boyband

788. ‘All That I Need’, by Boyzone

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Oh, this is indeed ‘all that we need’…

All That I Need, by Boyzone (their 3rd of six #1s)

1 week, from 26th April – 3rd May 1998

A dull, plodder from the nineties’ dullest, most plodding boyband. Yay! A mid-tempo ballad (shock, horror!) that floats past your ears fairly inoffensively. I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever heard this before… I’m sure that I must have – I owned every ‘Now’ album between 1996 and 1999 – but I’m also sure that I’ve erased every memory of it in the intervening twenty six years.

Do I sniff the riff from the classic wimp-rock ballad ‘Right Here Waiting’? I think I do, plucked gently on an acoustic guitar. If that’s your inspiration, then you’re going to end up with something pretty insipid. Even groanin’ Ronan sounds bored as he meanders his way through the verses, as opposed to his usual constipated attempts at emoting.

And there’s that late-nineties computer generated drumbeat again. It’s starting to crop up more and more often, presumably preset into every Casio keyboard sold in 1998. In come the rest of the band for the chorus, and a lot of strings for a finish far grander than this song deserves. It’s not awful, nor is it Boyzone’s most offensive effort. But you’ll struggle to hum this five minutes after listening to it.

‘All That I Need’ was the third single from Boyzone’s third album, so we can assume that it took advantage of a quiet sales week to sneak a moment on top. That’s not to suggest they didn’t have fans – I went to school with a lot of them – but when you compare them to Take That, East 17, or the Spice Girls, there’s just something missing. More often than not that something was ‘fun’. In the video, the lads are dressed in some exotic crocodile skin jackets, ready to party. They just weren’t getting the material.

Still, Boyzone filled a niche, aimed at mums and grannies more than the kids. Nice Irish boys. And by 1998, four years and three albums into their career, they were nearing their boyband sell-by-date. Luckily for us all their manager, Louis Walsh, already had his sights on their successors: the T-1000 of granny-pleasing boybands, who will soon take the singles chart in their inhuman grip. Can’t wait!

769. ‘MMMBop’, by Hanson

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From an uplifting gospel classic, to some undeniable nineties bubblegum. The charts in the spring of 1997 were on a feelgood trip…

MMMBop, by Hanson (their 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 1st – 22nd June 1997

Having said that, though, I’m not sure that ‘bubblegum’ really does ‘MMMBop’ justice. Yes, it’s got the nonsense title, and the catchy chorus, but the verses are actually quite… grungy? The riff is not a million miles away from an acoustic version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, and the way the wordy lines bump up against the melody is quite sophisticated. Let’s not call it grunge, but note that it owes a debt to alt-rock acts of time.

Until the chorus, that is, when we leap wholeheartedly into pure-pop territory. Has there been a bigger, more instant, less forgettable, earworm in music history. Probably, but I can’t think of it right now. I can’t think of it because I’m listening to ‘MMMBop’, and am unable to focus on anything but that chorus.

I’m also remiss in calling the title ‘nonsense’, for I have just now googled ‘what is an MMMBop’, and found that it is the “sound of time passing very quickly”. How profound. Even more profound are the lyrics, which again I’d never paid much attention to: You have so many relationships in this life, Only one or two will last… When you get old and start losing your hair, Can you tell me who will still care…? Deep. Sightly clumsy – it was written by teenagers, after all – but deep.

When this record came out, all the talk in the playground wasn’t so much how young Hanson were, but how everyone thought their lead singer was a girl. Which, looking back now, seems ridiculous. It’s clearly a boy with long hair. But then small-town Scotland isn’t always the most cosmopolitan of places, and very few lads were strolling down our High Street with shoulder length blonde locks. I will credit Taylor Hanson, though, as being one of my very first crushes… He may not have been a girl, but I still thought he was cute. (I’ve just checked, and he’s still a decent looking chap in his forties…)

Taylor, and his brothers Isaac and Zac, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been in a band since 1992. They’d released a couple of independent albums, one of which featured a slower version of ‘MMMBop’. They were spotted playing at South by Southwest, and recorded an album produced by the Dust Brothers, who added all the cheesy touches and scratches to this lead single, which made #1 across the globe. In my review of the Spice Girls ‘Mama’ I called the same scratch effects ‘dated’, but here they seem to add to the period charm.

Do I love this as much as ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’? Probably not. Not sure why I need to compare them, other than the fact they topped the charts together, and are both feelgood classics. ‘MMMBop’ ultimately sounds a bit more of its time, though in today’s rush for all things nineties it’s definitely been reclaimed as a classic. Even in 1997 it broke through the critics’ defences, and was voted as Single of the Year by The Village Voice.

