Chart Music: the Top Of The Pops Podcast - #61 (Pt 4): 25.7.2003 – The Arsethropocene

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

Simon Price and Sarah Bee join Al Needham to finish off this episode of The Pops from the Poochie Era. Benny Benassi pitches up with some Oven Ready Women, The Coral are suddenly a big deal, Beyoncé reduces everything we’ve just seen into dust with one mighty shake of her arse, and D-Side flounce off. TUCK IN, Pop-Crazed Youngsters…Video Playlist | Subscribe | Facebook | Twitter | The Chart Music Wiki | Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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what do you like to listen to? ummm... chart music oh chart music It's Friday evening. It's about 40 minutes to 8. It's July the 25th, 2003, and it's all going off on the telly.

Sunita has told Dev to fuck off and is moving out of the flat. Archie Shuckleworth has proposed to Audrey Roberts and Fiz Brown has called Tracy Barlow a massive slag in the Rovers' return for convincing Roy Cropper that he'd shagged her and is about to give her an absolute panning. Oh, and Top of the Pops is on the other side. Hey up, you pop-crazed youngsters, and welcome to the denouement of episode 61 of Chart Music.

I'm Al Needham, they're Simon Price and Sarah B, and we're going right in. There's some blind, super furry animals there. Do you reckon they could start a trend? Nah, maybe not. Okay, next up, a club anthem that's been filling up the dance floors all over the place. Created by an Italian record producer, this tune has made the hard hat the essential fashion accessory of this summer.

Don't know about the rest of the outfit, but maybe I could try one on for size. Here's the next big show. With vocals from The Biz, This is Benny Vanassi. Push me, and then just touch me, till I can get my satisfaction. Push me, and then just touch me,

till I can get my satisfaction. Satisfaction. Bonin, holding aloft one of the orangutan's wigs walks in front of the kids who we actually see for the first time they look pretty rubbish all combat trousers and band t-shirts she says something i couldn't quite catch then picks up a bob the builder helmet as she introduces a club anthem from italy that's been filling up the dance floors across the country,

Satisfaction, by Benny Benassi, featuring The Biz. Born in Reggio Emilia, Italy in 1967, Marco Benassi started DJing with his cousin in the late 80s, before moving into production in the 90s, working with post-Saturday Night Wigfield and assorted Italio Dansax. In 2001, he started putting out singles under the name of KMC, gaining moderate club success, and when he put this out under his own name in the summer of 2002, it got to number 80 in May of this year. But when he was put out again by the ministry of sand with a new video

featuring assorted lad mag models being all erotic with power tools which got extensive play on music video stations it soared into the chart this week straight in at number two and here on the top of the pop stage is an attempt to recreate the video in a health and safety pre watershed style and fashion this is well fucking men and motors isn't it or or tits and tires as we used to call it back in the day fucking hell i i mean uh what to say about this i mean as as this podcast token woman i i feel i should go first on this and and you know yes to be to be serious and you know to this this is fucking hilarious i mean it's it's not actually it's not funny it's it's not really sexy it's not anything the track itself let us let's get that out of the way. The track itself is not a very good dance track.

Basically, what it's for, we're now in the era, this is peak super club that we're at now. Yes. And this record has been produced for super clubs. Everything has been cranked up. And, you know, there's kind of nothing wrong with the sound palette itself. It's just that it's been given the aural equivalent of a very big boob job. Yes.

To make it sound big rather. It doesn't matter how good it is. It just sounds big. Yes. And it's kind of borrowing from a sort of a lineage of dirtiness and the sort of throbbing gristle kind of style. And I think it's meant to evoke a sort of Pavlovian dribble response. Yes. But it's just got the production values

of like flabby stadium rock, you know. It's essentially two speak and spell machines having phone sex, isn't it? Basically. Or the robot bar staff that Cynthia's having a workplace liaison. Yes. Why didn't they work that into the video?

Oh my God, yeah. Would have brought a few punters into my club as well. Yeah, the general would have approved. Yeah, he'd be slapping his arse or somebody else's with glee. I mean, that's actually, this was Apple's voice synthesis program, Macintosh. Right. Benny Benassi was very fond of it.

He used it all the time. It also appears on Fitter Happier by Radiohead. Flaming Lips used it on Yoshimi it all the time uh it's also appears on fitter happier by radiohead flaming lips used it on uh yoshimi battles the pink robot so you know afex twin used it a lot outcast marilyn manson it's also the voice of the autopilot in wall-e which is and i don't know if anyone's seen uh the mitchells versus the machines which is extremely funny that's uh that's the robot vacuum cleaners in that so it's it's you know, it's standard. It's very sort of shorthand for robot voice. And the weird thing about this is that it's robotic without being futurist at all.

It's sort of deliberately dead-eyed and flat, but not in that sexy way, not in that kind of shiny way. Yeah, it's music non-stop by Kraftwerk, but shit. But bad, yeah. It's not a good track. The thing is that if you want this sort of sound, but good, then you want...

Kernkraft 400 Zombie Nation did this much better in 1999. Right. Just had a lot more going on with it, just interesting little details and much more sort of punch and more ideas. Yeah. And I don't know if you could really dance to that either, but this is for, like, girls to pose to pose to and you know recreate the fucking video and men to punish the air and look

at the girls yeah and also um uh silver screen shower scene by felix de house cat that was 2001 right that's how you do this right anyway so the tits um yes to the tits some of the models in the video were doing an encore as there obviously wasn't a sunday sport road show event on that night and benny hides behind a newspaper as he tries to whip up some mystique about himself but when he puts the paper down to reveal himself the camera's too busy zooming in on the arses and we we never really see him again so that's him out of the way is that actually him or is that the biz who is the is there even is that is the biz a sort of gestalt entity of the bloke and the woman who basically have the same voice but different

yeah the biz are the man and woman the latter of which looks well fucking sarah palin which was oh god very disconcerting they're the singers he calls in every now and again and they really fuck me off because you know if you're talking about the biz, there's only one the biz, the late and the great biz market. Oh, yeah. So they can fuck off. So that's them dealt with. So, yeah, to the arses, everyone. Fucking, I mean, it is insane seeing that, like,

doesn't this give you whiplash seeing this on Top of the Pops? I mean, is this the kind of latter-day Top of the Pops equivalent of daddisfaction? Oh, yeah. Daddisfaction. Daddisfaction. It's laddisfaction isn't it it is laddisfaction i mean as we all know whenever there's a discussion about pants people and legs and co people including ourselves from time to time always say that oh dance troops on top of the pops they just wouldn't fly at any time since the mid 80s but you know as soon as the dance acts came in in the late 80s and especially during this time you know who do they almost always get in

a dance troupe yeah i mean we're going to see three of them on this episode so you just wonder why didn't they bring back a dance troupe for top of the pops does this count as dance this is dance in the broadest oiliest sense of the term, isn't it? Yes. These are models who have been doused in oil and put in some pants and given a tool belt apiece. Basted is the word, isn't it? They have been thoroughly basted.

