One of the biggest headlines of the
year was the democratic overthrow of the Tory Government by Tony Blair’s New
Labour party. I can’t claim to have stayed up into the early hours of May 2nd
to witness the iconic moment of Michael Portillo’s humiliating defeat; in true
Mike rock’n’roll style, I needed to bank some sleep in readiness for a night
flight to Athens. Painful memories remain of John Prescott and Peter Mandelson awkwardly
tapping their feet and nodding their heads to the campaign anthem ‘Things Can
Only Get Better’.
As for my holiday in Greece, I had a
fabulous time revelling in all that history, from Delphi to Olympia, Mycenae to
the Parthenon. I even had the best view of a receding Comet Hale-Bopp. I don’t
really recall much on the way of plate-smashing and bazouki music but the UK
did triumph at the Eurovision Song Contest the following night, courtesy of
Katrina and the Waves. On the coach I expressed my rather negative opinion
about the winning song only to discover that the woman sitting behind me was
the mother of the composer. Ouch! Only six more days to face in her company…
Little did I know that, two decades on and it is still the last example of
British Eurovision success. With the current state of continental politics, the
years of hurt are likely to stretch towards infinity...
In contrast, 1997 proved that The
Spice Girls were not a one-year wonder. If the second half of ’96 had seemed to
belong to the famous fivesome, then the following twelve months saw them
conquer the entire planet. Every business wanted a piece of them, and they
always seemed to oblige with enthusiasm. Not only was the band’s own
merchandise everywhere you looked but their faces were ubiquitous on all sorts
of other commercial products. When Channel Five launched on 30th
March, it didn’t take a marketing genius to spot the obvious association. Er, are there any really ‘hot’ pop groups linked
to the number five we can hire?
Duh!
As well as selling squillions of
albums and singles, the Spice Girls seemed to win every award going, too. They even
made the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize, although Roni Size’s
drum’n’bass thwarted that particular ambition. February’s Brit Awards ceremony
entered pop folklore thanks to Geri Halliwell’s Union Flag mini-skirt. When it came to Cool Britannia, the lads of Oasis had been usurped by Girl Power,
although the Gallagher brothers were probably too busy getting stoned or fighting to notice.
‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ was probably the best of their ’97 singles, although the Latino rhythms of
‘Spice Up Your Life’ shifted more copies. Inevitably, the Spiceworld album was
supported by a film of the same name, a book sold 200,000 on its first day, and
their global travels included a visit to South Africa to meet an apparently
admiring Nelson Mandela.
Indeed, Mel B, Mel C, Geri, Emma and
Posh were already so immensely powerful they could even fire their manager and
mentor Simon Fuller and run the massive machine themselves. Anyone who says
that the X Factor has thrown up bigger acts and promotional phenomena obviously
wasn’t around in ’97 or has somehow forgotten how huge The Spice Girls were at
their peak.
Yet none of their UK singles sold a
million in 1997. Remarkably, no fewer than seven other records released that
year did break the seven-figure barrier, each of them in the second half.
If you were aged under three, a parent
of toddlers or a student, you were probably more emotionally involved with
another British supergroup, the Teletubbies. They weren’t the first kids’ TV
characters to have a gigantic Christmas hit, nor the last. The song was
basically the programme theme song so of course it wasn’t exactly a work of
musical genius. It had just the one single redeeming feature: it was better
than Mr Blobby!
Barbie dolls had been around for
decades longer than Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po, and so the whole world
could engage with Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’.
The Danish-Norwegian band sold more than 1.8 million copies of the uber-catchy
slice of child-friendly Euro-dance. Most people I knew understandably sneered
at the simplistic pop tune and its even simpler video. Like most of the best
and worst pop classics, there’s more to the melody, rhythm and lyrics (too
suggestive for Barbie manufacturers Mattel!) than first meets the ear, and it’s
near the summit of my list of guilty pleasures. Judging by the single’s sales
and the YouTube tally of 300+ million views (in 2016) I am not alone. It was
surely destined to be a one-hit wonder over here, yet the similar ‘Doctor
Jones’ and brilliant ballad from the film Sliding Doors, ‘Turn Back Time’
followed it to the number one slot.
Gangsta rap was not exactly on my
private playlist. I didn’t know my Ice Ts from my Ice Cubes, my Chuck Ds from
my Eric Bs, and wasn’t losing any sleep over it. Thus when Puff Daddy (as he
was then known) joined forces with Faith Evans to hijack The Police’s ‘Every
Breath You Take’ in July with the tribute song ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, it was
the first time I’d ever heard of The Notorious B.I.G. I doubt I’d missed much,
and I had a low opinion of this maudlin bastardisation of the Eighties classic.
And yet it sold in droves during the summer months.
