You’ve Got To Not Wet Yourself Brother

I was actually kind of disappointed that a posthumous Michael Jackson Number One single wasn’t the big story on the singles chart this week. Above is my original seven-inch copy of ‘Man In The Mirror’ bought just after it came out in March 1988. I’d heard it on the radio one morning and raved enthusiastically to my friend Chris that it didn’t matter how many copies the album had sold, the single was so good and so inspiring that it deserved to be Number One for weeks. It would therefore have been nice to have been finally proven correct 21 years later.

Nonetheless I seem to have spent most of the week talking about the record anyway, having been contacted on Monday morning by a journalist from BBC Online who was putting together a piece about the track and just why this was the Jackson fans’ tribute purchase of choice. We spoke for about ten minutes, by the end of which I was wondering if I was going to be interrogated on the subject of what colour underwear the star was wearing on the day he recorded the vocals. That was how thorough the questioning was, but I guess in true journalistic fashion he just wanted to make sure he had enough soundbites and quotes from me to pluck the very best ones for the piece.

The fruits of these labours went up on Monday afternoon, and you can see the piece preserved online forever. Perhaps most fascinating are the comments underneath with one chap suggesting the rather more prosaic explanation for the success of the single is that it was one of the few that wasn’t on the ‘Number Ones’ album that everyone raced to buy and so they had to download this particular track as a single to complete the set as it were. Another blamed a Facebook application designed to show you your “favourite Michael Jackson song” which apparently came up with MITM as the answer every time.

This afternoon I continued the round of media whorage with a guest appearance on the Danny Kelly show on BBC WM where I followed a Bubbles impersonator on the running order. If you are reading this within seven days of posting, then you can find the show on iPlayer, I appear about 43 minutes in I think.

No matter how many times I explain it, I’m still a little startled by the surge in support for the song. When I bought the single at the time I was one of a select few, and to all intents and purposes the track was little more than a throwaway release, made at a time when Jackson was preoccupied with the Bad world tour rather than promoting singles. That a track that he did not even write, did not make a video for, which charted lower than any of his singles at the time habitually did and, lest we forget had nothing more than the instrumental version on the b-side should become the mourners’ single of choice is something to be marvelled.

I’m still happier Cascada are Number One, mind.

The Complete Jackson

I’ve never done this before, delving into the Masterton archives for a near complete account of everything I’ve ever written about a particular artist. The death of Michael Jackson seems to be an appropriate moment to break that particular duck, so here then is the unexpurgated and unredacted parade of every piece I’ve written about a Michael Jackson single.

These pieces cover the tail end of the ‘Dangerous’ promotional campaign at the end of 1992, through his chart revival with the HIStory set, his reinvention as a dancefloor king in 1997 and the rather misfiring 2001 comeback. The pieces collected here were either written for usenet, or from the mid-90s onwards the various official chart commentaries for dotmusic and its successors.

5th December 1992

No. 3: HIGHEST NEW ENTRY. Michael Jackson - Heal The World.

Single No.6 off the album makes a startlingly high debut, given that the last couple only just scraped the Top 20. Always a cert for the Christmas single 'Heal The World' is odds on favourite to hit the top, but the fact that so many people already have the album with both the single and it's b-side on it may well kill the sales of this well before the day itself.

2009 note – this was from something like the fourth chart column I ever wrote, with my style still to settle down from slight nonsense into the utter nonsense I generally write now.

27th February 1993

No. 6: NEW ENTRY. Michael Jackson - Give In To Me.

For Michael Jackson or indeed any other artist this is not a bad debut. For the 7th single off an album now 15 months old it is quite phenomenal. The success of this can bee attributed to a couple of reasons, the most likely of which being the TV showing in Britain last Monday of his interview with Oprah Winfrey which reputedly got more viewers than the BRITS ceremony. It's a clever bit of marketing by Sony Music in a similar way in which the 7th single off the 'Bad' album 'Smooth Criminal' made No.8 in December 1988 by coinciding with the cinema release of 'Moonwalker'. The second reason for the high entry may also be down to the fact that along with 'Who Is It' and 'Black Or White', Give In To Me is one of the few tracks on the album that represent Jackson at his very best and not stifled by machines. PS 'Bad' ultimately spawned 9 hit singles and the title track from 'Dangerous' has yet to appear on a 7" single.

10th July 1993

No. 11: NEW ENTRY. Michael Jackson - Will You Be There

Just grabbing the highest entry this week though is Jackson, and with it causing some debate over exactly what records he has established with this track. Very few albums produce large numbers of hit singles. The first to try this was Jackson himself with 6 from 'Thriller' - the first album ever to manage this. 'Bad' produced either 8 or 9 depending on your point of view ('Leave Me Alone' was only on the CD version yet peaked at 2 when released as a single in 1989) but one of these 'Man In The Mirror' peaked at 21. Therefore with the other 7 singles from 'Dangerous' making the Top 10 it becomes the first album ever to spawn 8 consecutive Top 20 hits, and a climb next week will make that 8 Top 10 hits. It's a remarkable achievement, the only people to come close to this are Guns 'N' Roses with(so far) 7 hits from the Use Your Illusion set, although this does not really count as they have 2 albums to play with rather than one.

18th December 1993

No. 35: NEW ENTRY. Michael Jackson - Gone Too Soon

You can look at this two ways. Jacko's third single of the year and the ninth hit from the album debuts at a place far lower than any before it. It could be down to the fact that the album is so old and this dirge of a tribute to his late friend Ryan White is one of the worst tracks from that album. The other factor could be the did he/didn't he scenario regarding Jordy Chandler and whether it has harmed his record sales at all. Only time will tell really....

10th June 1995

No.  3: (--) Michael & Janet Jackson – Scream

It was always going to be the biggest hit of the week, the question was just how big. When the brand new track from the newly rehabilitated Michael Jackson was premiered to the nation in a massive operation a few weeks ago the reaction was mixed to say the least. 'Scream' turned out to be one of those Michael Jackson records that is a groove and little else, at least it appears that way on first hearing it. That factor alone may have affected its sales in this first week - certainly Sony were hoping for an instant No.1 and publicly expressed their disappointment when it fell short. In fact the single fell way short, outsold by Pulp by a margin of 2:1 and by 'Unchained Melody' by 4:1. Hopes rest now on the premiere of the video on Thursday's 'Top of The Pops' which it is hoped will give it another boost. The reason for this apparent desperation on the part of the record company is simple - both the first singles from 'Dangerous' and 'Bad' were No.1 smashes and anything less than that from this new album will be seized by the press as an example of how the artist's career has been wrecked by the recent spate of allegations against him. I would rather suggest though that any underachievement by the single is more likely to be centred on the fact that this single sounds like little more than a b-side filler, would not rate a second glance if released by anyone else and certainly does not bear comparison with some of the classics he has released in the past. Herein lies the rub - Michael Jackson's whole superstar reputation it must be remembered, rests almost entirely on an album he made fifteen years ago and which probably means nothing to the generation of record buyers which has grown up since. More on this single, and its place in his overall chart achievements next week - whatever position it is at.

17th June 1995

No.  5: ( 3) Michael & Janet Jackson – Scream

Hmm, maybe the cynics were right. Whilst falling to No.5 after a Top 3 debut is no great crime, or ever very unusual, the fact that it is Michael Jackson doing so on a single currently unavailable on an album has caused many eyebrows to be raised. All of this of course has to be seen in context. Michael Jackson is still one of the all-time chart stars with 30 Top 10 hits to his credit - more than anyone else save Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley and Madonna; 'Bad' and 'Thriller' are two of the Top 5 biggest selling albums of all time in this country whilst 'Dangerous' became the first album ever to spawn 7 Top 10 hits. Despite all of this the knives are still out. Part of the reason for the single's stall is the delay in the release of the multi-million dollar video which has still to receive a proper airing. It will feature on Top Of The Pops at the insistence of producer Ric Blaxill, thus breaking the age-old rule of the show that no single going down the charts is ever featured. Meanwhile over in America the single has actually broken records of its own by breaking a 25 year old record to become the first single ever to debut inside the Top 5 on the Hot 100, although by the looks of things even that record is not going to last with America set for its first ever instant No.1 hit...

2009 note – and with that I went legit, with all the pieces that follow being ones that were published officially on dotmusic.com

2nd September 1995

3 YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Michael Jackson)

Top 3 placing notwithstanding, 'Scream' was by all accounts a terrible cacophony of a record that looked almost embarrassingly out of place on an album alongside some of Michael Jackson's past classics. The same can be said of many of the new songs from the 'History' album, save one. The R Kelly-penned ballad 'You Are Not Alone' probably ranks as one of the most beautiful songs Michael Jackson has ever recorded and so hot on the heels of becoming the first ever instant No.1 on Billboard's Hot 100, the track smashes straight in to become a Top 3 hit over here. Aside from his Jacksons work, this is Michael's 31st UK Top 10 hit.

