The biggest pop comeback of the new millennium. Step aside Madonna, All Saints, Oasis, and Britney… It’s Billie. Piper.
Day and Night, by Billie Piper (her 3rd and final #1)
1 week, from 21st – 28th May 2000
She’s added a surname, as well as beefing up her sound. While her team may, just may, have been listening to Ms Spears. And perhaps a bit of Backstreet Boys too… Okay, in fairness this is a pretty wholesale ripping off of that big-chords, big-chorus Max Martin sound. It is the female version of ‘Backstreet’s Back’. I did check to see if Martin had been involved here, but no. ‘Day and Night’ was written by English songwriter Eliot Kennedy, as well as two members of Dead or Alive, and produced by Stargate, who will become one of the biggest names in ‘00s pop. (And who are from Norway, so there is a Scandinavian influence after all…)
So, yes, this is a lot more muscular, a lot more mature, a lot more internationally appealing, than Billie’s two teeny bopping hits from 1998. The beat is chunky, the production slick, and the chorus lands like a big slab of granite. But despite all this I’m finding it fairly forgettable. Twenty-five years on I vaguely remembered the chorus; and after listening to it three times in succession I still only vaguely remember it. Compare it with ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’, a song it longs to be but that it falls far short of matching.
This track is also, inadvertently, evidence for the defence in the ‘Britney can’t sing’ case. Billie performs this competently, but her voice also sounds a little stretched. Brit could have sung this in her sleep. It also goes to show that while people may write off all pop music like this as disposable, it’s actually quite hard to locate that hidden ingredient which promotes a song from ‘decently catchy’ to ‘proper classic’.
The video is going for an ‘all grown up’ message (bear in mind she was still just seventeen when this made #1), with Billie and her friends partying in some sort of damp, underground garage. And a laundrette. This video debuted, according to Wikipedia, on 9th March, well over two months before the single was actually released, which gives another glimpse into why the turn-of-the-century charts were so fast-moving.
Billie released two further singles from this, her second LP. By the summer of 2001 she had announced her retirement from music in order to focus on her acting career. And a pretty successful acting career it has been, twenty years in. She’s most famous for her role as Rose Tyler on ‘Doctor Who’, but has starred on both stage and screen without ever being tempted back into the recording studio. No matter, to a generation of Brits rapidly approaching their forties, the name Billie Piper will always bring to mind ‘Because We Want To’s chanty chorus, and some low cut jeans.
Earlier I claimed that Britney Spears’ second number one – the nice enough ‘Born to Make You Happy’ – was a placeholder, something to keep things ticking over until her next main event. Here then, is that main event.
Oops!… I Did It Again, by Britney Spears (her 3rd of six #1s)
1 week, from 7th – 14th May 2000
Yes, Britney’s debut ‘…Baby One More Time’ is a classic: a timeless pop song that managed to win over the even the snobbiest ‘proper music’ critics. And ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ is much more rooted in time by its crunching Max Martin turn-of-the-century production. But ‘Oops!…’ is also a work of genius. It’s basically ‘Baby… One More Time’ – they share the same piano, and the same chords – deconstructed and rebuilt in a brutalist fashion. (The two songs are also exactly the same length.) It’s the evil twin. It’s the version of ‘Baby…’ that you’d hear in the Upside Down.
Then there’s the little Easter eggs, the pronunciation of baybay, and the ellipsis in the title. And the fact that said title refers not just to the song’s lyrics, but to the fact that, oops, she’s come back with another monster hit. It’s all very modern, very now: the in-jokes and the sarcasm. Oh you shouldn’t have… Brit deadpans when presented with a diamond in the spoken middle-eight, which parodies ‘Titanic’, another pop culture behemoth. In fact, this song just might have invented 21st century pop culture. I hope you don’t think I’m going overboard here…
All this is compounded by the fact that the submissive Britney of her first two number ones is gone. I think I did it again, I made you believe, We’re more than just friends… she teases, before announcing: I’m not that innocent! In the video she dances in a red catsuit while brandishing a whip.
The entirety of her second album, which shared the same title, was a bit of a reinvention. It’s now something of a cliché, that a female teen-pop star’s second album has to see them ‘grow up’ in some way, and Britney’s main rival Christina would take this concept to the extreme a couple of years later. But Britney laid the foundations for a long career here, and in singles like ‘Stronger’, about empowerment, and ‘Lucky’, about the loneliness of fame. Plus, the album also included an actually half-decent cover of ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.
But back to the aforementioned main event. The question remains: is ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ better than ‘…Baby One More Time’? I’d say no, musically it is not. But also… yes. It’s conceptual, it’s clever, it’s camp and catty. I’ll bet a greater number of Britney fans list this as their favourite song over ‘…Baby’, which is almost too prefect, too pristine.
So, three number ones and two solid-gold pop classics. Not bad going for a singer still in her teens. We’ll have to wait a while for her next chart-topper, but when it does come it too will be worth the wait. And many of the Britney singles that didn’t get to the top during this imperious, pre-breakdown phase are also classics of their time. Churning out hit after hit, banger after banger? That is just so typically her…
If the year 2000 has a defining sound – and I’m far from convinced that it does, with so many chart-toppers crammed into its fifty-two weeks – then UK garage would be a strong candidate.
Fill Me In, by Craig David (his 1st of two #1s)
1 week, from 9th – 16th April 2000
These staccato, two-step beats have started to appear more regularly, with Shanks & Bigfoot last year, and to a lesser extent Gabrielle a few weeks ago. I never particularly liked garage at the time – it always felt too light, too airy, too difficult to grab a hold of. It dances around the beat, without ever committing to it. Garage makes me think of a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower, impossible to catch. A strange image for a musical genre, perhaps, but one that works for me.
And eighteen-year-old Craig David, Southampton’s most famous chart-topper, is an equally strong candidate for the year’s breakout star. He has a soft, honeyed voice, and controls this lyric-heavy song despite lacking what I would describe as ‘oomph’. (That’s what garage lacks – oomph!) It tells the story of a young couple trying to get jiggy in the face of her over-protective parents. Calls diverted to answer phone, Red wine bottle half the contents gone, Midnight return, Jacuzzi turned on… Can you fill me in? her folks ask.
Clearly Southampton is a bit posher than where I grew up, as I never knew anyone with a jacuzzi. The Wikipedia entry for ‘Fill Me In’ amusingly claims the song as a commentary on helicopter parenting, though I’m not sure there are many parents, helicopter or otherwise, that would be thrilled upon discovering their teenage daughter had been in a jacuzzi with the next door neighbours’ randy son, guzzling their wine. It is an interesting twist, however, to have a song about teenage lust told from the parents’ point of view.
Listening back to this now, a quarter of a decade later, and I’m more disposed to it than I was at the time. There’s something light, yes, but carefree too; though maybe that’s just nostalgia. As garage goes, this is way over to the poppier side of the genre. It owes as much to American R&B – TLC, Usher, Destiny’s Child and the like – as it does to UK MCs spitting rhymes on council estates.
Craig David had announced himself to the world as the vocalist on Artful Dodger’s ‘Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)’ right at the end of 1999. That is an era-defining single, although it fell just short of appearing in this countdown. (‘Bo Selecta’ is a phrase that will come to haunt David, but more on that later.) His second #1 is also a real cultural moment, leaving ‘Fill Me In’ in the strange position of being Craig David’s first chart-topper, but not one of the two songs everyone remembers him for.
A fifth number one single in less than twelve months, with the fifth and final single from their debut album, it’s…
Fool Again, by Westlife (their 5th of fourteen #1s)
1 week, from 2nd – 9th April 2000
…we know perfectly well who it is (the picture above probably helped). And there’s a reason why ‘Fool Again’ was the fifth single from the album. It’s average, and not just in a wider musical sense (which it obviously is). It’s average in a Westlife sense: not as good a pop song as ‘If I Let You Go’, but not guilty of the same musical crimes as their recent Christmas #1.
