Birthday Number 1s: 2002 - Anyone of Us (Stupid Mistake)

I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard

Anyone of Us (Stupid Mistake) - Gareth Gates

all the way through (until just now).

I did know the chorus. I remember hearing a woman at a party singing it and thinking "that must be what that is". I remember that extremely well, because the same woman, who I knew a little but not very well, reacted to the news that my intention was to become a primary school teacher with unhidden disapproval and disbelief, saying "that is something you're really not suited to" and I often think about how she, a slightly drunk slight acquaintance, was the only person who hit the nail on the head, and the favour that almost did me. If just one other person had been so blunt, I might have spared myself a stoopid mistake of a year. (all turned out fine in the end, mind!)

This was one of four (four!) UK Number 1s for Gareth Gates, the only one that wasn't an obvious cover of an obvious song. Listening to it, it's fairly catchy, nothing outstanding. 2002 was really the year that Cowell's creations dominated the charts. For 18 weeks of the year, with 8 different songs, the Number 1 spot was held by an act from an ITV talent show. 

Of course, this situation would carry on, in some way, for most of the decade, but, as it developed, it was less a case of "any old dross will do it" ...usually the series winner would get one guaranteed Number 1 but then fall away, whereas over the course of the era, Syco success was concentrated on a handful of major acts - usually, it turned out, groups (Girls Aloud, 1D, JLS, Little Mix).

Without wishing to be critical, Gareth Gates was lucky to have his success when he did. He ended up playing shows in places like St Mary's Church, Ashford, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Following Anyone of Us at Number 1 that summer was another Pop Idol alumnus, Darius (Campbell-Danesh) with Colourblind. Darius's death last year really did make me feel terribly sad. To me, he was the greatest figure of the Syco era. Not just the greatest figure, but the catalyst, the gold dust that set the whole thing in motion.

I didn't watch the first episode or two of Popstars in early 2001 but when I caught up with it down the line, with my flatmates, the first guy we saw was Darius, in his ponytail, goatee and leather jacket era. The point about Darius was that one moment you'd go "what a dweeb", then "but he seems nice" then "he's really a great singer" then "he's actually very handsome" then "why the hell is he doing that". He was genuinely nuanced - they constructed all their future narratives for other people that would serve the shows for a decade out of what simply came naturally from him in an hour or so of TV..

It was a genuinely beautiful thing when he came back a couple of years later on the first series of Pop Idol looking like a matinee idol. That first series, with Will, Gareth, Darius completing the podium, looks so innocent and outdated now. Just three charming young fellas. They each had a narrative that worked, It was good TV, and it was actually, still, at that point, endearing TV.

I think I thought Darius would do even better than he did, he really had such a fine voice, but he did pretty well for himself. After a few hits, he moved to musical theatre. I saw him the musical of Gone With the Wind, as my cousin was also in it. He was good, I thought. Unfortunately the musical wasn't.

A strange era of pop music all told with, no doubt, some real unpleasant stories in the background. In 2002, Girls Aloud and Will Young were just about to break the mould by releasing truly excellent singles on the back of talent show success. Gareth Gates never quite managed to do that.

Birthday Number 1s: 2001 - Eternity/The Road to Mandalay

The summer of 2001 was a very long summer, and somewhere near the middle of it was

Eternity/The Road to Mandalay - Robbie Williams

although I hardly noticed.

That was the summer of my finals, memorable for my flat mate having a party on the flat roof and falling from a chimney, bringing it down with him, and smashing through the ceiling of the room I was revising in for my last exam. I was cross, but only for a couple of days.

Then I was home for a couple of weeks, in a strange dreamlike state, then back to St As for graduation. That was the first time I'd been there in high summer, and I certainly had the thought that I wished I'd been there in high summer some more. Hell of a beautiful place  on the longest day of the year.

Then, back to London, all sorts of hanging around, having fun, including the playscheme in Portsmouth, which I was nominally in charge of that year, which involved a fair bit of planning - making lists, stacking boxes etc

I have an odd memory, actually, which slightly surprises me about my personality then, but also, as it develops it rather confirms it. I (I think it was me) had the bright idea to try to get more children to come to the playscheme, so Alex and I headed down to Portsmouth in his car with a bunch of leaflets with a plan to pay a visit to various schools in the area. Had we rung ahead? Not even sure ... this seems very forward-thinking and evangelical of me to even consider.

As I recall, it was a day pissing with rain, and we kind of lost our nerve, and didn't do much except have a McDonalds and sit in the car listening to Wimbledon. It was either the match when Henman beat Federer or when he would have beaten Ivanisevic to reach the final if the rain hadn't stopped his flow. I guess the latter.

The summer of Henmania! What a mania! And Strokesmania, of sorts. I was somewhat a participant in it, but let me say, I am equally fond of Free All Angels by Ash, which I think is criminally underrated, very much the sound of that summer, and, I think, to this day Burn Baby Burn will rock the indie dancefloor just as much as Last Night ...

The Portsmouth playscheme that year was a bit chaotic but, I think a lot of fun. Someone was taking pictures, so I still have pictures of my birthday, popping champagne, feeling no pain. I have quite a good haircut, what the hell. And am sunburnt of course.

Robbie Williams' 'Eternity/The Road to Mandalay' was Number 1 for the two-week duration of the playscheme. It was there for summer madness.

I tried not to listen to these two songs at the time, and I know why. Because they were ok. Because they were pleasant, understated, pop songs, and I certainly could not deal with the possibility of actually tolerating Robbie Williams songs. Even the vocal is tolerable. How intolerable!

This was Robinson Williamsburg's 4th, of 7 solo Number 1s, after 6 with Take That. He owned that half-decade that crossed the millennium in the UK. And, quite impressively, his albums sold very consistently in the UK for a very long time. First six were all 2 million plus or thereabouts, then even when they dipped, as they always do, they were still very good sales figures, up to the present day. Even the biggest artists, like Beyonce and Sheeran, have a big dip in sales at some point. I suppose the consistency in Williams' sales is because he never sold a bean in the US, which I never fully understood. So he was always big in a smaller pond, so not as far to fall.

Anyway, I notice that this song, Eternity, which I worry I would quite like if it were by someone I didn't loathe (I don't actually loathe Robbie Williams anymore, btw, I loathe Tories, war, climate change and all that kind of stuff ...), was written about Geri Halliwell and has Brian May on guitar, which calls back to a couple of previous August Number 1s. I think I felt at the time, and there may be something in it, that, after the cool-classic indebted retroism of Britpop (Beatles/Bowie/Kinks/Wire etc) pop music saw value in going deliberately retro after that, but its gods were the uncool ones, ABBA, Bee Gees, Elton John (not cool at all in the 90s, unlike now) and Queen. 

Anyway, the fun continued that summer, and then stopped abruptly on 11th September, when one of the most significant and terrible events in history took place, and I got a job in a bookshop.

Birthday Number 1s: 2000 - We Will Rock You

Let's all meet up in the year 2000. Won't it be be strange?

One of the worst Number 1s ever, in my opinion, is

We Will Rock You - Five and Queen

which is clearly a bit harsh, but, man, it's still dispiriting to think of it.

I'm quite fond of 5ive, and Queen are Queen, or rather, here, Queen really aren't Queen, but this is just an abject sign of the times, this one.

2000 was pretty much the worst year for the trend around the turn of the century for singles to only be Number 1 for one week. That year, there were only 8 Number 1s that were at the top for longer than a week. It is one of the few pleasing details of how streaming has changed the singles charts that songs have a much longer run at it now, in terms of both staying at Number 1 and staying in the charts full stop. 

In 2000, everything was focused towards a high new entry and after that it didn't really matter. There are some distinctly unmemorable chart-toppers that year.

Not all - Pure Shores, Oops I Did It Again, Beautiful Day, Spinning Around, The Real Slim Shady, 7 Days, Groovejet (If This Ain't Love), Independent Women, Stan ... there are some really well-remembered Number 1s from that year, but lots that aren't.

Five (or 5ive) were quite a fun boyband for a while - there was the impression they had a bit more a sense of danger than some (When the Lights Go Out, Don't Want to Let You Go), they could do anthem (Everybody Get Up) and had some catchy light pop songs like Got the Feeling and Keep on Movin'. 

