Check this out… Just a couple of weeks after Norman Cook worked his magic on Cornershop’s ‘Brimful of Asha’, American house DJ Jason Nevins has his wicked way with a hip hop golden oldie…
It’s Like That, by Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins (their 1st and only #1s)
6 weeks, from 15th March – 26th April 1998
I remember this being huge, an omnipresent hit that spring. And six weeks at number one is a very impressive run for the late-nineties (only one song will beat that total in 1998). But listening now, I’m a bit stumped trying to work out why it was quite so popular… It’s a bit repetitive, a sledgehammer beat that goes on, and on, with a less stardust sprinkled by Nevins compared to Fatboy Slim. Some of the transitions are predictable, and the original Run-D.M.C. vocals feel off in the mix.
Not that it’s bad, or that I don’t enjoy it on a certain level, or that it doesn’t unleash a heady wave of nostalgia listening to it again in 2024. I just mean that I can’t really locate the reason that it became the year’s 3rd best-selling single and – even more impressively – the only record to ever hold a Spice Girls’ song off number one in the UK (this was released in the same week as ‘Stop’, which it beat to the top by well over 100,000 copies).
The original ‘It’s Like That’ had featured on Run-D.M.C.’s debut album in 1984, and was released as the LP’s first single. It’s a call-to-arms – a spikier, more cynical ‘What’s Going On’ for a new decade: Unemployment at record highs, People coming, People going, People born to die… Don’t ask me because I don’t know why, It’s like that, And that’s the way it is… What’s interesting about the original is that the 1998 hit is there, fully formed. If anything, the beat is even heavier. Nevins does little more than tart it up with a standard dance rhythm and some up-to-date flourishes (which admittedly is also what Norman Cook did on ‘Brimful…’, I just like that song better).
The one notable thing that Nevins does add is the sped-up Run DMC and Jam Master Jay! break, along with a bit off beatboxing. That’s the part I most remember, perhaps the hook that sold this as a hit. But in actual fact it last barely ten seconds, before that relentless beat comes slamming back in. (I always assumed that ‘Jam Master Jay’ was Jason Nevins, but he was actually the DJ in Run-D.M.C, who was sadly shot dead in 2002.)
Not surprisingly, this would be both Run-D.M.C.’s and Jason Nevin’s biggest ever hit. Nevins has only returned to the Top 10 one further time, although he’s gone on to work with stars like Nelly and Ariana Grande. For Run-D.M.C., this was their second Top 10, a decade on from ‘Walk This Way’ – in which they and Aerosmith fused rap with rock, much like Nevins was fusing rap and dance on this record.
Is it too early to call this the Age of the Remix? It is true that we’ve had two in quick succession, and that remixed hits will be more noticeable at the top of the charts as the century turns. I think it’s the fact that this is the first ‘versus’ record to make #1, as opposed to a plain old ‘featuring’ or an understated ‘&’. It feels so very turn of the twenty-first century (though a quick scan has shown me that there will actually only be a couple of other ‘someone versus someone else’ number ones between now and 2005.)
Of all Madonna’s thirteen number ones, ‘Frozen’ – her first in almost eight years – has to be the strangest…
Frozen, by Madonna (her 8th of thirteen #1s)
1 week, from 1st – 8th March 1998
It’s her longest for a start, and probably the least accessible. There’s no instant hook, as with ‘Into the Groove’, and no controversial gimmicks, as with ‘Like a Prayer’. Instead there’s a shimmering, undulating electronic beat, beefed up at intervals by strange, reverberating sound effects and drum fills. And there are the strings that add an air of grandiosity to the song, especially when they come to the fore midway through, like an ‘Arabian Nights’ film score. A Rolling Stone reviewer at the time described it as “arctic melancholy”, and I think that’s perfect.
Interestingly for Madonna, the lyrics are the least noticeable thing about ‘Frozen’. They seem to be about a lover who is closed off: You only see what your eyes want to see, How can life be what you want it to be, You’re frozen, When your heart’s not open… Or perhaps it’s more religious, with Madonna, who had begun taking an interest in Eastern spiritualism, singing as a sort of high priestess. The video would bear this interpretation out, Madge floating above a desert, all in black, as a sort of nun-slash-witch, before turning into a flock of crows, and then a large dog.