Not being a viewer of Aussie soaps,
I’d never previously heard of Natalie Imbruglia either. Yet who could not be
smitten after seeing the video of ‘Torn’ and hear that vulnerability in her voice? It has sometimes been suggested that
the success of her debut single is largely down to the line about Natalie ‘lying naked on the floor’ but….. - er…….
sorry, I was, um, distracted for a moment there – that’s clearly untrue.
Apparently it’s the second biggest selling single not to have topped the UK
chart. She had other songs and albums but it’s ‘Torn’ which has stood the test
of time.
Another classic never to have made
number one was Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’. In fact I think it only peaked at
four but kept the tills ringing either side of the Christmas period. With the
advent of digital downloads, it eventually passed the million mark and of
course has become a radio and wedding staple. For me, it’s not such a great
song. It’s even really difficult to sing. However, it was obviously a cathartic
time in Robbie’s own life. ‘Angels’ helped change him from laughable chubby,
drug-addled, washed-up ex-boybander into cherished national treasure.
Ironically, his rise coincided with Gary Barlow heading in the opposite
direction.
Perhaps the strangest journey to
million-selling status was that travelled by ‘Perfect Day’. Starting life as a
long-form promo film for BBC Music and the licence fee’s essential role in
nurturing talent, this stunning production of Lou Reed’s 1972 B side boasted
such extraordinary power that it led to an understandable clamour to be able to
buy it as a single.
Never has the term ‘Various Artists’
been more aptly adopted. The performers really did span a broad range of
genres, from pop to blues, jazz to classical, rock to country, avant garde to
folk. For all the megastar names like Bono, Bowie and Elton (but no Spice
Girls!), the most memorable moments for me were created by Courtney Pine’s
flowing soprano sax solo, the rich mellow tones of Heather Small, Dr John’s
laconic “such a poir-fick day” and
Tom Jones’ show-stopping “You’re going to
reeEAPPPP” near the end. But they all played their part.
The record raised more than £2million
for the Beeb’s Children in Need charity and I was completely bowled over. and
even now it raises hairs on my arms when I listen. There have been numerous
attempts to imitate the montage charity single before and since, but this
remains the grand-daddy of them all.
Meanwhile the charts were definitely
losing their lustre. Not so much with regard to the quality of music but in the
trajectories the singles followed. For most of my life, going ‘straight in at
number one’ was a rarity. Now it was almost obligatory. Every single
chart-topper in 1997 entered the Top 40 either at one or two. I don’t know
whether it was the result of a change in the sampling methodology or more
cannily targeted record company marketing, or both, but it didn’t feel right.
It also meant that, unless you had access to satellite TV channels, the videos
were shown a maximum of once on TOTP.
Following ‘2 Become 1’, the first five
number one singles spent just the single week at the top. It beats me how most
got there in the first place. The sequence included possibly U2’s worst ever
release ‘Discotheque’. In the credit
column was Blur’s ‘Beetlebum’. I
remember watching them on TOTP while sitting in a Cleethorpes B&B thinking
it was quite good, although the asymetrical drum beat during the verse jarred
with my traditional sense of rhythm.
I later heard an interview with Damon
Albarn in which he admitted the song was about heroin. He countered the
criticism about the subject-matter by comparing with The Las’ ‘There She Goes’,
another perennial pop radio favourite written about the killer drug. The Blur
lyricist emphasised in his Mockney accent that the controversial theme of
‘There She Goes’ (and by association, his own hit) wasn’t important: “It doesn’t ma’er. It doesn’t ma’er. It’s
still a great song”.
What was an even greater song was
White Town’s ‘Your Woman’.
By this time, White Town was essentially just Jyoti Mishra, born in India and
raised in Derby. Made on a shoestring, it really shouldn’t have been a hit but
it slowly gained respect in the clubs and on Radio 1. Some favourite records are slow-burners; this
one slammed me in the face on first listen. Starting with an ancient Al Bowlly
muted trumpet solo, it veers into alien territory, albeit with standard drum
beat, the vocals delivered as if over the telephone. Is it about a woman, a
man? The video is even more pretentious but, as Damon Albarn might have put it,
it doesn’t ma’er. It didn’t fit in the ’97 scene, and yet it did. It sounded
complex yet at the same time absurdly simple. Let’s just call it a modern
masterpiece, the most wonderful of one-hit wonders!
By way of contrast, Oasis were
becoming victims of their own success. Their American tour had collapsed under
the weight of sibling hatred, then the collection of Noel Gallagher’s
third-string songs were combined in the dreadfully over-produced Be Here Now
album. It didn’t really ma-er. After release on 21st August, it sold almost
700,000 copies in its first three days! The first single, ‘D’You Know
What I Mean’ was Oasis turned up to eleven, a bloated eight minutes in length.
‘All Around the World’ was even longer. ‘Stand By Me’ included a glorious
chorus but it took forever to get there.
