#uncool50

[manysmallhands]

#Uncool50 Index page

Having made a post indexing my #FearOfMu21c posts, i thought that I might as well index all the #Uncool50 posts too, in case anyone wanted to have a look thru those. This was a challenge posted last year on twitter where those taking part had to pick their 50 favourite singles since the punk era. As well as doing this, I took it upon myself to write a post about each of them, which i eventually stockpiled here (for want of anything else to do with them). A quick word of warning: unlike my posts this year, they were often turned around to short order and consequently i'm less happy with them than the ones i did this time.

Anyway, after we found that most people weren't really interested in picking anything much released after 1985, the organiser (my twitter friend Arron Wright, or @nonoxcol as he is there) decided to do a purely 21st century challenge this year, which is where #FearOfMu21c comes in. But anyway, these were my #Uncool 50 picks. They're listed in no particular order, other than 11 pts were given to the best five songs, with the top one getting an extra point too (as noted below).

1. Abba - Knowing Me, Knowing You

2. Tom Tom Club _ Genius Of Love

3. Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen (11 pts)

4. Madness - Michael Caine

5. .The Blue Nile - Tinseltown In The Rain

6. Strawberry Switchblade - Since Yesterday

7. Suzanne Vega - Marlene On The Wall

8. Madonna - Dress You Up

9. Nu Shooz - I Can't Wait

10. Kate Bush - Hounds Of Love

11. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

12. Talulah Gosh - Steaming Train

13. Public Enemy - Bring The Noise

14. Tears For Fears - Sowing The Seeds Of Love

15. Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart

16. The KLF - Last Train To Trancentral (12 pts)

17. The Orb - Orb In Dub EP

18. Stereolab - Super Electric EP

19. A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime

20. Nirvana - Oh The Guilt

21. Pulp - Lipgloss

22. Underworld - Cowgirl

23. Ween - Freedom Of '76

24. R.E.M. - At My Most Beautiful

25. Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock n Roll Fun

26. Jeffrey Lewis - The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song

27. Amerie - 1 Thing

28. LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum

29. Electrelane - To The East

30. The Go! Team - Doing It Right

31. Florence + The Machine - Dog Days Are Over (11 pts)

32. Eux Autres - You're Alight

33. MGMT - Flash Delirium

34. Warpaint - Undertow

35. St Vincent - Cruel

36. Sharon Van Etten - Serpents

37. The Soundcarriers - Boiling Point

38. Tullycraft - Lost In Light Rotation

39. The Clientele - On A Summer Trail

40. Trust Fund/Joanna Gruesome - Spilt 12" EP

41. The Juan Maclean - A Simple Design

42. Faith Healer - Again (11 pts)

43. Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta

44. Little Mix - Black Magic

45. Grimes - Kill Vs Maim

46. Solange - Cranes In The Sky

47. Muna - I Know A Place (11 pts)

48. Fred Thomas - Voiceover

49. U.S. Girls - Rosebud

50. Jeanines - Things Change EP

#50favouritesingles #Uncool50 #Music #fearofmu21c #Pop #Altpop #Hip Hop #Indie #Indiepop #Tweepop #Indie Rock #Rock #70s Music #80s Music #90s Music #00s Music #10s Music

[weaversweek]

Uncool50 - finding my place

Part of the #Uncool50 project, a sort-of autobiography told through the memories of pop singles. This installment covers the second half of the 2000s. Nothing from 2005 or 2006, by now my head had been turned by European hits and the anglophone stuff just wasn’t fun.

The theatre kid who made it. "Grace Kelly" came out of nowhere at the start of 2007, as flamboyant and ostentatious and unashamedly queer as anything. Mika sounds like Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen who was snatched from us far too soon.

The homophobes hated it. Of course the homophobes hated it, they cannot stand anything fun, colourful, honest. One review at the time said, "Like being held at gunpoint by Bonnie Langford", as if this was a bad thing!

This song is fun, it's catchy, it worms into your ears and is never going to leave. Might just be the greatest pop song of the decade. More power to Mika.

The greatest pop moment of the decade comes straight after the breakdown in "About you now". We hear the chorus line again – "can we bring yesterday back around?" But this time it's different – a little higher-pitched, a touch yelpy. And there's a gloriously discordant high tone, "coz I know how I feel about you now".

By this time, we're up to Sugababes 3.0 – Siobhan's long-gone, Mutya's been replaced by Amelle - but the songs still remain awesome. Dancey-electronica with a scuzzy overtone. And the video with the young man parkouring his way around south London, hopes to meet up with his date on the Southbank.

My long list of 300 songs had a lot of Sugababes – "Overload" and "Freak like me", "Too lost in you", "Ugly" and "Change" all featured. But none of them have this yelp of joy, that’s the clincher.

