1997 White Town: Your Woman

A subtle spin on Bing Crosby's 1932 song 'My Woman' (though the muted trumpet riff is actually a direct sample from Al Bowly's version of the same year), 'Your Woman' is a soft clash of the old and the new from one man band Jyoti Prakash Mishra (aka White Town) that's broadcasting from some unspecified, androgynous future through a vintage radio microphone powered by valves. 'Your Woman' works as a song because it neither revels in nor emphasises this inherent contradiction in style and instead presents both itself and its curiously asexual lyric in a dry and passionless, matter of fact way that stops it well short of falling into the territory of quirk to demand that you take it seriously. Indeed, 'Your Woman' feels more closely aligned with the then lo-fi output of Folk Implosion, Pavement, Beck et al (though that spooky trumpet motif is the best sample Portishead never used), a comparison that befits a song recorded in a back bedroom. It all adds up to a noteworthy one hit wonder of the kind we haven't seen in such a long, long time.