Grunge

Never Had a #1… Part 2

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Welcome to the second part of our countdown through the forty highest selling acts (worldwide) that have never managed a UK chart-topping single. Before cracking on with numbers 35-31, check out the first installment here, featuring some surprisingly big names and also an explanation of how the concept of ‘highest selling’ has been worked out.

All caught up? Then here’s the next five:

35. Green Day

Biggest hit: ‘The Saints Are Coming’ with U2 (#2, in 2006)

I was all ready to write about ‘American Idiot’ (#3, in 2004) as Green Day’s biggest hit… But the discographies don’t lie. Who knew, or remembered, that this duet with U2 had charted a place higher?

Recorded to raise money for those affected in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and with a snatch of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ in the intro, this is a good cover of the Skids’ original. Yet it is also frustrating that this is Green Day’s biggest hit over some of their earlier pop-punk classics, or their era-defining ‘American Idiot’ hits. Though I feel some personal pride here, as Skids are from my hometown, and they always get slightly overshadowed by Big Country (the band Stuart Adamson formed post-Skids).

34. Nirvana

Biggest hit: ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ (#5, in 1993)

Two of the biggest alt-rock acts of the nineties, back to back. And again, not many people would pick ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ as Nirvana’s biggest hit, over you-know-what (it made #7). But I’m so glad it is, because it is a freakin’ tune! No band has more perfectly balanced heavy rock with pop melodies, and this is them at the peak of their powers, the lead single from third album ‘In Utero’, and probably the best song ever written about children with terminal cancer. Plus, the scene in the video with the band playing against a blood-red sky is the most gorgeous snapshot of that early-nineties, grunge aesthetic.

33. Imagine Dragons

Biggest Hit: ‘Sucker for Pain’ with Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Ty Dolla Sign & Logic (#11 in 2016)

Up next, Imagine Dragons. Or, as I like to call them, Everything That Is Wrong With Rock Music in the 21st Century. And of course they’ve sold more than Nirvana and Green Day… But like the illustrious pair that they outrank, Imagine Dragons biggest UK chart hit is not their most famous. (You know, the one that goes thump thump shout shout thump shout). In ‘Sucker for Pain’, from the ‘Suicide Squad’ soundtrack, they act as mere comperes, singing the same chorus over and over for a revolving cast of rappers, and their douchebaggery is diluted. It’s still not a very good song though.

32. Tom Petty

Biggest hit: ‘I Won’t Back Down’ with the Heartbreakers (#28, in 1989)

Like so many artists in this Top 40, Tom Petty was far more succesful in his native US (where this track made #12). And it’s kind of easy to see why, because this is proper, chugging, heartland rock that doesn’t quite translate to our green and sometimes pleasant land. But there’s a strong British influence on display here, with Jeff Lynne writing and producing (that beat has Lynne written all over it) and George Harrison on guitar. Speaking of Lynne and Harrison, the biggest UK hit that Petty featured on had come a year earlier: the Travelling Wilbury’s ‘Handle With Care’.

31. Van Halen

Biggest hit: ‘Jump’ (#7, in 1984)

Unlike every other act in this section, Van Halen’s biggest hit in the UK is the song you’d probably expect. In actual fact, ‘Jump’ was Van Halen’s first Top 40 hit in Britain. It’s interesting, American disinterest towards British glam rock in the seventies was largely replicated by the British public towards American glam metal in the eighties. And I have to admit that ‘Jump’ has always left this Brit fairly cold. It’s catchy, and the synth riff is memorable, but it pales in comparison to earlier, harder rocking Van Halen hits. It pales in comparison too to the other singles from ‘1984’, like ‘Panama’ and ‘Hot for Teacher. It was also perhaps a reason in lead singer David Lee Roth’s leaving the band the following year, as he saw it as too much of a departure from their original sound.

Before finishing this section, we should also mention three artists who would have featured here had they ever had a British hit. Luke Bryan (a 21st century C&W megastar who has had 30 Billboard country chart #1s), Johnny Hallyday (France’s biggest ever male star), and Ayumi Hamasaki (Japan’s best-selling solo star, and ‘Empress of Pop’ to much of Asia).

733. ‘Spaceman’, by Babylon Zoo

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

The second number one of 1996, and one of the year’s most interesting hits, is yet another Levi’s assisted chart-topper.

