2004: The Good Old Days? - February

At the turn of the century Ibiza was very much an island for dance music. Then in 2005 Ibiza Rocks was launched due to the decline in popularity of dance music and increase in popularity of indie music. In February 2004 I think I've found the point where that change took place because I count an equal number of dance records as there are indie records.

There's no shortage of records to get full marks but they're all what I'd call TVR Griffith records i.e. they're good but only a nitwit would consider them the best. I have to pick one though and I find myself gravitating towards "Rock Your Body Rock" by Ferry Corsten. It's a decent trance record in an era where a lot of the trance records hitting the charts were dreadful.

We have a bit of genre crossing in the dance music world this month with Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde featuring on "Straight Ahead" by Tube & Berger and The Cure singer Robert Smith featuring on "Da Hype" by Junior Jack. Both decent efforts.

It's a more low key month for rap music and the only record getting full marks is another genre crossing with with Lenny Kravitz collaborating with P Diddy, Loon and Pharrell on "Show Me Your Soul". I didn't want to like a P Diddy record at the time, but the Neptunes production and featured artists made me feel more comfortable about it. I thought "Holidae Inn" by Chingy was OK but can't say I liked "The Set Up" by Obie Trice & Nate Dogg or "It Takes Scoop" by Fatman Scoop. 

It was even more low key for R&B music. We had "Walked Outta Heaven" by Jagged Edge of their "Hard" album which I already owned by this point and like. There was the debut for Joss Stone with "Fell In Love With A Boy", a reworded cover of "Fell In Love With A Girl" by White Stripes which was shit. Then there was "Dance With My Father" by Luther Vandross which I want to like because he's a good singer but unfortunately the songs quite dreary.

When Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins was sent to prison I realised I couldn't name a single Lostprophets song. None of the ones I've heard in this journey have rung a bell until now. I recognised "Last Train Home" and I actually quite like it.

The worst record goes to Pink with "God Is A DJ". If anything it's because of the misleading title, it's not a dance record by any stretch of the imagination. That said when you see who the artist it's safe to assume it's going 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: 24%

Here's a look at the chart:

This months score means that over half the months in 2004 say around a quarter of the Top 40 is decent.