2005: The End? - March

After going through this next batch of records I can quite confidently say I got a new phone in March 2005. On that phone I could listen to the radio, so I started listening to Galaxy FM on it. This was short lived though once I'd had enough of hearing the same songs every day plus all the adverts. Several of these were Top 40 hits that month.

As a result there are several records that never appeared on Top of the Pops but I am very familiar with. Once again indie/garage rock is the most prominent genre, but only 14 of the 65 records fit that category. Obviously none of them got played on Galaxy FM but they had more presence on Top of the Pops. There's 2 of these records I like which come from New Order and Bravery and both are more of the electronic variety.

One good thing I will say about the charts this month is that it has a wider variety of genres than you could ever imagine these days. The top record could legitimately be placed in both the dance and rock genres. That record is "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" by LCD Soundsystem.

Just narrowly missing out on best record is another dance/rock crossover one in "Lift Me Up" by Moby. It was used for ITVs coverage of the Formula 1 and takes me back to a time when Formula 1 was still worth watching.

Elsewhere in the dance music world, recycling of older records was the order of the day. We have Fatboy Slim's take on "The Joker" which I recall being one of the better records doing the round on the music channels. 

There were 2 rip offs of "Waiting For A Star To Fall" going head to head. We had "Star To Fall" by Cabin Crew which was out and out cheese and "Falling Stars" by Sunset Strippers which was more tolerable but not worthy of full marks.

Then we had Groove Cutters doing "We Close Our Eyes" which was dreadful and LNM Projekt featuring Bonnie Bailey doing Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" which I don't mind even if I did hear it every 5 minutes on Galaxy FM.

Finally in the dance music recycling world we had Styles & Breeze do a commercial dance version of their own happy hardcore composition "Heartbeatz". I'm not keen on the happy hardcore tune so I'm not going to like this one either.

It was a low key month for rap with "Let's Get Blown" by Snoop Dogg & Pharrell being the only record from the genre and gets full marks. Nelly had "Over And Over" from his R&B album "Suit" which features country singer Tim McGraw. I like that record but think now is a good time to point out Tim McGraw tried to crack the UK market after this with his own single "Live Like You Were Dying" which flopped. 

Quite a few R&B records in this Top 40 but most are crap. One good one is the debut for Akon, "Locked Up". On the other end of the scale was the debut for John Legend who I see as a prime example of R&B going shit.

More re-issues for Elvis Presley but this time none get any marks. A re-issue I do quite like is "Is This The Way To Amarillo" by Tony Christie. The fact it stole the limelight at Comic Relief that year and pushed the god awful official Comic Relief single by McFly to the shade.

Lot's of strong contenders for worst record this time round but my pick is "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree" by KT Tunstall. It's supposed to be real music but in reality it's just lowest common denominator worm fodder that isn't even catchy.

Here's a list of the records with the best on top, worst at the bottom and the good ones in green, OK ones in amber and rubbish ones in red (and in no particular order):

Score: 21%