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.
If we thought that Iron Maiden scoring a heavy metal #1 was unexpected, then it seems positively mainstream compared with the intro of our next chart-topper.
Sadeness Part I, by Enigma (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 13th – 20th January 1991
For how about some Gregorian chanting (in Latin, of course) to kick off 1991? Chanting that is mixed with a chilled-out dance beat, and then replaced by some electronic pan pipes. It’s the culmination of the new-age vibe that’s been infiltrating pop music over the past few years – think Enya, Simple Minds, even recent Cliff – and it means that this record sounds highly innovative and unusual; and yet truly dated.
A bit later a crunchy guitar comes in, while a woman mutters breathily in French, reminding me of Serge & Jane. These are the moments that lift this record above being something you’d hear in the background as someone performs an aromatherapy massage. I do like the drop, the do-doop-de-doo fill, too. It’s way beyond my usual wheelhouse – I have a deep distrust of anything that could feature in a ‘chillout’ playlist – but there’s enough going on here, a lot even, to keep things interesting.
The lyrics, such as they are, appear in Latin and in French. And if you were thinking a song this weird couldn’t possibly have banal lyrics about love and laughter then you’d be correct. It’s written in the form of an address to the Marquis de Sade (hence the title), the notorious 18th century French author and libertine responsible for some of the most outrageously explicit writing in history. (As an aside, I studied literature at university, and the only time we received a content warning, and were allowed to skip a text if we felt uncomfortable, was as we were about to read Sade’s ‘Justine’. There’s a reason the man gave his name to the term ‘Sadism’…) Anyway. Sade tell me, What are you looking for…? the song asks. Sade, are you evil or divine…?
I’m loath to label this as ‘not good’. When it comes to writing these posts, a record featuring chanting monks and pan-pipes, about a notorious sex-offender, is certainly more interesting to write about than your average dance hit. And it’s amazing how sophisticated dance music has become in the past couple of years, since the Hi-NRG heyday of SAW, and how quickly things have chilled out. But at the same time. ‘Sadeness Part 1’ isn’t something I’d ever incorporate into my daily playlists.
Enigma were a German ‘musical project’, helmed by German-Romanian producer Michael Cretu, and this was their breakthrough hit. And what a hit: number one across Europe, and Top 5 in the US. They struggled to match this success until the lead single from their second album, ‘Return to Innocence’, made #3 three years later. That record ditched the monks and went for more ethnic, tribal chanting.
Since then, Enigma have continued to record without particularly bothering the charts, including a 2006 concept album based on an imagined collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Because why not? Cretu’s greatest moment may have come long before Enigma and his championing of world music, though: he played keyboards on Boney M’s 1978 #1 ‘Rivers of Babylon’…
In this intermittent series on songs that should have been number ones, we’ve met songs that were classics, deserving of chart glory; songs that may well have been secretly denied top spot; and songs that topped the wrong chart…
But the record I’m featuring today may well have the strongest case to argue in the ‘should have been a #1’ stakes. For no song has ever gone closer…
‘Groove Is in the Heart’, by Deee-Lite – reached #2 in September 1990, behind ‘The Joker’
First up, the song itself. And it’s a classic. Is it disco? Funk? Hip-hop? All of the above? Or does anyone really care, when it makes you move like it does? Linked in spirit to the big dance hits of the time, but a world away from them, there are few songs that sound this fun, so full of a joie de vivre that you wish you could bottle and use to live forever. The little touches – the bubble popping, the horns, the looped intro – add to its appeal, and never grate. Deee-Lite were from NYC, and comprised an American singer, a Ukrainian DJ and a Japanese producer (as unusual a mish-mash as their genre-bending hit) plus contributions from rapper Q-Tip and legendary bassist Bootsy Collins.
So, ‘Groove Is in the Heart’ should have been a number one on merit, because it’s great and I said so. And, for the week beginning 9th September 1990, it was. At least, it was in a tie for number one with the Steve Miller Band’s re-released ‘The Joker’. In the 1950s, when sales data was pretty patchy, tied chart positions were commonplace. Since 1973, however, a rule had been in place which stated that the record with the bigger increase in sales week-on-week would ‘win’. Both records had climbed that week, but ‘The Joker’ had done so with a 57% increase. Deee-lite had only improved their sales by 37%. Steve Miller took the #1.
