1992 #1s

684. ‘I Will Always Love You’, by Whitney Houston

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I’ve enjoyed my journey through 1992, a year short on number one hits (just twelve) but a year that has valued quality over quantity. I’ve not actively disliked any of its chart-toppers, the worst I could say is that a couple have been fairly bland (yes, KWS, I’m looking at you). But before we wrap this year up, we have to grapple with its final hit. The year’s biggest-selling, longest-running #1…

I Will Always Love You, by Whitney Houston (her 4th and final #1)

10 weeks, from 29th November 1992 – 7th February 1993

The early nineties is the era of the soundtrack single. And it’s bookmarked by three songs-from-movies in particular, each of which got into double figures at the top of the charts. Enter Part II, then: Ms Houston, and the love theme from her blockbuster ‘The Bodyguard’. (And, as an aside, isn’t it interesting that both this and the earlier ginormous soundtrack #1 were from films starring heartthrob du jour Kevin Costner…?)

Anyway. First off, this record gets a lot of stick. It’s overblown, over-sung, overplayed… A misuse of Whitney’s undoubted talents. It also has the misfortune to be a cover – a cover of a wistful, tender original by the universally beloved Dolly Parton. Bryan Adams’ sixteen-week monster at least had nothing to compare it with… But is this stick justified? Does ‘I Will Always Love You’ deserve the hate…?

Well, yes. Let’s be honest, it’s rotten. A bloated whale corpse of a record. All the complaints I had about ‘Everything I Do (I Do It for You)’ – that it was too much, too serious, missing the tongue-in-cheek silliness that any good power-ballad needs – also apply here. Plus, this adds a teeth-grinding saxophone solo for good measure.

But what’s also annoying about this record is that for the first three minutes or so, it’s actually pretty dull. I compared Whitney’s most recent #1, ‘One Moment in Time’, to a couple of rounds in a boxing ring. She grabbed that tune, and pummelled the listener into oblivion with it. Ridiculous, of course; but I enjoyed the bombast. Yet on ‘I Will Always Love You’, she sleepwalks her way through the first couple of verses, with their gloopy production, and sleazy sax. Then comes the moment that everyone remembers when they think about this song: the pause, the drumbeat, and the rocket launch into the final chorus.

It’s like she knew that this song would be a millstone around her neck for the rest of her career, and thought ‘fuck it, we might as well have some fun’. Either that, or she foresaw that this would be murdered in karaoke bars from here to eternity, and so decided to make it impossible to copy, by going through her full repertoire of trills, belting, melisma… you name it. Because while you might disagree with her approach to this song – and I do – there’s no denying that the woman could sing. It’s an ending so aggressive, so over the top, that the ‘love theme’ becomes a stalker’s anthem: I-ee-ayye will always love you-hoo… (and there’s nothing you can do about it!)

This song stayed at number one for ten weeks – a total that Bryan Adams would have scoffed at, but that gave Houston the record for a female soloist. It made the top in late November, stayed there as Xmas #1, and was still there at the end of January to become my 7th birthday number one. (My ‘girlfriend’ at the time – we were in Primary 3 – liked to sing this to me as we walked home together…) Wikipedia lists it as making #1 in twenty-three countries, though I’m sure there were more. It set a new record for weeks at #1 on the Billboard chart, and remains the planet’s best-selling song by a female act… ever.

Yet here ends Whitney Houston’s British chart-topping career. From smooth jazz (‘Saving All My Love for You’), to dance pop (‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’), to overblown power-ballads (the last two). Her chart career, though, was far from over, and in fact she would go on to release some her best records once her voice had deteriorated through age (and drug use), meaning she could no longer attempt ginormous ballads like this one. ‘My Love Is Your Love’, ‘It’s Not Right but It’s Okay’, and ‘Million Dollar Bill’, among others, are all great.

