Ballads

847. ‘Rise’, by Gabrielle

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If there was an award for the artist that has flirted most with the number one spot on the UK charts without ever getting a date – the ‘nearly number one’ award – then Bob Dylan would be hot favourite to win. ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ and ‘The Mighty Quinn’ were written by him, he sang a couple of lines on ‘We Are the World’, while ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ made it in a cover version. All we need now is for someone to sample Dylan on a chart-topping single…

Rise, by Gabrielle (her 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 30th January – 13th February 2000

Well wouldn’t you know… Here is the Bob Dylan-sampling number one. He liked this record so much that he allowed Gabrielle to use the sample – the guitar chords and his vocal harmonies from ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ – free of charge. This sample adds a certain excitement to ‘Rise’, but I’m not quite sure what about the song convinced the often cantankerous Dylan to donate his work for gratis.

It’s a delicate, pretty ballad, nicely sung and sparingly arranged, with the gentlest of garage beats. In the ultra-processed, ultra-poppy early days of the 21st century it is a pleasant change of pace at the top of the charts. But ‘Rise’ never quite, ahem, rises above that word: ‘pleasant’. It’s nice enough to hear when it comes on Smooth FM (it has probably been on their playlists for twenty-five years straight), but I’d never rush to search it out.

I’m pretty sure I wrote much the same about Gabrielle’s first #1, ‘Dreams’ (in fact, I gave that a ‘Meh’ Award). There is something safe and very mum-leaning about her two biggest hits. I’ll argue that ‘When a Woman’ (the retro-pop follow-up to ‘Rise’), ‘Out of Reach’ (the ‘Bridget Jones’ soundtrack hit from 2001), or 1996’s big, brassy ‘Give Me a Little More Time’ – would have been worthier number ones.

As much as neither particularly excites me, it is worth noting the near seven-year gap between Gabrielle’s two number one singles. So much musical water has gone under the bridge since 1993 (for a snapshot: ‘Dreams’ knocked UB40 off the top, while ‘Rise’ displaces Britney Spears) that it is impressive how she managed to come back with such a big hit. She would go on scoring Top 20 hits until 2004, and released her most recent album just last year.

So, two number ones for Gabrielle, the most famous eye-patch wearing pop star since Johnny Kidd. And only ten letters between both titles, ‘Dreams’ and ‘Rise’. Has any singer managed to get more success out of even shorter song names? Nichest of niche pop knowledge, but let me know in the comments if you can think of one!

844. ‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’, by Westlife

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I’m sure many readers think I’ve been a little soft on Westlife in my posts on their first three chart-toppers. ‘Swear It Again’ was fairly bland, but I enjoyed ‘If I Let You Go’ more than I was expecting to, and ‘Flying Without Wings’ has an overblown charm to it. But no more. The Westlife love-in stops here!

I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun, by Westlife (their 4th of fourteen #1s)

4 weeks, from 19th December 1999 – 16th January 2000

Just five seconds into ‘I Have a Dream’ and I’m feeling nauseous. The sleigh bells, the tinkles, the choking clouds of saccharine. It is so cynically programmed for the festive season that I’m imagining a big red button on a mixing desk, sealed in a glass box, with a sign that reads ‘Smash for Boybands in Desperate Need of Christmas Number One’. I’d make my usual comparison to karaoke backing tracks, if that wasn’t a horrible insult to the people who make karaoke backing tracks.

It doesn’t help that it’s an ABBA cover. Even though ‘I Have a Dream’ has never been one of my favourite ABBA songs, this feels like an act of sacrilege. But then it’s not so much a ‘cover’, more a pillaging mission that would make even the blood-thirstiest Vikings blush, leaving behind a smouldering ruin where once stood a much-loved ballad.

With grim inevitability a choir appears, for the second chart-topper running, as we lurch towards what the producers must have hoped would be a soaring climax. The best bit of the entire business are the closing two seconds; not just because the song is ending, but because one of the boys finishes on an oh-woah-owah that I think was meant to sound profound, but that sounds to me like the noise a murderer would make as they drop their bloody knife, realising exactly what a terrible crime they have just committed.

‘I Have a Dream’ finishes, yet we barely have time to rinse the sick from our mouths. There’s another massacring of a seventies hit to contend with. ‘Seasons in the Sun’ was a fairly shite record to begin with, so this cover doesn’t offend the ears quite as badly. Still, it tries its best. To kick off, we get a blast of the ol’ Oirish pipes, in the finest B*Witched tradition, to remind us exactly which nation to blame for this offence.

