2004-05 - My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

These were difficult years for me. In addition to the emotional pain of my protracted split from Kim, I was enduring frequent physical pains as a result of a flare-up of my Crohn’s Disease. They undoubtedly affected my life and work throughout 2004, culminating in major surgery that November, and a slow recovery during the first few months of 2005.

Other dramatic moments also affected me. As a member of staff, especially based in Broadcasting House, I was inevitably caught up in the shenanigans which arose from Tony Blair’s disgraceful abuse of the BBC to cover up his wilful lies and misleading of the country over the Iraq War with the ‘dodgy dossier’. Popular Director-General Greg Dyke was sensationally forced to resign in February 2004. On Boxing Day, as I lay on my bed in Basildon Hospital, I was touched terribly by the pictures of the horrific tsunami aftermath in Thailand. The following summer I arrived in London just an hour after the terrorist attacks on the Tubes and buses. But life goes on.

There were shockwaves in the music industry, too. Singles sales plunged further, crumbling under the weight of technological advances. Of course by this time I was well versed in emails and the internet. I’d even invested in a PC and, despite its lingering air of embarrassment, used it for online dating. Our vocabulary was evolving. On top of all this, there were the mysteries of (mostly illegal) file sharing, downloads and videos ‘going viral’. 

The first official Download Chart was introduced in September ’04 and, despite fears of the traditional chart being over-run by even crappier nonsense than was already there, the two sets of consumers proved to be pretty similar when it came to musical tastes. 

The nadir of chart history probably occurred at the beginning of 2005. That manifested itself in the marketing ploy commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s first record. Someone had the bright idea of re-releasing all of the Elvis number ones in chronological order, week by week to build up fans’ own box sets. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ duly topped the chart again, followed immediately by ‘One Night’. Despite sales barely scraping 20,000, this duly became the official 1,000^th UK number one single. I braced myself for another fifteen weeks or so of rock’n’roll torture. I reckon the Top of the Pops production team were even more concerned. Presley’s estate had never granted the BBC permission to show Elvis recordings so what could they do in the usual climactic number one slot? One week they were even forced to hire a tribute band! Luckily, only three of these posthumous performances made it to the top for a second time, and contemporary artists were allowed a look-in. Mind you, if none of them could shift 21,000 copies in any particular week, they clearly didn’t deserve to top the charts either.

In each of these two years, only two singles sold more than half a million, half of them being mega-charity records. Band Aid 20 was the 2004 Christmas number one, but the biggest-seller of 2005 was one of those weird bolts from the blue. I’d never liked Tony Christie’s 1971 belter 'Is This the Way to Amarillo?’ I’d never much liked comedian Peter Kay either, not having seen his cult Channel 4 sitcom Phoenix Nights, nor any of his stand-up routines. However, when the Bolton comic revitalised the record, miming with the aid of numerous B- and C–list celebrities marching with him on walking machines against increasingly bizarre backcloths, even I had to smile and sing along.

OK, so the appearance of Jimmy Savile, still alive and not yet revealed as the predatory pervert we now know he was, casts a stain on the memory of the video. But it’s more entertaining to remember Ronnie Corbett falling off his machine or Jim Bowen, against all odds, somehow staying upright. Neither are still with us, but I hope this is unconnected with their gym equipment experiences. Anyway, the record raised millions for Comic Relief. The video spawned countless amateur copies, many cleverly choreographed, going viral on a youthful YouTube. Peter Kay has successfully used the song as a crowd-pleasing filler in live shows ever since. As for me, I no longer hear the opening “‘Sha-la-las” with dread; rather with an automatic smile on my face.

The Gallagher brothers are hardly known for their laugh-a-minute demeanour. Yet their eighth and final number one hit, ‘The Importance of Being Idle’, was unusually wry and jaunty. While the vocals were Noel’s and the guitars reminiscent of The Kinks, the record was also memorable for its video. This featured a mime-and-dance tour-de-force from Rhys Ifans in funeral director garb. It followed all the previous Oasis chart-toppers by spending just one week at the pinnacle. I guess it’s because the band’s legion of fans tended to flock to the shops, High Street or online, in the week of release. All the same, for this most successful of groups, it’s quite an amazing sequence. There were to be more lengthy and lucrative tours but no further major hits. 

Oasis did at least last the best part of 20 years. But that’s a meagre career span compared with Eighties icons The Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and Depeche Mode. Each enjoyed a return to form in 2004-5 with respective singles ‘Flamboyant’, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Precious’. The latter was the best of them; indeed I rate it amongst their top three singles of all time.

