new age

753. ‘A Different Beat’, by Boyzone

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

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.

681. ‘Sleeping Satellite’, by Tasmin Archer

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

It’s fair to say we needed a bit of a chillout, after cutting all those mad shapes to our past couple of chart-toppers, ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ and ‘Ebeneezer Goode’. Enter Tasmin Archer then, with ‘Sleeping Satellite’.

Sleeping Satellite, by Tasmin Archer (her 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 11th – 25th October 1992

First things first, this is just as ‘nineties’ as the rave anthem that preceded it. The trip-hop drums and light guitars, for a start, and the way Archer sings the verses quietly before ending them LOUDLY. It’s very nu-soul, in the same vein perhaps as Lisa Stansfield’s semi-recent #1, and the lyrics are quite new-age – a genre that’s been popping up ever since Enya in 1988. It’s grown up, is what it is. Your mum might say she’d heard it on the radio the other morning, and quite liked it. Certainly no schoolboy innuendo about class-A drugs here.

Archer has a great voice, with a rasp that kicks in on those loud bits. You could perhaps accuse her of over-singing, but she gives the song an energy that stops it from becoming too MOR (you know, ‘mum oriented-rock’…) Because, let’s be honest, the lyrics are wishy-washy. I blame you for the moonlit sky, And the dream that died, With the eagles’ flights… She’s referencing the moon landings – the ‘Sleeping Satellite’ of the title is our very own moon – and the fact that we’re neglecting Earth in favour of space adventure. Though, to be fair, the lines in which she seems to be predicting an apocalypse don’t seem too far off, thirty years on…

I like the organ that kicks in, and the power chords that offer some oomph as the song grows. It goes on a bit too long, though, and ultimately the message gets lost in the perfectly pleasant melody. It’s one of those songs, outside Christmas classics, and the various summer-themed number ones, that perfectly suits the time of year that it reached top spot. This was an autumn #1, ideal as the nights started to draw in. I’d also suggest that it joins the likes of ‘Baby Jump’, Slik, and Boris Gardner, as one of the most-forgotten number ones of its time.

‘Sleeping Satellite’ was Tasmin Archer’s debut release, with her having previously worked as a backing singer and recording studio assistant in Bradford. She’s labelled as a one-hit wonder, which is unfair as her follow-up single made the Top 20. In fact she has five Top 40 hits, and a 1993 Brit Award for Best Breakthrough Act. She released her most recent album in 2006, before announcing that she was going into TV and film soundtrack work.

657. ‘Sadeness Part 1’, by Enigma

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

If we thought that Iron Maiden scoring a heavy metal #1 was unexpected, then it seems positively mainstream compared with the intro of our next chart-topper.

Sadeness Part I, by Enigma (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 13th – 20th January 1991

For how about some Gregorian chanting (in Latin, of course) to kick off 1991? Chanting that is mixed with a chilled-out dance beat, and then replaced by some electronic pan pipes. It’s the culmination of the new-age vibe that’s been infiltrating pop music over the past few years – think Enya, Simple Minds, even recent Cliff – and it means that this record sounds highly innovative and unusual; and yet truly dated.

A bit later a crunchy guitar comes in, while a woman mutters breathily in French, reminding me of Serge & Jane. These are the moments that lift this record above being something you’d hear in the background as someone performs an aromatherapy massage. I do like the drop, the do-doop-de-doo fill, too. It’s way beyond my usual wheelhouse – I have a deep distrust of anything that could feature in a ‘chillout’ playlist – but there’s enough going on here, a lot even, to keep things interesting.

The lyrics, such as they are, appear in Latin and in French. And if you were thinking a song this weird couldn’t possibly have banal lyrics about love and laughter then you’d be correct. It’s written in the form of an address to the Marquis de Sade (hence the title), the notorious 18th century French author and libertine responsible for some of the most outrageously explicit writing in history. (As an aside, I studied literature at university, and the only time we received a content warning, and were allowed to skip a text if we felt uncomfortable, was as we were about to read Sade’s ‘Justine’. There’s a reason the man gave his name to the term ‘Sadism’…) Anyway. Sade tell me, What are you looking for…? the song asks. Sade, are you evil or divine…?