The rest of the song plods by fairly slowly, and the Westlife boys sound largely bored. The production is just as cheap and tacky. I’ve tried, in the comments, to defend late-nineties pop music from accusations that it was too ‘push-button’, but I can offer no defence here. All the worst pre-programmed touches and flourishes of the era are on display here. We end the decade on the lowest of low notes…

Again, I wonder if Westlife actually counted many teenage girls among their fans, as this seventies double-header seems unerringly aimed at the mum market. And the tactic, of course, worked. As terrible as this record is, it was an inevitable Christmas number one, and the only Westlife single to spend more than two weeks at the top. It was also the last number one of the decade, of the century, and of the millennium. It meant that Westlife joined the Spice Girls and B*Witched in reaching #1 with their first four releases. It also meant that they scored four number ones in a calendar year, a feat managed just twice before, by Elvis in 1961 and ‘62.

So, here end the 1990s. I wouldn’t call it the best chart decade (the 1960s will never be topped), but was it the most interesting? It was a decade of extremes: the longest continuous run at #1, the best-selling #1 of all time (and some of the lowest selling #1s too), as well as the two longest-playing #1s. We’ve had classics that have come to define modern British pop culture, and some of the most notorious novelties. We’ve had Take That, Oasis, and the Spice Girls. We’ve had our first ‘fuck’ on top of the charts. I will be doing a deeper dive into the decade very soon, when we do our ‘Nineties Top 10’.

But I’ll leave things here, on an important question. There’s no doubt that the ‘90s have ended at a tragically low ebb. But what record is worse? This, or ‘The Millennium Prayer’? It is probably a question best answered when I hand out the next ‘Worst Number One’ Award, but for me there’s only one winner…

841. ‘She’s the One’ / ‘It’s Only Us’, by Robbie Williams

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‘She’s the One’ is not Robbie Williams’ best known number one. Nor does it get the airplay of a ‘Rock DJ’, a ‘Feel’, or an ‘Angels’. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to suggest that it’s one of his very best.

She’s the One / It’s Only Us, by Robbie Williams (his 2nd of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 14th – 21st November 1999

At least, I always thought so. Until today, when everything I believed was rocked to its core… ‘She’s the One’ is a cover. World Party, a project fronted by former Waterboys member Karl Wallinger, recorded and released the original in 1997, and it was an Ivor Novello-winning, film soundtrack appearing, performed-on-Jools-Holland sort of hit. I’m ashamed of myself for not discovering this much earlier…

Robbie Williams delivers a facsimile of this song – same instrumentation, same harmonies, same vocal range – and delivers it very well. It is a lovely song; a very late-Britpop, arms around your mates in the pub sort of tune. It could easily have been recorded by Oasis, which of course means it has lots of nice Beatlesy touches to it, in the drum-fills and the backing vocals. But I feel slightly cheated now, after all these years of enjoying this so-called Robbie Williams hit.

What the original doesn’t have is a Brit Award winning video set in the world of competitive figure skating, with Robbie playing a has-been skater given one last chance at glory. Plus, it means Barry Davies, the greatest football commentator of my lifetime, can claim a number one single. (My dream aged thirteen, when this song came out, was to be Barry Davies.)

There was some drama, and some fairly ungentlemanly behaviour from Williams, when he started claiming that ‘She’s the One’ was the best song he had ever written. Some of Wallinger’s band played on the cover, unknown to Wallinger himself, and he suffered a brain aneurysm around the time it was hitting #1. Still, he did well off the royalties, and in interviews has claimed that this record saved him from penury. Williams has also, more recently, finally admitted that he didn’t write the song.

What of the double-‘A’ side, ‘It’s Only Us’? The fact I don’t think I’d ever heard this suggests it was more of a jumped-up ‘B’-side than a true double-‘A’. It was written for the soundtrack to FIFA 2000 and, again, it’s very Britpop indebted, this time more Supergrass than Oasis. It rollocks along nicely with lyrics that namecheck Williams’ hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, and with a fun end-of-the-pier organ solo. It’s also one of those songs where Robbie makes a drugs reference – We’re just after cheaper thrills, Since the price went up on pills… – of the sort that always feels a little try-hard for a former boyband member, like a teenager trying to shock his parents. We get it, Robbie. We get it.

