soundtrack hits

944. ‘Lose Yourself’, by Eminem

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The third and final part of Eminem’s era-defining triptych. Scary Eminem, Funny Eminem, Motivational Eminem…

Lose Yourself, by Eminem (his 4th of eleven #1s)

1 week, 8th – 15th December 2002

‘Lose Yourself’ was probably Eminem at the peak of his fame and success, as not only was it a huge hit record, it also came from the soundtrack to ‘8 Mile’, a huge hit movie in which Eminem played a character loosely based on himself. If he has a signature song, then it’s probably this.

Before we get to the lyrics, I’d also say that this is Eminem’s strongest number one musically. The slow building intro, the heavy, dramatic chords, the piano line that slinks around the beat (and I’ve just realised the ‘Succession’ theme writers totally nicked a trick here). Some of his other, funnier chart-toppers tend towards cheap, rinky-dink beats. Not this one. It’s lush, and cinematic.

Lyrically, ‘Lose Yourself’ is about taking chances, with the movie’s protagonist about to take part in a rap battle that could lead to a way out of poverty. You only get one shot, Do not miss your chance to blow, This opportunity comes once in a lifetime… I am usually immune to the charms of anything that could be labelled as ‘motivational’, but this works because it focuses on the fear of failure rather than on the glory of winning, as the delivery grows more intense verse by verse. No ‘search for the hero inside yourself’ here. Instead it’s: I’ve got to formulate a plot, Or end up in jail or shot, Success is my only motherfucking option, Failure’s not…

Surprisingly, that ‘motherfucker’ is one of very few curse words in the song, making this surely Eminem’s cleanest chart-topper. For the first time in four we also do not need to sound the homophobia klaxon, as this track also features zero gay slurs. This is basically a hymn by Eminem’s standards…

I also think, as it’s not about murdering your girlfriend, and features no puerile humour, that this was the song which convinced most anti-rap types of Eminem’s talent. I think it comes across as a little bit ‘newly graduated English teacher desperate to look cool’ when one compares Eminem’s lyrics to poetry, but the opening lines – His palms are sweaty, Knees weak, Arms are heavy, There’s vomit on his sweater already, Mom’s spaghetti – set a scene in less than twenty words that most writers could only dream of. In the third verse, he sets off on a staccato flow that very few, if any, other rappers could pull off.

Having said that, of his three peerless #1s, I enjoy ‘Lose Yourself’ the least. It’s great, impressive; but it’s also very earnest. What it says about me, that I prefer the song about murdering your girlfriend, or the one with the video in which Eminem surfs on a turd, I don’t want to explore. What’s for sure is that this was the end of Eminem’s imperial phase. ‘Lose Yourself’ might have been the first rap song to win the Oscar for Best Original Song, a genuine cultural moment, but he certainly did ‘lose it’ with his fifth number one…

This will be my last regular post for the year. I’ll do a couple of festive posts over Christmas and New Year, and resume with the number ones in early January.

900. ‘Lady Marmalade’, by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mýa & Pink

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We are officially 900 number ones not out! Thanks to everyone who has ever read, commented, liked and followed. I’m not sure that I ever imagined when I started writing these posts back in November 2017 (!) that I’d ever get this far. But, to paraphrase an old football cliché, I’ve just been taking it one number one at a time…

Lady Marmalade, by Christina Aguilera (her 2nd of four #1s), Lil Kim, Mýa & Pink (her 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 24th June – 1st July 2001

Our 900th is not the most original of chart-toppers, a cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’ coming barely three years on from the last chart-topping cover of ‘Lady Marmalade’. Have two other versions of the same song ever made #1 so close together? Anyway, while All Saints’ take played fast and loose with the LaBelle original, this all-star re-imagining is much more faithful.

One big difference, though, is that Lady Marmalade no longer plies her trade down in old New Orleans. She’s been transferred to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, just in time for the big glossy Baz Luhrmann movie musical of the same name. Different brothel, same story. Kitchy kitchy kitchy yaya dada. Mocha chocolatey yaya… Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?

