772. ‘Men in Black’, by Will Smith

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The first half of 1997 was an interesting musical smorgasbord, with a quick turnover of number ones meaning we flitted gayly from genre to genre. During the second half of the year things will get slightly more predictable at the top of the charts, and records will start staying at #1 for slightly longer…

Men in Black, by Will Smith (his 1st and only solo #1)

4 weeks, from 10th August – 7th September 1997

Beginning with the year’s second big soundtrack hit. ‘Men in Black’ was the summer’s big popcorn movie, featuring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and some aliens, which I thought I remembered fondly until I realised I was thinking of ‘Independence Day’, from the year before. I probably did see ‘Men in Black’ at the time, but it hasn’t remained with me.

The lyrics are geared towards the movie plot, which means unique lines like: Walk in shadow, Move in silence, Guard against extra-terrestrial violence… It reminds me of Partners in Kryme – one of the first hip-hop chart toppers – and their rhymes about which Teenage Ninja Turtle liked pizza (Michelangelo, of course). You could class this, and Puff Daddy’s ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ as a step back for hip-hop, after more innovative and respectable #1s by the Fugees and Coolio. But at the same time, this was a huge-selling, month-long number one, and another sign that rap had gone mainstream. (It was also, I believe, the first time that one hip-hop track had knocked another off top spot).

It’s based around ‘Forget Me Nots’, a minor hit in 1982 for Patrice Rushen. If it sounds familiar, then that’s because George Michael had sampled it a year earlier on ‘Fastlove’. The chorus was edited and sung by Coko, of the R&B group SWV, who really should have gotten a co-credit, so much does she bring to the show.

“Will Smith don’t have to cuss to sell records, but I do”, Eminem would famously rap a few years after this. It’s easy to be snobbish about Smith’s family-friendly approach to hip-hop (an NME review at the time labelled him the ‘Cliff Richard of rap’) but really, this is well-made, catchy pop. I don’t love it now, twenty-seven years on, but it was everywhere that summer, and was the #1 when I started high school. Plus the Bouncin’ with me, Slide with me… break is still great fun. File it under ‘fondly remembered’.

‘Men in Black’ was Will Smith’s debut solo single, featuring on his first solo album ‘Big Willie Style’ (tee-hee) and marked a return to music after he’d begun focusing on acting in the early-nineties. He has of course already featured at number one, as the Fresh Prince with Jazzy Jeff in 1993; while this song set him up for a good few years of chart success. He would have eight further Top 5 hits between now and 2005, including three #2s. Respect from the hip-hop community never quite arrived, but he had a great ear for a sample, and made some of the records that define the late-nineties for many people of my generation. He hasn’t released much new music since the mid-2000s, but remains one of Hollywood’s big hitters…

771. ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’, by Oasis

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Was this the most anticipated song of the nineties? The decade’s ultimate band, whose previous album had become one of the biggest in history, releasing the lead single from their third LP. In this moment, Oasis were everything, and everywhere.

D’You Know What I Mean?, by Oasis (their 3rd of eight #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th July 1997

‘Definitely Maybe’ had the attitude, and the riffs, while ‘What’s the Story’ had the globe-straddling ambition, and huge pop choruses. ‘Be Here Now’ would have to go some to be even bigger than its predecessors… And ‘go some’ it did. Starting with the seven-minute lead…

Seven and a half minutes, in fact, that are completely overblown and ridiculous, and somehow still pretty boring. On the album version, clocking in at almost eight minutes, the scene is set with a full minute of helicopters, feedback, bleeping and blooping, before the song even starts. The first chorus doesn’t arrive until the two and a half minute mark. The final minute or so is more feedback, and psychedelic loops for good measure. Most of the verses are slow and plodding, with so many different tracks welded together that listening to it, especially on headphones, can be a trippy experience. There’s a decent song in there, somewhere, buried under a landslide of sound.

The best thing about ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ is the lyrics, Oasis at their most Oasis-y. In fact it might as well be the Liam manifesto, with pearls like: Comin’ in a mess, Goin’ out in style, I ain’t good-looking but I’m someone’s child… and I met my maker, Made him cry… Is this his best vocal performance on an Oasis #1? Perhaps. And of course there are two Beatles references (The fool on the hill and I feel fine…) so blatant that Noel was clearly playing to the gallery.

It didn’t really matter what it sounded like, this was always going to go to number one, and the fact that it is so overblown and so far up its own arse makes for an interesting chart-topping record. (Though despite it selling almost 400,000 copies in its first week, Puff Daddy returned to the top a week later.) ‘Be Here Now’ was equally always going to be the year’s biggest album; but after early adulation, the critical response to it quickly soured. It is, how to say… a bit much. Obnoxious, overlong, overproduced, over-the-top. The problem was that Oasis were too big to edit, and they were taking far too much cocaine. Even the title of this record, ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ sounds like a conversation with a drugged-up bore.