Whitney died in 2012, after a troubled life, aged just forty-eight. A sad way for one of the most technically gifted singers of all time to go. Among the tributes paid upon her death was one from Dolly Parton, whom the media had suggested wasn’t happy with Houston’s cover at the time. Parton thanked her for bringing her song to a wider audience (not to mention for the royalties that must have rolled in…)

683. ‘Would I Lie to You?’, by Charles & Eddie

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Well, would you look at that. We’ve literally just had the 1990’s biggest R&B/pop/soul hybrid act at number one – Boyz II Men with ‘End of the Road’ – but it turns out that they were but a warm-up act for… checks notes… the decade’s greatest soul single.

Would I Lie to You?, by Charles & Eddie (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 15th – 29th November 1992

Usually I see a great song coming, and semi-prepare what I’m going to write in advance. You don’t want to do the classics wrong, do you? But despite ‘Would I Lie to You?’ being on the horizon for a while now, and despite me being pretty familiar with it, I was caught off guard by how good it actually is.

The main reason it’s an improvement on ‘End of the Road’, is that it doesn’t go down the default drippy approach of so much ‘90s soul and R&B. The sort of slushy sentiment that Boyz II Men excelled at. No, Charles & Eddie keep things sassy and upbeat in the verses: Everbody’s got their history, On every page a mystery…  Before switching to a heartstring-tugging bridge: I’m tellin’ you baby, You will never find another girl, In this heart of mine…

And OK, the lyrics in the chorus are stock-standard love song: Don’t you know it’s true, Girl there’s no-one else but you… but they’re wrapped up in such a timeless melody that you don’t really notice. Plus, whether or not Charles and Eddie are indeed telling the truth is never established. Part of this song’s attraction, to a cynical mind like mine anyway, is that behind their honeyed voices and gorgeous harmonies they could be full of shit…

But back to that word ‘timeless’. That’s the other, even greater, attraction that this record has. It borrows the best of sixties and seventies soul, of Motown and the Temptations (and with the gospel backing, the organ and the near calypso-sounding drum break it is pretty much a soul music ‘How To…’ guide), but it still sounds perfectly placed in the early ‘90s. It’s authentic enough to stand up on its own, and to not sound like a well-intentioned pastiche. In short, it’s a brilliant record.

Charles Pettigrew and Eddie Chacon met on the New York subway in 1990, when one spotted the other carrying a Marvin Gaye LP. Which for an origin story sounds as great as it does unlikely. Members of twelve-year-old Chacon’s first band, interestingly, went on to join Metallica and Faith No More. He and Charles are, like Tasmin Archer a couple of posts previously, marked down as one-hit wonders, despite producing two studio albums, and three further Top 40 hits.

They split in 1999, with Chacon continuing to work intermittently, and he has released two well-received solo albums in the 2020s. Sadly, Pettigrew died of cancer two years after their split, aged just thirty-seven. This post then can hopefully serve as a tribute, to him, and to the greatest soul chart-topper of the decade.

682. ‘End of the Road’, by Boyz II Men

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Things are getting very nineties around here: from iconic dance hits, to adult, dinner-party pop, to this… Yes, it’s time to sound the boyband klaxon!

End of the Road, by Boyz II Men (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 25th October – 15th November 1992

When I think of ‘90s boybands’, the first ones that spring to mind are all homegrown: Take That, East 17, 5ive, Boyzone (OK, Irish but still…) Yet all four of the boyband #1s that we’ve covered so far have been by Americans. And they’re getting progressively more sophisticated and mature – from NKOTB, to Color Me Badd, and now Boyz II Men. So much so that it feels slightly unfair to label these dudes as a ‘boyband’.

Except, the name, Boyz II Men, is pure ‘90s Boyband. Is there a ‘z’ in place of the ‘s’…? Check. Are there numbers and/or symbols…? Check. Is it memorably cheesy…? Check check check. Still, musically, this is a big improvement on ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’. It’s an update on the classic sixties/seventies vocal group sound: great voices, and great harmonies, with bass, tenors and baritones swooping all around one another.