It’s worth noting that this was the fourth single from ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, the album that had given us ‘Millennium’ well over a year earlier. Taking the fourth single from an already huge-selling album to number one requires some serious star power, something that Robbie had in abundance in the late ‘90s. In fact, this moment saw the breakout star from the decade’s biggest boyband knocking his female counterpart, Geri Halliwell, off top-spot. The following year the pair would even date for a couple of months. Geri and Robbie, top of the pops and pretending to be a couple for the tabloids… Pop culture doesn’t get any more turn-of-the-21st-century that that.

838. ‘Flying Without Wings’, by Westlife

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Back, by unpopular demand, for one week only… Westlife.

Flying Without Wings, by Westlife (their 3rd of fourteen #1s)

1 week, from 24th – 31st October 1999

In earlier posts, I had mentioned the existence of two Westlife songs that I quite liked. (I then realised that ‘If I Let You Go’ was a bit of a bop, and had to admit to liking three Westlife records.) ‘Flying Without Wings’ was one of the original two, but question is: does it live up to my expectations…?

Well, sort of. It is a decent enough pop ballad, a three-minute long crescendo that builds to an actually quite stirring finale. And, credit where it’s due, I think a lot of that is down to the boys’ vocals, especially – and I’m going to attempt this without Googling – Shane (the plain, Gary Barlow-ish one) and Mark (the, um, gay one), who take the lead.

What lets the song down, and means it doesn’t quite manage to be the deep, soulful classic it wishes to be, are the clunky lyrics, and the cheap production. Unusually for a boyband song, the words focus partly on non-romantic love: friendships, parents, even the joy of being alone, all of which apparently make you feel like you’re flying without wings… Which is a pretty banal title, really. Meanwhile the production is pure ‘X-Factor winners single’ shlock, when a more stripped back backing might have worked wonders.

It’s records like this that make me wonder: who were Westlife’s fans? Ok, ‘If I Let You Go’ was teen-pop, but this and ‘Swear It Again’ are very middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road. I was thirteen when this came out, and don’t remember any Westlife fans at school (though maybe they were just keeping it quiet). Then again, three number ones in a row don’t lie. Though we should at some point, when we’ve truly run out of things to say about yet another one-week-wonder ballad, explore just how canny the band’s management were in securing them all these number ones.

So, ‘Flying Without Wings’: pretty good, compared to much of Westlife’s output, but not the classic it so clearly wants to be. And I’d say that there are plenty of their songs that are better remembered a quarter of a century on. Interestingly, though, in 2004 a live version of ‘Flying Without Wings’ made history by becoming the first ever #1 on the download chart (a chart that in 2005 would be combined into the regular singles countdown). What I would like to ask, though, is why oh why did they not save this record for their Christmas release a few weeks later, rather than the dross they did eventually serve up…? More on that soon enough.

831. ‘When You Say Nothing at All’, by Ronan Keating

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I did warn you… Just because Boyzone’s chart-topping days are over, we’re far from hearing the last of Groanin’ Ronan.

When You Say Nothing at All, by Ronan Keating (his 1st of three solo #1s)

2 weeks, from 1st – 15th August 1999

Barely three months on from ‘You Needed Me’, and before his band had even released their final single, Keating launched a solo career, with immediate success. Of course, he was helped in this by having his debut single included on the soundtrack to the year’s biggest romcom, ‘Notting Hill’, but still. I’ll admit, quietly and grudgingly, that I’ve always quite liked this…

It’s got a nice country lilt to it, and a decent chorus. Some of the production is very late-nineties bells and whistles, and it could have done without the overpowering backing singers. Plus the tin-whistle chorus is better not mentioned. Still, I’d tentatively state that this is better than at least four out of Boyzone’s six number ones.

The worst thing about it is… Yup, you guessed it. The singer. Ronan Keating is not a bad singer. He hits the right notes, he holds them, and you can make out what he’s saying (a quality my late gran held above all else). But his vocal affectations, his growls and lisps, his insistence on pronouncing his ‘ch’s and ‘sh’s like Sean Connery… He doesn’t speak like that. It’s put on when he sings. It’s annoying! And it was a huge risk for him to tempt every comedian in the land by releasing a record with the crucial line: You say it best, When you say nothing at all…

I’ve had various people commenting on Keating’s voice in previous posts. One has suggested that he might have had an alternate career as a grunge singer, which I can understand. Another has suggested that he is better on upbeat numbers, a theory that his performance on ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ doesn’t hold up but that we can put to the test again with his next chart-topper. Further thoughts on his vocal stylings are always welcome.

