Cat In a Hammock: Because I Think We Need It

Welcome Philosocats, and muse with me as we take another well earned break and reflect on the world within ourselves, our own personal issues and dreams and hopes and future. Join me will you on this journey of self-enlightenment will you as we explore what the last week has held for us? And what the future holds as well?

Of course, this being a written post that you can't contribute to until it's the end, for the most part this will be me just talking about personal news and news on the site, since I'm not terribly good at the personal part of this 'personal' blog. In fact let's talk about this...

Because the last week had the first post on the site that wasn't mine, and I'm rather glad of the reception that got. Bit of backstory behind it; I was asked to put it on by Heather, the writer of the article, because she wanted it out there and didn't really have a blog of her own to put it. I was a bit worried at first since it was a very serious subject being placed in between me overanalysing pop culture, attacking politicians and cracking wise, so I didn't want the importance of what she'd written to be undermined by my usual content. Most of the people that got in touch with me about it (Shameless Plug time! Twitter's @HuggyDave, I respond to everything or leave a comment down below) were very supportive though, which helped, and it's also why I've subtly changed the tagline and might change it further, since it's not really a 'personal blog' but more a collation of views, because I'm pretty terrible at writing about my own life, it feels too much like I'm bragging or trying to elicit some kind of sympathy when I try.

That said, I probably should put more individually creative fare up here, like short stories or whatever, show I'm more than just a grumpy ranting lunatic. Expect the content to hopefully get a bit more esoteric. Also, I need to really finish the next part of 'Girl Depowered'. That should hopefully be a bit more analytical and actually provide some clear scope of what i'm trying to accomplish.

I don't think there's any other site news, so I guess I've got to go into my personal life don't I? Well, I suppose I should explain what I do when I'm not writing this stuff. My main stuff outside of my post-graduate study and the endless sleepless nights and uncertainty applying for funding and loans provides includes the band I'm the lead singer of, a metal outfit out of Lancaster called Project: Unicorn (Look us up, we actually exist) and already we've got some pretty exciting gigs coming up in Lancaster, so if you're around Lancaster in the next four months, might be worth a look. We even got reviews calling us “pleasantly surprising”!

There's a reason I'm hardly a marketer.

There's also the writing/editing gig I have with local student newspaper The Whistleblower, which takes up quite a bit of my time, but on the plus side means I actually have relevant job experience working for a newspaper! On top of that there's my other personal writing projects I have, projects I really need to work far more on than I have over summer. I've gotten lazy apparently.

Well, this was short compared to most of my posts, but I personally feel better for doing this. See ya next week when I will have the need to do this again! Or otherwise feel the urge to cleave through things with a giant axe.

Keep musing, Philosocats!

Quick Round Of Important News Events

Right, since I’ve been frantically hurrying with applications for this and that regarding my upcoming M.A (along with a budding addiction to Tales of Symphonia), I've been a little behind with the really important (and somewhat relevent to my ongoing projects) news stories that have come in, so rather than get even further behind, I'll quickly talk about them here

The first two, joyeously (and totally without gallons of sarcasm dripping from my every pore as I say it) is about sexism and sexual crimes. I suppose I should start with the utter farce that is the Julian Assange affair, an utter comedy of errors that ensures that noone actually gets justice. To those of you living in a box and unaware of the story, I'll condense it as much as possible. Julian Assange is the head of Wikileaks who is wanted by the Swedish authorities under allegations of sexual assault which are under Swedish law considered to be rape. A lot of people will note the pointedness of my description there, but I want to avoid any accusations of partisanship, with this, because I genuinely want both sides to get what they want. Julian Assange fears he will be extradited in secret to the US (there's a precedent for it in Sweden which even the UK hasn't stooped to – yet) and since it is within the powers of both the UK and Sweden to assure him that he will not be extradited to a third party where he faces execution and/or torture, it surely should not be too much of a stretch to offer him safety while he is being questioned. The UK after all is the same country that allowed asylum for a former despot who killed tens of thousands and raped or ordered the rape of thousands. On the opposite side, you do have two women who are currently being accused of being a honey trap but on that same note they deserve their chance to be heard out and this saga in their lives to be drawn to a close. I suspect at the end of it, most people, regardless of whether they, like all of these ludicrous forced dichotomies, side with one or the other being pulled by misinformation on both sides, all want Julian Assange to not be extradited to the US to be tortured and killed (potentially, there is a precedent for this), while on that same note wanting justice to be meted by and to all involved parties.

Nevertheless there have been some crazies around to fuck that up.

In an update to the story which helpfully links me to the next part of this, George “I Was in Big Brother Once” Galloway made an ass of himself by claiming that Assange is at worst guilty of “bad sexual etiquette, and arguing that once you're in bed and have had sex people assume they are “In the sex game” and thus he's not guilty. I'm not going to accuse him of being a rapist cheerleader or a horrible misogynist brute of a man, but he absolutely is an idiot. Not getting past the initial “it's illegal in Sweden” thing, it should be noted that this logical path is pretty dangerous. Essentially he's saying that once consent is given that's it, the people involved have carte blanche to do whatever they want with each other. There have been many legal precedents that have shown this to be wrong in UK legislation (Most notably DPP vs Morgan [1974], where consent was not given but recklessly assumed) and of course R vs R [1991], which showed that marriage (the ultimate consent into 'the sex game' in some circles) did not imply consent. There are others, where the terms of consent change but essentially UK law proves Mr Galloway wrong, let alone Swedish law, where sex while sleeping (having given consent before) and sex without protection are sexual offences that can constitute rape. The issue is that while Galloway is a fool and is rightly pilloried for this, he's far from the only one thinking this, and believing in a very specific type of rape, the worst examples of such come from over the pond...

Ah, the American right wing, making Richard III seem increasingly pleasant with each passing day! The order of the day, once again is women's health, being oddly perversely interested in women's biology, which I assume is old white politician's idea of porn or something, since actual porn is not only sinful but found too often on pastor's computers for them to take the risk. So yeah, it's more abortion talk, with two sides to it, both as despicable and disgusting as each other. Do you pick Todd Akin, whose beliefs on women's biology must go back to the Dark Ages? He believes that somehow in cases of 'legitimate rape' (quite what makes non-consentual sexual assault 'legitimate' was never explained) a woman's body can shut itself down and thus stop conception. It's scary how people this balls-out insane can hold positions of power, but even he was pilloried for his position. Or do you pick Mitt “I lied about pretty much everything except my silly name” Romney's running mate Paul Ryan, who is one of the worst kind of bible bashing politicians, believing that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape (and presumably that the rapist father deserves visitation rights). The last time such horribly misogynistic legislation was considered, they at least paid 60 silver shekles (well, their family was, fucking Leviticus)! I could go on and on about this, but really it would essentially degenerate into permutations of “WHY?! Holy fuck why?!” and I don't think anyone needs to see that.

In other, less horrible news (I stress the qualifier 'less'), the sad saga of Nick Clegg continues, as his wealth tax idea (basically rich people pay money to the country too! What a bizarre concept!) is ignored, not even put on the fridge in the Liberal Democrat canteen. It wasn't an especially good idea, but I suspect was never going to appeal to the Tory base (I.e. Horrible horrible rich bastards). Kudos for trying though.

