1994 - It's got nothing to do with Vorsprung durch technik you know

There were some momentous events happening around the world in 1994. Rwanda and Yugoslavia were experiencing horrendous civil wars, yet the IRA announced a cessation of hostilities and Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty. Nelson Mandela achieved the unthinkable by becoming President of South Africa but Labour’s new leader John Smith died of a heart attack, clearing the way for Tony Blair to mould the party in his image.

It wasn’t significant at the time but the first new number one of the year was D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, used three years later as the signature tune for New Labour’s successful election campaign. D:Ream are now probably better known for boasting current science broadcaster extraordinaire Professor Brian Cox on occasional keyboards. Tough on Peter Cunnah, who pretty much did everything on the recordings.

John Major’s Tory government was spouting platitudes about getting ‘Back to Basics’ and that seemed to be what was happening in the charts, too. Suede toned down their rockier sound and introduced some sweet strings on ‘The Wild Ones’, performed live here - sans orchestra - on Jools Holland’s then groundbreaking BBC2 show ‘Later with…’. I thought it simply had to soar to the top three in the footsteps of the band’s ‘Stay Together’ but it stalled at eighteen. Never mind, Brett, it was the first (and only) cassette single I ever bought.

Around the same time, Madonna’s ‘Immaculate Collection’ became the first CD album I purchased, too, so my new flat at 30 Radford Court must by then have been adorned by a new-fangled CD player. Although I was busy hiring CDs from the library for selective taping, I felt the bachelor pad deserved the foundation of a proper music collection beyond my tapes of miscellaneous tracks largely nicked off the radio over the previous decade.

Earlier in the year I had bought a cassette of Erasure’s Greatest Hits compilation. Pop! However, it had been released before ‘Always’ gave them what felt like a comeback hit. It had a fresh sound, but nevertheless unmistakeably a Bell/Clarke synthpop production. Rather too many extraneous beeps and electronic twirly bits for my liking but definitely one of their best slow numbers.

An Eighties electro classic was re-mixed in ’94 to accompany another singles compilation, this time by New Order. I don’t think I bought it until the following year, but it did allow me to become better acquainted with ‘True Faith’. For some reason it didn’t leave an imprint in 1987 but in November its rise to the top ten catapulted it into my list of all-time faves. My arms still sprout goosebumps when listening to the melody and lush production. Forget the new video: the original is peerless!

One cassette album I did buy at Christmas was Blur’s 'Parklife'. I know the date because for some reason I still have the receipt from Billericay High Street’s claustrophoblic little ‘Slipped Discs’ shop. £8.49. Sounds quite a lot these days. I should have waited twenty years and paid a fiver in HMV. The band’s ‘Girls and Boys’ and title track (featuring Phil Daniels’ delicious delivery of those witty Damon Albarn lyrics) had wormed their wily way into my head, and I splashed out. It was, and remains, a wonderful album, totally different from anything else I’d heard. They were all terribly ‘cheeky chappy’ faux Londoners, accentuated by the Walthamstow greyhound stadium images on the album cover. There was other, less knees-up, material to enjoy, too, such as ‘To the End’ and ‘This is a Low’.

The whole Britpop rivalry with Oasis had yet to be manufactured. Back then, I don’t recall being particularly impressed by the latter’s singles from Definitely Maybe. Only the Christmas song ‘Forever I’ fared particularly well, but the song I remember most distinctly was ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. Not totally in a good way. In particular, the message of nonchalantly-dipped fags as ‘cool’ has never chimed with me. I’ve never developed a taste for booze either, but that’s by the by! In spite of my lack of vices, I couldn’t help a sneaking admiration for this dollop of grunge guitar rock, but wouldn’t become a fan for another twelve months or so.

Talking of alcohol (!), Guinness ads were beginning to take on a marketing life of their own. They tended to mine the past for musical accompaniment and the 1994 ‘Pure Genius’ commercial had the winning idea of taking a minute-long excerpt from Louis Armstrong’s gorgeous Bond song ‘We Have All the Time in the World’. The ad propelled the original to number three in December. The following year saw Perez ‘Prez’ Prado’s Orchestra do even better with ‘Guaglione’ thanks to an engagingly quirky ad.

Levi ads had already spawned chart hits but in ’94 the jeans megabrand adopted a different approach of featuring music from new artists. As a result, Scottish grungesters Stiltskin stormed to number one with ‘Inside’, whose rocky intro formed the unexpected backing to this ad entitled ‘Creek’. The rest of the song was quite good, too!