It would be easy to look down on this OTT, fairly superfluous take on a seventies classic, in which four bad-ass chicks from the Moulin Rouge try to out-diva one another. And I won’t claim that it is better than LaBelle’s. But I enjoyed it back in 2001, and I still do enjoy it now. It strips all subtlety from what was already a fairly unsubtle song, adds a grinding industrial synth riff, and some well-placed cowbells. Mýa warms things up with the first verse, Pink (feeling quite out of place here, and in her suspenders in the video) ups the ante with the second. Clearly things were being set up for Christina, by far the biggest name of the four at the time, to blow everything out of the water for the finish.

Except, for my money, the show is stolen by Lil Kim’s rapped verse, the song’s one big change from the original, in which she delivers the immortal line: We independent women, Some mistake us for whores, I say why spend mine, When I can spend yours…? It’s a very modern female rap, a full decade ahead of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, that even Xtina’s explosive belting can’t overshadow. But boy, does she try. And it works, doesn’t grate, because, again, this ain’t the time for subtlety.

This record is a lot like the movie it came from, and like a lot Baz Luhrmann’s filmography: good fun, as long as you don’t stop and think about it too much. My biggest issue with it is why Missy (Misdemeanour here) Elliott, who acts as the MC for the outro, doesn’t get a credit, and therefore her second number one single?

It’s been customary, every hundred number ones, for me to look back at the marker posts that have gone before. But there’s a recap up next, and I’d like to save any retrospection for then. What is worth noting is how short the gaps between each hundred are getting. There were over seven years between the first chart-topper and the hundredth (November 1952 to April 1960), but less than three between numbers 800 and 900 (September 1998 to June 2001).

897. ‘It’s Raining Men’, by Geri Halliwell

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Providing the meat in an S Club sandwich, Geri Halliwell returns for her fourth and final solo chart-topper. It is also, sadly, our very last Solo Spice number one.

It’s Raining Men, by Geri Halliwell (her 4th and final solo #1)

2 weeks, from 6th – 20th May

But… Is this a case of saving the worst for last? I’ve found something to enjoy in all seven of the Spice Girl’s previous solo #1s, which have spanned a variety of genres, from hip-hop to trance. But I find Geri covering ‘It’s Raining Men’ to be a step too far.

It’s not just that it’s yet another inferior cover of an eighties classic, after similar recent efforts from Westlife, A1, and Boyzone. It’s also not just that it’s another classic #2 being belatedly taken to the top, after 911, Madonna, and Westlife (again). These things don’t help, but this cover feels even more tired than many of those earlier refits.

I think it’s more of what I complained about in Geri’s previous #1, ‘Bag It Up’, in which she was so blatantly chasing the pink pound that it was becoming a bit embarrassing. And what could be more gay-baiting than covering ‘It’s Raining Men’? Like I wrote in that post, she already had gay icon status. She was a Spice Girl, for God’s sake! She didn’t need to try so hard.

Anyway. She decided (or was asked) to cover this camp classic. Very well. But it’s so half-arsed. It’s missing the original’s sassy ad-libs (how low, girl? and the like). It’s missing the thunderclaps. And she gives the song’s best line – I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna let myself get, Absolutely soaking wet – neither the gravitas nor the commitment it deserves. I don’t believe for one second that Geri is excited about this extreme weather event. Whereas, in the original, I fully believe that the Weather Girls were two thirsty bitches ready to rip off their roofs and stay in bed. The lowest point comes when Ginger finally does try her own smutty ad-lib, and it’s genuinely cringey. Go get yourself wet girl, I know you want to… No, Geri. We don’t.

Other than that, it’s a fine record… Joking aside, it was the lead from her second solo album, as well as being from the soundtrack to the second ‘Bridget Jones’ film (from memory, it soundtracks Hugh Grant and Colin Firth beating each other up in a fountain). It was probably always destined to be a huge hit, and was the only one of her four #1s to spend more than a week at the top. But it was the beginning of the end, as none of the album’s subsequent singles got higher than #7.

