1996 - Step outside, summertime's in bloom

I reckon 1996 was one of the better years, personal and musically. Of course there were the usual highs and lows, disappointments and moments of euphoria but memories have been kind to the year in which I turned 35. However, for many teenage (and older!) girls, the walls of the world caved in on 12^th February 1996. Official helplines were set up. Samaritans volunteers must have worked their socks off. Yes, Take That announced their split. Four weeks later, their final single – an insipid cover of The Bee Gees’ ‘How Deep is Your Love?’ made its predictable entry at number one. The UK sat back and prepared to be wowed by Gary Barlow’s barnstorming solo career. To my surprise, the UK was to be sorely disappointed.  

Mark Owen actually won the race to release the first post TT album, but his opening single ‘Child’ in November was even worse than Barlow’s ballad 'Forever Love'. Back in the summer, his old mucker Robbie Williams zoomed in with a faithful copy of George Michael’s ‘Freedom’. Competent enough, but it sounded too similar to George’s original. So was this the new Robbie? While pratting about trying to be the Gallagher brothers’ new best friend – to their obvious irritation – doing as many drugs as he dared to ingratiate himself with Noel, would he attempt to carve a niche as a boring covers singer? Well, that’s how it looked at the time.

George Michael himself bounced back into the limelight after a five-year hiatus resulting from a lawsuit against his label Sony. The mournful ‘Jesus to a Child’ and upbeat ‘Fastlove’ each made number one and displayed the vocals and production quality to which both Gary and Robbie must have aspired and, in 1996, failed to do. I was no fan of George’s ‘mature’ music but had to admit that the man could sing.

Boyzone also capped a successful twelve months by taking another old Bee Gees song to number one. ‘Words’ was a decent effort, but the Irish quintet was such a feeble covers act compared with Take That. Despite Ronan Keating’s distinctive vocals, I found their impressive chart run inexplicable.

Talking of inexplicable, one of the most shocking news events of the year was the massacre on 13^th March by Thomas Hamilton of sixteen schoolchildren and a teacher at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland. Once the nation stopped grieving, the Government took responsibility and cracked down on handgun ownership. I’m not sure it actually reduced firearms offences but at least it sent out the right signals. Another outcome was a Christmas charity fundraising number one but also, indirectly, the success of a masterful chillout dance track by Robert Miles.

I read at the time that, frustrated by a lack of appropriate tracks with which to wind down his club sets, the Italian DJ produced his own: ‘Children’. This video made an atmospheric accompaniment to the soothing synths and the record sold 600,000 over here, plus millions more around the world. Who knew that a dance instrumental could pack such an emotional punch?

I also enjoyed Livin’ Joy’s ‘Don’t Stop Moving’ and Gina G’s ‘Ooh Ah…Just a Little Bit’. The latter’s success was no surprise, unlike its choice to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest. An unashamed pop dance track, it finished a creditable eighth place in Oslo. How we would welcome such a lofty position nowadays. At the time of writing, it remains the last UK Eurovision to top our charts, and unless there’s some seismic shift in Europolitics, I’m confident that won’t change in my lifetime.

However, when it comes to instantly recognisable Nineties dance intros, few can match the impact of The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’. I’d written them off as a rave act whose music meant absolutely nothing to anyone not off their face on Ecstasy. My opinion was swiftly swayed as soon as I heard that opening synth blast and watched that underground tunnel-set video with the spine-chillingly scary Keith Flint spitting out the lyrics. Grown-ups fainted in horror at Keith’s appearance but I was relieved to be sufficiently immature to relish the promo and the track itself. Bigbeat meets punk (‘Pigbeat’? ‘Bunk’?!). Whatever genre it’s allocated to, I loved it and still do.

As an aside, my sister Catherine got to know Keith as a regular customer when she worked at Chelmsford’s DVLA office. And very polite he was, too, apparently, although he kept his intimidating head under cover in the office! Good to know that, for all the band’s success over more than two decades, he remains true to his Essex roots. ‘Breathe’ also went to the top in the autumn, and the Braintree boys paved the way for another British bigbeat dance act, The Chemical Brothers, to have a number one. Admittedly, recruiting Noel Gallagher to provide vocals on ‘Setting Sun’ probably helped.

