Boybands

795. ‘Freak Me’, by Another Level

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Another boyband, another pop song, another sign that we’re now well into the late nineties…

Freak Me, by Another Level (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th July 1998

But unlike Billie Piper, there’s nothing tweeny about this raunchy record. Let me lick you up and down, ‘Till you say stop…  the Another Level lads beg… Let me play with your body baby, Make you real hot… All this over slick, modern R&B beats, and honeyed harmonising.

It’s very American, when you compare it to the more wholesome British boybands of the day (oh to hear Ronan Keating have a go with these lyrics…) And it had originally been a Billboard #1 in 1993, for US R&B group Silk, co-written by hip-hop/soul pioneer Keith Sweat. But Another Level were from London, with echoes perhaps of East 17 – Britain’s baddest boyband up this point.

‘Freak Me’ is, like I said, raunchy. There’s a decent soul-pop song in there amongst the gloop, and the chorus does enough to shine through. It’s also way too much. In the second verse, one of the boys announces: I like the taste of whipped cream, Spread it on top of me… They want to see the unnamed girl’s body drip, want to take a sip. Even Prince at his randiest would have thought twice about these clunky lyrics.

It reminds me of ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’, Color Me Badd’s 1991 chart-topper, in its unintentionally hilarious horniness. Which leads me to think twice about claiming that this isn’t a tween-pop record. Okay, perhaps the lyrics might have been lost on eight year olds, but I can imagine many a fifteen year old putting this one a make-out mixtape. It’s nowhere near as ‘adult’ as Another Level might have hoped.

This was Another Level’s second Top 10 hit – their first, ‘Be Alone No More’, had featured none other than Jay-Z – and they would enjoy seven in total during their short-lived, two album career. I have to admit that without the help of a search engine I couldn’t have named any of their other songs. In fact, the only other thing I know about Another Level is that one of their members, Dane Bowers, launched a mildly successful solo career, and almost managed a number one with Vicky Beckham. The rest of his post-Another Level career isn’t as impressive, dwindling down into lots of reality TV, a sex tape, and a jail sentence for assaulting his girlfriend. The other three members of the band don’t even merit a Wikipedia page…

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!

753. ‘A Different Beat’, by Boyzone

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Fresh from their first British number one, Boyzone set their sights on ‘global’ domination…

A Different Beat, by Boyzone (their 2nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 8th – 15th December 1996

By going down a new-age, world music path, that is. There have been few more distinctive intros to number one singles than this one, with its thunderclaps and African chants. This could be a very interesting song, we think, and hope… and are then left disappointed when it slides into much more predictable, pre-Christmas saccharine

The lyrics are very much of the season: Let’s not neglect our race… Life on earth be one… We are all grains of sand, apparently. At least it’s not Ronan Keating on lead vocals this time, as Stephen Gately’s clear and gentle tones guide us through the verses. Groanin’ Ronan, as we must now and forever refer to him, does get to let rip on the middle eight. He’s seen the rain fall in Africa, and touched the snow in Alaska… And let’s not get into how he pronounces ‘Niagara’, just so the line scans.

It’s easy to be cynical about songs like this, especially coming from bands as lightweight as Boyzone. I salute the message, even if the video – in which the lads descend from the heavens to dance with African children – gives off an iffy, white-saviour message. I have a feeling they were taking their cue from ‘Earth Song’, last year’s messianic Christmas Number One; but neither the song, nor the video, can compete with Michael Jackson’s irrepressible bombast.

This was the only one of Boyzone’s six chart-toppers that the band had a hand in writing, and one of only two that weren’t cover versions. It was also produced, in part, by Trevor Horn of Buggles fame. So, there are much blander offerings to come from Boyzone. There is a decent song buried in here – the title-line hook is good – but it’s smothered in far too much boyband dressing. And it doesn’t build to the big finish that a song like this needs to succeed; it just fizzles out to a simple drumbeat.

I’d assume they were aiming for the festive top spot with this release. But that was never going to happen, what with a record with an even more important message coming up next, and the third single from a certain female five-piece hovering on the horizon.

