andrew lloyd webber

798. ‘No Matter What’, by Boyzone

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Straight after ‘Viva Forever’, here’s another high quality ballad…

No Matter What, by Boyzone (their 4th of six #1s)

3 weeks, from 9th – 30th August 1998

Yes, the words ‘high quality’ and ‘Boyzone’ in very close proximity there, but I’ll stand by it. This is, by a clear distance, the best of the Irish boyband’s six number ones.

Like the Spice Girls before it, the melody and the chord progressions here are simple, but effective. There’s something instantly touching, even if this isn’t your kind of music. (It absolutely reeks of musical theatre, with an ‘Act I finale’ energy to it. More on that to follow…) Helping immensely in this song’s likeability is that Stephen Gately gets to sing the first verse. Nice voice, nice boy, sorely missed…

If only he’d been allowed to carry the whole thing. Alas, Ronan Keating comes clattering in for the second verse, with all the subtlety of a drunken ox. But even he can’t ruin it. There’s a depth to this, a timelessness that’s been missing from Boyzone’s previous number ones. There’s another acoustic guitar solo, and a soaring finish, and the job’s a good ‘un. The fact that this stands out so far against the band’s earlier singles is perhaps explained by the songwriters: Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Jim Steinman.

‘No Matter What’ was the first act closer in ‘Whistle Down the Wind’, Webber’s 1996 musical based on the book and film of the same name. (I must admit, I knew this was from a musical, but thought it was much older.) It becomes the fourth chart-topper that Webber has been involved in, after ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, ‘Any Dream Will Do’, and, yes, ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini’. It’s also Steinman’s fourth, after ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, ‘I’d Do Anything for Love’, and ‘Never Forget’ (meaning that he’s produced hits for the nineties’ two biggest boybands).

It’s a needless comparison, but since this directly followed ‘Viva Forever’ I feel compelled to say that this isn’t as a good a record. And it’s not just because of groanin’ Ronan… The production is a bit cheap, with a squelchy bass and a karaoke-level percussion. And I don’t know who thought the strange chicka-cha-ah-has in the intro were a good idea, but they weren’t. Plus, the lyrics are well-intentioned but interesting: No matter what they tell us, No matter what they teach us, What we believe is true… (Sounds like the motto of your average Twitter user…)

Still, it is a good pop ballad. And for a boyband single to get three weeks at number one means that it must have had broad crossover appeal. It even managed to graze the charts in the US, something that no Boyzone single did before, or after. They have two final number ones coming up – one of which is not, I repeat not, a ballad – but I highly doubt either will match this.

666. ‘Any Dream Will Do’, by Jason Donovan

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

Jason Donovan’s final UK number one throws us a bit of a curveball… Musical theatre chart-toppers are generally few and far between, as are hit songs based on bible stories. But perhaps the strangest thing about this song is Jason himself…

Any Dream Will Do, by Jason Donovan (his 4th and final #1)

2 weeks, from 23rd June – 7th July 1991

Given a blind listening test, there’s no way you would peg this for the same guy who just two years ago was singing ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’. He sounds so proper, so refined. Not that he was a hellraiser back in his SAW days; but he’s gone full musical the-ay-tah, pronouncing every syllable and projecting his voice right to the cheap seats. My gran, whose main requirement in a singer was that you could ‘make out what they were saying’, would have approved.

Away from JD, the record’s production is average, verging on cheap, and the kids’ choir in the background sounds phoned-in. It is of course from ‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’, an Andrew Lloyd-Webber/Tim Rice musical based on the story of Joseph, from the Book of Genesis. They had written it in the late sixties, but the show hadn’t had a run in the West End for almost twenty years before a revival, starring Donovan as the title character, turned it into one of Britain’s best-loved musicals. Lloyd-Webber, meanwhile, scored his second #1 in under a year, after bringing us Timmy Mallett and his infamous bikini…

It’s a well-trodden path. A pop star’s hits begin to dry up and so they migrate to the stage. Not that Jason Donovan had fallen that far from his heyday – his second album had produced three Top 10 hits, though no #1s – but perhaps he could see which way the wind was blowing. It was a smart move, bringing him to the attention of a whole new audience, and gaining him a pretty unexpected swansong at the top of the charts.

If I’m honest, it’s hard for me to judge this song with any sort of impartiality. We have, in fact, reached a massive milestone. After five and half years of writing, and six hundred and sixty-six number ones (note the irony of a bible-based song being the 666th…) we arrive at the first chart-topper that I was actually aware of at the time. In fact the soundtrack to ‘Joseph…’ was the first CD I ever owned, while I went on a Sunday school trip to see the show in Edinburgh (though by that point I believe it was Phillip Schofield in the starring role).

And so, what would otherwise be a fairly unremarkable chart-topper, save for the odd coda it gave Donovan’s chart-career, takes on great significance. For me, at least. I can’t hear the soaring A crash of drums, A flash of light… line without picturing that old worn-out CD (although my favourite songs at the time were the country-ish ‘One More Angel in Heaven’ and the unhinged jazz-polka of ‘Potiphar’).

I’ve written before about Jason Donovan (and Kylie) being pop ground zero for older millennials like me. Kylie may have gone on to slightly bigger things – she’s literally back in the Top 10 as I write this, aged fifty-five, an absolute icon – but Jason has remained in the public eye for better (a plethora of stage and light entertainment shows) or worse (lawsuits and drug addiction). When I was a student, the mere suggestion that he might be making a private appearance at a nightclub would be enough to sell the place out. (It happened several times, and he never once turned up…) So here’s to you, Jason Donovan. Not many pop stars had a bigger impact on my formative years.