Pop

904. ‘Eternal Flame’, by Atomic Kitten

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I admitted to a nostalgic appreciation of the cheap and cheerful production on Atomic Kitten’s first number one, ‘Whole Again’. It worked fine on an original composition…

Eternal Flame, by Atomic Kitten (their 2nd of three #1s)

2 weeks, from 29th July – 12th August 2001

But to replace the iconic, tingling intro to ‘Eternal Flame’ with the exact same pre-set drumbeat is sacrilege. And all three Kittens combined cannot compare to Susanna Hoffs tremulous vocals. We’ve heard a lot of inessential covers cropping up at number one in recent years, many of them re-dos of eighties classics, and I’d say that this rivals A1’s ‘Take on Me’ for cheapening banality.

Ironically for a song widely believed to have brought about the end of the Bangles, this version of ‘Eternal Flame’ was the official relaunch of Atomic Kitten, Kerry Katona having been replaced by Jenny Frost during the promotion of their previous number one. It set the tone for several more years of mid-level balladry and cheap covers, none of which were a patch on the catchy, playful singles from their first album. We can once again conclude that Kerry ‘That’s why mum’s go to Iceland’ Katona was the genuine creative force in the group…

What’s interesting-slash-alarming to realise is that there were only twelve years between the two versions of ‘Eternal Flame’ making number one. Yet to my ears, considering I was aged three for one and fifteen for the other, they sound as if they’re from completely different millennia. Which they technically are, but that’s not what I mean… Whatever is beyond your living memory is automatically ‘ancient’, and anything you can remember is ‘modern’, even if there’s but a year between them. It’s the same as how I can watch ‘Top Gun’, or footage from the 1986 World Cup, and struggle to believe that I was alive at the same time…

Apologies for that tangent, but is there a better place to get lost in contemplation of the perception of time than in a post on Atomic Kitten’s butchering of ‘Eternal Flame’? And luckily for us, this isn’t the last eighties chart-topper that the Kittens are going to get their claws stuck into. Their final chart-topper awaits…

901. ‘The Way to Your Love’, by Hear’Say

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Every time I come across a #1 that I haven’t heard before I assume it will be the last such occasion. And I genuinely thought that I would have remembered something – a chorus, a line – from every 21st century chart-topper. But no, Hear’Say’s second number one has me stumped.

The Way to Your Love, by Hear’Say (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 1st – 8th July 2001

Though it makes sense that this was such a flash in the pan, and has been completely forgotten. The knock-off Max Martin production (Britney wouldn’t even have had this as an album track), the predictable chord progressions, lyrics like your heart is my home… It’s just so damn basic. If this is the best the year’s big new pop group can do for their second single then you start to fear for their longevity…

The two boys in the band, Noel and Danny, take more of a lead role here. And while I don’t want to be mean, I always thought they looked like two of the least likely pop group members ever. The three girls? Fine. I can see them as a sort of Atomic Kitten level girl group. But those two boys look more suited to refitting your kitchen. They can sing though – they all can sing, having gone through multiple audition rounds on ‘Popstars’ – and don’t let the side down.

Midway through, the song improves slightly, and morphs into a peppy Disney theme. A straight to VHS Disney movie, maybe. It’s still undeniably lame. And although this made number one, it did so on fairly low sales and went on to be the second lowest selling chart-topper of the year, ahead only of J-Lo’s January #1 ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’. Most tellingly, it sold but a tenth of ‘Pure and Simple’s total.

Hear’Say would release only one more single (the #4 hit ‘Everybody’) before the ‘Popstars’ winning line-up was ripped in two by Kym Marsh’s departure in January 2002, citing a rift in the group. She was quickly replaced, by backing dancer Johnny Shentall, for one final single. By then, public opinion against the group had turned, and they were being booed off stage and harassed at motorway service stations. They called it quits in October 2002, just twenty months after launching.

