1999 pop songs

820. ‘Flat Beat’, by Mr. Oizo

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And now for something slightly different…

Flat Beat, by Mr. Oizo (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 28th March – 11th April 1999

…please don’t adjust your dial. I did earlier bill 1999 as the year of the random dance hit, and dance hits don’t come much more random than this.

Yes, it’s repetitive, but when the song is called ‘Flat Beat’ I think that’s largely the point. And yes, some of the myriad effects, pulses and throbs that make up this record are odd. But there’s something hypnotising in this track’s minimalism, and in that strange, vibrating bass riff that you can almost feel pressing against your eardrums (this is a chart-topper best appreciated through headphones).

Every thirty seconds or so, as you begin to tire of the simple beat, another little element is added, just in time. I’m imagining Mr. Oizo taking a walk through his local rainforest, and using some of the stranger sounding animal calls to decorate this tune. The intro features a woman claiming that Quentin (Mr. Oizo’s real name) is a ‘real jerkie’. The album version ends on what sounds a lot like someone taking a piss. I can’t say I truly love ‘Flat Beat’, but I do enjoy how bloody weird it is.

‘Flat Beat’ was helped to the top of the charts by Flat Eric, a yellow puppet made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. In the video he runs a business, answering phones and smoking frankfurters. But it was his appearance in a series of Levi’s adverts that made him famous, and that necessitated Mr. Oizo make a tune to go with them.

This is the latest – the seventh – and I believe final ‘Levi’s’ chart-topper. Since the mid-eighties we’ve had the jeans makers to thank for curios like ‘The Joker’, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’, and Stiltskin’s ‘Inside’ making number one. Like its predecessors, ‘Flat Beat’ would have been nowhere near #1 without the ad campaign, but I will say that all of the Levi’s-resurrected chart-toppers have been worthwhile in their own way.

Mr. Oizo AKA Quentin Dupieux is a French DJ and filmmaker (‘oiseau’ being French for ‘bird’). ‘Flat Beat’ was a bonus track on his first album, and he’s had a few others which have been minor hits in his homeland. In the UK he has gold-star, purest one-hit wonder status, with nothing else even grazing the lower reaches of the charts.

It’s also worth noticing that, spoken intro aside, this is a purely instrumental track. Wikipedia lists it as the 25th instrumental number one, though they count ‘Hoots Mon’, and ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ in that list, which seems generous. What’s indisputable is that there have been precious few since the genre’s heyday in the fifties and early-sixties – this is only the ‘90s second instrumental after ‘Doop’, while there were zero in the ‘80s – and that there are precious few more to come.

The album version:

819. ‘Blame It on the Weatherman’, by B*Witched

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Storms gather, thunderclouds ripen, droplets fall like one of those ‘soft noise for sleep’ playlists… B*Witched are getting moody.

Blame It on the Weatherman, by B*Witched (their 4th and final #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th March 1999

Before we get stuck into the meat of this next number one, can I ponder for a second what the most used non-musical sound effect is in pop music? I’m sure it must either be rainfall or revving motorbikes, but any other suggestions are welcome. The storms here are soon replaced by an acoustic guitar, and not for the first time I’m getting an unexpected Beatles flashback from a B*Witched number one. This time it’s ‘In My Life’ buried within the opening chords…

In fact this whole song is a game of spot-the-influences. The verses remind me of other late-90s indie-pop acts like Tin Tin Out and Catatonia, and most of all Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’. Then the new-age, Enya touches from ‘To You I Belong’ return for the chorus… The rain goes on, On and on again… Meanwhile the bad-weather-as-metaphor-for-heartbreak is a trope as old as pop music, from ‘Raining in My Heart’ to ‘Rhythm of the Rain’.

Since the ridiculous ‘C’est la Vie’, B*Witched have matured with each successive single, to the point that I’ve been quite impressed with how much I’ve enjoyed it when they’ve popped up in recent weeks. I’d still rank ‘Rollercoaster’ as my favourite, but this has some nice harmonies in the choruses and the middle-eight.

