On This Day… 31st October

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Welcome to another edition of ‘On This Day’, in which we look back at chart-topping hits and stories from a particular date.

While the UK singles charts have had plenty of Christmas hits, and summer-themed hits; other times of year don’t seem to generate as much pop potential. We are still waiting for an Easter #1, for example (Lady Gaga’s ‘Judas’ having been robbed). And, while certain tunes regularly re-enter the charts around 31st October – ‘Thriller’, ‘Ghostbusters’, ‘Monster Mash’ etc. – there has never been a specifically ‘Halloween’ themed number one either.

So, I’m going to cast my eyes back, and choose the most unofficially ‘scary’ number one to have been sitting on top of the charts for Halloween. In ascending order of spookiness…

Qualifying for the serial-killer vibes of the title if nothing else, ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ does at least have a woozy, slightly sinister appeal to it. It also has two connections to Halloween, as the Flamingo’s original was recorded on this day in 1958, while Art Garfunkel’s cover was at number one today in 1975. I did name this as one of my most ‘meh’ chart-toppers, sadly, so it has to rank lowest on today’s spook-o-meter. Read my original post here.

Possibly the best number one to have been on top at Halloween, but not quite the scariest. Though this is named after a satellite… which goes into space… alongside UFOs… and aliens are a standard Halloween costume… So there is that. Yes, ‘Telstar’ was at number one in the UK sixty-four years ago today. (It was also famously the first US #1 by a British group, pre-dating the British Invasion by a couple of years.) The eek factor is upped by this being at #1 for the duration of the Cuban Missile Crisis, probably as close as humanity has come to a nuclear wipeout, as well as by being one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite songs. (Original post here.)

‘The Fly’ qualifies as our next, somewhat Halloweenish chart-topper for two reasons. Firstly, The Fly was a character, invented by Bono, and the song is apparently sung from the POV of a man calling home from hell, revealing what he has learned. Secondly, U2’s drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was born on 31st October 1961. For his thirtieth birthday, this track gave his band their second British chart-topper. (Original post here.) ‘The Fly’ was a big departure for the band, but personally I like the experimental direction it heralded for the rest of the 1990s, a period that gave us some of my favourite U2 tracks.

Topping the charts on this day in 1972, we have the third creepiest Halloween number one. I love ‘Mouldy Old Dough’, and the fact that it features a fifty-eight year old lady named Hilda on piano, as my original post detailed. But by God, it needs to be used in a horror movie. Can you imagine a piano coming to life in the middle of the night and playing this drunken, boogie-woogie riff? While the songs only lines (Mouldy old dough… and Dirty old man…) are delivered in the sort of growling, unearthly voice that you’d usually only hear at a seance. A catchy, creepy classic.

Our next chart-topper, sitting on top of the charts for Halloween 1981, is this trippy cover of the sixties classic ‘It’s My Party’. There are covers that sound identical to the original, and there are covers that try something different. And then there’s this… I’m qualifying it as the second creepiest Halloween #1 for the simple fact that Stewart’s production and Gaskin’s vocals transform teenage melodrama into what sounds like it may end up as a mass murder. Tell me that the way she sings the Oh what a birthday surprise, Judy’s wearing his ring… doesn’t suggest she’s slowly reaching for the cake knife. (Original post here.)

What other song could top this list of spooky chart-toppers? What other time of year could this epic have been number one? Thirty-three years ago today, Meat Loaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ was beginning its third of seven weeks on top. Where to start with this Gothic epic? One of the longest number ones by runtime, with what must surely be one of the most preposterous music videos ever made – levitating chaise longues, anyone? – it remains beloved, and regularly bellowed out at karaoke nights. All this despite people still not being clear on what ‘that’ is… (Original post here.)