This was the fourth time in just over a decade that ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ had been a hit. Keith Whitley took it to the top of the Billboard Country Charts in 1988, while Alison Krauss & Union Station took it to the lower reaches of the Hot 100 in 1995. Both of those versions are a lot rawer, and less polished. Frances Black then took it to the Irish Top 10 in 1996, which is when Ronan first heard it. He upped the Irishness – perhaps inspired by B*Witched’s recent dedication to all things Celtic – and scored the biggest hit of all.

824. ‘You Needed Me’, by Boyzone

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Yet MORE boyband balladry…

You Needed Me, by Boyzone (their 6th and final #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd May 1999

Following on from our last post, if I’d wanted an example of how drippy late-nineties boybands from the British Isles were compared to their American counterparts, then I couldn’t have planned it better. Straight after Backstreet Boys’ era-straddling classic ‘I Want It That Way’ comes Ronan and the lads’ final, and perhaps most insipid, number one.

‘You Needed Me’ was originally a Billboard #1 in 1978 for Canadian singer Anne Murray (it made #22 in the UK). If you ever want to listen to ‘You Needed Me’, then listen to her version. And you should want to listen to it, as in its original form it’s a nice slice of Carpenters-esque, late-seventies soft rock. There are no circumstances under which you should ever need to listen to the Boyzone cover instead, unless you find yourself writing a blog in which you force yourself to listen to every single number one single…

Ronan Keating takes lead vocals (of course he does), and he goes through his full repertoire of grunts, growls, and rasps, as if well aware that this is Boyzone’s last hurrah. And it’s not that he and his bandmates completely ruin the song. It’s more that nothing here is an improvement on the original: not the vocals, not the karaoke reverb ‘n’ tinkles production, not the extra backing singers chucked in at the end. My favourite bit of both versions, and which I’m happy Boyzone kept, exaggerated even, is the overstated ending.

I say that this is Boyzone’s most insipid number one but it of course has competition. ‘No Matter What’ is their best by far, ‘A Different Beat’ at least had some interesting, world music elements, while we were simply glad that their cover of ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ was NOT A BALLAD! Maybe then ‘You Needed Me’ can tie with their cover of ‘Words’, and ‘All That I Need’ as their dullest. The video to this one, though, is worth noting as it features lots of different couples in lots of different picture frames, at least two of whom appear to be same-sex, which feels very progressive for the time. It was probably tied to the fact that Stephen Gately had just come out as gay.

Many didn’t expect ‘You Needed Me’ to make number one, as it was up against Geri Halliwell’s highly anticipated solo debut ‘Look at Me’. Boyzone, though, edged the race by a narrow 748 copies, which many put down to the fact that they released two different CD versions compared to Geri’s one. Ginger Spice would have her day at the top of the charts, but was made to wait a few months longer than she might have wanted.

Boyzone meanwhile had one final Top 10 hit after this before calling it a day for the best part of a decade. We will of course hear Groanin’ Ronan’s unmistakeable tones again at the top of the charts, as he was quick to launch a successful solo career. Stephen Gately and Mikey Thomas also tried it alone, with less success, while Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch had a go as a duo. They reformed in 2008, returned briefly to the Top 10, and have released several albums in the years since. Gately tragically died from a heart condition in 2009, aged just thirty-three.

823. ‘I Want It That Way’, by Backstreet Boys

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More boyband balladry at the top of the charts, with yet more to come very soon…

I Want It That Way, by Backstreet Boys (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 9th – 16th May 1999

But wait, come back! Boyband ballads don’t have to be dull, repetitive, and bland. Yes, I know, Westlife will put this theory sorely to the test time and again, but believe me. In fact, don’t take my word for it, just play our next number one: ‘I Want It That Way’, by the Backstreet Boys. From the UK’s most successful boyband, to – in pure sales figures – the most successful of all time…

Like Britney Spears a few weeks earlier, ‘I Want It That Way’ has that confident, glossy-teethed American-ness, with a healthy dollop of Max Martin production (plus, of course, that quintessential late-nineties drumbeat). Comparing this to Westlife, or Boyzone, it reminds me of the 1950s, when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis et al were the epitome of hip-swivelling cool, and the Brits were still serving up nudge-wink music hall acts like Tommy Steele. Of course, we’re only a few years on here from the heyday of Take That – a British boyband that had global appeal – but things seem to have regressed since then.