Finally for this little catch up thing we have the Paralympics. After I outed myself as a giggling pathetic Olympic fanboy/nationalist the last time we talked about it, I will be a bit more reserved this time. The Opening Ceremony is absolutely worth a look, if only to see Stephen Hawking, and Ian McKellen playing John Geilgood's Prospero. That said, there is a dark undercurrent with both of the Games involving their sponsors. People have mocked how Coca Cola and McDonald's both sponsored the games despite their large contribution to the ill health of the whole world, as well as BP for polluting and killing the rest of it, but ATOS is the big stickler for me. While the former three harm a large amount of people and thus would ruin potential athletes, ATOS sponsors an event that is celebrating the ability and triumph of disabled people over their various adversities and yet at the same time is not supporting disabled people to the point thatpeople are starting to die despite being determined 'fit for work' byATOS.Which is pretty literally like shaking your hand with one hand and plunging the knife in your back with the other. Something needs to happen when 32 people are dying a week under this new regime.

Now, under that delightful note, pleasant dreams.

A Friend's Experience with Harassment

[Note from Dave: This is going to be a strange update, since this isn't something I've written nor is it a personal take on it, but a close personal friend of mine asked if I would put it on my blog, so that the message of the piece is out there, and since it pretty succinctly demonstrates why I react as I do to certain implications, expressions and marginalisations in the media, I decided to put it up. Heather, the floor is yours]

I’m Heather. I’m 20, a university student and I regularly work in a small Sports & Social Club (well, I’m currently running the place until they find someone else). I enjoy this job because it enables me to talk to people and be friendly to them. I may receive the occasional comment about my female parts, and may be asked if I like/am good at ‘giving head,’ but I feel safe, so it doesn’t bother me.
If I get strangers shouting across the street about my body parts, chances are I won’t hear them because my MP3 will be blaring music through my headphones. So I’m not going to lie – I’d never really understood just how bad sexual harassment could be… until I received it myself.
I’d closed the bar at work and two lads around my age were still around. They asked for another drink after I’d given countless ‘last orders’ warnings, closed and counted up the till, took it downstairs and switched off the gas… So no chance. I absolutely hate it when customers ask for lock-ins because actually, I’m tired. And by expecting me to serve them drinks after I’ve closed the bar and am ready to go, it’s fucking inconsiderate of them.
I said no. I wasn’t going to change my mind.
I was stubborn. They were stubborn.
I said no several times. They asked several times.
But I wasn’t going to be the doormat that I sometimes am, not that night, and so I stuck to my original answer.
45 minutes later, they gave up and went away.
I returned home, upset and tired by what had happened, because 1) I hate it when customers expect lock-ins and 2)… well, one customer had seriously crossed the line.
He said that if I served him a drink, I could lift up my skirt, take off my tights and he’d ‘lick the alphabet’ on my ‘fanny,’ but only if my pubic hair wasn’t too long and had I had a wash today?
He actually said that.
He also repeatedly asked if I had a ‘sensitive clitoris.’
He actually said that too.
I was horrified.
Now, I may hear the occasional comment made by a customer that I disagree with, i.e. that ‘pakis are taking over the world,’ and I may or may not speak up about it. But this was different. This was an attack towards me.
Nobody had ever spoken to me like that before, but there he was, standing at the bar, saying those things to me, a FEMALE member of staff, working late at NIGHT on her OWN.
It wasn’t said in a jokey manner. He and his mate had jokingly been saying previously that we should have a threesome but I just said ‘Nah, I like my men with longer hair’ (his mate had short hair, and if I had a ‘type’ of guy I fell for, he wouldn’t be it), and then quickly said ‘But not you, Oli.’ Saying that now, I guess I should have seen worse to come.
Oli wasn’t even drunk. I’m not saying it would be OK for him to say it if he WAS drunk, but you know what I mean.
I was scared. I was made to feel uncomfortable to be in their company, to be at my own workplace, and I didn’t know how to react.
I regret to say that I laughed it off. I know it was the wrong reaction and that what he’d said was bang out of order, but like I just said, I didn’t know how else to respond.
After returning home that night, all I said to my dad (who is on the club committee at the club) was that two lads had wanted drinks after closing the bar, and that I’d stuck to my ‘no’ answer. Dad congratulated me for sticking to what I’d said and not being a doormat.
I went to bed and didn’t think about it until the next day.
I told a friend about what had happened. She offered to buy me some water from a nearby Greggs, with it being stuffy warm and not being able to leave my summer job stall. When she returned, I said ‘Oh my god, can I rant about last night at work please?’
She said yes, so I did.
As I told it, I realised just how wrong it all was. Saying the words felt disgusting, and I felt compelled to warn her several times before actually telling her what had been said. I didn’t want to shock her.
She affirmed my thoughts that what had happened was unacceptable. He had crossed the line and I couldn’t stand by and let it go unnoticed. She recommended I tell my dad.
For a few seconds, as she was telling me this, I considered if it was my fault at all. That night at work, I’d been wearing clothes that complimented my figure (complimented, that’s all – don’t go calling me a slut), so maybe I’d been ‘asking for it?’ The fact that I’d worn the same things without any trouble previously was not of importance right then.
But hell, I realised soon enough that actually, this way of thinking was fucking dangerous and shouldn’t actually apply to justice (although unfortunately, the law has used this argument in harassment and rape cases before) - even if someone is dressed as a ‘slut,’ blaming the victim is never going to help. And, quite simply, to suggest that a girl wearing nice clothes will suddenly transform a man into a misogynistic and intimidating arsehole who can’t control their mouth and/or actions is demeaning to men, and I’m not convinced.
I told dad about it when he was in the garden, back from a bike ride. I had to be off to work again quite soon, so I had to tell him then.
Between telling my friend about the incident and telling dad, doubts had started nagging at me again – maybe he’d think I’d been asking for it? Maybe he’d just shrug and say ‘It was just a joke. Get over it.”
But no. It turns out that actually, dads don’t tend to like it when a customer talks to their 20 year old daughter like that. He was furious with Oli. He told me that somebody had to confront Oli about the incident, demanding he apologise to me, saying how inappropriate it was and that if it happened again, it would be reported to the committee, and would I want to tell Oli this, or would I want someone else to do it?
I said that I could tell him myself, and he assured me that I wouldn’t be digging up old history by bringing it up, even if the next time Oli came in was weeks after, and that I couldn’t just go “Oh, it’s fine!” in my usual forgiving and pushover manner, whenever the confrontation would occur. Because it wasn’t fine, and both dad and I knew this.
I was upstairs working a function that night, and dad came up the stairs later on and asked could he have a word?
He told me that Oli had arrived downstairs and that he didn’t want me to come away from the party, and that he’d had a word with Oli instead.
Oli had come in with his girlfriend, and my dad, being the good guy that he is, called Oli away from her and asked to have a word. Judging by Oli’s attempt to intimidate my dad by moving close and looking down at him, he knew what it was about. It didn’t work though, because dad stuck his ground and told him that he knew what had happened. Oli apologised and admitted that it had been out of order.
Apparently, dad had wanted to have more than just ‘a word’ with him and wanted to ‘kick his bloody face in.’ But he didn’t.
So next time Oli sees me, he owes me an apology. And he knows history can’t repeat itself, because if he does, he’s out of the club. And there’s no chance that he can every speak to me or anyone else in that way again.
I thanked dad for what he’d done – for listening to me, for talking to Oli – but he said he’d not done anything.
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I haven’t. Have I got blood on my shoe? No, I have not got blood on my shoe.”
Like I said at the beginning of this blog, I’d never really quite understood how intimidating and damaging sexual harassment was, until I’d received it myself. It’s not nice. Having things of a sexual nature shouted at you across the street can make a person feel uncomfortable. It’s not a compliment if the speaker expects or wishes for something from the receiver (…sex). There’s a great difference between ‘I love your hat’ and ‘Y’alright love? Nice tits!’ LEARN IT.
But all in all, my experience of sexual harassment ended OK: people understood just how wrong the whole thing was and I wasn’t made to feel like I was to blame… I was lucky. But not everyone is. If you witness or receive sexual harassment and someone or you are made to feel scared and vulnerable, then please… just stand against it.

