About This Time 20 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of December-ish 2005!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet…

In which we learn that we should never count Madonna out.

We should never assume that she has gone irrevocably down the dumper. Madonna, like the monster at the end of a horror film, will always come back.

For Madonna was back, baby!

It’s difficult to understate just how not inevitable this was. How much it had looked, only a few years earlier, as though Madonna was finally over…

For Madonna had been through a rough patch.

Madonna’s career has been full of rough patches. She’d always courted controversy and then got away with it because she always had yet another banger up her sleeve. By the end of the millennium, she was pretty much the only 80s icon still-standing. It seemed as though she would last forever.

Okay, so what exactly was so bad about “American Life?” Was Madonna just not reading the room right? Was this simply not what the American people wanted from their pop stars post-911? Or is “American Life” a genuinely bad song?

“American Life” was a genuinely bad song.

Supposedly it’s about the Iraqi invasion – complete with a George W Bush impersonator at the end of the video, who Madonna is trying to assassinate – although there’s little in the lyrical content to suggest that.

For example, there is the rap.

Simply the fact that there is a rap – that it’s Madonna doing a rap – ought to be bad enough, but she starts with:

“I’m drinking a soy latte
I get a double shot
It goes right through my body”

And finishes with…

“I’d like to express my extreme point of view
I’m not Christian and I’m not a Jew
I’m just living out the American dream
And I just realized that nothing…

(* dramatic pause*)

… is what it seeeeeeeeeems.”

One of many reasons why Madonna is never mentioned in Greatest Rappers Of All Time lists.

At one point, Madonna lists off all of the people she has working for her, none of whom apparently had the guts to tell Madonna that she couldn’t rap. And fair enough: would you have the guts to tell Madonna that she couldn’t rap?

Todd In The Shadows even made a Trainwreckords video on the American Life album, his series on career-destroying albums. But American Life did not destroy Madonna’s career. If Madonna had been a mere mortal, then maybe her career would have been destroyed. But Madonna is not a mere mortal. And we know that because, a few years later, she was BACK!!!!

Mind you, in order to return to the top, Madonna needed to bring out the big guns.

Madonna needed to bring out ABBA.

Way back in 1979, at the peak of their disco-fuelled imperial phase – and apparently inspired by Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” – ABBA recorded a fun-sounding sad song with the fun-sounding sad song title of “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight),”and… have you ever seen people having so much fun playing a hook?

Look at Benny go! This is truly delightful stuff. It’s almost as though they aren’t aware that they have written a song about terminable loneliness.

The idea to sample “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)” came from Stuart Price, Madonna’s primary collaborator around this time.

Stuart was a DJ.

Madonna was so serious about having a hit this time that she was engaging in surveillance marketing!

Stuart Price was most famous for being the guy behind Les Rythmes Digitales in the late 90s, an English boy pretending to be a French boy in order to jump on the Daft Punk-led future-retro-French house bandwagon. Madonna’s most recent previous collaborator – Mirwais – had been actually French, which had led to some communication problems; not only because Mirwais insisted on speaking French, but because he also insisted on speaking about French existentialism, a tedious enough topic even when it’s in English.

A fake-French English boy was a happy medium.

So: Stuart was driving down the M6 from Liverpool to London in the wee small hours of the morning, truly a man after midnight, when all of a sudden, “Gimme Gimme Gimme” came on the radio. And he thought, “that would be a good idea for a sample.” A thought which, if he were working with any other artist, would have been the end of that, since ABBA so very rarely allows anyone to sample them. But Stuart was working with Madonna and Madonna gets what she wants.

Although even when you are Madonna, if you are up against the stubborn forces of Benny and Bjorn, you still need to flatter their egos by writing them a note – a handwritten note! – and sending your emissary to Stockholm.

Obviously, they said yes. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it.

They claimed it was because they were fans, but I’m sure the generous royalty-split agreement also helped. Benny says it’s his favourite Madonna song. I wonder why.

Having gained access to such a magnificent hook, Stuart pushes it as far as it will go. Building it up, breaking it down… making it sound like a DJ set.

Very possibly crying out “YEAH!!!! THAT’S IT!!!!!” I can imagine Stuart having just as much fun twisting the knob on that hook as Benny did when he was playing it on the keyboard.

At the same time as Stuart was listening to ABBA in his car on the M6, Madonna was working on a film with Luc Besson.