In fact, despite me claiming that this isn’t one of her gimmicky chart-toppers, the first thing that springs to mind when I think of ‘Frozen’ is Madonna – famously blonde for most of the past fifteen years – now with long jet-black hair. Always one for the visuals… The second thing I remember about this record is hearing it almost as often as ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at the pool bar in Lanzarote during my spring holiday that year.
And the fact that it was on such heavy rotation at the time perhaps proves that this isn’t as inaccessible as I suggested. In truth, there are just as many hooks here as in Madonna’s poppier numbers, they’re just buried in the trip-hop beats, and stretched out over six minutes. Of 1998’s seven number ones so far, three have now run on beyond five minutes – ‘Never Ever’, ‘All Around the World’, and this – while Celine Dion wasn’t far behind (and that one certainly feels longer than five minutes…)
Although this was her first number one since ‘Vogue’, Madonna hadn’t ever been away from the top of the charts. In fact, she’d casually racked up a further seventeen (!) Top 10 hits between ‘Vogue’ and now. At the same time, ‘Frozen’ was the lead single from her first studio album in four years, following a few years of compilations and soundtracks.
Undoubtedly then, we can class this is one of Madge’s famous re-inventions. She wasn’t just following current trends with William Orbit on production duty, she was setting them. Fifteen years is a lifetime for a female pop star, and this was a statement release, one that announced the Queen of Pop wasn’t going anywhere. ‘Frozen’ was an interesting choice for the lead-single though, especially considering that follow-up ‘Ray of Light’ is the much better remembered hit, but it makes for an interesting detour in Madonna’s chart history. This is her second and final ‘90s #1, making it by far her least successful chart-topping decade. However, she has five more ‘00s #1s to come, all perhaps owing a debt to how successfully she updated her sound here.
Up next, a quirky little number one. An indie-pop tune about classic Indian movies, by a band who had never previously been higher than #60 in the charts…
Brimful of Asha, by Cornershop (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 22nd February – 1st March 1998
‘Brimful of Asha’ had originally been released in 1997, in a more pedestrian, lo-fi version. It’s nice – a different angle on British rock in the late-Britpop years – but it needed a sprinkling of stardust to turn it into a hit. Enter Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim. This is already Cook’s third chart-topping persona, following a spot as a member of the Housemartins in 1986, and with Beats International in 1990.
Compared to some of the other big dance acts of the time – think Prodigy or the Chemical Brothers – Cook’s work as Fatboy Slim has a much poppier, more accessible style. The production on this record – the chunky drum fills, the loops – is very late nineties. But it probably sounds ‘very late nineties’ because Fatboy Slim was one of the defining sounds of that era. ‘Brimful of Asha’ was the launchpad for him to enjoy several years of hits.
And while it does sound rooted in the late-90s, ‘Brimful of Asha’ also has nods back to the sixties in the guitar line, and the fact that Cook added a sample from ‘Mary, Mary’, by the Monkees. The ‘Asha’ in the title refers to Asha Bosle, a famous soundtrack singer and one of the most influential names in Bollywood. And of course there’s the famous hook: Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, Everybody needs a bosom… It all comes together to create an intoxicatingly catchy song.
Cornershop were from Wolverhampton, and had been ploughing an alt-indie furrow since 1991. Their references to Indian cinema came from founders and brothers Tjinder and Avtar Singh (though Avtar had left in 1995), and the band’s name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the stereotypical line of work that Indian immigrants tended to take up in the UK. It’s actually quite a big cultural moment, this: British Indians topping the charts with a song celebrating their ancestral country. It’s also a surprisingly early nostalgic tribute to vinyl records (Brimful of Asha on the ’45…) just after the format had been largely killed off, and before hipsters rediscovered it.
Sadly, Cornershop would struggle for hits when Norman Cook wasn’t involved. The follow-up, ‘Sleep on the Left Side’, made #23, and their last Top 100 appearance came in 2004. They remain active, though, both recording and touring. Norman Cook, meanwhile, went from strength to strength after this. In the months following ‘Brimful of Asha’s success, he had his first hit as Fatboy Slim with ‘The Rockafeller Skank’, setting him up for several years of solo success. I have a feeling that his poppy, Big Beat style might have been looked down upon in more fashionable dance circles, but he was always undeniably catchy. And he’ll be back along with his own solo #1 very soon!