Girls Depowered: An Exploration of the changing representation of Women in Video Games Introduction

 So, apparently there have been some controversial trailers unveiled at E3 this year, once again placing gender representation firmly in the limelight of videogames in a matter not seen since the craziness regarding the original Mass Effect. The question with a lot of the trailers, particularly in the Square-Enix camp involved their immaturity regarding gender relations and controversial content, particularly in the trailers for Hitman: Absolution and the reboot of the long running Tomb Raider franchise. The latter is a more contentious one which will be the driving point of this essay, but to briefly sum up my views on the Hitman trailer, I believe it was less an issue of scandalised sexualisation of religious figures but an attempt to evoke the gritty dark aesthetic of seventies grindhouse films that was too silly to be provocative. The Tomb Raider trailer and various quotes from the lead designer are somewhat more contentious in ways I will go into much greater depth later in the piece, but suffice to say are a far cry from her days as a powerful female figure, one of the main totemic figures of 'Girl Power'. It seems like women in video games have lost their power, being cast into the shadows of mainstream popular games and being the victims of intense amounts of misogyny whenever they surface. It gets worse when this rampant misogyny starts to infect figures fairly central to the video game feminist Zeitgeist: Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series and Samus Aran from Metroid. Comparing their characterisation, appearance and the implications thereof from their earliest incarnations to now represents the power struggle between the third wave Feminist movement and the Patriarchal Hegemony which has grown increasingly misogynistic as the twenty first century enters its second decade.

It's times like these you really miss Girl Power...

Introduction: What is Girl Power? And why the hell should I miss it?

Girl power is a movement that came into significant prominance in the mid-1990s, though it did exist before that as part of the Riot Grrl punk movement of the early 1990s, and thus has a tangential relationship to third wave feminism. And since feminism is a massive fundamental part of this essay and I will frequently be attempting to read video games using feminist frameworks, I will briefly summarize the three waves of feminism here and any feminist theory I use I'll explain as I go.

The first wave of feminism was to give women the vote, which was finally won in 1918 (with great caveats including having to be over 30; the real victory for all women was in 1928 when they could vote at 21 like men at the time). The idea was to remove the shackles to femininity that were mandated by law, most symbolised by that great democratic right to vote and the individuality that it symbolised. It is telling that it took nearly sixty years after the emancipation proclamation which heralded the abolition of slavery in the US (and thus for emancipated slaves to receive the vote) for women to also gain it, and is a firm indication of the struggle to crack the hegemony and allow women the most fundamental of democratic rights.

Second Wave Feminism was a tad more nebulous but was still with solid goals. It was about equal rights for women, particularly in the workplace. It was about equal pay for equal work, the right for a woman to own her own body completely (usually best symbolised by Roe vs Wade (1973) , the landmark US case on abortion), and other equalities of sexuality. Believe it or not, but up until 1986 (in the UK) sexual harassment was not criminalised, one of the biggest gains of the Women's Liberation Movement (as it was called). It is probably what most people think of when they think of feminism, with the burning of bras, marches, strikes, radical feminism with Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and works of fiction by authors such as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson, as well as a greater visibility in women in workplaces typically dominated by men.

Third Wave Feminism is a lot harder to define, but is really less to do with institutions and more to do with society as a whole. It speaks far less in absolutes, as second wave feminism did, and more about giving women of all races, colours, creeds and sexualities the right to define feminism for themselves. It was about highlighting the more hidden darker troubles surrounding feminine life, such as gendered violence, rape, domestic abuse, reproductive rights (ie the right of a woman to control her own body) and so. It focuses thematically on the reclaiming on concepts, words and ideas that have been wielded as weapons against them, which ironically enough includes the word feminist, as well as the body, the mind and the sense of self, through various means.

What does any of this have to do with Girl Power? Well, in the mid 90s, as the second wave began to fade away and the third wave was beginning to find its stride in popular culture, there existed a middle ground, inspired by the Riot Grrl movement. It was punk rock, by girls (or is it grrls?), for girls and about girl issues, like domestic abuse and the continued oppression of women. This wouldn't sit right with the typical pop music listener so it was made more market friendly and eventually you got Shampoo, a pop-punk duo, mainly known for an awful song called Trouble, a song mainly known for the savaging that fellow Riot Grrl Lucy McKenzie gave them and it, infamously going so far as to claim claim “Shampoo = Miss June And July Of The Paedophile Calendar". It was an awful song that inevitably ends up on School Dance megamixes and will do until the end of time, but it kind of summed up the girl power aesthetic as a very public reaction to very controlled images of femininity. This began in music with Shampoo but came to its very public peak with The Spice Girls, a five piece band, each singer (though I use the term loosely with Mrs Beckham) who each represented a different stereotype. You had Ginger Spice the leader, Sporty Spice (who may have popularised the 'girl power' trend of female singers wearing midriff baring tops and trousers), Scary Spice (who for unfortunate implications fans amongst you, is black), Posh Spice (Posh in this universe means wearing insanely tight and short minidresses) and Baby Spice (the blonde one). Their view of girl power was essentially singing the same sorts of songs as every other female pop outfit, but adding a hint of attitude. This was shown mostly in their first and biggest hit “Wannabe”, where (sing along with me readers) if you want to be their lover, you got to get with their friends. For the most part it was about empowerment, showing people who missed the memo during the Women's Liberation Movement that they could now think for themselves, here's a ton of media creations telling you that you can (providing it's within their pre-prepared ideas of 'identity').

So yeah, it's a mess of consumerist ideas of feminism and attempting to be strong independent women while at the same time not. It's a bizarre dichotomy of mutually exclusive ideas all tied together in an impossible ideal. It strives for “assertiveness, ambition and individualism” (to quote the OED definition) but due to its confines in consumerism it can't achieve any of them, since actual individualism doesn't sell brands. But on the same note, I can't hate it. Because compared to the alternative (women as either victims, objects or silenced) a patronising, market-tested strong female character (TM) is indeed a far better proposal, and also opened the door for genuine strong females to appear in pop culture, such as Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and professional wrestler Chyna, as well as host of imitators.

And it is at this point I can get into the bigger fish of this piece. Video games were no stranger to the movement, and between its inception and its zenith, two of the biggest female icons in video game history released their most land mark titles: Super Metroid in 1994 (with the first metroid a decade earlier in 1986) and Tomb Raider in 1996. I will be exploring both of these series in turn, framing them with feminist theory and explaining their individual importance to feminism and the ideal of gender equality in video games, as well as their down turn and the negative implications of their most recent games, Metroid Other M and the yet to be released Tomb Raider reboot.