They are oven-ready women. And there's a bit, you can't really count it as dancing they do the in the one sort of bit that counts as this very monotonous track this and the one bit of sort of that's meant to be like a drop is like it sort of double it goes double time and so it's like and then they they do a little yeah they they sort of pretend to be drilling and everyone goes all right i mean they're at fucking hell you don't really see the crowd again but it's like there are young men in that crowd baying like hounds it's a bit queasy isn't it it's not the yellow hurl area but they're all balloons in that audience just just in their

trousers on the stage as well mate oh god i'm sorry but it reduces you in very you can just feel your brain kind of reducing down in some ways yeah you kind of can't blame them if there's men hooting at this that's the reaction that was meant to be elicited but it is yes you can see that the camera is a little bit there's a bit of hesitation there it's sort of a horny catholic in a strip club camera sort of looking and looking away and looking and looking away oh no oh please forgive me please forgive me yeah the camera made its excuses and left yeah this shit's still going on isn't it i mean as a former smut peddler i could see this coming a mile off all this bollocks after i finished my shift at

the wank factory and i was waiting for me train to get back home i'd always nip into wh smith and have a look at the top shelf yeah i just wanted to know who was buying the fucking shit i was helping to pump out and you'd see mr suit come in and his eyes would go right across the top shelf at razzle and escort and mayfair and penthouse but then he'd see a couple of shelves down, Maxim's got a 16-page laundry special, and he'd always buy that. That was the beginning of the end for wank mags in this country because nobody ever went broke

underestimating the sexual cowardice of British men. That's the sort of Alka-Pops of... Coward porn. You know what you want, and you've settled for that and by this point it was it was embedded in the in the british male psyche yeah i mean it's a weird sort of thing isn't it when you see this which is european you know this is italian so you have to take off a few points of of you know of of outrage for like european sex standards you know he'd have done this on the italian version of crackerjack and no one would have battled yeah exactly

it doesn't have enough it thinks it's got a sort of tongue-in-cheek sort of humor about it you know but i don't think it like it wouldn't get on eurotrash it's almost too slick and again too too oily to get on eurotrash but you can't just imagine antoine decaux and just kind of going you know they're thrilling they're willing and they've come here to do some drilling but not quite you know i think they probably would have turned it down for not quite being silly enough see when i saw this on the list i wondered how the hell they were going to make it work on cowey's top of the pops because he's anti-video you know and let's face it if ever a song was all about the video it's you know it's satisfaction by benny benassi but they

basically get around it by completely recreating the video like it's a school play in sunderland basically so i'm sure he approved he probably loved it on that on that basis yeah they they kind of like rub the fannies against some brooms and they they've got chainsaws and stuff there but they just hold them up near the end don't turn them on of course it's all a bit hills angels that's what i thought yes massively so it's not it's not so much pans people are legs and co it is hills angels it's that kind of comedy aspect to it benny hill benassi yes because you've got the vocalist ones are dressed as the building site foreman and forewoman so they get to wear clothes but yes the rest of the dress the rest of them are

the basted sexy ladies from the videos in their hot pants and bikinis and high viz and their hard hats and boots and they're wielding the power tools and yes the broomsticks for fuck's sake yeah and there's a moment where some extreme ass shaking happens as if they're as if they're pre-empting the number one record a bit of a um which is which is cheeky literally um so it's it's ah but not though but there is a crucial difference which i will which i will get to it is you're right it's quite a throwback to see a dance-based performance like this on a more modern totp it is like flick colby never retired no but yeah you're right that when when dance records happen what else you're going to do and this does tend to be the way maybe not as extremely sexualized as this one but but still i've got a lot more time for the record than you

two and what it comes down to i think the thing that uh sarah said that chimed most with me was comparing it to felix the house cat because this song is arguably electro clash's biggest hit because it has a lot of electro clash tropes that pounding beat it doesn't have any funk to it it's just that cold dispassionate vocal put through that robotic voice synthesizer you know the mackintalk that you compare to two speaking spell machines having phone sex um yeah the the female vocal is very flying lizards or miss kitten yes and the two vocalists even have a robotic way of moving so for me as you know i was very much an

electro clash aficionado at the time. This isn't a million miles from Fisher Spooner or adult to one of those groups, but it is all about the visuals. This, the song that you can't separate the song from the visuals in this case, the whole package is shameless sexploitation. But for me, it's a fucking solid platinum banger.

And I'm surprised that you guys don't like it. You say it's dead-eyed and flat. Yeah, it is. And that's kind of what I like about it because I was into that kind of thing. It just doesn't do it. Yeah, I love this sort of thing. I just don't love this, I guess. Maybe it's because I'm a humorless bin.

I don't know. But it is, like, so inextricable from the video. You know, I went and watched the video. And it is fucking outrageous. And like I said, it's funny without being humor the video you know i went and watched the video and it is fucking outrageous and and like i said it's funny without being humorous you know but it's like you know because all the the names of the equipment like flash up on the screen and it's like orbital sander minimal dust opera and then it's like there's a bit about it minimal dust operation with disposable bag and part of my brain just goes is that we are to you disposable bags is it but it's there is a

whole there's a whole kind of sub-genre of of this type of electro house dance around this time which kind of lasted for a good couple of years where the videos were made so that when you heard the music it would evoke the video yes so it's almost like the music was almost secondary to its video because and that's what it's supposed to do to your brain and it usually meant sexy women in their smalls doing sex things in absurd circumstances like often it would be really sort of pedestrian summer night club chum music but with you know a video that had women in their pants like in an office or a laboratory or a gym or notably in a white void pretending to be a marching band

What was that? That was, do you remember this was Alex Gordino Destination Calabria which had the Crystal Waters sample which is actually quite a banger, this is like 2005 this is way in the future and it's hysterical, the absolute top most of this was Perfect Exceder by Mason featuring Princess future and it's it's hysterical the absolute top most of this was um

perfect tuxedo by mason featuring princess superstar it's absolutely amazing um video has three women but it really sends up that whole thing and just puts a lid on it puts an end to it right and the video has three women like made up to such a grotesque degree with like three sets of eyelashes each and they're like bouncing on gym balls and spanking each other and and it's great but i think credit is due to benny benaski for like bringing electro house kind of into the mainstream and paving the way for stuff like justice and digitalism who i love very much so you know fair enough it's just that it doesn't hit the spot for me yeah i mean the video just reminds me of when i used to work in a factory in Ucknell in 1990

and one bloke on the bench next to me he had a calendar that had been handed out by a local engineering firm and it featured models trying to be erotic with lathes and I remember him pointing at that month's picture which was some woman squatting by a lathe with her undercarriage out and licking the starting knob and just saying oh all local lasses there mint it great that's what i got from from that video and this performance

i can confirm by the way that you can dance to kun kraft 400 by zombie nation uh because it's a wales thing do you know about this no basically um what happened was in one of wales's qualifying games for Euro 2016, which Welsh people never go on about, the away fans were kind of kettled in the stadium in Belgium. They were doing that thing of sending the home supporters out of the stadium first so that they don't end up mixing on the streets and kicking off or anything like that. So the Wales fans are just locked there in the stadium, nothing to do.

And over the tannoy, the DJ in the stadium played Kerncraft 400. And everyone just started singing along. And there was like a massive disco in the stands. And that just became a Wales thing then. All Wales games, particularly away games, that just happens. Just one of those kind of let's all have a disco moments.

And that's one of my main memories of following Wales away, particularly in France in 2016. The other thing I was going to say about this song is it's well man-to-man featuring man parish. Yes. And that got me wondering, Al, have you ever stripped to this song or was it the wrong era? It was the wrong era and I wouldn't anyway on principle.