Luc Besson was famous about this time for a lot of amazing stuff like The Fifth Element, and Leon: The Professional. But he was also infamous for a lot of stuff that looks as though it’s almost certainly pretentious twaddle:

Madonna just wouldn’t give up her dreams of being a Hollywood actress. Even after starring in her husband Guy Ritchie’s – movie Swept Away, universally regarded as one of the worst movies of all time, she just wouldn’t let the acting bug go!

So, yeah, before “Hung Up,” neither Madonna’s film nor pop career was looking particularly promising.

The movie that Madonna and Luc were making this time involved Madonna as a time traveller. Madonna was to travel back to the 1920s, the 1940s, the 1960s… and the disco era… and naturally she would do the soundtrack, presumedly providing a song for each era. “Hung Up” was the disco one.

Madonna wrote a whole lot of songs for the movie before she even read the script. When she finally did, she realized that it was a turkey. And when Madonna rejects your script, you know it has to be pretty bad.

But Madonna kept the song, the video for which mostly appeared to be a way for Madge to demonstrate how flexible she was – and how hot she still looked in a leotard – even as she soared towards 50. Which is particularly impressive given that she had recently fallen off a horse. On her birthday. She had three broken ribs, a broken collarbone and a broken hand. And they hadn’t completely healed yet.

“Hung Up” didn’t just have the juice of ABBA going for it, but the promotional push of a $9 million marketing campaign, including the soundtracking of a Motorola commercial a month before it was released… you could fit 100 songs on your phone! Would wonders never cease!?!

Mobile phones, you must remember, were a big deal in 2005 … so much so that “Hung Up” was available as a ringtone a month before it was released as a single.

It worked. “Hung Up” was Madonna’s biggest chart hit since “Vogue.”

In Europe it might just be her biggest hit of all! It went to Number One in so many countries, including those you never thought even had a chart!!

Madonna’s mid-00s comeback was only a temporary one. “Jump” was a hit. “Sorry” was a hit. In Europe, it almost as big as “Hung Up.” That’s what happens when you sing in French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish. Also Hebrew, Japanese and Hindi. Madonna’s marketing campaign on this one was multi-regional!

But soon Madonna started to look desperate. Soon she’d have “4 Minutes” to save her career. And it worked, again, partially due to the star power of Justin Timberlake and the mere presence of Timbaland. And despite my true belief that it’s almost as bad as “American Life.”

So there’s 4 minutes left on the Doomsday clock or whatever. Madonna only has 4 minutes to save the world! But what she do for those 4 minutes? Jump on a bunch of cars and make bad puns about a “you intervention”? While Justin just says “Ma-donna” over and over again.

After that, it was a long, slow decline, painful to watch… but hey, she lasted longer, remained relevant longer, than any of her contemporaries. Just long enough for Lady Gaga to take over…

“Hung Up” is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Feel Good Land…

Ah, talented families. Don’t you love them?

• The Jacksons.
• The Carpenters.
• The von Trapp Family Singers.
• Hanson.
• The White Stripes.

Add to that list: The Bedingfields. Let’s meet them!

It comes from being homeschooled.

But before Natasha, there was Daniel. Not just in terms of his career – about which more below – but in terms of being born.

Oh, and there was a Nikola, too. She would also try to become a pop star. I think she’s still trying to become a pop star.

All three of them started a band together in high school. In Auckland, New Zealand.

They called themselves The DNA Algorithm, which must’ve felt oh-so- futuristic at the time. They were a Christian electronic dance band. They seem to have recorded stuff, but that stuff also seems to have disappeared. More successful was Natasha’s work with Hillsong a few years later, including a couple of songs that she co-wrote on Hillsong Kids’ Jesus Is My Superhero album – she didn’t sing them though, because she was no longer a kid – including this one…

Whilst Natasha was working her way up through the Christian pop songwriting scene, her brother, Daniel, had become the world’s highest charting UK Garage artist.

I mean, it’s a close competition between Daniel and Craig David, but Daniel’s chart stats are slightly more impressive; three UK Number Ones to Craig David’s two.

Not only was Daniel Bedingfield the world’s highest charting UK Garage artist, but also one of the most unlikely.

UK garage was supposed to be the sound of pirate radio and housing commission flats, not the sound of homeschooled Kiwis. Nonetheless, Daniel did a good job: his biggest hit, “Gotta Get Thru This”, a full-on future-funk tragedy, filled with stuttering, glitchy beats, keyboard stabs and heartbreak. I’m pretty sure most of its appeal came from the novelty of hearing such chipmunk helium vocals coming out of such a solid block of a head. It was a combination that sent him right to the top of the UK charts!

