Random runners-up is back! Following on from my latest recap, let’s take a break from analysing all those chart-toppers, and lavish some attention on those records that fell at the final hurdle: #2.
These records are genuinely chosen at random (thank you random.org), and this time the generator has kindly thrown up a chart-topper from each of the five decades we’ve covered so far. We’ll be going back as far as 1955, and as close to this blog’s ‘present day’ as 1996. But first up, it’s the sixties.
The generator has also thrown up three acts who we’ve already met in pole position. Fleetwood Mac had scored their only UK number one in January 1969, with the atmospheric instrumental ‘Albatross’.
‘Man of the World’, by Fleetwood Mac
#2 for 1 week, from 28th May – 4th June 1969 (behind ‘Get Back’)
They followed that up with a couple of #2s, the first of which was ‘Man of the World’. It starts off as a simple acoustic number, with some echoey guitar flourishes, and some nice echoes back to ‘Albatross’ in the cymbal crashes and the rhythmic bass. Peter Green, then the band’s main singer and songwriter, mournfully drawls: I could tell you about my life, They say I’m a man of the world… There’s no one I’d rather be… Before howling: But I just wish I’d never been born…
Legend has it that it was these lyrics that first alerted his bandmates to the fact that Green might not have been mentally okay. Just a year later he left the band. It’s a well-worn topic, how fame and fortune don’t always lead to health and happiness, but seldom has it been spelled out as beautifully as on ‘Man of the World’. After a wonderful bluesy middle-eight about how a ‘good woman’ might help, it ends with a murmured AndI wish I was in love…
When I was very young, I had a ‘Best of the Sixties’ cassette compilation. It was cheap, so it didn’t have the huge hits on it; but it had this. And so I knew ‘Man of the World’ long before I’d ever heard ‘Don’t Stop’, or ‘Little Lies’. Which is perhaps fitting, because it is this original incarnation of Fleetwood Mac that had the most UK singles chart success: a chart-topper, and two number twos. They would have to wait almost two decades for their next biggest hit: a #4 for ‘Everywhere’ in 1987.
By then, of course, and for most of their huge seventies successes, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – whose surnames were combined to create the band’s name – were the two remaining original members. Peter Green meanwhile, struggled with his mental health throughout the seventies and eighties, but was sporadically involved in the music business, and with the other members of Fleetwood Mac. He joined the band for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and died in 2020.
And so to recap, for the twenty-sixth time (you can explore all the previous recaps by clicking on the handily titled ‘Recaps’ folder in my Categories section).
Instead of the usual thirty chart-toppers, this time I held off until we had gone through fifty, because of the rapid late-nineties turnover at the top of the charts. This latest period covers almost two years, from November 1996 to September 1998, and of the fifty number ones an amazing twenty-eight managed just a single week at the top. Plus, forty-five of them entered at number one, a feat that was almost unheard of until the mid-nineties, but is now the norm.
As in every recap, I like to pick out the themes that have been running through our latest chart-toppers. And for this recap the theme is POP! With one obvious name to start with: The Spice Girls. They’ve racked up five number ones in the past couple of years, including two festive chart-toppers. However, their most recent #1 – ‘Viva Forever’ – saw them cut down to a four-piece after Geri’s departure. And in the next recap, despite them still having two number ones to come, we’ll be talking more about the girls’ solo ventures.
But they’ve opened the floodgates for a poptastic turn of the century, and in recent weeks we’ve seen the charts flooded with a some cheap imitations of Girl Power (B*Witched and Billie). 1998 even saw the Spiceys usurped as Britain’s biggest girl group, as All Saints took over with two sexy, sassy number ones, and a couple of interesting covers. The boys haven’t been left out either: Boyzone have taken Take That’s crown as the biggest boyband in the land, scoring three largely insipid #1s, while Peter Andre and Another Level tried their best to sound sexy. By far the best pure-pop record of the last couple of years, though, was Hanson’s way too catchy ‘MMMBop’.
So, pop music is back in. Britpop is… out? We’ve mentioned before that, despite Britpop being the musical movement that the 1990s are remembered for, it was never very well represented on top of the singles charts. Yet there have still been moments as the scene started to go through its death throes: Oasis doubled-down, pretending nothing was wrong, with two preposterously overblown singles from ‘Be Here Now’ (played together ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ and ‘All Around the World’ would take up almost twenty minutes of your time). Blur meanwhile kicked off the comedown with ‘Beetlebum’, the Verve went even more melancholy on ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, and the Manics just did their own thing, as they usually do, singing about shooting fascists. And we should also mention ‘3 Lions ‘98’, the World Cup reworking of the 1996 original cementing that tune’s place as ultimately the biggest Britpop song of all.