At the lighter end of the spectrum, it was a good year for wry, witty British pop. The Beautiful South had for some time shown the way for the genre, but ’96 featured what is my favourite TBS single, ‘Rotterdam’. Paul Heaton seemed to be taking a worrying Country turn, but this one just about stays on the right side of the divide. The acoustic guitar, complemented by accordion, blends beautifully with Jacqui Abbott’s voice. What’s more, it has such a happy vibe!

I’d never previously heard of The Divine Comedy, beyond some vague association with Dante. However, Neil Hannon’s band burst into my consciousness in July with ‘Something For The Weekend’. I don’t know why, but his melodies remind me of old TV or cinema ads but the lyrics sit up and beg to be heard over and over again. My old BBC colleague Russell once burned a Divine Comedy CD for me, but I confess I simply didn’t ‘get it’. However, I could listen to ‘Something….’ on a continuous loop. It starts out like a sleazy Leslie Phillips comedy before turning into a whimsical mystery. I think the whole is a modern fable warning dirty old men about taking girls into a woodshed. Great stuff!

Another band new to me was Space. Not the ‘Magic Fly’ French electro-disco outfit from 1977 but the bunch of Liverpool indie rockers. Lead singer Tommy Scott reminded me of the Buzzcocks front man Pete Shelley but his compositions were poles apart. ‘Female of the Species’ is perhaps best known, thanks to being used as the theme tune for ITV’s Cold Feet, but this was followed by the equally brilliant ‘Me and You Against the World’, ‘Neighbourhood’ and the following year’s ‘Dark Clouds’.

Combining nifty tunes and entertaining words is never easy to pull off successfully but Space were the mid-Nineties masters of the craft. What’s more, Scott broke the Britpop rules by actually appearing to enjoy himself on stage. No Gallagher-esque scowls; just cheeky grins or, in a V Festival performance I recall watching in 1998, Scott almost ‘corpsing’ with laughter in mid-verse. 

I can’t imagine Jas Mann doing that. When it comes to eye-catching debuts, few could beat his band Babylon Zoo. After part of their debut single, ‘Spaceman’ was used for another of those Levi’s ads, it generated huge advance sales and became the fastest selling single since ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ in 1964. I recall the first performance on TOTP and Jas Mann’s striking silver skirt ensemble became a talking point even in my office. The whole song was actually better than the advert extract had led us to expect and, with Mann’s otherworldly persona and the distorted guitars and backing vocals, ‘Spaceman’ sold a million inside five weeks. It wasn’t quite a one-hit wonder but they never graced the top ten again.

Kula Shaker may not have resembled alien astronauts but their fondness for Asian instruments, Eastern mysticism and Sanskrit lyrics marked them out from the rest of the Britpop crowd. Main man Crispin Mills, one of the thespian dynasty, was often written off as a pretentious prat, perhaps with some justification. Nevertheless, ‘Tattva’ was an interesting record, going to four in July, and superior to the more Western, Sixties-ish rocker ‘Hey Dude’, which went two places higher. 

Jamiroquai sounded like a Stevie Wonder tribute act but couldn’t have looked more different. Jay Kay’s penchant for wacky Native American headgear (as in the ‘Iroquai’ bit, although mis-spelt) got him noticed, and ‘Virtual Insanity’ was agreeably funky. However, my appreciation of pop stars usually ranks in indirect proportion to their egos, and in those years the Cat in the Hat’s ego was one of the most monstrous in music.  

The Lighthouse Family were the new darlings of Easy Listening. Renewed airplay led to a re-release of ‘Lifted’ and suddenly they were on every show going. The ‘Ocean Drive’ album had actually been deleted. A year later it had sold well over a million. A bit too Easy listening for me, and I’m no fan of Tunde Baiyewu’s voice, but the gently flowing verse and rising chorus always leaves me – well, uplifted! It does stray into dangerous Gospel territory towards the end but I’ll forgive them.  

The Britpop guitar bands were still going strong, with Shed Seven’s ‘Going For Gold’ and Mansun’s ‘Wide Open Space’ adding to my engagement with the genre. The latter band, from Chester, was hotly tipped to be the Next Big Thing. Wrong! Great debut, though, the epic sound living up to the title. John Power’s band Cast were always reliable hitmakers, and ‘Sandstorm’ in January was probably their best.

