I was unable to contribute this week, owing to the fact that the two more obscure songs were near-impossible to find as downloads, and I don't remember them well from the time.

Tragedy – Steps

I get the strange sensation my girlfriend is standing over me, checking I don’t knock this one. She’s in luck of course, because it really is fun, and breathes that youthful exuberance into the slightly tired sounding Bee Gees original. School discos were never going to be the same again, that’s for sure. At last! A song I could dance to! (8)

The Dope Show – Marilyn Manson

Now that Manson appears to have lost the grip on shock value and controversy he once held to the lyrically/aesthetically/musically superior Eminem, I think it may be useful to examine the context here. People got really worked up about this song, and the man who fronted the band who made it. Some people bought into his ideas like they were going out of fashion (which, by 1998, they were), whilst others held protest rallies and God-knows-what to make known their disgust. Listening to “The Dope Show” (which is far more a crime against actual tunes than it is against society), this all seems a little silly now, doesn’t it? (3)

The Bartender and the Thief – Stereophonics

Trying to buy the “Thousand Trees” single as a plucky young indie kid (so they were signed to V2, but whatever), a friend accused me of listening to “weird no-name bands”. By the time this came out, it seemed the nation’s youth were sold: the all the girls fancied Kelly, all the boys wanted to rawk. Not a bad slice of overdriven guitar action, apparently about lesbians, good hooks, and so on. What was to follow (i.e. the rest of the album) was not the childish disowning of a band because they became too popular to be cool, but the sensible disdain of a band who were no longer any cop. Still, good while it lasted. (7)