Smell My Cheese
December 2013 – Hyperdub release a surprise new Burial EP. Me, not being a massive fan of Burial, but liking his work enough to take an interest, takes a listen on Youtube. First track was okay, had that kind of grimy, nocturnal, urban sound I recognised as being consistent with other Burial handiwork, but the other two tracks were something different. Burial was never afraid to inject emotion and sentimentality into his work, but it was always obscured by those dark, gloomy overtones, the feelings subdued and muted into greyscale. However, on ‘Hiders’ and ‘Come Down to Us’, these emotional barriers seemed to be removed, or at least attenuated. Also, there was a certain word that I noticed being bandied about a fair bit by commentators online: cheesy.
I could see were these people were coming from. Those piano chords and uplifting pads on ‘Hiders’ subsumed by soft-rock drums, gated snares and even a melodic tom fill to boot. Similarly, on ‘Come Down to Us’ the synth lines are simple but euphoric, and even with the non-standard structure, once the power ballad part begins halfway through, with all its twinkling FM synth glory, there is no denying that Burial has cast off the shackles of his grubby ‘realness’ and embraced the cheese.
Now, I am unsure whether to say these tracks are truly cheesy, not because of any negative connotations that term bears, but because those glimpses of cheesiness are recognised as such more due to the association of those particular sounds with other tracks that are regarded as truly cheesy. The allusions to a kind of synth driven music coming out of Europe, America, Japan and spreading throughout the world in the 80s/90s, are the cause of this connected cheesiness. This cheese by association can be seen on other occasions recently; the synth brass on Eno-Hyde‘s ‘The Satellites’, or the slap bass on Rustie‘s ‘Hover Traps’, well, to be honest a whole slew of timbres found on Glass Swords. These musicians are clearly aware that these tones are linked with a certain time or genre, and are either deliberately invoking it, or trying to distort it. Much like the new so-called ‘post-irony’ movement, typified musically by genres like vapourwave and nightcore, it is impossible to discern the line between sincerity and irony, or a genuine love for cheese and sniggering behind cheese’s back when it isn’t looking.
Naturally, I then pondered on what ‘cheese’ is. Most people who grew up in the same (or almost analogous) culture as I will have some sense of what cheesy music relates to, but like any abstract concept, trying to provide a definition is like trying to juggle custard, the only certainty being that a mess will be made. Add to that the fact that cheesiness is highly subjective and people’s tolerances and awareness of cheese are quite substantially different. So in order to compensate for these divergences in opinion, I’ll discuss the meaning in the widest possible sense, balancing that with my own instinctual take on what feels cheesy. Obviously, the term ‘cheesy’ can be applied to a host of different things and phenomena, and I may touch upon them at times, but the core of the article will deal with this relationship with music.
Anyway, let’s start with the basics; what is cheese?
So now I have to use other words to clarify one word that describes an ambiguous impression attained whilst experiencing specific sensory input. Okay, I’ll transform the word into its adjectival form and find similar adjectives that cover related concepts (from strongest to weakest degree of commonality): corny, kitsch, naff, tacky, fluff, camp, schmaltzy, trashy, soppy, gaudy, chintzy, trite, banal, hackneyed, cheap, shallow, vulgar, superficial, insincere. These words give us a clearer idea of what cheese constitutes but a lot of these don’t necessarily imply cheesiness, or there isn’t a direct overlap in meaning. For example, all camp music is cheesy but not all cheesy music is camp. Corny is near enough a perfect synonym, and several of the other words (naff, tacky, gaudy, chintzy), though more condemning and discriminatory, retain a rough form of the common sentiment suggested by the users.
Personally, I refute the comparison of triteness and banality to cheesiness, as I can think of plenty of non-cheesy music that is just as vapid and unimaginative, meaning it denotes only a tendency of the music rather than a necessary component. Similarly, cheesy music can be schmaltzy or soppy but they aren’t requirements. Adjectives like cheap, shallow, superficial, trashy and vulgar are just indicative of the speaker’s musical snobbery and inability to grasp the nature and purpose of music, art and entertainment, rather than describing the sounds. Sincerity in composition is not discernible via the music alone and relies on a posteriori knowledge garnered from the creator of the artwork, so to make a conclusion of insincerity based on the music is both illogical and patently disrespectful. Kitsch is probably the closest in idea to cheese but it seems to encompass a slightly different, and possibly larger, scope than cheese, especially in terms of including older music and being less specific.
