Sunday, November 15, 2009

Noughties By Nature #57: Spiller feat. Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)

1999 wasn't the best year for Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Her band Theaudience had split, there was little chance of a solo career and she was reduced to modelling as a devil (albeit a sexy devil) in adverts for gaming websites. I don't think she expected the end of the nineties to turn out like this.

So it was a surprise that she was involved in the first real chart battle of the noughties. On one side was Victoria Beckham releasing her first solo single 'Out Of Your Mind' (well, solo if you ignore Dane Bowers & True Steppers); on the other was Sophie and DJ Spiller with Groovejet (If This Ain't Love). The tabloids loved it, it was considered to be a 'personal battle' to see who was the Real Posh.

Of course the winner was Sophie with the laid back tunes of Groovejet perfectly matching her languid vocals. The question "If this ain't love, why does it feel so good?" never being answered in the song, other than through the way Sophie asks it. It's always the catchy songs that manage to get lines through under the radar and a song that promoted sex purely for enjoyment rather than love certainly did that.

For once, the indie kids beat the pop brats - although the victory was slightly dampened by the pop direction that Sophie took after this single. But if she didn't do that we would never have had the punchline "Murder on Zidane's floor", and what would the noughties have been without that?
Ben Hall

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