Down In The Park

Looking back, after some period of reflection, at the ludicrous influx of “boy bands” and “girl bands” of the late 90’s and early 00’s it’s fair to say that most of their output was frankly rubbish. That said I’m comfortable in admitting that there were a few randomly scattered top tracks amongst the deluge. Sad but true, I can think of at least one song by the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Five that I can listen to without wanting to commit homicide. You may argue that this reflects more on my notorious dodgy musical taste than any high-points in creativity - but you’d be wrong. What were those songs? Doesn’t matter. None of them made the TSP 1000 so at least you know I don’t absolutely love them. And Bardot were shit. Period.

Where am I going on this, you may well ask. Well my point is that of the thousands upon thousands of singles released by these paint-by-numbers, factory built groups there was only one red-hot future classic of a song. It’s status may be a bit dubious, and you can probably argue that it doesn’t actually belong in the era anyway but Freak Like Me by the Sugababes is almost certainly the best Top 40 radio friendly song released so far this decade.

And dubious it is. As explained here it was a ‘cover’ of a mashed-up Gary Numan vs Adina Howard song that the group/their managers/whoever heard floating around in 2001 and decided they’d re-record. Cue instant hit, Nu-mania and a lot of royalties going everywhere but the group’s pockets. For the limited time that it’s available on that link (Spoilt Victorian Child, easily my favourite MP3 blog of the moment) you can download the absolutely seamless original mash-up version which, truth be told, is probably better.


Whether or not you can claim it as having been part of the era in discussion when it’s two parts were welded together from completely seperate musical times and it wasn’t even their idea to stick them together in the first place is debatable. I choose to say that it is, lest we don’t have anything else to show from our years of being assaulted by Scandal’us. Your opinion may vary.