Trawling the archives of the UK pop charts for tenuous links, patterns and globally important trends. We're gonna get ourselves connected, as they say. (NB: they don't)
Observant readers of The Pop Web will have noted our sister project "Every 1" which reviews and contextualises every UK number 1. In honour of this quest, we thought we would try and take on a connecting challenge which spans a huge swathe of the history of the UK number 1. The first UK number 1 was achieved by Al Martino with "Here In My Heart" in November 1953. 50 years later, this song was the UK number 1:
Christina Aguilera - Dirrty
Yes, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the UK number 1 was a song with a video featuring bare-knuckle boxing and all manner of hedonistic activity (interestingly, the video for Dirrty was only banned in Thailand after it was revealed that at one point in the video Christina was standing in front of a wall which contained grafiti advertising child prostitutes). Apart from the accidents of history which placed them at these milestones of the UK chart, what else connects these two?
Well... Al Martino, in addition to his singing career, also had a part in the Godfather as the singer Johnny Fontaine.
"Starring" alongside Al was none other than Diane Keaton. But before we hear the hundreds of voices of complaint, bear with us, we haven't turned into a "connect the movie star" blog, the good folks at imdb have already sorted that out for us. Diane Keaton, in addition to being an actress has also tried her hand at directing and crucially, made a brief foray into the world of the music video and directed this 80s classic:
As we've discussed elsewhere, we wouldn't want you to go away thinking that "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" is the unchallenged pinacle of Belinda Carlisle's career but, needs must, and this is the link that the chart web has provided. Belinda Carlisle's career was driven in part by the songwriting genius that is Rick Nowles who, in his time has wrote several absolute smashes (e.g. this, this and this). If that amazing collection of writing credits wasn't enough, he also co-wrote one of the strongest ballads for the Queen of Pop:
Power Of Goodbye by Madonna takes us on to our home stretch. In 2002, the stars (and their schedules) aligned and Madonna teamed up with Britney Spears on Me Against The Music
It's a shame really, you'd think with two of pop's most entertaining and compelling women on a record they'd be able to come up with something a little less... well... a little less "third single off the album", wouldn't you? Sadly, in the world of pop 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2 so there you go. Anyway, you can probably see where we're going now, can't you? Yes. Well, if not, this picture should give it away...
Britney's career set off in the Mickey Mouse Club in 1993, as Christina Aguilera reached the end of her tenure (Justin Timberlake was also knocking around but forget about that for now). Christina and Britney's career have operated in remarkable parallel with one another in one sense (i.e. the "sense" of most tabloid media), and with completely no correlation in another (i.e. in an actual comparison of the two's chart career). The comparison between Britney and Christina may have been a little fair at the start of their career but as time has gone on, the two have actually traversed fairly discrete routes. In any event, that's an article for another day. The journey is complete. Number 1 at the start of year 1, and Number 1 at the start of year 50, united by The Pop Web.
Al Martino - Diane Keaton - Belinda Carlisle - Rick Knowles - Madonna - Britney Spears - Christina Aguilera
Oh, but before we forget, can we just emphasise that whatever else Christina has relased throughout her career, in our view she's never been much better than she was on this.
Christina Aguilera has unveiled her new single, called "Not Myself Tonight" which you can listen to here (perhaps at some point the record company will deign to permit video embedding and, you know, diffuse the PROMOTIONAL video across the fragmented media consumed by its contemporary target audience...)
A few preliminary observations:
Firstly, Xtina could do with tipping her hat to Timbaland for inspiring the beats which underpin the song. Observant listeners will note they're almost exactly the same as in SexyBack.
Secondly, it doesn't have the immediacy (or the daring attitude) of something like Dirrty. It takes a few listens but there is undoubtedly some great stuff here (especially the "Tonight I'm not the same girl" shouty refrain). It has to be said, though, that if this is the start of a campaign which seeks to reinvent Christina, it doesn't quite do the job given that it seems to borrow production tricks which worked two years ago but which have become a little de rigeur now. On the other hand, it's a song which has just inspired a pop music blog do use the term de rigeur so perhaps, at least on this level, it's done something right.
Thirdly, this is a perfectly competent release to kick off the Bionic album campaign. But, if we were in Christina's camp, we would be just a little bit wary about hearing the word "competent" ascribed to this comeback single. The female solo pop market is currently about as crowded than it was back in the good old early 00s Christina/Britney wars. Britney's a good few months away from putting anything out which at least avoids those anachronistic comparisons to be wheeled out but now Christina is going up against the likes of Lady Gaga and, we absolutely regret to add, Katie Perry. Obviously the former provides more of an interesting creative foil, but nonetheless, the market for Christina Aguilera's brand of pop is there, but it's fairly fragmented.
Don't get us wrong, "Not Myself Tonight" can be fairly sure of a top ten placing come release day, but having put the Britney war behind her, Christina now finds herself competing with some pretty formidable new kids on the block. When seen against the backdrop of "Telephone", for example, "Not Myself Tonight" really can't afford to be looking dated and merely "competent". Not if it wants to cement Christina as one of the female pop stars occupying the throne which Lady Gaga and Katie Perry are pretending to.
On the other hand, if her team have learned from her past success, and the current success of Lady Gaga, then they'll know that a cracking video could help paper over some of these cracks... We wait in hope.
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