Chart Rewind

My own memories of Christmas 1992? All a bit of a rush I think, a mixture of driving friends who were mobile DJs around to an endless succession of other people’s parties, mixed in with a holiday job working at a firm of accountants. I spent the the Christmas period wrestling with the mini computer network of a recently insolvent company, trying to get their accounts system to produce a list of their debtors whom we could chase for money. All very festive. I suspect the actual Christmas celebrations themselves were so unremarkable that not even the sound of Nirvana can stir any of them.

Speaking of which:

30: Nirvana – In Bloom

Timely, given that this year (2011) marked the 20th anniversary of ‘Nevermind’ and the moment Nirvana we are told stood the world of rock on its head. The fourth and final hit single mined from the famous album was inevitably the smallest but it made a respectable Number 28 upon release and gave us the most mime-able drum fill since the heyday of Phil Collins. At what point does it become acceptable to admit you never really “got” Nirvana? I read about what a massive influence they were, how they broke the mould and inspired a whole new generation of musicians, and how Kurt Cobain’s tragically early death only served to add to the mystique – and I get it completely. The only problem was that by and large it was rock music that was too noisy, too uncultured and too, well, amateurish for me to ever work out what made it so good. The Nirvana worship continued apace, but it was a party to which I never felt I was invited.

29: Undercover – Never Let Her Slip Away

A mini craze at the end of 1992 for tastefully club-friendly covers managed to somehow bring out the best and worst of the genre all at once. Truth be told, this was one of the best – a respectful and affectionate resurrection of the song originally written by Andrew Gold and who had a Number 5 hit with it in May 1978. Undercover were John Matthews, Tim Laws and John Jules and they had struck gold (no pun intended) earlier in the summer with a similarly affectionate reworking of ‘Baker Street’ which peaked at Number 2. The follow-up may have been a smaller hit but to me it was actually the better record with a cheeriness and charm which made it hard to hate, however much affection you might have had for the original. They followed this up with a third hit in early 93, this time taking on Gallagher & Lyle’s ‘I Wanna Stay With You’ but by this time the novelty had worn off and the Top 30 hit proved to be their final big chart single. This section of the chart has a better strike rate than last time, but history has still judged Undercover to be too obscure to have their output preserved for proper streaming.

28: East Side Beat – Alive And Kicking

On the flip side of the coin, this is how to get things badly wrong, even if it may have just been a matter of timing. East Side Beat were an Italian collective (six or seven blokes all with names ending in “ini”) who had arguably kicked off the whole “make a naff easy listening record into a club hit” genre with their take on Christopher Cross’ ‘Ride Like The Wind’ which had been a worldwide smash hit at the tail end of 1991, hitting Number 3 on these shores. The follow-up took a year to appear for one reason or another and truth be told it kind of bombed, peaking briefly at Number 26 before vanishing. There were theoretically a number of reasons for this. First was the usual problem of bad timing, released too close to Christmas and too late for anyone to care about it before the holidays began. Which is possible. Second was the fact that their rendition of the Simple Minds smash hit from the mid-80s was actually a bit rubbish compared to their first single, what was in theory a good idea of turning Jim Kerr’s stadium-filling anthem into a floor filler spoiled not a little by some rather lame execution. Again, another good reason why nobody in the UK really cared that much. Thirdly and perhaps more importantly I suspect the single failed as they were completely screwed over by the fact that the original version had returned to the British charts just two months previously, released not only to celebrate a Greatest Hits compilation for the Scottish rock band but also due to its use in a famous series of commercials for Sky TV, hyping the launch of their coverage of the brand new English Premier League. In short, everyone knew the original, and more importantly was comfortable with the concept of dancing to Simple Minds thanks to the re-release being bundled with a remix of their early single ‘Love Song’ with which it was a double a-side. By the time East Side Beat came to the party we had kind of had our fill of the song. East Side Beat continued to make cover versions until well into the 1990s, with varying degrees of success on the continent. ‘Alive And Kicking’ however killed their British prospects off for good.

27: Boyz II Men – End Of The Road

Winding its way gently down the chart after what had already been an epic chart run, this was arguably one of the most significant American singles of the year. The lavish romantic ballad propelled Boyz II Men to worldwide fame in a way I suspect even their creators hadn’t dreamed, in the process resurrecting the concept of a close-harmony vocal group and briefly diverting American R&B down a path of locating men with rich, deep voices. ‘End Of The Road’ had taken its sweet time to catch fire, entering the Top 40 at Number 36 in early September and then bucking what was at the time a prevailing trend by gently rising up the singles chart, moving 36-31-22-14 before suddenly exploding. Even then it took a while to wake up, spending a fortnight at Number 2 before finally enjoying a two week spell at the top. It gave Motown records its first British Number One since Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ a full eight years earlier and ultimately was to spend over six months on the Top 75. Heck, it was even hanging around long enough to collide on the singles chart with its follow-up… which we’ll come to shortly.

26: SL2 – Way In My Brain/Drumbeats

There may well have been a reason why it took so long for a follow-up to SL2’s smash Number 2 single ‘On A Ragga Tip’ to appear, but it escapes me for now and even their rather gloriously detailed Wikipedia page (they only had three hits!) makes no reference to the gap. Anyway, for whatever reason despite having been a springtime hit single, the next release from Slipmatt & Lime did not appear until December, a remix of a track which had actually first appeared in a different form on the flipside of their first single ‘DJ’s Take Control’ a full year earlier. ‘Way In My Brain’ appeared to pay dearly for their lack of musical activity – peaking here at Number 26 and in the process bringing the whole SL2 project to a grinding halt.

25: Dina Carroll – So Close

Some things just need heating for an extended period. The lady who can lay a bold claim to be one of Britain’s foremost soul stars of the 90s began her career as the guest singer on Quartz’s cover of ‘It’s Too Late’ back in 1991. Although she preferred to be a balladeer, her label and management knew that the only way to break her was as a dance diva, and so her first two singles ‘Ain’t No Man’ and ‘Special Kind Of Love’ were uptempo floor fillers, both peaking at Number 16 during the course of 1992. Her third single was her first ballad, ‘So Close’ was the title track of her debut album which eventually hit the shops in early 1993 and although the single did respectably enough, its Number 20 peak was still frustratingly short of the mainstream breakthrough everyone knew Dina Carroll deserved. True stardom wasn’t to be hers until a full year later and the release of what was eventually the album’s sixth single ‘Don’t Be A Stranger’ – but really that is a story for another time. For now Dina Carroll was just another dance diva trying her hand at a ballad for the holidays. Nobody quite knew what lay around the corner.

