pop charts

740. ‘Three Lions’, by Baddiel & Skinner & The Lightning Seeds

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Oh Lord, here we go. I steel myself, as I always do when a song concerning the England Football Team comes along…

Three Lions, by Baddiel & Skinner & The Lightning Seeds (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 26th May – 2nd June 1996/ 1 week, from 30th June – 7th July 1996 (2 weeks total)

The thing is, I do like ‘Three Lions’. It’s a Britpop classic (you could argue that it’s the Britpop classic, alongside ‘Common People’ and ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, given how ubiquitous it remains, almost thirty years on…) and it’s given The Lightning Seeds – a brilliant pop act – a moment or two on top of the singles charts.

There’s also a lot I really bloody hate about this song; but for a moment let’s focus on the positives. Football aside, ‘Three Lions’ is a very British pop song, in the tradition of The Kinks and Blur, in that it is part music hall, part pub singalong, and yet part quite sophisticated rock music. Separated from the crowd noises and the snatches of commentary, the chords and the pianos are quite melancholy, almost baroque.

The lyrics are also very particularly British. Few nations would start a song that should ostensibly be about sporting glory, with a verse about how England’s gonna throw it away, Gonna blow it away… We don’t like to revel in success. If anything, we much prefer to wallow in disappointment. (And England are actually quite good at football! Wait till you hear about Scotland…)

‘Three Lions’ was recorded ahead of Euro ’96, the first big tournament to be held in the UK – the land that invented association football – since the 1966 World Cup. Hence the It’s coming home… refrain. David Baddiel and Frank Skinner are comedians, and were hosts of the popular ‘Fantasy Football League’ TV show, who teamed up with Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds. He had been asked by the FA to write the official England team song, but had declined the offer of the players singing on the song. Broudie wanted it to be different to its predecessors – ‘Back Home’, ‘World in Motion’ etc. – and be written from the fans’ point of view. The title, meanwhile, refers to the three lions on the England team’s crest.

All three men take turns on lead vocals: Brodie is clearly a good singer, Skinner acquits himself well, Baddiel…. Well, let’s just say he gives it a good go. Listening to the song now, it sounds a lot more lightweight, a lot simpler than I remember. Maybe I’m just used to hearing it bellowed out by tens of thousands rather than by three fairly reedy voices. And it contains one of pop music’s great mondegreens. Hands up who thinks the words are jewels remain still gleaming? When they are of course Jules Rimet still gleaming, a reference to the original World Cup trophy that England lifted in 1966, and which Brazil got to keep following their 1970 triumph.

So what is it that I hate about this song? Well, I hate what it’s become. I hate that it still gets bellowed out by England fans, usually drunk, often belligerent, sometimes with a flare stuck up their arse. ‘Oh but it’s a joke, it’s self-deprecating…’ some will argue. No, when it’s sung about a tournament not hosted by England (i.e. every major tournament since 1996) it sounds obnoxiously entitled, as if the trophy is coming home, pre-destined, to England. Except it never does. 1966 remains England’s only triumph. The thirty years of hurt in the lyrics now stand at fifty-eight, and long may that number continue to grow.

Luka Modric mentioned the song’s arrogance as a motivating factor for Croatia in their 2018 World Cup semi-final win over England. So maybe it’s time to retire the song as the moron’s anthem of choice, for England’s own good if anything, and return the song to beloved Britpop classic status. Deliciously, back in 1996, German fans started singing ‘Three Lions’ following their semi-final win over England. If only they had a word for taking pleasure in another’s misfortune…

This is already a very long post, and I know that most of my readers don’t give a hoot about football, or soccer, but I should mention the nice touches in the video. Baddiel and Skinner recreate famous moments from English football – when Lineker scored, that tackle by Moore – on a muddy playing field with the ’96 squad. (It’s definitely Steve Stone’s finest achievement in an England shirt.) And then Geoff Hurst – hattrick hero of ’66 – turns up at the pub, but they don’t realise.

One last thing before we finish: we need to give a shout out to the Lightning Seeds. ‘Three Lions’, in all its versions, is by far their biggest hit, but they were mainstays of the ‘90s and the sort of act who can put together a brilliant Greatest Hits. My personal favourites are ‘Lucky You’ and ‘Sugar Coated Iceberg’, and I’d check them out if you aren’t familiar.

