It's a soundtrack to my life (Top 10 Singles)

Member Name: miriamb

Product:	Top 10 Singles
Date:	17/06/02 (281 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: they're good

Disadvantages: they're old (ish)

Top ten singles…well so many to choose from! To make it a little easier for myself I’ve decided that those listed must be songs that I came to as singles, and not that I retrospectively found on an album. Unfortunately this automatically excludes a whole load of great singles released before I was born, and sadly loads of others that I was either too young to have been aware of, or simply passed me by.

I’ve also gone for singles that are highly personal: don’t get me wrong, I love them all, but they may not be my favourite or the acknowledged ‘best’ by the artist in question – see, I’m being dead strict with myself! But the following singles evoke a memory of a particular day or time for me that is unsurpassed by any other. So if I pick something by an artist and you read it and say to yourself that I’m a fool because I picked single x and not single y, well maybe that’ll help explain it a bit! This is my nostalgia-fest, as experienced through the medium of the single.

Anyway. In true Top of the Pops styleee, here we go… (please hum Top of the Pops countdown music to yourself for atmosphere)


At number 10, it’s ‘Don’t Falter’ by Mint Royale featuring Lauren Laverne of Kenickie fame. I never got into Kenickie but this is great. Take stripey deckchairs and a warm sea breeze and you have this song. Played to death on the radio when it was released in summer 2000, this was a good year. And waking up to Zoe Ball’s Radio 1 breakfast show with the sun shining in through the blinds, this quite literally has summer written all over it. Just listen to the catchy lyrics ‘when you’re with me it’s officially summer’ and yeah baby it sure is. Pretty pop that always makes me smile, shimmy, and want to enjoy the sunshine…

Number 9 is a (relatively) new entry from 2001, Sunshine Anderson’s ‘
Heard it all Before’, an R’n’B gem from an artist who seems to have to have disappeared into obscurity after the release of her debut album Your Woman. Low-slung soul stroke pop that echoes the best of the Brand New Heavies, and sends you rushing to put your dancing shoes and false eyelashes on (and that's just the boys). Oh this was great when it came out, the poor boy I was seeing didn’t know what had hit him: I was calling the shots and he could like it or leave. To his credit he stuck around until the whole female power thing really got too much and I had to kick him to the kerb, girlfriend. Basically this song epitomises that respect me or go attitude, and still makes me swell with assumed empowerment. Poor boy though eh.

And at number 8, we’ve got a non-mover, this one’s been sticking around for a while, well, since 1996. Yes, it’s ‘Nancy Boy’ by Placebo, the bad lady-boy of indiepop himself, Brian Molko spits out an invigorating, rough ‘n’ ready number. Call me shallow, but I don’t care about the lyrics on this one. As an extra bonus though we get the B-side ‘Miss Moneypenny’ ('0898 double-0 7/all you need to make a movie is a gun and a girl') which is almost as infectious as ‘Nancy Boy’ itself. All you need to know is that this reminds me of going back to live at my dad’s for a bit, discovering MTV, and supporting my little brother’s first gigs in places that he wasn’t even old enough to get into. Oh and being single for the first time in about 7 years and having a ball. Heaven!

Moving back up the charts to 7 is another summertime favourite, it’s ‘Step On’ by the Happy Mondays. Waking up to the sultry tones of Simon Mayo (I fancied his voice!), yes, it’s 1990 and the living is easy. That summery smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of birds tweeting in the trees and that fee
ling that today’s gonna be a good day. This evokes memories of walking to school, where my only worry was whether I’d rolled up the waistband of my skirt to get it at the correct length (not indecent but definitely shorter than regulation), and how many more holes I could pick in my cardi, which was of course tied around the waist to disguise the rolled up skirt. ‘Step On’ just takes me back instantly to being 14 and possibly the happiest girl alive. This is the most evocative of the whole scope of the Madchester sound for me, Shaun Ryder’s non-singing contrasts with that whistling, gutsy-vocalled refrains and the guitar chorus. If anyone knows what he meant by ‘twisting my melon, man’, please do let me know. I think it’s like ‘doing my head in’ but there must be a more druggy meaning surely?

Moving swiftly to number 6, and riding high are ‘The Facts of Life’ by Black Box Recorder. Signalling a more cynical take on the child-like innocence of proper pop, this is a low-key affair of breathy vocals and a downbeat melody. This really reminds me of riding the crest of a wave of blushingly early romance, and of course, I was heading for a fall! But enough of that. The lyrics still do it for me, the chorus sings ‘It’s just the facts of life/there’s no masterplan/You walk me home from school/I’ll let you hold my hand’ and doesn’t that just induce a smile? Chivalrous, uneasy gestures of affection, that regardless of age only appear when you’re in those first delicate flushes of possibility. Unfortunately the song takes a more depressing turn later on but for the purposes of this op we’ll gloss over that. This is a beauty of a single.