24: Arrested Development – People Everyday

A short lived but incredibly important act in the development of hip-hop, Arrested Development hailed from Atlanta and for a brief time in 1992 and 1993 were the most exciting group on the planet. Their concept was to be “alternate” hip hop, eschewing drum machines and samples for a more measured and organic approach which reached back to black music’s blues roots and span them into something which proved to be commercial paydirt. ‘People Everyday’ was their third single and their first to chart in this country, a reworking of Sly And The Family Stone’s ‘Everyday People’ with new verses added by lead singer Speech along the way. Truly it was like nothing anyone had ever heard at the time and more than deserved its Number 2 peak in early November 1992. 1993 saw them become the first rap group to perform on MTV Unplugged but after a poor reception for their second album in 1994 the group had disbanded by the following year.

23: Boyz II Men – Motownphilly

Ah, here they are again. Proof that nobody was really sure just where Boyz II Men’s comfort zone was, their debut album also featured tracks like the harder edged R&B track ‘Motownphilly’ in which they bragged about their “East coast swing” and how they were fusing together two disparate genres of soul music. My honest opinion? As a pop record this truly isn’t half bad, but as the globe-buggering success of ‘End Of The Road’ proved, their future lay in the syrupy ballad and quite literally nowhere else. ‘Motownphilly’ suffered slightly from the unfortunate chart collision with its still in the shops predecessor, but at this peak position it did at least outsell it on the Christmas Top 40.

22: Slipstreem – We Are Raving – The Anthem

I never quite figured out if it was all done semi-ironically or whether it was somehow an important part of the culture for rave tracks to be created from the naffest sources possible. In 1991 it was all the rage for old childhood references to be draped in blissed-up beats, such as ‘Sesame’s Treat’ and indeed the track ‘Charly’ which originally shot the Prodigy to national fame. By 1992 this had mutated into a chart-bound form of the “replace x with rave” parlour game, whereby if a song had a word which you could replace with “raving” it was considered a suitable candidate for club treatment. Hence the Christmas Top 40 played host to this piece of nonsense, an air-horn drenched romp through a reworking of the Sutherland Brothers song ‘Sailing’ (as made famous by Rod Stewart) with the word “sailing” replaced by… well you get the idea. A quick trip to Discogs.com reveals that the single was the work of producers Steve Moore and Justin O’Neal about whom further details are rather sketchy, suffice to say they don’t appear to have been credited with anything else since. ‘We Are Raving – The Anthem’ clung on to eventually sneak into the Top 20 in the new year and in the most truly random manner possible is actually on Spotify to hear. Click above for the full horror.

21: 808 State and UB40 – One In Ten

“I have a one-inch head…” Not all dance remixes are utter rubbish. UB40’s early period rant at the nonsense of government statistics first appeared on their 1981 album ‘Present Arms’ and became their fourth Top 10 hit single in the summer of that year, peaking at Number 7. 12 years later it was back on the chart thanks to a surprisingly well done remix by Manchester pioneers 808 State who transformed the track into an absorbing hybrid of dub-reggae and what would in time come to be called jungle beats. Released in early December, the single had climbed to Number 17 before dipping back to rest just outside the Christmas Top 20.

A better strike rate than in Part One then, although three tatty cover versions and one remix does not a clasic list of songs make. Don’t forget the whole chart is compiled into a Spotify playlist for those with an urge to re-live these songs (almost) in full. Top 20 time tomorrow

The final furlong! No context-setting ramblings from me really, other than to note that as the tape of the chart show wore on, I started to grow more and more into the way Wes approached the hosting of the chart show. In the opening few minutes when his initial script was full of throwaway one-liners as he recapped the events of the previous week, I started to wonder if this was the reason he lasted but two short years on the show. Then by the end he had settled down, this was his arena and he was in command. The “continuous countdown” aspect of the first half of the show, whereby with a quarter of it taken up with the album chart he was required to rattle through the lower half of the Top 40, skipping some singles at random and playing just 90 seconds of others kind of broke the flow a little, but the Top 20, featuring backstage chats with the stars and just the right amount of knowing cynicism about some of the singles made the whole thing an exciting and engaging show to listen to. Yet somehow he seemed so restricted by the format, you can understand why Radio One ultimately decided the experiment wasn’t working.

That was indeed a context-setting ramble wasn’t it? Bugger. Top Ten Time!

10: Ashanti – Rock Wit U (Awww Baby)

As we spend all our time these days falling over ourselves to praise the superstar achievements of the likes of Rihanna and Beyonce, it is far too easy to overlook just how massive Ashanti was in the R&B world at the start of the last decade. Granted, most of her success came in America where at one point in 2002 she held down three of the Top 10 singles on the Hot 100, the first artist since The Beatles to achieve that kind of chart monopoly. On these shores she still managed a credible and consistent chart career, appearing on four Top 10 hits during 2002, including Number 4 smash hit ‘Foolish’ which was in such demand ahead of its release that it spent three weeks charting on import. ‘Rock Wit U’ was one of the first singles to be lifted from her second album and the rather charming and mellow ballad made a comfortable Number 7 upon release in June 2003, even if it was her only Top 10 single from that particular release. She topped the charts in 2004 as a guest singer on Ja Rule’s ‘Wonderful’ and scored her final Top 10 hit at the start of 2005 with ‘Only U’ only to see her career dive into the doldrums almost as rapidly as it soared. Much of her success had stemmed from her association with Irv Gotti and his label The Inc records, but the pair parted company in May 2009 after her 2008 album ‘The Declaration’ underperformed and the pair disagreed on her future musical direction. We’re promised a release this year for her own self-published album, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for any hits resulting.

9: Metallica – St Anger

The title track from what would be the 8th album from the speed metal specialists, landing here on the chart with what was still at the time Metallica’s customary efficiency and quite possibly to the utter bemusement of most casual observers. I’d be tempted to call ‘St Anger’ “typical Metallica”, except that the most notable thing about it was that it was not, representing a shift in their style and a genuine and well received attempt to fit in with the nu-metal sound which had torn up the rule book for rock music at the start of the 21st century. From a more entertaining political standpoint, this was the first Metallica release proper since they suffered a total sense of humour failure over the possibility of their work being spread on file sharing networks, the band’s self-appointed crusade over the issue of online piracy almost certainly contributing to the continual head in the sand approach to the industry over the thorny issue of digital music and which held them back for the best part of five years. An a truly ironic manner, the release of the album ‘St Anger’ was moved forward five days after the entire work appeared on file sharing networks.