I did wonder if, because they've got one of those little, I don't know what they're called, the little polyester stripy road hut thing on the stage. They've done the set out as if it's roadworks. Spared no expense. No. Just nipped out and kind of plundered a roadworks. If they'd had any balls balls they would have had somebody

hidden in there yeah like benny benassi himself where you know who burst out at the end wearing nothing but some strategically smeared road grease yes and maybe nothing but a hard hat between himself and an urgent parliamentary session on the future of the bbc i did appreciate the triangular road sign behind them. Did you notice that? No. Yeah, it's a bridge with two humps. I see what they did there. Oh, of course it is.

Fucking hell. It's like tits. Yes. And arses. And arses as well. Oh, God, it's a feast of... But it did occur to me as well that it does indicate how far we've come in terms of beauty standards because while there are still enclaves of this like this the look of of these lab mag models is not too

far removed from what you now get which is women who kind of take an instagram filtered shot and take it into a plastic surgeon and go that make me look like that yeah it's not that it's a kind of the classic thing with big lips and cat eyes and tiny noses and big tits. But, you know, there's also like every other type of body and figure and everything now. So, you know, there's been some progress. This is not like the only thing that you're allowed to dribble over. Yeah. And what a shame that Benny Benassi didn't put up a follow-up single,

which was a cover version of the Birdseye steakhouse advert oh it's chips it's chips that would have been something um i have one more thing to say about this which is say it apart from on the youtube comments one of the somebody said watching this video as a kid felt like a crime which seems but no the one the last thing is have you do you know of the satisfaction challenge of 2018 no well uh 2017 so this was kind of pre-tick tock some russian cadets at the ulyanov institute of civil aviation filmed a parody video of themselves in their pants doing maintenance tasks um i say their pants are stuffed pants army hats leather belts and big boots and they are ironing twerking mopping and eating

bananas it's the gayest most subversive thing ever it's amazing it's amazing and obviously the institute was quite upset about this and read them for filth and threatened to expel the men of russian military must not twerk yes and it caused for filth and threatened to expel the men of russian military must not work yes and it caused a massive upset and there were headlines like row over cavorting russian air cadets all those and then loads of other people over those russians loads of other people made their own videos in solidarity yes as and like some pensioners in petersburg and ukrainian swimmers welders and so it was awesome so if nothing else that's benny benassi's contribution to our times is is that yeah there was a piece in the new yorker arguing

that the parody video was a show of solidarity with oppressed lgbtq people in russia and certainly you know the russian establishment were as you say furious about it so i guess they read the signs and you know what a brilliant thing to do i think we've got to put that on the video playlist. Yes. I did wonder if this, not this performance, the video, the iconic video, I did wonder if there was any sort of a nod in there to Quentin Tarantino's Chicks Who Love Guns bit. Do you remember that?

Yeah. From Jackie Brown. It's quite early on inie brown where um samuel l jackson is is uh showing off to robert de niro about how about his gun knowledge through the medium of a like a video that he's got of some some girls in bikinis like firing guns and um you only see a tiny bit of it in in the film but they they spent you know a day making a short that is in there and it's really funny it like it goes on for so for so long and it's really uncomfortable because it's like oh christ and then it's funny and then it isn't funny anymore and then it's funny again and i don't think

that maybe if benny benassi had just maybe if they just fixed on the one woman with the one implement and just gone all the way through that would have been brilliant actually wonder what david thinks about this video because you know it is einstein norbarten isn't it with more attractive people doing it einstein norxbarten oh very good it's tna at b and q. So the following week, Satisfaction dropped two places to number four, but would spend five weeks in the top 20, a massive accomplishment by 2003. The follow-up, No Matter What You Do,

only got to number 40 in February of 2004, but it would have a chart renaissance in 2011 when he collaborated with Chris Brown on Beautiful People, which got to number four for two weeks in May of that year, and Cinema with Gary Go, which got to number 20 in August of that year. Meanwhile, the video developed a life of its own when it was parodied by some middle-aged blokes in Denmark, some grannies in Belgium to demonstrate against gender pay equality,

some squaddies in Britain, and yes, most famously in Russia a few years after that, with the Russian air cadet dormitory, which was yeah. It's so good. Welcome to All Rather Mysterious, the podcast that aims to unlock the mysteries of the past with the key of fact. My name is John Rain. My name is Eleanor Morton.

My name is David Reed. Please join us as we present to you mysteries that have baffled the world. You had any noises? What about a door creaking? You don't have to do this. That weird ka-dunk that lights going off makes for some reason in films. All rather mysterious. I have to see they're wearing their protective clothing there.

A big thanks to Benny Benassi and The Biz. Now a young group who are taking on the mantle of Liverpool's best band. Now, we've seen many Merseyside legends come and go, but these guys are carrying on their city's musical tradition. The new heroes of the wild North West. This is The Coral. Cotton, turning away from a strip of monitors on the back of the main stage while the piano play for the next act stares on blankly while chewing gum, tells us that loads of bands from Merseyside have come and gone, and here's one

more, The Coral with Pass It On. Formed in Hoy Lake in 1996, Hive started out as a school band who changed their name to The Coral when they started playing local gigs. A few years later, they ran into Alan Wills, who was intrigued by a gig poster which featured Ian Skelly's grandfather's head exploding and offered to start up a label, which became Deltasonic, and make them his first signing. They put out their debut single, Shadows Fall, in July of 2001, followed by two EPs, none of which made the charts. But then they teamed up with Ian Brodie for their fourth release, Goodbye, which put them over the top and got them to number 21 in July. And their debut self-titled LP was nominated for the Mercury Prize one day after its release and entered the charts at number five in August. This is the follow-up to don't think you're the first which

got to number 10 in march of this year it's the second track from their next lp magic and medicine which comes out next monday and it's slammed into the charts this week at number five so chaps by 2003 we're you know supposedly in post brit pop times but it's a good time to be a band like the choral isn't it still because if a band like this came out in the mid 80s they'd be happy with a page and melody maker and about 20 seconds in the indie section of the chart show but you know a band like this can sell a few records and get straight into the top 10 yeah i mean obviously we've had oasis and their whole kind of beatles comparisons and there's also been things like cars to literally from liverpool finn cotton is plugging them into that heritage she's introducing them as being part

of that scouse tradition yeah i guess freddie and the dreamers liverpool express yeah i mean implicitly back to the beatles but our kid they're actually what's disparagingly known as woolly backs aren't they from the Wirral, woolly backs meaning people who aren't quite from Liverpool, plastic scousers is another term so yeah as you say the coral from Hoy Lake on the Wirral and they're on the corner

because the Wirral is like a rectangle that sticks out and they're from the corner that's closer to Deeside, Deeside there is again as the crow flies hoy lake is as close to wales as it is to liverpool right and it's um it's a moderately posh seaside town it's got the royal liverpool golf course there where the open has been held and mike rutherford our genesis went to boarding school there and that's not where the coral went they went to hilbra high school where james bond daniel craig and the cyclist chris boardman also went fact fans so what i'm saying is it's not it's not the mean streets of toxteth you know what i mean no so they're definitely woolly backs not scousers as such and it's good to clarify that because you know if people say

um somebody from sunderland is a geordie you know get very heads up about it so yes half man half biscuit who are from bearaird and Ed, because it's impossible to say that word in any other accent, wrote a song called Rock and Roll is Full of Bad Wolves. It's about bands who turn up on Soccer AM professing to be into footy, but they don't know anything about it. And it did cross my mind that it might be about The Coral

because they have been on Soccer AM a lot. but it turns out nigel blackwell actually wrote it about a band from south end who've never heard of roots hall so that's more likely to be the horrors or something like that um by the way when you google bad wool um you just find loads of stuff slagging off ukip's paul nuttle paul nuttle is a bad wool which anyway it got me thinking who are the good wolves um so half man off biscuit themselves obviously boo radley's are from wallacee pete burns from some port sunlight paul heaton's from bromborough omd are from the outskirts of hoy lake because're getting closer Cliff Williams from ACDC grew up in Hoy Lake On the downside You've got that tedious sexist twat