This was marketed as the ‘2000 remix’ of ‘Fool Again, as opposed to the 1999 original, and that probably eked out a few extra purchases from fans who already had the album. The only change I can make out, though, is the beefed up intro. The bridge really, really reminds me of a song that I just can’t quite put my finger on. The key change is massive, even by Westlife standards. The rest of the song descends quickly and happily into boyband schmaltz, rolling around in said schmaltz like a pig in shit.
Since they’re coming thick and fast, I’m going to keep track of Westlife’s many number one singles with my brand-new feature: Westlife Watch! (Hey, at least it will use up a paragraph every time I have to write about them). After five chart-toppers, the ranking currently stands at:
If I Let You Go
Flying Without Wings
Fool Again
Swear It Again
I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun
I feel that bottom song will take some shifting, but I have faith in Westlife’s abilities to serve up something bad enough with their nine remaining number ones.
I think it must be a record, having five number one singles from the same album. I can find no other examples, on the British charts at least. But perhaps here we should discuss Westlife’s management, and their clever release schedule. Louis Walsh had a smart knack of picking quiet weeks for his boys’ singles. ‘Fool Again’ made #1 with sales that would have fallen short in all but nine weeks of this chart year. This doesn’t apply to all of their chart-toppers, as many did debut on top with impressive sales, but they definitely padded their stats with some lucky number ones. ‘Fool Again’ fell to #8 the following week, which says it all.
At the same time, maybe it was also a case of other acts avoiding weeks when Westlife were releasing, especially after five chart-toppers in a row? It would have been a brave act that went up against this Irish juggernaut in 2000, when they were at the peak of their popularity.
One Spice Girl replaces another on top of the charts. Off the top of my head, this might be the only time two former band members have traded places like this, but I am open to being proven wrong…
Never Be the Same Again, by Melanie C (her 1st of two solo #1s) ft. Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopez (her 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 26th March – 2nd April 2000
Anyway, Melanie Chisolm becomes our third Solo Spice. She was, famously, the Spice Who Could Actually Sing, and so perhaps we might have expected her first #1 to be a little more full-throated? This was her fourth solo single, after the grungy ‘Goin’ Down’ and the slightly dull ‘Northern Star’ had both made #4, while her Bryan Adams country rock duet ‘When You’re Gone’ made #3.
So, Mel C had had to wait, and it took a hip-hop detour to finally score her a chart-topper. It’s slow and slinky, with some cool drum-fills, and lots of record scratches (which even in 2000 every hip-hop record apparently had to have). It’s interesting how hip-hop still hasn’t yet become the dominant chart force that it eventually will. Not that ‘Never Be the Same Again’ is proper hip-hop, with Mel breathily singing her lines, and a very hooky, pop chorus.
No, the hip-hop is brought by the guest feature, the coolest guest feature since Mel B introduced us to Missy Elliott: TLC’s Lisa Lopes, AKA ‘Left Eye’ on account of her left eye being more ‘slanted’. She delivers a proper, sustained rap, the likes of which remains few and far between in the number one slot. It’s a bit basic, compared to some of TLC’s classics – The US to UK, NYC to LA, From sidewalks to highways… – but it ticks off all the requirements of a guest rapper slot. And it’s to their credit that both Mels managed to secure such impressive features.
The only disappointing thing about this well-produced, catchy but credible record, is that Mel C isn’t tested vocally. However she’s to be congratulated for trying out different sounds and genres on her debut album, while her second number one will be something completely different again. We can assume that her label decided to release a week after Geri’s ‘Bag It Up’ to avoid the girls being in direct competition, but for the record ‘Never Be the Same Again’ debuted with thirty thousand more sales than Geri had the week before.
As for Lisa Lopes, this was her 3rd and final solo hit in the UK – all of which were features – to add to the four Top 10s that TLC had scored in the ‘90s (‘No Scrubs’ was the highest, making #3). She died in a car crash in Honduras, in 2002, while on volunteer work.
Bag It Up, by Geri Halliwell (her 3rd of four solo #1s)
1 week, from 19th – 26th March 2000
I overused the c-word in my post on Geri’s previous number one ‘Lift Me Up’, so I will endeavour to describe this record as anything but ‘camp’. Problem is, ‘Bag It Up’ opens with what may be the gayest line ever recorded: I like chocolate and controversy… Don’t we all, Geri.
What is this silly slice of disco-cheese about? Why is she treating her man ‘like a lady’? What the hell does I don’t take sugar on my colour TV mean?? It’s clearly some extension of the ‘Girl Power’ message, about how women don’t have to take crap from men. But like ‘Girl Power’ it falls apart under close inspection, and turns into the aural equivalent of a rowdy hen party entering a pub, even if the line Just a bad case of opposite sex… is wonderful.
Not that this record was ever meant to be closely inspected. It’s complete fluff. The video is even gayer, if such a thing was possible, as Geri advertises ‘Girl Powder’, which she uses to spike her boyfriend’s drink and turn him into a topless servant. She then dances around her factory with lots of pink-haired, six-packed oompah loompahs. Meanwhile, at that year’s Brit Awards, she performed the song after emerging from between a giant pair of legs.
Musically it sounds much like the Spice Girls’ ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, in its poppy, nu-disco beats. In fairness, all three #1s from Geri’s debut solo album have brought something a bit different to the party, while remaining utterly disposable pop. I don’t mean that to be rude, either: I love Geri, and I love disposable pop.
What I might have questioned, had I been a bit older in 2000, was Geri’s relentless pursuit of gay icon status. It’s fun and all, but if anything it’s a little too much. She’d secured it anyway, what with being a literal Spice Girl, and so didn’t have to try so hard. I wonder if in the end it cost her some longevity. (As I write this I’m just remembering that her final chart-topper will be a cover of ‘It’s Raining Men’…)
Still, ‘Bag It Up’ is fun, and Geri was admirably serious about not taking herself seriously. Compared to self-obsessed modern pop, it’s been very refreshing to revisit the time when she was the biggest female pop star in the land.
Hurray! Our first random dance hit of the new century! From the mid-nineties onwards these have become a common occurrence, and they aren’t letting up in the early years of the 2000s.
Don’t Give Up, by Chicane (his 1st and only #1) ft. Bryan Adams (his 2nd and final #1)
1 week, from 12th – 19th March 2000
This is blissed-out, late-afternoon by the pool sort of dance. Background dance, if there is such a thing. Which begs the question, how did this middling record end up on top of the charts? What’s the USP? Is it the fact that it’s rock music’s Bryan Adams croaking his way through it?
Maybe it was a bigger deal than it seems now, a middle-aged rock star appearing on a fresh dance track. Nowadays nobody bats an eyelid at a rock-cum-dance remix. I initially wondered if it was a sample of an old Adams’ track, but no – it was written by Adams in 1999, then mixed and produced by Chicane (British DJ Nicholas Bracegirdle). Vocally, Adams does a Cher and is heavily vocoded and autotuned. And yet, you can instantly tell it’s him. I never would have pegged him as having such a distinctive voice.
Other than the novelty of Bryan Adams’ featuring on it, there’s not much here to catch the ears. It picks up a bit from the midway point, with some higher tempo trance touches, but it remains fairly repetitive. I can’t escape the feeling that this sounds like the sort of remix that would usually have been tucked away as the third track on a CD single.
Perhaps the success of this record was due to the fact that Chicane had been responsible for the single edit of Adams’ 1999 #6 single ‘Cloud Number Nine’ (a much better song than this). View ‘Don’t Give Up’ as the follow-up and its success starts to make more sense. Chicane didn’t have too many big hits, but when they did it was usually with someone interesting. His single before this featured Máire Brennan, sister of Enya, while his 2006 hit ‘Stoned in Love’ was with Tom Jones.
Bryan Adams meanwhile was no stranger to chart success. This was his 11th Top 10 hit since arriving on these shores in the mid-eighties. It is interesting to see the difference in his two chart-toppers though, both in terms of their sound, and in their presence at the top. ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ holds the record for consecutive weeks at number one; while a decade later ‘Don’t Give Up’ squeaked a solitary week on fairly low sales, just over a thousand copies ahead of Madonna in the end.
This past fifty has taken us from September 1998 through to the earliest months of 2000. How to sum up, then, the number one singles that saw out the second millennium?
Boybands, random dance acts, and a whole lot of bubblegum. That should just about do it. Take the boybands first. Five groups of lads, responsible for nine different number ones. The biggest of whom have been Westlife, whose total of four in 1999 matched a record that Elvis had held for almost forty years.
Then there’s been the former boyband members. Ronan Keating launched a solo career, while Robbie Williams scored the first two chart-toppers of his hugely successful post-Take That life. We could also throw Ricky Martin in with this lot too, although most British people wouldn’t have known him as an ex-boyband star.
What of the girl groups? Not quite as successful as the boys, but we’ve had three #1s from B*Witched, the return of All Saints, as well as The Spice Girls’ third Christmas number one in a row. Plus, the launch of two solo Spices: Mel B got in first but was soon eclipsed by Geri. All in all, that’s a lot of pop.
And that’s before we mention the other bubblegum acts, like S Club 7, Vengaboys, Billie, and Steps. For large swathes of this run I’ve been desperate to hear a guitar, rather than that late-nineties pre-set drumbeat and the usual post-production tinkles and record scratches. Rock acts have popped up now and then, more as novelties than anything else. The Offspring, Lenny Kravitz, Manic Street Preachers and Oasis Mk II all tried their best to cut through, but most surprising of all was the return of Blondie, almost twenty years on from their previous number one.
That leaves the random dance acts. They may not technically have all been one-hit wonders, but they all have one hit for which they are best remembered. Spacedust, Mr. Oizo, ATB, Eiffel 65, Wamdue Project… All legends for fifteen minutes. The two dance acts that can lay claim to having much of a chart career beyond 1999 are Fatboy Slim (who finally scored a #1 under his own steam) and Armand Van Helden, who will top the charts again a decade later.
These have been the main storylines that the most recent chart-toppers have played out, but in and around them some other fascinating tales have been told. Two pop stars for the 21st century, Britney and Christina, debuted straight at the top, while a pop star from the eighties – Madonna – proved she still had the power to provoke (covering ‘American Pie’) and to succeed (scoring the ninth #1 of her career). Meanwhile a star of the ‘60s, Cher, scored her biggest hit, and became the oldest female artist to the top the charts, with ‘Believe’.
There has been the emergence of garage – another sound that will dominate in the early years of the ‘00s – through Shanks & Bigfoot and, to a lesser extent, Gabrielle’s ‘Rise’, which also brought Bob Dylan as close to a British chart-topper as he’s ever likely to get. And of course there was the Latin summer of ’99, when Spanish briefly became the lingua franca of the charts thanks to Ricky, Geri, and Lou Bega’s horny mambo-ing.
But perhaps the most important chart story of all has been the continued speedy turnover of number ones. This fifty took us a year and a half to get through (the previous fifty took almost two years), while the next fifty will be the quickest of all. Of the past bunch, only five records spent more than a fortnight at the top, and an amazing thirty-two of them only managed a single week.
To the awards, then. Starting with the Meh Award for being completely unmemorable. The two records that I was most neutral on were ‘You Don’t Know Me’ (basic dance) and ‘Rise’ (basic soul-pop). But I’m going to give this to a boyband ballad. I’m choosing Boyzone’s ‘You Needed Me’ cover not because it was any duller than the rest, but because it would feel wrong if Boyzone escaped without earning at least one of my more negative awards.
The WTAF Award for being interesting if nothing else is always a fun one to decide, and this time we aren’t short of candidates. There’s ‘Gym & Tonic’, the aerobics routine as dance track, and Chef from South Park, voiced by soul legend Isaac Hayes. There’s Mr. Oizo and Flat Eric, and Eiffel 65 with their animated blue aliens. All worthy winners at any other time. But when Baz Luhrmann’s fully spoken ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, based on a fictional graduation speech, is a contender then the others might as well pack up and go home.