In which we don our lifejackets, fight our way out on deck, and try to find a lost child with whom to bribe our way onto a boat. Anything to avoid a collision with this hulking leviathan of a song…
My Heart Will Go On, by Celine Dion (her 2nd and final #1)
1 week, from 15th – 22nd February 1998 / 1 week, from 8th – 15th March 1998 (2 weeks total)
‘My Heart Will Go On’ is one of those songs that has become such a cliché, such a meme, such a cornerstone of popular culture, that it is very hard to judge as a mere five-minute piece of popular balladry. But if you can separate it from what it’s become, and manage to hear it as people in 1997 did… Then you are still confronted with a truly horrifying song.
I always thought the opening notes were played on pan-pipes, but it’s actually a tin whistle. This vaguely Celtic, new-agey motif features throughout the three hours plus of the movie ‘Titanic’, a sort of Pavlovian signal that Something Romantic is happening. It existed as part of the soundtrack to the film before composer James Horner suggested using it in a song. James Cameron, the director, wasn’t sold. If only he’d stuck to his guns… Sadly, he gave in, and this monster was born.
My first impression upon sitting down and listening to this song properly for the first time in a quarter of a century is that it sounds dated for the late-nineties. Every power-ballad cliché is ticked: big drums, squealing guitars, echoey effects, and gloopy percussion. Add in the new-age feel, and it sounds like we’ve slipped back a decade. Then there’s the ‘Whitney’ moment – the pause, and the beat, before the key-change and the final sledgehammer chorus.
As Houston does in ‘I Will Always Love You’, Celine Dion bludgeons all emotion out of the song’s climax in a storm of howling bombast. Though that sounds like I’m suggesting that there’s emotion in the verses preceding the final chorus. There isn’t. It’s all just too huge, too overwhelming, to have any impact. It mirrors the way I feel about the movie, too. I’ve enjoyed it as a piece of entertainment, but the ‘sad’ scenes now come across almost as tongue-in-cheek. Again, this is possibly because we’ve seen way too many parodies of frozen Jack, and Rose clinging to the door; but it could also be because the film was complete fluff in the first place.
For all this talk of entertainment, though, one of this song’s biggest failings is its dullness. I first mentioned this phenomenon when we covered the ‘90s other big soundtrack hits: Houston’s, and Bryan Adams. Once upon a time power ballads were ridiculous pieces of theatre. Think ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, or ‘China in Your Hand’. Dion’s previous chart-topper ‘Think Twice’ was a much more recent example of a power ballad whose earnestness was delivered with a wink and a lot of scenery chewing. There’s no wink here, though, no sense of an in-joke. Just a dull plod punctuated by lots of serious fist clenching.
But you don’t need me to tell you that ‘My Heart Will Go On’, for all its God-awfulness, was fairly successful. A number one in more than twenty-five countries around the world, and currently the second-best selling single ever by a female artist (behind you-know-who). Celine Dion apparently disliked it at first – I mean, she would say that now – but it hasn’t stopped her milking it for all its worth. China in particular has a passion for the song, with state television inviting Dion to belt out her biggest hit several times over the years. For me, though, ‘My Heart Will Go On’ will always remind me of a family holiday in Lanzarote. It was the first time I had ever been on a plane, travelling for four hours across Europe just to hear this dirge being played every fifteen minutes at the pool bar…
Aqua, looking for all the world like they’d be one-hit wonders, surprise us all by returning with not just a second hit, but a second number one.
Doctor Jones, by Aqua (their 2nd of three #1s)
2 weeks, from 1st – 15th February 1998
Perhaps the trick was that they stuck to a clear ‘if it ain’t broke’ formula. Female and male vocals, Eurodance production, about five different ultra-catchy hooks… The demand was obviously there post-‘Barbie Girl’. The tempo is increased from their earlier hit, giving this a proper Hi-NRG bounce to it. And like its predecessor, this single is also based around a pop culture icon.