"This is the life", Amy MacDonald's defining hit. Breakthrough single "Mr rock and roll" had positioned Amy as a troubadour, sings songs about people's lives. She uses a few words to describe a scene, and whoosh – we're in it!

"This is the life" is a personal, probably autobiographical, song. "So you're sitting there with nothing to do, talking about Robert Riger and his motley crew". Life-affirming through its melancholy, drunken nights out and waiting in for friends and thinking both that this is excellent and this is terrible.

Number one for the year in Belgium, Netherlands; for some weeks in Austria and Czechia; top five in all civilised markets around the continent. And number 28 on Britain, because the playlisters and programmers in London are a complete waste of space and goodness knows who pays them. Amy's built a hugely successful career in Europe, and still makes top-drawer albums to this day.

So I started hanging out with a bunch of friends from the karaoke bar, and we went out to a maize maze, ears of corn up to eye level. Or for Caz, ears of corn over the top of her head. Caz managed to lose contact with the group, get lost, and had to be rescued by the tall stablehand.

We welcomed Anna into our friendship group, and she turned out to be the glue to hold us together, and we loved her dearly. "Bulletproof" by La Roux is one of many many songs from those years. This time, maybe, I'll be bulletproof.

#uncool50 #uncool 50 #personal #autobiography #pop singles #mika #queer #queer representation #sugababes #video #amy macdonald #troubadour #la roux #genderqueer

[manysmallhands]

#46: Solange - Cranes In The Sky

Released - Oct 5 2016

Highest UK chart position - Did not chart (UK Hip Hop/RnB chart - #29 )

Spotify streams to date - 130,496,166

First heard - bought LP for my brother, 2019

My brother was probably the person from whom I learned to take music (too) seriously, so it seems fitting that he should pop back in now for a late cameo. For his birthday in 2019, I was tasked with buying him Solange’s magnum opus A Seat at the Table on vinyl. Unprepared to hand it over without checking for warps, scratches, etc (it’s a hard life sometimes), I decided to give it a spin first. Soul is not something I’d really listened to much at that point, but ASATT is such an inventive, intriguing record that I was forced - no, forced - to pinch the digital files that came with it and carry on listening. This is, I guess, where I finally broke down my resistance to Soul and RnB, which then crossed over into more Hip Hop as well and finally opened the floodgates to all sorts of different things that I’d decided, largely out of ignorance, that I didn’t really like. As such, it’s an album that had an impact on me far beyond its actual contents.

Cranes in The Sky is its best known song and, tho i still think that it’s a great album all the way thru, there are few others on there that I love nearly so much. It’s a song about defeat: not in a final, winner takes all sense, but more the slow realisation that everything is a mess and, as much as you seek to distract yourself, there’s no escaping from it. While the cranes of the title are apparently mechanical cranes, a reference to the misery hanging over her, I’ve never managed to stop myself thinking of them as ungainly birds with a desperate need to fly away. 

All of its melancholy, resignation and stasis are right there in the introduction: that rhythmic tap of the drumsticks set against the calm, elegant strings seems to say everything already before the song has even begun. Yet for all the evocativeness of the music, it’s Solange’s vocal that dominates. There is no one moment that breaks me - if I’m in the right mood for it I’m a wreck all the way thru - but the part I come back to is where she admits “I’ll cry it away” and the response hits up immediately, “don’t you cry it baby!” , as Solange just carries on “away, away, away”, so serene but entirely done with it all. The only time she raises her voice is to sing the title, at which point the pressure seems to break thru a little, but it’s basically a song of quiet despair: a simple, dignified statement that this is not how life is meant to be lived. 

I think I used to believe that Soul was basically smooth music for wine bars but A Seat at the Table changed that. While much of the record is Not About Me by definition, the common humanity of it is powerful enough that I can understand something of where it comes from. More specifically, regarding Cranes In the Sky, I’ve known those feelings she sings about all too well.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Solange #Cranes In The Sky #RnB #Soul #10s Music #Youtube

[weaversweek]

Uncool 50 - Crushes

Part of the Uncool50 project, an autobiography mediated through singles.

An honourable mention to song 52 in my top 50: “Heart and soul” by T’Pau, for a massive crush on Carol Decker. It’s a shame she’s gone to the dark side recently. 

"Heart" from the Pet Shop Boys was playing during my first proper snog. It was on a school trip seeing Roman palaces on the South coast, and an overnight stay in Bognor Regis. The talk on day two wasn’t of us, but of the couple who might have **actually done it**.

So many great Pet Shop Boys songs - “Love comes quickly”, “Left to my own devices”, “Where the streets have no name - can’t take my eyes off of you”, “Jealousy”, “Go west”, “A red letter day”, “I get along” “It doesn’t often snow at Christmas”, and especially “Always on my mind”. For the autobiography, “Heart” takes it.