That’s not to say I don’t like ‘Be Here Now’ – it’s got some great tunes buried within it, and gets too much stick from people who probably haven’t listened to it in twenty-five years. And actually, so what if it’s a bloated whale-corpse of a record, made by a band who had spent two years gorging on champagne and coke…? That’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby. Perhaps one of the genre’s last great excesses, just two years out from the horrors of a new millennium. Which of the 21st century’s big rock bands would even attempt something so hideously gargantuan? Coldplay? Snow Patrol? Imagine Dragons…?

In my post on ‘Beetlebum’, I pinpointed that record as the start of the Britpop comedown. Blur had taken themselves off to bed as shivering, sweating wrecks. But ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ is the sound of Oasis keeping the party going, for better or worse, even though the morning sun is creeping through the cracks in the blinds, as the song drones on and on, and on.

It became the second-longest #1 single ever, ahead of ‘Hey Jude’ but thirty seconds behind Meat Loaf’s ‘I Would Do Anything for Love’. Never ones to be denied, Oasis’s third single from ‘Be Here Now’ will be so long that it will make ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’ seem short and sweet by comparison. And that one will be making number one soon enough.

Cover Versions of #1s – ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ / ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’

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We finish Cover Versions week with a two-for-the-price-of-one deal. Rod Stewart scored his 4th number one in 1977 with two covers of acoustic classics – ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ and ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’. I was a bit hard on it when recapping (I gave it a ‘Meh’ Award), and by far the most memorable thing about the record is that it kept the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ off the top… fairly or otherwise.

But really, both songs are quite lovely. If either had topped the charts on their own, it would have been fine. Both together, with Rod dragging the arse out of them, and I got a bit bored. Luckily for us, there are plenty of other versions of both songs for us to get our teeth into.

Both songs existed before Rod got his hands on them. ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ was recorded by US band Crazy Horse, for their first album after Neil Young had left them to form Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Stewart didn’t stray very far from this when recording his own hit version. It’s very early-seventies country-rock, and hides a tragic backstory in the fact that the writer (and singer of this original) Danny Whitten would die of a drug overdose barely a year after it was recorded.

For something a bit different, we’d have to wait until 1988, when Everything But the Girl made #3 with their own version. In truth, it’s more the band performing it that makes this one stand out, as it’s a similarly heartfelt, acoustic take, albeit it with a few more strings. This was the duo’s only Top 10 hit between their debut in 1982, and their now signature song ‘Missing’ in 1995.

‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’ dates back further than ‘I Don’t Want…’, as it was written by Cat Stevens in 1965. Stevens sold the song for thirty pounds to US soul singer P.P. Arnold, who was the first to have a hit with it in 1967. Her version has an interesting production: part-Motown, part-sixties beat band, part-soul stomper… Sonically it’s more enjoyable, for me, than any of the more straightforward, guitar-led versions.

Cat Stevens would eventually record his own version as an album track, while it was a Canadian number one in 1973 in a particularly strident version by Keith Hampshire. Then thirty years later, Sheryl Crow brought the song back to the charts with a fairly predictable cover, put out as the ‘new’ single on a Best Of album. By far the most unusual cover of ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, though, came in 1995 from Swedish rapper Papa Dee. It’s a classic slice of mid-nineties reggae-pop, complete with an Ace of Base beat and a ragga break in the middle. I’m suprised it wasn’t a hit in the UK, given how many reggae interludes we’ve enjoyed in recent months. Still, it was popular across Europe, especially in Scandivania, where it went Top 10 in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

I hope you’ve enjoyed ‘Cover Versions’ week, and have perhaps heard a version of a well-known hit that was new to you. I know I did! This weekend we’ll get back to more familiar songs, and artists, starting with possibly the most anticipated single of the 1990s.

Cover Versions of #1s – Torre Florim & The Pogues

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‘Firestarter’, by Torre Florim

I have to thank the person who, in the comments section on ‘Firestarter’, pointed me in the direction of this version of the Prodigy’s controversial classic. (Folks, please put your name in the comments!) It’s a complete reinvention – as all the best cover versions are – ‘Firestarter’ as performed by ‘White Album’ era Beatles, and sung by Scott Walker. Still, it retains the song’s ominous, bubbling nastiness, even as it lulls to you to sleep with its droning lullaby beat. It’s performed by Torre Florim, of Dutch band De Staat, and came to prominence on the soundtrack for the video game ‘Just Cause 3’.

