Hot on the heels of The Clash, can we also claim this next number one as part of the recent rock revival…?
The Stonk, by Hale & Pace and The Stonkers (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 17th – 24th March 1991
Hear me out! There’s a boogie-woogie rhythm, and a honky-tonk piano… The lyrics are somewhat anarchic, vaguely saucy even, if you try hard enough… OK. No, I admit. This isn’t rock and/or roll. This is the return of the chart phenomenon that brought us such treats as Cliff Richard and the Young Ones remake of ‘Living Doll’: the Comic Relief single.
Those of you who live beyond British shores may never have enjoyed this bi-annual TV fundraiser, in which the great and the good of British light entertainment come together for an evening of forced merriment. Hence why the video for ‘The Stonk’ features Bruce Forsyth, Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean, and (if my eyes didn’t deceive me) David Baddiel, while it opens with newsreader Angela Rippon being whacked out the way by a red-nosed Big Ben. (It is compulsory for Comic Relief to feature newsreaders doing stupid things. It’s funny, you see, because they are usually so serious.)
If this all sounds completely insufferable, then you’d be right. The gags, such as they are, all land flat. Ich bin ein Stonker… announces JFK, while Neil Armstrong claims one giant Stonk for mankind… Even Shakespeare isn’t safe: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s Stonk? someone asks, which makes no sense on any level. It’s shit, and completely unbothered about it. Proud of it, even. Maybe I’m a miserable sod, but I firmly believe that Red Nose Day would make even more money if people donated on the proviso that it would end an hour earlier for every million raised.
(Note the fact that this is advertised as a double-‘A’ side, alongside the much-loved Victoria Wood. The charts only mention Hale & Pace, however. Perhaps this record’s success had something to do with the other song on offer…)
And yet… I can’t list ‘The Stonk’ as one of the all-time worst chart-toppers. It’s not plumbing the depths alongside ‘Star Trekkin’ (which raised not a penny for charity) or ‘No Charge’ (the least humorous ‘novelty’ record of all time). That cheap, relentless boogie-woogie beat, and the chorus’s strong whiff of ‘The Timewarp’, does sort of hook me in. I didn’t want to, honestly I didn’t, but I’ve ended up tapping my feet.
It was written by comedy duo Gareth Hale and Norman Pace who, despite being TV mainstays throughout the 1990s, somehow never managed to become a part of my childhood. I couldn’t name a single one of their sketches or characters. Meanwhile, despite sounding as cheap and cheerful as a Butlin’s ‘knobbly knees’ contest, it does feature ‘proper’ musicians: British rock royalty even, in Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor, Black Sabbath’s Tommy Iommi, and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.
In wrapping this post up, I have no desire to ever hear this song again. I doubt anybody has actively listened to it since it left the Top 40 (as is the way with most charity singles). It isn’t on Spotify, and all that’s left as proof that this nonsense was, for one week in March 1991, the best-selling single in the country is this grainy YouTube video…
Last week, in a recap of the past thirty chart toppers, I made a lot of just how eccentrically the charts have been behaving over the past year or two. And happily, they show no signs of becoming predictable quite yet…
Should I Stay or Should I Go, by The Clash (their 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 3rd – 17th March 1991
For yes, we must sound the ‘random re-release’ klaxon one more time: The Clash score their sole UK #1. And once again, as with ‘The Joker’, it’s Levi’s Jeans we have to thank for giving this classic tune a new lease of life (the ad team knew how to pick them!)
We open with a nonchalantly cool intro. Two guitars have a little call-and-response, before a bass guitar so jagged it almost rips your speakers in two. It’s a simple riff, so easy and familiar that my immediate response is to dredge the memory banks to recall if it’s a cover version. It isn’t, but Mick Jones based it, knowingly or otherwise, on ‘Little Latin Lupe Lu’, a sixties garage-band classic.
The whole thing is loveably ramshackle, and a world away from the polished dance hits that have been the sound of the early 1990s. The guitars crackle, Joe Strummer sneers, and the band holler and screech the backing vocals in Spanish. The main lyrics meanwhile, tell the story of a toxic relationship: It’s always tease, tease, tease, You’re happy when I’m on my knees… and the chaotic ‘chorus’, such as it is, does its best to portray the frenzy of a conflicted mind.