Of the five, Kym Marsh and Myleene Klass launched solo music careers (Marsh making #2 in 2003 with ‘Cry’ and Klass releasing two classical crossover albums) before moving into TV, acting and presenting. Suzanne Shaw went into stage and screen acting, as did Noel Sullivan, who I’m pretty sure I saw playing Danny in ‘Grease’ in the West End. Danny Foster is a wedding/pub singer. And to be honest, that all counts as a fairly successful end for a bunch of reality TV show contestants. Far sadder post-fame tales have been told…

900. ‘Lady Marmalade’, by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa & Pink

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We are officially 900 number ones not out! Thanks to everyone who has ever read, commented, liked and followed. I’m not sure that I ever imagined when I started writing these posts back in November 2017 (!) that I’d ever get this far. But, to paraphrase an old football cliché, I’ve just been taking it one number one at a time…

Lady Marmalade, by Christina Aguilera (her 2nd of four #1s), Lil Kim, Mýa & Pink (her 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 24th June – 1st July 2001

Our 900th is not the most original of chart-toppers, a cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’ coming barely three years on from the last chart-topping cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’. Have two other versions of the same song ever made #1 so close together? Anyway, while All Saints’ take played fast and loose with the LaBelle original, this all-star re-imagining is much more faithful.

One big difference, though, is that Lady Marmalade no longer plies her trade down in old New Orleans. She’s been transferred to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, just in time for the big glossy Baz Luhrmann movie musical of the same name. Different brothel, same story. Kitchy kitchy kitchy yaya dada. Mocha chocolatey yaya… Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?

It would be easy to look down on this OTT, fairly superfluous take on a seventies classic, in which four bad-ass chicks from the Moulin Rouge try to out-diva one another. And I won’t claim that it is better than LaBelle’s. But I enjoyed it back in 2001, and I still do enjoy it now. It strips all subtlety from what was already a fairly unsubtle song, adds a grinding industrial synth riff, and some well-placed cowbells. Mýa warms things up with the first verse, Pink (feeling quite out of place here, and in her suspenders in the video) ups the ante with the second. Clearly things were being set up for Christina, by far the biggest name of the four at the time, to blow everything out of the water for the finish.

Except, for my money, the show is stolen by Lil Kim’s rapped verse, the song’s one big change from the original, in which she delivers the immortal line: We independent women, Some mistake us for whores, I say why spend mine, When I can spend yours…? It’s a very modern female rap, a full decade ahead of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, that even Xtina’s explosive belting can’t overshadow. But boy, does she try. And it works, doesn’t grate, because, again, this ain’t the time for subtlety.

This record is a lot like the movie it came from, and like a lot Baz Luhrmann’s filmography: good fun, as long as you don’t stop and think about it too much. My biggest issue with it is why Missy (Misdemeanour here) Elliott, who acts as the MC for the outro, doesn’t get a credit, and therefore her second number one single?

It’s been customary, every hundred number ones, for me to look back at the marker posts that have gone before. But there’s a recap up next, and I’d like to save any retrospection for then. What is worth noting is how short the gaps between each hundred are getting. There were over seven years between the first chart-topper and the hundredth (November 1952 to April 1960), but less than three between numbers 800 and 900 (September 1998 to June 2001).

896. ‘Don’t Stop Movin”, by S Club 7

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So far, S Club 7 have teased us with their two number one singles: a cheesy TV show theme, and a festive ballad. Okay records, but no real proof of why they were the turn of the century’s finest tween-pop bubblegummers.

Don’t Stop Movin’, by S Club 7 (their 3rd of four #1s)

1 week, from 29th April – 6th May / 1 week, from 20th – 27th May 2001 (2 weeks total)

Until now. Because here is their undisputed (by me) best song: an unapologetic disco-pop banger. Uncontrollably catchy, unarguably wholesome, utterly lacking in edge. But who needs edge? Not S Club. Not anyone, really, when they have such a complete and utter floor filler. I can genuinely not imagine a party where ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’ would not get people dancing (and if there is then I don’t want invited).

