2006: The End? - January

As we enter a new year one thing immediately stands out about the new entries in January which is just how few of them there were. In total there were 20, compared to 59 in December 2005 and 40 in January 2005. This means that each good record will carry 5%, so we need just 2 decent and 1 OK record in January 06 to beat the score in December 2005.

The low quantity meant that most records were played on Top of the Pops. I count 9 of the 20 as being from the indie/garage rock genre and 6 of these were on the show. The indie/garage rock dominance was similar to the rap dominance in more recent years, so I guess Top of the Pops had now choice but to dig into that genre.

2 of the indie records not on Top of the Pops are what I would call really obscure. The bands are Crimea and Forward Russia, I've not heard of either. YouTube existed by 2006 so we have the videos from when both records were new and both have had just 40k views in that time. More importantly though, none of the indie records get any points.

My Sunday night viewing by 2006 was the Galaxy Chart on MTV Dance. There were 2 different dance remakes of the Baywatch theme, "Phat Beach (I'll Be Ready)" by Naughty Boy and "I'll Be Ready" by Sunblock. Both are crap.

A better use of sampling came from Hi Tack with "Say Say Say (Waiting 4 U)" which sampled the Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson record and gets full marks. The best dance record, and best Jan 06 record was "Muscle Car" by Mylo & Freeform Five from the excellent "Destroy Rock n Roll" album.

Sticking with dance we had "Dancin" by Aaron Smith ft Luvli which wasn't how I remembered it when I played it. Turns out I was listening to a crappy 2013 EDM remix. Finding the original was like a needle in a haystack but once I found it I thought much better, but too vocal heavy to get full marks so gets half marks instead.

Rap wise we have "Nasty Girl" by Notorious BIG plus others, a record I remember being played a lot on the music channels but could never be sure if it topped the charts or not. Turns out it did, but not my cup of tea. We have British rapper "Sway" with "Little Derek" which is OK.

The worst record is the only R&B record of the month which is "Check On It" by Beyonce and Slim Thug. I was on the music channels a lot and when it came on I would switch channels.

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: 18%

Here's a look at the chart:

This score was helped by the small number of records. If we were just looking at a number score rather than percentage then it would be the worst month, but again the small number of records would put it at a disadvantage.