neighbours

925. ‘Kiss Kiss’, by Holly Valance

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Two raunchy pop records trade places at the top of the charts. At first glance they’re pretty similar tunes, sung by women, all about getting jiggy… But therein lies the mystery of music. What makes the Sugababes sound, to my ears, sublime, but this next #1 ridiculous?

Kiss Kiss, by Holly Valance (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 5th – 12th May 2002

I mean ridiculous in the best possible way, though: trashy, catchy, OTT. It also has a distinctly Middle Eastern feel, with Arabian strings and flourishes not usually found in Western pop. It had originally been released, under the title ‘Şimarık’ by Turkish star Tarkan, in 1997, before being turned into ‘Kiss Kiss’ by Greek-American singer Stella Soleil in 2001. This extended journey to becoming a British hit had left Holly Valance with pretty distinctive debut hit on her hands.

Given how love and lust has inspired so much of the pop canon, it’s mildly surprising that this is the first number one single to use the classic kissing sound as a hook. The song title doesn’t feature in the lyrics, instead it’s represented, over and over, by either a mwah or a kissing-your-granny-on-the-cheek kind of sound. It’s very camp. But as good as the Arabian strings and the kissing are, my favourite part is the break, where the strings and the kisses are chopped up and topped off with a heavily vocoded aw yeah. My biggest complaint though, is that the ending is all set up to end on a big smacker… yet doesn’t.

Holly Valance had been familiar to Brits for a few of years as Flick Scully in ‘Neighbours’. (As an avid Ramsey Street aficionado through the late-nineties and most of the noughties, it’s my personal favourite ‘Neighbours’ era.) And in the tradition of Kylie, Jason, Natalie Imbruglia and Stefan Dennis, the pop career was never far away. This record actually puts ‘Neighbours’ clear of ‘Eastenders’ as the most successful soap on the singles chart, by three (Kylie, Jason, Holly Valance) to two (Nick Berry, Martine McCutcheon). However, we could also accept Wendy Richards, who featured at #1 in 1962, albeit many years before she started playing Pauline Fowler in Albert Square, to make it a tie.

Flick may have been helped to the top of the charts by the video in which she appeared naked but for some accurately applied strip-lighting. It’s a classic ‘the nice girl you thought you knew is all grown up’ move. And, hey, sex sells. I can confirm it was quite the hot topic in the school playground at the time. In fact, the boy I was in love with, aged sixteen, was obsessed with Holly Valance. It’s taken me until today, listening to this trashy classic of its time, to make my peace with her. I’m less willing to endorse Holly’s post-pop career. Her Wiki page now lists her as singer, model, right-wing activist…

Like I said at the start, Sugababes gave us pop to stand the test of time. Holly Valance gave us pop that stands the test of its three and a half minute run-time. But both are great in their own ways. Valance also struggled to have the longevity of the Sugababes, but scored two further Top 3 hits from her debut album, ‘Kiss Kiss’ being followed by ‘Down Boy’ and ‘Naughty Girl’ (I’m noticing a theme…)

621. ‘Especially for You’, by Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

As much a festive tradition as endless turkey sandwiches between Boxing Day and New Year’s, the singles chart has its own version of Christmas leftovers…

Especially for You, by Kylie Minogue (her 2nd of seven #1s) & Jason Donovan (his 1st of four #1s)

3 weeks, from 1st – 22nd January 1989

There’s no way ‘Especially for You’ was supposed to be #1 in late January. It had been lodged behind Cliff’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ (has there ever been a more saccharine festive Top 2?) for all four weeks of that record’s chart-topping run, before ascending to its rightful place at #1 on the first day of 1989.

I say ‘rightful’, for yes, as saccharine as this ballad is, there’s something, especially in the verses, that tugs at the heartstrings. It’s not the lyrics, which are the type you knock-out on the back of a napkin: Especially for you, I wanna tell you you mean all the world to me, How I’m certain that our love was meant to be… Or the production, which is as cheap and cheerful as Stock Aitken Waterman ever got.

It’s something I’ve just noticed, after sitting down to listen to this song properly for the first time in decades… It’s a rip-off of ABBA’s 1981 hit ‘One of Us’. Just listen: the intro, the reggae-ish beat, the harmonies…! And when you base a song on one of the best pop group ever’s best hits, then you’re not going to go far wrong.