Miles Kane I would say the choral are good wolves On the whole They were a best case scenario version Of capital T S O T This sort of thing Northern guitar based indie rock of the noughties. At their best they

almost had an SFA thing going on actually. Dreaming of You was brilliant I thought. In the Morning has got that twinkly daytime radio feel like Dancing in the Moonlight but top loader which I like despite myself. I know, I know. I'm sorry

I'm going to, yeah. It'm never going to leave that down. It's your favourite track on cooking, isn't it, Simon? Yeah, yeah, on cooking, the Jamie Oliver compilation. Oh, my God, yeah. And the Chorals' first album, the South Island one, really good. It's got elements of sea shanties and Hispanic folk mixed in there with all the more predictable 60s psychedelia. And, oh, by the way i sat with

the coral at an award ceremony once uh for some reason the enemy awards for some reason i was stuck on the same table as them but you know they were nice guys with they they kept leaving a table in ones and twos and coming back with a certain chaotic energy about them um they were fucking loads of them at one point i think there were seven members of the choral but I've been skating around talking about this actual song because it's very slight I think I was stunned to learn

that this is their biggest hit I mean why? I can only put it down to this certain kind of mathematical momentum of their rise because their first five singles went 180, 21 13, 10 and 5 and the album, as you say, got to number one that this is from.

And it's as if the whole thing had just been decided by forces bigger than us. It was just sort of all heading that way because this song, yeah, I couldn't have sung it if you pointed a gun at my head. There is a certain scousy thing to them in the james skelly is exactly the same haircut as lee mavers from the lars and i even did a compare contrast i found the lars on top of the pops and um uh you know lee

from the lars is wearing a round neck jumper and baggy jeans exactly the same as james skelly the only difference is one of them's got a tambourine, one of them's got a guitar. By this time, if you're the lead singer of a Lancashire band, you've got to have a tambourine with you. That's the law. Have a tambourine, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I thought, well, okay, maybe I'm missing something here. So I looked in the lyrics and it goes, every day I recognise what's deceased and what's alive, but don't repeat what I just said until gold has turned to lead. Then all the tales will be told whilst you and I are in the cold. But don't think this is the end, because it's just begun, my friend. And when it's done and all this is gone, just find the feeling, pass it on. So, I don't know, I mean, it's just a vague...

I mean, there's that reverse alchemy thing of gold turning to lead, but it's just a sort of vague there's that reverse alchemy thing of gold turning to lead but it's just a sort of vague very vague feeling of everything going wrong um somebody I don't know if you ever go on the website song meanings but somebody on there reckoned it's about STDs which made me laugh pass it on but um I prefer I prefer to interpret it you know there's that child childish way of uh whispering a rumor in school as they pass it on. You know, like Darren Grimes had a crafty wanking class, pass it on, that kind of thing. Oh, man.

The thing about that is that, obviously, there were NME cover stars this week. And I think this was a thing that the NME did. They were always trying to nail down the next big songwriting guitar genius and slap them on the cover as quick as they could and go this is your next big song until people kind of caught into it i think and went really um but that was definitely a thing and i think it it may not have done them any favors no it's nice this it's inoffensive it's pleasant enough isn't it it's

kind of a it's a bit of a nothing tune. Weirdly, I think the chorus is pleasant and the verse really, really like grated on me for some reason. And the fact that there's no bridge as well. It's like, just put a bridge in there. Yeah. It's missing your bridge, mate. But, you know, they don't have to put a bridge in, but it just seemed a bit sudden.

Or a tunnel at least, you know. It's just something. It kind of goes back to that whole sound arising from place yeah and they have definitely turned towards liverpool and kind of lent into that but it's not completely lazy obviously there's a million bands that have come from there that have completely coasted on that if you come from somewhere that has such such a heritage you you kind of don't have to be good you just have to be confident you just have to go yeah and wait for somebody you know to go yeah that sound

is what we want on our label right now and they are shooting for timelessness as well that's the thing is that it does sound kind of slightly out of time it doesn't sound distinctively 2003 but it isn't like a really wincy throwback either Dreaming of You which is better

than this definitely um pete doherty claims to have written that and sold it to them for i don't know a bag of something a massive breakfast i've been to that cafe it's really good he wasn't there at the time unfortunately yes it is a nice it is a nice gaff and they have proper sauce you didn't do the challenge i did not i did not undertake the pete doherty challenges I guess it is now called. Listen to a baby's shambles single without throwing up your breakfast. Oh, I'll tell you what, though. I bet that was a fucking cheat, though. Because, you know, Pete Doherty, he's got like an Alaskan Malamute or a Husky, a large dog.

Right. And I'm sure you could just pass half the bacon under the table to the dog. The thing that this reminded me most of actually is dodgy right you were you know the kind of brit pop adjacent dorks who were extremely uncool but actually pretty good at songwriting they're more like that than cast which is better the presentation of it is a step down from super furry animals isn't it they've got the video screens up again but it's like really thin transmissions of their video for this song you know when someone films summer for the news and they've got the phone cameras upward yeah the orientation's wrong yeah yeah and you're just there saturday going oh you stupid cunt turn your

phone round yeah yeah what the fuck is wrong with you i do give them credit because they are um as i'm sure you're going to mention they're still going and um yeah i was slightly surprised but quite quite pleased to find um and they were quite freaked out by how big they got, how quickly. And they, which I'm sure is the, which obviously is the experience of a lot of, a lot of artists. And it's got to be a huge head fuck. It's going to be really difficult. And James Skelly said that what they couldn't deal with was the, how other people project their idea of you onto you. And then that's, that's who you are. And so then you have to sort of go back their idea of you onto you and then that's that's who

you are and so then you have to sort of yeah go back and reclaim who you think you are and so they sort of did that and their most recent album is a double they just put a fair dose to them they just put out a double album about an imaginary decaying seaside resort and it's very it's very soft and very gentle psychedelia it sounds like people who used to smoke a lot of weed, but then knocked it on the head because it was making them go a bit wrong. And I respect the fact that they are still at it and they're doing it on their own terms. Well, I mean, a band like this in 2003,

if they can get about, I don't know, 10,000 people to go out and buy their new single at the same time, they're in the top ten. And, you know, if you've just been on the cover of the NME, that's going to be easy to get, isn't it and then within that world you're suddenly a big deal and you're potentially a festival headliner yes and then it just it can spiral yeah absolutely yeah yeah but the problem is you've got to keep it up i think they they kind of just went no we're not going to do that we're going to do the other thing yeah i'm sure a lot of people would be

better off for doing that but because that you have to resist a lot of pressure because then once other people are counting on you to make them money then it's very difficult. But luckily for them they're an indie band on an actual indie label so they've got the best of both worlds, haven't they?

They're calling the shots in a way, yeah. Good on them. They are playing the shine on Weekender in November, by the way, along with the likes of just check this out

to see if this makes your brain twang at all, Glass Vegas, Pigeon Detective. Oh, fucking hell. Cast, Republica, Dub Pistols, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Goldie Lookin' Chain, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Peter Hook and his amazing Peter Hook band, Sun Scream.

