Ballads

854. ‘Fool Again’, by Westlife

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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:

  1. If I Let You Go
  2. Flying Without Wings
  3. Fool Again
  4. Swear It Again
  5. 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.

841. ‘She’s the One’ / ‘It’s Only Us’, by Robbie Williams

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‘She’s the One’ is not Robbie Williams’ best known number one. Nor does it get the airplay of a ‘Rock DJ’, a ‘Feel’, or an ‘Angels’. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to suggest that it’s one of his very best.

She’s the One / It’s Only Us, by Robbie Williams (his 2nd of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 14th – 21st November 1999

At least, I always thought so. Until today, when everything I believed was rocked to its core… ‘She’s the One’ is a cover. World Party, a project fronted by former Waterboys member Karl Wallinger, recorded and released the original in 1997, and it was an Ivor Novello-winning, film soundtrack appearing, performed-on-Jools-Holland sort of hit. I’m ashamed of myself for not discovering this much earlier…

Robbie Williams delivers a facsimile of this song – same instrumentation, same harmonies, same vocal range – and delivers it very well. It is a lovely song; a very late-Britpop, arms around your mates in the pub sort of tune. It could easily have been recorded by Oasis, which of course means it has lots of nice Beatlesy touches to it, in the drum-fills and the backing vocals. But I feel slightly cheated now, after all these years of enjoying this so-called Robbie Williams hit.

What the original doesn’t have is a Brit Award winning video set in the world of competitive figure skating, with Robbie playing a has-been skater given one last chance at glory. Plus, it means Barry Davies, the greatest football commentator of my lifetime, can claim a number one single. (My dream aged thirteen, when this song came out, was to be Barry Davies.)

There was some drama, and some fairly ungentlemanly behaviour from Williams, when he started claiming that ‘She’s the One’ was the best song he had ever written. Some of Wallinger’s band played on the cover, unknown to Wallinger himself, and he suffered a brain aneurysm around the time it was hitting #1. Still, he did well off the royalties, and in interviews has claimed that this record saved him from penury. Williams has also, more recently, finally admitted that he didn’t write the song.

What of the double-‘A’ side, ‘It’s Only Us’? The fact I don’t think I’d ever heard this suggests it was more of a jumped-up ‘B’-side than a true double-‘A’. It was written for the soundtrack to FIFA 2000 and, again, it’s very Britpop indebted, this time more Supergrass than Oasis. It rollocks along nicely with lyrics that namecheck Williams’ hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, and with a fun end-of-the-pier organ solo. It’s also one of those songs where Robbie makes a drugs reference – We’re just after cheaper thrills, Since the price went up on pills… – of the sort that always feels a little try-hard for a former boyband member, like a teenager trying to shock his parents. We get it, Robbie. We get it.

It’s worth noting that this was the fourth single from ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, the album that had given us ‘Millennium’ well over a year earlier. Taking the fourth single from an already huge-selling album to number one requires some serious star power, something that Robbie had in abundance in the late ‘90s. In fact, this moment saw the breakout star from the decade’s biggest boyband knocking his female counterpart, Geri Halliwell, off top-spot. The following year the pair would even date for a couple of months. Geri and Robbie, top of the pops and pretending to be a couple for the tabloids… Pop culture doesn’t get any more turn-of-the-21st-century that that.

838. ‘Flying Without Wings’, by Westlife

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Back, by unpopular demand, for one week only… Westlife.

Flying Without Wings, by Westlife (their 3rd of fourteen #1s)

1 week, from 24th – 31st October 1999

In earlier posts, I had mentioned the existence of two Westlife songs that I quite liked. (I then realised that ‘If I Let You Go’ was a bit of a bop, and had to admit to liking three Westlife records.) ‘Flying Without Wings’ was one of the original two, but question is: does it live up to my expectations…?

Well, sort of. It is a decent enough pop ballad, a three-minute long crescendo that builds to an actually quite stirring finale. And, credit where it’s due, I think a lot of that is down to the boys’ vocals, especially – and I’m going to attempt this without Googling – Shane (the plain, Gary Barlow-ish one) and Mark (the, um, gay one), who take the lead.

What lets the song down, and means it doesn’t quite manage to be the deep, soulful classic it wishes to be, are the clunky lyrics, and the cheap production. Unusually for a boyband song, the words focus partly on non-romantic love: friendships, parents, even the joy of being alone, all of which apparently make you feel like you’re flying without wings… Which is a pretty banal title, really. Meanwhile the production is pure ‘X-Factor winners single’ shlock, when a more stripped back backing might have worked wonders.

