2000-01 - How could I forget that I had given her an extra key?

And so to the 2000s. Just as the total solar eclipse of 11^th August 1999 had failed to signal the destruction of humankind, the doom-mongering descendants of Nostradamus were similarly disappointed as the world didn’t end at the stroke of midnight of 31^st December. People may have partied like it was 1999 but they just kept going. Whether it was all a big hoax or the people had reason to embrace the IT crowd, but neither did the ‘Millennium Bug’ bring the planet’s computers to a sudden halt, crippling microwaves and multinational banks alike. On the other hand, a few rough hands were dealt: foot and mouth disease, a fuel crisis manufactured by the right-wing Countryside Alliance, severe flooding and the 9/11 terror attacks. I even contracted chicken pox.

Music seemed to be at rock bottom, too. With a record 43 number one singles, the once-lauded achievement was surely irrevocably devalued. Things had come to a pretty poor juncture for me to declare Bob the Builder’s Christmas hit ‘Can We Fix It?’ one of my favourites of the year. On 13^th April 2000 I noted in the diary: “I always wondered at what age I’d lose interest in chart music. The answer is 38!”

Well, that assertion proved premature but back then, there were precious few top 20 entries that appealed to me. 2001 wasn’t a whole lot better but at least the charts had a bit more stability, allowing me to get more closely acquainted with a lot of the high-fliers.

Boybands and girl groups were possibly at their zenith. The Westlife conveyor belt of mum-friendly ballads continued to chug along remorselessly, A1 enjoyed an unfathomable run of top-tenners, 5ive (no ‘F’!) benefited from some help from Queen and along came Blue.

Keen to follow the success of The Backstreet Boys, the quartet ventured not into pop but definite R’n’B territory. Their biggest hit in 2001 was ‘Too Close’ but it’s ‘All Rise’ which was surely their highpoint. Lee Ryan and Duncan James may have had the girls swooning, Antony Costa providing the Robbie-ish tomfoolery but it was Simon Webbe who was surely the soul and voice of the band. They did have some credibility as talented singers in the UK but it was six thousand miles away where I recall my favourite performance of that song: by a young Thai group in a Chiang Mai open-air restaurant!

As for the females of the species, The Spice Girls survived the break for all their members’ (and Geri Halliwell’s) solo efforts to record a new album. They, too, took the R’n’B route, which quickly killed them off. The single ‘Holler’ reached the top – their ninth number one - was well received by the critics but failed to take their young fans with them. It sounded awful to me, too.

It wasn’t the end for Scary, Baby, Posh or Sporty, though. Mel B stuck with the American vibe, Emma Bunton sang some pleasant poppy songs, Mel C mixed things up nicely with ballads, dance and soul while Victoria….well, Victoria married David Beckham. Actually, her collaboration with Truesteppers and Dane Bowers, ‘Out of Your Mind’ did generate some media interest in August 2000. It was hyped as part of a battle with Spiller’s vastly superior ‘Groovejet’, which introduced Sophie Ellis-Bexter. Posh lost but, in her current guise as fashion designer and celebrity darling, she has won the war hands-down.

On the female side, Liverpudlians Atomic Kitten enjoyed a very successful start to the third millennium. I couldn’t stand ‘em. Nevertheless, their fifth single ‘Whole Again’ was indubitably one of those irritatingly perfect pop songs, like ‘No Matter What’ or ‘Earth Song’, selling a million but making me reach for the Off button. Somehow, they had several other top-tenners, led by a lame cover of ‘Eternal Flame’.  

I hadn’t been a fan of All Saints, either. Yet in February 2001, they released ‘Pure Shores’, a winning collaboration between Shaznay Lewis and that man William Orbit. I loved the trippy vibe from the first bar. I also quite liked the quartet’s seemingly random dancing, at odds with the over-rehearsed routines with which I had become so familiar. Watch their live TOTP performance: their shamble-chic swaying, the excellent voice of Mel Blatt and the harmonies of the Appleton sisters. Shaznay wasn’t the best singer but hers was the songwriting talent.

No wonder Madonna was fuming Orbit gave the song to the Anglo-Canadians and not her. The similar ‘Black Coffee’ gave us more gorgeous ‘dream pop’ harmonies and also went to number one. After this and ‘Pure Shores’, I could almost forgive All Saints for the more popular ‘Never Ever’. Almost.

It wasn’t just the single-sex groups bringing in the punters. Steps staggered on before splitting up in 2001. By then, the baton was well and truly passed to Simon Fuller’s new creation, S Club 7. Created for children’s TV, they weren’t exactly The Monkees. For starters, the Sixties funsters didn’t have Rachel Stevens swinging her hips to I’m a Believer! I must admit I never watched a minute of their BBC series, and their early singles left me cold. ‘Bring it All Back’ and ‘Reach’ were perfect pop anthems for seven year-olds and their ballads were pale shadows of The Spice Girls. Then in April 2001, from nowhere, came ‘Don’t Stop Movin’’.

