1992 – Walking 'round the room singing Stormy Weather

This was one of those marking-time kind of years. The first of many ‘restructurings’ at the BBC did at least benefit me but what of personal matters? Now, in my thirties, I was wondering where life was taking me. Still no girlfriend, but surely I was at an age where settling down should be, at the very least, on the horizon. Yet I was still living with the parents. It wasn’t just the Queen having a kind of ‘annus horribilis’. Meanwhile I was desperately, clinging on to the last vestiges of youth with Billericay Rotaract, grasping at those opportunities to dance, opportunities I’d always spurned as a teenager, refusing to countenance even the micro-thought of attending a school disco at the Mayflower.

I did revert to holidaying solo. In July I took a coach trip to what was then still Czechoslovakia, then in September embarked on the first of several rail-based B&B weeks around Britain, beginning with Edinburgh, my first traversing of the Anglo-Scottish border.

It was hardly a vintage twelve months for music so unsurprisingly. I don’t recall music playing much of a role in either vacation. Actually, there’s one exception. When walking around Prague, soaking up the sunshine and sights, I was diverted by the incongruous sound of rock music filling the Old Town Square. Surely it should be a Baroque string quartet? A Smetana symphony? Approaching the centre of the square I realised it was a bunch of youngsters from, of all places, Shrewsbury School! The song they played, which I remember to this day, was ‘Everything About You’, which Ugly Kid Joe had recently taken to the top three. I’d liked the song, and the boys were pretty good, too.

It’s a simple slice of Californian rock but for a cool vibe there wasn’t anything cooler than Arrested Development’s ‘People Everyday’. For some reason I’ve never fathomed, the title is flipped around from the phrase actually sung; that is, “everyday people”. Whatever. It shuffled effortlessly to number two in November. There was more to come with the snappier ‘Mr Wendal’ some months later but I don’t remember anything else from them at all.

There was plenty of long male hair floating around. Axl Rose mixed strutting around the stage and caressing the keyboards with a couple of very popular rock ballads. ‘November Rain’ definitely showed Guns ‘n’ Roses’ sensitive side, then they gave a Bob Dylan classic a heavy makeover. By ’92, the band were one of the biggest on the planet and pretty much top of the bill at the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert at Wembley where this memorable performance of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ was recorded

Curtis Stigers was touted as the new Michael Bolton; flowing brown locks rather than hideous mullet. A better soul voice, in my opinion, but I still wasn’t fussed on the songs ‘I Wonder Why’ and ‘You’re All That Matters to Me’. Then there was Charles, or was it Eddie? Whichever? As a pair, Charles and Eddie had one of the year’s biggest hits with their debut single, ‘Would I Lie to You?’. It had a pleasant Sixties soul sound, with a Smokey Robinson-like lead vocal by Eddie (or was it Charles?), an unfussy production and the benefit of being a much better song than anything by Stigers or Bolton. The world’s worst hairstyle in 1992 must have been that of Billy Ray Cyrus. Fittingly, perhaps, as his ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ just made me ache to break his neck.

Bono’s hair was less lank and mullet than in the Joshua Tree era but amongst the several singles from the Achtung Baby production line came what must be the finest ballad from U2, and maybe anyone, in the Nineties. ‘One’ was the track which determined that I bought the album. On first hearing, I thought it was an instant classic, destined to be the biggest seller for years. And yet it peaked at a disappointing seven in March. It puzzled me then, and it puzzles me still. The album version is much longer than that featured in the Anton Corbijn video and frankly, could easily drift on for another three minutes without boring me – and, believe me, I have a low boredom threshold.

At the same time, the chart was dominated by another slowie, by Shakespear’s Sister. ‘Stay’ was number one for eight long weeks, a melodramatic two-hander performed by ex-Bananarama Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit. The latter’s pure soprano sang the main melody and chorus while a scarily Goth-ified Fahey did the low register bits, and the formula certainly worked. For all Stay’s longevity, one of its follow-ups, ‘Hello (Turn On Your Radio On)’ also worked its spell on me. For both songs, I was also encouraged by the pair’s readiness to sing live on shows such as TOTP, even though Stay’s Goth video was played to death. Fahey’s witch-like image was apparently not restricted to her make-up and clothes. The following year she sacked Detroit without actually telling her.

One of my favourites from 1992 was another creepy song, this time ‘Hazard’ from American Richard Marx. The creepiness stems not from the singer’s visage but the mysterious lyrics. It’s a gorgeous lilting melody but the subject-matter begs you to listen to the words. Did the boy kill Mary? If innocent, why was he hounded out of town? The video added to the suspense, but the lyrics do rather suggest Marx’s protagonist was the victim of mistaken identity:-

                                    “I swear I left her by the river.

                                    I swear I left her safe and sound”

We are left to make up our own minds. Whatever the verdict, it’s refreshing to hear a hit record which makes you think and not just listen ambiently or dance.

Another surprise hit with intriguing lyrics was Marc Almond’s cover of an old Sixties song, ‘The Days of Pearly Spencer’. The sudden crashing transition from string-driven rhythm to melancholy minor chord finale seems unnecessarily blunt but I’ve always been a fan of Almond’s voice. Stripped of the Soft Cell New Romantic baggage, he has always been a brilliant pop soul singer, capable of sounding modern yet breathing new theatrical life into older material like Jacques Brel’s ‘Jacky’, ‘Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart’ and, for that matter, ‘The Days of Pearly Spencer’ itself.

Another unexpected chart-topper which I enjoyed was Tamsin Archer’s ‘Sleeping Satellite’. Promoted from backing vocalist status, the Yorkshire-born singer really shone with this paeon to astronauts and the moon. Her 1993 Brit award recognised her as breakthrough act but unfortunately it didn’t lead to greater things.