By this release, though, even though it got to Number 1, it was clear their time was passed (soon to be seamlessly replaced by Blue), and it was also obvious, and I remember this so clearly at the time, that one of them. Sean, didn't want to be there. He looked in visible absent distress when they were on TV - this turns out to have been very much the case, and, less obviously, he wasn't the only one. It really sounds like it was a bit of a shitty life.

As for Queen, Freddie was dead 9 years, John Deacon had had enough a few years before, Brian May and Roger Taylor had a musical to sell. So be it. Two tickets to We Will Rock You.

But I never liked the song at the best of times, even when I loved Queen, I was thoroughly sick of it when it was on Gladiators each week, and this new version was beyond the pale.

Richie Neville, an ok singer who had the most "rock" voice of the five, had the thankless task of doing the Mercury vocal and ... you know, it's not.

There are some desperate rap bits, Sean looking miserable in the video, and the strong sense of how far both Five, and Queen, were from actually "rocking" anyone at that point.

Number 1 a couple of weeks later was Rock DJ by Robbie Williams, another song which insulted the word "rock" ... anyway, what was I listening to then? Flaming Lips, The Band, inbetween British indie like Ooberman and Ultrasound. I am still not seeing much light in pop music, but I remember it was at the end of 2000, with Stan and Independent Women, that I became a bit more open to non-rock music than I had been. Especially if this aberration was rock music.

Birthday Number 1s: 1999 - Livin' La Vida Loca

I don't really know what to write about

Livin' La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin

It's not that I haven't heard the song countless times, it's just that I am just not sure what I feel about it, if I feel anything.

It's certainly an archetypal summer Number 1 - they quite often have a bit of Spanish in them, as the Brits head off, or wish they were heading off, to a beach holiday. This trend went into overdrive in the summer of '99 - within the space of a couple of months, the Number 1s included Livin' La Vida Loca, Mi Chico Latino, Mambo No.5 and We're Going to Ibiza. As exotic as it gets!

I have suddenly a specific memory. I had just started listening to Nick Drake - I'd bought a Nick Drake compilation and the Nick Drake biography by Patrick Humphries - on the day of the eclipse, 11th August 1999, I was in a plane to Frankfurt. The sky was grey. I was reading about Nick Drake.

The era was classic end-of-history, everything is fine, only a few wars, nothing truly bad will ever happen again, let's all get ourselves in a tizz about the Millennium Bug.

Looking at the Number 1s for that year, there are a lot of them, and nearly all of them are of a type, a kind of frictionless pop/dance. There are some other decent ones, like Genie in a Bottle and, I suppose, Baby One More Time, but Livin' La Vida Loca may be the best of a fairly bad bunch.

I don't think I ever hated it. Maybe I did. Maybe it just wasn't enough like Nick Drake or Leonard Cohen for me.

But it's a great pop song ... I think ...a cultural touchstone ... maybe ... my sister had been in Mexico for a year so I already knew Ricky Martin was a megastar in the Latin world, and I think he'd had one or two brief encounters with the UK charts before this one. I like the way it combines England and Spanish in the same sentence. It hangs on "skin's the colour mocha" which is really bad, but just about survives. There was a tragic world champion boxer called Johnny Tapia with the craziest, saddest life story, whose nickname was "Mi vida loca" so it makes me think of him.

But, no, that's about it from me. A song that was both novelty and groundbreaker, one of the first of so many big Latin crossover hits, a song one couldn't escape from for a while, but not a source of much diversionary inspiration for me, I'm afraid.

Actually, spotting a typo a couple of days later, I have had a specific thought about this song, which I will refer back to  in a few songs' time, about how songs like this made me feel, compared to other people, and how, at this stage, I didn't really understand it, so ... I probably did resent this very good pop song at the time, because it was a song of romance and dancing, and by a few years' later, I just understood that feeling better in myself, and so wouldn't have hated something harmless and fun like this song, but still can't exactly bring myself to like it. Anyway, I'll come back to that thought.

Birthday Number 1s: 1998 - Deeper Underground

I'm not even halfway through this. Christ. Fear not, I'm quite sure the second half will be less wordy, as there are quite a lot of songs I have no real connection with. The late 80s and 90s are the ones where I remember pretty precise details of my relationship to the song. That's not to say there aren't some grrrreat songs to come - some of the greatest.

But for now, it's

Deeper Underground - Jamiroquai

which was Number 1 for one week leading up to 1st August 1998, before Viva Forever by the Spice Girls took over. 

I choose this to write about, as I've already ranted about the Spice Girls. Viva Forever was the last single on which Geri Halliwell sang, and she was already out of the group by the time it was released. From Wannabe, 2 years before, to this, it was the blink of an eye - they had packed in a lot of story. 

After this, it is quite interesting that there were then a couple of years where the Spice Girls were quite ubiquitous as solo artists in the charts, and that Mel B recorded with Missy Elliott and Mel C with Left-Eye, so were clearly aiming for cool, but then none of them could sustain successful solo careers ... Spice Girls, though they have returned here and then, have always felt like a historical entity since then.

...anyway, I said I wouldn't talk about the Spice Girls. Jamiroquai it is.

I have, and have always had, a certain soft spot for Jay Kay and his merry band, in spite of it all. Being told by my sisters that he was from Ealing, indeed that he "used to deal weed on Haven Green" and then seeing him on Top of the Pops with his big hat and fancy moves, him being initially deemed super cool and then almost immediately marked as perennially and utterly uncool, listening to Too Young to Die, and hearing everyone say "that sounds like Stevie Wonder" but not knowing enough Stevie Wonder to know why, being punched by a paparazzo ... I was always just rooting for him. Well, mostly.

Deeper Underground, which was from the film Godzilla, was their only UK Number 1, and only for 1 week. It was one of those Number 1s of that specific era, a bit like the Manics' If You Tolerate This later that summer, which was a bit of a smash and grab. It wasn't actually that popular a song, it just had a week's opportunity and took it.

Jamiroquai have more popular songs than this one. They have an impressive 19 UK Top 20 hits. They really kept at it. They've more in common with earlier mainstream bands like Simply Red and UB40 than the 90s trends, but Jay Kay was very Britpop-attitudy, so gets lumped in with that a bit. Early on, they were part of acid jazz. As a band, they always struck me as exceptionally well drilled. People I know who went to see them said they were great. It seemed like they were a band that girls liked. I've seen their tracks, particularly Virtual Insanity, played by more than one wedding band.

Deeper Underground is a bit rockier, heavier, than a lot of their hits. It's not really a great song, but it's ok. I remember thinking I'd be excited by going to see Godzilla, and then when it came around, realising I didn't fancy it at all, which, I guess, was the kind of decision that set me on to the path to the kind of film fan I am.

 I have not much memory of that summer (after 1st year at university), to be honest, beyond France 98 ... just drifted through it a fair bit. Rolling around Ealing and Barnes, drinking London Pride, sleeping in. 20, but still pretty much a child.

Oh, it ended with a boat trip on the Norfolk Broads. That was good. I listen to Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley. Small changes but significant.

Birthday Number 1s: 1997 - I'll Be Missing You

Do you remember when the airwaves in the summer of 1997 were absolutely dominated by a hastily put-together, somewhat maudlin tribute to a much loved figure who died in suspicious circumstances? Yes, that's right, it's

I'll Be Missing You - Puff Daddy and Faith Evans featuring 112

the monster hit about the Notorious BIG, who lived his life like a candle in the wind.

I first heard I'll Be Missing You when I was sitting on a balcony in a hotel in Nairobi overlooking the city bus station, drinking martinis and smoking menthol cigarettes, on the day before the night I took a flight back to faraway London town after six months and twelve days away. 

I still have a photograph Wieland took  of me sat on the balcony, looking skinny and grimey, in my UsedCo Blue sweatshirt, hadn't had a haircut for six months, but it's not long, it's just ... formless. I am finally able to admit to myself that all I've wanted for most of the time I've been away is to go home, watch sport, listen to music, make a good cup of tea and bacon sandwich.