Grunge was going especially strong at the time. Even The Cranberries, whose light, ethereal ‘Linger’ had lingered for months in the chart, ventured into the fuzzy guitar territory on the dark, brooding anti-terror anthem ‘Zombie’. However, when it came to grunge, there really was nothing to surpass Nirvana. I know many hold up Pearl Jam as kings of the genre but frankly I couldn’t name a single song of theirs. Mind you, at the start of the year, Kurt Cobain’s trio certainly wouldn’t have been my Mastermind specialist subject either but a single BBC2 broadcast was about to change all that.

In November 1993, Nirvana had followed the release of their third album In Utero with a performance on MTV’s Unplugged show. I didn’t record the date I watched it on TV here but it was probably early ’94. I recall Dad staying up to watch it with me and he also seemed to approve. Of course, his reaction may have been different had they had been fully electric and blasting out the boisterous ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. 

It wasn’t as if I knew most of the songs they played; I was familiar with only ‘Come As You Are’. However, it was heartwarming for me (and maybe John Major) to see a rock band going back to basics, and hearing something different in Cobain’s voice. From the raucous rock roar I knew from their singles, here was a cracked bluesy moan which worked really well. Not sure about his scruffy outsized jumper. My favourite track was ‘All Apologies’, the acoustic version trumping almost anything I had heard from the band.

‘Come As You Are’ features repetition of the line “I don’t have a gun”. Unfortunately, Kurt was lying. He did have a gun. And in April, having succumbed to heroin once more, he turned it on himself. I came home from work one night and Dad told me that some pop star had committed suicide. I had no hesitation in guessing the Nirvana frontman. Dad was impressed. I was just rather sad. To me, he wasn’t a rock god. I was no part of the Generation X for which he was supposed to speak so eloquently through his music. I just felt it was such a waste. The Unplugged gig was released as an album later in the year, and I bought it. I also picked up Nevermind, but I only really liked the first half. The rest sounded far too angry and discordant for me. Yes, I’d already turned into my dad!  

Or had I? After all, I don’t think Dad ever expressed any approval for dance, trance or disco. Apart from his Sixties impression of Tom Jones, I can’t even recollect seeing him actually dance. It may have been my last year in Rotaract but there were still some new anthems to get me going at village halls around the county. Identifying my three favourite dance singles of the year, by coincidence they all had ‘night; in the title. The Real Thing did well with ‘Another Night’ but surely one of the highlights was Corona’s eternally uplifting ‘Rhythm of the Night’. 

A song which divided opinion like few others was Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’. However irritating the song and cheesy the blonde Danish singer, it was undeniably catchy. It went straight in at number one in September and became the second biggest seller of the year. 

The song it displaced at the top had been there an interminable fifteen weeks so a change was overdue. Indeed, the song had been all around us for a few months longer. Back in May, I went to see the new hit film ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ with Elaine from Rotaract. An excellent ‘date movie’, not that anything came of it. As for the film, it became huge, made a star of Hugh Grant and made it OK to say ‘Fuck fuck fuckity-fuck’ (but not at home). It also revived the career of Wet Wet Wet, whose cover of ‘Love is All Around’ dominated the soundtrack.

After hearing it back in the Seventies on the Savile show, I’d loved the Troggs original. It was a cute, sweet love song adorned with subtle guitar and strings. Fast forward 27 years and Reg Presley’s Summer of Love composition had been transformed into a Big Ballad for the Nineties multiplex generation. It was perfect for the romcom and, once released, it topped the charts throughout the summer, shifting almost 2 million copies and eclipsing even Bryan Adams’ effort two years earlier. It was not, as Robbie Williams proclaimed in his TOTP intro, the biggest seller of all-time but had the band not insisting on deleting the single while still number one, who knows what it could have achieved? 

There were other huge love songs, but most just sounded over-bombastic crap to sell cinema tickets and soundtrack albums. Bon Jovi’s ‘Always’ is a case in point. All-4-One’s R’n’B dirge ‘I Swear’ was pinned at number two for a record-breaking seven weeks by Marti Pellow and the boys, but a true legend went all the way in April.  

Amidst his infamous falling–out with Sony, Prince was no longer Prince. He wasn’t even officially ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’. No, he had reduced his brand to a ‘symbol’ which defied pronunciation. No matter. He still took his falsetto-laden ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ to the zenith. I couldn’t understand why. I daresay he wooed and bedded countless beauties with it but, unlike most of his stuff, it just sounded mind-numbingly boring. Another example of me missing the point, as it proved to be Prince’s only number one single in the UK. Well, not Prince exactly, but – er – the Artist/Symbol. Whatever. 

Mariah Carey never needed to resort to falsetto. Her destruction of ‘Without You’ also went all the way in February. Singer of the original, Harry Nilsson, had died only a month earlier, so he must have been spinning in the proverbial at what Mariah’s excesses were doing to his 1972 classic. 

