25 Years Since....May 1993

A bit late this month, but here's what I was enjoying in April 1993:

Guns N Roses - Civil War

It was now getting on for 2 years since Guns N Roses released their "Use Your Illusion" albums and they were still releasing singles from it, this being the last one.

It was actually the lead single from the "Civil War EP" which also included "Garden of Eden" and "Dead Horse". It was the only release from the album that failed to make the Top 10 reaching number 11 which was probably partly to do with most people owning the albums by this point.

Admittedly this was possibly the Guns N Roses single that had the least impact on me at the time, but they were my favourite band and I still liked it. These days it ranks amongst my favourite Guns N Roses songs.

Bon Jovi - In These Arms

The third single to be released from the "Keep the Faith album but not the last. I can't remember whether Bon Jovi were my 3rd or 2nd favourite band at the time, certainly by the summer Bon Jovi took 2nd place from INXS in my list of favourite bands.

My favourite thing about this song is the drums just before the chorus, it's just a short bit that basically bridges the verse drumming to the chorus drumming but it really makes the song for me.

Several years later when I'd been through my Rave days and opened myself up to other types of music I dug out my "Keep the Faith" album and listening to the drums in this having been used to just hearing drum machines for a few years it sounded fantastic.

Rage Against the Machine - Bullet in the Head

When I heard there was a Rage Against the Machine song called "Bullet in the Head" I just had to hear it, particularly knowing what I knew about them.

I wasn't disappointed, if "Killing in the Name" was the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me song" then this was the "motherfuckers lost their mind" song.

When someone would have the Rage Against the Machine in their Walkman at school, the general rule at break time when we had 15 minutes would be to listen to the first two tracks, "Bombtrack" and "Killing in the Name" then fast forward to "Bullet in the Head" and listen to that before the bell would ring.

Inner Circle - Sweat

There was me thinking I was all hip and modern listening to this record. Little did I know this was a band who had previously been in the UK Top 40 in 1979 and formed in 1968.

It was a record that got everyone singing and dancing at the school discos, but we were probably too young to really get what the lyrics implied.

I also used to own a t-shirt with the same colour scheme as the singer has when he's in the sea in the video. That wasn't intentional but I remember loving that t-shirt at the time, but it was terrible really.

Ace of Base - All That She Wants

I remember hearing this for the first time. It was a clip on the Big Breakfast, probably amongst other clips of new records. Later on that day I was hearing other people sing it and thought maybe I'd been missing out by not hearing it in full

It ended up getting to number one knocking off Queen, something which may have upset me a year earlier but my days as a Queen fan were well and truly behind me by this point and I actually saw this as a plus point if anything.

Ace of Base generally had some pretty good singles but this one was the only one I really appreciated at the time, they were the wrong genre for me to appreciate the future hits except perhaps "Beautiful Life" from when I was a Raver which I like a lot more now than I did back then.

Top of the Pops: 31/05/2018

What's this all about?

Top 40 Countdown

Number of eligible records: 10
New (40) Ramz - Family Tree
New (35) Tom Walker - Leave A Light On
⬆ (28) Shakka ft AlunaGeorge - Man Down
⬆ (26) M22 ft Medina - First Time
New (12) Clean Bandit ft Demi Lovato - Solo
⬆ (6) Jess Glynne - I'll Be There
⬆ (5) Banx & Ranx ft Ella Eyre & Yxng Bane - Answerphone
⬆ (4) Anne Marie - 2002
(1) Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Missing Out
⬆ (27) Yxng Bane - Vroom

What is modern music?

When I was on Popmaster I mentioned to Ken Bruce I was going to see High Contrast the following day and had to explain who he was as Ken had never heard of him, I think he said he wasn't down with the youth.

Yet the debut album of High Contrast came out in 2002, 16 years ago. To put that into perspective, in 1989 when I heard new Queen songs for the first time in living memory my Mum told me they'd been round for donkeys years. Their debut album came out in 1973 i.e. at that point in time Queens first album was just one year older than High Contrasts debut album is now.

To be fair the most likely reason Ken Bruce hadn't heard of High Contrast is that he's probably not that well known to people who aren't into Dance music, he's never had a Top 40 hit for example. But you do have contestants on Popmaster who get a question about a 2002 song wrong because they don't know modern music.

It raises an interesting question, how old does a song have to be before it's not longer considered modern?

Of course there's no definitive answer and ones age obviously plays a big part. For a lot of people modern music is a positive term in their younger years but they then reach the point where it's a negative term. It does however seem that modern music is getting older.

For some people modern music means anything in the 21st Century which in some ways seems a pretty logical distinction. It does however mean music that is 18 years old is considered modern. Casting my mind back to the year 2000 I don't recall anyone branding music from 1982 as being modern. In fact I don't really remember anyone, old or young branding 80s music as being modern during the 90s.

