ATOMIC KITTEN – "The Tide Is High (Get The Feeling)"

New entries at 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 might be the most early-2000s chart incident ever, especially with a Pop Idol I alumnus (Whatmore) and an Irish Model act (Ronan).

I’ll give a point to this for the “new bit,” mostly because it goes very nicely with the Recycled Atomic Kitten Drum Loop, rather more than “The Tide Is High” itself. And certainly this was otherwise a terrible fit for this act, because it’s so dependent on being shot with performance character like Debbie Harry gave, and Atomic Kitten’s entire business model after “Whole Again” was geared far far away from any such thing.

A low 3. And, thanks to that Ronan track, still not the worst song in the top five in week three of its reign of error. This was number one when I started sixth form, and my bus ride there was soundtracked by the likes of Linkin Park and Avril Lavigne on the MP3 player of one of the boys who got on at my stop; if the alternative was Ronan or this, I owe him more than I thought.

A big part of the problem here is that I’ve never much liked “The Tide is High” as a song. Blondie did their best to bring some charm to it, but even that version – which is probably the one I’d protest least about hearing – just saunters along lazily without managing to stir much movement or any emotions in me. It suffices, and that’s it.

It’s far better than this, though, which feels like a cheap, hastily-recorded karaoke run-through for a B-side (or what it also reminds me of are the quickly recorded tunes for children’s feature length cartoons – I’m visualising a lot of cuddly bears and rainbows as I listen to this). Seriously sloppy stuff. The fact that this version came with a new middle-eight appended surely shows that someone out there cared and wanted to do something a bit different with the song, but that slides by without making much of a mark on me too.

Commenting as much to say, `Welcome back,` as anything else because there isn’t a lot to see here – although The Tide Is High (Get The Feeling) has a little bit more going for it than Crossroads. I’m prepared to be reasonably charitable as the `get the feeling` addition just saves it from being a cheap photocopy and the fact that the production has dated badly isn’t entirely Atomic Kitten’s fault.

August 2005, our family from Sheffield had come down for a few days to where I live in Wiltshire, for the first time in my then living memory. The 7 (almost 8) year old me, much like the 21 year old me today, was known to them and other as being a ‘music boy’ with my vast array of CDs and Now compilations, so when we were having a BBQ, I was the “DJ” (playing random songs I wanted to hear on the CD player from my and my parents’ collection). I show them Now 53 to see if they wanted to choose a track, and my great uncle’s friend (who is like family) wanted Atomic Kitten’s The Tide is High. I vigorously refused, saying that it was rubbish. Even after my dad got angry at me and basically instructed me to play it, I remained a rude, naughty boy and never played it.

I was being a brat, obviously, and a total killjoy. And while I would never be an arsehole in a situation like that today, I can only look back and smile, because this is still complete garbage and I don’t think I’ve heard it in the wild since, except on ‘every number 1 of the 2000s’ programmes. This sucks all the lite-reggae out of the Blondie version just like they sucked all the lite-Sgt Pepper out of Eternal Flame, and like that song what lies in its place is the most tired Early Learning Centre Kids Grooves sounds known to a #1 record. Not for me, thanks.

2

This was number one on my first day of school

Interesting. In 2002, I found myself in an emotional place I would not like to revisit. At the end of 2001, Nature had dealt me and my family a nasty blow. I tried to recover my composure and return to work in early 2002. One Monday morning, a couple of weeks in, I was given the shocking news that the 43-year-old man who worked at the desk next to mine had died in his sleep the previous night. There had been no warning signs. He was survived by his wife and four children.

His death posed a philosophical riddle. I was now in a situation where I did not know where I would physically be able to achieve some of the modest goals I had set myself in life. I also had no control whatsoever over whether I could. My colleague, by contrast, had met all of his personal and professional goals effortlessly. Now, he knew nothing about it. He was a self-effacing, easy-going family man. He exuded a calm contentedness that colleagues and friends admired, and it made them feel happy. Now that was all gone. I could not pretend to understand how his family must have felt. Of course, it left me thinking, “What’s it all for, what does it all mean” etc.

Things got better, for me, through the year. Then as now, it was remarkable how (again, I stress, for me) the year began at rock-bottom, and ended in optimism; something approaching confidence.

I recall from the time that one of the things that helped me cope was the abundance of bearable everyday pop on the radio. Seriously.

