wet wet wet

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

/ UK #1s blog / 13 Comments

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.

673. ‘Goodnight Girl’, by Wet Wet Wet

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Into 1992 we go, then. A year that it won’t take us long to get through, as it only has twelve #1s – the lowest turnover of chart-toppers for thirty years. Why the charts slowed down so much as we move towards the mid-‘90s is something we might chat about in the coming posts…

Goodnight Girl, by Wet Wet Wet (their 2nd of three #1s)

4 weeks, from 19th January – 16th February 1992

We kick off with Clydebank lads Wet Wet Wet, last heard four years ago singing a peppy cover of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ for charity. Since then they’ve grown up: the hair is longer, the mood much more serious… Was this the original boy-band to man-band transition, a path since followed by Take That, Westlife and more…?

It’s a nice enough ballad. Lots of strings, a bit of piano, and an almost a cappella feel to the vocals. Marti Pellow takes the lead of course, but the three others whose names I don’t know weave themselves around him. It could have crumpled into bland, MOR mush; but the chorus is an earworm, with real purpose to it: Caught up in your wishing well, Your hopes inside it…

The video is very 1992, and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. Why is there a priest swinging on a pendulum? Why indeed? The same applies to the lyrics, really, but if you allow them to just wash over you then the melodies, and Pellow’s voice, are enough to make this an enjoyable, if low-key, start to the year. It seems that Wet Wet Wet had managed to grow old(er) gracefully. It was also my 6th birthday #1, and perhaps that means I give it extra fondness points.

‘Goodnight Girl’ is a bit of an anomaly in the Wet Wet Wet discography. As well as being their only self-penned number one, it was the only Top 10 hit the band managed between 1989 and 1994. It’s pleasant enough, but I’m not sure I can explain why it so spectacularly broke their slump. Was it as simple as it being released in January, traditionally the quietest time for new singles? Anyway, they’ll come back properly in a couple of years, with an (almost) record-breaking mega-hit that will set them up for the rest of the decade, and beyond.

609. ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ / ‘She’s Leaving Home’, by Wet Wet Wet / Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

Our next #1 is an interesting concept, and (I think) the only chart-topping example of it: a double-‘A’ side with songs by two different artists…

With a Little Help from My Friends / She’s Leaving Home, by Wet Wet Wet (their 1st of three #1s) / Billy Bragg with Cara Tivey (their 1st and only #1s)

4 weeks, from 15th May – 12th June 1988

Actually, the songs on the recent M/A/R/R/S double-‘A’ were by two different bands in all but name, but OK… This definitely is. A fun pop-soul cover by a hot new lad-band (that presumably got most of the airplay at the time), and a more introspective offering on the flip side. Both are Beatles covers – ‘Sgt Pepper’s’ covers, no less – and were recorded for children’s charity Childline.

Which means we have to sound the Charity Record alarm! But, actually, this is one of the best charity singles of the decade. Perhaps ever. There’s no gimmick, nobody is dicking about, there are no misguided attempts at comedy. Just two solid Beatles covers. Wet Wet Wet’s take on ‘With a Little Help…’ is fine, though not a patch on either the original or Joe Cocker’s OTT version. It’s perky, fast-paced, with a soaring organ, and a little bit of over-singing from Marti Pellow… The ‘friends’ in this version are the kind folks at Childline (as the video makes clear). Though I’m not sure they’re the sort you’d ‘get high’ with… No matter, Pellow glides past that line without blinking.

It’s nothing special, but when you think of some of the horrors inflicted on classic rock songs by X Factor alumni in the name of charity then you’ll take ‘nothing special’ all day long. In fact, it’s a pretty low-key intro for a band who will go on to have one of the biggest number one singles of all time. But that particular beast can wait… For now, Wet Wet Wet were a likeable bunch of lads from Clydebank, who’d had a run of Top 10 hits following their 1987 breakthrough ‘Wishing I Was Lucky’ (and who make it two Scottish chart-toppers in a row, following Fairground Attraction’s Eddi Reader).

And on the other side? Well, considering that the charity album this single came from was produced by the NME, and featured covers from The Fall (‘A Day in the Life’) The Wedding Present (‘Getting Better’) and Sonic Youth (‘Within You Without You’), perhaps Wet Wet Wet were actually the surprise inclusion? Billy Bragg is an activist, a left-wing folk-punk songwriter, and possibly the ultimate Pointless answer to ‘Artists with a UK #1 single’.

His take on ‘She’s Leaving Home’ with his long-time collaborator Cara Tivey on piano, is something different – both in terms of the peppy song on the flip-side, and in terms of chart-topping singles in general. Few pop hits can have featured an accent as uncompromising as Bragg’s, for example. Though the kitchen-sink drama in the lyrics… She’s leaving home after living alone for so many years… is very on-brand for him. It’s a pretty take on the original, and another win for ‘80s indie which, after The Housemartins and Fairground Attraction, is actually getting more of a crack at the top spot than I’d have anticipated.

I like the concept, and the contrast between the two songs… but neither comes close to its original. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even rate ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ as much as certain of the Beatles’ other studio albums (at least the two before and the two that followed it…) There now, I feel like I’ve outed myself as a complete Philistine… Up next, perhaps a post on why I’ve always found Bob Dylan overrated… Or maybe not.