The ‘Doctor Jones’ of the title is Indiana Jones, as made clear by the video in which Lene (formerly Barbie) and the other two members of Aqua plough through the jungle in search of René (formerly Ken). Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones wake up now… prattles the chorus, and he does wake up just in time to save his bandmates from being boiled alive. As with the ‘Barbie Girl’ video it’s good camp fun.
This whole endeavour, is of course, complete cheese, and if your tolerance for cheesy Eurotrash is low then this record certainly won’t be for you. I’m fairly immune to it, but the ayypee-aieeooaayyoo-ayypeeay-eh (I believe that is the official transliteration…) line in the chorus is annoying even to me. And sadly, René’s role is much less than it was in ‘Barbie Girl’, with his gravelly voice being used mainly to echo Lene’s lead.
It’s not as good as their biggest hit, or as memorable, but it does successfully manage the difficult balancing act of replicating what made the former such a big smash, recycling it cleverly, but without simply churning out ‘Barbie Girl Part II’. That’s quite a hard trick to pull off, especially when their first hit had had such massive success but had been filed away quite firmly in the ‘novelty’ drawer.
I’m starting to sound like quite the Aqua apologist. But it wasn’t just me, honest! 1998 was their year! Not only did they manage this second number one, they will soon manage a third. A third that will prove them capable of writing a proper pop song, and not just novelty dance numbers.
January 1998, but we take a quick step into the early twentieth century…
You Make Me Wanna…, by Usher (his 1st of four #1s)
1 week, from 25th January – 1st February 1998
Since the mid-1990s, the British charts have been very British-led. This sounds like an obvious statement, but hear me out. In 1996, the only American acts to top the charts were the Fugees, twice (one of which was, to be fair, the year’s highest-seller), and Deep Blue Something. Back in 1994, it was only Prince and Mariah Carey. 1993 saw honorary American Shaggy, Meat Loaf, and a Will Smith-Jazzy Jeff combo. Compare that to 1990, when seven US acts made number one…
Clearly the fact that European-style dance music and Britpop were the big musical movements of the mid-nineties meant that the States didn’t get much of a look-in at the top of the charts. But 1997 saw a reversal of that trend, with #1 hits from the rogues gallery of R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Puff Daddy, plus No Doubt, Hanson, and Will Smith. 1998 will continue this way, starting with an up and coming eighteen-year-old called Usher.
I’ll admit that I padded this post out with the preceding couple of paragraphs because I’ve never found this sort of late-90s, twitchy, minimalist R&B very interesting. It’s very modern, sounding more like what’s to come in the early ‘00s than what’s come before, and Usher’s vocals are impressive. I do like his freestyles towards the end of the song, where he sounds like a more muscular Michael Jackson. He certainly doesn’t sound like a teenager here.
But it largely washes over me without really registering. This was the sound of the Billboard charts at the time, and there’s a significance to it topping the UK charts now. It reminds me of some early Destiny’s Child tracks from the same time, with the same jerky, pizzicato production. But I like ‘Bills Bills Bills’ much more than ‘You Make Me Wanna…’, which I can only explain through the fact that Beyoncé just makes things better.
Still, it introduces one of the big names of modern pop music. This was Usher’s first British hit, though he’d have to wait a couple more years to become a huge chart force. He’ll have four chart-toppers over an impressive twelve-year span (with at least one genuine banger) and a Top 10 career that will last the best part of two decades.
Again, this January is providing an interesting mix of one-week #1s that might not have made the top at any other time of year. A slow-burn girl group classic, Oasis at their most overblown, and a glimpse into the charts of the future. On a personal note, ‘You Make Me Wanna…’ (why the ellipsis?) was my twelfth birthday number one. Meh. Had I been born a day later I could have claimed the cheesy tune that is to come…
A few months after the highest-selling number one single of all time, a slightly different chart record falls. Oasis were planning to release the penultimate track from ‘Be Here Now’ as that album’s final single, a track that ran to well over nine minutes (long even by that bloated album’s standards). Surely, people assumed, there would be a single edit? But of course not. For this was Oasis, the biggest, boldest band in the land, and nobody could tell them what to do.
