1999 Geri Halliwell: Lift Me Up

The second number one from Halliwell is a less fussy, lighter ballad affair than the last, but the same problems remain - in delivering her flim flam of a song, Halliwell's thin altitude vocal emotes no further than the roof of her mouth, presumably due to all the unmelted butter clogging up her maw that serves to coats it with a sickly schoolgirl, trying a bit too hard to be liked sweetness. Call me a snob, but I don't really regard 'Lift Me Up' as a 'proper' single; it's simply a vehicle for product placement, with that product being Halliwell herself. Not being anything I can imagine deriving any pleasure from listening to, it serves the same function as a poster hording advertising washing powder (this even comes with a free poster dammit) - it remains in place for the duration of a campaign only to be scraped off and replaced with something else when it's over. And as far as that goes, in sitting proudly at number one for a week, 'Lift Me Up' has succeeded admirably. But in its success in inflating Ms Halliwell's ego it's also devalued the currency of the medium to Weimar-like hyperinflation proportions where you needed a wheelbarrow full of marks just to buy that washing powder. Unfortunately, a wheelbarrow full of Geri Halliwell singles is always going to add up to nothing. I'm not having a good year am I?