Spaceman, by Babylon Zoo (their 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 21st January – 24th February 1996

I had no idea before starting this blog the extent of the jeans brand’s grip on the British charts. I make this, I think, the seventh Levi’s-assisted #1 in under ten years, but I admit I’ve lost count. (If we treated Levi’s as an act in themselves, they’d be up there with the Stones and ABBA in the overall list.) And almost all of them have been good #1s – re-released oldies from the Clash and the Steve Miller Band, as well as quirky, newer hits from Stiltskin and Shaggy. And let’s remember that, kicking off this whole era of Levi’s domination, they helped ‘Stand By Me’ to a belated but very deserving number one position

‘Spaceman’ is not at that level, but it is a remarkable chart-topper. People harshly suggested that it made #1 solely because the advert featured just the opening fifteen seconds, which make the song sound like a high-speed techno number. Space man, I always wanted you to go, Into space, Man… trills a high-pitched alien vocal, as we prepare our glowsticks.

Except, most of the song is a much heavier, rockier beast. It lurches from Britpop verses to industrial grunge in the chorus, before ending on a trip-hop, dance beat once again. It’s ear-catching, attention grabbing… And I’m going to stick my neck out and say it’s good. Lyrically it also treads novel ground. The singer, to summarise, is sick of life on earth. The sickening taste, Homophobic jokes, Images of fascist votes, Beam me up because I can’t breathe… are not your average #1 single’s lyrics. I can’t get off the carousel, I can’t get off this world…

Of course, that bit didn’t feature in the commercial. But it’s unfair to suggest that people were duped into buying this record. And the fact that it remained on top for five weeks, with plenty of airplay one presumes, clearly shows the song’s popularity. It became the fastest-selling debut single ever, going on to sell well over a million copies. It may be OTT and hyperactive, lurching from one sound to another, but I like its gothic silliness. There’s also a case for it being the first glam rock number one in quite a few years…

It was also my 10th birthday number one, so I feel a personal connection to it too. Babylon Zoo were a band from Wolverhampton, who had never charted before ‘Spaceman’ went, well, intergalactic. They’re cast as one-hit wonders, even though two further songs from their debut went Top 40. They struggled to sell albums, though, and suffered some terrible reviews for their live shows. They disbanded in 1999.

707. ‘Inside’, by Stiltskin

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

In my previous post, I wrote that Tony Di Bart’s ‘The Real Thing’ must have been the most recent #1 that I’d never previously heard. Well, the very next chart-topper is probably just as forgotten…

Inside, by Stiltskin (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 8th – 15th May 1994

Luckily, though, my dad once owned a ‘Best Rock Album Ever…’ sort of compilation released sometime around 1994. In amongst all the Free, the Boston, and the Blue Oyster Cult, the compilers had clearly felt the need for something more contemporary. What better track to include, then, than that year’s big rock hit: Stiltskin’s ‘Inside’. Which means that this lumpy, grungy, one-hit wonder takes me right back to my childhood.

This should be a pretty cool moment for chart watchers. Grunge was the sound of the early-nineties, though it had never troubled the top of the charts until now. (By May ’94, the genre was on its last legs, Kurt Cobain having died just a month earlier…) Anyway, this is a very heavy, very sweaty, very hairy number one single, the hardest rocking since Iron Maiden brought our daughters to the slaughter. Listening to it now, for the first time in two decades, the chorus is a classic of the genre.

But it also feels a little like Grunge-by-AI. Listen and you can hear rip-offs of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in the quiet-loud chorus, and ‘Black Hole Sun’ in the two chiming notes during the verses. I swear to God there’s something by Pearl Jam buried in there, too, though I can’t quite root it out. People online have compared it to ‘Today’ by Smashing Pumpkins, but I don’t personally hear it. Basically, the songwriters have taken elements of the best grunge bands, smushed them up, and made a pretty decent song.

The lyrics are apparently based on Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’, making this potentially the first UK #1 to reference the ancient Greek philosopher. To my ears, though, it sounds like the worst sort of Year 9 poetry: Strong words in a Ganges sky, I have to lie, Shadows move in pairs… culminating in the motivational slogan: If you believe it, Don’t keep it all inside… (To be fair, I was a fan of the fat man starts to fall line as a kid…)

‘Inside’ also loses a few more street-cred points from the fact that the song was written to order for a Levi’s jeans commercial (making this the fourth number one to come from a Levi’s ad, though the first that isn’t a re-release of an older track). A man called Peter Lawler wrote the song, and plays all the instruments on this recording. He needed a vocalist, and after some auditions found Ray Wilson, a Scottish singer/guitarist. This first incarnation of the band released only one album, and two more low-charting singles, but they reformed and have carried on to this day, in an ever-changing line-up with Wilson as the only constant. (He also spent four years as lead-singer for Genesis, replacing Phil Collins.)

‘Inside’ was probably fortunate to find itself on a compilation called ‘Best Rock Album Ever’ – right place, right time – and is similarly fortunate to hold the title of the UK’s sole grunge chart-topper. But variety is the spice of life, and I’m glad it sneaked its week at number one. Sadly, the fate that confirms once and for all if a record has been lost to the mists of time has indeed befallen ‘Inside’… It’s not on Spotify.