The Manic Street Preachers were never really part of the Britpop scene. In fact, prior to 1996 I knew very little about them, other than the mysterious disappearance of their troubled guitarist and co-songwriter Richey Edwards. Suddenly, emerging from the ether at the end of April, came a new single ‘Design For Life’ and I had a new modern favourite. It made a huge impression on me. If I thought ‘Wide Open Space’ was epic, then ‘Design….’ transported epic to a whole new dimension. It had a stirring continuous riff, anthemic chorus and lyrics about working class struggles (“Libraries gave us power”). What could I not like about it? The Everything Must Go album also gave us another solid rocker in ‘Kevin Carter’ and seeing them on TV at Glastonbury made me resolve to see them live. I’m still resolving…. 

Of course, they wear their Welshness very prominently on their sleeves. The red dragon breathes fire from their stage, and of course it was the Manics who wrote and recorded the Euro 2016 song for the Wales football squad. Loving the Manics has certainly helped me integrate with the locals since moving to Wales; it’s practically the law. However, I wish they’d do one big gig in Cardiff so I can get tickets before they are snapped up. I had a chance in 2016 but I was too old and set in my ways to make the trip to Swansea. Some fan I am.

It was a memorable summer. My attempts at meeting someone special via Dateline finally brought me to the hands of Jane in Ealing but sadly no further, and the first fickle flames of a relationship were quickly extinguished by the lady in question before we could celebrate my birthday. I did make a few lasting friends. In particular, Polish Margaret (and husband Minas) still swap Christmas cards with me and she motivated me to take a coach holiday to Zakopane in September. It was also a notable summer for sport, and a few songs are forever associated with the big events.

The big holiday hit in Europe was a remix of Los Del Rio’s ‘Macarena’. It made number two here but was absolutely massive in the States. I tend to associate the song with the Atlanta Olympics in August. It seemed obligatory for participants and the American spectators to perform the awkward little dance. For me, it did at least distract from the fact that the Games were the worst in living memory, not just for the British team’s paucity of medals but for the whole crass commercialism and US propaganda preached by the domestic TV coverage. Thank God for the BBC!

Slightly more parochial than the Olympic fortnight are the European Football championships, now abbreviated handily to ‘The Euros’. In ’96, England were the hosts, sparking a wave of football mania throughout June and beyond. Simply Red had the official England song, but nobody remembers it now, and even fewer bought it then. Keith Allen inevitably was involved in a left-field pub fan ditty ‘England’s Irie’ with Black Grape. However, the record which really captured the mood of the times was ‘Three Lions’ by Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds.

The two comedians had become well known for their Friday night show on BBC 2, Fantasy Football League, essential viewing for Dad and me. It was a live and irreverently funny half hour with amusing clips, light-hearted footie chat with guests, dressing-gowned Statto, local park or back garden re-creations of famous football incidents, and all usually ending with a dreadfully tuneless song performed by Jeff Astle. The Euros were made for them. Football was coming home…. With Ian Broudie’s music and lyrics by David and Frank, ‘Three Lions’ turned the traditional tale of England’s perennial tournament failures into a realisation that the heroics of 1966 “could be again”. It’s a fantastic record. I still get goosebumps listening to it now, and I don’t even support England. It sold well over half a million, reaching number one twice, split by the four weeks in which The Fugees’ million-selling hip-hop ‘Killing Me Softly’ cover held sway.

Sadly for the home fans, England bowed out in a semi-final penalty shoot-out against the Germans (who else?). A nation mourned. Maybe the record was simply too good to be wasted on England. According to the striker Jurgen Klinsmann, the German team were also singing it on the way to Wembley and it reached their own top 20.

A World Cup update also topped the UK chart two years later but England’s ‘years of hurt’ have now expanded to fifty years and counting. The words are due a re-boot. After all, I remember:-

                        That Beckham red card

                        Rooney stamping too hard

                        Seaman grasping thin air

And Iceland’s war chant….