The Legacy of London 2012, or the Obligatory Olympic Update

And so, just like that my friends, the Games of the Thirtieth Olympiad are over, but before the high of the Olympic drug wears out and they completely disappear from the public consciousness, I think it's time to take a very brief moment to reflect on what the games has meant for everyone in the country, as well as what it will mean for the future of both British sport and the country as a whole.

Well, I think the first thing to say is that, after four years of grief, stick and criticism from naysayers (including me) who saw the laughable handover ceremony in Bejing and guffawed at its sheer crapness, that the Olympics delivered on a scale I don't think any of us quite expected. I admit, I was among them, cringing at Boris on the London Bus inexplicably driving on the ice rink. I snickered at the notion that David Beckham kicking a football into the baffled crowd was the best that Britain could offer and resigned myself to the idea that London 2012 would be delightfully camp, a crap, kitsch but hopefully charming in its inadequacy, the bric-a-brac stand to Bejing's looming hypermart.

What's that? Ah yes, I'll take an extra slice of humble pie with my large order of dead wrong, thanks!

And make that order for every single one of the other cynics who, like me saw their cynicism wiped out about a minute into the opening ceremony, which was a superb entry into the crazy yet irrevocably charming world of Great Britain, and a reminder to the people watching across the nation that that world does exist, despite our cynicism. It was wonderful, about people rather than politics and alive in a way that neither the technically perfect Bejing games nor the corrupt world we found ourselves surrounded in seemed to be, summed up of course by the NHS routine, a beautiful sentiment that hopefully political leaders will soon realise: We care about the NHS, touch it and watch your career die. Everything in the ceremony symbolised the unity and imagination and sense of humour we have, our best qualities shown in the best possible light, which was the start of a change in our attitude.

This kind of optimism spread from the great ceremony into the games itself, where I, happy if we got maybe a couple of medals, seemed to just excel and get better and more gilded with each passing day. After a slow start, the medals started to pour in, and people who started off cynical began to scream at the television, scream in the stands with that patriotic fervour we typically cannot associate with ourselves, and suddenly the country of despair had something to scream our heart out at. This of course lead to the crowning moment, the ultimate metaphor of the Olympics, as within an hour of each other, long jumper Greg Rutherford, the stupendously talented and beautiful Jessica Ennis and the magnificent Mo Farah became probably the most fitting of Olympic heroes; a triumph that shattered the class divide, racial lines (Jess is mixed race and Mo a Somali refugee) gender lines (every single country had a female athlete and there was about an equal amount of male and female GB medal winners) and showing a kingdom United, helped by the masses of support for Scot Andy Murray and Welshman Geriant Thomas as they furthered Great Britain's gold rush. In the e nd, Team GB, a nation united, scored 29 gold medals, the biggest medal haul since 1908, the first London games where most of the sports were only actually played by British athletes and games like Tiddlywinks, Making Sock Puppets and Whip the Butler were Olympic events, putting us third only to the usual suspects of China and the US, an amazing achievement by itself, brought about by the country's will, determination and uncharacteristic optimism once the games began, an optimism that became epidemic by the end judging by the medal total.

But it wasn't just the winners that were celebrated, which was one of the most wonderful things about these games and why London fit as an Olympic city. The Turkish women runner coming dead last got as massive an ovation as the winner of the heat. The one female Saudi Arabian athlete, who ran the 800m in a hijab got an ovation usually reserved for the winner of the finals, but the message a it sent was far reaching and truly positive. The games were for everyone, and everyone who made it deserved and got our admiration and respect.

Before this turns into a gushing update... it's already there isn't it. I'm sorry, this is simply a success all around and really the only thing that can hopefully come of this is that everyone in the echelons of politics realise the value of sport and fund it and support it. But more than that is the attitude the games has extolled in us. The games have shone a flattering mirror on us, but it is our time to keep this in our minds as we return to reality, and realise that in the end, life isn't all that bad so long as you fight for what you believe in.

Cat in a Hammock: Updates of a Miscellaneous Nature

Just because I love this Motif

Greetings patrons of the Clinkening, after the mad rush to finish the baffling pop songs list, as well as nearly having an aneurysm having to talk about Sandi Thom, I figure it's time for the emanation of a new hopefully regular feature to the site: We follow the lead of cats, the Internet's most popular animal, lie in our hammock and just relax, reflect and meditate on the world around us.

The internet told me all cats are philosophers too.

So yeah, this is some kind of comments section where rather than me ranting incoherently and ignorantly about pop music, video games, the art world, literature, popular culture as a whole, politics et al, I'm going to talk about stuff that happened on the site itself, which admittedly will make this a rather short entry most of the time.

First things first, I got a little bit of feedback on probably the biggest thing I've done in terms of personal projects for the internet, and I think both of them are the most popular posts I did for the sites, and thank all of you who read it and said nice things about it. The criticism about it mostly stemmed from people confused by the concept, or that certain songs were missing that perhaps should have been there. The idea wasn't that they were bad songs, although a lot of them were pretty bad songs but that it was songs that by the logic and conventions of pop music should not have reached number one, and then I'd try to explain why that was the case, what was in vogue or the hidden value of a song which most people dismiss as tawdry, pointless or whatever. A couple people missed that, thinking that when I put Rage Against the Machine as the top I was making an attack, when really it was the opposite, but that's all in the article. The other issue I got with that was how vicious I was about Sandi Thom's I Wish I was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair), and whether I was just being a literalist and nitpicking a song because it was overplayed to a ludicrous obscene extent, or of course taking everything too seriously. Should say, my issue is less the sentiment and more the fact it was a wilful act of deception on the part of Sandi and the major label she signed with an anthemic war cry for stupidity. I'll stop because I'm not going to have the rest of this contaminated with me ranting about Punk Rocker for two thousand words again. It's finally out of my system, and I am emancipated from this most crippling of songs.

The other thing about it was that, somewhat encouragingly I got quite a few more views than I had done for anything else I had written previously, by a considerable margin, which shows me of course that the way to attract readers is with effort, research and complaining about bad pop songs. Lesson learned, and so every two weeks or so I'll try and get a bigger project done, I've got plans for the next one, but I'm not sure if that'll be what I'll do next.

The next thing is a somewhat belated explanation of why there's such a big gap between my work in march and now, since then I've graduated so I get to put B A (Hons) in front of my name like the pretentious arse that you have already figured out I am, so now I've been working on that, and the tempestuous move from being in the education bubble, to attempting to acquire enough funding for a post-graduate degree without the lifeline of the student loan to rely on. It'll be tough, but then isn't the point of toughness in life to test your mettle, to see if you want it enough? I've been complacent a little bit, succeeding but not as much as maybe I should have, so time will tell what I become. Ironically enough I started The Clinkening as a way to work on and test my writing dexterity and improve my writing style, hopefully to the point where I might find myself funny. Not got there yet, but the more I do it, the more people message me out of the blue and say I did well. Early days yet, but really I'm doing this really as much to test myself as anything else, and if it entertains other people, then that's superb.