What was their thing? I don't know. Anyway, Black Grape Alison Limerick oh look a woman oh no Republica is two women 808 State

and The Farm I would go and watch Las Vegas and Goldie Looking Chain out of those but very little else I would go and see 808 State

and maybe The Coral I'd go and see The Coral yeah so the following week Pass It On dropped 11 places to number 16 the follow up

Secret Kiss only got to number 25 in October of this year, and they'd have to wait until 2005 for their next and last top 10 hit, when In The Morning got to number 6 in May of that year. But they only had one more top 40 hit in them, even though they're still going and their most recent lp coral island got to number two in may of this year hey i'm ways and here is this week's official Top of the Pops Top 20. 20's Escalade, Full No More. 19, Delta Goodrum, Lost Without You.

Pump It Up's at 18, Joe Budden. 17's Can't Get It Back from Mystique. 21 questions at 16 from 50 Cent. 15's Madonna, Hollywood. New at 14, James Addiction, Just Because. New again at 13, Golden Retriever from the Super Furry Animals. Ignition Remix at 12 from R. Kelly. M&M's at 11, Business.

At 10, Flying the Wings of Love from XTM and DJ Shucky. 9's The Fast Food Song from the Fast Food Rockers. Javine's at 8, Real Things. New at 7, Invisible from D-Side. 6 is Feel Good Time from Pink featuring William Orbit. 5's a new entry, Pass It On from The Coral. 4's Bring Me to Life from Evanescence. Wayne Wins at three, No Letting Go.

And the highest new entry at number two goes to Benny Badassi Presents The Biz and Satisfaction. And don't forget to check out the new chart this Sunday with me on Radio 1. That was the chart. That was top of the pops. I'm Liz Bonham. I'm Fern Coulson.

Do you know, I don't think I can remember a time when this lady wasn't at number one. I know. A big well done to the booty-shaking Beyonce Knowles. See ya. Yes. So crazy right now. Most incredibly.

It's your girl, B. It's your boy, Young. You ready? Sing it, y'all. After a ridiculously fast top 20 rundown from Wes Butters ended in a plug for his chart rundown on Sunday, Carton and Bonny muse upon the longevity of this week's number one and they do some appallingly workmanlike arse-shaking as the camera zooms in on a repeat of the Top of the Pops performance

of this week's number one, Crazy in Love, by Beyonce. Born in Houston in 1981, Beyonce Knowles began her music career at the age of seven when she won a school talent contest singing Imagine by John Lennon and beating out contestants twice her age. A year later, she auditioned with her schoolmate Kelly Rowland for a spot on a local group called Girls' Time, and they both landed the gig, playing around the Houston talent show area and eventually being entered in Star Search, the American talent show which also broadcasts the first nationwide appearances of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Tiffany and Usher.

to manage the group, trimming it down to four and getting them support slots for assorted female R&B groups and a year later they landed a record deal with Columbia and changed their name to Destiny's Child. They made the first dent on the UK charts in 1998 when No No No entered the chart at number five, sparking a run of eight top 10 hits over here including number ones with independent woman in december of 2000 and survivor in april of 2001 round about the same time it was announced that destiny's child would have a break so the three remaining members could embark on solo careers and dabble in films and whatnot with no Knowles becoming the most successful of the trio. This is the follow-up to Work It Out, which got to number seven in July of 2002.

It's the lead-off single from her debut LP Dangerously In Love, which came out last month, and leans hard on a sample of the 1970 Chi-Lite single Are You My Woman, and includes some rap from her knockoff jay-z repaying the favor she did on his last single oh three bonnie and clyde it turned to the chart at number one two weeks ago this is its third week upon the summit of mount pop and here's the repeat of her performance on the main stage earlier this month that um chart countdown from wes butters um when he goes at

the start higher i'm wes i mean i'm just thinking who the fuck because i'm yeah i didn't know he was um turns out yeah wes butters um who was presenting the chart on radio one at that point and um obviously he's missing a trick by not having a jingle that goes everyone knows it's Butters, that's me. Apparently, where the wife comes from and when the wife comes from, which is Croydon and the 90s, Butters means ugly or disgusting. So he must have had a tough time in the public eye, I can only imagine. But the thing that struck me about the countdown, because you see tiny little video clips, almost sort of gif length clips of each song.

Only three of them are not Top of the Pops footage, which was Jane's Addiction, something called XTM, which is a dance thing I'd never heard of, as like a cartoony video, and R. Kelly, which, you know, all things considered,

it's for the best that he wasn't in the studio. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't be talking about this episode. But yeah, I just thought that, the fact that 17 out of 20 are from this sort of IKEA Top of the Pops footage just goes to show how well

Kawi's system is working at this point. It's on a roll, isn't it? They've just got this constant production line of content. So, yeah. And they're massive stars as well. You know, you've got Madonna in there and Eminem and, you know, all right, S Club 8. But, you know, proper big stars like 50 Cent and so on and Pink.

And, yeah, clearly, Cowie's whole thing is, it's a machine that's well-oiled by this point, I would say. But it does make it, like I said before, it does make it all quite samey. And it's quite self-congratulatory as well, isn it it's like look at all the people we've had it's like yeah yeah we know yeah they're sort of trying to co-opt pop it's like this is the one your one stop pop shop and you know just it's it's a bit samey but this fucking song jesus i mean it's it it's a toss-up between this and hey y'all for the best single of the century so far, I contend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's this.

And I mean, this is, it's an important moment as well, really, just in all kinds of ways. Which, you know, for one of those, you know, you look up the story of it and it's one of those things that almost didn't happen. Hungover producer was instructed to just knock it out in a couple of hours. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, she wasn't keen on the horns in the first instance because no one else was doing it. You know, it seemed a little bit too retro. It's like, no, that was absolutely the right call.

But obviously we have to mention the choreography because the thing is that since the dawn of pop culture in, I don't know, let's say 1957, arses had been shaken left to right to and fro and as of 2003 when beyonce dropped the video of crazy in love and and performed it about the place the world understood that it was possible for arses to go up and down it was the birth of arse longitude she single-handedly ushered in the arthropocene this is a an announcement of of a lot of things this is a real watershed and it's incredible

really that it is pre the watershed on top of the pops this is it's so far beyond any sort of stab at sexiness that has happened in this episode thus far and it's it's an important it's a real declaration that this is gonna be the most important pop star of her generation and you can see that now this is the track that we'll remember when we're old and we think about these things this is it you brought us around to the subject of ours as sarah so let's you gotta get you arses Sarah so let's get it out the way. You've got to get it out the way. There was a lot more gratuitous

arse shots in the Benny Benassi thing and Beyonce's got jeans on but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. She could have sackcloth on and it'd still be, my god look at that woman. You're also getting arse shots in the Star Bar let's not forget. Yes. Cotton and Bonin doing a bit of comedy

booty shaking there with a camera zooming in on them while they're letting us know it's been number one forever. Very poor. Yeah, it's a bit of a pro-am tournament this, isn't it? Oh, bless them though. It's nice to see them getting into the spirit of the thing. But also going left to right

still because, you know, it takes a while for the world to catch up when something like this happens. Even if it's happening right and right. It's like they hadn't got the memo. It's so magnificent. It's like a whale breaching on, you know, and you're like, oh my God.

Just the awe, you know, you don't get over it. I mean, there are four other women on the stage legging and co-ing it, but it might as well be me, Simon, Taylor and Neil up there doing the mud rocker because it doesn't make a blind bit of difference. You're not looking at them, you're looking at her. They're the backing arses.