In the second-half of 1997, single sales reached their all-time peak, meaning that we have also met some of the biggest-selling hits ever in this past bunch. ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, ‘Barbie Girl’ and ‘Perfect Day’ are in the Top 50, while reigning supreme over everything is Elton John’s Diana tribute. That record, and the cover of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ marking the Dunblane school shooting, means that two tragic events in modern British history have made an impression on the hit parade.
Finally, one more theme that we should mention is how we’ve quietly entered the age of the remix. Armand van Helden had his way with Tori Amos’ ‘Professional Widow’, Norman Cook with Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’, and it was Jason Nevins VS Run–D.M.C. on ‘It’s Like That’.
Other subplots to mention before we get on with dishing out awards… We bade farewell to MJ, and welcomed Madonna back for her first #1 in almost eight years. Hip-hop continued to tighten its grip, with chart-toppers from LL Cool J, Puff Daddy, Will Smith and, as above, Run-D.M.C. And that perennial nineties genre, the soundtrack hit, maintained its relevance with #1s from ‘Space Jam’, ‘Men in Black’, ‘Titanic’, ‘Godzilla’, ‘Sliding Doors’ and, um, ‘Beavis and Butt-Head Do America’.
To the awards then. As is traditional, we start with The ‘Meh’ Award for Forgettability. Three tunes left my pulse truly flatlining, and they were: Peter Andre’s ‘I Feel You’, Usher’s ‘You Make Me Wanna…’, and Boyzone’s ‘All That I Need’. And of those three, I genuinely cannot remember a note of ‘I Feel You’. This may be because I wrote my post on it in way back in March, but sod it. Peter Andre ‘wins’.
The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else appears much harder this time around. There have been plenty of bad records, but not many ‘so bad they’re good’ records. ‘Barbie Girl’…? Genuinely decent. The Teletubbies…? Genuinely awful, and a contender for the very worst. So I’m going to take a different approach. Musically it’s enjoyable, perhaps one of their better singles; but the fact that it runs for a record-breaking ten minutes, seven of which are nanananas, means that Oasis take this one with ‘All Around the World’.
On to TheVery Worst Award. I had five contenders, but I’ve already talked myself out of three of them. Puff Daddy’s tribute to the Notorious BIG is crass, but I have residual affection for that from when I was the perfect age to fall for its mawkish rhymes. Speaking of mawkish, if I chose Elton’s Diana tribute then it would feel deliberately edgy of me (plus, ‘Something About the Way You Look Tonight’ is a decent enough song). ‘Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh’’ is garbage but, really, what’s the point in getting angry about nonsense like that?
No, the two left standing are Celine Dion’s iceberg shaped blockbuster ‘My Heart Will Go On’, and B*Witched’s Paddy’s Day anthem ‘C’est la Vie’. Both are records I would happily ban on pain of death, but if I had to choose one to be used on me as a method of torture it would be Celine Dion. Which means B*Witched take the crown. What are they like?
TheVery Best Award is tough, tough, tough this time. As I write this I still haven’t made my mind up. For the first time we’re contending not only with songs I love, but songs I grew up with in real time. The feelings are real, people. I have a shortlist of eight… Okay, more of a longlist. I’ll list them, with one pro and one con for each…
‘Breathe’, by The Prodigy (pro – better than ‘Firestarter’/con – very similar to ‘Setting Sun’, our last Very Best winner).
‘Your Woman’ by White Town (pro – one of the quirkiest ever #1s/con – too quirky…?)
Blur’s ‘Beetlebum’ (pro – I love Blur!/con – am I being objective?)
‘I Wanna Be the Only One’, by Eternal ft. BeBe Winans (pro – the key changes/con – is it actually a hymn…?)
‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, by the Verve (pro – majestic melancholy/con – or is it too depressing?)
All Saint’s ‘Never Ever’ (pro – iconic spoken word intro/con – they have even better songs to come).
Aqua’s ‘Turn Back Time’ (pro – classy pop/con – does it just benefit from comparison with their earlier #1s…?)
‘Feel It’, by The Tamperer ft. Maya (pro – a banger/ con – a bit basic).