Final thing is the whole nature of blogs. I really like blogs, over social media gimmickry like the 140 characters of Twitter and the minefield that is Facebook, primarily because I tend to like to spread out my thoughts, elaborate in a way you can't with Twitter. They're all useful for their own purpose, like a post-it on a door compared to reading a newspaper or picking up a novel. They do all have the positive of letting you have a connection to your audience that could not be anywhere near as direct if this was a printed piece, and that is something I enjoy. I love reading criticism and feedback of all kinds, so I guess that's what this final pre-amble is about. I've one of those Twitter thingies (@huggydave), so if you're into somewhat dull shorthand discussion and learning when my updates are, following me on Twitter might help that. Otherwise, there are comment boxes below etc. and my email's a gmail account so it'll be directly connected to this blog account or something.

Thanks for reading and the like, see you next week with more Cat in a Hammock.

The Ten Most Baffling UK Number One Singles in History Part 2/2

Here is part two of the list, where things plummet downhill very quickly.

5: There's No-one Quite like Grandma – St Winifred's School Choir (1980)

What?

Now this is more familiar territory for a list like this – a terrible one hit wonder from the 1980s, featuring a child choir. I'll try not to go too deeply in with this song, helped by the fact that since it's a very childish and innocuous song, there isn't really much to read into. The strange production, forwarded by synth strings so awful the song sounds like a failing student's submission in their “Introduction to Sibelius” class, sounds really quite sinister alongside the naturalistic sound of the children's singing, other than the one girl who actually got the main solo part, who's strange voice utterly frightens me, though that might just be undeveloped vocal chords or something. The two contrasting components would be fine on their own, but together it makes the song feel incredibly empty and devoid of anything, like the dead skin of a meaningful song draped over a robot.

And yet it managed to knock the late great John Lennon (who had just died in a high profile tragic occurrence not three months prior) off the chart. How?

Most Ridiculous Part?

The Top of the Pops performance, which seems to tie with the original Ringu for the most frightening video involving children to ever be distributed to the masses.

Why?

It's kitchy, badly made with not particularly talented singers and songwriters, of course it was going to be a hit in the early 80s! It was a very very cheesy song with a big sentiment, which meant it was always going to be a number one hit, and chances are a ton of grandmothers got this unwanted ode as a present that year. But why this song, with this choir and that awful production, I will never know.

4: Can the Can – Suzi Quatro (2004)

What?

Oh, I'm not going to make any fans for this...

So we have Suzi Quatro, rock music's (and to a big degree feminism's) dirty little secret. I'll start with the positives of her. She was indeed the first female to be involved in rock music at a high level as an instrumentalist and not just a singer, as well as the first female rock artists to get a number one single, making her an early icon for feminism and inclusivity in the very very masculine genre of rock. Her work after her initial run of success showed genuine improvement, and even now, 40 years or so after her initial hit, she's still performing. Um... she looked really good in a catsuit?

But all of this can't really get around the fact that her initial hit singles, Devil Gate Drive, 48 Crash and especially Can the Can are utterly appalling uninspired rock songs from the early explosion of the genre. This was 1973, when progressive rock and heavy metal was beginning to explode and get increasingly sophisticated and technical, and Can the Can smacked of uninspired blues-based three chord rock and roll, with very very little to set it apart from its contemporaries. Quatro herself plays bass at a very elementary level, playing nothing more than simple root notes, which in this sort of song doesn't really matter all that much. This kind of relatively unintrusive music is resigned to the background, in order to not distract from Quatro's vocals: a convention you typically see in pop music.

Speaking of

Most Ridiculous Part?

The Lyrics. The entirety of them. Most people tend to mock the chorus for it's utter nonsense, but the lyrics get worse the more you understand them. Before I go into the lyrics, I would be hasty to not point out that in a lot of circles Quatro is considered a feminist icon for being the first female instrumentalist with major commercial success in her own right, which paved the way for more female instrumentalists, band leaders (like Blondie and Joan Jett) and proof yet again that women could succeed in a man's world.

However, the lyrics, penned by Quatro and two male songwriters prove that music was still very much a man's world, as the song is about getting a boyfriend and getting him to stick around, that is if he wants to. That's what “Can the Can” means, doing the impossible and getting him to stick around, which I suppose in the early swinging seventies was tricky to do.

Essentially the verses discuss the dangers of other females in the family, which could be read figuratively (as in all the mother and sister figures) and literally. It plays to the stereotypes of the disapproving matriarchal battleaxe in the first verse, the metaphorical Tiger, protective of her young and fiercely retaliating against any perceived threat, such as the boyfriend eagle who flies in the sky (high high!), a somewhat obvious double entendre or being both a free spirit and a stoner. The strange pre-chorus refrain “Scratch out her eyes” could be implying to surprise her and stand by your boyfriend, but it seems oddly violent, and the use of feline imagery and the notion of cat fighting over a man has not gone unnoticed, and only gets worse in the second verse.

The second verse of course, which implies that any woman who isn't moralising and matriarchal is a direct threat to your relationship, an evil harlot who will take your boyfriend “without a fight.”

Essentially, the “feminist icon” is singing that other women are the enemy, a man is so valued and treasured to your identity you should mutilate other women to keep him and that it's not a man's fault if he's adulterous, it's the fault of the women who tempt him. For the seventies admittedly, that is progressive, but in hindsight it didn't really do that many favours.

Why?

It was an easy gimmick. Put a girl in a leather catsuit, stick a bass on there and boom, mass market appeal! She had an air of danger but not too much to put off really white-bred types, playing the rock stereotype very safely and singing essentially something like “Baby Love” or the typical female singer fare of the time, just playing a bass at the same time. My bafflement is why this song? Why this song with its awful premise and really clumsy lyrics? Answers to these questions are beyond me, but at least its crimes are just clumsy metaphors, it's not like it's outright misogynistic is it?

3: Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back) – Eamon/F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back) – Frankee (2004)

What?

Sometimes it's wonderful doing the research for this list, you get to hear all these lost gems that had their day in the limelight then sunk like a stone, you see that some artists who deserved hits did get them and some utter shocks now and then.

Unfortunately, then you get to 2004 and realised that this stupid feud dominated the charts for seven weeks.

This is going to take quite a bit of explanation as to why I have two songs in the same spot, both by artists you've never heard of. The short version is one is the answer song to the other and both are essentially the same song, so I counted both. The longer answer is significantly so. Are you sitting comfortably?

In 2005, Eamon came onto the pop scene with a new sound he dubbed Ho-Wop, which was new and unique and combined gritty hip hop with a smooth R&B vocal styling. Now, I suspect his claims of originality are suspect, since the late Princess of R&B Aaliyah was making music several years before that which fit the definition and actually were an influence on various artists that combined Hip Hop and R&B such as Drake, but that's not where this song falls down.

Nor in fact does it fall down on its controversial lyrics. Well, I'm not sure if controversial is the right word for the levels of juvenile dialogue you hear in his work. The song contains 33 expletives, the most in any number one single, and as you may expect the topic of the song (a break up song based on infidelity, believe it or not) isn't exactly explored with much meditation. Or dignity. No, the song falls down because it's awful, with an anaemic beat, a really underwhelming singer and incredibly clumsy lyrics. And usually here the story would end, the song would get maybe a little stint in the top 10 for having the word “Fuck” in the title and then it would just go away,and I would be happy.