I feel I’ve been a bit harsh of ol’ Gezza here. She remains my favourite Spice Girl. She remains an icon. And in fact, her best record was yet to come. She had one final LP, 2005’s ‘Passion’, from which the lead single was ‘Ride It’: her truest, campest classic. She always had it in her, she just didn’t have to try so hard…

If anyone’s interested, my solo Spice Girls singles ranking goes (from worst to best): ‘It’s Raining Men’ > ‘Never Be the Same Again’ > ‘Lift Me Up’ > ‘Bag It Up’ > ‘I Want You Back’ > ‘What Took You So Long?’ > ‘Mi Chico Latino’ > ‘I Turn to You’.

The ‘Fame’ referencing video, over which a lot of fuss was made at the time about Geri’s eye-catching, yoga-based weight loss. Just the song below:

883. ‘Independent Women (Pt. 1)’, by Destiny’s Child

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Question…

Independent Women (Pt. 1), by Destiny’s Child (their 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 26th November – 3rd December 2000

Towards the end of a year jam-packed with zeitgeist grabbing choruses, where does All the women, Who independent, Throw your hands up at me… rank?

That’s before we get to the I bought it bridge, or indeed the repeatedly deadpanned question line. It’s slick turn-of-the-century R&B, minimalist in its instrumentation, with plenty of space for Beyoncé and co.’s tight harmonies, especially in the nearly a cappella break. This was the first Destiny’s Child track to feature Michelle Williams, and the only one to feature Farrah Franklin (who was only in the group for a couple of months).

‘Independent Women’ comes from the soundtrack to a movie reboot of ‘Charlie’s Angels’, and we are given no chance to forget it. From the spoken intro introducing the actresses, to the Charlie how your angels get down like that… refrain, few other movie soundtrack chart-toppers have had such strong product placement. It could have backfired, or at least left the song stranded in a very particular place in time, but it hasn’t. In fact, lines like Cameron D, Invest in me have perhaps added to its nostalgic allure.

I earlier drew comparisons between the Spice Girls’ recent ‘Holler’ and US girl-groups like Destiny’s Child, but really it’s no contest. This is so polished, so confident; another example of how American acts were setting the tempo at this time. Britain could still produce good pop (Steps!), but whenever we tried to ape this sort of hip-hop/R&B uber-pop we just couldn’t pull it off.

What I’m noticing now, after repeated listens, is the irony of a song about women’s independence promoting a film about three (admittedly kickass) women controlled by an unseen older man. Plus, as others have pointed out before me, the independence of the women in the song seems to be measured by the fact that they can buy their own clothes, shoes, cars and jewellery.

I mentioned her in passing, but we should make more of this being our introduction to Beyoncé, who will go on to be one of the new millennium’s biggest stars, with a near twenty-five year span between this and her most recent chart-topper. And while this track is well-remembered, I’d argue that the two following Destiny’s Child singles have become even more embedded in popular culture (one of which will be shortly turning up at #1).

Before we finish, I have one final question. If this is ‘Independent Women (Pt I)’, then what of part two? Well, it’s an album track, much harder-edged, nowhere near as catchy. Case closed, Charlie.

882. ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’, by LeAnn Rimes

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Showing A1 just how it’s done, here is some authentic turn-of-the-century American jumbo-pop.

Can’t Fight the Moonlight, by LeAnn Rimes (her 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th November 2000

Can that become the standard term for this sort of huge chords, huge vocals, huge synths pop? Jumbo-pop. It’ll be my legacy. Though while Britney and Christina are obvious reference points for this record, LeAnn Rimes was first and foremost a country artist, and so this is jumbo-pop with a country twang. Which is cool.

But as with the Corrs’ Mutt Lange-produced ‘Breathless’, this makes me once again rue the fact that the Queen of late-nineties country pop, Shania Twain, never made top spot in the UK. Catchy as ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’ is, it is no ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’. Very few pop songs are…

I will say that this song does almost lose the run of itself from the middle-eight onwards, with synths that sound like a garbage crusher gone haywire. It gets very cluttered and rushed, as if on a deadline, where a few more seconds runtime could have allowed the song to breathe a bit. But the way Rimes launches herself into the key change is impressive, and allows her to show off her vocals towards the end. It was written by Diane Warren, and produced by movie mogul Jerry Bruckheimer, which perhaps explains its ginormous sound.

