all saints

876. ‘Black Coffee’, by All Saints

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

All Saints return for their second number one of the year, although ‘Pure Shores’ feels like a lifetime ago given how many chart-toppers we’ve ploughed through since then…

Black Coffee, by All Saints (their 5th and final #1)

1 week, from 8th – 15th October 2000

And this second single from their second album is cut from much the same cloth as their previous #1. It’s got the same lush, dream pop soundscape, with woozy synths and whale noises – it too was produced by William Orbit – and is a further departure from the sassy, R&B pop of their 1998 hits. But I think I actually prefer this to the hugely loved and well-respected ‘Pure Shores’.

I’d say that it’s got the best chorus of their five chart-toppers, and the contrast between the ambient yearning there and the fast moving verses is very appealing. It’s a love song, going by most of the lyrics… I wouldn’t wanna change, Anything at all… But the song’s wistful atmosphere (and the video) hints at a break-up… I wouldn’t wanna take, Everything out on you… (Although I know I do…)

Any song that chucks its title down the sink in the middle of the second verse is automatically very cool, but I would suggest that what elevates this record to true greatness is the coda, in which the first verse is remixed into something more industrial, and darker. It’s a fantastically edgy way for Britain’s coolest girl group to bow out from chart-topping duty.

Sadly, though, ‘Black Coffee’ was a big part of All Saints calling it quits in early 2001. It was the only All Saints original not to be written by Shaznay Lewis, and the Appleton sisters saw this as a reason for them to finally be given lead vocals over Lewis. Tensions built up during recording and live performances, until an argument over who got to wear a jacket for a photoshoot proved the final straw. And to be honest, that was a huge part of All Saints appeal: the fact that running behind all those great songs was the nagging suspicion that they really fucking hated each other.

They had one more single to come, the #7 ‘All Hooked Up’, which contains the classic chorus line: I know that you want a piece of my ass… But that was pretty much it (until the inevitable comeback five years later). On any given day my choice of best All Saints single might rotate between ‘Never Ever’, ‘Pure Shores’ and this, but today I’m leaning towards ‘Black Coffee’. Add in ‘Bootie Call’ and the better-than-they-should-have-been covers of ‘Lady Marmalade’ and ‘Under the Bridge’, then you have one of the great chart-topping runs.

849. ‘Pure Shores’, by All Saints

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

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…

800. ‘Bootie Call’, by All Saints

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Suddenly it’s eight hundred not out. We continue to cut a swathe through the chart decades, almost tipping over into a new century. But there’s still plenty of life left in the 1990s, as All Saints return to form…

Bootie Call, by All Saints (their 3rd of five #1s)

1 week, from 6th – 13th September 1998

I tried to make the best of their double-bill cover record, featuring interesting takes on ‘Under the Bridge’ and ‘Lady Marmalade‘. And while it wasn’t the horror show some might have claimed, it still wasn’t that good. So here’s their third number one of the year, making them 1998’s joint most successful girl group (the other one isn’t the Spice Girls). And it’s a fun record.

It’s also a strange record, despite the subject matter being very All Saints. Casual sex is the order of the day, and it’s worth stopping to note that while this song isn’t at all explicit, it’s only really been since the mid-nineties that chart-toppers have started to be this up-front about sex. Never stop giving good love, ‘Cause that’s what I call you for… the girls purr… You can bring it on with the rough stuff, I don’t want to be tamed… All Saints are, of course, in charge of the whole situation, reminding their guys: It’s just a bootie call… (Why, incidentally, not ‘booty’? Is ‘bootie’ a British spelling I don’t know about?)

The strangeness comes from the production, and the sound effects that hang all over this song like weird Christmas decorations. There’s what sounds like someone snoring, a man going ‘uh’ over, over and over (once you’ve noticed him in the mix he takes over completely), plus lots of vaguely sexual breathing and spluttering. The second verse is very rough around the edges, with the girls taking turns over their lines as if ad-libbing around a looped piano riff. It could be cool; but it could also sound half-arsed. It’s certainly not polished or softened, like so many of the recent tween pop #1s, so that’s something to be thankful for. The girls don’t forget that there might be children listening though, adding a line I assume to be about safe sex: Jimmy’s got to ride in your pocket, or lock him in your wallet…

‘Bootie Call’ isn’t as good as ‘Never Ever’, or either of the band’s two remaining chart-toppers. It’s a little gimmicky, and gets a little repetitive. But even as their fourth best number one, it’s pretty enjoyable. Plus it cements their place as the biggest British girl group of the day, as the Spice Girls continue to disintegrate.

