pop charts

810. ‘Tragedy’ / ‘Heartbeat’, by Steps

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1999, then. Just writing it out – ‘1999’ – still feels pleasingly futuristic, despite it being twenty-five years ago. And what cutting-edge, avant-garde #1 do we have to guide us into the future…? Steps! With a Bee Gees cover…

Tragedy / Heartbeat, by Steps (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 3rd – 10th January 1999

It is a cheap and cheerful (‘cheap and cheerful’ being the Steps motto) and pretty faithful cover of the Brothers Gibb’s 1979 chart-topper, the big hit of the ’98 party season. By the first week in January presumably everyone knew the hands-to-the-face-while-shouting-out-the-title-line move from the video, the record having taken seven weeks to climb to the top – a very slow burn for the late nineties.

‘Heartbeat’ is a little more inventive, and was initially the song that was pushed to radio. A wintery ballad, with lots of little retro-flourishes (I love the revving bass), sounding like something Barbara Dickson might have recorded a decade and a half earlier. Faye and Clare, the pair that usually took the lead on Steps’ singles, both have an oddly old-fashioned, stage school way of enunciating their lines which is well-demonstrated here. But they also both have a set of lungs on them, giving oomph to even the most banal of lines. As with most Steps songs, we are left to wonder what the two male members, H and Lee, are doing. At least here they contributed some nice backing vocals.

I will admit right now, loud and proud, that I like Steps. Whatever. Sue me. Yes, they’re camp. Yes, they are cheesy. Yes, they are a Poundland ABBA. And yes, occasionally they’ve made some truly awful records (‘5,6,7,8’ springs immediately to mind). But all that is forgiven thanks to the pop perfection of singles like ‘Last Thing on My Mind’, or ‘Love’s Got a Hold of My Heart’.

Sadly, they’re neither the first, nor the last, act to be poorly served by their chart-toppers. ‘Tragedy’ and ‘Heartbeat’ wouldn’t rank among their best songs (and the less said about their second #1 the better… until I have to write a post about it.) They match Sash! – see my previous post – for five #2s, at least four of which would have made better #1s than this.

1999 will take us longer to get through than any year so far, with thirty-five chart-toppers (up four from 1998’s total). But luckily we’re now hitting a typically eclectic run of January number ones, made up of genre-hopping DJs, boyband covers, punk rockers, and the shock return of a legendary new-wave band… Exciting times ahead!

809. ‘Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)’, by Chef

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Falling short behind the Spice Girls in Christmas-week, but thrusting to number one for the new year… A funky ode to some sweet, yet salty, confectionary.

Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You), by Chef (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th December 1998 – 3rd January 1999

Part-recipe, part funk-soul masterpiece… Could we argue that ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ is the first and perhaps only true funk song to make number one in the UK? Naturally everyone came for the innuendo, but they stayed for the fact this is actually a great song, with a nasty funk riff. Plus, the voice is Isaac Hayes – soul, funk, Stax Records legend – becoming one of the oldest chart-topping artists, aged fifty-five.

In all honesty, these balls do be sounding delicious. Cinnamon, butter, brandy, vanilla, and chocolate (though, interestingly, no salt)… Grease up the cooking sheet, (Cause I hate when my balls stick)… Then pre-heat the oven to 350, And give that spoon a lick…! It all leads to a frenzied ending, in which Chef’s balls start to burn, and a piano takes a pounding like nothing we’ve heard since Jerry Lee Lewis was at number one.

If you’re going to do a novelty song – if you really must – then use records like this as your ‘How To’. Ridiculous innuendo, a genuinely good tune, and a proper singer that doesn’t mind taking the mickey out of themselves. Some might blanche at a soul legend like Hayes only making number one by growling Now suck on my balls! I am not one of those people. And it’s not like he’d come especially close in the previous three decades: a #10 in 1975 with ‘Disco Connection’, after a #4 in 1971 with the iconic ‘Theme from ‘Shaft’’.