By way of contrast, a decade after their demise, Abba were back! Sort of. In June, Erasure went straight in at the top with their 4-track EP ‘Abba-esque’. Not only did it bring them their only number one single, but it also kept Mariah Carey and Nick Berry off the top. Yesss! Double whammy! The Essex duo’s hilarious homage to the Swedes’ ‘Take a Chance on Me’ helped keep them at the summit for five weeks. Not their best record, but undoubtedly entertaining. And who knew that Vince Clarke would make such a convincing Agnetha?! And what did Sweden think of these cover versions? Well, their shoppers kept the EP at number one for six weeks, so who says they don’t have a sense of humour? 

Not to be outdone, the Australian Abba tribute group, Bjorn Again had their cheeky revenge by releasing their own EP, entitled ‘Erasure-ish’. Sadly, it only reached 25 over here, but it gave the likes of ‘Stop’ and ‘Give a Little Respect’ a Seventies mini-skirt and platforms makeover. I saw Bjorn Again in concert at Shepherds Bush Empire some years later and have to say they were wonderful. I never got the chance to see the originals on stage. However, when the audience are in on the joke, the tongue-in-cheek but genuinely fond impressions of the legendary Swedes were hugely enjoyable, and they are more than useful singers and musicians, too.

Whether all this fun and games whetted the appetite for the real thing, I’m not sure, but Abba released their definitive greatest hits compilation Gold in September, it sold well but not spectacularly. Nevertheless, It now ranks as the second biggest selling album in UK history. Abba will never go out of style. 

Jimmy Nail’s stock was also riding high. Keen to avoid typecasting as the rugged Geordie, thick but with a heart of gold, he had transformed himself into the rugged Geordie, intelligent with a heart of gold, in the title role of BBC1’s detective series Spender. He became a bit of a sex symbol, so inevitably he chose this point to revive his dormant singing career. Perfect timing! ‘Ain’t No Doubt’ followed ‘Abbaesque’ to number one. I confess it wasn’t for me, unlike Spender, which at the time set a high standard for all future moody, flawed but brilliant detective TV series to aspire to.

’92 was also the year when Crowded House stamped their mark on me. I’d known ‘Don’t Dream it’s Over’, of course, but when ‘Weather With You’ broke into the top ten, I recognised their true talent. It wasn’t just the lilting melody and the uplifting chorus; I also loved the intriguing lyrics like

                        “There’s a small boat made of china

                        It’s going nowhere on the mantelpiece”

I didn’t buy the Woodface CD (shame!) but did hire it from the library, to discover more great tracks like ‘Fall at Your Feet’ and ‘Four Seasons in One Day’. Neil and Tim Finn certainly had a way with words, harmonies and memorable ballads, wrapped up in unfussy production. Mere OBEs don’t do them justice.

In contrast, there were some truly awful records being played constantly that year. I’ve mentioned the ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ abomination, but I also detested the re-release of the Freddie Mercury/Monserrat Caballe operatic epic ‘Barcelona’. The BBC’s coverage of the Olympics from that city meant it was on air ad infinitum. I described Madonna’s ‘This Used to be my Playground’ as a “dreadfully boring ballad” and Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears in Heaven’ and Michael Jackson’s vomit-inducing Christmas hit ‘Heal the World’ were so coated in sugar, there was nothing worth listening to in the centre.

Yet none of these compared to the year’s biggest-seller. It wasn’t that Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ was a dreadful song. It wasn’t. And, of course, Whitney’s interpretation of Dolly Parton’s composition was stunning. It’s just that the whole romance of the thing, the ‘Bodyguard’ brand marketing, turned my stomach. Even now I find it a tough listen. When I went to see the West End musical version of The Bodyguard’, starring the brilliant Beverly Knight, I was probably the only one on the audience not to be crying buckets when Beverly belted out the big number.

Moving hastily back to the good stuff, as The B-52s would have it in 1992. My 1991 obituary for the passing of decent dance music turned out to be a tad premature. For starters, Dr Alban’s ‘It’s My Life’ was a huge Euro disco hit, and for obvious reasons. I’d never heard of him before but the Nigerian-born Swedish DJ/producer had already become successful on the continent. After ‘It’s My Life’, that success continued, but not over here. I thought Snap! would be pretty much a one-hit wonder but that had been just an appetiser for ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’.

The words weren’t important, of course. Nor, in truth, were the vocals – perfectly adequate though they were – of Thea Austin and rapper Turbo B. It was all about the synthesizer riff. As an intro, it was reminiscent of a bugle call to arms, only this time hailing the hordes on to the dance floor. It worked. Unlike many big Euro dance tracks, ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ had the structure of any good pop record: a proper start, middle and finish, although this didn’t necessarily work for DJs trying to incorporate the ‘boof, boof’ finale while segue-ing into the next record. Anyway, only Whitney’s hit outsold it that year in the UK.

It wasn’t just about Swedish and German electronica, though. Britain was producing some great Euro-sounding dance music, too. Once pigeonholed as rave acts, some were really crossing over into the pop world without really compromising their dance reputations.

For years, I imagined Felix to be some anonymous figure toiling from a soundproofed chalet studio deep in the Westphalian forest but apparently he hailed from Chelmsford! His enduring anthem ‘Don’t You Want Me’ has been remixed at frequent intervals but why mess with the original in the first place?