Never mind. For a few glorious weeks, England was united in a unique mood of unfamiliar optimism. Of course, Terry Venables’ side weren’t actually going to win the trophy but it was fun to see and hear 90,000 stadium spectators singing a humble pop song, encapsulating ‘lad-dom’, Britpop and the renewed appetite for the sport, for just under four minutes.

Yet even Euro 96 doesn’t quite hit the highest notes. Probably the most anticipated and celebrated concerts of the decade were the two headlined by Oasis at Knebworth on 10^th and 11^th August. At the end of February, Oasis soared to the top with ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’, the epitome not only of Britpop but of the whole ‘Cool Britannia’ era. When Noel sang it at their April gigs at Manchester City’s Maine Road ground, it really couldn’t have got any better for the band.

It bore such a perfect message that, although having been released only a few weeks earlier, ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ was played in full to conclude the iconic BBC2 drama series ‘Our Friend in the North’. For some, it was a brilliant chronicle of Northern working class aspirations, success and failure (a bit like England FC), for others it was the series which made the name of Daniel Craig, in a most un-Bond- like character! For me, that musical climax was probably the most moving five minutes of non-sporting television I have ever experienced.

I also recall the TOTP finale in the week the single went to number one. Not only did they feature ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ but then Liam swaggered across from the piano (bet he didn’t play it!) to mime the B side. It turned out to be a belligerently unsubtle cover of Slade’s ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’. Oasis  definitely blotted their copy book that evening. It got me wondering what Noddy et al would have done with ‘Morning Glory’, etc. Rather well, I reckon!

Fast forward to August, and I tuned in to Radio 1’s live transmission of the Sunday night Knebworth concert. Typically, two people rang me that evening, interrupting my listening of the ‘Gig of the Decade’ (honestly, it was thus described at the time) and depriving me of an opportunity to say I was (virtually) there throughout. At least I did get to hear Oasis at their primal live best on tracks such as the opener ‘Columbia’, ‘Champagne Supernova’ and the peerless ‘Live Forever’. Sorted! Mad fer it! Summertime was, most definitely, in bloom.

It’s easy to visualise 1996 as a year when lads ruled the airwaves. From the Gallaghers to Prodigy, Paul Weller to Peter Andre, Jez Mann to Mark Morrison, men would appear to have a chart stranglehold. Not true. 

For starters, the biggest selling album came courtesy of the previously unheard of Alanis Morissette. There were no massive hits on Jagged Little Pill, just several excellent tracks delivered in unique style by the young Canadian. She sounded scary and even a little potty-mouthed as the woman scorned in ‘You Oughtta Know’, crazily kooky on ‘Head Over Feet’ and close to the edge in ‘One Hand in My Pocket’. Yet it’s her engagingly misunderstood take on irony which has probably been her most enduring song. Probably too many ‘aye-ee-aye-ee-aye’s but Alanis neatly channelled her inner Joni Mitchell into the live rock arena, as in this Hyde Park performance of 'Ironic'. 

She paved the way for any number of similar artists, from Meredith Brooks to Avril Lavigne, but it was a shame that her follow-up album failed to live up to the sky-high expectations of JLP, and Morissette moved naturally into acting. Country star Sheryl Crow also dipped her toes into rock with surprisingly superb results. There’s a nod to her roots with the squealing pedal steel bit but it could almost be the Oasis rhythm section behind the brilliant ‘If It Makes You Happy’. 

There’s obvious sonic references to Alanis on Alisha’s Attic’s ‘I Am I Feel’. From their mid-Atlantic accents I certainly thought the duo were more Americans but they were in fact from East London sisters, daughters of The Tremeloes founder Brian Poole. Dubstar were from Newcastle with a tendency to dreamy trance music. Fronted by Sarah Blackwood, I preferred ‘Not So Manic Now’, which managed to sound so blissfully uplifting while telling a sad story about a young woman attacked in her tower block flat. The lines 

“I was making myself the usual cup of tea
When the doorbell strangely rang” 

demanded I listened to the rest. Who was at the door? What would happen? It’s a song which deserves more recognition than its number fifteen placing indicated. 