Chef was of course a character in 1998’s breakout cartoon, ‘South Park’. I was slap-bang in the middle of the show’s target demographic, and the playground that year had been full of kids shouting ‘Oh my god, you killed Kenny!’ (though I wasn’t allowed to watch the show myself). ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ had featured in an episode a few months earlier, and proved memorable enough to be released as a single, pushing the actual Spice Girls all the way in the race for Christmas number one, and finishing only eight thousand copies behind them. (In doing so it recorded the highest weekly sale for a #2 since 1984.)

‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ isn’t the only chart hit to come from South Park. The following year ‘Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo’ made the festive charts, peaking at #4. A funny postscript to this record, though, is the fact that Isaac Hayes had joined the Church of Scientology in the 1990s, and left South Park in 2005 after an episode satirising said Church. He also presumably disowned his sole British chart-topper. Hayes died in 2008, following a stroke.

806. ‘Believe’, by Cher

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What is this fantasy world, in which a fifty-two year old woman can score the biggest hit of her career, well over thirty years into it..?

Believe, by Cher (her 4th and final #1)

7 weeks, from 25th October – 13th December 1998

Well the autumn of 1998 was no fantasy. Was it the novelty factor? Was it the autotune? Or was it just the fact that ‘Believe’ is a simply great pop song? Yes, yes, and yes; but I also think that it’s the contrast between the low-key, melancholy verses, with lines like No matter how hard I try, You keep pushing me aside… And the soaring, positive chorus. Do you believe in life after love…? Well, do you?

It’s also a modern sounding pop song, with all the late nineties flourishes, sound effects and, yes, a version of that synthesised drum beat. Quite a departure from the MOR rock that Cher had been recording for much of the ‘80s and ‘90s; sounding like it could have been recorded by one of the much younger poppettes of the day.

But we do have to address the Auto-Tuned elephant in the room. ‘Believe’ is often credited with introducing the world to the tool, which had been invented just one year before. But it’s use here is gimmicky, and fun. Nobody doubts that Cher can sing, and the way she belts the middle-eight out here, all natural, leave us in no doubt. Other, less vocally capable, singers’ use of Auto-Tune is a subject we can save for another day…

‘Believe’ truly was a behemoth of a song. Seven weeks at number one in the late-nineties was a huge achievement, a run that will not be matched again until 2005. In some ways we could see it as the last of the 1990’s ‘event’ singles, songs that went beyond the chart and entered the lives of the general public, like Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston, Wet Wet Wet, and Elton John before. I certainly remember it being everywhere in the school playground that autumn, and it remains the biggest-selling single of all time by a solo female.

I wrote earlier about the novelty factor of having an old(er) pop star like Cher at number one, but the truth is that this was her third chart-topper of the decade, after ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ and ‘Love Can Build a Bridge’. The ‘90s is by far her most successful chart era, after her initial ‘60s successes and a fairly barren twenty years in between. So perhaps it’s not too much of a surprise that she was capable of pulling a hit like this out of the bag in her fifties.

Since ‘Believe’ Cher hasn’t managed too many more hits, but she reached #18 last year – aged seventy-seven! – with her festive ‘DJ Play a Christmas Song’. She will probably outlive us all. An interesting footnote here is that the week in which ‘Believe’ made #1 – the final week in October – the Top 5 of the singles chart was famously superannuated. George Michael was #2 with ‘Outside’, U2 were at #3, and a recently reformed Culture Club sat at #4.

804. ‘Girlfriend’, by Billie

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Right after B*Witched, the year’s second biggest teenybop act returns for another crack at the top…

Girlfriend, by Billie (her 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 11th – 18th October 1998

I thought ‘Rollercoaster’ was a big improvement on ‘C’est la Vie’, a record I detested. Is the same upswing evident with Miss Piper, bearing in mind that I didn’t find ‘Because We Want To’ anywhere near as bad as B*Witched’s accursed debut? Um… Not particularly. It’s more of the same, really.