‘Blame It on the Weatherman’ was the group’s fourth consecutive #1 single, matching the Spice Girls’ achievement from a couple of years earlier. (In fact they bettered that record by having all four singles enter at the top; ‘Wannabe’ having climbed to its peak.) It would be their last though, as none of the singles from their second album came close. It’s interesting, actually, how quickly the B*Witched bubble burst. If we fast-forward exactly a year, in March 2000 we’d find ‘Jump Down’ struggling to a #16 peak.

They split in 2002, after being dropped by Sony despite having a third album in the works. More recently they have reformed and toured with other ‘90s pop acts (including recent chart-toppers 911), and have even tentatively released some new material, that hasn’t come close to troubling the charts. All a long way from the late-nineties, when B*Witched at the height of their powers were scoring four #1s across barely nine months. All together now: what were they like?

PS. I’m adding this in a couple of days after publishing, but I’ve just realised that when this record knocked Boyzone from the top it was probably the first and only time that two siblings have replaced one another at number one (Boyzone’s Shane Lynch and B*Witched’s Edele and Keavy Lynch). Let me know of any others!

818. ‘When the Going Gets Tough’, by Boyzone

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From pop heaven, it’s back down to earth with a hefty bump…

When the Going Gets Tough, by Boyzone (their 5th of six #1s)

2 weeks, from 7th – 21st March 1999

Boyzone return with their penultimate chart-topper. Yes, we’re almost done with them. And, hey, at least this isn’t a ballad! Instead it’s that other modern pop group staple: the charity cover. From the late nineties onwards, charities desperate for your money made a clear shift away from novelty singles over to classic covers by the day’s big acts. There are similar crimes against pop to come from the likes of Westlife, Girls Aloud, and One Direction.

The synths are cheap and the production tacky on this version of Billy Ocean’s 1986 #1, while I think this might be Ronan Keating’s most grating vocal performance yet (a category with some very strong competition). In fact, this is pretty poor all round. I just don’t think Boyzone had the personality to do anything other than bland balladry. The fun and frivolity here sounds much too forced.

The best bit by far is that they keep the original’s saxophone solo almost note for note, which means we get a blast of sweet mid-80s sax – a sound I never realised I’d missed. And yes, the Billy Ocean version is a decent enough song (though not one I was overly hot on in my original post), and it’s hard to completely ruin decent source material. That original feels like a lifetime ago (in some ways it was, as I was born a few weeks before Ocean made #1), but the thirteen year gap between these versions means it’s the same as an artist in 2024 covering a song from 2011, which sounds like the blink of an eye…

This was the 1999 Comic Relief single, raising money for any number of good causes. So yes, yes, yes we shouldn’t be too harsh on it. (Though I would donate far more money than the price of a CD single to never hear Boyzone again). The video features the requisite plethora of celebs goofing around in the name of charidee. In fact, watching this was the most enjoyable part of this whole exercise, seeing people that hadn’t crossed my mind for many years: Will Mellor, John McCririck, Mystic Meg (RIP) and Saracen from Gladiators (as well as a very young Graham Norton).

817. ‘…Baby One More Time’, by Britney Spears

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It’s Britney, bitch.

…Baby One More Time, by Britney Spears (her 1st of six #1s)

2 weeks, from 21st February – 7th March 1999

Sorry, couldn’t resist. That iconic intro is still eight years off. But let’s be real, the three note piano motif (the official term, apparently) that introduced the world to Britney Spears, and that underpins one of the all-time great pop songs, is even more iconic.

Yes, ‘all-time great’. Up there in the pop pantheon with ‘Cathy’s Clown’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘It’s a Sin’… You name a pop classic from any era, and ‘…Baby One More Time’ is up there holding its own alongside them. It has all the indefinable qualities – the ability to hook you instantly, the ability to remain catchy but never cloying, the ability to still somehow sound fresh after twenty-five years – which all classics need.

