TRACKS OF THE YEAR: 2000
Starting today: thirty tracks, best of the year, counted down in order. I’m going to get Blogvoices put on so people can discuss the choices, I think. Other contributors – feel free to intersperse with additions and brickbats, and your usual nonsense of course. But without further ado:
30. SUGABABES – “Overload”
“Train From Kansas City” redubbed as a Bliss agony page letter: the girls sing the words like they’re sleepwalkers, more burnt-out than overloaded. Everything’s going to end badly, as usual. Sugababes in their best songs have a great shrug-yeah-so-what thing happening but with hooks and production and voices even too. Though I’m less sure of the voices: they do that thing of singing “mehhh” instead of “me” and there’s a melisma problem, too. Shrug, yeah, so what, “Overload” is a fine, cold single, swapping popstandard girlband fireworks pizzazz for stripped-down style, which I approve of though it means the album turns anonymous and classy too often. That low shuffly rumble “Overload” rides on is, after all, the closest the Nu Bubblegum has so far got to menacing me.