It starts off fairly promisingly, though. Some excellent vintage record scratches, and some shoobydoobydoopdoops reminiscent of the classic girl groups. There’s a bit of sass in the verses, and I can certainly hear a bit of All Saints in there (as with B*Witched, Billie’s second single was clearly trying to add a little more edge). The song’s premise is that Billie has seen a boy that she likes, and she isn’t going to play it coy: Playin’ hard to get takes too long sugar, So I told my friends that I’ve found a man…

While I admire the confidence (very Girl Power), the song is let down by another chanty chorus. Do you have a girlfriend…? Can I have your number…? I don’t think it suits Billie’s voice particularly well, which adds to the grating effect. And I’m not sure this aggressive approach would have worked, romantically speaking.

I’ve lost count of how many pop songs in 1998 have had the same vaguely hip-hop backing beat and squelchy bass synths. It’s another step towards what I would call truly ‘modern’ pop music (i.e. the Max Martin sledgehammer approach). This is a bit more minimal than what’s to come, the simple beat decorated with various horn parps and string flourishes.

Billie Piper has an interesting post-pop career, but we’ll hold off on that for now. She has one final number one, with a big and beefy Y2K sound, and that will make an interesting contrast with her first two chart-toppers. It’s worth mentioning, before we go, that ‘Girlfriend’ put Billie out and clear as the youngest person to make #1 with their first two singles.

802. ‘I Want You Back’, by Melanie B ft. Missy Elliott

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Straight on the back of Robbie Williams first solo #1, we have our first Solo Spice…

I Want You Back, by Melanie B ft. Missy Elliott (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th September 1998

I’m not sure Mel B would have been many peoples’ choice for the Spice Girls most likely breakout star and, in truth, though she struck early she wasn’t the most successful of the five. But this is in fact the perfect solo Spice Girl number one: cool, edgy, and unlike anything the group had released in their two album career…

I’m the M to the E, L, B… Melanie Brown announces. As iconic raps go, it is not on the same level as her Now here’s the story from A to Z… moment in ‘Wannabe’, but it does the job. She tells the story of how she may think her ex is a bit of a dick, how he’s driven her to drink and distraction, but how she still wants him back…

The sharp strings and the ominous guitars over a hip-hop beat do sound pretty cutting edge for 1998, and a huge step away from what we’ve heard so far from the Spice Girls. But what roots this record in the late nineties is the very dated rap lingo. I admire the use of the term ‘wack’ in the chorus, but can’t help grimacing at lines like I know I talk mad junk, But I know what I want… And even though you’re a mack true dat, I want you back…

Still, bringing true street cred we have Missy ‘Misdemeanour’ Elliott on board, for her only credited appearance on a UK #1 single. (She will also feature, uncredited, on ‘Lady Marmalade’ in a few years time.) She does little more than spell out her name and then go ‘uh uh uh’, but hey. I think this might be the very first example of a pop star A ft. a rapper B record to make number one, with many to follow in the coming decades. To reduce Missy Elliott, a hip-hop pioneer, to the status of rent-a-rapper feels wrong though, and I do wish she’d been given more to do.

According to Mel B, this was Missy Elliott’s song, and she the one who invited the Spice Girl to duet on it. Incongruously, it also featured on the soundtrack to the Frankie Lymon biopic ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’. Elliott was far from a household name in Britain at this point, and wouldn’t make the Top 10 under her own steam until 2001’s ‘Get Ur Freak On’.

Mel B meanwhile peaked early in her solo career, and while she would go on to score two more Top 10 hits she will not be returning to the number one position without the help of her bandmates. ‘I Want You Back’ may not be the best remembered of the Spice Girls’ solo efforts, but I’d go as far as to say that it is not the wackest piece of music any of them have put their name to.

801. ‘Millennium’, by Robbie Williams

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Into the eight hundreds, and we do so with a bold statement of a number one…

Millennium, by Robbie Williams (his 1st of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 13th – 20th September 1998

The biggest British pop star at the turn of the century, the black sheep of the ‘90s biggest boyband, finally scores a solo number one. It’s a cocky, swaggering track, making nice use of a sample from Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’. (Though in actual fact it is a rerecording in a slightly higher key, which was cheaper than paying for the original.) Anyway, it slams the door open, sweeps into the room chorus first, declaring ‘I’m here!’