All Around the World, by Oasis (their 4th of eight #1s)
1 week, from 18th – 25th January 1998
In fact, the single version of ‘All Around the World’ drags things out even further than the album version, meaning that it runs to a staggering nine minutes thirty-eight seconds. You wonder why they didn’t just keep it going to the ten-minute mark… Still, it stands as the longest number one single ever, almost two minutes ahead of Meat Loaf in second place. But what gets overlooked in all the chat about how long it is, and how OTT ‘Be Here Now’ is, is the fact that this is a pretty good song.
It’s one of the album’s clearer, more instant moments. It’s a simple enough concept, with slightly jazzy, slightly Beatlesy (duh!) chord progressions. The simple concept is built upon, with layers of overdub and na-na-na-ing, until it grows into a thumping gospel track, with Liam chanting his mantra: I know what I know, It’s gonna be okay… We all know now that by 1998 Oasis were a coked-up mess; but this is Oasis at their coked-up best. I’ve always thought it very underrated.
Perhaps ‘All Around the World’ stands out as different to the rest of ‘Be Here Now’ because it was actually one of Noel’s earliest song writing efforts, with live performances dating back to 1992. I don’t imagine those early versions of the song sounded as gigantic as this, but it does have that early-Oasis theme of everyone getting along, making better days. Plus it has Liam chewing the life out of the word sheeeiiiiinnnneeee, which is a real Oasis 101.
Added to this early-nineties seed of a song were seven whole minutes of coda. Lots of key changes, lots of subtle rearranging of the na-na-nas. I particularly like the seismic shift around 5:30, before Liam comes back bellowing through a loudspeaker. Of course it’s too long – it’s a preposterous length for a pop song – and of course it’s self-indulgent. Plus, of course the Beatles’ references are way too obvious (‘Hey Jude’, for one, and ‘Yellow Submarine’ in the mesmerising animated video).
But as with ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’, and as with ‘Be Here Now’ on the whole, you do just have to sit back and admire the sheer bravado of releasing this beautiful, overblown nonsense, and then lament the passing of rock music that is this big. It’s a shame that a track of ‘All Around the World’s size is relatively forgotten among the Oasis back-catalogue, and that it sneaked a January number one when competition was scarce. By now, a backlash had begun against Oasis, as always happens when acts become that popular. It will be over two years before their next chart hit, as the band take a much needed breather after the wild ride of the Britpop years.
Into 1998, then. The penultimate year of the century, the 46th year of the UK singles charts, and one with a thus-far record thirty number ones. And to start off, there are a few questions that I need to know…
Never Ever, by All Saints (their 1st of five #1s)
1 week, from 11th – 18th January 1998
To be honest, an opening line that clunky could kill lesser songs off before they’ve started. A few answers that I need to know, surely, scans just as well. Anyway, ‘Never Ever’ quickly recovers from that shaky start, by bringing us one of the great spoken word sections. Anyone of my vintage can probably still recite it word for word…You can tell me to my face, Or even on the phone… as well as adding all the backing harmonies.
It takes the sassy soul vibe of 1997’s final chart-topper, the Spice Girls’ ‘Too Much’, and ups both the sass and the soul. All Saints have very good voices, and great harmonies, to the point where you’re tricked into misremembering this as an a cappella track. But their voices are also flawed, like the Spice Girls’, so that you can hear their accents and dropped consonants.
‘Never Ever’ isn’t a cappella, of course, and the production is period-perfect late-90s R&B squelch (this is what we must refer to it as from now on, and we’ll be hearing it a lot as the century winds down). It’s also let down slightly by further clunky lyrics (flexin’ vocabulary… the alphabet runs right from A to Z) and simplistic rhymes: Free from pain/ Goin’ insane… So low/ Black hole… So sad/ Feelin’ really bad… But hey, at least the words stick with you. And by the end, as the harmonies build and the organs start to swirl, you forgive it. The outro is just as good as the famous intro, slipping into a hip-hop beat as the girls’ voices are filtered and distorted.