The singer’s happy to remain, no matter the torture doled out, but by the end of the song we’re left none the wiser over whether he stays or goes. (I struggle to see how this helped to advertise jeans, but who am I to question…?) I’d call this record pretty poppy for The Clash, as well as assuming it was one of their early singles. But it was the 3rd release from their 1982 album ‘Combat Rock’, making #17 at the time. And despite coming five years after the band’s sixth and final studio album, this re-release was their first Top 10 hit, let alone their first number one.
Over the past few months, rock music has started to creep back in to the upper reaches of the charts (hurray!) If we start with ‘The Joker’s classic rock, then five of the past twelve #1s have been rock of one kind or another: indie rock (The Beautiful South), heavy metal (Iron Maiden), progressive rock (Queen) and now this. Is ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ more classic rock? Or is it garage? Or is it our first real punk rock #1, a decade and a half too late…? Or should we simply not care, and just revel in proper rock ‘n’ roll enjoying its new-found moment in the sun?
And so here we are. The final episode in our ‘Never Had a #1…’ week, and it’s the band with the biggest disparity between Top 10 hits and number ones: 18 to 0.
Bon Jovi – 18 Top 10 hits between 1986 and 2006
Interestingly, three of this week’s four acts have had remarkably similar chart careers. Depeche Mode, Janet Jackson and Bon Jovi’s Top 10s all stretch from the early-mid ’80s through to the early-mid ’00s. Why did artists from that era prove so durable? In Bon Jovi’s case it’s probably down to the fact that, of all the poodle-permed hair metal acts of the late eighties, they cut their hair just in time and recast themselves as everyman rockers. Here are their three biggest hits…
‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ – reached #4 in 1986
Once upon a time, Not so long ago… ‘Mr Brightside’, ‘Sweet Caroline’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’… All songs I have to some extent enjoyed, once upon a time, only for them to pale, then bore, then sour from over-familiarity. ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ is possibly the ultimate overplayed anthem. It might have been good. It might still be good, for all I know. I never will know, though, for I’d rather lose a pinkie finger than ever hear it again.
‘It’s My Life’ – reached #3 in 2000
Bon Jovi’s Bon-Joviest song. Power chords and cloyingly earnest lyrics about it being ‘now or never’ and how we ‘ain’t gonna live forever’, while Jon bounces around like an excited labrador. I want to hate it, but dammit that chorus just clicks. What I notice from listening to it now is how many little nu-metal touches there are – the piano line is lifted straight from Linkin Park, for example – and how dumb the video is. Bearing in mind Bon Jovi were all pushing forty when this came out, why exactly is a teenage boy jumping off bridges and dodging oil tankers to see the old fogies rocking out in a tunnel?
‘Always’ – reached #2 in 1994
It’s a widely held fact that the moment Kurt Cobain first played the opening riff to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, all the hair metal acts dissolved to dust like the Nazis in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Except for one… Bon Jovi laughed in the face of the glam apocalypse, shook the debris from their hair, and scored their biggest ever hit with this monstrous power-ballad. I can’t argue with it. Nobody can argue with music this pompous and sincere. A giant with a sledgehammer would be more subtle than Jon Bon Jovi howling his way through ‘Always’. I will say, though, that if you’ve ever sat through someone other than JBJ trying to howl their way through this song – at your local karaoke evening, perhaps – then hell will hold no fears for you.
I’ve been a bit down on Bon Jovi, I worry. I like some of their stuff. ‘You Give Love a Bad Name’ is fun, while ‘Bad Medicine’ might be the ultimate hair metal anthem. Sadly, their three biggest UK hits are all songs I would jump off bridges and dodge oil tankers to avoid…
Thanks for reading and enjoying this detour into the biggest non chart-topping acts of all time. We’ll be resuming the regular countdown in a few days time!
