Now, I know I was blathering on about this in the pub last night, but it really does need blogging. The second best thing about “The Ultimate Popstar” on Channel 4 last Sunday was Shakin’ Stevens being in the top 15 best selling singles artists in the UK ever. The best thing about the programme was that, for no discernable reason, over the credits they played 30 seconds of STAY YOUNG by ULTRASOUND, which I had forgotten all about and was more than glad to hear again (for the youngsters out there, ultrasound were THE BEST NEW BAND IN BRITAIN from january to june 1998, until they released their album which was rubbish prog) . Here is an interview with them from the glory days (which I finally found by searching for ultrasound indie tiny).
The programme itself was quite interesting, in comparison to all the other top 100-type shows that C4 knock out, because it was based on REAL HARD FACTS about single sales, rather than whatever hive mind idiocy causes GREASE of all things to be voted best musical ever ever and also they dispensed almost entirely with z-listers “what were we on”ing and stuck with the artists involved (oh, and abba’s rhythm section), a handful of other songwriters/producers (ashford and simpson, dionne warwick, JELLYBEAN) and a few decent hacks (morley, patterson, mick wall for the rockier stuff). Strangely, it is the only programme that was on on Sunday that has no further information on the channel 4 website…