songs ever after this that are rock songs that get to number one and one of them is very light rock music and one of them is an internet campaign and both of those are quite soon so we really are there's nothing as heavy as this other than that

i'll just say obviously other than killing in the name there's nothing as heavy as this that ever gets number one ever again um and i'm not sure that will ever change so it really is kind of the end of an era really like we're not quite at the very end for rock music at the top of the charts but this is sort of the last hurrah and then there's a few more as an epilogue so um it kind of makes me a bit sad thinking about that but what a way to go out, what a way to go out with this. I don't think you're entirely alone actually Lizzie, in fact I know you're

not entirely alone because a friend of the podcast Edward Thomas actually you've just appeared on In 5 haven't you, the podcast that he runs over there. I have yeah talking about Blur, yes we will leave a link to that in the over there i have yeah talking about blur yes we will leave a link to that in the show notes yeah great show we've all been on it um i i remember

mentioning this album to ed and i think he went off and tried it because again he was somebody in around and in and around 2006 was like very much aware of all of the big like trendy albums that were out at the time like i remember him telling me a story about how like basically every morning when he was at uni in the flat that he lived in with about three or four other people every single morning he would wake up to the sound of hot fuss by the killers and him just sort of like looking from a distance going i'm not really into this i think i'm just gonna go and listen to the beach boys instead and that was me yes and i remember him also telling me about this album that when he came to it in like 2020 or 2021 he was like i've never really heard much about this seems

like he's getting a bit of a reappraisal let's go and listen to it he just said the one word that he said to me he said i was just baffled by it which is the perfect word because it is a little bit like, oh my God, there's so much happening here. Like they pack everything. They pack the mix with everything and they, they do just throw it at you as, as fast as they possibly can.

It doesn't surprise me that Andrew Lloyd Webber likes this. Yes, it's exactly, exactly the kind of thing and i do think as well that um it's i don't think we should maybe like go past this too far without mentioning i don't think it plays a huge role in it or at least it's not what i get out of it maybe you two would like to offer a different interpretation but okay i do think that an element of gerard way's queerness plays out in this as well this idea of defiance and oh sure if my existence is a political statement then i will if that's what

you think then i will carry on etc etc i thought that was because to be honest i thought that was known i'm sure he said that yeah i think that yes he has yes he has um i don't think he's openly bisexual i think he's openly pan or something like that and then he has expressed curiosity about non-binary gender identities but has never really you know like i think like even 10 years ago before all this stuff was like more widely known how do i put this like i've learned most of the the language around you know the lgbt spectrum i've learned it from social media but in order to learn it from social media it has to start in fairly small corners of social media mostly on tumblr to be honest just after this

point and a little bit on myspace and bebo and things like that but before it had reached wider acceptance and wider knowledge if you will you know that he was very much having these kinds of conversations with fans mostly of the umbrella academy um which i think i could be wrong but i think is kind of full of lots of people lots of characters who are on the lgbt spectrum as well um and so i feel like it's always kind of been loaded into his work and stuff like that but i do think that there is a a kind of side to this which embraces that you know in the same way it feels like a bit of a cousin to i don't feel like dancing in the sense that like it that there is a sort of there isn't necessarily a happiness to this but there is a there's that particular flavor i don't want to say camp because that's

not the right word for this theatricality drama yeah there is that kind of side of it which a lot of that kind of music does have and i do think that freddie mercury tried his best to inject queen with as much as he could mostly their live performances when they weren't and when he wasn't constrained by the walls of the studio because it feels like i think that's it with a lot of queen's music actually which is that there's only a few cuts of theirs that feel like they leave the studio they break out of the format that they're in uh whereas with this is like constantly trying to bust out and do that um i mean but yeah just on just on that point to be fair i don't know if this is like i don't know how known this is outside of the the queer community really but there is a large number of people in the queer

community of our generation who are massive fans of Mike M it's a large subculture there which I think may somewhat surprise people because generally the image of the queer community is being very pop and very

chart heavy and stuff but MCR and emo music in general is massive with quite a lot of queer people so there is definitely something to that definitely yeah yeah but lizzie there's something that you said that kind of struck me um earlier this week and since you've said it i've not really been able to get it out of my head which is that you said that you enjoyed the intro to the black parade yeah the opening track and then you said but then it just starts sounding like the muppets it kind of does which is an amazing comparison and i beg you to listen to the lead single from danger days the album that came after this which is just na na na na na na na i've heard

that sounds like the Muppets. That sounds like something that they would do. It really does. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na. I'd love to hear Gerard Way just screeching out the lyrics of the Muppets theme. Yes, da-da-da-da-da. When I was just a young boy, my father took me to a parade. But, yeah, this is something.

This is definitely a moment and I'm glad that we've given it the time. But does anybody else have anything more to say about Welcome to the Black Parade or any of the songs that we have covered this week? I don't think there's anything left to add. Just that I'm so glad we've got to celebrate such wonderful music this week

and we also discussed Razorlight. So Lizzie, I don't feel like dancing, America, welcome to the Black Parade. Up or down, where are they going? Well, I don't feel like dancing, but I do feel like putting I don't feel like dancing in the vault, so I will.

Razorlight are going nowhere this week. I think that was kind of a given. Stuck at the roadside motel I mean they've already been to America They don't need to go anywhere else And the Black Parade is passing by But it's going in neither the vault Nor the pie hole for me I'm afraid

I'm sorry Cool As for me I don't feel like dancing Slamming that in the vault America misses the vault Welcome to the Black Parade Is being shoved so hard

into the vault that it like passes through the roof of it. Andy, Scissor Sisters, Razorlight, Mike M, how do we go? America isn't going anywhere. Sorry, that's not like a political statement. That song isn't going

in either the vault or the pie hole. As for the other two, as for Don't Feel Like Dancing and dancing and black parade they are two of the easiest drop kicks into the vault that i have ever done and i will say that i think both those songs are probably in my top five songs that we've ever covered on the show right up there with like pure shores um all the things you said can't get you out of my head it's in that kind of company absolutely extraordinary piece of music if there was something higher than the vault if there was like a kind of throne they would be up there

awesome alright then we will be back next time thank you very much for listening to this well bit of a bumper episode to bring you back with in the new year after we took some time off and we'll see you for the next one thank you very much bye-bye see ya bye-bye jump in my car

i wanna take you home come on and jump in my car it's too far to walk on your own No thank you sir Oh come on, I'm just where they got it No thank you sir Oh little girl, I wouldn't tell you no lie I know you're gay How can you say that we've only just met? You're all the same

She's got way there but I'll get her, yeah I got you there No you didn't, I was catching my breath And look, it's starting to rain And baby, you'll catch your death Well, I don't know Oh, come on, it costs nothing to try And you're the ride home lesson, try

Oh, jump in my car I wanna take you home Jump in my car It's too far to walk on your own Oh yeah Come on girl Come on girl I got a hotline

Let's go talk