Would you capture it or just let it slip?
Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.
2002 : Lose Yourself - Eminem
This one surprises me - I think it's an OK track but it's nowhere close to being his best track so I suspect there's some kind of tie-in that's pushed it to the top of the list for this year. I'm also not expecting to find a load of covers out there...
The video immediately explains the tie-in is to 8 Mile (a surprisingly good film which I own on DVD and the rap battle extras are most amusing) but apart from that it's 5:27 of unremarkableness which must have taken at least five minutes to plan. Not the song though - that's way better than I remembered it being.
Wikipedia tells me I'm wrong and that many people view this as his finest work - it certainly well down well with the public, with it being his first #1 in the US (and staying there for TWELVE weeks, keeping Missy Elliott's "Work It" at #2 for ten weeks). It was his fourth #1 over here - can you believe he's had seven chart toppers here? And they REALLY loved it in Sweden - it was their best selling song of 2003. Wikipedia also has a surprisingly big section on the video, including the somewhat surprising information that a fan-edit version done by "msvogue23" has over 1 billion views on YouTube. I assumed it must have been way better than the original so rushed to see it, but it's basically just the same scenes in a different order, so quite why people went mad for it is unclear!
Wikipedia lists a load of cover versions, but when you look at them, most of them are just people rapping over the music. However, it does offer us the bizarre combination of Weird Al Yankovic (exactly what you expect), The Script (I quite like this), Christian parody band (whatever one of them is) ApologetiX (just weird) post hardcore band Serianna (certainly different) along with live versions from Taylor Swift (barely audible!) and Kelly Clarkson (pretty good). secondhandsongs.com also offers up Paul Young (a swing version - not at all what I was expecting) and The Sons Of Pitches (an odd Gregorian chant based version) and YouTube comes up with Andra Day (a nice soulful version) and Selected Of God (I like this - and it has a much better video than the original).
So having been reminded that it's a better track than I remembered and exactly how popular it was, maybe I'm not so surprised it took the year but I suspect we'll come up with some more probable winners from over here. Looking at the year end chart, the top two (by quite some distance) emerged from Pop Idol with Will Young's "Evergreen" comfortably taking the top spot ahead of Gareth Gates's "Unchained Melody" (the FOURTH time we've mentioned this track over the years). The rest of the top five are a very unimpressive selection of Enrique Iglesias's "Hero", Nelly's "Dilemma" and Elvis vs JXL's "A Little Less Conversation".
And things just get worse further down - the top 50 for the year features eight tracks from either Pop Idol, Popstars or Popstars:The Rivals, two Oasis tracks (and this was not a peak Oasis year) and two S Club Juniors tracks. And we're not even close to rock bottom yet because I've still got Las Ketchup's "The Ketchup Song" and Ali G & Shaggy's "Me Julie" to mention. Things can't get worse than that, can they? Oh look, the 24th best selling track of the year was The Cheeky Girl's "Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)". Sigh. In the whole top 50, the only tracks I'd actively choose to listen to are Girls Aloud's "The Sound Of The Underground", P!nk's "Get The Party Started", Christina Aguilera's "Dirrrty" and Puretone's "Addicted To Bass" - 2002 was not a great year for best-selling singles.
Hopefully, looking slightly further down the charts will improve matters (but I'm not all that confident). The UK charts offer up Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever", Doves' "There Goes The Fear", Ms Dynamite's "It Takes More", Red Hot Chili Peppers' "By The Way", Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles", Coldplay's "In My Place" and "The Scientist", Busted's "What I Go To School For", Jennifer Lopez's "Jenny From The Block" and Avril Lavigne's "Sk8ter Boi". Not a huge selection and plenty of those would have struggled to make other years - there were also a load of singles by big names this year that I simply don't remember.
Looking over the Atlantic, the best selling single of the year was Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" which we already know was from 2001 - the rest of the charts is mostly US R&B stars who I've heard of but know very little about. Usher features on the top 100 list three times, Nelly four times and Ashanti (Mrs Nelly) an incredible seven times - she had quite the 2002 over there.
After listening to the track and seeing the competition, I'm actually pretty happy that Eminem took the year (and I'm tempted to watch 8 Mile again). It's a decent track with a good narrative, a cracking bassline - and a very lazy video.
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