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!
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…
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…
So here it is. The biggest-selling single of all time. Where to begin…?
Something About the Way You Look Tonight / Candle in the Wind 1997, by Elton John (his 4th of ten #1s)
5 weeks, from 14th September – 19th October 1997
I suppose we should begin in Paris, sometime after midnight on Sunday 31st August, 1997. This isn’t really the place to go into the gory details – we all know what happened. I had the dubious honour of breathlessly breaking the news to my family, after an early morning trip to a campsite newsagents. The papers all screamed of a crash, though I’m not sure if they had confirmed the death. Anyway, radios went on and the tragedy unfolded.
Fast-forward to the funeral on September 6th, where Elton John, close friend of the Princess of Wales, performed a new version of his 1973 hit ‘Candle in the Wind’ in her honour. Straight after the service he went to the studio to record it, with Sir George Martin as producer. Seven days after that it had become the fastest-selling single in history.
Interestingly, though, ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ is listed as the second half of this double-‘A’, and so we begin with the completely incongruous ‘Something About the Way You Look Tonight’. It’s a decent enough, mid-career, soft-rock ballad. Very MOR, AOR… whatever acronym you prefer. It rises to a pretty soaring peak, with squealing guitars and Elton giving a full-throated vocal performance, before ending with a strangely flat final minute or so.
It was the 2nd single from his ‘The Big Picture’ album, and the way it piggybacked its way on to the biggest-selling single of all time is actually quite funny. It had been released by itself on the Monday, but by Saturday had been combined with ‘Candle in the Wind’. If it had been left on its own, or perhaps if Diana had fastened her seatbelt, then ‘Something About the Way…’ would probably have been headed for a #24 peak. (Elton was still capable of a decent sized hit in the mid-1990s, but they were an eclectic mix. His most recent Top 10s before this had been a duet with Pavarotti, and a duet with RuPaul.)
On to the main event then, the real reason that people flocked to buy this record. The fact that this nonsense is the best-seller of all time is proof of just how much the nation lost its collective mind in the wake of Diana’s death. At its peak ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ was selling an estimated six copies per second, with news bulletins telling tales of people frenziedly buying fifty or more CDs each. Released on Saturday 13th, by the next day it was announced as the new number one, having sold half a million in twenty-four hours. By the end of its first full week on sale, it had comfortably passed two million.
The lyrics also lay bare the madness surrounding Diana’s death. Goodbye England’s rose, May you ever grow in our hearts… (As an aside, why not ‘Britain’s Rose? It still scans, and she was Princess of the whole island. It really gets my goat when people – often Americans – talk about ‘the King of England’. There’s no such person!) You called out to your country, And you whispered to those in pain, Now you belong to heaven, And the stars spell out your name…
So they start off bad, and get progressively worse. The lowest point probably being the line about us always carrying a torch for the nation’s golden child… My feelings on the posthumous beatification of Diana, on the Royal Family, on the British public in general, aside (stories for another day and another blog…) it’s simply a bad rewrite. The music is fine – the original ‘Candle in the Wind’, and it’s lyrics about Marilyn Munroe, is a standout in Elton’s back-catalogue – but the new words are simplistic, trite and saccharine. It makes ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, 1997’s other elegiac hit, sound like Tennyson.
And I know that Elton was her friend, and that she did lots of charity work, and that the Queen was a bit hard on her (I’ve watched ‘The Crown’!), and that all the proceeds from this record went to a good cause… But still, none of that can change the fact that it’s a truly rotten song, the worst of Elton’s ten chart-toppers (okay, joint-worst with that Ladbaby drivel).
Yet here it is, with an unassailable lead at the top of the all-time sellers list. Over five millions copies sold, with ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ lagging some million sales away, and ‘Last Christmas’ behind that. The glimmer of hope is that these festive hits will slowly catch up thanks to a month’s worth of sales and streams every December, but that won’t happen for many years, if it happens at all. For now, the biggest single ever remains a hastily-rewritten dirge for a dead princess, that nobody has actually listened to in twenty-five years, and an average soft-rock tune that came along for the ride.
A slight change in direction then, after Will Smith’s intergalactic, family friendly, summer blockbusting number one…
The Drugs Don’t Work, by The Verve (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 7th – 14th September 1997
This is surely one of the saddest chart-toppers in history. Not many hits have made the toppermost of the poppermost with lines such as: Like a cat in a bag, Waiting to drown… This time I’m comin’ down…
I suppose we have to class this as Britpop; but it also feels bigger, more timeless than that. And if it is Britpop (bearing in mind that the Verve formed as a shoegaze band, way back in 1990) then it is another song marking the comedown, more ‘Beetlebum’ than ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ It’s interesting, actually, that the closing years of the decade will see (slightly) more rock chart-toppers than 1995-6, the peak years of Britpop.
As with Blur’s second #1, this one’s about drugs, and the bands’ struggles with them. I mean, it’s right there in the title. But added to that is the perhaps apocryphal story that it’s about watching a close family member die of cancer. The drugs don’t work, They just make you worse, But I know I’ll see your face again… Richard Ashcroft has never confirmed this, but has mentioned in interviews that this is now the song’s widely-accepted meaning. And he seems genuinely moved by this, the fact that he’s written a song that accompanies people through some of their darkest moments.
Despite all this, and despite me just calling it “one of the saddest chart-toppers in history”, it’s not a miserable song. The reverb, and the strings, give it a light quality, and I love the bluesy rasp to Ashcroft’s voice. The highlight is the middle-eight, the gorgeously soaring Cause baby oooh, If heaven calls… ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ was the second release from their widely acclaimed ‘Urban Hymns’ album, and the strings in particular tie it back to the previous single, ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. That record is probably the Verve’s best remembered – especially as it was their only hit in the US – but it’s not a song I’ve ever loved. For me, this record, their sole number one, is their towering achievement.
So, I wouldn’t like to overly suggest that the success of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, which had made #2 a couple of months earlier, was the reason for this making #1. This record deserves better than ‘shadow #1’ status. Perhaps more of a factor in this being such a big hit is the fact that it was released the day after the death of Princess Diana. Lots of sources have retrospectively claimed that her death, and the public’s need for something both maudlin and uplifting, meant it went straight to number one. Maybe that’s true, but again I’d give a song of this quality a bit more benefit of the doubt. ‘Urban Hymns’ went on to become one of the decade’s biggest albums, but its success caused the band to fracture. Ashcroft embarked on a successful solo career, and the next Verve album didn’t appear until 2008.
Anyway, if the public were desperate to mark Diana’s death by purchasing a CD single, they didn’t have to wait long for an even more appropriate song to come along…
And so we meet the year’s third now-problematic chart-topper. I have to admit that I’m not quite up on what Sean Combs has/hasn’t been accused of*, while I think a lawyer would advise me to mention that he’s not been found guilty of anything. It seems, though, he’s quickly heading the way of R. Kelly and Michael Jackson.
I’ll Be Missing You, by Puff Daddy (his 1st of three #1s) & Faith Evans ft. 112
3 weeks, from 22nd June – 13th July 1997 / 3 weeks from 20th July – 10th August 1997 (6 weeks total)
Back in 1997, Combs was head of his own label, Bad Boy Records. He’d signed the rapper Notorious B.I.G., and had produced for acts like Usher, TLC, Mariah Carey, even Aretha Franklin. That March, B.I.G. had been shot dead just as Combs had been preparing his own debut album. ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ is a hastily-recorded tribute to his dead pal, featuring fellow Bad Boy artists 112, and Faith Evan’s (Biggie’s widow).
So, on the one hand, it feels churlish to criticise a tribute to a recently deceased man. On the other… there’s just so much to criticise. Reviews at the time called it ‘maudlin’, and ‘turgid’, and it’s hard to disagree. The lyrics – which I once knew word-for-word – are extremely clunky. It’s kinda hard with you not around, Know you’re in heaven smiling down… Watchin’ us while we pray for you, Every day we pray for you…
It’s main hook is that it’s based around ‘Every Breath You Take’, by The Police, as well as the hymn ‘I’ll Fly Away’. In earlier posts I bemoaned not knowing the difference between a sample and an interpolation, so imagine my joy to discover that ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ features both! So blatant is it that Sting and Co., who hadn’t been asked permission, sued for 100% of the royalties (and won).
The clear highlight of this saccharine number is Evans, whose voice soars above the sentimentalism, especially in her middle-eight: Somebody tell me why… Other than that, it is catchy, and it is heartfelt. But I can’t help but see something cynical in the way it goes for the heartstrings so remorselessly. It reminds me of Wiz Khalifa’s ‘See You Again’, another rap/pop crossover about a dead man, which I think is one of the sickliest pieces of music ever recorded (sorry, spoilers, but it’s a while before we’ll come to it…)
Thing is, though, I loved this song as an eleven year old. Like I said, I knew all the words. If I’d been eleven when ‘See You Again’ came out, I’d probably have felt the same about it. But that’s the song’s problem: it lacks nuance, depth, and relies too much on simplistic lyrics about turning back the hands of time, and living life after death. If this record helps a kid process their emotions following a loved one’s death, then great. But as an adult I would need something a little more substantial.
Though maybe I’m in the minority on this, as ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ stayed at number one for six weeks in total (an impressive feat, as chart turnover was ever increasing) and would have been 1997’s biggest-seller, if it weren’t for the small matter of the most succesful record ever released coming along a few weeks later: another tribute to a dead person. It remains the 23rd highest-selling record in the UK, and the country’s biggest-ever hip-hop song. Sean Combs, AKA Puff Daddy, AKA P. Diddy, AKA Diddy (I believe he’s the only artist to have topped the charts under three different stage names) will return to this countdown eventually, though with nothing resembling the success of his first big hit.
*Long before the current accusations against him, there was a rumour that Diddy had put the hit out on the Notorious B.I.G. himself.
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…
Without realising it, 1997 has gotten off to a pretty rocking start. Established names like Blur, and U2, have ensured that guitars have been well-represented at the top of the charts. Carrying on the trend are a band enjoying their breakthrough smash…
Don’t Speak, by No Doubt (their 1st and only #1)
3 weeks, from 16th February – 9th March 1997
…which has gone on to become one of the decade’s best-remembered hits. ‘Don’t Speak’ is both of its time – it has that US alt-rock sound, with the post-grunge power chords, that had worked for Deep Blue Something a few months earlier. But it also has some more unusual ideas in the mix: a moody flamenco beat, and melodramatic lyrics delivered more like a showtune (You and me, I can see us dying, Aren’t we…?)
Perhaps, strangest of all, there’s a woman singing! A rock song! Any excuse not to do those dishes… I jest, of course! There have been plenty of women singing rock songs at the top of the chart, and female-fronted rock bands, like Blondie, the Pretenders, T’Pau, and…. You get my point. Gwen Stefani’s fantastic vocal performance was, I’d say, one of the main selling-points.
‘Don’t Speak’ had been around for a while – as had No Doubt, who formed in Anaheim, in 1986, and went through nearly a decade of trying to make it – in a more upbeat form. Stefani re-wrote it after breaking up with the band’s bassist Tony Kanal. The pair then took the leading roles in the video, which plays on the way the media side-lined the three other members to focus on Stefani. The band were on the verge of splitting up, allegedly, on the day they filmed it.
As good as ‘Don’t Speak’ is – and I do like it, though wouldn’t include it my pantheon of all-time nineties classics – it could be seen as a bit of a sell-out for the originally ska/punk No Doubt. The lead single from their 3rd album, the breakneck ‘Just a Girl’ had been a minor hit, and then made #3 on re-release later in 1997, and I do wish that had been the bigger smash.
Maybe it’s just the fact that the peak of their career coincides almost exactly with my formative years, but it seems very odd that this is No Doubt’s, and Gwen Stefani’s, only chart-topper. At least they managed one in the UK, with ‘Don’t Speak’ never officially being released in the US, despite a sixteen-week run on top of the airplay charts. Before we go then I should mention that, in my humble opinion, No Doubt’s grimy ‘Hella Good’, Stefani’s glorious solo debut ‘What You Waiting For?’, and her equally cool, um, ‘Cool’, all should have been number ones. No Doubt, meanwhile, recently reunited for the first time in almost a decade, and played a well-received set at Coachella.