My first choice for karaoke is a song like “Axel F”, “Crockett’s theme”, or “Eye level”. But if I must actually sing, it’s this one - written because Jason Donovan’s voice was even more limited than mine.

As a family, we went on holiday to the south coast in summer 1989. We hadn't planned it, but found Radio 1's roadshow was in town while we were there. And it's hosted by Phillip Schofield, one of the very few people both I and my sister rated.

When we turn up, there's icing on both our cakes. I get to see Trev and Simon; sister sees her crush Jason Donovan belt out "Too many broken hearts". Here’s how Schofe remembered the day on Going Live.

It’s difficult to narrow down Madonna to one song – in the top 150-ish, I’d considered “Into the groove”, “Open your heart”, “Deeper and deeper”, and “You must love me”.

For me, “Like a prayer” is the ultimate Madonna song, both in composition and attitude. It came with a video I didn’t see for eleven years. Not until I was in a friend’s house, quarter-watching satellite channel VH-1, and it came up on random shuffle. Worth the wait? You bet.

#uncool50 #pet shop boys #madonna #jason donovan #phillip schofield #radio 1 roadshow #snogging in bognor regis #wishtower slopes #eastbourne #banned video

[manysmallhands]

#38: Tullycraft - Lost In Light Rotation

Released - 28th Jan 2013

Highest UK Chart Position - Did not chart

Spotify streams to date: 57,529

First heard - Fortuna Pop! website, 2013

“Twee” is perhaps the most contested and/or reviled word in the world of indiepop. Say it to fans and many of them will become defensive or angry. You might even make someone who likes the Sea Urchins mad - imagine that! For others, well, it’s just what it’s called, it’s tweepop, ultimately it’s no biggie. I don’t know if Tullycraft were the first band to “reclaim” the word for themselves but certainly they’ve made a career out of being an unapologetic embodiment of Twee, in all its wonders, contradictions and irritations. Some would claim that they were long past their prime by 2013 (the reviews for the Lost In Light Rotation album are almost uniformly “they have nothing new to offer” , as if that wasn’t the point): I would beg to differ. Lost In Light Rotation is my favourite Tullycraft song and it’s a good pick for this list as it deals with fandom, a thing that grows from a love of music but can become something else entirely.

One of indie music’s great enticements is “here’s this great thing that no one else knows about! It can be yours and you can feel special!”. Sean Tollefson’s dismissive line about people who “never took the time to learn the slang that we speak or the slogans on the T-shirts” understands this - it’s about learning those things and belonging to something, but also, it’s about knowing that you’re a better person for it. In my experience, people who like indiepop are generally extremely nice and welcoming and they exhibit not the least bit of snobbery around would-be fans (there aren’t enough of us to turn anyone away tbh). But an enticement of any scene is to feel like yr in the know and, in such a tiny and excruciatingly nerdy one as Twee (I may as well say it, this is Tullycraft after all), that hard won knowledge is the privilege of a tiny number of people, making it a super-exclusive club. It may be entirely irrelevant in the real world, but it’s perhaps the only thing we have in the face of everyone calling us a bunch of girly pricks (an insult we’d wear with pride, but an insult all the same).

Anyway, Lost In Light Rotation! A lot of indiepop revolves around someone with a floppy fringe bemoaning being dumped over a jangly guitar line: that’s the bad stuff. The best indiepop is always fun and that’s how Tullycraft go about it. The song has a zip to it from the word go, it’s all sudden shocks, snappy drum fills and Sean’s rapid fire delivery, getting right to the thrill of hearing THAT SONG on the radio and wearing THAT THING to the show, so that everyone knows that this is YOUR BAND, whether anyone else gives a shit or not. The communal chants are fun, the guitar hooks are surprisingly glossy (courtesy of a mix by big-shot producer Phil Ek), and the lyrics always pin down the “vacant need to be a part of something bigger still” at the heart of fandom, the desperation to be up with the scene and that sublime moment when the music hits and you get caught singing almost every word.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Tullycraft #Indiepop #Tweepop #Twee #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#25: Sleater Kinney - You're No Rock N Roll Fun

Released - May 2nd 2000

Highest UK Chart Position - #85

First Heard - Cheap cd, 2014

I wouldn’t have heard of Sleater Kinney the first time around, so by the time I bought All Hands On The Bad One nearly 15 years later, the context for this would have been long since past. However, pompous guitar bands fronted by Very Serious Men are as constant as a northern star and so I can’t say it took much effort to pick up the thread.