Also rooted in social realism were the perfect pop-dance band Saint Etienne. As mentioned before, I became a fan in 1994 but the 1996 greatest hits collection Too Young to Die introduced me to some of their earlier electro-dance material like ‘Only Love can Break Your Heart’ and long-form ballads like ‘Avenue’ and ‘Hobart Paving’ (the flip side of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’). It is probably the CD I’ve replayed more than any other. The videos also transport me back to a London in transition, a capital I recognise from my Tube trips to unsuccessful dates. 

Firmly in Britpop territory were Echobelly, Garbage and Lush. In ’96, Sonia Madan had a penchant for difficult subjects, and for once her lyrics were perfect for a gloomy yet compelling song like ‘Dark Therapy’ yet it failed to crack the top 20. I particularly love those multi-tracked vocal harmonies in the chorus. Like Madan, Miki Berenyi was of Asian descent, and her band Lush delivered ‘Single Girl’, a delicious three-and-a-bit minute thrash, a staple of any self-respecting anthology of Nineties girl bands.

Garbage, on the other hand, were an American outfit fronted by Scot Shirley Manson. ‘Stupid Girl’ was their biggest and best single. It starts out as a fairly conventional rock song with a guitar riff, thudding bassline and sylphlike synth chords. Then in come Manson’s vocals and weird and wonderful ticks and punky parts, and it takes on a life of its own.

However, when it came to females in bands, the rule book was ripped up and scattered in space in July 1996. Bereft of pop celebrity material after the demise of Take That, the mags were keen to grab a piece of an energetically promoted English quintet of girls, whose first video was proving to be a satellite TV hit. Top of the Pops magazine interviewed them, and dubbed them Scary, Sporty, Baby, Ginger and Posh. The epithets stuck, as did their music. They were The Spice Girls, and suddenly everyone was singing ‘Wannabe’. The video was an ideal way of introducing the world to the sassy personalities of Mel B, Mel C, Emma, Geri and Victoria, and the record became a global success, number one in 37 nations, no less!

Apart from Victoria, The Spice Girls could all sing well and weren’t merely Simon Fuller’s puppets. They weren’t just surgically-enhanced dolly-bird models; they looked like real young women, apparently good mates who lived and worked for each other. I think that was their USP, and the reason for their enormous success in the UK and elsewhere. Kids could identify with them. Another factor was the quality of their effortless pop music. ‘Wannabe’ was contemporary, ‘Say You’ll Be There’ had a splash of Seventies R’n’B, while the Christmas/New Year million-seller ‘2 Become 1’ was a timeless ballad. A new marketing phenomenon was upon us. Girl Power had arrived!

1995 – See our friends, See the sights!

Fed up with a life of frustrating singledom, this was the year I tried to take control of my own destiny. Tantalised by those new-fangled dating pages in the free local newspapers, I made a few tentative contacts. Later in the year, attracted by an advert seen on the Tube, I joined Dateline. It wasn’t about the internet back then, of course; just sending personal details and receiving five contact numbers. You could also subscribe to a magazine which proved more successful in actually meeting people. I had several autumn dates, some promising, some not. No girlfriend, but at least I enjoyed getting out and about in London, visiting unfamiliar corners of the capital and experiencing a different form of social life, post-Rotaract..

None of the encounters involved music. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Instead, my principal link with the latest sounds remained that frail and frayed umbilical cord connected to TOTP and the Radio 1 chart show. Neither were the appointment to view or listen they once were, of course and the ‘papers offered a chance to keep up with the charts for my diary. Actually there was some decent stuff to listen to, although much of it could be bracketed under Britpop.

Amidst the increasing dominant hip-hop and R’n’B scene, largely white guitar bands were suddenly everywhere. Not just in the clubs where they had always been, but on the radio and telly. Radio 1 really championed the genre, and so it also entered my own precious little world. And about time, too.

I didn’t necessarily lump all the artists together under one media-friendly banner. Sleeper’s ‘Vegas’ just sounded different, and had the additional benefit of singer Louise Wener. I could, and often did, lose myself in her big brown eyes. And she was single! AND from London? Dream on! It was followed by another excellent single ‘What Do I Do Now?’ but Wener was soon to put music to one side and become a highly regarded novelist. Those eyes strayed elsewhere…

Sonya Maden also made a splash in ’95. Not just because she was a front woman, but also because she was an ASIAN frontwoman. To me, that wasn’t significant. More importantly, her band Echobelly purveyed a similarly appealing brand of pop-rock. I particularly liked ‘King of the Kerb’. No ladies amongst The Levellers, but the ‘crusty’ band enjoyed a rare hit with ‘Hope Street’, which became one of my favourites of the year. 

