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.