Unusually, the boring Jo O’Meara was relegated to second lead, ceding the verses to Bradley McIntosh. There were real instruments, it was grown-up, the rhythm was utterly infectious and what an intro! Besides its Best Single Brit award, it achieved the rare accolade of being a ‘split’ number one. Its two weeks at the top were divided by Geri Halliwell’s awful ‘It’s Raining Men’. No longer could I dismiss the group as dumb child fodder; they had a record it was OK to like.

Lee Cattermole’s departure the following year meant the ‘7’ had to be discarded and in the middle of a live performance in 2003, the remainder of the band also called time. In the meantime, the brand extended to a bunch of genuine youngsters called S Club Juniors, later re-named S Club 8. That was the final straw. Britain was all S-Clubbed out.

As a solo artist, Robbie Williams had conquered the nation’s affections in a way that Gary Barlow had so surprisingly failed to do. For several years, you knew summer was over and the autumn leaves were about to fall when the new Robbie album came out. Youngsters ran to the shops to buy the CD to wrap for their Mums’ Christmas prezzy, and there were usually attention-grabbing singles assailing the number one spot, too.

2000 and 2001 weren’t years for his best songs. However, I will concede that ‘Rock DJ’ was a decent stomper with a controversial video, the uncut version definitely not for the squeamish! Then, when the 2001 album turned out to be a vanity project, Swing When You’re Winning, satisfying Robbie’s inner Rat Pack desires, I felt the bubble had burst.

There was only one hit single, a faithful for-Christmas reprise with Nicole Kidman of the sumptuous Sinatra duet ‘Somethin’ Stupid. Robbie had a decent voice, no question. Yet he surely couldn’t compare himself with Frank Sinatra, could he?! I remember watching with Mum and Dad the TV Albert Hall ‘special’, with Mr W posturing in classic chilled suit and casually unfastened ‘dickie-bow’. They also recognised he wasn’t a bad singer. Yet Mum couldn’t escape her classroom instincts for spotting a troublemaker. She simply could not get away from her observation of the cheeky persona as being a sure sign of a ghastly child to teach! In the event, ‘Swing When You’re Winning’ proved me wrong by being one of Robbie’s most successful albums. Moreover, the show DVD went on to be one of Europe’s biggest sellers of all time. Back then, the man could walk on water.

At the start of the millennium, I didn’t attend any West End musicals, but did watch a few films featuring prominent soundtracks. In November 2001, Kim and I saw Baz Luhrmann’s screen musical, Moulin Rouge. It garnered great media reviews but I considered it “overblown and over-rated”. A few female friends loved the romantic lead Ewan McGregor, but I wonder what would have happened had Leonardo di Caprio got the part for which he auditioned. Roles were reversed in the Danny Boyle adventure-drama The Beach, which we went to see in February 2000. Unlike Moulin Rouge, this did boast a cracking soundtrack and one which actually complemented the film. Indeed, perhaps apart from the Thai scenery, the music was probably the best thing about it.

‘Pure Shores’ was an obvious choice: shores…beach….duh! However, the top track must have been ‘Porcelain’ by Moby. To me, the tinkling piano represented a gentle subtropical stream while the four-chord string progression played backwards gave it a soothing yet mysterious backdrop. This proved perfect for a film about a stoner backpacker community, at first so idyllic, yet about to fracture so horribly.  Even the title suggests something beautiful yet brittle, again fundamentally fitting for the storyline. I didn’t really register Moby’s own downbeat introspective lyrics, so stunning was the production. The album from whence it came, Play, was an unexpectedly huge hit, albeit not a source of successful singles. Instead, all the tracks were licensed to the advertising industry. Ever the creative producer and musician, Moby has never been away, but I doubt ‘Porcelain’ could be surpassed as an electronic ambient dreamscape.

Checking back through my diary I was surprised to find that this wasn’t my favourite song of 2001. Instead it was the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Ocean Spray’. These days, it wouldn’t even have been my favourite Welsh release!

That would have been a toss-up between ‘Have a Nice Day’ and ‘Handbags and Gladrags’, both by The Stereophonics, who were at the peak of their popularity. The Manics may have given Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and the 2000s a memorable launch with the rollicking ‘Masses Against the Classes’, but the ‘Phonics won on sales. Kelly Jones’ voice was ideal to deliver a fabulously faithful cover of the wistful 1971 Rod Stewart track. However, the easy rhythm of ‘Have a Nice Day’ more snugly fitted my mood at the time.

