nineties pop music

641. ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, by Sinéad O’Connor

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

Just four weeks, and three number one singles, into the new decade and the 1990s have their first iconic moment…

Nothing Compares 2 U, by Sinéad O’Connor (her 1st and only #1)

4 weeks, from 28th January – 25th February 1990

First things first, I hate overuse of the word ‘iconic’. Yass! Slay! Dresses are ‘iconic’, memes are ‘iconic’, everything’s bloody ‘iconic’. But I think the term is valid here. From the sustained opening note, to the Orwellian opening line: It’s been seven hours and fifteen days… the song grabs you, makes you sit up and listen.

And that is pretty much all down to Sinead O’Connor’s vocal performance. She hits every note perfectly – the soft ones, the angry ones, the ones you don’t expect. Some favourite lines: I went to the doctor, And guess what he told me, Guess what he told me… or All the flowers that you planted mama… Or the way Nothing can take away these blues… hits a really bluesy note at the end. To tell the truth, without O’Connor’s heroics, with a different, less committed singer, this could be a flat, maybe even dull song. The synths are slow, the beat is steady, with a trip-hop edge that will become ubiquitous as this decade goes on.

The most famous of her vocal tricks has to be the key-change in the title line: No-Thing compares, To you… It’s the one hook that ultimately sells the entire song. But we can’t pretend that this song did well on vocals alone. There’s the famous video, another iconic aspect of this whole business (I promise that’s the last time I’ll use that word), in which O’Connor remains in close-up, her face strikingly cat-like, head shaved, a tear rolling down either cheek. (The tears were unplanned, and brought on by the ‘mama’ line, her mum having died in a car crash several years earlier.)

‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was famously written by Prince, though his version was never released. O’Connor’s version was also famously disliked by its author, perhaps because it outperformed pretty much every song he ever released. It was #1 in thirteen countries, and Top 10 in countless others, overshadowing everything that she has done since. I’d never heard the Prince original, which was finally released in 2018, and it’s nowhere near as good – cluttered with fiddly guitar and a wild sax solo, completely missing the sparse beauty of this definitive version.

Is it surprising that this song did so well? I say that because it is unremittingly miserable: the singer counts down the hours since her break-up, listing all the things that won’t help her get over her loss, all the flowers that have wilted since. And yet, I asked a silly question, really. All the best ballads aren’t about love; they’re about lost love: ‘Without You’, ‘The Winner Takes It All’… Misery hits home. It’s the hopeful, positive ones that often lack an edge: ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You’, or ‘Hello’, to name but two.

Sinead O’Connor wasn’t a complete unknown when this, the second single from her second album came out; but none of her earlier, or her subsequent releases, made the Top 10. Her career in the US ended abruptly when she ripped up a picture of the pope on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as a protest against child abuse in the Catholic church, and she has courted controversy in statements about her sexuality, her religion, and her views on Irish politics. She is an eccentric, a contrarian, one who is hard to define. Except everyone can agree that her biggest hit kickstarted the 1990s, and remains one of the decade’s most iconic (sorry) songs.

640. ‘Tears on My Pillow’, by Kylie Minogue

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Kylie does Grease!

Tears on My Pillow, by Kylie Minogue (her 4th of seven #1s)

1 week, from 21st – 28th January 1990

Well, no. Kylie’s never done ‘Grease’ – though she’d have made a good Sandy – and ‘Tears on My Pillow’ only ever features in the background of the original movie. But this record certainly has that feel about it…

It’s the final UK #1 to be produced by Stock Aitken and Waterman… pause for a moment to cheer/sigh (delete as appropriate)… though you wouldn’t particularly know it. It’s a shame that they don’t bow out with a Hi-NRG banger, but the chart Gods can be cruel. Like Jason Donovan’s stab at the sixties on ‘Sealed With a Kiss’, this is nothing more than karaoke. At least the trio bow out with a big hit for their chief muse, the lovely Ms Minogue. And in the big ‘Jason Vs Kylie Retro Covers Contest’ there can be only one winner: this one, because it’s Kylie.