It’s records like this that make me wonder: who were Westlife’s fans? Ok, ‘If I Let You Go’ was teen-pop, but this and ‘Swear It Again’ are very middle-aged, and middle-of-the-road. I was thirteen when this came out, and don’t remember any Westlife fans at school (though maybe they were just keeping it quiet). Then again, three number ones in a row don’t lie. Though we should at some point, when we’ve truly run out of things to say about yet another one-week-wonder ballad, explore just how canny the band’s management were in securing them all these number ones.

So, ‘Flying Without Wings’: pretty good, compared to much of Westlife’s output, but not the classic it so clearly wants to be. And I’d say that there are plenty of their songs that are better remembered a quarter of a century on. Interestingly, though, in 2004 a live version of ‘Flying Without Wings’ made history by becoming the first ever #1 on the download chart (a chart that in 2005 would be combined into the regular singles countdown). What I would like to ask, though, is why oh why did they not save this record for their Christmas release a few weeks later, rather than the dross they did eventually serve up…? More on that soon enough.

831. ‘When You Say Nothing at All’, by Ronan Keating

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I did warn you… Just because Boyzone’s chart-topping days are over, we’re far from hearing the last of Groanin’ Ronan.

When You Say Nothing at All, by Ronan Keating (his 1st of three solo #1s)

2 weeks, from 1st – 15th August 1999

Barely three months on from ‘You Needed Me’, and before his band had even released their final single, Keating launched a solo career, with immediate success. Of course, he was helped in this by having his debut single included on the soundtrack to the year’s biggest romcom, ‘Notting Hill’, but still. I’ll admit, quietly and grudgingly, that I’ve always quite liked this…

It’s got a nice country lilt to it, and a decent chorus. Some of the production is very late-nineties bells and whistles, and it could have done without the overpowering backing singers. Plus the tin-whistle chorus is better not mentioned. Still, I’d tentatively state that this is better than at least four out of Boyzone’s six number ones.

The worst thing about it is… Yup, you guessed it. The singer. Ronan Keating is not a bad singer. He hits the right notes, he holds them, and you can make out what he’s saying (a quality my late gran held above all else). But his vocal affectations, his growls and lisps, his insistence on pronouncing his ‘ch’s and ‘sh’s like Sean Connery… He doesn’t speak like that. It’s put on when he sings. It’s annoying! And it was a huge risk for him to tempt every comedian in the land by releasing a record with the crucial line: You say it best, When you say nothing at all…

I’ve had various people commenting on Keating’s voice in previous posts. One has suggested that he might have had an alternate career as a grunge singer, which I can understand. Another has suggested that he is better on upbeat numbers, a theory that his performance on ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ doesn’t hold up but that we can put to the test again with his next chart-topper. Further thoughts on his vocal stylings are always welcome.

This was the fourth time in just over a decade that ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ had been a hit. Keith Whitley took it to the top of the Billboard Country Charts in 1988, while Alison Krauss & Union Station took it to the lower reaches of the Hot 100 in 1995. Both of those versions are a lot rawer, and less polished. Frances Black then took it to the Irish Top 10 in 1996, which is when Ronan first heard it. He upped the Irishness – perhaps inspired by B*Witched’s recent dedication to all things Celtic – and scored the biggest hit of all.

824. ‘You Needed Me’, by Boyzone

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Yet MORE boyband balladry…

You Needed Me, by Boyzone (their 6th and final #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd May 1999

Following on from our last post, if I’d wanted an example of how drippy late-nineties boybands from the British Isles were compared to their American counterparts, then I couldn’t have planned it better. Straight after Backstreet Boys’ era-straddling classic ‘I Want It That Way’ comes Ronan and the lads’ final, and perhaps most insipid, number one.

‘You Needed Me’ was originally a Billboard #1 in 1978 for Canadian singer Anne Murray (it made #22 in the UK). If you ever want to listen to ‘You Needed Me’, then listen to her version. And you should want to listen to it, as in its original form it’s a nice slice of Carpenters-esque, late-seventies soft rock. There are no circumstances under which you should ever need to listen to the Boyzone cover instead, unless you find yourself writing a blog in which you force yourself to listen to every single number one single…

Ronan Keating takes lead vocals (of course he does), and he goes through his full repertoire of grunts, growls, and rasps, as if well aware that this is Boyzone’s last hurrah. And it’s not that he and his bandmates completely ruin the song. It’s more that nothing here is an improvement on the original: not the vocals, not the karaoke reverb ‘n’ tinkles production, not the extra backing singers chucked in at the end. My favourite bit of both versions, and which I’m happy Boyzone kept, exaggerated even, is the overstated ending.