8: XTM & DJ Chucky presents Annia – Fly On The Wings Of Love

The most enjoyable part of any extended wander through the hits and happenings of a particular week in years gone by is the excuse to immerse yourself in the music of that time, and along the way alight upon the one track that you know practically defines the way you felt at that time and which virtually commands repeated plays and renewed appreciation. This single is indeed such a record.

On the face of it, ‘Fly On The Wings Of Love’ seemed an unlikely basis for a Europe-wide summertime smash hit. The song had been the runaway winner of the 2000 Eurovision Song Contest as written and performed by the Olsen Brothers yet had only been a hit single in a selected few countries, coming nowhere near the singles chart on these shores. Over the next few years a handful of trace-inspired cover versions had been made of the song but it was the one by Spanish producers XTM which hit paydirt, topping the charts in Ireland and becoming a smash hit single which spent no less than two months diving in and out of the Top 10 – this here was its second of what would ultimately be three visits to its Number 8 peak.

Maybe it was the sheer contrast between the versions which made it work so well, the Olsen Brothers original a gently paced ballad performed by two middle aged musical veterans, the XTM version an uptempo club track centred around the cute mewing of the lyrics by singer Annia. Whatever it was, a song which was already uplifting and heart-warming was made to soar even higher and become a genuine feelgood anthem which endured way beyond its initial burst of clubland success. So many raved-up versions of pop hits do little more than rip the heart and soul out of a track for the sake of nailing some beats to someone else’s creativity. ‘Fly On The Wings Of Love’ avoided all these pitfalls to become something rather magical instead.

As for hearing it, well We7 have the track as linked to above, but the only version on Spotify is one ripped from the middle of a longer pre-mixed dance compilation. Best to revel in one of the other reasons the single was so successful, the astonishingly cute animated video made to accompany its chart success.

Touching the sky

7: Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey – I Know What You Want

“Baby if you give it me, I’ll give it to you, as long as you want.”

You know it is funny, Mariah Carey’s wilderness years at the start of the 21st century – coinciding with her departure from Sony records and her expensively terminated deal with Virgin – was never really such an issue in this country, a territory where her music generally just did reasonably OK with the odd gigantic smash hit here and there. Hence 2001 single ‘Loverboy’, the track that convinced people in the States that she was finished, made a perfectly reasonable Number 12 and the Number 32 peak of follow-up ‘Never Too Far’ was most probably down to both label apathy and the fact that it was shoved out with little fanfare in Christmas week. Nonetheless she needed something to put her on the comeback trail, and it was ‘I Know What You Want’ that proved to be the perfect vehicle. In truth she was actually nothing more than the guest star on the single, one penned by Busta Rhymes for his eighth album ‘It Ain’t Safe No More’ which he’d released in 2002. Even an on her uppers Mariah Carey was still too huge a superstar name to pass up for marketing purposes however and when released as a single the track was a global smash hit, charging to Number 3 in Britain to become Ms Carey’s biggest hit single for three years and Busta Rhyme’s first Top 3 hit in five summers. The track is the perfect crossover of the styles of the two artists, showing all at once that Mariah Carey could do hip-hop with ease, whilst Busta Rhymes could tone down the aggression and do smooth soul seduction – all in the space of one five minute single.

6: Delta Goodrem – Lost Without You

By the start of the 21st century the concept of Australian soap actress wants to become a pop singer was such a well-worn cliche that nobody would even think of using it as a marketing tool any more. Hence it was nothing less than a pleasant surprise that the recording career of the teenager previously best known for being Nina Tucker in Neighbours was such a glittering revelation. The truth of the matter was that she was always more singer than actress, having been signed in her native Australia when she was just 15. After her first single stiffed, she was actively encouraged to take up the soap opera role to boost her public profile and to ensure that she had name value before they tried again. Her first UK single ‘Born To Try’ was released in March 2003 and was an instant Top 3 smash, followed swiftly by this second single which also encountered little opposition in racing to Number 4. Both were tender piano-led singles which showed off her near perfect voice to stunning effect, the icing on the cake being that the album from which they were taken was almost entirely self-penned (although ‘Lost Without You’ was a rare exception with no input from the singer herself). She was no manufactured teen starlet, but a genuine musical talent with a sophistication which belied her youthful years.

Frustratingly the momentum she built up was more or less instantly derailed just a week after this chart was published when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, resulting in both her withdrawal from Neighbours and the suspension of her recording career whilst she battled the disease. Whilst she successfully beat the cancer and returned to recording in 2005, much of her success since then has been confined to her home country, her only visibility to the British public being her seven year relationship with former Westlife star Bryan McFadden after she rescued him from the living hell of being married to Kerry Katona. I think.

5: Wayne Wonder – No Letting Go

Actually no, I was wrong. The defining sound of the summer of 2003 wasn’t one particular record at all, but a whole series of them – all based around the same handclap beat. The distinctive rhythm pattern, known as the Diwali Riddim was created by Jamaican producer Steven ‘Lenky’ Marsden in 2002 and during the course of the next 12 months ended up as the basis of so many different tracks that an entire album was eventually produced to collect them all together. Wayne Wonder’s track was actually the second Diwali Riddim-based hit to chart, the first having been Sean Paul’s ‘Get Busy’ which had dropped out of the Top 40 just before this chart came out. Both ‘Get Busy’ and ‘No Letting Go’ were produced by Marsden himself which goes some way to explaining why the tracks were constructed the way they were. Both were swiftly followed into the charts however by ‘Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)’, a third Diwali track which had no link to the original producer at all.

As for Wayne Wonder himself, he is something of a two hit wonder. ‘No Letting Go’ was this week spending its second week at Number 5, a position it would hold for a third before dropping two places and then charging up to its eventual Number 3 peak. He followed it later in the year with ‘Bounce Along’ which made Number 19 before fading into chart obscurity.

4: R Kelly – Ignition Remix

R Kelly is a genius, and in truth one of the few R&B stars who has, countless times, during his career made me want to stop and applaud the sheer brilliance of his work. At the same time he conducts himself in such a manner that you almost feel bad validating his lifestyle by appreciating his music – best known as the Gary Glitter dilemma. The summer of 2003 was a time when these conflicting emotions threatened to come to a head.