And I’m not saying that I think British popular music was in a less appealing state than the US at the turn of the 21st century. On the contrary, I think the British charts were throwing up curios and oddities, and a mix of genres, that the Billboard chart could only dream of, while the latest Boyz II Men hit spent its seventeenth week at #1. But when it came to pure pop, the US acts of the day – Spears, Aguilera, these Backstreet Boys – had the ability to make their British counterparts look like small fry. Let’s call it the US pop-industrial complex.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. Why is ‘I Want It That Way’ such a classic pop tune? Something in the minor key verses and the soaring chorus. Something in the Tell me why! hook. Definitely something in the gigantic key change, which is one of the very best of its kind. But mainly in the way that it somehow sells an opening line like You are my fire, My one desire… without making you want to press ‘skip’. Get past that line and you’re invested until the end.

The lyrics are, as many before me have pointed out, nonsense. Or, if you’re being generous, ambiguous. We’re never given an answer to the ‘tell me whys’, or any hint as to what is such a heartbreak, and a mistake. Maybe it’s just my dirty mind, but I like to think of this as a sort of Meat Loaf not telling us what he wouldn’t do for love situation, with ‘that way’ being some sort of sordid sexual act that the good ol’ Backstreet Boys can’t stomach their girlfriends asking for.

Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever the reason, ‘I Want It That Way’ was a huge hit around the world. Take it from me, as someone who’s spent many years in Asia, this is one of those English songs that everyone, from Japan to the Philippines to Cambodia, knows. It was far from the Backstreet Boys first hit in the UK, but if any of their singles was going to make number one then it was this. They would also go on to have eight more Top 10s between here and 2005, to end with an impressive total of sixteen in just under a decade. Colour me amazed, though, to have just discovered that Backstreet Boys scored precisely zero US chart-toppers!

822. ‘Swear It Again’, by Westlife

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Here we go, then… Our most successful boyband’s reign of terror begins…

Swear It Again, by Westlife (their 1st of fourteen #1s)

2 weeks, from 25th April – 9th May 1999

As tempting as it is to go in two-footed on Westlife from the start, they do have a hell of a lot of number ones to get through (only Elvis and The Beatles have more). So can I imagine a world where ‘Swear it Again’, their debut single, was their only hit, and find something good, or at least interesting, to say about it?

I’ll give the verses the credit of having a hint of ‘80s Elton John about them, in the confident piano lines. Beyond that though, it’s a struggle. This isn’t just Westlife’s debut single, it’s their Manifesto. The template through which they’ll be dominating the charts for much of the next decade. It’s bland, it’s MOR. It’s soppy. It’s crap.

This sounds so much like every other song they’ll release between now and 2006, that as I listen I can clearly picture them rising from their stools, through clouds of dry ice, for the final chorus. There is no key change, however, no matter how much one is teased. Perhaps we’ll find that a Westlife trademark key-change wasn’t as common as we think? Maybe they actually did very few, like how Sherlock Holmes hardly ever said ‘elementary’…? The truth will be revealed, slowly, one syrupy ballad after another.

Westlife are usually seen as taking the baton from Boyzone as Britain’s favourite Irish boyband. They shared a manager, Louis Walsh, and Ronan Keating was also involved in their early days (they had supported Boyzone and the Backstreet Boys on tour before releasing any music). It wasn’t a clean transfer of power, though, as Keating’s gang still have one more #1 to come. Westlife had formed a couple of years earlier, as a six-piece, but were rejected by Simon Cowell, who claimed that they were “the ugliest boyband I have ever seen in my life”. Three members were promptly sacked – the ugly ones, we can presume – two new ones hired, and off they went.

Off to score fourteen (yes, one four) number ones in seven years. Interestingly, though, ‘Swear It Again’ did something that only four of their chart-toppers managed: more than a single week at number one. Their fourteen number ones will amount only to twenty weeks in total at the top, a phenomenon that we can perhaps explore in more detail in a later Westlife post, once we’ve lost count of the key-changes, and run out of synonyms for ‘bland’.

821. ‘Perfect Moment’, by Martine McCutcheon

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If ‘Levi’s #1s’ is a niche chart-topping genre – see Mr. Oizo last time out – then this next chart-topper falls into an even rarer category…

Perfect Moment, by Martine McCutcheon (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 11th – 25th April 1999

Not just ‘TV stars’ (alongside the likes of Telly Savalas and David Soul) or ‘Soap Stars’ (alongside Kylie and Jason), both of which would be niche enough. No, after Nick Berry, this is just the second ever Eastenders number one.