739. ‘Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit’, by Gina G

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One day I’ll do a feature on the #1 singles with the best intros – the likes of ‘Satisfaction’, and ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’. It’ll be a great blog post, attracting widespread acclaim… Except for one problem. I’ll feel duty bound to include ‘Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit’.

Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit, by Gina G (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th May 1996

You see, few intros hold more nostalgic power for me. Within two of these tinny notes – this synthesised siren demanding you report immediately to the dancefloor – I am ten years old again, at a primary school disco, among the flashing lights, and the dry ice that always smelled a bit like pee, high on Fanta and prawn cocktail Skips.

Yes, this is cheesy crap. But it is also magnificent. It is the final part of a holy trinity of Eurovision anthems – this, ‘Waterloo’, and ‘Making Your Mind Up’ – and the fact that it only finished in 8th place is truly shocking. It’s very camp – as any song with ‘Ooh Aah…’ in the title must be – and yet flirts with almost being cool. Lines like Every night makes me hate the days… and the way that the drum machine and the synths reach near-techno levels, for example.

You could be smart, and claim that this is ‘post-rave’ or something, but actually trying to give this record a clever label would be doing it a disservice. Something this gloriously tacky doesn’t need clever labels. In a nutshell, ‘Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit’ sounds like Stock, Aitken and Waterman back in their chart-topping heyday, but only if the lads had just popped some Ecstasy and downed five bottles of Hooch.

Although she represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1996, Gina Gardiner was Australian, from Brisbane. She had genuine dance music credentials, having been a DJ since the early ‘90s, and a member of the group Bass Culture. Post-Eurovision, ‘Ooh Aah…’ was a hit around Europe, and even made #12 in the US. It led to two further #6 hits for Gina, who released her last single in 2011, and hasn’t been active since. She apparently has her own record label, and lives in LA with her husband. I hope she’s happy, and would like her to know that her biggest hit still elicits an almost Pavlovian response from this man in his late-thirties…

Interestingly, Gina G’s is the first female voice to feature on a UK number one since Janice Robinson belted out her vocals on Livin’ Joy’s ‘Dreamer’, and the first woman to be credited on a UK chart-topper since Cher, Chrissie Hynde and Neneh Cherry well over a year ago. 1995 was very male heavy – and the worst year for number ones in quite a while. The remainder of 1996 promises more female voices, and thankfully much more enjoyable #1s.

738. ‘Fastlove’, by George Michael

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George Michael bows out from chart-topping duty, after eleven #1s – both solo and with Wham! – in just under twelve years. And dare we say he bows out with his best…?

Fastlove, by George Michael (his 7th and final solo #1)

3 weeks, from 28th April – 19th May 1996

I doubt many other people would name ‘Fastlove’ as Michael’s best chart-topper, but it’s my favourite. As worthy, and lyrically beautiful, as ‘Jesus to a Child’ was; I’m glad that he wraps up with this banger. Gotta get up to get down… And if his number one from earlier in the year was an ode to a lost love, then this is an ode to getting over a lost love. An ode to anonymous and fleeting satisfaction, as Cher once memorably put it.

I ain’t mister right, But if you’re looking for fast love… he purrs, over a funky bassline and some contemporary disco beats. All that bullshit conversation, Baby can’t you read the signs… I also love the line about all his friends having babies, while he’s just wanting to have fun, which is something every gay man in their thirties can relate to. In the background we can hear ‘interpolated’ – as we must always refer to sampling from hereon in – the hook from 1982 hit ‘Forget Me Nots’ by Patrice Rushen (which Will Smith will soon ‘interpolate’ even more blatantly).

I called this a ‘banger’, but it’s actually quite smooth and slinky. The melody and the groove wrap themselves around you like a particularly sexy snake, and don’t let go. There are still some of the over-indulgences that, for me, always mark George Michael’s work down a notch: the muzaky saxophones, and the fact that it goes on for over five minutes. A three-minute quicky would have been more appropriate here, especially given the subject matter. But the funky break in the middle is a thing of beauty.

Like all great pop songs, though, there is more going on under the surface. The lyrics aren’t just celebratory, they reveal a pain behind all the sex. George needs affirmation, needs someone to ease his mind. In the absence of security, I made my way into the night… Which sounds quite dark, until a few lines later he proposes a quick shag in his BMW. But there’s enough here to suggest that his need for ‘fastlove’ isn’t an entirely healthy thing, and may be linked to the loss in ‘Jesus to a Child’. The most telling line is surely I miss my baby… It’s admirable that he made a very catchy pop song out of such personal issues.