Like the enduring Basildon boys, Morrissey never made it to the top of the UK singles charts, either with The Smiths or solo. However, he came pretty close with ‘Irish Blood, English Heart’, the first single from his seventh studio album You Are The Quarry. It was typically controversial in its political theme but, despite its lack of airplay, went straight in at three. For all that, I preferred its successor, ‘First of the Gang to Die’. I remember seeing this performance on Later…. Morrissey seemed so effortless and precise in his vocals, raising him even higher than his already lofty position in my estimation, if not for his dodgy politics then as a singer.

I also appreciated releases by a couple of former boy band members. OK, so Robbie Williams was by then better known as a solo star. Whatever his origins, the 2005 Intensive Care album gave us one of his more divisive singles. On first hearing, it was hard to fathom what to make of ‘Tripping’. With no proper intro, it dived straight into a Clash-like ska rhythm. Huh?! I hung on in there and was rewarded by an uplifting chorus and, for all its eccentricity, a strangely engaging song. Was it all about drugs, as suggested by the title? I don’t know. However, credit to the Robster for trying something different.

Blue were taking a break, leaving some of their members to forge separate careers. I liked Simon Webbe’s ‘No Worries’ single, although the “I just know your life’s gonna change” line, sung by Yvonne John Lewis, is the best bit about the song. Webbe’s vocals make the record sound like superior Lighthouse Family fare but it was surprisingly good. More surprising perhaps was his failure to extend his discography beyond two albums. Meanwhile, Westlife survived the departure of Brian McFadden in 2004 and droned their way to yet another stodgy chart-topping ballad. ‘You Raise Me Up’? No, it just got me down.

Busted’s tour support act, McFly usurped their bosses’ crown and proved even more successful. Debut ‘Five Colours in Her Hair’ was pure pop gold and the follow-up ‘Obviously’ was almost as good. Incredibly, they went on to notch another sixteen top ten hits. While Busted’s James Bourne contributed to some of their early tracks, it was Tom Fletcher’s songwriting and pleasant voice which proved decisive. Furthermore, the eager, easy-going personalities of Tom, Danny, Dougie and Harry appealed to kids and adults alike, helping them become charity song stalwarts. It amuses me to recall Mum telling me she liked their version of ‘Don’t Stop Us Now’, released for Sport Relief two years later. I doubt she’d ever heard the Queen original, but the melodic intro probably did it for her. Actually, I’d even go so far as rating their live performance of the song at Wembley as approaching the quality of Freddie et al. Praise indeed!

I can’t vouch for the quality of their musicianship but O-zone also enjoyed a big hit in 2004. ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue – unless you speak Romanian – but it did have a catchy chorus and boast the USP of being the first, and probably last, band from Moldova to make the top three over here! Six months after breaking Europe they disbanded. Such is pop!

The mid-Noughties were filled with American pseudo-punk bands, from Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy to emo idols My Chemical Romance. However, in 2004, Green Day reminded us why their template could not possibly be improved upon. That was on account of the album American Idiot, unleashed that September with the single of the same name. Expletive-laden and provocatively political, it bowled me over from the dramatic opening riff to the sudden ending. Its three minutes are as powerful and energetic as anything ever recorded. TOTP accorded them the accolade of a live performance in the Television Centre car park, with the rest of the gig available on the red button. I took advantage and loved it.

Four other tracks were released as singles but my favourite has to be ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, one of the very best rock ballads. It peaked at number five at Christmas but deservedly hung around for months. Billy-Joe Armstrong’s kohl-eyed, round-faced rock rebel look never seems to change, even in the second decade of the 2000s. Will he ever succumb to the ageing process? Who cares? As for the album, it was described variously as rock opera and concept album, telling a story of working-class love and life in a post-9/11 President Bush America. It was begging to be made into a stage musical and, five years later, this became reality. Another five years, and it crossed the Atlantic, landing at Cardiff. Angie isn’t familiar with the band so we didn’t buy tickets. Another regret. 

Last year I happened upon an interview with Green Day in which Billy-Jo and co spoke fondly about working with Dave Grohl many years previously. Nothing surprising about that; everyone who has worked for the Foo Fighters front man has nothing but nice epithets to say about him. However, the programme reminded me of another broadcast I watched in 2005 when The Foo Fighters released the double album In Your Honour. For all Grohl’s ‘nicest man in rock’ persona, I’ve rarely heard a track of his which had the ‘Wow!’ factor. ‘Learning to Fly’ came close – but no cigar.