The Utah Saints created some top tunes with the help of creative sampling of well-known voices. The best example was ‘Something Good’, which flew to four in the summer. So smart was the sample of the ”I knew that something good was going to happen” line that I didn’t realise it came from Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’, hence the ghostly images of Kate’s 1987 video amidst the Saints’ own promo. The band was unusual in that they could actually perform live rather than just twiddle a few knobs on a synth and wave their arms around.

And then there were The Shamen. For starters, they had the – for me - attractive propensity to sing live on TOTP. This was pretty much unheard of for a techno-dance act, either before or since, and first surfaced on the previous autumn’s top fiver, ‘Move Any Mountain’. They originated in Scotland, but the rapper Mr C brought a touch of London street ‘bantah’ and a DJ-land credibility to their sound. Everything came together in September, when ‘Ebenezer Goode’ leapt to the top of the singles chart.

It wasn’t merely a cracking track to dance to. It had a unique quality to it, perhaps best illustrated by Mr C’s opening lines:-

                        “Naughty, naughty, very naughty

                        Ha ha ha ha ha”

It was indeed very naughty. The “Es are good, Es are good” chorus obviously extolled the virtues of the drug du jour, Ecstasy, which did result in the single being banned temporarily by the Beeb. However, as I imagined The Beatles did a quarter of a century earlier over ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, The Shamen and their record company must have had their fingers tightly crossed behind their backs when insisting that the song was really about a shady club underworld character! See what I mean?

“He takes you to the top, shakes you all around
Then back down, you know as he gets mellow”

Anyway, there was sufficient lyrical ambiguity to let them off the hook, and ‘Ebenezer Goode’ proceeded to sell almost 300,000 copies before being prematurely deleted after about six weeks! It stayed in the clubs much longer.

Dance still wasn’t dead by the following year but, thanks to a male vocal quintet from the North West, the UK pop music axis was swiftly shifting.

1991 – All bound for Mu-Mu land

Strife was still bubbling around the world in 1991. The break-up of Communist Eastern Europe hadn’t settled revolutionary fervour. In June, Slovenia and Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia, laying the foundations for the appalling war there in the following few years. President Gorbachev survived a coup in the Soviet Union but, understandably fearing for his life and opting for a quieter (and more lucrative) retirement, finally jacked it in at Christmas. But the worst violence was the preserve of a UK-US alliance.

Operation Desert Storm began on 16^th January, heralding six weeks of carnage as our forces blitzed Iraq to rubble in retaliation for the invasion of Kuwait. Talking of slaughter, Iron Maiden made the cunning and cheeky calculated move of releasing ‘Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter’ at the perfect time to displace holier-than-thou Cliff Richard from the number one spot in the New Year. While they didn’t stay at the top for the Iraq War, the hostilities were instead accompanied by the rise of Enigma’s contrasting ‘Sadness Part 1’!

Metal tracks rarely registered with me, but several monsters did register in the upper echelons of the chart. In January, Queen channelled their inner Led Zep in their six-minute single ‘Innuendo’, crashing straight in at number one. At the time, I described it as “such a slovenly mish-mash of HM posturing, flamenco guitar (!) and sub-Bohemian Rhapsody effects”. In many ways my contemporaneous opinion still holds water, but I might now replace the word ‘slovenly’ with ‘oddly appealing’! 

It certainly wasn’t the best year for the band, but then Freddie Mercury’s health, like their music, was in rapid decline. I was shocked to see Freddie’s skeletal appearance in the video for the awful ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’, and so the news of his death in November from “an AIDS-related illness” came as no surprise. Neither did the consequent surge to the Christmas number one slot of a re-released ‘Bo-Rhap’, twinned with the new and grossly inferior ‘These Are the Days of Our Lives’. When the following Easter, Mercury’s life and music were celebrated in a Wembley fundraising mega-concert, it was only fitting that ‘Innuendo’ was sung by Led Zep’s Robert Plant.

Metallica also featured heavily in that show but at the time their brand of chugging guitar rock in hits like ‘Enter Sandman’ wasn’t to my taste. The same went for Nirvana, whose sensational ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ assaulted the top ten in November. It was another year or two before I came to appreciate Kurt Cobain et al and buy not one, but two Nirvana albums – and then he went and shot himself…. I like to think the two events are unconnected.

U2 went ‘Rock’ in the autumn, too. Releasing ‘The Fly’, they announced it would be available for three weeks only. Would it have topped the chart otherwise? Maybe, but it ranks as one of my favourite U2 tracks of all time, from one of my favourite albums by any artist, Achtung Baby. This also kicked off the band’s predilection for extravagantly-staged multimedia event shows, beginning with the ZooTV tour in 1992-93. I just wish I’d grabbed the opportunity to see it for myself instead of just on video. 

It was another good year for the rock ballad. Guns ‘n’ Roses seemed more appropriate interpreters of ‘Live and Let Die’ than Paul McCartney ever did, while Extreme temporarily went acoustic for the memorable romantic number two song ‘More Than Words’.  1991 also saw German behemoth band The Scorpions go global with the stirring power ballad ‘Wind of Change’.

Of course, I had never heard of them, but this record was to become one of the world’s biggest-selling singles in history, not just in Germany. Forever associated with the country’s reunification – and a million times better than David Hasselhoff’s crass, but for some reason hugely popular ‘Freedom’ – it was actually written about the fragile political situation in the Soviet Union. Yet the precise political inspiration behind the song is unimportant; it just works wonders as a glorious emotional ode to the human spirit.