I’m loath to label this as ‘not good’. When it comes to writing these posts, a record featuring chanting monks and pan-pipes, about a notorious sex-offender, is certainly more interesting to write about than your average dance hit. And it’s amazing how sophisticated dance music has become in the past couple of years, since the Hi-NRG heyday of SAW, and how quickly things have chilled out. But at the same time. ‘Sadeness Part 1’ isn’t something I’d ever incorporate into my daily playlists.

Enigma were a German ‘musical project’, helmed by German-Romanian producer Michael Cretu, and this was their breakthrough hit. And what a hit: number one across Europe, and Top 5 in the US. They struggled to match this success until the lead single from their second album, ‘Return to Innocence’, made #3 three years later. That record ditched the monks and went for more ethnic, tribal chanting.

Since then, Enigma have continued to record without particularly bothering the charts, including a 2006 concept album based on an imagined collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. Because why not? Cretu’s greatest moment may have come long before Enigma and his championing of world music, though: he played keyboards on Boney M’s 1978 #1 ‘Rivers of Babylon’…

618. ‘Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)’, by Enya

/ UK #1s blog / 18 Comments

We move from one of the most bombastic #1s – Whitney’s ‘One Moment in Time’ – to one of the oddest.

Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)’, by Enya (her 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 23rd October – 13th November 1988

If you’ve been listening carefully, though, there have been signs that a big nu-folk, new-age smash hit was coming. Both the Bee Gee’s ‘You Win Again’, and T’Pau’s ‘China in Your Hand’ had touches of it, to my ears at least. Still, it’s a shock to hear a song so out there appearing at the top of the singles chart.

And while it does sound like a slightly more focused version of the sort of music piped into to spas and massage parlours, with some unidentifiable chanting and chords that break and ebb like waves, ‘Orinoco Flow’ is a pop song underneath all the hippy dressing. The sail away, sail way hook is a real earworm, while the airy synths (the technical term is pizzicato, and the fact that it sounds a bit like water dripping in the rainforest is very new-age) are distinctive.

The lyrics that aren’t ‘sail away’ are pretty cryptic. It’s basically a list of places Enya wants to visit on the Orinoco flow (the Orinoco being both a river, and the name of the studio where the song was recorded): From Bissau to Palau, in the shade of Avalon…, which one wag has described as ‘the itinerary for the most expensive gap year of all time’.

Then there’s the break, in which things slow down and we’re treated to some chanting in what I guessed was some Bornean tribal language, but what is actually just: Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up, up, adieu… (Actually, this probably sums up the ‘new age’ movement quite well: what appears authentically ethnic turns out to be some gibberish cooked up by middle-class women for money…) Still, when the main beat breaks back in with a big bass drum, you too are swept along with this funny little chart-topper.

There don’t seem to have been any external reasons for it turning into such a big smash hit – no TV theme, no advert… It was from Enya’s second album, but was her first charting single. She had been a member of Celtic folk-rock band Clannad for two years, with various of her siblings and uncles, before going solo in 1982. Perhaps the time of year helped – this is the archetypal ‘autumn’ chart-topper, and I’m not sure it could have been such a big hit at any other time of year. (I’m not sure why this is, something to do with yearning, minor keys…) There are summer smashes, festive songs (obviously), and cosy autumnal hits; but I’m yet to pick out a ‘sound of spring’.

Enya, born Enya Patricia Brennan in County Donegal, has gone from strength to strength since her debut smash, and is the second biggest-selling Irish act ever (we also recently met the best-selling – U2). She scored reasonable-sized chart hits throughout the eighties and nineties, including a handful of further Top 10s, which is pretty impressive considering that her genre isn’t the most commercial. She will also feature on two big hip-hop #1s: one of which she’s credited on; the other one she isn’t…