After that comes a state of the nation address, over a hip-hop beat. Live for liposuction, Detox for your rent, Overdose at Christmas, And give it up for Lent… We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars, that sort of thing. It’s very zeitgeist grabbing, very of-the-moment, less than a year and a half before Y2K, all delivered with a sense of theatre by Robbie Williams. We’re praying it’s not too late… he sings in the chorus… Millennium…

Even if you’re stuck behind a dead end desk job in Slough, the appeal of an idea that we’ve got stars directing our dishevelled fates is clear. My favourite bit though is the nonchalantly loutish Come and have a go if you think you are hard enough… chant. It is this that sums up the post-Britpop nineties, the lads and the ladettes, the alcopops, all that. It’s clever, and catchy, somehow deep without really trying.

Some pop stars don’t seem to care about their chart fortunes, about whether or not a song will be a hit, but I don’t think Robbie Williams is one of them. At this point in his career at least, he seemed to relish being famous, being on stage, on TV, on the radio. And he released songs that were big and catchy, that appealed to the widest possible audience, like this one. He certainly had charisma, the X-factor that the best pop stars need. But he also had a clever team around him, and a songwriting partner in Guy Chambers who guided him through this imperious phase from 1998 to the early years of the 2000s.

‘Millennium’ was the lead single from Williams’ second album, ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, but to pinpoint the moment he became Britain’s biggest pop star we need to rewind a few months to when ‘Angels’ was dominating the charts and the airwaves, to the extent that it began to feel like the country’s unofficial national anthem. Despite peaking at #4 it remains his biggest selling single. Following that his now signature tune ‘Let Me Entertain You’ made #3, and the rest is history.

It had been a long time coming, though. Williams had left Take That over three years before, and spent a year fighting a clause in his contract preventing him from launching a solo career while his former band were still recording. Fittingly, his first release was a cover of George Michael’s ‘Freedom’, which made #2 in July 1996, around the same time his bandmate Gary Barlow was releasing the dull ‘Forever Love’. Compare and contrast Barlow’s two forgettable number ones with this one, and it’s not hard to see why Williams went on to be the far bigger solo star.

It’s also hard to overstate how big Robbie Williams was becoming when this record went to the top. I wouldn’t count myself a huge fan, and I’ve never bought any of his music, but it turns out I knew all the words to ‘Millennium’ through sheer osmosis. He will have a nice and steady drip-feed of #1s for the next few years, so I’ll have plenty of time to test my knowledge of his other lyrics as we go on.

Random Runners-Up: ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’, by The Four Aces

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For the fourth part of this Random Runners-Up series, we’re going back almost as far as it’s possible to go. In chart terms, at least. To the mists of November 1955… It’s over five years since I wrote my posts on the fifties number ones, discovering that for every hot slice of rock ‘n’ roll there were three rather stodgier slices of big-lunged balladry. But if you’re a more recent visitor to these pages, I would recommend a journey back to the dawn of the charts as an interesting counterpoint to the #1s we’re covering now.

‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’, by the Four Aces

#2 for 2 weeks, from 25th November – 9th December 1955 (behind ‘Rock Around the Clock’)

Anyway, on to the #2 at hand. And interestingly, this very record was held from top spot by ‘Rock Around the Clock’, the first rock and/or roll number one. Which goes to prove that there was no instant rock revolution; more a smattering of guitar-led hits that slowly started to break up the heavy crooning. In fairness, ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ has quite a springy bass line, but aside from that it’s a big, beefy pre-rock ballad. A dramatic intro, strings, vocal harmonies, and a lead singer who croons like his life depends on it.