Post-‘Fastlove’, George Michael would remain a fairly regular presence in the UK charts, including four more #2s. One of which is the truly glorious, and definitely worthy of the term ‘banger’, ‘Outside’ – a brilliant middle-finger to all the fuss over his sexuality. He died in 2016, aged just fifty-three, and took his place in the highest-echelons of dead pop superstars. I have my opinions on his current standing among the greats, but it seems churlish to drone on about them here.

And, of course, he isn’t actually done with chart-topping, as the streaming era has given ‘Last Christmas’ – for years the highest-selling #2 hit of all time – a new lease of life. But that’s something that we’ll get to, again, and again, and again, in due course…

737. ‘Return of the Mack’, by Mark Morrison

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I did say, a post or two ago, that we were hitting a golden vein of chart-toppers. In fact, Take That’s feeble swansong aside, 1996 has already been a vast improvement on the year before, and we’re only in April…

Return of the Mack, by Mark Morrison (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 14th – 28th April 1996

‘Return of the Mack’ is completely different from our last number one – the Prodigy’s searing ‘Firestarter’ – but it’s every bit as catchy. It’s slick, very mid-nineties R&B; but I don’t mean slick in a boring way. More in a supremely confident, honeyed, knows exactly what it’s doing sort of way.

You could easily believe that this was being sung by a US soul superstar, a Boyz II Men-Bobby Brown hybrid of some sort, apart from one detail: it’s actually quite fun, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. A lot of US R&B at this time was spotlessly honed to the point of being completely transparent and unmemorable. We had a taster of it when Michael Jackson’s ‘You Are Not Alone’ was at #1, but thankfully this sound never dominated the British charts like it did the Billboard.

I assume that the ‘Mack’ in the chorus is supposed to be Mark Morrison himself, and this self-referencing adds another layer of braggadocio to what is already a swaggering tune. He’s back, feeling better than ever, and ready to lord it over his ex… So I’m back up in the game, Running things to keep my swing, Letting all the people know, That I’m back to run the show… It’s not harsh to suggest that Morrison has a unique singing voice – high-pitched and nasal – and the way he enunciates certain words, like ‘swing’, adds another hook to the record.

We’re getting deep into the pop stars of my childhood now, and two things I remember about Mark Morrison were his very cool slanted mohawk hairdo, and the fact that ‘Return of the Mack’ was about his release from jail. Except, my mind is playing tricks on me… Morrison did do jailtime, for the always inadvisable crime of trying to take a gun onto an aeroplane, but not until a year after ‘Return of the Mack’ made number one.

Although he was released from his three month stretch just as the song started to climb the US charts, eventually settling at an impressive #2, so I wasn’t completely wrong. The fact that this up-tempo R&B did so well in the land of down-tempo R&B suggests that even Americans might have been growing weary of all the syrupy ballads. It was the first of an impressive five Top 10 UK hits from the one album (though, in the States, Morrison remains a one-hit wonder).

Gun-toting on aircraft wasn’t Morrison’s only brush with the law, and he’s also been in trouble for affray, assault, driving without a licence, suspected kidnapping, and for paying a lookalike to do his community service. An eventful life, then, though he has remained active in the music industry throughout. More recently, he seems to have been rediscovered by modern rap and R&B stars, being sampled by Chris Brown and working with Post Malone.

736. ‘Firestarter’, by The Prodigy

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Right in the middle of the Britpop years, we finally get a proper punk number one!

Firestarter, by The Prodigy (their 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 24th March – 14th April 1996

Obviously ‘Firestarter’ is not musically ‘punk’ – more techno-metal – but everything else is pretty on point. The aggression, the repetitive, nuclear siren riff, the nastiness of the lyrics: I’m the bitch you hated, Filth infatuated, Yeah…

Within the song’s opening ten seconds, it is already one of the grittiest sounding number one singles we’ve heard. Everything about it seems designed to put you on edge, to make your hairs stand on end – the harsh drums and bass, the abrasive riff, the metal on metal grinding rhythm. It’s not often a song this raw, this unapologetically hardcore, crosses over into huge mainstream success.