There are also other key elements that help to place a track firmly in the cheesy camp, such as a lack of subtlety, a penchant for excessive sentiment and melodrama, either being completely en vogue or entirely démodé, adhering to the contemporary vision of glitz and glamour, possessing some kind of novelty value, containing humorous lyrics, and that indescribable in-your-face quality. Another point is that nearly all of these words carry negative connotations, which leads to some kind of value judgement that doesn’t make any rational sense in the sphere of art. (This is crucial to the ‘why’ part of the equation I will tackle later). However, even disregarding these connotations, the notion of cheesiness can exist as a simple descriptor, like funkiness, or catchiness, and the preconception that it is a ‘bad’ quality for a piece of music to have is a very poor grasp of its nature.
Considering that cheesiness is a quality that can be applied to anything from films and literature to jokes and dancing, trying to establish a clear musical basis for cheese is tough but there are broad routes to which it seems bound. Firstly, every single piece of cheesy music I can think of is tonal, and even more specifically diatonic, which is also proven by the apparent fact that almost all atonal music is not cheesy. However, this applies to most pop music, and Western music in general, so not much can be read into that. Next though, is the use of this diatonic framework to craft very memorable, easily singable, catchy melodies, and the employment of standardised harmonic progressions. An interesting demonstration of this is the transformation of the chord progression from Pachelbel‘s Canon into a lineage of cheesy classics: ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ – ‘Go West’ – ‘All Together Now’ – ‘C U When U Get There’ etc. (Which begs the question, is the original canon cheesy?).
With such a breadth of cheesy music in existence, any other ubiquitous musical traits are just conglomerations of the most common designators (digital synths, melismatic vocals, hi-fi production etc), and often cheesy and non-cheesy music has more similarities than differences. In other words, on the page, in staff notation, or on the screen, in blocks of MIDI and audio data, the difference between cheese and non-cheese is almost imperceptible, a subtle variation in terms of arrangement, instrumentation or production technique can make a huge impact on the overall impression of cheesiness. This can be exemplified by interpretations of classical pieces like Wendy Carlos‘s of Bach, ELP‘s of Mussorgsky, or further transposed, Walter Murphy‘s ‘A Fifth of Beethoven’, which leave us with an impression of cheese that the original material never contained.
There is also the issue of the passage of time adding the whiff of cheese to music, but the fact that so much modern music is cheesy should disprove that suggestion. Yet there is something to the idea of time, and more specifically generation, being important to the perception of cheese without it being just another form of nostalgia. I was born in the 80s and, even though I have no real memory of that decade, have a very definite inclination to find much 80s pop music cheesy, going as far to say many elements from that time have become archetypal of cheese. Yet I can still recognise cheese from earlier periods, but I am sure not as strongly as someone born in generations prior to mine.
Similarly, the tropes associated with cheese must naturally change over time as certain signifiers didn’t always exist; i.e. there was undoubtedly cheesy music in the 50s, yet synths and drum machines either didn’t exist or were only accessible to a very few musicians, so the criteria for cheesiness in the 50s is different to that of later periods. Therefore, seeing as the concept of cheesiness or kitsch didn’t exist as we know them today in the baroque and classical eras, we cannot know whether or not a similar emotional response to music was possible in those years. I have heard the galant style referred to as fluff, with the Alberti bass being somewhat hackneyed in that mid-1700s period, so maybe this could be an analogous concept to cheese at that time. There is also the use of contextualisation to attach cheese to a piece of music at a later date; Orff‘s ‘O Fortuna’, Prokofiev‘s ‘Dance of the Knights’, numerous Sousa marches, all have been used in different settings that somehow add cheese to the music, even though the music itself remains unchanged. In other words, a shift in the mental association of those pieces from the consecrated realm of classical music to the mundane modern world of The X-Factor and The Apprentice can give the illusion of cheese through context.
Looking at it from a sonic standpoint just isn’t going to achieve anything with something as conceptual as cheesiness, so let’s move back to semantics, but away from a very general level, down to looking at genre, and try to identify any implications within them.
By merely looking at the names of genres conducive to cheesy music we can garner a lot of insight (and also jump to a lot of conclusions). Just by collecting some of these genre names together, a pattern definitely emerges; soft rock, smooth jazz, easy listening, new age, light music. Taking these adjectives and placing them alongside their antonyms further emphasises a congruity; soft–hard, smooth–rough, easy–difficult, new–old, light–heavy. These antonyms represent many of the qualities of non-cheesy music, but further than that I can infer a deeper dichotomy; feminine–masculine.