On to the big awards, then. TheVery Worst Chart-Topper for this recap is a straight shoot-out between two truly rotten songs. ‘The Millennium Prayer’ and Westlife’s festive double-A ‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’, both of which ensured that the 1990s ended on a very low note. I am aware that I have previously given Cliff Richard a ‘worst’ award way back in 1965 (which seems harsh in hindsight) and so my hand is forced slightly into awarding this to Westlife. Luckily, they are very worthy winners. I am also aware that they have ten more #1s to come, and that I will have to break my own rules if I want to punish them further, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Finally, The Very Best Chart-Topper Award. I have enjoyed chart-toppers from B*Witched (yes, B*Witched!) with ‘Rollercoaster’, Five with ‘Keep on Movin’ (the best of the boyband #1s by far), and the Manics with the blistering ‘The Masses Against the Classes’. I adore ‘Maria’, and had Blondie not already won for ‘Heart of Glass’ I might have been tempted to argue its case. But no. Instead we have two pop icons: one at the very start of her career, the other three decades deep into it. Britney versus Cher.
‘…Baby One More Time’ is objectively the better song, I think. But for the sheer brilliance of a fifty-two year old woman spending seven weeks at number one, filling the dancefloor, as well as making us ask what the hell she was doing with her voice, then Cher wins. Plus, I have a feeling Britney may well be in contention again a couple of recaps down the line…
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.
‘Please Don’t Go’ / ‘Game Boy’, by KWS.
‘Dreams’, by Gabrielle.
‘Forever Love’, by Gary Barlow.
‘I Feel You’, by Peter Andre.
‘You Needed Me’, by Boyzone.
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.
‘Ebeneezer Goode’, by The Shamen.
‘I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’, by Meat Loaf.
‘Spaceman’, by Babylon Zoo.
‘All Around the World’, by Oasis.
‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, by Baz Luhrmann.
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.
‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, by Bryan Adams.
‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’, by The Outhere Brothers.
‘Unchained Melody’ / ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, by Robson & Jerome.
‘C’est la Vie’, by B*Witched
‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’, by Westlife.
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
Just before our next recap, do we have a contender for the Worst Number One award…?
American Pie, by Madonna (her 9th of thirteen #1s)
1 week, from 5th – 12th March 2000
It’s fair to say that Madonna’s version of Don McClean’s ‘American Pie’ is much maligned. I’m guilty for some of this maligning, as I’ve pre-dissed it in earlier posts and comments, despite not having heard it for a quarter of a century. So, question is: is it as bad as everyone seems to think?
No, not at all. If this was the original version of ‘American Pie’, then it might be quite a fairly innocuous entry to the Madonna canon. But it’s not, of course. I think critics are more offended by the idea of this track than the song itself. Madonna? That cone bra wearing, Jesus humping, sex book publishing harpy, daring to cover one of the pillars of rock and roll?? And I’d guess that Madonna was fully aware of this, and that her deciding to cover this classic is an act every bit as provocative as the time she went down on Black Jesus.
At the same time, there’s nothing amazing about this version. It’s as if deciding to record it was bold enough, because Madonna forgot to make it particularly interesting. Sensibly, she doesn’t do the full eight minute version, and she uses McClean’s final verse, which most radio edits of the original skip. Perhaps she was attracted by the reference to the Father, Son, And the Holy Ghost, in keeping with her usual religious schtick.
‘American Pie’ was produced by William Orbit, just like the previous chart-topper from All Saints. This puts ‘American Pie’ in the unenviable position of sounding quiet a lot like its predecessor, but being not as good. All the Orbit swishes and swirls are there, but it ends up sounding like the B-side to ‘Pure Shores’. I’d have like Madge to have gone full, crunching electro – much like her second #1 of the year 2000 – just to truly give the purists a heart attack.