Next up we have a much delayed recap, but before that we should cast our eyes back towards each of the ‘hundredth’ number ones. What’s interesting is that almost all of them represent a facet of British chart-topping tastes. All Saints are a good way to mark the girl-powered sass-pop of the late nineties, as were Chaka Demus & Pliers (700) a good way to mark the mid-nineties reggae revival. What’s interesting is that there are barely four and half years between 800 and 700, as the turnover of number ones increases, but more than six between 700 and 600, in which T’Pau represented for all the eighties power-ballads.

500 was Nicole’s ‘A Little Peace’ (Eurovision), while 400 was ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ (showtunes). Tony Orlando and Dawn’s ‘Knock Three Times’ represents nothing more than the British public’s ongoing love of middling cheese. 200 was ‘Help’ by the biggest band of all time, while 100 was Anthony Newley’s ‘Do You Mind’, highlighting the lull that came between rock ‘n’ roll and Merseybeat. And of course, Al Martino kicked the whole shebang off in 1952, repping for all the pre-rock crooners. It’s been a lot of fun so far – thanks to everyone who has come along for the ride – and rest assured I have no intention of stopping until we make it all the way to the present day.

780. ‘Never Ever’, by All Saints

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

Into 1998, then. The penultimate year of the century, the 46th year of the UK singles charts, and one with a thus-far record thirty number ones. And to start off, there are a few questions that I need to know…

Never Ever, by All Saints (their 1st of five #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th January 1998

To be honest, an opening line that clunky could kill lesser songs off before they’ve started. A few answers that I need to know, surely, scans just as well. Anyway, ‘Never Ever’ quickly recovers from that shaky start, by bringing us one of the great spoken word sections. Anyone of my vintage can probably still recite it word for word…You can tell me to my face, Or even on the phone… as well as adding all the backing harmonies.

It takes the sassy soul vibe of 1997’s final chart-topper, the Spice Girls’ ‘Too Much’, and ups both the sass and the soul. All Saints have very good voices, and great harmonies, to the point where you’re tricked into misremembering this as an a cappella track. But their voices are also flawed, like the Spice Girls’, so that you can hear their accents and dropped consonants.

‘Never Ever’ isn’t a cappella, of course, and the production is period-perfect late-90s R&B squelch (this is what we must refer to it as from now on, and we’ll be hearing it a lot as the century winds down). It’s also let down slightly by further clunky lyrics (flexin’ vocabulary… the alphabet runs right from A to Z) and simplistic rhymes: Free from pain/ Goin’ insane… So low/ Black hole… So sad/ Feelin’ really bad… But hey, at least the words stick with you. And by the end, as the harmonies build and the organs start to swirl, you forgive it. The outro is just as good as the famous intro, slipping into a hip-hop beat as the girls’ voices are filtered and distorted.

Having a pop single run over five minutes (six and a half in its album version) is always a risk, spreading a few decent lines and a hook too thin. But ‘Never Ever’ lasts the distance, thanks to the strength of the voices and the melodies, and the way that they continue to build. And talking of being long-running, the song had a particularly slow journey to the top of the charts by 1998’s standards. It first charted in November, then hung around the Top 10 for seven weeks before finally reaching the top in the post-Christmas lull. It set a record for the highest ever sales before making #1 (770,000), and it’s current total stands at 1.5 million. It is the 3rd biggest-selling girl group single of all time in the UK. (You can guess the top two in the comments below…)

It feels simplistic to call All Saints the female East 17 to the Spice Girls’ Take That, but I’m going to do it anyway. The Spice Girls were chaotic and silly, whereas All Saints were all glowering stares, pierced tongues and nose-studs, shacking up with Gallaghers. They were the girls a couple of years above you in the corridor at school, definitely not to be approached under any circumstances. ‘Never Ever’ was only their second single, but it established them as the ‘other’ girl group of the day. In 1998, they’ll even have one more #1 than the Spice Girls. In fact, they’ll have five chart-toppers in just under three years, and all but one of them will be great.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might be expecting a recap in my next post. However I’ve decided that as the turnover of #1s is ever-increasing, and to stop my all-time awards getting too skewed towards the late-‘90s/early-‘00s, I’m going to do recaps after every fiftieth chart-topper until things slow down a bit, sometime around 2003.