As UK Garage hit its end of the century peak, three things became clear. It could ring up the hits, like no underground dance scene since hardcore rave. It was exceptionally flexible – the strains in the charts became more melodic and soulful, while elsewhere the music was getting darker, dubbier and more bass-led or more minimal and MC-driven. That was a bit like rave, too. But the third aspect of garage was not like rave at all: vocalists and rappers were central to this music, and the fans knew who they were.
An eager record industry put these three things together and saw stars. New, marketable stars, addressing the business’ long-running (and aesthetically myopic) beef with dance music – its notorious “facelessness”. The question of what to do with UK Garage and its inheritors is a subplot that plays out across this whole decade. The outcomes are mostly frustrating – potential missed or misused, bright careers fizzling out, and an overall sense of an industry that liked the idea of young, black British stars more than it supported the reality.
But that’s a story for later, as are Craig David’s own run-ins with the media. “Fill Me In” strolls into the charts with the aura of a major talent on the point of being realised. Craig David is the new decade’s first new chart-topper, but he almost wasn’t: he’d made his name as on the Artful Dodger’s “Re-Rewind”, the quintessential garage hit. “Re-Rewind” bumped beguilingly between slinky on the verses and lurching on the chorus: a hit that sounded like nothing before it. Across it all Craig David danced in and out of the rhythm, a hypeman in the process of becoming a soulboy, reconciling the odd geometries of the Artful Dodger’s future with the smooth moves of an audience out for a good time.
Smoothness was the angle David mined for his solo career. “Fill Me In” uses 2-step beats as a way to accelerate the song into its chorus, but the heart of the single is in its slowly unwinding verses, produced with the filigree delicacy of current R&B, golden nets of finely plucked strings enmeshing with the beat’s discreet stutter and David’s voice. Which is a gentle instrument, never really moving beyond ‘fond’ or ‘rueful’ even when describing parental anger. “Fill Me In” is a precise song, living or dying on its web of details – “Wearing a jacket, whose property / Said you’d been queueing for a taxi / But you left all your money on the TV” – which all feel real enough to build the mood. It’s as committed to painting a situation as Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name”, if not nearly as dramatic.
But that gentility works in its favour, too. “Fill Me In” doesn’t capture the urgency of its chosen scenario – trying to get it on under the shadow of the parental panopticon – but it ends up somewhere just as resonant: looking back on those stolen moments later, a pinch of resentment mixed with nostalgia. Parents may not understand – well, no, in this case they understand all too well – but they’re almost as sympathetic a set of players here as Craig David and his girl. Antagonists, sure, but not villains, just obstacles with their own objectives in the game. And that basic sympathy is a sign of what makes “Fill Me In” work. Even at this point you can hear David being seduced by himself, keen to play the loverman role, but it’s kept in balance by his humane, keen eye. This and “Re-Rewind” together are a fine statement of talent and intent. They were also his peak, but we didn’t know that. For now, welcome to the 00s, again.
Score: 8
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extraordinary to think he was only a few days short of 19 when this hit number 1 – its sophistication suggests a more mature talent. This is the first number 1 of the new millennium reviewed here that makes me want to go and download a copy. It sounds fresh, exhilarating and sensuous – like a digital bossa nova
Was I the only person that this reminded them of “Is and Ought the Western World” Scritti Politti?
Feels very modern indeed – maybe this is just more similar to DEEP HOUSE: THE SOUND OF 2014 than what we’ve encountered before. I vaguely like Craig David but this isn’t as funny as his other bunny so I care about it less.
I think it’s really of its time – not just the garage thing but it’s very post-TLC, post-Destiny’s Child, it feels designed to fit right into that wave of American R&B. In a good way though.
This made #15 in the US, but showing my increasing divergence from pop music of the time, I don’t remember hearing it before now. It sounds a bit dull to me: 4/10.
A fine write-up – and a terrific No1. I’ve probably said before that I generally prefer female to male vocalists when it comes to modern r’n’b and its off-shoots, for reasons I’ve never fully worked out. But early Craig David was an exception – maybe because he although he was polished in some ways he also sounded like a kid, or I knew he was a kid, that there was an element of bluff in his loverman tales.
But also, as Tom says, his agility as a vocalist was perfect for the new beats – the two combined make this an incredibly nimble record.
