A1

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!

881. ‘Same Old Brand New You’, by A1

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Let’s purge A1’s unnecessary cover of ‘Take on Me’ from our minds, and instead revel in their second number one of the year, and some of the purest turn-of-the-century pop this side of *NSYNC.

Same Old Brand New You, by A1 (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th November 2000

In fact, this is *NSYNC crossed with the Backstreet Boys, and with a liberal dollop of Britney Spears. It is a shameless tribute to/pastiche of/rip-off of that blockbuster, Max Martin sound so beloved of those Stateside pop juggernauts. It was co-written by Eric Foster White, who had worked with Britney and the BSBs. And it comes pretty close to being as good.

The a cappella intro is striking, and well sung; and the chorus is a peach. The chords are huge, the production has that clanking industrial sound that makes everything feel epic. It’s also got a cheeky title, almost palindromic. No song called ‘Same Old Brand New You’ is going to be dull. But why don’t I rate it as highly as, say, ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’?

Sad to say, it’s probably because it’s A1, and there’s something a bit budget about them. If this has been recorded by Justin Timberlake and his crew, maybe I’d be more effusive. We Brits tend to knock our own while being in thrall to anything from across the Atlantic. I felt the same about Billie Piper’s foray into similarly hard-edged pop, ‘Day and Night’.

Though if I had to give a specifically musical reason for this song falling short of classic status, I’d point out the hugely clunking robot-voice sections. They go on too long, are too distorted, and are simply incomprehensible. The lyrics get completely lost: something, something, not keeping your promises… (To my ears it sounds like never gonna change your passwords…)

But it’s still a lot of fun, and a song I admit I’d completely forgotten about. Despite being a chart-topper, it’s definitely been lost among the year 2000’s more illustrious number ones. This was from A1’s second album, and they had one more in them. That gave us their last big hit – the also pretty decent ‘Caught in the Middle’, which made #2 in early 2002. They split soon after, but have reformed since. Like Westlife in my previous post, A1 were hugely popular in Asia, so popular that there were four teenage girls sadly crushed to death when the band turned up for a signing in Jakarta.

As it is still just about Eurovision season, it would be remiss to finish without mentioning that A1 almost represented Norway at the contest in 2010. Meanwhile Ben Adams did, as one half of Subwoolfer, finishing in 10th place in 2022, with the memorably titled ‘Give that Wolf a Banana’.

873. ‘Take on Me’, by A1

/ UK #1s blog / 15 Comments

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s definitely becoming a bit of a chart theme over the past year or so: classic #2s making #1 in inferior cover versions. We’ve had 911’s ‘A Little Bit More’, Westlife’s ‘I Have a Dream’, and Madonna’s infamous ‘American Pie’. But is this next chart-topping cover the most egregious…?

Take on Me, by A1 (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 3rd – 10th September 2000

Or is it a harmless tribute, bringing a much-loved classic to the ears of a new generation…? (Though there were only fifteen years between this and the original ‘Take on Me’, so I’m not sure enough time could have passed for it to have been forgotten.) The first thing that stands out are the reedy vocals, which simply cannot compete with Morten Harket, the ‘80s most crystalline voice. The producers try to paper over the cracks, by distorting, or by beefing them up with reverb and echo, and in the chorus Ben Adams makes a decent enough attempt at the high note (though the sceptic in me wonders if he didn’t have some electronic assistance…)

The original riff is of course, forever and always, a classic. So if you were to stumble across this version without ever having heard the original, then you might be impressed. But on top of the riff there are lots of pointless effects and window dressing. In fact, ‘pointless’ is the perfect word here. Why did A1 need to do this?

They had already enjoyed four Top 10 hits from their debut album, and the single following this – if I’m not mistaken – is something of a noughties pop classic. So, was it more of a statement? We’re back, with our second album, and a cover that’s bound to get us attention? I mean it worked, after all. Here they are, with their first #1. And they weren’t done meddling with the pop canon, as the B-Side was a Beatles medley.

A1 had been formed by Tim Byrne, the mastermind behind Steps, and Paul Marazzi, who had failed the audition to be in Steps. In my mind, they were very much a second division boyband, more Another Level than Take That, but they stayed together for three albums and eight Top 10 singles in total. The A-ha connection goes beyond this record, too, as they had a Norwegian member, Christian Ingebrigsten, and were almost as successful in Norway as they were in the UK.