If this was a one-off smash by a one-hit wonder, then I might be more effusive in praising it. It is a good record, a well-produced, well-written, well-performed pop song with a soaring bridge, and a catchy chorus: Although we’ve come, To the end of the road… It also has a great spoken word section (and intro, on the album version) in which bass vocalist Michael McCary does his best Barry White: All those times… You ran out with that other fella, Baby I knew about it…

The reason why I’m feeling a bit down on this record is because I know that this was not Boyz II Men’s only hit. And most of those other hits sound very much like ‘End of the Road’. They had a sound, and they rinsed the arse off it: ‘One Sweet Day’, ‘On Bended Knee’, ‘Water Runs Dry’… The one Boyz II Men song that I like more than ‘End of the Road’ is the preposterous ‘I’ll Make Love To You’, which basically sounds like someone doing a Boyz II Men parody.

At least in the UK this was the Boyz only visit to the top of the charts, and the first of just three Top 10 hits. Compare and contrast this with their complete domination of the Billboard charts in the mid-nineties. Two of their singles (including this one) set records for most consecutive weeks at #1. They were the first act since The Beatles to replace themselves at the top. Their five chart-toppers spent a combined 50 (fifty!) weeks at number one…

Thank God, then, for their less-fanatic British fans. They sent the band’s (second) best single to number one, for a perfectly sensible three weeks. And we can appreciate it for the fine piece of soul/R&B that it is. Plus, it was technically a Motown release, giving that legendary label its first UK #1 since ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ and, unless anyone wants to tell me otherwise, its last.

681. ‘Sleeping Satellite’, by Tasmin Archer

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It’s fair to say we needed a bit of a chillout, after cutting all those mad shapes to our past couple of chart-toppers, ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ and ‘Ebeneezer Goode’. Enter Tasmin Archer then, with ‘Sleeping Satellite’.

Sleeping Satellite, by Tasmin Archer (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 11th – 25th October 1992

First things first, this is just as ‘nineties’ as the rave anthem that preceded it. The trip-hop drums and light guitars, for a start, and the way Archer sings the verses quietly before ending them LOUDLY. It’s very nu-soul, in the same vein perhaps as Lisa Stansfield’s semi-recent #1, and the lyrics are quite new-age – a genre that’s been popping up ever since Enya in 1988. It’s grown up, is what it is. Your mum might say she’d heard it on the radio the other morning, and quite liked it. Certainly no schoolboy innuendo about class-A drugs here.

Archer has a great voice, with a rasp that kicks in on those loud bits. You could perhaps accuse her of over-singing, but she gives the song an energy that stops it from becoming too MOR (you know, ‘mum oriented-rock’…) Because, let’s be honest, the lyrics are wishy-washy. I blame you for the moonlit sky, And the dream that died, With the eagles’ flights… She’s referencing the moon landings – the ‘Sleeping Satellite’ of the title is our very own moon – and the fact that we’re neglecting Earth in favour of space adventure. Though, to be fair, the lines in which she seems to be predicting an apocalypse don’t seem too far off, thirty years on…

I like the organ that kicks in, and the power chords that offer some oomph as the song grows. It goes on a bit too long, though, and ultimately the message gets lost in the perfectly pleasant melody. It’s one of those songs, outside Christmas classics, and the various summer-themed number ones, that perfectly suits the time of year that it reached top spot. This was an autumn #1, ideal as the nights started to draw in. I’d also suggest that it joins the likes of ‘Baby Jump’, Slik, and Boris Gardner, as one of the most-forgotten number ones of its time.

‘Sleeping Satellite’ was Tasmin Archer’s debut release, with her having previously worked as a backing singer and recording studio assistant in Bradford. She’s labelled as a one-hit wonder, which is unfair as her follow-up single made the Top 20. In fact she has five Top 40 hits, and a 1993 Brit Award for Best Breakthrough Act. She released her most recent album in 2006, before announcing that she was going into TV and film soundtrack work.

680. ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, by The Shamen

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Hot on the heels of ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ comes another ‘90s dance classic…

Ebeneezer Goode, by The Shamen (their 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 13th September – 11th October 1992

And as magisterial as Snap!’s track was, ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ represents the flip-side of dance music in the early years of the decade. Aggressive and in-your-face, the opening voiceover sets the tone: A great philosopher once wrote… Naughty, naughty, Very naughty…. And off we go, cackling like Sid James…

Since forever, pop music and drugs have gone together. Sex and drugs and rock and roll, and all that. But no genre has ever been quite so entwined with illegal substances as electronic dance, and with one Class-A substance in particular. So when a track comes along by one of the big dance acts of the day, shamelessly celebrating said drug, and getting all the grown-ups’ knickers in a twist at the same time, you know it’s going to be a big old hit.

The clever bit here (I was going to use the word ‘genius’, but I think that would be stretching it slightly) is that the drug reference isn’t immediately obvious. ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, you might think, sounds like a character invented by Charles Dickens. Eezer good, Eezer good, He’s Ebeneezer Goode… A silly novelty song, parents around the country might have thought, as they heard it blaring from their teenagers’ bedrooms. Harmless nonsense. But, wait…

And like the teacher who’s twigged on far too late that the class is having a joke at their expense, the parents realise that the chorus could just as well be saying ‘E’s are good, ‘E’s are good… ‘E’s as in Ecstasy… And look, the song’s at number one already. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, but it is pretty amusing. Very naughty indeed…

But amid all the innuendo, the guffawing and the gurning, this is still a banger. The joke would have worn very thin, very quickly, if this wasn’t a good pop tune. I don’t think it’s quite up there with ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, and I don’t think you’d want to hear it all that often, but it’s a lot of fun. And it’s a significant number one because rave culture isn’t really represented at the top of the charts, despite being one of the big musical movements of the day, and while this is diluted, poppy rave, and it lost the Shamen a lot of ‘hardcore’ fans, it still counts.

It’s also, despite the modern sound, a treasure trove of peculiarly British references. We’ve got rhyming slang, and a shout-out to Vera Lynn, of all people: Anybody got any Vera’s…? Lovely… (‘Vera Lynns’ being rhyming slang for ‘skins’, which people used to mix cannabis and ecstasy) and a reference to ‘Mr Punchinella’ AKA Mr Punch from ‘Punch & Judy’. While  in the second verse there’s even a bit of sensible advice: But go easy on old ‘Eezer, ‘E’s the love you could lose… Pop pills responsibly, kids.

The BBC, always up for a good banning, initially refused to air the song, but relinquished when it became a huge hit. Hilariously, the week that ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ climbed to number one was the Corporation’s ‘drug awareness week’. On TOTP the band changed some of the lyrics, including adding a reference to ‘underlay’, which they explained as a ‘gratuitous rug reference’. Boom and indeed tish. It was far from the first hit song to reference an illegal substance – The Beatles were doing it twenty-five years earlier – but few had done it quite so shamelessly.

The Shamen were a Scottish band, formed in Aberdeen in 1985, and had been around since the very earliest days of house music. They started out making psychedelic pop, before moving to a more electronic sound. This wasn’t their first Top 10 hit, but it was so unexpectedly huge that the band decided to delete it while it was still on top of the charts, so that it wouldn’t come to define them. Sadly, though, it still did, and their hits grew smaller and smaller until they split in 1999. But, as founding member Colin Angus says, ‘Uncle Ebeneezer is still looking after me to this day.’ Whether he’s still dropping MDMA, or he’s talking about royalties, I do not know, but it seems fitting to end this post on a double-entendre.

679. ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’, by Snap!

