Official Charts Pop Gem #47: Richard X FT Kelis – Finest Dreams

We celebrate this sophisticated, retro, yet bang up-to-date dance track from British producer Richard X and US songstress Kelis, a Number 8 hit in 2003

This sophisticated, retro, yet bang up-to-date dance track from British producer Richard X and US songstress Kelis hit Number 8 in 2003 and is the latest song to be crowned Pop Gem – the second time for Kelis.

Every week we look for your Pop Gems – those overlooked pop classics that deserve another chance to shine. And every week we give you a theme to help you pluck your very faves out of your internal archive, or ‘brain’ as you may like to call it.

This week's theme was DREAMS. Nice ones, odd ones, spooky ones, hot ones, nightmares, hopes and aspirations, delusions – as long as it was super-dreamy and was released as a single, it was up for consideration.

You didn’t let us down. After much debating, we whittled down your picks to a final list of 10. Here’s who made it:

Mama Cass – Dream A Little Dream (Number 11 in 1968)
Blondie – Dreaming (Number 2 in 1979)
Johnny Hates Jazz – Shattered Dreams (Number 5 in 1987)
Debbie Gibson – Only In My Dreams (Number 11 in 1988)
Cathy Dennis – Just Another Dream (Number 13 in 1991)
Mariah Carey – Dreamlover (Number 9 in 1993)
Dario G – Dream To Me (Number 9 in 2001)
Richard X FT Kelis – Finest Dreams (Number 8 in 2003)
McFly – Star Girl (Number 1 in 2006)
Christian Falk FT Robyn – Dream On (Number 29 in 2008)

It was a close-run thing, but we only ever pick one (um, apart from that week when we picked two, but we don’t like to dwell) and this week, the honour went to Richard X FT Kelis. A collaboration!

Watch the video for Finest Dreams before we explain why we chose it as our Pop Gem!

Why it had to be Richard X and Kelis

Richard X is something of a pop legend. King of mashups in the early Noughties, Richard was behind brilliant pop tracks like Sugababes’ Freak Like Me, Liberty X’s Being Nobody and Rachel Stevens’ Some Girls (not a mashup, no, but still very good). He’s also worked with Norwegian singer Annie, who is kind of a one-woman Pop Gem machine, really, and other pop megstars like Goldfrapp and Sophie Ellis-Bextor. As if that weren’t enough, he took up production duties on Will Young’s Number 1 album from 2011, Echoes. Richard X is pure pop!

As for Kelis, well, Kelis is Kelis. Unmistakable vocals, plenty of attitude and generally a very good popstar. Her debut single Caught Out There was a Pop Gem quite recently, yes, but a Pop Gem is a Pop Gem – we can’t turn anyone away just because they were picked before. It wouldn’t be fair, right? Right.

The song

Coming in the middle of a wave of success for Richard thanks to that Sugababes Number 1, Finest Dreams was a mashup of two rather good songs that many people had forgotten – Pop Gems, if you will. Richard took S.O.S. Band’s Number 17 hit from 1986, The Finest, and Human League’s unreleased The Things That Dreams Are Made Of and reswizzled them to make Finest Dreams, a smart, sophisticated dance-pop classic.

Finest Dreams peaked at Number 8 in August 2003. That week, the Number 1 single was Breathe, by Blu Cantrell FT Sean Paul.

Other notable stuff happening in the charts that week were Busted going straight in at Number 3 with Sleeping With The Light On and farther down the chart, Kelis having yet another new entry at Number 25 with P Diddy on Let’s Get Ill. One place ahead of Richard and Kelis at Number 7 that week? None other than Pharrell, teaming up with Jay Z for the equally Pop Gemulous Frontin’.

See full Top 40 for that week in 2003.

Their chart stories

Kelis has had 16 Top 40 hits, including three Number 2s, but has never topped the chart. Her biggest selling single in the UK is Bounce, her Number 2 hit with Calvin Harris in 2011, which has sold 530,000 copies. Richard hasn’t had a Number 1 as a credited artist, but as producer the biggest hit he was behind was Sugababes’ Freak Like Me. Legends, the pair of ‘em.