Bruckheimer was presumably involved because this comes from the soundtrack to his movie, ‘Coyote Ugly’. It’s a film that I remember being huge among my age group at the time, but that never gets mentioned anymore. (Its 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes might explain why…) Apparently LeAnn Rimes appears in the film as herself, while she also recorded ‘Can’t Fight the Moonlight’ for actress Piper Perabo – who played the main character – and so technically duets with herself at the end of the film. Which sounds enjoyably messy.

While this may be a bit cluttered, a bit too fast, a bit chaotic, it’s still undeniably huge and catchy. There’s something admirable about the sheer joie de vivre of so many of these recent number ones, even if not many are truly great records, which makes me miss a time when pop music came with a capital ‘P’!

Although this is LeAnn Rimes biggest hit by chart position, she is probably much better remembered for her ballad ‘How Do I Live’, which was the 6th highest-selling song of 1998 despite never rising above #7. She remains active, and seems to have moved more into Christian contemporary territory in her old age.

796. ‘Deeper Underground’, by Jamiroquai

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And so Jamiroquai, a nineties chart mainstay, score their only number one single. Should we class them alongside Dusty, Quo, and a-Ha, as one of the great one and only #1 acts? Or is one chart-topper par for their course…?

Deeper Underground, by Jamiroquai (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th July 1998

‘Deeper Underground’ isn’t the first record you’d think of as Jamiroquai’s only #1, and it’s not a record I’ve heard much over the years. So two things strike me as I listen to it now. First, that it’s obviously from a movie soundtrack, as no normal pop single has this much time to open, with strings and ominous chords, never mind a monster’s roar. It was from the big 1998 summer blockbuster ‘Godzilla’, which was fairly successful at the box office but was panned by critics.

The second thing I notice is how heavy this record is. By the time I was a teenager, Jamiroquai were a byword for naffness, mainly brought about by lead singer Jay Kay’s collection of silly hats. Many of their other big hits veered towards a disco cheeriness, but ‘Deeper Underground’ has an edge to it, underpinned by a scuzzy funk riff. They had been acid funk pioneers in the early nineties, and this is definitely not their most commercial moment. When the lyrics finally arrive, Jay Kay almost freestyles over the aggressive beat.

As a soundtrack hit, the lyrics have to relate to the movie they feature in. But Jamiroquai manage to twist lyrics about going deeper underground to escape a massive, city-smashing monster, into what seems like a song about paranoia: Something’s come to rock me, And I can’t keep my head, I get nervous in the New York City streets, Where my legacy treads… The video takes a more literal approach to the subject matter, with Jay Kay dancing his way around death as Godzilla, and any number of crashing taxis and helicopters, destroy a cinema, all with very dated CGI.

I had thought that this record sampled Led Zeppelin, and although the riff is cool it’s not quite at Led Zep standards. This is because I was confusing it with the other big hit from the ‘Godzilla’ soundtrack, Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page’s ‘Come With Me’, which is based around ‘Kashmir’. That one made #2 around the same time (and is Page’s only Top 10 hit in the UK, either with or without Led Zeppelin).

As ‘Deeper Underground’ descends into even nastier, funkier territory, the synths grow harsher and harsher until it sounds a bit like I imagine electro-shock therapy would. It’s cool. I like it. I’m glad that this is Jamiroquai’s only #1, over the much more mum-friendly ‘Canned Heat’ or ‘Cosmic Dancer’. Though their greatest moment remains ‘Virtual Insanity’, which was one of my favourite tracks on ‘Now 37’ back, as they say, in the day.

In my intro I called Jamiroquai a ‘nineties mainstay’, but that wouldn’t seem to do them justice. I’ve just discovered that they were the 3rd best-selling UK act of the decade, behind Oasis and The Spice Girls. Which is very impressive for a band that many write off as one guy and some hats (though as much as I’ve enjoyed writing this review I was probably hasty in naming them alongside Dusty and Status Quo…) ‘Deeper Underground’ remains forgotten amongst their back-catalogue it seems, as it is nowhere to be seen on their Spotify popular tracks. On the same platform’s ‘This Is Jamiroquai’ playlist, it is buried away as track twenty-eight.

