2003: The Good Old Days? - March

We certainly appear to have gone back to an era when dance music was big in the charts. Normally when the popularity of a genre declines it comes after everyone jumps on the bandwagon and makes rubbish.

We'll start on a more positive note though with the best record which is "Mo Fire" by Bad Company UK. It's members included DJ Fresh, an example of someone making decent music before going on to make commercial rubbish even by his own admission in a round about way. There was another drum & bass record in "Midnight" by Un-Cut which could do without the vocals but is decent nonetheless. 

We have what is possibly the last techno record to make the Top 40 and it comes from the most unlikely act to have that honour, Queen. Admittedly they had little to do with this release, it's Vanguard doing a techno remake of "Flash" and Queen get a credit on the single. It gets full marks.

Also getting full marks is some garage from MJ Cole with "Wondering Why" and a solid effort from Chicane with "Love On The Run". On more of a chill out vibe we have decent records from Rokysopp with "Eple" and Jakatta with "One Fine Day". There's also a rare 21st century hit for Massive Attack with "Special Cases" which also gets full marks.

Such is the quantity of dance music though there's plenty of rubbish too. A lot of it is vocal trance/eurodance remakes of older records such as "Hard To Say I'm Sorry", "The Boys Of Summer", "Total Eclipse Of The Heart", "Someday" (Mariah Carey song) and "Heaven Is A Place On Earth". These all no doubt contributed to the decline in popularity of dance music.

Rap wise we have decent records in "Sing For the Moment" by Eminem, "Mesmerize" by Ja Rule & Ashanti and the double a-side "Provider / Lapdance". Not so keen on "Gossip Folks" by Missy Elliott & Ludacris or "Work It" by Nelly & Justin Timberlake.

Mis-Teeq came back with an R&B record following the demise of UK Garage with "Scandalous" which is decent but would be the last decent record they'd make. Simply Red were also back with "Sunrise" which is one of their better records in my opinion.

The worst record this month comes from Christina Aguilera with "Beautiful". With her previous single "Dirrty" she was moving away from her pop roots to be more street but then she did this dreary nonsense.

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: 28%

Here's a look at the chart:

It's starting to look like early 2003 was better than late 2003. Lets not get carried away though, March 2003 is slightly worse than August 2007 which was just 2 months before we got our first zero.