Ballads

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!

812. ‘A Little Bit More’, by 911

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And so here we have the first of five boybands to top the charts in 1999. Brace yourself for fist clenches and key changes aplenty…

A Little Bit More, by 911 (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 17th – 24th January 1999

911 were very much in the second-tier of ‘90s boybands, never reaching the heights of Take That, East 17, or indeed many of the groups to come; but they plugged away, workmanlike, with a presumably dedicated fanbase, to finally spend a week on top of the charts. The AFC Bournemouth of boybands, if you will.

They certainly plug away on this workmanlike Dr. Hook cover (making it already the second cover of a seventies classic to make #1 this year). It’s not truly terrible, but it adds nothing to the glossy horniness of the original, which had spent five weeks at #2 in 1976. 911’s producers make decent work of the soaring chord changes, but the boys’ voices are very lightweight. They sound like little kids, which isn’t ideal when trying to sell lines like Come on over here, And lay by my side, I’ve got to be touching you…

‘A Little Bit More’ is a famously raunchy song, in fairness, about an all-night sex session that just won’t end. Yes it has a very MOR sound, and an attempt to recreate the gloopy production that was ubiquitous in the mid-seventies, but I bet there were parents across the land wincing as they listened to their eight year olds blithely singing along to the lyrics. Still it’s a canny and well-worn boyband strategy, covering an oldie to attract both the kids and their mums, and the group also had success with covers of ‘More Than a Woman’ and ‘Private Number’.

911, formed in Glasgow although all three members are English, had been around since 1995, and had visited the UK Top 10 eight times before finally scoring a number one (doing so with the lowest weekly sales of 1999). I found myself struggling to name a single other 911 song, until I checked their discography and was reminded of the fun ‘Party People… Friday Night’ – their crowning glory. They had split by the end of that year, but have since reformed for the nostalgia circuit. They remain interestingly popular in southeast Asia, with number one albums in Malaysia and duets with Vietnamese star Ðúc Phúc (which is definitely not pronounced the way it reads…)

Before we finish, I should recognise that 911 actually set something of a record here. Every #1 since B*Witched’s ‘To You I Belong’ has spent just one week at the top and, as this is the sixth in a row, ‘A Little Bit More’ makes history by beating the previous longest stretch of one-weekers set in February 1997. It’s a record that will be broken again, very soon, as these turn-of-the-century charts hit breakneck speed.

808. ‘Goodbye’, by The Spice Girls

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Managing a Beatles-matching three Christmas number ones in a row, it’s the Spice Girls…

Goodbye, by The Spice Girls (their 8th of nine #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th December 1998

Could we argue that this is a more impressive feat than that managed by The Beatles, as the Fab Four’s three festive chart-toppers came before the Christmas Number One © became a thing? Perhaps. But that’s a discussion for another day. On to the ballad at hand.

For it is, of course, a ballad. My favourite of their three Xmas #1s, by far, is ‘Too Much’, because it desperately didn’t want to be a ballad. But this is much more traditional fare. Listen little child, There will come a day… To be honest, I’m not sure what this is about. A break-up, I guess? With children involved?

Of course, with lines like Goodbye my friend… and I never dreamt you’d go your own sweet way… many at the time saw this as the remaining Spice Girls making their peace with Geri, after she’d abandoned them several months before. It was, after all, the first song they recorded as a four-piece, and wouldn’t appear on an album until two years later. Others saw it as the Girls bowing out entirely, which wasn’t a strange assumption given that Mel B had already enjoyed a solo chart-topper.

Musically this is lush and atmospheric, though perhaps a little more predictable sounding. coming straight after B*Witched’s Celtic-influenced ‘To You I Belong’. I like the squelchy bass – a little out place at first – while the beat is very American R&B, very Destiny’s Child. I can’t find too much to love, though. And coming two years after I’d outgrown my tweenage passion for the Spice Girls, I’m not sure I’ve ever properly listened to ‘Goodbye’.

It’s not as good a ballad as ‘Viva Forever’, that’s for sure. But you can tell that they had access to the best songwriters of the day, as evidenced by Mel C’s genuinely memorable chorus-within-a-chorus: So glad we made it, Time’s never, ever gonna change it… She always did get the best parts… I also like the fact that none of their Xmas number ones have gone down the cliched sleigh bells and choirs route (although the video to ‘Goodbye’ does involve a lot of snow, and people frozen like ice sculptures).