Musically, this smooshes the past twenty-five years of pop music into a blender and comes up with a balance that works. The strings are disco, the beat is a ‘Billie Jean’ rip off (not a sample, as some claim), and the chorus is pure nineties bubblegum. For 2001, you could claim that it sounds old-fashioned. I’d rather go with ‘timeless’. There’s even a vocoder, for the fabulously naff Don’t stop movin’ to the S Club beat… coda, giving things that Daft Punk chic.

Bradley McIntosh is on lead vocals here, for the verses. (I have seen Bradley perform this live, and to this date he remains the only chart-topping artist whom I have touched/got an autograph off). Then regular lead Jo takes over for the bridge, which is the part of the song that seals its classic status. And which, listening to it now, owes a big debt to Madonna’s ‘Vogue’. Right here on the dance floor is where you got to let it go… Her vocals ahead of the final chorus are actually fairly spectacular.

I often claim that British pop songs lagged behind their US cousins at this time, which they did. But ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’, while completely British in its production and tone, can compete in terms of quality with almost anything that Britney was putting out at this time. And if I had to choose between this and the overly earnest Destiny’s Child record it knocked off top spot then there’s no contest.

There will be those that argue for ‘Reach’ as S Club 7’s best song, and it is a debate that causes deep divisions. ‘Reach’ is a great pop song, if a little too goody two shoes for my liking. But the real reason why ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’ is S Club’s greatest song, and not ‘Reach’, is that while both could happily be played at a primary school disco, only one could be played in a respectable nightclub. This one.

893. ‘Pure and Simple’, by Hear’Say

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There is an argument to be made that this next number one is the single most important pop song of the twenty first century. Had the debut single from the winners of ‘Popstars’, a docu-competition in which a brand new group was formed in front of the viewing public’s very eyes, not been a huge, million-selling success, then think what we might have been spared…

Pure and Simple, by Hear’Say (their 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 18th March – 8th April 2001

It would be easy to claim that this is the moment in which pop music was irredeemably ruined, all credibility stripped from the process of making pop, and that from here on the charts were off to hell in a handcart… In fact, that would be too easy. Pop music has always been reliant on photogenic puppets singing other people’s songs. What reality TV did was to bring the tawdry process out into the open, and to give the public a say (not always a good idea…)

Though I didn’t realise, or had forgotten, that Hear’Say were not chosen by a public vote. No, the five winning ‘Popstars’ were chosen by a judging panel, and the series filmed more as a documentary than a competition. The final episode aired on the day that ‘Pure and Simple’ entered at number one, the fastest selling debut of all time, with the Radio One announcement seen as the culmination of their journey.

What of the song, then, that kicks off this brave new world? It’s… alright. I remember actually liking it at the time, aged fifteen; but it hasn’t quite stood the test of time for me. It’s got some nice touches, some soulful vocals, and an ear-catching chord progression. But it can’t escape the fact that it already sounds dated, more 1998 than 2001, and that it is in debt to at least three other recent songs.

It has the cheapness of Atomic Kitten’s ‘Whole Again’, while it is also reaching for (and missing) the sassiness of All Saints’ ‘Never Ever’. And it is a clear melodic rip-off of Oasis’ ‘All Around the World’ – a fact noted by Noel Gallagher, who wisely let it slide given the liberal amount of melody borrowing he had done in his time. It had originally been recorded, but not released, by short-lived girl group Girl Thing a couple of years earlier.

Having said all that, and with these shortcomings fully in mind, ‘Pure and Simple’ stands head and shoulders above pretty much every Pop Idol/Fame Academy/X Factor/you name it winner’s single that came after. It is a decent, upbeat pop song, with lyrics that allow it to exist beyond its talent show context, and not a maudlin ballad about overcoming obstacles, making your dreams come true, and earning Simon Cowell millions of pounds…

I was about to launch into a (short) potted history of Hear’Say’s post-‘Pure and Simple’ career before remembering that they bucked the odds and actually managed a second number one. Fair play to them. We’ll save the bio for next time. And we’ll have plenty of time to reflect on the reality TV era – perhaps the biggest pop ‘genre’ of the 21st century – over the course of the fifty-plus number ones it has generated. Not all of which are terrible (though many of course are), and a handful of which are pretty damn good!

