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Their fifth #1 single, but, man, there's more than enough to follow. Yep, the zany-eyed soulstress sampled Zimmerman's “Knocking on Heaven's Door” mumblings, slapped her own inimitable kitchen sink R&B stylings over the top, and created the exact feeling you get when you realise that it's only 2:57pm and you're working till six tonight. Vacuum cleaner-voiced boomer fave Bob Dylan never managed a number one single in his own right in the UK, but thank Gabrielle for giving him a chance to piggyback on her fame to the top of the charts. Spears turns up a few more times over the rest of this article, so we can discuss the meat she's added to our decade's pop cultural stew there. If you ignore the myriad travesties wrenched from Britney, this is Louisiana's finest's worst single to date-a bit of straight forward barefoot-and-pregnant-by-the-stove “Stand By Your Man” balladry with not a single second of memorability about it. The song itself? Well, “masses” and “classes” doesn't actually rhyme unless you were born within a five mile radius of Toxteth, and this is where ol' Bono Vox got the inspiration for “Vertigo,” so. Joke was on us though, because rather than being the end of the 90s this really was the beginning of the 00s-a template for so much of what would follow: a number one single getting to the position on fanbase rather than mass appeal (combined with the “delete on day of release” technique” that all your favourite low level indie bands now use) and chock-full of all those clever self-referential lyrics that would plague the pop world in the mid 00s (“Hello, it's us again, and we're still so in love with you,” do you see?). What else sums up music from the turn of the millennium more than a sample taken from a Noam Chomsky speech, backed by a homage to Bowie doing a homage to the Beatles? Yeah, it seemed incongruous six years ago when the number one spot was the sole preserve of US imports and the mighty Ian “H” Watkins.” “The Masses Against the Classes” seemed like the last hiccup from the decade that bought us the never-ending vomiting that was Britpop. Manic Street Preachers - The Masses Against the Classes
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So after nearly 200 records and 12 and a half hours worth of music, the Manic Street Preachers through to Gnarls Barkley, taking in such myriad wonders as DJ Sammy, DJ Otzi, DJ Pied Piper, DJ Casper, and nine songs by fucking Westlife, my sanity, the last month of my life, and my suspicion of Roger Sanchez’s oeuvre have all been taken away. “Hey boss, how about I sit down and listen to every British number one single of the decade in order, and then write about them?” Annoyingly, he called me up on it. T started as more of a joke than an article pitch.