I know, I know. We’re a week into May and I still haven’t posted about our April 2001 Billboard retrospective. I’ve been busy being busy while also being busy procrastinating. But I figure what’s a few days late for something twenty-five years in the making?
Quick note: monthly rankings are based on weekly positions on the Billboard charts collected and scored. Rankings are in [brackets] and will correspond to the position on the playlist provided above. Some months not all songs are available to stream and cannot be made available for a playlist, so sometimes we pretend they didn’t exist, sorry.
Janet Jackson topped the overall charts this month with “All For You”[1], a delightfully fun song even after all these years. Working off the bouncy disco deep cut “The Glow Of Love” by Change, the sample in addition with the production truly highlights the vocals of Miss Jackson (I guess we’re being nasty). Sadly, “All For You” marks the last time Janet has topped the charts and has only had marginal charting success since. In that time, there was a “wardrobe malfunction” scandal that seemed to negatively affect her (and only her). Janet Jackson has been touring as of late including a Vegas residency. In today’s climate,I feel there’s truly a possibility of a career resurgence and I’d be happy to see that.
Debuting the month prior, Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” roared it’s way the the second spot. 2001 truly belonged to the group as they were hitting their stride with hit after hit. Weeks after “Independent Woman” topped the charts, there wasn’t much time in-between singles. Starting the week ending on April 14, “Survivor” reached as high as number two, unable to dethrone “All For You”. Both singles held on to the their respective positions for an impressive seven weeks.
The song that would eventually pass both “All For You” and “Survivor” made its debut this month in April. The leadoff single to the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge!, “Lady Marmalade”[30] featured a real who’s-who as Christina Aguilera, Li’l Kim, Pink, and Mya (along with Miss Elliott who produced the track) combined forces ala the Mighty Moulin Power Rangers to give their spin on the 70’s classic made popular by Patti LeBelle. Fun fact (questionable): in 1998, the British girl-group All Saints recorded a version of “Lady Marmalade” which was remixed by notable producer Timbaland. That track made it’s way onto the Doctor Dolittle soundtrack.
My favorite Jennifer Lopez tune entered the charts this month and I was happy to listen to it again and again. “Play” is a delicious slice of nostalgia that tackles the most serious of issues: pestering a DJ to play your song and if possible to turn it up. It turns her on, apparently. Revisiting the song led me to the music video and again, what a nice little time capsule this was. This was 2001 through and through.
Where there were highs this month, there were also a few floaters. And while I try to strike a balance of being fair and not be aggressively negative, I have approached a fair share of clunkers and I would be doing myself a disservice to avoid talking about a couple here. The song “Bizounce”[9] performed by the artist Olivia not only snuck their way into the ninth overall position for the month, it also became the first non-Christmas song to get a big ol’ goose egg in my personal ratings. (The only other song so far to score a zero is the dreadful “Christmas Shoes”)
The other song this month that would have (and should have) scored a zero at the very least had a shred of stupid goofiness that it made the song tolerable to get through twice. You can only be so careful, you know. “Mrs. Steven Rudy”[60] by Mark McGuinn is a little country music tune that broke into the top 50 for a few weeks starting in April 2001. Peaking at position 44, this track is an unrequited love letter to the protagonist’s married neighbor that he hopes on winning over while the husband is on the road. I had a hard time with envisioning the main character of the song to be an adolescent, which is creepy, or as a grown-ass man, which also kinda pathetic.
A fair reminder, dear reader, that this is just the beginning of 2001 we are talking about and country music is about to get much, much worse.
imeanttolisten.com 