9th September 1995

1 YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Michael Jackson)

The cynical view might be that this is as a result of some clever marketing, the release of another format to Michael Jackson's hit giving it the impetus to claim Number One, but that should in no way detract from the achievement of this record. The superstar whose image appeared tainted beyond repair has not only made chart history in America but has now duplicated that feat over here and returned to the top of the charts with a record that ranks alongside any that he has made before. The R Kelly ballad becomes his fifth solo chart topper (and his sixth in all if you count the Jacksons' 'Show You The Way To Go') following in the footsteps of 'One Day In Your Life' in 1981, 'Billie Jean' in 1983, 'I Just Can't Stop Loving You' in 1987 and 'Black Or White' in 1991. It also means he continues to be one of the few artists to have had at least one Number One single from a succession of albums, HIStory now joining 'Thriller', 'Bad' and 'Dangerous' on that list. It is by no means an unusual feat but it is one that few modern chart artists can emulate. It will now be interesting to see how long he can hold on to the top. None of his four previous chart-topping hits have remained there for longer than two weeks.

16th September 1995

1 YOU ARE NOT ALONE (Michael Jackson)

A second week at the top for Michael Jackson and by virtue of a strong surge of sales, by a slightly greater margin than the 800 copies that marked him out last week. Nonetheless his lead on the top remains slender and given the strong showing of several of the records below him he will face an uphill struggle to last another week and turn 'You Are Not Alone' into his longest running Number One hit ever.

2009 note – it didn’t, but his biggest UK chart single ever was just three months away.

9th December 1995

1 EARTH SONG (Michael Jackson)

At the start of this year, who would have thought it? Michael Jackson was apparently having to restart his career from the ground up following the scandals of recent years and was doing so with 'Scream', a noisy mess of a single that did little for the musical reputations of either him or sister Janet. The 'HIStory' album was not walking off the shelves in the manner expected either, until the release back in September of 'You Are Not Alone' which shot to Number One and reminded us that when it all boiled down, Michael Jackson was simply a superstar. Now the story takes on a second twist as he scores his second chart-topper of the year, shouldering the near-duopoloy of Coolio and Robson/Jerome out of the way as he does so. The towering gospel track gives him his sixth solo career Number One and indeed marks the first time he has had two chart-toppers from one album. This is despite his propensity for milking albums dry for singles - of the record-breaking seven Top 10 hits from 'Dangerous' which charted, only 'Black Or White' hit the top, despite several others coming close. The success of 'Earth Song' has also turned the betting market for Christmas Number One upside down. The track had featured in the running but was nowhere near one of the favourites. All that has changed now, the track is favourite with the bookmakers and with the appeal of the song far-reaching enough to enable it to hang on for another 3 weeks until the all-important Christmas chart. Having said that, speculation of this kind fails to take into account the release this week of 'Free As A Bird' - a single which, despite what any critic says about the way it sounds, is still virtually guaranteed a phenomenal sale. Much more about the Beatles record next week, I'm sure, but it does mean that the race for Christmas Number One is still far from over.

16th December 1995

1 EARTH SONG (Michael Jackson)

Michael Jackson almost died this week. Such a blunt and to the point statement may not be the most tactful thing in the world but could go some way towards explaining why the star has just pulled off what is without question one of the chart feats of the year. Although before this week he was the clear favourite to ultimately become the Christmas Number One, the release of the new Beatles single this week was expected to be too big a challenge to hold off. As it turns out figures released throughout the week indicated that the race for the top slot was too close to call and a final surge gave Jacko the edge. His health crisis during the week certainly caused a bit of a stir, especially given the truth behind the old adage that death is very commercial. If the reports are to be believed, at one point he was close to death, something that would have prompted an enormous surge for both album and single and blown any speculation about the Christmas Number One clean out of the water. Even so, having held off the Beatles, Jackson now has few serious competitors for the crown over the next two weeks. Certainly this week sees the vast bulk of the competition debuting far too low to mount any serious challenge.  Due for release in the next week or so are singles by Queen, Corona, Robson and Jerome and of course the Mike Flowers Pops all of which could still pose a problem - it's not over yet.

2009 note – wow, how spookily prescient was that? The details of his December 1995 health scare are all lost in the mists of time, but it was no exaggeration to say that the reports at the time suggested he was indeed at death’s door at one point. Incidentally I think it was this column that prompted one irate fan to get in touch and take umbrage at my constant reference to his idol as “Jacko”. That’s not his name apparently and it was “disrespectful”.

23rd December 1995

1 EARTH SONG (Michael Jackson)

Christmas -1. No real surprises here as Michael Jackson hangs onto the lead he had as of last week and spends a third week at the top of the charts. He is still very much the odds-on favourite to notch up a fourth week next week and thus become the Christmas Number One, especially now that the Beatles single appears to have peaked and is sliding down this week. His main challenge could come from a rather unexpected source. I rarely speculate about hitherto unreleased records but this one in particular is causing such a stir that it deserves consideration here. The record in question is Mike Flowers Pops' version of 'Wonderwall' which has reportedly notched up over 200,000 advance orders, enough for the bookmakers to make it second favourite to top the chart next week. It should be pointed out here that advance orders mean very little as they still do not guarantee people will actually hand over their money for those copies. Nevertheless it does mean that the race for the title is far from over and the eyes of the world will be on the computer terminals at Millward Brown come Christmas Eve. It is too close to call.

2009 note – now in one of those bizarre moves that presumably made sense at the time, dotmusic didn’t actually publish in the week of the Christmas chart 1995 so I never had the chance to write up on the two-way battle between Jacko, I’m sorry, Jackson and the Mike Flowers Pops. By the time everyone returned to work in the new year, everyone had moved on and the talk was all of the singles that were going to replace him. Rather than reproduce that irrelevant piece, we’ll move on ourselves instead.

20th April 1996

4 THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT US (Michael Jackson)

Michael Jackson appears to be a walking controversy magnet at the present. Not only did his attempt to 'cleanse' himself during his Brits awards performance backfire spectacularly thanks to a Mr J. Cocker of Sheffield but the shooting of the Spike Lee directed video for this new single was dogged by allegations over the way the slum areas portrayed in the film were benefitting from the exposure. 'They Don't Care About Us' was also the track from HIStory which had to be re-edited after complaints about the supposedly anti-Semitic lyrics. Muck-raking aside, where does that leave us? Answer: Jacko with the biggest new hit of the week and yet another Top 10 hit as he continues the most successful chart run of his career, following up the Number One smashes of both 'You Are Not Alone' and 'Earth Song'. His public relations staff may be making a balls up at every turn at the moment but the music shines through regardless.

16th November 1996

4 STRANGER IN MOSCOW (Michael Jackson)

Jacko, or "Dad" as we should get used to calling him, notches up his third hit of 1996, following on from 'They Don't Care About Us' and his collaboration with 3T 'Why'. Lifted once more from HIStory, it makes a comfortable Top 5 debut, aided somewhat by the collection of dance remixes that accompany the single. It stretches to six his current run of Top Ten hits that dates back to the release of 'Scream' in June 1995, the best run of his long and distinguished career. In his entire chart career he has now had 35 Top Ten hits, helping him to maintain his fourth place in the all-time list just behind Madonna for whom 'You Must Love Me' was her 37th.

3rd May 1997

1 BLOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR (Michael Jackson)

It may have seemed inevitable, but believe it or not the concept of Michael Jackson being a certain candidate for Number One is a fairly recent innovation. Indeed it was not until September 1995 when 'You Are Not Alone' made a triumphant climb to the top that Jacko's status as a genuine chart-topping star was re-established. That single of course was written by R Kelly and now Jacko returns the favour with a slight kick in the teeth by deposing him from the top of the charts. 'Blood On The Dancefloor' is a brand new track taken from the forthcoming 'History Revisited' collection of remixes and is nothing more, nothing less, than a typical full-on Jackson dance workout that fortunately gets the balance of groove over melody exactly right. It is his first Number One single since 'Earth Song' was top of the charts for Christmas 1995 and is the seventh solo chart-topper of his career. That total puts him level in a curious tie with both Madonna and George Michael, the two acts whom you would pigeonhole with Jackson as the biggest stars of the last decade. Of course if you delve further into Jacko's past you can add the Jacksons' 'Show You The Way To Go' to his list of Number One hits which would give him 8 - the same as er...Take That. Whether he can hang on for another week will be interesting as there is now a brief window in the release schedules with few major new releases on the horizon - at least for a few weeks until we all start doing the MMMBop.

19th July 1997

5 HISTORY/GHOSTS (Michael Jackson)

There is no doubting Michael Jackson is on a roll right now with the decision to release a remix album clearly one of the best moves he has made for years. In the same week that his world tour rolls into this country the now two year old title track from his Greatest Hits collection crashes straight in to give him his eighth consecutive Top 5 hit. When you consider that the normal marketing strategy of endlessly mining albums for singles normally results in ever low chart placings this is nothing short of incredible. Indeed together 'History' and 'Blood On The Dancefloor' have produced three Number One hits and some of the biggest chart smashes he has had for years. Following on from the Number One success of 'Blood On The Dancefloor' the remixed 'History' further halts Jacko's early-decade slide into self-cliche and instead presents him as the master of the late 90s pop record. Whatever the rumoured state of his nose, the man is, and will remain, Superstar.