If we can all agree that cheesiness is a 20th century phenomena and, particularly, becoming more identifiable post-WWII until reaching its current incarnation sometime after the 60s, we can also transpose these shared dispositions of the music with the prevalent cultural notions of femininity and masculinity within this same period. So we can apply this to both ideal physical and mental characteristics of women from the masculine viewpoint. The idealised feminine mentality being soft, pliant, simple, conforming, warm, naive, obedient, trivial, upbeat, romantic, emotional, sentimental, light-hearted, carefree, happy, as opposed to the masculine mindset being serious, important, complex, aggressive, significant, powerful, raw, cool, composed, logical, strong-willed. This applies even to physical fashions during this era; smooth, sleek, shaven legs; soft hands, unaccustomed to manual labour; preference for light clothing fabrics like silk, chiffon, lace, satin, nylon etc; an interest in fashion, or novelty; an obsession with the superficial and cosmetic (make-up), the artificial and synthetic (hair extensions, acrylic nails, fake eyelashes, breast implants), and ultimately aesthetics over functionality (high heels, long hair). All of which is to say cheesy music can be viewed as being inherently feminine, or more correctly, that common feminine values have been designated as being cheesy, and its accompanying connotations. (That’s not even touching on handbag house). Taking this a step further, if we examine the soundtracks to porn films, especially from the period when budgets were higher and a musical backing seen as de rigueur, we can observe a propensity for extremely cheesy music. This could be interpreted as a way of promoting the masculine view of femininity and appealing to the product’s mostly male audience, thus creating a subconscious association in the mind of the listener between cheese and this idealised femininity portrayed in the films.
To further establish this line of thought, if we examine the characteristics of usually non-cheesy styles of music we can identify these supposed masculine qualities. Atonal and experimental music with it’s difficult harmonies and rough (harsh) dissonances, the aggression of heavy metal and hard rock, not to mention both hardcore punk and breakbeat hardcore, indie (independent) rock, serious art and classical music, New Complexity, the clinical composition methods of serialism, the aggression of gangsta rap and ghettotech, the raw, lo-fi production of noise and industrial, cool jazz, deep house, intelligent dance music, as opposed to shallow and ‘dumb’ regular dance music (you know, that is actually good for dancing to). These genres are completely at odds with the essence of cheese, yet there can be distortions of these styles, which coincidentally enough can also be represented in semantic terms. Hair metal is undoubtedly a cheesy genre, and it’s name, like soft rock, is a fusion of the tender and the tough, this representing an infiltration of the feminine quality into the male domain, similar to glam rock. Likewise, happy hardcore shows a softening of the very solid, macho original name by the preceding adjective, and to be fair, it is quite apt as it teeters on the border between cheese and non-cheese quite happily. Nevertheless, on the whole, genres which share these ideal masculine traits tend to be considered less cheesy.
All that could be deemed to be selective filtering as there are tons of likely-to-be-cheesy genre names that don’t fit so neatly into that semantic hypothesis; progressive house, Italo disco, hi-NRG, J-pop & K-pop, pop-punk, schlager, trance, enka, Christian rock, chill out, country, exotica, kayokyoku, progressive rock, ‘contemporary’ R’n’B, lounge, disco, doo-wop, Eurobeat, bubblegum pop, shibuya-kei, visual-kei, library music, Christmas songs, vaudeville, city pop, gabber, space-age pop and all those styles of metal that are rated really high on RYM, but that I’ve never met a single person who listens to; e.g. power metal, symphonic metal, war metal, atmospheric black metal, neoclassical metal etc. (At least I think all those metal genres are cheesy, I have so little interest in them that maybe I haven’t listened to every subsection of each meta-genre’s niche offshoot to make an informed judgement, but I find them so corny that it must be cheesiness rather than just regular distaste; an unusual variety of cheese, goat’s cheese maybe.) However, the same adjectives as outlined above could be used to describe much that is cheesy within these genres. Also, even the genres that aren’t especially in line with these feminised qualities can be relatively more feminine compared to their nearest related genres. For example, new wave is more feminine, and therefore cheesier, than punk, even if it might not be cheesy on the whole.
Obviously, only a person with the lowest cheese threshold (highest cheese awareness) is going to find everything in these genres cheesy, but many of them are so entwined with the notion of cheese that I don’t know if a track can even belong to that genre without it. Any genre name preceded by Euro- or Italo- is generally a guarantee of cheese, similarly J-pop and K-pop are about the whole cheesy package, not just on the musical level, with every aspect tailored for maximum cheese. A lot of these genres are all too aware of the importance of this cheesiness and use it to their advantage, none more so than those styles of music favoured by the gay community.