Mellow male melancholy was big in Britain. Travis followed their 1999 conquests with the sumptuous ‘Sing’. The subtle banjo, chimes and guitar made for a captivating sound as good as anything else they have done. I could say the same for ‘Yellow’ by the then little known band called Coldplay. Their debut album Parachutes sold a million but the floaty ballad was the only single from it that I liked.

The simple video was also a winner, although I don’t understand why it had to be filmed – and lip-synched - at double speed before being played at half-speed. That’s why, as he strolls along Studland Bay beneath the stars, some of boyish Chris Martin’s mannerisms don’t quite look right. Apparently ‘Yellow’ remains a crowd-pleaser in their concerts and I recall seeing their first Glasto appearance on the telly. As usual, I failed miserably to predict their longevity and incredible global superstardom.

David Gray’s White Ladder was another album which crept up through the cracks and took the UK by storm. I considered his top-five single ‘Babylon’ one of the best in 2000, although it was sometimes difficult to ignore his infuriatingly persistent head-shaking as he sang. It didn’t matter whether he was playing guitar or piano, ‘old noddy’ was at it constantly. Never mind. There weren’t any other solo blokes singing their own songs so the Mancunian stood out from the crowd. I’m not sure why he hasn’t maintained that early momentum. It’s not as if there’s no longer any appetite for introspective young men strumming to ballads. Maybe Ed Sheeran et al should be grateful for the trail blazed by David Gray a decade earlier.

It was a fruitful period for Will Smith, too. Shrugging off the Fresh Prince persona, his old-school amiable pop rap, sampling the likes of Sister Sledge (‘Getting Jiggy Wit It’) and Stevie Wonder (‘Wild Wild West’) was always on the radio. And yet the baton was about to be passed to a new brand of hip-hop in the form of Eminem. A successful white rapper? Surely not? And yet in 1999-2001, the former Marshall Mathers III apparently created a sub-genre all of his own.

I didn’t particularly like ‘My Name Is’ but in 2000’s entertaining ’The Real Slim Shady’, Eminem lambasts Will himself, as well as a host of other contemporary celebs. Somehow, his cheeky alter ego seems to get away with it. His biggest hit over here is probably ‘Stan’ and, ‘Neneh Cherry’s ‘Man Child’ excepted, must be my top hip-hop song of all time. The tale of a crazed fan who ends up killing his pregnant girlfriend, blaming Eminem for his actions, gave Mr Mathers full rein to spit out more vitriolic rhymes, this time as part of a character other than himself. Yet would the song have been so memorable without the guitar intro and the airy-fairy verse sung by the woman who in the video played the ill-fated girlfriend of Stan?

Not long afterwards, I discovered her name was Dido. Well, Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, to be precise. A year later, she had cornered the international market for female-perspective romantic angst. A few tracks had been used in films and TV dramas a few years earlier and her album No Angel had a curious history. Recorded and released in the USA in 1999, then a year later in Europe, it didn’t exactly set the world afire until her contribution to ‘Stan’ raised her profile several notches.

I don’t think Dido’s voice is anything special but the gentle melodies were consistently exceptional. I came to recognise that ‘bit from Stan’ in ‘Thank You’, a clear example of a song where the chorus fails to lift the verse. It went to number three, ahead of the superior ‘Here With Me’ and my preferred track, ‘Hunter’. As for the album itself, it has since sold a barely credible 21 million copies around the world, 3 million of which came in the UK alone. By the end of 2001, there was no avoiding Ms Armstrong or her magnificent mellow music.

In 2000 Britney Spears followed ‘One More Time’ with two further classy chart-toppers, ‘Oops I Did it Again’ and the grown-up ballad ‘Born to Make You Happy’. Billie became Billie Piper and tried to become the Brit Britney on the forgettable ‘Day and Night’. Her music career seemed to wither once she became Mrs Chris Evans at just eighteen. I wrote her off as just another ephemeral starlet, yet now she boasts a deserved reputation as one of our top TV and stage actresses. Good on her!

The Corrs continued their run of success with the US-friendly timeless light rock of ‘Breathless’ but I preferred the similar ‘Sitting Down Here’ by young Norwegian songstress Lene Marlin. Already big in her own country, this pleasant ditty brought her briefly to my attention but this was her first and last top-tenner in the UK. Meanwhile, a singer I’d thought I’d heard the last of made a stunning return to the charts.

Kylie’s time had surely been and gone, along with the Stock-Aitken-Waterman ‘Hit Factory’ era a decade earlier. Yet, on my 39^th birthday in 2000, Ms Minogue and her gold hotpants were propelled to the summit in ‘Spinning Around’. This was Kylie reinvented for the 21^st century dance generation and I was seriously surprised how well it worked. More hits followed, including the less-than impressive ‘Kids’ with the besotted Robbie Williams, but then the following September, she only goes and releases ‘I Can’t Get You Out of My Head’.