748. ‘Words’, by Boyzone

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We wake up, post-Chemical Brothers, with a bit of a headache. Bleary-eyed, we reach for the play button on our next #1… And it’s one hell of a comedown.

Words, by Boyzone (their 1st of six #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th October 1996

Not for the first time this year, a boyband reaches for the Bee Gees songbook. ‘Words’ was one of the Gibb Brothers’ first chart hits, their third record to reach the Top 10 back in 1968. The original is a very much a late-sixties ballad, drenched in strings and heavy piano chords, but it doesn’t feel overblown, with Barry Gibb’s voice right out at the front of the mix. Boyzone’s producers decide to up the drama, up the rolling drums and the layered vocal tracks, and drag a full extra minute out of the song.

It’s a bit stodgy, a bit lumpy. On their cover of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, Take That stripped things back, and I was also a bit sniffy about it, so maybe I’m just picky. Or maybe it’s just very hard to do justice to a Bee Gees original. This take on ‘Words’ isn’t terrible (and Boyzone have some real crimes against pop to come), but that’s because the quality of the source material shines through.

One thing I do find particularly annoying about this is Ronan Keating, Boyzone’s main man, on lead vocals. He just has an annoying voice, like he’s constantly trying to add gravitas to each and every syllable rather than just singing the damn song. Alas, it’s a voice that we’ll have to get used to on top of the charts for the time being.

For all the fuss I made about Take That as the boyband of the ‘90s, for folks of my age group they were just a little too old. No, it was Boyzone that the girls in my Primary 6 class were obsessed with. To this day I remain conditioned to hate them, after getting into trouble for sending a classmate into floods of tears just because I told her how terrible they were…

But honestly, they weren’t a patch on Take That, who had some genuinely good pop songs, many of them originals. Boyzone relied too heavily on bland covers, that cynically targeted both the tweens and their mums. ‘Words’ was the group’s first number one but their sixth Top 5 hit, and they’d already had their wicked way with the Osmonds’ ‘Love Me for a Reason’, and Cat Stevens’ ‘Father and Son’.

Robson & Jerome gave us our introduction to the chart crimes of Simon Cowell, while Boyzone were managed by his henchman in the vanilla-isation of ‘90s and ‘00s pop, Louis Walsh. Not that Boyzone were the only Irish five-piece that Walsh unleashed on the world, but we’ll try not to think about them until we have to….

735. ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, by Take That

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Take That have been a pioneering boyband in many ways, over the course of their eight number one singles. Multi-generational appeal with ‘Relight My Fire’, Ivor Novello-winning song writing in ‘Back for Good’, rock star level production on ‘Never Forget’…

How Deep Is Your Love, by Take That (their 8th of twelve #1s)

3 weeks, from 3rd – 24th March 1996

And now they push the idea of the ‘goodbye’ single. Ever since, every boyband worthy of the name has released a ballad after the inevitable split has been announced, and solo careers begin to loom large on the horizon. Not just boybands, even, as The Spice Girls will soon attest. Sadly, though, for a band capable of very good pop songs, this is a fairly flat goodbye: a serviceably average Bee Gees cover.

It’s a faithful take on ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, which had made #3 in 1978 when the Bee Gees were at the height of their disco powers. Rather than disco, though, Take That go for a soft-rock, acoustic guitars with some hand-held drums, sound. It reminds me of ‘More Than Words’ by Extreme… Make of that what you will.

One thing the stripped back production does is push the boys’ – a four-piece now after Robbie’s departure – voices to the fore. Their harmonies are nice, almost a cappella at times, but they can’t lift this record to anything other than middling heights. It is not a patch on the original, which I would rate as one of the Brothers Gibb’s crowning glories.