During the late 80s I do recall having conversations with my uncle who was around 40 at the time about the songs in the charts. By the end of the 90s he didn't really have much idea of what was in the charts anymore. In 2011 I had a conversation with him where I said I didn't like much modern music and that you can't beat the 90s. He's always felt the same about the 60s but was surprised to hear me say that because in his mind the 90s was modern music.

For me personally I think mid 00s is where the modern era begins. Not because I think a 13 year old record is new, but more it being a point where I started to lose interest in music of that time, at least in a mainstream sense.

That's not strictly an age thing though. Like I mentioned earlier, I used to converse with my uncle about the charts when he was around 40, I didn't turn 40 in the mid 00s, I'm still younger than 40 now.

If we look at what happened in the mid 00s it becomes more clear. The X Factor started in 2004 which has had a big impact on the charts ever since. Artists come and go but at the end of the day it's still Simon Cowell music.

Then in 2005 downloads became eligible for the charts and eventually were eligible if they didn't have a physical copy which would more or less halve the number of hits you'd have in the Top 40 each year.

In 2006 we saw the rise of YouTube and the end of Top of the Pops. This meant hours of finding that tune you hadn't heard since 1992 without the usual half hourly catch up what was in the charts that week.

Then you look at the music itself. In 2006 we had the debut of Calvin Harris, in 2018 we've just had the sixth week at number one for Calvin Harris.
I'd say a combination of these factors make it feel like we're in the same era. Sure we had old timers like Cliff Richard and Elton John score number ones in the 90s, but this wasn't music targeted to the youth, it just so happened that older people bought singles too. I strongly suspect the new Calvin Harris record is aimed at the youth market, I certainly don't know anyone in my age group who listens to him.

I do still think it's a bit barmy calling a song that's over a decade old "modern" but then looking at music since the mid 00s I find it hard to describe it any differently.

Top of the Pops: 24/05/2018

What's this all about?

Top 40 Countdown

Number of eligible records: 10
New (39) Selena Gomez - Back to You
New (38) Years & Years - If You're Over Me
New (22) Rita Ora ft Cardi B, Bebe Rexha & Charli XCX - Girls
New (23) Arctic Monkeys - Star Treatment
New (18) Arctic Monkeys - Four Out of Five
⬆ (15) EO - German
⬆ (10) Shawn Mendes - In My Blood
⬆ (9) David Guetta ft Sia - Flames
(1) Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Missing Out
New (26) Arctic Monkeys - One Point Perspective

UK Singles Chart: The 1990s

In this journey through the chart years so far one thing which has surprised me is how much of the music I already know.

In the 50s there were barely over 1000 chart hits the whole decade many of which were the same songs recorded by different artists, though admittedly this is the decade so far with the most songs I don't know. The 60s brought many songs I've always known and several acts I consider at least good enough to listen to their greatest hits. The amount of 70s songs I know increases a lot after 1976 courtesy of the Top of the Pops reruns and similar with the early 80s prior to reaching my living memory of the late 80s.

In the 90s I remember the entire decade well. Looking at all the number ones I can tell you something I was doing in my life at that point in time for most of them. Yet what surprised me was how many hits of the 90s I didn't know. But that is more down to the sheer quantity of hits we had that decade, more than twice as many as the 50s, 60s and 70s and almost twice as much as the 80s.

Dance Music was the genre which grew the most throughout the decade and most years gave us a new sub genre of Dance Music in the charts. There were many House records every year and by the end of the decade a lot of Trance records too. There were also a decent amount of Big Beat records throughout the late 90s, but other genres weren't as consistent.

We had plenty of Hardcore Rave records in the latter half of 1991 and throughout 1992 but by 1993 it was virtually non existent in the charts. It's probably not surprising we didn't have much Happy Hardcore in the charts, but there was very little Drum & Bass in it too despite there being a show dedicated to that genre on Radio 1.

In 1997 I remember everyone talking about Speed Garage but chart wise I count 15 records I would consider to be Speed Garage from that year.

Away from Dance music we had the era of Grunge music in the early 90s, yet there wasn't an awful lot of Grunge hits in the charts. When people moved onto Green Day and Offspring there was little else in the charts that could be described as Punk.

There was a much stronger presence of Rap music in the charts, but every year it seemed to me dwarfed by the amount of R&B in the charts and had a bigger presence when the two genres combined.

Obviously given the sheer quantity of music in the charts and I've been talking about what there's been less of than expected, what actually was occupying the charts?

Basically what we would most associate the charts with, Pop music. The higher positions were occupied by the well known boy bands/girl groups etc and the lower positions by those who nobody remembers.