Having a pop single run over five minutes (six and a half in its album version) is always a risk, spreading a few decent lines and a hook too thin. But ‘Never Ever’ lasts the distance, thanks to the strength of the voices and the melodies, and the way that they continue to build. And talking of being long-running, the song had a particularly slow journey to the top of the charts by 1998’s standards. It first charted in November, then hung around the Top 10 for seven weeks before finally reaching the top in the post-Christmas lull. It set a record for the highest ever sales before making #1 (770,000), and it’s current total stands at 1.5 million. It is the 3rd biggest-selling girl group single of all time in the UK. (You can guess the top two in the comments below…)
It feels simplistic to call All Saints the female East 17 to the Spice Girls’ Take That, but I’m going to do it anyway. The Spice Girls were chaotic and silly, whereas All Saints were all glowering stares, pierced tongues and nose-studs, shacking up with Gallaghers. They were the girls a couple of years above you in the corridor at school, definitely not to be approached under any circumstances. ‘Never Ever’ was only their second single, but it established them as the ‘other’ girl group of the day. In 1998, they’ll even have one more #1 than the Spice Girls. In fact, they’ll have five chart-toppers in just under three years, and all but one of them will be great.
If you’ve been paying attention, you might be expecting a recap in my next post. However I’ve decided that as the turnover of #1s is ever-increasing, and to stop my all-time awards getting too skewed towards the late-‘90s/early-‘00s, I’m going to do recaps after every fiftieth chart-topper until things slow down a bit, sometime around 2003.
Oi Oi! Here’s a Best Of for Britpop’s cheekiest chappies. And it’s got nothing to do with your Vorsprung durch Technik, y’know… For I haven’t chosen ‘Parklife’ as one of them. Nor have I chosen either of Blur’s #1s – ‘Country House’ and ‘Beetlebum’. What I have done is pick my favourite non-chart topping single (no album tracks allowed) from each of their nine studio albums, plus a couple of standalone singles for good measure. Off we swagger, then…
‘She’s So High’ – from Leisure
Blur’s first album stands out as something of an oddity. Apart from it clearly being Damon Albarn on lead vocals, they don’t sound like the Britpop icons that they would go on to become. ‘She’s So High’ was their first ever release, making #48 in October 1990. It’s very much a shoegaze single, lulling you in with its pounding drone and stoned vocals. It was twinned with ‘I Know’ as a double-‘A’, which is a more uptempo number with a funky Madchester beat. Both songs are a neat time capsule of what indie music sounded like at the dawn of the ’90s, long before anyone had heard of ‘Brit Pop’.
‘Popscene’ – non-album single
I’m cheating a bit here, as ‘Popscene’ wasn’t on any album, but it seems too important to miss off this list. It feels like the sound of Blur coming into their own, the Blur that would go on to become one of the decade’s biggest bands, and is a song that they were proud of and excited to release. When it stalled at #32, in 1992, they were disappointed, and blamed grunge for not allowing upbeat rock music to flourish. Which was sour grapes, even if they did have a point. However, ‘Popscene’ is now regarded as one of, if not the, first real Britpop single. One that would influence a whole genre with its mix of punk and glam, its energy and its snotty Britishness, even if its legacy isn’t reflected in its chart position.
‘Sunday Sunday’ – from Modern Life Is Rubbish
‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ kicked off the Britpop phase of Blur’s career, and the album’s third single set the template for the sort of perky, Kinks-y hits that they would churn out by the dozen between 1993 and 1996. Many would say they surpassed it a year later on ‘Parklife’, but this song is saved by not having been bludgeoned into our skulls for the past three decades. Plus ‘Parklife’ also doesn’t have ‘Sunday Sunday’s frantic middle-eight, that sounds like a malfunctioning arcade game, or the big brass band that sees us home. The lyrics are no ‘Autumn Almanac’, but there’s charm here in its depiction of a lazy Sunday: He sings the Songs of Praise every week but always falls asleep… The three singles from the album all made the Top 30, and though a good case could be made for ‘For Tomorrow’, I think ‘Sunday Sunday’ best encapsulates Blur on the verge of becoming massive.
‘Girls & Boys’ – from Parklife
And massive they became, thanks to ‘Parklife’, and its lead single ‘Girls & Boys’. Sometimes Britpop gets written off as a regressive movement, a fin de siecle piss-up for the lads and ladettes. But that was just one half of it (the Oasis half). The other half was Brett Anderson’s floppy fringe and amyl nitrate innuendo, Jarvis Cocker’s knowing looks and camp asides. And of course Blur, singing about Girls who want boys, Who like boys to be girls, Who do boys like they’re girls, Who do girls like they’re boys… All over a squelching electro-disco beat, and a brilliantly cheap looking green-screened video. Yes, it’s a satire about 18-30s holidays, and could be viewed in a sneering ‘look at those plebs’ sort of way. But I don’t think you need to overthink brilliant pop like this.
