813. ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’, by The Offspring

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Comedy-rock is an underrepresented genre on the UK singles chart, if indeed it is a genre at all. Most of the comic songs we’ve met so far have been thoroughly pop-leaning, and most of them have been thoroughly awful…

Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), by The Offspring (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 24th – 31st January 1999

Luckily this next record rocks, and isn’t awful. ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’ would be a hard-rocking #1 in any era, but in the extreme pop landscape of the late nineties it really stands out. And if any sub-genre of rock lends itself towards comedy, it would be this sort of gonzo nu-punk. From the faux-German intro (borrowed from Def Leppard), past the uno dos tres…, to the Give it to me baby, Aww-aww-aww-aww… this song is packed with several extremely dumb but catchy hooks.

Admittedly I turned thirteen on this song’s final day at #1, so was the perfect age for something this loud and obnoxious. But I will argue that it has held up pretty well, and in fact its poseur-bashing message is perhaps even more relevant in the social media age. Okay, some of the references are dated (Ricki Lake, mistaking Vanilla Ice for Ice Cube) but He may not have a clue, And he may not have style, But everything he lacks well he makes up in denial… is a line for all seasons. Fake it ‘til you make it, baby…

Frontman Dexter Holland made it clear that the song wasn’t a comment on Black/hip-hop culture, but a satire on middle-class white kids trying to ape it. My favourite line is when the hero of the song is cruising in his Pinto, waving at homies as they pass… But if he looks twice they’re gonna kick his lily ass… To this day, though, I don’t get the reference to him wanting a ‘13’ tattoo but getting a ‘31’. I’d appreciate it if one of my more fly readers could enlighten this particular white guy…

The Offspring, from southern California, had been around since 1984 under the name Manic Subsidal. They were proper punks back in the day, which inevitably led to some older fans seeing the poppier sound (not to mention the chart success) of this track as a sell-out. They presumably had conniption fits when they heard the ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ aping follow-up ‘Why Don’t You Get a Job?’, which made #2 a few months later.

This smash hit set the Offspring up for a good few years of belated chart success, with tunes like ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’, ‘Original Prankster’, and ‘Hit That’ to name a few of my favourites. They probably never quite hit the commercial heights of other ‘90s pop-punk acts like Green Day or Blink-182, but they have something that neither of those bands managed: a number one single.

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.

811. ‘Praise You’, by Fatboy Slim

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A 4th chart-topping guise for Norman Cook, then. After some indie a cappella with the Housemartins, some dub-dance with Beats International, and a funky remix of Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’, he finally makes number one under his own steam…

Praise You, by Fatboy Slim (his 1st and only solo #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th January 1999

The piano line is captivating, as are the smokily soulful opening vocals. We’ve come a long, long way together, Through the hard times and the good… I like the way the final note of these lines is dragged out, and out, and out… and out, as the percussion builds in anticipation of a monumental drop… That never comes. Just more of the same groove, and more of the same vocals.

As on ‘Brimful of Asha’, Fatboy Slim’s mixing style is crowd-pleasing and accessible. Nothing too fancy, nothing too hardcore; just big beats that make you want to dance. But the intro is definitely the best part, oozing a promise that isn’t quite delivered. It’s appealing and catchy, but there are only so many ways that you can chop and twist the two vocal lines that make up this entire song. The album version drags on for a much too long five and a half minutes, though a more palatable radio-edit was used for the single.

‘Praise You’ is a wild smorgasbord of samples, prime among them ‘Take Yo’ Praise’ by Camille Yarborough. Thus twenty-five years later I belatedly realise that it is a woman’s voice singing on this track… I genuinely had no idea. Buried deeper we have a piano line from the Steve Miller Band, drums from John Fogerty, the theme to a cartoon called ‘Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids’, and a guitar lick from Disney anthem ‘It’s a Small World’. From Mickey Mouse, to CCR, to Bill Cosby; ‘eclectic’ doesn’t even begin to cover it!

The video was also a big selling point, secretly filmed in front of Fox Bruin Theatre in LA. It’s a flashmob, at least ten years before that concept went viral, featuring some apeshit breakdancing from director Spike Jonze. It wasn’t staged at all, apparently, including the moment when a theatre employee storms out and turns off their stereo.