That song was, possibly, apart from the Blur and Paul Weller albums I'd be sent in the post, the first new Western pop music I'd heard in those six months. I think it played three or four times over the course of that long afternoon on the balcony, mine and Wieland's last bit of time together as he was staying on another week or so, as we couldn't book the same flights. It was a nice idea to spend that day drinking, eating and smoking in a fancy Nairobi hotel, a way to acclimatise a bit to western ways after half a year on a hillside (though, previously, my western ways had not involved smoking menthol cigarettes and drinking martinis).

I was puzzled by what it was I was hearing that day. What's this ropey Police cover, I thought? I found out when I got home that this was the worldwide smash Number 1 single.

I did know about the Notorious BIG by that point. My mother had sent me the NME pretty much week. I knew the news if not the tunes. But ... well ... here's a thing. Biggie Smalls died in March 1997. I read about it in the NME. I hadn't heard of him up to that point. I wasn't a hip-hop guy but I followed music fairly closely. Tupac Shakur had died in September 1996. Everybody had heard of him. He was very famous in his lifetime - I knew what he looked like, what he sounded like, his life story. 

I have never been able to let go of the suspicion, no doubt entirely unfounded, that Christopher Wallace's death created a false equivalence, a need for their to be "Tupac and Biggie" which elevated the latter's impact, life story and art far beyond its natural status.  Really, it's a suspicion born of my ignorance, but still I haven't let go of it. BIG is cited as one of the greatest rappers of all times, his first two albums hailed as timeless classics, and I just ... don't know. 

Is it all the marketing genius of Puff Daddy/Sean Combs, who became utterly ubiquitous and infinitely wealthy in the late 90s? The main thing I remember reading about him was that he wasn't much of a rapper himself, just a businessman. Be that as it may, I quite enjoyed some of his later singles like 'All About the Benjamins' and 'Come with Me'. He certainly knew how to make hip-hop that crossed over.

I'll Be Missing You was one of the biggest hip-hop songs in the UK up to that point, maybe the biggest. After the initial 90/91 breakthrough of rather silly rap-adjacent hits like Turtle Power and Ice Ice Baby, the only big UK hip-hop Number 1s had been Boom! Shake the Room, Gangsta's Paradise, Killing Me Softly (and Ready or Not). I'll Be Missing You felt like a big moment for the dominance of hip-hop. In particular, it put the biggest rock band in Britain in its place.

What with getting sent the NME every week while in Mbale, I knew all about the coming Oasis. It was going to be the biggest. And the best. When my time in Kenya was cut short by visa issues, I would have the opportunity to be here now, pretty much, for D'You Know What I Mean? 

It was released on 7th July. I returned on, ! think, 13th July. Even by the time I returned, I think, the truth was slightly out that it was ... not that good ... kind of a mess. Nevertheless, it did go straight in at Number 1 in its first week.

I remembering hearing a new Oasis song on the radio, I guess as soon as I got back on the plane. and thinking "I'm surprised people don't like this. This is really good", but it turned out that was Stay Young, the b-side, and, to my mind, the last true Oasis song when their youthful vigour could still be bought into. I soon heard D'You Know What I Mean, and it was poor, and, of course, despite the hype, I'll Be Missing You, which had already been Number 1 for three weeks before, returned to Number 1 after a one week intermission, for another three weeks.

So, that was the sound of the summer of 97. Then there was Men in Black by Will Smith, then there was The Drugs Don't Work (all pretty doomy, isn't). There was a car crash in Paris which drove everyone in Britain nuts forever and then there was the grace that placed itself where lives were torn apart.

... then there was Spice Up Your Life and Barbie Girl .... weird year, all in, 1997.

Birthday Number 1s: 1996 - Wannabe

Number 1 on my 18th birthday,

Wannabe - The Spice Girls

and I don't really want to be the 44 year old man writing about how he's not a fan of the Spice Girls, but there we go.

No, I wasn't a fan of Wannabe. The first time I encountered the Spice Girls was on a billboard on a bus shelter outside Northfields tube station on the way to one of my last A-levels. I couldn't quite work out what it was an advert for - a TV show, a foodstuff, a perfume, a comedy troupe ... i guess that was job well done by the marketing team.

Wannabe was, for a while, dismissed as a new definition of summer madness, but Say You'll Be There went straight in at Number 1 as well, and the Spice Girls were here to say. Though not for that long. They really, really, only lasted, as an active combined force in the charts, for two years.

At the time, I was very rockist, and was not going to give this kind of thing a chance. I didn't like any non-guitar music. But, now, wise and generous, I'd say Take That have several 8/10 and 9/10 songs, likewise All Saints, Girls Aloud have a few 10/10 songs, TLC have some 10/10 songs. Eternal have a handful of 8/10 songs. The Spice Girls ... Spice Up Your Life is 6/10 for a few seconds, likewise Stop and 2 Become 1. That's it. Emma Bunton's first solo single is really nice, Geri Halliwell's solo career contains a hint of true lunacy which is almost entertaining. So, as you can see, I'm still not having it.

There are parts of the Spice Girls story I think are cool and parts I still resent. Geri Halliwell, at school with Priti Patel, an inspiration and friend to Liz Truss, a devotee of Thatcher, married to the worst person in the worst era of the worst sport, might be an even more culturally significant figure than we realise, in a bad way.

It's not for me to say whether their Girl Power was a good thing. Josie Long doesn't think so. On the playschemes in the following summers, all the young girls were dressing like the Spice Girls and shouting Girl Power and assigning themselves Spice Girl personas. Maybe all that did some good, maybe it didn't.

I just don't think the Spice Girls were good. I don't like the records. They're still popular enough, especially Wannabe which has almost a billion spotify streams, but to me, when it's deliberately messy, it's too much, when it's not deliberately messy, it's empty.

But, yes, they were clearly cultural significant, and did signal the changing of a guard. They were lucky that their first single followed directly on from the end of Take That. That fanbase was right there for them. Did they, though, signal the end of laddish, monocultural Britpop, and usher in a brighter popcentric dawn (you may think this is my regular straw man, but i see this regularly claimed)?

Or were the Spice Girls the ultimate Britpop band? 96 was the summer of Three Lions and then Wannabe. I kind of think, along with Noel Gallagher at Downing Street, those are the main things people actually think about when they think, vaguely, about "Britpop". The blunt instrument. The george cross and the union jack.

I've seen Britpop described by moderately sensible, right-on people, as partly responsible for the rebirth of nationalism in this country? Who do they mean? Elastica? The Boo Radleys? Super Furry Animals? Sleeper? Supergrass? Maybe it was McAlmont and Butler ...

Hmpph, i feel like i'm off-topic, and yet, on-topic. You go ahead and retrospectively love this Tory shell of a pop band, the David's not for turning.

Oh yeah, my 18th birthday ... not significant. Was in Portchester, as I would do for many birthdays to come. Have a vague memory i got drunk quickly, not in a fun way - can't really remember anything else.

Birthday Number 1s: 1995 - Boom Boom Boom

So we come to the golden summer of Britpop, when Cool Britannia was made manifest by

Boom Boom Boom - Outhere Brothers

Who were they? Were they out here, or out there? They were an American duo, and notwithstanding their pair of relatively benign Number 1s - this and Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle), a close inspection of their discography reveals song titles of unmitigated filth. Like, I can't even ... just look them up ...

Oh sure, Country House vs Roll with It was a couple of weeks away, and on the minds of the likes of me, but, really the charts were, for the most part, the usual stuff. Some indie bands were doing a bit better than they would otherwise, but it wasn't rampant menswear.

The biggest Number 1s that year were by Celine Dion, Robson and Jerome, Michael Jackson, Coolio and Simply Red. And Back for Good, by Take That, which people got very very excited about. I was a little sniffy about it, but am prepared to accept it has stood the time better than Oasis' Some Might Say, which replaced it at Number 1.

I started buying the NME in early 95, as well as occasional Vox, Q, Select, Melody Maker, so considered myself, at once, a fully fledged indie kid. I was also extremely Christian. 

I was combining those two things seamlessly. As I practised them, they shared the quality of looking askance at the rest of the world with mostly gentle, occasionally vicious, despair. Perfect.