‘Honky Tonk Women’, by The Pogues

If ever there were a band to rival the Stones for hellraising and general debauchery, it’s the Pogues. And they covered one of Jagger & Richards debauched classic ‘Honky Tonk Women’ as the ‘B’-side to their single ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah’ in 1988. So this must be officially the most rock ‘n’ roll record ever made…? Unusually for a Pogues song at the time, lead vocals are taken by Spider Stacy rather than Shane MacGowan, but the raucous air remains intact. This cover version doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but then sometimes you just don’t need to.

Some final covers coming up tomorrow!

Cover Versions of #1s – Billy Idol and Sweet

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‘Mony Mony’, by Billy Idol

Two different cover versions today, starting with a remake that made #1 in the States but only got to #7 in the UK. Similarly, the original ‘Mony Mony’ had been Tommy James & the Shondells’ only British hit, despite the band racking several more in the USA. Billy Idol first recorded ‘Mony Mony’ for his debut solo EP after leaving Generation X, in 1981. It didn’t chart, and is a bit more poppy than the live version, recorded in 1985 but not released until two years later. That is much more indebted to hair metal acts like Bon Jovi and Motley Crue, who were ubiquitous at the time. It’s fun, but then I have a soft spot for the days when rock stars looked more poodle than human, and probably kickstarted gobal warming with the amount of hairspray they released on the world. Interestingly, Idol’s cover of ‘Mony Mony’ was replaced at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 by Tiffany’s ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’, which was originally recorded by… Tommy James & The Shondells.

Here’s the ‘original’, studio version…

‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, by Sweet

I love Dead or Alive’s ‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, so much so that I named it as one of my twenty-six ‘Best’ chart-toppers. One of the reasons I like it is that the synths are so clanking and tinny, and the pace so relentless, that it could easily work as a hard rock song. Enter glam legends the Sweet, who recorded it for a 2012 album of cover versions. Sweet weren’t the first rock act to take the song on, as this nu-metal version by Dope attests (think Limp Bizkit on poppers), but I’m featuring them as they were cruelly deprived of chart-toppers back in the ’70s (five #2s alongside their only #1, ‘Block Buster!’)

What I want to hear now is a whole album of SAW covers by rock and metal acts… Black Sabbath doing Kylie, Mel & Kim’s ‘Respectable’ reimagined by Pearl Jam… It would be a best-seller, surely.

Another two covers tomorrow!

Cover Versions of #1s – ‘Tainted Love’

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It’s been a while since I did a ‘cover versions’ week, so I thought I’d bring it back to allow us a break from the regular countdown, as we make steady progress through the mid-to-late ’90s. Later on this week I’ll be featuring a cover of one of that period’s most famous hits, but for now we’re focusing on various versions of the same song: Soft Cell’s massive 1981 smash ‘Tainted Love’.

Okay, this means that Gloria Jones’s versions aren’t covers of ‘Tainted Love’… They’re the originals. But it didn’t make #1 either time she recorded it. In fact neither managed to chart at all.

Which is pretty shocking, as the funky, stomping, Motown-influenced track is an instant classic, that should be mentioned in the same breath as The Supremes, the Ronettes, even Aretha. But the charts can be a fickle beast. A decade later, Jones’ original started getting played on the Northern Soul circuit. This encouraged Jones, who had since moved into musical theatre and then into being T. Rex’s backing singer, to have a go at re-recording it in 1976…

The updated version is a bit slicker, a bit less frenetic, and benefits from the advances in recording technology that had taken place. I wouldn’t say it’s an improvement, though I do like the smokiness that Jones’ voice has gained in the twelve intervening years. Jones’ boyfriend Marc Bolan produced the track, but even that couldn’t make it a hit. The following year she was the driver of the car that crashed and killed Bolan, also badly injuring herself. It gave her cause to flee the country (from an impending court case, and from T. Rex fanatics who had looted their house…)

Meanwhile, synth-pop duo Soft Cell heard the song in Northern Soul clubs, and had started incorporating it into their live sets. They were encouraged to record it, released it as their 2nd single, and the rest is chart-topping history, nicely summed up – if I do say so myself – in this post right here. But it seems that ‘Tainted Love’ is a song that demands to be recorded more than once, as Marc Almond also had another go in 1991. This version made #5, and is sometimes mistakenly played as the ‘original’ Soft Cell version (it’s the one with Marc Almond floating among the stars in the video…) God this is a bit complicated…

And then ten years after that, ‘Tainted Love’ returned to the Top 5 with its joint-second most succesful version, from a fairly unlikely source…

Recorded for the soundtrack to the parody film ‘Not Another Teen Movie’, Marilyn Manson scored his/their only Top 10 hit with this industrial-glam cover. In the video, Manson’s band of freaky goths crash a frat party, and mayhem ensues. For me, this version really works, and goes to show the strength of the song that it can still exist in a sound so removed from its original incarnation. I’m a fan of Manson (the band, and the music; not so much the creepy person behind it all) and am glad that this sent them briefly into the mainstream. You could argue that this was sell-out moment for an act that a few years earlier had been terrifying middle-America, even being blamed for school shootings, but this campy cover just goes to show how ridiculous those fears were.