892. ‘Uptown Girl’, by Westlife

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Stung by their first ever non-number one (‘What Makes a Man’ having been kept off top spot by Bob the Builder), Westlife return with a foolproof strategy for restoring their chart fortunes. A carbon copy of a beloved classic.

Uptown Girl, by Westlife (their 8th of fourteen #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th March 2001

If a note-for-note cover of Billy Joel’s 1983 chart-topper was not enough of a guarantee, then making it the official Red Nose Day single was the clincher. Guaranteed, sure-fire, bookies not even letting you place bets sort of number one. And so it was, opening with Westlife’s biggest ever sales week.

And, on a very surface level, this isn’t a terrible record. It doesn’t irk in the same way that, say, A1’s cover of ‘Take on Me’ does. Probably because Westlife’s producers sensibly kept things very un-experimental, retaining the original’s doo-wop, Four Seasons-aping energy. It adds nothing, however, and you will never need to listen to the Westlife version of ‘Uptown Girl’ as long as Billy Joel’s original is available.

Actually, it’s not strictly true that nothing is added. Because this is Westlife, ‘Uptown Girl’ now has a key change. Hey ho. Again, it doesn’t ruin the song. If you squint hard enough you can imagine you’re listening to the original. Am I being overly charitable? About this charity record? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just glad that this is a Westlife number one that ISN’T A BALLAD! Of their frankly unbelievable total of fourteen number ones, I’d say that only two are officially not ballads (while I will hear arguments for ‘If I Let You Go’ being their third non-ballad #1, if anyone cares to make them…)

Westlife were following in Boyzone’s footsteps here, Ronan and his gang having released the previous Comic Relief single two years earlier: a similarly faithful redo of another eighties classic. It’s almost as if the same evil genius was behind both bands… But I will give Westlife the credit of not being anywhere near as reliant on cheesy covers as their predecessors. Over half of Boyzone’s chart-topping records were covers, whereas this was only Westlife’s second out of nine releases.

To be fair, the video is quite fun, with Claudia Schiffer as the uptown girl, and a little dig at Bob the Builder too…

890. ‘Whole Again’, by Atomic Kitten

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The first thing that hits your ears with our next number one is the pre-set drumbeat, and synthy organs. It sounds cheap. And ‘cheap’ sets the perfect tone for one of the new millennium’s biggest ballads, and one of its biggest girl groups.

Whole Again, by Atomic Kitten (their 1st of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 4th February – 4th March 2001

If the Spice Girls were the group you’d like to have hung out with, and All Saints were the group you were terrified of running into in the corridor; Atomic Kitten were the group that would happily nick you a packet of fags from the Spar as long as you let them keep a couple. Kerry, Liz, and Tash, three likely scouse lasses.

If that sounds a bit snobby; I don’t mean it to. I imagine it was a big part of their appeal, and their success. They genuinely looked like girls from your school. They weren’t the best singers, they weren’t glamour models, and the production on their songs was largely cheap and largely cheerful. You could argue that they were to pop music what Limp Bizkit, the act they knocked off top spot, were to rock. (Though both acts, I will argue, do have brilliant names.)

I will also contest that ‘Whole Again’ is a great pop ballad, with an almost cynically heart-tugging chord progression, and a retro feel (especially in the spoken word middle-eight). If it had had a bit more money thrown at it, if it had come within five hundred metres of an actual musical instrument, and been sung by someone like Gabrielle, it would be regarded as a true classic. But it is let down by not having all of the above, and is now just a nostalgic classic, and not a song you hear all that often anymore. (Unless of course when it’s being re-written in tribute to Gareth Southgate…)

Yet, it managed to become huge. It stayed at number one for a full month, the longest stay of the millennium so far, increasing in sales for each of those four weeks. It became the 2000’s 13th highest-selling single, and Britain’s 4th biggest girl group single of all time, behind ‘Wannabe’, ‘2 Become 1’, and ‘Never Ever’. And maybe this success was exactly because it sounds so of its time: the ballad that came along in the right place, at the right time, and will forever be rooted in the winter of 2000-2001.