However, where sales are concerned, it paled into insignificance compared with the UK’s biggest seller of 1991. Following the previous year’s Ghost supremacy, it was the turn of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves to attract hordes into cinemas and enjoy Kevin Costner and his Merrie Men fight in the forest and ultimately kill Alan Rickman’s gloriously over-the-top Sheriff. From the film came Bryan Adams’ even more all-conquering track ‘Everything I Do I Do It For You’. It was number one for an unbelievable sixteen weeks, spanning July to October. For all its irritating longevity, it remains one of the all-time best movie love songs, perfectly structured with its piano intro, climactic crescendo then final breakdown. I wasn’t aware at the time, but the incessantly-broadcast Julien Temple video was mostly filmed not in glamorous California but in little ol’ West Somerset. Take a bow, Kilve beach.

In the days before she sold her songs to some of the biggest stars on the planet, Norwich’s Cathy Dennis enjoyed a modest solo career of her own. Her dance tunes were instantly forgettable but I have fond memories of the less successful ballad ‘Too Many Walls’. Terry Wogan seemed impressed, too! 

I’ve never liked Spandau Ballet’s over-rated ‘True’, but I have to admit the simple guitar motif sounds much better on PM Dawn’s ‘Set Adrift on Memory Bliss’. Another American hip-hop single which effortlessly evokes the emotions of West Coast sultry dog days was ‘Summertime’ by Jazzie Jeff and the Fresh Prince. I never watched the latter’s Bel Air sitcom but Will Smith was a rapper I could listen to. Occasionally. 

From hip-hop to trip-hop. I suppose it got its name from mixing hip-hop and Acid House beats and 1991 gave us one of the best examples in the form of Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’. With its sumptuous strings, minor synth chords, Shara Nelson’s soulful vocals and the ‘heyyy hey-hey heyyy’s, together with the groundbreaking single-shot video in non-descript LA, it all felt so American; yet it was a very British, ney Bristolian, production. Seal was another domestic star with a transatlantic sound. His biggest hit ‘Crazy’ went silver early in the year, making him more than just ‘that bloke with the facial scars who sings on Adamski’s ‘Killer’’. Like ‘Unfinished Sympathy’, it possesses a smooth, chilled, almost ambient style. Not quite a ballad, not quite pure dance, not quite a political statement, it nonetheless successfully fused elements of all three, and it was one of my favourites of ’91. 

Trip-hop was also to the fore in the work of the most successful, possibly the weirdest and definitely the most controversial singles artists of the year. The KLF wasn’t the first project created by thirty-somethings Jimmy Cauty and A&R man Bill Drummond. They had already topped the chart as The Timelords but in 1991 they blew us away with something very different.

The coming together of hip-hop, trance, soul and a punkish attitude was altogether too much for me at the time. When ‘3am Eternal’ went to number one in February, I described it as “awful claptrap”. Kind of Snap! meets The Prodigy meets The Clash. What was all this nonsense about The Justified Ancients? MuMu Land? I never understood it then and I still don’t. ‘Last Train to Trancentral’ was more of the same but, when they flew to number two in December, I began to appreciate their music a bit more. ‘Justified and Ancient’ must go down as one of the most bizarre collaborations in pop history, marrying Drummond’s offbeat take on music with the country legend Tammy Wynette!  How did that happen? Well, according to the lyric: 

“They called me up in Tennessee
They said "Tammy, stand by The Jams"
But if you don't like what they're going to do,
You better not stop them 'cause they're coming through” 

Apparently Drummond was a Country fan. Whatever. It was a chart-topper in eighteen countries and refreshed the career of Wynette, introducing her to a whole new generation of listeners and rave-goers for whom breakbeats and wacky lyrics (“They’re justified and they’re ancient And they drive an ice cream van”. I mean, really?!). And that proved to be their final single. Their outlandish thrash metal performance of ‘3am Eternal’, climaxing with Drummond firing a machine gun at the incredulous audience of suited and booted record industry execs at the 1992 Brit Award ceremony, proved to be a dramatic suicide note for the duo’s musical life.  

Many artists have proclaimed they are the people to revolutionise the music business, overthrow the status quo and go out on a high. The KLF are the only ones who succeeded, if only for one year. They proceeded to delete their entire back catalogue and move into arthouse territory, culminating in the public burning of a million pounds. Did they make a statement? Oh yes. That Drummond and Cauty were a couple of obnoxious mad numpties with more money than sense.  Mind you, I believe their subversive anarchistic attitude hasn’t extended to a boycott of Spotify, and 2017 saw them dip a toe back into the public eye..

Speaking as I was of The Clash, the veteran punk rockers finally hit the top with Mick Jones’ ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’, thanks to Levi’s latest TV ad campaign. Not, in my view, their finest musical moment. I much preferred the rawer Strummer sound of ‘Rock the Casbah’, the re-release of which peaked at a mere fifteen. Not quite ‘London Calling’, but in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, it had an apt contemporary political comment to make. 

The Sixties were re-born in the guise of Cher’s monotonous ‘Shoop Shoop Song’ (aka ‘It’s In His Kiss’), a massive hit from the ‘Mermaids’ soundtrack. The comedian Vic Reeves later teamed up with the ubiquitous folk/alt rock outfit The Wonder Stuff to update Tommy Roe’s ‘Dizzy’ while The Doors’ brooding ‘Light My Fire’ blazed into the charts on the coat-tails of Oliver Stone’s biopic of the original stoner band. I have never understood why this had failed to light up the UK charts back in ’67 but for all the media obsession with recreational drugs, the sound didn’t quite chime with the early Nineties scene. Good, though! 