I was ten when this came out, but I remember it feeling and sounding dangerous. I’m the Firestarter, Twisted Firestarter… I’m pretty sure it made the evening news, amid fears around the arson-promoting lyrics and Keith Flint’s performance in the video, in which he flings himself about an abandoned tunnel, covered in piercings, with his memorable reverse-Mohican hairdo. Watching it now, it’s amazing to think that many stations refused to play it before the watershed – there’s no violence, no swearing, nothing sexual; just Flint’s unhinged performance. But, to be fair, it is terrifying, especially when he pauses to stare, dead-eyed into the camera (and perhaps quite poignant, now, knowing that he had his demons).

The Prodigy were already a hugely successful dance act, and had been scoring Top 10 hits since the early nineties. So the lead single from their third album was bound to be big. But ‘Firestarter’ was almost a reinvention – a heavier, rockier sound, presumably brought about by the fact that guitars were ‘in’ in 1996. Which brings us back to the troubles we’ve had in defining ‘Britpop’ recently: Prodigy weren’t Britpop – they were a dance act that pre-dated the genre – but it’s hard to argue ‘Firestarter’ and the subsequent ‘The Fat of the Land’ album weren’t huge Britpop moments.

We do have to acknowledge that much of this song is a patchwork of samples: from the Breeders, and a Chicago house group called ‘Ten City’. Even the ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’ refrain is from Art of Noise. But if ever there were an argument against sampling being lazy, it is in a banger like this, the fact that the band heard something in those three wildly disparate songs and creating something fearlessly new.

And yet, I will say that, as great and thrilling as ‘Firestarter’ is, it’s neither The Prodigy’s best single, nor their most controversial. Their best will also make #1 before the end of 1996, while their most controversial was the 3rd release from ‘The Fat of the Land’, the ever-charming ‘Smack My Bitch Up’.

735. ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, by Take That

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Take That have been a pioneering boyband in many ways, over the course of their eight number one singles. Multi-generational appeal with ‘Relight My Fire’, Ivor Novello-winning song writing in ‘Back for Good’, rock star level production on ‘Never Forget’…

How Deep Is Your Love, by Take That (their 8th of twelve #1s)

3 weeks, from 3rd – 24th March 1996

And now they push the idea of the ‘goodbye’ single. Ever since, every boyband worthy of the name has released a ballad after the inevitable split has been announced, and solo careers begin to loom large on the horizon. Not just boybands, even, as The Spice Girls will soon attest. Sadly, though, for a band capable of very good pop songs, this is a fairly flat goodbye: a serviceably average Bee Gees cover.

It’s a faithful take on ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, which had made #3 in 1978 when the Bee Gees were at the height of their disco powers. Rather than disco, though, Take That go for a soft-rock, acoustic guitars with some hand-held drums, sound. It reminds me of ‘More Than Words’ by Extreme… Make of that what you will.

One thing the stripped back production does is push the boys’ – a four-piece now after Robbie’s departure – voices to the fore. Their harmonies are nice, almost a cappella at times, but they can’t lift this record to anything other than middling heights. It is not a patch on the original, which I would rate as one of the Brothers Gibb’s crowning glories.

Take That had announced their split a few weeks before this final single was released, ahead of a Greatest Hits album, and so it was inevitable that it would make top spot. (Helplines had to be set up to counsel distraught fans following the news…) Since ‘Pray’ in 1993, only one of their singles had failed to make #1. And then that was it, or so everyone assumed. Gary Barlow was about to embark on a solo career – we’ll meet him again very soon – as were Mark and Robbie, all to varying degrees of success. I doubt any one predicted that a decade later Take That would launch one of the most successful musical comebacks the country had ever seen… But all that can wait for another day! In our more immediate future, with this drab one out the way, we are about to embark on a run of classic chart toppers, starting with an ode to pyromania…

734. ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, by Oasis

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‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ isn’t Oasis’s best song (that is a question for a different post, but it would probably be something from their debut album). ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ is, though, probably the ultimate Oasis song. Oasis at their Oasisest.

Don’t Look Back in Anger, by Oasis (their 2nd of eight #1s)

1 week, from 24th February – 3rd March 1996

They set out their stall in the opening seconds, with the piano line from ‘Imagine’ which, according to Noel, was a deliberate middle finger to those who claimed Oasis were musical copycats. It hooks you in, declaring that the next five minutes are going to be epic. In fact, every part of this song, from that intro onwards, is a hook.