I say that this is Boyzone’s most insipid number one but it of course has competition. ‘No Matter What’ is their best by far, ‘A Different Beat’ at least had some interesting, world music elements, while we were simply glad that their cover of ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ was NOT A BALLAD! Maybe then ‘You Needed Me’ can tie with their cover of ‘Words’, and ‘All That I Need’ as their dullest. The video to this one, though, is worth noting as it features lots of different couples in lots of different picture frames, at least two of whom appear to be same-sex, which feels very progressive for the time. It was probably tied to the fact that Stephen Gately had just come out as gay.

Many didn’t expect ‘You Needed Me’ to make number one, as it was up against Geri Halliwell’s highly anticipated solo debut ‘Look at Me’. Boyzone, though, edged the race by a narrow 748 copies, which many put down to the fact that they released two different CD versions compared to Geri’s one. Ginger Spice would have her day at the top of the charts, but was made to wait a few months longer than she might have wanted.

Boyzone meanwhile had one final Top 10 hit after this before calling it a day for the best part of a decade. We will of course hear Groanin’ Ronan’s unmistakeable tones again at the top of the charts, as he was quick to launch a successful solo career. Stephen Gately and Mikey Thomas also tried it alone, with less success, while Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch had a go as a duo. They reformed in 2008, returned briefly to the Top 10, and have released several albums in the years since. Gately tragically died from a heart condition in 2009, aged just thirty-three.

822. ‘Swear It Again’, by Westlife

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Here we go, then… Our most successful boyband’s reign of terror begins…

Swear It Again, by Westlife (their 1st of fourteen #1s)

2 weeks, from 25th April – 9th May 1999

As tempting as it is to go in two-footed on Westlife from the start, they do have a hell of a lot of number ones to get through (only Elvis and The Beatles have more). So can I imagine a world where ‘Swear it Again’, their debut single, was their only hit, and find something good, or at least interesting, to say about it?

I’ll give the verses the credit of having a hint of ‘80s Elton John about them, in the confident piano lines. Beyond that though, it’s a struggle. This isn’t just Westlife’s debut single, it’s their Manifesto. The template through which they’ll be dominating the charts for much of the next decade. It’s bland, it’s MOR. It’s soppy. It’s crap.

This sounds so much like every other song they’ll release between now and 2006, that as I listen I can clearly picture them rising from their stools, through clouds of dry ice, for the final chorus. There is no key change, however, no matter how much one is teased. Perhaps we’ll find that a Westlife trademark key-change wasn’t as common as we think? Maybe they actually did very few, like how Sherlock Holmes hardly ever said ‘elementary’…? The truth will be revealed, slowly, one syrupy ballad after another.

Westlife are usually seen as taking the baton from Boyzone as Britain’s favourite Irish boyband. They shared a manager, Louis Walsh, and Ronan Keating was also involved in their early days (they had supported Boyzone and the Backstreet Boys on tour before releasing any music). It wasn’t a clean transfer of power, though, as Keating’s gang still have one more #1 to come. Westlife had formed a couple of years earlier, as a six-piece, but were rejected by Simon Cowell, who claimed that they were “the ugliest boyband I have ever seen in my life”. Three members were promptly sacked – the ugly ones, we can presume – two new ones hired, and off they went.

Off to score fourteen (yes, one four) number ones in seven years. Interestingly, though, ‘Swear It Again’ did something that only four of their chart-toppers managed: more than a single week at number one. Their fourteen number ones will amount only to twenty weeks in total at the top, a phenomenon that we can perhaps explore in more detail in a later Westlife post, once we’ve lost count of the key-changes, and run out of synonyms for ‘bland’.

821. ‘Perfect Moment’, by Martine McCutcheon

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If ‘Levi’s #1s’ is a niche chart-topping genre – see Mr. Oizo last time out – then this next chart-topper falls into an even rarer category…

Perfect Moment, by Martine McCutcheon (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 11th – 25th April 1999

Not just ‘TV stars’ (alongside the likes of Telly Savalas and David Soul) or ‘Soap Stars’ (alongside Kylie and Jason), both of which would be niche enough. No, after Nick Berry, this is just the second ever Eastenders number one.