So, after two and a half years, two albums, eight singles yielding seven number ones, the Spice Girls… went on a break. There was still a tour, and solo projects to invest in. But there were also still plans for a third album, that will come about eventually, and give them a final footnote of a number one. It would have been cleaner, somehow, if they’d just bowed out with ‘Goodbye’, their record-matching third consecutive Christmas #1. Pushing them all the way in the charts that week was an animated chef, voiced by a soul legend, who would have his moment in the sun soon enough…

807. ‘To You I Belong’, by B*Witched

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A blast of Celtic pipes meets our ears, heralding the arrival of our next number one. Because heaven forbid we forget just for one second that B*Witched. Are. Irish!

To You I Belong, by B*Witched (their 3rd of four #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th December 1998

Girl group rules dictate that the 3rd single must be a ballad, especially if said single is being released at Christmas. So in some ways, ‘To You I Belong’ is a fairly predictable, low-tempo, pop smoocher (with a strangely old-fashioned sounding title, grammatically speaking). In other ways, though, it’s actually quite interesting.

For such a generic girl group ballad, there are plenty of touches that I wasn’t expecting. The tin whistles and strings give it a New Age feel, with hints of Enya even, and the girls’ floaty, trembly voices are quite soothing. Turns out that B*Witched could properly sing, something that was lost amongst all the bubble-gum silliness of their first two singles!

It’s unexpectedly classy, and even if I don’t automatically love all the Celtic flourishes at least it’s something a little different from what the other girl groups of the time were offering. I would say, though, that it could have done with a more stripped-back production – maybe just the girls’ voices and a couple of guitars – as all the layers of computer generated synths and tinkly bits make it sound cluttered.

Three #1s from their first three singles catapulted B*Witched into exalted company: Gerry & The Pacemakers, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jive Bunny and The Spice Girls. And they’ll go one better than the first three of those acts, by making it four out of four. Speaking of The Spice Girls, B*Witched sensibly released ‘To You I Belong’ a week before the festive number one race, rather than going up against the Queens of Christmas. However, with this giving the Irish girls their third chart-topper of 1998, compared to the Spice Girls’ one (so far), it could be argued that at this point B*Witched were the bigger group…

Finally from a chart-geek angle, this record kicks off a run of ten one-week #1s in a row, through until late February 1999, as the chart-topping turnover continues to ramp up. (The previous longest run of one-weekers was five, in early 1997.)

798. ‘No Matter What’, by Boyzone

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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.

‘No Matter What’ was the first act closer in ‘Whistle Down the Wind’, Webber’s 1996 musical based on the book and film of the same name. (I must admit, I knew this was from a musical, but thought it was much older.) It becomes the fourth chart-topper that Webber has been involved in, after ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, ‘Any Dream Will Do’, and, yes, ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’. It’s also Steinman’s fourth, after ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’, and ‘Never Forget’ (meaning that he’s produced hits for the nineties’ two biggest boybands).

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.

797. ‘Viva Forever’, by The Spice Girls

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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.

790. ‘Turn Back Time’, by Aqua

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1997’s novelty act of choice surprise us yet again by returning for a 3rd number single. Not only that, the surprise is increased by the fact that this is a ‘proper’ song!

Turn Back Time, by Aqua (their 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th May 1998

No Barbie and Ken here, no ayypeeay-eh-oh. This is classy pop. The chord progressions in the verses have a sweeping drama to them, with the feel of a Bond theme in places. Give me time to reason, Give me time to think it through… It’s sung from the point of view of someone who has cheated, and who is owning their mistake. Give me strength, To face this test of mine… Lene’s voice, so chirpy and borderline annoying on their earlier hits, is rich here, and full of emotion. I often struggle to believe ballad singers, but she sounds genuinely guilty, and repentant.

Away from the vocals, the production is smooth nineties soul-funk. And (of course) that late-nineties preset drum beat is there, buried beneath some cool horns that make me think of Ace of Base. Maybe it’s a Scandi-pop thing and – while it does mean I’m going to lean into some national stereotyping – there is something in the clean, coolness of this that feels very Scandinavian.

Seriously, this is an excellent pop song. If it were by Madonna, and not the goons that brought us ‘Barbie Girl’, then this would not be half as forgotten as it currently is. The only thing I regret is that René’s gravelly tones don’t get a look in. I’m not sure how they could have made that work – maybe a bit of baritone harmonising – but it’s sad that he has been sidelined after two star turns. The only questionable part of this record is the jarring break in the middle, when the smoothness is broken by urgent horns and a grinding industrial beat. It’s certainly a choice – presumably meant to show the mental turmoil of the singer – and it just about works.