Yeah. But it's important. It would be too much if it was just her. So it's good that they are there as a team doing it together. And she's sort of carried that idea through that they've been sort of tinkering with this over the years i don't know if you've seen the coachella performance from from 2018 she's got like 50 or 100 dancers and horn players

and just really messing with the format they slow it down they speed it up thrown in samples and stuff it's absolutely staggering and it really shows her inventiveness and her desire to to keep pushing it but also then you can go right back to this and it's perfect it's just such a perfect thing and what i was saying before about music being made to kind of evoke the video so the video becomes more important and this isn't like that but there's a perfect dovetail of the imagery from the video and and the choreography and the song the song would still be great without the video but it's just one of the big moments in in mainstream pop culture the whole thing i saw destiny's child play a skate park in labrador grove once this was um the notting hill carnival of whatever year it was that i guess no no no by destiny's child was in the charts which I thought was amazing by the way

it had this real kind of almost Paisley Park-ish psychedelic feel to it No No No and yeah I thought a lot of Destiny's Child stuff was just lovely and they were there in this fucking skate park as part of the Notting Hill Carnival and they were all wearing just sort of double denim outfits and doing a sort of PA on on top of one of the kind of moundy bits of a skate park and um at that point there was no real indication that this one Beyonce was going to go on to be this you know obvious massive star um except I guess if you knew what was going on behind the scenes and you knew that her dad was basically determining their career then you could have predicted it but just just to look at, they were very much a group.

But by this point, we're seeing on top of the pops, she is totally dominant. She is, you know, a world star on top of the fucking world. She's radiantly beautiful. Yeah, she's got those silvery jeans on and the crop top. And we are getting a bit of Builder's Arse crack there at times, which would have been more appropriate for Benny Benassi. It's like she's hitting back at them for stealing her arse shaking thunder yes one thing that really

impressed me she's in these massive stilettos right and she she drops she's in these massive stilettos dancing about and she drops to her knees for a bit of wailing and then she gets up again without using hands singing at the same time and it is live i'm pretty sure it's live because her vocal her vocals a bit off at times, but not too bad, you know. She does a lot of ad-libbing towards the end, which is really thrilling. She's singing over backing tapes.

There's a bit during Jay-Z's bit where she just does this little grin at the camera and pokes her tongue out slightly, like, yeah, I know I'm amazing and I'm smashing this, you know. Yes. Some rap in this case was provided by Jay-Z, and apparently it was written and recorded in ten minutes, and to my mind it sounds like he was out having a shit for at least eight of them because it's his usual tedious gibberish.

You know, he's got loads of money, he's dead good, he's a star like Ringo, he's mad mad he's cut from a different cloth his texture is the best fur like chinchilla etc etc oh i don't know i quite like the line stick bony but the pocket is fat like tony soprano yeah and i've been iller than chain smokers i quite like that he was the first big rapper that i didn't reckon. When he came out, it was around the time when hip-hop had started devouring itself. And he was just basically sampling old hip-hop tunes. Well, he was sampling fucking Annie, wasn't he? Yeah.

Which I quite liked. I like Hard Knock Life. But by this time, he's one of the few rappers who can actually afford to clear samples. So it's like, yeah, he's no good. There was a lot of kerfuffle around this time that when it was announced that he name-checked david beckham in a forthcoming tune and you know cue lots of discussion in the papers about how football was really seeping into the american consciousness but then it turned out he only mentioned it because of the rockefeller connection with victoria beckham and he was looking for something to rhyme with every suit covers my rectum.

So there we go. I mean, usually you get some rapping to pep up a single and make it funky, but to my mind, this just gets in the way of everything. It's the wet tea towel of landfill rap thrown over the glorious chip pan fire of R&B. I don't know.

It's like you're having a conversation with this brilliant woman and you you're really interested in her and then all of a sudden a fucking boyfriend doesn't like it and he has to stick his oar in and it's like no mate i'm not trying to cop off with your girlfriend i just find her more interesting than you at the very least you could have said oh yeah you see her there this brilliant woman i'm going out with her. Yeah. You know, it doesn't take that long to rhyme Beyonce with, soon she's going to be my fiance. Fucking rappers, I shit them.

It's supposed to be, like, I know it was a last minute addition and everything, but that's not, it's fucking rap, you know. Isn't this the soul of spontaneity? And, you know, it's like, she's right there. She's right there. And he's not, he's not bothered to turn up, has he? To be fair, I mean, he does do an excellent hype job at the start. Most incredibly, it's your girl, Bea,

which is obviously what I want to hear when I come into a room and wear my massive heels. Yes. Hey! Next time we go out for a drink, Sarah, I'll make sure I get in the pub early. And I'll shout that as soon as I see you in the windows. Excellent. And just make sure everyone is quiet as well. I get in the pub earlier. And I'll shout that as soon as I see you in the windows. Excellent.

And just make sure everyone is quiet as well. I won't have heels on. No, there will be by the time I'm finished. Don't worry about that. But yeah, so that's a good, you know, strong start there. But then he's just kind of in the middle. It's like he just lapses into navel gazing, you know, about his own skills, which I am now calling into question.

Yeah. You know. I'm surprised they didn't slag off d side as well yeah get another lick in on those poor lads i don't know i think it provides a little bit of a bridge and a little bit of kind of it builds up the anticipation for when she's going to come back in because you know she's coming back here yeah so i think it has a function in the record that that bit of some rap in terms of what it's for in terms of him being able to clear samples because he can afford it sure um but he didn't produce this. That's what it's for. In terms of him being able to clear samples

because he can afford it. Sure. But he didn't produce this, let's not forget. It's Rich Harrison. Yeah. I mean, I've mentioned Pharrell and Timbaland earlier on in this episode as being the two guys who are really running American pop,

particularly black American pop at this time. Yeah. But Rich Harrison isn't one of those top guys. He did go on to produce One Thing by Amory, which is amazing. Oh, that's the other great tune at this time. But Rich Harrison isn't one of those top guys. He did go on to produce One Thing by Amory, which is amazing. That's the other great tune of this time. But this record, if he'd only done this in his career, who cares? Because it's just

phenomenal. It's one of those ones I would also put Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie and Bad Romance by Lady Gaga in this category that I can just remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. And I'm like, fucking hell. You know, what is this?

And it's not just a matter of lazily whacking a well-known sample over the top because the little bit of brass from that Chai Lights record, it doesn't even dominate the Chai Lights record. If you play that Chai Lights record, you're kind of disappointed that that bit of brass isn't happening all the way through. It's just one little bit of it.

So that's a good find from the producer. I remember being slightly confused by the lyrics at the time because being a big Liverpool fan, I was convinced she was singing Sammy Hoopy is Crazy right now. But she's actually going, got me hoping you'll page me right now. She's obsessed with pages. Because Bugaboo, right right bugaboo by destiny's child that's 1999 uh you make me want to throw my pager out the window right in 1999 you can

imagine yeah pages were still a thing 2003 yeah she's going on about pages i it's weird yeah surely pages are gone by now but yeah well this is the 3g era isn't it yeah i think paramedics and stuff still a doctor still had them, but, you know. She's a doctor of pop and of arse shaking. It's great, though, because the horns actually sound like Beyoncé coming towards you. Yes. That's what that means now. Like, here I fucking come in my heels. If she she was a wrestler that'd be her entrance music

yeah yeah yeah it really like the smashing a glass for steve austin i think it is like it is one of those kind of happy accents where everything just kind of came together in the most brilliant way if they'd intended that it wouldn't have worked but because they didn't it's just it's just naturally you know but um speaking of jay-z i mean i don't think much of it as itself but i can't imagine the track without it at this point so right but i wrote the guidebook for um you know those kind of big orchestra plays pop hits events that you have a lot of these days there's one of those at the royal albert hall and i wrote the guidebook for it oh yeah so just like a little bit on each and one of the tracks was um crazy enough i didn't go to the event, actually, but kind of wish I had.

