Ear Maggot

Dear readers, I have an ear maggot.

An ear maggot (as defined by me and my friend Trudy) is a song which inexplicably gets stuck in your head. Sometimes ear maggots can be very bad things.

Particularly if they’re songs you hate.

Leona (she looks like a hactual lion) Lewis’s ’Forgive Me’ (I wouldn’t forgive her for reasons too numerous to list here) is a great example. Another would be H2O’s ‘What We Gonna Do’.

I’ve not linked to either song because I have your own best interests at heart - if you listen to either, even for a short while you are in danger of contracting them as ear maggots and you’ll be stuck with them for the rest of the day.

However, today’s ear maggot is a good one - it’s Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking.

Just blurry brilliant aren’t they?

Think you recognise the song, but don’t remember them? Here’s some facts, pop pickers: (half inched from Wikipedia)

1. Althea Forrest and Donna Reid reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in February 1978.
2. “Uptown Top Ranking” has been covered by: Sean Paul, Scout Niblett, Black Box Recorder, and Joni Rewind (with our very own Estelle doing the vocals).
3. Big D and the Kids Table, did a version (with new lyrics) and gave it a new title - “Strictly Rude”.
4. Pop Will Eat Itself sampled the “No Pop, No Style” refrain in their single “X, Y & Zee”. 
5. It was also sampled by Abs Breen in “What You Got” - nope I didn’t remember him either. For those who might care - he’s formerly of boyband Five - and has apparently changed his name to Abs Love - dear god was his name not stupid enough already?

But enough of this poptastic trivia… I have to go do some PPC reports - oh the glamour!