Easter beckons: an offline cottage (the work laptop having finally returned to the pool), briefly interrupted by Duran Duran and Goldfrapp at the Arena on Sunday night, and followed directly by a few days in Lisbon with K, Dymbel and Dymbellina. Which means that it's mini-hiatus time for Troubled Diva.

But not before I leave you with a track from the imaginary mix CD which you compiled for me this week. Having tracked down and listened to all but three of your recommendations (I'm still stuck on Kevin Coyne, Archie Roach and Jah Wurzel), one song in particular stood out from the pack. In fact, it fairly screamed out to be listened to by absolutely everybody.

Here it is, then. A song which requires your full attention, so please promise me that you won't multi-task while playing it. Go on - take your hands off that keyboard, push that mouse away, turn away from the screen - and listen.

Update: MP3 now deleted.

(Thanks to Nigel for the suggestion.)

I didn't really want to go to the swanky hotel's first birthday party - it was too soon after the excesses of the weekend - but K said come on, it will be a laugh, people we know are going, it's free booze and gourmet nibbles, and it's a good excuse to put on our smart new trendy gear and pose around a bit. Sometimes, he knows exactly how to speak my language.

"It's cocktails and beer in the restaurant, or champagne and wine in the lobby."

What a peculiar way to organise your drinks. We turn right and battle through to the lobby, winding through sprawling clumps of braying flash trash who think this do is the fucking business, mate. There's a big queue for fizz - except that it's more of a scrum, as most of the flash trash evidently consider themselves above waiting in line. No-one doing the rounds with trays, except for one lone waitress with just two glasses left; she promises to return with more, and is never seen again.

Awkward, over-calculated postures; fake smiles betrayed by eyes which are constantly scanning the brightly-lit space; everyone is performing, everyone is "on". (And I choose my prepositions carefully, hur hur.) Playing the game is the only option. Our journalist friend (already battling to suppress his dirty looks when no-one is watching) introduces us to someone of his acquaintance who has wandered into our orbit.

"This is K, this is Mike, this is S."

She smiles and greets K, swivels her head straight past me in one smooth, flawless motion, then smiles and greets S. In a split second, she has correctly calculated that I am an outsider at this game, and thus am no-one worth knowing.

As we have observed on many occasions, our journalist friend is blessed with uncommonly acute social antennae. He waits a minute or so, and then has another bash at bringing me into the game.

"This is Mike. This man is one of the country's top bloggers. He's just been featured in The Observer."

(In brackets. In the middle of a list. At the back end of Page Two. But now is not a time to quibble.)

In a split second, she has snapped straight back round to face me, arm already outstreched, face wreathed in smiles. "Hi! Very pleased to meet you!"

As I, in turn, make my own calculations and act on them accordingly. Two can play this game, missy.

An enthusiastic, natural networker, our journalist friend has recently taken to talking me up everywhere as "one of the country's top bloggers". As I blushingly make to duck and wince - bobbing my face, Lady Di style, beneath an imagined (and long vanished) floppy fringe - I discover with some surprise that the old reactions of bafflement, condescension or total disinterest have all but vanished. People actually look impressed. Post-BdJ, her book deal, and all the attendant guessing games in the national press, everyone in these circles now knows exactly what a blogger is. Or thinks they do, at any rate. We're the phemomenon du jour, don't you know. We're really frightfully au courant. No longer viewed as sad little loudmouths, bleating away to nobody in particular, we're getting respect. What a richly ironic proposition - that the lascivious diaries of a call girl could finally be conferring respectability upon us all.

Back at the swanky do, I am slowly drowning. Our friend from the boutique hotel is regaling us with mischievous gossip about the boy band who checked in this afternoon. ("Our masseuse says that X has such stinky feet!") For me, this should be conversational home ground - an easy lob. Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more of an effort of will to focus on what is being said. An overpowering sense of disconnection is taking me over. The people standing around me no longer seem quite real; it is as if I am observing them through a bubble. Even their voices are sounding muffled; words reverberating inside my head, but their meaning failing to reach my brain. I keep zoning out, staring into the middle distance, longing to be anywhere but here - and then frantically snapping back into the room, trying to arrange my facial features into some semblance of the requisite brightness, failing badly, and then zoning out again. Insulating myself with ever-thickening layers of guilt.