This new album featured one typical heavy rock CD alongside a more mellow acoustic record. Together Grohl described them as “the bottle and the hangover”! I don’t know what I was watching back then (Jonathan Ross, possibly?) but the band performed live a song from each. When Grohl stepped up with just an acoustic guitar with no other accompaniment, I saw a different side of the Fighters, which I guess was the whole point. He was probably singing his old composition from the early Nirvana days ‘Friend of a Friend’. These days it has come to represent a Kurt Cobain tribute but for me it merely showcases Dave Grohl’s many and varied talents. 

Green Day apart, I was more into the emerging indie rock sound emanating from every corner of Britain – and Finland. Starting with the latter, The Rasmus breathed some new life into a traditional rock genre with ‘In the Shadows’ but in January 2004, it was Scottish band Franz Ferdinand who made the headlines. ‘Take Me Out’ certainly grabbed the attention. The snappy guitar and deadpan vocals in the opening minute had a touch of the Nineties about it, then the chords slowed and we were into what sounded like a completely different song. I can’t pretend I found the melody particularly appealing but as a modern splash of guitar rock, it worked a treat. 

Franz Ferdinand were definitely at the arty end of the spectrum. Singer Alex Kapranos was for a while a food critic for The Guardian for heaven’s sake! My natural inclination was for something more earthy, more engaging. Enter The Kaiser Chiefs! ‘I Predict a Riot’ wasn’t a big hit but once heard, never forgotten. Of course the chorus has lived on amongst football crowds. Not in anticipation of Seventies-style mayhem but mocking a chunky opposition player with ‘riot’ replaced by ‘diet’… 

‘Every Day I Love You Less and Less’ subverted the usual idea of a relationships song and ‘Oh My God’ had a delightful languorous swing to it. I remember watching them do Glastonbury and appear, sweaty and swaying, for a live post-gig interview. Whether Ricky Wilson was actually drunk on alcohol or euphoria, I couldn’t be sure, but he delivered entertaining answers, unusual for a pop star. I went on to buy their 2005 album Employment, which still bears up.  Rather too many “OhhhhhHHHHHs”, perhaps, but there were few duff tracks.

2005 was also the year in which The Stereophonics finally achieved a number one single. ‘Dakota’ seemed to spring from nowhere. More than a decade later, it still feels fresh; a twenty-first century classic. They haven’t really come close since and, on hearing on the radio, it’s a track for which we still raise the volume to yell “I don’t know where we are going now”. 

The Welshmen had been going too long to be media darlings but The Arctic Monkeys ticked the boxes of musos eager to find fresh faces and new exciting music. They rode the crest of the technological wave on which new artists could promote, market and distribute their work in seconds. The internet was already an amazing thing. The Sheffield quartet typified the new DIY rock band trend, and the back-to-basics video for ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ further played to this elemental image. As for me, I hated it, but you couldn’t avoid it.  

Madonna may have been 47, almost old enough to be Arctic Monkey Alex Turner’s granny, but she still looked good on the dancefloor, too. Her 2005 disco track ‘Hung Up’ was another in her line of retro-modern dance fusion singles, sampling Abba’s arpeggio keyboard hook from ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’. An eleventh UK number one was the inevitable conclusion. The video also ensured that nobody else could ever again wear a pink leotard and make it their own. For all the ubiquity of manufactured dancers with vices like Girls Aloud and the Pussycat Dolls, Madonna still had more talent and charisma in her left ankle than a hundred Cheryl Tweedys or Nicole Scherzingers in their whole gyrating bodies.

Madonna had been around seemingly for an eternity, but Britain was churning out more young female singer-songwriters. KT Tunstall was already a multi-instrumentalist, music graduate, professional songwriter and almost 30 years old when she recorded her debut album Eye to the Telescope. It brought her intriguing blend of folk, blues, pop and rock to the world and sold a million in the UK alone. The beautiful ballad ‘Other Side of the World’ had evident echoes of Dido at her best, but it was the up-tempo ‘Suddenly I See’ which seemed to be on the radio all the time and had my feet a-tapping.