I’m not convinced that Daniel was ever famous exactly, but he had hits. Quite a lot of them.

Which meant that he gave quite a lot of interviews. And in those interviews, Daniel seemed to have only one favourite topic of conversation: his sister, Natasha. And how she was so much better than he was. And how everyone should listen to her, even though she had nothing out yet to listen to.

“Natasha and I are like two halves of the same soul. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a brother and sister this close – we’re best friends, we trust each other implicitly and can read every nuance on each other’s faces.

“Natasha’s my benchmark of what to look for in a woman – yes, I’d like to find someone pretty much like her.“

It took a while for Natasha to get a recording contract, but she was finally given the chance because, as a dude from Photogenic Records – a brand-new division of Sony who had no other artists on their books – told her: “We don’t like your songs, but we like you.” Understandable.

So Natasha was shipped off to L.A. – probably the best place in the world to go if you’re trying to write an uplifting Minivan Rock classic – to write some songs with people who might actually know how to write songs that Photogenic Records might actually like. One of those people was Steve Kipner, who also more-or-less ran the label, and who had previously written both “Physical” and “Genie In A Bottle.” And he helped Natasha out with “These Words.”

Steve presumedly helped out with the melody since, as Natasha helpfully boasts, “these words” were her own. Words that included:

“Read some Byron, Shelley and Keats
Recited it over a HIP…HOP… BEAT”

Hmm. A lot of people seem impressed that Natasha mentions Byron, Shelley and Keats. A lot of people think that’s clever. I say, clever rhymes: see ya later!

(I should be honest here, since it probably looks as though I’m saying something like “I bet she doesn’t even know who Byron, Shelley and Keats are?” that I couldn’t recite a single poem by a single one of them)

(Words that also included “hyperbole”, but no, I’m not going to be all snooty that Natasha pronounced “hyperbole” wrong. It’s simply one of those words you see but never hear. I didn’t know how to pronounce it myself until about the same time; during a season three episode of The West Wing called Gone Quiet where C.J. has to be explained the meaning of “I’m Too Sexy”…)

Anyway…

Natasha followed “These Words” with another song about writing: “Unwritten.” Natasha had found her niche. Natasha had found what God had put her on this planet to do.

And here is where we meet the final Bedingfield, Josh.

Although now he seems to go by Joshua. And still – twenty years later – Josh is also still trying to become a pop star. It’s what the Bedingfields do. His socials are very on-brand Bedingfield.

But back in 2005, it was Josh who inspired “Unwritten.”

Josh was about to turn 14. His birthday was coming up. Natasha couldn’t make it back to Auckland, so she wrote him a poem as a birthday present.

“I was on the road, so I wrote a song for him, thinking of what someone his age needs to hear, what I wish I had heard at that point in my life. There are a lot of pressures and expectations.”

A lot of people asking you what you want to do with your life? To which you don’t have a single good answer.

Josh wasn’t particularly happy with his present. He wanted a proper present. Something he could hold in his hands.

Fortunately, “Unwritten” became such a big hit, and earned Natasha so much money, she would soon be able to buy many X-Boxes.

As was the case with “These Words”, Natasha also had a whole lot of help writing “Unwritten.”

Danielle Brisebois helped her.

Danielle was already famous:

And:

Was there any member of the New Radicals who didn’t go on to become hit-song-writers-for-hire in the 00s? (Lead singer Greg Alexander being responsible for Ronan Keating’s “Life Is A Rollercoaster” and Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder On The Dancefloor”)?

“For ages, I’d wanted to write a song about how you never know what to expect from life.
I’d had three different careers.
I’d gone from having a ton of money to being broke and living in a garage when I was 20.

I never saw Natasha’s poem for her brother but I did see the word “unwritten” on her computer.”

So, two people, completely independently, coming up with the same thought!

What are the odds!?!

Now I mentioned before that Natasha and Daniel – and let’s not forget Nikola and Josh – had been homeschooled by their mother. This feels relevant. I’m not necessarily saying that “Unwritten” would have remained, well, unwritten, if Natasha had not been homeschooled, and I can’t swear that this next scene took place on a homeschool-day… but it is definitely true that the “feel the rain on your skin” line came from Natasha’s mother, as a result of something that happened about that time.

