POP-EYE 22/10/00
Ladies and gentlemen, an honest-to-goodness Top 40 climber has made this week‘s biggest impact: Paul Gambaccini and Tim Rice, those wizened guardians of pop propriety, would be delighted. Baha Men‘s “Who Let The Dogs Out?”, after skittering around the mid-teens for a week or two, has shot up to No.2, based on….what? It clearly should have been an enormous hit from the start, being quite the most idiotic record to trouble the charts in a vintage but rather tasteful year. Stadium-ready chanting of the title PLUS worldbeat generica PLUS ragga gibberish EQUALS obvious smash, no? Repeated exposure is like itching powder down the neck, but you can say that of any record eventually.
Meanwhile, Steps continue their adequacy odyssey with “Stomp”, which is one of their worse tracks but still hardly worth getting bothered about (especially if you’re George Michael! “Jesus To A Child”? Kettle to a fucking Pot, more like.) You’d have thought though that after licensing a sample to Modjo and letting them rather pervily breathe all over it, Chic would have had few problems with letting Steps assay an actual cover of “Everybody Dance”. Still, apparently not, meaning October in chartland continues as the unofficial Pop Month ‘O’ Plagiarism.
Despite being the funniest single in the charts, Fatboy Slim‘s “Bird Of Preyyyyyyyyy” hobbles to a disappointing No.9. It’s too long and it hardly impels you floorwards, but it’s a pleasant bit of hippy froth nonetheless and you have to assume the UK Garage uprising has caused problems for the shiny-pated ex-Housemartin. To add insult to other insult, it charts a mere one position higher than Blur‘s “Music Is My Radar”, which you will recall is the worst piece of music ever recorded. Who would have thought there were so many jaded indie rock hacks out there, eh?
Precious little action in the lower rungs – Moby brings home the very bacon he can’t eat with “Why Does My Car Sell So Good?”, a re-release of his winsome techno nasty, the electronica equivalent of big-eyed spaniel pictures. Even worse is the David Gray record, where surprisingly hard breakbeats are ruined by the man with the genetically modified larynx, a grisly crossbreed of 80s Bono and 80s Dylan. Ugh. And that’s your lot. This week, expect the Spice Girls to hit No.1 with their worst single, and no lightening of the pop clouds, as not a record company in the land is putting up any strong opposition (when Turin Brakes get into HMV’s new singles racks, you know it’s a slow week…)
THE FIVE BEST
ALL SAINTS – “Black Coffee” (7)
FATBOY SLIM – “Sunset (Bird Of Prey)” (9)
KERNKRAFT 400 – “Zombie Nation” (12)
AZZIDO DE BASS – “Dooms Night” (15)
EMINEM – “The Way I Am” (16)