20th October 2001

2 YOU ROCK MY WORLD (Michael Jackson)

So let us take a few minutes to consider the story so far. The last time 
we saw Michael Jackson in the singles chart was in 1997. At the time his career back in America was on rather shaky ground, the History album had not produced either the sales or the smash hit singles everyone was expecting and it was clear that his days of being able to trade on the reputation of the Thriller album (recorded back in 1982 lest we forget) were numbered.

Britain was actually a different story as not only had You Are Not Alone and Earth Song topped the chart in 1995, his Blood On The Dancefloor remix album had turned into a major success, producing yet another Number One hit in the shape of the title track. Wacko Jacko had potentially rediscovered himself as a club icon and the future looked bright. Then of course he vanished for four years, embedding himself in a quagmire of perfectionism whilst at the same time emerging every so often to set up strange charities, perform one-off concerts and break a few limbs along the way. Jackson the slightly strange celebrity was back, his music almost an afterthought.

It is against this background that one of the most expensive albums in history is about to be released, its arrival preluded by the first single. After all the hype people were expecting something quite spectacular. What they got in the shape of You Rock My World is nothing out of the ordinary. Sure it is a fine record, one which seems at times to hark back to the days of the Off The Wall Album in the late 1970s. As a retro single it works fine but as an advert for the new, innovative and still relevant Michael Jackson it is actually a bit disappointing. That still didn't stop everyone expecting it to charge to the top of the listings with ease, but as already documented a certain Australian pop star has rubbed his brand new nose in it. Once more a note of moderation must be sounded. I'm reminded of the time in June 1995 when Scream became the long-awaited first single from History. Just like You Rock My World it wasn't as good as everyone was hoping and it only made Number 3 in this country, outsold in the week of release by Pulp's Common People and Robson and Jerome's rendition of Unchained Melody. His next two singles were much better received and both topped the charts.

Hence the headlines about the charts this week should not really be about how Michael Jackson has failed to hit Number One and has instead been humiliated by Kylie Minogue. Instead they should be detailing how this is his 20th solo Top 3 hit, one which proves that the four years in the studio has done his overall appeal no harm at all and one which suggests that there are far bigger gems lurking in the grooves of the forthcoming new album. Write him off at your peril.

2009 note – not long after the above piece was published, I received an email from a student newspaper asking if they could reproduce it in full, the editor regarding it as the best summary of the state of Jackson’s career and his prospects for the future. I’d quite forgotten the “Kylie humiliates Jacko” headlines that abounded after ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ beat him to Number One. 

22nd December 2001

25 CRY (Michael Jackson)

Back in October when I wrote about Michael Jackson's big comeback single You Rock My World I received a pleasantly large number of emails from dedicated fans of the superstar who were very appreciative of what they saw as a fair and balanced writeup. A writeup you may remember which speculated that there were better singles to come from the album and that all he needed was another R Kelly ballad to give him a genuine smash hit. I confess to not having a clue how to approach this one.

Let's have a go anyway. Cry was the track highlighted by most reviewers as the standout track on the rather underwhelming Invincible album. It is indeed an R Kelly song and clearly intended to be another I Believe I Can Fly or You Are Not Alone. As a Christmas single release it was the perfect choice and was touted in some places as an outside bet for the seasonal chart-topper. Instead the single has done spectacularly badly. Forget the Spice Girls missing the Top 5, this is a Michael Jackson single, the second one from a long-awaited new album and a great song at that. For it to chart at Number 25 is unthinkable. Not that he hasn't had hits this small in the past but on those occasions excuses could be made. When Man In The Mirror peaked at Number 21 in February 1988 it was while he was on tour on the other side of the world and did not even have time to make a proper video for the track. Gone Too Soon made Number 33 in December 1993 but it was the ninth single from the two year old Dangerous album and was released on the back of the Jordy Chandler scandal. Cry has no such excuses available to it. This is a flop single.

If you want reasons, try once again referring back to what I wrote in October. To maintain his supposed status as the biggest recording star on the planet, Michael Jackson has to deliver something new and spectacular every time. With this album he hasn't, just a series of tracks that are quite good but still a bit same old, same old. For all the way sister Janet is releasing records that sound a mess, she is at least attempting to innovate and push back some boundaries. That, I suspect, is why this week she is at Number 13 and big brother is at Number 25.

6th December 2003

5 ONE MORE CHANCE (Michael Jackson)

Let us deal with the facts here as they stand.

• Michael Jackson's last chart appearances were with the two hit singles from the disastrous Invincible album. You Rock My World made a creditable Number 2 in October 2001, the followup Cry was a resounding flop when it made Number 25 in December that same year.
• Since then he hasn't had the best of times PR wise, what with his complaints that Sony records were deliberately stifling the promotion of the album (possibly because it was crap), the Martin Bashir interview and oh yes that small matter of those charges that led to his arrest just last week.
• He has a new Greatest Hits collection on release which topped the chart last week.
• This brand new single is taken from that self same set.
• Brand new singles from artists of Michael Jackson's calibre tend not to chart at Number 5. When You Rock My World failed to top the charts two years ago it was a huge shock. This chart performance will be treated in the same light. Some or all of the above points may be connected although it isn't my place to join the dots here.

Incidentally One More Chance is co-written by R Kelly. There is a joke in there somewhere.

2009 note – in retrospect that was actually a little harsh on One More Chance which stood out as a much needed return to form and the smash hit ballad that Cry should have been. Sadly that was also the last original release from Michael Jackson, his only other chart entries since being the poorly received Dualdisc re-releases during 2006. This weekend I’ll get write about many of his old hits all over again – possibly for the last time ever.

See The Bright Get Duller

Can we talk about history repeating?

I seem to have this uncanny knack of being at the centre of major happenings at work, be they sport or news related. Last night I found myself embroiled in a far reaching news event that in a bizarre way was almost a carbon copy of the events of the evening almost exactly four years ago – turning up to work in the evening after a pleasant meal only to find all hell breaking loose and every plan for the evening abandoned.

Naturally the same person was involved. Four years ago I arrived in the office to the news on all TV screens that the jury in the Michael Jackson trial had reached a verdict, a verdict that would shape the agenda for the rest of the evening. Last night Michael Jackson was involved again, and as I arrived at the office just before 11pm to start a long-planned overnight shift television was reporting that the rumours that the singer had died were turning into cold hard facts.

When we went on air at 1am, the death of Michael Jackson was the only topic of debate. For five straight hours we took calls from people wanting to give their thoughts on the subject, occasions like this the being the time that speech radio comes to the fore. Whilst the music stations that had the resources had switched their programming to back to back renditions of his hits, we provided the means for people to express their shock at the loss of their idol.

Not that everyone shared that view, and indeed picking a middle way was the hardest thing of all. Sometimes you have to balance free speech with questions of taste and it meant that whilst callers who wanted to express concern that the star’s lifestyle was being whitewashed and that we were painting him as a modern day saint were allowed to express their view, those who simply wanted to make outraged points at how he was nothing more than a vile child abuser of which the world should be glad to be rid were politely informed we wouldn’t be taking their call that night.

Mind you, as night turned into morning there were some other equally outlandish points of view being put forward. First there was the man who wanted to discuss what was going to happen to his concert tickets. “Will we be getting a refund, that’s what I want to know” he informed me. When I assured him that of course that would be the case, he shouted he wasn’t so sure and spent the next 45 minutes ringing up repeatedly to insist that he got to discuss his concerns on air. In doing so he forgot the first commandment of speech radio. Thou shalt not piss off the call screener, they and only they are the gateway to the airwaves, and you only get one shot at convincing them.

Then there was the man at about 4am who was making up conspiracies in his head. “Is he really dead, that’s the question..” I assured him that it was absolutely the case. “Ah, but it is like in 1977 when Elvis was supposed to have died, we all know that he didn’t”. At that point I myself broke the first commandment of phone answering: don’t tell the callers they are nutters. Really though I think he had it coming.

You may guess from this whimsical account of the events of last night that I’m not exactly donning the sackcloth and ashes over the whole thing. Chalk this up as yet another public figure event that I have little or no emotional attachment to and can so do little more than observe it all with bemusement. Once I’d slept off the excesses of last night, I couldn’t resist a trip to the O2 to see the small shrine that people had set up to the man who sadly would never get to play there. It was hardly a scene of mass mourning, just a handful of students signing their names on posters underneath a giant screen advising people that the issue of refunds would be decided soon. Nonetheless as I left to return to the tube station, the individuals all carrying bouquets of flowers suggested the installation was only going to grow. The state of play as at 4pm today is in the photo at the top of this entry.

One thing is for sure, the sudden passing of such a major star can’t help but have a huge chart impact come the weekend. Although the effects were slow to make themselves known (and I will confess to checking the iTunes countdown at regular intervals during the evening just to spot the first Jackson singles appearing) by the middle of Friday it was clear that the expected sales rush for his entire back catalogue – both singles and albums – was underway. Indeed, amidst the “oh my word” shocked comments from friends on Twitter and Facebook last night were the other pertinent observations that acts like La Roux might be about to to have their triumphant chart week almost totally eclipsed.