I am familiar with this song, as a version of it famously plays during the opening scene of ‘Grease’, while Sandy and Danny frolic on a beach. I’d bet most people are familiar with the title line at least, from a variety of pop culture references. Away from the soaring chorus, things are slightly less memorable, and we have some classic 1950s metaphors for love: It’s the April rose, That only grows, In the early spring…

It sounds very dated, not to mention that the recording needs a remastering or two. But it’s hard to dislike a song that is belted out with such conviction. My memories of writing about the ‘50s number ones are lots of songs like this, about flowers, sunshine and morning dew, sung with operatic conviction. None of which would work for a modern audience. When did we all become so cynical…? (And thank God we did…)

The Four Aces were a four-piece from Pennsylvania, who enjoyed decent chart success on either side of the Atlantic until, like so many pre-rock acts, 1957 or so. ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ meanwhile was the theme to a movie of the same name, and won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1956. It was recorded by a plethora of famous names following this success, as was the style of the time, including Eddie Fisher, Doris Day, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Sinatra, and Connie Francis (in Italian), among others.

Our final #2 is up tomorrow! It’s the turn of the eighties, and another soundtrack classic…

Random Runners-Up: ‘Children’, by Robert Miles

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Day 3 of our Random Runners-up weekend, and it’s time for a ’90s dance classic.

‘Children’, by Robert Miles

#2 for 2 weeks, from 10th – 24th March 1996 (behind ‘How Deep Is Your Love’)

In terms of number one singles, we’re only two and a half years ahead of Robert Miles’ ‘Children’. But to ears attuned to the sounds of 1998, this already sounds quite old-school. It is pure mid-nineties trance, house, Eurodisco… whatever. You know I’m terrible at labelling dance tracks. I usually have my own two labels for dance music: ‘good’, and ‘not so good’. But this record confounds such reduction.

‘Children’ has all the touches you’d expect from a mid-nineties dance record: a techno beat, synthesised strings, electronic squiggly bits… So far, so basic. But ‘Children’ also has one of the most recognisable riffs in modern popular music. A piano line so instant, so memorable, so strangely affecting, that it feels like it must have existed for all eternity. I can’t help feeling that it’s a waste for it to have been used on an otherwise fairly middling song like this.

I’ve mentioned this phenomena before, but dance music fans have a tendency to treat dance music like a religion, and the club as church. (I blame the ecstasy…) ‘Children’ is one of the few songs that helps someone like me to understand this point of view. Even as a dance music outsider, and as someone who doesn’t particularly love this song, I could see myself raising my hands to the sky if this came on. Having it large. Nice one! Chooooon…!

Robert Miles was an Italian DJ and composer, who had recorded ‘Children’ in 1994 after seeing pictures of child victims of the war in Yugoslavia. He also wanted to record a slower, more sedate form of dance music to play at the end of a night, to calm clubbers down and send them home less likely to crash their cars. (This was a real problem in Italy at the time, known as ‘Saturday night slaughter’, which to me sounds like a great lost glam rock track…) This more sedate sub-genre became known as ‘Dream House’.

‘Children’ was a huge hit across Europe, selling over five millions copies, and even making the Billboard 100. In the UK it spent a fortnight behind Take That’s farewell cover of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, but in the long run was the year’s 8th biggest selling hit. Robert Miles managed three further Top 20 hits before setting up his own record label in the early 2000s. He died in 2017, aged just forty-seven.

Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll be heading back to the future. 1955 awaits…

Random Runners-Up: ‘The Air That I Breathe’, by The Hollies

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Next up on our Random Runners-Up long weekend, it’s a classic from the seventies…

‘The Air That I Breathe’, by The Hollies

#2 for 1 week, from 17th – 24th March 1974 (behind ‘Billy – Don’t Be a Hero’)

Like Fleetwood Mac yesterday, The Hollies had more succesful eras than the one we’re covering today. Between 1963 and 1970 they racked up a very impressive sixteen Top 10 hits, including the chart-topping ‘I’m Alive’. Also like Fleetwood Mac, by the time their biggest seventies hit came along, two founding members – Graham Nash and Eric Haydock – had left for pastures new.

‘The Air That I Breathe’ is a big, beast of a song. The sort of song that you know is going to be huge from its opening, extended guitar chord. It crams a lot into its four and half minute runtime, including that soaring chorus, and a couple of chiming guitar solos. But for me the best bit is the first bridge, as Alan Clarke floats in the Makin’ love with you, Has left me peaceful, Warm and tired… line without taking a breath. Plus, any pop song which has the confidence to make you wait almost two minutes for the first chorus gets a nod of approval from me.