Marcella Detroit’s soprano was similarly in the canine auditory scale but she seemed to know when to rein it in. Having been booted out of Shakespear’s Sister, she wrote and sang ‘I Believe’. Had it been used for ‘Four Weddings…’ instead of ‘Love is All Around’, I reckon it could have been almost as popular. However, it wasn’t, and it reached only eleven here. One of the better ‘big ballads’, in my book.

If anything I preferred Lisa Loeb’s ‘Stay’. No superfluous trills and runs, no grandiose production, no self-indulgent promo, just a simple romantic message, beautifully delivered. Apparently it was featured in a film but for me it was the young American’s own performance in the video that won me over. Sadly, Loeb became another ‘Outstanding Newcomer’ Brit winner who barely troubled the chart thereafter. 

Bruce Springsteen also showed his sensitive side in his ‘Streets of Philadelphia’. Appropriately sombre in mood, the song accompanied the groundbreaking AIDS movie Philadelphia. Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar but Bruce cleaned up in the Academy Awards, Grammys and everywhere else with this elegiac track, one of my Springsteen favourites.

Anther artist to re-appear in the top three was Kylie Minogue. ‘Confide in Me’ shared a basic trip-hop beat with Bruce’s hit but the rest was a smorgasbord of dance and Eastern rhythms. Her S/A/W days were long behind her, but somehow, like Madonna, she seemed to hook up with the right people at the right time, record the right song and be re-born. 

It was a good year for solo female singers. Gone were the days when the Brits nominee lists consistently consisted of Madonna, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, plus a few extras plucked from the inside pages of the music press. I enjoyed hearing Tori Amos performing ‘Cornflake Girl’ and at the end of the year, Sheryl Crow brought an agreeable brand of Country to the charts in the form of ‘All I Wanna Do’. She sang of a Los Angeles world I didn’t know, nor particularly wanted to know, but did so in such a way that even the Santa Monica Boulevard sounded exotic. And then there was Dawn Penn. Amongst another crop of reggae hits, her re-working of an old song ‘You Don’t Love Me (No, No No)’ stood out. The nine-beat tattoo intro suggested something more lively but it morphed into a summer slice of rock-steady, perfect for the June-July heatwave.

There was still space in the charts and my heart for the more offbeat. The Beautiful South had for several years been prize purveyors of light-hearted yet perceptive pop. Ready for the Christmas market, they released their first compilation album Carry On Up the Charts. In barely a month it became the second biggest seller of the year, and went on to be five-times platinum. The band was commonly described as everyone’s second favourites, and I succumbed to temptation the following year. 

Located further along the oddball scale were The Crash Test Dummies. My diary notes that I didn’t like their number two hit ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ at first but it certainly grew on me. The strange baritone voice of Brad Roberts may well have grated with many, but it has a unique aura about it, an archetypal slow-burner. Strangely it wasn’t hugely popular in their native Canada, but trust the Aussies to celebrate the bizarre! 

Well, I’ve got this far into 1994 without mentioning Take That. Not that they weren’t successful. Far from it. They toured extensively, garnered more hits and, had ‘Love Ain’t Here Anymore’ not faltered at three, would have delivered an impressive sequence of eleven consecutive number ones. Their success was inevitably spawning competitors in the new ‘boy band’ market. 

Boyzone debuted with a limp version of the Osmonds’ ‘Love me For a Reason’ but Let Loose re-released the far superior ‘Crazy For You’. I had designs on Lois, the PA to the head of department at work. We had a few sort-of dates in London but we weren’t really suited. However, I do remember that she quite liked Let Loose (as well as Jimi Hendrix) but I didn’t need her to tell me that ‘Crazy For You’ was a cracking single. 

East 17 were a different beast. They were the Stones to Take That’s Beatles, the boys your parents wouldn’t really want you to consort with, unlike nice wholesome Gary, Mark et al. They weren’t dancers and to my untrained eye, they just looked ridiculous in back-to-front baseball caps. I know they cultivated a mean, moody image but I’d bet they were about as hard as jelly!  Their career hit a highpoint at Christmas when ‘Stay Another Day’ topped the chart. It wasn’t even a Christmas song but add a few bells and dress up the drongos at the back in white furry snow suits et voila! I was no fan but had to concede that Tony Mortimer could write some decent stuff.

Could the boy band era last, would synths take over the world or, just possibly, could guitars make a prolonged comeback? I may have reached my mid-thirties but there was still new music to entertain a dinosaur like me.

Iiiiit's Chriiiist-maaaaas!

Christmas is, of course, a time for music. It’s the season not only to be jolly but also to bathe in the warm, soapy waters of traditional songs. Yet what counts as tradition has changed markedly in my lifetime. 