Norman Cook finally scores a solo number one, then, and it acts as a swansong to one of the more leftfield chart-topping careers. There can’t be many, if any, other acts to have four different #1s under four different guises. He still had plenty more hits to come, though, and the other singles from his ‘You’ve Come a Long Way Baby’ album, like ‘Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Gangster Trippin’, really are the sound of the late nineties for me. He also remained an active remixer, and I would point you in the direction of his great work on Missy Elliott’s ‘Gossip Folks’, and the Beastie Boys’ ‘Body Movin’.

810. ‘Tragedy’ / ‘Heartbeat’, by Steps

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1999, then. Just writing it out – ‘1999’ – still feels pleasingly futuristic, despite it being twenty-five years ago. And what cutting-edge, avant-garde #1 do we have to guide us into the future…? Steps! With a Bee Gees cover…

Tragedy / Heartbeat, by Steps (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 3rd – 10th January 1999

It is a cheap and cheerful (‘cheap and cheerful’ being the Steps motto) and pretty faithful cover of the Brothers Gibb’s 1979 chart-topper, the big hit of the ’98 party season. By the first week in January presumably everyone knew the hands-to-the-face-while-shouting-out-the-title-line move from the video, the record having taken seven weeks to climb to the top – a very slow burn for the late nineties.

‘Heartbeat’ is a little more inventive, and was initially the song that was pushed to radio. A wintery ballad, with lots of little retro-flourishes (I love the revving bass), sounding like something Barbara Dickson might have recorded a decade and a half earlier. Faye and Clare, the pair that usually took the lead on Steps’ singles, both have an oddly old-fashioned, stage school way of enunciating their lines which is well-demonstrated here. But they also both have a set of lungs on them, giving oomph to even the most banal of lines. As with most Steps songs, we are left to wonder what the two male members, H and Lee, are doing. At least here they contributed some nice backing vocals.

I will admit right now, loud and proud, that I like Steps. Whatever. Sue me. Yes, they’re camp. Yes, they are cheesy. Yes, they are a Poundland ABBA. And yes, occasionally they’ve made some truly awful records (‘5,6,7,8’ springs immediately to mind). But all that is forgiven thanks to the pop perfection of singles like ‘Last Thing on My Mind’, or ‘Love’s Got a Hold of My Heart’.

Sadly, they’re neither the first, nor the last, act to be poorly served by their chart-toppers. ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Heartbeat’ wouldn’t rank among their best songs (and the less said about their second #1 the better… until I have to write a post about it.) They match Sash! – see my previous post – for five #2s, at least four of which would have made better #1s than this.

1999 will take us longer to get through than any year so far, with thirty-five chart-toppers (up four from 1998’s total). But luckily we’re now hitting a typically eclectic run of January number ones, made up of genre-hopping DJs, boyband covers, punk rockers, and the shock return of a legendary new-wave band… Exciting times ahead!

Never Had a #1… Sash!

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I thought my ‘Never Had a #1…’ series had reached a natural end. I’d gone through the main suspects: The Who, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, among others, and was struggling to think of many other significant acts that hadn’t topped the UK singles chart. Until I remembered the act that can lay claim to being the unluckiest in chart history… Sash! (The exclamation mark is theirs, not mine…)

Between 1997 and 2000, Sash! scored five #2 singles without managing a single chart topper. Of course, plenty of acts have finished as runner-up more often than that. Madonna has twelve number two hits to her name, Cliff and Kylie have eleven… Elvis has seventeen if you include his 2005 re-releases. But the difference is that those legends also managed plenty of number ones between them. Not Sash!

Sash! were – still are – a German DJ and production four-piece, formed in 1995. They had a distinctive Euro-trance sound, and a clear ‘if it ain’t broke’ approach to hit-making, so this rundown of their tunes might start to sound like a spot-the-difference exercise…

‘Encore Une Fois’ – #2 in 1997

If you only listen to one of these, then make it this one. This is a banger, and the only one of Sash’s hits that I truly remember. The female vocalist has always made me think of a station announcer. The French title translates as ‘one more time’, which is fitting because…

‘Ecuador’ ft. Rodriguez – #2 in 1997

They came back with more of the same. For their follow up hit, they swapped a woman shouting in French for a man shouting in Spanish. Rodriguez, presumably. This is still pretty catchy, a little lighter, a little more House-y.