Then of course came the answer song, Frankees F.U.R.B. What does FURB mean? Fuck you right back of course! And this is where the bad bitter mean spiritedness takes a turn, and you realise you're listening to a row between two inherently repellant people. He has serious issues with women and acts like a 14 year old with his largely incoherent whiny lyrics, while she is an unfaithful sociopath who, while righteously pissed about this not being settled in a room or some angry Bebo posts rather than being part of the biggest selling song in the UK in April 2004 (along with anyone with ears) took this rage to an extreme level, actually saying that the infidelity she did doesn't matter, because “it's [his] fault somehow!”

Somehow, I don't feel entirely sympathetic to either, and rather than feel intrigued about what kind of situation could have caused such a one-in-a-million occurrence, I just wanted them to go away. Which they didn't for another month after.

Most Ridiculous Part?

That, get this! Eamon and Frankee didn't actually date each other and this relationship was an elaborate publicity stunt! Wow, that was such a twist it's like the forces of the cosmos are just fucking with us today aren't they? Seriously, people actually bought that the two of them were an item, mostly because the idiots who genuinely enjoyed the song wanted to believe it was true, helped by Frankee having an Eamon lookalike in the music video, to add to the cash in potent-I mean adding to the emotional crippling, as we see Frankee righteously react to accusations of infidelity in such a dignified fashion!

Why?

Both artists were complete unknowns, with barely a hint of buzz about them, and judging by their efforts no reason to. Initially Eamon's song was a hit because having the F-bomb in the title is a pretty unsubtle way to drum up controversy, which of course creates cash. You can't build controversy purely on the f-word though, so Frankee's associates came in and created the idea of a feud between the two, which appealed on many levels, pandering to the worst stereotypes, and dividing audiences between misogynists and misandrists, appealing to their basest misconceptions (all women are whores who want your money vs the key to female independence is to use all within your path) in order to drum up sales, making this a pseudo-competition between men and women. And in fact, that aspect of it is probably the only part of these two abominable wastes of music that actually had any thought put into them.

2: I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) – Sandi Thom (2007)

What?

An embodiment of absolutely everything I hate about music, that's fucking what! This is not going to be the same kind of entry as the last eight, because while I'm not a fan of their gimmicks or the fact they're not very good, they're usually either too good or innocuous enough to not be worthy of my contempt. Even the Crazy Frog, something I hate from every possible conceptual level, I at least respect the particular song the frog bing baaarped to. This is on a whole nother level, and is probably up there as one of my least favourite songs in existence. I'll usually give everything a chance, even things technically worse than this, but this song. This fucking song! Right, I've got to explain where I come from this song before I can get into it.

Right, one of the things that annoys me more than anything else is nostalgic mania, nostalgia pretty close to its initial medical definition. Where people long for the past despite never experiencing it and having very little knowledge of what the past was actually like to live in. So, I'm fine with songs like Summer of 69 and The Boys of Summer, which talk about the past from a relative standpoint; they don't miss the time period but the experiences and people that were in it.

You might start to see my issue with Thom's single.

Written as a response to her getting her mobile phone stolen (that's actually the story behind it) this entitled cretin then wrote this screed with the idea that “the hippies wouldn't let this happen”, neglecting the fact that hippies do not care about unnecessary possessions and generally were the minority, also the fact that the punks hated hippies and kicked the shit out of them. The faux-k song has no actual instrumental melody, completely held by Thom's insufferably smug vocals and a thumping drum section that I think is designed to give me a migraine. In terms of production, vocals or lyricism, there is nothing redeemable about this song; it is utterly, utterly worthless. Even the premise, that she wishes that she was back in the eras of free love and fake anarchy were back because that would make the world magically better and she'd be better in it. Except her music is dreadful and would never get even a passing mention in the era of Woodstock and Isle of Wight, and she'd probably get glassed in the London punk scene.

Most Ridiculous Part:

The lyrics, every single painful word of them. In fact I hate the lyrics so much that I am going to analyse this song line by agonising line, to show you what this song sounds like in my head.

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
(Well, I think The Automatic said it more succinctly than I could about how much shit would be kicked out of her if she went to a punk gig with flowers in her hair)

In seventy-seven and sixty-nine revolution was in the air

(Oh yes, that media-based revolution, where people bought the sex pistols genuinely believing their message of anarchy, or sixty-nine where lots of great music happened, but not that many epoch shifting events.)

I was born too late into a world that doesn't care

(Oh get fucked! This is the main crux of why I don't like nostalgia ballads, because they assume the world suddenly stopped caring an indefinite period after they realised a world existence, by pampered entitled pricks who don't care about the world at all. You get out what you put in in this life!)

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

(Running out of lyrics already?)

When the head of state didn't play guitar
(I've no idea what this is referring to, but in any case, how do you know what musical tastes politicians have when they're off duty? Henry VIII composed Greensleeves after all.)

Not everybody drove a car

(Most still not, another sign of her entitlement complex me thinks. Besides, does this mean she pines for the days when social mobility was a pipe dream?)

When music really mattered and when radio was king

(Wait, did she just say her music doesn't matter? Well she's got me there.)

When accountants didn't have control

(I think they still did, these were the dying days of Keynesian economics after all...)

And the media couldn't buy your soul

(Tell that to the Monkees!)

And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything
(Really? Is this a Luddite Anthem or something? I'd call this utterly stupid but I fear that may be the point!)

When pop stars still remained a myth

(Tell that to the Monkees, and Elvis Presley for that matter)

And ignorance could still be bliss

(Called it! This is a anthem for stupidity!)

And when god saved the queen she turned a whiter shade of pale

(Because she only knows two songs from the Punk and Prog revolutions. Maybe if she heard any more she'd write better lyrics?)

My mom and dad were in their teens

(Well, at least this is relatable to her own life, maybe the first verse and a half was a miste-)

And anarchy was still a dream

(-and back to stupidity we go. Where outside of Syria has anarchy been achieved?)

And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail

(You fuckwit! Even in the sixties there were telephones!)

When record shops were still on top

(Timely, as horrible music like yours began to gain traction through digital means. You hypocrite)

And vinyl was all that they stocked
(What about 4-track and 8-tracks? Sure they were around in the sixties, they were certainly around by seventy seven you idiot!)

And the super info highway was still drifting out in space

(another nonsense Luddite rhyme, because the internet was made by aliens am I right?)

Kids were wearing hand me downs

(Most kids still wear hand-me-downs today, and when they don't, that means recycling and donating clothes have improved exponentially.)

And playing games meant kick arounds
(Oh, so video games are somehow the work of modern evil too right? Unless it's meant to be decrying the sexualisation of society, something that is a direct result of the sexual liberation of the late sixties?! Do you know a single thing about the past?)

And footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face

(Because mud and long hair are the truest signs of masculinity right? What does this have to do with Punk Rock anyway?)

Why?

Much like the other completely worthless track on this list, the Crazy Frog (oh YES! I went there!), the key to Thom's success was not actually on any merits her song actually had (read: none) but once again on blanket marketing. The adverts for her song were completely inescapable. You ended up seeing it about a million times a day (conservatively estimated) and hearing her horrible whine of a chorus, like something out of a particularly stupid socialist's livejournal. Actually, that's giving her way too much credit, like she has actual beliefs and values of her own. It' more like one of those bandwagon jumpers who has no idea what socialism (or politics at all) means but knows that it's cool among her hipster group of friends to like it, so she does. Basically you were bombarded with stupid for long enough that your brain melted and you went out and bought it to try to make it go away.

