Thursday 14 October 2021

UK Charts Best Year Search: 1999

What's this all about?

Top 40

Best Song: Chicane ft Maire Brennan - Saltwater

Probably the best Chicane single. It did remind me of "I Can't Help Myself" by Lucid when I first heard it, a record I also love. The sample comes from "Theme from Harry's Game" by Clannad, the group Maire Brennan is part of. As far as mainstream trance music goes, it really doesn't get any better than this.

Worst Song: Dixie Chicks - There's Your Trouble

The Dixie Chicks are one of those American country groups I'm aware of without knowing any of their music. I assumed they had no UK Top 40 hits, but they managed one. It's just as crap as I expected it to be, here's hoping I never hear another Dixie Chicks record again after successfully avoiding this for 22 years.

Top 40 Review

This was the year I did my Top 20 from 20 years ago reviews so the Top 20 reviews are here.

It was the year that their seemed to be so much good dance music in the mainstream that I thought it could never get any better. I don't think it ever did.

However, I do think I was very lenient with my scoring, who was I trying to kid by saying "Sweet Like Chocolate" was OK for example.

The big eye opener for me is that despite dance music being really big at the time, there are no house records in the chart. Even trance, the year 1999 is best remembered for in a dance music sense only has 3 records that fit into this genre. There are 5 big beat records though, a genre that's more associated with 1998.

Then again, a lot of dance records don't hit the charts until they've had their time in the clubs.

What pushes the score down at a time when commercial dance was at it's best was too much cheesy pop. The boy band/girl group/teen singer formula proved so successful that by this point that every man and his dog were manufacturing one.

Despite this, its a decent enough score.

Score: 16

Table

Now we've reached the end of the 20th century I sense it's all down hill from here, but you never know:



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