25 Years Since....August 2000

So much was going on in August 2000 it's a wonder I had any time to listen to music, but I did:

Craig David - 7 Days

Craig David moved away from garage and made an R&B record with this. There was a garage version as well though. Music aside, you have the story and the Groundhog Day style video to go with the story. At this point in time he showed he could make a decent R&B record, though he did make some terrible ones in later years.

Wookie ft Lain - Battle

Wookie worked with Soul II Soul prior to UK garage being a thing. This was his big hit and it was on pretty much every garage set I was hearing around this time. You can almost imagine Soul II Soul sounding like this had they started out around this time.

Richie Dan - Call It Fate

Yes it's another garage record but this just shows how addicted I was to garage at the time. The fact of the matter was that a lot of the tunes getting into the Top 40 were tunes you'd hear on the garage tapes from the raves. I found it sad in the way that there appeared to be no underground garage anymore, but the music was great.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

There was a pub in town that I started going to a lot more around this time for the simple fact it acquired a late license. There was a video jukebox in the pub which was a relatively new concept at the time and I remember this tune coming on a lot. What I'm not sure about was whether I'd bought the "Californication" album by this point.

JJ72 - Oxygen

When I watch music videos from yesteryear it's quite common for me to look at the band/artist and think wow I don't remember them looking that young. In the case of JJ72 though I do remember them looking young at the time, but then they're similar in age to me and I was a young student at the time. I do feel part of the problem with indie music is that it's the dross that truly makes it big and there's plenty of good bands that get nowhere. JJ72 managed to scrape the Top 40 but didn't really get any further than that.

80s in the 90s: 1983

Continuing the look at whether 80s acts succeeded in the 90s here's a look at the 1983 debutants:

Eurythmics: Between their Top 40 debut "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" in 1983 and "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" in 1985, Eurythmics only failed to reach the Top 10 once. After this they only reached the Top 10 once again which was with "Thorn In My Side" in 1986. They managed at least 1 Top 40 hit in the remaining years of the 80s but most didn't even make the Top 20. In 1990 they had 2 minor hits in 1990 with "The King And Queen Of America" and "Angel" before they split up. Then they came back in 1999 with "I Saved The World Today" which made number 11.

Verdict: Miss

Tina Turner: Her 80s solo career was a sort of comeback having previously been part of Ike & Tina Turner in the 60s. She had more Top 40 hits in the 90s than 80s though less Top 10s. As an 80s chart act by this definition is one that had at least 4 Top 40 hits that decade, having 4 Top 10s in the 90s which is what Tina Turner had would surely qualify you as a 90s chart act too.

Verdict: Hit

Marillion: In the 90s Marillion managed 3 Top 40 hits that peaked at number 34. Some may be surprised to learn they even had 3 Top 40 hits that decade but they actually had 7. Just "Sympathy" was a Top 20 and none were Top 10. It's however worth noting that 8 of their 12 Top 40 hits in the 80s also failed to reach the Top 20. However they did have 3 Top 10s which are the ones people remember, their 90s hits not so much.

Verdict: Miss

Paul Young: His biggest 90s hit was "Senza Una Donna (Without A Woman)" but that was as a featured singer on a Zucchero record so doesn't really count. Taking that record out of the equation all his Top 40 hits up to "Every Time You Go Away" in 1985 made the Top 10 and every Top 40 hit after didn't. He did manage 6 Top 40 hits in the 90s on his own but all of them were minor.

Verdict: Miss

Prince: He was still releasing new music and had a huge following right up to his death in 2016. From a UK charts perspective though his last original Top 40 hit came in 1997 with "The Holy River". He did however manage at least one Top 40 hit between 1983 and 1997. The 90s was when we got the New Power Generation backing him and he changed his name to a symbol. It was also the decade where he scored his only number one plus several other big hits. There's no doubt he was just as much a 90s chart act as he was an 80s one.

Verdict: Hit

Aztec Camera: Best known for the 1988 hit "Somewhere In My Heart" I would say their solitary 90s Top 40 hit "Good Morning Britain" is their 2nd best known. The question is should a number 19 in 1990 that featured another artist, in this case Mick Jones, qualify you as a 90s chart act? Doesn't really seem enough.