Camp and homosexuality are naturally linked, and for good reason. Nearly every artist with a ‘big gay following’ operates within this realm of camp and cheese. This could be an effect of the effeminate (or emasculating) labelling towards gay men by straight society, tying into what I mentioned earlier about the feminine association with cheese, which leads to a confluence of the two, but which is even stronger in this instance because of the underlying disapproval of homosexuality in our culture (well, at least up until secularisation and liberalisation became widespread in the West, but clearly that disapproval still exists among certain sections of society) and the aforementioned negative connotations linked with cheese, strengthening this feeling of disparagement.
Therefore, as a way of adding scorn or derision to a judgement about music, terms like ‘cheese’ and ‘camp’ can be used in the same way as calling a person a ‘faggot’ or a ‘queer’. However, this cheese has been embraced completely by the gay community, until eventually a re-appropriation of the quality of cheesiness has been completed to the point where cheese has become virtually mandatory for the art to be welcomed by the gay population, or the artist to attain ‘gay icon’ status. (I’ll note that in niche gay cultures like that of the ballroom scene on the east coast of the US, this isn’t necessarily the case, but in the wider gay community it still applies).The original criticism produces the reverse of its intended effect, ostracisation, actually galvanising the style and creating a feeling of solidarity among artists.
There are also similarities between what is considered to be acceptable in terms of both cheese and femininity. In the public’s eyes, once a certain level of cheese is reached and the music is considered not just slightly corny but extremely cheesy, it is no longer dismissed as merely naff or throwaway, it becomes annoying, bothersome, or just plain ‘rubbish’. Crazy Frog would be a prime example, where people are so irked by that rendition of ‘Axel F’ to the point of anger. Likewise, if an individual is perceived as too feminine (or effeminate) they move from not only an accepted standard, but an actively encouraged one, into the position of being a target for ridicule and contempt. Just like when a woman wears what is considered to be too much make-up, too showy a dress, or acting in a too girlish way, they are often condemned as looking ‘cheap’, ‘trashy’, ‘fake’, even being castigated to the point of being labelled ‘slutty’ or ‘whorish’, or if a man even slightly exhibits these ideal feminine characteristics, he is susceptible to a much harsher rebuking. So there is clearly amounts of both ‘cheese’ and ‘femininity’ that are not only tolerated, but, in the case of the latter particularly, promoted as desirable, but whereas a lack of cheese may elicit boredom and disinterest from certain listeners, a woman lacking in any feminine traits, both intrinsic and extrinsic, will arouse at best, suspicion, and at worst, prejudice.
I’ll clarify here that the actual gender or sexuality of the artist is completely irrelevant, the only important factor is that their music falls within the scope of these established ideal feminine qualities. (Thus, a genre like riot grrrl is musically masculine despite the gender of the artists, or even the ideals and motives behind the creation of the art). However, all this could be me seeing what I want to see in order to further demonstrate my claims, but there is one blatant fact to be shown from the use of cheese as a descriptor; that it is seen as a ‘bad’ quality for music to have, and that it supposedly degrades the value of the artwork.
Here’s where we get to the crux of the matter. The establishment of cheese as an identifiable characteristic is a pretence to support the notion that all art has some kind of absolute worth; that there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music; and that the elements that constitute cheesiness are most definitely a contributory factor in this equation. It is a question of musical snobbery and elitism, and the reasons behind this are probably beyond me to illuminate but I’ll attempt it anyway.
By believing that there is objectively ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music, one must also believe that there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste, and by the listener having an understanding of this, and having a preference for ‘good’ music, they can recognise themselves as having ‘good’ taste (or more succinctly, ‘taste’). Therefore, this identification of taste enables the listener to have a feeling of superiority over other listeners who seemingly lack this ‘taste’, or better yet lack the knowledge to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music in the first place. This form of ego boosting not only leads to close-mindedness, but the unnecessary distinction of highbrow and lowbrow, and the strangely puritanical concept of ‘guilty pleasures’. This is why the awareness of cheese and kitsch are strongest amongst those with the most interest in a particular art, carrying with it the false rationale that knowledge enhances ‘taste’, and in turn a reverence for the underground over that bastion of cheese, the mainstream. It’s no coincidence that what is generally regarded as ‘tasteful’ conforms with the tastes of the elite, the intelligentsia, the experts, the minority, and as mentioned earlier, in our culture that usually aligns with the idealised masculine viewpoint. Conversely, that which is cheesy generally exists within the world of the common man, the casual listener, the majority. Thus music that is derided by listeners of ‘taste and distinction’ as being cheesy is more likely to be popular, in order to capitalise upon this, cheese can be commodified into a tool for profit, meaning whilst ‘cheese’ has negative connotations in terms of artistic merit, it has strong positive implications in terms of commercial value.
