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Westlife, DJ Otzi and now Bob The Builder... they must have been worried about loading so much serious, heavyweight material so early in the sequence there.
The claymation construction worker's second Number One single is of course a parody, if that's the appropriate word, of Lou Bega's summer hit of two years earlier, which is in turn based on a Perez Prado instrumental, hence the otherwise confusing title which supplies at least one joke in this version. For obvious generational reasons, I don't know much about the characters here other than Bob himself, but I always had something of a soft spot for this, and not least because it seemed to wind up the sort of people who believed the chart belonged to people aged between about 15 and 30, and anything that was popular with people of other ages didn't belong there. And I find it slightly amusing that Neil Morrissey has had two Number Ones and Stephen Morrissey hasn't had any.
Also appearing on: Now 48
Available on: Bob the Builder - the Album
I was about 14/15 when this Now album came out, and at the time I was aghast at how terrible all the current pop music seemed to be to me - why was I so out of the loop.
ReplyDeleteSo far the listing of Now 50 has reassured me that the chart music WAS embarrassingly bad at the time. I mean, can you imagine any of these songs being played on oldies radio in 10-15 years?
I don't think that not making it to oldies radio necessarily means that it's bad. Short term pop still counts as far as I'm concerned. I expect to see the Kylie one hanging around as a classic, even though I agree that it's not actually very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this is pretty weak compilation (though, as the Anonymous Tipster who bought this, I decided it was definitely better than the other one I saw in the same shop - it was either 49 or 51), and I do see your point that it's noticeably short on records of lasting signifcance: I make it 9 if I'm LUDICROUSLY generous.
I'd tend to agree with the disagreement, if that makes sense. At least in the sense that I wouldn't trust the judgement of oldies radio: the songs you currently hear from 1996 aren't necessarily my favourites either.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say that I'm going to like all of this album, or even rank it that high compared to other Now! albums, but at the risk of spoilers, I don't think it gets any better when it gets more serious.