‘The Air That I Breathe’ has a bit of history to it, before and after this version. It was originally written and recorded by Albert Hammond in 1972, then covered by Phil Everly before becoming a worldwide smash thanks to The Hollies. Twenty years later, and Radiohead fairly obviously cribbed the verse melody for their breakthrough hit ‘Creep’. Hammond and co-writer Mike Hazlewood sued, but accepted only a small amount of co-writing royalties as Radiohead were ‘honest’ about their recycling. Radiohead themselves took Lana Del Rey to court when she released ‘Get Free’ in 2017, again borrowing what is clearly a very potent melody.

A famous sixties act scoring a hit in the seventies is a big thing, as it sometimes feels like there was a clear line in the sand drawn after the Beatles split. The Stones managed it, obviously, and The Who, but most others struggled. ‘The Air That I Breathe’ was The Hollies’ swansong, their last visit to the Top 10. Or should I say it was their ‘first’ swansong, as of course ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ found a new lease of life thanks to Miller Lite, and belatedly made #1 in 1988. As much as I do admire ‘He Ain’t Heavy…’, I do rather wish it had been ‘The Air That I Breathe’ that was given a second run at the charts. I’m not sure it’s my favourite Hollies’ song, as some of their sixties beat hits hit just the right spot for me, but its certainly their most epic.

Tomorrow, its a runner-up from the ’90s…

Random Runners-Up: ‘Man of the World’, by Fleetwood Mac

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Random runners-up is back! Following on from my latest recap, let’s take a break from analysing all those chart-toppers, and lavish some attention on those records that fell at the final hurdle: #2.

These records are genuinely chosen at random (thank you random.org), and this time the generator has kindly thrown up a chart-topper from each of the five decades we’ve covered so far. We’ll be going back as far as 1955, and as close to this blog’s ‘present day’ as 1996. But first up, it’s the sixties.

The generator has also thrown up three acts who we’ve already met in pole position. Fleetwood Mac had scored their only UK number one in January 1969, with the atmospheric instrumental ‘Albatross’.

‘Man of the World’, by Fleetwood Mac

#2 for 1 week, from 28th May – 4th June 1969 (behind ‘Get Back’)

They followed that up with a couple of #2s, the first of which was ‘Man of the World’. It starts off as a simple acoustic number, with some echoey guitar flourishes, and some nice echoes back to ‘Albatross’ in the cymbal crashes and the rhythmic bass. Peter Green, then the band’s main singer and songwriter, mournfully drawls: I could tell you about my life, They say I’m a man of the world… There’s no one I’d rather be… Before howling: But I just wish I’d never been born…

Legend has it that it was these lyrics that first alerted his bandmates to the fact that Green might not have been mentally okay. Just a year later he left the band. It’s a well-worn topic, how fame and fortune don’t always lead to health and happiness, but seldom has it been spelled out as beautifully as on ‘Man of the World’. After a wonderful bluesy middle-eight about how a ‘good woman’ might help, it ends with a murmured And I wish I was in love…

When I was very young, I had a ‘Best of the Sixties’ cassette compilation. It was cheap, so it didn’t have the huge hits on it; but it had this. And so I knew ‘Man of the World’ long before I’d ever heard ‘Don’t Stop’, or ‘Little Lies’. Which is perhaps fitting, because it is this original incarnation of Fleetwood Mac that had the most UK singles chart success: a chart-topper, and two number twos. They would have to wait almost two decades for their next biggest hit: a #4 for ‘Everywhere’ in 1987.

By then, of course, and for most of their huge seventies successes, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – whose surnames were combined to create the band’s name – were the two remaining original members. Peter Green meanwhile, struggled with his mental health throughout the seventies and eighties, but was sporadically involved in the music business, and with the other members of Fleetwood Mac. He joined the band for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and died in 2020.

Tomorrow we have a seventies #2…