Those loveable lads from Oxford, Supergrass, finally cracked it with ‘Alright’, smashing in at number two in July. I may never have been tempted to “smoke a fag, put it out” or “got some cash, bought some wheels, took it out through some fields, lost controls, hit a wall” but its frenetic pace and joyous outdoor video nonetheless evoked images of summer holidays past and deserved its success. Gaz Coombs’ simian sideburns were definitely a symbol of ’95, and the band produced a number of top-quality songs across the whole decade.

Another under-rated act was The Lightning Seeds. By 1995, they were expanding from being Ian Broudie’s studio project into a proper touring band, and it was their top 20 single ‘Lucky You’ which made me sit up and listen. Match of the Day’s adoption of the instrumental intro to ‘The Life of Riley’ to accompany the Goal of the Month competition clips also raised the band’s profile and the following year Broudie became forever associated with football and lad-dom, of which more later.

Another group which finally found their moment was Pulp. I’d never heard of them until ‘Common People’ flew into the top three at the start of June. Jarvis Cocker’s unfashionable glasses, clothes and geeky, gawky limbs stood out in so many ways, while his perceptive lyrics begged to be heard, enjoyed and repeated. However, it was their performance of the song as their finale at Glastonbury a few weeks later (on a programme called 4 at Glastonbury – none of the saturation BBC coverage back then) that really made an impression. Apparently they had only been included after The Stone Roses pulled out and it had been feared the Glasto crowd would have booed them off the stage. Quite the opposite; ‘Common People’ became part of the festival folklore. I wasn’t ‘there’, but I did see it on the telly that night.

By the end of the year, I actually preferred ‘Sorted – For Es and Wizz’ which also reached number two. The Press predictably slated it as a grotesque advert for drugs. Listen to the bloody lyrics! More memorable was Cocker’s performance at the start of the 1996 Brits broadcast, ending with him  soaring high above the auditorium in a wire singing “What if I never come down?”! An hour or so later, his position as media hate figure and simultaneous man of the people was firmly set in stone as he mischievously mooned in front of Michael Jackson’s much-hyped Messiah depiction while singing ‘Earth Song’. Consequently I’ll never hear a bad word about Jarvis, one of the truly great eccentric British pop stars and a damned fine songwriter to boot. Meanwhile, that once all-conquering American genius had dipped beyond parody.

But of course, retrospectives of 1995 tend to focus primarily on the supposed bitter rivalry between Blur and Oasis…. The country was allegedly split in two. Forget the Brexit division; this was far more significant! North v South. Art school v Old school. Middle class v Working class. Cocaine v cannabis. When Blur’s ‘Country House’ was released on the same day in July as Oasis brought out ‘Roll With It’, the race to number one was dubbed the Battle of Britpop. The result made the national TV news. The winners were…..Blur! Ironically, neither song was anywhere near their best.

The following singles releases were, in my opinion, possibly their finest. The strings intro and verse for ‘The Universal’ are simply stunning, and have since achieved lasting fame through use in British Gas adverts. Subtle Graham Coxon guitar and Alex James bass and mature vocals from Damon Albarn came together nicely, and they could do it live, as this ‘Later….’ performance demonstrates. Rather too much brass for my liking, perhaps, but nevertheless I was shocked that it went straight in at five only to make an unceremonious slide.

Meanwhile, Oasis were robbed of a number one spot for ‘Wonderwall’, the pinnacle of the Britpop production line. Gone were the Grunge guitars and the angry Liam Gallagher snarl. This was an astonishing rock ballad, the acoustic intro and cello accompaniment giving the song an other-worldly sound. I even insisted on having the track played at our wedding in 2017. This wasn’t Britpop, it was sheer magic. Meanwhile, on 2^nd October the Manc quintet gave their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory to the world. For all Noel Gallagher’s stupid statements about drugs, there was no doubting his genius for writing, and the album ensured that, while Blur won the 1995 battle, Oasis undoubtedly won the war. It was also a conflict which was yet to run its course. It may seem too obvious but it remains one of my favourite CDs, retaining its beauty, rhythm and relevance two decades later. Oasis were a bunch of weed-smoking dickheads but how the music scene today could benefit from a band of their calibre.