I couldn’t say the same about other songs prominent that year. I really detested Crystal Waters’ ‘Gypsy Woman’, Kiri Te Kanawa’s ‘World in Union’ (part of ITV’s commercial blitz surrounding the Rugby World Cup) and The Simpsons’ ‘Do the Bartman’. Back then, Sky TV was in its infancy, with an audience still largely comprised of white van men’s families keen to adorn their terraced homes and flats with the latest hideous satellite dishes. Was I just being a snob? Most definitely. I therefore tarred the unfamiliar cartoon comedy with the same contemptuous brush. Consequently, any associated single never stood a chance with me. After The Simpsons appeared on BBC2, bringing it within my reach, I realised that instead of being brash American trash it was in fact rather brilliant, probably the funniest sitcom I’ve ever seen.

Strangely enough, it later transpired that Bart’s anthem was written by superfan Michael Jackson! He had kept it quiet so as not to interfere with the promotion of his new album Dangerous. I didn’t particularly like his number one single ‘Black or White’. I considered it ironic given that Wacko Jacko had by this time become more white than black. 

Jackson could no longer guarantee outselling everyone else; not in the UK anyway. His latest effort was easily eclipsed by an act I found it hard to like.  Simply Red’s fourth album Stars was released in September and took a grip on the album chart for well over a year, eventually selling well over 3 million copies. I wasn’t one of the buyers. Mick Hucknall may have boasted ginger hair and left-leaning politics but his brand of pop/soul wasn’t my thing at all. For me, Stars was the ultimate dinner party record. Too slow to dance to, too boring to listen to, it was fit only to play in the background while you ate and nattered, twinkling gently and inoffensively overhead while more interesting things were happening on the ground. ‘Something Got Me Started’ did at least have a bit of drive to it but the title track epitomised everything that was wrong – yet also right – about Simply Red. It was inescapable throughout December. Searching desperately for positives, I must admit it was preferable to ‘Fairground’, the group’s only number one from 1996. I hated that one! Maybe it was because I wasn’t really a dinner party person either.

MoR was beginning to grow, while Dance was starting to take itself less seriously, and not in a good way. However, there were some enjoyable tracks around. Candi Staton’s ‘You Got the Love’ was given a toe-tapping trancey update by British DJ/producer The Source. Florence and the Machine’s more recent high octane version is perhaps better known over here, and there have been other dance remixes but I still love The Source’s bubbly synths.

K-Klass went to number three with ‘Rhythm is a Mystery’, probably forgotten by everyone except me. I shamefully recall having it as an answer in a Rotaract pop quiz at the time, with only one team knowing it. I still wake up in a cold sweat remembering what a ridiculously difficult quiz I devised. Lessons were learnt, of course. They never let me fly solo writing all the questions again, and rightly so.

Now for the sillier songs. Oceanic’s ‘Insanity’ sold surprisingly well, its House piano bed and catchy chorus making it a popular party anthem before the term was ever used. It also helped to have your act name beginning with the number two. 2 in a Room’s ‘Wiggle It’ and 2 Unlimited’s ‘Get Ready For This’ were great for Rotaract discos – and were indeed played at quite a few! - but not much else.

I tend to think of Erasure as an Eighties band, but they probably enjoyed more success in the Nineties than they did in the previous ten years. In ’91, ‘Chorus’ was the biggest hit but the more memorable one was ‘Love to Hate You’. Not so keen on the echoes of ‘I Will Survive’ but otherwise definitely one for dancing to. REM first appeared on my radar, too. Not their utterly brilliant ‘Losing My Religion’, but the top-tenner ‘Shiny Happy People’. Back then, Michael Stipe could actually pass for being of a sunny disposition!

Later I would ponder on the likelihood of the song being about something far more miserable and depressing. Yet the lyrics are simply full of ‘happy’s. Lots of them. Speaking of misery, Morrissey’s fave Manchester band (apparently) and one-time ‘baggies’, James, took ‘Sit Down' to number two, with a gloriously upbeat rhythm and vocal. Yet its theme was supposedly that of mental illness. In the words of Kurt Cobain: oh, well, whatever, never mind! It became a song we could enjoy at discos while, well, sitting down. Also Tim Booth was to become one of my favourite singers.

Some front men and women have truly amazing voices. I’m thinking Freddie Mercury, Karen Carpenter, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison. Others are memorable for being uniquely bizarre: I give you Kate Bush, Noddy Holder, Rod Stewart. However, Booth comes into the category of just sounding wonderful for no apparent reason whatsoever. James didn’t quite repeat the success of ‘Sit Down’ but the follow-ups and his occasional appearances on 'Later… with Jools Holland' cemented Tim Booth’s as one of my all-time top voices.

There was plenty of sex in the charts and on TOTP. Color Me Badd wanted to sex me up while Salt n’ Pepa insisted: ‘Let’s Talk about Sex’. No, let’s not! However, one of the most entertaining three minutes of music came courtesy of a camp couple of Putney gym club owners with little hair but a twinkle in the eye. Richard Fairbrass had you from the unaccompanied baritone monotone opening lines:-

“I'm too sexy for my love
Too sexy for my love
Love's going to leave me”

And just kept going! Even the band’s name, Right Said Fred, possessed just the right sense of fun and comedic nostalgia, while ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was one of the rare tracks you could jig along to with a stupid grin on your face. Bryan Adams kept it at number two for a record-equalling six weeks but it outsold all but three singles in the UK and even scooped an Ivor Novello songwriting award. I suspect that was merited by one of the finest finales of any song ever. It simply ends with:

“I’m too sexy for this song”.

That’s all, folks! It had ‘one-hit wonder’ stamped all over it and yet for all its novelty value, ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was not the beginning and end of RSF’s musical career. I actually preferred the Christmas follow-up, ‘Don’t Talk, Let’s Kiss’ while the following Spring, ‘Deeply Dippy’ presented them with a number one success, and a second Ivor Novello. But it was the first single which remains unforgettable. Let’s face it, we’ve all strutted around the living room singing “I’m too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts”, haven’t we. Haven’t we? Oh, maybe it’s just me then, but I don’t care.