‘Stay’ ft. La Trec – #2 in 1997

Completing their hat-trick of #2s in 1997, we get an intro in a 3rd language. English! By this point it’s getting hard to tell one trance riff from the next, but at least this one does have verses and choruses, and not just shouting.

‘Mysterious Times’ ft. Tina Cousins – #2 in 1998

The second single from their second album (the lead only made #3!) is a little more subtle. I’d also say a little more bland. I actually miss the shouting.

‘Adelante’ – #2 in 2000

We return to something a little more banging, with a little more Spanish, for Sash’s final UK #2. ‘Adelante’ means ‘forward’, which is fitting for a song released in February 2000, with a whole new millenium stretching out promisingly ahead of us… I would struggle to tell any of their non-‘Encore Une Fois’ hits from the other, although this track has to be praised for the novel use of accordions in a dance song.

If anyone has any other suggestions for acts that would merit a ‘Never Had a #1’ post (as in acts with lots of hits but no chart-toppers, rather than a band you really like but that have never been above #23) then let me know in the comments!

Next up, we prepare to party like it’s 1999…

809. ‘Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)’, by Chef

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Falling short behind the Spice Girls in Christmas-week, but thrusting to number one for the new year… A funky ode to some sweet, yet salty, confectionary.

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You), by Chef (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th December 1998 – 3rd January 1999

Part-recipe, part funk-soul masterpiece… Could we argue that ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ is the first and perhaps only true funk song to make number one in the UK? Naturally everyone came for the innuendo, but they stayed for the fact this is actually a great song, with a nasty funk riff. Plus, the voice is Isaac Hayes – soul, funk, Stax Records legend – becoming one of the oldest chart-topping artists, aged fifty-five.

In all honesty, these balls do be sounding delicious. Cinnamon, butter, brandy, vanilla, and chocolate (though, interestingly, no salt)… Grease up the cooking sheet, (Cause I hate when my balls stick)… Then pre-heat the oven to 350, And give that spoon a lick…! It all leads to a frenzied ending, in which Chef’s balls start to burn, and a piano takes a pounding like nothing we’ve heard since Jerry Lee Lewis was at number one.

If you’re going to do a novelty song – if you really must – then use records like this as your ‘How To’. Ridiculous innuendo, a genuinely good tune, and a proper singer that doesn’t mind taking the mickey out of themselves. Some might blanche at a soul legend like Hayes only making number one by growling Now suck on my balls! I am not one of those people. And it’s not like he’d come especially close in the previous three decades: a #10 in 1975 with ‘Disco Connection’, after a #4 in 1971 with the iconic ‘Theme from ‘Shaft’’.

Chef was of course a character in 1998’s breakout cartoon, ‘South Park’. I was slap-bang in the middle of the show’s target demographic, and the playground that year had been full of kids shouting ‘Oh my god, you killed Kenny!’ (though I wasn’t allowed to watch the show myself). ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ had featured in an episode a few months earlier, and proved memorable enough to be released as a single, pushing the actual Spice Girls all the way in the race for Christmas number one, and finishing only eight thousand copies behind them. (In doing so it recorded the highest weekly sale for a #2 since 1984.)

‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ isn’t the only chart hit to come from South Park. The following year ‘Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo’ made the festive charts, peaking at #4. A funny postscript to this record, though, is the fact that Isaac Hayes had joined the Church of Scientology in the 1990s, and left South Park in 2005 after an episode satirising said Church. He also presumably disowned his sole British chart-topper. Hayes died in 2008, following a stroke.

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.)

806. ‘Believe’, by Cher

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What is this fantasy world, in which a fifty-two year old woman can score the biggest hit of her career, well over thirty years into it..?

Believe, by Cher (her 4th and final #1)

7 weeks, from 25th October – 13th December 1998

Well the autumn of 1998 was no fantasy. Was it the novelty factor? Was it the autotune? Or was it just the fact that ‘Believe’ is a simply great pop song? Yes, yes, and yes; but I also think that it’s the contrast between the low-key, melancholy verses, with lines like No matter how hard I try, You keep pushing me aside… And the soaring, positive chorus. Do you believe in life after love…? Well, do you?