And if this were a competition, then Martine McCutcheon wins the Battle of the Eastenders Pop Stars hands down. That is more to do with how crap Nick Berry’s effort was than any particular strengths that this record has, but still. A win’s a win. And ‘Perfect Moment’ starts off interestingly enough, with a grandiosely old-fashioned intro, and some early-eighties, Ultravoxy synths.

Yes, it’s a gloopy ballad. But it sounds quite out of place against the late-nineties pop landscape. This sounds like it could have replaced Nick Berry at the top back in 1986. I don’t want to use the word ‘experimental’ on a record as average as this, but at the same time McCutcheon’s producers were clearly trying a couple of things out.

By the second verse, though, order has been restored. That pre-set late-nineties drumbeat has kicked in, while the middle-eight (And if tomorrow brings a lonely day…) sets a template to be followed by every X-Factor winner’s single from here to eternity. Blandness wins, but for a minute or so something a little more interesting was threatened.

And what of Martine McCutcheon, AKA Tiffany Mitchell, who a few months earlier had been mown down in Albert Square by Frank Butcher’s car? She has a pretty decent voice here, on her solo debut, and by the end is trying her best to compete with the big ‘90s divas. She is ultimately, though, no Whitney Houston. She had made earlier attempts at a pop career, as part of failed girl-group Milan in at the start of the decade, and on a minor dance hit not long after she had joined ‘EastEnders.

‘Perfect Moment’ had originally been recorded by Polish singer Edyta Górniak in 1997, and this cover set McCutcheon up for a couple of years of chart success. Colour me surprised to discover that she managed four more Top 10 hits! None of which I have any memory of… She has gone on to acting success on stage and screen – perhaps most famous to an international audience as Natalie in ‘Love Actually’ – while the fact that she was killed off and unable to return to EastEnders has apparently always rankled with her.

808. ‘Goodbye’, by The Spice Girls

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Managing a Beatles-matching three Christmas number ones in a row, it’s the Spice Girls…

Goodbye, by The Spice Girls (their 8th of nine #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th December 1998

Could we argue that this is a more impressive feat than that managed by The Beatles, as the Fab Four’s three festive chart-toppers came before the Christmas Number One © became a thing? Perhaps. But that’s a discussion for another day. On to the ballad at hand.

For it is, of course, a ballad. My favourite of their three Xmas #1s, by far, is ‘Too Much’, because it desperately didn’t want to be a ballad. But this is much more traditional fare. Listen little child, There will come a day… To be honest, I’m not sure what this is about. A break-up, I guess? With children involved?

Of course, with lines like Goodbye my friend… and I never dreamt you’d go your own sweet way… many at the time saw this as the remaining Spice Girls making their peace with Geri, after she’d abandoned them several months before. It was, after all, the first song they recorded as a four-piece, and wouldn’t appear on an album until two years later. Others saw it as the Girls bowing out entirely, which wasn’t a strange assumption given that Mel B had already enjoyed a solo chart-topper.

Musically this is lush and atmospheric, though perhaps a little more predictable sounding. coming straight after B*Witched’s Celtic-influenced ‘To You I Belong’. I like the squelchy bass – a little out place at first – while the beat is very American R&B, very Destiny’s Child. I can’t find too much to love, though. And coming two years after I’d outgrown my tweenage passion for the Spice Girls, I’m not sure I’ve ever properly listened to ‘Goodbye’.

It’s not as good a ballad as ‘Viva Forever’, that’s for sure. But you can tell that they had access to the best songwriters of the day, as evidenced by Mel C’s genuinely memorable chorus-within-a-chorus: So glad we made it, Time’s never, ever gonna change it… She always did get the best parts… I also like the fact that none of their Xmas number ones have gone down the cliched sleigh bells and choirs route (although the video to ‘Goodbye’ does involve a lot of snow, and people frozen like ice sculptures).

So, after two and a half years, two albums, eight singles yielding seven number ones, the Spice Girls… went on a break. There was still a tour, and solo projects to invest in. But there were also still plans for a third album, that will come about eventually, and give them a final footnote of a number one. It would have been cleaner, somehow, if they’d just bowed out with ‘Goodbye’, their record-matching third consecutive Christmas #1. Pushing them all the way in the charts that week was an animated chef, voiced by a soul legend, who would have his moment in the sun soon enough…

807. ‘To You I Belong’, by B*Witched

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A blast of Celtic pipes meets our ears, heralding the arrival of our next number one. Because heaven forbid we forget just for one second that B*Witched. Are. Irish!