‘Ignition Remix’ was easily the biggest hit single thus far in what had already been a pretty stellar chart career. Returning him to the top of the charts for the first time since ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ in 1997, it stayed on top for four weeks and ultimately sold 478,000 copies to wind up as the third biggest seller of the year. The “remix” part of the title was actually slightly disingenuous as there was nothing remixed about the track at all. The single was actually the second of two tracks from his fourth album ‘Chocolate Factory’ which were based on the same underlying backing track. Although listed as separate tracks, the two parts of ‘Ignition’ flowed seamlessly into one another with the main track ‘Ignition’ being a slow and slick seduction track whilst ‘Remix’ was an uptempo let’s celebrate the weekend party track – their only link being the backing track and the “bounce bounce bounce” refrain which took on an entirely different meaning in the context of each song. That’s why R Kelly is a genius. He made two entirely different songs out of the same piece of music, almost without breaking sweat.

Yet even whilst ‘Ignition Remix’ was at Number One and crushing all the competition it was uncomfortable praising him too much. Hanging over his head at the time were the allegations of improper behaviour after a tape purporting to show him having sex with an underage girl circulated widely online. Yet despite the man on the video looking and sounding exactly like him and despite one of his former musical collaborators positively identifying the girl on the tape as her daughter, Kelly denied it all. It took a full five years for the case to come to trial, and somehow his lawyers managed to instil enough doubt in the minds of the jury that the man on the tape was Kelly that he was acquitted of all charges.

Still the stain of the allegations remain, and any appreciation of the genius of the man who sang moving ballads like ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ and ‘The World’s Greatest’ as well as party classics like ‘Ignition Remix’ whilst at the same time writing and performing the epic ‘Trapped In The Closet’ tale always has to be tempered by the nagging doubt that he is a deeply unpleasant, vile individual. The Gary Glitter dilemma indeed.

3: Blazin’ Squad – We Just Be Dreamin’

What must it be like, being part of a large (17-strong) rap collective, performing in what you hope is a very credible style and very successfully too, yet despite this being considered naff and lightweight by true fans of your genre. The truth is that Blazin’ Squad represented the pop-friendly Smash Hits face of British rap music, a world away from the harsh streetwise realities of those nasty people from the So Solid Crew. So in truth they were all pop stars making rap records rather than rap stars making hits, yet for a brief period the formula proved rather successful. After opening their account in 2002 with a Number One cover of ‘Crossroads’ (as made more famous across the Atlantic by Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony) this breezy summery single was their fourth chart hit and the biggest since their debut, the highest new entry of the week here at Number 3, even if its chart career was to be short lived as it plunged to Number 12 just a week later. There is very little actually wrong with any of Blazin’ Squad’s output, but they weren’t “urban” stars in any sense of the word.

2: Fast Food Rockers – Fast Food Song

Depending on your point of view, this record is either the moment when things really did truly start to go to shit, or possibly one of the most brilliant pop moments of the summer. The concept of the ‘Fast Food Song’ was hardly original. Its central refrain namechecking various fast food brands had been a standard part of campfire doggerel for at least 20 years, possibly even more. My baby sister used to come home from Brownies chanting “a pizza hut, a pizza hut, Kentucky fried chicken and a pizza hut”. I’d be shocked if any British (or even American as the song originated there) child grew up in the 80s or 90s without knowing how to sing the song. Yet oddly enough the idea of making it into a pop record originated on the continent, via a series of different novelty acts. It was from there that Mike Stock imported the idea back to the UK, recruiting three brightly dressed and squeaky clean performers to form the Fast Food Rockers and have a smash hit single with an idea that was maybe so obvious it was amazing nobody had thought of it before. Needless to say that some commentators grumpily suggested such product placement of such unhealthy food brands was the thin end of the wedge and that it amounted to corporate indoctrination of the younger generation. Which was utter balls at the end of the day.

Sadly so was the idea of the Fast Food Rockers. When the single became a hit, plans were advance for an entire album which did indeed hit the shops later in the autumn. Despite the best will in the world however, they were a one note joke and indeed one which streaming services have more taste than to feature in their catalogues. So you know what’s coming…

You’ll be singing it all day…

1: Evanescence  – Bring Me To Life

I got such pelters when this single first came out. The week ‘Bring Me To Life’ hit the charts, entering straight at Number One I wrote:

Having crept into the lower end of the chart on import a couple of weeks ago, the US Top 10 single charges all opposition out of the way to become the record that finally ends R Kelly’s four week run at the top of the singles chart. It is not insignificant that they are the first American rock act to top the charts since Limp Bizkit over two years ago. We are all witness this week to the chart success of what will be regarded in years to come as one of the all-time rock classics.

Was I really that far off? Eight years on, and the epic and intense production remains the biggest ever worldwide smash for Evanescence, a debut that they were always going to struggle to live up to and which did indeed prove to be the case, despite three more Top 10 hits in the three years after it made the charts. You’ll notice that I’m assuming that the Number One single of this week requires little in the way of introduction to a casual audience. The climactic duet between Amy Lee and guest singer Paul McCoy stands tall as one of the most arresting moments in rock music of the decade and it is a single which has its place as a true classic of its time. Indeed by a strange coincidence, at the time of writing this piece and for reasons I’ve yet to see explained, the eight year old Number One single is threatening to return to the Top 40 as a spontaneous download hit:

If that doesn’t prove how much it endures, then I don’t know what does.

What to conclude then from June 29th 2003? It may well indeed have been the moment just before music sales crashed and everything went dim for a while, yet at the same time there was plenty here to appreciate and refreshingly little in the way of filler. Pop music will always have its worthwhile moments, even if you have to wait for proper historical context to appreciate them properly. That’s really why I still keep these things around:

As for the playlists, they are both now totally up to date, although as ever with rather more missing tracks than sometimes I’d like. With Spotify we managed 32 out of 40 tracks, on We7 33 out of 40 (even if a couple are just previews). Click and enjoy either way.

Now this is normally the stage in the proceedings where I recount where I was personally in life when this particular chart was being broadcast and somehow relate the music back to where I was at in time. Somehow this becomes harder the older you get. In summer 2003 I was cheerfully fixing a media company’s computers and mail server during the day and then scuttling off to play at sports radio at night and weekends, during this exact week packing up my entire life to move into the docklands flat with the manic landlady from hell whom I have waxed lyrical about in the past. I don’t really know how relevant the music was to anything I was doing at the time – I just listened because I liked it.