“It started raining one day when we were in England, and she was like, ‘Kids, quickly put on your swimsuits and we’re going to dance in the rain,’

I was like, ‘That is so embarrassing. Our neighbors are going to think we’re ridiculous.’ And she said, ‘No, you have to trust me, you have to try this.'”

Natasha’s dancing in the rain worldview was not purely influenced by her Christian homeschooling. Natasha also went to university to study psychology. Not because she wanted to be a psychologist, but because she wanted to understand how the human mind worked, so that she could write better songs.

Interesting strategy. Curious logic. But how sheltered a life have you lived Natasha – first being home schooled and then living in New Zealand – to need to study psychology at a tertiary level in order to write about how we have been conditioned not to make mistakes?

You’d think that, given her Psych qualifications, Natasha would have known better than to title one of her songs “If You’re Gonna Jump”, but nonetheless she did. It was one of the B-sides.

Towards the end of “Unwritten”, just when you think the song can’t possibly get any peppier, along comes a gospel choir.

I’m not convinced that this is adequate reason for “Unwritten” to qualify as R&B, but people do persist in calling it that. You seem like a great girl, Natasha, but you’re not Mary J. Blige.

And you’re definitely not Chaka Khan:

With Natasha high up the charts, and Daniel having recovered from a car crash in Auckland that had derailed his career, the two of them performed a duet together at the Brits.

And look, I’m not sure what would have been an appropriate duet for a brother and a sister to sing together, but it probably would’ve been better if they hadn’t publicly announced to each other that ain’t nobody loves them better, makes them happy, makes them feel this way… they really were a close family.

It’s hard to hate on Natasha for her optimism. She really seems to believe in this stuff. “Unwritten” does not contain a single note of self-doubt. I have it on good authority that it was played at many high school graduation ceremonies in 2005. And probably in 2006, and 2007 as well. It’s the perfect song for such aspirational occasions.

The extent to which you might find yourself susceptible to the Gospel According To Natasha is probably correlated to the extent to which you like your pop stars to be pockets full of sunshine.

Or possibly not. Natasha appears to have a way of turning even the most curmudgeon of characters into puppy dogs. “Unwritten” has a way of achieving anthem-status in even the roughest of neighbourhoods. I’ve seen it described, on more than one occasion, as a “certified hood classic.”

Not with me though. I remain immune.

“Unwritten” is a 6.

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Meanwhile, in Dance-Punk Land…

On May 22nd 2004, the Federal Marriage Amendment was introduced into the United States Senate, with the aim of inserting the definition of marriage – as being between a man and a woman – into the Constitution of The United States Of America.

The Amendment had been suggested before, in 2002 and 2003, but it hadn’t gotten anywhere. This time, however, it was serious.

• This time it was in all the newspapers.
• This time it was all over Fox News. This time thousands of worshippers descended on churches – 10,000 at a single megachurch in Memphis – to try and pray the amendment through Congress.
• This time they had President Bush throwing his weight behind it.

And this time, once again, it failed. As it always would. As it always should.

Although a majority in both the House and the Senate supported the amendment, it failed to attract the super-majority that a constitutional amendment requires.

In retrospect, the Federal Marriage Amendment never stood a chance. After all, it was up against Beth Ditto.

Beth Ditto came from the small town of Searcy, in Arkansas, where her family was so poor that Beth had to eat squirrels. Not often, admittedly. Mostly when she was a kid. And another time when she got stoned for the first time at the age of 13 and had the munchies. But eating squirrels was a family tradition; Beth’s father liked to boil their heads and suck their brains out through their nose. Her great-grandmother could shoot three squirrels with one bullet!

Some have suggested that Searcy is the town that inspired Footloose.

By the time she was 18, Beth Ditto had moved to the much more Beth Ditto-friendly environs of Olympia, Washington.

Beth wasn’t alone. It seemed like half the misfit population of Searcy, Arkansas had moved to Olympia, Washington. Her best friend Jerry, the first out-of-the-closest gay person Beth ever knew, was their too. Beth became roommates with two other Searcy-citizens, and they started a band.

Also Elliot Smith and The Decemberists, but they don’t feel quite as relevant. One of the reasons Kill Rock Stars signed them, was that guitarist Nathan Howdeshell ordered so many records from their mail order department back when he was in Searcy, that they recognized his name.

A few years later the band moved to Portland, because Beth wanted to live somewhere where there were “lots of dykes, lots of gays and the rent was still cheap.” But her-best-friend Jerry was still in Olympia. Beth called him one day, and he was upset.