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I’m not a huge dance music fan – I feel I should have that phrase on permanent ‘copy paste’, given how many times I’ve said/will say it – but when a dance song clicks…

Rhythm Is a Dancer, by Snap! (their 2nd and final #1)

6 weeks, from 2nd August – 13th September 1992

‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ is one of those that just clicks. And it clicks immediately, grabbing you as the atmospheric intro builds, from the three intertwining synth lines, to the drums, to the backing vocals. When the main vocals and the bass eventually kick in together, I’m inspired to compare it with the ultimate slow-build intro, ‘Smoke on the Water’. Yes, rock snobs, I went there…

The song as a whole is slick and streamlined, much more grown-up than Snap’s first chart-topper, ‘The Power’, which I found harsh and gimmicky. The lyrics are very generic – the title itself is nonsense, if you’ve ever stopped to think about it – but no dance tune needs deep lyrics. Rhythm is a dancer, It’s a soul’s companion… Lift your hands and voices, Free your mind and join us, You can feel it in the air… Complete waffle. But when you’re topless in a sweaty club, choking on the dry ice, it might sound like the dance equivalent of a hymn.

What ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ is best remembered for today, though – as well as being a 1990s club classic – is for its rapped verse. The fact that there’s a rap in the first place is still worth noting. Today it feels standard, but as I mentioned in my post on ‘Black or White’ the idea of sticking a rapped verse in your dance/pop song was a pretty new one in 1992. (‘The Power’ was one of the very first, in fact.) And this is one of the first raps that doesn’t feel tacked on, or gimmicky, bearing in mind that some previous hip-hop chart-toppers have involved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, and Vanilla Ice.

Let the rhythm ride you, Guide you, Sneak inside you… raps Turbo B, sounding like he’s spent the past two years practising. It’s fine, until he reaches the final line, and spoils it: I’m serious as cancer, When I say rhythm is a dancer… In fairness to Turbo, his first reaction was supposedly ‘No way am I singing that shit’. But sing it he did, to a mixed reaction. In my opinion, it’s so crass and so unexpected that it somehow works, and anyway Snap! didn’t invent it – it was a phrase that had been used in hip-hop tracks for years.

My only complaint about this majestic track is that it just glides to a finish. It’s a bit of a flat ending, but then the rest of the song is so cool and icily confident that to finish with something showy might have spoiled it. ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ has placed on all sorts of ‘Best Songs of the 90s’ and ‘Greatest Dance Tunes Ever’ sorts of lists, and has been re-recorded and/or re-leased by Snap! three times since this original release.

Despite being remembered now mainly for their two number ones, Snap! were genuinely huge in the first half of the 1990s, scoring nine Top 10 hits between 1990 and 1994. None were bigger than this, however – the second-highest seller of 1992. They remain active today, with original vocalist Penny Ford back on board, though sadly no more Turbo B.

678. ‘Ain’t No Doubt’, by Jimmy Nail

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This next number one arrives shrouded in mystery… I was alive and kicking in the summer of 1992, all of six and a half years old, but the names Jimmy Nail and ‘Ain’t No Doubt’ don’t really chime with me at all…

Ain’t No Doubt, by Jimmy Nail (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 12th July – 2nd August 1992

I know he’s an actor, but for some reason I had Jimmy Nail down as the guy who played Crocodile Dundee. (He clearly wasn’t – he’s from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; not Newcastle, New South Wales – and my mistake comes from the fact that one of his later hits was ‘Crocodile Shoes’.) And when you see the terms ‘actor’ and ‘number one single’ together, knowing what we’ve heard from Telly Savalas, David Soul, Nick Berry and the like, the blood does tend to run cold…

But, in fairness, this quite a sophisticated, adult-orientated pop song. There’s a very early-nineties beat, with horns and heavy piano chords, alongside nods to seventies soul and disco. Nail talks his way through the verses, Geordie accent and all, describing a relationship gone sour: Oh yeah, I know a goodbye when I hear it… Which leads me to wonder if he can actually sing. Then the chorus comes along and blows my doubts away – Jimmy’s got a set of pipes on him.

Said chorus is slightly bizarre though, as the Ain’t no doubt it’s plain to see, A woman like you is no good for me line follows the call-and-response rhythms used by marching soldiers. ‘I don’t know what I’ve been told…’ followed by something saucy about Eskimos, etc. etc. Nail admitted that he wrote the song shortly after watching ‘Full Metal Jacket’. It gives the song a clear hook, but it comes off as a little gimmicky to my ears.