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1028. ‘Thunder in My Heart Again’, by Meck ft. Leo Sayer

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On to another number one with a disco groove, albeit a more family-friendly record than its predecessor ‘Nasty Girl’…

Thunder In My Heart Again, by Meck (his 1st and only #1) ft. Leo Sayer (his 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 12th – 26th February 2006

It’s been a while, but it’s nice to have a tacky dance song back at #1. This sound was all the rage back in 2003 and ’04 (also known as handbag house, but my woke self thinks that’s a bit misogynist), it usually involves an old disco or dance track tarted up with a modern beat by a young, preferably European, DJ. Think ‘Make Luv’, think LMC, think ‘Lola’s Theme’ and, of course, ‘Call on Me’. And anyway, ‘tacky dance’ can’t be much of an insult, as I quite like most of those songs. They remind me of nights out in my provincial hometown.

‘Thunder in My Heart Again’ ticks (almost) all the tacky dance boxes. A sample from Leo Sayer’s 1977 #22 hit ‘Thunder in My Heart’, a basic, pre-set rhythm, lots of swooshes and vocal effects… The only thing lacking is that Meck was British. I’d have sworn he’d be German or Dutch.

Meck didn’t have to work too hard to turn this into a nu-disco track, as Sayer’s original was pretty darn disco to start with. I do love the commitment with which he belts out the Do just what you wanna do with my love… line. In fact, listening to the original now, you start to think that Meck was a little cheeky in getting a credit on this record… I like Sayer’s quote from the time, in which he claims this remix “kept all (the original’s) integrity”. Leo, mate, it sounds almost identical…

Though Sayer had little reason to complain as his credit on the single brought an unexpected return to number one, exactly twenty-nine years after his sole previous chart-topper ‘When I Need You’. (Fun fact: Leo Sayer has only ever made #1 in February.) At the time it was a record, beating the twenty-six years between Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’ and ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’. He didn’t hold the record for long, and it has since been beaten by three acts with longer gaps between their number ones. Answers on a postcard, or in the comments, if you know who they are…

After this, we’ll continue on a disco groove. From hip-hop, to tacky dance, to a pop legend showing everyone how to do dance music properly…

This video is a masterpiece of the tacky dance genre. Gloriously cheap looking!

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1027. ‘Nasty Girl’, by Notorious B.I.G. ft. Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge & Avery Storm

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In 2005, we had a belated, posthumous #1 for 2Pac. In early 2006, another famous, and very dead, nineties rapper makes their first and only appearance on top of the charts: the Notorious B.I.G.

Nasty Girl, by Notorious B.I.G. (his 1st and only #1) ft. Diddy (his 3rd and final #1), Nelly (his 4th and final #1), Jagged Edge & Avery Storm

2 weeks, from 29th January – 12th February 2006

It’s fitting, in more ways than one, that six months elapsed between their turns at number one, as that’s how long passed between their deaths. 2Pac’s murder came in September 1996, before Biggie was slain in March 1997 in a similar drive-by shooting. Rumours abound that their deaths were related, given the feud between the two that had gone on since 1994.

Unlike 2Pac, whose ‘Ghetto Gospel’ was hard-hitting social commentary, ‘Nasty Girl’ doesn’t have such worthy ambitions. The title gives a big hint, and yes, this is filth. I remember the soulful groove, and the catchy chorus from the time (this was my 20th birthday #1), but I don’t remember it being so dirty. I must have been hearing the radio edit…

B.I.G. delivers the first verse, a sample from a song of his originally called ‘Nasty Boy’. Fingers in your mouth, Open up your blouse, Pull your g-string down south… is one of the cleaner lines, but it’s my favourite of the three main verses. Biggie has a brilliantly languorous flow, that makes him sound like he’s rapping direct from the bedroom, presumably in a silk nightgown.

Plus, he’s not Diddy – topping the charts for the third time under a third different name – whose verse makes for pretty icky listening knowing what we know now. Women wantin’ to bone Sean Combs… he brags. Nelly does the third, and again he can’t match the effortless smut of their dead partner. Both these men were appearing on their final chart-toppers.

Elsewhere in the credits – the longest for a number one single up to this point – we have vocal group Jagged Edge, who sing the chorus, while R&B singer Avery Storm gets to harmonise in the background. This makes it one more act than Christina Aguilera et al and their version of ‘Lady Marmalade’.

