I don’t know if this is embarrassing or if enough time has passed for it to be retro, but the first CD single I bought, to play on my shiny new hi-fi, was ‘7 Days’ by Craig David. It might possibly have been from the bargain bin of a shop such as W H Smith or Woolworths, or I might have bought it when it was first released. The artwork was minimalist, featuring Craig David dressed in white on a white background. The single reached number 1 on the UK chart in July 2000. He previously reached number 1 with ‘Fill Me In’ and had already become popular with ‘Re-Rewind’ as the vocalist for Artful Dodger. At some point I acquired both Craig David’s debut album ‘Born to Do It’ and Artful Dodger’s ‘It’s All About the Stragglers’. Craig David was one of the biggest pop stars in the UK in the year 2000 and I really liked that hybrid of garage and pop. I liked ‘7 Days’ because of the mellow guitar riff and Craig’s tuneful voice. The lyrics were kind of silly, describing a man’s fantasy of meeting a girl in the subway at ‘about quarter past three’ on a Monday, propositioning her and spending the week together, but it was very catchy.
CD singles in the UK usually had two versions, each version including remixes, b-sides or maybe even a video to play on your computer. I don’t know which CD version of ‘7 Days’ I had, but I do remember that remixes on singles were often a bit rubbish and it was desirable to have the version which had different songs, not just remixes. My CD singles collection was quite small, as they were expensive compared to the cassettes, unless from the aforementioned bargain bin. I had ‘New Year’ by the Sugababes, ‘Music’ by Madonna and ’19/2000′ by Gorillaz, I don’t recall what else. I now own one CD single, ‘Achilles Heel’, the debut from Toploader. I found it in a charity shop in around 2010, having liked the song since seeing it performed on Top of the Pops more than a decade earlier. The late 90s to early 2000s were peak times for the CD single and I’d assumed the format had died out, but I’ve read that with the resurgence of physical media they’ve made a comeback.
As for my copy of ‘7 Days’, it’s long-gone, but the song has a permanent residence in my brain.
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