THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH TO NUMBER ONE CONTINUES

ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN I'M FLOATING IN A CONSTANT HEAVEN
Rachel Stevens, "Crazy Boys" (original writeup)

There's a very good chance that anyone who's ever had the misfortune of talking to me about pop music since the release of "Crazy Boys" is, even as you read this, on their way to the hospital to be treated for a case of severe shock. When it comes to songs for which I am the demented governess, intractably convinced that the baby is really her own, "Crazy Boys" would have to be way way way way way way way way up that list - I mean, it's the song that enabled me to come out of the closet as a ferocious devotee of hyper-constructed pop music to all my Mountain Goats- and Broken Social Scene-loving friends, for god's sakes; they'd all be excused for being surprised to see this about five spots lower than expected.

And, frankly, they're not wrong. "Crazy Boys", after all, is still on the short list in the running for the title of The Greatest Creation Ever Wrought By Richard X, and the only thing keeping it from being the hands-down best song on Come And Get It is my reluctance to pick apart an album that's basically revealed itself to be the single best chart-pop album since The Lexicon of Love. I hasten to add, of course, that comparing Come and Get It and Lexicon is a bit like comparing High Fidelity to Death in Venice; the simple fact is that neither Rachel Stevens nor her songwriters have the requisite chops to make an album anywhere near as devastatingly on-the-nose as Lexicon, although to be fair neither does anyone else on this planet. But anyone who's able to approach Come And Get It in terms of what it sounds like rather than in terms of what it's about is in for one of the singular musical treats of their lives; the story goes that since Stevens had been on the verge of being dropped by her label, she contacted every shit-hot pop producer she could get on the phone (Xenomania, Dallas Austin, Jewels & Stone) and got thirteen monumental (yet still nuanced and discrete) tracks over which to sing. Naturally the album was a monstrous flop and Rachel was shunted down Polydor's sub-label chain, eventually ending up on some bullshit imprint that might not have even opened up for business yet. It would be an honest-to-goodness shame if it hadn't had the effect of instilling a poignancy in the album's songs that no performance could have ever come close to nailing; Come and Get It is a long string of insecurities about relationships, convictions, and the trustworthiness of the ground under one's feet, and every time Stevens' content manages to shake free of the background tracks which couldawouldashoulda saved her career, chills go down my spine. Skipping around on Come and Get It feels almost like skipping around on Music for 18 Musicians - why the hell would I want to inflict that kind of violence on something so rigorously tight-knit?

That's easy: because as fantastic as some of the songs are, some of them are simply more fantastic than others, and none moreso than "Crazy Boys". The easiest way to prove this to yourself is, of course, to listen to it on a good pair of headphones - I speak from experience when I say that "Crazy Boys" sounds retardedly great blasting out of my car speakers, but even as I'm sitting there in the moment of being pummelled by that murderous kick drum or or those crashing synth-exclamation marks, I can't help but strain my ears to catch all the little details going on in this song. And boy are there a lot of little details - vocal tracks playing against each other, arpeggios swelling in texture before receding to Nicole Richie-like proportions just as quickly, percussion lines suddenly revealing themselves to have melodic properties, all that hot shit. And let's not shortchange Rachel on this one either - the girl just flat-out knocked it out of the solar system here, nailing Alison Golfrapp's coy-machine act as effortlessly as anything on Supernatural, yet somehow finding a way to graft a palpable sense of despair and frustration on top. I mean, there probably isn't a single word (thanks to Polydor removing the "crap" from "Negotiate With Love") on Come and Get It delivered with more relish than that hissed-whispered "Crazy boys!" during the chorus here - that's because this is the song where she just gets to cut the fuck loose. Or maybe it's just me - my ears have been wrong before. I freely admit that Come and Get It has more potential embarassment down the line if I ever decide to give it up than almost anything else I own, and I say that as a man with a Bay City Rollers compilation in his CD rack right now. But if the year's worth of near-constant rotation Come and Get It's gotten in general, and "Crazy Boys" has gotten in particular, I somehow don't see that as being a problem. (Click here to buy Come and Get It from Amazon.co.uk)

SIX! SIX! SIX! SIX! UH...WAIT, CANCEL THAT LAST ONE
Shaznay Lewis, "I've Never Felt Like This Before" (Phones Volt version) (original writeup)

I'm pretty sure the only people more likely to feel the brusque backhand of my world-conquering laziness more sharply than those poor, misguided souls who email me in the hopes of geting me to listen to their music would be the folks who email me in the hopes of getting me to send them a song I've taken down; I do feel kinda bad since most everyone I've ever asked for a hey-I-was-retarded resend have been princes of the blood about it (hi James and Miguel), but given a choice between posting one file to Yousendit and trying to bounce a basketball as many times consecutively as I can (and then trying to break that record), well, er, let's just say that I've gotten up to seven thousand four hundred and sixty-one before the the tenants below me started complaining (lousy jerks). That being said, I do pay attention to all the requests, or at least enough attention to notice that if I charged a dollar per resend, I could probably retire to the Bahamas strictly on the basis of the resends of this mix of an ex-All Saint carried out by some dude, I dunno, Pete Ashworth or something. Granted, it's not too hard to see why - for some inexplicable reason, the Phones mix wasn't included on any of the major releases of the single, eventually turning up on a 10" version which like two people on earth bought. Well, thank fuck one of them had the wherewithal to rip from vinyl, because at this point I'd rather deny myself the pleasures of sight than live without this song; I'm not sure if I can name three songs offhand that get across sass or giddiness half as thoroughly, both from the viewpoint of the performance (that's genuine joy in those wobbly "whoa-oh-ohhh"s right before the chorus, y'all) and the production (I refuse to believe Epworth ever had more fun making a song sound the way it ended up sounding than he did on this mix - it's a hell of an articulate, thrilling production to pull off in eight hours). I mean, this song really should have been at least as big a hit as "Crazy In Love"; instead, it ended up a Bosnian Serb under the feeble protection of the MP3 blogosphere's UN. Any of y'all with kids would do well by 'em to teach them that the world's a fucked-up place sometimes. (Click here to buy a used copy of the "Never Felt Like This Before" promo featuring the Volt version from a GEMM merchant)

ELSEWHERE
- HOLY SHIT A WHOLE SHITLOAD OF NEW LONG BLONDES DEMOS OVER AT DREAMS OF HORSES HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT. Once Hell Hath No Fury comes out (er, by now may that should read "if"), I think it's a fair claim that the Blondes are going to be sitting on the album I covet most ferociously on this earth, so yeah, I would suggest doing like me and taking every opportunity to spoil that rare pleasure for yourself, even in demo form.