I listened to this again just now, and found it a little surprising that the 2-Step is downplayed more than I remember it. The video opens with him paying due respect to the footsoldiers of UKG, performing for one of many pirate stations that helped spread the hype. It’s almost a “so long and thanks for all the fish” departing gesture as he moves into a smooth R&B arena, perhaps a British version of Usher? He must have been aware that he was on the verge of something big. At this point he’s eager to please and hungry for success. He’s naturally charming and an ideal poster boy for UK urban music. FMI is quite a compelling argument for such a movement as crossovers go, and not unwelcome, as UKG trumps House for bankable, visible artists, as Tom states. But still this sounds like a hit very much of its time. I suppose the subtle 2-Step stylings root it in 2000, more than anything. But FMI is still fun in the way it harks back to and subverts that famous song by The Coasters, even though seduction is explicitly on the menu rather than partying with friends. David’s songwriting chops are astute, for now. Definitely worthy of an 8.
#4 In fairness it’s not as if I was paying any attention at the time so this isn’t rooted in 2000 for me at all.
You mean this isn’t the latest from Frank Ocean or the Weeknd? I’m so over ‘Uptown Funk’, I dare say that the charts could use some of this angsty loverboy action right now.
I’m listening to ‘Fill Me In’ on Spotify: the cd-single/e.p. there comprises 9 versions of this track (including an impressive 10-minute Live). That’s excessive given that most of the remixes seem to be pretty minor variations, but, so far at least, all mixes are better than listenable – they’re all good to great (Sunship Remix is my fave so far). That’s amazing.
This track announces the arrival of a player (both performance- and production-wise), yet David’s nobody, right? He’s neither a superstar a la Usher/JT nor a revered elder like Angelo as far as I know (or is the big comeback just around the corner?). Checking, FMI got to #11 in NZ (album got to #2 and spent 51 weeks in the charts – massive), but David would have other hits including a #1 through early 2003, then *nothing*. What happened?
8
Craig David all over our boink! I was drip-fed garage through the sixth form common room stereo but never really got a handle on it until [tv-theme sampling bunny] and C David – my parents were literally trying to find out what I was Up To (ans: chill out Mum, I am not about to spoil my university career by getting up the duff) and Craig was Well Fit. Hormones going wild: I was down with that shiz.
Do I get to be the first to mention that Fill Me In headed a top six of new entries, a record which (I think) might have been equalled but never broken. Perhaps more incredibly (or depressingly for those who thought the charts had been devalued) three of the six were singles chart debuts and a further two were solo debuts. The magnificent six were;
1 Fill Me In
2 Flowers by Sweet Female Attitude (making a garage top two)
3 A Song For The Lovers by Richard Ashcroft (selling to fanbase of indie fans)
4 Deeper Shade Of Blue by Steps (selling to fanbase of ten year olds)
5 The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang (arguably the most enduring of the six, it danced around the top ten for several weeks, eventually making number four and outselling most of the chart toppers of the year. Had it made number one I’m curious as to what score we’d be talking – I’m slightly ashamed to admit it but of the just under 20,000 songs on my Ipod, if I could only have 100 The Bad Touch would be one of them).
6, Blow Ya Mind by Lock and Load (this actually kept the number six slot for two weeks but I can’t remember it at all).
It just so happens that I’ve just got back from seeing Ryan Adams in concert. I mention this because it occurred to me that his debut album was also released in 2000 to many column inches if not that many sales. With hindsight he was always a bit too contrary to be a star but for a while he was one of rock music’s brightest hopes and maintains a strong following.
I think we’ve already touched on the famous Melody Maker cover that drew the battle lines between rock and hip hop. In 2000 rock was becoming a dead genre and innovation in hip hop was getting noticed in the mainstream for the first time. My point is that in 2000, as a rock fan I was trying to keep an open mind. But having just revisited Fill Me In just now, while it has many admirable qualities (the backing holds up well fifteen years on, the lyric is well delivered) what it lacks for me is any sense of mystery or wonder. There’s nothing left to the imagination. Now obviously that’s just an opinion and a controversial one at that but I found myself reflecting on how tastes began to diverge as the new century began.
It’s also occurred to me that at the time the impression the most recent trilogy of chart toppers gave was that Melanie C had found her solo niche and would `do a Robbie`, the Westlife bubble would soon burst and Craig David was a figure who would influence music for some time to come. All were wrong.