And if this were a competition, then Martine McCutcheon wins the Battle of the Eastenders Pop Stars hands down. That is more to do with how crap Nick Berry’s effort was than any particular strengths that this record has, but still. A win’s a win. And ‘Perfect Moment’ starts off interestingly enough, with a grandiosely old-fashioned intro, and some early-eighties, Ultravoxy synths.

Yes, it’s a gloopy ballad. But it sounds quite out of place against the late-nineties pop landscape. This sounds like it could have replaced Nick Berry at the top back in 1986. I don’t want to use the word ‘experimental’ on a record as average as this, but at the same time McCutcheon’s producers were clearly trying a couple of things out.

By the second verse, though, order has been restored. That pre-set late-nineties drumbeat has kicked in, while the middle-eight (And if tomorrow brings a lonely day…) sets a template to be followed by every X-Factor winner’s single from here to eternity. Blandness wins, but for a minute or so something a little more interesting was threatened.

And what of Martine McCutcheon, AKA Tiffany Mitchell, who a few months earlier had been mown down in Albert Square by Frank Butcher’s car? She has a pretty decent voice here, on her solo debut, and by the end is trying her best to compete with the big ‘90s divas. She is ultimately, though, no Whitney Houston. She had made earlier attempts at a pop career, as part of failed girl-group Milan in at the start of the decade, and on a minor dance hit not long after she had joined ‘EastEnders.

‘Perfect Moment’ had originally been recorded by Polish singer Edyta Górniak in 1997, and this cover set McCutcheon up for a couple of years of chart success. Colour me surprised to discover that she managed four more Top 10 hits! None of which I have any memory of… She has gone on to acting success on stage and screen – perhaps most famous to an international audience as Natalie in ‘Love Actually’ – while the fact that she was killed off and unable to return to EastEnders has apparently always rankled with her.

819. ‘Blame It on the Weatherman’, by B*Witched

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Storms gather, thunderclouds ripen, droplets fall like one of those ‘soft noise for sleep’ playlists… B*Witched are getting moody.

Blame It on the Weatherman, by B*Witched (their 4th and final #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th March 1999

Before we get stuck into the meat of this next number one, can I ponder for a second what the most used non-musical sound effect is in pop music? I’m sure it must either be rainfall or revving motorbikes, but any other suggestions are welcome. The storms here are soon replaced by an acoustic guitar, and not for the first time I’m getting an unexpected Beatles flashback from a B*Witched number one. This time it’s ‘In My Life’ buried within the opening chords…

In fact this whole song is a game of spot-the-influences. The verses remind me of other late-90s indie-pop acts like Tin Tin Out and Catatonia, and most of all Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’. Then the new-age, Enya touches from ‘To You I Belong’ return for the chorus… The rain goes on, On and on again… Meanwhile the bad-weather-as-metaphor-for-heartbreak is a trope as old as pop music, from ‘Raining in My Heart’ to ‘Rhythm of the Rain’.

Since the ridiculous ‘C’est la Vie’, B*Witched have matured with each successive single, to the point that I’ve been quite impressed with how much I’ve enjoyed it when they’ve popped up in recent weeks. I’d still rank ‘Rollercoaster’ as my favourite, but this has some nice harmonies in the choruses and the middle-eight.

‘Blame It on the Weatherman’ was the group’s fourth consecutive #1 single, matching the Spice Girls’ achievement from a couple of years earlier. (In fact they bettered that record by having all four singles enter at the top; ‘Wannabe’ having climbed to its peak.) It would be their last though, as none of the singles from their second album came close. It’s interesting, actually, how quickly the B*Witched bubble burst. If we fast-forward exactly a year, in March 2000 we’d find ‘Jump Down’ struggling to a #16 peak.

They split in 2002, after being dropped by Sony despite having a third album in the works. More recently they have reformed and toured with other ‘90s pop acts (including recent chart-toppers 911), and have even tentatively released some new material, that hasn’t come close to troubling the charts. All a long way from the late-nineties, when B*Witched at the height of their powers were scoring four #1s across barely nine months. All together now: what were they like?

PS. I’m adding this in a couple of days after publishing, but I’ve just realised that when this record knocked Boyzone from the top it was probably the first and only time that two siblings have replaced one another at number one (Boyzone’s Shane Lynch and B*Witched’s Edele and Keavy Lynch). Let me know of any others!