I remember 1st August, my 17th birthday, pretty well. For once I am not playing cricket. I start the day at Rotherhithe Youth Hostel, as part of the surveying week of the PHSP playscheme/Access guide and travel in the backseat a small car without AC on a very hot day with Mark and Martin up through northeast London, to survey various leisure facilities in the Lea Valley for disabled access.

In my head, I have marked this as a not-particularly-fun birthday, but I still remember a certain awe at the melting tarmac and the endless expanse of the city, with the northeast being the opposite of the part I knew well. There were so many wasps about, that's the other thing I remember.

I was certainly aware of those kooky Outhere Brothers. It was either on that Portsmouth playscheme or the next that a guy called Dan, who the kids called "Dantona" because he wore a Man Utd shirt and put his collar up, would lead the coachful in a rendition, singing "Boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh!" and the would all holler back "Way-oh!!" over and over again, and I understood at that point that the world of men was divided in two, between those who, when they sang "boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh", would be correctly confident that everyone would, indeed, say "way-oh!"; and those who, though their preference would be for never, under any circumstance, singing "boom boom boom, now everybody say way-oh", if extreme events did ever force them to, then as they miserably finished their "now everybody say way-oh", they would know, in their bitter hearts, that people would not holler back "Way-oh!!". And I was, needless to say, in the latter category. And there have I stayed.

Britpop now! Cool Britannia! Champagne supernova! Mad for it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Polish,_2_Biscuits_%26_a_Fish_Sandwich

By the way, Boom is clearly a fantastic word to have in the title of pop songs, pretty much a guarantee of success - if you want to hit, call it Boom Crash, or something ...

Boom Clap, Boom Boom, Boom! Shake the Room, Boom Bang-a-Bang, Boom Boom Boom Boom, Boombastic, Boom Boom Pow, ... all ... bangers

Birthday Number 1s: 1994 - Love is All Around

Time for another

Love is All Around - West Wet Wet

an entity I don't really understand.

I have never really felt anything about this song. I don't hate it, it didn't bother me particularly that it was Number 1 through the summer of 1994, I could also, probably, sing it all the way through, but, at the same time, it is nothing. Just no kind of song at all, either in the Troggs original version, or the Wet Wet Wet version. To me, who is clearly wrong.

I don't mind the Troggs. I don't mind Wet Wet Wet. I actually really love Goodnight Girl, in a weird way.

But this ... I can't understand why they chose it for Four Weddings ..., I can't understand why people kept on buying it; it's like an album track by a band that almost got signed.

Yet there it is, breaking all records if it had really wanted to. I was watching the Tops of the Pop from 1994 earlier this year, and Marti Pellow forgets the words in one of their first appearances on the show ... I wonder if he thought "well, that's fucked it," but it hadn't..

It is also interesting that at a point where Oasis are just about in the popular consciousness, Wet Wet Wet are, to a man, attired and styled like they're just back from buying "been to see the Maharishi" fancy dress costumes. Groovy, baby.

Interesting that 80s bands Tears for Fears and Wet Wet Wet both made very Beatles-indebted music in the early/mid 90s (were there any others, i'm trying to remember ...?) but were by no means seen as part of the Britpop party.

I'm usually a sucker for the music in iffy romcoms. It can make me love both the song and/or the film far more than is appropriate, whether its Sway in American Pie or Ocean Drive and Stars in proto-Four Weddings, Jack and Sarah. But i can hardly remember Love is All Around being in Four Weddings ... it's just one of the songs played by the shonky wedding band, right? There is some quite nice use of jazz standards in the film, isn't there? I guess the supposed central romance is so secondary to some people's (e.g my) enjoyment of the film, compared to the comic set pieces, the friendships and the general vibes, it barely feels like a romcom at all.

I thought the film held up well for a long time. I didn't watch it, I don't think, in the summer of 94, but soon afterwards, and generally enjoyed catching up with it on TV for years - bonking old Toby De Lisle etc - but saw a bit of it recently, and it really felt, for the first time, wildly dated, twee, misogynistic etc bit unfair really, I just think its comic style has rather been eaten by its many successors.

I also wonder the extent to which Four Weddings had a real-word effect on wedding culture. Richard Curtis says the film was influenced by his own friend circle and their experiences of going to weddings in their 20s and 30s,, so perhaps it was already like that, but speaking to people of the previous generation, it certainly seems there was less picture-book extravagance and by the time my generation of weddings came about, everyone had seen 4 Weddings and envisioned some part of something similar.

My 20s and 30s were full of variations on the theme - castles and grand Scottish hotels, idyllic fields, vast marquees. bumping into the same people, dancing to the same songs. I fuckin loved it, no doubt, but, looking back, surely there was something performative and imitative, perhaps we can all look a little askance at the spiralling costs and the special touches ...

,,, anyway, all that was a long way off on my 16th birthday. I'd only been to one wedding, was about to go to my second funeral.

On the day, sure I was playing cricket again in the Cotswolds. Just starting to emerge from the darkest of the worst of adolescence. GCSEs were done, slightly less terrible haircut. It was the USA World Cup that summer. At school, the next year, people would be mainly being less horrible to each other. 

I was still not there musically, but almost there. I'd bought The Jam Greatest Hits, then followed that up with the red herrings of some 80s compilations. I wasn't buying the NME yet but read Caitlin Moran's music column in the Times, read the music reviews in Time Out, was starting to known who was who and what was what. Kurt Cobain had died in April and Blur had released Parklife. The same Caitlin Moran and Johnny Vaughan had briefly presented an absolute mess of a Channel 4 music show called Naked City where I'd been unimpressed by Oasis and loved the Manics doing La Tristesse Durere on a bandstand.

I'm still not there with Blur. It won't be until a November 1994 episode of Top of the Pops where Suede do The Wild Ones and Blur do End of a Century (the episode was just on BBC4, it also had live performances by Sheryl Crow and Kate Bush, as well as Urge Overkill doing a creepy song from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack) that I decide to buy Parklife. I'm surprised, retrospectively, it's not Suede I go all in on. I love The Wild Ones, and had liked all their songs I'd heard. Perhaps I knew I didn't have the hips for it. So Blur it was. 

But for almost a third of 1994, it was Love is All Around, doing the same job as Everything I Do, but a fair bit worse.

Marti Pellow ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0VOJ0Z3vY0&ab_channel=Limmy

Birthday Number 1s: 1993 - Pray

The first chart topper by one of the key UK pop acts of the decade, Number 1 on August 1 1993 was

Pray - Take That

This could be described as Take That's breakthrough hit, but saying that, their ascent at this stage was pretty much inevitable. Their previous single 'Why Can't I Wake Up With You' was weak and unmemorable, but had still reached Number 2, so as long as the next one was decent, a Number 1 was likely.

Pray is, I think, really good. Still one of their best. I was no fan of Take That at the time, as I'll get to, but Pray immediately sounded like it belonged - the intro sounded like the theme to popular Saturday night on ITV, and the chorus was once heard, never forgotten.

Barlow knew what he was doing. Everyone knew what they were doing, even though what they were doing had still, at that point, not been done that much before. 

It shows how innocent I was, but also how relatively "innocent" (not really the right word) the era was that I took against Take That because I heard they'd been specially put together by a svengali (Nigel Martin-Smith). They weren't "authentic". I mean, this has been so entirely commonplace for so long, it was a laughable view even then ...

Take That took a long time to really get going, forming in 1990 releasing their first single in 1991. Pray, in 1993, was their 9th single and first Number 1. After that, 10 of their next 11 singles (with an 8 year gap in the middle) were Number 1s. Their biggest songs on Spotify, apart from Back for Good, are from their comeback era. They really had the knack.

They do still rankle a little. Pace Jason of Orange, it's a shame what a Tory/establishment lot they turned out to be. And, yes, I wish they'd held it together so Robbie Williams' solo career was never unleashed. ...

but Pray was decent.

1993's Number 1s, in general, I don't like nearly as much as those of 1992 - I Will Always Love You, No Limit, Oh Carolina, Young at Heart, Five Live EP, All That She Wants, Can't Help Falling in Love With You, Dreams, Pray, Living on My Own, Mr Vain, Boom! Shake the Room, Relight My Fire, I'd Do Anything for Love, Mr Blobby, Babe, Mr Blobby ...