Wow! Where did that come from? And since when had flamboyant Mud guitarist Rob Davies been a songwriter? His robotic bassline, the ‘la-la-la’ hook, Cathy Dennis’ melody and lyrics and that miraculously and maddeningly stable white costume in the video not only made the single an instant classic but have gone down in pop history. I was delighted to find that Kylie was suddenly ‘cool’. Her second career as dance diva was to last longer than her first incarnation as ‘pop princess’ although it wasn’t really my cup of tea. 

For all the success of ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ it was only the third biggest-selling single of 2001. Top of the list was another song I wouldn’t have expected to have loved had it simply been described to me: ‘It Wasn’t Me’. I had never understood a word uttered by Shaggy. With apologies to all Jamaican patois singers, all his lyrics sound like “lubba-lubba-lubba”. And yet, aided by Rikrok’s character narration, his tongue-in-cheek humour and advice to deny everything despite being caught in flagrate delicto with an unnamed lady by saying – intelligibly – “It wasn’t me” made me warm to him. The song had a strange structure, rather repetitive, but I still adore it: a rare dash of humour amidst a welter of rather dour dance and R’n’B.

It wasn’t the only record to make me smile. The Bloodhound Gang’s ‘Bad Touch’ could easily have been just a bad-taste paeon to sex had it not been for a fun electro-beat and creatively descriptive lyrics like

“You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”.

Daft but delightful! The same goes for the charming slice of teen grunge rock ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ by Wheatus. The full-blooded modern punk by the likes of Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot left me cold, but this sweet love story and its powerful chorus was oddly enjoyable. Doesn’t the moment when the girl approaches the boy with those precious Iron Maiden tickets tug at the heartstrings? Or is it just me? At least the tale gives hope to all the geeks and losers that we can actually get the girl.The band must have had fun with it, too, as witnessed by their live interaction with the TOTP audience.

I hadn’t been completely deserted by US dance, though. However, it was hard to single out shining examples in 2000-01. I’d say my favourites were Jakatta’s ‘American Dream’ and Roger Sanchez’s ‘Another Chance’. Both featured a rather monotonous beat and few, if any, discernible lyrics, but then you could say that about any dance anthem. I guess that’s the point. However, both had something different about them. The former had that short chill zone in the middle, while I loved the cool chords in ‘Another Chance’. Sanchez is another of those yawnworthy superstar DJs of the Ibiza club circuit but I’ll let him off for producing this memorable mix of samples.

Around this time, new niche ‘urban’ musical categories were traversing the Atlantic and moving into our mainstream. Grime, Dubstep,…. They all sounded the same to me. However, in those early 2000s, another entered my vocabulary. Garage was no longer just somewhere you kept your car safe; it was a genre popular enough to top the UK chart. Acts like So Solid Crew and their offshoot Oxide and Neutrino didn’t float my boat but Southampton teenager Craig David possessed enough charisma and, more importantly, tunes to keep me listening. It was his voice on The Artful Dodger’s ‘Re-Rewind’ in 1999. Craig David was Oliver Twist, and he was the new kid on the Garage block. In 2000, along came ‘Fill Me In’, another rather boring blend of British R’n’B and hip-hop but I liked the groove in ‘Seven Days’; It was more Blue than Blues. 

‘Walking Away’ was a reasonable ballad, too, and his debut album Born to Do It went multi-platinum. Undoubtedly intelligent, young Craig could occasionally come across as a bit of a knob. However, he didn’t deserve to become such a laughing stock, mercilessly mocked on ‘Bo Selecta!’ by the perennially unfunny Leigh Francis, aka Avid Merrion. Credit to him for making such a successful comeback in 2015-16, proving his position as one of Britain’s most award-laden black acts of all time.

While Craig David was the latest in a long line of talented singer-songwriters, 2001 was year zero in the modern era of artists created by television. Of course, TV talent shows were nothing new, but when Simon Cowell’s new ITV Saturday night show Popstars assembled Hear’Say, the die was cast for a twenty-first century assembly line of stars, so lucrative for SyCo and ITV.

I wouldn’t mind so much if the music was any good. However, they all seemed to be lowest common denominator ballads. ‘Pure and Simple’ was in the ‘Whole Again’ mould but the three girls-two boys line-up was more S Club 7 for the ITV audience. The group didn’t last very long, but Coronation Street’s Kym Marsh, Suzanne Shaw and the classically-trained pianist-turned-model Myleene Klass haven’t done too badly since then.

On the other hand, Hear’Say’s swift success demonstrated the potential of such a light entertainment template. Popstars begat Pop Idol which in turn begat X Factor. Producer Simon Cowell was laughing all the way to the bank but musical creativity threatened to go gurgling down the toilet...

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.