The video is even more stacked with luminaries: Usher, Pharrell Williams, Fat Joe, Naomi Campbell, and surely many more I don’t recognise, dancing in a club in honour of Biggie. I assumed that William’s must have been involved in the record’s production, as the beat sounds very Neptunes, but he wasn’t.

I do like this song, as despite the vulgarity it’s silly enough, and it does have a very danceable, disco-soul beat. It probably goes on a minute too long, though. It was from an album called ‘Duets: The Final Chapter’, B.I.G.’s second posthumous album. Like 2Pac, he wasn’t short of people making a buck off his legacy, in this case P. Diddy himself, who was the project’s executive producer. Some complained that the rappers he was ‘duetting’ with on the album were people Biggie didn’t care for in real life, but obviously he had no say. Diddy, whose career breakthrough had come thanks to his tribute for Biggie (‘I’ll Be Missing You’), had no qualms.

It’s worth noting that ‘Nasty Girl’ was not a big seller, and in its second week at #1 it recorded sales of fewer than 25,000. Just a month after Shayne Ward selling three quarters of a million to make Christmas number one, we’re on our way to hitting a record sales low…

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1026. ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, by Arctic Monkeys

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We move into 2006, with a classic January #1…

When the Sun Goes Down, by Arctic Monkeys (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th January 2006

A ‘January #1’ being a low-selling one-weeker, making it due to the general sleepiness of the market after the new year, potentially indie in leaning, or alternative in sound. Think ‘Sadeness Part 1’, or ‘Professional Widow’, or ‘The Masses Against the Classes’. Or indeed ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, Arctic Monkeys second #1.

Following their first appearance on this blog, there was some discussion of how Arctic Monkeys’ career can be split into two parts. Pre and post-‘AM’, their hugely successful 2013 album. To Gen Z, and therefore to streaming services and social media, that album is Arctic Monkeys. Which means their first four albums get overshadowed, forgotten even, in some quarters. It means you don’t hear ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ as much as you might expect, and you almost never hear their second and final chart-topper.

Which is a shame. Okay, it might not be the most commercial of their hits. It might not be as light-hearted, or as danceable as its predecessor. I mean, it might feel strange dancing to a song about prostitutes, and the ‘scummy’ men that surround them. It’s musically bold, too, starting with an extendedly slow, almost jazzy intro, in which the scene is set (with a lyrical nod to another big hit about hookers, the Police’s ‘Roxanne’).

A minute in, and we snap into a much more trademark, sharp as a tack riff. It’s even heavier than ‘…Dancefloor’, the heaviest riff we’ve heard at number one for a good long while. Like ‘…Dancefloor’ too, the lyrics go from brazenly teenage – They’re all infected, But he’ll be alright – to sharply observant. And Alex Turner’s delivery remains unashamedly South Yorkshire – we get a ‘summat’, and a ‘fookin’ freezing’, while the second verse has an all-time rhyming couplet: ‘Ford Mondeo’ with and he don’t even have to say ‘owt…

The slow, solitary guitar returns for the outro – the song only really comes to life for a minute and a half – and ends on an almost comical, music hall riff. I don’t like this record as much as ‘…Dancefloor’, but I am glad that the band chose something as deliberately uncommercial – both musically and lyrically – for their second single, knowing that there was an excellent chance of it making number one. The video is worth a watch too, perhaps one of the most unglamorous music videos of all time, featuring a young Stephen Graham as a pimp.

Maybe surprisingly, after two #1s straight out the blocks, Arctic Monkeys managed no further chart-toppers. They had plenty of hits from their second album, before their fortunes slowly slipped with albums three and four. Then, as we mentioned above, they returned with the hugely successful ‘AM’ and seemed to become a completely different band. Since then they’ve long since stopped chasing chart hits.

Meanwhile rock music in general has all but disappeared from the Top 40 in the streaming age (‘Mr Brightside’ excepted…) So, once again, we can call Arctic Monkey’s British rock’s last hurrah, bid them farewell, and prepare ourselves for a future that neither rocks nor rolls…

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1025. ‘That’s My Goal’, by Shayne Ward

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I talked in our last post about the ‘competition’ for Xmas number one 2005, with Westlife and Diana Ross, and the JCB Song, jostling for the title. Except, in reality, there was no contest. The festive chart-topper would cease to be a competition for most of the next decade.