... some ok ones, but quite a few stinkers. The year belonged to Take That and it was also the year pop reggae started to dominate - Shaggy, Inner Circle, Shabba, Snow, Ace of Base, UB40, Chaka Demus and Pliers ... all that stuff.

I was still, really, without a musical home. I thought Queen was my musical home, but it will turn out not to be. Perhaps this dreadful Freddie Mercury single Living on My Own, will help me break out of that Queen funk, I can't remember.

I remember my birthday (15) very well that year... cricket. There was a cricket tour to the Cotswolds, three matches in three days, and those three days were the first three times I got drunk. The first two times, successfully, the third time untidily.

I'm just about to sound about as English middle-class as anyone possibly could, so please remember I am a misanthropic Celtic republican from a broken home, but there is/was something exquisite about the culture of drinking after cricket matches in the home counties.

If, in my era, you were lucky enough to be a teenager who loved cricket and wanted to play it all summer, who was good at cricket, then the experience of playing a full afternoon's cricket in the sun, then sitting in or outside the pavilion, being bought beer by friendly elders, and chatting about nothing more or less than the day's cricket, or the next day's cricket, was as good as it gets.

I wasn't popular, people didn't want me at their parties, I wasn't attractive or charismatic, so being good at cricket, being treated as an equal and drunk with, listened to, on those evenings, meant a lot to me.

That first time, at Middleton Stoney, an obscenely picturesque cricket club. I'd taken a couple of wickets, there was a barbecue, there were four or five bottes of Becks, a clear, tipsy, head, no hangover, I felt like I'd discovered the secret to life. I more or less had.

I'm not entirely rose-tinted. By the end of that tour, some of the older lads were irritated by me. I was irritating, and callow, and lads don't want to perpetually indulge an irritating, callow 15-year old. They want to dance to Take That.

It baffled me, perhaps because I didn't really understand what lads were, that the lads at my school loved Take That. I don't know exactly what I thought they'd love instead, if anything, but the universality of Take That was key to their success, and to their long-lasting appeal, compared to some of the other massive pop acts of that decade, who I will get to down the line. 

Birthday Number 1s :1992 - Ain't No Doubt

Before all the news became relentlessly, oppressively grim all year round, there used to be a concept called "Silly season" implying that over the summer, there was an absence of genuine serious content, and people of the UK went a bit nuts. It mostly applied to news stories, but

Ain't No Doubt - Jimmy Nail

strikes me as a perfect "silly season" Number 1, succeeding where 'I'm Too Sexy' had, just, failed the year before. Actual Number 1, for three whole weeks, this was.

In 1992, I'm really following the chart closely. I'd say these are my peak years of engagement with pop music. I was telling myself I hated all of it, but of course I was lying to myself.

Interesting, in 1992, there were only 13 Number 1s in total - nothing was on top for only one week - everything had a solid run.

Because I don't think I'm actually going to have that much to say about Ain't No Doubt, I'll fill space by listing those 13 Number 1s. Perhaps this list will be as evocative for you as for me ....

• Bohemian Rhapsody/These Were the Days of Our Lives (Freddie Mercury had died in Nov 1991 and for the next couple of years, I should never forget, my main musical identity was that i was a massive Queen fan)
• Goodnight Girl
• Stay (Shakespears Sister)
• Deeply Dippy
• Please Don't Go
• ABBA-esque EP
• Ain't No Doubt
• Rhythm is a Dancer
• Ebenezer Goode
• Sleeping Satellite
• End of the Road
• Would I Lie to You
• I Will Always Love You

I have a certain nostalgic fondness for at least 3/4 of them, and unambiguously love two of them, which is not too bad. There's a silliness and oddness to quite a few them - like, that feels more like an era of classic pop music than one might expect of the early 90s.

What to make of Ain't No Doubt, the biggest of quite a few hits for renaissance man Jimmy Nail. It thrives as a twitter meme whenever eg Liz Truss, Nadine Dorries or any other truth-economical female politician is promising something ... "She's lying", and is, looking back, a clever song with a funny video. It's still nuts it went to Number 1 though. I've noticed one of the co-writers is a woman called Charlie Dore, who I listened to a fair bit a decade or so ago, making extremely sharp English folk songs. There's a great one called 'Big-Boned Girl'.

I also love that James Michael Aloysius Bradford takes his stage name from the fact that he once stood on a nail.

On a personal level, I was just about at my worst in the summer of 1992 - incredibly obnoxious, alienating, no idea how to look, to dress, to shave, to do anything. Was still pretty good at cricket, though, which is what I was doing for plenty of the summer, and those were the good hours.

Birthday Number 1s: 1991 - (Everything I Do) I Do it for You

I'm barely a third of the way through this whole vain enterprise, yet it now feels like we've reached the end of history. The big kahuna. Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. You get the picture.

It's 

[Everything I Do) I Do it for You - Bryan Adams

First of all, I would not have put money on that being where the brackets are.

Second of all, I'm not going to talk down this song. This is a good song.

I was on the train home a few years ago and I suddenly had the thought - "I'm going to listen to 'Everything I Do ...' and I think what I'm going to discover is that it's a good song". And I was right. It is a good song.

I mistakenly thought Adams didn't write it, that it was written solely by Michael Kamen, but that turns out not to be true. The song is based on the love theme Kamen wrote for Robin Hood, but it was Adams and Mutt Lange who turned it into a song, so he wrote it as much as Bob D wrote most of his songs, you know.

Oh, Mutt Lange, you say? Mutt Lange who'd go on to marry Shania Twain? The very same. And bass on the track is played by Larry Klein, who was at the time married to another somewhat successful Canadian called Joni Mitchell.

This song is, obviously, one of the most successful singles of all time, but, unlike most others of the most successful singles ever, it belongs mainly to its time and context. It hasn't been done to death by covers and radio play and X Factor. It's hardly disappeared, it has almost 500 million Spotify streams, but for context, Summer of 69 has almost a billion.

When I listened to it on that train home, it sounded fresh again. Of course, when the Friday night old TOTPs passed through 1991 I was reminded that, for those long, long 3 1/2 months of the summer of 91 (those weren't the best days of my life)  it was doing mine and everyone's heads in.

But that's not Bryan Adams' fault. In the last decade or so, quite a few cool-adjacent rock acts have cited Adams' crisp, euphoric unembarrassing radio rock as an influence and an inspiration. That surprised me, but it shouldn't have. He was not cool, but he was mainly not wildly uncool (not until the somewhat creepy Have You Ever Really Love a Woman?  (also co-written with Kamen and Lange) and The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You,) and his songs were really perfect for the radio, and everyone wants to be on the radio, right ...

I hadn't actually heard of Bryan Adam until 1991 - I guess I was still quite young for his big mid-80s hits and he was quite quiet in the late 80s. He sneaked up on me. 

Here comes big diversion. (inevitable really, that as we get towards the early teen years, all of this is unlocking a lot of memories).

16 weeks. A long time. Entered the charts on 27 June 1991, got to Number 1 a couple of weeks later. Held off the challenge of More than Words, Set Adrift on Memory Bliss, Now That We've Found Love, You Could Be Mine, Move Any Mountain, Enter Sandman, I'm Too Sexy, Summertime, Charly, Gett Off, Let's Talk about Sex, Insanity, Love to Hate You, Sunshine on a Rainy Day, Peace, Everybody's Free, Saltwater, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, Get Ready for This, World in Union, Wind of motherfuckin Change, before succumbing, finally, anticlimactically, to The Fly by U2.

16 weeks. More than one season.

I could write a lot about that summer, about the changes of the wind in those 16 weeks.

Post-Scholarship exams, which had been more stressful, more wholly consuming, than GCSEs, A-Levels or Finals would prove to be, by a long, long way. Leaving behind the prep school. Cruelty, meanness, had started to infect everything, as tends to be the case with boys not managed properly between 11 and 16. I can blame other people, but I was a horror in those years too. Not mean, but just clueless, charmless, obnoxious.