After two pop bangers, introducing the world to the phenomenon that was Baby, Scary, Ginger, Posh, and Sporty, a ballad was needed.
2 Become 1, by The Spice Girls (their 3rd of nine #1s)
3 weeks, from 22nd December 1996 – 12th January 1997
It’s the first rule of nineties pop: any girl group, or boyband, worth their salt needs at least one ballad per year. Especially around Christmas time. And so The Spice Girls start their hattrick of festive chart-toppers with this slow and sultry number.
We’ve gone from friendship never ends on ‘Wannabe’, where boys came a strict second to girl power, to Tonight is the night, When two become one… here. But the ladies are still in control of all the love making. They need the love, they’re the ones who are back for more. It’s a bootie call, basically, two years before All Saints – supposedly the more streetwise girl group – had a hit by that name. The Girls even remind the fellow to rubber up: Be a little bit wiser baby, Put it on, Put it on…
A lot is made nowadays of how nobody realised what this song was about at the time– which is bollocks, frankly, because eleven-year-old me and my friends knew just what they were singing about, and accompanied the lyrics with some predictably childish hand gestures. I will say that, listening now, some of the lines are ropey, such as Any deal that we endeavour, Boys and girls feel good together… And in fact, for the single release, they changed the second half of that line to Love will bring us back together… as they were already aware of their gay fanbase, and wanted to be inclusive. It’s still a clunky line, though.
On the whole, though, it’s a fairly classy first attempt at a ballad, and was always going to be Christmas Number 1, even though they delayed its release so that the Dunblane tribute could have a week at the top. My first thought when I picture ‘2 Become 1’ is the video, with the girls wandering around a time-lapsed version of New York. There’s also the forty-five second fade-out with the violins, in which none of the girls feature, which I’ve always thought was a bold move for a pop single (though radio stations always had the option to cut it early, I suppose).
And so that was 1996. It took us a while to get through in the end, as the turnover of number ones increased. In all, there were eleven one-weekers – which I’m pretty sure is a record for one year– and eight of them came in the second half of the year. 1997 is similarly well spread out, and so we will waste no time in jumping straight into that year, next.
After partying all night on ‘Flava’, Peter Andre aims for the flip-side of ‘90s R&B: a sickly slow-jam…
I Feel You, by Peter Andre (his 2nd of three #1s)
1 week, from 1st – 8th December 1996
I assumed that by late-1996, as we near my eleventh birthday, there wouldn’t be any number ones that I’d never heard before. But I reckoned against the fact that, as chart-topping turnover increases, there will be lots of one-week wonders to contend with. Like this.
‘I Feel You’ has some nice Boyz II Men style chord changes, a funky bassline and, if you squint your ears (you know what I mean…) you could just about mistake Andre for Michael Jackson. It also has, as most songs of this ilk do, some unintentionally stomach-turning lyrics: I’m thinking about the bedroom, baby, We’d be making love…Making love! As well as a very steamy video featuring, naturally, Andre’s six-pack as one of the main characters.
By and large, though, this song is dull. Spotify only hosts an extended five-minute mix, which is a slog when it comes to a song of this quality. And it’s sexiness is so forced, that anyone who isn’t Pepe Le Pew will be turned off. It’s custom made for horny teenagers to put on their make-out mixtapes, and they were presumably one of the song’s main customer bases in getting it to the top.
This should have been the last we hear from Peter Andre. His star shone brightly, but briefly: seven Top 10 hits between 1996 and 1998. Fate had different ideas, however. It does mean that, in seven years or so, he will reappear, and his best single will belatedly make #1… But at what cost?
Since this is looking like being a very short write-up, I’ll mention something that I’ve hinted at in earlier posts. Late-’96 is the moment that the singles chart became the chart I grew up with – not just in terms of the songs sounding like modern pop, as I’ve discussed before, but in the way they started entering at #1, and staying there for just seven days at a time. As I said above: ‘one-week wonders’, like this one, and the next song we’ll be featuring…
The UK Number Ones Blog 