Like their Big-Beat chums the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers enjoyed two chart-toppers across 1996-97. When it came to the Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’, I wondered if it could be mentioned in the same breath as the pop culture moment that was ‘Firestarter’. I won’t be asking a similar question this time around…
Block Rockin’ Beats, by The Chemical Brothers (their 2nd and final #1)
1 week, from 30th March – 6th April 1997
For ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ is not up to the standard of the wonderfully trippy ‘Setting Sun’. Not that it isn’t ear-catching, or that there’s nothing interesting in this melange of sounds. Or that underpinning the entire five minutes of noise there isn’t a pretty cool bassline. All this is true. But at times this song has the feel of a dance record from a decade before, when samples were thrown together with novelty, rather than musical, value in mind.
‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ contains what sounds like sirens, snatches of different hip-hop songs (including the constantly repeated Back with another one of those block rockin’ beats…!) and what I imagine is a donkey being assaulted with a red-hot poker. I’m not writing it off, because I do enjoy dance music when it’s this chaotic and aggressive, but it also feels like a Big Beat song written to order. ‘Setting Sun’ had the advantage of Noel Gallagher on vocals, and a thick dollop of inspiration from the Beatles, which this record lacks.
Looking further into the chart history of ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, and other one-week #1s of the time, is interesting. It’s maybe time to introduce the term ‘non number one’. Not that I want to deny the Chemical Brothers their second chart-topper. They’ve added to the rich and interesting tapestry of 1997’s #1s, making it an enjoyable year so far. But after entering at the top, it dropped to #8 the following week, and ranked at #88 on the best-selling songs of the year list. Similarly, Blur’s ‘Beetlebum’ had fallen #1 to #7, while U2’s ‘Discotheque’ fell #1 to #6, both after just one-week stays on top.
I was asked recently by a commenter why this was, and I answered that it was to do with songs in the mid-late 1990s being promoted heavily, sometimes for weeks, before being released. So the majority of their sales were concentrated in the first week they were available. But it also ties into the fact that this period also saw some of the highest singles sales of all time. I don’t know if it was to do with disposable income, or the ubiquity of CD players, or even the quality of the music, but demand was there and record labels needed something to fill it. If anyone has noticed that it is taking us ages to get through entire years now (there will be as many #1s between January and May ’97 as there were in the entirety of 1992) then there’s your answer.
None of this is to say that the Chemical Brothers weren’t a genuinely popular act. They had no further #1s, but would go on scoring Top 20 hits for another decade after this. Including what is probably their signature song, ahead of either of their chart-toppers, 1999’s ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’, which made #3.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Never heard this one before. It’s okay. I could tell halfway through that this was a song I wouldn’t remember after an hour. It sounds very late-90s. I very vaguely remember this type of sound in the early 2000s when I was a baby. I’ll take this over most eurotrash anyday even if it’s not too far from it. I can definitely hear the influence of industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails on this one.
The turnover in the mid-to-late-90s for UK No. 1s reminds me of the high turnover of US Hot 100 No. 1s during the mid-70s (1974 and 1975 had 35 US No. 1s each, insanity, that’s one-third of the year-end charts for both years dedicated to just the No. 1s).
In the UK, it peaks in the year 2000, with a frankly ridiculous 42 number one singles, including a record-breaking (I think) 12 one-weekers in a row. And amazing to think that just eight years earlier there had only been 12 No 1s…
Yes this one is OK, they did other good tracks and Setting Sons was way better. The high turnover at the top was due also to discounting of CD’s first week of release to 99p in order to get a number one. They were an outrageous £4 when vinyl still existed, so marketing was geared around extra tracks, remixes and classic bonus old hits being bunged onto the CD, but by now the vinyl single was dead and it was all down to marketing for that top spot slot using price. Some were £1.99 but a lot were 99p (Britney Spears for example) then they went up to £2.99 second week.
I got very frustrated with this chart manipulation and thought a rolling 2-week chart would give a more accurate feel for what was actually the top selling single – you can see records that hit 2 and hung around there, like No Mercy’s Where Do You Go, would have been the real number one vs those that entered high and dropped like a brick. Others like Your Woman would have had longer runs on top.
Ah, that’s a reason I’d overlooked. Very interesting. I was too young for vinyl singles, and I don’t think I paid much attention to how much singles costed week on week. It’s also interesting, and frustrating, how no matter what the prevalent format of the time is… vinyl, CD, download or stream, record companies will find a way to game the system!
As the person who started this discussion off initially I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, total manipulation of the charts by record companies. Interestingly, two previous high watermarks in singles sales (1977-79 and 1983-84) resulted in the opposite happening, a lot of number ones ( and some number two’s) selling over a million and acts like John and Olivia, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Wings staying at number one for months on end. As I’ve said before, this was the period I lost interest in the charts and began to regard them as a bit of a joke
It’s not too bad. I wouldn’t listen to it a lot but it’s not bad.
One of my favourite Chemical Brothers tracks, this – I much prefer this to Setting Sun, although as mentioned it’s not as good as Hey Boy Hey Girl from a few years later.
As an 11 year-old at the time I very much enjoyed the high turnover of singles in this era – I’d get bored of long-running number 1s pretty quickly and the constant turnover meant that even by listening to the radio I was exposed to way more music than I might have been in another period, which was great for the development of my musical taste.
Good to hear another perspective. Yes, I think fast-turnover can be linked to the late-90s charts being more influence by the ‘youth’ than at any other time. Very few ‘legacy’ acts were topping the charts, and it was largely boybands, girlgroups, teeny stuff (with occasional exceptions like Cher and Cliff).
For me, I don’t like constant, weekly change, but I also hate when records get into 7+ weeks on top. Give me a new number one every 2-3 weeks, and I’ll be happy.