Part three in this series of posts on artists with an abundance of Top 10 hits, but for whom the very top of the charts has proven elusive. Up next…
Janet Jackson – 16 Top 10 hits between 1986 and 2002
Given that she is one of the most succesful female pop stars of all time, I can’t say I’m very familiar with Janet Jackson’s discography. There’s ‘Together’ Again’, which during my first year of high school you couldn’t turn on the radio for more than five minutes without hearing, and ‘Scream’, the duet with her brother Michael, and the most expensive music video ever (at the time). Neither of these make this list…
In my head I put it down to her simply being bigger in the US than in Britain. Which is true; but which is also completely disbunked by the fact she’s featuring here as the second most succesful non-number-one-getter of all time. Why isn’t she mentioned in the same breath as Madonna, or Whitney Houston? Has her music dated more than theirs? Has she been dwarfed by her brother’s fame (and infamy)? Or is it because her right breast slipped out at a Superbowl half-time show? I’m not attempting to choose a reason here (though, sadly, it’s probably the latter), yet it is worth pondering as we count down her three biggest UK hits.
‘What Have You Done for Me Lately’ – reached #3 in 1986
Miss Jacko has several #3 hits to choose from, but I’ll go for her breakthrough smash. From the wonderfully over-acted intro, to the pounding synths and drums, it is so mid-eighties it hurts. But it also has an energy, and an aggressive beat, that pretty much drags you to the dancefloor. Not a relaxing listen, but one that ‘slaps’, as the kids might say. Interestingly, given her famous family, it took three albums and four years of flops for Janet to establish herself as a solo star with this sassy tune.
‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’ (with Luther Vandross) – reached #2 in 1992
Janet Jackson’s joint-biggest UK hit is this perfectly pleasant, if fairly forgettable, slice of mid-tempo nineties pop, with a hint of R&B. It was from the soundtrack for the movie ‘Mo’ Money’, and neither Janet nor Luther feature in the video. Instead the film’s stars Damon Wayans and Stacey Dash lip-synch along gamely.
‘That’s the Way Love Goes’ – reached #2 in 1993
From the sounds of this, Janet went down the same ultra-slick route as her big brother in the ’90s. At least she is singing, rather than clicking and squeaking her way through the song, but still. I’m trying to find something to grab on to here, but it’s all just too polished and bland. Apparently it was a shockingly sexy change of pace for her, and this record ended up with 8 (eight!) weeks at #1 in the US. I can’t see it, myself.
Much more interesting is the video, with the ginormous home sound system (I pity her neighbours) and actual J-Lo (!), back when she was plain old Jennifer Lopez. Anyway this ended up as Jackson’s (joint) biggest UK hit, but it hasn’t given me much of an urge to do a deep-dive into her discography.
Tomorrow, we’ll wrap this series up by featuring the biggest band never to make number one. Yes, we are significantly more than halfway there…
This week, we’re celebrating the ‘unluckiest’ chart acts of all time. The four bands/artists with the most Top 10 hits, but without a number one…
Next up… We’re going way back in time, to a man who was present on the very first chart back in 1952.
Nat King Cole – 15 Top 10 hits between 1952 and 1987
‘Pretend’ – #2 in 1953
Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue… Nat’s silky tones wrap themselves around this self-help guide of a song. Not sure many modern-day mental health professionals would recommend simply pretending yourself happy and in love. But folks were made of sterner stuff back in the fifties, and apparently they could just sing themselves happy on demand. Cole may not have a number one single to his name, but chart-toppers like Marvin Gaye, Johnny Preston and Alvin Stardust have recorded versions of ‘Pretend’.
‘Smile’ – #2 in 1954
A year later, Nat was at it again. One word title, reaching #2, insisiting that You’ll find that life is still worthwhile, If you just smile… This one is much better known, to me at least. In fact, if someone asks you to name a ‘classic’, or a ‘standard’, then there’s a chance you might name ‘Smile’. The tune was written by none other than Charlie Chaplin, in 1936, before words were added in the fifties. It’s been covered by everyone from Michael Jackson (his favourite song, apparently), Judy Garland, Michael Buble (obviously) and Lady Gaga.