1990 - You know you talk so hip, man, You're twistin' my melon, man

Ah, the Nineties! In the Eighties the Seventies were ridiculed for their tank-tops, flares and safety pins. In the Nineties, it was the Eighties we all laughed at: all those leg-warmers, shoulderpads, Yuppies and poodle-haired singers. However, apart from MC Hammer's trousers, I think history has treated the final decade of the second millennium relatively kindly.

Radio remained king, Top of the Pops advanced fearlessly into its fourth decade, vinyl’s days were numbered, the cassette survived in its association with the Walkman but the CD took control. Even I could not resist the new dominant technology. Maybe it was my growing up but after years of focussing on taping stuff from the radio, I started borrowing CDs from the library (and taping the best tracks) and even buying them. Mostly Greatest Hits compilations by artists like Kate Bush, Stranglers, Erasure, Julian Cope and such like, but at least I had the kernel of a music collection I could show to anyone who ventured into my little empire.

Talking of empires, the Stock Aitken Waterman hegemony was crumbling. Prolific as ever, but there was no longer the guarantee of massive chart success. Fortunately they still had Kylie. SAW’s final number one single was her cover of ‘Tears on My Pillow’ but 1990 also brought us possibly her best SAW-era pop song, ‘Better the Devil You Know’.

Meanwhile Jason Donovan’s chart career experienced a surprise slump. Kylie’s movie role in ‘The Delinquents’ led nowhere but Jason’s subsequent appearance at the London Palladium the following year was to be a roaring success. I saw him on the famous stage and must admit he was rather good. The Hit Factory wasn’t quite spent. Donna Summer had fallen out with the production trio, but her loss was Lonnie Gordon’s gain. A genuine soul singer rather than pop starlet, she had a number four hit in February with the excellent ‘Happening All Over Again’.

At the same time, Depeche Mode were back at their best. It came only second on my end-of-year ‘Other’ genre list but ‘Enjoy the Silence’ is now probably my favourite electronic anthem of all time. Martin Gore’s writing had turned darker, and his costumes wackier, but the band had also become huge around the world, even in the States. I was horrified upon hearing the 2004 remix. It had jettisoned much of what I loved about the original; the humming harmonising synths providing an opulent duvet of sound, so warm I don’t want it to end.

Electro-pop was nevertheless being relegated under the onslaught of dance music. House may have been an American invention but this was a great time for British acts. For all the excellence of Black Box and Technotronic, who each capitalised on the ‘megamix’ mania in 1990, it was home-grown artists enjoying the most success. So much so that a ‘Brits 1990’ dance medley, featuring the likes of Street Tuff, S-Express and 808 State went to number two in January. There was more to come later in the year.

This was the year when The Dance Anthem was celebrated in Capital Letters. We had The Orb’s ‘Chime’, Guru Josh’s ‘Infinity’ and all sort of weird trance stuff which, in the certain absence of Ecstasy, would have emptied Rotaract dance floors everywhere if played. Inside a mammoth tent in a remote Sussex field, they would have gone down a storm. Helped by 12” single sales, such tracks did make the top 20 and thus almost guaranteed some radio airplay, but this wasn’t the music I was listening and dancing to.

‘Dirty Cash’ by The Adventures of Stevie V was one of the year’s highlights for me, although Adamski’s growling synth classic, ‘Killer’, introducing the silky soulful vocals of Seal, sold many more copies. The lovely Betty Boo went solo, peaking at three with ‘Where Are You Baby?’. The inevitable house piano intro, a catchy chorus and some wacky rap made for a winning combination. Monie Love was a more authentic hip-hop star, and her ‘It’s a Shame’ was a great vehicle for her rapping and genuine singing voice. Its mid-pace shuffle beat was also perfect to move my feet to! 

Brit producers DNA did a wonderful job transforming Suzanne Vega’s wistful New York observations on ‘Tom’s Diner’ into a dreamy chillout dance anthem, in which we could sway a bit to the Soul II Soul-like beat while chanting “Der der der-der, der der-der der” at frequent intervals. Bass-O-Matic’s ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ was another excellent record which pierced the top ten. Londonbeat’s ‘I’ve Been Thinking About You’ was definitely at the pop end of dance, and was another of my favourites in 1990. Despite the name, Londonbeat were partly American, fronted by Jimmy Helms, but we clasped them to our patriotic bosom in that year of British House and trip-hop.

Of course there were some stand-out international dance tracks, too. There was no getting away from ‘The Power’ by German act Snap! or Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’, and both have stood the test of time, even though I didn’t much like them personally. The same goes for Vanilla Ice’s ’Ice Ice Baby’. Gratuitously sampling Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’ bass hook, it was very hard to take seriously the rap credentials of a lantern-jawed white Texan. However, the boy could move and it was infuriatingly infectious, out-selling every other dance record that year.

I couldn’t really take New Kids on the Block seriously either. ‘The Right Stuff’ had been a number one at the end of 1989 and ‘Hangin’ Tough’ was the first new chart-topping single of the Nineties. They were better dancers than singers, although they seemed over-fond of the ‘wave your arms from side to side’ move. In my head I wrote them out of my musical memory as a two-hit wonder. Yet on checking the stats, it appears that they had eight consecutive top-tenners in the UK. What? How did that happen? Fair to say they were much bigger in the States than here, a blue-collar Take That.