Much like the concept of ‘cool’, the natural antithesis of ‘cheese’, which is aligned with the masculine characteristics, there are solid economic reasons to maintain this status quo, but whilst being cool is nearly always seen as a positive attribute to strive for, and advertised as such, being cheesy is the exact opposite, a characteristic usually to be avoided at all costs. Yet with the prevalence of irony in our post-modern society, the adoption of cheese is becoming an equally acceptable position, blurring the lines between the two polar concepts. This follows in tandem with the continued assaults on traditional extrinsic gender signifiers, meaning that attributes that define both the feminine/cheesy and the masculine/cool are becoming less distinct and increasingly more difficult to identify.
The problem is that, though this feeling of cheese is clearly learned and not innate, once we are ingrained with a sense of cheesiness it is very difficult to cast off. Even after listening to a ton of cheesy music whilst writing this article, and losing some sort of perspective on what exactly is or isn’t cheese, I still retain a fundamental awareness of cheese in some form, even if it doesn’t produce an aversion or disdain to the music. As an analogy, I’m confident that if you were to play some commonly designated cheesy music to a member of an uncontacted tribe, they would have no understanding of these acquired qualities of cheese, only the intrinsic acoustic properties of the sounds. They would process the music tabula rasa, applying their own individualistic descriptors. This could be extrapolated into all areas of art, with there being no reason why a particular style of clothing or a type of cinema should be cheesy, or continuing with my theme, why dresses or rom-coms, for instance, should be feminine. Yet if that sense of cheese is difficult to shed, then this notion of extrinsic femininity is virtually inextricable, to the point where if I even hear the clack of a stiletto heel on a hard surfaced floor my Pavlovian response kicks into gear and my bestial mind screams out ‘woman!’.
Putting everything aside, music is just sound, it is not a fully functional language, so interpretations of its meaning and significance are naturally personal. Yet there is a traditionally acquired set of emotional cues contained within the music that allow for various people to share common feelings derived from the sounds. This is what ‘cheese’ is a part of, and also helps explains how it functions, but it is important to be mindful that it is an extrinsic component that applies more to our own senses than it does to the actual physical aspect, and that its existence is not inevitable. In the same way that beyond the physical (or physiological) aspect, the divide between feminine and masculine (or indeed heterosexual and homosexual) is established through tradition and conditioning, which is to say that the gender mentality, or anything extrinsic from the human form that is associated with gender identity, is done so through norms and customs just like the application of the ‘cheese’ epithet is to art, meaning both can change over time and are only linked through common practice. Therefore my proposed relationship between the current epitome of femininity and the common criteria for cheese is only valid since both arrived at their currently recognisable forms, and only within our own culture. This flux of understanding could eventually result in a time when the two aren’t so heavily linked, but who knows what the future holds.
As long as there are people who wish to promote the view that art has an objective value and maintain this manufactured division between cheese and non-cheese, the best we can do is to accept this unavoidable cheesiness, learn to enjoy it like any other musical property, without reproach or shame, and remember music is about pleasure; no ‘guilt’ necessary.
To conclude, here is a big wedge of some of my favourite cheese. Click a character to be directed to your cheese of choice.