And that wasn’t it as far as ‘Tainted Love’ and the top-end of the charts were concerned. In 2006, Rihanna made #2 with her Soft Cell sampling, electro-pop banger ‘SOS’. Not a cover version as such, but I’m still embedding the video below because it’s a TUNE.

Join us tomorrow for another ‘Cover Versions of #1s’ special, when you’ll get two songs for the price of one!

770. ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, by Puff Daddy & Faith Evans ft. 112

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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.

769. ‘MMMBop’, by Hanson

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From an uplifting gospel classic, to some undeniable nineties bubblegum. The charts in the spring of 1997 were on a feelgood trip…

MMMBop, by Hanson (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 1st – 22nd June 1997

Having said that, though, I’m not sure that ‘bubblegum’ really does ‘MMMBop’ justice. Yes, it’s got the nonsense title, and the catchy chorus, but the verses are actually quite… grungy? The riff is not a million miles away from an acoustic version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, and the way the wordy lines bump up against the melody is quite sophisticated. Let’s not call it grunge, but note that it owes a debt to alt-rock acts of time.

Until the chorus, that is, when we leap wholeheartedly into pure-pop territory. Has there been a bigger, more instant, less forgettable, earworm in music history. Probably, but I can’t think of it right now. I can’t think of it because I’m listening to ‘MMMBop’, and am unable to focus on anything but that chorus.

I’m also remiss in calling the title ‘nonsense’, for I have just now googled ‘what is an MMMBop’, and found that it is the “sound of time passing very quickly”. How profound. Even more profound are the lyrics, which again I’d never paid much attention to: You have so many relationships in this life, Only one or two will last… When you get old and start losing your hair, Can you tell me who will still care…? Deep. Sightly clumsy – it was written by teenagers, after all – but deep.

When this record came out, all the talk in the playground wasn’t so much how young Hanson were, but how everyone thought their lead singer was a girl. Which, looking back now, seems ridiculous. It’s clearly a boy with long hair. But then small-town Scotland isn’t always the most cosmopolitan of places, and very few lads were strolling down our High Street with shoulder length blonde locks. I will credit Taylor Hanson, though, as being one of my very first crushes… He may not have been a girl, but I still thought he was cute. (I’ve just checked, and he’s still a decent looking chap in his forties…)

Taylor, and his brothers Isaac and Zac, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been in a band since 1992. They’d released a couple of independent albums, one of which featured a slower version of ‘MMMBop’. They were spotted playing at South by Southwest, and recorded an album produced by the Dust Brothers, who added all the cheesy touches and scratches to this lead single, which made #1 across the globe. In my review of the Spice Girls ‘Mama’ I called the same scratch effects ‘dated’, but here they seem to add to the period charm.

Do I love this as much as ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’? Probably not. Not sure why I need to compare them, other than the fact they topped the charts together, and are both feelgood classics. ‘MMMBop’ ultimately sounds a bit more of its time, though in today’s rush for all things nineties it’s definitely been reclaimed as a classic. Even in 1997 it broke through the critics’ defences, and was voted as Single of the Year by The Village Voice.

Hanson remain a going concern, with the brothers still recording and touring together. They have fifteen children between them, which is impressive. Away from music, they’re involved in a lot of charity work, and have even launched their own craft beer… wait for it… MMMHops.

768. ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’, Eternal ft. BeBe Winans

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Ooh Lordy. Hallelujah! When I listened to this gospel-pop classic for the first time in absolute yonks, I was dragged off on a wave of nostalgia. I struggled to make any notes. It was the biggest Proustian rush I’ve experienced yet, as we delve further into the chart-toppers of my childhood.

I Wanna Be the Only One, by Eternal ft. BeBe Winans (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, from 25th May – 1st June 1997

But for a nostalgic moment like this to really hit home, the memory needs to be a good one. Proust loved his madeleines, and I realised how much I enjoy this record, one of 1997’s best #1s. It’s a perfect blending of soul, R&B, and gospel, with enough sass and enough honesty, enough fun and enough seriousness… I may be waffling slightly, but the point stands.