That’s My Goal, by Shane Ward (his 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 25th December 2005 – 22nd January 2006

A year ago, the first ever X Factor winner, Steve Brookstein, took his cover of Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ to the top. But Brookstein was a middle-aged man, who by this point a year on had argued with Simon Cowell and was persona non grata, and anyway he didn’t make Christmas #1. It feels like he’s been erased from the history books. Here then is the first winner of the X Factor proper: young, handsome, endlessly promotable Shayne Ward, with an original song.

Well, I say ‘original’. Technically it was written for the winner of that year’s competition, but there’s nothing original about it. If you’ve heard any of the previous reality TV winners singles, from the likes of Will Young, David Sneddon, or Michelle McManus, then you know how this song goes. I’m here to win your heart and soul, That’s my goal… It is a mid-tempo, mid-range, mid-everything, common or garden pop ballad. (It is so bland that it makes Michelle’s ‘All This Time’ sound epic. She’s the true queen of winner’s single balladry.)

But, of course, this is the third fastest-selling single of all time, with the 5th highest weekly sale (since 1980, as before that records are patchy) behind Band Aid, ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’, Will Young and Gareth Gates. Considering how poor overall sales were in 2005, and that we’re mere weeks away from them hitting an all-time low in early 2006, it makes Ward’s opening week sales of almost 750k quite jaw-dropping.

For my sins, my flatmates at the time and I were very invested in this series of X Factor. Who remembers the heady days Chico (more on him soon), Journey South, and Andy Abraham the singing binman? We even, cough, went to the see live tour… And I remember thinking it obvious from very early on that Ward would win. I genuinely thought he could be a big star.

And yet, like most winners of the X Factor, he burned brightly for a while, then fizzled out. Two #2s, a handful of other Top 10s, but nothing post 2000s. He was dropped by Cowell in 2011 but kept releasing music independently, as well as moving into acting. He was in Coronation Street for three years. Who knew?

We may never hear Shayne Ward on top of the charts again, but there are several years’ worth of X Factor winner’s singles to come, and if you can tell one from the other then you’re a better critic than I…

Side note: I did wonder if a Xmas number one staying on top until January 22nd was a record, so I did a look through the annals. It’s relatively late for a festive chart-topper to still be hanging around, but a handful of records have gone longer. Can anyone name the only Christmas #1 to have still been topping the charts in February, though? Answers in the comments…

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Cover Versions of #1s… Indie Rock Edition

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In 2007, to celebrate their fortieth anniversary, BBC Radio 1 released an album of cover versions, featuring the big pop and rock acts of the day.

(For anyone not of a British persuasion, Radio 1 is the youth-oriented national radio station, which plays all the pop, rock, dance, and hip-hop hits of the day, as well as the Top 40 on a Friday afternoon. Radio 2 is for the middle-agers. Radio 3 plays classical and jazz. Radio 4 is news, documentaries, plays, and so on. And Radio 5 is for sports. They’re the five main ones that I grew up with. There are others, especially now in the digital age. Here ends today’s lesson on British radio stations.)

Anyway, the remit for the album was to include one song from every year that Radio 1 had been broadcasting, covered in a modern style. Interestingly for us, this coincides (almost) with the very point we are at in our countdown, and so we can feature some of the big indie rock groups of the day that we aren’t going to meet at #1. I’ve complained a bit that the mid-00s indie rock revival – Arctic Monkeys aside – hasn’t been represented on top of the charts. There are a few more indie number ones to come in 2006 and 2007, but not by these acts below.

Here then, are three old number ones, covered by hip new beat groups for Radio 1’s ruby anniversary. Well, hip and new sometime around 2007, anyway…

Kasabian – ‘Too Much Too Young’

One of the very biggest groups to come out of the 2000s, Kasabian are still going strong. All but one of their albums have made #1 in the UK, while on the singles chart their biggest hit was 2009’s #3 ‘Fire’. For this album they covered the Special’s 1980 punky, spiky, two-tone ‘Too Much Too Young’. And they did it in a very faithful, punky, two-tone style. It’s fine. I just wish they made it sound more Kasabian, as they were one of the more unpredictable-sounding of the landfill-indie era, especially their trippy, space-rock inspired debut album.