‘Turn Back Time’ featured on the soundtrack to the Gwyneth Paltrow film ‘Sliding Doors’, which I’ve not seen but which has one of the most famous premises in movie history. The video features plenty of scenes from the film, and also has the band re-enacting the plot, with Lene constantly missing trains and lift doors on the London Underground. Meanwhile their black leather jackets are very late-nineties chic.

Aqua were worth one more Top 10 hit from their breakthrough album, then one more when they released their second LP in 2000 (the showtune-tastic ‘Cartoon Heroes’). They split for most of the ‘00s, but reformed in 2008 and remain together to this day. They belatedly returned to the Top 10 last year, when their signature hit was reimagined by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice ahead of the ‘Barbie’ movie.

788. ‘All That I Need’, by Boyzone

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Oh, this is indeed ‘all that we need’…

All That I Need, by Boyzone (their 3rd of six #1s)

1 week, from 26th April – 3rd May 1998

A dull, plodder from the nineties’ dullest, most plodding boyband. Yay! A mid-tempo ballad (shock, horror!) that floats past your ears fairly inoffensively. I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever heard this before… I’m sure that I must have – I owned every ‘Now’ album between 1996 and 1999 – but I’m also sure that I’ve erased every memory of it in the intervening twenty six years.

Do I sniff the riff from the classic wimp-rock ballad ‘Right Here Waiting’? I think I do, plucked gently on an acoustic guitar. If that’s your inspiration, then you’re going to end up with something pretty insipid. Even groanin’ Ronan sounds bored as he meanders his way through the verses, as opposed to his usual constipated attempts at emoting.

And there’s that late-nineties computer generated drumbeat again. It’s starting to crop up more and more often, presumably preset into every Casio keyboard sold in 1998. In come the rest of the band for the chorus, and a lot of strings for a finish far grander than this song deserves. It’s not awful, nor is it Boyzone’s most offensive effort. But you’ll struggle to hum this five minutes after listening to it.

‘All That I Need’ was the third single from Boyzone’s third album, so we can assume that it took advantage of a quiet sales week to sneak a moment on top. That’s not to suggest they didn’t have fans – I went to school with a lot of them – but when you compare them to Take That, East 17, or the Spice Girls, there’s just something missing. More often than not that something was ‘fun’. In the video, the lads are dressed in some exotic crocodile skin jackets, ready to party. They just weren’t getting the material.

Still, Boyzone filled a niche, aimed at mums and grannies more than the kids. Nice Irish boys. And by 1998, four years and three albums into their career, they were nearing their boyband sell-by-date. Luckily for us all their manager, Louis Walsh, already had his sights on their successors: the T-1000 of granny-pleasing boybands, who will soon take the singles chart in their inhuman grip. Can’t wait!

784. ‘My Heart Will Go On’, by Celine Dion

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In which we don our lifejackets, fight our way out on deck, and try to find a lost child with whom to bribe our way onto a boat. Anything to avoid a collision with this hulking leviathan of a song…

My Heart Will Go On, by Celine Dion (her 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 15th – 22nd February 1998 / 1 week, from 8th – 15th March 1998 (2 weeks total)

‘My Heart Will Go On’ is one of those songs that has become such a cliché, such a meme, such a cornerstone of popular culture, that it is very hard to judge as a mere five-minute piece of popular balladry. But if you can separate it from what it’s become, and manage to hear it as people in 1997 did… Then you are still confronted with a truly horrifying song.

I always thought the opening notes were played on pan-pipes, but it’s actually a tin whistle. This vaguely Celtic, new-agey motif features throughout the three hours plus of the movie ‘Titanic’, a sort of Pavlovian signal that Something Romantic is happening. It existed as part of the soundtrack to the film before composer James Horner suggested using it in a song. James Cameron, the director, wasn’t sold. If only he’d stuck to his guns… Sadly, he gave in, and this monster was born.

My first impression upon sitting down and listening to this song properly for the first time in a quarter of a century is that it sounds dated for the late-nineties. Every power-ballad cliché is ticked: big drums, squealing guitars, echoey effects, and gloopy percussion. Add in the new-age feel, and it sounds like we’ve slipped back a decade. Then there’s the ‘Whitney’ moment – the pause, and the beat, before the key-change and the final sledgehammer chorus.