One of the dance tracks most fondly remembered from 1990 was the first football song it was OK to like. Englandneworder’s ‘World in Motion’ harnessed the Hacienda cool coefficient of New Order to the lyrics of footie-mad Keith Allen. And then there was that rap by England winger John Barnes. ‘Back Home’ and ‘Fly the Flag’, this wasn’t. Gillian Gilbert looks terribly uncomfortable in the cheap ‘n’ cheerful video, and Bernard Sumner only slightly less so but, excepting his goal at the Maracana, this was Barnesy’s finest hour.  

It was released for the World Cup which would forever be known as Italia 90. On the pitch, at least in this part of the globe, the tournament became associated with Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne, who bawled his eyes out after being booked in the semi-final against West Germany. However, the Italian hosts are of a more cultural disposition. Instead of wheeling out the likes of booze-sozzled Keith Allen, they launched the competition with a concert featuring the global opera stars Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti. They became branded The Three Tenors, and football would never be the same again. Italia 90 was the first football event to transcend mere sport. TV audiences were huge, reaching countries not normally known for their football prowess.  

The fact that the BBC’s coverage used Pavarotti’s rousing rendition of Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ strengthened the connection between footie and opera, and the charts suddenly took on a strange look. He went to number two here, and the Essential Pavarotti and the Three Tenors concert recording itself were each amongst the six biggest selling albums of the whole year. Extraordinary! For all the “Vincero, vincero!”s, Italy didn’t win. It would have been fitting had their team of Maldini, Vialli, Mancini, Baresi and Toto Schillaci emerged victorious in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico but they were knocked out on penalties by Argentina.

I loved that World Cup.  Slagged off for its lack of goals and its infamous red card-ridden final, it nevertheless had so many dramatic ingredients, featuring two English teams (one representing Ireland) and Scotland, the surprise heroes of Cameroon and the likes of Maradona at his best. Yet it was the added element of top-class music which cemented this tournament as one of my all-time favourites. It didn’t convert me into an opera fan, buying up Covent Garden tickets for Turandot, but it was an unforgettable summer with the contrasting soundtracks of Pavarotti and John Barnes. 

It wasn’t just opera flying the flag for classical music. Nigel Kennedy’s interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons sold an amazing two million copies and the unconventional violinist’s image was as ubiquitous as not only Pavarotti’s but also Kylie’s, Madonna’s and George Michael’s. Not really my thing but the opening bars of La Primavera are as uplifting as any piece of pop.

Unlike Kennedy, you wouldn’t have caught any members of The Housemartins wearing bondage leather boots or Aston Villa shirts. In fact, by this time Hull’s finest had flown the nest for good. And yet their progeny prospered. Norman Cook, not yet Fatboy Slim, went to number one with the sample-heavy ‘Dub Be Good to Me’ as part of his genre-bending Beats International combo. Meanwhile, Paul Heaton and Dave Hemingway had formed The Beautiful South and in 1990 they matched their ex-bass player’s success. They won hearts and minds with an impudent line in catchy melodies and witty lyrics, few better than ‘A Little Time’, featuring a duet of Hemingway and Briana Corrigan as a warring couple. There would be plenty more from them in the next few years but this was to be their only chart-topper.

I liked some other quirky singles, too. The B-52’s ‘Love Shack’ was an incredibly infectious retro dance track, an instant Rotaract disco stalwart. The Beloved were more of the age. I loved ‘Hello’ which, while not making the top ten, had an off-the-wall lyric. Their eclectic roll-call of names in the chorus was unique. How many songs would rhyme Jeffrey Archer with Jean-Paul Sartre or William Tell with (backing singer) Kym Mizelle?! My favourite couplet, immortalising a Brookside TV character and a once-exciting Crystal Palace winger was:-

“Billy Corkhill, Vince Hilaire
Freddie Flintstone, Fred Astaire…”

Also high on the quirkometer was ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ by They Might Be Giants. Apparently it’s a song sung from the viewpoint of a nightlight. Yes, really. But it’s just fun listening to the abstract nonsense, delivered in a deadpan Massachussetts drawl. I couldn’t have been the only one because it made surprising progress to number six here.

For all her colourful career, Madonna entered a monochrome phase, at least where her videos were concerned. In April, her paeon to the magazine ‘Vogue' went straight in at four, supported by a typical song-and-dance video (“Strike the pose”). My diary recorded: “she’s joined the House beat brigade and beaten them at their own game. Shame I don’t like the song”. I was astonished to read this final sentence as ‘Vogue’ quickly became my favourite of Madonna’s copious canon.

For all ‘Vogue’’s magnificence, it wasn’t enough for La Ciccone. She had been flirting with controversy for a while but when the tacky ‘Hanky Panky’ came out, some of us thought she had lost the plot. It was back to the Forties but with a song explicitly yearning to be spanked! It wasn’t even any good. Talking of explicit lyrics there was little ambiguity in the words of ‘Justify Your Love’. The black and white video depicting plentiful sex and gender-bending S&M was banned by MTV, which of course merely cranked up the notoriety dial to eleven and made the song a worldwide hit in December.

The drum riff was lifted from James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ and everyone was sampling Clyde Stubblefield’s solo, from Public Enemy to George Michael. True to form, Madonna virtually made it her own on ‘Justify Your Love’, the beat complementing the eroticism of her breathy, mostly spoken, vocal. I felt almost guilty at liking the record but it was beautifully beguiling.

Another b&w video falling foul of some censors was made for Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’. After featuring in David Lynch’s film ‘Wild at Heart’, the song took off around the world. The ghostly slide guitar and Isaak’s cool, brooding voice helped place the song second on my end-of-year ‘slow/ballad’ list. Apparently about unrequited love, there didn’t seem to be much ‘unrequitedness’ going on in the video, as Isaak cavorted on a beach with a naked Helena Christensen!

