There are a number of songs on this list that, in the cold light of day* it has been hard to find someone who will champion enough to write about it. One even got booted off of the list for that reason. A similar situation has arisen with The Futureheads version of The Hounds Of Love. To a sober mind it is hard to work out why this robust but one joke gag on one of Kate Bush’s best tracks should have made any list of the Top 100 Songs of All Time. Especially with Kate’s own Wuthering Heights wuthering considerably lower down.
To explain it, and to excuse saying much more about it than calling it “a robust but one joke gag on one of Kate Bush’s best tracks” it probably would make sense to explain again how this list was made. Since in the next couple of months we will finally make it to number one after this six year journey, let us go back to a room above the Jeremy Bentham pub on the 29th December 2004 more »
I’ll tell you what pop’s missing at the moment and that’s rivalries. Not feuds, we have plenty of feuds, there’s a feud a day on Twitter I think. Feuds are great but the emphasis is on the stars themselves and what they think or feel. Rivalries are different. They’re about the fans, about what stars mean on a social level.
The great necessary thing about rivalries is that if you’re an outsider they should baffle you a bit. Take That and East 17 – seriously? What’s the difference? They’re both boy bands right, both manufactured, you shouldn’t be listening to either of them, you should be listening to oh, I don’t know, Consolidated or something. And isn’t the rivalry all a hype thing anyway? I had those conversations a few times in 1993.
Be My Baby always existed. Clearly to me it always existed, it is ten years older than me. But there is something about Be My Baby which feels like it always existed, its has the primal chord, the ur-drumbeat, that wall of sound and in the heart of it Ronnie Spector’s hics, tics and wonderfully strident voice. You get the feeling they could have shut down pop music then and there and called it a good job well done, and a plenty of people would have said fair enough.
(By the way I love that London Records reissue sleeve: way to go to miss the point).
This perceived perfection is the problem with Be My Baby. Not that it is too good. But in marrying Spector’s production to this wonderful mid-tempo stompathon it unwittingly gave us the template for “proper pop”. You know, the pop that never really existed, the pop that people are always talking about when they are sniffy about S Club 7*. more »
The AlkoholiKs Only When I’m Drunk, a review by Alix
I liked this song in 2003 or sometime in the past when this list was compiled and I was mostly drunk. I do not look back on this period in my life with much fondness or pride (or clarity), and can only apologise to my friends and society in general for suggesting this track as part of the Top 100 Songs (I’m not even sure I did suggest this, almost certainly, I was drunk). more »
So in lieu of saying anything about Billie Jean, here are some other prominent Billie Jeans, or Billies Jeans.
Billie Jean King: Probably the most famous Billie Jean, and almost certainly the most important female tennis player of all time. But was Michael Jackson a big tennis fan. It would certainly make sense when Mike says she is not his girl though, by 1983 she had been outed. Certainly if Mike chose the name to honour her, he would have been way ahead of the US: she did finally receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama last year. But apparently Quincy Jones (who never liked Billie Jean anyway) wanted to change the name of the song because he though people would think it would be about Billie Jean King. more »
What exactly are good times, according to Chic? The lyrics refer to jitterbugging being involved, but it’s hard to believe many people on the dancefloor actually jitterbug to it (past tense of jitterbug: jatterbug?). The jitterbug isn’t a hard dance but its hand-round-the-waist 50s style of partnered-up bopping is light years away from what disco invented: full-fledged, individualistic yet en masse booty shaking, preferably until way past a reasonable hour. This is the new state of mind that Chic is talking about. Don’t be a drag, participate. And then:
Clams on the half shell, and roller skates. Roller skates! more »
There’s a song on the radio, a catchy ear-worm of a song, and it’s been on the radio a lot now that you mention it. It drags you in, “now listen to my words” it commands. How might you react?