‘When I Fall in Love’ – reached #2 in 1957, and #4 in 1987
Completing his hattrick of #2s, another classy ballad. Nat King Cole did release uptempo tunes (I love ‘Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer‘), but the British public loved him best when he was crooning his heart out. This one, from the movie ‘Istanbul’, tips over into ‘boring’ territory, I’m afraid. But I’m in a minority, it seems, as it also made #4 on rerelease thirty years later. By that time Cole had been dead for two decades – he passed away aged just forty-five, from lung cancer. If he’d lived longer, who knows, he may have been even higher up on this list, or may even have featured in the main countdown…
Nat King Cole might have recorded a version of Michael Jackson’s favourite song, but up next we’ll feature a lady with a slightly more concrete link to the King of Pop…
This week, in a break from our regular schedule, I’m going to be celebrating some acts with plenty of Top 10 hits to their name. Household names, the lot of them. But acts that, for whatever reason, have never made it to pole position.
In fact, the acts I’m going to cover – two bands, two soloists; three whose careers began in the ’80s and stretch to the present day, one who was present on the very first chart way back in 1952 – are perhaps the unluckiest pop stars around. They are the bands and artists who have managed the most Top 10 hits without ever making number one. As recompense for their bad luck, I’ll present to you the three records from each band/artist that came closest…
First up… Well, I kind of gave that away in the title:
Depeche Mode – 14 Top 10 hits between 1981 and 2005
‘People Are People’ – #4 in 1984
None of Depeche Mode’s biggest hits are the tunes you’d expect. No ‘Enjoy the Silence’, no ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ or ‘Personal Jesus’. ‘People Are People’ was the lead single from their fourth album, and their joint biggest hit (they’ve never risen above #4). The clanking irons and booming cannons that intro this record are almost too ‘eighties’ for me, but they are certainly striking. Interestingly, I’d have thought that this was from a few years later, when the synths in the charts got harsher and tinnier. This record, then, was a trendsetter, a nod towards a Pet Shop Boys, SAW future. The lyrics are the sort that are sadly always going to be prescient: I can’t understand, What makes a man, Hate another man, Help me understand…
‘Barrel of a Gun’ – #4 in 1997
Deep in the midst of the Britpop years, Depeche Mode were on their 9th album, and the lead single was this moody, churning, paranoid beast. It takes a chorus that could have been by Oasis, mixes it with Nine Inch Nails, and some grungy leftovers, and a hip-hop beat for good measure, to create an very unlikely hit single.
‘Precious’ – #4 in 2005
The Mode’s final Top 10 single (to date… who knows?) is also their joint highest charting. By the mid-00s, synth-pop was making a comeback thanks to acts like the Killers, Goldfrapp, the Bravery and more, and Depeche Mode were the granddaddies. Perhaps that’s why they managed such a late career flourish (or perhaps it was the fact that singles sales were in the toilet in 2005). It’s a low-key, melancholy track, written by Martin Gore to his children as an apology for his impending divorce.
Another unlucky artist is up tomorrow, and we’re going right back to the dawn of the British singles chart…
The past thirty #1 singles have thrown the charts into a state of flux. We last recapped in July 1989, and the song that kicked off this latest section was Sonia’s ‘You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You’. Back then, Stock Aitken Waterman were responsible for what felt like one in every two chart-toppers, their brassy synths and predictable melodies the sound of the late 1980s…
And then, suddenly, they weren’t. After Sonia, SAW had just two number ones left in the tank – Band Aid II, and Kylie’s cute cover of ‘Tears on My Pillow’ – and neither of those were classics of their kind. No, it seemed that as dance music took over, people realised that there was a world beyond SAW. Black Box’s ‘Ride on Time’, for example, that autumn’s monster hit, and the record I claimed as the first modern dance #1.
From then on, we slipped into a dance groove as we began the final decade of the 20th century. Beats International, Snap!, Adamski, even New Order with the finest football song of all, and Madonna with another of her famous shapeshifts. It was dance music of a different sort: not one hundred manic samples all smashed together; but cool, confident music that, to be honest, wasn’t always that easy to dance to.
Yet to claim that this recap is solely about the dance hits is to airbrush a lot of what makes this period in chart history so interesting. For while the dance hits were trying to hold everything together, the rest of popular music was going ever so slightly mental. We caught glimpses of the decade to come, with the first modern boyband (NKOTB), some lilting indie from The Beautiful South, and the first movie-soundtrack monster ballad of the ‘90s in ‘Show Me Heaven’. It won’t be the last.