It was a good year for director David Lynch because his groundbreaking TV mystery series ‘Twin Peaks’ was unleashed. We wouldn’t normally have watched such a programme, especially as it was scheduled on BBC2. However, the gamble paid off.  The pilot episode was like nothing like I’d ever seen before. Basically a whodunit but with so many red herrings, weird characterisation and stylish touches that it seemed impossible to pigeonhole into any known genre. Indeed, as the series progressed, the plot also became impossible to follow but that wasn’t the point. Part of its charm was in Angelo Badalamenti’s music. The eerie theme tune was an instrumental version of Julee Cruise’s ‘Falling', with words by Lynch. Borrowing a phrase by lead character Dale Cooper, it was ‘damned fine’! 

There was more backwoods Americana in the form of Alannah Myles’ bluesy ‘Black Velvet’. OK, so Myles is Canadian, but it’s a paean to Elvis Presley, inspired by a bus trip to Graceland. From the first line:- 

                        “Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell”

the mood is set, the picture painted; you can almost feel the oppressive heat. It was popular just about everywhere, and still sounds great. Coincidentally, Bobby Vinton’s Sixties track ‘Blue Velvet’ also made number two on the UK that year, but I’d rate the darker material slightly higher.

Big ballads provided the three biggest selling singles of 1990. It proved the symbiosis between film and music which was to dominate the charts in the early Nineties. Weepie ‘Ghost’ topped the box office list, and its soundtrack centrepiece, ‘Unchained Melody’ by The Righteous Brothers did the same for UK singles. Bobby Hatfield’s soaring tenor filled the airwaves throughout autumn while the erotic clay scene in the film must have sent thousands, humming the song, to pottery evening classes. 

The second most popular film was ‘Pretty Woman’. I don’t know whether careers advisors were overwhelmed by girls wanting to become call girls and meet wealthy Richard Gere lookalikes but the movie’s top track was Roxette’s magnificent ‘It Must Have Been Love’. This certainly ranks amongst my fave ballads, even if it tells a sad story. Only a number three hit here, it was huge in the States.

On the other hand, a Prince composition handed Sinead O’Connor her career highlight, ‘Nothing Compares 2U’. Prince’s obsession with numbers and letters in song titles was rather tiresome but I can forgive him anything after Sinead’s emotional performance of his unreleased track. The simple video has become iconic, and it’s hard not to be affected by the sight of O’Connor’s full-screen pixie face and blue eyes letting tears fall in tune with the autumn leaves. Apparently she and Prince almost came to blows, his hostility to her fondness for swearing merely serving as a challenge. I’m sure he didn’t resent the generous royalties the cover version generated.

Putting aside the hysterical horrors propagated by the living mullet that was Michael Bolton, the other successful slowie I enjoyed from that year was Elton John’s ‘Sacrifice’. One of those songs which flopped originally, it gave Elton his first solo number one single in the UK, and deservedly so. Hardly an uplifting love song, it nevertheless resonated with the public and kept Pavarotti and the England football team off the top during the World Cup. I like to think it was the summit of the summer soundtrack, although the truly awful ‘Turtle Power’ and Timmy Mallett’s ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny…..’ (under the pseudonym Bombalurina) actually topped the charts during a hot and sticky August.

As an aside, visiting a small art shop in Saundersfoot, Pembrokeshire, we showed interest in an attractive painting of a boat. The £5K price tag put paid to any realistic thought of purchase but it was a revelation to be told it was the work of the aforementioned Mr Mallett. No longer the irritating children’s TV entertainer, he is now apparently a respected artist. A shame that to people of my age he will always be associated not with beautiful beachscapes but stupid hats and hideous summer party hits like this one.

1989 had been dubbed the official Second Summer of Love. However, 1990 was the year when the Madchester sound, MDMA and yellow smiley logo really crossed over into mainstream common culture. Not that we were all dancing like loons fired up by LSD or Ecstasy pills. It’s just that a lot of the music seemed really good.

The Stone Roses were the archetypal Madchester band, their first album frequently appearing in ‘greatest of all time’ polls despite hardly anyone ever having bought it! They had numerous singles, half of them with ‘Stone’ in the title, but I don’t remember any of them. It was only when I borrowed the album from the library several years later that I discovered the glories of the slow-burning opener ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ and ‘She’s a Waterfall’.

I’ve never warmed to Ian Brown’s airy-fairy voice but I suppose having strong powerful vocals weren’t really important, potentially detracting from the psychedelic sound which was aimed at stoned partygoers. Shaun Ryder probably never won awards for his singing ability either, but his Happy Mondays released two Mancunian monsters in ‘Step On’ and ‘Kinky Afro’. Both stalled at five in the charts but I really enjoyed them. The former was better to dance to, while the follow-up was made for turning up the volume and listening. 

Also demonstrating their ‘mad for it’ credentials were The Soup Dragons’ ‘I’m Free’, The Farm’s ‘Groovy Train’ and Candy Flip’s lazy, hazy cover of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Nevertheless, perhaps the outstanding example of the genre was EMF’s ‘Unbelievable’. An infectious dance number with attitude, it did its stuff without MC Hammer’s baggy ‘loons or Bez’s maracas, but apparently if you listen to the backing vocals it’s full of profanities. Ah, 1990. You could get away with anything. Unless you’re Margaret Thatcher, whose reign of political and social terror finally, and surprisingly, came to an ignominious conclusion. That, too, was unbelievable. As The Las sang that winter, ‘There She Goes’….