Verdict: Miss

Big Country: When you hear the name Big Country the 80s springs to mind to the point you wouldn't expect them to have any Top 40 hits in the 90s. They managed 3 though but the highest they managed out of those was 24. 

Verdict: Miss

Nick Heyward: He started out as singer with Haircut 100 who managed 4 Top 40 hits. He 1 better as a solo artist in the 80s with 5 Top 40 hits to his name spread across 1983 and 1984. Then he had one more Top 40 hit in 1996 with the number 37 "Rollerblade" which was his attempt at jumping on the Britpop bandwagon.

Verdict: Miss

Top 30 in 1999 Reviewed: Week 35

Here's my weekly look at the Top 30 from 26 years ago. The plan is for these posts to go out at 17:30 on a Sunday.

Here is the Top 40 in full.

I've decided against repetition from previous weeks moving forward so will only feature the records I'm reviewing for the first time. I also won't repeat the reviews from the Top 20 in 1999 Reviewed posts.

Once again my opinions are inevitably going to differ from other people, but I'm not trying to convince anyone something is good or rubbish, I'm simply giving my opinion.

So this is the records new to the top 30 from this week in 1999 with my verdict on each record:

26. Mercury Rev - Goddess On A Hiway

Mercury Rev were a band I remember a lot of people at university were into but I'd never heard of them myself. Now that I am familiar with their music I really don't get what the fuss was all about. I guess we all have our individual tastes.

Verdict - Rubbish

If we give the records which were good 1 point each and those which were OK half a point, the final score is 14.5/30, or 47%. We get this score a lot.

Dutch Top 40 1995: Week 35

These were the new entries in the Dutch Top 40 that never made the UK Top 40:

Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo - Stars

If it wasn't for Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo I probably wouldn't be doing these posts. This was a record I first heard when a mate did a happy hardcore mix. It was also a record that DJ Vibes would play out regularly at the time. When YouTube became a thing I started discovering videos I never knew existed and I have to say I found this particular video quite disturbing.

Gordon - Omdat Ik Zo Van Je Hou

We've seen Dutch singer Gordon twice already this year and both times he was doing songs in English. This time he's singing in Dutch and it sort of makes sense why. It's a cover of "Tu M'Aimes Encore" by Celine Dion which is in French so I guess there's no point in doing it in English if it was never in English in the first place.

Gerard Joling - Zing Met Me Mee

On the basis of this video it would appear that Gerard Joling had a huge following in Holland give the number of people there and the fact they're all singing along. His Dutch Top 40 career began in 1985 and he had hits as recently as 2013. This was his final Top 40 hit of the 90s. He's also a TV presenter in Holland.

Andre Hazes - Leven Op T Plein

We last saw Andre Hazes in the first Top 40 of the year. He's a Dutch singer with 36 albums and 55 singles to his name and was almost 2 decades into his Dutch Top 40 career at this point. 

January Charts: 1973

Here are the new entries ranked from best to worst:

1. Focus - Sylvia

2. Thin Lizzy - Whisky In The Jar

3. Junior Walker And The All Stars - Take Me Girl I'm Ready

4. Archie Bell And The Drells - There's Gonna Be A Showdown

5. Electric Light Orchestra - Roll Over Beethoven

6. Harold Melvin And The Bluenotes - If You Don't Know Me By Now

7. Dandy Livingstone - Big City/Think About That

8. Focus - Hocus Pocus

9. Dave Edmunds - Baby I Love You

10. Free - Wishing Well

11. The Who - Relay

12. The Temptations - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone

13. Billy Paul - Me And Mrs Jones

14. The Sweet - Blockbuster

15. Strawbs - Part Of The Union

16. Elton John - Daniel

17. Status Quo - Paper Plane

18. Gary Glitter - Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)

19. Olivia Newton-John - Take Me Home Country Roads

Even with and expanded scoring system it's tough giving each record a score. You may be familiar with the term "a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work". This is the approach I'm trying to go for with my scoring logic.

The Temptations are one of my favourite music acts from this era but my least favourite of their big hits by far is "Papa Was a Rollin Stone". Many of us have stand out records we don't like by our favourite musicians and for me and The Temptations this is the one.