All the singles from ‘Parklife’ could have been chosen, as all have a claim to being among Blur’s best. From the soaring lounge-pop of ‘To the End’, the ubiquity of the title-track, to the bittersweet ‘End of a Century’. But I’ll go with the lead-single, which made #5 in the spring of 1994, and really kicked Britpop into gear.
‘The Universal’ – from The Great Escape
‘The Great Escape’ gave Blur their first number one single, which also brought with it all the hullaballoo of the ‘Battle of Britpop’. But it was the album’s second single, a #5 hit in November 1995, which is the real highlight. It’s a sweeping ballad, more strings than guitars, about a future where technology has taken over. The looming end of the twentieth century was a theme that cropped up throughout Blur’s Britpop phase, never more so than in ‘The Universal’: No-one here is alone, Satellites in every home… Eerily prescient, perhaps, as we look back from our social media age. The video is similarly creepy, a tribute to a ‘A Clockwork Orange’, with Blur all in white, playing to a bar full of uninterested, and increasingly chaotic, yuppies. Can we also take a moment to appreciate Damon Albarn, already the ’90s best-looking frontman, in mascara… (Fun fact: former Tottenham forward and BBC pundit Garth Crooks bought one of the all-seeing golf balls from the video at a charity auction in 1999).
‘Song 2’ – from Blur
I’m going for the second single from their fifth album, as the lead single made #1 and I’ve already covered it. And while I do like ‘Beetlebum’, I probably would have chosen ‘Song 2’ because, well, it bloody rocks. It’s also perfectly named, as not only was it the second single, it is also exactly two minutes long, made #2 in the charts, and it is the second track on the album (the song’s title is a placeholder that they never bothered to change). Things had been going sour for Blur following ‘The Great Escape’, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that they helped kill off Britpop with the follow-up. Gone are the larking cheeky-chappies; it is much darker, grittier, electronic in places, and grungier… Speaking of which, since their ill-fated tour of the States in 1992, Blur had spoken out against grunge, and American rock, and some say that ‘Song 2’ was intended as a piss-take of the genre. They apparently had no idea that their label would want the song on the album, let alone want it released as a single. And of course, when it did come it out it became their best-known song in the US. Funny that… Going by Damon’s outburst when they played Coachella earlier this year, he still has some unresolved anger towards Americans…
(Also, an honorable mention to this album’s fourth single, ‘M.O.R.’, which also rocks.)
‘Coffee & TV’ – from 13
Second single from the album, again. ’13’ was even more experimental than ‘Blur’, coming out in 1999 with Britpop going through its death-spasms. The lead-single was the near eight-minute long ‘Tender’, which is a good song – a swampy, gospel oddity – stretched way too thin. It was famously (and rightfully) held off number one by ‘…Baby One More Time’. The follow-up was ‘Coffee & TV’, written and sung by Graham Coxon about his struggles with alcohol. It contains, for my money, one of the greatest opening lines of all time: Do you feel like a chain store, Practically floored… Plus there’s also the award winning video featuring Milky, the animated milk carton.
‘Out of Time’ – from Think Tank
In the four years between ’13’ and ‘Think Tank’, Graham Coxon had left the band and Damon Albarn had released a well-aclaimed and succesful album with Gorillaz. For their seventh album, the remaining three members decamped to Morrocco. ‘Out of Time’, the album’s lead single and Blur’s most recent Top 10 hit, features an orchestra from Marrakesh, who provide the eerie, ethereal sounds that swirl around this gorgeous song. It also features perhaps Albarn’s best vocal performance, so soothing and clear that it works as a form of ASMR. Following this album, and the subsequent tour, Blur disbanded for the better part of a decade. (A shout out too for ‘Think Tank’s second single, the completely different ‘Crazy Beat’, a sort of ‘Song 2’ on steroids.)