There has been a bit of a retro wave sweeping the charts over the final year of the ‘80s. There was Jive Bunny, of course, but also those sixties covers from Jason, and Marc Almond with Gene Pitney. ‘Tears on My Pillow’ had originally been a 1958 hit for Little Anthony & The Imperials – one which failed to chart in the UK but had made #4 in the US. (There has of course been a completely unrelated ‘Tears on My Pillow’ at #1 in the UK, for Johnny Nash in 1975. Off the top of my head, I think this is the second time two different songs with the same name have made #1, after ‘The Power of Love’…)

This was from the soundtrack to Kylie’s big-screen debut ‘The Delinquents’, a Romeo and Juliet-ish tale of teenage love in ‘50s Australia. Apparently the movie isn’t great, but it continues a trend of forgettable films accompanied by number one singles (‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’, ‘When the Going Gets Tough’…) And it scored Kylie her fourth chart-topper in just under two years. Amazingly, this will be her sole nineties #1. A decade of fading chart fortunes, duets with Nick Cave, and a stab at something more alternative will keep her busy until a spectacular comeback in the early ‘00s. Still, she sneaks in, and in due course will join a select band of artists with #1s in three different decades.

If it feels like I’ve been padding this post out, blethering on about everything but the actual, largely forgettable, music then you’d be right. Let me pad it out a little more before finishing, then. Though I don’t remember this particular record, Kylie (and Jason) are pop ground zero for my generation: the first singers we remember from TV, from the playground, the first CDs we bought (more on that later…) The music may not have always been great, but this is nostalgic stuff for us older millennials. This rundown is suddenly getting quite real!

639. ‘Hangin’ Tough’, by New Kids on the Block

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Here we go then. The nineteen nineties. The fifth decade of the UK singles chart. The decade I did half my growing up in. Almost four years old at the start, almost fourteen by the end. I’ll try to keep the personal reminiscences – interesting for nobody but myself – to a minimum as we go. But there’s no escaping the fact that some of  these are the first #1s that I can remember in ‘real time’.

Hangin’ Tough, by New Kids on the Block (their 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 7th – 21st January 1990

Not that three-year-old me, brain filled with Thomas the Tank Engine and dinosaurs, had much interest in 1990’s first number one. NKOTB were back, just a month after ‘The Right Stuff’ had vacated top-spot, to bless the decade with its first of many, many boy-band chart-toppers.

First things first, a question. Did ‘Hangin’ Tough’ ever actually sound tough? I suppose it might have to twelve-year-olds, who were the only audience that mattered. But at a remove of thirty-odd years, the bass chords, the whistles and the oh-oh-ohing all sound incredibly lame. Hangin’ tough… the boys chant, very slowly (this song needs a shot or two of caffeine) Are you tough enough!? they demand, before ending the chorus on a very unconvincing We’re rough!

At my high school these dweebs would have been laughed all the way behind the bike sheds, before having their lunch money nicked. And I think the Kids knew it, because the vocals – especially the oh-oh-ohs – feel half-arsed compared to ‘The Right Stuff’. Elsewhere, the chords in the chorus remind me of ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’, and it’s never a good idea to rip-off a classic song to make a bang-average one like this. A remixed version of the record, the one that presumably got airplay at the time, beefs things up a bit; but not enough.

In fact, the rockier mix takes away one of the few really interesting things about this song. In the album version, a good minute or so is given over to a fiddly, noodly synth-organ solo. I’m not claiming it’s very good, just that few teen-pop songs are allowed moments of such self-indulgence. (The rockier mix switches the organs for a pretty forgettable guitar solo.) By the end though, the Kids are beat-boxing and freestyling, and the song really loses its way. You know it ain’t over till the fat lady sings… one of them announces, and you wish she’d started singing earlier.

The one thing to be thankful for is that, once again, it’s not a syrupy ballad. NKOTB had plenty of them among their ten British Top 10 hits, but none of them troubled the top. The band split in the mid-nineties, with Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre attempting solo careers. They reformed in 2008, then teamed up for a tour and an album with Backstreet Boys (NKOTBSB anyone?)

Whatever their merits (or lack thereof), New Kids on the Block hit two chart milestones with ‘Hangin’ Tough’. They joined Al Martino, Michael Holliday, Edison Lighthouse and The Pretenders in scoring the first #1 of a new decade (a big deal for chart geeks like me!) The second was less illustrious: in the record’s first week on top of the charts, it posted the lowest sales ever for a number one single…