I’m not completely sure Sunday will see a Top 20 almost totally dominated by Jackson recordings, but even a cursory glance at the iTunes chart this evening shows three different Jacko singles all heading for the top end, with Man In The Mirror leading the charge at Number 3.

In the cold light of day I’m also struck by the huge economic impact the death of Michael Jackson will have on this, my local area. Much comment has already been made of the herculean task the promoters will have in refunding millions of pounds to the people who have bought tickets for the 50 concerts that will now never take place. Sympathies or sniggers should also be directed to the speculators who bought tickets and then sold them on at a profit even before they had been delivered. Working out who gets to be liable there could keep a few lawyers in business.

On a more serious note, there are local businesses who could well feel a knock on effect. Inside the O2 itself there are bars and restaurants who were looking forward to bumper takings on the nights of the concerts themselves. Whilst the dates later in the year may well be snapped up by other events, friends in the know are resigned to the fact that the arena will simply have to go dark on the dates next month when the first gigs were due to take place. That is not counting the effect on all the hotels in the surrounding area which you can almost guarantee were fully booked with people who were to fly in from all over the world to see the events. Coming home from work on nights when events have been on at the O2, it is a common sight to see the DLR station packed with weary concert goers all attempting to find their way to their beds. Only the other week I did my good turn for the year by leading a veritable posse of lost Britney Spears fans down the road to the Etap hotel next door to my flat – I figured they had suffered enough already after all. Cancelled hotel bookings may well be filled over time by other events, but guaranteed capacity nights may well be hard to come by.

So whilst I wasn’t exactly a fan – I liked his music enough in his heyday when I was a teenager, but could not easily sit comfortably with the notion that by continuing to buy his records I was validating his lifestyle and condoning the inappropriate way he behaved – the tragic death of Jacko the superstar still managed to have an impact.

It only seems fitting that I use the chance to dig up some happier memories, so later this weekend I will reproduce everything I’ve ever written about his chart singles, dating back to 1992. Plus I get to reproduce this photo, a memory of the day 12 years ago that I spent an afternoon pretending to be the man himself, all for a local radio promotion.

Get Yer Hobknobs Ready

A friend summed it up nicely the other day in an email:

“Its strange that, although you work on all those football matches and other sports events, I don't picture you as a sports-fan so-to-speak, more of a music guru! Are you enthusiastic about sport, or is it just the radio production and related side of it that you're passionate about?”

I will quite freely confess that the last thing I ever expected to end up doing as an adult was helping to broadcast live sport. Sporting action just didn’t register on the family radar, with my father almost apparently unique in having no interest in football or any kind of sport whatsoever. Unlike just about everyone else I work with, my childhood was absent from any kind of cultivation of a love of the game. The closest I ever came to sharing a love of sporting action was watching Wimbledon with my mother or the Saturday afternoon wrestling with my grandmother. I was at university before I followed a football season from start to finish for the first time, and even that was only because I’d discovered the betting possibilities of studying football form via a series of computer programs.

Yet I wouldn’t change any aspect of my job for a moment. Sporting action is for me, the purest and most dramatic form of entertainment that there is. No other aspect of popular culture, no other element of our society encourages thousands of people to join together for an intense period of time in a single shared experience. Sports events are where lives are changed. With one moment of brilliance, or even in one split second lapse in concentration, reputations can be made, legends can be created, moments of history destined to be replayed time and time again will take place and the actions of a small group of people will perhaps be indelibly etched on the emotional memories of those watching. If you cannot participate yourself, then what better way to be a part of it than to be the one responsible for sharing it with a wider audience, or in radio terms, providing the soundtrack of those moments for posterity.

Think back to any great sporting moment, and an integral part of that memory is the broadcast commentary that accompanies it. Geoff Hurst’s goal in the 1966 World Cup Final is forever associated with the words “he’s got… some people are on the pitch, they think it’s all over”, the moment Damon Hill won the Formula One world championship marked not so much by the waving of the chequered flag but by Murray Walker confessing that he has to “stop talking, because I’ve got a lump in my throat” whilst the expression “It’s up for grabs now” will forever transport Arsenal fans back to the magical moment that Michael Thomas swept forward in the dying seconds of the 1989 football season to give them the title.

It is potential moments like that which I get to be a part of week in week out, even if it is just under the banner of “producer”. That title alone makes for an interesting divide in the office. Most of my other colleagues are also producers, but their job involves endless amounts of preparation. Most talk radio shows are all about the “setup”, the pre-broadcast booking of the guests, planning of the running orders and the step by step mapping of where each show should be taken. I’ve tried that, and I’m not very good at it, so have the utmost respect for those who do it day in day out. My job is more seat of the pants, flying without a safety net (quite literally, given that mine is the only show on the station that routinely switches off the seven second digital delay) or very often a full running order. I’m the one who goes into the studio with a rough plan of what will happen for the first 40 minutes or so, but beyond that we might as well just sit there with a blank piece of paper. I love that I start out not knowing what is going to happen by the end, the ultimate judgement coming based on how we react when it happens.

Perhaps more exciting that any of this, is the opportunity to have to push the boundaries a little, to experiment with the way we stage sport on the radio. I’ve talked before about how for the most part, sports commentary has changed very little in the past 60 years or so, a broadcast of a football match today sounding much the same as it might have done a generation earlier, with only the tone of the voices and the quality of the sound differentiating one from the other. Compare this to the way television coverage of all sports, not just football, has come on in leaps and bounds thanks to the outside of the (six-yard) box thinking by Sky and others. A 21st century broadcast of an event on television feels like a totally different world to that of the same presentation from the 1970s. I see no reason at all why radio should not evolve in the same way.

Naturally you cannot reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it. A large part of the reason why sports presentation has remained the same for so long is that it works and suits the needs of the audience just fine. Nonetheless there are still ways you can push at the edges and maybe grow the horizons just a little. Throughout the last season on talkSPORT’s Saturday afternoon Match Day Live show we’ve tried to cast off some of the traditional shackles of sports presentation. Ditching in-match continuity was a major start. A commentator shouldn’t need to break off from his concentration on the action to laboriously introduce his colleague at another game. We’re not just at one game after all, we are at all of them. Consequently we tried to make it sound like all the matches were live all at once, with reporters arriving on the scene as part of the flow of the conversation as if they had been waiting patiently for their turn all along. It wasn’t perfect, and the difficulties of coordinating the moment when one presenter at one match knows when not to speak at the same time as his colleague at the other end of the country dives in to say his piece cannot be underestimated. Many was the Saturday afternoon when I ended up as a nervous wreck after 90 minutes of shouting “Chelsea will follow.. come off the back… no, wait missed the moment… CUE!!…. don’t apologise Nigel, just pay attention…. goal at Boro will follow… no, not there.. PICK UP” ad nauseum. There are still ways of doing it better, and it is to my deep frustration that I’ve figured out a better system deep in the middle of the closed season.

Commentary development need not be confined to football either, and for the past two weeks or so I’ve had the enormous privilege of being part of something rather magical. The occasion was the ICC World Twenty20 Cricket tournament for which we had official broadcast rights. Twenty20 cricket is something we’ve broadcast for the past few years as rightsholders for the domestic cup competition, but each time I’ve always felt something was lacking. The problem was we were using broadcasters who had been schooled in the Test Match Special way of thinking, where the game was played at a relaxed and genteel pace and where the description of the action was almost secondary to the background chatter itself. Naturally that works well for something like a Test Match, where the action itself might come once every 15 minutes or so, but Twenty20 is different.

So my colleagues and I sat down with our presenters and spelled it out to them. Twenty20 is rock and roll cricket. It is played at a frantic, almost frightening pace. Your batsmen have just 120 deliveries to play with so every single one has to count for something, and just as crucially every run conceded by the fielders could be the difference between winning and losing. During the course of the last two and a half weeks we have been witness to some of that thinking, with fielders resorting to dramatic aerobatics to stop three runs turning into a four, and with batsmen taking wild risks to snap at a full toss that might or might not turn into a catch which under normal circumstances they would just parry away. The presentation had to reflect the knife edge nature of the game, the palpable tension that surrounded the ground, and the intense emotion that everyone from player to spectator was caught up in. To our joy they responded magnificently.

The high point came exactly a week ago for England’s Super Eights match against India. Having been resoundingly beaten by South Africa three days earlier, the tournament hosts knew nothing less than a victory was required to prevent an ignominious exit from the competition. It was against this backdrop that we were set to describe the action to the nation and with the majority of the match called by the combination of Ronnie Irani and Darren Gough. I don’t know what it was, whether it was the yin and yang combination of Yorkshire and Lancashire accents colliding together, the sheer infectious enthusiasm of Ronnie in his comfort zone and talking passionately about the game that has dominated his life, or just Goughie’s homespun pearls of wisdom and a magnificent turn of phrase, all delivered in the kind of rich mellifluous tones that transported me back to the characters who populated the tiny Yorkshire village in which I grew up but the two men somehow managed to sweep you up in a bewildering mix of enthusiasm, excitement and ultimately tension as India crept agonisingly close to the adequate but by no means out of reach target they had been set by our boys.