Jemma Griffiths was another Celt with a degree (in law!) under her belt. Born in Penarth, and furthering her musical education as DJ, agent and promoter around Brighton, she finally broke through with her Finally Woken album. Like Moby before her, she’d used her professional experience and instincts to license all tracks for use on TV, which helped break her in the States. She came to my attention in July ’05 as Jem performing the bouncy ‘They’ on TOTP. Her breathy voice needed multi-layering but she owned the stage to the manor born, a talented free spirit with an ear for a killer pop tune. ‘Just a Ride’ and ‘Wish I’ sounded equally refreshing and yet, at the time of writing, she has inexplicably failed to dent the top fifty again. I bought the album yet remain the only person in my circle (admittedly with a feeble radius) who has ever heard of Jem. 

That same summer, animated ‘artists’ enjoyed considerable success, but with mixed critical response. I’ll start with the positive. When Damon Albarn found a post-Blur collaborator in artist and designer Jamie Hewlett several years earlier, the virtual band Gorillaz enjoyed actual chart success. I wasn’t so impressed. However, when they released ‘Feelgood Inc’ in May 2005, I was converted to the cause.  I couldn’t really relate to the ugly-but-cool Gorillaz bandmates. I left that to my fifteen year-old niece Rachel. But the captivating combination of rock, electro, hip-hop and bruising bassline was topped off by the astonishing animation. The synth-backed sequence of the floating windmill island still gets me moist-eyed and generously goose-pimpled. The follow-up ‘Dare’, with Shaun Ryder, had a more conventional structure, and went to number one, but for me it’s ‘Feelgood Inc’ that has the edge. 

At the pond life end of the spectrum, Crazy Frog’s ‘Axel F’ must surely go down as one of the most irritating three minutes of – I hesitate to ascribe the term music – amphibian turd in the history of mankind. Thank you, Erik Wernquist! Harmless attempts at sound effects became associated with a creepy computer animate character. With mobile phone ringtones becoming big business, the frightful frog’s “A ring ding ding ding d-ding” was taking over not only the radio airwaves but also seemingly the very air that we breathed.

Everyone wished there had been a tadpole murder when ‘Axel F’ robbed Coldplay of a first number one single in June. The event allowed Chris Martin to show he did, after all, possess a sense of humour. Appearing on, I think, the Jonathan Ross TV chat show, he opened a performance of their superior ‘Speed of Sound’ with a gritted teeth “ring ding-a-ding” rendition! He acknowledged Coldplay’s nemesis again at Glastonbury and probably on subsequent occasions too numerous to mention. 

After the split from Kim, I filled my Saturday mornings listening to Jonathan Ross’s show on Radio 2. The network was rapidly building a reputation for personality-led radio, playing music for my age group. The evening schedules remained full of fodder for pensioners but newly-promoted Controller Lesley Douglas was transforming Radio 2 into a commercial-free haven for thirty- and fortysomething Radio 1 exiles like me. Jonathan Ross was the star signing. He may have come at a price but was worth every penny. I looked forward to his broadcast over breakfast and it was sometimes difficult to switch off to do the weekly shop. ‘Wossy’ is nothing if not a master of the anecdote, and his life was ripe for an endless stream of funny and credible stories, accompanied by producer Andy’s helpless giggling.  

Of course, it wasn’t all about the chat. Radio 2 could break new music acts, and it was on one of those Saturday mornings when my ears were first treated to ‘Somewhere Only We Know’. Hmm. Sounded good. It must have been a song I’d heard but long forgotten. Jonathan back-announced the artists as Keane. I soon realised Keane were a band, on the road to conquering Britain with their brand of piano-led pop rock, out-Coldplaying Coldplay.

The multi-platinum album Hopes and Fears is one of my all-time favourites, containing so many excellent tracks. ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ was an instant success with me, marked by Tom Chaplin’s high tenor vocals and Tim Rice-Oxley’s fervent keyboard rhythms. And yet ‘Everybody’s Changing’ has become perhaps their signature piece and a song I never tire of hearing, or singing along to. For all that, it may well be the album finale ‘Bedshaped’ which was their concert performance highlight, be it at Glasto or the 2005 Live 8 charity mega-gig. 

Writing of which, I was with BBC colleagues at the Radio Festival in Edinburgh that July. Hordes of horseback riot police were on every corner in case of civil unrest linked, not to our event, but the Gleneagles G8 summit. Midge Ure had organised for Murrayfield the final Live 8 concert to further focus hearts and minds of people and politicians to Make Poverty History. At our venue, Midge had actually set aside a ticket for every delegate to attend straight after the conference ended. Wow! Fantastic! Only problem was the fact that I had no place to stay that night and a non-transferable train ticket booked for that afternoon. I therefore had to decline. 