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九十二 九十三 . 九十四 九十五 . 九十六 九十七 . 九十八 九十九 . 百 百一 . 百二 百三 . 百四 百五
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1. Akina Nakamori – Desire
2. Alba Parietti – Only Music Survives
3. Whigfield – Saturday Night
4. Baltimora – Tarzan Boy
5. Sigue Sigue Sputnik – Love Missile F1-11
6. ABBA – Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
7. Bob James & David Sanborn – Maputo
8. MIchel Rubini – Graham’s Theme
9. N-Trance – Set You Free
10. Laura Branigan – Gloria
11. Shanks & Bigfoot – Sweet Like Chocolate
12. Orange Caramel – Catallena
13. Princess – After the Love Has Gone
14. Lieutenant Pigeon – Mouldy Old Dough
15. Fuse ODG – TINA
16. Aneka – Japanese Boy
17. Nobuo Uematsu – Balamb Garden
18. Eric Prydz – Call On Me
19. Rose Laurens – American Love
20. Sarah Brightman – I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper
21. Fragma – Toca’s Miracle
22. M People – Moving On Up
23. Ray Lynch – The Oh of Pleasure
24. Waterfront Home – Take a Chance On Me
25. The Saturdays – Forever is Over
26. QT – Hey QT
27. Divine – Shoot Your Shot
28. Wang Chung – Dance Hall Days
29. Love Inc – You’re a Superstar
30. Ana Caprix – Blood Moon
31. Vanity 6 – Nasty Girl
32. Toshiki Kadomatsu – Hatsu Koi
33. Ten City – That’s The Way Love Is
34. Miles Davis – Time After Time
35. ATB – 9PM (TIll I Come)
36. Mike Mareen – Dancing in the Dark
37. Katy Perry – Firework
38. Windjammer – Tossing and Turning
39. Stan Bush – The Touch
40. Cher – Believe
41. Michael Rother – Flammende Herzen
42. Clio – Faces
43. James Horner – Commando
44. Kylie Minogue – I Should Be So Lucky
45. The Simon Park Orchestra – Eye Level
46. Hirofumi Murasaki – Clockwork Knight
47. Stacey Q – Two of Hearts
48. Enya – Caribbean Blue
49. Vengaboys – Boom Boom Boom
50. The Flirts – Passion
51. Watergate – Heart of Asia
52. Haddaway – What is Love
53. Tangerine Dream – Stealing the Silver Cross
54. Alexander Robotnick – Problemes d’Amour
55. Space Cowboy – I Would Die 4 U
56. Premiere Classe – Poupee Flash
57. Kelly Llorenna – Tell It To My Heart
58. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu – Ring a Bell
59. Jan Hammer – Crockett’s Theme
60. Tomoko Sasaki – Nights into Dreams
61. Bette Midler – The Rose
62. Mantovani – Charmaine
63. Barthezz – On the Move
64. Shang Shang Typhoon – Itsudemo Darekaga
65. Todd Terje – Svensk Sas
66. Womack & Womack – Drive
67. Sparks – Number One Song in Heaven
68. Girl’s Day – Something
69. Queen – Who Wants to Live Forever
70. Hannah Diamond – Pink and Blue
71. Sachio Ogawa – Sega Bass Fishing Diary Menu
72. Alphaville – Forever Young
73. Joe Sample – U Turn
74. Hot Butter – Popcorn
75. Sylvester – Don’t Stop
76. Tatsuro Yamashita – Love Talkin’
77. Anita Dobson – Anyone Can Fall In Love
78. ABC – Show Me
79. Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy
80. Mariah Carey – Emotions
81. KC & the Sunshine Band – Give It Up
82. Energy 52 – Cafe Del Mar
83. Brad Fiedel – Love Scene
84. Yoko Oginome – Verge of Love
85. Autre Ne Veut – Play by Play
86. Alan Menken – Under the Sea
87. Steve Winwood – Higher Love
88. The KLF – Last Train to Transcentral
89. Angelo Badalamenti – Love Theme from Twin Peaks
90. Crystal – Neo Age
91. Yukiko Okada – Dreaming Girl
92. Jean-Luc Ponty – Open Mind
93. Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes – Up Where We Belong
94. Doss – The Way I Feel
95. Hiroshima – Go
96. Wally Badarou – Chief Inspector
97. Perfume – Spending All My Time
98. Quando Quango – Genius
99. Spice Girls – Who Do You Think You Are
100. The Rippingtons – Mirage
101. Urban Hype – Trip to Trumpton
102. Giorgio Moroder & Phil Oakey – Together in Electric Dreams
103. Madonna – Lucky Star
104. Meishi Smile – Love Orchestra
105. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Field Work
106. KOTO – Phenomenon Choir
107. Olivia Newton John – Country Roads
108. N-Joi – Anthem
109. Weather Report – River People
110. Public Domain – Operation Blade
111. Seiko Matusda – Cherry Blossom
112. Shy Rose – I Cry For You
113. Perfecto Allstarz – Reach Up
114. Paul Hardcastle – Signs of Life
115. Whitney Houston – How WIll I Know
116. Naofumi Hataya – Desert Replay
117. Mark Knopfler – Going Home
118. Roxy Music – Avalon
119. Sigma – Nobody to Love
120. The Spinners – The Manchester Rambler