Reaction A “No colours anymore, I want them to turn black”
Ian Curtis, so the story goes, heard the song “Love Will Keep Us Together” sung by Captain and Tenille and was revolted. Somehow this Neil Sedaka-penned song (highest UK chart position: 32), an unrelentingly jaunty paean to the enduring and constructive power of love, grated with the adulterous misanthrope. So when the boys in the band came up with one of their really great hooky (HA HA) melodies, out came the notebooks with his very own misery memoir. Result:
Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart (Highest UK chart position: 13)
OK, so misanthrope is overstating it – he was a joy to drink with. It was only the constant skim reading of the ‘off-beat’ yet actually fashionable literature of pain and suffering, Ballard Hesse Gogol, and his own emotional insecurity that led him to vandalism – to take a watercolour chocolate-box confection and piss all over it. BLACK IT’S ALL BLACK. SO COLD, ALWAYS SO FUTILE!
There are 15 cover versions of Wuthering Heights on Spotify. They are all here in this playlist. Since Tom has covered everything I could say about the original here, I thought I’d look at these versions instead to see if there is a secret about the song that will be revealed. So in order of Spotify popularity:
The Puppini Sisters: They spread their Beverley Sisters for the noughties magic over Kate’s tragic, and in the process sing it as if they do not understand any of the words. Indeed they pronounce Cathy as Caffeine. Not trusting the original to be nuts enough they also add wacky milk bottle instrumentation, a musical saw and a thorough disdain for anyone who liked the original.
Angra: I think its a non-native English speaking male singer trying it in a gentle falsetto. It is! Brazillian power metal, which only really comes on in a few drum fills and some underplayed choral guitars. Possibly a little bit too respectful, for a metal version the original has more oomph. Not bad though.
When the Sugababes shed Keisha a few weeks ago, I was a bit worried for the catty one. Not cos she can’t look after herself, and not because she’ll be poor. But rather because the old idea that you have a successful career in a boy / girl / pop band and then have a successful solo career seems to have been proven to be pretty ropey. It struck me that Keisha, sticking with some form of the Sugababes as Mutya went all out for her solo career seemed to be pretty clever. Because what makes a solo career work is very different to the group dynamic. Good luck Keisha, but look closely at the parable of Rachel Stevens first.
Rachel was the pretty one from S Club 7. Well, according to the lads mags anyway, who had anointed her as such, and being the lad mags favourite she also became the favourite for a solo career. Bear in mind that this happened a few years ago when it looked like Girls Aloud were going to split up, Sarah Harding was the one tipped to have the solo career, again because she charted higher in the FHM Top 100. But of course Girls Aloud were clever and stayed together because they learned the lesson of Rachel Stevens. more »
Be My Baby always existed. Clearly to me it always existed, it is ten years older than me. But there is something about Be My Baby which feels like it always existed, its has the primal chord, the ur-drumbeat, that wall of sound and in the heart of it Ronnie Spector’s hics, tics and wonderfully strident voice. You get the feeling they could have shut down pop music then and there and called it a good job well done, and a plenty of people would have said fair enough. 
Billie Jean King: Probably the most famous Billie Jean, and almost certainly the most important female tennis player of all time. But was Michael Jackson a big tennis fan. It would certainly make sense when Mike says she is not his girl though, by 1983 she had been outed. Certainly if Mike chose the name to honour her, he would have been way ahead of the US: she did finally receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama last year. But apparently Quincy Jones (who never liked Billie Jean anyway) wanted to change the name of the song because he though people would think it would be about Billie Jean King.
What exactly are good times, according to Chic? The lyrics refer to jitterbugging being involved, but it’s hard to believe many people on the dancefloor actually jitterbug to it (past tense of jitterbug: jatterbug?). The jitterbug isn’t a hard dance but its hand-round-the-waist 50s style of partnered-up bopping is light years away from what disco invented: full-fledged, individualistic yet en masse booty shaking, preferably until way past a reasonable hour. This is the new state of mind that Chic is talking about. Don’t be a drag, participate. And then:
Angra: I think its a non-native English speaking male singer trying it in a gentle falsetto. It is! 
When the Sugababes shed Keisha a few weeks ago, I was a bit worried for the catty one. Not cos she can’t look after herself, and not because she’ll be poor. But rather because the old idea that you have a successful career in a boy / girl / pop band and then have a successful solo career seems to have been proven to be pretty ropey. It struck me that Keisha, sticking with some form of the Sugababes as Mutya went all out for her solo career seemed to be pretty clever. Because what makes a solo career work is very different to the group dynamic. Good luck Keisha, but look closely at the parable of Rachel Stevens first.