As a child, Christmas music meant carols. That’s it. Pop songs come and go but the tunes and words of festive hymns stay with us for life. I think my favourite from primary school was ‘Away in a Manger’, with ‘Silent Night’ the best for atmosphere and ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ or ‘While Shepherds Watched’ for a bit of up-tempo Crimbo. 'O Come All Ye Faithful' was more for grown-ups and I still think you can keep the dreary ‘In the Deep Midwinter’.

Growing older, I have disassociated myself from the religious element of carols and just listen to them as pleasant memories of Christmases past. A few years ago, as a member of the Quantock Musical Theatre Company, I performed a range of carols and other songs at various events through November and December. It gave me a new perspective, learning harmonies and singing tenor parts which may or may not be the melody ingrained in my head for five decades or so!

I did discover the history behind some of them. The ‘Coventry Carol’ sounded enchanting, though I say it myself. They could write tunes in the sixteenth century after all, I also enjoyed singing ‘Gaudete’. When Steeleye Span took it into the charts in 1973, I hadn’t appreciated it was even a Christmas song, nor that it was sung in Latin. Once you know that ‘Gaudete’ means ‘Rejoice’, a slight knowledge of French or Spanish is enough to understand the following lines in the chorus, “Christus est natus, ex-Maria virgine, Gaudete!” translates as “Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, rejoice!” I don’t have a recording of any of the QMTC a capella performances but the link above features Maddy Prior and her folky fellows doing their stuff.

Yet, away from the school hall, shopping centres or railway stations, carols are rarely heard these days. Once November begins, you start to take note of the muzak in shops. As the Hallowe-en masks are whisked back into store, and the fireworks are flogged at a huge discount, suddenly the shops are filled with the sight of tinsel and Santas, and the sound of Jonah Lewie’s “Dum-a-lum-a-lum-lum”s and Roy Wood’s school choir. When did the Christmas pop song become the ‘new tradition’?

There were no such hits in the Sixties that I can recall. I since learned about Harry Belafonte’s ‘Mary Boy Child’ from 1957, which was the first UK million-selling single. That same year, not even Elvis could elevate ‘Santa Bring my Baby Back to Me’ above seven in the charts. I had to make do with endless repeats on Junior Choice of someone lithping hith way through ‘All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth’.

It's just as well that carols were omnipresent because there were no other festive Christmas number ones to celebrate. From ‘Moon River’ to ‘Green Green Grass of Home’, they were always major hits, but nary a jingle bell to be heard. ‘Lily the Pink’, ‘Two Little Boys’, ‘Grandad’ and 'Ernie' introduced the formula of family-friendly novelty records before John Lennon, Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band released the bitter-sweet ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ in 1972, hopefully bringing the Vietnam War’s demise closer. Sadly people preferred to buy Chuck Berry's 'My Ding-a-Ling'. Fortunately, the next year we had some home-grown fare to enjoy, with Slade, Wizzard and Elton John, besides some long-forgotten festive comedy songs.

Throughout the Seventies the big Christmas songs piled up (the unfairly-neglected 'We Wish You a Wombling Merry Christmas', Greg Lake, Johnny Mathis et al), before a short hiatus. That came to an end in 1984. When Bob Geldof assembled a ‘who’s who’ of British pop at Sarm West Studios on Sunday 25^th November to record a song he’s composed with Midge Ure, with the sole purpose of raising millions for the victims of the Ethiopian famine, the Christmas charity phenomenon was born. The massive free publicity for Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, including piles of the hastily-pressed  singles in all shops and a five-minute broadcast of the promo video on BBC1, generated sales of more than three million.  

Of course, it helped that the song itself was a cracker: it was simultaneously a catchy singalong festive number and a tear-jerking reminder of why we should sometimes think of others worse off than ourselves. OK, so some of the lyrics were lazy but the message reached its target. Most of those performers are still household names, too, which is more than can be said for most participating in Band Aid 2 and Band Aid 20. More importantly, we realised that music could genuinely change the world. 

‘Do They Know it’s Christmas?’ even had the resilience to bring in more money for the Band Aid charity in three successive generations of pop royalty, although none could possibly match the punch packed by the original in ’84. Spare a thought for Wham, Gary Glitter and Queen. They all chose that winter to release their own Christmas classics. ‘Last Christmas’ sold a million without reaching number one but has proved to be one of the most popular, endearing seasonal songs and, following George Michael's Christmas death in 2016, could yet top the chart thanks to millions of streams in 2017.

The following year, the still-young ‘NOW’ brand released ‘The Christmas Album’, its first UK Christmas compilation. I know I bought it. With none of those dreadful Phil Spector productions, it was a great collection of British chart hits (but not Boney M’s ‘Mary’s Boy Child’) from Band Aid to Bing Crosby. Now the stores had something to play to get shoppers in the festive mood. They haven’t stopped since. 