That may have been disappointing but it turned out to be fortuitous. Had I delayed my return until the following morning, my train would not have reached London. The 7/7 bombings caused a public transport lockdown, closing not just the Underground network but also all the rail termini. I did watch much of the rain-soaked concert on telly, though. 

One of the top songs for the waving lighter brigades, including those being soaked at Murrayfield, was ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol. The track may have subsequently become purloined by the loathsome Leona Lewis, and the band more famous for the drearily monotonous ‘Chasing Cars’, but it’s easy to forget how popular and influential the original was. The verse is so sad and mournful but with the “Light up, light up….” refrain, the mood lifts and – well – lights up into a symphony of hope in the face of adversity.

Another power ballad beloved of all but the most pop-adverse radio stations in the mid-Noughties was Daniel Powter’s ‘Bad Day’. However, for a heartwarming, heart-melting romantic message, the simple approach is often the best. That was the thrust of Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘These Words’ which topped the chart in October 2004. After exhausting the traditional inspirations of classical poets, etc, she settles quite rightly for the most trustworthy source of all:

“These words are my own
From my heart flown
I love you I love you
I love you I love you!”

She emerged that autumn from the shadow of brother Daniel to become a genuine star in her own right. ‘These Words’ may have been a hip-hop ballad but back then Natasha could be forgiven anything. The Yanks preferred her follow-up ‘Unwritten’, reminiscent of Natalie Imbruglia or a loved-up Alanis Morissette, but our own chart-topper was endearingly British and all the better for it!

Another example of a delightful no-frills love song was ‘Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing’ by Katie Melua. Not a title which shrieks passion and romance, but the sweet lyrics explain that for all the so-called facts and figures we learn, the only precise truth is that “I will love you ‘til I die”. Ahhhh. And yet I also loved this latest Melua-Batt collaboration from her second album Piece by Piece. A few years later, Mum asked me if I was familiar with the songstress. She had apparently been featured on BBC Essex and Mum proceeded to request Melua albums for Christmas. Not sure I had a sweet enough tooth to bear the piles of sugar heaped into an entire album but this was a rare occasion when our musical tastes overlapped.

I’ve no idea what Mum thought of James Blunt. Nevertheless, during the summer of 2005, most people I knew had an opinion, and it was generally rather negative. His second single ‘You’re Beautiful’ was a real Marmite song. Love it or hate it, the song haunted the summer airwaves for months. Unusually, it entered the chart outside the top ten and climbed slowly to the summit, staying there for five weeks. For all its chart dominance, it didn’t even sell half a million copies, but it carved a niche deep in the British consciousness.

Here was a bloke so posh he’d ridden horses in the Life Guards, was a son of an army colonel and with a family tree traceable to tenth century Danish monarchy. At 31, he was quite late to pop superstardom but that’s where he was heading. One minute he was supporting Katie Melau and Elton John, the next he was headlining around the world, selling 11 million copies of debut album Back to Bedlam.

Back to the chart-topping single, where do I stand? Well, I considered it one of the best love songs I had ever heard. Another simple structure, plaintive lyrics charting the singer’s yearning for a woman’s affections he cannot possibly acquire. Women loved him. Apart from being a man (formerly) in uniform, here was someone unafraid to reveal his romantic side and lay his heart bare. It’s a trait common in male balladeers in recent years but for a few years Blunt blazed the trail. He even became the first Brit to top the US chart since Elton’s Diana tribute in 1997.

I did adore the song but I was no fan of Mr Blunt. I found his voice so tiresomely weedy and reedy, it didn’t deserve to sing lyrics as powerful and heart string tugging as ‘You’re Beautiful’. He hasn’t claimed another really successful single although I felt 2008’s ‘Carry You Home’ merited at least a top three spot, not a dismal twenty. His 2017 reincarnation as a Sheeran soundalike didn't quite reap the expected rewards either.

At Christmas 2005, I did my best to avoid a feeble but popular song about a child’s ride on his father’s JCB and Shayne Ward’s shitty X Factor-winning ballad ‘That’s My Goal’. However, shitty X Factor-winning ballads were to become inescapable for the next decade. Meanwhile, my life and career were bound for new challenges beyond the reach of even Simon Cowell.

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.

1996 - Step outside, summertime's in bloom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                        That Beckham red card

                        Rooney stamping too hard

                        Seaman grasping thin air

And Iceland’s war chant….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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