The Saltburn effect

A rash of 20-year-old tracks, such as Murder on the Dancefloor and Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten, are in the charts again. But which should remain firmly in the early 2000s?

Out of Your Mind by True Steppers and Dane Bowers feat. Victoria Beckham, 2001
UK garage seemed an unlikely musical segue for Victoria’s first solo single and it now seems incredibly dated, and not in a cool, ironic way. It was pretty popular at the time, but sadly not quite popular enough to reach number one, getting pipped at the post by Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love), which had the unfair advantage of being in some way memorable.

Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol, 2006
This miserable, meandering ballad was utterly ubiquitous in 2006 and made you want to top yourself, which isn’t a great combination. The noughties were knee-deep in limp indie bands stuffed full of sad-eyed boys with straggly hair and ripped jeans, which seem to have largely been consigned to history, thank fuck.

My Humps by Black Eyed Peas, 2005
The awfulness of My Humps has penetrated so far into our culture that, rather than it making a comeback, you could ask if it ever went away. However, what it’s certainly not going to be doing is soundtracking the climactic final scene in a sexy murder film about the English aristocracy, however alluring Fergie claims her ‘lovely lady lumps’ are.

I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in my Hair) by Sandi Thom, 2006
From the 30-second long a cappella intro to the asinine lyrics that conflated punks with hippies, who hated each other, and harked back to times when ‘computers were still scary and we didn’t know anything’, this song is terrible. Thom lamented that she was ‘born too late into a world that doesn’t care’, and, unfortunately for her, it still doesn’t.

Axel F by Crazy Frog, 2005
Crazy Frog was an animated character originally marketed by a Swedish ringtone manufacturer, and was originally known as ‘The Annoying Thing’, which is fucking spot on. This cover of the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune is so deeply, horribly irritating that even Gen Z’s rabid enthusiasm for everything Y2K cannot resurrect it.

Ooh Stick You, Daphne and Celeste, 2000
Bratty Americans Daphne and Celeste were everywhere in the year 2000, welcoming in a brand new millennium with lyrics like ‘In your ear with a can of beer, up your butt with a coconut’. They were so hated that a performance at Reading Festival saw them showered with hundreds of bottles of piss, so the UK is probably safe from a comeback from these two.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

I am more than happy, dear reader, to upload any or all of these videos to this post, if I get any requests to do so...😁