3 March 2001
‘It Wasn’t Me’ was only number one in Ireland for a week, but it then stayed at number two for the next seven weeks. This helps explain why you couldn’t escape it in early 2001. And escape it is exactly what I wanted to do. I hated its sexism and misogyny: ha ha! Your woman was watching you riding some other girl! What’s more, following you around the house as you rode in various rooms and on various surfaces! Just tell the dumb woman it wasn’t you! God knows we’ve had plenty of sexist, misogynistic songs at number one and every other number of the charts, but a particular ’00s variant was jokey bantz like this. It’s still sexist, misogynistic jokey bantz, though.
If I had to find a less dispiriting reason for this song’s hit status, I’d say it was RikRok’s voice on the chorus: sweet, slightly bewildered, just likeable and distinctive enough to skim over the appalling lyrics. (The non-radio-edit version makes prolific use of the word “banging”.) Of course, we’ve heard this sort of bait-and-switch recently at number one with Eminem’s ‘Stan’: hardly distinguished company. I’d also cite the novelty leering of ‘Mambo No. 5’ and the puerile smut of ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ as precedents here. I despise all the records mentioned above, and if you like any of them then I despise you too.