Too many drugs, a lavishly indulgent
Creation Records budget and Noel’s ego capable of swallowing even Robbie
Williams whole were boosting sales but doing their legacy no good. Swanning
around drinking Tony Blair’s champagne in Downing Street and holidaying in Mustique
with Kate Moss and Johnny Depp, Noel was also losing touch with his working
class roots. Oasis were undoubtedly past their best but that still left them
way ahead of any other British rock band.
Another Britpop group with drug
problems were The Verve. Wigan’s finest had split up once already but
reconvened to record a new album. Good decision! The result was Urban Hymns
which went on to top the album chart for twelve weeks and come close to
out-selling Be Here Now in 1997. The first single, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ undeniably owed much of its success to its striking strings intro, stripped
from an orchestral version of the Stones’ ‘The Last Time’. However, Richard
Ashcroft’s ‘heroin chic’ appearance gave him an unmistakeable image. And then
there was that video. Ashcroft’s arrogant Hoxton street strut and the clever
‘realistic’ choreography elevated the record to cult classic status. Tremendous
stuff!
A few months later, they edged up to
the top spot with the sad, Country-ish ballad ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, about
Ashcroft’s own addiction, but perhaps the two best songs on the album are the
other slow numbers ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘Sonnet’. Several years later, I was
fortunate to watch him perform an acoustic ‘Sonnet’ close up at one of BBC 6
Music’s live ‘Hub’ sessions, close to the Radio 4 office where I worked at the
time. My God, he really was so tall and painfully thin! I reckon Richard
Ashcroft, either with The Verve or as a solo artist, would have been higher in
the pantheon of great songwriters had he worked out how to end a song. Most
seem to simply drift into inconclusive ‘fade out’ territory, which is a shame.
Still, what do I know? The Wigan boy done pretty good without my advice….
Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan has also had
some well documented problems with Class A junk. Yet his band was still
producing some top quality music in the late Nineties. From the Ultra album,
‘No Good’ was a five-minute meal of moody Goth rock electronica, with Gahan’s voice as
powerful as I’ve ever heard it. There was a touch of the Goth in the look of
Brian Molko, too, but his group Placebo were more Britpop. ‘Nancy Boy’ was a
fabulous burst of energy, Molko’s guitar hand a blur, his vocal a sneering
snarl, while a pulsating bass drove the whole thing forward. This ‘Later…’
performance was a
true tour de force.
The Seahorses were borne out of
Madchester royalty. After leaving the Stone Roses, guitarist John Squire
brought his musical style and effortless cool to form a new band. Their debut
was the excellent ‘Love is the Law’,
one of my Britpop faves. A few other, less popular, singles followed but they
were destined to provide tour support to bigger acts like Oasis rather than
make it big on their own.
One of the finest ballads of the year
came from No Doubt. Predictably I’d not heard of them as a ska-punk combo but
when they released the unforgettable ‘Don’t Speak’ I
was one of the millions who sat up smartish to listen. The continuous resonant
two-note guitar riff drew me in to Gwen Stefani’s cool verse vocals and the
rock-y chorus. I’ve never quite worked out how someone who looks so pale and
white can inject such colour into her songs, although in my opinion nothing has
approached the potency of this platinum-seller.
There was nothing cool about liking
Hanson. The trio of ludicrously lanky-haired Tulsa teenage brothers went to
number one in the summer with the Marmite-ish pop anthem ‘Mmm Bop’.
Well, as with ‘Barbie Girl’, I was living proof that you didn’t have to be a
brain-dead twelve year-old girl to enjoy this particular single. On the other
hand, it may help with my street cred that I don’t remember anything else they
recorded.
Boyzone failed to add to their number
one tally, and both Damage and 911 threatened their position as top boy band
from this side of the ocean. However, the Backstreet Boys trumped the lot of
‘em, enjoying four top five singles over here, the best being the slow-tempo
shufflers ‘Quit Playing Games (with my Heart)’ and ‘As Long as You Love Me’.
The Floridans were massive in the States and apparently claim a career sales
total of 130 million records. That is not a typo. Blimey, surely they weren’t that
good? Britain’s soulful girl band Eternal also enjoyed a great year, but the
cross-Atlantic foursome All Saints were poised to attack.
Sweden had a new band on the global
music scene. Unlike Abba and Roxette, The Cardigans were firmly in the indie
camp. Their name conjured images of safe, old-fashioned popsters but their
music trod a subtle path between traditional melody, trendy, uncluttered
production and contemporary glumrock. ‘Lovefool’ was a surprise Spring hit which bucked the trend by peaking in its third week
on the chart, at a very creditable two. There was more to come (‘Favourite
Game’, ‘Erase/Rewind’, etc) and Nina Persson made a very welcome addition to
the pantheon of rock front women.
From sexy women to James Bond. A
record which oozes testosterone and conjures up images of Aston Martins and
speeding skidoos is The Propellerheads’ update of David Arnold’s theme to ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’.
Perhaps this isn’t the most popular member of the 007 franchise. However, this
is definitely my favourite Bond music, so thank you to the British dance
production duo for taking the tune into the charts. The nine-minute album track
is overegging the pudding somewhat, but the radio edit is a cracking listen.
1997 was the year when German rave
producer Sash! boasted three top three singles, and they were all pretty darned
good. ‘Encore Une Fois’ was old-school dance, followed by a more Latino sound
in ‘Ecuador’. In my
opinion, they were right up there with the most addictive club classics of the
decade. ‘Stay’ had more vocals and therefore sounds less of a banging Balearic
choon. The following year, Sash! and singer Tina Cousins had another near-miss
at the top with ‘Mysterious Times’, making the DJ one of the most consistent
dance acts of the late Nineties. I still tap my ageing toes.
Another excellent dance sound from the
year was ‘Remember Me’.
Without Googling it, I’d never have recalled that the act was Blue Boy,
although the vocals are sampled from Marlena Shaw’s raw Seventies original.
That bass groove is still incredibly infectious. Sorry Blue Boy. I promise to
remember you in the future.
A very different kind of boogie
wonderland was conjured up by the previously little-known anarchist collective
known as Chumbawamba. ‘Crusties’ were big in ’97. Unconventional eco-protester
Swampy was popular with anti-establishmentarians like me but not the Government
and construction companies whose efforts to build new airport runways or
by-passes were frequently frustrated by him and his mates. In the end, the
little guy with spade, ropes and attitude will never beat big business and
commercial development, and Swampy and his mates were no different. Fortunately
he wasn’t persuaded to launch a recording career. Enter Chumbawamba. Instead of
something to be enjoyed by morons stoned on Ecstasy in a big tent,
‘Tubthumping’ was an
instant hit for anyone at a suburban New Year party. Fundamentally, it’s a
modern drinking song with a raucous chorus. Nevertheless the cannily melodic
verse elevates it to one of the more engaging pub sing-alongs. I am living
proof you don’t have to be pissed - or “------“ according to the TOTP censors -
to enjoy it. It also serves perfectly well as a song for anyone suffering one
of life’s slings and arrows, needing a life-affirming confidence boost.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again.
No-one’s
ever gonna get me down”
Abso- ruddy- lutely!
Sadly, 1997 will be remembered less
for happiness and euphoria (beyond the Blair election landslide) and more for
one of the most chilling individual tragic deaths experienced in my lifetime so
far. Since her separation and subsequent divorce from Prince Charles, Diana had
become a divisive figure. Even in August she was stirring things
up with her courageous stand against landmines in war zones around the world.
My diary records the alternative headlines over her apparently burgeoning
relationship with Dodi al Fayed, son of another scourge of those in political
power. Good luck to her, I thought.
On 30th August, I and the
family attended the wedding of my cousin Emily and Chris at Glinton, with an
enjoyable reception in Stamford. The only musical memory that lingers from that
evening was five year-old Hannah’s entertaining whirling dervish of a dance to
the Spice Girls’ ‘Wannabe’. Many of us were staying at a picturesque, honey
stone village hotel nearby, and we sank into weary slumber late that night. Kim
and I didn’t have a TV or radio in our room so it was in blissful ignorance
that we came down to the breakfast room to find a disturbingly sombre
atmosphere.
We were quickly informed that Diana,
the ‘Queen of Hearts’, was dead, apparently the victim of typically
over-zealous motorbike paparazzi in Paris. So began one of the most emotional
weeks in UK history. The Queen and Charles were public enemies one and two.
Even I took the opportunity to divert from my normal journey home from White
City to witness for myself the rapidly-expanding sea of floral tributes outside
Kensington Palace; the groups of grieving tourists seated around candles; the
devastating air of despair, of not mere tragic death of one woman but an end to
an era.
Blair had his finest moment by
capturing the public mood and persuading Buckingham Palace to rip up ancient
protocol and approve a state funeral just a week later. The BBC rose to the
occasion in time-honoured style but amidst all the military claptrap and Earl
Spencer’s coruscating speech in the Abbey, one piece of music shone out.
Diana’s friend Elton John had re-worked ‘Candle in the Wind’ with new words
from Bernie Taupin, recognising the similarities with the original subject,
Marilyn Monroe and the need to endorse the sentiments much of the population
felt towards the departed princess.
Kim and I chose not to watch the
ceremony on TV. To this day I have done my darnedest to avoid hearing Elton’s one-off live
performance and the subsequent fund-raising single. It sold 600,000 on the
first day of release and racked up 4.86 million in just five weeks! Naturally
this became, and remains to this day, the biggest-selling single in UK history.
It will take something extraordinary to exceed that.
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