It’s also a modern sounding pop song, with all the late nineties flourishes, sound effects and, yes, a version of that synthesised drum beat. Quite a departure from the MOR rock that Cher had been recording for much of the ‘80s and ‘90s; sounding like it could have been recorded by one of the much younger poppettes of the day.

But we do have to address the Auto-Tuned elephant in the room. ‘Believe’ is often credited with introducing the world to the tool, which had been invented just one year before. But it’s use here is gimmicky, and fun. Nobody doubts that Cher can sing, and the way she belts the middle-eight out here, all natural, leave us in no doubt. Other, less vocally capable, singers’ use of Auto-Tune is a subject we can save for another day…

‘Believe’ truly was a behemoth of a song. Seven weeks at number one in the late-nineties was a huge achievement, a run that will not be matched again until 2005. In some ways we could see it as the last of the 1990’s ‘event’ singles, songs that went beyond the chart and entered the lives of the general public, like Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston, Wet Wet Wet, and Elton John before. I certainly remember it being everywhere in the school playground that autumn, and it remains the biggest-selling single of all time by a solo female.

I wrote earlier about the novelty factor of having an old(er) pop star like Cher at number one, but the truth is that this was her third chart-topper of the decade, after ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ and ‘Love Can Build a Bridge’. The ‘90s is by far her most successful chart era, after her initial ‘60s successes and a fairly barren twenty years in between. So perhaps it’s not too much of a surprise that she was capable of pulling a hit like this out of the bag in her fifties.

Since ‘Believe’ Cher hasn’t managed too many more hits, but she reached #18 last year – aged seventy-seven! – with her festive ‘DJ Play a Christmas Song’. She will probably outlive us all. An interesting footnote here is that the week in which ‘Believe’ made #1 – the final week in October – the Top 5 of the singles chart was famously superannuated. George Michael was #2 with ‘Outside’, U2 were at #3, and a recently reformed Culture Club sat at #4.

805. ‘Gym and Tonic’, by Spacedust

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We’re about to encounter one of the biggest pop songs of all time, from a legendary star. But before that, a brief interlude. A real ‘um, okay’ moment…

Gym and Tonic, by Spacedust (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 18th – 25th October 1998

‘Gym and Tonic’ is, essentially, an aerobics workout set to a hi-NRG beat. Stand with your feet parallel, A little more than hip distance apart… Apparently it was based on a Jane Fonda workout from the eighties, with the vocals here re-recorded to avoid a lawsuit. How fun it would have been if Jane had allowed it, and had featured on a number one single!

Although had that been the case, then it would presumably have been the original version by French DJ Bob Sinclar, very popular in Ibiza that summer, that would have been the hit. It was produced by Thomas Bangalter, AKA one half of Daft Punk (Yes, a member of Daft Punk, one of the most respected dance acts of all time, is involved in this nonsense.) Their version was never fully released due to the Fonda sample, but survives on YouTube. I’m not sure even an experienced musicologist could tell the difference between that and the Spacedust version – a few scratchy cuts aside – but they got away with it.

The most interesting thing here, musically, is the Balearic riff that plays over the top of the beat and all the five, six, seven, eight and backs. It sounds like all the dance hits to come between 1999 and the start of the new century. The future of dance music, first revealed in a piece of fluff like this…

Still, you can never underestimate the popularity of a dance song that tells you what to do in the lyrics: ‘The Time Warp’, ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’… This. All big hits. Although ‘Gym and Tonic’ did also strike it lucky by sneaking a week on top with very low sales. It was by far the year’s lowest selling #1, only the 109th biggest selling hit of 1998 (meaning that seventy-nine singles which didn’t make number one outsold it).

Spacedust were a British production duo, and beyond this surprise chart-topper they had one further hit, a #20 with ‘Let’s Get Down’. And I’ll admit I’ve been bopping along to this track for the past half hour, enjoying its infectious energy. It’s silly, but not at all heinous. And the video is a whole lot of camp fun, almost reinventing the phrase ‘cheap and cheerful’. It’s oddities like this which keep writing these posts interesting. It can’t all be era-defining pop classics. Speaking of which…