Madonna recorded this cover – and she’s not someone who has recorded very many covers during her career – for the soundtrack to her romcom ‘The Next Best Thing’ (her co-star Rupert Everett cavorts with her in the video, which also acts as an ‘America at the turn of the millennium’ time machine, with firefighters, body builders, blended families and kissing lesbians). It’s becoming something of a trend in the late nineties/early noughties for famous #2 hits make #1 in inferior cover versions. We’ve had ‘A Little Bit More’, and ‘I Have a Dream’. Now this, with a few more to come soon.
Perhaps, though, the final word should go to Don McClean himself, who was whole-hearted in his support for Madonna’s cover. ‘I have received many gifts from God’, he said, ‘but this is the first time I have ever received a gift from a goddess.’ (By ‘gifts’ we can only speculate that he meant ‘royalty cheques’.)
In other news, I recently wrote another guest post for Keith’s Nostalgic Italian blog, about books from our childhood. Check it out here.
The fifties had rock and roll, the sixties had beat bands and psychedelia. The seventies had glam, disco, and punk, while the eighties had new wave and new romantics. The nineties had hip-hop and Britpop, not to mention dance. The 2000s have… What do the 2000s have? In fact, what musical movements of any sort does the 21st century have…?
Pure Shores, by All Saints (their 4th of five #1s)
2 weeks, from 20th February – 5th March 2000
The new millennium provides an interesting dividing line, after which the Pop River reaches its delta, loses momentum, and splits into lots of little tributaries. It’s all to do with something called ‘the internet’, I think, taking power away from record companies and radio stations, and letting people discover all the music they could ever have dreamed of at the whir of a dial-up modem and the click of a mouse. The death of the monoculture, and all that. (Which isn’t to suggest that pop music’s journey had been relentlessly forward-moving over the first fifty years of the singles chart. Glam owed a debt to rock ‘n’ roll, Britpop owed a debt to the sixties, and so on …)
Anyway. That’s my long-winded way of getting around to saying that if the 21st century has a musical movement, I’d argue that it’s not so much a sound as a gender. Women. Female pop stars. Britney, Beyoncé, Gaga and Swift, to scratch but the tip of the iceberg. (And again, this is not to suggest that Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield, Diana Ross and Madonna were all figments of the 20th century imagination. Just indulge me…)
The dominance of the female pop star also meant – especially in the case of Britain in the 2000s – girl groups. In a few years I’ll be going wild for the cutting-edge pop of Sugababes and Girls Aloud, who even the likes of the NME will be rushing to anoint as the new avant-garde. All of which starts here, with the return of All Saints.
Phew. Having almost used up my regular wordcount with that intro, I’d better crack right into the song. ‘Pure Shores’ is described as ‘dream pop’, and it is definitely a step away from the group’s R&B-focused 1998 hits. The verses are laid-back, ambient, with a thrumming bass and lots of shimmering effects. We take detours between the verses for some whale calls and echoey backing vocals. It’s a pop song with the confidence to take its time, and to take us to some odd places. It was produced by electronic pioneer William Orbit, who is most famous perhaps for his work with Madonna around the same time, and who also worked with Blur, Prince, and U2.
But it is still a pop song, and the success of such things hinge on choruses. ‘Pure Shores’, for all its unusual soundscaping, remembers to click things into gear for a memorable I’m movin’, I’m comin’, Can you hear what I hear… Perhaps I’m of just the right age, but there are few choruses that transport me to a particular place and time like this one. It’s calling you my dear, Out of reach… The best bit of the song, though, is the hard-edged middle-eight, all industrial synths, and the following key change to take us home.
‘Pure Shores’ was written to order for the Leonardo Di Caprio movie ‘The Beach’, hence the Take me to my beach… line (the title doesn’t appear in the lyrics but certainly fits in with the film’s theme). Shaznay Lewis wrote most of the lyrics on a transatlantic flight, which is impressive, and not something many girl group members would be capable of doing, adding another layer of respectability to this tune.
Having said all that, and as good as ‘Pure Shores’ is, I think All Saints’ final chart-topper is even better. Both tracks, bookending the year 2000, set the tone for what pop music, specifically pop music fronted by women, could achieve in the years to come…
The UK Number Ones Blog 