Essentially I'm saying that despite the pandering to luddite hipsterdom, she's as processed as the Crazy Frog. And under that context, it makes sense to blanket market her and allow stupid people to genuinely believe the shit she's spewing, completely blissfully ignorant (or can you only be that in the sixties Sandi?) to the utterly hypocritical nature of the lyrics.

Right, I've got to move on before this song starts to cause permanent damage. And to hopefully make up for this, we're ending on a triumphant note.

1: Killing in the Name – Rage Against The Machine (2009)

What?

Oh hell yes, nineteen years after the release of their first album, Rage Against the Machine got a number one in the UK with one of their most enduring songs, most of the people reading this probably already know the song and the story behind its well deserved but belated success, but for you who don't understand the significance, here's a recap of the pop landscape at the end of the naughties.

From the creation of the hugely popular and hugely influential talent contest The X Factor, there was a sort of monopoly on the record industry and the charts. Basically, the masses of exposure and the framing of the winner's “story” as a journey though adversity, the winner of the contest each year was pretty much given on a golden plate a Christmas number one single. Yes, no matter how bad the singer, how uninspired the choice of song or even how disrespectful the cover version was, the Christmas number one each year was some kind of irrelevant processed ballad, which felt more devoid of emotion than a cardboard cut out of Keanu Reeves and had barely any more singing talent. For six years this was the case, six years of hurt.

In 2009, a last minute campaign to get something else to number one was hatched, the managers picking Killing in the Name as an appropriately anarchic song, essentially screaming the mantra of all those sick and tired of the endless manufactured pop. “Fuck you I won't do what you tell me!”

The campaign picked up momentum despite a lot of cynicism and conspiracy theories surrounding the fact that both Simon Cowell's record label and RATM's were both imprints of Sony BMG. With that, all eyes were on the Christmas charts, would Rage finally be able to stop the torment of a mediocre male singer and his Miley Cyrus cover?

Most Ridiculous Part?

That the campaign worked! Killing in the Name was the fastest selling downloaded single in history and the first Christmas number one to succeed purely though downloads. So what if McElderry managed to get the number one the very next week, for one brief shining moment, the people had spoken. Democracy had worked because the apathetic stood up.

Why?

Usually I'd have some cynical reason for the success of a song, but for something like this, maybe people are just awesome after all...

The Top 10 Most Baffling UK Number One Singles in History Part 1/2

The UK pop charts tend to, especially in recent years follow a particular formula. And with a little bit of thought, it's easy to see why: The single buying public, more so than the Album Charts has a very specific demographic that skews younger and younger with each generation; with younger demographics come very specific ways to sell music and types of music to sell. Hence you tend to see most things follow the trend (which at the moment comprises of boy bands, teenybopper pop singers and endless club songs, interspersed with some retro-soul) and most things outside of it not even getting a look in outside of their niché.

However, with well over 1200 number one singles since the charts unified in the late 1960s, there's been more than a few songs that make you scratch your head and wonder “how the hell did they become a hit?” and thus is the topic of today's list. Ten of the most baffling songs ever. There are a few caveats since this list is about being unexpected rather than just being bad, or obscure, though both of those things come into play. No, this is about songs that seemingly come out of nowhere and make you wonder how the hell people could buy them in the hundreds of thousands, so Charity singles are out and bad but conventional songs also are unless there's something especially unique about their rise. So with that, count down with me won't you?

10: Mambo No. 5 – Bob The Builder (2001)

What?

Oh, where to start, this one is very very easy. The second of two number one hits for the cartoon star (and his voice actor, Neil 'Man Behaving Badly' Morissey) sees the builder covering Lou Bega's number one hit, an anthem for polygamy where Lou Bega sings joyously about sleeping with pretty much every woman in the northern hemisphere. Of course the lyrics are somewhat altered to be less about boinking everyone and more about fixing every problem about the house. Although, put like that it kind of poisons the childhood of pretty much anyone just younger than me...

Most Ridiculous Part

The fact that someone from CBBC (the children's wing of the British Broadcasting Corporation who own Bob the Builder) looked at Mambo No. 5 and went “That's a perfect song to do a tie-in with Bob the Builder! You know how kids are all about pimping!”

Why did it happen?

The worst bit is that it worked! The BBC had already scored a number one already with the Bob the Builder theme song early in 2001. It helps that Morissey, while hardly the best singer ever, has an interesting voice and can hold a note, which made Mambo No. 5 and especially Can We Fix It actually tolerable compared to the CBBC's other number ones, the Teletubbies theme and especially Mr Blobby, both songs that aren't listenable even if you're young enough to watch the shows. It's a cash in and quite an embarrassing one, but one that makes a small bit of sense.

Mull of Kintyre – Paul McCartney (1977)

What?

I don't know either, the list will contain some terrible inexplicably popular songs, things from nichés that never broke free from that restraint or some long forgotten tie-in, but this one makes no sense. Paul McCartney has a spot of land called the Mull Of Kintyre, so he sang about it in an utterly dismal acoustic ballad so banal and insufferable it made one long for the days of the fucking Frog Chorus. And it scored the Christmas Number One spot, an accolade that is hotly competed for year on year and leads to some of the most creative (and occasionally worst) songs of any given year.

And yet the Christmas number one was this utterly irrelevant, pointless, dull as dishwater acoustic ballad about how Paul McCartney owns a big bit of beautiful land on a Scottish island, which is the 70s equivalent of those endless slog of rap songs and rap verses proclaiming the amazing wealth you have. That's the issue with it; strip the romanticist imagery and you have not only an incredibly dull acoustic ballad, but an implicitly egotistical one.

Most Ridiculous Part?

That the biggest hit of the band who did Live and Let Die was this, although this is far from the last time this is the case in the pop charts, and not even the last on this list.

Why?

I can only assume purely based on McCartney's sheer hit-making power. Paul McCartney had a ton of hits after the Beatles, first with Wings and later as a solo artist, and most of them were if not outright terrible at least a little unimaginative, lacking the zest and energy that former bandmate John Lennon provided, or indeed the musicianship and vulnerability of George Harrison. And it is indeed each members' hits post-Beatles that shows the balance between the members, that sheer synergy that made them one of the greatest bands of all time...as well as the clear weaknesses in each member's solo work. Ah well, at least the Frog Chorus never got to number one.

8: Axel F – The Crazy Frog

What?

Oh god, this one. This horrible, putrid, unlistenable piece of pop music smegma that polluted the airwaves and conversations of civilised society for a large chunk of 2005. Trying to explain this one to the blissfully ignorant is like explaining the odd popularity of slavery. Right, it started as a Swedish student trying to copy the sound of a two-stroke engine out of the comically awful Russian car, the Trabant. Six years later, another Swedish student created a 3d animation of the creature known as The Annoying Thing, using the sound to show off his ability to lip sync and animate in time with a sound file. It was popular on his site and spread out to Napster and other file sharing sites of the time and thus it was at this time that the burgeoning mobile phone ringtone company Jamstar! (at the time known as Jamba!, RingToneKing and a zillion other terrible names) bought the rights and started to blanket advertise the damn thing more than anything alive. More people saw this than saw the Coronation, the Jubilee or any sporting final, if only because it was absolutely impossible to escape. This original clip eventually permutated into a big merchandise grab to cash in on the surprise flash in the pan hit which eventually led to an hugely successful album in 2005, Crazy Hits.