Take That had announced their split a few weeks before this final single was released, ahead of a Greatest Hits album, and so it was inevitable that it would make top spot. (Helplines had to be set up to counsel distraught fans following the news…) Since ‘Pray’ in 1993, only one of their singles had failed to make #1. And then that was it, or so everyone assumed. Gary Barlow was about to embark on a solo career – we’ll meet him again very soon – as were Mark and Robbie, all to varying degrees of success. I doubt any one predicted that a decade later Take That would launch one of the most successful musical comebacks the country had ever seen… But all that can wait for another day! In our more immediate future, with this drab one out the way, we are about to embark on a run of classic chart toppers, starting with an ode to pyromania…

724. ‘Never Forget’, by Take That

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For many, Take That peaked with ‘Back for Good’, their sixth and best-loved number one single. Where to go from there, then? Back to decent-but-unremarkable pop, such as ‘Sure’? Or do they get Jim Steinman, a kids’ choir, and a sample from Verdi’s ‘Requiem’, and throw together an extravagantly OTT remake of a track from their most recent album?

Never Forget, by Take That (their 7th of twelve #1s)

3 weeks, from 30th July – 20th August 1995

I’m sure you already know, but it was the latter. Trumpets of the type usually reserved for announcing royalty herald this next chart-topper. Angelic children’s voices telling us that we’ve come so far, and we’ve reached so high… Depending how you score on the Barlow-tolerance meter, this is either further evidence that Take That were not just another boyband… Or the sound of them, and their songwriter-in-chief, disappearing up their collective arses.

When all the choirs and the Verdi are done, and the song slips into a bog-standard mid-nineties soul-pop beat, it’s a little disappointing. Much of this song’s near seven-minute runtime is fairly mundane, but nobody remembers that. They remember the soaring chorus (that takes well over two minutes to arrive) and the extended fade-out, rather than the dull verses.

It’s now a standard boyband cliché: the song about how fame hasn’t changed them, or how fame isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. This record might be where that trope stems from, as Howard Donald (on rare lead-vocal duty) announces weighty lyrics like We’ve had success, We’ve had good times, But remember this… while a slideshow of pictures from their childhoods plays in the video, interspersed with clips of them winning awards and generally being adored.

Again, if you have a cynical little mind (like I do) you could see this entire project as a massive humblebrag. My mind starts to wondering if Robbie left before or after ‘Never Forget’, as his voice is nowhere to be heard. But then he appears, eventually, to throw some ad-libs around in the long fade-out. Perhaps his diminished role is a clue as to why he did finally quit the band, post-recording but before ‘Never Forget’ was released. He’s had a fairly small role in all but one of their #1s (‘Everything Changes’), with nothing to suggest that he was going to be the huge solo star that he is.

I do like aspects of this single, just in case I’ve sounded too down on it. The sheer scale of it, the Jim Steinman-isation of it. The chorus is one of their very best, too. But by the six minute mark I’ve had my fill, and there’s a false ending that really tests the patience. Still, it was a huge hit – of course it was – and their seventh chart-topper in just two years. Yet it was the beginning of the end. Robbie had left, no further singles were released from the album, and there’s only a fairly limp Bee Gees cover to come before Britain’s biggest boyband are laid to rest. For a bit, anyway.

719. ‘Back for Good’, by Take That

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These are the types of posts I least enjoy writing. Famous songs, that everyone knows, about which loads has already been said…

Back for Good, by Take That (their 6th of twelve #1s)

4 weeks, from 2nd – 30th April 1995

Quite often, too, they’re not songs I particularly like. And I should, in the interests of full-disclosure, admit off the bat that I’m not a huge fan of this record… I can recognise it as a good pop song – a well-constructed, grown-up pop song far beyond your usual boyband fare – and admire it thus. From a distance. With one listen per year, at most.

It’s the Barlow Conundrum, again. He’s often trying, to my ears at least, to write the perfect pop song. To prove that he and his band had long since grown beyond their ‘British New Kids on the Block’ origins. That he is to be Taken. Seriously. And of course he should be. He’s a very capable, competent songwriter. ‘Back for Good’ won an Ivor Novello award, one of British music’s ultimate accolades, for a start.

But… Compare and contrast this with another recent blockbuster boyband ballad, on a very similar lyrical theme: ‘Stay Another Day’. The lyrics to that are simple to the point of almost being trite. But something – something in their universality, in the way Brian Harvey delivers them like a lost child, in the song’s hidden subject matter – hits home in a way ‘Back for Good’ never manages.