Sleater Kinney don’t need to prove that they can rock to anyone so going all out pop here is smart, a prime position from which to take a swipe at the lofty artistes of the indie scene. Corin ditches her trademark holler for an arch tunefulness and, while the guitars take the usual spidery post-punk route, the deceptively sweet harmonies and Janet’s double time drumming ultimately carry the day. In short, this song absolutely slaps. 

A few months after I bought this, the heroes reception that greeted SK’s return in 2014 illustrated a slightly changed picture in the indie world, where women are an increasingly strong and playful presence and things are better for it. But chauvinism remains a huge issue in the industry and so the message of You’re No Rock n’ Roll Fun is always worth remembering: if yr too cool to think that women can rock, who the fuck do you think you are?

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Sleater-Kinney #Rock #Indie #Riot Grrrl #00s music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#30: The Go! Team - Doing It Right

Released - Sep 3rd 2007

Highest UK Chart Position - #55

First Heard - Radio, 2007

During 2006 and 7, I was managing to listen to some music every day and so I became a bit more engaged with what was going on. I have a big pile of albums that date from this period, but Doing It Right is the only song from these that was good enough to make the cut (my other picks from this time were things that i came to later on). While I’ve often stayed in musical comfort zones, this was perhaps the era where I cleaved most to whatever indie stuff was on the radio, and a lot of it feels, not so much bad, but certainly quite homogenous now. Doing It Right is an odd exception, a song that points towards where my music taste would eventually take me but in the most unusual of ways: a kind of unholy mash-up of indiepop and hip-hop. 

I once had an argument on the internet which I was widely perceived to have lost, where I argued that The Go! Team were basically a hip hop act. And while I can admit that this is, at best, an extremely narrow conclusion to have made based on a very small amount of evidence, I still think that, circa the Proof Of Youth LP, it’s actually got a lot going for it. Perhaps the best way to put it is that, if the less boring thing that the “Why Don’t You?” kids did one day was to go and record a hip hop tune, then it would have sounded something like this. 

Its vibe is one of absolute maximalism - it’s oversaturated with sound to the point where it consistently overloads the speakers - but for something so incredibly in yr face, it also has a kind of clumsy beauty about it. This contrast plays out in the clash between Ninja’s punchy positivity and Kaori’s more amateurish charms, or the luminous clatter which dominates the record vs the gentle, melodic touches that makes it so damn catchy. This is the hip-hop/indiepop thing that feels irreconcilable in my brain, but sounds so utterly natural on this single that I can’t imagine why no one else does it (maybe they do? Idk). I guess in a way it harks back to that kind of day-glo chart rap from the late 80s, stuff like Rebel MC or Wee Papa Girl Rappers, but it’s a comparison that bears so little close scrutiny that I feel dumb even thinking about it. Doing It Right is perhaps the only record that coasted right thru my indiepop period and has settled nicely into my semi-hiphop era now, and I still don’t know how or why it works. Goddamn it!

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #The Go! Team #Indie #Hip Hop #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#50: Jeanines - Things Change EP

Released - Mar 6th 2020

Highest UK chart position - Did not chart

Spotify streams to date - 11,721 (Been In the Dark)

First heard - On release, 2020 

This feels like a fitting place to end up. If I’m honest, I don’t love indiepop like I used to. I’m not expecting it to do anything new, but looking at the latest round of artists, I do expect them to give something of themselves and that seems to be in increasingly short supply. Instead, we get Xeroxed bands to go with their Xeroxed haircuts and old Sarah fanzines and I have to admit that I’m bored. Jeanines are one of the exceptions. Are they original? Hell no! (don’t ask me that!) But I like the sense of Alicia that I get in their songs: nervous and brittle, but with a simple, sad honesty that cuts thru the most complicated of emotions. I like that they cut back to the 60s on a slightly busier route too: we have the usual Be My Baby drumbeats and gentle chamberpop here but there’s a folksy vibe too, with tambourines and briskly strummed acoustics adding some life to the mix.

There are some great and touching moments across the whole EP, especially Alicia’s painful observation that “I like you less and less and less and less and less” on the eerie Less and Less. But mainly this pick is about two songs: “Been In the Dark” covers a domestic breakdown in relations while coming on like a breezier Belle And Sebastian, all bustling energy and bittersweet strings. The melody soars and swoops wonderfully and its combination of winsome charm and dour, downbeat lyrics creates the kind of emotional contrast that great indiepop thrives off. I had this one to close out my Uncool 50 playlist because it seemed like the right note to finish on: as Alicia so rightly points out, we have indeed “been in the light, been in the dark’.