Hanson remain a going concern, with the brothers still recording and touring together. They have fifteen children between them, which is impressive. Away from music, they’re involved in a lot of charity work, and have even launched their own craft beer… wait for it… MMMHops.

766. ‘Love Won’t Wait’, by Gary Barlow

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I was nonplussed when Gary Barlow launched his solo career with the dreary ballad ‘Forever Love’. Nonplussed, and bored. Was that it, from the man meant to be the next George Michael?

Love Won’t Wait, by Gary Barlow (his 2nd of three solo #1s)

1 week, from 4th – 11th May 1997

I was also surprised that I had no recollection of ever hearing what must have been a hugely anticipated record. Almost a year later, Barlow’s debut album was ready, and his second single was released ahead of it. ‘Love Won’t Wait’ also doesn’t ring a bell, but at least it’s relatively up-tempo. There’s a hint of disco in the beat, and the bridge has a soaring chord progression. This might be… fun?

And then we reach the chorus, and I do recognise this one! Love won’t wait, Forever and a day… It’s a pretty basic, soul-pop song with some nice seventies touches. One reviewer compared it to Cliff Richard’s output from that time, and now I can’t un-hear that. It also sounds like the sort of song Take That would have chucked out as the third or fourth single from one of their earlier albums. It’s no great shakes, is what I’m saying; but it’s much better than ‘Forever Love’.

It also has an interesting back-story. It was written by none other than Madonna, during sessions for her ‘Bedtime Stories’ album in 1994. I couldn’t imagine something this unremarkable coming from Madge, but someone’s uploaded the demo onto YouTube. It feels more Motown than disco, and even in its rough form it sounds better than Barlow’s version. That’s true star quality, I suppose.

And I also suppose we can claim this as a belated second ‘90s #1 for Madonna, her first since ‘Vogue’. She will be back soon, though, with a chart-topper under her own steam. Did anyone at the time imagine that we would have to wait so much longer for another Gary Barlow chart-topper, though? The album, ‘Open Road’, produced just one further Top 10 hit, while his second solo album in 1999 produced none. He won’t trouble the top spot for a decade, until Take That have their spectacular comeback, and won’t manage his final solo #1 for another fifteen years.

I have been, and probably still am, a bit harsh on Gary Barlow. Yes, he’s written some great pop songs. But though he’s finally achieved his goal, and ascended to the British pop pantheon, better late than never, he’s no Cliff, Elton, or George Michael. No Robbie Williams either, the man who will be taking the mantle of Britain’s Biggest Pop Star from under his former bandmate’s nose, very soon.

753. ‘A Different Beat’, by Boyzone

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Fresh from their first British number one, Boyzone set their sights on ‘global’ domination…

A Different Beat, by Boyzone (their 2nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 8th – 15th December 1996

By going down a new-age, world music path, that is. There have been few more distinctive intros to number one singles than this one, with its thunderclaps and African chants. This could be a very interesting song, we think, and hope… and are then left disappointed when it slides into much more predictable, pre-Christmas saccharine

The lyrics are very much of the season: Let’s not neglect our race… Life on earth be one… We are all grains of sand, apparently. At least it’s not Ronan Keating on lead vocals this time, as Stephen Gately’s clear and gentle tones guide us through the verses. Groanin’ Ronan, as we must now and forever refer to him, does get to let rip on the middle eight. He’s seen the rain fall in Africa, and touched the snow in Alaska… And let’s not get into how he pronounces ‘Niagara’, just so the line scans.

It’s easy to be cynical about songs like this, especially coming from bands as lightweight as Boyzone. I salute the message, even if the video – in which the lads descend from the heavens to dance with African children – gives off an iffy, white-saviour message. I have a feeling they were taking their cue from ‘Earth Song’, last year’s messianic Christmas Number One; but neither the song, nor the video, can compete with Michael Jackson’s irrepressible bombast.

This was the only one of Boyzone’s six chart-toppers that the band had a hand in writing, and one of only two that weren’t cover versions. It was also produced, in part, by Trevor Horn of Buggles fame. So, there are much blander offerings to come from Boyzone. There is a decent song buried in here – the title-line hook is good – but it’s smothered in far too much boyband dressing. And it doesn’t build to the big finish that a song like this needs to succeed; it just fizzles out to a simple drumbeat.

I’d assume they were aiming for the festive top spot with this release. But that was never going to happen, what with a record with an even more important message coming up next, and the third single from a certain female five-piece hovering on the horizon.

748. ‘Words’, by Boyzone

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We wake up, post-Chemical Brothers, with a bit of a headache. Bleary-eyed, we reach for the play button on our next #1… And it’s one hell of a comedown.

