THE FT TOP 100 SONGS: 60: DIANA ROSS - “Upside Down”
Kat Stevens writes:
It’s 1997, and the Brit Awards organisers are trying to recover from the previous year’s Jacko/Jarvis debacle. The Spice Girls steal the show and the Manics’ rendition of A Design For Life ensures sales of Everything Must Go increase by 200%. And then we have Motown legend, Miss Piggy sound-a-like and all-round bonkers diva Diana Ross teaming up with… Jay Kay from Jamiroquai? Jay Kay from Jamiroquai? It’s a terrible duet, both performers sounding breathless and disinterested. Diana stares at Jay’s feet, Jay’s head is encased by a monstrous fluffy ushanka. The seventeen-year-old classic has been chewed up and shat out by the horrific advance of late nineties coffee-table funk. Bernie Edwards must have been turning in his barely-cold grave. Luckily we need never think of this travesty again, and can instead wallow in the deliriously euphoric Nile Rodgers guitar groove and knotty bassline of the original. Not a stupid hat in sight.
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FT's Pete Baran on May 11th, 2007
Here is Diana at said Brits, trying to join the Spice Girls. One assumes her name would have been Scarier.
steve m on May 11th, 2007
Old Spice
Kat on May 11th, 2007
Oh bvgger, I mixed up past/present tenses with the grave-turning. That’ll teach me not to proof read before hitting ’send’.
FT's Pete Baran on May 11th, 2007
Steve, surely Old Spice is on the far right (in more ways that one in that photo).
FT's CarsmileSteve on May 11th, 2007
oh come on pete, geri’s not older than diana ross, that’s just nasty…
jamiroquai addicted on May 14th, 2007
I think that duet was great!
^_^