As Houston does in ‘I Will Always Love You’, Celine Dion bludgeons all emotion out of the song’s climax in a storm of howling bombast. Though that sounds like I’m suggesting that there’s emotion in the verses preceding the final chorus. There isn’t. It’s all just too huge, too overwhelming, to have any impact. It mirrors the way I feel about the movie, too. I’ve enjoyed it as a piece of entertainment, but the ‘sad’ scenes now come across almost as tongue-in-cheek. Again, this is possibly because we’ve seen way too many parodies of frozen Jack, and Rose clinging to the door; but it could also be because the film was complete fluff in the first place.

For all this talk of entertainment, though, one of this song’s biggest failings is its dullness. I first mentioned this phenomenon when we covered the ‘90s other big soundtrack hits: Houston’s, and Bryan Adams. Once upon a time power ballads were ridiculous pieces of theatre. Think ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, or ‘China in Your Hand’. Dion’s previous chart-topper ‘Think Twice’ was a much more recent example of a power ballad whose earnestness was delivered with a wink and a lot of scenery chewing. There’s no wink here, though, no sense of an in-joke. Just a dull plod punctuated by lots of serious fist clenching.

But you don’t need me to tell you that ‘My Heart Will Go On’, for all its God-awfulness, was fairly successful. A number one in more than twenty-five countries around the world, and currently the second-best selling single ever by a female artist (behind you-know-who). Celine Dion apparently disliked it at first – I mean, she would say that now – but it hasn’t stopped her milking it for all its worth. China in particular has a passion for the song, with state television inviting Dion to belt out her biggest hit several times over the years. For me, though, ‘My Heart Will Go On’ will always remind me of a family holiday in Lanzarote. It was the first time I had ever been on a plane, travelling for four hours across Europe just to hear this dirge being played every fifteen minutes at the pool bar…

779. ‘Too Much’, by The Spice Girls

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Happily preventing the Teletubbies from claiming a Christmas number one, the Spice Girls score their second of three festive chart-toppers in a row. And of the three, this is the best in my book…

Too Much, by The Spice Girls (their 6th of nine #1s)

2 weeks, from 21st December 1997 – 4th January 1998

It’s a ballad, of course (a girl group festive release will always be a ballad, there may be actual laws about this) but it’s not as straightforwardly sweet as ‘2 Become 1’, or as sentimental as the one to come next year. This is a sassy, soulful, fairly sophisticated, ballad that, with a little more oomph, could pass as a Bond theme.

It unfurls – that’s the perfect word – seductively, with plenty of horns and strings. Plus it has a couple of the Spice Girls’ best lines. As with all their good songs, they are the ones in charge, not the men. Unwrap yourself… Geri purrs… From around my finger… While in the middle-eight, Mel C unleashes the iconic: What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, I want a man, Not a boy who thinks he can…!

When you add in her harmonies in the second chorus, Mel C here cements herself not only as the star of this single but as the official ‘Spice who could sing’. I think this might be one of the group’s less well-remembered number ones, and it certainly passed me by at the time – twelve-year-old me having given up on them after the manic ‘Spice Up Your Life’. But listening to it now, I might be tempted to place it as their 2nd best chart-topper, after ‘Say You’ll Be There’ (clearly the singles where Mel C was allowed to unleash are the best).

‘Too Much’ was the girls’ 6th #1 in a row, maintaining their 100% record – a record that stands to this day (though it has since been matched by Westlife). Their next release, ‘Stop’, would be their first and only single not to make the top. As I mentioned in my last post on the Spice Girls, the returns from their second album were clearly shortening, although they remained a global phenomenon. This is also their final number one as a five-piece, as by the time of their seventh chart-topper, Geri will have famously called it a day.

In my last post I mentioned that late-1997 saw extremely high singles sales. It’s hard to say, as records vary, but this may have been the ultimate peak for physical singles in the UK. In the run up to Christmas ’97 there was a week in which the entire Top 5 all sold over 100,000 copies, and in the all-time highest-sellers table four songs from the latter half of the year remain in the Top 50 (‘I’ll Be Missing You’, ‘Barbie Girl’, ‘Perfect Day’ and the record-holding ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’). Why this is I’m not qualified to say… Cut-pricing, cultural relevance, the ubiquity of CD players are all decent reasons. The quality of music, in my opinion, is not. The autumn of 1997 has seen a bit of a drop-off compared to the first half of the year. Whatever the reason, we head into 1998 with sales still high, and the turnover at the top ever-increasing…