Top 30 time – roll the tape.

30: Dannii Minogue – Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling

Thinking it over, this is actually quite extraordinary. A couple of years ago I wrote in detail about a chart from 1991 and recounted the very start of Dannii Minogue’s chart career. Fast forward to a countdown 12 years later and she’s still clinging on to a life in hit singles. Minogue Jnr’s somehow clawed her way to decade and a half of chart fame thanks to a series of ever more unlikely comebacks, vanishing once the hits dried up to do other things (such as being an F1 driver’s moll) and then wheedling her way back into contention by persuading just the right people that she was the perfect voice for their latest dance project. Her 21st century comeback was sparked by her appearance on a track called ‘Who Do You Love Now’ by Riva, a hit single which turned into the most consistent run of Top 10 hits of her career. ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling’ was the penultimate one of these and her second chart single of 2003, the follow-up to ‘I Begin To Wonder’ which had reached Number 2 at the start of the year. Both tracks were lifted from her album ‘Neon Nights’ whose tracks celebrated the dancefloors of the 1980s, five years or so before it became the in thing to do – indeed so seamlessly retro was ‘Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling’ that it was spun into a bootleg mash-up of ‘Into The Groove’, further expanding its club potential.

Big sister may well have picked up the plaudits, the millions and the adoration but there were times when Minogue Minor was more than a match for her. This single was one such occasion.

29: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Pin

There is an underlying theme to this chart of appearances by a series of incredibly well received rock bands who never quite translated the adoring column inches into proper mainstream chart success. Still, we should thank our lucky stars they charted at all given the way the charts of 2011 avoid men and women with guitars like the plague. New York threesome the Yeah Yeah Yeahs released their debut album ‘Fever To Tell’ in 2003 and immediately attracted attention, not just for their sparky and tightly produced tracks, but also thanks to the rather arresting vision of frontwoman Karen O. The two minute long ‘Pin’ was their third chart hit and one of a series of hit singles which were little more than one week wonders on the sales rankings. Number 29 was as good as this one got, 13 places behind the peak of its predecessor ‘Date With The Night’ whose Number 16 peak remains for the moment their best singles chart showing.

28: Flaming Lips – Fight Test

Surely if ever there was a reason to love a particular year, to adore one special snapshot in musical history, it is the fact that in 2002 and into 2003, the Flaming Lips were for a fleeting moment actually properly famous, with hit records and everything. Wayne Coyne’s outfit of lavish stage performers and songs that appeared to be penned by people living on an entirely different plane of existence to the rest of us had laboured in semi-obscurity ever since the mid-1980s, only to finally hit their stride with 1999 album ‘The Soft Bulletin’ which to this day is regarded by some as one of the best albums of that decade. On these shores it became their first ever chart hit, and gave them a first ever Top 40 single as ‘Race For The Prize’ sneaked to Number 39, but it was the 2002 follow-up ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ which saw them become maybe not quite household names, but certainly properly famous for the stuff they had always been acclaimed for. Admittedly much of the appeal of the Flaming Lips is down to their lavish stage shows, but their singles still showed flashes of brilliance. ‘Fight Test’ was the third chart single lifted from ‘Yoshimi…’ and followed the title track into the charts in July 2003. All the usual elements are present and correct, Coyne’s endearing almost but never quite in tune vocals, a gentle, soothing production and quite inadvertently bits of someone else’s song as the melody of ‘Fight Test’ was shown to bear more than a passing resemblance to ‘Father And Son’ by Cat Stevens. Coyne held his hands up to the inadvertent plagiarism and cheerfully gave Stevens a share of the royalties and a songwriting credit, but even knowing that the track is partially copied from another does little to diminish its charm. Number 28 simply seems far far too low.

27: B2K – Girlfriend

The third and what would ultimately turn out to be the biggest chart single for short-lived American R&B sensations B2K. Britain was late getting into them so all their hits came from their second and final album ‘Pandemonium!’, an album which featured not only this Number 10 hit but also its predecessor ‘Bump Bump Bump’ which even had the added star power of P Diddy on guest vocals. ‘Girlfriend’ was written and produced by no less a figure than R Kelly which may possibly explain the enthusiastic way it shot up the charts. Most of the members of B2K have faded into oblivion with possibly the sole exception of Omarion who tried a brief solo career and then found himself the subject of lasting ridicule when a rogue PR person released a statement late on July 7th 2005 stating that Omarion had been nowhere near the bombs in London but that his fans should pray for his safety. Even more amusingly his Wikipedia page is the subject of constant battles between British editors wanting to include this detail as the reason he is famous in this country, versus American fans who can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

26: S Club – Say Goodbye/Love Ain’t Gonna Wait For You

All good things must come to an end, and looking back the writing was always on the wall for the whole S Club project. First Paul Cattermole quit in 2002, knocking the whole “S Club 7” concept for six (if you’ll pardon the pun) and necessitating a change of name. Then their much anticipated feature film “Seeing Double” turned out to be a pile of incomprehensible garbage and when its soundtrack album failed to set the charts on fire in the manner that pretty much all of their previous records had done, it seemed the only sensible thing to do was to draw the curtain and exit the stage. So fair play to S Club 7, their departure was on their terms. Summertime single ‘Love Ain’t Gonna Wait For You’ was bumped in favour of a swiftly recorded swansong single ‘Say Goodbye’, the song ostensibly about the end of a love affair but with an obvious underlying subtext – this was the most successful pop band of their generation bidding farewell. This then was their swansong, their own ‘Thank You For The Music’ and fittingly a Number 2 smash hit, far bigger than any of the other tracks from their final album.

25: Panjabi MC – Jogi

A hat tip to the man who to this day is the only artist to take a pretty much unmolested Bhangra track into the UK Top 10. ‘Mundian To Bach Ke’ was the track in question, a gloriously inspired worldwide smash hit which took the Knight Rider theme as its base before dragging the famous bassline into exciting new territory. Such was the widespread appeal of the track (a Number 5 hit in the early months of 2003) that a remixed version featuring a new rap line from Jay-Z featured on the flip side of this second hit single. Not that ‘Jogi’ wasn’t in the Top 30 on its own merits however, the single possibly the last thing you would expect to see in the UK Top 40 and played on the radio in the afternoon, yet its bizarre fusion of bhangra and hip hop beats worked to near perfection. Rajinder Singh Rai (to give him his full name) continues to make records to this day to a rather more limited audience, but memories of that glorious period when he became a mainstream chart star still live long in the memory. Only on Spotify to stream sadly.