790. ‘Turn Back Time’, by Aqua

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1997’s novelty act of choice surprise us yet again by returning for a 3rd number single. Not only that, the surprise is increased by the fact that this is a ‘proper’ song!

Turn Back Time, by Aqua (their 3rd and final #1)

1 week, from 10th – 17th May 1998

No Barbie and Ken here, no ayypeeay-eh-oh. This is classy pop. The chord progressions in the verses have a sweeping drama to them, with the feel of a Bond theme in places. Give me time to reason, Give me time to think it through… It’s sung from the point of view of someone who has cheated, and who is owning their mistake. Give me strength, To face this test of mine… Lene’s voice, so chirpy and borderline annoying on their earlier hits, is rich here, and full of emotion. I often struggle to believe ballad singers, but she sounds genuinely guilty, and repentant.

Away from the vocals, the production is smooth nineties soul-funk. And (of course) that late-nineties preset drum beat is there, buried beneath some cool horns that make me think of Ace of Base. Maybe it’s a Scandi-pop thing and – while it does mean I’m going to lean into some national stereotyping – there is something in the clean, coolness of this that feels very Scandinavian.

Seriously, this is an excellent pop song. If it were by Madonna, and not the goons that brought us ‘Barbie Girl’, then this would not be half as forgotten as it currently is. The only thing I regret is that René’s gravelly tones don’t get a look in. I’m not sure how they could have made that work – maybe a bit of baritone harmonising – but it’s sad that he has been sidelined after two star turns. The only questionable part of this record is the jarring break in the middle, when the smoothness is broken by urgent horns and a grinding industrial beat. It’s certainly a choice – presumably meant to show the mental turmoil of the singer – and it just about works.

‘Turn Back Time’ featured on the soundtrack to the Gwyneth Paltrow film ‘Sliding Doors’, which I’ve not seen but which has one of the most famous premises in movie history. The video features plenty of scenes from the film, and also has the band re-enacting the plot, with Lene constantly missing trains and lift doors on the London Underground. Meanwhile their black leather jackets are very late-nineties chic.

Aqua were worth one more Top 10 hit from their breakthrough album, then one more when they released their second LP in 2000 (the showtune-tastic ‘Cartoon Heroes’). They split for most of the ‘00s, but reformed in 2008 and remain together to this day. They belatedly returned to the Top 10 last year, when their signature hit was reimagined by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice ahead of the ‘Barbie’ movie.

709. ‘Love Is All Around’, by Wet Wet Wet

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The charts of the first half of the 1990s have had many stories to tell: interesting one-hit wonders, new sounds coming, old sounds going, acts appearing and becoming huge… And yet from a certain angle it can look like the period was dominated by just three songs, all from film soundtracks, which together spent forty-one weeks atop the charts. (Set back to back that would stretch for over nine months, a period in which you could conceive, gestate, and birth a human child…)

Love Is All Around, by Wet Wet Wet (their 3rd and final #1)

15 weeks, from 29th May – 11th Sept 1994

We’ve already endured Bryan Adams and Whitney, and now here is the third and final chart-hogging behemoth. And thankfully it’s the best of the three, by far. It’s not an overwrought power-ballad, for a start. More a low-power ballad, with some jaunty flourishes among the cheesy sentiments and Marti Pellow’s over-singing.

I like the woozy fills before the chorus, and the way the band manage to update a song from the sixties with just enough nineties rock touches: a string section, some power chords, and a soaring guitar for the fade-out. ‘Love Is All Around’ was originally recorded by the Troggs, making #5 in 1967. This gave Reg Presley a writing credit on a second #1, after the band’s 1966 #1 ‘With a Girl Like You’. (Rather brilliantly, he spent the unexpected royalties on crop circle research…)

The fact that it’s a more upbeat number than its ginormous predecessors is also reflected in the movie it came from. ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ was a rom-com, compared to the epic ‘Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves’ and the slushy ‘Bodyguard’. For the soundtrack, Wet Wet Wet were asked to choose between covering this, Barry Manilow’s ‘Can’t Smile Without You’ and Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ (which would have been interesting…) ‘Love Is All Around’ was, I’d imagine, an easy choice for the pop-rocking Wets.

