steps

Today’s Top 10 – December 31st, 1999

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For my final post of the year, let’s go back twenty-six years. Back to the final day of the 20th century. The Millennium. I was thirteen and remember it well: the day long coverage on TV, the fireworks, the fear that society might collapse at midnight, that I got to drink sparkling wine…

But, did the final UK singles chart do justice to the millennium just past? Did it manage to sum up the sounds of a century? Did we go out with a bang? Well….

10. ‘Back in My Life’, by Alice Deejay (up 1 / 5 weeks on chart)

The record at #10 on this week sets the scene beautifully. This was the sound of the late nineties: a Dutch Eurodance ‘project’ with some basic beats, basic lyrics, and a basic ‘dancing in front of a waterfall’ video. It’s ‘basically’ a slightly harder-edged Vengaboys. This was the follow-up to Alice Deejay’s better (and better known) breakthrough #2 ‘Better Off Alone’, and had been as high as #4 in the charts in early December.

9. ‘Kiss (When the Sun Don’t Shine)’, by Vengaboys (up 1 / 3 weeks on chart)

Oops. Like summoning an evil spirit by the mere mention of its name, here are the Vengaboys. Following up their two 1999 #1s, ‘Kiss (When the Sun Don’t Shine)’ had made #3 a couple of weeks before this. It is a little less in one’s face compared to, say, ‘Boom Boom Boom Boom’. Which is maybe why it didn’t do as well… Or maybe Vengaboys fatigue had set in? In earlier posts, I posited a theory that disposable tripe like this was so succesful at the turn of the millennium because we were all worried that the world would end, and just wanted to party. The first two records in this Top 10 do seem to give my theory some credence…

8. ‘Say You’ll Be Mine’ / ‘Better the Devil You Know’, by Steps (down 1 / 2 weeks on chart)

No turn of the millennium chart would be complete without some Steps, an ever-present between ’97 and 2001. ‘Say You’ll Be Mine’ is a pleasant pop tune, but it’s nobody’s favourite Steps song. The video is a nice time-capsule of late nineties movie parodies: ‘Romeo + Juliet’, ‘Titanic’, ‘Austin Powers’, and a fairly daring recreation of the ‘hairgel’ scene from ‘There’s Something About Mary’.

Steps did love a double-‘A’, and on the other side of the disc was this camp cover of a Kylie classic. The devil horns and long red coats are, I’m just going to say it, iconic. They do not outdo Kylie’s version, but they stick so close to it that they can’t really go wrong. This record entered at a fairly lowly (by Steps’ standards) #7 in Christmas week, but would climb to #4 in the new year to keep up an unbroken run of Top 5 hits for the group.

7. ‘Cognoscenti Vs. Intelligentsia’, by the Cuban Boys (down 3 / 2 weeks on chart)

Right. Y2K might not have brought about the end of the world, but two minutes into this next record you will perhaps begin wishing for it. There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s based around a sped-up, soundalike sample of Roger Miller’s ‘Whistle Stop’, AKA the minstrel’s tune from Disney’s ‘Robin Hood’. It had been the soundtrack to one of the earliest internet memes, ‘The Hampster Dance’, and there was a copyright controversy which delayed the release date. It had been promoted on, of all places, John Peel’s Radio 1 show, and had been at #4 for Xmas. And in some ways this is perfect for our dawn of the 21st Century Top 10: striking, modern, rooted in internet culture, completely and utterly banal…

6. ‘Two in a Million’ / ‘You’re My Number One’, by S Club 7 (down 1 / 2 weeks on chart)

We’ve had Steps, let’s have S Club. ‘Two in a Million’ isn’t one of their classics, and I struggled to remember it even after the chorus came along. It’s a nice enough slice of medium-tempo soul pop, but let’s skip forward to the flip-side…

…because this sort of breezy, Motown-lite pop is what S Club excelled at. ‘You’re My Number One’ was like a warm-up for their massive smash ‘Reach’ the following summer, but I’m enjoying it more today because it hasn’t been overdone. And I’m not one for nostalgia, but by God that video – with it’s crap choreo, its tomfoolery, its outfits – is so of its time it hurts. This double-A would rocket up to #2 in the new year, keeping S Club’s 100% Top 5 record intact.

