The charts of the first half of the 1990s have had many stories to tell: interesting one-hit wonders, new sounds coming, old sounds going, acts appearing and becoming huge… And yet from a certain angle it can look like the period was dominated by just three songs, all from film soundtracks, which together spent forty-one weeks atop the charts. (Set back to back that would stretch for over nine months, a period in which you could conceive, gestate, and birth a human child…)
Love Is All Around, by Wet Wet Wet (their 3rd and final #1)
15 weeks, from 29th May – 11th Sept 1994
We’ve already endured Bryan Adams and Whitney, and now here is the third and final chart-hogging behemoth. And thankfully it’s the best of the three, by far. It’s not an overwrought power-ballad, for a start. More a low-power ballad, with some jaunty flourishes among the cheesy sentiments and Marti Pellow’s over-singing.
I like the woozy fills before the chorus, and the way the band manage to update a song from the sixties with just enough nineties rock touches: a string section, some power chords, and a soaring guitar for the fade-out. ‘Love Is All Around’ was originally recorded by the Troggs, making #5 in 1967. This gave Reg Presley a writing credit on a second #1, after the band’s 1966 #1 ‘With a Girl Like You’. (Rather brilliantly, he spent the unexpected royalties on crop circle research…)
The fact that it’s a more upbeat number than its ginormous predecessors is also reflected in the movie it came from. ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ was a rom-com, compared to the epic ‘Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves’ and the slushy ‘Bodyguard’. For the soundtrack, Wet Wet Wet were asked to choose between covering this, Barry Manilow’s ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ (which would have been interesting…) ‘Love Is All Around’ was, I’d imagine, an easy choice for the pop-rocking Wets.
As much as this record is a relief after the other two long-runners, I shouldn’t overstate its quality. It’s fine. It’s serviceable. It’s a decently done cover. Nothing more. The original has a low-key charm to it that this version cannot reproduce with its lush production, and the fact that Marti Pellow doesn’t do ‘low-key’. And of course, we can’t ignore that it far outstayed its welcome on top of the charts. You often hear talk about ‘The Song of the Summer’. Never has it been quite as literal as this, with the record on top from late-May to early-September.
By the end of its run, some radio stations were refusing to play it. The band were well aware of the record becoming a millstone around their necks, and deleted it from production. ‘We did everyone’s head in’, Pellow succinctly summed up. This meant that it fell one week short of matching Adams’ record for consecutive weeks at #1. ‘Love Is All Around’, however, did outsell both Adams and Houston in the long run, and currently sits at almost two million copies (number eleven in the all-time sales table).
This song’s success didn’t completely sour Wet Wet Wet’s reputations in the UK. They wouldn’t again make number one, but they scored five further Top 10s before splitting in 1997 after a dispute over royalties. They reformed a decade later, and continue touring and recording with two of the four original members.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Like the Adams and Houston mega-hits, a victim of its own success, as it was ‘all around’ for too long. But as you say it was the best song of the three. And I love the fact that the guy who wrote it was able to put his royalties into an interesting hobby!
Defo the best of ‘the big three’ from that time. It’s not often that I really like a chart ‘pop’ band, but Wet Wet Wet were more than that. Really classy and soulful at times and for all the bad press Mart Pellow got, he certainly did have a mellow voice. (They call him Mellow Pellow … probably not – that just came to me a s I was writing.)
I had their first album on cassette and though not the kind of music I’d generally be associated with, I played it to death. 🙂
Haha that nickname should have caught on! Marti Pellow does have a great voice, and seems like a decent guy despite his troubles… But boy does he oversing. One of those eyes closed-fists clenched type of singers.
I love the original but I like this one also. They did a good job on it…I barely heard it back then. REM did an unplugged version of it I think. That is the version, other than the original, that I know best.
Yeah I just found out about the REM version writing this post. This version is fine. But not 15 weeks at number one levels of ‘fine’…!
Oh no…it was very rootsy…much like the original…it wasn’t huge like this. I like this though…it’s just a good song period.
I’ve never seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, but I do know this song. Wow, I honestly had no idea this was a cover. I know “Wild Thing” by the Troggs (which somehow went to #1 in the US but didn’t get to the top spot in the UK), but I didn’t know the original version of this song was by them as well. Listening to the original, it’s a very good – much sparser than the cover – song with a very lovely melody and a pretty string arrangement.
The cover is your typical 90s overblown sugary power ballad, but slightly – and I really do mean slightly – more subtle. I like it. Honestly, The Troggs version is better, but the Wet Wet Wet – seriously what kind of name is this – do an acceptable job. Certainly, I’ll take this over Bryan Adams and Whitney Houston.
I can’t wait until Britpop. Hell, I’ll take the Spice Girls over most of the crap that’s reached the top spot of the 90s so far. The first half of the UK 90s, I dunno, I’m not feeling a lot of this Eurodance and power ballad stuff.
Four Weddings and a Funeral basically set the template for every British rom-com over the following decade… So if you’ve seen ‘Notting Hill’, or ‘Bridget Jones’, or ‘Love Actually’, then you’ll have a pretty good idea what it’s about…
Yes, the early 90s were certainly the age of the overblown power ballad. Comaparatively the 80s power ballads were much more fun. Actually, an alternative #1 at this time would have been Bon Jovi’s ‘Always’, which was kept at #2 by some of the records I’m covering now. And thank God, as I’d count that as the ultimate bloated and rotten power ballad.
I’ve enjoyed watching dance music develop over the past few years, and I say that as someone who isn’t a huge dance music fan. Britpop is coming along very soon, though it won’t completely dislodge the dance and the balladry… or the reggae.
Ah but did you like the film?
It’s alright, I think. It’s been a while since I saw it. ‘Notting Hill’ is the best of that Curtis rom-com genre.
This became an albatross for everyone at the time! And not in an amusing “albatross! albatross!” buy your cinema ice-creams cinema Pythonesque way. The original is lovely and Reg Presley was always great fun, in spite of his West Country (Andover) accented UFO-obsession. Part of REM did an album with The Troggs, Athens Andover, in the 90’s, so it helped their profile – it’s in my CD collection – whereas Wet Wet Wet lost the charm of their debut single Wishing I Was Lucky long before this bloated monster. Great song, but Marti was better as a cute smiling pop singer with his over-singing held in check, the long-haired version was just too self-indulgent a la Whitney. I’ll take Bryan Adams of the 3, that man knows how to rock it live and can knock off a great song if he feels like it.
Hmmm… As an artist I might take Bryan Adams, or Whitney when she’s in an understated mood. But of the three mega-hits then I’d take Wet Wet Wet all day long! And I do admire the fact that even they got sick of it…
hah! On t’other hand Whitney & the Wets both ruined great originals, and Bryan only ruined his own song, but yes I also admire that got sick of their own song, though some more cynical types at the time considered it a marketing ploy to grab that extra week at one faced with an obvious incoming onslaught by making everyone who still hadnt bought it panic buy before stock dried up. Which is what happened, but it still didn’t help…! 🙂