Down The Dumper – The 2000s Part 12.

Here’s a female/male duo that made some pleasingly wibbly-wobbly music over the years (and also occasionally some plinky-plonky music if we were lucky), but it’s not Moloko (although they will be reviewed soon too). Alison Goldfrapp had been a backing singer for many years, and featured on several albums (I read that she sang the theme to a 90s CITV show, but I don’t know if that’s true or not).

In the late-90s she teamed up with Will Gregory, and for the next decade there would be plenty of welcome appearances on the singles chart. After a fairly quiet start, although they had already won over the music critics by this point, the first big success came in April 2003, when “Train” became their first Top 40 hit, and there was also “Strict Machine”. They were now heading for some mainstream acclaim.

Then in August 2005 came “Ooh La La”, the first and biggest Top Ten hit for Goldfrapp. This one sampled “Spirit In The Sky”, a three-time UK chart-topper. Not long after, third album “Supernature” became their first to make the Top Ten too. There were then two more Top Ten singles with “Number One” and “A & E”. Another album made the Top Ten, by this point it was clear that they also knew how to put on an impressive stage show, and a lot of their videos are great too.

However, “Happiness”, which is among my favourite singles of theirs, missed the Top Ten, and in July 2008, “Caravan Girl” reached a rather disappointing no. 54, meaning that their days of big hits were now over. Goldfrapp went on to have only one more hit single in the 2010s decade with “Rocket”, and this didn’t make the Top 40 either, despite definitely being up to standard.

They are still together though, and although the hit singles are now gone, the Top Ten albums have continued to come, the most recent being “Silver Eye” in 2017, along with a few remixes of songs for other groups. They have long-since been considered to be pioneers in the electropop genre, and hopefully their wibbly will be wobbly for a long time to come yet.