You know very well who you are - don't let 'em hold you down
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
1994 : Juicy - The Notorious B.I.G.
Not a track I recognise from the title, but I suspect I've heard it - maybe even written about it (having checked, I've written up Ready To Die, which includes this track but I didn't mention it once). I've no idea why it might have taken the year, I suspect I'm not going to love it and I'll be surprised if there are too many cover versions but let's see, shall we?
The video is 4:12 of nonsense nostalgia, ambition and "success" - and the main thing I took away from it that there's no way Mr B.I.G. had a reel-to-reel tape player when he was younger (he was born four years after me). It's all remarkably average for me, I'm afraid and I'm a bit surprised he got away with the lyric "time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade".
Wikipedia has remarkably little on the song other than telling me "the song is widely considered to be one of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time". Not by me, it ain't. The only other fact of interest is that Pete Rock claimed that Puffy (who produced the track) stole the beat from him - and at no point does anyone deny it, so it's quite possibly true. There's no section on critical comment, but there is an accolades section which gives various lists that it's done well in, including being declared #1 in a "Greatest hip-hop songs of all time" list drawn up by no less an authority on hip-hop than the BBC, so it MUST be true - you can almost imagine Nicholas Witchell announcing it in his special royal funeral voice. And how successful was this fantastic song commercially? Well it got to the dizzy heights of #27 in the US, #72 in the UK and, somewhat bizarrely, it was certified gold in Denmark.
Wikipedia lists no cover versions so we have to turn to our reliable back-up, secondhandsongs.com - up until this point, it's always churned out 50+ versions, even if they're by artists that you suspect are totally made up. For this song, it lists FOUR covers - Emily Wells (some interesting instrumental sounds, but her voice is SOOOO annoying), Scott Bradlee's Post Modern Jukebox (quite a clever jazz version featuring a fantastic vocal by Maiya Sykes), Patrick Lentz (not a terrible acoustic version) and Sharaya J (which is just her on something that looks like The Voice, so doesn't really count). YouTube has a few more versions by random artists but the only one that jumped at me was by Halsey - she does a reasonable job with it, but it's seven years old and amusingly has her down as an "artist to watch".
So, I can hear absolutely no reason why this took the year and nothing Wikipedia says explains it other than hippy-hoppy people like it (and we all know they like a load of shite). I'm expecting a load of better tracks from the year, but if it's anything like '93 I may be sorely disappointed. The UK year-end charts tell us that the best-selling track of the year was Wet Wet Wet's "Love Is All Around" - I guess it's OK if you like that sort of thing but it is, well, a bit wet. The rest of the top five were Whigfield's "Saturday Night" (terrible and somehow kinda great at the same time), East 17's "Stay Another Day" (ditto), Pato Banton's "Baby Come Back" (terrible and - no, just terrible) and All-4-One's "I Swear" (I don't even remember this). Hmmm - that's not a great selection now, is it? Other tracks that jumped out at me were Ace Of Base's "The Sign" (#10 - I really like the Pitch Perfect version), Man Yoo's "Come On You Reds" (#11 - really?), Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (#12 - how has this not won the year?), Youssou N'Dour & Neneh Cherry's "7 Seconds" (#16 - a fine track), Take That's "Everything Changes" (#19 - this feels very low) and Jimmy Nail's "Crocodile Shoes" (#21 - this is worse than "Ain't No Doubt" and that's really saying something).
Some better tracks in there, but I'm sure we can do better looking at the charts - Tori Amos's "Cornflake Girl", Reel 2 Real's "I Like To Move It" (not a great track, but super catchy), Blur's "Girls & Boys" and "Parklife", Crash Test Dummies' "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (Alexa used to really struggle naming this track!), PJ & Duncan's "Let's Get Ready To Rhumble" (with an extra "h" in there to prevent copyright issues!), Oasis's "Live Forever" and "Cigarettes & Alcohol", Kylie Minogue's "Confide In Me" (was this the start of grown-up Kylie?), R.E.M.'s "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?", Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Missed You)" and Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" (I really like this). That's a much better selection than last year, isn't it? (although it's still pretty short).
I imagine the US is going to give us a load of shite R&B and hip-hop - wow, the best selling single of the year over there was Ace Of Base's "The Sign"! They also held the #9 and #10 positions as well - they had a good year over there! The rest of the chart is very R&B heavy with surprisingly little hip-hop - the only other track that jumped out at me was Elton John's "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" which did much better over there than it did here.
OK - so we've established there were plenty of tracks I preferred over Juicy this year, but we haven't established how it took the year and Mariah didn't. And I'm so struggling to understand what's going on that I've done some further research and, according a random website with no credentials whatsoever but some believable Spotify numbers, Mariah has had 1.5 billion streams and Notorious has had 600 million - which ain't even close! Does that mean I'm basically wasting my time on nonsense here?!? Oh well, it's not like it's the first time - and "Juicy" has been declared to be the winner, so the winner it is. Maybe.
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