I had two holidays that summer, while Bryan Adams was Number 1. The first one, the one I'd really been looking forward to, the one I'd pressured my mother to pay for, even though it cost far more than most school trips, two weeks' adventure course in the northwest of Scotland.

All these years later, I don't regret going, no way. The beauty of the land, of the lochs, the mountains, the seals, the porpoises, I'll never forget. But I'd not do anything like that again, that's for sure.

Relevantly, it was two weeks without TV, radio, newspapers. The only exception was they let is watch Graf-Sabatini in the Wimbledon final. One of the instructors ruined that impasse somewhat by trying to force-feed me an egg sandwich, as we were just about to be put on a trawler, made to catch fish, thrown into a loch, swim to an island with only the few fish we'd caught and bin bags, build a raft, swim to shore. Actually not my bag, it turns out. At one point, as I sat miserably alone, the same instructor (young military type, as they all were) said "how long before they eat you, David?". Ha, cool guy.

But, actually, the instructors were ok, apart from one creep. Doing their best to toughen us up without being completely horrible. It was the boys I was with that turned out to be the bastards, horrible, really. One kid was really badly bullied. It wasn't me. I didn't do enough defending him, I remember I wrote a story based on it at school or year or so, where I let it go properly Lord of the Flies, and I remember thinking "don't make yourself the good guy in this story, that would be bullshit". But I couldn't resist.

I said "relevantly". The relevance is returning via Inverness after two weeks, so pleased to be going home with my certificate of character assassination (Athleticism 8 Intelligence 8 Teamwork 5 etc) and suddenly being confronted by Bryan Adams. All of a sudden, everywhere, out of nowhere.

The other holiday, in late August, I'd given no thought to. The Christian Union House Party. My mother, though not a Christian, encouraged me to go as she thought it would be good to know some people at the big school.

I could write, and have written, many things about that 10 days, but the key things now are a) Bryan Adams was still Number 1! Still only halfway through it and b) the difference, and I guess why it really and truly affected me as much as it did, was the kindness. Just the kindness, after the cruelty of school and the feral pit the adventure holiday had been, the deep breath of shock kindness on that first house party ... thank god for that.

Anyway, Everything I Do stayed Number 1 right up to half-term of that first year. I must have fitted in seeing the film at some point, the definition of fun nonsense, with, especially in retrospect, one of the most fun casts imaginable - The Artful Dodger! Miss Marple! Rabies! Hans Gruber! Mike McShane! James Bond! Christian Slater! I forgive that silly film its many flaws.

And the song ... there's nothing to forgive. It's a good song.

Birthday Number 1s: 1990 - Turtle Power

Another song from a film, this time

Turtle Power - Partners in Kryme

(they never do time, a sentence for them has to end in a rhyme)

which, as you might have guessed, is from the 1990 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' film, though interestingly, the song came out several months before the film in this country.

I have pretty distinct memories of seeing the film. I was allowed to go see it at the end of the Autumn school term, in December 1990. It was a half school day. I went direct from school with a boy called Sanveer Bakshi to the Odeon in Ealing. I guess the film wasn't until 3ish, as we had time for a McDonalds, and to hang around a few shops in Ealing. There were treadmills in Ealing Sports and Sanveer said we could just have a bit of a run on them, I thought that wouldn't be allowed if we hasn't paid for them, but he said, no, it's fine, so we did.

Anyway, I remember that this was a little independent treat my mum had allowed for me at the end of a long term, and I knew it was about to come crashing down. 

Back then, they showed us our reports before our parents saw them, and mine was going to be Big Audio Dynamite BAD! I should say my mother was great, chilled, supportive, understanding, all the way through my education apart from for about 18 month in 89/90/91 when we all were driven a bit mad by some horrible hothousing pressure from certain teachers (all the teachers!) to get scholarships. I was speaking to Nick and Bobby, who were in that class with me, just a couple of months ago, and it was clear we were all, in our way, traumatised by it. It was weird and grim. Those two held themselves together to get those scholarships, but i did not. Fucked up my maths exam! Maths! Of all things! But really, I'd had a pretty horrid couple of years which kind of defined my life and the fact that I always do better when I shrink from, or rather avoid entirely, a challenge, rather than rise to it.

My mother and all the parents were brought in on the squeeze (we're 12, really important to say, we're 12, not 17, not 20). She probably also felt great pressure which she never put directly onto me because i was on a full assisted place, and when you're on a full assisted place, they don't want you just checking out of the high performance program ,,,

Anyway, all this to say, i remember the feeling of watching TMNT: The Movie because it was the first time i'd known what it was to be on borrowed time, or death row, or fool's paradise, or whatever one wants to call the current condition of the human race.

That was me then, pretending everything was fine on the treadmill with a Strawberry milkshake with Sanveer Bakhshi, knowing that my mother was going to, in a couple of hours, lose her shit with me.

Which she did. It is a bit tricky to remember how formidable my mother was when we were children, considering we've not had a cross word for over 20 years, but when Juliette said to her, when Rosa was little and we were extremely knackered, "Mary, I don't know how you did it on your own with four", she said, "nor do i, really. i think i was extremely ill-tempered ..." ... which she wasn't, but she was formidable, and i felt the full weight of it that Christmas holiday.

And, quite frankly, that killed the Turtles for me. I do not think fondly of them. I loved them before. Everyone loved them, slightly bowdlerised as they were in the UK (TMHT and all that). Boys in my class drew and wrote intense, dark, turtle fan-fiction. Again, that's a weird memory. The boy who was really great at drawing the turtles was pretty unpleasant and violent towards me. There'd been people who were my friends who became no longer my friends. A common school tale, but, yeah, weird, how it all relates to the Turtles!

I saw a lot at that cinema in Ealing over the years. Don't think it's a cinema anymore. Saw David Lynch's Dune there for someone's 7th birthday.  I think the parents thought it was going to be like Star Wars. Traumatised everybody. Ghost, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Notting Hill, all the classics ...

Talking of my mother, there was an alley next to the cinema called Barnes Pikle, which had a bit of a reputation, all a bit West Side Story. But Mattock Lane behind the cinema was the best place to park, so we'd run the gauntlet of Barnes Pikle to get to the cinema. One time, my mum was walking through carrying a cricket bat (mine or my brother's!) over her shoulder to intimidate any would-be attackers ... i remember some lads sitting on a staircase laughing and going "fucking cricket bat!"

The song, though, the song's the thing. Juliette knows all the words. I don't remember them so well. What I have noticed, though, is that 1990 and 1991 are the years hip-hop really hit the UK charts, or rather a slightly weird, comical, version of hip-hop - Number 1s in those years include - Dub Be Good to Me, The Power, Vogue, World in Motion, Turtle Power, Ice Ice Baby, 3am Eternal, Do the Bartman. Britain went crazy for crazy hip-hop. Cowabunga!

Birthday Number 1s: 1989 - You'll Never Stop Me Loving You

 I remember when I first saw the video for

You'll Never Stop Me Loving You - Sonia

and thinking it was some kind of joke. Not a real song, a Saturday morning wheeze. Maybe Trevor and Simon were involved. Rewatching it now, it is funny. It's a funny, disarming video where Sonia and her male co-star do some pretty good physical comedy. I think, at the time, I thought the silliness of the video disqualified the song (which expresses the same sentiment as the Glenn Medeiros song of the previous year, just in a more forceful way). The song is perfectly standard Stock Aitken Waterman stuff. Could be Kylie. Could only be 1989. Could only be Stock Aitken Waterman. In a way, their apotheosis.

Sonia never replicated this chart height, but had a decent career. A few years later, perhaps SAW had had writers' block, as a lot of her singles were covers. Funnily enough, those Sonia covers introduced me to a few very nice songs - You've Got a Friend, End of the World, You to Me are Everything, Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy.

In 1993, she finished second in Eurovision with a song called Better the Devil You Know, which is not as good as the Kylie song of the same name. In an era where the UK pretty much always did fine in Eurovision, it finished second. She has remained somewhat famous. She told David van Day from Dollar he was "a nasty piece of work" and she performed at the most recent Eurovision.