I actually remember hearing ‘Whole Again’ for the first time, probably the week before it went to number one. We were snowed in from school, and I saw the video on GMTV or something. And I remember thinking that it sounded like a massive hit. (I also remember the first time I heard one other #1 from 2001, and it is one of the three songs from this year to outsell ‘Whole Again’…)

This was actually Atomic Kitten’s last roll of the dice, as they were on the verge of being dropped from their record label and consigned to the girl group dustbin had ‘Whole Again’ not been a hit. Adding to their difficulties was the fact that Kerry Katona had quit the group a couple of weeks before this was released, and her parts hastily re-recorded by replacement Jenny Frost.

Still, it mattered not. The record was huge, launching Atomic Kitten Mk II, and bringing about several years’ worth of hits, including two more number ones that we we’ll get to in due course. Without giving too much away, both those chart-toppers are fairly crap, but I would argue for the quality of their earlier Mk I hits, ‘See Ya’ and ‘I Want Your Love’: catchy and experimental, the kooky brainchildren of OMD’s Andy McCluskey and Stuart Kershaw, who had created the group.

888. ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’, by Jennifer Lopez

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A few weeks ago we welcomed Beyoncé to the top of the charts, and now we welcome another twenty first century icon…

Love Don’t Cost a Thing, by Jennifer Lopez (her 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 14th – 21st January 2001

It does seem a bit laughable to compare Jennifer Lopez with Beyoncé now, in 2025, but in the early years of the millennium there were few bigger pop stars than J Lo. And for her first number one, the Beyoncé comparison is very fitting, as I hadn’t realised how much ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’ owed a debt to Destiny’s Child and their fluttery style of R&B.

It’s also similar to ‘Independent Women (Pt 1)’, though Lopez compares love, rather than independence, to wealth in the lyrics: Baby credit cards, Aren’t romance, Still you’re tryna buy, What’s already yours… Call me a cynic, but I’m not totally sold on the idea that J Lo would be happy dating a pauper, but at least it gives us a treasure trove of early ‘00s slang: Think you gotta keep me iced, You don’t… If I wanna floss I got my own… Rumours at the time suggested it was a dig at her then-boyfriend, P Diddy, who apparently had the cash but not the class. Looking back, if the worst he did was buy her a few Mercedes then she probably got off quite lightly…

Musically it’s fine. It rattles along at a fair clip, not giving you a chance to pick holes with some of the now pretty dated production touches. I do like the synthy drum fills, and the break where squelchy horns take over the beat. Like most US pop songs at the time its slick and polished, though it comes nowhere close to the heights of a Britney or a Christina record from the same time.

In fact, without giving too much away, I find all three of J Lo’s number ones slightly underwhelming. She had some great tunes fall short, such as her other classic of false modesty ‘Jenny From the Block’, and the banging ‘Play’, which made #3 a few months after this chart-topper. This is decent enough pop, very much of its time – a time capsule record – but perhaps not the sort of record that would have topped the charts at any time other than January.

882. ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’, by LeAnn Rimes

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Showing A1 just how it’s done, here is some authentic turn-of-the-century American jumbo-pop.

Can’t Fight the Moonlight, by LeAnn Rimes (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th November 2000

Can that become the standard term for this sort of huge chords, huge vocals, huge synths pop? Jumbo-pop. It’ll be my legacy. Though while Britney and Christina are obvious reference points for this record, LeAnn Rimes was first and foremost a country artist, and so this is jumbo-pop with a country twang. Which is cool.