For the last fifteen minutes of the game, not a single one of us in the control room said a word or even dared to breathe. We were just sat transfixed as the men on the end of the line delivered one of the most exciting and invigorating radio broadcasts I’d heard for a long time.

Don’t just take my word for it. From the moment the final delivery was bowled, the lines to the studio switchboard lit up. Normally a post-match phone in on the radio is dominated by the events on the pitch and the aspects of the game that have particularly stimulated the callers. Not this time. Just about every call was ringing up to heap praise upon the broadcast they had just heard, people insisting they were not cricket fans but could not bear to tear themselves away from the action or by contrast to say they had been fans of the game for life but had never before been caught up in an atmosphere like it or heard their favourite sport communicated in such a way.

Frustratingly this whole event is for the moment something of a one-off. Most other cricket rights are tied up with other broadcasters and in truth it is only the Twenty20 format of the game that lends itself to such balls-out seat of the pants style. There is very little credit that either I or my production colleagues on-site could claim for the show either, given that our input was restricted to telling the commentators to talk in the manner we requested and then sit back for 90 minutes at a time. Even so, it was something of a privilege to play a part, however small, in a broadcast that elicited a response quite unlike anything I’ve experienced in 15 years in this business.

So my friend is correct. It is very strange that I spend my working life on events that I’d probably pay little or no attention to were I not being paid to do so. Believe me when I say this, I would not have it any other way.

I Wanna 1991 You Up – Part 4

So for the climax of this particular retrospective and the ten biggest selling singles, as revealed by Radio One for June 2nd 1991 – just in time for my A-Levels.

10: The Doors – Light My Fire

Oliver Stone’s biopic of Jim Morrison and The Doors inspired a welcome revival of interest in the music of this most seminal of 60s rock groups. The result as far as their music was concerned was a smash hit ‘Best Of The Doors’ compilation and most significantly for us, a return to the charts for the first time in 24 years of one of their most famous songs. ‘Light My Fire’ had originally been little more than a minor hit on these shores, charting at Number 49 in August 1967 although naturally its legacy and reputation extended far beyond mere chart positions in this case. The re-release was a different matter altogether, charging into the Top 10 to give the group their biggest ever UK hit. Almost exactly 11 years later the song would be at Number One thanks to Will Young’s rendition, although that particular version was informed more by Jose Feliciano’s 1968 jazz arrangement than the original.

Looking back at how we viewed the song at the time, it does throw into sharp relief the way the passing of years is viewed somewhat differently as you grow older. To most of my peer group, ‘Light My Fire’ was a track from ancient history, recorded and released years before any of us were born. The equivalent today would be a famous single from 1985 being re-released and discovered by a rapturous new audience of teenagers. Yet having lived through then, the music of the mid 80s is far from ancient history – just the soundtrack of my childhood. Still, here’s hoping for the Mai Tai or Belouis Some biopic to show the young generation how it felt to be alive back then.

9: KLF featuring Children Of The Revolution – Last Train To Trancentral

Now there is a danger that anything I say about the work of Cauty and Drummond will be branded a misinterpretation of what it was they were trying to say and achieve, or at the very worst be accused of missing the point altogether. We have to have a go anyway. The most artistic dance music rebels in history were at the height of their fame and powers in 1991. The KLF had released the out of this realm hit album ‘The White Room’ and supplemented it with a series of singles which, if truth be told, actually bore little resemblance to the laid back sounds that shared their name on the album. ‘Last Train To Trancentral’ was the final instalment of what came to be known as the “Stadium House Trilogy”, three singles of inspired and exciting dance music dressed up in an everything but the kitchen sink production designed to make the records sound like the greatest work ever. To many ears they were. This single charted as the follow-up to Number One smash ‘3am Eternal’ and although it was in essence a mash-up of both that hit and its own immediate predecessor ‘What Time Is Love’ I still had to rank ‘Last Train To Trancentral’ as my personal favourite of the three. Perhaps it was the driving piano rhythm, the samples of their older hits or maybe just the vocoder effects that made them sound for all the world like the Electric Light Orchestra on speed. Either way this was a towering masterpiece of a record. Tracking it down to play is naturally another matter altogether as the KLF have stuck rigidly to their word since they deleted their entire catalogue “forever” in 1992. Hence you can’t buy ‘Last Train To Trancentral’ much less stream it via an online jukebox. Instead we’re left with the videos on YouTube, so take a pause for the next four minutes and enjoy one of the greatest Number 2 hits of the year.

8: REM – Shiny Happy People

It did seem at one point that REM were never going to have a British hit. Like so many music fans of the time, I’d watched as ‘The One I Love’ was a turntable smash at the end of 1987 without ever really troubling the business end of the charts. Watched as ‘Stand’ was released not once but twice and bafflingly failed to become a hit, even in the summer of ‘89 as ‘Orange Crush’ gave them their first ever minor Top 40 hit. So it was something of a joy to watch ‘Losing My Religion’ fly to Number 19 in the spring of 1991, establish itself as something of a classic and ensure that the celebrated Atlantans were finally being talked of as mainstream stars at last. Their Top 10 breakthrough finally came with the second single from ‘Out Of Time’ as ‘Shiny Happy People’ raced up the charts to a Number 6 peak, and guess what? I failed to get it at all. The song is justifiably one of their most famous pop hits, its bubbly sound and naturally the star guest appearance from Kate Pierson on co-lead vocals making it an FM radio staple for most of the next decade. Nonetheless compared to their other work I just thought the single was a throwaway, and if you want the honest truth if I was asked to name my least favourite REM single of all time, I’d ignore tuneless rubbish like ‘E-Bow The Letter’ and point to the giggling inanity of ‘Shiny Happy People’ as one of their all time creative lowpoints. What may also have been a factor is that Kate Pierson is just a year younger than my mother, so to see her dancing around in a ra-ra skirt like a schoolgirl in the video was something quite scary and disturbing.

7: Soft Cell featuring Marc Almond – Tainted Love

Another golden oldie, Soft Cell’s most famous single charting here as part of the promotion for a Greatest Hits collection which was selling in respectable numbers at the time. The rather curious billing for the single should provide a clue that despite all appearances to the contrary this wasn’t a straightforward re-issue of the track that had shot to Number One nine years earlier. Although Marc Almond’s inability to quite hold the tune and sing a little flat at times was an endearing quality of the early Soft Cell recordings, you suspect that as the years went by he felt it misrepresented him as a singer. As a result certain of the tracks on ‘Memorabilia – The Singles’ were re-recordings with Almond adding new vocals to the original tracks. ‘Tainted Love’ was one such track afforded the treatment although in truth you would be hard pressed to notice the difference. Let’s not split hairs though. It may not have been their song to begin with, but with ‘Tainted Love’ Soft Cell recorded one of the most famous singles of the 1980s. To see it back on the chart and back in the Top 10 even as early as 1991 was nothing less than a joy.

6: Kylie Minogue – Shocked

As I will never tire of pointing out, the cool and sophisticated and worshiped from the ground up Kylie Minogue image is at total odds with the way she was viewed by the “in crowd” at the start of her career. Back then she was a cheesy pop puppet in the hands of Pete Waterman et al, releasing a series of throwaway pre-teen pop songs that may have all gone Top 3 without fail but were hardly the work of a credible artist worthy of widespread acclaim and attention. The first inkling that this all might change came at the start of the decade when yes, she did start doing rude things with Michael Hutchence, but also when her producers upped their game and allowed her to fill third album ‘Rhythm Of Love’ with some rather more mature and club-friendly material. The odd thing was that ‘Shocked’ wasn’t intended to be one of them and was seen as little more than a filler track by Stock/Aitken/Waterman who wrote and produced it. That was before remixers DNA got their hands on it, adding a house beat and a rap from Jazzi P and turning it into what was instantly acclaimed as the coolest Kylie Minogue single yet. Of particular note at the time was the suspicion that the lyrics of the track may well have been tampered with in the overdub to add a slightly ruder edge to things. Whilst on the original album version Kylie does indeed sing about being “rocked to my very foundations” things are a little less clear cut on the DNA mix. For radio purposes the line on the 7-inch mix was rather more muffled but the 12-inch version leaves you in no doubt that she is now bragging of being “fucked to my very foundations” in what was a radical departure from the sweet clean cut image she had, thanks to being just a couple of years removed from “Neighbours” at that point. Kylie herself has always refused to comment on just what she is actually singing, thus adding neatly to the mythology.

As a final aside, with this single at Number 6 and Dannii’s ‘Success’ at Number 11, this is the closest two sisters have ever come to having simultaneous Top 10 hits. Although her 1992 Greatest Hits collection (marking the end of her PWL years) is still available to buy, it is impossible to stream any of her early work online, hence you will have to make do with a YouTube conversion of the video. Still, it gives us a chance to note that the director cleverly ensures she’s never in shot lip-synching the controversial line, thus ensuring it still remains a mystery as to exactly what she is singing.