So where did I stand on the stand-off? As ever, I didn’t quite fit in with the media view on the world; I just loved both bands. Each were giants of Britpop and Nineties music generally and sit happily side-by-side in my CD collection.

I was becoming a regular viewer of Jools Holland’s Friday night show on BBC2 and, with the use of video I could record it to see at a more convenient time and fast-forward through the boring World Music segments and cringey interviews. As with Blur, I’m pretty sure I also watched the performances of McAlmont and (Bernard) Butler, including their rendition of the gorgeous ‘You Do’. The same was true for Everything But the Girl delivering their dance re-mix of ‘Missing’. My then work colleague Lesley is somewhere in the audience with her latest boyfriend, behind Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn in this clip but the recording quality is a bit too ropey for me to pick them out! Whatever, it was a great record and a November contemporary of ‘Wonderwall’. 

Another superstar who wore his Sixties influences prominently on his sleeve was Paul Weller. He won hearts and minds in ’95 with his finest solo album Stanley Road. He was always a popular choice for Later… and here he is doing his thing at the piano on probably his best ballad ‘You Do Something To Me’. As in his Jam days, his singles usually blazed into the top ten before descending rapidly off the radio stations’ radar. It happened to this one, and also the rockier ‘The Changingman’ but I really liked them both.

I’d say that Weller fans were even more hostile than Albarn fans to Noel Gallagher. However, Oasis were already being flattered by the sincere form of imitation of tribute bands like No Way Sis and Wibling Rivalry. However, no cover versions were quicker out of the blocks, nor more successful, than the Mike Flowers Pops’ version of ‘Wonderwall’. It was outrageous, so bad it was good! Almost. The cheesy be-wigged singer, Mike Sammes-esque backing chorus and the bossanova beat should have consigned the record to oblivion. But it matched Oasis in going to number two at Christmas, much to Noel’s amusement. Who says Mr Gallagher doesn’t have a sense of humour? 

However, Mike Flowers appeared at some major venues, presumably as a novelty act. I admit I never heard their take on The Doors’ ‘Light My Fire’!  It was perhaps unsurprising that this type of faux easy listening didn’t catch on. On the other hand the more modern dance music was not finished. However, examples which got me jigging were becoming fewer and further between. 

Belgians Alex Party did well with ‘Don’t Give Me Your Life’ as did Strike’s ‘U Sure Do’. However, I took a greater shine to the two big hits by N-Trance. I’d assumed they were yet another European outfit but apparently they were true Brits. ‘Set You Free’ was the archetypal club anthem but its follow-up, an update of ‘Stayin’ Alive’, was even more successful. Kinda tongue-in-cheek, it boasted rapping by Ricardo da Force, whose unorthodox corruption of the verse shouldn’t have worked. However, according to my diary, this turned out to be my favourite dance track of 1995.

I’ve written much about 1995 being the year of Britpop. That’s probably the product of my selective memory. Even a cursory flick over the year’s charts reveals that where singles are concerned, hip-hop, reggae fusion and R’n’B definitely had the upper-hand. Wacko Jacko had two number ones, Shaggy’s impenetrable ‘Boombastic’ was all over the airwaves, and Coolio’s collaboration with LV, ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, was ‘95’s second biggest seller.

That was a decent single but until researching this section I had buried all trace of The Outhere Brothers in the deepest recesses of my memory banks. Damn! Out they came again. ‘Boom Boom Boom!’ ‘Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle….’ Aarrghhh! They also topped the charts twice. But worse was to come.

Like millions of others, Mum loved watching ITV’s drama series Soldier Soldier. After an episode in which the two main characters sang ‘Unchained Melody’ at a wedding, huge public interest spurred Simon Cowell into pursuing the actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn into recording the song. They eventually relented and ended up making a fortune. The first single sold 1.8 million. The next, a similarly sickly saccharine cover of ‘I Believe’, also broke the million barrier. It gets worse. Their cringeworthy covers album outsold ‘Morning Glory’ in 1995 and, with the hastily recorded follow-up, sold a combined seven million! Being far superior actors than vocalists they didn’t even sing all the harmonies on the records. Robson and Jerome were all over that year like a nasty rash but don’t expect a YouTube link in this blog.