Pre-listening, I did wonder if this might be a novelty record, a comedy cash-in on an actor’s fame. It isn’t, but the marching beat chorus, along with the bridge where a female singer trills sweet nothings (I don’t want nobody else, I love you… while Nail replies with a deadpan: She’s lying…) add a comedy element to it, intentionally or not. Still, it’s a very listenable record, far above some of the earlier chart-toppers sung by actors, one that’s improving with each listen I give it.

Jimmy Nail was no stranger to chart success, having scored a #3 hit in 1985 with a cover of Rose Royce’s ‘Love Don’t Live Here No More’, after he’d found fame in the comedy ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ (which, to be honest, I should have known him from, as my parents were big fans). He resurrected his music career with this single, after starring in police drama ‘Spender’, while his last big hit would come in 1994, from the aforementioned ‘Crocodile Shoes’ (not, sadly, ‘Crocodile Dundee’). I’m sure the reason why I’m so foggy on Jimmy Nail is the fact that he retired sometime in the ‘00s, and rarely appears on TV or film these days.

The 1990s will keep up the tradition of actors becoming singers, which has been with us since the earliest days of the charts, with mixed results. We have of course recently seen Kylie and Jason become mega stars, while we will probably look back very fondly on Jimmy Nail after dealing with the likes of Robson and Jerome, and Martine McCutcheon…

677. ‘ABBA-esque E.P.’, by Erasure

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Can there be anything camper than Erasure covering ABBA? How about Erasure recording an entire E.P. of ABBA covers, and called it ‘ABBA-esque’?

ABBA-Esque (E.P.), by Erasure (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 7th June – 12th July 1992

ABBA scored nine #1s between 1974 and 1980, making them at this point in time the fifth most successful chart-topping act (behind Elvis, the Beatles, Cliff, and The Shadows). But luckily, three of the four tunes Erasure chose to cover didn’t make top spot originally. Starting with, perhaps, ABBA’s greatest non-number one single…

I’m not sure which was the ‘lead’ single from the E.P. – I get the feeling it was track three, but they made videos for all of them – so I’ll go through them in order. We kick off with ‘Lay All Your Love on Me’, which was only ever released by ABBA as a 12” single. It’s the most faithful cover of the four, with the mood and tempo kept, and just the instrumentation updated to a post-SAW, Hi-NRG style. I love that they don’t change the pronouns in the lyrics, as most acts do when covering a song originally sung by a different gender, and we’re treated to Andy Bell asking how a grown up woman can ever fall so easily…

Of the four, I don’t think I’d ever heard their take on ‘S.O.S.’ before. And, of the four, it’s my least favourite. ‘S.O.S.’ is an important song in the ABBA canon: the song that extended ABBA’s career beyond simply being Eurovision winners; a genuine rock classic beloved of Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and The Sex Pistols. This over-processed take, though, fails to capture the soaring joy that can be found in the when you’re gone, how can I even try to go on… line in the original.

Track three then, and the one that represented this E.P. as a whole. ‘Take a Chance on Me’ was an ABBA chart-topper, back in February 1978. It’s an improvement on ‘S.O.S.’, but they’ve gone moodier than the original. They’ve also gone very early-nineties and added a ragga-style rap, or toast, by one MC Kinky. It’s a bold move, but then by this point in the E.P. maybe they were thinking it might have started to feel a bit by-the-numbers. It certainly shakes things up. The video for ‘Take a Chance…’ is the highlight of the entire project: Vince and Andy pout, gurn and flirt with one another, both as themselves and in drag as Agnetha and Frida. I’m sure it was done lovingly, but I do wonder what the ladies thought…

We end on what is probably my favourite of the four: a pounding, throbbing, techno-take on ‘Voulez Vous’. The intro, in fact, isn’t a million miles from something you’d hear at a hardcore rave. Here Erasure succeed in completely updating disco-era ABBA to a 1992 sound, which is testament either to the strength of their interpretation, of Benny and Björn’s songwriting, or maybe both. (‘Voulez Vous’ also includes some of my personal favourite ABBA lyrics: I know what you think, The girl means business so I’ll offer her a drink… and We’ve done it all before, And now we’re back to get some more, You know what I mean…)Years later, a fifth cover – ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ – was added to the E.P., but as it wasn’t around when this topped the charts I won’t bring it up.