Then there were the continued random releases of golden oldies that have been a feature of the charts since 1986, thanks to Levi’s adverts (‘The Joker’) and movies about ghosts with a fetish for pottery wheels (‘Unchained Melody’). And then there was the long-awaited arrival of hip-hop as a genuine chart force, with the genre scoring three out of the past thirty number ones. (Though, as those raps were either about animated turtles, or delivered by cartoon children, or Liverpool midfielders, or… oh yeah… Vanilla Ice, it’s safe to say that it’s a genre still finding its feet. Its time will come soon enough.)
And then it’s almost too easy to pass over the fact that Elton John scored his first ever solo #1, and that Cliff Richard went all Christian-contemporary to ensure he managed a chart-topper in each of the singles chart’s five decades, and his 3rd Xmas #1 appearance in a row! Because all that pales into insignificance when we hit the run of number one singles that came in the deep midwinter of 1990-91. Iron Maiden brought the heavy metal. Enigma brought the Gregorian chanting. Queen brought the Spanish guitars (not to mention the end of the world). And the KLF brought the house down with their industrial dance banger ‘3AM Eternal’, complete with machine guns.
Anything else…? Oh, but I’d almost forgotten. At least, I’d tried to forget. Jive Bunny. J-J-J-Jive Bunny. He was a thing that happened. And he didn’t just ‘happen’. Three #1s, ten weeks at the top, in barely four months. For a brief moment it was the Bunny’s world and we were just living in it (and I’ve only just realised quite how much these past few months have been dominated by cartoon characters…) To tell the truth, I quite enjoyed his first two hits, with their perky mash-ups of rock ‘n’ roll classics. By the 3rd, Christmas-themed, hit however the joke had run out of steam…
Which brings us on to the awards. The ‘Meh’ Award is hard to decide, as so many of the past thirty records have been anything but dull. I could give it to Lisa Stansfield’s ‘All Around the World’, but that was a bit too classy. I could give it to NKOTB’s ‘Hangin’ Tough’, but that was entertainingly lame. So, I’ll have to give it to Band Aid II, for their completely faithful, but nowhere near as iconic, attempt to recapture the magic of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ At least it raised some money for a worthy cause.
There have rarely been as many rich pickings for our next award, the The WTAF Awardfor being interesting if nothing else. Where in God’s name do we start? Partners in Kryme? Timmy Mallet and his scantily clad young ladies? The Simpsons? Iron Maiden? Vanilla Ice?? J-J-J-Jive Bunny?? No, I think it’s between two back to back #1s from January 1991. ‘Innuendo’, and ‘Sadeness Part 1’. And as much as I grew to enjoy Queen’s 3rd chart-topper (or perhaps because I now like it so much…) I’ll have to give it to the one with the chanting monks, and the lyrics in French about a perverted literary genius.
Finally, then, to the main events. The Best and, before that, our 22ndVery Worst Chart-Topper. I listed so many weird and wonderful hits above, but I’d be loath to give it to any of them. No, this one’s cut and dried. I’m giving it to the record which confirmed that the Jive Bunny joke had ceased to be funny: ‘Let’s Party’. Cheap covers of Slade, Wizzard and Gary Glitter, stitched together with the subtlety of a charging elephant, do not a classic record make.
Much more tricky to decide is this recap’s Very Best Chart-Topper. I started off with a longlist but, as much as I enjoyed ‘Vogue’, Beats International and the KLF, I pretty quickly refined things down into a shortlist. Black Box’s ‘Ride on Time’, and a song I haven’t even found time to mention yet… Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Two very different records, two worthy winners. Black Box set the sound for the decade to come, whereas O’Connor’s take on Prince’s original would sound, yes, iconic in any decade. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ for the win.
To recap the recaps:
The ‘Meh’ Award for Forgettability
‘Hold My Hand’, by Don Cornell.
‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’, by The Dream Weavers.
‘On the Street Where You Live’, by Vic Damone.
‘Why’, by Anthony Newley.
‘The Next Time’ / ‘Bachelor Boy’, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows.
‘Juliet’, by The Four Pennies.
‘The Carnival Is Over’, by The Seekers.
‘Silence Is Golden’, by The Tremeloes.
‘I Pretend’, by Des O’Connor.
‘Woodstock’, by Matthews’ Southern Comfort.
‘How Can I Be Sure’, by David Cassidy.