5: Crystal Waters – Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee)

The first chart appearance of what is naturally a very famous dance record and one which had the unfortunate effect of eclipsing just about everything else Crystal Waters attempted to do afterwards. A smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic (Number 8 in America and Number 2 here), the single made chart history when first released, flying in at Number 3 to set a new record for the time as the highest ever new entry by an unknown act. Widely expected to be Number One, it eventually could only stall at Number 2 behind the record that on this particular chart was three places above.

4: Beverley Craven – Promise Me (iTunes)

The one and only major hit single for singer-songwriter Beverley Craven who had been something of a label darling and thus the recipient of a prolonged promotional campaign to even get her this far. The tender piano ballad ‘Promise Me’ had first been released a year earlier to little chart success but after relentless plugging (led by DLT on weekend mornings on Radio One who was particularly enamoured with her sound) it gained a Top 40 foothold and eventually had a creditable run at Number 3. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Promise Me’ is a sweet, classy song performed by a lady with a pure voice and undoubted talent, but it is as Smooth FM as it gets and to hear it in tandem with its chart contemporaries makes you marvel even more at how the song became a hit when it did.

3: Amy Grant – Baby Baby

The first and greatest mainstream hit for Amy Grant, who until this point had confined her attentions to the Christian rock circuit in America. To that audience she was a superstar but to the rest of us a virtual unknown. Even before ‘Baby Baby’ she had been making baby steps before this single, her duet with Peter Cetera on ‘The Next Time I Fall’ having topped the US charts in 1986 whilst her 1988 single ‘Lead Me On’ had received its fair share of airplay in this country, largely thanks to the relentless plugging by Simon Mayo on Radio One. Nonetheless her ‘Heart In Motion’ album marked her headlong plunge into the secular mainstream, the bouncy pop collection presenting her with a string of international hits and naturally the admonishment of the bible-belt community who had hitherto been her biggest supporters. Indeed as was widely reported at the time, the video for ‘Baby Baby’ was banned or restricted by many Christian rock channels back in the States due to the scenes it contained of her embracing a man who manifestly was not her husband (this in spite of the fact that the song is about the joys of motherhood and the feeling her newborn daughter inspired her with). Although her UK hits can be counted on the fingers of one hand, Amy Grant remains a huge star in gospel circles to this day, her career even surviving the slight wrinkle in the mid 90s when a duet with the equally already-married Vince Gill ended up with the pair making sweet music in ways that didn’t involve a recording studio.

2: Cher – The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)

..and last week’s Number One is this week’s Number 2 as the five week chart-topping run of this single came to an end this week. Eschewing the rock chick image she had spent the previous decade cultivating for herself, Cher stormed to Number One for the first time since the 1960s thanks to this deservedly famous version of the song made popular by Betty Everett in 1964 when Cher herself was just 18 years old. The song was taken from the soundtrack of the film ‘Mermaids’ in which she starred alongside Bob Hoskins and with Winona Ryder and a cherubic Christina Ricci playing both her daughters and the backing singers in the video. History now records that Cher would end the decade back at the top of the charts with one of the biggest female-led singles in history, but at the time her return to the top 26 years after she was first Number One with ‘I Got You Babe’ was something of a chart miracle.

1: Color Me Badd – I Wanna Sex You Up

Just 17 different singles topped the charts in 1991, and for the first time ever a grand total of four of them were taken from film soundtracks. This was the third in a row to hit the top, hard on the heels of both ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ and Chesney Hawkes’ ‘The One And Only’ which had by this time dropped out of the Top 40 altogether. The sweet harmonies of Color Me Badd originated in Oaklahoma, the foursome having been discovered by Robert Bell of Kool and the Gang back in 1990. Their biggest international smash hit came about after it was featured on the soundtrack of ‘New Jack City’ but the single also featured on their debut album ‘CMB’ which was released later that year. Aside from its rather naughty lyrics (something which would become a common theme during the course of the summer), the most distinctive thing about ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ is the fact that it exists in two distinct versions and the one that topped the UK charts is a different one to that which is most commonly heard today.

To explain: the single release for the UK was the soundtrack version of the hit and is characterised by its “hey, beautiful lady/I need you/tonight” opening verse. The version that later appeared on the ‘CMB’ album featured different lyrics for the verses and was sung to a totally different melody – this one the “come inside/take off your coat/I’ll make you feel at home” variation. The New Jack City version seems hard to track down these days (although the soundtrack itself remains on the catalogue and is readily ordered online) and so consequently it is the “wrong” version that finds its way onto just about every “Greatest R&B Love Songs Ever” compilation going and indeed it seems the online streaming services. I leave it to more informed commenters to explain just why the two radically different versions existed, and more to the point why it was the rarer of the two that became the hit.

With that the Top 40 show comes to an end and Mark Goodier hands over to the Annie Nightingale Request Show (still going strong in its post-chart slot at this time). Annie’s first record of the evening is ‘Loose Fit’ from the Happy Mondays which means she has to wait almost a full minute before uttering her trademark “hi” at the last second before the vocals begin.

That was summer 1991, hope you enjoyed this as ever, and don’t forget that the full Top 40 (or at least the 35 that are available) are on the full Spotify and We7 playlists for your online streaming pleasure. Going back to the subject of ageing for a moment, it is worth noting that my next bit of music writing will be to to talk about the 2009 chart debut of Pixie Lott who it should be noted was barely 5 months old when these songs were all hits. Pass my Zimmer frame.

I Wanna 1991 You Up – Part 3

Yes, I know its been a week since we last did this. Some live cricket stuff kind of messed up the schedule and got in the way of life.

Elsewhere in the world (you knew it was coming) in June 1991, South Africa repealed the apartheid laws and joined the civilised world at long last, some chap called Boris Yeltsin was the surprise winner in the Russian presidential election, the fate of the heir to the throne was in question after one of Prince William’s school friends accidentally stoved his head in with a golf club whilst ‘Silence Of The Lambs’ was packing them in at the local multiplex.

Back in the present day, our retrospective look back at the chart of June 2nd 1991 has reached the Top 20.

20: Kraftwerk – The Robots

1991 was supposed to represent a rebirth for the legendary German synth wizards. Having virtually withdrawn from live performing and with their last album release having been a full five years earlier, they marked their return to the limelight with ‘The Mix’, an album featuring a selection of rearranged and re-recorded classics that they intended to be a demonstration of how they have been evolving their sound during the previous years of isolation. Critical reaction was mixed, the general air of “is that it?” common to most reviews, but for fans of the group who had been aching for new work from their heroes for many years the album was leaped upon eagerly. Leading the promotion was a single edit of ‘The Robots’, a new version of a track that had first appeared on the album ‘The Man-Machine’ way back in 1978. Truth be told the 1991 version didn’t (if you’ll pardon the pun) press any exciting new buttons or mark the huge leap forward that it was sold to us as, but it did at least give the group their first chart hit since ‘Tour De France’ way back in 1984 and indeed by going Top 20 became their biggest hit since ‘Computer Love/The Model’ stormed to Number One back in 1982.

19: OMD – Sailing On The Seven Seas

At the start of the year would you have put money on OMD ever having a hit single again? Silent since the release of a Greatest Hits album in 1988, the group were all but broken up McCluskey and Humphries having parted ways at the end of the decade and the latter’s The Listening Pool project picking up the lions share of critical coverage. Undaunted Andy McCluskey carried on, retaining both the band name and his near-legendary haircut and recruiting fellow Liverpudlians Lloyd Massett and Stuart Kershaw to work on some brand new material. The first fruit of these labours was comeback single ‘Sailing On The Seven Seas’, a deceptively simple track propelled by little more than a tubthumping rhythm track and an organ. To the surprise of all but the most cynical of us, it worked and the track flew to Number 3, giving the new version of the group their biggest hit single since ‘Souvenir’ a full decade earlier. Follow-up single ‘Pandora’s Box’ went Top 10 as well to prove it was no one-off and the album ‘Sugar Tax’ became the first of a trio of well received albums during the 1990s. When the hits dried up again in 1996 McCluskey and Kershaw moved on to creating new acts of their own – most notably the first ever incarnation of Atomic Kitten. Is is true to say that Kerry Katona is indirectly famous thanks to the success of this single?

18: New Kids On The Block – Call It What You Want

It took the UK the best part of a year to catch on to NKOTB following their initial American success, so it kind of stands to reason that their British appeal persisted long after the fans back home had all grown breasts and moved on to other things. The idea for ‘No More Games: The Remix Album’ was credited to Donnie Walhberg who was as tired as the rest of us were by Maurice Starr’s watered down pop and whilst it did little to arrest their rather startling commercial decline in America, it gave them enough of an impetus to sell out concerts across Europe and Asia throughout 1991. Lead single ‘Games’ made Number 12 at the start of the year and this more successful single was the follow-up. If ‘Tonight’ is the one New Kids song it is OK to like, then ‘Call It What You Want’ is the song that it was acceptable to dance to. Remixed by producers of the moment Clivilles and Cole and featuring a hard-edged and inspired rap from Freedom Williams, the single crackled with an energy and most crucially had a credible edge that was almost entirely lacking from the rather risible singles they had released until now. Had ‘Call It What You Want’ been followed up with enough haste they might well have reinvented themselves as a dancefloor-friendly urban act for the new decade. As it was, aside from a one-off Christmas single later that year, the New Kids vanished until 1994 when they returned as NKOTB and were pretty much laughed off the park.