#11 I remember “The Bad Touch”! I’m surprised to see it only reached #52 in the US as it seemed a lot more popular at the time (in contrast FMI made #15 but I don’t remember it). I wouldn’t include it on my all-time top 100, but I’d give it 8/10. Normally not my thing, but it had exactly the right balance of over-the-top ridiculousness and dumb humor. Guilty pleasure indeed.
Did the 80’s nostalgia-fest followup “Mope” do anything in the UK?
Don’t recall Mope being around much; some attention for The Ballad Of Chasey Lain and (perhaps less predictably) The Inevitable Return Of The Great White Dope, which I seem to recall getting some music channel time.
I was in an all-male Hall Of Residence at uni at the time, so The Bad Touch’s (and the rest of their output’s) juvenilia was massively popular in the hall bar, but the best I ever heard from them was Hell Yeah, a spectacular cutdown of the self-aggrandisement of religion (“but would I be a good Messiah with my low self esteem? / if I don’t believe in myself would that be blasphemy?” etc).
Craig David gets the “probably good but not my thing” score. 3.
I find this rather dull, unfortunately – it does nothing to reach out and grab or invoke interest in me. A catchy riff and a good use of 2-step is not sufficient. I’d far rather have seen “Re-re-wind” here – which really was grabbing and (obviously) both career-defining, and ultimately, through televised cruel parody, perhaps even career-destroying. “Fill Me In” is very minor in comparison. 4.
I always thought Craig David deserved better than he got – and I feel like part of it was that Bo Selecta hit him at exactly the wrong moment (Britney Spears was also sent out into the wilderness for years, but eventually recovered). What is he doing nowadays?
His second bunny is close enough that I’m saving my answer to “What happened?” for that (the rest of you needn’t be so shy of course, though hold off on specific comment on CD’s weekly schedule).
As for “What’s he up to now?” that’s easier. He is living in Miami, DJing a weekly party there which doubles as a radio show (I’m not quite sure how it doubles). He is also, as Ned found, ridiculously buff. He’s doing that thing former stars do, musically – promising new music, releasing the occasional teaser snippet or stray track online, repeatedy dipping toes in the water and seeing if anyone nibbles. His last few records didn’t set the world on fire but he’s only 33, so at least one big comeback hit with the right song or feature spot wouldn’t be out of the question. I personally doubt it, partly because I suspect he’s happy doing the Miami beach life/radio thing. More on this next time, too.
(I was thinking about this general question when it was Liz Phair week over on my rockist thread. When someone gets famous early for doing a thing, we tend to measure their future success on that metric, i.e. Phair is seen as unsuccessful or washed up now because her pop albums did quite poorly and she doesn’t release indie ones, or not the kind of indie ones critics and old fans want. In fact she’s a successful writer of music for TV and has won industry awards for that twice in the last five years, something that tends to be glossed over. I wonder if it’s the same with Craig David – at 18 I’ve no doubt he wanted to be a global music industry megastar, but I suspect at 33 his definition of a successful and happy life may well have shifted and “living on the beach, being paid to party every week, and looking hot*” seems pretty close to a definition of living his best life.)
*I’m assuming he feels he looks hot
15: Craig isn’t quite like Britney because her scapegoating and redemption seems of a type common to fallen stars throughout pop history, whereas his was of a type recognisable to anyone who’s ever been in a playground.
It’s not just the famous stuff either – I remember Simon and Miquita, whom I otherwise enjoyed, openly eye-rolling as they put him through a toe-curlingly awkward interview. Kids as sharks, scenting blood.
The difference as I rationalise it is that Britney remained a star of sorts, us engaging in her narrative, but with CD the narrative wasn’t his. He wasn’t even in on it – he was turned into a bullied kid whom no one wanted to rally round. For that reason, even if her casting out may have been for higher stakes, his seems to me the crueller.
PS I saw him live around this time and I thought he was excellent, professional and charming. In on the ground floor with the next big thing I thought – instead within a few months my attendance had turned *me* into a mini laughing-stock, among my mates with their Oasis tickets and their Travis LPs.
#11 My hunch is that I like The Bad Touch a lot less than everyone else does – this was true at the time and it’s remained true. I know a lot of people – some whose tastes in general are much better or more sophisticated than mine – who rate it very highly – but for me it’s always swirled around in a kind of “Big hook, get the point of it, don’t like it” territory. So I suspect it would be one of those entries where I hand out a 5 and get a shellacking in the comments.