In fact, this song survived the moment that I found out that it had religious connotations (well, I mean, it is a gospel song). Aged eleven, I was beginning to question why I had to tag along with my mother to church every Sunday. It wasn’t so much that I was questioning the theology as much as I just wanted a lie-in but my mum, to her credit, let me make my own decision. By twelve I had stopped going. If any of the hymns we sang had had the heft of this tune, however, I’d have been in the front pew every week, hands to the sky.

The key changes at the end, for example, could convert the most atheist of hearts. In my mind I remembered at least five as the song soars to a conclusion, but there’s actually only two. The one complaint you could make about this tune is that it’s not exactly subtle, that it sledgehammers its point home. But honestly, that’s what a song like this needs. The start of the second verse, for example: Now you deserve a mansion… My Lord, you too… is a bizarre line – clunky almost – a ridiculous call and response moment; but also the best bit of the song.

Eternal were probably the biggest British girl group in the first half of the 1990s. The only British girl group of the time, really, until the Spice Girls came along and opened the floodgates for the final years of the decade. They were a sort of British answer to En Vogue, two sisters and two others. Louise Nurding had left in 1995 to start a middling solo career, and to become one of the original WAGs by marrying Liverpool midfielder Jamie Redknapp. This was their 11th Top 10 hit since 1993, and they would only have one more before splitting in 1999. Fair to say, although they had some good pop singles, they peaked with this – a fitting record to become their only chart-topper.

Helping in that regard was BeBe Winans, an American soul and gospel singer, who had written and produced two of Eternal’s earlier hits. He provides the perfect counterpoint to the girls’ harmonies, giving the lyrics much more meaning than if they had been sung by just female voices. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard another song by him, but he left his mark.

‘I Wanna Be the Only One’ was the 2nd most played song on British radio for the year, meaning that plenty of people surely got sick of it. One of my key memories of the record is hearing it in a car park while eating an ice-cream, presumably sometime in May or June 1997, just at the moment I was getting interested in the charts (I believe that this was Track 1 on ‘Now 37’). Soon after that I would start faithfully writing the Top 40 down every week, trying to keep up with the live radio countdown in those pre-internet days. It’s not an exaggeration to say that if it hadn’t been for songs like this grabbing my attention at that formative age, I might not be writing this blog now.

767. ‘You’re Not Alone’, by Olive

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We’ve not been short of dance hits in recent months, although their frequency hasn’t been as rapid fire as it was back in the early-to-mid nineties. And the dance hits of 1996-97 have tended to be of the chunky, Big-Beat variety. But this next number one is very different from the likes of the Prodigy, and the Chemical Brothers…

You’re Not Alone, by Olive (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 11th – 25th May 1997

It’s a step back towards a lighter, House sound, with a female singer leading the cavalry. But it’s also a step forward, because it’s taking those sounds and adding a few more modern touches. Personally, I often dread writing entries on dance chart-toppers – not because I inherently dislike dance music; more because it’s out of my comfort zone. I’ve just about got my head around big beat and trance, and now I’m being told that ‘You’re Not Alone’ is at turns breakbeat, ambient, and trip-hop.

Basically, I am trying to write and learn as I go. Apologies if any dance music experts stumble across this blog, and it causes them to snap their glo-sticks in anger. Anyway, ‘ambient’ I get – it’s a very atmospheric track: melancholy, haunting even. And trip-hop I get too, thanks to the drum beat. ‘Breakbeat’ I’m happy to go along with, because it sounds fun.

And I do like this record. My favourite part is the trippy keyboard riff, which sounds so much like a passage from a classical composition that I was convinced it must be. It takes great skill to write a chord sequence that sounds so timeless. I remember this record from the time, watching it on TOTP, thinking it sounded very grown-up, not quite getting it. I still don’t quite get it, thirty years on, because this isn’t really in my wheelhouse. But it’s well-made, and diverting enough, to make it a worthy chart-topper. One that enhances further the quality of 1997, so far.

What I will say is that, for all the atmospherics, the track does hold back a little. I’m waiting for the drop, for a full-on, banging, trance finish that never comes. It remains slinky and strange until the end. But, as I’ve just proven, I know nothing about dance music. If I had my way behind a set of decks everything would end up sounding like 2 Unlimited (and, let’s be honest, that would actually be amazing).

Olive were a London-based three piece, formed in 1994. ‘You’re Not Alone’ had been a minor hit the year before, and this chart-topping version was a remix (though you’d be hard-pressed to notice much difference between the two versions.) I believe the video below to be the one that made #1. It was their only Top 10 hit – the follow-up made #14 – and they split in 2003.