As the cycle repeats, panic starts to rise inside me, causing my heart to race and my temples to pound. I even feel slightly sick. I have to get out of this room. NOW. Handing my glass to K, I mumble an excuse and flee for the sanctuary of a toilet cubicle, where I sit for several minutes, trying to calm myself, waiting for the pounding and the throbbing to stop.

If I stay in here any longer, people will wonder where I am. A fresh wave of anxiety hits, pushing me back out into the lobby. I try and flash a look at K, but we are in uncharted waters here, and there is no meaningful signal which I can send. Besides which, he is playing the game to perfection, networking all around with his customary apparent ease, attracting people towards him with that understated charisma which he doesn't quite know that he has. I have no wish to put him off his stroke. A new anxiety hits me: that I might be letting him down in public. The pounding and the throbbing return, even as a couple of goons in matching white sportswear suddenly materialise next to me, tumbling around on the lobby floor in an ill-conceived display - half judo, half breakdancing - which is presumably meant to be the evening's "turn". It is a staggering misjudgement. No-one quite knows how to react. Even the flash trash are looking uncomfortable.

And I can take no more. Another quick mumble to K, and I am out of the door before he even has the chance to react. Ten minutes later, I am back at home, sitting semi-catatonic in the dark in my Marc Jacobs pea coat and my too-tight Prada shoes, breathing in and breathing out, and finally understanding why K sometimes has to leave noisy gay clubs in a hurry.

Labels: top25

Images of the Scissor Sisters at Nottingham Rock City last night, courtesy of Buni's phonecam.
To you, they might look fuzzy; to me, they're an astonishingly accurate representation.
(It was that kind of night...)

Smart, fashionable young woman, discussing The Passion Of The Christ with her friends:

"Oh, it was so sad! Especially that bit where his mother saw him... yeah, that bit... as a woman, I really related to that. But, basically, I just cried and cried all the way through it! I mean - really, really sobbed, like a child or something! In fact, I don't think I stopped crying until right at the end, when he was... you know... re-born or whatever."

(Brightly) "Still, nice of them to leave it open for a sequel..."

If I were to download and burn a mix CD from your suggestions so far (which, of course, I would NEVER do, because that would be SO WRONG), then the current track listing would look something like this.Any more suggestions? Remember: rather than necessarily being your favourite song of all time (that most nebulous of concepts), this should instead be a song which you think everybody should hear.

Update: The ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS BECAUSE DOWNLOADING IS SO VERY VERY WRONG double CD is now complete, but don't let that stop you making further suggestions for the "special edition" boxed set.

1st place - The 1960s. (36 points)

Most popular: Anyone Who Had A Heart - Cilla Black.
Least popular: Diane - The Bachelors.

Yes! It's a middle-aged Mojo reader's wet dream! With the 1960s winning by a decisive margin of 5 points, the final result sees our five decades neatly stacked up in reverse chronological order, thus adding weight to the theory that pop music really has got steadily worse over the past forty years. As Groc said in a recent comment:Or maybe we just hit a good week in a year of rapid change and growth, as the British beat boom revolutionised the way that pop music was made. Suddenly, everyone was in a group with a singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer (there are six in this particular selection) whereas even a year earlier, such a commodity was bordering on the non-existent. The notion of the pop group as a gang-like, creatively autonomous unit had arrived; it persists to this day.

Lyrically speaking, the focus here is overwhelmingly romantic in inclination, with nine songs in the Top Ten being more or less straightforward love songs. Or maybe not so straightforward; for as well as being the most romantic of the five decades, 1964 is also the most heartbroken, with exactly half of the top ten dealing with jilted, absent or cruel lovers. (Compare this with the lust-drenched chart of 2004, where only Jamelia's Thank You addresses the pain which love can bring.) It is also somewhat disconcerting to note that while the intervening three decades brought a dramatic widening of lyrical scope (nostalgia, surrealism, social commentary...), this appears to have narrowed right down again in the last few years. Simply put: we have moved from love to lust, passing experimentation along the way.

Your two favourite Top Tens are also by far and away the most British: apart from Jim Reeves (USA) and The Bachelors (Ireland), all of 1964's other acts come from the UK, with four of them hailing from Liverpool. In 1974, nine singles in the Top Ten are British. In both 1984 and 1994, there are just two, and in 2004 there are four. Is this mere coincidence, or does this reveal a sublimated nationalism in your voting patterns?

