911

Best of the Rest… Boybands

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

If you’ve been following this blog over the past few weeks, you’ll have seen that I claimed December 2002, and Blue’s cover of ‘Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word’, featuring Elton himself, as marking the end of the Golden Age of the Boyband…

I’ve gone into discussions, and answered questions on: what makes a boyband (dance routines, key changes), who the first boyband were (NKOTB), and whether or not Blazin’ Squad were a boyband (they weren’t, it’s official). In total, we’ve covered, enjoyed and/or endured forty boyband #1s over the course of thirteen chart years. Most have been ballads. Many have been garbage. A few have been classics.

So, in this post, I am going to offer you an alternative history. A ‘what might have been’. Six non-charttopping hits from six charttopping boybands. Six choons. Not a ballad in sight.

Color Me Badd – ‘All 4 Love’ (reached #5 in 1991)

Color Me Badd made #1 with the icky ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’. But, later in 1991, they returned with the genuinely catchy ‘All 4 Love’. It’s a cheesily soulful love song, with a looped piano riff and a funky horn section. Knight in shining armour, I’ll be your fairytale… are lyrics that in a ballad would have you swallowing back vomit; but that in an uptempo number like this are forgiveable. This record made top spot in the US (bravo America), but was their final Top 10 pretty much everywhere.

East 17 – ‘Deep’ (reached #5 in 1993)

To be honest, East 17 have nothing to prove. Their one chart-topper is probably the best boyband single ever released. On the one hand, this is quite an experimental boyband single, with an ominous squelchy bass, a floaty piano line, and a strange operatic vocal loop, mingling to make an atmospheric backing track. On the other, this is preposterously horny nonsense. East 17 were almost instantly cast as the Stones to Take That’s Beatles, and it is impossible to imagine Gary Barlow uttering lines like I wanna do it ’till my belly rumbles... or I’ll butter the toast if you lick the knife…

911 – ‘Bodyshakin’‘ (reached #3 in 1997)

911 had to wait a long time (by boyband standards) for a #1. Eleven singles over three years until their cover of Dr. Hook’s ‘A Little Bit More’ finally made it all the way. But what a damp squib that was. Especially when a banger such as ‘Bodyshakin” stalled at #3. In 1997, this was very a modern sounding pop song, something that Max Martin and Backstreet Boys would be churning out to great a success by the end of the decade. (Dare I say that 911 managed this because they completely ripped off ‘We’ve Got It Goin’ On’?) I struggled between this and ‘Party People… Friday Night’, which is a much cheesier disco number, so I attach that here for your pleasure.

Five – ‘Everybody Get Up’ (reached #2 in 1998)

‘Keep on Movin” aside, I found Five’s (sorry, 5ive’s) number ones underwhelming. Especially when earlier in their career they were releasing singles like this ‘I Love Rock n Roll’ sampling 1998 smash. I think, having slogged through all these boybands, Five were probably the most fun, and the most light on ballads. In classic ’90s music video fashion, the boys disrupt a school exam, tossing test papers willy-nilly, and deliver era-defining lines like I’m the bad boy that you invite for dinner, Ain’t got no manners ’cause I eat with my fingers…

Blue – ‘All Rise’ (reached #4 in 2001)

In a way, for Blue to wrap the Golden Era of the Boyband up was fitting, as they had offered a vision of the future of the genre. They were less concerned with dance routines and key changes, and more with slick R&B production and more mature lyrics. When boybands returned to the charts in the late ’00s, quite a few of them looked and sounded like Blue. Their second single (and first #1) ‘Too Close’ told a tale of trying to hide an erection, while their debut single ‘All Rise’ presented a breakup as a court case: I’m gonna tell it to your face, I rest my case... Less a boyband, more a young adultband.

A1 – ‘Caught in the Middle’ (reached #2 in 2002)

For their 3rd and final album, A1 also went for a more grown-up sound, a world away from their pointless cover of ‘Take on Me’. This was another way in which boybands adapted for the 2000s, incorporating guitars and moodier themes, and sheepskin jackets. By the middle of the decade, as Take That returned and Westlife kept plodding on, we’d be talking about ‘manbands’. Anyway, this is a catchy, minor key number. I think it would be fair to suggest it owes a certain debt to Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and A1 were hardly the first boyband to borrow a sound.

Up soon, we’ll be launching into our next fifty chart-toppers, which will take us from spring 2003 to early 2005. It will also take us to the 1000th UK number one, and I have some special posts planned when we get to that milestone. It will all be boyband-less, however. Celebrate or mourn as you see fit. Unless you count Busted and McFly as boybands… but let’s not go there just yet!

812. ‘A Little Bit More’, by 911

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

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.