24: Shania Twain – Forever And For Always

Back in 1998, Shania Twain and then husband Mutt Lange had achieved exactly what they had set out to do – record and release the biggest selling Country album of all time. The formula was simple, collect together the best songs possible and then record and mix them in two different versions – a traditional C&W style for the American market and an out and out mainstream pop style for the rather less refined tastes of the rest of the world. ‘Come On Over’ turned the singer into a superstar and practically spewed hits in its wake. So for the follow-up all they had to do was repeat the stunt, right? Well it kind of worked. 2002 release ‘Up!’ admittedly did go on to sell 20 million copies worldwide but that was still only half the total of its predecessor. The songs inside were by and large as sparky and original as before, but the whole project simply had an air of going back over old ground and presuming what had worked before would work perfectly again. The singles from the album performed respectably enough here, tender ballad ‘Forever And For Always’ was a Number 6 hit as the third Top 10 hit in a row from the album but whereas once upon a time she was hanging around the upper end of the charts for weeks on end, all of these singles made rather perfunctory in and out chart performances, suggesting that by and large she was preaching to the choir. ‘Up!’ as a whole is the classic example of a record that is simply blah. Musically and lyrically incredibly well made, but with an air of factory line production that by and large made it all feel rather soulless.

23: Justin Timberlake – Rock Your Body

As I never tire of pointing out, old pubehead here was never actually the main or even lead singer in ‘NSync, but he was somehow anointed as the one with the charisma and star potential to be thrust into the limelight as a solo star. Boy did that turn out well. One of the signature songs of his early solo career, ‘Rock Your Body’ was his third Number 2 hit in a row during 2002 and 2003, following hard on the heels of the emotionally intense ‘Cry Me A River’ which had been a hit in February. Actually of all the singles lifted from his debut album ‘Justified’, my favourite was perhaps the less well received fourth release ‘Senorita’ which dispensed entirely with song structure halfway through in favour of the singer leading his imaginary crowd in a series of girls v boys call and responses. Somehow it cut through all mental images of his then unfortunate nappy-headed image and made him – as everyone subsequently realised – one of the coolest men on the planet.

22: 50 Cent – In Da Club

One of the longest running hits on this week’s chart, 50 Cent’s celebrated debut single was this week holding steady at Number 22 in what was its 16th week on the Top 40. All this pre-downloads of course, so every single one of those chart weeks was down to continuing shop demand for his physical singles. Indeed ‘In Da Club’ during its chart life behaved just like we’d expect a modern day hit to do, entering at Number 4 before sliding to Number 9 and then steadily consolidating its position to finally peak at Number 3 during weeks 5 and 6 of its chart run. I’ll freely confess that of all the superstar rappers of the last decade, 50 Cent remains the one whose appeal remains to me a mystery, with his music and his lyrics as impenetrable now as they were when he first emerged onto the scene. Nonetheless, it is hard to knock a smash hit such as this one. ‘In Da Club’ ended the year with a sale of 278,000 copies as the 13th biggest seller of 2003.

21: Foo Fighters – Low

A typically efficient chart entry for the Foo Fighters with the third single lifted from their first ever Number One album ‘One By One’. What makes this single more notable as far as this chart countdown is concerned is that its ultimate chart position was the subject of Wes’ “One Big Text” competition which he had been plugging the backside off since the start of the show. To qualify for the big prize question, all you had to do was successfully predict where the single was going to land, and so immediately after it was played out host welcomed “Neil” who then correctly answered a multiple choice trivia question about Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and his favourite hobby. Playing golf apparently, so now we know. Neil, a rock and nu-metal fan we were informed, won himself the entire Top 10 albums which admittedly did consist of the likes of Radiohead and the Stereophonics, but also Beyonce, S Club 7 and George Benson. Bet he was secretly thrilled.

There’s more to come from 2003, although next up we hit a decidedly sticky patch of the singles chart, littered with strange one-off singles from acts never to darken our doors again. For the moment, the Spotify and We7 playlists are all updated, with an almost 100% strike rate of available tracks this time around. Trust me, there is a fair blizzard of YouTube embeds coming soon.

Yes, this has indeed taken a while, so thanks for bearing with me. Unless you are reading this all in one go in six months time and pay no attention to the dates at the top of course. Welcome to our final march through the chart of October 25th 1998 and in this final rundown of songs we discover just what it was that made this particular singles chart so very unique.

10: Billie – Girlfriend

Long before Secret Diary, way ahead of the Dr Who years and before even she was “that bird who married Chris Evans”, Billie Piper was plain old “Billie”, the bright teenage pop sensation of 1998. Long before anyone knew what her voice sounded like, we all knew her face thanks to her selection earlier that year as the face of a high profile advertising campaign for Smash Hits magazine. It made for a nice neat hook to hang the marketing of her pop career on and so it was at the tender age of just 15 she was signed to a record deal and unleashed upon the charts. Debut single ‘Because We Want To’ was released in June and was an instant Number One, making Billie the second youngest female star ever to top the UK charts (a record held to this day by Helen Shapiro). Proof that turning a child of that age into a celebrity was fraught with danger came the day after her Number One was announced, pictures in the press of her enjoying a celebratory glass of what appeared to be champagne at a celebratory party causing a few furrowed brows at her label.

Moving past that minor wrinkle, ‘Girlfriend’ was her second single release and it too was an easy and instant Number One and heralded the release of her debut album ‘Honey To The B’. What caught the eye the most however was the list of credits on the album and in particular the fact that it was produced in its entirety and partially written by Jim Marr and Wendy Page. Nice years earlier pair were the leading lights behind indie-pop act Skin Games who were the darlings of the music press in 1989 and indeed made one of the best albums of the period, only for the British public to ignore it totally and for the band to fall apart shortly afterwards. Their association with the Billie album kicked off a flurry of hit songs penned by the pair at the turn of the century with Page herself performing vocal duties on the Tin Tin Out single ‘Eleven To Fly’ in 1999.

Billie’s career as a pop star has been all but eclipsed by her work as an actress as a rather less fresh faced adult. The work of Skin Games is equally as forgotten but perhaps more tragically so. It seems only appropriate to refresh memories of it here, especially as their album ‘The Blood Rush’ is more or less impossible to find.

