2001: The Good Old Days? - January

One thing that was evident around the turn of the century was how big dance music was at the time. Just over a year later and this is still the case with almost half the new entries in January 2001 being dance records.

We'll start with the best one which is "Camels" by Santos. This one very much reminds me of an era when decent dance records were making the charts. Not only that, but also dance records that may not have been my cup of tea but were records for the dance music fans more than a mainstream audience.

A record I bought on vinyl at the time was "Komodo (Save A Soul)" by Mauro Picotto. At the time it seemed like this was the sort of direction hard dance music was heading in, slower than happy hardcore which had more or less died at this point, but faster than your average dance record.

There were 2 UK garage records this month and both were by groups jumping on the bandwagon. There was Mis-Teeq with "Why", an unknown R&B record given a garage remix and bringing them into the mainstream. The result was surprisingly good. What wasn't so good was "Falling" by Boom! who were a mixed gender pop group and a bit rubbish.

I'm a big fan of "Needin U" by David Morales but this month it's fallen victim to the trend at the time of ruining tunes with vocals so therefore gets no marks. I'm not too keen on "Demons" by Fatboy Slim & Macy Gray but can still appreciate it. No marks for it though.

Just the one rap record this month which comes from Spooks with "Things I've Seen" which I do like.

R&B wise we have 2 records, but both are really pop disguised as R&B. They are "Love Don't Cost A Thing" by Jennifer Lopez and "You Make Me Sick" by Pink. Neither records get any marks and I consider the latter to be bad enough to be crowned worst record of the month.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers had the last single from their "Californication" album "Road Trippin". I owned the album at the time but don't recall this being a single. I do like it though. 

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: 33%

Here's a look at the chart:

2001 is clearly better than any of the years that followed. We also have months that are better than December 1999 though the best of them fall just short of the December 1993 score. This series of posts has cover the start of 2001 to October 2007. A separate series of posts looks at every Top 30 from the start of 1990 to the end of 1999 and will conclude at the end of the year. This just leaves a gap of the year 2000 and it only seems right to fill this gap in. As you may have guessed, next week will be the start of 2000: The Good Old Days?