The best song in that Top 6 is the glorious “Flowers”, which would have been a shout for the first 10 of the 21st century – though there are stronger shouts to come, looking at the next year or two. (It will happen! Honest!)
I definitely would have preferred Flowers at #1 to this, sheer joy.
Fill Me In is a good song though. Probably his best – his next bunny is a borderline novelty song, but Walking Away was very good too. His career trajectory definitely smacks of unfulfilled potential. Like a less artsy-fartsy Terrence Trent D’arby perhaps.
I have to do my pop-loving shout out to Deeper Shade of Blue too – best thing Steps ever did. Certainly their most successful ABBA pastiche since One For Sorrow. I remember being struck by how dark it sounded, by Steps standards. I suspect that’s why it was one of their lesser hits, I’m not sure their younger fans really ‘got it’.
Sometimes, mostly as a joke, I liked to imagine me and my friends were responsible for the rise of Craig David. Here’s the justification: (1) We always went to the Rhino Club in Southampton on Wednesday nights (2) The club was otherwise utterly dead on weekdays (3) Craig David’s big break was MCing the Artful Dodger’s night on Mondays (the one time I went to this, in late 2000, there were only 50 or so people there). (4) If all of my friends had suddenly boycotted the place in, say, early 1999, it could have tipped the scales and it could’ve gone under. Yeah, a bit tenuous, but it gives a taste of his status in Southampton in 2000 that we spent our time imagining this at all. Craig was the epitome of “local boy made good” – everyone knew someone who’d been to school with him, and all had the same report; He had always been focused on music, and everyone had always known he would be a huge star. Most of all everyone knew he was “nice” – and this is what came across most in his music. As much as his songs presented him in seductive R&B roles, it was always with a PG rating, there was never any chance of him being challenging, dangerous or confrontational. At first this was to his credit, he was a new mainstream star after all, but when the alternatives came along soon afterwards, his innocence seemed immediately dated, cheesy romantic stories without real sex or emotion just weren’t worthy of attention.
To revisit the topic of NME losing their way around this time (as discussed in the Mel C thread) – anyone remember that incredibly odd spoof of the album cover they ran with the lookalike sitting on the toilet?
That was Melody Maker in its twilight years – was discussed a bit in the Offspring entry!
Re: The Bad Touch. I was at a karaoke place here in China a few years back, and somebody decided they wanted to sing this. For most songs there’s a music video to play along with the track, but when there isn’t one they just shove together a load of cheap stock footage from tourist locations in Europe. In this case this meant the song was cut to footage of young children playing on a beach. Which has to be one of the oddest and creepiest juxtapositions I’ve ever seen.
Love the little details in the verse narrative that come back in the chorus as clues found by the parents. Brilliant concept, very good execution and unlike anything else in the charts at the time. I imagine someone like Tim Rice would be a big fan of this song, but it’s all done unselfconsciously, without a hint of Merritt-style archness.
“Living or dying on its web of details” is why FMI reminded me of 60s girl group hits (even more so with the bunnied sequel).
It’s very teenage, which is I think unusual around this time – something the UK bubblegum entrants weren’t, nor was Britney (pre/early teen), and ex-Spice were aiming at a slightly older listeners (if they had a specific demographic in mind).
For ‘innocence’ you could read ‘subtlety’, which felt warm, cheeky and charming, though the comical detail about the half finished bottle of wine reminded you this is kids we’re talking about, not an older lover.
Re Re Wind and Flowers would both be 10s for me, but this is pretty adorable.
Okay, by one of those weird coincidences literally as I was reading this entry I switched the TV from the BBC iPlayer to The Vault music channel and this track was playing!
(This is my first comment on the site, btw, so hi everyone! I’ve been archiving binging ‘popular’ and enjoying both Tom’s commentaries and the thoughtful, intelligent comment threads.)
I listened to the charts intently throughout the 90s and 00s so I’m rarely surprised by anything here because I knew them all so well – so was a real shock to listen to this and it’s way better than I remember – I had it down in my head as a rather bland 5 or 6 but Tom’s dead right with his 8 on this – surprisingly sophisticated, lovely changes of pace, great vocals, and love all the nods to current R&B. I wonder why I’d mentally downgraded this – I’m guessing it’s the way his subsequent career went massively downhill that I’ve pigeonholed him in my head as novelty garage.
On the other hand, it’s still not as good as Moving Too Fast (number 2 a couple of weeks ago) or Flowers – both easily a 9 for me, I think joyous garage might be my favourite flavour of what is an incredibly diverse genre
#20 – completely agree on this Steps one. It’s got that wonderful combination of bouncy yet melancholy. Great pop song that got written off by most people just because it was from a kid’s band.
As for the Bad Touch – that hook is so good it’s enough to carry the song. It got so overplayed that year I grew sick of it at the time, but listening to it just now it still sounds great.
11: to branch out from the Garage acclaim, I like Song For The Lovers a lot. I don’t know anyone else who does – no doubt it gets lumped in, perhaps understandably, with the rest of his disgraceful solo career, but it was a fine record to kick off with.
Also notable was the fine, dark aura in the video – except that it stops midway through for him to take a piss. Whose idea was that?! It doesn’t annoy me like the scatological skit on CrazySexyCool, but talk about buzzkill ffs.
The choruses of this are great, especially the first one, paying off all the details set up in the opening part of the song. It’s like the musical equivalent of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock bulldozing through prospective clients – i.e. from the detective/parents’ pov, this is easy, just cop to it and we can move on. A bit like Sherlock though the second time, it’s a trick you’ve seen done before so whilst it’s still good, it doesn’t quite hold the impact of that first chorus.
It also seems to have the “right” flourish for the time of year – Spring is here and Summer is around the corner, people are probably ready for thinking about going abroad, so the Spanish guitar is a neat little warm up for those thinking about that and also gave it a little bit of longevity for summer radio play. The staccato strings that build up underneath the run into the chorus sound like the footsteps of the parents heading towards the door, the urgency builds until the use of the beat and the strings in the chorus contrast well against the opening of the song, where the two of them are just relaxing into each others’ company, versus the chorus where the interrogation kicks off and you can imagine hearts start to race as the pressure and fear of being caught mounts. This record has had some serious thought put into it, I reckon, and works really well as a little drama. Really enjoyable.
Flowers is really good too but in a totally different way. The way everything sounds a bit cut up is great and it’s enjoyably upbeat.
Bad Touch has a monster hook but I find it’s more than a bit icky. Ballad Of Chasey Lain is even worse in that regard, though a good character study of a young man obsessed with a porn star and utterly dehumanising her; I suspect that its intent was not to castigate him however. It’s also one of the few tracks I can think of where the radio edit is preferable to the unedited version (with the offensive words drowned out by a screech of feedback, it at least leaves something to the imagination and unwittingly provides a memorable hook). Having had a student flatmate who played Bloodhound Gang records a lot, there’s a whole load of their songs which are lyrically awful, finding humour in talking down to women, the disabled, gays, etc. Bad Touch, taken in context with the rest of their body of work, is something I regard with due suspicion as a result. The people worried about Blink’s sense of humour on the Geri thread could find many easier targets elsewhere in that scene and Bloodhound Gang are probably one of the worst offenders.
About the best thing Bloodhound Gang did that I heard was a cover of It’s Tricky by Run DMC.
30: I think we’ve talked about this before – I would stand up for Song For The Lovers too, a fine Don Henley rip, as I think I mentioned on The Verve thread. Quickly downhill from there though – that album has some terrible stuff on it and I don’t imagine that the ensuing albums did anything to halt the slide, given the singles I heard from them.
Lower down the chart American country rock band Lonestar entered at 24 with their massive US hot Amazed. This song would slip slowly to 36 over the four weeks that followed before rebounding to peak at 21 twice and lingering for ages in the high twenties before finally departing – in a neat symmetry it’s sixteenth and final week saw Craig David’s second bunny on top. At that time Guinness Hit Singles used to do a feature where they totted up the chart positions of each single from the previous two years (seventy five points for number one, seventy four for two and so on) and produce a ranking; in that list Amazed came out top for 2000.
Long running singles weren’t unknown in the late nineties/ early noughties (LeAnn Rimes’ How Do I Live spent thirty weeks in the top forty and wound up the seventh biggest selling single of 1998 despite never climbing above seven in the weekly chart) but there was never anything as spectacular as Lonestar managed. Given that I think I’m going to be championing rock music over Hip Hop/ RnB forever more I’ll say this – Amazed is absolutely dreadful.
Amazed had a pretty astonishing run for a non top 20 single – and for one that’s so dreadful. At the time it was the best-selling song ever that missed the top 20.
Although now that hits can keep selling for much longer as they’re always available to download, there’s a lot of more recent records that have overtaken it on that list – these are the biggest:
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird EP (Sweet Home Alabama) (#21) 510,000 (300,000 + 210,000 downloads)
DJ Fresh – Gold Dust (#22) 494,000
Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are Over (#23) 445,000
The Script – Breakeven (#21) 427,460
Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man (#24) 414,000
Lonestar – Amazed (#21) 406,000
Skrillex – Bangarang (#24) 379,000
Mumford and Sons – The Cave (#32) 353,000
Bryan Adams – Summer of ’69 (#42) 353,000
Shakira featuring FreshlyGround – Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) (#21) 299,000
Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (#46) 255,000
Evelyn “Champagne” King – Shame (#39) 250,000
Skrillex!! Tick vg.
“Amazed” also did something no country song had done for 17 years: reached #1 on the Hot 100. IIRC it had actually fallen off the chart after being a massive country radio success in 1999, but then re-entered in 2000 and rose to the top with a new poppier remix. The original version was actually not terrible, but the remix actually was terrible.
It’s funny how many of those are no. 21, 22 or 24 hits – you’d think for a stat like that, the actual peak wouldn’t much matter.
Summer of 69 is an interesting one – I first became aware of it when it landed at no.3 or thereabouts in one of those awful Radio 1 all-time polls (the ones that always had Bohemian Rhapsody at no.1 and Stairway at no.2), and assumed it had been a monster hit in some long-forgotten yore. Not so, evidently. I wonder how it became such a staple?
My memory of Amazed, not wanting to revisit it, is that it sounded like a superior Boyzone song.
Was there an original version of Flowers? I got the feeling Sweet Female Attitude were a pair of hippie girls.
Re 37: I remember hearing it as an album track when I worked in a record shop and thinking it had to be a massive hit. Adams had zero profile at that time. I guess A&M in Britain let it slide and put all their promo efforts into Run To You a year later.
#37 I remember that particular Radio 1 top 100 poll, broadcast on a bank holiday in 1994. Summer of 69 was indeed number three behind Bo Rhap and Smells Like Teen Spirit. Bryan Adams also had Everything I Do at five, Take That were four and six with Everything Changes and Pray respectively and TAFKAP’s The Most Beautiful Girl In The World came seventh and Sweet Child Of Mine, Imagine and Losing My Religion rounded out the top ten. Radio 1’s previous Top 100 (done in 1991 I think) had been been dominated by standards such as Stairway, Layla, Baker Street etc and I remember these giving way to more modern fare by Nirvana, Pearl Jam etc.
On a personal level listening to that run down allowed me to hear a lot of songs for the first time and was a big ear opener for me. My reason for going off topic is that I’ve googled to see if the full run down is available anywhere but that particular poll seems to have been airbrushed out of history.
“Summer of 69” is another example of the “Don’t Stop Believing” effect, which I know the Lineman has discussed before – Britain convincing itself en masse some global hit was a standard when it didn’t actually do much here at all.
#39: Dad recorded the 1992 version off the radio onto a succession of C90s that wound up in the car, so that Radio 1 Top 100 (Simon Bates and Jakki Brambles presenting) was on heavy rotation when we went on holiday and such like – I can still remember some of the links on it, never mind the order – the most recent thing in the upper reaches of the chart was Losing My Religion somewhere in the 30s. Careless Whisper was 5th or 6th I think – Top 4 was Bo Rhap, Stairway, Everything I Do and Imagine. Those tapes might still be knocking around in my parents’ house somewhere – something to retrieve at some point perhaps.
I have a vague recollection of it essentially being the last hurrah of the Smashy and Nicey type generation – soon thereafter the long knives would be out, the 1994 chart had a load of newer stuff in it and the last time I remember hearing a Radio 1 Top 100 Unfinished Sympathy was #1 and most of the songs I remember being in the 1991 chart had long since departed. Rocklist actually has that list from 1998 here:
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/uk_radio.htm
It was the first time I’d ever heard Led Zep (not my parents’ bag evidently) and never bothered with them again until I got to university.