You can be the type of person who jots down every little chord, lyric or guitar lick that Oasis nicked – and I am that person sometimes – or you can be someone who admires the way they managed to distil British rock history into an elite-level run of singles (and two excellent albums), who admits that when they were good, they were very good. The drum-fill before the final, soaring chorus here is, no hyperbole, one of pop music’s great moments.

‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ also features some of Noel’s more coherent lyrics. My personal favourite is the Please don’t put your life in the hands, Of a rock n roll band, Who’ll throw it all away… with the squealing guitars in between. A lot of the lines are still nonsense, but they work somehow. I assume it’s about a break-up, given all the stuff about walking on by, and not looking back. Or maybe it’s a mantra for living positively, not lingering on mistakes. Don’t go thinking that ‘Sally’ is anyone important, though. ‘It’s just a word that fit, y’know,’ says Noel. ‘Might as well throw a girl’s name in there.’

A song written and led by Noel has to beg the question: what of Liam? Well, despite having nothing to do, he spends the video mooching around the garden of a stately home in his shades, and still manages to be the star of the show. He is apparently responsible for the song’s most famous line: So Sally can wait… having misheard what Noel was really singing while writing it.

Despite what I wrote earlier, I’m going to briefly be the guy that points out the bits that Oasis nicked. I just now noticed that while everyone was distracted by the ‘Imagine’ piano in the intro, the floaty guitar in the outro is a rip-off of ‘Octopus’s Garden’. Is that common knowledge, or have I just unearthed another, previously undiscovered fossil?

‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ was the 4th single from an album that had already sold in the multi-millions, and so the fact that it made number one is testament to how truly massive Oasis were in 1996. Over the past twenty-eight (!!!) years, it has gone from a pop song to almost a hymn, or an alternate national anthem. In the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, gathering crowds spontaneously began singing it, giving the lyrics an even more resonant feel.

Meanwhile, it has also been voted the 4th Most Popular #1 Single ever, the 2nd greatest Britpop song (after ‘Common People’), and the Greatest Song of the 1990s. (And, most importantly, the 2nd Best Song to Sing Along to While Drunk – controversially robbed of top spot in that poll by Aerosmith’s God-awful ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’.) It is also by far the best of Oasis’s eight number ones… and I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler for what’s to come!

Should Have Been a #1…? ‘Common People’, by Pulp

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Often when I’ve done a ‘Should Have Been a #1…’ post, it’s because the song featured was particularly unlucky when being deprived of top spot. ‘God Save the Queen’ may have been the victim of a political manoeuvre, ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ the victim of the festive holidays, and ‘Groove Is in the Heart’ runner up in the closest sales race ever…

But ‘Common People’ was beaten fair and square, by the more popular, better-selling record: Robson & Jerome’s double-‘A’ of ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘White Cliffs of Dover’. Still, I do think that this was the biggest chart travesty ever… A travesty of public taste. But this post isn’t just a lamentation on Pulp’s poor fortune; it’s a tribute to all the Britpop records that never made number one. (Robson & Jerome did the double a few months later, also keeping Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’ in second place behind their cover of ‘I Believe’.)

If our journey through 1995 has taught us anything, it’s that Britpop was badly served at the top of the singles chart. Few big musical movements are less well-represented at the top – maybe punk, and heavy metal. Oasis and Blur have had a #1 each, and they’ll have more going forward. In the weeks and months to come we’ll meet the Prodigy, the Verve, and the Manic Street Preachers (none of whom can truly be defined as ‘Britpop’) as well as a remixed Cornershop, and a dubious one from the Lightning Seeds. Maybe that’s the problem: what was Britpop? Blur were around way before the term was coined. Pulp had been going since the early eighties. Maybe true ‘Britpop’ is literally just Oasis…

Anyway, Pulp may precede and post-date Britpop, but ‘Common People’ is the ultimate Britpop anthem. It’s confident, cocky, clever, and very British. It condenses centuries of class history into four minutes, plus you can dance to it. It bestrides British pop culture to this day, cropping up most recently in a funny reference in ‘Saltburn’. It came from the ‘Different Class’ album – by my money the best Britpop LP – which also featured another #2: ‘Sorted for E’s & Whizz’ / ‘Mis-Shapes’… (kept off top by Simply Red).

