2003: The Good Old Days? - January

When I started looking at the charts from the start of 2005 we were in the era of indie domination. As I started going back into 2004 I saw that what came before the indie domination was lots of rap/R&B in the charts. 2003 has taken us back to an era where there's lots of dance music and in January we seem a world away from any sort of indie or rap/R&B dominance.

There were just 5 indie records entering the Top 40. One of those records gets half marks which is "Time For Heroes" by The Libertines, a band whose music I'm enjoying more than I thought it would.

All the rap records get full marks, helped by the fact there were just 2 of them. We have "React" by Eric Sermon & Redman and "Made You Look" by Nas. As for R&B, well there wasn't any.

Onto the dance music then and this gives us the best record which is "Love Story (Vs Finally)" by Layo & Buskwacka. It's a mash up of "Love Story" by Layo & Bushwacka and "Finally" by Kings of Tomorrow, both records I like.

Missing out on best record is "True" by Jaimeson. This was the first time since May 2002 that we had a garage record in the Top 40 having been a pretty prolific genre chart wise in the couple of years prior to that. 

We also have some decent records from Audio Bullys with "We Don't Care" and from John Silver with "Come On Over". Neither were contenders for the best record though.

I've mentioned on previous posts my dislike for a lot of the vocal trance records coming out around this time. There's a few of them this month and none get any points. It does however seem appropriate to pick a vocal trance record as the worst record this month. That honour goes to Oxygen ft Andrea Britton with "Am I On Your Mind". I picked it because it's the one with the worst vocals.

The remaining record to get full marks is a bhangra record which is "Mundian To Bach Ke". Not your usual chart record but it was big at the time. It came shortly after the BBC Asian Network went nationwide and I'm sure this would of helped. 

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: 25%

Here's a look at the chart:

That brings us to the end of 2003 so time to answer the question was 2003 the good old days? I would say no. The early part appeared to be heading in the right direction but as mentioned previously the final Top 30 of 1993 was the worst in the 90s to that point with a score of 32%. We never got as high as 32% in 2003. The question is will 2002 get there?