9: 911 – More Than A Woman

Extraordinary to think that someone once thought of naming a boy band after the US emergency number, but there you go. 911 were a three piece boy band formed of Lee Brennan, Jimmy Constable and Spike Dawbarn whose work was slightly less throwaway than your average pop act thanks largely to Lee Brennan’s own talents as a contributing songwriter which meant that hits such as ‘Party People (Friday Night)’ and ‘The Journey’ had a charm all of their own and were worthwhile works in their own right. Sadly by the time of their third album ‘There It Is’, the group were reduced to little more than a covers band and their final few singles were nothing more than adequate retreads of older classics. Not that it did their chart positions any harm mind, this cover of the Bee Gees’ ‘More Than A Woman’ hit Number 2 upon release in October 1998, at the time their biggest hit to date. They would go on to top it early in the new year with a version of Dr Hook’s ‘A Little Bit More’ which went all the way to Number One, but for the boys themselves you suspect the fun had gone out of it. They famously split in early 2000, picking the Chris Moyles show on Radio One as their platform of choice to announce it truly was the end.

8: Kele Le Roc – Little Bit Of Lovin’

A brand new entry, but by no means the biggest. Not by a long way, which perhaps was ultimately to its detriment as history has all but overlook it since. One of those singles which sits forlorn as a lost classic, the dreamy ‘Little Bit Of Lovin’ was the first of just two major hit singles for East End girl Kele Le Roc, her exotic sounding performing name covering up the fact that in truth she was just plain old Kelly Biggs from East Ham. Showered with Mobo awards for her debut album ‘Everybody’s Somebody’, she more or less fell off the radar shortly afterwards – listen to this record and realise that this was actually a crying shame. Both this single and follow-up ‘My Love’ were utterly amazing.

7: Aerosmith – I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing

It is surely one of the most bizarre, messed up and truly perverse facts in music that in a career which stretches back to 1973 and with some all-time classic rock hits in their catalogue, Aerosmith’s biggest and most famous worldwide smash hit ever is a rather limp Diane Warren MOR ballad which they recorded for a film soundtrack. Even back in the day I watched the success of ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing’ with a mixture of horror and fascination. It was great that one of the biggest rock acts of all time were suddenly household names and a radio staple with this single, but their greatest record ever it most certainly was not. To this day I can’t quite fathom just what the hold this song has over people is. Diane Warren wrote far better songs and indeed far better love anthems for hit movies in her day and only the most charitable of critics would argue that the register and tone of the song suited Steve Tyler’s vocal range and abilities down to the ground. Yet for all its shortcomings the song from the “Armageddon” soundtrack stands proud as Aerosmith’s biggest ever UK hit single, a Number 4 hit which bucked the prevailing chart trends by entering low and climbing high and which sustained its sales long enough for a nine week run inside the Top 10 – again at a time when even the biggest chart hits struggle to do better than 3 or 4. Perhaps reduced now to a cliche thanks to the insistence of at least one X Factor contender each year insisting on attempting the song, for good or ill this is one of the defining moments of late 1998 in music.

6: Spacedust – Gym and Tonic

Ah, now this is my favourite kind of random dance single. One that has a genuine pull up a chair and listen story behind it. The diverting fusion of club beats and exercise workout instructions was created by a Frenchman – a Paris nightclub DJ called Christope LeFrient who styled himself “Bob Sinclar” in tribute to the famous James Bond spoof film “Le Magnifique”. The writer of the track was a certain Thomas Bangalter- he of the Stardust record we stumbled across earlier. The pair built the record out of samples from an old Jane Fonda workout album overlaid over an old disco track called ‘Bad Mouthin’ and generated enough interest from white label pressings to persuade labels to start sniffing around for the rights to release it properly. Whilst the track (originally titled ‘Gym Tonic’) came out in France under Sinclar’s name, clearance for UK release was rather trickier to obtain. Bangalter was reportedly rather unhappy with the track to begin with, feeling it detracted from his own productions under his own stream and to make matters worse Jane Fonda’s vocals were a further sticking point, with the UK rights holders of the original “Workout” series declining to co-operate and Fonda herself threatening legal action for breach of copyright.

Hence it came as little surprise to see a version begin to circulate with the Fonda vocals removed and a soundalike inserted in her place. What more more curious was that the credited artist on the track was now “Spacedust”, the identity of whom was a mystery at the time – and indeed right up until the official release of the single the assumption was that this was simply Sinclar and Bangalter operating under a new pseudonym to distance themselves further from the illicit original. Needless to say it wasn’t. This new version was the creation of Englishmen Paul Glancey and Duncan Glasson (erroneously credited on the initial pressings of the CD) who had put together their version with an eye to being formally asked to remix the original. Instead the rights to their version were snapped up by East West records who realised they could steam in with a hit whilst the original was tied up in a copyright dispute. Their reward was an instant Number One hit, albeit one which was swiftly bumped down to Number 6 a week later. The track is now a little too obscure to appear on streaming sites, which is odd because follow-up mid-table single ‘Let’s Get Down’ is itself online. Have the video anyway, just for the fun of it.

The reason for its swift 1-6 chart decline? Not actually because its sales crashed to that extent, but it came up against something unique in British chart history – a Top 5 made up entirely of brand new entries.

5: Alanis Morrissette – Thank U

Bringing up the rear so to speak was this, the first single from Alanis Morrissette’s album ‘Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie’ and her first new material since the ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album had shot her to stardom three years earlier. Trading on that reputation both the single and album were inevitably going to be her commercial highpoint, and so it proved. The wistful ‘Thank U’ – the lyrics bizarrely recounting a tale of Delhi belly she got on a promotional tour – shot straight to the Top 5 to become her biggest ever UK hit single. Mention has to be made of the video for the track which saw a naked Alanis (with the interesting bits blurred out) being embraced by strangers in a variety of urban settings. The subsequent French and Saunders parody was if anything just as memorable.