Take the second verse here, in particular. Unaware but underlined, I figured out this story… In the corner of my mind, I celebrated glory… In the twist of separation, You excelled at being free… It all sounds clever, but does it actually mean anything? The harmonies are lovely, the want you back hook burrows its way in and never leaves, but is it all a bit fur coat and no knickers?

Or maybe it’s just me. ‘Back for Good’ has cropped up in pretty much every ‘Best songs of the…’ list for thirty years now. I am fully prepared for comments on how very wrong I am on this… But this record leaves me, like a fair old chunk of the Barlow Songbook, cold. Luckily for Take That, I am (sadly) not the arbiter of popular music, and this was a massive, massive hit all around the world. Even on the Billboard 100, where it made #7.

My feelings aside, ‘Back for Good’ was clearly the moment that Take That were made credible. Everyone who had written them off as just another boyband, even those way too cool for school, liked this record. I think it’s fair to say that without this song’s success, the band would not still be filling stadiums and topping the album charts in 2023. Back in 1995, and one of those aforementioned converts who confessed himself a fan of this song was Noel Gallagher. Speaking of whom…

714. ‘Stay Another Day’, by East 17

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Every good guy needs a bad guy. Every superhero a nemesis. And the cutest, cleanest-cut boyband of the day needed some rough east London lads as their foils…

Stay Another Day, by East 17 (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 4th December 1994 – 8th January 1995

Take That have dominated the charts of 1993-1995 like few acts ever do: they’re on five number ones in our countdown – and it’ll very soon be eight – having stuck to a winning pop formula. East 17 meanwhile had been ticking along since mid-1992, scoring five Top 10 hits packed with edgier dance and hip-hop touches, yet not coming close to matching Gary and the boys’ success.

Though the one thing East 17 can lay claim to that Take That can’t is a Christmas number one. A classic Christmas number one at that. A record… I’m just going to stick my neck on the line right now… better than any Take That ever released. (Yes, including that one…) And, ironically, to score their only number one they momentarily dropped the bad-boy posturing, and out-Barlowed Barlow himself; recording a sophisticated, grown-up ballad the likes of which Take That’s chief songwriter would have jumped at.

Baby if you’ve got to go away, Don’t think I could take the pain, Won’t you stay another day… It’s a ballad, of course, and on first listen the lyrics are standard weepy, break-up fare. The four voices meld together in an almost a cappella way – a nod to Christmas hits past? – led by a painfully young sounding Brian Harvey. It’s touching, but when you learn that Tony Mortimer actually wrote it following his brother’s suicide, then lyrics the might on the surface sound simplistic Oh don’t leave me alone like this… hit ten times harder, and elevate the song much higher.

The only controversy that surrounds this record is whether or not it’s a Christmas song. So pressing an issue is it that YouGov polls have been conducted on the subject (the ‘no’s had it, with a slim majority). I’d have to say it is though. It clearly ends in a hail of church bells, that were tacked on once the song had been slated for a festive release. Plus the video has snow in it! Luckily the fact that it now gets filed away with the other festive favourites for ten and a half months of the year means it’s not been done to death. Unlike some other boyband ballads from the mid-nineties…

Speaking of the video… It’s both iconic (those white parka jackets) and yet terrible (pretty much everything else – the dodgy green screen, the floating dancer, the white gloves…) But even that can’t ruin the song. East 17 would continue until the end of the decade – scoring a further six Top 10s – with their fair share of sackings, drama and drug-related controversies. Take That, it’s fair to say, won the war, if there ever was one. Though I was very surprised to learn that if you look beyond British shores, East 17 actually sold more records worldwide, thanks to their popularity in Europe and Australia. And recording one of the best ever boyband singles ever probably helped too.

711. ‘Sure’, by Take That

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Any act that racks up twelve number ones is going to have some chart-toppers that are better remembered than others… May I present to you, then, Take That’s all-but-forgotten #1.

