2005: The End? - June

Whilst indie/garage rock was the leading genre in terms of number of new entries in the Top 40 for June it was a lower proportion than previous months of 2005. This was maybe seen as a good thing by Top of the Pops because none of those indie/garage rock records appeared on the show.

None of those records get full marks but 2 of them get half marks which come from The Magic Numbers with "Forever Lost" and Arcade Fire with "Power Out". I thought both were North American but turns out The Magic Numbers are British. I already knew that Arcade Fire are Canadian. 

My music taste though was dance, rap and R&B so lets see how those genres fared.

There's just 4 records I'd consider to be dance, 3 of which are dance versions of older records. There's "Shot You Down" by Audio Bully's ft Nancy Sinatra, I suspect all Nancy did was sing the original song. Then there's DJ Sammy doing a euro cheese version of "Why" by Annie Lennox and Groove Coverage doing a euro cheese version of "Poison" by Alice Cooper. Finally there's "U Don't Know Me" by Basement Jaxx which sounds like it's trying to rip off "Strict Machine" by Goldfrapp and nowhere near as good.

It's a big fat zero for dance music then, but what about rap? Well that's also a big fat zero because there aren't any rap records.

Up to R&B to deliver then. We have the quantity but not really the quality. We have "N Dey Say" by Nelly which is my best record pick and is taken from his R&B album "Suit". The only other one to get full marks is "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani.

The only other record overall in this batch to get full marks is "Kiss And Say Goodbye" by UB40. Quite an appropriate title for their final Top 40 hit which was also their 40th Top 40 hit. It follows that tried and tested UB40 formula.

All that remains is to pick the worst record and for that I go back to the R&B records. It's "1 Thing" by Amerie, a record that sounds like it's trying to recreate the past but failing. The problem is singers like Amerie are part of the reason why modern music is shit. 

Amerie beat off competition from Crazy Frog, but at least Crazy Frog was supposed to be shit.

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: 13%

Here's a look at the chart:

Well June was a truly dreadful month. Was this the month that chart music died?