Aside from Britpop, the rapid-fire turnover of number ones, and the dominance of the Spice Girls, there’s one not so expected theme for 1997… Problematic performers.
I Believe I Can Fly, by R. Kelly (his 1st of three #1s)
3 weeks, from 6th – 27th April 1997
Starting with the disgraced, and currently incarcerated, R. Kelly. I’m not going to come over all hand-wringy about it, mind you. We managed with Gary Glitter and his gang, and when Rolf Harris sang about ‘Two Little Boys’. And unlike them, ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ doesn’t have any lyrics that sound dubious in hindsight (we’ll save that for Kelly’s next #1, ‘Ignition’).
Though some double-entendres might have given us something entertaining to write about at least, because this is a fairly dull, very worthy, song for most of its verses and bridges. It was written for the movie ‘Space Jam’, a half cartoon/half live-action film in which Michael Jordan plays basketball with Bugs Bunny (that sounds crazy when you actually type it out, but as a kid I went with it…) So there are lots of lines about never giving up, achieving miracles… If I can see it, Then I can do it… If I just believe it, There’s nothing to it…
I will say that the chorus, however, has whatever choruses need to be great. Something in the chord progressions; the simple, but not clunky, rhymes; that pause in the beat on the word ‘believe’… I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it makes for a chorus that leaves the rest of mush behind, and burrows its way into the public conscience.
By the end, things have gone full-on gospel, with some soaring strings, and Kelly bringing it home with lots of whoops, hollers and melisma. Impressive, but not worth the four minutes of sludge we had to wade through to get there. And also quite a hard turn from his usual output, which had been much more upbeat, R&B for his two prior Top 10 hits, ‘She’s Got that Vibe’ and ‘Bump and Grind’ (dubious lyrics klaxon!). Plus, if schmaltzy and over-emoted nineties ballads are your thing, I’d say R. Kelly surpassed this two years later, with ‘If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time’.
As with Glitter, I half-expected not to find Kelly on Spotify. They did, after all, make a big fuss about deleting his music in 2018, before reinstating it but refusing to feature it in any playlists. Which is a classic case of having your cake and eating it. I’m no fan of cancel culture, but if you are going to cancel someone then do it properly! Not this ‘loudly virtue signal but quietly still take the money’ nonsense. One person who did #cancelrkelly was Lady Gaga, who recorded the banging ‘Do What U Want’ with him in 2013 – long after the first allegations against him had come to light – then quickly replaced it with an (inferior) version featuring Christina Aguilera after a backlash… (I love Gaga, but I’m still sore about that one…)
Anyway, R. Kelly still has two more number ones to come, so we have plenty of time to cover his catalogue of crimes and get ourselves worked up about cancel culture if we so wish. In the meantime, let’s move on from all this, and pretend we’ve never had a problem with sex offenders having chart-topping singles, because up next it’s… Oh…