Gossip – ‘Careless Whisper’

In the mid-’00s I was a big reader of the NME. And for a year or so, between 2006 and 2007, it felt like the Gossip and their front woman Beth Ditto graced the magazine’s cover on a weekly basis. Like so many before them, they never quite lived up to their ‘next big thing’ tag, but their one Top 10 hit – the clattering, protest anthem ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ – is a certified classic of the time. Their take on George Michael’s eighties smoocher is cut from the same dance-punk cloth. Unlike the Kasabian cover above, it does do something new with the source material, and it’s quite nice to hear an over-played tune (that I’m not overly fond of) sound so different.

The Kooks – ‘All That She Wants’

Ah, the Kooks. The poster boys for ‘landfill indie’? Or one of the mid-00s more enduring acts? They’re still together, still touring and making music, and their signature song ‘Naive’ seems to have gained popularity with the TikTok generation. I did buy, and enjoy, their debut album ‘Inside In/Inside Out’ – especially the bouncy ‘You Don’t Love Me’. But there was always the whiff of art school (they formed at the BRIT school) poseurs about them, and lead singer Luke Pritchard always gave the impression that he thought he was Pete Doherty, minus the heroin.

But their cover of Ace of Base’s 1993 #1, ‘All That She Wants’, is serviceable enough, translating the original’s reggae lilt into a very 2006 indie riff. Of the three I like Gossip’s cover the best, but this is a decent second.

I hope you enjoyed these three covers. This ‘Radio One Est. 1967’ album is good for at least three more chart-topping covers, so I’ll return to it in the new year.

1024. ‘JCB Song’, by Nizlopi

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‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all the potential Xmas number ones were lining up for a shot at the crown…

JCB Song, by Nizlopi (their 1st and only #1) 

1 week, from 18th – 25th December 2005

2005’s left-field, indie contender for festive top spot – following in the grand footsteps of Housemartins, the Flying Pickets, Gary Jules and co. – was from folk duo Nizlopi, with their song about a bullied kid skipping school to drive with his dad in his big yellow digger. It’s a gentle acoustic tune, nostalgic in tone, written from the POV of a five-year-old. I can see why it was a big Christmas hit. 

Shame, then, that I’m now going to rip it to shreds. I hated this song at the time, and two decades haven’t improved matters. To my ears, what some people might argue as being ‘sweet’ comes across as cloying, twee, simpering… insert your synonym of choice. Sample lyrics: The engine rattles my bum like berserk… and My dad’s probably had a bloody hard day… It’s cynical heartstring pulling, is what it is. Holding up the bypass, Me and my dad havin’ a top laugh… the refrain goes. And of course loads of people will gobble up this sort of thing at Christmas like it was leftover turkey. (Though it wasn’t written with the holidays in mind. It had first charted at #160 in June, before growing in renown via the internet.)

I misremembered the ‘JCB Song’ as being for charity, which might have explained its lyrics and its success. Back in 2005, charity wristbands were all the rage. The white ‘Make Poverty History’, yellow ‘Livestrong’ (ummm…), and the blue ‘Beat Bullying’ are the ones I remember. It was how we virtue signalled before social media. So I’d always assumed that this – a song about a bullied child – was raising money to ‘beat the bullies’. But no. We can’t even give it a pass on those grounds.

For the coda, it transforms from gentle folksy ballad into a rousing rapped, hoe-down finale: I’m Luke, I’m five and my dad’s Bruce Lee… This bit sounds familiar. It makes me do a double take. It dawns on me why ‘JCB Song’ is so bad. A quick bit of research puts two and two together… When Nizlopi were starting out, their guitar technician was a certain Edward Christopher Sheeran.

Oh Nizlopi, what did you do? I could just about forgive this twee slop – it is Christmas after all – and appreciate the fact that you are all but one hit wonders (follow-up ‘Girls’ made #91). But to know that Ed Sheeran was sitting backstage at your gigs, taking notes, making his plan for world domination. That’s unforgivable.