‘Sorted…’ had some rock ‘n’ roll controversy about it, getting the Daily Mirror’s knickers in a twist about its ‘pro-drugs message’. (Even the most perfunctory listen to the song reveals a distinctly non-positive drugs message…) ‘Mis-Shapes’ meanwhile is an outsiders anthem – You could end up with a smack in the mouth, Just for standing out, now, really… – the antithesis to some of the more laddish elements of Britpop.

Away from Pulp, the second biggest Britpop #2 (from a band that didn’t otherwise make #1) is the evergreen, ever-perky ‘Alright’, by Supergrass – kept off top by the dreaded Outhere Brothers. An ode to being young – the band were still teenagers when it was recorded – it’s impossible not to feel cheered when you hear it, with lyrics like: We wake up, We go out, Smoke a fag, Put it out, See our friends, See the sights, Feel alright… (I’m a big Supergrass fan, and can confirm that ‘Alright’, as fun as it is, isn’t even close to being their best song. Do a deep dive!) They made #2 again in 1997, with the thumping ‘Richard III’.

Another close call came in January 1996, when the Bluetones took the jangly, Stone Roses leaning ‘Slight Return’ to #2. And the oft-maligned Kula Shaker were the other Britpop runners-up, their lightly psychedelic rockers ending up in 2nd place twice: ‘Hey Dude’, and a cover of sixties classic ‘Hush’.

And I’ll end with the band many claim kicked off the entire Britpop genre: Suede. They never managed even a #2; but here’s their biggest hit, from their biggest album – 1996’s #3 smash ‘Trash’.

‘Trash’ is another song – like ‘Alright’ and ‘Common People’ – that celebrates people’s weirdness, their exuberance, their individuality. Britpop, for all it’s Blur Vs Oasis boorishness, was often more concerned with everyone getting along, and having a good time. The perfect musical movement, perhaps, as we charged towards the end of the 20th Century, and the dark unknown of the Y2K. I was just a little too late to enjoy it fully (I turned twelve in early 1998, as the genre began to dissipate) but the shadows of it reached deep into the music of my teens, the Stereophonics and the Coldplays and the Travises, and on into the indie-rock revival of 2003-2007.

But at the same time, perhaps it’s difficult to define what Britpop is, and why so many of its biggest names pre-dated and then outlasted it, because it was the first big musical movement to rely heavily on sounds that had gone before. Britpop was essentially a ‘Best Of’ British rock, taking everything from the Beatles to the Stone Roses, and all that came inbetween – the Kinks, the Small Faces, Slade, the Jam – distilling it into great pop songs. It was the last big evolution of rock music in the 20th century, the century that birthed rock and roll, but perhaps it was so backward-facing, so reverential to what had gone before, that it was also the last evolution of rock music, full stop. Like a Greatest Hits tour before the end of the rock ‘n’ roll century. Post-Britpop, guitar-led music never again dominated the pop charts. In 2024, the dominant British stars are rappers, DJs, female pop singers, and scruffy singer-songwriters types. And while I’m not such a rock snob that I can’t enjoy other types of music – hopefully I’ve made that clear plenty of times on the blog – I also can’t help looking back nostalgically to a time when guitar bands were the sound of the pop charts (though not the sound of the number one spot…)

731. ‘Earth Song’, by Michael Jackson

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You can approach this next number one very cynically, if that’s your thing, as there’s lots to be cynical about…

Earth Song, by Michael Jackson (his 6th of seven #1s)

6 weeks, from 3rd December 1995 – 14th January 1996

For his sixth solo UK chart-topper, the King of Pop, long-since divorced from reality, fully realises his Messianic potential. What about elephants? he demands of us, towards the end of this colossal track. Have we lost their trust? Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker certainly let us know what he thought, famously mooning Jackson’s performance of the song at the Brit Awards.

But, once your eyes have completed their rolling, and you stop to listen to ‘Earth Song’, then you can’t help but be impressed. You might not want to hear it every day, but the very fact that he conceived of, wrote, and recorded this track, and then managed to sell the message in a way that only Michael Jackson could – largely through the conviction in his whoops and hollers – is darned impressive. Like ‘You Are Not Alone’, this is a lullaby underneath all the dressing (Jackson intended it to be simple, so that it could be understood right across the world). But what dressing… When the drums and funky bass kick in it’s a bit of a moment, as is the gigantic key change. The last three minutes is basically MJ berating us about the state of the planet, accompanied by a wind machine and a gospel choir.