Words, by Boyzone (their 1st of six #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th October 1996

Not for the first time this year, a boyband reaches for the Bee Gees songbook. ‘Words’ was one of the Gibb Brothers’ first chart hits, their third record to reach the Top 10 back in 1968. The original is a very much a late-sixties ballad, drenched in strings and heavy piano chords, but it doesn’t feel overblown, with Barry Gibb’s voice right out at the front of the mix. Boyzone’s producers decide to up the drama, up the rolling drums and the layered vocal tracks, and drag a full extra minute out of the song.

It’s a bit stodgy, a bit lumpy. On their cover of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, Take That stripped things back, and I was also a bit sniffy about it, so maybe I’m just picky. Or maybe it’s just very hard to do justice to a Bee Gees original. This take on ‘Words’ isn’t terrible (and Boyzone have some real crimes against pop to come), but that’s because the quality of the source material shines through.

One thing I do find particularly annoying about this is Ronan Keating, Boyzone’s main man, on lead vocals. He just has an annoying voice, like he’s constantly trying to add gravitas to each and every syllable rather than just singing the damn song. Alas, it’s a voice that we’ll have to get used to on top of the charts for the time being.

For all the fuss I made about Take That as the boyband of the ‘90s, for folks of my age group they were just a little too old. No, it was Boyzone that the girls in my Primary 6 class were obsessed with. To this day I remain conditioned to hate them, after getting into trouble for sending a classmate into floods of tears just because I told her how terrible they were…

But honestly, they weren’t a patch on Take That, who had some genuinely good pop songs, many of them originals. Boyzone relied too heavily on bland covers, that cynically targeted both the tweens and their mums. ‘Words’ was the group’s first number one but their sixth Top 5 hit, and they’d already had their wicked way with the Osmonds’ ‘Love Me for a Reason’, and Cat Stevens’ ‘Father and Son’.

Robson & Jerome gave us our introduction to the chart crimes of Simon Cowell, while Boyzone were managed by his henchman in the vanilla-isation of ‘90s and ‘00s pop, Louis Walsh. Not that Boyzone were the only Irish five-piece that Walsh unleashed on the world, but we’ll try not to think about them until we have to….

742. ‘Forever Love’, by Gary Barlow

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Have I ever heard this song before…? The much-anticipated solo debut from Take That’s leading man? I was about to start my final year of primary school, fairly well up on the pop hits of the day, and yet…

Forever Love, by Gary Barlow (his 1st of three solo #1s)

1 week, from 14th – 21st July 1996

There’s a chance I may never have heard ‘Forever Love’ before; but there’s also a chance I’ve heard it a hundred times and simply forgotten. It is… Dull. Bland. Pedestrian. Lacking any sort of hook, or memorable lines. Love it has, So many beautiful faces, Sharing lives, And sharing days… See what I mean. Meh.

My last two posts have been lengthy, so this one can be short and sweet. Dull love song has week at number one. Hardly the first time, and at least it was just one week. Except, ‘Forever Love’ should be so much bigger, so much more of an event. Gary Barlow was the biggest pop star in the land, striking out alone. The next George Michael, maybe?

I think he was probably trying too hard. This record is clearly well produced, something that took a lot of time and careful thought. But it’s too fussy, too needlessly ornate. The album-version intro is so long, and overwrought, that you’re bored before Gary has even opened his mouth. At the three minute mark you check how long is left, and sigh when you see there are two more to go… I’ve never written a classic pop song, but I bet nobody that’s managed it ever sat down at their piano and said ‘today is the day I write something timeless!’ You feel that Barlow probably set himself that goal, though.

The obvious comparison to make is with his former bandmate, the one who had jumped ship first and was also about to release his debut single, a cover of ‘Freedom’ by George Michael (clearly both men had the same ambition). Initially it was Gary who had the bigger hits, but it was Robbie Williams who understood better what a pop star is about, what the public wants: some catchy tunes and some showmanship. Most of them don’t care about the ‘craft’. (Also, Robbie very sensibly got someone in to help him write said tunes…)

And so Robbie will very soon eclipse his estranged bandmate. Gary has one further solo number one to come – another that, at first glance, I don’t think I’ve heard for the best part of three decades – before a decade in the wilderness beckons.

735. ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, by Take That

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Take That have been a pioneering boyband in many ways, over the course of their eight number one singles. Multi-generational appeal with ‘Relight My Fire’, Ivor Novello-winning song writing in ‘Back for Good’, rock star level production on ‘Never Forget’…

How Deep Is Your Love, by Take That (their 8th of twelve #1s)

3 weeks, from 3rd – 24th March 1996

And now they push the idea of the ‘goodbye’ single. Ever since, every boyband worthy of the name has released a ballad after the inevitable split has been announced, and solo careers begin to loom large on the horizon. Not just boybands, even, as The Spice Girls will soon attest. Sadly, though, for a band capable of very good pop songs, this is a fairly flat goodbye: a serviceably average Bee Gees cover.

It’s a faithful take on ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, which had made #3 in 1978 when the Bee Gees were at the height of their disco powers. Rather than disco, though, Take That go for a soft-rock, acoustic guitars with some hand-held drums, sound. It reminds me of ‘More Than Words’ by Extreme… Make of that what you will.

One thing the stripped back production does is push the boys’ – a four-piece now after Robbie’s departure – voices to the fore. Their harmonies are nice, almost a cappella at times, but they can’t lift this record to anything other than middling heights. It is not a patch on the original, which I would rate as one of the Brothers Gibb’s crowning glories.

Take That had announced their split a few weeks before this final single was released, ahead of a Greatest Hits album, and so it was inevitable that it would make top spot. (Helplines had to be set up to counsel distraught fans following the news…) Since ‘Pray’ in 1993, only one of their singles had failed to make #1. And then that was it, or so everyone assumed. Gary Barlow was about to embark on a solo career – we’ll meet him again very soon – as were Mark and Robbie, all to varying degrees of success. I doubt any one predicted that a decade later Take That would launch one of the most successful musical comebacks the country had ever seen… But all that can wait for another day! In our more immediate future, with this drab one out the way, we are about to embark on a run of classic chart toppers, starting with an ode to pyromania…

724. ‘Never Forget’, by Take That

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For many, Take That peaked with ‘Back for Good’, their sixth and best-loved number one single. Where to go from there, then? Back to decent-but-unremarkable pop, such as ‘Sure’? Or do they get Jim Steinman, a kids’ choir, and a sample from Verdi’s ‘Requiem’, and throw together an extravagantly OTT remake of a track from their most recent album?

Never Forget, by Take That (their 7th of twelve #1s)

3 weeks, from 30th July – 20th August 1995

I’m sure you already know, but it was the latter. Trumpets of the type usually reserved for announcing royalty herald this next chart-topper. Angelic children’s voices telling us that we’ve come so far, and we’ve reached so high… Depending how you score on the Barlow-tolerance meter, this is either further evidence that Take That were not just another boyband… Or the sound of them, and their songwriter-in-chief, disappearing up their collective arses.

When all the choirs and the Verdi are done, and the song slips into a bog-standard mid-nineties soul-pop beat, it’s a little disappointing. Much of this song’s near seven-minute runtime is fairly mundane, but nobody remembers that. They remember the soaring chorus (that takes well over two minutes to arrive) and the extended fade-out, rather than the dull verses.

It’s now a standard boyband cliché: the song about how fame hasn’t changed them, or how fame isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. This record might be where that trope stems from, as Howard Donald (on rare lead-vocal duty) announces weighty lyrics like We’ve had success, We’ve had good times, But remember this… while a slideshow of pictures from their childhoods plays in the video, interspersed with clips of them winning awards and generally being adored.

Again, if you have a cynical little mind (like I do) you could see this entire project as a massive humblebrag. My mind starts to wondering if Robbie left before or after ‘Never Forget’, as his voice is nowhere to be heard. But then he appears, eventually, to throw some ad-libs around in the long fade-out. Perhaps his diminished role is a clue as to why he did finally quit the band, post-recording but before ‘Never Forget’ was released. He’s had a fairly small role in all but one of their #1s (‘Everything Changes’), with nothing to suggest that he was going to be the huge solo star that he is.

I do like aspects of this single, just in case I’ve sounded too down on it. The sheer scale of it, the Jim Steinman-isation of it. The chorus is one of their very best, too. But by the six minute mark I’ve had my fill, and there’s a false ending that really tests the patience. Still, it was a huge hit – of course it was – and their seventh chart-topper in just two years. Yet it was the beginning of the end. Robbie had left, no further singles were released from the album, and there’s only a fairly limp Bee Gees cover to come before Britain’s biggest boyband are laid to rest. For a bit, anyway.

719. ‘Back for Good’, by Take That

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These are the types of posts I least enjoy writing. Famous songs, that everyone knows, about which loads has already been said…

Back for Good, by Take That (their 6th of twelve #1s)

4 weeks, from 2nd – 30th April 1995

Quite often, too, they’re not songs I particularly like. And I should, in the interests of full-disclosure, admit off the bat that I’m not a huge fan of this record… I can recognise it as a good pop song – a well-constructed, grown-up pop song far beyond your usual boyband fare – and admire it thus. From a distance. With one listen per year, at most.