Unlike the previous indie hits I listed in the intro, both Nizlopi and the ‘JCB Song’ seem to have been pretty much forgotten. And though they didn’t hold on to make Christmas #1, they did take one sizeable scalp when they consigned the twin powers of Westlife and Diana Ross, and their rejig of ‘When You Tell Me That You Love Me’, to the runners-up spot. This may be the only instance in recorded history when I would have preferred Westlife at #1…

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1023. ‘Stickwitu’, by Pussycat Dolls

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For their second number one, credit has to be given to the Pussycat Dolls for not giving us more of the same (apart from the weird spelling). After the boyfriend-stealing sass of ‘Don’t Cha’, they are now celebrating faithfulness and monogamy.

Stickwitu, by Pussycat Dolls (their 2nd and final #1) 

2 weeks, from 4th – 18th December 2005

Having said that, I wouldn’t have turned my nose up at more of the same, if the alternative had to be this sappy ballad. Nobody gonna love me better, I must stick wit’ you… ‘Stickwitu’ isn’t terrible, it isn’t even bad. The slightly off-kilter drumbeat, and the toy box riff are vaguely interesting. It grows into a bit of a power ballad in the middle eight, with impressive enough vocals from leading lady Nicole Scherzinger. But on the whole this is the sort of syrupy R&B that was more at home on the Billboard charts of the time, but which had started to crop up more often at #1 in the UK by the middle of the ‘00s.

It’s also a real shadow number one, a term I first used waaaay back in 1953, when the zany ‘Hey Joe!’ provided a chart-topping footnote to Frankie Laine’s humongously successful ballad ‘I Believe’. The concept remains unchanged, despite the years and the differences in music consumption: a song that wouldn’t have been a hit without the success of an artist’s previous single. Would ‘Stickwitu’ have been anywhere near the top of the charts had ‘Don’t Cha’ not existed? I’ll stick my neck out and say no.

Another bit of credit has to go to the producers of this track for not sticking a rent-a-rapper verse on it. I’m actually surprised they didn’t and, who knows, it might even have livened things up. A remix featuring someone called Avant was released, but not recognised by the OCC. The third and fourth singles from the Dolls’ debut album did return to the usual formula, with features for Will.I.Am (‘Beep’) and Snoop Dogg (‘Buttons’). Both those songs were Top 3 hits, and were returns to the group’s bawdy, Burlesque roots.

Beyond that, there was one more album and a few more Top 10 hits, but for the fourth highest selling Western girl group of all time, and ‘the heirs to the Spice Girls bedazzled throne’ (MTV), they never quite fulfilled their potential. Nicole Scherzinger was all too keen to start a solo career (she has one solo #1 to come), and there were ‘tensions’ between her and the other Dolls. However, they have reformed twice since their split in 2010, and are currently touring as a three-piece, with Scherzinger back in the fold. 

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1022. ‘Hung Up’, by Madonna

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Let’s pretend that Westlife didn’t ruin what has been a great autumn for chart-toppers: Oasis, Gorillaz, Sugababes and Arctic Monkeys all with top quality number ones in September and October 2005. And now here’s Madge, wrapping the season up with the best of the lot?

Hung Up, by Madonna (her 11th of thirteen #1s) 

3 weeks, from 13th November – 4th December 2005

The sole impressive thing about ‘You Raise Me Up’ was Westlife scoring one of their biggest hits six and a half years into their career. Madonna sees that, thinks ‘cute’, and smashes it out of the park with ‘Hung Up’, a full twenty-three years on from her debut single.

What’s so good about it? It’s a dance anthem, but then so are many of Madonna’s hits. It’s neo-disco, but that’s yet another return for the genre in a new millennium that hasn’t been short of seventies inspired tunes. It’s a very ‘00s-era mash-up, but not the first to make the charts, or number one. Maybe it’s just the pure joyousness of it: it soars, it pounds, it flirts. It is my personal favourite of all Madonna’s thirteen chart-toppers.