I look back now and think how recognisable some of those records were. Late in the year, I heard an interview with an actress who said something like “I love modern pop, stuff like Nickelback and P!nk”. At once, I thought the following (deep breath):

a) they’re nothing like each other (and therefore the examples offer no insight (to amplify this point – what would the third example be? My thought process says Shakira, but she’s nothing like the other two)

b) they’re not modern sounding (even in 2002)

c) they’re very bland and anything that mainstream should not be forwarded as an example of one’s up-to-dateness

d) they’ve both put out a couple of bearable records – in fact I think I quite like those records

And my reaction to that single comment was very similar to how I felt when I listened to Now 53. Treat yourself – look at the tracklisting. Utterly bearable, nothing great.

So, I can’t make up my mind whether 2002 was rubbish or brilliant. We got through it. It wasn’t terribly different from what went before, or what came after. But it was a little bit different. And we are not going back. The record which epitomises all of this , for me, is “The Tide Is High” by Atomic Kitten.

One last thing. Wrt “Get the Feeling” – Why no ref to “Oh My Lord” (1978), or “Forgive Me Girl” (1980)?

The artwork!

Apt for the group’s name that the girls look as if they’d scratch your eyes out as soon as look at you.

11. Completely agreed on the “Ladies Night” cover – good idea (girl group cover of that song!) done spectacularly badly, without even the (very!) basic competence of the other two covers. I’d be preparing a 1 for it if it was bunnied.

12. That Now 53 tracklisting… I’m not sure I’d put CD1 Track 2 in that category, but it’s on our radar. But there is a lot of general adequacy on that list, even by Now standards – unexceptional-but-serviceable dance-pop at the back end of CD1, and lots of mediocre pop depth throughout most of that disc. (Which makes sense in this era – the record industry was basically in strong financial position, whilst also seeing the digital danger even if there was too much focus on piracy as the potential murder weapon. Couple that with the warp-speed chart turnover of this era and you have a recipe for making lots of quick bets on the here and now, which is how you get things like Abs getting a shot at a solo career or half the Pop Idol finalists getting record deals.)

Bizarre to see Puddle of Mudd’s “She Hates Me” on CD2 though. Surely, to the general public outside the nu-metal crowd to which I was so heavily exposed as a sixth-former at the time, that was a gimmick record? And that gimmick was the swearing that obviously had to be edited out for Now? Weird.

I’m afraid I’m quite mixed on Appleton’s Fantasy; I loved it in the mid-00s, but only the intro and verses with that outre production (with a guitar sound eyeing up Holly Valance’s impending Down Boy) really stand out to me today, as the chorus sounds surprisingly flat.

I would want to stick up vigorously for Now 53 but that’s mostly purely out of the sake of childhood nostalgia. But most of what’s good about CD1 has been mentioned in other threads. CD2 is one of the most classic ‘rock/alternative stuff throughout but mostly at the start’ scenarios in all of Now history, but I’d stick up for some of a lot of the songs, even RA’s much maligned Check the Meaning (if we avoid the lyrics).

U2’s appearance is one of their best songs of the 2000s, Supergrass’ Grace (their last Now IIRC) is lovely and its a shame other fanbase hits like Suede’s Positivity or the Manics’ There by the Grace of God don’t (cough) grace the disc*. But that Eva Cassidy track wasn’t even a single, and follows the Verve on Now 40 and Coldplay on 48 (and soon 55) in ‘the album/artist is big so we’re sticking a non-charter on there to represent their appeal’ territory.

Then the, shall we say, Kerrang stuff is a bad mix, even if they all appealed to me as a boy. The Summer Nights-but-not-geddit!? Puddle of Mudd track is pretty dire and Chad Kroeger’s Hero likewise (and should have been on 52 I think, tho thanks to its appearance here I’ll always think of it as an end-of-the-year hit). Girl All the Bad Guys Want at least offers up a smile.

Then there’s the out of place R&B and dance material, represented best by the wonderful Dy-Na-Mi-Tee.

*but then those bands rarely did

#19 Yeah I discussed those benefits of the Hits series in this period – and Now 52’s relative downside – on the If Tomorrow Never Comes thread, and BMG and co. certainly tried hard in this era – the Pop Idol inclusions (and music videos too) in 2002 were the equivalent of the ’50 tracks even tho a lot of them are edited’ fiasco of 2001. But brand loyalty prevailed and indeed 2000s Hits albums were just as prone, and often more so, to lesser hits clogging up the track list in unusual places (for every Freeek! situation on a Now album there’d be a few more on a Hits album I find).