Thanks for bearing with me. Based on these pros and cons, I am ruthlessly eliminating six records. The two remaining contenders are: ‘Your Woman’ and ‘Beetlebum’, back to back number ones in January 1997, and both at the time on my beloved four-cassette doorstopper ‘Now 36’ album. I’ve never been more tempted to announce a tie, but no. Rules are rules. Both are great, but only one uses a trumpet sample from the 1930s. There’s no such thing as too quirky: ‘Your Woman’ wins.
To recap the recaps, then:
The ‘Meh’ Award for Forgettability
‘Hold My Hand’, by Don Cornell.
‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’, by The Dream Weavers.
‘On the Street Where You Live’, by Vic Damone.
‘Why’, by Anthony Newley.
‘The Next Time’ / ‘Bachelor Boy’, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows.
‘Juliet’, by The Four Pennies.
‘The Carnival Is Over’, by The Seekers.
‘Silence Is Golden’, by The Tremeloes.
‘I Pretend’, by Des O’Connor.
‘Woodstock’, by Matthews’ Southern Comfort.
‘How Can I Be Sure’, by David Cassidy.
‘Annie’s Song’, by John Denver.
‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, by Art Garfunkel.
‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ / ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, by Rod Stewart.
‘Three Times a Lady’, by The Commodores.
‘What’s Another Year’, by Johnny Logan.
‘A Little Peace’, by Nicole.
‘Every Breath You Take’, by The Police.
‘I Got You Babe’, by UB40 with Chrissie Hynde.
‘Who’s That Girl’, by Madonna.
‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, by Phil Collins.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, by Band Aid II.
‘Please Don’t Go’ / ‘Game Boy’, by KWS.
‘Dreams’, by Gabrielle.
‘Forever Love’, by Gary Barlow.
‘I Feel You’, by Peter Andre.
The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else
‘I See the Moon’, by The Stargazers.
‘Lay Down Your Arms’, by Anne Shelton.
‘Hoots Mon’, by Lord Rockingham’s XI.
‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, by The Temperance Seven.
‘Nut Rocker’, by B. Bumble & The Stingers.
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers.
‘Little Red Rooster’, by The Rolling Stones.
‘Puppet on a String’, by Sandie Shaw.
‘Fire’, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
‘In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)’, by Zager & Evans.
‘Amazing Grace’, The Pipes & Drums & Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard.
‘Kung Fu Fighting’, by Carl Douglas.
‘If’, by Telly Savalas.
‘Wuthering Heights’, by Kate Bush.
‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’, by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
‘Shaddap You Face’, by Joe Dolce Music Theatre.
‘It’s My Party’, by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.
‘Save Your Love’ by Renée & Renato.
‘Rock Me Amadeus’, by Falco.
‘Pump Up the Volume’ / ‘Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)’, by M/A/R/R/S.
‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, by The Timelords.
‘Sadeness Part 1’, by Enigma.
‘Ebeneezer Goode’, by The Shamen.
‘I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, by Meat Loaf.
‘Spaceman’, by Babylon Zoo.
‘All Around the World’, by Oasis.
The Very Worst Chart-Toppers
‘Cara Mia’, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra.
‘The Man From Laramie’, by Jimmy Young.
‘Roulette’, by Russ Conway.
‘Wooden Heart’, by Elvis Presley.
‘Lovesick Blues’, by Frank Ifield.
‘Diane’, by The Bachelors.
‘The Minute You’re Gone’, by Cliff Richard.
‘Release Me’, by Engelbert Humperdinck.
‘Lily the Pink’, by The Scaffold.
‘All Kinds of Everything’, by Dana.
‘The Twelfth of Never’, by Donny Osmond.
‘The Streak’, by Ray Stevens.
‘No Charge’, by J. J. Barrie
‘Don’t Give Up On Us’, by David Soul
‘One Day at a Time’, by Lena Martell.
‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’, by St. Winifred’s School Choir.
‘I’ve Never Been to Me’, by Charlene.
‘Hello’, by Lionel Richie.
‘I Want to Know What Love Is’, by Foreigner.
‘Star Trekkin’’, by The Firm.
‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You’, by Glenn Medeiros.
‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers.
‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, by Bryan Adams.
‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’, by The Outhere Brothers.
‘Unchained Melody’ / ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, by Robson & Jerome.
‘C’est la Vie’, by B*Witched
The Very Best Chart-Toppers
‘Such a Night’, by Johnnie Ray.
‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado & His Orchestra.
‘Great Balls of Fire’, by Jerry Lee Lewis.