Are any of the four covers better than the originals? No, of course not. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a worthwhile exercise. For a start it got Erasure an overdue #1, after almost a decade of releases and twelve previous Top 10 hits. But even better than that, it started The ABBA Revival.

It seems strange to say in 2023, but even I can remember a time when ABBA weren’t the world’s most beloved band. By the late-eighties they were a punchline, an embarrassment, records to be hidden under the bed rather than publicly displayed. Erasure unashamedly covering four of their hits, allowing kids to discover them and adults to remember just how good ABBA had been, started us down the road to ‘ABBA Gold’ (which was released later in 1992) becoming one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, to ‘Muriel’s Wedding’, to the ‘Mamma Mia’ stage show and films, to the band’s holographic comeback. As a ‘thank you’, ABBA tribute act Björn Again (who in 1992, believe it or not, opened for Nirvana – Kurt Cobain being another factor in the ABBA-naissance) released ‘Erasure-ish’, with covers of ‘A Little Respect’ and ‘Stop!’

676. ‘Please Don’t Go’ / ‘Game Boy’, by KWS

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Do my ears deceive me, or are we entering yet another new phase in dance? As someone who isn’t that into dance music, the way in which I’ve been noticing new trends in the genre has surprised me… From house in the mid-80s, to sampling, to the rave influenced early nineties hits… And now we enter the ‘golden age of dance’.

Please Don’t Go / Game Boy, by KWS (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 3rd May – 7th June 1992

I don’t think people actually call it that. But between 1992 and 1997, even though Britpop is what the 1990s are remembered for, it was dance music that ruled the charts. And I’d say it starts here, with what is a fairly lacklustre remake of a KC & The Sunshine Band hit from a decade or so earlier…

Even as someone who doesn’t love dance music, I’m excited at the prospect of covering some of the dance number ones on the horizon: the Prodigy, Chemical Brothers… 2 Unlimited. But for every fun and fresh electronic #1, there are lazy remakes like this. It’s got a fairly low beats-per-minute – though not slow enough to be ‘chillout’ – it’s got elements of house, a hint of trance… It dabbles in different styles, but doesn’t commit to any, and ends up quite dull. (To be fair, the original is also fairly pedestrian, compared to KC’s more famous hits. It made #3 in 1980, and was also the first Billboard chart-topper of the ‘80s.)

And yet, this fairly forgettable tune was number one for five weeks… Perhaps now is as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room. We’re almost halfway through 1992, and we’ve only had four number ones. As I mentioned in an earlier post, 1992’s turnover is the slowest for thirty years, and it’s down to two things. We’re in one of those slumps that come along every decade or so: think the early sixties, between rock ‘n’ roll and the Beatles, or the mid-seventies, between glam and new wave. Currently we’re puttering around lost between the SAW-led late-‘80s and Britpop.

In addition, the way people were buying music was changing. After decades as the main format, vinyl ‘45s were slowly being phased out in favour of CD singles. At the peak of vinyl’s popularity, in the late 1970s, an act had to sell an average of 150k copies to make number one; in 1992 it was taking only 60-70k. By the end of this decade, the CD will be at its peak, and the turnover of #1s will be at record-breaking levels (1992 has twelve #1s, 2000 has forty-two!) There will be a similar slow-down in the mid-00s, as CDs die and downloads take over, and then again in the late 2010s as streaming becomes the default for how we consume music.

Anyway, after that detour into chart logistics, we mustn’t forget that this was a double-‘A’ side, and we have another song to write about. A song that is bloody hard to track down. Nothing on Spotify, and one trippy YouTube video, which leads me to assume that ‘Game Boy’ didn’t get much airtime when ‘Please Don’t Go’ was riding high in the charts. And when I listen to it, my doubts are confirmed. It’s probably the closest we’ll ever come to a happy hardcore #1. It’s an instrumental – been a while since we featured one of those – and it feels almost retro in the way it appears to be a bunch of samples strung together to make a hot mess of a tune.