But as with the Corrs’ Mutt Lange-produced ‘Breathless’, this makes me once again rue the fact that the Queen of late-nineties country pop, Shania Twain, never made top spot in the UK. Catchy as ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’ is, it is no ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’. Very few pop songs are…

I will say that this song does almost lose the run of itself from the middle-eight onwards, with synths that sound like a garbage crusher gone haywire. It gets very cluttered and rushed, as if on a deadline, where a few more seconds runtime could have allowed the song to breathe a bit. But the way Rimes launches herself into the key change is impressive, and allows her to show off her vocals towards the end. It was written by Diane Warren, and produced by movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, which perhaps explains its ginormous sound.

Bruckheimer was presumably involved because this comes from the soundtrack to his movie, ‘Coyote Ugly’. It’s a film that I remember being huge among my age group at the time, but that never gets mentioned anymore. (Its 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes might explain why…) Apparently LeAnn Rimes appears in the film as herself, while she also recorded ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’ for actress Piper Perabo – who played the main character – and so technically duets with herself at the end of the film. Which sounds enjoyably messy.

While this may be a bit cluttered, a bit too fast, a bit chaotic, it’s still undeniably huge and catchy. There’s something admirable about the sheer joie de vivre of so many of these recent number ones, even if not many are truly great records, which makes me miss a time when pop music came with a capital ‘P’!

Although this is LeAnn Rimes biggest hit by chart position, she is probably much better remembered for her ballad ‘How Do I Live’, which was the 6th highest-selling song of 1998 despite never rising above #7. She remains active, and seems to have moved more into Christian contemporary territory in her old age.

881. ‘Same Old Brand New You’, by A1

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Let’s purge A1’s unnecessary cover of ‘Take on Me’ from our minds, and instead revel in their second number one of the year, and some of the purest turn-of-the-century pop this side of *NSYNC.

Same Old Brand New You, by A1 (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th November 2000

In fact, this is *NSYNC crossed with the Backstreet Boys, and with a liberal dollop of Britney Spears. It is a shameless tribute to/pastiche of/rip-off of that blockbuster, Max Martin sound so beloved of those Stateside pop juggernauts. It was co-written by Eric Foster White, who had worked with Britney and the BSBs. And it comes pretty close to being as good.

The a cappella intro is striking, and well sung; and the chorus is a peach. The chords are huge, the production has that clanking industrial sound that makes everything feel epic. It’s also got a cheeky title, almost palindromic. No song called ‘Same Old Brand New You’ is going to be dull. But why don’t I rate it as highly as, say, ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’?

Sad to say, it’s probably because it’s A1, and there’s something a bit budget about them. If this has been recorded by Justin Timberlake and his crew, maybe I’d be more effusive. We Brits tend to knock our own while being in thrall to anything from across the Atlantic. I felt the same about Billie Piper’s foray into similarly hard-edged pop, ‘Day and Night’.

Though if I had to give a specifically musical reason for this song falling short of classic status, I’d point out the hugely clunking robot-voice sections. They go on too long, are too distorted, and are simply incomprehensible. The lyrics get completely lost: something, something, not keeping your promises… (To my ears it sounds like never gonna change your passwords…)

But it’s still a lot of fun, and a song I admit I’d completely forgotten about. Despite being a chart-topper, it’s definitely been lost among the year 2000’s more illustrious number ones. This was from A1’s second album, and they had one more in them. That gave us their last big hit – the also pretty decent ‘Caught in the Middle’, which made #2 in early 2002. They split soon after, but have reformed since. Like Westlife in my previous post, A1 were hugely popular in Asia, so popular that there were four teenage girls sadly crushed to death when the band turned up for a signing in Jakarta.

As it is still just about Eurovision season, it would be remiss to finish without mentioning that A1 almost represented Norway at the contest in 2010. Meanwhile Ben Adams did, as one half of Subwoolfer, finishing in 10th place in 2022, with the memorably titled ‘Give that Wolf a Banana’.