Filed under: lists, music | Tags: catatonia, cerys matthews, design of a decade, the year 2000
#6. Catatonia, She’s A Millionaire
Welsh quintet Catatonia started releasing EPs in 1993, but didn’t hit it big until they got topical with singles Mulder & Scully and Road Rage in 1998. And, you know, big is a relative term, I guess. In the grand scheme of Britpop, they weren’t Oasis and they weren’t Blur; they were on the B-list, alongside Longpigs and Dubstar, who kinda-sorta had one American hit and were then promptly forgotten, despite knowing fans rapturing about them. And unlike every other female-fronted Britpop group (bar Elastica and late-period Lush) they actually did briefly make it onto American airwaves.
2000′s Equally Blessed And Cursed, didn’t really cause much of a stir, though, mainly because all the oomph of Britpop faded when everybody went electronic and for whatever reason modern rock stations decided that Kula Shaker was less hip than Robbie Williams. Plus the record company did that thing they always do when there’s a girl singer and a boy band, sticking her in fishnets and centering her on the album cover. Does that ever make anybody happy?
Musically, Catatonia adapted just like everybody else; Londinium and Dazed Beautiful And Bruised were as sweeping as anything on 1997’s International Velvet, but tracks like Dead From The Waist Down and She’s A Millionaire added a more introspective tone, and some electronic bits, to the mix. She’s A Millionaire, never released as a single, is still one of my favorite songs by the Welsh quintet, and it was a telling introduction to this decade’s fixation on blondeness, name brands and featherweight socialites: “Her treasured chest was sunken, equally cursed and blessed/In her Versace dress, too eager to impress.” Despite a cooing baby, carnival interlude, and the phrase “DIY gynecology,” the song managed not to get too silly, or too heavy-handed.
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