I didn't put this, but it really amused me to think of putting, you know, featuring her partner Jay-Z, a star in his own right. Wow. That would have been, yeah, I just thought, no, I'll just leave that out. I'll let him off this time. And the thing is, I heard Alicia Keys' version of Empire State of Mind that hasn't got him on it, and it's just not as good. So I don't know what to do with that.

You might think he's just splurging his lumpen, fairly useless rap all over things, but yeah, maybe it's just what you're used to. But when I heard the Alicia Keys track without him on it, I thought, meh. I'm not saying there shouldn't be some rap on it, but just get a better rapper in. Imagine Q-Tip on this.

What would Q-Tip have done? Oh, well, there you go. Fucking hell. But Crazy in Love's just a fucking monster. It's a juggernaut, isn't it? It's one of those things, it cannot be resisted. If you're in its path, you're fucked. It bends you to its will.

I mean, I can understand, especially after all these years, I can understand someone feeling they've heard it too many times, right? No, no such thing. But if anyone said they didn't like this record, I just wouldn't trust them. It doesn't compute for me. You could not like it. Yeah, there's something a bit off

if you don't feel any feelings for it at all. Not all of this stuff, you know, can stand up next to this by any means. I mean, the sexual politics of single ladies, I mean, don't even fucking start me on that you know and i i know i know um uh people think very highly of her lemonade album and stuff she you know she she's done some interesting stuff since but this just towers doesn't it it really does yeah i mean to my mind she's a one-hit wonder oh my god no she is to me come on because i've never heard anything else her. I couldn't sing you one note of any other song that she's done.

High Court Needham. I could have another you in a minute. Was that her? Yes. Yeah, there you go then. That's the other thing I know her about. But that's it. That's all I know about her.

So just crazy in love and I could have another you in a minute. Yes. It doesn't matter what else she's done because she did this. I mean, yeah, she's gone on to do some very sort of, some very, talking about sexual politics she's gone on to to really delve into that and it's really interesting in the kind of

course of her career where it's like marriage is lovely and men are great and then to go oh shit they fuck you over and this is what I've got to say about it she's very righteous she's got to the position of power where she could like have 50 black panthers with her at the fucking super bowl and and pull that off yeah yeah and you know she's very she's very pro black lives matter and you know you don't have

to be when you're that big you can you know you can sort of go it's not for me to say or you can actually go fuck this and you can stake your claim in that way yeah she's important in so many ways and she's a good philanthropist and you know she's done a lot of extremely interesting stuff not all of which is yeah you're not going to throw on lemonade to you know before you go out on a friday night but you know that's it just shows that she's got a kind of breadth and depth of you know interesting stuff going on but yeah it always comes back to this this is just the greatest yeah she's also responsible um inadvertently for one of my favorite bits of music writing ever when she um headlined glastonbury in 2011 and clive james of all people wrote a review of it i mean i guess he was writing a review of the tv coverage rather

than the gig but you know and if i can just read out what he wrote the whole deal is organized like d-day but without the mistakes it's got everything except the kind of emotion we would get from amy winehouse if she were organized to cross the road successfully beyonce and pathos are strangers winehouse and pathos are flatmates and you should see the kitchen i just enjoyed this so much like i teared up a bit watching this because she's so she's so blazingly brilliant and nothing and so beautiful and so sexy and nothing else in this episode even seems to belong to the same planet does it yeah i think beyonce may actually be where human evolution has peaked. I think it's all downhill from her. So the following week, Crazy in Love dropped to number two,

usurped by Never Gonna Leave Your Side by Daniel Bedingfield. The follow-up, Baby Boy with Sean Paul, got to number two in October. A year later, Destiny's Child reunited for the LP Destiny Fulfilled and then split up, leading Knowles to have 31 top 40 hits, four of which would get to number one. Look at all crazy allows,

I'm looking, I'm looking so crazy allows. It's so crazy, la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la Friday, 7.30, BBC One. We do our very best to give accurate critiques of what we've just seen, and that's what we're going to continue to do. We're just having a bit of slack by the fellow who did Fame Academy. We came off stage, and he said that we weren't quite there,

but we are on top of the pub, so what's the scene on? We go straight to a voiceover of Bonin and Cotton spoilering next week's episode and begging us to tune in next week. And then we go to a voiceover of Bonin and Cotton spoilering next week's episode and begging us to tune in next week. And then we go to a graphic of the word inquest and footage of Park and Grant walking out of the building,

shilling Fame Academy again, and then cutting to D-side, flouncing down a corridor, telling us that they've just been slagged off by Parks, but they've just been on top of the pops so what does he know yeah yeah they've been on top of the pops more than he has yeah so fuck off yeah properly fuck off this does remind me a little bit of um the one time that i did a comment is free for the guardian and they the editor made me go into the comments

and respond to the comments. And it was so difficult because, you know, the ones that were mean, and I responded to them as, you know, and so I told them off. And then the editor told me off for telling them off. But I had to, I was really put in this impossible position. And I didn't want to, I wanted to just say what I wanted to say and then fuck off, and I was not allowed to. So it's like comment is free, but you can only be free once. And then after that,

you've got to be super diplomatic. Comment ain't free. There's a hefty fucking fee. And you know, poor D-side having to come on again. It's like, oh no, we'll give them a right to reply.

And it's like, oh, poor lads. You know, because they're sort of going down the stairs. There's one of them is sort of doing this sort of like fake boxy boxy to the camera. Yeah. And it's like they've been told to like laugh

it off in a particular way and just like oh but it will be people will think you're great and it's like but they just it's like this is not what they signed up for at all but I do love them for the fact that you know one of Chart Music's catchphrases has actually been made real for once they've been on top of the pops more than he has

they've manifested it what of the pops more than he has. They've manifested it. What's the tune on? If you're looking for anyone else, it's us. The tide is high, but I'm holding on I'm falling. Get on up when we're down, baby I've got you to kiss goodnight I've got you to kiss goodnight I've got you to understand

