LIBERTY X – "Just A Little"

This still sounds pretty good – in fact I remembered it when I heard it whereas Hearsay’s efforts have (thankfully) disappeared. I also remember feeling slightly aggrieved when (IIRC) Jessica was sidelined from the winning group on the Popstars series after she admitted having smoked weed. She came across as one of the most talented of the contenders and it just seemed prudish and petty to dismiss her. I’m glad she enjoyed success and credibility. She seems to have ended up married to Kevin Pieterson so she really is living the dream 😉
This gets a high 6 from me too

Yes, this is fine. Not much more but better than Hear’says’s efforts. Am sure we *can* be more kind to Hear’say at this distance but I’m not certain we necessarily should be, at least with respect to the back room staff that went with them. They almost certainly were let down by the songs that they were given – and I’m unsure how much agency they would have had in their being chosen.

As ever, when it comes to the reality TV popstars, there’s maybe a lot to be said for what this meant for the evolution of the genre. The success of Liberty X almost certainly led to One True Voice being held within the bosom of the TV show’s aftermath when “The Rivals” happened – indeed the show was likely set up to reflect the Hear’say/Liberty X situation – so as there was no chance of missing out on a Liberty X style bit of success in the aftermath. I dare say we’ll talk more about OTV anon, but the lesson of giving the “other” group at least somewhat decent songs to sing was probably the most salient thing they could have learned from this #1.

#2: A-ha! A chance to talk about Kevin Pietersen. A colossal ego but what a bat. Of all the batsmen I have seen in the flesh, KP would be in the top 3 (behind Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene – the two Sri Lankans who, at least when I have seen them in the ground, appear to have been touched by something otherworldly. I did see Tendulkar bat once – but he didn’t play well and got out for 3). At his best, he was blessed with the ability to seemingly halt time whilst he figured out what to do, imagination to see shots others couldn’t – especially opposing captains vis a vis their field placings, and, yes, the arrogance to attempt things others wouldn’t dare.

My top memories of him were in his final season playing 4 day cricket with Surrey. He was having one last throw of the die trying to get back into the England team. I was on jury service. After court threw out, I went down to The Oval and caught KP and Surrey v Leics, and saw him go from 198 to 310 in about an hour, smashing the opposition attack to all parts, including two monstrous 6s into the second tier of the Vauxhall end stand. He shared a last wicket stand of over 100 in that innings, in which the #11 batsman scored 4. He was just so far above everyone else it was frightening. A couple of weeks later, it was the annual schools’ day at The Oval. When tea was called, KP didn’t take it, he just wandered over to the boundary where the kids were and signed autographs and took selfies for the duration before play re-started. He’s a bit polarising to say the least, but that put him in the positive side of the ledger in my mind.

He’s been married to Jessica for 10 years now, so life can’t be all bad, you’d think.

Known this song since the day it was a hit, and played it a lot on compilarions, but must confess my Liberty X ignorance. Only looking them up recently did I see they were from Popstars, and that they were originally simply ‘Liberty’ before legal wranglings interveined with their name and release schedules (sidenote, there’s a lot of ‘X’s around this time, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that Being Nobody has a giant ‘X’ on its sleeve). I see the original group name was chosen to reprsent freedom, that they were on V2, and that their first single was a somewhat busy UK garage workout which perhaps sounds about a year too late in my ears to be the top 5 hit that it was.

But, as I say, my Liberty X ignorance. I don’t remember that song or their next, less successful single at all. And I don’t remember how they go now. Just a Little, arriving half a year later, feels to me almost like Freak Like Me in terms of a group re-establishing itself, name change and all, because first and foremost Just a Little feels less steeped in obvious trends and works up a sound for itself, and also unlike the first two singles, it leaves an aftertaste, a hook or two people remember (or me at least).

This song is always one of the ones that’ll remind me most of mid-2002, even for just that guitar tone that plays the song’s staccato riff that also seems to double up as its rhythmic pulse. And, chorus melody aside, its precisely that riffhym (I’m sorry, truly) that guides this track above the lyrics, which aren’t so pristine. A song where, for the most part (some parts don’t make sense, to me at least), the group aren’t being so subtle about what they want, unlike the ‘you’ they sing to, who one minute apparently doesn’t know what they have, and next minute are being teasy, not merely inviting the lust but are doing it in such a thrilling way that requires a brief crackle of backing vocals (“I like it when you do it like that, ah ah”). The idea of working it only “just a little” suggests the song’s subject is indeed already half way there. All in all, the singers and ‘you’ work such a strange dynamic that the former settles on wanting to compromise (“meet me in the middle”).

So quite a messy record in that respect. But the rather minimal flow is charming, and benefits their soft voices. The riff plays almost constantly throughout, only dropping out for a post-middle eight chorus-come-bridge, and the less interesting beat behind it never hides, so the subtle appearance of other little sounds and so forth, usually wrapped around lines as opposed to appearing concurrently, are made all the more obvious. Typically these are breathy, or whispered (read: ‘seductive’) backing vocals that sound almost ad-libbed (like a kind of running commentary, or, as I prefer to see it, things whispered in one ear of the subject while the rest of the song is being sung in the other). The one that always comes to mind is that “ah-ah-ah-ahhh” about 30 seconds in or so. Again, like with Freak Like Me, minor details are given light there.

Its a nice little record, and stands at a 7 for me but is triumped by their Richard X collaboration Being Nobody (again based on an old Girls on Top mash if I’m not mistaken). As with Freak Like Me, Ain’t Nobody was still somewhat fresh in the public mind – though not as recently – thanks to LL Cool J, but the pairing with Being Boiled (again, as with Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, a song without a chorus of its own) is a treat. As for other Liberty X songs, I remember none except A Night to Remember, the completely forgotten about cover done for that year’s Children in Need, and I only remember that because I own the CD single of it. I may have played it only once.

A solid 7, unexpected given the provenance (I had no time for the trendchasing of their first single, Thinking It Over).

With mashups, Bastard Pop, call it what you like in full swing at this point, this lives on for me via the Orbital Just A Little Bit Lush cut & shut which was one of the best I’d heard at the time.

Not on YouTube, obviously.

Holding On For You, their 2002 Christmas hit, was really rather lovely too.

7 seems to be consensus on this one and I wouldn’t disagree with that.

Re: “the dire metatextual route”… Yes, at this time in 2002 Beckham broke his metatextual, and almost missed the World Cup. Nasty injury. On a nearly-relevant note, football songs this year went as high as No 3 – http://bbc.in/2wrspUC – but singles by Venables and Fat Les fell outside the 40, how the mighty have fallen – http://bbc.in/2x5BVkC