17: Pet Shop Boys – Jealousy

Everywhere I turn I am surrounded by opportunities to talk about the Pet Shop Boys, although in this case it is a good thing. ‘Jealousy’ was the fourth and final single to be lifted from the ‘Behaviour’ album and followed hard on the heels of their celebrated (and to this day famous) remake of ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ which had stormed to Number 4 in the spring. ‘Jealousy’ was a rather more measured affair, a slow building torch song which served in its entirety as a build up to the lavish orchestral climax. Indeed the novelty of the single release was that it had been remixed from the album version, the synthesised band at the end having been replaced with a real orchestra for the occasion. Never the most commercial of offerings, the single still made a none too shabby Number 12 the week after this new entry placing.

16: MC Hammer – Yo! Sweetness

Speaking of US superstars about to live past their shelf life, here comes MC Hammer. At this point he was just a year removed from the globe-buggering success of ‘U Can’t Touch This’ but already the novelty value was wearing off. ‘Yo! Sweetness’ was another track lifted from the massive selling ‘Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em’ and was based heavily around a sample from ‘Word Up’ by Cameo yet despite this respectable enough Number 16 placing you could not escape the feeling that once the hype had died down he was something of a one trick pony. Not that he didn’t have a little more gas in the tank - ‘Addams Groove’ went Top 10 at the start of 1992 and the follow-up ‘Do Not Pass Me By’ mixed rap and gospel in a manner which many hated but I found hard to resist. Still, if you are looking for the moment when MC Hammer reached the top of the mountain and began to amble down the other side, there is a case to be made for pointing at the release of this single.

15: Sonia – Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)

The seventh hit and third Top 10 single for Sonia, the bubbly scouse redhead who for all her enthusiasm only ever seemed to be presented with Stock/Aitken/Waterman’s off-cuts for her songs. Having left PWL records in a sulk after her first album, she teamed up with Nigel Wright for her second collection of irritatingly chirpy offerings. Wright was well and truly at the helm for this single, a bouncy yet somehow rather synthetic Motown pastiche which was charting here on its way to an eventual Number 10 peak. I actually liked her, possibly out of sheer bloody-mindedness and because it wound other friends up who (quite rightly) viewed her as the antithesis of cool. She never quite hit the chart heights again after 1991, although her Eurovision entry ‘Better The Devil You Know’ was robbed of the crown at the death and gave her a Number 15 hit in the wake of the contest that year.

14: Technotronic – Move That Body

Having milked 1990 debut ‘Pump Up The Jam’ for several nearly identical singles (plus a megamix), Technotronic producer Jo Bogaert needed to mix the formula up to extend the life of the project. Hence the recruitment of Rejane Magloire aka Reggie to supply vocals on this lead single from their second album. As a party hit ‘Move That Body’ worked well enough but it was neither distinctive nor original enough to become anything more than “just another Technotronic single”, still based around the trademark Teutonic thump that had conquered Europe the year before. In fact that seems to be a common theme amongst this selection of songs in the Top 20, late additions to an act’s chart history that were neither spectacularly good nor particularly bad, just a little bit indifferent.’Move That Body’ is naturally a little hard to track down these days, so you won’t find it streaming online. Have a fan-made slideshow of the track instead.

 

13: Cathy Dennis – Touch Me (All Night Long)

This single on the other hand is something of a snapshot of an oft-forgotten aspect of the early career of one of pop’s greatest ever songwriters. Industry legend Cathy Dennis started out as a reedy-voiced dance diva, teaming up with D-Mob for their early hits in 1989 before breaking out on her own in a moderately successful solo career. ‘Touch Me (All Night Long)’ was her biggest hit both here and in America, hitting Number 5 on these shores. The song was unfamiliar to most but was hardly new, having been originally recorded by wish back in 1984. Cathy Dennis’ last hit was her cover of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ in 1997 after which she forged a new career as songwriter to the stars, an integral part of the 19 Entertainment setup and as a result penning hits for the likes of S Club 7, Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears and indeed just about every American Idol winner you care to name. Towering 21st century pop records like ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, ‘Reach’ and ‘Toxic’? All Cathy Dennis creations.

12: Madonna – Holiday

No, you are not wrong, this is still 1991. Madonna’s first ever Greatest Hits compilation ‘The Immaculate Collection’ had been such a hit at the end of 1990 that it prompted her label to continue to milk it for the next six months. Token new track ‘Justify My Love’ had been followed with a re-release of ‘Crazy For You’ which had duly shot to Number 2 and matched its original 1985 peak. New track ‘Rescue Me’ had also flown in short order to Number 2 so for a fourth bite of the cherry it was decided to reactivate what was essentially her signature song. ‘Holiday’ had already been a Top 10 hit twice over, reaching Number 6 as her debut hit in early 1984 and then flying to Number 2 in the summer of 1985 just as her career went stratospheric. This re-release six years on meant that the throwaway pop song became one of those rare records to have been a hit on three separate occasions, reaching the Top 10 each time after climbing to Number 5 a week after this new entry point. Incidentally the hits on ‘The Immaculate Collection’ were billed as “remixes” thanks to a supposedly revolutionary new technique known as Q-sound which was supposed to recreate quadrophonic sound through ordinary stereo speakers. Needless to say most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

11: Dannii Minogue - Success

The prospect of Minogue Junior becoming a pop star like her older sister had been talked up for some time. Just about every interview and reference to Dannii Minogue during 1990 made reference to the fact that she had been a smash in the Australian charts with her single ‘Love And Kisses’ and was hoping to duplicate her sister’s international success herself. Not one single British label was interested and her music went unreleased until she finally landed a regular role in Home and Away and was suddenly a bankable star on these shores. When it did finally emerge, ‘Love And Kisses’ was horrible, a plodding meandering single delivered in a strange whiny voice that made the year of hype that had proceeded it seem like a very bad joke. Nonetheless the single scrambled its way to Number 8 and justified the release of this follow-up. ‘Success’ may have also attracted its fair share of critical scorn but it was at least a much better single, sung properly this time and blessed with an infectious dance beat which afforded it a modest amount of club play and in truth kind of pointed the way for some of the better receive hits of her career. The single lodged itself at Number 11 for no less than three weeks before finally falling back. Perhaps the most amazing fact about the single is that a decade later, against all odds it seemed, Dannii Minogue was still managing Top 10 hits.

Top 10 on the way before the weekend is over, in the meantime enjoy the Spotify and We7 playlists of (most) of the above.

I Wanna 1991 You Up – Part 2

My A-level exam timetable is buried inside a folder inside my parents’ loft, but if memory serves most of the exams I was taking were staged after the half term break. The one exception was the General Studies paper (for which I gained my one and only A-grade back in the days when they weren’t given out like sweets) and I remember on the morning of the exam being stuck for a way to properly revise for that most nebulous of subjects. I did so in the most unique way possible, by taking part in and winning the mid-morning nostalgia quiz on local radio.

It was the Jonathan Cowap show (he’s still there to this day) on BBC Radio York which I had for some reason taken to listening to at the time. Every morning he played with a caller the “yearquest quiz” in which the contestant had to answer three questions about the events of this month in a particular year in the past. Listening to it one morning, I opened up my copy of Chronicle Of The 20th Century at the appropriate page to see if I could glean any clues, only to realise that all the questions asked related to events referenced in the book. Having thus stumbled on the research material for the quiz, I reasoned that I could hardly lose and so spent the next week phoning up each day for the qualifying question in the hope of being selected.

I think the morning of the General Studies exam was the third time I’d tried and for whatever reason (maybe because I was calling from West rather than North Yorkshire and sounded rather brighter than the old ladies who were the regular participants) it was that day that the producer chose to ring me back and put me to air. I kept the tape of the occasion for several years but despite a flat-wide search last night I clearly don’t have it any more. It is enough that I tell you that I answered correctly all three of my questions on the events of May 1972, pausing for careful thought between a couple of the answers to hide the fact that I was cheating furiously with the reference book open in front of me. After being congratulated and thanking the host profoundly, my details were taken and a prize promised to me in the post. I had to wait until the day after the exams had finished for it to arrive, and by sheer coincidence it was the brand new album from one of the acts featured in the 30-21 rundown on this chart of June 1991. Precisely which act that was shall, I hope, become clear by the end.