But the song that leaves me entirely devastated is the closing Things Are Gonna Change. There’s something so tender in its simple offer of reassurance, where Alicia’s no-nonsense practicality (“the only thing to do is just try and quell yr fears til the stars all disappear”) shows another side to her character, one that can dust herself down and make the best of something in spite of how overwhelming it all might be. It destroys me entirely inside 75 seconds and, if there’s a note of tentative melancholy to its hope for the best vibe, it perhaps comes from a sense that sometimes things don’t change, or that they get worse instead. On a day where i’m very much hoping for the best regarding not losing the one place that I come to talk to people on the internet, the mood of this song feels distinctly familiar.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Jeanines #Indie #Indiepop #Wiaiwya #10s Music #Bandcamp

[manysmallhands]

#48: Fred Thomas - Voiceover

Released - Dec 7th 2016

Highest UK Chart position - No

Spotify streams to date  -  67,095

First heard - late 2017

Home stretch now. During the 10s, I had a tendency to fall off with bands pretty quickly: most of the time I was happy just to have one or two records by someone and it was extremely rare for me to rake thru long back catalogues. I say this to be clear that the *checks notes* 27 Fred Thomas records, tapes, CDs and digital albums that I’ve racked up since the end of 2017 under six different project names (including buying two copies of three of them for extremely spurious reasons) are not a general habit for me. And tho I can’t say that every song on them is up to the standard of Voiceover, I’m not sorry and I’d do it again.

Voiceover was the “big” single (it got a video!) from Changer, the first Fred LP that I bought and which became a companion to me in my early days of being able to listen to music while walking in 2018. Voiceover itself is a great song to walk to, not for entirely different reasons to the more rhythmic tracks that I’ve already picked out for that quality. That skittery guitar intro makes me skip my feet a little, but its Fred’s delivery here that’s key, a kind of spoken word stream of consciousness ramble which occasionally takes off into wonderful yelled passages of which I know every word and inflection. The big moment is the extended (only comes around the once but you know it’s the) chorus at the end, where he randomly shouts about different kinds of feelings - “bus station feelings”; “UTI feelings”; “angry dad feelings! - over a celebratory fanfare, paying tribute to the faint possibility of his being “something more than just a cloud of distressed emotions” to anyone else at all. While I have a long list of favourite lines in this immensely quotable song, it’s the “internet feelings”  that hit me hardest now, for reasons that grew out of my love for this record.

As it happened, I wrote a blogpost about Changer that was read by about three people, one of whom was a woman in LA who liked it and followed me on Twitter. We got to talking about obscure indie acts and both being long term sick (such is my patter with the ladies) and then something odd happened  - we fell in love from over 5000 miles apart. Tho it’s tricky to manage - I guess neither of us could cope with having someone around them all the time but I’d rather she was at the bottom of the road tbh - she remains the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not usually one for the idea of records changing my life - it happens very rarely and generally by accident - but Changer, and Voiceover by extension, is one of them. So, when Fred sings of “all those internet feelings”, I guess that he knew what he was talking about. Sadly, none of the other 26 generally excellent LPs I’ve bought by him (and I’ve bought Changer twice dammit!) have had a similar effect on any other aspect of anything at all. But I keep buying them all the same.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Fred Thomas #Indie Rock #DIY Music #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#47: Muna - I Know A Place

Released - Dec 2 2016

Highest UK chart position - Did not chart (US Adult Pop: #39)

Spotify streams to date - 30,271,307

First heard - Xmas 2017

I Know A Place was a song I first heard during a bad time: I’d had chronic anxiety for nearly a year and i barely communicated with anyone at all. I found myself in the run up to Christmas looking for a record that my sister could get for me and managed to click on this song. It’s a synthpop melodrama of vast proportions (always a favourite genre) and I’m not entirely sure that I’ve ever listened to it all the way thru without starting to feel overwhelmed in some way or other. But one of the great things about it is that it’s a little ridiculous too, both in that sense of scope - an emotion is always better expressed for being magnified to a colossal size imo - but also in Katie Gavin’s outsize vocal ticks (“I knoooo”, “lay down yr weahpon”), which always make me smile and increases my fondness, both for her and for the song. 

Its other side is that Katie is very much playing for real: when she says “somebody hurt me but I’m staying alive”, it doesn’t feel like a small thing or an over-exaggeration, and its context as a post-Orlando LGBT anthem makes the sentiment more pointed still. The thing that I Know A Place understands is that while you can’t always solve yr biggest problems, you can sometimes forget for a while in the company of people who are on yr side. I guess that might be a little clichéd but, in a world that (once again) feels increasingly hostile to people who sit outside society’s norms, I Know A Place still taps into a very powerful idea. So when Katie sings “if you want to go out dancing” just before the chorus and the voices surge in behind her, it unleashes an enormous wave of emotion.