‘Cathy’s Clown’, by The Everly Brothers.
‘Telstar’, by The Tornadoes.
‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles.
‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, by The Rolling Stones.
‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, by Procol Harum.
‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’, by Marvin Gaye.
‘Baby Jump’, by Mungo Jerry.
‘Metal Guru’, by T. Rex.
‘Tiger Feet’, by Mud.
‘Space Oddity’, by David Bowie.
‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer.
‘Heart of Glass’, by Blondie.
‘The Winner Takes It All’, by ABBA.
‘My Camera Never Lies’, by Bucks Fizz.
‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, by Dead or Alive
‘Stand by Me’, by Ben E. King (Honorary Award)
‘It’s a Sin’, by Pet Shop Boys.
‘Theme from S-Express’, by S’Express.
‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, by Sinéad O’Connor.
‘Would I Lie to You?’, by Charles & Eddie.
‘Stay Another Day’, by East 17.
‘Setting Sun’, by The Chemical Brothers.
‘Your Woman’, by White Town
Our next run of fifty chart-toppers will take us, just, into the new millennium. Before that, we’ll take a break and have a week of records that never quite made it to the top. Random Runners-Up is back!
Suddenly it’s eight hundred not out. We continue to cut a swathe through the chart decades, almost tipping over into a new century. But there’s still plenty of life left in the 1990s, as All Saints return to form…
Bootie Call, by All Saints (their 3rd of five #1s)
1 week, from 6th – 13th September 1998
I tried to make the best of their double-bill cover record, featuring interesting takes on ‘Under the Bridge’ and ‘Lady Marmalade‘. And while it wasn’t the horror show some might have claimed, it still wasn’t that good. So here’s their third number one of the year, making them 1998’s joint most successful girl group (the other one isn’t the Spice Girls). And it’s a fun record.
It’s also a strange record, despite the subject matter being very All Saints. Casual sex is the order of the day, and it’s worth stopping to note that while this song isn’t at all explicit, it’s only really been since the mid-nineties that chart-toppers have started to be this up-front about sex. Never stop giving good love, ‘Cause that’s what I call you for… the girls purr… You can bring it on with the rough stuff, I don’t want to be tamed… All Saints are, of course, in charge of the whole situation, reminding their guys: It’s just a bootie call… (Why, incidentally, not ‘booty’? Is ‘bootie’ a British spelling I don’t know about?)
The strangeness comes from the production, and the sound effects that hang all over this song like weird Christmas decorations. There’s what sounds like someone snoring, a man going ‘uh’ over, over and over (once you’ve noticed him in the mix he takes over completely), plus lots of vaguely sexual breathing and spluttering. The second verse is very rough around the edges, with the girls taking turns over their lines as if ad-libbing around a looped piano riff. It could be cool; but it could also sound half-arsed. It’s certainly not polished or softened, like so many of the recent tween pop #1s, so that’s something to be thankful for. The girls don’t forget that there might be children listening though, adding a line I assume to be about safe sex: Jimmy’s got to ride in your pocket, or lock him in your wallet…
‘Bootie Call’ isn’t as good as ‘Never Ever’, or either of the band’s two remaining chart-toppers. It’s a little gimmicky, and gets a little repetitive. But even as their fourth best number one, it’s pretty enjoyable. Plus it cements their place as the biggest British girl group of the day, as the Spice Girls continue to disintegrate.
Next up we have a much delayed recap, but before that we should cast our eyes back towards each of the ‘hundredth’ number ones. What’s interesting is that almost all of them represent a facet of British chart-topping tastes. All Saints are a good way to mark the girl-powered sass-pop of the late nineties, as were Chaka Demus & Pliers (700) a good way to mark the mid-nineties reggae revival. What’s interesting is that there are barely four and half years between 800 and 700, as the turnover of number ones increases, but more than six between 700 and 600, in which T’Pau represented for all the eighties power-ballads.
500 was Nicole’s ‘A Little Peace’ (Eurovision), while 400 was ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ (showtunes). Tony Orlando and Dawn’s ‘Knock Three Times’ represents nothing more than the British public’s ongoing love of middling cheese. 200 was ‘Help’ by the biggest band of all time, while 100 was Anthony Newley’s ‘Do You Mind’, highlighting the lull that came between rock ‘n’ roll and Merseybeat. And of course, Al Martino kicked the whole shebang off in 1952, repping for all the pre-rock crooners. It’s been a lot of fun so far – thanks to everyone who has come along for the ride – and rest assured I have no intention of stopping until we make it all the way to the present day.