Horrific. Sorry, man. Sorry, man, that messes with the D-side. Find out where they live. We cut back to Park and Grant sitting on a sofa watching pre-recorded footage of randoms outside Television Centre singing very badly and making absolute arses of themselves which has obviously been collated by the camera crew so park and grant can have

something to sneer at a regular feature of shows like this isn't it look at these twats who think the summer is top of the pop self-esteem this low at this point yeah this is so weak isn't it yeah the show ends with ken from d-side throwing punches at the camera and saying it's a sorry man that messes with the d-side while his bandmate ken from d-side says we'll find out where he lives as the camera fades down and that pop craze youngsters closes the book on this episode atop of the pops and also closes the book on the reign of chris cowell because four days later the bbc recruited andy peters over the head of cowell in a last ditch attempt to shore up the ratings which caused cowell to walk out and peters to mind the shop in preparation for a massive

relaunch in November. Article in The Guardian the following week, the BBC One controller Lorraine Hegeser even suggested yesterday that Top of the Pops' long-term future on the channel was not secure. It's on BBC One now, butc one has to appeal to all of the people some of the time she conceded that a move to bbc three was possible but added for the moment it will stay on bbc one the thing is are the charts as valid as they once were? Last Friday's edition attracted, get ready for this, 2.8 million viewers. Far fewer than the 4.5 million who watched the programme when it was relaunched in October 2001. The show has suffered from drastic changes in record buying habits. In the first quarter of this year, the sales of singles by number and value fell by 42%,

prompting crisis meetings in the BPI. Fucking hell. That November relaunch will be covered at some point, but not for a while. No. Let's go back to the distant past. Yeah, there's going gonna have to be some severe loin girding before we tackle that one 18 years ago was way too recent this let's be honest

i'm sorry al that sarah and i dragged you so close to the present but you know so what's on television afterwards well bbc one kicks on with eastenders then it's the final episode of the second series of My Family, the Robert Lin's air Zoe Wanamaker sitcom. Then it's a repeat of the final episode of the third series of Alveda's Aimed Pet, the one where they reunited after 16 years to relocate a transporter bridge to Arizona. After the news, it's the chat show Patrick Kilty Almost Live, followed by Close to the Edge the first of three comedy specials

featuring Jim Davidson 2003 everyone fucking hell then it's boxing from the sports village in Norwich the 2000 murder film Exposure and they hand over to BBC News 24

at 5 to 3 BBC two hits us with the flying gardener where Chris Beardshaw gets in a helicopter to look at someone's garden in Herefordshire because the BBC has that much money to piss up the wall then they follow that up with gardener's world the documentary series Stalin inside the terror, Newsnight, Newsnight Review, then the 2000 Australian comedy film The Wog Boy about a Greek Australian who suddenly becomes famous, and then they hand over to BBC Learning Zone at 3am. ITV continues with Tonight with Trevor McDonald a repeat of A Touch of Frost where David Jason finds out if someone with Down Syndrome has done a murder then a repeat of The Undertaker docusoap Don't Drop the Coffin ITV Weekend News

the 1996 comedy film Joe's Apartment highlights from today's action in the Tour de France and all the usual night time ramble. Channel 4 has just started Grand Slam the show hosted by James Richardson and Carol Vorderman where two champions in other TV quizzes face off against each other then it's the first part of the grand final of the fourth Big Brother. Then it's Scrubs, then the final part of Big Brother.

After V. Graham Norton big brother then it's scrubs then the final part of big brother after v graham norton it's the last in the present series of bow selector featuring craig david turning up to have the piss taken out of him and david sneddon then it's today at the test big brother's little brother and a repeat of tonight's big brother then some brazil, me dears, what are we talking about in an empty playground tomorrow? Because it's Saturday. If I was literally still at school, you know, if I was literally 13 or 14, I'd be talking murder dolls, because exciting,

and Benny Benassi, because tits and arse. I went to a boys' school, you know. As a grown-up, just wanging on about the genius of Super Theory Animals, probably. And Beyonce. Depending on what age I was, I suppose, I might be pondering the great artistry of Beyonce Knowles and the fact that there's nothing else that that woman was put here on this earth to do.

What we're buying on Saturday. Crazy enough. Super Theory Animals and Beyonce and maybe Benny Benassi. And what does this episode tell us about July of 2003? It's a load of arse. Now, what it tells us is that some things never change from 1973 to 2003. If you want to stand out, either have tits and arse if you're women or wear a mad costume if you're a bunch of guys.

I don't make the rules. Chris Cowie does. And what would you have done to rescue Top of the Pops? Or is it too late? It would have been good to just go kind of back to basics in terms of get the best people who are going to do the most interesting stuff live. And then just the best videos.

You know, the whole let's not have any videos anymore thing is death i think just like one or maybe two you know you don't even have to show the whole thing but just yeah that's been part of it for so long and i think it was a mistake to get rid of it so but yeah just get the best people in who not necessarily the you know the best singers or the best dancers or the people who can make their ass go a different way to how asses have always gone but although obviously ideally that's what you want just the greatest range that you can display which there you know there is some of that in evidence here but um just just really double down on that i would scrap the star bar yeah yes i would allow more videos and just have much more of the studio audience and much more of the presenters being in amongst it

so that it feels like a party you've been invited to, not one that you haven't. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I came to this episode pretty much stone cold, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. If this was a new BBC One music show, you'd look at it and go, well, this is all right, actually. There's been some

interesting bands and singers on and everything i i'm coming away from it feeling i've got a handle on what's happening music wise at the moment but here's the problem it's not a music show it's top of the fucking pops yeah yeah the other thing of course is to uh keep a bit of suspense in it yes yeah i love the whizzy suspenseful countdown at the end you know there was a period kind of you know in the 80s where they absolutely nailed that and it's like i don't know what you know stay tuned for some good stuff that you can trust us will be good yeah you know run with that like you're supposed to be able to trust there's a certain degree of like when you turn on top of the pops it's like you're going to have there'll be some stuff you

like some stuff you don't like but it's all going to be worth watching. So, like, why spaff it all in the first, you know. They did it multiple times as well. Is that weird? It's like, you know when people started to do documentaries in that American style where after every advert, which is like every 20 minutes or something, there's a recap of everything you've just seen. And, you know, as if you're just coming into it for the first.

It's like, don't fall for that. You know know it's all right to trust people to have an attention span yeah there was a series on bravo about the band towers of london which um i'm in briefly um and yeah every episode of that i think an episode was like maybe 20 minutes long i swear like 12 minutes of it was recap or throwing forward and only about eight, if that, that's being generous, was actual programme. It took them fucking ages to get the whole series out because it was just inching along, you know what I mean? And yeah, yeah.

That drives me mad. Yeah, it's a bit like that. And that, pop craze youngsters, is the end of this episode of Chart Music. Time for me to do my usual promotional flange, www.chart-music.co.uk facebook.com slash chart music

Reach us on Twitter at chartmusic T-O-T-P money down the G-string patreon.com slash chart music Ta very much Simon Price. You're very welcome. God bless you Sarah B. Oh, God bless me.

My name's Al Needham, and I implore you to make sure you go all ranger doings. Chart music. GreatBigHour.com Hi, I'm Scott Hancock, and I host From Queer to Eternity, www.greatfakehour.com Queerness was don't get AIDS. If I'd been marrying a girl, that would not have happened. Maybe we can find a universality that we weren't aware of before. That's why this podcast is so great, because actually, I guess we just don't think to speak of this stuff, and yet it's part of our fabric.

From Queer to Eternity, available to listen to now from the Great Big Owl Company. Hello, all you teddy guys and girls out there. Oh, welcome to the tweenie chart countdown. Today you're going to hear all the tweenies favourite songs, and first on stage is Young Milo. He's chosen this number as his favourite song because he likes to move and dance. Tease me, and then just tempt me, so I can get my, Darnisfaction. Bait me, and agitate me, until I get my, Darnisfaction.

Darnisfaction. Corn. I get very excited for corn. Wow, naughty lady. Corn. There's a lot I'd like to say about Lexington. Corn. Very excited for... Wow. Naughty lady. A lot I'd like to say about Lexington. I'm afraid you'll probably bleep me out if I do. Jump up and shake your bits off so I can get my

Dinah's fashion. Bed down and shake your drums off until I get my Dinah's fashion. Dinah get by. That is facture. That is facture. That is facture. That is facture. That is facture.

That is facture. That is facture. That is facture. That is facture. Here are some young ladies I've admired many times in my little armchair. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long.

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