At the same time, I’m also deliberately ignoring the big pink elephant in the room. The ABBA sample. Madonna + ABBA (an ABBA song inspired by Donna Summer) = gay heaven. I’m not sure allowing Madonna to get her hands on the electronic pan-pipes from ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’ could have gone wrong, but this was only the third time that Benny & Bjorn had ever permitted a sample from one of their songs. They needn’t have worried.

Cleverly, ‘Hung Up’ sticks to the spirit of the original, about needing a man in the middle of the night, so much so that it feels like Part II. But importantly, while Frida and Agnetha’s sexual tension is never resolved, Madonna quickly loses patience with her reluctant man. From Waiting for your call every night and day, I’m fed up, I’m tired of waiting of you… to You’ll wake up one day, But it’ll be too late…

In the video, Madonna runs through a particularly sexy ballet warm up, wearing a pink leotard. I remember some disparaging comments at the time, about a woman of her age blah blah blah, but watching it back now she looks amazing. If my arse looks that good at forty-seven, I will happily parade around town in a pink leotard. It is even more impressive to watch, knowing that she had broken eight bones in a horse riding accident weeks before filming.

It wasn’t just ‘Hung Up’ that brought Madonna back to the forefront of hit making. The ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’ album was seen as a big return to form, and potentially the best LP of her career. So good that it would offer one further #1, a song every bit as good as this…

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1021. ‘You Raise Me Up’, by Westlife

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Sigh. The charts do like to bring us down to earth. Straight after Arctic Monkeys’ lightning bolt of a debut, here come Westlife…

You Raise Me Up, by Westlife (their 13th of fourteen #1s) 

2 weeks, from 30th October – 13th November 2005

2004 was the one year in eight, between 1999 and 2006, in which Westlife didn’t have an autumnal #1. Like clockwork, October or November saw the lead from a new Westlife album, to be released ahead of the Christmas shopping period. In 2004 they had recorded a ‘rat pack’ inspired album – the heinously titled ‘Allow Us to Be Frank’ – which had no singles and only made #3. But it provided a convenient line in the sand, and meant that when the boys returned a year later, they were a fully-fledged man band. This was also their first #1 as a four-piece, with Brian McFadden having quit the year before.

Allow me to be frank. ‘You Raise Me Up’ is not my cup of tea. To quote Miss Jean Brodie: ‘For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing that they like.’ There have been many versions of it recorded over the years, and I’ve listened to several of them for this post, trying to find one I could stomach. I haven’t managed. It is cloying, it is overwrought, it is pompous, whoever is singing. Every version has a mournful Celtic accompaniment that makes it sound like a reject from the ‘Braveheart’ soundtrack. It sounds like a hymn, but it isn’t. I don’t like that. I don’t like feeling as if I’m being tricked into listening to religious music. It should nail its colours to the mast (or the cross, as it were) and let us know, with a label that reads ‘Secular Guidance: Religious Content’, or something. 

One thing that surprises me about ‘You Raise Me Up’ is that it was only written in 2001. I’d have assumed it was much older. It had grown in infamy, from the original by Norwegian-Irish band Secret Garden, through Josh Groban’s well-known cover. Prior to Westlife, another Irish icon in Daniel O’Donnell had had the biggest British hit with it, making #22 in 2003. I wouldn’t say Westlife’s version is any better or worse than the others, but it makes me look back fondly towards the days of ‘If I Let You Go’, and ‘My Love’. Even their cover of ‘Mandy’ was palatable compared to this hard, lumpy stodge.

And yet, ‘You Raise Me Up’ was the first Westlife single to spend more than a week on top for five years, since their equally crappy cover of ‘Against All Odds’ with Mariah Carey. Had Arctic Monkeys released a week later, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against this juggernaut, which sold 1.5 times what ‘I Bet You Look Good…’ had in its first week. Even their second week sales were higher. It currently stands as Westlife’s third highest-seller, which is an admittedly impressive feat for a boyband, sorry manband, on their sixth studio album.

It would also have been the perfect way to bid them adieu. But alas, we have one final Westlife chart-topper to get through. Another MOR cover. Next autumn, obviously.

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