GWEN STEFANI – “What You Waiting For”
Tick tock tick tock – generally with any top 100 list there are some very recent records that slip into the rundown thanks to the immediate enthusiasm of the participants and stick out a bit amidst the established classics. Here at Freaky Trigger we believe – Malcolm Gladwell stylee – that momentary enthusiasm is generally a truer guide to worth than long rumination and so we have daringly waited for three years before writing up Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?” because we KNEW we were right about it. When the list was made this was a bubble of joy shooting up the half-full glass of pop THAT IS THE CHARTS – now however it stands revealed as the foundation stone of a reinvigorated strand of mental clockwork robot pop by ladies. Without the self-knowledge, tricksiness, frightening dancefloor compulsion and Jacques Lu Cont remixes of “What You Waiting For” we would surely not have had Fergie, “Hung Up”, Britney singing about flashing the paparazzi and that other Gwen track about the goatherd. The only sorrow is that Britain’s pop stars have been too reserved to take up the baton: TashBed is mad but in a slightly different fashion and the new lot seem happy to sing about toothbrushes.