Phew! That’s enough of them! Back to some of the music I did enjoy hearing. This was the time I first became aware of Green Day. When Billy-Jo Armstrong launched into ‘Basket Case’, I was immediately transported back to the late Seventies. The frenetic guitar intro was pure Punk rock but the Californians nevertheless somehow forged their own path to massive global success for another two decades and counting.

Punk was one of the few genres Madonna never experimented with. Mercifully Madonna had closed her outrageous sexually-explicit chapter but in 1995 seemed to be drifting inevitably towards middle-age sentimentality. Her album Bedtime Stories yielded decent singles like ‘Secret’ and ‘Take a Bow’ without taking the charts by storm. Then an elegant acoustic production of the ballad ‘You’ll See’ made the top five in November and was in my mind her best of the year. M People also released ‘Search for the Hero’, an eighth successive top-tenner for them. It was in and out remarkably quickly but the lyrical message has guaranteed airplay on radio, adverts and sporting video sequences ever since.

I’ve already written about the Britpop conflicts dominating the UK music scene. However, now for a reality check. In 1995, the truly dreadful, pointless (is there any other kind?) civil war in Yugoslavia was in its fourth year. It gained prominence because for once the pictures of shelling, snipers, civilian massacres and political mayhem were not in some distant corner of the world but just a few hours away in Europe. The nation had splintered and various state and breakaway militias were fighting over the spoils, avenging past nationalist ‘wrongs’ with fascistic fervour. One of the worst excesses was the siege of Sarajevo.

For all the news coverage, it can often be a piece of music which brings home the true horror of war and spurs people into bringing the warring factions to a ceasefire. The U2/Brian Eno project Original Soundtracks 1, under the name Passengers, yielded one memorable single ‘Miss Sarajevo’, its official video consisting entirely of film of life in the besieged capital of Bosnia. Weirdly, it’s not Bono’s verses which stirred my senses but the operatic segment sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Sadly the siege continued for several months but this track for me serves as a stunning reminder of that appalling war on our doorstep.

The year even yielded two ‘new’ Beatles hits. However, despite the plentiful publicity, neither achieved the success I originally expected. Probably because they weren’t much cop. ‘Baby It’s You’ was taken from the recent Beatles Live at the BBC album while ‘Free as a Bird’ was cobbled together from an old Lennon demo, with new contributions from surviving members. However, with George Harrison’s long-time collaborator Jeff Lynne co-producing, it just sounded like a feeble ELO-Tom Petty track. Another, similarly unremarkable Beatles single ‘Real Love’ emerged the following year to accompany a new ITV documentary series and Anthology album. 

Other ballads also left their mark on me. Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Julia Says’ was no ‘Love is all Around’ but definitely above average, as was Seal’s ‘Kiss from a Rose’. Boyzone narrowly missed out on a first chart-topper with another three singles, although ‘Father and Son’ sold more than 800,000 copies in the Christmas period. However, when it came to boy bands, Take That continued to reign supreme. It wasn’t plain sailing. Robbie Williams left, allegedly because he considered himself too ‘hard’ for the pure pop world, his personality too big for a boy band and talent to great to play second fiddle to Mr Barlow. His departure didn’t hurt their sales, coming between two of their biggest hits. In July, their gospel/classical-influenced ‘Never Forget’ topped the chart for three weeks, but my contemporary diary note suggests I was no fan. Two decades on, and I think the dramatic intro and chorus are brilliant.

Nevertheless, their preceding single took brilliance to a new level. An instant classic, ‘Back for Good’ shifted 350,000 in the first week and went on to top a million. The quintet were back looking daft under water for the video, but I’ll forgive them because this is Gary Barlow’s finest moment as a songwriter. Robbie was probably in denial but, for all his indie rock credentials, even Noel Gallagher said the song “said something” and “touched” him. Undoubtedly it is one of the finest ‘lost love’ songs I’ve ever heard. But for how long could the Barlow production line continue….?