5. ‘Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)’, by Artful Dodger ft. Craig David (up 1 / 4 weeks on chart)

Peaking at #2 before and after the festive period, though slumping temporarily on this week’s chart, here is the sound of the new millennium. Those staccato 2-step garage beats would go on to be one of the sounds of 2000-2001, while seventeen-year-old Craig David would be the first big breakout star of the 21st century, scoring two #1s in the coming months. I wouldn’t say I love this as a piece of music, but as a scene setter few songs take you back to the turn of the millennium as effectively as this.

4. ‘Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo’, by Mr. Hankey (up 4 / 2 weeks on chart)

Clearly released with the Christmas number one in mind, here’s a cartoon character which Wikipedia nicely sums up as a ‘sentient piece of feces’. Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo had featured in a South Park episode way back in 1997, but a combination of the series taking off a little later in Britain, plus Chef’s success the year before, led to this release in late 1999. Mr Hankey, The Christmas Poo, He’s small and brown and comes from you… It has the sound of a classic fifties festive tune-slash-television theme and did, I will confess, raise a smile on these unwilling lips. It is not a patch on ‘Chocolate Salty Balls’ however, and was nowhere near as succesful. (Though it would obviously have been somewhat satisfying if this had peaked at number two…)

3. ‘Imagine’, by John Lennon (non-mover / 2 weeks on chart)

Many will be holding their heads in their hands at the thought of ‘Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo’ rubbing shoulders with ‘Imagine’. But I like to see this juxtaposition as the magic of the charts… Anyway, we all know ‘Imagine’, and would all probably be happy never hearing ‘Imagine’ again, despite it being a beautiful song. It had been re-released ahead of the new year, presumably with the aim of making it the millennium’s final #1. It fell a couple of places short, but this did mark the third occasion on which it had made the Top 10.

2. ‘The Millennium Prayer’, by Cliff Richard (non-mover / 6 weeks on chart)

This weird Top 10 sees arguably Britain’s two biggest pop acts represented in the Top 3, with Cliff joining a Beatle as the century drew to an end. It also sees one of the worst Top 2s of all time. I wrote all about Cliff’s final number one here, and have no wish to revisit it….

1. ‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’, by Westlife (non-mover / 2 weeks on chart)

Ditto the record that was at number one, Westlife’s fourth of their breakout year and the previous week’s Christmas chart-topper. I have tried to be as kind as possible about some of Westlife’s many #1s, and have enjoyed a couple, but this double-‘A’ is as syrupy, saccharine, and cynical as you can get. Read my full post on it here, and discover why I named it as one of my very worst number ones here.

What strikes me about this chart is how normal it is, considering the looming spectre of Y2K. I thought that would have been more of a theme in this Top 10 but, aside from Cliff and John Lennon, it’s mainly just a routine run-down of Eurodance, disposable pop and Christmas novelties. It’s refreshing , however, to see a festive chart that isn’t just a replica of the Spotify ‘Christmas Hits’ playlist, as the modern charts now are.

Our regular blog will resume early next week, where we left it in December 2002. I hope everyone has a great new year, and that 2026 is full of health, wealth and happiness… and great music!

Best of the Rest – Steps

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

I’ve been threatening this post for quite a while, and I’m sure many readers didn’t take those threats seriously. To them, all I can say is sorry. Never again will you underestimate this blogger’s love for some cheesy pop. Time to begin, so count me in…

Steps were a near-permanent fixture on the singles chart between 1997 and 2001, managing two number ones. Sadly, both of their chart-toppers were fairly average (‘Tragedy’/’Heartbeat’ and ‘Stomp’) while many of their near misses – they had five singles that peaked at #2 – are classics of their time and genre. The turn of the 21st century was a time when disposable, teeny-pop acts were ten-a-penny. But Steps still managed to carve their own niche. They weren’t cool, they weren’t sexy, they weren’t particularly down with the kids. They were camp, and catchy. Who were Steps’ fans? Was their continued success all the fault of gay men? (Probably, yes.)

You may be relieved to hear that I won’t do my usual Top 10 today. I’ll restrict it to a Top 5. But, what a five! Five bubblegum classics of the fin de siecle, and I will entertain no arguments to the contrary…

‘Last Thing on My Mind’ – #6 in 1998

I don’t think many people expected Steps to have any sort of career beyond their debut hit: the ultra-cheesy, line-dancing meets techno ‘5, 6, 7, 8’. But lo and behold, they returned with a proper pop song, combining an ABBA-esque piano line with a cheap and frothy chorus. And the revelation that at least two of the five, Faye and Clare, could actually sing! ‘Last Thing on My Mind’ had originally been recorded by Bananarama in 1992, but had stalled at #72. That version is even more indebted to ABBA, while the song’s author Pete Waterman has claimed it was inspired by Mozart. A bold claim, but I’ll buy it.