‘Annie’s Song’, by John Denver.
‘I Only Have Eyes For You’, by Art Garfunkel.
‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ / ‘The First Cut Is the Deepest’, by Rod Stewart.
‘Three Times a Lady’, by The Commodores.
‘What’s Another Year’, by Johnny Logan.
‘A Little Peace’, by Nicole.
‘Every Breath You Take’, by The Police.
‘I Got You Babe’, by UB40 with Chrissie Hynde.
‘Who’s That Girl’, by Madonna.
‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, by Phil Collins.
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, by Band Aid II.
The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else
‘I See the Moon’, by The Stargazers.
‘Lay Down Your Arms’, by Anne Shelton.
‘Hoots Mon’, by Lord Rockingham’s XI.
‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’, by The Temperance Seven.
‘Nut Rocker’, by B. Bumble & The Stingers.
‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, by Gerry & The Pacemakers.
‘Little Red Rooster’, by The Rolling Stones.
‘Puppet on a String’, by Sandie Shaw.
‘Fire’, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
‘In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)’, by Zager & Evans.
‘Amazing Grace’, The Pipes & Drums & Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard.
‘Kung Fu Fighting’, by Carl Douglas.
‘If’, by Telly Savalas.
‘Wuthering Heights’, by Kate Bush.
‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’, by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.
‘Shaddap You Face’, by Joe Dolce Music Theatre.
‘It’s My Party’, by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.
‘Save Your Love’ by Renée & Renato.
‘Rock Me Amadeus’, by Falco.
‘Pump Up the Volume’ / ‘Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)’, by M/A/R/R/S
‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’, by The Timelords
‘Sadeness Part 1’, by Enigma
The Very Worst Chart-Toppers
‘Cara Mia’, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra.
‘The Man From Laramie’, by Jimmy Young.
‘Roulette’, by Russ Conway.
‘Wooden Heart’, by Elvis Presley.
‘Lovesick Blues’, by Frank Ifield.
‘Diane’, by The Bachelors.
‘The Minute You’re Gone’, by Cliff Richard.
‘Release Me’, by Engelbert Humperdinck.
‘Lily the Pink’, by The Scaffold.
‘All Kinds of Everything’, by Dana.
‘The Twelfth of Never’, by Donny Osmond.
‘The Streak’, by Ray Stevens.
‘No Charge’, by J. J. Barrie
‘Don’t Give Up On Us’, by David Soul
‘One Day at a Time’, by Lena Martell.
‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’, by St. Winifred’s School Choir.
‘I’ve Never Been to Me’, by Charlene.
‘Hello’, by Lionel Richie.
‘I Want to Know What Love Is’, by Foreigner.
‘Star Trekkin’’, by The Firm.
‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You’, by Glenn Medeiros.
‘Let’s Party’, by Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers.
The Very Best Chart-Toppers
‘Such a Night’, by Johnnie Ray.
‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’, by Perez ‘Prez’ Prado & His Orchestra.
‘Great Balls of Fire’, by Jerry Lee Lewis.
‘Cathy’s Clown’, by The Everly Brothers.
‘Telstar’, by The Tornadoes.
‘She Loves You’ by The Beatles.
‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, by The Rolling Stones.
‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, by Procol Harum.
‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’, by Marvin Gaye.
‘Baby Jump’, by Mungo Jerry.
‘Metal Guru’, by T. Rex.
‘Tiger Feet’, by Mud.
‘Space Oddity’, by David Bowie.
‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer.
‘Heart of Glass’, by Blondie.
‘The Winner Takes It All’, by ABBA.
‘My Camera Never Lies’, by Bucks Fizz.
‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
‘You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)’, by Dead or Alive
As with all novelty singles, I approach this next number one with trepidation, my finger hovering reluctantly over the play button. But the intro actually sounds quite cool: a new jack swing beat and a squelchy bassline. Something by Janet Jackson perhaps, or a Prince ‘B’-side…
Do the Bartman, by The Simpsons (their 1st and only #1)
3 weeks, from 10th February – 3rd March 1991
The only version available on Spotify is the five minute (!) album version – from ‘The Simpsons Sing the Blues’ LP – so I don’t know for how long this intro did its funky thing on the single-edit. Eventually Homer comes in, yelling at Bart for some unspecified misdemeanour. Nobody saw me… I didn’t do it…
From here on things follow a fairly formulaic hip-hop single format: i.e. rapper tells us how great he is. Except here the rapper is a yellow cartoon boy, voiced by a thirty-five year woman (kudos to Nancy Cartwright here, as it can’t be easy rapping while putting on such a voice). There are some fun lines: I’m the kid that made delinquency an art, Last name Simpson, First name Bart… but the song ends up caught between not being funny enough to work as a novelty, yet still being gimmicky enough to annoy. The ‘joke’ wears especially thin on the, it bears repeating, five minutes long extended album version.
The fact that this does almost work as a pop song is probably down to the alleged involvement of Michael Jackson. He’s not credited – his label insisted he couldn’t be – and there are differing accounts of what he actually contributed towards the song, but it seems he wrote some of the lyrics and contributed backing vocals, as well as giving the song its title. He also apparently insisted that he be name-checked (If you can do the Bart, You’re bad like Michael Jackson…) Jackson would also feature in an episode of The Simpsons a few months after this had been a hit single. The video too is a six-minute long MJ-esque epic, in which Bart takes over a school talent show with his new dance routine (or was it all a dream…?)
It’s credited to ‘The Simpsons’, but it’s largely just Bart. Lisa gets a saxophone solo, and Homer gets to yell throughout. Marge and Maggie are conspicuous by their absence. I wonder if, to many British listeners, ‘Do the Bartman’ was their first exposure to ‘The Simpsons’. At the time this was released, the show was just halfway through its second season in the US, and was only broadcast on satellite TV in the UK (I remember it coming to terrestrial TV, on Channel 4, much later in the mid-nineties). If so, the song’s success is quite remarkable, as I’m not sure it holds much enjoyment for someone who’s never seen the show.
Anyway, in this moment ‘The Simpsons’ was on the verge of becoming the biggest TV programme in the world. Between series three and ten it was untouchable, and a fixture in my own house every dinner time. They even managed a second Top 10 single, another hip-hop track (and actually much better than this) ‘Deep, Deep Trouble’. After that, the show came to a natural conclusion in the early 2000s, and is remembered as one of the best series ever, and as a lesson in how to go out on top. Right? No…?
I’m going to stick my neck out here, and claim that we’re in the midst of what is the strangest run of number one singles. From ‘Unchained Melody’, past Vanilla Ice and Christian Cliff, Iron Maiden bringing our daughters to the slaughter, Enigma’s Gregorian chanting, and Queen’s ‘other’ epic single… to the KLF.
3A.M. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.), by The KLF (their 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 27th January – 10th February 1991
And on the face of it, ‘3A.M. Eternal’ is a return to the dance music that’s shaped the early ‘90s. If you were being harsh, you could claim it to be a rehash of Snap!’s ‘The Power’, with its Russian radio intro, and its mix of a male rapper with a big-voiced female (the singer belting it out at the start is soul legend P.P. Arnold). But this is The KLF, and with them nothing is what it seems.
For a start, the sound that immediately follows the radio intro is a machine gun, strafing the listener into pieces. There’s all the chanting about the ‘Ancients of Mu Mu’ (the band’s former name). And then there’s the crowd noise, and the announcement at the end that KLF have now left the building… It’s all fake, the S.S.L. in the title refers to a Solid State Logic mixing desk. And there’s the fact that this is actually a remix of a 1989 release of the same name: a deep trance track that failed to chart and that sounds unrecognisable from this much poppier version.
But above all that, one fact remains: it’s a banger. All my talk of comparing it to ‘The Power’ fades away because this, in my opinion, is the far better song. It’s dance music with rock chords, and with about three different hooks: the KLF is gonna rock you chant, the uh-huh-uh-huhs, and the Ancients of Mu Mu. And as fake as it may be, the soaring crowd noise adds an epic, stadium quality to the track. (This was #1 on my fifth birthday, and it’s one of my very favourite birthday chart-toppers.)