I have a recap coming up in a couple of posts, in which I’ll name the best/worst/weirdest/dullest of the most recent number one singles. But if I ever decide to dish out awards for ‘Best Song Title’, then we’ll have an easy all-time winner…
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, by Manic Street Preachers (their 1st of two #1s)
1 week, from 30th August – 6th September 1998
I make the nine-word ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’, to be the second longest chart-topping title not to feature brackets (and obviously not counting double-‘A’s). Bonus points for naming the eleven-word winner of that award… Anyway, so far so interesting. But is the song any good…?
Well, the dreamy reverb on the guitars is cool, and the song has a big, beefy wall-of-sound feel to it. It’s confident, and orchestral, and as the lead single from their fifth album it declares the Manics to be perhaps the biggest band in post-Britpop Britain. It’s also fairly mid-tempo, a bit Radio 2, when compared to some of their earlier, spikier hits.
Of course, with a title like that, the lyrics were surely going to be the most interesting aspect of this song. And on one level they don’t let us down. So if I can shoot rabbits, Then I can shoot fascists… is a line unlike most others in the preceding seven hundred and ninety-eight #1s. Inspiration for the song came from a Spanish Civil War-era poster, showing a child killed by Franco’s forces with the title-line printed below. The singer is singing from a modern viewpoint though, and feels gutless when he thinks about the generations before him who fought fascism.
The lyrics are also what leave me a little cold, when faced with writing a post on this record. I’d like to celebrate the Manics making number one – a rock song making number one in the very poppy charts of late ’98 – but they have better songs in their canon. And it’s not that I’m put off by the preachy-ness of it (the hint is in the band’s name, after all), but ‘A Design for Life’ did the socialist-statement-with-strings-and-a-massive-chorus much better than this two years earlier (and only made #2). ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’ is a little too on the nose, a little too much edge without substance. And, removed from the song’s actual lyrics, it can be co-opted by any crackpot conspiracy theorists, as happened in 2009 when the BNP used the song on their website.
I go through phases with the Manics where I listen to them a lot; and then at other times I seem to forget they exist. They always remained somewhat outside the world of Britpop, pre-dating the movement by several years, and by managing hits well into the 2000s, long after most of the other big nineties rock acts had imploded. I do like them, though. And just to prove that I don’t mind political statements in songs, as long as the song itself is strong enough to carry said statement, I will be giving their second number one a glowing write-up.
***I should also mention that I’ve written a post for Kinks Week at Powerpop Blog, which was published earlier today. Please do check it out, along with the rest of Max’s always entertaining and informative posts on music and pop culture!***
Straight after ‘Viva Forever’, here’s another high quality ballad…
No Matter What, by Boyzone (their 4th of six #1s)
3 weeks, from 9th – 30th August 1998
Yes, the words ‘high quality’ and ‘Boyzone’ in very close proximity there, but I’ll stand by it. This is, by a clear distance, the best of the Irish boyband’s six number ones.
Like the Spice Girls before it, the melody and the chord progressions here are simple, but effective. There’s something instantly touching, even if this isn’t your kind of music. (It absolutely reeks of musical theatre, with an ‘Act I finale’ energy to it. More on that to follow…) Helping immensely in this song’s likeability is that Stephen Gately gets to sing the first verse. Nice voice, nice boy, sorely missed…
If only he’d been allowed to carry the whole thing. Alas, Ronan Keating comes clattering in for the second verse, with all the subtlety of a drunken ox. But even he can’t ruin it. There’s a depth to this, a timelessness that’s been missing from Boyzone’s previous number ones. There’s another acoustic guitar solo, and a soaring finish, and the job’s a good ‘un. The fact that this stands out so far against the band’s earlier singles is perhaps explained by the songwriters: Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Jim Steinman.
It’s a needless comparison, but since this directly followed ‘Viva Forever’ I feel compelled to say that this isn’t as a good a record. And it’s not just because of groanin’ Ronan… The production is a bit cheap, with a squelchy bass and a karaoke-level percussion. And I don’t know who thought the strange chicka-cha-ah-has in the intro were a good idea, but they weren’t. Plus, the lyrics are well-intentioned but interesting: No matter what they tell us, No matter what they teach us, What we believe is true… (Sounds like the motto of your average Twitter user…)
Still, it is a good pop ballad. And for a boyband single to get three weeks at number one means that it must have had broad crossover appeal. It even managed to graze the charts in the US, something that no Boyzone single did before, or after. They have two final number ones coming up – one of which is not, I repeat not, a ballad – but I highly doubt either will match this.