‘Under the Westway’ – non-album single
Since we had ‘Popscene’, we can have this one too. An out-of-the-blue release in 2012, of a song written by Albarn and Coxon for a charity performance. Perhaps Blur’s most melancholy ballad, written about a man sitting under the A40 flyover in West London. Think a 21st century ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but far less hopeful. And yet it’s beautiful, ending on a thumping piano note reminiscent of ‘A Day in the Life’. It is the band’s most recent Top 40 hit to date.
‘Ong Ong’ – from The Magic Whip
Blur reformed in the early 2010s, and went out on tour. A new album was not on the cards, however, until a festival they were supposed to be playing in Japan was cancelled, leaving the band in Hong Kong with time to spare. They booked a small studio in Kowloon, and bashed what would go on to become ‘The Magic Whip’ out in five days. ‘Ong Ong’ has a joyful bounciness to it that harks back to the goofiness of ‘Sunday Sunday’ and ‘Parklife’, but also has a middle-aged melancholy buried within. Plus I have somewhat personal reasons for choosing it, as it’s a cute tribute to my home of twelve years, a land of black kites and wishing trees (as well as tarmac that melts on hot, sunny days like today…)
‘St. Charles Square’ – from The Ballad of Darren
I have to admit to not being that enthused by Blur’s most recent album, last year’s ‘The Ballad of Darren’. The standout track by far was the second single, the grungey, crunchy ‘St Charles Square’. It’s a ghost story – theres something down here and it’s living under the floorboards – but they are the ghosts of Britpop past. Apparently ‘Tesco Disco’was a real unlicensed club, next to a Tesco in Notting Hill. Which is brilliant.
I hope you enjoyed this frolic through the best British band of the ’90s… (please do disagree with that statement in the comments below!) Up next we return to regular programming, starting out on 1998!
Happily preventing the Teletubbies from claiming a Christmas number one, the Spice Girls score their second of three festive chart-toppers in a row. And of the three, this is the best in my book…
Too Much, by The Spice Girls (their 6th of nine #1s)
2 weeks, from 21st December 1997 – 4th January 1998
It’s a ballad, of course (a girl group festive release will always be a ballad, there may be actual laws about this) but it’s not as straightforwardly sweet as ‘2 Become 1’, or as sentimental as the one to come next year. This is a sassy, soulful, fairly sophisticated, ballad that, with a little more oomph, could pass as a Bond theme.
It unfurls – that’s the perfect word – seductively, with plenty of horns and strings. Plus it has a couple of the Spice Girls’ best lines. As with all their good songs, they are the ones in charge, not the men. Unwrap yourself… Geri purrs… From around my finger… While in the middle-eight, Mel C unleashes the iconic: What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, I want a man, Not a boy who thinks he can…!
When you add in her harmonies in the second chorus, Mel C here cements herself not only as the star of this single but as the official ‘Spice who could sing’. I think this might be one of the group’s less well-remembered number ones, and it certainly passed me by at the time – twelve-year-old me having given up on them after the manic ‘Spice Up Your Life’. But listening to it now, I might be tempted to place it as their 2nd best chart-topper, after ‘Say You’ll Be There’ (clearly the singles where Mel C was allowed to unleash are the best).
‘Too Much’ was the girls’ 6th #1 in a row, maintaining their 100% record – a record that stands to this day (though it has since been matched by Westlife). Their next release, ‘Stop’, would be their first and only single not to make the top. As I mentioned in my last post on the Spice Girls, the returns from their second album were clearly shortening, although they remained a global phenomenon. This is also their final number one as a five-piece, as by the time of their seventh chart-topper, Geri will have famously called it a day.
In my last post I mentioned that late-1997 saw extremely high singles sales. It’s hard to say, as records vary, but this may have been the ultimate peak for physical singles in the UK. In the run up to Christmas ’97 there was a week in which the entire Top 5 all sold over 100,000 copies, and in the all-time highest-sellers table four songs from the latter half of the year remain in the Top 50 (‘I’ll Be Missing You’, ‘Barbie Girl’, ‘Perfect Day’ and the record-holding ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’). Why this is I’m not qualified to say… Cut-pricing, cultural relevance, the ubiquity of CD players are all decent reasons. The quality of music, in my opinion, is not. The autumn of 1997 has seen a bit of a drop-off compared to the first half of the year. Whatever the reason, we head into 1998 with sales still high, and the turnover at the top ever-increasing…
The UK Number Ones Blog 