And, let’s be honest, much of what he’s singing about is true. It was true in 1995, and it’s true thirty years on. What about children dying?…Can’t you hear them cry?… Where did we go wrong?… Someone tell me why… It’s preachy, sure, but he ain’t wrong. Of course, though, sending this song to number one is a lot easier than actually changing our ways, and if Jackson truly thought this would make any difference to the fate of the human race then he was Wacko indeed.

The video too is every bit as OTT as you might expect. I can remember watching it on ‘Top of the Pops’ at the time, aged almost ten, and being captivated. Watching back now, it’s painted in very broad strokes, but it’s vivid, and memorable. Dead elephants, felled trees, someone clubbing a seal… Then through his sheer bloody star power, clinging to some tree stumps, Jackson undoes all the damage, and we live happily ever after.

At the end of the day, most people are more Jarvis Cocker than they are Michael Jackson. And most of the time, that is a good thing. ‘Earth Song’ is preposterous, and overblown, and now interestingly forgotten among his illustrious back catalogue. But it also delivers an uncomfortable truth, however clumsily the message is conveyed.

This was the 1995 Christmas #1, famously holding off The Beatles’ much feted ‘comeback’ single ‘Free As a Bird’ (they’ll manage their 18th chart-topper, eventually). It also wraps up a very odd, very underwhelming year, in which the charts have felt at odds with what people were actually listening to. One interesting thing, though, to chart geeks like me, is that 1995 was the year where singles suddenly started entering at #1. What was once a freak event, marking an act out as the very biggest in the land, was happening much more often. From ‘Back for Good’ to ‘Earth Song’, all but two #1s were held-back, heavily promoted songs that entered at the top. This will continue as the nineties progress, with the turnover of number ones increasing all the time as well.

730. ‘I Believe’ / ‘Up on the Roof’, by Robson & Jerome

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

Oh yes, time for more golden-oldies karaoke, from your granny’s favourites.

I Believe / Up on the Roof, by Robson & Jerome (their 2nd of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 5th November – 3rd December 1995

This time, they resurrect one of the very biggest number one singles. The biggest ever, if ‘weeks at number one’ is the metric we’re using. Frankie Laine’s original racked up eighteen weeks at the top way back in 1953. It was just the 9th #1, and it’s pretty amazing to think that its record still stands over seventy years on.

And for such a massive single, I feel it’s been a little forgotten (1953 was a long time ago, to be fair) and so it’s good in a way that it had another moment in the sun. And R&J’s take on it is… okay. Better than either of the tunes on their first single. It’s still cheap, still karaoke; but it doesn’t cloy as much, and builds to a fairly soaring climax. Maybe that’s testament to the quality of the song…

 Plus, it’s short – barely two minutes, like Laine’s version – and ‘shortness’ is ideal when these two take to the mic. Sadly, any mild positivity I can muster here is wiped out by the flip side of this disc: a version of The Drifters’ ‘Up on the Roof’ which takes the duo to new levels of tackiness. It is truly dreadful – synthy horns and horrible Disney princess tinkly bits. That this is a timeless classic’s only appearance at #1 (anywhere, as far as I can tell!) is genuinely criminal.

Equally criminal to some is the fact that this record held Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’ at #2. However, thanks to Oasis not lacking for #1 singles, and thanks to ‘Wonderwall’s annoying ubiquity, I don’t class that an upset as heinous as this pair’s first single holding off ‘Common People’.

One thing I do notice, listening to these two songs, is that Robson & Jerome’s singing voices sound different. Better, more polished, than on ‘Unchained Melody’, or on ‘White Cliffs of Dover’. Whether this was the result of singing lessons, or something more sinister, I don’t know. Des Dyer, formerly of ‘70s band Jigsaw, made allegations that it was him singing on the records. He was paid off, and told to shut up. Much later, Mike Stock admitted that the duo’s vocal’s were ‘patched up’ by sessions singers.

Whether or not they were singing on these songs, it didn’t do them much harm. While not quite as successful as their debut, this record still made a month at #1 and reached almost a million sales. An album inevitably followed, on which they murdered The Beatles, The Monkees, The Walker Brothers, and Elvis, as well as ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Danny Boy’. At least they didn’t cling on at the top to become one of the worst Christmas Number Ones. For the King of Pop had other ideas…