But, I hear you argue, is this not too bubblegum to be an all-time classic? Don’t Britney’s vocal, shall we say, limitations not detract? To the first charge I say no, for this has as much underlying melancholy as the best ABBA songs. What other teenybop songs involve lines about fatal loneliness? And to the second I say that sixteen-year-old Britney’s vocal stylings are perfect for a song about teenage lust and longing. Plus, she managed to influence the way an entire generation pronounced the word ‘baby’ (Bayba? Baybay? Byebuh?)

To reach truly magical heights though, a song needs a moment where everything just clicks. That moment of transcendence arrives in the middle eight, as the chorus lines are chopped up and loaded with emphasis: I must confess, That my loneliness, Is killing me now…

Of course, this was a massive smash across the world, and now stands as one of the best-selling singles ever. It’s most recent placing in the Rolling Stone Top 500 of all time was #205. It’s also been voted the greatest debut single of all time, and the UK’s 7th favourite number one. Britney aside, it also properly introduced the world to Max Martin, one of the most successful chart-topping writers and producers of all time. At last count I make this his first of twenty appearances in the credits of a chart-topping single in the UK.

‘…Baby One More Time’ also won awards for its video, in which Britney flaunts almost every school uniform rule in the book. It got criticism too, for sexualising both school uniforms and the teenage singer in them, as well as the suggestion that it was glamorising sexual violence. Martin has since argued that the ‘hit me’ in the lyrics refers to ‘hitting someone up on the phone’ (as the kids put it in 1999), and that any confusion stems from the fact that English isn’t his first language.

But frankly, who cares? A song this good doesn’t deserve to be caught up in tawdry speculation about its slightly risqué video. Having said that, while this might technically be the best of Britney Spears many singles, it is not my favourite. Britney has five more number ones to get through, and two of those songs can rival this for classic status.

816. ‘Fly Away’, by Lenny Kravitz

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Lenny Kravitz then, bringing us three guitar-led number ones out of four…. Heady days!

Fly Away, by Lenny Kravitz (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 14th – 21st February 1999

The intro really rocks, a concrete-heavy riff that fills the room, so much that it sets us up for disappointment upon hearing the rest of the song. Not that it’s bad, not really. But the effect-laden guitars in the verses are interesting – I can’t help hearing someone struggling to swallow, in urgent need of a Heimlich manoeuvre – and Lenny Kravitz’s vocals somehow don’t do the tune any favours.

Plus, the lyrics are simplistic, verging on just plain bad. I wish that I could fly, Into the sky, So very high… Just like a dragonfly… Ignoring the fact that dragonflies usually hover at no more than tree-height, the insistence on dragging out rhymes across several lines, entire verses even, is annoying. I want to get away, I want to flyyyyy away… Kravitz pleads, so often that you begin to wish he’d just bloody well go. What’s stopping him?

I’ll admit that my opinion of this track is clouded by the fact I’ve never quite gotten Lenny Kravitz. He seems to me like a parody of an oversexed rock star, desperately wanting to be Prince, or Jimi Hendrix. But then again, Black rock musicians are hardly ten a-penny so I should give him credit for carving out an impressive career. Plus, ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ is a ten-out-of-ten classic, and would have made a much more worthy chart-topper.

Having claimed that ‘Fly Away’ isn’t bad, I realise I’ve just spent three paragraphs giving a pretty compelling argument as to why it is. Part of me relishes a brief period of rock dominance at the top of the charts, but at the same time I shouldn’t be uncritical of a song just because it’s got guitars, and isn’t by a boyband or a faceless DJ. This for me doesn’t come close to the gonzo pop-punk of the Offspring, or Blondie’s cool-as-fuck comeback.