In theory I should give this record zero, but when you take an average record by an artist you can take or leave such as "Daniel" by Elton John and ask would I really prefer to listen to this record than The Temptations one, the answer would be no.

On the other hand you have a band like Focus. All I know about them is they're a Dutch progressive rock band and have never heard any other their records outside the 2 that feature in this batch which were their only 2 Top 40 hits. "Sylvia" is just brilliant, rather short for a progressive rock tune but I feel I could easily listen to a 20 minute version. "Hocus Pocus" is just bonkers and a good record in it's own right but suffers from the fact it's not "Sylvia".

In 2nd place we have the Top 40 debut of Thin Lizzy with "Whisky In The Jar". It would take another 3 years until we'd see them in the Top 40 again.

Then we have some Motown in 3rd place with "Take Me Girl I'm Ready" by Junior Walker & the All Stars, a more obscure one but great partly for that reason. Some northern soul in 4th place with "There's Gonna Be A Showdown" by Archie Bell & the Drells.

Next up we have "Roll Over Beethoven" by ELO which would rank near the bottom in my ratings of their hits but that's a sign of how good they were, this is a great record.

None of the records are bad enough to score zero but the worst record is "Take Me Home Country Roads". It's an inferior cover of a song that I don't particularly like.

In some ways 1973 is unchartered territory for me. In my numerous attempts at exploring the 70s charts I begin with 1970 but don't make it this far. At the same time it pre-dates the Top of the Pops reruns. However I'm quite encouraged by this batch of records generally speaking.

Score: 55

2000: The Good Old Days? - August

August 2000 was the last time we had a big battle for number one that was widely talked about. This was between Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Victoria Beckham despite neither being the lead artist on their respective records.

The winner of the battle was Sophie Ellis-Bextor who provided vocals for "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)" by Spiller. It started life as a pretty good instrumental record but the addition of the vocals completely ruins it and therefore it gets no points.

Victoria Beckham became the final Spice Girl to have a hit outside of the Spice Girls by providing vocals alongside Dane Bowers on "Out Of Your Mind" by True Steppers. UK garage had got so big so quickly and now the pop singers were jumping on the bandwagon and it was predictably rubbish.

The rest of the UK garage records this month get full marks. This includes the best record this month which is "Battle" by Wookie featuing Lain. Another one of the decent garage record this month is "Call It Fate" by Richie Dan.

I mentioned in September the origins of me getting into R&B via garage. Maybe that was a bit premature because we have another example this month. "7 Days" by Craig David was his first non-garage record. However the first version of this I heard was a garage version on the tapes, but when I heard this R&B version I thought it was decent too.

Another decent R&B record this month was the only Top 40 hit for Ruff Endz with "No More". There weren't any rap new entries this month.

Some decent trance record this month including the excellent "Time To Burn" by Storm, an alias of Jam & Spoon who were early pioneers of trance in the early 90s. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers had a decent record in "Californication" and I think I owned the album of the same name by this point. We also had the Top 40 debut from indie band JJ72 with "Oxygen" which is a decent effort.

Onto the worst record and this month it comes from Mandy Moore with "I Wanna Be With You". A very cringeworthy record. 

Here's a list of the records with the best on top, worst at the bottom and the good ones in green, OK ones in amber and rubbish ones in red (and in no particular order):

Score: 40%

Here's a look at the chart:

We have the best August of the 21st century.

UK Number 40s: Sanna Nielsen - Undo (2014)

 

The vast majority of Eurovision songs don't make it into the UK Top 40. The ones that do tend to either be the winning songs or the UK entries. However this Eurovision entry was neither, it was from Sweden and finished 3rd. 

The winner that year was "Rise Like A Phoenix" by Conchita Wurst and the UK entry was "Children of the Universe" by Molly and both made the Top 40, as didn't 2nd placed "Calm After The Storm" by Common Linnets. This meant that 4 Eurovision entries made the Top 40 that year, the only time that had happened previously was in 1974.

Although this was the only UK Top 40 hit for Sanna Nielsen, she'd already got quite a lengthy discography by this point. She was about to release her 8th album which is her final album to date. It was also the 7th time she'd attempted to represent Sweden at Eurovision.