The nu-disco movement, which has popped up time and again in the year 2000, reaches its peak. Because if Steps are referencing a trend, then you know it’s nearly over…
Stomp, by Steps (their 2nd and final #1)
1 week, from 22nd – 29th October 2000
Actually, no. I love Steps, and will hear no word against them. I am definitely going to do a ‘Best of the Rest’ post, as they were so poorly served by their two number ones. We had the okay cover of ‘Tragedy’, paired with the okay ballad ‘Heartbeat’, and now this. Everybody clap your hands… (clap clap)… Get on up and dance, We’re gonna stomp all night now…
I mean, it’s fine. I like the rampant tempo of it, that forces you to do the full repertoire of classic disco hand gesture moves to it. I like it the pew pew effects, and the strings. Hand claps, and thank God for the weekend… In fact, it throws almost every cliché into the mix, including yet another of the year’s Chic samples (for which Nile & Co. didn’t initially receive a credit). So much disco, in fact that it promptly kills off the current revival. I’d be surprised if we hear much more at number one any time soon.
But ‘Stomp’ also can’t escape its sheer basic-ness. I know, I know, Steps were one of the most basic groups going. Which is true, to an extent. But most of their classic (yes, classic) songs are rooted in those late nineties pop sounds – a reason why they are fairly beloved by those who grew up with them – and so to hear them go disco feels like a lazy choice.
I also can’t help turning my nose up at this, knowing the Steps songs which failed to make #1. Twelve other Top 10 hits, five of which stalled at #2. ‘One for Sorrow’, ‘Last Thing on My Mind’, ‘Deeper Shade of Blue’… Meanwhile ‘Stomp’ sits at #11 in the Steps all-time sales table, and at #10 on their Spotify most played tracks. It also fluked its week at number one, with the lowest first-week sales of any of the year’s forty-two chart-toppers.
Steps split-up on Boxing Day 2001, but reformed with actually quite surprising success in the 2010s, remaining together (plus Michelle Visage, for some reason) to this day. They may have been ‘ABBA on speed’, in the words of Pete Waterman, but they bunged out some very decent pop records, and were in their own way a soundtrack to the turn of the millennium.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Before following this blog, I’d only encountered one reference to Steps– in a student newspaper about twenty years ago. Now I’ve listened to two of their songs, and liked both. Yes, this isn’t nearly as catchy as Tragedy (even what they added to Tragedy), but it’s still catchy– a nice uplifting chorus.
It’s hard to dislike a band that smile all the time and seem so completely untroubled by existential angst!
Maolsheachlann
No, thankfully Steps had little time for existential angst. Though, a bit like ABBA, many of their catchiest, poppiest songs are about heartbreak.
I’d never have admitted it at the time, but I do love Steps. Pure, unadulterated pop.
I started out liking Steps – with their Bananarama cover, One For Sorrow, Deeper Shade Of Blue, but as they went on they seemed to get cheesier. Stomp I actually didn’t mind, it clearly referenced back to Brothers Johnson Stomp, so Pete Waterman doing his usual classic Motown/disco magpie act, but at least it wasn’t a cover. Against all expectations I was rather happy to see them back together after they started dropping some good pop singles. Just a shame the current kids streaming the same songs month after month, year after year, don’t care about them! I long for the days when the charts reflected what you paid for one occasion and not what you spent 2 years passively playing over and over across the entire Western World, off playlists, but just in slightly different orders in each country…
I think you’re a bit optimistic to think that Steps could score a chart hit in the 2020s. Streaming, physicals… postal votes… I can’t see it happening : )
I hear you with the streaming/playlist complaints. But the charts company are in a bind… Make it pure sales and you have a number one with a couple hundred sales. While the streaming companies don’t really care how slow their charts are, or how old the songs clogging them up are.
yes charts are a problem, sadly. The only solution I can come up with is to remove streaming-company-created playlist tracks from counting towards sales – it’s essentially no different from radio – and just have tracks people play by choice via personal playlists or albums. I think that would hand some of the power back to music fans by removing passive listening. That’s never going to happen though, because Spotify and co like having the power and they wont provide the data without bundling in playlist data. Ah well never mind…. 🙂
They were never great art ( not that they were meant to be) and the constant comparisons people make of them to ABBA are laughable (The Winner Takes It All and Dancing Queen v’s this? Really? ) but they were indeed poorly served by their two number ones. I was 13 when the Bee Gees took Tragedy to number one so Steps cover always sounded like a poor imitation, sorry! One For Sorrow and Deeper Shade of Blue would have been more worthy chart toppers than the two they actually had, but you seem to find that happening time and again throughout this countdown ( Prince being the most obvious example)
I think the ABBA comparisons were inevitable as a mixed gender pop group, and their second single (I think) Last Thing on My Mind was such an obvious ABBA rip off. But surely nobody ever claimed they were as good as ABBA!
I don’t think I know any Steps songs. I like the disco strings.