30: Kirsty MacColl – Walking Down Madison

Wow, do you remember the shock and delight this caused the first time you heard it? It wasn’t that Kirsty MacColl hadn’t already signalled her intention to move away from cheery 80s jangly-pop into something a little more, shall we say, urban – hooking up with the Happy Mondays saw to that. Nonetheless, the debut single from her ‘Electric Landlady’ was a dramatic shock to the system. Co-written by Johnny Marr and produced as always by her husband Steve Lillywhite, ‘Walking Down Madison’ was a six minute epic, drenched in hip-hop beats and featuring extensive rap breaks from Aniff Cousins. Intact as always were her heartwarming vocals, swooping and diving over the melody in her own always immaculate style. Radical it may have been but as a means of dragging one of the most 80s of alternative stars kicking and screaming into the new decade it worked a treat. As was always the case sadly, her records were long on critical praise but short on massive sales, and ‘Walking Down Madison’ stalled at a disappointing Number 23 and indeed but for a re-release of ‘Fairytale Of New York’ later that year would ultimately be the last Top 40 hit of her lifetime. Personally I loved (and indeed still do) the follow-up ‘My Affair’ to which only the emotionally bereft can avoid wanting to samba around the living room. Her Greatest Hits album remains one of the few CDs I can listen to over and over again without ever getting bored, and whatever its chart shortcomings ‘Walking Down Madison’ has proud of place amongst them.

29: Jason Donovan – RSVP (iTunes)

Looking back, Jason Donovan has cause to thank his lucky stars that Andrew Lloyd-Webber came along when he did and offered him the chance to do “Joseph”. Up to that point his musical career was swiftly running out of steam, a situation hardly helped by the (even by their early 90s standards) weak-kneed SAW production on his second album ‘Between The Lines’ which contained ten knocked up and by and large identikit pop songs that for the most part dropped out of the mind within moments of hearing them. ‘RSVP’ was a brand new recording, one of two new tracks for his Greatest Hits collection (yes, he’d made two albums and was already releasing a compilation, go figure). The single stalled at Number 17 in what to most fans would have been something of a shock, but in truth he was already moving on. Three weeks after this chart was published he was sitting pretty at Number One with his rendition of ‘Any Dream Will Do’ and whilst we now know that a rather nasty drug addiction was on his horizon, at the time it seemed that the blue eyed boy from Down Under had just neatly swapped a pop career for one on the musical stage.

28: Zucchero featuring Paul Young – Senza Una Donna

“I changed the world. Ooh! Ooh!” A huge superstar beyond all reason in his native Italy for most of the 1980s, Zucchero was a complete unknown throughout the English speaking world, something he and his label were keen to correct. Taking the best songs from his previous two albums, they enlisted the help of some better known international stars to re-record them as English language duets, a move which you might argue was something of a masterstroke. Leading the way was ‘Sezna Una Donna’ which had first appeared on his 1987 album ‘Blue’s’ and was duly transformed into a smash hit thanks to the recruitment of Paul Young whose own 1990 comeback attempt had hardly set the word on fire. It was by any standards an inspired pairing, the gravelly voices of both men dovetailing nicely and injecting the record with just the right amount of soulful longing. The single flew to Number 4 (Paul Young’s biggest hit for six years) and was a smash all over Europe although America remained frustratingly indifferent. Sadly Zucchero just couldn’t repeat the magic second time around, and a Randy Crawford-fronted rendition of his old classic ‘Diamante’ missed the Top 40 in early 1992. His only other chart hit came later that year when the Luciano Pavarotti duet ‘Miserere’ crept to Number 15. Given his superstar status elsewhere it seems unfair to brand him a one hit wonder, but to all intents and purposes he is to British audiences. Still, if you are going to only have one hit it might as well be a track as fondly remembered as this one.

27: Pixies – Planet Of Sound

One of just three UK Top 40 hits for the semi-legendary American alt-rock band, ‘Planet Of Sound’ crept into to the Top 30 just over a year after their chart breakthrough with ‘Velouria’.Looking back it is actually strange to note that they never really managed a proper overground breakthrough on these shores, as in another lifetime they would have rode the grunge explosion of the early 90s to mainstream success and heralded as elder statesmen of the movement. The truth was however that by 1991 the band were all but falling apart, relations between Black Francis and Kim Deal having been fractious for several years and the album ‘Trompe Le Monde’ from which this single came wound up being their studio swansong. They did at least have one more surprise to pull, landing their biggest ever hit single in late 1997 when ‘Debaser’ from retrospective hits collection ‘Death To The Pixies’ landed at Number 23.

26: Roxette – Fading Like A Flower

The second single lifted from their ‘Joyride’ album, ‘Fading Like A Flower’ was on its way out of the chart at this point having peaked at a somewhat indifferent Number 12, a figure indicative of their rather stop start chart career on these shores. Needless to say America was the real target market for this unashamedly radio-friendly power ballad and the single spent most of the summer hovering around the US Top 10. That would be just about the most interesting thing to say about the single, but for the extraordinary postscript that saw it turned into a looping house Eurodance single by the Dancing DJs who dragged the track back to Number 18 in a radically new version in 2005.

25: Salt-N-Pepa – Do You Want Me

A large part of the reason people have so much respect for Cheryl and Sandra aka Salt-N-Pepa is not so much their seemingly effortless rise to the top in the male dominated world of hip-hop but their uncanny ability to pull themselves back from commercial oblivion time after time thanks to a knack for picking the right hits. All but forgotten since their 1988 breakthrough and apparently dumper-bound when 1990 comeback single ‘Expression’ flopped upon first release, the duo (or trio, if one properly acknowledges DJ Spinderella as an integral part of the act) steamrollered their way back to stardom in the summer of 1991 with a pair of back to back and very memorable hits. ‘Do You Want Me’ (remixed dramatically from the version that first appeared on the album ‘Black’s Magic’ kind of wound up overshadowed by the censor-baiting and delightfully candid ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ which followed it later in the summer but as far as I am concerned it was this track which was the far superior pop record and which rightfully soundtracked every club night and disco until well into August. To this day one of my favourite memories of the time but regrettably not to be found on the online streaming services, nor on online stores. Have the video instead on me:

24: Queen – Headlong

Even five months prior to the tragic events of that November, Queen were making the wrong kind of headlines in 1991. The papers all knew Freddie was dying, but until he admitted it himself could do nothing more than drop heavy and ever less subtle hints. Musically the group had started the year on a high thanks to ‘Innuendo’ charging to Number One, but even the songs they continued to release from the album raised more questions than there were answers. Why were all the videos filmed in black and white? Why, during the video for ‘Headlong’, a typically fist-pumping Queen rocker, was Freddie lying down while the band danced around him? Never did the elephant in the room loom so large, and it meant that the memory of Queen’s final “proper” album is tainted by the endless gossip and, well, innuendo that accompanied it. ‘Headlong’ was the album’s third single and bested the rather meandering ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’ by easing its way to Number 14 from where it had fallen to this position on this chart. Little did we know, although perhaps we should have guessed, that their next single release would be the last of their charismatic lead singers lifetime.

23: Pop Will Eat Itself – 92 Degrees

I’ve had cause to write before of the masterful way that Pop Will Eat Itself rode the dance revolution to long lasting success by marrying their usual sound with house beats to quite wonderful effect. ‘92 Degrees’ was another perfect example of this, a thundering and intoxicating club track that somehow managed to appeal to both indie and dance crowds in one fell swoop. Quite why this was such a small hit I never really worked out, but Number 23 was as good as it got although most fans will agree the single stands proud as one of their very best. Even if some more cynical reviewers couldn’t resist wondering why they spent the song singing about a “hardcore dancefloor yawn”.

22: Kenny Thomas – Thinking About Your Love

Acts whose appeal you never got ever: Kenny Thomas. I mean just why was everyone kissing his backside so much in 1991? Yes he was a young British star, yes he had a far from unpleasant soul voice but his 1991 hits such as ‘Outstanding’ and this follow-up effort were some of the blandest, dullest, meaningless pieces of watered down R&B you could have the misfortune to hear. ‘Thinking About Your Love’ was a 14 place climber on this chart and was on its way to an eventual Number 4 peak as his one and only Top 10 hit. He continued to chart hits until 1995, but I don’t think most people could name more than three.

21: T’Pau – Whenever You Need Me

So, remember the album I won on Radio York that bright May morning? It turned out to be ‘The Promise’ the third and final release from the legends that were T’Pau. Few would argue that by 1991 their time had been and gone and it didn’t really matter how enthusiastically the goddess-like Carol Decker tossed her mane of hair around in the video for ‘Whenever You Need Me’, commercially they were all but running on fumes. Not that this wasn’t a bad record (and indeed the album itself does still have its moments) but music had moved on from the world of radio-friendly rock in which they operated. Not that they vanished forever of course, Carol Decker jumping aboard the nostalgia train with enthusiasm from the late 90s onwards and the band with the odd original member feature on “here and now” shows with pleasing regularity. I don’t care that she’s now 51 and a mother of two. I’d still crawl over hot coals for her.

As ever the Spotify and we7 playlists are updated with all these songs, and Jonthan Cowap if you are reading this I confess I did cheat at the yearquest quiz 18 years ago. You can have the T’Pau album back if you want, it is still in excellent condition.