whigfield

[19] Charli XCX, ‘I’ll Never Know’

Charli XCX

We did the ‘Saturday Night’ dance to this cute pelting kitten of a dance-pop frippery. Well, if we’re getting picky I think we did the Macarena, but you know, details. Either way, 18 years on – EIGHTEEN YEARS ON – plundering Whigfield is fair game, or even long overdue. And this is a promotional song for Red Bull so it’s not exactly bearing any standards for purity of art.

In fact, Charli – one of the planet’s leading blogstars – doesn’t even sound as if she’s particularly arsed, coming on like the sulky teenager I’m looking forward to Junior being in (oh God) six years. Blogstar, blogstar. It’s a different stratum of pop, isn’t it? Amazing popstars, loved by daytripping indie boys, barely getting within a whiff of Reggie’s Top 40 cologne. Maybe Charli, Robyn and Solange are just rubbish popstars after all.

Junior’s now moved onto the funky worm and declares ‘I’ll Never Know’ “fabulosa”. It’s everyone else who doesn’t know.

[10] Whigfield, ‘Saturday Night’

Now THIS was a hit. Junior danced like a dervish from the funny quacks at the start to the skipping outro. Of course, the funny quacks continued throughout, but Whigfield was never going to be Aretha Franklin, was she?

Sannie Carlson sprang from Denmark, yet  ‘Saturday Night’ is a purely Italian dance record, if perhaps lacking the pedigree of Italo House classics. Really lacking it. It’s a novelty, with its endless little dance and silly lyrics, but it was so catchy it made me momentarily forget my pint of 80/- when I first heard it in an Edinburgh bar. She’s apparently still making records, so it’s testament to one holiday song’s nagging appeal that we all remember this but don’t have the first clue what she’s lent her squawk to since.