Apart from the later versions of Band Aid, Shakin’ Stevens’ ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ and a couple of Cliff Richard crimes against music, there have been no true Christmas number ones in the intervening thirty years. I don’t count East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’ from 1994. Adding some chimes and sleighbells, and dressing the baseball-capped bad boy boy-band in white fur doesn’t really make it a Christmas song in my book. Nevertheless, if it’s one of Angie’s festive faves, clearly mine isn’t the only opinion. 

Topping the charts on 25^th December isn’t the only symbol of Christmas success. Jonah Lewie (‘Don’t Stop the Cavalry’), Greg Lake (I Believe in Father Christmas’), Mariah Carey (‘All I Want for Christmas is You’) and the extraordinary collaboration between Kirsty McColl and the Pogues (‘Fairytale of New York’) each fell agonisingly short of the top spot.  

Songs which tell a sentimental story at Christmas often do well. That’s probably why the bitter-sweet Irish-American ballad, Lewie’s wartime soldier’s thoughts and Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’, something we can all recognise, are arguably more popular now than they were when first released. 

In November 2013, Leona Lewis released a career-rescuing single, ‘One More Sleep’. I’m no fan of Lewis and her skin-crawling Carey-esque embellishments, but the song did seem to tick the right boxes when it comes to ingredients for a Christmas winner. Ironically it was blocked by the latest X Factor winner, Sam Bailey, an artist pretty much ignored ever since. I wonder if ‘One More Sleep’ becomes the ‘Fairytale of New York’ twenty years hence? Possibly, but probably not. 

In my humble opinion, ‘Pop Idol’ and ‘The X Factor’ have destroyed the whole excitement of The Christmas Number One’ in the past decade. Thanks so much, Simon Cowell! Apart from a few one-off charity records and an anti X Factor protest pipping the likes of Joe McElderry and James Arthur, ITV’s overblown ego and tear-fest has taken over, and the Christmas song has suffered in consequence. But there is a chink of light: the failures of the 2015 and 2016 winners has perhaps opened the door to a return. 

Probably everybody who wanted to buy the Christmas classics has already done so. However, the easy access to the tracks online and the changing chart rules in favour of streaming does seem to have given them a new lease of life. For the first time in years, Wham, Carey and The Pogues are all queuing up to depose Ed Sheeran and a potential flurry of charity efforts.

Just as long as there are no American Sixties re-runs, spacemen comin' a travellin', mistletoe or wine, I don't mind. For just a few weeks a year, even this Scrooge can cope with a cracking Christmas tune. I'll leave you with surely the best of them all. Take it away, Slade, and 'Merry Christmas Everybody'!

1993 - Time to break free, nothin' can stop me

At some point during the year, one of my newer Rotaract colleagues, Elaine, expressed excitement at the rumour of Gary Barlow moving to Billericay. Noticing my blank look, she seemed part pained, part amused at my apparent – and genuine – ignorance of the aforementioned celebrity, who may or may not have been gracing our town with his presence. “You know? Take That!”.

Well, at least I had heard of Take That; I just wasn’t au fait with the individual band members. By the end of 1993 there probably wasn’t anybody under the age of 50 who didn’t know Gary, Robbie, Mark, Jason and Howard. During the previous year they had racked up five top 20 singles, culminating in the up-tempo cover of ‘Could it Be Magic?’ at Christmas which peaked at three. The next single, the dreary ‘Why Can’t I Wake Up With You’ made two but it was ‘Pray’ which signalled their arrival as true pop stars.

It was a brilliant song, nice vocals by Gary, a beat you could tap your toes to, and another of those daft almost homoerotic videos full of moody, topless poses and slo-mo shakes of the head in water. Their days as purely gay icons were gone; suddenly every young female was after the quintet. To my knowledge, Mr Barlow never bought a house in Norsey Road but his songs were everywhere. Not only ‘Pray’, but also ‘Relight My Fire’ and ‘Babe’ went straight in at number one, making Take That the first act ever to have such a hat-trick in the UK.

I don’t remember the term ‘boy band’ being applied to any previous group, but suddenly it was a popular label with which TT were encumbered, prompting the launching of various copies such as Louis Walsh’s Boyzone. However, Gary and the boys were not ready to relinquish their crowns as pop princes.

I suppose the Osmonds and The Jackson Five had been prototype pop boy bands, releasing a stream of mostly vocal hits. They did actually play some instruments although it was obvious that, apart from Gary on the piano, Take That were primarily eye candy, decent dancers (apart from Gary, again) and proponents of passable vocal harmonies. Michael Jackson’s career clearly hadn’t been harmed by his abandoning his brothers; he was, after all, only the biggest star on the planet.

