Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2004, design of a decade, the streets
10. The Streets, Fit But You Know It
After Mike Skinner set Anglophile hearts ablaze with his 2002 debut, the man known as The Streets followed the commercial and critical success up with A Grand Don’t Come For Free, a darkly funny concept album about desperation and boredom. It’s bleak and miserable and not especially fun to listen to. The tracks on Original Pirate Material proved their point by sounding really awkward; it was the sound of a frantic Englishman trying to make rap songs and producing something giddier and more immediate; but that style can’t quite convey the levels of drama that Skinner’s trying to channel on A Grand Don’t Come For Free. The songs are still funny, but the album’s concept seems simultaneously glossed-over and never ending.
Well, except for track seven.
I have no idea whether Skinner’s label demanded the man produce a goofy single after hearing the rest of the album, but that’s what it sounds like. Fit But You Don’t Know It is upbeat and completely out of touch with the rest of the album. It’s four minutes of comic relief halfway through an album that’s all jerky, repetitive beats and suburban garage-emo.
Outside of the album’s murky context, the song is still fun, at least for the first hundred or so listens. The “I’m alright, don’t touch me” breakdown in the middle still cracks me up, and fake tan jokes never really get old.
But Skinner’s back-and-forth antics with Teddy Mitchell are by no means extraordinary; actually, in retrospect I have no idea what I was thinking putting this song in the year’s top ten.
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