The Spice Girls return, after missing #1 for the first time behind Run-D.M.C, with their first Geri-less single…
Viva Forever, by The Spice Girls (their 7th of nine #1s)
2 weeks, from 26th July – 9th August 1998
I can still remember where I was when I heard Geri had left the group (some generations had JFK…) I was in a minibus, on my way home from a Scout camp, when news broke on the radio. But of course, ‘Viva Forever’ had been recorded months before, so Halliwell still features both in the song and in the video – as much as any of the girls ‘feature’ in the video as animated fairies – and in fact was credited with writing most of the lyrics.
There are some lovely strings ‘n’ harmonies in the intro, then a cool Spanish guitar to bring some drama. The verses have a sense of melancholy, and the lyrics – originally about a summer romance – have a real yearning to them. The bridge even has some Spanish, for that touch of class. The verses too have a timeless quality to them, even if the chord progressions are a little predictable.
Of course, by the time Geri had left, the lyrics had ceased to be about a summer fling and seemed to fit perfectly as her ‘goodbye’ to the band. And this is a very solid pop record. In fact, it’s almost adult-oriented soft rock. And I’d put it down as the group’s best ballad, miles ahead of ‘Mama’, and pretty far ahead of ‘2 Become 1’. The fact that they had gems like this up their sleeve, two years into their career, sets the Spice Girls apart from most other pop fodder of the time.
The only thing that slightly lets this record down is the vocals. And we know, of course, seven chart-toppers in, that people didn’t buy Spice Girls’ records for the quality of their voices. But it’s on songs like this, where they can’t rely on boisterous, girl-power energy, that you can hear how reedy a couple of them were. Luckily, Mel C is on hand to do most of the heavy lifting as the song reaches its climax.
I can’t remember ever seeing the full music video for ‘Viva Forever’ before, but it’s a trip. Set in the 1970s, two boys follow an animatronic bouncing chicken into a forest where they meet the Spiceys as slightly demented looking fairies. One of the boys disappears into a Rubik’s cube with the girls, leaving his friend lost and confused… It apparently took longer to film than the entirety of ‘Spiceworld – The Movie’, and adds a ‘loss of innocence’ interpretation to the song’s lyrics.
So, Geri had left, citing exhaustion and depression. The drama was that she didn’t tell the other girls to their faces, causing a rift for many years… It wasn’t the only crack to start showing, though. Before the Girls return for their penultimate number one, their solo careers will have started, with predictably chart-topping results.
And so Jamiroquai, a nineties chart mainstay, score their only number one single. Should we class them alongside Dusty, Quo, and a-Ha, as one of the great one and only #1 acts? Or is one chart-topper par for their course…?
Deeper Underground, by Jamiroquai (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 19th – 26th July 1998
‘Deeper Underground’ isn’t the first record you’d think of as Jamiroquai’s only #1, and it’s not a record I’ve heard much over the years. So two things strike me as I listen to it now. First, that it’s obviously from a movie soundtrack, as no normal pop single has this much time to open, with strings and ominous chords, never mind a monster’s roar. It was from the big 1998 summer blockbuster ‘Godzilla’, which was fairly successful at the box office but was panned by critics.
The second thing I notice is how heavy this record is. By the time I was a teenager, Jamiroquai were a byword for naffness, mainly brought about by lead singer Jay Kay’s collection of silly hats. Many of their other big hits veered towards a disco cheeriness, but ‘Deeper Underground’ has an edge to it, underpinned by a scuzzy funk riff. They had been acid funk pioneers in the early nineties, and this is definitely not their most commercial moment. When the lyrics finally arrive, Jay Kay almost freestyles over the aggressive beat.
As a soundtrack hit, the lyrics have to relate to the movie they feature in. But Jamiroquai manage to twist lyrics about going deeper underground to escape a massive, city-smashing monster, into what seems like a song about paranoia: Something’s come to rock me, And I can’t keep my head, I get nervous in the New York City streets, Where my legacy treads… The video takes a more literal approach to the subject matter, with Jay Kay dancing his way around death as Godzilla, and any number of crashing taxis and helicopters, destroy a cinema, all with very dated CGI.