There was consternation, not least from Deee-Lite’s record label, who felt that the new, up-and-coming act (this was their first ever chart hit) should get preference. ‘The Joker’, as fun as it is, was just so 1973. ‘Groove Is in the Heart’ was fresh and funky, and the future. Except, that’s sadly not how the charts work. They’re all about cold, hard sales figures. And The Steve Miller Band’s victory was confirmed once and for all when it turned that the tied position had been down to a rounding error, and that ‘The Joker’ had sold a whopping eight more copies than ‘Groove…’
The next week, ‘The Joker’ remained at #1 fair and square, and ‘Groove…’ started to slip down the chart. Deee-Lite never made it back into the Top 20, and split up in the mid-90s. Still, they leave quiet the legacy: one of the classic wedding disco floor-fillers, and the unluckiest #2 single of all time…
Fists of metal to the ready! For yes, you read correctly: Iron Maiden have a number one single.
Bring Your Daughter… To the Slaughter, by Iron Maiden (their 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 30th December 1990 – 13th January 1991
Though whether this is truly heavy metal, or just hard rock, is a valid question. It’s a straight-forward, riff driven song; distinctly Iron Maiden – few lead singers have as recognisable a voice as Bruce Dickinson – but stripped back, lacking the prog touches that many of their songs have. The opening chords are almost punk – short sharp jabs to the side of the face – before we settle into something more, well, silly.
I’ll be far from the first to point out that, for a genre so given to machismo, sweat and greasy hair; heavy metal can be quite camp. And there have been few camper moments in a #1 single than when Dickinson starts to purr: True love and lipstick on your linen, Bite the pillow, Make no sound… Oo-er! Unchain your back door… he then growls, presumably trying very hard not to giggle… Invite me around…
In fact, the entire record sounds like Iron Maiden put themselves under the control of a group of schoolboys for the day. Even the writers of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ would have turned this down as too silly. But hell, it’s fun. The way Dickinson goes all operatic on the word ‘slaughter’, the middle-eight with demonic monks chanting, the shredding solo, and the sudden ending – I’m comin’ to get ya! – marking the point where the band clearly decided this nonsense had gone on long enough.
Even though ‘Bring Your Daughter…’ gave the genre its first ever chart-topper, it doesn’t have a lot of love in the heavy metal community. (One article I read online named the title line as the laziest rhyme in music history.) On the one hand it’s a bit of a sell-out for band that were capable of truly genre-defining rock. On the other, though, it is a unique moment in UK chart history. The list of hard rock #1s is short, and up for debate: ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Fire’, ‘Baby Jump’, ‘School’s Out’… and this? Plus, it knocked Cliff and his God-bothering ‘Saviour’s Day’ off number one, a fact that Maiden were well aware of when they promoted the single.
In fact, this may well be the first example of a very 21st century phenomenon: the chart campaign. Most of these will come much later, fuelled by the democracy of the download era, with a little help from social media, in which any song from any band, any genre, any time, can chart if bought in sufficient quantities, often for a cause (charitable, or just to be obnoxious). It’ll give us some interesting moments as we go along on our journey. Back in 1990 though, the internet was a strange, new thing that most people had never actually experienced, and so Maiden had to rely on word of mouth, a ban from the ever-willing BBC, and the publicity of whacking Cliff Richard out the way.
They also had the sense to release it on the quietest week of the year – the one after the Christmas rush – and so it entered at #1 with fairly low sales. In fact, one source names ‘Bring Your Daughter…’ as the lowest-selling #1 of all time, with total sales of around 100,000. It’s an old article, though, and that figure was probably beaten in the mid-00s sales slump. (It’s definitely been beaten by now, if you don’t count streams as ‘proper’ sales.) Iron Maiden, though, were no strangers to the top end of the singles chart by late 1990: this was their sixth consecutive Top 10 hit, and one of seventeen in total.
Anyway, who cares if it barely sold, if the BBC didn’t play it, and if it’s a bit crap? It’s heavy metal, at number one. The anonymous dance tracks, movie soundtrack monster hits and boy-band preeners will be back soon enough. Until then, raise those fists once more, and pray for mercy from the Gods of rock.
The UK Number Ones Blog 