At number 5, it’s one of 1997’s finest, ‘Spellbound’ by Rae and Christian. A funky addition to this list, Veba’s powerful gospel vocal soars over the jazzy hip-hop
beats and breaks that you’d expect from the Grand Central fold. Add to that the flute interludes that dance over the background and you’ve got beautiful listening. Now come with me as I step back a few years to my first year at uni, keeping vampiric hours and skipping seminars, handing work in quite literally 2 minutes before the deadline, and working throughout the night to finish a presentation due to be launched on the world at 9.30 am. Happy, sleep-deprived, headily spontaneous days, when everything was a party, and if it wasn’t already, it would be turned into one by the sea of like-minded freshers.

Next up, it’s the Badly Drawn Boy moving ‘Once Around the Block’ to number 4. Cracking melodic guitars and a shuffly beat that frame Damon Gough’s sleepy, can’t quite be bothered vocals perfectly. This is the precursor to number 6 in the chart, the admiring from afar stage, the have they noticed me pangs that make up each encounter. Like those encounters, this song is one that you never want to end, and I get a sinking feeling whenever I realise that it’s nearly time to part. ‘I’m fascinated by your style, your beauty will last for a while’… and indeed it will. I have yet to meet anyone that doesn’t like this. Please don’t shatter my illusions if you don’t.

We’re into the top three, pop-pickers, and at number 3 we’re going back in time to 1988 and ‘Theme from S’Express’ by S’Express. The first 7” I ever exchanged for my pocket money, and purchased from a funny little shop up the road. I remember this getting quite considerable air-play despite the barely masked shock of the new-music-unfriendly disc jockey at my local radio station. And how cool did I think I was for owning this! At 11, I was shunning the Stock Aitken and Waterman fare and going undergound with the new electronic dance sound 
211; oh yes I remember that feeling of smug satisfaction clearly, even today. Possibly my finest hour, in terms of muso cool, was my first purchase! Ah well...

Just beating S’Express is Madonna at number 2 – but which one? Is it ‘Lucky Star’, by virtue of the fact that it was my school gym team’s display theme? Or the stylised eyebrows and flameco-esque dresses of ‘La Isla Bonita’? The bare-faced raunchery of 'Justify my Love' or even the bubblegum scented 'Cherish'? Maybe the kitchy ‘True Blue’ that coincided with my political awakening and led me to believe that Madonna was a Tory? Nope, none of those. It is, of course, 1986’s ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. As explained, it could have been any number of Madonna singles, but this one stands out from a nostalgia point of view because I remember feeling dead clever that I’d sussed this song to be about a father’s disapproval of a teen pregnancy. This of course led to me relentlessly questioning my poor dad about whether or not he’d let me keep my baby, if I were pregnant. I was 10. Suffice to say dad didn’t really give me an answer. As you might have noticed, Madonna was omnipresent through my pre-teen years, and I should point out that each of the singles evokes a slightly different memory for me. ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ though is the most rooted in my musical nostalgia, so this single is number 2.

And holding on to the top spot is that classic by any other name: it’s New Order, dancing their way to our hearts with ‘True Faith’. Why? Well it’s obvious really, ‘I feel so extraordinary/something’s got a hold on me/I get this feeling I’m in motion/a sudden sense of liberty’ – 1989, me at 13 - of course, it’s the onset of my teenage years, and that sudden sense of liberty was my desperate wish to sprea
d my wings. Of course I should point out that it was also one of the favourite songs of my first boyfriend, which has undoubtedly coloured my perception of it. But as an anthem for my teenage years, the single holds true to this day, and still gives me that edgy, must do many things sensation. In a rut? Lacking direction? General malaise? ‘True Faith’ is your remedy. And that’s why it reigns supreme at the number 1 spot in my top ten singles.


So there we are. Falling out of the chart were songs like 'Every breath you take' by 'The Police, Blondie's 'Call Me', 'Atmosphere' by Joy Division, 'Peaches' by the Stranglers, even 'Can't Take my Eyes off You' by Andy Williams, amongst many many others, but you know how fussy these chart-compilers are and how stringently they stick to their criteria. I hope you enjoyed it anyway, and the brief introduction to those records that made their mark on Me.

Thanks for reading ;)

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