#38 I’m pretty sure the Flowers version that charted was a remix of a long-forgotten original. They seemed pretty clear that their success was down to having a track in the right genre at the right time (although being brilliant can’t have hurt). I remember in an interview they said they’d had the follow-up remixed into several different genres to maximise their chances of another lucky strike – sadly it didn’t work a second time.
I love the cut-up vocals. Possibly the inspiration for Goulding’s “Starry Eyed” a decade later?
Katy B covering Flowers at lounge ballad speed… Curious, I’m saying. But I guess testament to its canonical status in certain quarters.
Re 43: That’s pretty sweet, thanks – never noticed the Erik Satie lift before!
Craig David really did appear to be a rising star at this time – There was a lightness of touch about his vocals that seemed fresh and appealing.
‘Bo Selecta’ was a vile programme- hypocritical, sexist and racist, one of the first indicators that Channel 4 was junking its soul.
Somewhat taken aback by all the admiration for a track as shabby (euphemism alert!) as ‘The Bad Touch’ – The MTV Grumbleweeds to my ears.
While on the topic of low-peaking but high-selling singles, it’s worth noting that 34 singles got classified as platinum during the 2000s, and of those 34, 31 of them got to number 1. (“Pure Shores” and 30 bunnies.)
For a song that didn’t even make the top 20 yet sell that many to come from *this* era is astonishing. I’d never take that away from “Amazed,” nor for that matter the chorus hook.
As for “Fill Me In,” it’s both lushly detailed and beautifully innocuous; sadly, too much of the R&B we’ll meet from here on in (and probably the Miami scene David mixes in now – certainly one bunnied member thereof) are basically picking up the cock-rock bandwagon in the lyrical department. It’s not just David’s future that is made to seem brighter than it actually is with this record.
7 at worst. Marking it down because the lyrics are infuriatingly low in the mix considering how much the song is driven by them. A charitable reading suggests that’s a deliberate decision that adds an air of mystery to them…
Seeing as I’ve mentioned that, it feels remiss not to mention my thoughts on “The Bad Touch”: a brilliant piece of nasty work, killer hooks carrying a tidal wave of misogyny – in that respect, arguably a far better pointer of R&B’s future than “Fill Me In.” Still loved it in spite of myself for a while, but absolutely for the instrumental part of the song. There’s a few bunnies I’ll be saying that about.
#45 Funny you mention Channel 4 losing its soul when we’re talking about Southampton’s big local hero in the same week as Immigration Street, the logical conclusion to the channel’s dissolution into Daily Mail TV for pretty much most of its schedule other than those summer nights that everyone associated with the channel’s dissolution into some other form of terrible.
(I went to university in Southampton. The heavily white middle-class student body told me the area covered by Immigration Street was a must-avoid. I only dared set foot in it in third year, and that for running through it, and I was left wondering what the fuss was about. Other than racism, and possibly the fact that the area was associated with Southampton Solent Former-Not-Even-A-Polytechnic students as that campus was close by.)
I’d love to know the real reason why this guy failed. Along with the obvious Bo Selecta thing, how about that huge Brits snub? Wasn’t it 6 nominations? That has to be pretty embarrassing. More discussion on this on the next bunny.
I like this a lot more now than at the time. I was very much into the MJ Cole album this year, Craig was very much a Tesco Value version of the sleek side of garage I liked at then. This still sounds pretty fresh 15 years later, which is a lot more than can be said for any of this records predeccssors at the top spot.
I don’t remember ever having heard this before, but it’s fantastic, isn’t it?
As pointed out @25, 26 and elsewhere, the lyrical detail is just lovely.
Reminds me of someone else we’ll be meeting here: did he get the career that Craig David should have had? But sadly for a few years yet I can refer to him only as M*** S******.
@45 You’re dead right: Bo Selecta was vile. Makes 2000 feel a lot more than 15 years away.
What with that and the Bloodhound Gang, was there a full-on anti-PC backlash under way? I don’t quite remember it that way, but maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention.
I’d completely forgotten MJ Cole until listening to the relevant Now record a few weeks ago! He was definitely being pushed as the sophisticated end of the genre – which after feeling a bit burned by the jazzier end of drum’n’bass back in the 90s made me wary. “Crazy Love” is still a fine record though. I should check out the album.