4: Culture Club – I Just Wanna Be Loved

Once upon a time, bands from the 1980s didn’t reunite every five minutes for a nostalgia tour or a TV special, so when one did so it was a very special thing indeed. The first Culture Club reunion after they broke up in 1986 actually came in 1989 when a series of songs were written and recorded for an album that was ultimately never to be released. Boy George was more interested in reinventing himself as a dance music star, this work manifesting itself in the Jesus Loves You project in 1991 and in particular the hit single ‘Bow Down Mister’ which somehow turned the Hari Krishna mantra into a mainstream club hit. Having spent most of the decade as a highly regarded club DJ, George was finally persuaded to put his differences with the rest of the group (Jon Moss in particular aside) and reunite with them for a reunion tour. To help an accompanying hits collection based around a performance for the VH1 show Storytellers on the way, the group returned to the studio for the first time in 12 years to produce a handful of new songs, with the lilting ‘Just Wanna Be Loved’, featuring the band well and truly back in the ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’ groove selected for single release. The song wasn’t necessarily the greatest Culture Club single ever, but crucially it was a long way from the worst and it more than justified its existence by flying straight into the Top 5 upon release. Part of it may well have been for the nostalgic buzz of hearing Boy George singing lovers’ rock once again but the simple fact was that ‘Just Wanna Be Loved’ was their biggest hit single since ‘The War Song’ 14 years earlier. A group who had barely been on speaking terms for the best part of a decade sounded for all the world like they had never been away. It was hard to resist that kind of charm.

3: U2 – The Sweetest Thing

It was Greatest Hits time for U2 in 1998, the band suffering from the slight commercial wobble that had resulted from the rather experimental sound of 1997 album ‘Pop’. Whilst both the album and lead single ‘Discotheque’ had given them Number One hits, even the most die-hard of fans could not escape the feeling that for the first time ever the seemingly unassailable Irish superstars had made a record that was for the most part a bit rubbish. Hence a retread of the glory years of their first decade in music was the perfect way to remind the world just what made them so good in the first place. ‘The Best Of 1980-1990’ came in two versions – one with an extra disc featuring the b-sides of their singles during this period. ‘The Sweetest Thing’ was itself originally a b-side, having featured on the single release of ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ in 1987 and with a new version featuring a gospel choir finding its way onto ‘Rattle and Hum’ a year later. Bono always felt the song (an apology to his wife Ali for missing her birthday) deserved more attention that it first received, so the track was re-recorded to promote the new compilation and issued as a single. It could well have been Number One, but for the fact its release coincided with the flurry of big hit singles which made up this record-setting Top 5. Even as a Number 3 hit it stands tall as one of U2’s best singles of the decade. Heck, it even had Boyzone in the video.

2: George Michael – Outside

Back in the days when George Michael had a sense of humour about himself, even he had to admit there were probably more dignified ways to come out of the closet. His arrest for exposing himself to an undercover police officer in a Los Angeles public toilet made headlines across the world but also in turn served as the perfect publicity for his planned Greatest Hits collection at the end of 1998. Showing a self awareness that stood any criticism of his misdemeanour on its head, the album was cheerily titled “Ladies and Gentlemen – The Best of George Michael” and divided his solo work into a disc of ballads and a disc of floorfillers. It was from the latter that this newly recorded track came, a sizzling funk workout in which George put on his best “Mr Sex” voice and attempted to extol the virtues of al fresco loving. Coming after the soulful introspection of 1996 album ‘Older’ the track was a breath of fresh air and was hailed widely as George Michael back to his best. Massive chart success was almost guaranteed, and its failure to add to his tally of Number One singles was down to nothing more than there being an even bigger track ahead of it in the queue. History may well record that as the century turned George lost his artistic mojo and was reduced to turning out singles that were essentially carbon copies of this one, but if we are focusing on the now of this particular chart then it is enough to recall ‘Outside’ as being one of the freshest, funkiest pop records of the year and another offering from a man who voice could bewitch us all, regardless of who he waved his penis at.

1: Cher – Believe

It was a bold step turning Cher into a dance star. Her solo work for the previous decade and a half had been firmly rooted in rock music and it was as a leather-clad guitar heroine that most of the world knew her, notwithstanding the rock and roll nostalgia of ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ with which she had topped the UK charts in 1991. Nonetheless it was believed that a change of direction would be the shot in the arm that the then 52 year old star needed, and at the behest of then Warner boss Rob Dickins, Cher was teamed up some up and coming British producers to make the pop record that would hopefully revive her career. The song ‘Believe’ had been floating around as a demo for some time, much to the frustration of its writers, amongst them a then unknown Brian Higgins. With the help of other Warner staffers, all but the chorus was ditched and the hit song took shape, hence the presence of no less than six different names on the song-writing credits.

Yet it wasn’t the writing of the track that made ‘Believe’ the near legendary track it became. It was all down to the production by Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling which transformed the song into something special. The magic ingredient was what Terry Wogan termed “Sparky’s Magic Piano”, the processing of Cher’s voice with what everyone assumed at the time was an old fashioned vocoder and which everyone “in the know” identified as a tribute to Roger Troutman, congratulating ourselves on our musical insight in the process. The vocal effects were greeted with horror by Cher’s label when they first heard the track, but they remained in place when the artist herself insisted they were her favourite bit. In fact it wasn’t until several years later, after the creators of the track formed the now famous Xenomania production team and label, that the producers revealed that the effect came from running the vocals through Autotune with all the settings turned up to 11. Without meaning to they had invented a production trick which ten years later would come to be the defining sound of transatlantic pop music.

‘Believe’ and its use of Autotune actually remained a one-off novelty until ten years later when Kanye West hit on the gimmick of using it to turn himself as a rapper who manifestly could not sing into an actual singer for the track ‘Love Lockdown’. Nonetheless the 1998 single has its place in history as the first ever Autotuned pop hit – and one that at the time was a global sensation. ‘Believe’ slice through chart records like a butchers knife. This was the first of what would become seven weeks at Number One, the single selling 107,000 copies in its first week and a phenomenal 205,000 a week later. In a year of no less than four million sellers, ‘Believe’ ended it as the biggest seller of them all. Its total sales to date of 1.7 million are enough to make it the 16th biggest seller of all time in this country and far and away the biggest ever by a female artist. It extended Cher’s span of Number One hits to 33 years, dating back to the 1965 success of ‘I Got You Babe’ and at the age of 52 she set a record as the oldest woman ever to have a Number One hit in the UK – one that persists to this day. As I commented at the time, it was enough to make Cliff Richard’s grumpy protestations of “ageism” seem a little like sour grapes. All you had to do was make a record that enough people wanted to hear, and nobody cared how old you were.

So there you are, the hits of October 25th 1998 and thank you for your patience as we finally got there. Relive them all with the Spotify and We7 playlists and we’ll do this all over again at Christmas. Naturally you’ll have to wait until then to find out which Christmas chart we revisit this year. I’m nothing if not a tease.