What of Stock Aitken Waterman? I've remembered that I, bizarrely, thought that the name was a pun on Stock, chicken and water ... really ... i don't even get it myself ... i think I thought that Pete Waterman (who was the public face) was the only member of the team who actually existed, and he had invented a moniker which was a pun on a known well phrase ... that well known well known phrase ... stock, chicken and water, which everyone says all the time.

Anyway, Mike Stock and Matt Aitken did, and do, exist. You don't see that much of them, but there's always been a lot of Pete Waterman to go round.

A both admirable and somewhat ridiculous figure, Waterman. He truly committed to and loved what he did, and had a very interesting life along the way, including being a trade union official, a coal miner, working on the railways.

He worked his way up the music business, was clearly incredibly passionate and knowledgeable about uptempo pop and soul. He masterminded one of the most successful eras in British pop music history, full of many, many memorable melodes.

I'll tell you what Pete Waterman didn't like ... indie music. Fuck, no. Every now and then, the NME would gleefully interview him and he'd basically fulfil his brief by saying "All of this is shit. You're all bedwetting losers, this music is depressing, no-talent shit, pop music is everything, I hate you, fuck off" and it was strong content.

History may judge Waterman has been proved right. What a poptimistic age it has been, as turgid, limp, misogynistic indie-rock has supposedly been beaten back into the ground where it belongs. 

Equally, the other side of the tale is ... there was a recent feature in the Guardian on when Belle and Sebastian, in the early days of the internet, organised their fanbase to defeat Steps to Best Newcomer at the 1999 Brits, one of those comically meaningless small victories that warm the cockles of most people.

24 years later, it was clear the cockles of Waterman, H, Claire and the gang from Steps were still not warmed. Still utterly resentful, humourless and furious, like this was one of history's great injustices, their historic recollections had to be seen to be believed. Waterman believed it was a music industry conspiracy to defeat him, the little man. Righto.

Anyway, it just reminded me a little of what I actually think and that the winners, in all contexts, betray themselves when they are ridiculous people. Steps were shite. Of course, Pure shite. Most of the music of SAW was pretty bad. A great deal of the feelgood pop music one is castigated as a snob for not wholeheartedly embracing is just a warming ocean full of sewage and plastic. I mean, really.

You're a nasty piece of work, David ...

Birthday Number 1s: 1988 - Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You

Initially, seeing that this song

Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You - Glenn Medeiros

 was Number 1 on my 10th birthday, I let out a groan of disappointment. 

There is perhaps no hit song of my childhood I'm less connected to. But that fact, in itself, triggered a few thoughts.

First, let's start with the nice stuff. Does anyone ever ask "Whatever happened to Glenn Medeiros?"? If they do, the answer is rather beautiful. He's a headmaster. He has a degree and doctorate in education and is principal of a high school in his home city, Honolulu.

I happened across these edifying details while channel-hopping recently, and it made me feel a little guilty about dismissing Medeiros as one of the great pop lightweights. What did I know? Indeed, and truly, nothing.

In my head, I had always had a thought "Glenn Medeiros was rubbish, Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You was a rubbish song", but I realised, when I remembered the context, that that was, purely, a second-hand opinion.

As I mentioned last time, I often lost track of the charts over the summer, because of the holidays, and this happened in a big way in the summer of 1988. It was a holiday-heavy holiday. There was a school trip walking in the Peak District, then two family weeks in Cumbria, then two family weeks at a gite in Brittany.

The trip to Cumbria I remember best for almost drowning in a natural pool near Caldbeck in the Lake District. I slipped down a small waterfall, panicked (i was able to swim, albeit poorly) and needed to be rescued by a bystander. I still remember thinking "why is that guy not rescuing me? Oh good, he is". But, anyway, it was quite unpleasant. I guess I experienced shock and was sick, and then started hearing voices. Hearing a choir I couldn't switch off, singing the East German national anthem. And the weird thing is, three summers later, after being underwater and travelling on a motorboat on a loch in Scotland, on a school adventure holiday, I started hearing the same voices again, singing the same East German national anthem. Of course, East Germany had ceased to exist in the meantime.

Why the East German national anthem? Well, you used to hear it a lot at World Athletics Championships. It was a good tune, i guess.

Anywaaaay ... Glenn Medeiros... later in that Cumbria trip, my aunt and cousin came down from Edinburgh for a couple of days, and I remember being in my aunt's car with Madeleine, my cousin, and my sister Laura, listening to the radio, I remember we all enjoyed Circle in the Sand by Belinda Carlisle, but when Glenn Medeiros came on, after learning he'd been Number 1 for a couple of weeks, I remember either Madeleine or Laura (both of whom can speak with some authority on the subject) saying "he's not a very good singer" ... and that was it. I never gave poor Glenn a chance. 

In the UK, this was his one big hit, but he also had a US Number 1 in 1990 called She Ain't Worth It.

I think I thought Nothing's Gonna Change... was attached to some film, something like Cocktail, but it appears its ascent in the US was due to appearing on various US soap operas. It was co-written by the great Gerry Goffin and originally written for a George Benson album a few years ago.

It really is surprising how many hit songs (What's Love Got to Do With It being a good example) were just hanging around for a few years, waiting for the lucky version that would make take them to the top.

Talking of the East German national anthem. probably the defining moment of the summer of 88 (for me and others) was Ben Johnson's positive test, the end of sporting innocence. Everything changed.

Birthday Number 1s: 1987 - La Bamba

Once again, I have a choice. I could choose Who's That Girl by Madonna, but I choose the song that became Number 1 on 1st August 1987 and stayed there for two weeks

La Bamba - Los Lobos

as a) we had Madonna last year b) Who's That Girl barely registers with me, perhaps because I heard the Eurythmics song of the same name first. In any case, it's not a major Madonna song, and I have precisely nothing to say about it.

So, La Bamba. I don't, actually, remember either of these songs being Number 1, even though by now I was, most of the year, following the charts. But it will be a running theme that I often have lost touch with them at the time of my birthday, as it's the summer holidays and I'm out of the routine of school then Top of the Pops and might well have been on actual holiday. In this case, I'm pretty certain, me, my sister and my cousin had gone on a riding holiday in the borders (instigated by my cousin) which was the absolute worst time ever, and thankfully put all of us off everything to do with riding (not that i was ever into it) for evermore.

Another running theme, which we've already seen a few times, is that the hit song of the summer is attached to a hit film. So it is in this case - La Bamba was from the film La Bamba, about the life of Ritchie Valens, played by Lou "The Very Best of Neil" Diamond Phillips (there should have ben a supergroup made up of Lou Reed, Neil Diamond and Michelle Phillips, really).

I've not seen the film La Bamba. It was not a massive hit film, but big enough, and well received. I have, though, seen the musical Buddy, which was, as the publicity had it, "Buddy brilliant!" and in which the 17-year-old young star Richard Valenzuela met his fate along with pilot Roger Peterson,  Jiles Perry "The Big Bopper" Richardson, Charles Hardin Holley and, of course, the music.

Like I say, I don't remember the song La Bamba being in the charts, but it became a song that was everywhere all of a sudden, with everyone going labalababalabamba, or something like that.

It's a wonderful song, one of the purest, most joyful things that exists, based on a Mexican folk tune, rockified by Valens, here performed by Los Lobos, which means The Wolves.

I have a weird thing about pretty much only listening to English language music, perhaps because I was so bored by opera as a child, and I really like to know what's being talked about, but, for all that, songs in Spanish, from this to Llorando, have a pretty high rate of actually breaking through my defences.

I made a fun quiz question out of it many years ago, which still gets used, just asking Which classic song has lyrics that mean "I am not a sailor, I am not a sailor, I'm a captain, I'm a captain, I'm a captain"?

but I more closely remember that lyrical section "Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan", because I remember, in the summer of 1995, with a couple of friends from Ealing who I'd known for most of my childhood, we came up with "You're not sorry man in yellow, so it can't be done" and thought it was truly the funniest thing that had ever, ever happened, just laughed about it all summer and beyond. And what strikes me is I'd known those two a long time, they were both a year or two older than me, you might have thought we'd become lifelong friends, but I hardly saw them all that much after that, and, how, at school, though you might think it's one of the loneliest times, you do, in most cases, have more good friends than you'll ever have again. 