One reason for that was his willingness to experiment and attract some top-notch collaborators from other genres. One of my favourite Jacko singles from the Nineties was ‘Give In To Me’ which reached number two in March ’93. It was a true rock ballad, fuelled by Slash’s guitar licks and solos. At the same time, Lenny Kravitz was doing the same thing, swinging his dreads while knocking out some mean rock riffs on a ‘flying V’. That month, Iron Maiden also made it a temporary haven for old-school metal. It didn’t last. However, the summer did deliver another slice of meat-and-two-veg rock in the form of ‘Two Princes’ by New York’s Spin Doctors. Angie hates it and it has been voted one of the worst songs ever. Not in my book. Its simplicity, basic structure without the excesses of contemporary icons Kiss and Aerosmith, makes this track one of my not-so-guilty pleasures.

Two British superstars who had long since left the bands which made their respective fortunes were earning rave reviews with new albums. Sting brought out ‘Ten Summoner’s Tales’, including some sumptuous singles. I remember one of my work colleagues, with whom I tended to associate more muscular music, going into raptures over the bucolic charms of ‘Fields of Gold’, and quite rightly so. It’s one of those songs whose layers of echoing synth chords and delicious vocals beg you to stop what you’re doing and listen and lose yourself in the music. ‘If I Ever Lose My Faith in You’ was another great record, yet neither pierced the UK top ten, which is quite baffling.

The solo career of another post-punk New Waver, Paul Weller, really gathered momentum with 'Wild Wood'. I recall being delighted on first hearing the title track, yet it spent a mere three weeks on the chart. Another mystery. Maybe it was deliberately deleted by the artist or his record company, but it deserved a longer shelf life.

Duran Duran had taken a few sabbaticals but sensibly Simon le Bon never attempted to go it alone. In January, their beautiful ‘Ordinary World’, from their ‘Wedding album’, crept up to six and proved to the world they weren’t to be consigned to the bargain bins of New Romanticism. Lovely lyrics, written and delivered with mature restraint by a 34 year-old Simon Le Bon, combine with an elegant verse and stirring chorus, topped off by a memorable descending guitar riff. This is probably their last great single but it’s life-affirming that Duran Duran still tour and make new music, free of the nostalgia circuit. Long may they do so!

1993 was the year when I finally realised that, to grow up properly, I really needed to escape the bosom of the family home. I had always got on extremely well with Mum and Dad, which made the whole palaver of searching for my own place less urgent. However, my days in Rotaract (nominally for 18-29s) were clearly numbered and the prospect of finding my own way was not as frightening as it had once been. I had sufficient savings for a deposit, so finance wasn’t an issue. I wasn’t looking to move too far, and so we perused together some local properties. I came close to securing a 2-bed flat but it wasn’t until the next year when I finally moved into 30 Radford Court for the princely sum of £52,000!

All of this coincided with the success of M People’s Elegant Slumming album, including the intoxicating ‘Moving On Up’. Obviously it wasn’t written with my house-hunting in mind. It was more a feminist anthem giving an errant boyfriend the heave-ho, and with Heather Small’s deep, rich voice, no boyfriend would dare challenge the decision. I’m pretty sure I didn’t associate my own life and the song title at the time; only in retrospect does the title neatly encapsulate my thinking. Anyway, Heather Small’s distinctive towering hairstyle was everywhere that year and M People were deservedly hoovering up all sorts of awards.

It was also a year that brought two other very different artists to my attention for the first time. Radiohead seemed quite ‘normal’ back then, and their re-released debut single ‘Creep’ struck a chord with me. Not the weird lyrics about some form of obsession, but the semi-grungey music. That grumbling bass intro, the mysterious chord progression and ugly double guitar slashes were like nothing I’d heard before, not even from Nirvana. This was before Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood et al became rock legends with a disturbingly obsessive, possessive fanbase. Their massively popular Nineties albums did yield the occasional commercial single I liked, such as ‘Fade Out’, but I have never ‘got’ Radiohead, and in my mid-fifties, surely never will.

Of course, they have a right to exist. In fact the rock world would be a poorer place without them. I’ve long felt the same about Bjork. The diminutive ex-Sugarcubes singer has been pigeonholed in the ‘difficult’ box, labelled as perennially weird and an enemy of the media. She may have had her run-ins with intrusive photographers; quite frankly, considering it natural behaviour for a mum protecting her child, I don’t blame her. As for Bjork’s music, my relationship with her has followed similar lines to that with Radiohead. However, in 1993 she released three astonishingly contrasting singles. ‘Play Dead’, made with David Arnold, was a movie song but not for James Bond. They surely missed a trick there. ‘Big Time Sensuality’ was a shimmering electronic oddity, showcasing Bjork’s endearingly unique vocal style, full of squawks and childish dancing. However, it was seeing her perform ‘Venus as a Boy’ on telly, not TOTP, that I recognised her exquisite talent.