Though to call it a complete rip-off is harsh – the chorus is its own beast, and a real earworm – and of course there’s the star quality of Queen Kylie, who can carry any old tripe when she’s in the mood. And then there’s Jason Donovan, who will go on to be 1989’s biggest chart star (well, him and a cartoon rabbit…) It was released in the wake of the couple’s wedding on Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours’– one of the most watched episodes of any soap – amid lots of speculation about a romance in real-life, and so it was bound to be a gigantic hit. The most impressive thing is that old Cliff Richard was able to hold off this juggernaut for so long!

No matter, it eventually made #1 and became SAW’s biggest ever hit. (And, I believe, their only release to sell a million copies.) 1989 will be the year that the production trio peak – they’ll helm a quite incredible seven chart-toppers this year – so it’s only proper that they kick the year off with their best (OK, second best, after Dead or Alive). Sadly, that means that the final year of the decade will probably pale in comparison to 1988, which unexpectedly became my best year for chart-toppers since 1980-81.

195. ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, by Jackie Trent

/ UK #1s blog / 8 Comments

We are now slap bang in the middle of the 1960s, and we’ve arrived at perhaps the most sixties-sounding song yet. It shimmers, it glistens, it drips… It’s absolutely drenched in the sixties.

jackie-trent-on-tv-1968-billboard-650

Where Are You Now (My Love), by Jackie Trent (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 20th – 27th May 1965

La…la-la-la-la-la… la-la-la-la-la… a cute little Latin-tinged rhythm, and a voice that is rich and honeyed. I like her voice. I want to listen to it some more. I want it to sing me to sleep. When shadows of evening gently fall, The mem’ry of you I soon, Recall… She sings properly, with a mildly posh way of stressing her words – a slight pre-rock throwback. I imagine this disc playing in a luxury New York apartment, overlooking Central Park at sunset, as a man dressed like an extra from ‘Mad Men’ pours a cocktail for a woman in a daringly short skirt and a beehive…

Then the chorus soars – as the chorus of every mid-sixties, female-led ballad simply must – with swirling violins and portentous drums. Where are you now, My love…? Where are you now, My love…? To be honest, I’m struggling to pay much attention to the lyrics. They are stock-lyrics, lyrics that exist because, well, a song needs them. This record is much more about the sound. About being a gorgeously identifiable moment in time. Listen closely… It’s the sixties…

It’s yet another grown-up pop song. That’s the theme of the first half of 1965: the more we move away from the simple Beat-pop ditties of Herman’s Hermits, Peter and Gordon and the like, the more mature everything is getting. The Righteous Brothers, The Moody Blues, Jackie Trent. I’m no songwriter, but ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ sounds like a complex song. Upon closer listen, it’s still a verse-verse-chorus-repeat then middle-eight kind of number. But it sounds complex, the way one section leads softly into the other, fading then rising.

Jackie-Trent-Where-Are-You-Now-7-Single

(Note that pretty much everywhere lists the song title as ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’, except for on the disc itself…)

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is another Bacharach and David number – it’s just got that feel about it – but it’s not. It was written by Trent herself, with her song-writing partner Tony Hatch. Apparently it featured in a popular TV series of the time, ‘It’s Dark Outside’, the exposure from which saw the song reach #1. The pair wrote several other sixties hits, primarily for Petula Clark, but also for Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Scott Walker, and more. You can’t get much more ‘cool sixties’ than that list of names… Come the seventies, though, and the hits were drying up for Trent, both as a performer and as a writer. She was reduced to writing songs for Stoke City, to celebrate their appearance in the League Cup Final. And that seemed to have been that…

Until the ‘80s when Trent and Hatch, by this point married, moved to Australia. Where they only bloody went and wrote the theme to ‘Neighbours’. Yes, the theme. Neighbours, Everybody needs good neighbours – played on British TV, twice a day for the past thirty-odd years. Given that no TV show – outside of X Factor, Pop Idol etc. – has contributed more to the pop charts over the years than ‘Neighbours’, it’s amazing to think that (with a slight stretch of the imagination) you can claim ‘Where Are You Now (My Love)’ as the first ‘Neighbours’ hit… twenty years before the pilot aired!

Jackie Trent then, ladies and gentlemen, who sadly passed away in 2015. Sit back, press play and enjoy her one and only UK #1 hit – her most famous song-that-isn’t-the-theme-to-an-Australian-soap-opera…

Follow along with every song below: