1998/1999 - We've got stars directin' our fate And we're prayin' it's not too late

I’ve combined the final couple of years in the Nineties. It wasn’t simply that there were fewer songs appealing to my own appetite, although that was true.  Not only was the music scene in transition but so was my personal life. In February ’98, Kim moved from her grim Grimsby hellhole to a townhouse room in Cricklewood. Just over a year later, she moved in to my flat in Billericay.

My relationship with Kim introduced me to Thai culture. My first trip to Chiang Mai in February 1999 was a real eye-opener; in fact an astonishing feast for all the senses. Music played its part, too. The foyer of any decent hotel seemed to resonate with the beautiful sound of the khim. The player would sit cross-legged before the horizontal dulcimer-like instrument and tap the strings lightly with two spoon-shaped hammers. I could sit and let my mind drift for ages, lost in the Oriental exoticism of it all.

Back in Blighty,  we enjoyed the new Saturday Night Fever musical at the Palladium on my 37^th birthday, full of lively Seventies disco songs and dancing. It wasn’t merely a Bee Gees boogie wonderland. In fact the showstopper was a rumbustious rendition of ‘Disco Inferno’ performed by a character in a ‘Fro-tastic’ wig of prodigious proportions. However the star Andy Garcia’s soundtrack singles were strangely insipid. Clock maintained their impressive chart career of Seventies retro with covers of Michael Jackson and KC, while Bamboo’s number two hit ‘Bamboogie’ was a House mash-up based on a sample of KC’s ‘Get Down Tonight’. Play any Sunshine Band song and you shouldn’t really go wrong, but these updates did little for me.

Seventies nostalgia was given an almighty leg-up by the arrival on the London stage of Mamma Mia in April 1999. The previous December, Kim and I had been entertained by Bjorn Again’s affectionate tribute to the Swedes at  Shepherd Bush Empire, and now the real Bjorn-and-Benny co-production was about to take the world by storm. The first great ‘jukebox musical’ was my next birthday treat and it was hugely enjoyable. I remarked at the time that it was a winner for anyone who didn’t actually hate Abba. Stating the obvious, Mike!

The connection continued with the transition of Steps into what sounded like an Abba tribute group under the writing and production tutelage of the old ‘Hitman’, Pete Waterman. Credit where credit’s due, Pete, but this wasn’t his finest hour. The records still sold by the ton, though.

Britpop was pretty much dead and 1998-99 was the era of the Celts and Continentals. In particular, it felt like the whole world had turned green, wearing the shamrock and downing Guinness. Michael Flatley and his twinkle-toed troupers were tip-tapping on stages round the world and Irish bands were ubiquitous. This was partly created by James Horner’s soundtrack to the all-conquering Titanic movie. I detested Celine Dion’s million-selling ‘My Heart Will Go On’ with a passion and, when Leonardo di Caprio drifted off to die in the frozen Atlantic waters, I actually had to suppress a cheer. 

Boyzone racked up another four number one singles including one which actually still gets played. Their recording of ‘No Matter What’, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Whistle Down the Wind became easily their most popular single. That’s not to say that I liked it, of course. In fact, when I first heard it I wondered who the female lead was on the first verse. I felt rather sheepish on discovering the soft tenor voice in fact belonged to Stephen Gately. Oops! Ronan Keating had his own solo hit, then Boyzone’s stools were borrowed by Westlife, who had four number ones of their own, all in 1999. Aarrghhh!  

Amidst all this millennial MoR melancholy, another Irish band slipped onto the scene, with a slightly different take on the Boghran-Tin whistle-and-fiddle folk-pop crossover for which the public’s appetite was so notably flourishing. Apart from success at home, The Corrs had been languishing in the second division, supporting Celine Dion amongst others. However, when they re-released their album Talk On Corners, the UK was ready for a new family group, and promotion to pop’s Premier League was assured.

It helped that the three sisters were - let’s be frank! - easy on the eye as well as on the ear. Sorry, Jim. I know you played your part, but who was watching you on the guitar? Their hit singles flowed like a County Louth stream, all of them tripping beautifully from the radio. What male heart could not melt watching and listening to Andrea Corr dreamily performing ‘What Do I Do?’ or ‘Runaway’? She took flicking and flirting bedroom eyes to a new level, and the Irish lilt to her voice also contributed to The Corrs’ huge success.

Ireland could even boast a new girl group to rival The Spice Girls in 1998. B*witched (the asterisk was essential) burst onto the scene with the throwaway but infectious ‘C’est la Vie’, complete with the obligatory Riverdance sequence. B*witched also recorded the inevitable dreamy ballad a la ‘2 Become 1’. My diary placed ‘To You I Belong’ as one of my favourites of 1998 but, before Googling it just now, it was just another long-forgotten girl group footnote. Other, similarly unmemorable chart-toppers followed, and three years later they were dropped by their label and split up. Such is pop. 

The Irish didn’t quite have everything their own way; this was a great period for the Welsh, too. The Manics were secure in the upper echelons of UK rock royalty, and their singles success continued effortlessly with another Spanish Civil War anthem ‘If You TolerateThis Then Your Children Will Be Next’ (performed here at the new Millennium Stadium in Cardiff) and ‘You Stole the Sun from My Heart’. In my eyes they could just do no wrong. 

New kids from the valleys, The Stereophonics, also stepped up a gear. I’d first heard of them when Kelly Jones performed a solo rendition as a busker of ‘As Long as we Beat the English’, for a BBC Wales rugby promo. I quite liked his husky vocals and sense of humour. While they had already enjoyed some hits, it wasn’t until the ballad ‘Just Looking’ that I began to appreciate their music. As with so many acts, subsequent purchase of their greatest hits CD introduced me in later life to other brilliant tracks like ‘Pick a Part That’ New’ and ‘More Life in a Tramp’s Vest’.

So far, so macho. Enter Cerys Matthews. The description of a ‘smokey’ voice was perfect for Cardiff-born, Swansea-educated Cerys, although her smoking and drinking led her into rehab a few years later. Nevertheless, for all her love of booze and the filthy weed, she and her band Catatonia were a breath of fresh air to the charts.

Although the song had nothing to do with aliens, ‘Mulder and Scully’ shamelessly name-checked the character from TV’s ‘The X Files’ and was a bright and breezy post-Britpop hit I couldn’t help liking. In many ways, I preferred the less successful ‘Road Rage’. Cerys was not a typical pop star, nor even rock star; more a slightly hippy-ish Celtic free spirit. Since then she has undergone more re-inventions than Bowie. Nashville Country artist, Welsh language cultural icon, respected radio presenter and music commentator, I reckon she has done more than most to merit her MBE. Nevertheless, for me it was those two Catatonia singles which will always stand out.  

The Welsh music scene was very incestuous back then. Cerys was one of many collaborators on Tom Jones’ huge-selling Reload covers album. I didn’t particularly enjoy any of them, but ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’ (with the Stereophonics, and Tom’s half-chuckled “I'm lookin' at my girlfriend - she's passed out on the floor”!) and ‘Burning Down the House’ (with The Cardigans) remain staples of Welsh rock station, Nation Radio to this day. 

The old fox even saved a relationship. Well, at least he did in the lyrics of Space’s ‘Ballad of Tom Jones’. And who sang with them? Yes, Cerys Matthews! It was another of Tommy Scott’s wry, witty ditties, in which he and Cerys exchanged snarling ripostes before recognising that Tom Jones’ music had brought their rancorous skirmishes to an end: 

“There was something in that voice
that stopped us seeing red
The two of us would've surely
have ended up dead”

Ahhhh! And all this despite Cerys singing “I’ll never throw my knickers at you” and Tommy’s “And I don’t come from Wales!”

As for the Scots, Texas had been flying the Saltire successfully for a few years but in ’99, Travis finally hit pay dirt with the brilliant ‘The Man Who’ album. Glorious singles flowed freely all year. None made the top five but all were equally fine. They had entered the public consciousness when their opening chords of ‘Why Does it Always Rain On Me?’ triggered a downpour at a previously warm and sunny Glastonbury Festival. Fran Healy may well have dined out on that anecdote ever since, and that song has been their most famous. I could have picked any one of four to represent their end-of-decade dominance, but their first release from the album ‘Writing to Reach You’ gets the nod ahead of ‘Driftwood’.

With B*witched, Cleopatra, S Club 7 and 15 year-old Billie Piper appealing to the Smash Hits generation of young girls, The Spice Girls were beginning to look like grannies. After conquering the world for two years, the only way was down. The lively Sixties-influenced ‘Stop’ was stopped from maintaining their run of number ones by Run DMC and Jason Nevins in March ‘98, but ‘Viva Forever’ got them back on track in the summer. One of their best ballads, it nevertheless couldn’t emulate reality. Between recording their TOTP performance and the single’s release, and during their US tour, Geri Halliwell left the group. Nothing lasts forever, ladies.

Solo projects were an inevitable consequence. Mel B was the first of the five to top the charts (a dull hip-hop duet with Missie ‘Midemeanor’ Elliott), Emma Bunton came close and Mel C delighted with her rock collaboration with Bryan Adams on ‘When You’re Gone’.  But everyone was waiting for Geri’s debut. Everyone, that is, except me.

In May 1999, the former Ginger Spice promoted her debut solo single ‘Look At Me’ at every opportunity on every possible medium on both sides of the Atlantic. Perform as often as you like, Geri; it was terrible! However, thanks to some creative marketing by Team Boyzone, the boyband’s ‘You Needed Me’ beat her to the top.

Geri’s first number one did arrive a few months later in the form of ‘My Chico Latino’, and that wasn’t much better. Her hit was a pathetic amalgam of ‘Las Isla Bonita’ and ‘Viva Forever’. Fortunately for her, she was riding on the coat-tails of a summer Latino explosion. Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ and Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5’ dominated the summer months. I have no innate antipathy towards Latin rhythms. Far from it. However, for all their frequent airplay, I had no time for either. The only positive outcome of Bega’s record was its use in that memorable paper-stripping scene on BBC1’s The Royle Family in 2000. Mambo, my arse….!

France, Germany, Holland and Italy all had number one singles in 1999. And a right mixed bag they were. Mr Oizo’s ‘Flat Beat’ was a tuneless bass loop and drum sample, propelled to the top via a Levi commercial. After all those delightful number twos, this execrable effort embarrassingly proved to be the single which ended the 36-year wait for an instrumental UK number one. Tragic. Just for the hell of it, here are The Shadows from 1960 with 'Apache' to restore my faith in the genre....

German producer ATB gave us something rather better with ‘9am (Til I Come)’ while Italians Eiffel 65 delivered ‘Blue’. Many rate this one of the worst examples of Euro-Dance ever to be inflicted on an unsuspecting world. I disagree, and so did the million or so people who bought it. Ludicrous, it may be, but it’s another of my now-not-so-secret guilty pleasures. Altogether now, “I’m blue, da-ba-de-da-ba-da…” I could go on….

Dutch Euro-Dance act Vengaboys had three chart-toppers of their own. Think Gina G meets ‘Barbie Girl’. Oh well. At least their cod-reggae update of Typically Tropical’s ‘Barbados’, in the guise of ‘We’re Going to Ibiza’ (Coconut Airways replaced by Venga Airways) had something to tap my toes to.

Ibiza was the place to be for anyone into dance music rather more hardcore than Vengaboys. The Mediterranean mega-clubs bred the mega-rich celebrity DJs, but these didn’t exactly lend themselves to TOTP or any other TV broadcast. There wasn’t much to gain from watching someone standing behind the decks in those torch headsets. They resembled alien insects waving their arms or pretending to twiddle a few knobs. Did they really think they’d con the viewer into believing these ‘performers’ were doing anything other than switching on a pre-prepared digital segue of banging choons they’d mixed weeks earlier. That didn’t stop them having hits.

I truly hated Armand van Helden’s ultra-monotonous ‘You Don’t Know Me’ but when it came to listening on the radio, we Brits contrived some contemporary club tracks more to my thirty-something taste. Basement Jaxx’s ‘Rendezx-vu’ was OK and The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Hey Girl, Hey Boy’ better. However, when it came to sampling umpteen vocals, riffs and synth beats into something completely new that I actually liked, the ex-Housemartin Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, seemed to have it sussed. In January 1999, ‘Praise You’ reached the summit but one of my favourites from that era was ‘Right Here, Right Now' held off the top by one of those blasted Westlife ballads.

Mr Slim also sprinkled some stardust on a song, ‘Brimful of Asha’ by a little-known British Asian combo called Cornershop. A year before ‘Praise You’, their rather boring tribute to Indian movie singer Asha Bhosle was re-mixed into a joyously upbeat dance number and it sold over half a million.

Like most chart-toppers, ‘Brimful of Asha’ went straight to the top. Back then, few reached number one via a climb and so if I didn’t see them on TOTP when they reached the summit, I didn’t usually see them at all. In 1999, no fewer than 35 singles spent at least one week at the head of the queue. Inevitably, for many it was a case of ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’. In most cases, I don’t think I missed much at all.

Even the million-selling ‘Baby One More Time’ led the way for just two weeks, but its chart lifespan exceeded that of just about all others. Britney Spears herself has, of course, proved more enduring than I and others could possibly have predicted. The naughty schoolgirl video worked wonderfully in ridding herself of an outdated wholesome Disney Club image although, at just 16 at the time of release, the “Hit Me…” lyric left a sour taste in the mouth.

Nevertheless, Max Martin’s composition was intoxicating stuff. From that 3-note bass piano riff and Britney’s breathy “Oh baby, baby” to the chorus crescendo, it’s a great pop song. ‘Oops, I Did It again’ followed the fruitful formula and was to deliver more success in 2000, but Spears, despite the odd meltdown and ill-conceived, short-lived marriages along the way, has somehow come through the subsequent few decades almost unscathed Not really my cup of tea but good on her for surviving so many career ‘car crashes’.

For all the new teenage starlets, there was still space for some golden oldies to make successful comebacks. Cher was 52 when she dominated Autumn ’98 with the irritating ‘Believe’ and the even more irritating use of distorting Auto-Tune software. Debbie Harry was an even more venerable 56 when Blondie enjoyed an even more unlikely number one with ‘Maria’, nineteen years after their previous chart-topper. Not exactly their best, but at least they still had the drive and creativity to record their own new material and find an audience. 

Madonna was relatively youthful, yet approaching forty when her latest reinvention hit the airwaves and record shops in 1998. In those days, she rarely disappointed, and the Ray of Light album fell firmly into that bracket. My first exposure to the new stuff was when she appeared on TOTP performing ‘Frozen’, all long golden curls and floor-length Gothic black lacy costume. This was la Ciccone in spiritual mode, part-Earth mother, part witch! It was surprising that Madonna was on TOTP at all, and yet ‘Frozen’ was quite an entrancing mix of classical and electronica, enhanced by producer William Orbit’s trademark three-beat pulse. The album’s title track was a more effervescent ambient/techno/House track based on a long-forgotten English Sixties folk song which I presume must have been unrecognisable in comparison with the Madonna re-tread. Great video, too, which leaves me breathless just watching it. 

The following year, Madonna again turned to William Orbit for ‘Beautiful Stranger’. It was hard to disassociate it from the second Austin Powers comedy The Spy Who Shagged Me, which I did actually see in the cinema. The Guardian critic led me to believe it would be wet-yourself hilarious. Sadly, it wasn’t. Madonna’s song was one of the better things in it; its subtle dance rhythm with a hint of psychedelia made it a brilliant song in its own right. Yeah, baby!

Blur popped up again in 1999, their new album including the glorious number two hit ‘Tender’. It also provided one of Glasto’s greatest ten-minute ‘moments’ when the band reunited for a summer of glorious festival performances in 2009, featuring  ‘Tender’.  I’m not one for Gospel choirs, but, just watching on TV, the a capella section gave me goosebumps. The Lord alone knows what those present must have felt.

Like Blur, I daresay Radiohead delivered some memorable live renditions to vast open-air crowds but I wouldn’t have bothered switching on to see. Radiohead’s OK Computer is one of those albums which constantly appears in rock mags’ ‘greatest ever’ lists. Cue another yawnnnn from me. Yet personal history registers its ballad ‘No Surprises’ as my faves of ’98. That children’s lullaby guitar intro just doesn’t fit the Radiohead brand, though. Far too good!

My musical memories of these years aren’t restricted to the big guns. For starters, there were some delightful Alternative rock and pop singles around.  I really liked Semisonic’s ‘Secret Smile’. Lovely lyrics and a deceptively simple melody, but it failed to make our top ten. Apparently it featured in a film I’d never heard of. The same was true of the cute ‘Kiss Me’ by fellow Americans Sixpence None the Richer. With a title like that, it’s bound to feature on soundtracks, adverts and Valentine’s Day playlists for generations to come. However corny it sounds, I still quite like its joyfully twangy guitars and Leigh Nash’s natural vocals.

We Brits did the unpretentious songs quite well, too. Best of the lot around that time must have been Tin Tin Out’s trip-hoppy cover of  ‘Here’s Where the Story Ends’, sung by Shelly Nelson. It made seven over here in April 1998.

At the weirder end of the scale was the All Seeing I’s collaboration with Tony Christie, ‘Walk Like a Panther’. It gave the old crooner a helping hand back into the charts after a lengthy gap, but it was co-composer Jarvis Cocker’s TOTP appearance in January ’99 which I remember most clearly. He may not have the rich voice of Christie but only Jarvis he could pull off such a singularly eccentric performance.

 Amidst all the rocket-powered trajectories to number one, it was refreshing when two massive records peaked after two or three months. All Saints’ bleak, bluesy and frankly boring  ‘Never Ever’ took nine weeks to make number one early in ’98, while its chart contemporary ‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams spent even longer en route to its highest position of four. The latter must surely be the lowest-charting million-seller in UK history, but laid in concrete Robbie’s solo career foundations.

Two of his best, though not necessarily his most successful, songs topped the chart in this period. Even though the 2000s were still some way off, he released ‘Millennium’ in September 1998. He admitted it was a shameless shoehorning of the great social buzzword into a lyric which had nothing whatsoever to do with the significant calendar event.

Boasting an intro of the incomparable John Barry descending strings from ‘You Only Live Twice’, it could hardly fail. The video, too, was an unusually tongue-in-cheek pastiche of James Bond. Robbie’s Ernst Blofeld-sized ego also deflated sufficiently to allow the final part feature him comically prancing about in a field trying to activate his 007-style jet-pack. Video Gold!

That won him one of his many Brit awards, as did the video for the following year’s ‘She’s the One’. God knows why. Robbie as a champion figure skater? Oh, per-leaze! The song, however, is a superb tear-jerker. It had all the hallmarks of a Guy Chambers melody, and yet, unknown to me, it was actually a cover of a World Party song. From the best video and best ballad to his best lyric. ‘Strong’ wasn’t a classic but did again show Williams’ more sensitive side, featuring the couplet:-

                    “Early morning when I wake up

                    I look like Kiss but without the make-up”

evoking some incomparable striking imagery! One millennium may have passed, but from Robbie, more, so much more was to come.

1997 – Good-bye, England’s rose

This was another of those truly momentous years. Personally, my improbable relationship with Kim developed with the help of lengthy train journeys  to and from Cleethorpes. It would later blossom with short breaks to the Lake District and Paris. Music didn’t play much of a part, unless you count my Friday evening train trip to Doncaster en route to see her, spent in the company of the rock band Terrorvision! A shame I wasn’t better acquainted with their music at the time or I might even have struck up a conversation instead of shrinking into my window seat racking my brains over their identity. It eventually dawned on me before journey’s end.

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 2^nd 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 30^th 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 30^th 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.

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….?

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.