It wasn’t a big hit, but the vulnerability and gentle emotion in her voice grabbed me by the gut in a way the Icelander has never achieved since. With her pretty, elfinlike appearance, she came across not so much a pop star but as a fairytale character; not as distant as Enya, less precisely rehearsed than Kate Bush. Bjork was half-tomboy, half pixie. She possessed the innocent moon face of a tweenie, yet the mature musical mind of a 27 year-old woman. The song itself has hints of jazz and touches of Indian percussion yet at heart it’s a simple pop ballad. Her Glastonbury performance sums up everything which seemed so wondrous, yet simultaneously slightly irritating about her.

Michael Stipe was another mild eccentric who by ’93 was helping REM to global superstardom. After hearing the rocking ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite’, baffling ‘Man on the Moon’, bewitching ‘Everybody Hurts’ and the beautiful nostalgic drum-free ‘Nightswimming’, I was moved to buy their new album ‘Automatic for the People’, the year’s second biggest-seller. Even the failed single ‘Find the River’, which closed side two (yes, they still had 12” LPs) was glorious. For all the ingenious string and woodwind arrangements, and Mike Mills’ piano, on ‘Nightswimming’, it was the lullaby-like ‘Everybody Hurts’ which most represents REM that year.

I found it hard to like Stipe’s twang, but I could at least appreciate his phrasing of his own lyrics. The band was impressively talented, too, swapping instruments while the front man did his usual angsty thing at the mic. Like most great acts, they passed me by in the live sense. However, I always enjoyed watching them performing live on TV, if only to spot the fleeting moments when Michael Stipe’s face cracked into a smile!

New Order had been quiet for three years, so it was a welcome treat to see the video for their new single ‘Regret’ on TOTP. Well, the ‘Baywatch’ aspect was largely lost on me – and the band don’t exactly look comfortable on a Californian beach either - but the rockier sound met with my approval. Their ‘Best Of…’ compilation came out the following Christmas and I think I bought the cassette not long after. I think they are dreadfully under-rated. They have done dance, electronica, pop-rock, and often in the same song! From sustaining the Eighties Hacienda scene to appearing at the 1993 Reading Festival, the rockers’ mecca, they were always a cool band. Still are.

2Unlimited certainly weren’t cool but ‘No Limit’ proved to be their biggest UK hit. The contemporary joke was that, once the minute-long techno intro finally gave way to Anita’s vocals, she sang “No, no, no-no-no-no, no-no-no-no, no-no there’s no lyrics”. Of course, dance anthems don’t exactly demand deep and meaningful words, and the Dutch duo enjoyed a string of successful singles using the same winning formula.

There was more of the same from Capella’s ‘U Got to Let the Music’, Culture Beat’s ‘Mr Vain’ and one of the great Nineties tracks from any genre, Haddaway’s ‘What is Love?’. The Germany-based Trinidadian gave us this majestic debut, a searing dance beat with a melody worthy of listening to without your dancing shoes on. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the pre-Will Smith Fresh Prince hip-hopped their way to number one with ‘Boom Shake Shake the Room’. One of the rare rap tracks I quite liked, thanks to Will’s tongue-in-cheek delivery, it was a million miles from the new breed of gangsta rappers like Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac and Public Enemy who were beginning to infiltrate the UK singles chart.

For some reason, 1993 became one of the biggest years ever for reggae and its modern offshoot, ragga. In one March week, the top three consisted of Shaggy’s “catchy” ‘O Carolina’, Canadian white boy Snow’s ‘Informer’ (“repetitive crap”) and Shabba Ranks’ “sexist ego trip”, ‘Mr Loverman’. Note the italicised quotes from my diary on 26^th March.

Two months later, it was a top three consisting entirely of more traditional reggae. Only Inner Circle were Jamaican, and ‘Sweat (la-la-Long)’ bounced its merry way to number three, justifying my description as “a jolly little holiday song”. Swedish band Ace of Base went further with their ‘All That She Wants’. The Berggren sisters could sing live, too, as they did on TOTP here. The blonde-brunette combo had a slight touch of the Abbas about them, and indeed their 30 million global sales put them third behind the fab foursome and Roxette in Swedish pop annals. ‘The Sign’ was another number one the following year and, to my surprise, it even became America’s biggest-seller of 1994.

Of course, any period of reggae dominance must include our own UB40. On their way to the top that week in May, their inevitable contribution was another cover version, this time of ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love’. Shuffling along in the same predictable groove as ‘Red, Red Wine’, it had similar huge success without really floating my boat. It was at least better than the “erotic” Sharon Stone thriller Sliver from which the track emerged. However, when it came to enervating Caribbean rhythms, the year belonged to Chaka Demus and Pliers.