As much as this record is a relief after the other two long-runners, I shouldn’t overstate its quality. It’s fine. It’s serviceable. It’s a decently done cover. Nothing more. The original has a low-key charm to it that this version cannot reproduce with its lush production, and the fact that Marti Pellow doesn’t do ‘low-key’. And of course, we can’t ignore that it far outstayed its welcome on top of the charts. You often hear talk about ‘The Song of the Summer’. Never has it been quite as literal as this, with the record on top from late-May to early-September.

By the end of its run, some radio stations were refusing to play it. The band were well aware of the record becoming a millstone around their necks, and deleted it from production. ‘We did everyone’s head in’, Pellow succinctly summed up. This meant that it fell one week short of matching Adams’ record for consecutive weeks at #1. ‘Love Is All Around’, however, did outsell both Adams and Houston in the long run, and currently sits at almost two million copies (number eleven in the all-time sales table).

This song’s success didn’t completely sour Wet Wet Wet’s reputations in the UK. They wouldn’t again make number one, but they scored five further Top 10s before splitting in 1997 after a dispute over royalties. They reformed a decade later, and continue touring and recording with two of the four original members.

667. ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’, by Bryan Adams

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Oh Lordy, here we go…

(Everything I Do) I Do It for You, by Bryan Adams (his 1st of two #1s)

16 weeks, from 7th July – 27th October 1991

The 1980s gets the rep as the era of the power-ballad, when big drums and even bigger hair stalked the pop landscape. And yes, the ‘80s gave us ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’, ‘Take My Breath Away’, ‘The Power of Love’… All gigantic anthems. All of them, to me at least, pretty good. But the 1990s was when power ballads really started to bulk up, to hit the gym, to mutate, Jurassic World-style, into the beast that stands before us now…

Everything about this record is colossal. The slow-build intro, the strained vocals, the sentiment, the production… Nothing is subtle, nothing left to chance. The title, even, tells you exactly what sort of song this will be before you even press play. The listener is not required to think; they merely have to submit to its awesome power. I bet very few of the couples who’ve chosen this as a first dance at their wedding actually like the song; they’ve just been bludgeoned into submission, a sort of musical Stockholm syndrome.

I could pick any line from ‘(Everything I Do…)’ and bask in its cliched stupidity. It’s all the sort of the stuff even a lovestruck fourteen-year-old would think was too overwrought. Take me as I am, Take my life, I would give it all, I would sacrifice… Bryan Adams growls. I get that we live nowadays in a more cynical age, but did anyone actually take this seriously at the time?

Well, probably. Because a record this overblown couldn’t just have a couple of weeks at #1. Not even a couple of months would suffice. No, ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ needed sixteen long weeks at the top to get its message across. It famously holds the record for the most consecutive weeks at number one (though not the most weeks in total: Frankie Laine’s ‘I Believe’ racked up eighteen over three different runs in 1953). And the UK wasn’t alone in suffering through a summer (and autumn) of Adams. It was #1 for seven weeks in the US, nine in his homeland of Canada, eleven in Australia, and twelve in Sweden.

But there’s a reason why this record, despite its success, has been semi-forgotten, and earlier power ballads by Bonnie Tyler and co remain well-loved. ‘(Everything I Do)…’ just isn’t fun. There’s nothing here that isn’t full-on, one-hundred percent sincerity. And for a power ballad to truly work, you need to feel that the singer is aware, on some level, that what they’re singing is ridiculous. And yet here’s this behemoth, with all the charm of a constipated brontosaurus. Adams isn’t an insufferable guy – he’s recorded plenty of fun, upbeat songs – but this one…? It’s way too earnest.