I had thought that this record sampled Led Zeppelin, and although the riff is cool it’s not quite at Led Zep standards. This is because I was confusing it with the other big hit from the ‘Godzilla’ soundtrack, Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page’s ‘Come With Me’, which is based around ‘Kashmir’. That one made #2 around the same time (and is Page’s only Top 10 hit in the UK, either with or without Led Zeppelin).
As ‘Deeper Underground’ descends into even nastier, funkier territory, the synths grow harsher and harsher until it sounds a bit like I imagine electro-shock therapy would. It’s cool. I like it. I’m glad that this is Jamiroquai’s only #1, over the much more mum-friendly ‘Canned Heat’ or ‘Cosmic Dancer’. Though their greatest moment remains ‘Virtual Insanity’, which was one of my favourite tracks on ‘Now 37’ back, as they say, in the day.
In my intro I called Jamiroquai a ‘nineties mainstay’, but that wouldn’t seem to do them justice. I’ve just discovered that they were the 3rd best-selling UK act of the decade, behind Oasis and The Spice Girls. Which is very impressive for a band that many write off as one guy and some hats (though as much as I’ve enjoyed writing this review I was probably hasty in naming them alongside Dusty and Status Quo…) ‘Deeper Underground’ remains forgotten amongst their back-catalogue it seems, as it is nowhere to be seen on their Spotify popular tracks. On the same platform’s ‘This Is Jamiroquai’ playlist, it is buried away as track twenty-eight.
Another boyband, another pop song, another sign that we’re now well into the late nineties…
Freak Me, by Another Level (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 12th – 19th July 1998
But unlike Billie Piper, there’s nothing tweeny about this raunchy record. Let me lick you up and down, ‘Till you say stop… the Another Level lads beg… Let me play with your body baby, Make you real hot… All this over slick, modern R&B beats, and honeyed harmonising.
It’s very American, when you compare it to the more wholesome British boybands of the day (oh to hear Ronan Keating have a go with these lyrics…) And it had originally been a Billboard #1 in 1993, for US R&B group Silk, co-written by hip-hop/soul pioneer Keith Sweat. But Another Level were from London, with echoes perhaps of East 17 – Britain’s baddest boyband up this point.
‘Freak Me’ is, like I said, raunchy. There’s a decent soul-pop song in there amongst the gloop, and the chorus does enough to shine through. It’s also way too much. In the second verse, one of the boys announces: I like the taste of whipped cream, Spread it on top of me… They want to see the unnamed girl’s body drip, want to take a sip. Even Prince at his randiest would have thought twice about these clunky lyrics.
It reminds me of ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’, Color Me Badd’s 1991 chart-topper, in its unintentionally hilarious horniness. Which leads me to think twice about claiming that this isn’t a tween-pop record. Okay, perhaps the lyrics might have been lost on eight year olds, but I can imagine many a fifteen year old putting this one a make-out mixtape. It’s nowhere near as ‘adult’ as Another Level might have hoped.
This was Another Level’s second Top 10 hit – their first, ‘Be Alone No More’, had featured none other than Jay-Z – and they would enjoy seven in total during their short-lived, two album career. I have to admit that without the help of a search engine I couldn’t have named any of their other songs. In fact, the only other thing I know about Another Level is that one of their members, Dane Bowers, launched a mildly successful solo career, and almost managed a number one with Vicky Beckham. The rest of his post-Another Level career isn’t as impressive, dwindling down into lots of reality TV, a sex tape, and a jail sentence for assaulting his girlfriend. The other three members of the band don’t even merit a Wikipedia page…
Two posts ago, as we endured B*Witched’s ‘C’est la Vie’, I hinted at an impending tween-pop takeover. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you…
Because We Want To, by Billie (her 1st of three #1s)
1 week, from 5th – 12th July 1998
Was ‘tweenager’ a word back in 1998? Apparently yes – it was first used in 1949. So we can use it freely to describe this next #1. ‘Because We Want To’, by fifteen-year-old Billie Piper, is perhaps the ultimate tween-pop record: vital to anyone aged eight to twelve when it came out; anathema to anyone even slightly older.