It was an era when most records would enter at their peak and plummet out the charts quickly rather than slowly go down the lower positions. This allowed the not so popular acts to occupy the lower positions. On top of this there were the acts who were remembered for one hit but had several other hits too that didn't chart so high, but this was nothing new.

Next up is the 2000s, a decade that I know a fair bit of the early part where there were still lots of hits, but not so much the latter part where there were less hits, so I would anticipate it taking me around 3 weeks to research each year again.

Top of the Pops: 17/05/2018

What's this all about?

Top 40 Countdown

Number of eligible records: 9
New (40) Shakka ft AlunaGeorge - Man Down
New (36) M22 ft Medina - First Time
New (35) Shawn Mendes ft Khalid - Youth
⬆ (25) Liam Payne ft J Balvin - Familiar
⬆ (20) M O ft Lotto Boyz & Mr Eazi - Bad Vibe
New (16) Jess Glynne - I'll Be There
New (14) Childish Gambino - This Is America
⬆ (6) Banx & Ranx ft Ella Eyre & Yxng Bane - Answerphone
(1) Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Missing Out
None

Top of the Pops: 10/05/2018

What's this all about?

Top 40 Countdown

Number of eligible records: 7
New (28) Paloma Faith - Make Your Own Kind Of Music
⬆ (19) David Guetta ft Sia - Flames
⬆ (18) EO - German
⬆ (15) Cardi B ft Bad Bunny & J Balvin - I Like It
(1) Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Missing Out
These two records miss out because they're not on YouTube:
New (9) Post Malone - Better Now
New (11) Post Malone - Paranoid

25 Years Since....April 1993

A bit late this month, but here's what I was enjoying in April 1993:

Jade - Don't Walk Away

We begin with a record that entered the Top 40 in March but reached the Top 10 in April. This record simply had the feel good factor when listening to it.

I'm not sure whether I actually knew who this was by at the time. When this was covered by Javine in 2004 it reminded me of this records existence and I looked up who it was by. When I saw it was by Jade it didn't ring a bell at all.

This was the only Top 10 hit for Jade but they had another four Top 40 hits, all of which are quite good but probably none of them as good as this. Probably the most underrated female R&B group of the 90s.

Sonic Youth - Sugar Kane

There were lots of cool bands that people should have been listening to at the time and Sonic Youth was one of them and probably one of the better ones.

This was the second out of three Top 40 hits for Sonic Youth who arguably became popular over here because of the popularity of Grunge music without being Grunge music itself. Ironically for a group with youth in it's title, they were a fair bit older than the other Grunge and Grunge related bands. They formed in 1981 and bass player Kim Gordon turned 40 in April 1993.

The Almighty - Addiction

As mentioned above there were lots of bands that people at school were introducing people to, but The Almighty was a band I introduced to everyone else.

It was the older kid who lived on my street and didn't go to my school who introduced me to The Almighty and gave me a copy of their "Soul Destruction" album.

At the start of 1995 I was no longer listening to this kind of music, but I learned they were going to appear on Top of the Pops which annoyed me somewhat as I was still proud of the fact they were the band I discovered amongst my peers, and now anyone could discover them. I had always assumed they were American but later discovered they were British which may explain why they never became household names like Metallica.

East 17 - Slow It Down

This is the East 17 single that only I seem to remember. Some only remember "Stay Another Day" but then you mention songs like "Steam", "House of Love" etc and it all starts coming back to them. Mention "Slow It Down" though and they haven't got a clue.

Although this never made the Top 10, it's not their lowest charting single with "Gold" and "Someone to Love" charting lower.

Prodigy - Wind it Up

The final single to come from "Experience" which was an album I was familiar with thanks to many trips in the car of someone who kept playing it.

I therefore already knew this when it was released and I like most of the tracks on the Prodigy album.

It was later on in 1993 that I learned one of the rules of being a Grunger according to me peers is to despise all things Rave, so I followed suit until the end of 1994 when I became a Raver and bought both Prodigy albums.

Top of the Pops: 03/05/2018

What's this all about?

Top 40 Countdown

Number of eligible records: 11
New (34) Liam Payne ft J Balvin - Familiar
⬆ (32) David Guetta ft Martin Garrix & Brooks - Like I Do
⬆ (31) Yxng Bane - Vroom
New (28) J Cole - ATM
⬆ (22) Sean Paul ft David Guetta & Becky G - Mad Love
New (8) Anne Marie - 2002
⬆ (7) Banx & Ranx ft Ella Eyre & Yxng Bane - Answerphone
New (2) Ariana Grande - No Tears Left to Cry
(1) Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa - One Kiss

Missing Out
New (17) J Cole - Kod
New (30) J Cole - Photograph