The lead off single of Crazy Hits, a cover of the main theme from Beverly Hills Cop was a monumental smash hit, even with Frog's annoying gimmick polluting the incredibly infectious beat getting to number one practically everywhere in the world and staying there in the UK for a month, only finally being ousted by the tag team of Tupac and Elton John.

Most Ridiculous Part:

As much as I want to say the very fact the Crazy Frog exists as a pop culture artefact is one, but I suppose the fact that the mobile phone-bait music video was turned into not one, but two video games makes me want to flee this planet as fast as physics will allow me.

Why?

It's really hard to consider how the Crazy Frog phenomenon suddenly flashed into existence and just as quickly went away. As much as I want to put it down to horrible people being horrible and liking terrible things then finally seeing sense, there must be more to it than that. Crazy Frog was the symbol of a change that would very quickly sweep the pop world: The use of ringtones, the internet and new media as a firm marketing tool, as well as cross marketing in a very efficient way (well other than the blanket marketing of the initial ringtone) that kept the grey bastard constantly in the public's conscious, which snowballed and meant once it was there it would not go away.

As much as we wanted it to.

7: Ain't No Doubt – Jimmy Nail (1993)

What?

If the Crazy Frog is entirely plausible from a sheer cynical marketing perspective, the huge and sustained success of Jimmy Nail is the complete opposite. Typically the number one position goes to either something very talented, very catchy or it fits a contemporary trend. Jimmy Nail was never any of those things, and in fact there's a good chance you won't have heard of him, since his last big role was in 2002, reprising a role he hadn't done at that point for 14 years. Basically, he was the Geordie lout from Auf Wiedersehn Pet, and yet from that he had a pretty respectable television career in the 90s, his biggest hit being the heartwarming comedy Crocodile Shoes.

And it is with Crocodile Shoes that his television and music careers both converge and peak simultaneously, the simple premise of a factory worker who wants to live the dream of being a country music singer included a tie-in album which went to number two at the tail end of 1994 and the title track becoming another of Nail's many many chart hits. However, while Crocodile Shoes makes perfect sense as a tie-in product, his previous album, Growing Up in Public was the big hit, and its first single, Ain't No Doubt inexplicably went to number one, the reason I call it inexplicable becomes readily appatrent once you hear it.

From a production standpoint the song is pretty much dead centre in terms of its sound. It has a brass band, an admittedly awesome bass riff that powers the song and muted synth chords creating a somewhat slow atmospheric verse which comes to life in the chorus. Nail is also accompanied by Sylvia Mason-James, who does very well with the three repeating lines she gets. Those are the two good parts of the song, and really it goes downhill the second Nail starts evoking the rhythmic styling of William Shatner. The lyrics are about a breakup and the mistrust that comes from that, done in a simplistic way and really simply demanding honestly; the act of lying to save feelings after a breakup being a contradiction in terms, leading to the eventual resignnation of Nail's narrator as a liar himself, lying himself to both protect himself and to try and hurt his former lover. The problem is Nail's performance, acting like he's narrating the monologue in a bad Geordie Film Noir, which could have worked in framing the lady as a femme fatale and extending the metaphor. The problem is that it becomes abundantly clear that Nail is not singing the verses due to the limitations in his voice or the unwillingness of the hacks who wrote the song to create a vocal melody, and so it stands to expose his weaknesses in both lyricism and singing, weaknesses that got him an Ivor Novello award nomination for excellent songwriting.

It should be noted that “Bad Geordie Film Noir” seems to be the theme of the music video, although the influences seem to be less “The Blue Dahlia” and more “Bugsy Malone”, as the verse and chorus move between the grim London streets in an intimidating cold grey, the overexposed, almost deified light in the Pre-Chorus and the glitzy full on musical colours of the chorus, relating a tale of the muted emotions of the protagonist being tested by the forced platitudes of his former love, eventually tipping over and forcing the protagonist to rhetorically ask "Why does she pretend?!" and burst out into the emotive, colourful chorus.

Yeah, that's about as much Jimmy fucking Nail analysis as you can wring out of me.

Most Ridiculous Part?

The Pre-Chorus by a mile, where Mason-James is interrupted by Nail's sardonic asides of “she's lying!” which is nothing short of genius. If I'm ever in a nasty horrible break up (um, again), I know who's sage advice I'm going to follow to deal with it!

Why?

Nail was a fairly respected actor, with most of his better roles, such as in Spender and Crocodile Shoes being characters he created, and received five BAFTA nominations and a Golden Globe Nomination that he created. Perhaps his exposure and reputation with the BBC, a company known for being better than most when it came to cross-promotion, as well as his reputation for writing (though not really music) kept him in the public picture, and thus people bought his music as a show of support for his television persona, like they did later with Crocodile Shoes.

Or maybe people are just suckers for bad break up songs, who knows?

6: Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter – Iron Maiden (1990)

What?

Oh hell yes, one of the gods of metal, Iron Maiden were so awesome they managed a number one hit in the early nineties, where metal had been shooed away into nothingness in the wake of the first wave of popular hip hop (or hip-pop as certain particularly humourless oafs will claim). Most metal that was still stocked was the increasingly out of control yet ever duller Hair Metal variety, and it would be a couple of years before its reaction would get big enough to confront it's decadent stablemate. Amid this chaotic landscape, and the utterly pathetic religious claptrap Saviour's Day making it to the Christmas top spot , Iron Maiden managed to score the number one single on the eve of 1991.

To a fan of heavy metal this is standard, and actually for Iron Maiden unfortunately redundant stuff, off their weakest album, No Prayer For the Dying, although a different cut was used as the theme song for the slasher flop Nightmare On Elm Street Part V: The Dream Child. Arguably a tiny bit more accessible in terms of sound than something like To Tame a Land admittedly, but really it's standard Maiden, and really it's difficult to hate an Iron Maiden song if you're a fan of that kind of music. And if you're not, then these words are going to slap you in 3...2...

Most Ridiculous Moment

The BBC banned the song and its music video, if you can believe it, in late 1990 when it started climbing up the charts on Christmas eve. I assume it's because of the rather sexualised lyrics, or maybe that they thought in the wake of the devil worshipping child abuse scare of the early 1990s (believe it or not, that was a real genuine moral panic), that people would literally bring their daughter to the slaughter. Either way, it was a bit sensationalist and I suspect the BBC were pushed into it.

Why?

While I want to say simply “Because it's awesome your plebian cretins!” I genuinely am baffled by this one more than most of the ones on this list. Rock and heavy metal really stopped being more than a fluke hit about a decade before this, but even with the hits in the genre that came before and after this, there was usually a reason for their success. They were in the soundtrack a hit film, some kind of major media event involved them, they got a rub from a popular star of the time or more morbidly one of the members dies. Nightmare Part 5 was an utter flop, so I doubt that Freddy had anything to do with its success. It's not much simpler than most Maiden fare so it wasn't a dramatic change in style like how Metallica and Megadeth got big hits. The song got banned from the BBC, but how much that drove sales I have no idea; while it got the Sex Pistols their only number one hit, but that song was trying to get banned because being taboo was the entire point of the Sex Pistols (not punk mind, before I get complaints from punk bands, just The Sex Pistols themselves). Personally, this isn't entirely out of nowhere, given their massive success outside of the pop fold, perhaps a crossover hit was inevitable. Also, Iron Maiden are awesome, that is all.