To You I Belong, by B*Witched (their 3rd of four #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th December 1998

Girl group rules dictate that the 3rd single must be a ballad, especially if said single is being released at Christmas. So in some ways, ‘To You I Belong’ is a fairly predictable, low-tempo, pop smoocher (with a strangely old-fashioned sounding title, grammatically speaking). In other ways, though, it’s actually quite interesting.

For such a generic girl group ballad, there are plenty of touches that I wasn’t expecting. The tin whistles and strings give it a New Age feel, with hints of Enya even, and the girls’ floaty, trembly voices are quite soothing. Turns out that B*Witched could properly sing, something that was lost amongst all the bubble-gum silliness of their first two singles!

It’s unexpectedly classy, and even if I don’t automatically love all the Celtic flourishes at least it’s something a little different from what the other girl groups of the time were offering. I would say, though, that it could have done with a more stripped-back production – maybe just the girls’ voices and a couple of guitars – as all the layers of computer generated synths and tinkly bits make it sound cluttered.

Three #1s from their first three singles catapulted B*Witched into exalted company: Gerry & The Pacemakers, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Jive Bunny and The Spice Girls. And they’ll go one better than the first three of those acts, by making it four out of four. Speaking of The Spice Girls, B*Witched sensibly released ‘To You I Belong’ a week before the festive number one race, rather than going up against the Queens of Christmas. However, with this giving the Irish girls their third chart-topper of 1998, compared to the Spice Girls’ one (so far), it could be argued that at this point B*Witched were the bigger group…

Finally from a chart-geek angle, this record kicks off a run of ten one-week #1s in a row, through until late February 1999, as the chart-topping turnover continues to ramp up. (The previous longest run of one-weekers was five, in early 1997.)

797. ‘Viva Forever’, by The Spice Girls

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The Spice Girls return, after missing #1 for the first time behind Run-D.M.C, with their first Geri-less single…

Viva Forever, by The Spice Girls (their 7th of nine #1s)

2 weeks, from 26th July – 9th August 1998

I can still remember where I was when I heard Geri had left the group (some generations had JFK…) I was in a minibus, on my way home from a Scout camp, when news broke on the radio. But of course, ‘Viva Forever’ had been recorded months before, so Halliwell still features both in the song and in the video – as much as any of the girls ‘feature’ in the video as animated fairies – and in fact was credited with writing most of the lyrics.

There are some lovely strings ‘n’ harmonies in the intro, then a cool Spanish guitar to bring some drama. The verses have a sense of melancholy, and the lyrics – originally about a summer romance – have a real yearning to them. The bridge even has some Spanish, for that touch of class. The verses too have a timeless quality to them, even if the chord progressions are a little predictable.

Of course, by the time Geri had left, the lyrics had ceased to be about a summer fling and seemed to fit perfectly as her ‘goodbye’ to the band. And this is a very solid pop record. In fact, it’s almost adult-oriented soft rock. And I’d put it down as the group’s best ballad, miles ahead of ‘Mama’, and pretty far ahead of ‘2 Become 1’. The fact that they had gems like this up their sleeve, two years into their career, sets the Spice Girls apart from most other pop fodder of the time.

The only thing that slightly lets this record down is the vocals. And we know, of course, seven chart-toppers in, that people didn’t buy Spice Girls’ records for the quality of their voices. But it’s on songs like this, where they can’t rely on boisterous, girl-power energy, that you can hear how reedy a couple of them were. Luckily, Mel C is on hand to do most of the heavy lifting as the song reaches its climax.

I can’t remember ever seeing the full music video for ‘Viva Forever’ before, but it’s a trip. Set in the 1970s, two boys follow an animatronic bouncing chicken into a forest where they meet the Spiceys as slightly demented looking fairies. One of the boys disappears into a Rubik’s cube with the girls, leaving his friend lost and confused… It apparently took longer to film than the entirety of ‘Spiceworld – The Movie’, and adds a ‘loss of innocence’ interpretation to the song’s lyrics.

So, Geri had left, citing exhaustion and depression. The drama was that she didn’t tell the other girls to their faces, causing a rift for many years… It wasn’t the only crack to start showing, though. Before the Girls return for their penultimate number one, their solo careers will have started, with predictably chart-topping results.