This being the KLF, you do wonder if this remix was done with the aim of aping the big dance hits of the age – all the ingredients are there – and in the end making a song that betters them all. They’d done it once before, as The Timelords (they’ve gone under quite a few names over the years…) and the ridiculously catchy, sample-heavy ‘Doctorin’ the Tardis’ from three years earlier. And they weren’t done remixing ‘3AM Eternal’, as a year later they recorded a thrash metal version with crust punk group Extreme Noise Terror, with whom they duetted at the Brit awards, and pretended to machine gun the audience (the original plan had been to disembowel a dead sheep live on stage, before the lawyers stepped in…) The performance is on YouTube, and it’s amazing to think that it was broadcast on primetime BBC.
You’d need an entirely separate blog post to go into sufficient detail on the KLF, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, their many guises and their many moments of notoriety. Aside from their Brits performance, shout outs need to be made to their duet with Tammy Wynette on ‘Justified and Ancient’, which made #2 later in 1991, in shades of the Pet Shop Boys and Dusty. And their retirement, when they deleted their entire back catalogue (it was only restored a couple of years ago) and set fire to their remaining one million pounds in royalties on a remote Scottish island.
So there you go. As talented as they were tasteless, and responsible for yet another weird and wonderful number one. You’ll be glad to hear that things aren’t getting any less bizarre either, for up next is the most famous pop star of the age, with the most famous animated family of all time…
It feels like a trick pub-quiz question: which number one hit by Queen is over six minutes long, composed of several sections, in several genres…?
Innuendo, by Queen (their 3rd of six #1s)
1 week, from 20th – 27th January 1991
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ everyone will shout, and everyone will be wrong. (For Bo Rap isn’t quite over six minutes long…) No, ‘Innuendo’ is Queen’s true forgotten epic. And what an epic. It starts off brooding, and ominous, reminiscent of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’, with apocalyptic lyrics such as: While there’s a wind and the stars and the rainbow, ‘Til the mountains crumble into the plain… Freddie bemoans mankind’s inability to live in harmony, and its insistence on dividing people by race, religion and creed.
Then come the flamenco guitars, which to my untrained ears sounds like some serious musicianship (it was played by Brian May and Steve Howe of Yes), and a bridge that sounds like a cross between the monkish chants used by Enigma, and a Disney theme. After all that, it’s hard not punch the air when a trademark Brian May guitar solo comes swooping in, saving this monster from disappearing up its own arse.
It ends as it began, ominously stomping its way to the end of time. It’s hard not to read this as Freddie coming to grips with his impending death, when he asks: If there’s a God or any kind of justice under the sky, If there’s a point, If there’s a reason to live or die. He knew that this was the last album Queen would release in his lifetime, and so the line Through our sorrow, All through our splendour, Don’t take offence at my innuendo… almost becomes a farewell to Queen’s fans and detractors alike.
Ultimately, though, it ends on a positive note: Yes, we’ll keep on trying…And that line is the moment in this bizarre epic that sounds like classic Queen. Otherwise, it’s one of the weirdest #1 singles ever, in an era of increasingly weird #1s. And it’s amazing to think that it’s only Queen’s 3rd UK chart-topper, after ‘Under Pressure’ and the aforementioned ‘other’ epic’. Just think of the classic Queen hits, the ‘Radio Gaga’s and the ‘Another One Bites the Dust’s, that didn’t make it while this beast (described beautifully by one journalist at the time as ‘seductively monstrous’) did.
It’s unfair to compare this record to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, though it’s perhaps inevitable. Bo Rap was the sound of a band in their infancy, four young men going wild simply because they could, because nobody had told them not to, and there’s a great joie de vivre throughout that song (and I say that as someone who would happily never hear it again). ‘Innuendo’ is far darker and much less optimistic, four middle aged men, one of whom was terminally ill, pledging to ‘keep on trying’ despite the odds being stacked against them, and against mankind.
As a teen, I had Queen’s three-disc Greatest Hits. I usually skipped ‘Innuendo’ in favour of the earlier hits (in fact, I think it was on Disc 3, which I barely bothered playing). But writing this post has given me an appreciation of this dark, strange record. The fact that it was a #1 hit is amazing – down to a combination of low January sales and Queen’s dedicated fanbase – but I’m glad it was. The band will be back before the end of the year, for their fourth #1, under predictably sad circumstances.
The UK Number Ones Blog 