From now on, this process might get harder. There will be fewer songs I know or care about. That's just the way it goes. I didn't totally detach from the charts in the late 2000s, and to this day there are still hit songs I like (in fact, I think 2023 has been a pretty interesting year near the top), but I think this will be a bit more of a struggle. Two contributing factors - Top of the Pops ending in 2006, plus I stopped buying the NME regularly in 2007 or 2008. I was still massively into music, but lost an automatic connection to what's popular. AS did a lot of people.
So, for 2008, it's
Dance Wiv Me - Dizzee Rascal ft Calvin Harris & Chrome
which is a pretty decent record. It sounds exactly what you think it'd sound like - poppy, dancey, hiphop. It's actually a pretty big deal, in that it was the first Number 1 for everyone involved. For Chrome, a little-known r'n'b singer, it was one the first of two both with Dizzee Rascal. For Dizzee Rascal, the first of, I think, five, for Calvin Harris, the first of eleven (!) not even including all his productions, and counting, including massive worldwide smashes. He is a very very successful singles artist, and that shows little sign of slowing down even now.
Though, I noticed, he doesn't carry critical acclaim with it. Rather like Mark Ronson, a DJ who also wanted to be a bit of a pop star, a skinny, geeky, well-to-do hitmaker who doesn't really fit the box of superstar, there seems to be a lot of resentment alongside the sales. Pitchfork was scathing about Calvin Harris' Coachella headline and album last year. I have no skin in this particular game but I do find a certain thread of American anti-Britishness pretty fascinating. Every country is anti-British in some way or another, and that is to be expected and respected, but the one that sticks in my craw a little is American hipster attitude to British culture. I can't quite pin it down, put as a regular Pitchfork reader, follower of US music and film journalists, there's a very specific thing.
So I should leap to the defence of Calvin Harris ... so ... I quite like his singing. He sings in some of his hits and he's like the bassist of an indie band who does harmonies somewhat unwillingly to start with, and then has written his own song, and is allowed to have a couple of minutes every second album. Which is the kind of voice I want to hear on a dancefloor banger.
His name's not actually Calvin Harris, it's Adam Wiles. He chose Calvin Harris because he thought it was racially ambiguous when he was getting started. Calvin Schmalvin.
He's from Dumfries. the Queen of the South. I was in Dumfries last summer - it's very nice. It was blistering hot when we arrived, and about 15 degrees colder and wetter when we left. Nice.
Anyway, I guess his gifts are pop nous, beats, catchy tunes, and being the Fatboy Slim of this century ... or something.
And what of the Dizzee Rascal, found guilty of something not exactly rascallish in recent times. This was where he decided to have a hit, I guess.
I remember listening to Boy in Da Corner on the top deck of a bus travelling through north-east London when it came out, and it really was impressive and seemed to own the time and place. It told me things I didn't know. Saying that, he won the Mercury, he had the column inches, but he didn't really have a hit. Fix Up look Sharp has a semi-hit. He didn't have a proper, full-sized hit for five years, even though he was a famous enough cultural entity. Indeed, when i did jury service in 2006, one of the defendants was described by a witness as looking like Dizzee Rascal. I think , very inappropriately i think, he was described a couple of times by one of the barristers as "Dizzee Rascal". I do not think said defendant, sitting in the dock, was impressed.
Anyway, the actual Dizzee Rascal clearly was sick of being acclaimed but not having hits, so made some dumb, fun pop records, having five Number 1s, of which Bonkers is, let's be honest, a proper classic, much better than this one, but has never got the acclaim back. Such is the way.
You can somewhat ignore what I said at the top about losing track with pop music in 2008, actually. I think it's just another case of doing things in the summer so not paying attention. Number 1s for 2008 which I paid attention to include Mercy, American Boy, That's Not My Name (Ya wannae dance tae the Tang Tangs?), Take a Bow, Viva La Vida, I Kissed a Girl, So What, Single Ladies/If I Were a Boy, and the best of all of them, The Promise. I mean, great, that's a great year for hits, isn't it?
And what of me? 30th birthday. I specifically remember the mundane things I did the days before - went to my football team's AGM at the Freemason's Arms, ran a 10 mile in Battersea Park in 67 min 50 (as good as I ever got). Was properly fit that summer, training for marathon, pre-leg break. Went to Latitude (sunny), went to Green Man (rainy), went to the Isle of Coll for a half-marathon. One of those clashed with the first filming of Only Connect which i might otherwise have appeared on as a contestant. Wonder what happened to that show ...
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