2001: The Good Old Days? - November

We've already established that we're now back in the era when dance music was big in the charts. There were no shortage of dance records in November 2001. However there were more rap and R&B records so this is where we'll start.

The only rap or R&B record to get full marks that I didn't buy the album of is "Ugly" by Bubba Sparxxx. The ones I do own as part of the albums are "Fight Music" by D12, "Livin It Up" by Ja Rule ft Case, "Letter 2 My Unborn" by 2Pac and "Fallin" by Alicia Keys.

That's all the rap records getting full marks but just the one R&B record. The rest of the R&B records all get zero even though these were the early days of me declaring myself as an R&B fan. With the likes of Destiny's Child having hits though it shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

I got into R&B off the back of being into UK garage. This month there were 2 UK garage records but neither were any good and part of the reason for the genres demise. We have "They Don't Know" by So Solid Crew which needs no further explanation. Then we have "Messin" by Ladies First, a girl group jumping on the garage bandwagon.

Trance music is a mixed bag. There's a zero for vocal records "Stay With Me" by Angelic and "Dreams" by Miss Shiva. The vocal record "Underwater" gets half a mark though. Instrumental trance record "The Legacy" by Push gets full marks.

There isn't a bad house record this month and that includes "Rapture" by IIO which I do like despite the fact it appeared to inspire a lot of vocal rubbish in later years. We also have "Harder Better Faster Stronger" by Daft Punk which I could almost tell would be a single when I first heard it on the album.

It's not Daft Punk who give us the best record though, it's a record from the punk world. I'd bought Green Days "Warning" album the day it was released a year or so prior to this. I found the album to be disappointing but one exception was the track "Waiting" which was different in a good way.

The worst record comes from Cher. After her late 90s revival with her autotune nonsense it seemed like that phase was over by 2001. But then came "The Music's No Good Without You". Fortunately that was the end.

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 looking more promising but lets see how the rest of the year pans out.