So, that's my main thought about La Bamba. Bummer.

I am a huge fan of Lou "And I are beautiful like" Diamond Phillips as Chavez y Chavez in the Young Guns films, and thought his mates'-rates cameo in 24 the highlight of the whole franchise.

But, in the end, you're not sorry, man in yellow, so it can't be done.

Birthday Number 1s: 1986 - Papa Don't Preach

Papa Don't Preach - Madonna

the second of thirteen (so far) UK Number 1s for Madonna, Number 1 for 3 weeks, replaced on 2nd August 1986 by Lady in Red, which might have been quite fun to write about. At least I can tell you that Chris de Burgh was rejected from Nick Drake's Marlborough College band the Perfumed Gardeners, but you probably already know that.

I remember Papa Don't Preach. I remember when it came out, I remember it being Number 1. I remember thinking Madonna looked pretty different in the video (dark, cropped hair). I think I thought she was, in the chorus, commending her father, in the third person, for not being preachy, and that said lack of judgmentalism meant she would be able to stay with her current paramour. I probably felt i'd reached quite a subtle, grown-up interpretation, based on my newly acquired understanding of the youthful American vernacular. Turns out it was more literal than that.

Papa Don't Preach was impressive because if the biggest pop star in the world was to release right now a song with that subject matter, it would still cause a sensation of controversy.

Madonna was probably already a guaranteed superstar by then but, like I say, it was only her 2nd UK Number 1 - lots of things have fallen, further, faster. It wasn't the first single from the album True Blue. That was Live to Tell, which is, even now I think, my favourite Madonna song. I suddenly remember Live to Tell was on those compilation tapes i was telling you about last time. They're both quite grown up songs. It might be that some people started taking Madonna seriously then, though i suspect most people that weren't already taking her seriously by then are still not taking her seriously. 

I'd always thought Madonna wrote Papa Don't Preach and it had some degree of lived experience, or its opposite, but in fact it turns out it was the only song on True Blue she didn't have a significant hand in writing. It was written by a man called Brian Elliott, inspired by teenage girl conversations he used to hear outside the recording studio.

And, yes, it did, apparently, cause a great deal of ire from various political factions.

It's basically a pretty good song. I don't love it, but it's pretty good. It sounds a bit like Luka by Suzanne Vega, or rather Luka sounds a bit like it.

In the summer of 1986 I was between schools. I definitely went on holiday to Edinburgh and North Berwick. I was, intermittently, into the charts, in terms of watching Top of the Pops, or i think Schofield would sometimes go through the Top 10 in the broom cupboard. 86 was not a bad year - Pet Shop Boys, A-ha, the Housemartins and the Final Countdown. 

Madonna was only going to get bigger, and I was only going to follow the charts more closely.

Birthday Number 1s: 1985 - There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)

I really love this song

There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart) - Eurythmics

which was Number 1 on my 7th birthday, although I don't remember it being Number 1 at the time. The main thing I remember about the summer of 1985 is the David Gower-led Ashes. The 4th test began on 1st August. I will have been watching that. That summer we had a holiday in a converted train carriage in Bognor Regis, and also travelling around Ireland with my dad and my sister Laura. Both holidays I spent mainly making up and scoring imaginary cricket matches - like, full cricket scoring notation, full test matches. In 1985, I was hospitalised for approaching perfection, slowly scoring my way across Ireland, they had to make a correction ... 

This song will have come to my attention on a collection of three compilation tapes which were made in 1986 by the brother of a friend of my sister's, which I believe was widely distributed around the mean streets of Ealing.

Within those three tapes was a great summary of the chart hits of the mid-80s, and was probably the most played thing in our house through 86. 87, 88.

I wish I still had those tapes, I wonder if they're stored away somewhere, and I wish I could remember everything that was on them. I had a fair crack a decade or two ago of writing down all the songs I remember, but now that's faded somewhat.

There was definitely The Word Girl by Scritti Politti. You Keep Me Hangin' On by Kim Wilde, and There Must Be An Angel by Eurythmics.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This is Eurythmics' biggest, global, lasting hit, a much-covered, much-sampled part of the furniture, but There Must Be an Angel was their only UK Number 1, and I prefer it, its warmth, its chorus, its harmonica by Stevie Wonder. The wordless singing by Annie Lennox was, I think, one of my very favourite bits of music when I was little, and I still love it.

Eurythmics were very good, and very successful over a significant period of time. One can hardly say they're underrated, what with being in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and all that. But maybe Annie Lennox is a little underrated? Maybe doesn't get talked about what an incredible, unique, pop star she was, say, compared to Kate Bush, Debbie Harry, even Prince or George Michael.

The style, the androgyny, the composure, the mystery, the songs, the voice, the all-round musicality. Perhaps when it became clear she was extremely nice and normal, people forgot how weird she was.

Or she was just too present for a little too long? It was a bit of a running joke that Annie Lennox just had to yawn to win a Brit Award. Her first solo album, Diva, was very very successful, and acclaimed. I remember there were a lot of singles and they all seemed to be very good. Then, after the the first track on Medusa, her second solo album, - a cover, No More I Love Yous, which didn't seem like a cover because the original was obscure - was a big, and well-liked hit, it all went south pretty quickly. People really didn't like Medusa. The NME, and several other publications, savaged it. They were covers of famous songs and it was felt she didn't do anything interesting with them. Back then, music journalism could really and truly be brutal, and have rather the same effect on an artist's reputation as a sudden twitter backlash does these days.

It has struck me, having seen Annie Lennox covering other famous songs since then, on Jools Holland or anywhere else, that she is not good at covering songs. Her voice is so outstanding, in a formal way, that it limits the material, and limits itself. She seems to go out of her way to treat other people's songs with respect.

Gosh, that turned kind of negative. On the contrary, much better to be Annie Lennox, a unique singer of their own, and little-known material, than a great covers artist of standards. In my opinion. More lucrative too, I guess. I imagine Sweet Dreams has made her and Dave as rich as two songwriters can be.

And There Must Be An Angel is my favourite of theirs, such a joyful vocal, a great tune, everything about it perfect but also unfettered. This will certainly be one of my favourite songs to be Number 1 on my birthday. Hard to see what will beat it at this point.

Birthday Number 1s: 1984: Two Tribes

Number 1 on my 6th birthday, and indeed for nine weeks in the summer of 1984, was 

Two Tribes - Frankie Goes to Hollywood

the middle part of the FGTH trilogy which dominated the charts and supposedly terrified the nation that year.

'Relax' sold more, but 'Two Tribes' was Number 1 for longer. It may be that 'The Power of Love' is the most loved of the three.

Certainly by me. I must say, and I've really had to focus on this fact in order to write anything honest about it, I hate 'Two Tribes'. No, I don't hate it. I think it's great, iconic, brave, witty, all those things, but I hate listening to it. I find the sound of it awful.

Sometimes that just happens. It's not, per se, Holly Johnson's voice. I like Relax and The Power of Love and used to love that solo song 'Americanos', but, somehow, in this context, with this busy, heavy production, these lyrics, I just can't handle it.

I feel a bit sad about that, as it's the sort of record one ought to like. What could be better than a massively successful anti-war song by a militant gay left-wing pop band? But it's a switch-off.

I'd have liked to be entirely present for the Frankie Goes to Hollywood phenomenon, would have liked to have had it awkwardly explained to me by sibling or parent, but I don't quite remember it. I remember Frankie Says t-shirts and vaguely was aware that the phrase Frankie Goes to Hollywood was a thing, but not really sure I knew any more than that until a couple of years later.

All the singles came out again in 1993/4 and there was a certainly amount of FGTH retrospective, and I think I enjoyed Two Tribes at that time, was interested in the video and what it was about, found Trevor Horn and Holly Johnson to be interesting interviews, but I think over time it's just solidified as the sound I don't like.

As well as Frankie. 1984 was also dominated by Wham! and George Michael. Indeed 'Two Tribes' came directly after 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go' and directly before 'Careless Whisper'. 1984 is pretty much the most 80s of 80s years. I wish I had more fondness for this song, but I do like the next one, I promise.