‘Better Best Forgotten’ – reached #2 in 1999

One of five Steps singles that fell a place short of top spot, ‘Better Best Forgotten’ is another ABBA(ish) melody with lots of late-nineties dressing. Please bear in mind that by constantly bringing up ABBA I am not being so bold as to claim Steps were in any way comparable to said Swedish Gods and Goddesses, but that the influences were clear… Meanwhile I can’t explain it, but the key change just before the chorus here is hands down the gayest moment in popular music.

‘A Deeper Shade of Blue’ – reached #4 in 2000

The 4th single from their second album was a slightly cooler affair, with an Italo-house beat and some dance diva vocals from Claire. It was another track originally recorded by someone else – in this case Tina Cousins – but Steps stepped in and made it their own. Musical vultures! It is more mature, and more sophisticated, than much of Steps’ earlier work.

‘One for Sorrow’ – reached #2 in 1998

There is a beauty about early Steps videos, which rival the cheapest of stock karaoke videos. Here they cycle, have a kickabout, and generally frolic in long grass and sunflowers somewhere in Italy. And the song is a melancholy dance classic, with the melody deeply in debt to… well, you know who it’s in debt to. Another thing to note is Steps’ consistent dedication to wordplay: One for sorrow, Ain’t it too too bad… (See also the deeper shade of blue/darker shade of me from the previous entry.)

‘Love’s Got a Hold of My Heart’ – reached #2 in 1999

For me, this is peak Steps. All boxes ticked. A candyfloss chorus. A Eurotrash beat. Cheesy dance routine on a pier (all while dressed in canary yellow). Claire absolutely belting it out (the way she lets rip on the resigned to my fate… line is a chef’s kiss moment). It lacks the usual hint of melancholy – making it one of their least ABBA-aping singles – and it sounds excactly like you’d expect Steps to sound, had you only ever seen a picture of them.

If you made it this far through the post, I salute you. Thanks for humouring me. I realise that Steps are written off by many as cheap tat, indicative of a time when pop was at its most disposable. And maybe it’s nostalgia for my youth (though I’d never have admitted to liking Steps at the time!), but I do think the five songs included here deserve their place in the pantheon of pop. Maybe not on the same floor, or even the same wing, but definitely in the same building as the likes of Kylie, or Madonna, or even, yes, ABBA.

Steps split on Boxing Day 2001, but reformed a decade later and have been touring and recording ever since, releasing some pretty decent dance-pop tracks. For reasons that I don’t quite understand, they seem to have acquired Michelle Visage as a part-time sixth member. There’s clearly a lot of people who still hold some affection for Steps. Including me. And I make no apologies for it!

878. ‘Stomp’, by Steps

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The nu-disco movement, which has popped up time and again in the year 2000, reaches its peak. Because if Steps are referencing a trend, then you know it’s nearly over…

Stomp, by Steps (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th October 2000

Actually, no. I love Steps, and will hear no word against them. I am definitely going to do a ‘Best of the Rest’ post, as they were so poorly served by their two number ones. We had the okay cover of ‘Tragedy’, paired with the okay ballad ‘Heartbeat’, and now this. Everybody clap your hands… (clap clap)… Get on up and dance, We’re gonna stomp all night now…

I mean, it’s fine. I like the rampant tempo of it, that forces you to do the full repertoire of classic disco hand gesture moves to it. I like it the pew pew effects, and the strings. Hand claps, and thank God for the weekend… In fact, it throws almost every cliché into the mix, including yet another of the year’s Chic samples (for which Nile & Co. didn’t initially receive a credit). So much disco, in fact that it promptly kills off the current revival. I’d be surprised if we hear much more at number one any time soon.

But ‘Stomp’ also can’t escape its sheer basic-ness. I know, I know, Steps were one of the most basic groups going. Which is true, to an extent. But most of their classic (yes, classic) songs are rooted in those late nineties pop sounds – a reason why they are fairly beloved by those who grew up with them – and so to hear them go disco feels like a lazy choice.