He’d just had a phone call with his mom, who was debating gay marriage with him because it was all over the news… meaning that the proposed amendment, and all the Presidential hoo-ha surrounding it, was having a real effect on people’s lives! And people’s family relationships!! Their existence put into question by the people they loved!!!

So Beth wrote a song to make her friend feel better.

Everyone was writing songs for their friends and families! But “Standing In The Way Of Control” is a very different song from “Unwritten.” “Standing In The Way Of Control” is an explosion.

Just listen to that intro:

“POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!POW!” before breaking down to a pounding bass groove – “der-der der-der der-der…” – and all of that before Beth even growls “YOUR BACKS AGAINST THE WALL!!!!” with an all-of-body holler that will knock you off your feet even before you realize that Beth was actually holding back a little, that the actual earthquakes are still to come….

Do not attempt to sing “Standing In The Way Of Control” at karaoke. You will not be able to pull it off.

My favourite part?

The primal “OOOUUURRRRGGGGHHHOOOOHHH” at the end of the break-it-down build-it-all-up-again section, sounding as though Beth is shrugging off all that oppression with a shake of her shoulders!!!

It only requires a slight misreading of “Standing In The Way Of Control”’s opening verse to interpret it as a super-hero theme song. “When your backs against the wall, and there’s no-one else to call…” (not the exact lyrics) with Beth Ditto the only person, in these trying times, who can save you from Bush and the bigots.

If you were not told specifically that “Standing In The Way Of Control” was about the Federal Marriage Amendment you might never have guessed.

But you would have guessed that it was about survival, of you and your mates, in the face of oppression.

For such an explosive single, it took a surprising long time for “Standing In The Way Of Control” to catch on.

I wasn’t entirely sure exactly when to cover it. It was initially released about this time, with a Le Tigre remix released even earlier (in case having Kathleen Hanna on remixing duty wasn’t enough of a feminist-icon tick of approval, Kim Gordon did the artwork!) It blew up indie dancefloors at the beginning of 2006, and then it blew up even more indie dance floors as 2006 rolled on:

And yet still, despite her being the “Coolest Person On The Planet”, they hid her photo in the corner and gave the cover to Muse. Or as Beth put it:

“I’d like to thank the NME for putting me at the top of the Cool List… and then chickenshitting out of putting me on the front cover. If you want to be edgy let’s be edgy.

Start by putting some fat girls on the front.”

A few months later, they put a fat girl on the front.

The world seemed to be waiting for Beth Ditto, and she – temporarily – was handed the world.

Soon she became a fashion designer, for plus-sized retail chain Evans. She became a runway model for Jean Paul Gaultier. She wrote an advice column in The Guardian: “What Would Betto Ditto Do?”: answering such questions as “I’m a 15-year-old bisexual feminist attracted to a sexist, homophobic male friend. What should I do?”

For a year or two there, Beth was extremely busy. Not only was she fighting the Bush Administration, she was fighting fat-shaming. She said things like:

“I’m proud of my shape and sometimes I’ll eat a whole bucket of chicken or two ice cream cartons, just to make sure I stay the way I am.” 

And…

“I feel, more than ever, I’m out to save every fat girl crying herself to sleep,”

She became an icon for the anti-size-zero models campaign:

An admirable attempt to rid the world of unrealistic body-shape standards.

She named names. She named Posh Spice.

“Posh Spice is an absolute joke.

In the nineties she did all that Girl Power stuff, then she realised being thin got her attention. She’s just a total tool.”

It goes without saying that Beth was also not a fan of Paris Hilton.

She was a hero. A role model. And she had a message for all the queer kids who had grown up in small towns, as she told Queer Youth TV one day when they asked her:

“Stay strong… find your people…

That’s what I did, I found the people that were f*cking rad, amazing, I can’t believe I found them, I can’t believe I even met them in Arkansas.

Like, find your people, stick to your people, trust them and stay together, that’s my message… or get the f*ck out.

If you feel trapped, or that you can’t be yourself there, then f*ckin’ leave. There’s better places to be, there’s better people to know.”

Or, in other words…

“IT’S PART NOT GIVING IN
AND PART TRUSTING YOUR FRIENDS
YOU DO IT ALL AGAIN
BUT YOU DON’T STOP TRYING

WO-OOH WO-OOH WOOOH!!”

“Standing In The Way Of Control” is a 10!

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