Thursday 12 January 2023

Christmas Charts Rated: 2007

 Top 40

Best Song: T2 featuring Jodie Aysha - Heartbroken

There was a sort of UK Garage revival for the modern era at the end of 2007 in bassline house. This was the Top 40 record that kicked it off in the charts. It was pretty short lived from a chart perspective and spawned just a handful of Top 40 hits. All the hits were a little cheesy and commercial sounding, but a breath of fresh air compared to the sheer quantity of crap coming out elsewhere.

Worst Song: Rihanna featuring Jay-Z - Umbrella

I picked this for the worst song in 2007 in my best year search. At Christmas time it was still there in the Top 40. There were some truly awful records in this Top 40 including a couple more from Rihanna, but none of them quite as bad as this record.

Top 40 Review

Although 2007 was just one place above 2009 in the table for the best year search, there was a 2 point difference which meant 2007 was almost twice as good as 2009.

It was the first year at Christmas that a record could reach the Top 40 on downloads alone without a physical release to accompany it. This resulted in there being 10 Christmas records in the Top 40 including a first Top 40 appearance for "Driving Home For Christmas" by Chris Rea. Just the one actual new Christmas song with "Don't Shoot Me Santa" by The Killers, the rest are the usual suspects. As always it's zeros all around for the Christmas songs.

Once again Alicia Keys contributes to the points with "No One" which gets the full marks this time. Another one to get full marks comes from the most unlikely source, Take That. When they made their comeback I found their music to be surprisingly good and "Rule The World" was the last of these good songs before they went shit again.

Elsewhere we have our fair share of boy bands/girl groups/X Factor contestants. The indie music that dominated the middle of the decade appeared to have died out by this point in favour of the more pop rock music like Scouting for Girls.

One notable exception is "Flux" by Bloc Party which was part of the so called Nu Rave movement earlier in the year which bared no resemblance whatsoever to actual rave music.

Dance music wise, aside from "Heartbroken" the only other record was "Anthem" by Filo & Peri featuring Eric Lumiere which was a vocal trance record and almost a precursor to the EDM nonsense that followed in years to come.

Just the one rap record in there with "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" by Soulja Boy Tellem which just sounds like a piss take to me.

The target to match the best year 2007 score was 5, but this fell way short with just the 3 good records and no half marks.

Score: 3

Table

2007 still tops the table as expected:





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