A year in lowculture: pop

While we may be long past the days in which the Christmas No.1 was a hotly-contested battleground fought by the great and good, the pop charts can still amaze and surprise us, both in good ways and bad. But what got us all excited in 2008? Read on to find our take on matters musical. (As with yesterday, this does not aim to be an exhaustive list, so if you feel we’ve missed anything of critical importance, do air your thoughts in the comments section.)

January: Well, what a difference a year makes, given that almost 12 months ago Leon Jackson was riding high at the top of the charts, flushed with X Factor success and anticipating the stardom that lay ahead. Of course, that’s something we’ll tackle in a little while. This month saw the amazing ‘Some Kinda Rush’ by Booty Luv stall at an unforgivably low No.19 in the charts, while Britney’s finest single from the Blackout album, ‘Piece of Me’, peaked at No.2 despite (or possibly because of) the deeply disappointing video. The eternally-tedious Adele charted highly with ‘Chasing Pavements’, a song which you could be mistaken for assuming had some depth before you listen to the lyrics properly, only to discover they’re dull, inane and trying too hard. A case of art imitating life for Adele there, clearly. Kelly Rowland’s ‘Work’ also provided much joy, not least for the bit at the end where she sounds like she’s talking about chickens.

February: There was an inexplicable Wet Wet Wet comeback, which I can only assume was the result of some deranged maniac with a grudge trying to hurt me in the most painful way possible. Thankfully, it seems to have been mercifully brief, in chart terms at least. The Feeling returned with ‘I Thought It Was Over’, prompting a heartfelt debate over on the forums about whether they were crap or not. I voted no, pretty much everyone else voted yes. Oh well. February also brought us Duffy, who is basically a slightly less-annoying version of Adele with added Welshness, H Two O, OneRepublic’s turgid ‘Stop And Stare’, Sarah Cracknell on the song from the LloydsTSB advert (not the year’s most heinous advert-related pop crime, but again we’ll get to that in a minute), landfill indie group One Night Only having the short-sightedness to name a song ‘Just For Tonight’, and of course Flo Rida’s ‘Low’.

March: As is only right, some of the year’s brightest pop hope came from northern Europe in the form of Alphabeat, bringing a bit of Scandinavian sparkle and some pleasingly low-fi videos to our shores. This month clearly belonged to Estelle, though, with ‘American Boy’ sadly demonstrating that no matter how impressive your material, female urban acts are rarely taken seriously unless a top male rapper does a guest spot. Not that I’m disparaging this song or Kanye West, but it’s a shame this appears to be the only hit to come out of Shine when there are so many great songs on it. Then again, it gave us a No.1 single that namechecks Ribena, and when was the last time that happened? Elsewhere, Madonna teamed up with Justin Timberlake with moderate results and Sam Sparro’s ‘Black and Gold’ hung around for ages.

April: Usher spawned a thousand “comedy” covers with ‘Love In This Club’, and the Kooks returned, in an effort to prove to us all that they were over all their Melua-related trauma.

The endearingly crazy Mariah Carey returned with ‘Touch My Body’, which included the amazing line “if there’s a camera up in here, then I’d best not catch this flick on YouTube” – which sounded even better when covered by Aretha Franklin. Trufax. From the Collaborations We Didn’t See Coming department, Cheryl Tweedy Cole provided guest vocals on Will.I.Am’s ‘Heartbreaker’, which had almost certainly nothing to do with her auditioning to be a dancer in the video on The Passions of Girls Aloud. Fragma released an unnecessary update of ‘Toca’s Miracle’, and Radio 1 listeners across the country got their brains in a right old knot trying to analyse the lyrics of Black Kids’ ‘I’m Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You’.

May: Usually drink, usually dance, usually bubble. Yes, this was the month of Wiley’s brilliant ‘Wearing My Rolex’. Necessary pop fact: Wiley is not scared of foxes:

The list of people who resolutely refused to fuck off this month included Adele, Coldplay, Pigeon Detectives and James Fox Out of Fame Academy, while fresh annoyances arrived in the form of The Script. Sara Bareilles’ ‘Love Song’ proceeded to bother the crap out of me, while the Ting Tings informed us of the many things the girl’s name was not, if not what it actually is, and Rihanna stretched theatrical metaphors to breaking point in ‘Take A Bow’.

June: Last year’s American Idol Jordin Sparks, who maybe DOESN’T WANT TO BE A SLUT, OKAY?? finally broke the UK market with the amazing Chris Brown duet ‘No Air’, which managed to turn overwrought teenage emotion into an art form. Fellow chastity lovers The Jonas Brothers made the wise decision not to launch the UK career with their Busted covers, and instead went with the actually-quite-agreeable ‘SOS’, turning them into household names. We’re sure we’ll be hearing about GHD Jonas, Jailbait Jonas, and Gay Jonas for years to come.

