100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #3 The Streets – Weak Become Heroes

Released: 2002

In the end, raving went the way of nearly all things which become culturally significant; the man stepped in, everyone wanted shares and any fun was gradually sucked out of it until it didn’t even recognise itself in the mirror anymore.

Mike Skinner’s Brixton-via-Birmingham genesis for The Streets had involved channeling the emergence of UK Garage, a champagne and coke glamification of house music. His delivery though was from a geezery, urchin’s point of view; famously Ted Kessler bullseyed this early appeal in the quote for Original Pirate Material’s buzz stickers with “Everyone knows the future of dance music always comes from the streets. Now the future of dance music is The Streets”.

With the future in his hands Skinner opted instead to give his debut album’s best tune a nostalgic, backward looking vibe. On Weak Become Heroes our guide European Bob navigated memories of mid-nineties luv’d ups as a utopia to a piano loop that endlessly repeated until it hazed; met in the present with the reality of a colder, harsher early noughties, the dictatorial 1994 Criminal Justice Act stalked the background as fun killer supreme. The party was definitely over, but for Skinner it had just begun.