That idea of a place (oooooh!) - a place you can go (yeah!) - was partly what made me feel an affinity with it, but a lot of its impact was also tied up in not really having that. A song might take you somewhere else for a few minutes but, after all, it is just a song, and the tears that it provoked (and still brings today) were about my loneliness as much as anything else. It had been a long time since I’d felt happy at all back then and, while things are different now and I’m not isolated in the same way, it can still tap into all of those emotions at will. Like To The East (#29), which dates from around the same period, it still feels like a lot to process.

But the main thing to take away from I Know A Place, the thing that should really never be forgotten, is that Katie Gavin saying “weahpon” really is just extremely funny. Even if I’m boring you to death rn, it’s worth giving it a listen just for that. 11 points

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Muna #I Know A Place #Synthpop #Electronic #Pop #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#44: Little Mix - Black Magic

Released - May 21st 2015

Highest UK Chart Position - #1

Spotify streams to date: 533,968,603(!!!)

First Heard - On release

I am ashamed to say that, over the last 20 years, and especially the last decade or more, i have largely missed out on chart pop. I can blame a lot of it on illness, in that i’m never sat in front of the TV with other people nor stuck in the car with them either, and so i avoid the kind of community experience which means that you know what’s in the charts whether you like it or not. But part of it is just to do with the fragmentation of entertainment in general: the radio station I listen to has its own “hits” now and the places I look for music on the internet are often as clueless as I am about stuff outside their lane. As such, I know next to nothing: I could perhaps vaguely tell you what Call Me Maybe and Get Lucky sound like but I wouldn’t swear to it, and while I’m sure I’ve heard New Rules and Shake It Off (and I’m pretty sure that I enjoyed them too), I can’t remember a note of either. This is not to be snobby - I like pop music, I really do! -  but there’s just a lot going on these days and this stuff tends to slip past you unless yr paying attention. But just once in a while, I surprise myself by actually noticing something and so here we are. 

I have no idea why I heard Black Magic when it came out, because I haven’t regularly known what was at number one since about 2006. But I remember looking up the video for some reason and it blew me away completely, certainly enough that I’ve got the (really quite good) Get Weird album on my computer somewhere too (don’t let them other suckers hate on you!). At first, my main takeaway was its vibes-based similarity to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which is a dangerous place to go in a post Blurred Lines-case world (I think I heard Blurred Lines just the once - not feeling too bad about that tbh). But this is not merely a cheap rip off (tbf it is a bit of a cheap rip off, just not merely so): the stomping bridge and four lines each girl group dynamics make it a bullishly modern update of an earlier era, albeit one with enough familiarity that the styles compliment rather than clash. And above all, it’s simply a wonderful and exciting pop song. I feel like I’m being played as I enjoy it - as surely it must have been at least in part created to gain some wider appeal beyond their younger fanbase - but as the pleasure centres of my brain light up every time they shout “HEY!” and the tears well in my eyes at the “falling in love” coda, I have to admit that they won fair and square. Black Magic is the secret potion in itself and, as my third and final number 1, it’s also (alongside King Kunta (#43)) another satisfyingly popular jewel to decorate this otherwise rather obscure end of the list with. Now just watch someone split the vote with Shout Out To My Ex.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Little Mix #Pop #Black Magic #Number 1s #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#42: Faith Healer - Again

Released - Jan 14, 2015

Highest UK chart position - Did not chart

Spotify streams to date - 129,719

First heard - investigated after hearing other songs on the radio

Again is so much of a throwback to the 70s that I wouldn’t hesitate to call it pastiche: chief healer Jessica Jalbert has clearly listened to a lot of records by Boston and The Eagles but when her take on them is this great, I can’t say that it troubles me too much. One of the great joys of the song comes from the contrast between that bold, glossy production - all sunshine harmonies, motoring riffs and California sparkle - set against Jalbert’s sweet but determinedly low key vocal. The sheer vastness of the production ought to swamp her entirely but somehow she manages to bob across the top of it, like a wallflower on a day trip to the funfair who’s cheerfully determined to enjoy all the rides.

I’ve known this song for over seven years now, but I still find myself surprised by how much happiness can be wrung out of each of its twists and turns. Some things stand out, like the twinkle of a little run in double time along the bridge into the chorus, or the thrilling engine of guitars that back Jalbert as she throws back her head and lets out a glorious “Wooooooooo!”, sounding for all the world like she’s streaming full tilt down an LA highway in a stolen convertible. But there’s not a second that’s wasted at any point: no sound is out of place and every last line is a winner in its own perfect, insular way.

Other than on music websites, I have never heard a single actual person make reference to Again, either online or in the real world. I don’t know anyone else who’s even heard it unless I played it to them first, a count that numbers two before today. But I’m giving it an 11 anyway. While I love all the songs in this list, I don’t think there are many others that set a smile on my face quite so firmly as this does, that makes my feet skip a little faster and my head swoon so forcefully at so many different points. Jalbert might be singing about having “lost more than some people ever gain”, but the mood is one of absolute freedom, the sound of the world offering to make every last one of yr dreams come true as you step forward to meet it with a smile. 