It’s also probably an indicator of where we are, in pop music terms. The fun of glam metal has fizzled out, and grunge hasn’t quite broken through yet. (Symbolically, ‘Nevermind’ was released right in the middle of this record’s long, long run at the top…) Glam metal hadn’t made much impact at the top of the British charts (neither would grunge for that matter), but it did mean that guitars slowly returned to the mainstream and allowed huge hit singles like this. (Compare this with a power-ballad from the mid-eighties, and it’s much more ‘rock’.)

This single was of course from the soundtrack to ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’, the ginormous box-office hit of that summer. Chart-toppers from movie soundtracks have been around since the dawn of the charts, but it does feel as if they are taking over in the early nineties. Of the last five #1s, all have been from soundtracks (if we count stage shows as well as films). And this won’t be the last theme song to make it to double-figures at the top of the charts. We’ve got plenty more of these mutant power-ballads to come soon… Brace yourselves.

(For some reason, the single-edit version of the video to ‘(Everything I Do)…’ seems to have been erased from history in favour of the six and a half minute album version.)

666. ‘Any Dream Will Do’, by Jason Donovan

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Jason Donovan’s final UK number one throws us a bit of a curveball… Musical theatre chart-toppers are generally few and far between, as are hit songs based on bible stories. But perhaps the strangest thing about this song is Jason himself…

Any Dream Will Do, by Jason Donovan (his 4th and final #1)

2 weeks, from 23rd June – 7th July 1991

Given a blind listening test, there’s no way you would peg this for the same guy who just two years ago was singing ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’. He sounds so proper, so refined. Not that he was a hellraiser back in his SAW days; but he’s gone full musical the-ay-tah, pronouncing every syllable and projecting his voice right to the cheap seats. My gran, whose main requirement in a singer was that you could ‘make out what they were saying’, would have approved.

Away from JD, the record’s production is average, verging on cheap, and the kids’ choir in the background sounds phoned-in. It is of course from ‘Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’, an Andrew Lloyd-Webber/Tim Rice musical based on the story of Joseph, from the Book of Genesis. They had written it in the late sixties, but the show hadn’t had a run in the West End for almost twenty years before a revival, starring Donovan as the title character, turned it into one of Britain’s best-loved musicals. Lloyd-Webber, meanwhile, scored his second #1 in under a year, after bringing us Timmy Mallett and his infamous bikini…

It’s a well-trodden path. A pop star’s hits begin to dry up and so they migrate to the stage. Not that Jason Donovan had fallen that far from his heyday – his second album had produced three Top 10 hits, though no #1s – but perhaps he could see which way the wind was blowing. It was a smart move, bringing him to the attention of a whole new audience, and gaining him a pretty unexpected swansong at the top of the charts.

If I’m honest, it’s hard for me to judge this song with any sort of impartiality. We have, in fact, reached a massive milestone. After five and half years of writing, and six hundred and sixty-six number ones (note the irony of a bible-based song being the 666th…) we arrive at the first chart-topper that I was actually aware of at the time. In fact the soundtrack to ‘Joseph…’ was the first CD I ever owned, while I went on a Sunday school trip to see the show in Edinburgh (though by that point I believe it was Phillip Schofield in the starring role).

And so, what would otherwise be a fairly unremarkable chart-topper, save for the odd coda it gave Donovan’s chart-career, takes on great significance. For me, at least. I can’t hear the soaring A crash of drums, A flash of light… line without picturing that old worn-out CD (although my favourite songs at the time were the country-ish ‘One More Angel in Heaven’ and the unhinged jazz-polka of ‘Potiphar’).

I’ve written before about Jason Donovan (and Kylie) being pop ground zero for older millennials like me. Kylie may have gone on to slightly bigger things – she’s literally back in the Top 10 as I write this, aged fifty-five, an absolute icon – but Jason has remained in the public eye for better (a plethora of stage and light entertainment shows) or worse (lawsuits and drug addiction). When I was a student, the mere suggestion that he might be making a private appearance at a nightclub would be enough to sell the place out. (It happened several times, and he never once turned up…) So here’s to you, Jason Donovan. Not many pop stars had a bigger impact on my formative years.