It probably wouldn’t have made #1 either, if it hadn’t been used extensively in adverts for Peugeot (for some reason I misremembered it as Vodafone). Kravitz’s only previous visit to the UK Top 10 had been with the already-mentioned ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ six years earlier. Songs from Adverts has been a surprisingly successful chart-topping genre over the years, and this won’t be 1999’s last. ‘Fly Away’ does though finally bring to an end our run of ten consecutive one-weekers – by far the longest such run in chart history. It’s been an eclectic quickfire run through Xmas ballads, novelty funk, dance, and some good old fashioned rock and roll. And of course, the record that did finally manage to stay at the top for longer than seven days had to be something pretty special…

815. ‘Maria’, by Blondie

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I wonder who had this on their 1999 bingo cards? New-wave icons Blondie stage a comeback, release their first single since 1982, and it only goes and makes number one…

Maria, by Blondie (their 6th and final #1)

1 week, from 7th – 14th February 1999

Okay, the first part had already happened in 1997, with the band spending much of 1998 on tour. But surely nobody expected this… Exactly twenty years since ‘Heart of Glass’ became their first chart-topper, and over eighteen since ‘The Tide Is High’ became what most assumed was their last.

‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ was a recent, perfect example of how to do a novelty hit. ‘Maria’ is, then, a textbook example of how to arrange a comeback smash. They’re still new-wave punks at heart, with razor sharp guitars in the intro and solo, Harry on top vocal form (for that chorus line needs belting out), and some trademark drum fills from Clem Burke. The subject matter also calls to mind earlier Blondie hits-about-girls, like ‘Sunday Girl’ and ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. But the production is clean, crisp, late-nineties alt-rock. A perfect balance that means ‘Maria’ could have come right in the middle of Blondie’s imperial phase; but that also guaranteed radio play in 1999. Plus, there’s wedding bells, which I don’t really get but sound great.

Who is ‘Maria’, though? One of rock’s great femme fatales, she was an imaginary woman, dreamed up by keyboard player Jimmy Destri, who had fantasised about such a girl while at a Catholic school. She sounds pretty high maintenance – She moves like she don’t care, Smooth as silk, Cool as air – but also like you’d give your right eye for her to just notice you. And the line about her Walking on imported air… has to be one of the coolest descriptions in rock ‘n’ roll. Ooh it makes you wanna die…

The slightly surprising thing here is that Blondie weren’t all that old in 1999… They were in their late forties/early fifties, which in 2024, when Beyonce and Eminem can still make number one, doesn’t seem that wild. Debbie Harry was fifty-three, which means she promptly usurps Cher (eleven months her junior) as the oldest female chart-topper. It also meant that Blondie joined a very select group of acts to have made #1 in three different decades, which in 1999 only numbered Cliff, Elvis, the Bee Gees, and Queen (and Paul McCartney, under various guises).

They have gone on to release four more albums since this comeback, the most recent coming in 2017. Chart hits have been harder to come by, but I would point you in the direction of their following lead single, 2003’s cracking ‘Good Boys’. I feel like a Blondie ‘Best of the Rest’ post is overdue…

Finally, we should mention that ‘Maria’ becomes the latest in a long, long line of chart-topping women. Off the top of my head we’ve had Tiffany, Frankie, Josephine, and Eleanor Rigby, but there are many, many more. Though, interestingly, number ones named after women seem to have been much more prevalent in the fifties and sixties than in the 1990s…

814. ‘You Don’t Know Me’ by Armand Van Helden ft. Duane Harden

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A fairly unusual rock track is followed on top of the charts by a fairly generic dance track. Standard January fare for the late ‘90s…

You Don’t Know Me, by Armand Van Helden (his 1st of two #1s) ft. Duane Harden

1 week, from 31st January – 7th February 1999

We should though prepare to meet more and more of these one-off dance tracks in the coming months, to the point where there will become commonplace. This is the sound of 1999, really: ATB, Eiffel 65, Mr. Oizo… All kicked off by Armand Van Helden. Whom we have met before in this blog, with his uncredited remix of Tori Amos’ ‘Professional Widow’ (another January number one!)