July: Ironik had bags of fun messing with the tuning settings on his laptop, and got a top five single in the form of ‘Stay With Me’ into the bargain. Glasvegas happened, the Ting Tings had a follow-up, McFly were still making an effort every now and then, Basshunter gave us a decent helping of bosh and Dizzee Rascal and Kid Rock scored No.1 singles. Seriously, what the fuck was up with July, you guys?

August: Former Christian rock singer Katy Perry was the first woman in history to kiss a girl and like it, so she decided to write a song in order to celebrate this momentous occasion. Said song turned out to be patronising and fairly offensive to Certain Sections Of The Community who accused her of fauxmosexuality, tokenism, homophobia and other such crimes, rather than the more obvious crime of having a voice like an alsatian trying to pass a kidney stone. Nonetheless, it spent an age at No.1 and was probably this year’s summer anthem – blerg. The Saturdays took over the position of Britain’s foremost Girls Aloud understudies, while Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’ was better than the title might suggest, though really this month was all about Little Jackie’s ‘The World Should Revolve Around Me’.

September: Miley Cyrus made the disappointing decision to remix ‘See You Again’ for its release in the UK. I questioned her best friend Leslie regarding this lapse in judgement, but the only statement she’d offer was “she’s just bein’ Miley”. Will Young returned to a disappointingly low singles chart placing (though the album appears to have sold fairly well), Ne-Yo’s ‘Miss Independent’ set the cause of feminism back several decades despite apparently good intentions, and the Pussycat Dolls returned to let us know that when they were younger, they wanted to grow up and have boopies. Also, M.I.A.’s ‘Paper Planes’ finally cracked the Top 20 after featuring on the Pineapple Express soundtrack. And to celebrate, here’s a snippet of Rihanna covering it indifferently:

October: Sugababes jumped the shark big time when they decided that what one of the UK’s most critically-acclaimed girl groups really needed to launch their latest album was a terrifyingly bad cover of the song from the Boots advert with added lazy girl-power lyrics. Despite the transparently obvious attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator, this proved to be a very poor decision both commercially and critically. Things also went horribly wrong for Leon Jackson, whose new single could only muster a No.3 placing and was beaten by Peter Kay in the guise of a transsexual Irish fake reality show winner. Ouch, indeed. A more successful comeback was staged by Pink, whose ‘So What’ was possibly the finest schoolyard chant-based pop song since Daphne and Celeste’s ‘U.G.L.Y.’, while the Saturdays’ ‘Up’ continued to be high on quality and low on personality, and Katy Perry annoyed me even further when I wound up liking sophomore single ‘Hot ‘n’ Cold’ despite myself. There were also a number of career resurgences for tired old boybands like Boyzone and Oasis, but let’s not dwell on that.

November: Girls Aloud achieved their first non-cover No.1 since ‘Sound of the Underground’ with ‘The Promise’, which overcame its sonic similarities to the Blankety Blank theme tune to become an excellent pop song in its own right. The X Factor Finalists’ cover of Mariah Carey’s ‘Hero’ proved to be the most self-congratulatory charity single since Band Aid 20, while the top ten became the terrain of the pop diva: Alesha Dixon finally managed that lucrative solo Top 10 hit with ‘The Boy Does Nothing’, Britney Spears launched her 30th comeback of the year with the brilliant ‘Womanizer’, Christina Aguilera endeavoured to assure us that she ‘Keeps Getting Better’ despite some evidence to the contrary, and Beyoncé’s ‘If I Were A Boy’ came complete with hilarious Calvin-Klein-meets-domestic-violence-charity video. It didn’t help that Ciara had also had this idea over a year beforehand, and done it far better. The Killers got things back on track with ‘Human’, and pretty much the entire country couldn’t believe their ears when T.I. and Rihanna sampled O-Zone’s ‘Dragostea Din Tei’.

December: The marvellous Same Difference began their attempt at world domination, and the charts slowly filled with old festive songs being downloaded in their thousands. Leona Lewis did the unfeasible and made a Snow Patrol song interesting and was rewarded with a No.1 for her efforts, and the two canonical versions of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ leapt up the charts as a result of a bunch of people getting butthurt about Simon Cowell’s decision to give the song to the winner of The X Factor. Personally I think Alexandra Burke did a pretty good job of it, but I’m still sad I never got to hear Eoghan’s version.

And there we have it. What are you anticipating for pop in 2009? Feel free to ruminate in the comments, as long as you clean up afterwards.

Tagged as: a year in lowculture 2008, pop