pop charts

817. ‘…Baby One More Time’, by Britney Spears

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

It’s Britney, bitch.

…Baby One More Time, by Britney Spears (her 1st of six #1s)

2 weeks, from 21st February – 7th March 1999

Sorry, couldn’t resist. That iconic intro is still eight years off. But let’s be real, the three note piano motif (the official term, apparently) that introduced the world to Britney Spears, and that underpins one of the all-time great pop songs, is even more iconic.

Yes, ‘all-time great’. Up there in the pop pantheon with ‘Cathy’s Clown’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘It’s a Sin’… You name a pop classic from any era, and ‘…Baby One More Time’ is up there holding its own alongside them. It has all the indefinable qualities – the ability to hook you instantly, the ability to remain catchy but never cloying, the ability to still somehow sound fresh after twenty-five years – which all classics need.

But, I hear you argue, is this not too bubblegum to be an all-time classic? Don’t Britney’s vocal, shall we say, limitations not detract? To the first charge I say no, for this has as much underlying melancholy as the best ABBA songs. What other teenybop songs involve lines about fatal loneliness? And to the second I say that sixteen-year-old Britney’s vocal stylings are perfect for a song about teenage lust and longing. Plus, she managed to influence the way an entire generation pronounced the word ‘baby’ (Bayba? Baybay? Byebuh?)

To reach truly magical heights though, a song needs a moment where everything just clicks. That moment of transcendence arrives in the middle eight, as the chorus lines are chopped up and loaded with emphasis: I must confess, That my loneliness, Is killing me now…

Of course, this was a massive smash across the world, and now stands as one of the best-selling singles ever. It’s most recent placing in the Rolling Stone Top 500 of all time was #205. It’s also been voted the greatest debut single of all time, and the UK’s 7th favourite number one. Britney aside, it also properly introduced the world to Max Martin, one of the most successful chart-topping writers and producers of all time. At last count I make this his first of twenty appearances in the credits of a chart-topping single in the UK.

‘…Baby One More Time’ also won awards for its video, in which Britney flaunts almost every school uniform rule in the book. It got criticism too, for sexualising both school uniforms and the teenage singer in them, as well as the suggestion that it was glamorising sexual violence. Martin has since argued that the ‘hit me’ in the lyrics refers to ‘hitting someone up on the phone’ (as the kids put it in 1999), and that any confusion stems from the fact that English isn’t his first language.

But frankly, who cares? A song this good doesn’t deserve to be caught up in tawdry speculation about its slightly risqué video. Having said that, while this might technically be the best of Britney Spears many singles, it is not my favourite. Britney has five more number ones to get through, and two of those songs can rival this for classic status.

816. ‘Fly Away’, by Lenny Kravitz

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

Lenny Kravitz then, bringing us three guitar-led number ones out of four…. Heady days!

Fly Away, by Lenny Kravitz (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 14th – 21st February 1999

The intro really rocks, a concrete-heavy riff that fills the room, so much that it sets us up for disappointment upon hearing the rest of the song. Not that it’s bad, not really. But the effect-laden guitars in the verses are interesting – I can’t help hearing someone struggling to swallow, in urgent need of a Heimlich manoeuvre – and Lenny Kravitz’s vocals somehow don’t do the tune any favours.

Plus, the lyrics are simplistic, verging on just plain bad. I wish that I could fly, Into the sky, So very high… Just like a dragonfly… Ignoring the fact that dragonflies usually hover at no more than tree-height, the insistence on dragging out rhymes across several lines, entire verses even, is annoying. I want to get away, I want to flyyyyy away… Kravitz pleads, so often that you begin to wish he’d just bloody well go. What’s stopping him?

I’ll admit that my opinion of this track is clouded by the fact I’ve never quite gotten Lenny Kravitz. He seems to me like a parody of an oversexed rock star, desperately wanting to be Prince, or Jimi Hendrix. But then again, Black rock musicians are hardly ten a-penny so I should give him credit for carving out an impressive career. Plus, ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ is a ten-out-of-ten classic, and would have made a much more worthy chart-topper.

Having claimed that ‘Fly Away’ isn’t bad, I realise I’ve just spent three paragraphs giving a pretty compelling argument as to why it is. Part of me relishes a brief period of rock dominance at the top of the charts, but at the same time I shouldn’t be uncritical of a song just because it’s got guitars, and isn’t by a boyband or a faceless DJ. This for me doesn’t come close to the gonzo pop-punk of the Offspring, or Blondie’s cool-as-fuck comeback.

It probably wouldn’t have made #1 either, if it hadn’t been used extensively in adverts for Peugeot (for some reason I misremembered it as Vodafone). Kravitz’s only previous visit to the UK Top 10 had been with the already-mentioned ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ six years earlier. Songs from Adverts has been a surprisingly successful chart-topping genre over the years, and this won’t be 1999’s last. ‘Fly Away’ does though finally bring to an end our run of ten consecutive one-weekers – by far the longest such run in chart history. It’s been an eclectic quickfire run through Xmas ballads, novelty funk, dance, and some good old fashioned rock and roll. And of course, the record that did finally manage to stay at the top for longer than seven days had to be something pretty special…

815. ‘Maria’, by Blondie

/ UK #1s blog / 12 Comments

I wonder who had this on their 1999 bingo cards? New-wave icons Blondie stage a comeback, release their first single since 1982, and it only goes and makes number one…

Maria, by Blondie (their 6th and final #1)

1 week, from 7th – 14th February 1999

Okay, the first part had already happened in 1997, with the band spending much of 1998 on tour. But surely nobody expected this… Exactly twenty years since ‘Heart of Glass’ became their first chart-topper, and over eighteen since ‘The Tide Is High’ became what most assumed was their last.

‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ was a recent, perfect example of how to do a novelty hit. ‘Maria’ is, then, a textbook example of how to arrange a comeback smash. They’re still new-wave punks at heart, with razor sharp guitars in the intro and solo, Harry on top vocal form (for that chorus line needs belting out), and some trademark drum fills from Clem Burke. The subject matter also calls to mind earlier Blondie hits-about-girls, like ‘Sunday Girl’ and ‘Rip Her to Shreds’. But the production is clean, crisp, late-nineties alt-rock. A perfect balance that means ‘Maria’ could have come right in the middle of Blondie’s imperial phase; but that also guaranteed radio play in 1999. Plus, there’s wedding bells, which I don’t really get but sound great.

Who is ‘Maria’, though? One of rock’s great femme fatales, she was an imaginary woman, dreamed up by keyboard player Jimmy Destri, who had fantasised about such a girl while at a Catholic school. She sounds pretty high maintenance – She moves like she don’t care, Smooth as silk, Cool as air – but also like you’d give your right eye for her to just notice you. And the line about her Walking on imported air… has to be one of the coolest descriptions in rock ‘n’ roll. Ooh it makes you wanna die…

The slightly surprising thing here is that Blondie weren’t all that old in 1999… They were in their late forties/early fifties, which in 2024, when Beyonce and Eminem can still make number one, doesn’t seem that wild. Debbie Harry was fifty-three, which means she promptly usurps Cher (eleven months her junior) as the oldest female chart-topper. It also meant that Blondie joined a very select group of acts to have made #1 in three different decades, which in 1999 only numbered Cliff, Elvis, the Bee Gees, and Queen (and Paul McCartney, under various guises).

They have gone on to release four more albums since this comeback, the most recent coming in 2017. Chart hits have been harder to come by, but I would point you in the direction of their following lead single, 2003’s cracking ‘Good Boys’. I feel like a Blondie ‘Best of the Rest’ post is overdue…

Finally, we should mention that ‘Maria’ becomes the latest in a long, long line of chart-topping women. Off the top of my head we’ve had Tiffany, Frankie, Josephine, and Eleanor Rigby, but there are many, many more. Though, interestingly, number ones named after women seem to have been much more prevalent in the fifties and sixties than in the 1990s…

812. ‘A Little Bit More’, by 911

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

And so here we have the first of five boybands to top the charts in 1999. Brace yourself for fist clenches and key changes aplenty…

A Little Bit More, by 911 (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 17th – 24th January 1999

911 were very much in the second-tier of ‘90s boybands, never reaching the heights of Take That, East 17, or indeed many of the groups to come; but they plugged away, workmanlike, with a presumably dedicated fanbase, to finally spend a week on top of the charts. The AFC Bournemouth of boybands, if you will.

They certainly plug away on this workmanlike Dr. Hook cover (making it already the second cover of a seventies classic to make #1 this year). It’s not truly terrible, but it adds nothing to the glossy horniness of the original, which had spent five weeks at #2 in 1976. 911’s producers make decent work of the soaring chord changes, but the boys’ voices are very lightweight. They sound like little kids, which isn’t ideal when trying to sell lines like Come on over here, And lay by my side, I’ve got to be touching you…

‘A Little Bit More’ is a famously raunchy song, in fairness, about an all-night sex session that just won’t end. Yes it has a very MOR sound, and an attempt to recreate the gloopy production that was ubiquitous in the mid-seventies, but I bet there were parents across the land wincing as they listened to their eight year olds blithely singing along to the lyrics. Still it’s a canny and well-worn boyband strategy, covering an oldie to attract both the kids and their mums, and the group also had success with covers of ‘More Than a Woman’ and ‘Private Number’.

911, formed in Glasgow although all three members are English, had been around since 1995, and had visited the UK Top 10 eight times before finally scoring a number one (doing so with the lowest weekly sales of 1999). I found myself struggling to name a single other 911 song, until I checked their discography and was reminded of the fun ‘Party People… Friday Night’ – their crowning glory. They had split by the end of that year, but have since reformed for the nostalgia circuit. They remain interestingly popular in southeast Asia, with number one albums in Malaysia and duets with Vietnamese star Ðúc Phúc (which is definitely not pronounced the way it reads…)

Before we finish, I should recognise that 911 actually set something of a record here. Every #1 since B*Witched’s ‘To You I Belong’ has spent just one week at the top and, as this is the sixth in a row, ‘A Little Bit More’ makes history by beating the previous longest stretch of one-weekers set in February 1997. It’s a record that will be broken again, very soon, as these turn-of-the-century charts hit breakneck speed.

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

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 16 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 3 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

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

/ UK #1s blog / 18 Comments

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.