Sure, by Take That (their 5th of twelve #1s)

2 weeks, from 9th – 23rd October 1994

I’m ‘sure’ I’ve heard this somewhere – the sure, so sure hook in the chorus was familiar – but the rest was a surprise. A pleasant surprise at that. The intro fools you, with lullabying chords suggesting that a syrupy ballad is on its way. But then everything goes a bit funky: with a squelchy bass, and lots of horns and scratchy turntables. If Take That’s previous hits had relied on retro, disco influences – ‘Relight My Fire’ and ‘Everything Changes’ – then ‘Sure’ sees the band turn to modern, American R&B.

Though, in fairness, this new jack swing beat had been around for a while, so they were actually quite late to the party. Still, it’s a solid pop song, and boybands are always at their most bearable when they’re keeping things upbeat. The lyrics are a bit PG, compared to similar acts – it’s been well over three years since Color Me Badd wanted to sex us up. Though there is a reference here to Gary Barlow’s relationship checklist: It’s got to be social, compatible, sexual, irresistible… (Take That’s big ‘rivals’ East 17 were a lot steamier on hits like ‘Deep’, but then they weren’t scoring #1 after #1. Definitely something to be said for keeping it family-friendly.)

Speaking of Mr Barlow, I do wish he’d relinquished lead vocal duty for this one. As fun a song as it is, he just doesn’t convince as a sexy alpha on the record, or when the lads cut a slick dance routine in the video. I’ve written in my previous posts on Take That that he clearly had ambitions above ‘boyband star’ – ambitions that will come to fruition with their next number one – and on the basis of their first five chart-toppers he was clearly the dominant force. Possibly too dominant. Small wonder Robbie wanted to break free…

‘Sure’ was the lead single from the band’s third album, and so was guaranteed to be a massive hit. It got the epic, seven-minute video treatment too. Though in truth half the video tells a very dull story in which the boys babysit a little girl while also trying to get ready for a house party. (Skip forward three and a half minutes if you just want to hear the actual song.) And yet, like I said in the intro, this record feels forgotten among their more famous hits. None more so than their sixth chart-topper: a genuinely huge pop-culture moment, coming along very soon.

704. ‘Everything Changes’, by Take That

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For their fourth #1 in nine months, Take That once again take turns at lead-vocal duty. We’ve had two Garys, one from Mark, and now a Robbie…

Everything Changes, by Take That (their 4th of twelve #1s)

2 weeks, from 3rd – 17th April 1994

Which gives a fairly throwaway pop song, a chart-topper more because of the band singing it than because of any innate quality the song might have, some significance. For here is the voice of the biggest British star of the coming decade… Though you might not have realised it at first, given the strange American accent he puts on for the album version’s intro…

On the single edit that bit is cut out, and we are rushed straight into another disco-tinged piece of retro-pop; the skinnier, sickly brother of ‘Relight My Fire’. I did wonder if ‘Everything Changes’ might have been a cover, as nobody under the age of sixty has ever used the term ‘taxicab’, but no – it’s a Gary Barlow (plus guests) writing credit. I guess they just needed the extra syllable to make it scan…

It’s perfectly serviceable pop. There’s nothing wrong with it (if we overlook the dated sax solo…) but neither is there much particularly memorable about it, apart perhaps from the for-ev-er… hook. There’s a reason why it was the fifth and final single from the band’s second album. There’s also a reason why it still made number one for a fortnight despite everyone already owning a copy of said album: Take That were bloody huge by this point.

While it might not have been his first lead vocals on a Take That single (I have little inclination to go back through their discography and check) it was definitely Robbie Williams’ first lead vocals on a #1. On their previous three, he very much took a back-seat. It felt strange to see him dancing gamely behind Barlow and Owen, knowing that he would go on to be bigger than any of them. But then, at the time, his departure was unexpected, and nobody would have bet on him having the success that he did.

Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. They’ve got a few more hits, and a few more chart-toppers, before he strikes out alone. And of the Take That #1s that have gone before, I’m starting to think I was a bit harsh on ‘Pray’… It’s head and shoulders above their other chart-toppers so far – as fun as ‘Relight My Fire’ was, and as strange as ‘Babe’ was. Quite possibly one of their very best…?