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.