And unlike some of those dance hits soon to come, ‘You Don’t Know Me’ has a nice retro-house feel, with a disco groove and soulful vocals from Duane Harden. It feels like something that could have been a hit much earlier in the decade. Which might be explained by the fact that this is, naturally, a mish-mash of samples, with strings that date from the seventies and drums from 1992. The eight-minute original version also features a spoken intro from ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’. As in, the cartoon.

Although Duane Arden has an excellent, soulful growl to his voice, the lyrics are standard ‘living my best life’ dance fodder. I’m tired and I’ve had enough, It’s my life and I’m living it now… But really, nobody wants to think too much on the dancefloor. Arden wrote the words by himself, once Van Helden had finished the music, like a dance version of Elton and Bernie.

Like many of the previous dance number ones, I don’t hate it. It’s fine. It washes over me pleasantly enough, and has caused me to do a couple of involuntary shoulder shimmies. But at the same time, like many dance tunes, after the first minute I start to find it a little repetitive. Dance music is not made for a guy sitting at a desk to analyse. Duane Harden’s week at the top was the pinnacle of his pop career; while Armand Van Helden will continue to produce and write hits throughout the 2000s, until his final #1 in a decade’s time.

For a fairly innocuous and forgotten chart-topper, this is a big one for me personally. I turned thirteen on the day this entered at number one (though I am a bit peeved that I just miss out on having the Offspring as a birthday #1). I apologise in advance for all the teenage nostalgia that will inevitable cloud my judgement as we cover the coming seven years’ worth of number ones…

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

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

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

1 week, from 24th – 31st January 1999

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

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

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

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

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

812. ‘A Little Bit More’, by 911

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And so here we have the first of five boybands to top the charts in 1999. Brace yourself for fist clenches and key changes aplenty…

A Little Bit More, by 911 (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 17th – 24th January 1999

911 were very much in the second-tier of ‘90s boybands, never reaching the heights of Take That, East 17, or indeed many of the groups to come; but they plugged away, workmanlike, with a presumably dedicated fanbase, to finally spend a week on top of the charts. The AFC Bournemouth of boybands, if you will.

They certainly plug away on this workmanlike Dr. Hook cover (making it already the second cover of a seventies classic to make #1 this year). It’s not truly terrible, but it adds nothing to the glossy horniness of the original, which had spent five weeks at #2 in 1976. 911’s producers make decent work of the soaring chord changes, but the boys’ voices are very lightweight. They sound like little kids, which isn’t ideal when trying to sell lines like Come on over here, And lay by my side, I’ve got to be touching you…

‘A Little Bit More’ is a famously raunchy song, in fairness, about an all-night sex session that just won’t end. Yes it has a very MOR sound, and an attempt to recreate the gloopy production that was ubiquitous in the mid-seventies, but I bet there were parents across the land wincing as they listened to their eight year olds blithely singing along to the lyrics. Still it’s a canny and well-worn boyband strategy, covering an oldie to attract both the kids and their mums, and the group also had success with covers of ‘More Than a Woman’ and ‘Private Number’.

911, formed in Glasgow although all three members are English, had been around since 1995, and had visited the UK Top 10 eight times before finally scoring a number one (doing so with the lowest weekly sales of 1999). I found myself struggling to name a single other 911 song, until I checked their discography and was reminded of the fun ‘Party People… Friday Night’ – their crowning glory. They had split by the end of that year, but have since reformed for the nostalgia circuit. They remain interestingly popular in southeast Asia, with number one albums in Malaysia and duets with Vietnamese star Ðúc Phúc (which is definitely not pronounced the way it reads…)

Before we finish, I should recognise that 911 actually set something of a record here. Every #1 since B*Witched’s ‘To You I Belong’ has spent just one week at the top and, as this is the sixth in a row, ‘A Little Bit More’ makes history by beating the previous longest stretch of one-weekers set in February 1997. It’s a record that will be broken again, very soon, as these turn-of-the-century charts hit breakneck speed.

811. ‘Praise You’, by Fatboy Slim

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

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

1 week, from 10th – 17th January 1999

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

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

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

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

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