I like it, more than its flip-side, for about a minute. Then it outstays its welcome. Who decides when a ‘B’-side becomes a double-‘A’? Record companies? The band? The charts themselves? Because I’d file this with ‘Girls’ School’ and ‘Anitina’ as an ‘A’-side that is much less well-known than many ‘B’-sides. But it’s there, in the record books, and we have to cover it. And it is, like I said, an aggressive style of dance that wouldn’t have otherwise featured at #1. Plus, it references the classic game console of the age in its title, which is nice.

KWS were a trio from Nottingham, named in ABBA-style as an acronym of the members’ surnames, and this was their first ever chart hit. They owed their chart fortunes to the fact that an Italian group called Double You had covered ‘Please Don’t Go’, but their record company had failed to secure UK distribution. KWS stepped in to record a remarkably similar sounding version, resulting in three years of legal action. By the time the record labels had settled up, KWS had long since ceased to be a chart concern. Their only other Top 10 hit was another remake of a much older dance tune, George McCrae’s early disco hit ‘Rock Your Baby’.

675. ‘Deeply Dippy’, by Right Said Fred

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

I play the intro to our next number one, and am convinced that I am actually listening to The Proclaimers’ ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’. Listen to the two of them back to back, and you won’t be able to un-hear it. But this is not the brothers Reid (their time will eventually come), but the brothers Fairbrass…

Deeply Dippy, by Right Said Fred (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 12th April – 3rd May 1992

It’s also slightly discombobulating to hear Right Said Fred singing a song that isn’t ‘I’m Too Sexy’, their monster hit from a few months before, which had spent six weeks at #2, prevented from featuring on this blog by the dreaded Bryan Adams. But yes, they had other songs. One of which did make number one. And, in all honesty, it might be the better tune.

I’m finding it hard to write about this record without using horrible words like ‘jaunty’, or ‘ditty’. For this is undeniably a jaunty ditty. From the alliterative title, to the springy acoustic rhythm, to the brass section that comes blasting in mid-way through. And then there’s the nonsense lyrics: Deeply dippy ‘bout the curves you got…

It’s actually just as sex-obsessed as ‘I’m Too Sexy’ – love as a ‘contact sport’ (let the neighbours talk) – but also has a swing at being romantic. Oh my love, Let’s set sail for seas of passion… It’s a song, like Vic Reeve’s ‘Dizzy’ not so long before, that just about manages the balance of being a novelty, and remaining listenable. In fact, if you were in the right mood, the moment where the horns come in could be downright jubilant.

It’s also an odd number one for this moment in time, wedged in among the dance tracks and ballads, one that might have been a hit in any era, that is as likely to get your granny dancing as it is your five-year-old nephew. But there’s little doubt that this wouldn’t have been anywhere near as big a hit without ‘I’m Too Sexy’ laying the groundwork. We can add Right Said Fred to acts like Don McLean, Alvin Stardust, and a-Ha, whose ‘big’ hit isn’t actually their biggest.

Right Said Fred were Richard and Fred Fairbrass, plus guitarist Rob Manzoli, and were named not for that Fred, but after a Bernard Cribbins song from 1962. Richard had already had a fifteen year career as a bassist for Boy George, Mick Jagger and David Bowie, while Fred had played guitar for Bob Dylan. In the late seventies, the pair toured with Joy Division. So, quite the musical chops for a duo often written off as one-hit wonders.

‘Deeply Dippy’ was the third of four Top 10 hits for Right Said Fred, but they continue to record. Fairbrass the elder has had quite the career since his chart-topping days, hosting ‘GayTime TV’ (the first BBC programme to be aimed at an LGBT audience), being targeted and beaten up by Russian ultra-nationalists, and in later years turning into something of a Twitter conspiracy theorist, as well as most recently accusing Beyonce of ripping him off. Deeply dippy, indeed.