I do love those 2000s Hits albums all the same, not least because cross-licensing splits meant a lot of songs appeared on them that didn’t on the Nows and vice versa, perhaps more so than was the case with the Global TV albums in the 90s (and the two aforesaid Suede and Manics songs did appear, altho the Manics one was relegated towards the end of the 25-tracks-per-disc Huge Hits 2003, where it was of course edited)

Mark M #9: The only precedent I know for grafting your own song onto a flagship cover is Freakytrigger’s official favourite record of all time, Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind/In My House, way up the other end of the quality scale.

Has anyone else ever done this? (Oasis sort of did it with the G*ry Gl*tt*r coda on Hello)

Other, unmentioned new entry concerns from this record’s summit span (but not all of them)

Week 1
#5 Ms Dynamite – Dy-Na-Mi-Tee – A (proto-Craig revival) semi-revival in 2010/11 aside, the short commercial legs of Ms Dynamite’s career feel to me a bit of a shame. Dy-Na-Mi-Tee is wonderfully restrained R&B whose secret weapon, cooing vocals aside, seems to be the unrelenting shaking of a tambourine, contributing more to the song’s bejewelled prettiness. Her Mercury Prize was really a noose round her neck, like it so often is to its winners.
#20 – Mint Royale – Sexiest Man in Jamaica – This oddly bunnied act seem to me the epitome of dance acts who kept charting with crossover, multi-influenced records but have never appeared to actually have any fans, a much more severe case of what some recon of Groove Armada (who are clearly this song’s biggest influence – it could have been on GA’s contemporaneous Lovebox, which was their last album to ape Leftfield before their suppressed desire to be Basement Jaxx eventually took over).
#21 – Ash – Envy – surprisingly not very hooky, but even though this is the last Ash song I can remember appearing on compilations, they still had a few modest hits of a size like this left in them for another five years. By the time they bowed out of the top 20 in 2007 you’d forget Tim Wheeler was still only 30, the age Grant Nicholas was when peers Feeder had their first hit.
#41 – Saint Etienne – Action – this post-Moloko-ish ditty could have been StEt’s last top 40 hit if it had gone one place higher…until follow-up Soft Like Me somehow did just that.

Week 2
#7 – Paul Weller – It’s Written in the Stars – the slightly ‘off’ horn sample that sounded lifted from vinyl was to many perhaps the most interesting thing about a Paul Weller single in years, and kinda puts me in the mind of Lemon Jelly. The parent album had a raga instrumental and a nice pop arty sleeve (Lemon Jelly again), so in some ways his apparent ‘creative renaissance’ (i.e. straying more from the meat and potatoes) that began with 22 Dreams has some unrecognised precedent here.
#12 – Underworld – Two Months Off – the singles looked like they could have been from Melody A.M., but (especially with TMO) the apparent blow to the group that was the departure of Darren Emerson does not really sound to me on A Hundred Days Off, which is a pretty solid record overall, if not quite up the standards of even Beaucoup Fish (which I really do love)
#29 – Weezer – Keep Fishin’ – if the single had all the chatter from the video then this would have been The Muppets’ first hit in 25 years. I’m not much of a Weezer fan but why Burndt Jamb wasn’t a single in this period seems a shame to me.

Week 3
Loads of new entries, nothing I really feel like commenting on (if I can call this commenting). Ronan’s I Love It When You Do is Gregg Alexander’s first boring hit but fortunately he’ll have at least one more great one in him next year (and its not with Ronan).

Oddly Papa Don’t Preach wasn’t strictly a chart entry at #3 as it had been hanging in the much lower reaches (peaking at #65) in the four weeks before… what was going on there?

#9 & #22 one of the best selling singles of all time in the UK did it – Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord by Boney M, which would have helped make Frank Farian a fair bit of cash

Sorry, HardToGetHits, I did read that but totally missed the point you were making and had forgotten by the time I listened to Pet Shop Boys and thought ‘ooh!’

it’s an indication of how bland this single is that it has taken me so long to respond – the original Paragons version has a sincere yet muted energy which the Blondie version replaces with Debbie Harry’s listless sultriness. This version sounds like AI karaoke – slick, efficient and charmless.

A charitable 4/10 from me.

This song is bad and we regret making this. We totally copied two other songs from this and though we made a lot from this it gives me a headache just listening to this. Thank you to everyone who says it is good but I disagree with you all.

As someone who loved the early Atomic Kitten stuff, this was when the new super-bland version of the band truly outstayed their welcome. Depressingly dull.