It’s the Barlow Conundrum, again. He’s often trying, to my ears at least, to write the perfect pop song. To prove that he and his band had long since grown beyond their ‘British New Kids on the Block’ origins. That he is to be Taken. Seriously. And of course he should be. He’s a very capable, competent songwriter. ‘Back for Good’ won an Ivor Novello award, one of British music’s ultimate accolades, for a start.

But… Compare and contrast this with another recent blockbuster boyband ballad, on a very similar lyrical theme: ‘Stay Another Day’. The lyrics to that are simple to the point of almost being trite. But something – something in their universality, in the way Brian Harvey delivers them like a lost child, in the song’s hidden subject matter – hits home in a way ‘Back for Good’ never manages.

Take the second verse here, in particular. Unaware but underlined, I figured out this story… In the corner of my mind, I celebrated glory… In the twist of separation, You excelled at being free… It all sounds clever, but does it actually mean anything? The harmonies are lovely, the want you back hook burrows its way in and never leaves, but is it all a bit fur coat and no knickers?

Or maybe it’s just me. ‘Back for Good’ has cropped up in pretty much every ‘Best songs of the…’ list for thirty years now. I am fully prepared for comments on how very wrong I am on this… But this record leaves me, like a fair old chunk of the Barlow Songbook, cold. Luckily for Take That, I am (sadly) not the arbiter of popular music, and this was a massive, massive hit all around the world. Even on the Billboard 100, where it made #7.

My feelings aside, ‘Back for Good’ was clearly the moment that Take That were made credible. Everyone who had written them off as just another boyband, even those way too cool for school, liked this record. I think it’s fair to say that without this song’s success, the band would not still be filling stadiums and topping the album charts in 2023. Back in 1995, and one of those aforementioned converts who confessed himself a fan of this song was Noel Gallagher. Speaking of whom…

714. ‘Stay Another Day’, by East 17

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Every good guy needs a bad guy. Every superhero a nemesis. And the cutest, cleanest-cut boyband of the day needed some rough east London lads as their foils…

Stay Another Day, by East 17 (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 4th December 1994 – 8th January 1995

Take That have dominated the charts of 1993-1995 like few acts ever do: they’re on five number ones in our countdown – and it’ll very soon be eight – having stuck to a winning pop formula. East 17 meanwhile had been ticking along since mid-1992, scoring five Top 10 hits packed with edgier dance and hip-hop touches, yet not coming close to matching Gary and the boys’ success.

Though the one thing East 17 can lay claim to that Take That can’t is a Christmas number one. A classic Christmas number one at that. A record… I’m just going to stick my neck on the line right now… better than any Take That ever released. (Yes, including that one…) And, ironically, to score their only number one they momentarily dropped the bad-boy posturing, and out-Barlowed Barlow himself; recording a sophisticated, grown-up ballad the likes of which Take That’s chief songwriter would have jumped at.

Baby if you’ve got to go away, Don’t think I could take the pain, Won’t you stay another day… It’s a ballad, of course, and on first listen the lyrics are standard weepy, break-up fare. The four voices meld together in an almost a cappella way – a nod to Christmas hits past? – led by a painfully young sounding Brian Harvey. It’s touching, but when you learn that Tony Mortimer actually wrote it following his brother’s suicide, then lyrics the might on the surface sound simplistic Oh don’t leave me alone like this… hit ten times harder, and elevate the song much higher.

The only controversy that surrounds this record is whether or not it’s a Christmas song. So pressing an issue is it that YouGov polls have been conducted on the subject (the ‘no’s had it, with a slim majority). I’d have to say it is though. It clearly ends in a hail of church bells, that were tacked on once the song had been slated for a festive release. Plus the video has snow in it! Luckily the fact that it now gets filed away with the other festive favourites for ten and a half months of the year means it’s not been done to death. Unlike some other boyband ballads from the mid-nineties…

Speaking of the video… It’s both iconic (those white parka jackets) and yet terrible (pretty much everything else – the dodgy green screen, the floating dancer, the white gloves…) But even that can’t ruin the song. East 17 would continue until the end of the decade – scoring a further six Top 10s – with their fair share of sackings, drama and drug-related controversies. Take That, it’s fair to say, won the war, if there ever was one. Though I was very surprised to learn that if you look beyond British shores, East 17 actually sold more records worldwide, thanks to their popularity in Europe and Australia. And recording one of the best ever boyband singles ever probably helped too.