Or am I just extrapolating wildly from insufficient data samples, and drawing unsafe and even slightly insulting conclusions? Oh, quite probably. But - once again - what huge fun I have had in doing so.

Thank you to everyone who took the trouble to vote and leave comments; unless I've flounced off in another hiatus by then, you can rest assured that we will most certainly be doing this all over again next year.

Until then, I shall leave you with the combined decade scores for the past two years of the project. Just five more years to go, and then we shall truly know...
Which Decade is Tops for Pops!
(Cue end titles.)(This has been another absurdly maximalist interactive stunt from Troubled Diva Productions - where more is always more. Much, much more.)

Labels: whichdecade04

2nd place - The 1970s. (31 points)

Most popular: The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies.
Least popular: Remember (Sha La La La) - Bay City Rollers.

Last year's winner fought back hard this time around, pulling itself up from fifth place to second place in the last four days of the poll. Like 1984, this was a transitional year, which saw the glam-rockers of 1973 peaking and then quickly distancing themselves from the genre, with Slade, Gary Glitter and T.Rex all releasing uncharacteristic ballads within a few weeks of each other. By the end of the year, glam would have yielded to early disco (George McCrae, Three Degrees, Hues Corporation), The Osmonds would have yielded to the Bay City Rollers, and a new breed of slightly artier, more self-consciously literate pop acts (Sparks, Queen, Cockney Rebel, 10cc) would have gained ground.

The overriding theme of this particular Top 10 was, however, nostalgia. The New Seekers and the Bay City Rollers waxed wistfully about the songs of the "old days", Ringo Starr covered one of them, and both Suzi Quatro and Alvin Stardust referenced the styles of classic rock and roll. Meanwhile, The Hollies and Charlie Rich delivered what for me were the two most pleasant surprises of this year's selection: stately, well-crafted ballads, sensitively arranged, and performed with genuine feeling. As with Van Halen in 1984, sometimes it's the uncool, unfashionable material which ends up sounding the most timeless and enduring (and in the case of The Air That I Breathe, directly influencing a classic of 20 years later, Radiohead's Creep).

Labels: whichdecade04

3rd place - The 1980s. (30 points)

Most popular: Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
Least popular: Joanna - Kool & The Gang.

This is unexpected, to say the least. In my (possibly nostalgia-addled) memory, 1984 was the final year of a protracted Golden Age which started with Heart Of Glass and Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, peaked with Relax and Two Tribes, and ended with Do They Know It's Christmas and You Spin Me Round (Like A Record). Sharp, sussed pop music, with wit, style and substance. To say nothing of all the fantastic early 80s soul/funk/late disco/early electro which had me bopping round my boom box in my fluffy white towelling socks.

So why was almost none this represented in our sample Top Ten? The preposterous Rockwell, the condescending Billy Joel, the borderline-offensive Lionel Richie, the whining Nik Kershaw, the patently counterfeit Break Machine, the anodyne Kool & The Gang... this is not the 1984 which I eagerly documented each Tuesday or Wednesday with my own personal top forty (yes, forty) of current favourites. On the strength of this pitiful evidence, it's a wonder that the 1980s even managed to climb as high as third place. This was only achieved on the strength of the remaining four songs (It's Raining Men, 99 Red Balloons, Jump, Relax), all classics in their own way, which between them picked up 19 points out of a possible 20.

No, this wasn't my 1984 at all. Perhaps I should check those old handwritten personal Top 40s once again. Let's see what was really rocking my world twenty years ago - and let's hope that it's not too embarrassing.



Hmm. Tolerable - distinctly tolerable - if a little Wine Bar in places. (Look, Sade was on the front cover of The Face! We didn't know any better!)

Labels: whichdecade04

Thanks to Dymbel for alerting me to an article about blogging by Simon Garfield in today's Observer. Garfield seems to be labouring under the happy delusion that I am one of the "big names" of UK blogging - a delusion with which I am more than happy to concur.

Bouquets to "moi" over at the estimable Bacon, Cheese and Oatcakes, who gets a particularly lengthy write-up.

Ego suitably stroked, I shall now return to the pleasurable languors of my well-earnt hangover.