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Faith Healer #Classic Rock #Indie Rock #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#41: The Juan Maclean - A Simple Design

Released - Nov 7 2014

Highest UK chart position - did not chart -

Spotify streams to date - 3,857,051

First heard - Bought In A Dream LP, 2022

I bought two great The Juan Maclean albums this year and I wanted to include a song here so as to be up to date with what I’m listening to right now. The Brighter The Light is a fantastic collection of house bangers but I think I prefer the slightly more cerebral approach of its predecessor, In A Dream. A Simple Design was its lead single and ticks every box - it’s a fun, dancefloor oriented tune full of memorable hooks, but with enough focus on song structure and arch nods to early synthpop to give it a more substantial feel. 

The great brainflash of John Maclean during this period was moving on from New Romantic cosplay into something with a more soulful touch: the throwbacks to the 80s which had always peppered his songs are still here, but he adds a warmth and playfulness that had been lacking, the ideal foil for Nancy’s wonderfully imperious vocal. She sings with a sharp, didactic edge and it’s this, along with her way with a melody, that lies at the heart of A Simple Design's greatness, combining self help pointers with a romantic touch to land somewhere between the Human League and Will Powers. 

The thing I love most about it is how she moves from the holler of the chorus (a great one to yell out if yr walking in an isolated area) to the sweet “la la la la la”  of the bridge, a more delicate touch that makes it stand out from the numerous club 12”s that they’ve released. It’s the best bit of the song but, notably, there was no room for its subtlety in the plethora of remixes that have appeared. In A Dream was the last proper John and Nancy LP and, while the Juan Maclean still exists as a solo project, A Simple Design feels like a pinnacle that they’ve never really topped. Though it's the song here that I’ve known for the least amount of time, it was one of the first that I picked and remains a sharp reminder to me that I really should have listened to them before.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #The Juan Maclean #A Simple Design #House #Synthpop #Electronic #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#40: Trust Fund/Joanna Gruesome - Split 12" EP

Released - Sep 22, 2014

Highest UK chart position - Did not chart

First heard - Forums, 2014

If I make a little tally chart of when I discovered all of these songs, 2014 accounts for a full 20% of them. The reason for this is not so mysterious: after over a decade of being able to do next to nothing, I found myself suddenly able to do slightly more than next to nothing and so the era of buying less than half a dozen CDs a year suddenly fell away. I looked around music blogs and forums, I found people with (what my girlfriend calls) “cousin eardrums” on the internet and I started to build a relationship with a world outside my head for the first time in years. This EP was at the centre of what I loved about DiY indie at that time, primarily because it was the first Trust Fund record that I heard and Trust Fund remain for me the best of those bands. My capacity to talk about them has already been tested to worrying levels (there’s a very long essay I wrote about them somewhere on the internet that was referred to as my dissertation by friends), but I appreciate that my audience here is more of the “who dat?” variety, so I shall try and keep this fairly brief.

Tho the 10s are largely regarded as a musical backwater for indie, I’m tempted to think of them as a Golden Age for DiY guitar pop. Being what it was, it broke little new ground, but there was a strong sense of character in the music that made its identity feel distinct to me - maybe that’s just the zeal of the newcomer, idk. Trust Fund themselves sound a lot like American slacker rock pushed thru a UK indiepop blender: you could hear the chunky Weezer style powerchords and the more angular Pavement-type elements, but within that, there’s also Ellis Jones’s faltering, high pitched whine of a voice singing about his two favourite subjects, awkward friendship and dishonesty. At one of these two poles is “No Pressure”, an alt country daze where Jones offers a girlfriend a safe space for some sort of emotional recovery. This leads to some of his best lines - “this is not your house and you do not cut the grass” in particular captures all the care and solicitousness of making sure someone feels welcome in a difficult situation - and the song itself becomes a sombre but comforting refuge from the worst that the world has to offer. At the other is the razor sharp power pop of Scared, an absolute rush of a song but one where pace and melody tend to mask the sheer desperation of Ellis’s vocal. Lead track Reading The Wrappers is great too - (ed. makes “wind it up” gestures) - yeah, alright… (for fucks sake - ed.)

