Month: February 2006

[9] Method Man featuring Mary J Blige, ‘I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need To Get By’

This record scares me. It’s a decent Puff Daddy mix for a start, and then there are the discordant, eerie Blige vocals hovering in the background, not to mention the sound of Method Man declaring undying devotion. It’s almost as threatening as Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’.

It has presence and power; I suppose that’s why I placed it so high. Not enough power, mind you, to distract Junior from scratching her mum’s dressing gown while she sends her emails. For now, Mum and Dad will remain the most fascinating objects in the universe, vying only with the Rollaround balls and sofa cover.

I only noticed today that Ashford and Simpson wrote ‘You’re All I Need To Get By’ in its original form. They built it up, and built it up, and built it up and now it’s solid.

[10] Blur, ‘The Universal’

That clever-clever Clockwork Orange video, the voguish thought-control paranoia of the lyric, the clean lines and tuneless faffings of The Great Escape: Blur were a funny old mixed bag in 1995. Parklife – half a very good album – gave them too much fame and they didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t know if they intended to skewer it with half-baked songs, but it was a sterling effort.

‘The Universal’ is one of two exceptions, to these ears. It’s singalong (ooh, “ironic” karaoke), has some fine trumpet interludes, satisfying use of strings and it builds to a crescendo rather like the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Jealousy’. 

Junior jumped when the strings came in, but soon relaxed as her dad did his near-legendary violin mime. She did the head-rock again, for a moment resembling a classical cellist, and rounded things off with a few of her favourite lip-smacks like an Albarn relishing his Gorillaz cash.

You can almost hear Graham Coxon sneering that he never liked hits anyway.