I also can’t help turning my nose up at this, knowing the Steps songs which failed to make #1. Twelve other Top 10 hits, five of which stalled at #2. ‘One for Sorrow’, ‘Last Thing on My Mind’, ‘Deeper Shade of Blue’… Meanwhile ‘Stomp’ sits at #11 in the Steps all-time sales table, and at #10 on their Spotify most played tracks. It also fluked its week at number one, with the lowest first-week sales of any of the year’s forty-two chart-toppers.

Steps split-up on Boxing Day 2001, but reformed with actually quite surprising success in the 2010s, remaining together (plus Michelle Visage, for some reason) to this day. They may have been ‘ABBA on speed’, in the words of Pete Waterman, but they bunged out some very decent pop records, and were in their own way a soundtrack to the turn of the millennium.

Cover Versions of Christmas #1s

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For our last post of the year, let’s take a look at some classic Christmas number ones, but in versions you might not have heard before… Some good, some not so good, some just plain odd.

Starting with the daddy of all festive chart-toppers, Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. Noel Gallagher recorded a cover for the ‘Royle Family’ Christmas special in 2000 (a sitcom that his band had famously contributed the theme song for). It sounds exactly as you’d expect Noel Gallagher doing a cover of Slade’s Christmas classic would. Except it lacks the raucous energy of the original, instead opting for a woozy drone. And there’s no It’s Chriiiiissssttttmmmmmaaaaasssss…. So shame on you, Noel.

That same year, way over on the other side of the pop spectrum, Steps recorded their own version, and is it wrong that I’m enjoying this version more…? For a start, they lead with It’s Christmaaaaaas… so bonus points there. But there’s also something in the propulsively camp beat, and the faux-Cher autotune, that is more in keeping with the anarchic original.

Or if neither of those straight covers do it for you, then how about this remix that made #30 in 1998? It’s a bizarre record: a fairly anonymous trance beat over which Slade occasionally pop up. Flush were a Swedish act, and this was presumably made with Slade’s permission, given that it’s Noddy Holder’s vocals.

Christmas #1 the year following Slade’s colossus, Mud took a more sombre approach to festive pop on ‘Lonely This Christmas’. In 2013 Traitors! recorded this fun pop-punk version for a charity album called ‘It’s Better to Give than to Receive’. And that’s about all I know. The band don’t have a website or Wiki page, and their only other release seems to have been a four track EP. I don’t even remember where I heard this version first, but it’s been on my festive playlist for a few years now. So thank you Traitors!, whoever you are/were.

Of course, Christmas is actually about more than just presents and gluttony… There’s also ‘Die Hard’. I mean, there’s also the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus H Christ. And sometimes religious songs have made Christmas number one, such as in 1976. Johnny Mathis’s version of ‘When a Child Is Born’ is fairly gentle and respectful, not enough to wake the sleeping babe in his crib. The same cannot be said for larger than life Greek Demis Roussos, who rattles the gates of heaven with his bombastic take. If I were Jesus, I know which approach I’d prefer.

And then there are the times when the festive number one isn’t about Christmas at all. in 1979, Pink Floyd made number one with their first chart hit in over a decade, ‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt II’. In 2004, nu-metal band Korn covered all three parts of the song (Pt II starts around the 1:30 mark). It was described as “one of the worst classic rock covers of all time” by Ultimate Classic Rock magazine, but I suspect they might be a tad biased against anything released post-1980. I’d call it a brutally efficient cover version.

‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt II’ then returned to the charts in 2007 when remixed by Swedish DJ Eric Prydz. His take, ‘Proper Education’, made #2, and gave us an interesting video in which a group of young hooligans break into some flats and… turn off all the energy wasting devices.

Our final cover is a 2015 remake of Shakin’ Stevens’ 1985 Xmas #1 ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, by Shaky himself. ‘Echoes of Merry Christmas Everyone’ is a completely re-imagined bluegrass version, with lots of banjo and harmonica, recorded to raise money for the Salvation Army, and it’s amazing how a jaunty, slightly irritating original, was transformed into a melancholy, slightly haunting cover.

That’s it from the UK Number Ones Blog for 2024! I’m going to take a couple of weeks off, before returning in the first week of January, when I’ll be launching a couple of new features to mix things up in amongst all the usual chart toppers. I’d like to thank everyone who has read, followed, liked and commented this year, and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

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

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

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

1 week, from 3rd – 10th January 1999

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

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

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

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

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