Why you gotta play that song so loud? Because we want to… Why you always run around in crowds? Because we want to… This ode to tweenage rebellion is simplistic, dumb, and annoyingly catchy. The lyrics feel so forced that the modern Gen Alpha cyborgs that pass for children these days would laugh in its face. But the late ‘90s were a simpler time, and clearly this struck a chord with the youth of the day. (I was twelve, and I found it irritating and irrelevant, so I assume most of the 80,000 copies that sent it straight to number one were bought by kids significantly younger than me…)
As much as I don’t like this record, I will make one important distinction: it’s better than ‘C’est la Vie’. But the production is cheap and dated – opening with the quacking duck synths last heard on Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’ – and it thumps its way into your brain with its silly, chanty chorus. The middle-eight is the best bit of the song, and owes a debt to the Spice Girls: a mix of Mel B’s rap from ‘Wannabe’ and the chorus of ‘Who Do You Think You Are’.
And right there is the problem. The Spice Girls had been so successful in grabbing the attention – and the pocket money – of children across the world that we’re starting to see a whole range of lesser copycats spring up. First B*Witched, now Billie… Just be glad that Vanilla’s ‘No Way, No Way’ fell short. (Although, let’s be honest, that would have made an iconic number one…)
As with B*Witched, this breakthrough hit set Billie up for a short of burst of chart-topping glory, and she’ll return to these pages soon enough. ‘Because We Want To’ made her the second-youngest female to top the charts, and the youngest since Helen Shapiro in 1961. A lot was made at the time of Billie being the youngest artist ever to ‘enter the charts at #1’, but that seems like an pointless distinction when almost every record was entering the charts at #1 in 1998. Still, it’s an impressive achievement, surpassing anything I was doing aged fifteen (most of which wouldn’t be fit to publish in such polite company…)
So successful was the original ‘Three Lions’, buoyed by England’s near miss at the 1996 European Championships, that the only logical thing for David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and Ian Brodie to do was re-record it for the next big international tournament: the 1998 World Cup.
3 Lions ‘98, by Baddiel, Skinner & the Lightning Seeds (their 2nd and final #1)
3 weeks, from 14th June – 5th July 1998
It starts off very meta, with the Wembley crowd singing the original chorus, and Jonathan Pearce reliving Gareth Southgate’s missed penalty that lost them the ’96 semi-final. After that it’s business as usual, with the sound perhaps a bit beefier than the earlier version. The lyrics are different too, with the first verse focusing on how close England came two years before, and the second focusing on how this will be their year in France.
‘3 Lions’ has been accused, as I mentioned in my first post on the song, of being a bit arrogant by those who don’t want England to do well at international tournaments (i.e. most people who aren’t English). I would argue that the 1998 version is even more over-confident, as thirty years of hurt is now no more years of hurt (okay, thirty-two years of hurt wouldn’t have scanned well, but still….)
This isn’t a football blog, so in short: football didn’t ‘come home’ in 1998, Argentina saw to that by beating England in the round of sixteen. David Beckham, Diego Simeone and all that… In fact, ‘3 Lions ‘98’ was at #1 for longer than England were in the tournament. And football still hasn’t come home in the near thirty years since, though it has come closer recently (too close for comfort for this Scot…) Just last month England lost the Euro 2024 final to Spain.
And as much as I find it annoying as a modern cultural behemoth, I again cannot argue that ‘3 Lions’ isn’t a good song. The daddy of all football pop songs. Plus, the video is good fun, once more featuring Geoff Hurst, and Robbie Williams, a lot of Germans with mullets, and a bit of fun with the fact that Stefan Kuntz had scored Germany’s equaliser two years before.
Away from the football, there’s a serious question to ask here: is this a different song to the original ‘Three Lions’? I’d say it obviously is – different name, different lyrics, different production – and so make it chart-topper #793, and not just a re-entry of chart-topper #740. However, the OCC now combine the versions when the song starts climbing the charts every two years (it will make #1 again in 2018). This is something our blog will have to consider in the 21st century, with several former number ones preparing to re-top the charts. Do they count as separate records – therefore deserving of an entirely new post written about them – or are they the same record returning to the top decades later? ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has already been back to the summit, but that was twinned with a new song – ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’ – and I treated it as a new number one. Something to consider, then, and I’d welcome the thoughts of any seasoned chart watchers out there.
‘3 Lions’ meanwhile has been re-released several times, and re-recorded several more. There’s a 2010 version with Russel Brand and Robbie Williams (singing this time) which made #21. There’s a 2022 Lionesses’ version, and a Christmas version to tie-in with the winter World Cup in Qatar. Thanks to England’s Euro 2024 run, it returned to #8 just a couple of weeks ago. It’s no exaggeration to state that this song is now up there with ‘Hey Jude’ and the aforementioned ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as one of the best-known, best-loved, best-remembered chart toppers of all time.
The UK Number Ones Blog 