The other side of this 12” single is occupied by Joanna Gruesome, a better band than their name suggests but who are not on top form here: only the elegiac shimmer and melancholy of Coffee Implosion matches up to any of the Trust Fund tunes. That doesn’t really matter tho - four of these six songs are among the very best of their kind. While it’s a record that still stands on its merits, it’s become a time capsule for me too, a moment where I was excited by music for the first time in years and feeling like my life was, for once, heading somewhere other than indefinite illness. The illness thing didn’t pan out: I got worse again, improved more, had a breakdown somewhere in the middle and finally understood that being able to go for a walk and make my own dinner was about as good as it was likely to get. But the music is still important to me, both on this record and all the others that I discovered from 2013/14 onwards. I can’t say much has ever happened in my life - it’s largely been based around long periods of nothing at all - but this was a time when I again became a person that related to the outside world as something other than a sick body and those records were my conduit for that. Whatever it is that I’ve become now, it began with these songs.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #Trust Fund #Joanna Gruesome #Indiepop #DiY pop #10s Music #Bandcamp #Personal

[manysmallhands]

#39: The Clientele - On A Summer Trail

Released - 21st July 2014

Highest UK Chart Position - Did not chart

Spotify streams to date - 69,492

First heard - Radio, 2014

According to a tweet from last year, The Clientele “do not self identify as indie-pop”, a comment I was reminded of during the “we’re not like those bands!” discourse from earlier in the list. Which is fine tbh, they can identify however they want: they’ve always formed part of the bedrock of UK indiepop in my opinion, but there’s something a lot more epic and considered about their sound than some of their more shambolic brethren, and they’ve never been shy of the odd 8 minute rock-out either. Still, where do we find On A Summer Trail? As a limited release 7” single on a tiny subsidiary of a tiny indiepop label that’s named after a Huggy Bear lyric. One is reminded of the adage about walking and quacking like ducks. Anyway…

This was one of two singles from 2014 (the other being the American release Falling Asleep) that heralded a new era for The Clientele, with both featuring a heavy emphasis on the Iranian Santur dulcimer. But rather than giving Summer Trail a Middle Eastern vibe, the effect seems only to emphasise the band’s Britishness, adding a baroque psychedelia to their (don’t call it) jangle-pop sound. It’s a song that feels like an English summertime: the chord progressions descend like a path into the woods, while the cornfields and long grass of the lyrics lend a kind of rustic innocence to the romance at its centre.

As the rain batters down on the flat roof above me, it does feel slightly perverse in late Autumn - that most Clientele of all the seasons - that I’ve picked their most Summery single here. In my defence, I think we were still in August when I started putting the list together and this was one of the first on the team sheet. I was moved to revisit my choice recently in light of the changing situation but, of all their UK singles, there’s not really even anything from their phenomenal early run that matches up to this late period favourite. While most of the acts in this stretch of the list have a natural home in the 10s, it’s comforting to find a band 15 years into their career who I can confidently place this far down, safe in the knowledge that they were better than they’d ever been and as good as anything else too.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #The Clientele #Not Indiepop #Don't Call It Indiepop #Indiepop #10s Music #Youtube

[manysmallhands]

#37: The Soundcarriers - Boiling Point

Released: 7"- 12 Sep 2012 ; Video Release - 21st Apr 2014

Highest UK Chart Position - Did not chart

Spotify streams to date: 149,946

First Heard - On re-release, 2014

I can remember Soundcarriers records from before this and, while they weren’t exactly bad, they did feel quite tame: coming off like reheated psychedelia, they had a distinct “Seekers joining a drug cult” vibe. In comparison, Boiling Point goes a lot harder, sounding more like they’ve taken over the movement completely and dumped acid in the local water supply. Their music was always built around revivalism, but this single gave their take on the late 60s more of a retrofuturist aspect, subtly throwing in some modern ideas which fit with the project so well that you might never notice the joins. The result is a kind of pop as head music, something catchy enough to be extremely addictive while having a kind of hypnotic whip-crack about it that could leave you staring blankly into space for hours at a time.

Once you get past the swirling drones of the intro, the drums are the thing that immediately jump out at you. Obviously it’s a kind of motorik beat but rather than recreating a live drum sound, it feels weirdly artificial, decaying in a uniform way as it drifts back under the mix, before cutting through hard again like something puncturing sheet metal. Alongside the loops of noise that form its nagging, almost ugly hooks, these elements have more in common with electronic music than a standard psych-pop act. But those 60s tropes are all here too, especially the coven-like male/female vocals and the heady musical swirl that threatens to swamp them: in what feels like an attempt to recreate the vibe of a trip itself, all of the song’s queasy energy and hurtling momentum is set against the sound of a choir singing calmly from the centre of the cyclone. While there has already been (and will continue to be) plenty of good old-fashioned nostalgia in this list, Boiling Point’s commitment to the bit does rather single it out. But its greatness comes from how it catches a band as they start to transcend their reference points, moving into more turbulent and interesting waters.

#Uncool50 #50favouritesingles #The Soundcarriers #Ghost Box #Psychedelia #Hauntology #10s Music #Youtube