The Jamaican DJ and singer combined to entertaining effect, making the top three with three consecutive singles. At first, I didn’t appreciate ‘Tease Me’, but it grew on me. ‘She Don’t Let Nobody’ was a slower number but probably my favourite was their ragga take on ‘Twist and Shout’. It never stood a chance of being the Christmas number one, but did top the chart once the decorations came down. I’ll even go as far as saying this version surpasses that of Brian Poole or The Beatles three decades earlier. It’s not exactly the same structure, of course, but through the patois you can just about detect the familiar guitar riff.

Apart from Take That, what kept Chaka Demus and Pliers at bay for a few weeks was an act which sends shivers down the spine to this day. The ‘performer’ must be the tallest ever to make number one and probably the pinkest. Mr Blobby was simply unstoppable that Christmas! The spin-off from BBC1’s Saturday evening show Noel’s House Party was the first, and surely the worst, in a sequence of home-grown children’s TV characters to achieve Christmas success. Give me Bob the Builder any day! At least the proceeds helped supplement the Beeb’s income and kept me in a job!

From Mr Blobby to Meatloaf isn’t as vast a chasm as you might think. And I’m not talking merely of the physical similarities, uncanny as they are. No, size is unimportant; I simply hate them both.

I cannot fathom why normally sane friends dissolve into raptures on hearing the first chords of ‘Bat Out of Hell’, a track so long I’m convinced whole civilisations have grown and collapsed before the final bursts of motor bike engine. The news that Meatloaf and Jim Steinman were working on a sequel to the original Seventies album filled me with dread. Unsurprisingly Bat Out of Hell 2 conquered all in 1993. But worst of all was the lead single, ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)’. Seven weeks at the top felt like seven years, it was a typical “interminable epic”. I won’t give it the extra exposure of a YouTube link but I can’t deny it formed part of my musical backdrop that autumn.

Changing the subject rapidly…. Ah, I refer to a band which has become possibly my favourite of all time. Yes, I know I have raved about Abba, Madness or even The Beatles, but they are predictable choices. I can claim only a quantum share of such musical megastars. However, I feel this band is more – well – mine: Saint Etienne.

They’ve had only one top ten hit, but umpteen which briefly illuminated the top thirty. In 1993, I first became enamoured of their wistful, Sixties-influenced covers and original music, when ‘You’re in a Bad Way’ and the joyous ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ adorned the stage of TOTP. Sarah Cracknell’s fresh and light vocals proved such a perfect fit with the rhythms of Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley, and I must confess I found her easy on the eye, too. My relationship with Saint (never St.) Etienne intensified two years later when they released a singles compilation Too Young to Die.

They may have taken their name from the French football club but Saint Etienne are very much part of the fabric of London. Most of their material from the mid-Nineties have been love songs to hidden corners of the capital and its people. Bob and Pete are also well into capturing the city on film, while Bob has written some well-received books and articles about the history of pop. His byline in The Guardian is always a welcome sight.

Imagine my delight, too, when I caught a short ad in Metro for remaining tickets to the band’s 2003 Christmas concert at the London Palladium. Who cared if I had nobody to go with; this was an opportunity not to be missed. It also turned out to be an unforgettable evening’s trawl through all their singles complete with guest stars like Etienne Daho and Edwyn Collins. Sarah self-consciously performed - complete with small baby bump! – front of stage, while black-clad Bob and Pete twiddled knobs behind banks of synthesisers. Thank you, Saint Etienne, for your enduring talent, and also staying below the celebrity radar and allowing me to feel that little bit closer to you.

Another London band was garnering rave reviews amongst the more mainstream media. Suede hadn’t really done much chart-wise but Melody Maker’s 1992 description of them as ‘the best new band on Britain’ helped convince the BPI and BBC to open the prestigious 1993 Brit Award broadcast with ‘Animal Nitrate’. I’m not sure they merited the introductory epithet of ‘already legendary’ but their performance of the song certainly made an impression on me.

The single was propelled to seven in the chart and Suede blasted off into the forefront of a whole new UK-born musical genre. Brett Anderson’s love of removing his shirt did nothing for me, and neither did his exaggerated vocal Cockneyisms, but I’d never before heard guitar work like Bernard Butler’s. If I had been remotely musical, I’m sure he would have inspired me to take up the instrument myself. Instead I contented myself with listening to his instinctive ear for accompanying melodies, riffs and licks on several chart hits. Maybe The Stone Roses and other indie bands had done something similar before, but for me this was a whole new sound. The shy Butler left Suede the following year but the band became a cornerstone, and maybe a catalyst, for a host of new bands which exploded from the underworld in 1994. Shining singles like ‘Trash’ and ‘Wild Ones’ were still to come but, while the term had yet to be coined, Britpop was upon us.