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Dammit, was going to post that Saint Etienne cover. In fact it was from a whole EP, Heavenly Recordings having three of their bands cover Right Said Fred's first three UK singles as a fundraiser for the Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust. Flowered Up and the Rockingbirds, and there was a video medley made featuring all three tracks which the Fairbrasses gamely appeared in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPogIntvZsU

There's a few interesting records in the charts over these weeks, starting with 2 Unlimited reaching their titular number for the second time (Hot 100 #49) and bringing in vocalist Anita Doth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICWiaZvB_IY The Manic Street Preachers elbowed their way into the weekly music press from the moment of their first single in 1988, all aphorism heavy manifestos, literary quotes/allusions and attacking all other bands in interviews. The '4 REAL' incident, where ingenue head theorist and habitual self-harmer Richey Edwards actually carved the phrase into his arm during an NME interview in a fateful attempt to prove they weren't emperor's new clothes, had happened in May 1991, before they'd even reached the top 40. Signed to Columbia on the basis of their press weight and rabid fanbase, their third major label single and last before agit-glam debut album Generation Terrorists - the one they swore would sell a million copies upon which they'd split up - was the one that took them into the top half of the chart, reaching #16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgKXBJ2LZKo Ride were the kind of lank-haired, shoegazey band Richey and Nicky openly despised ("all those bands are educated and middle class but all they have to say is "we don't want to say anything"") Their second album Going Blank Again took them into the top five and the single into the top ten at #9 for the only time, the endless touring leaving them strained and exhausted, a turn for classic rock not well received by fans or, in time, band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tp0pqNRCOQ

Meanwhile, in the UK... Wet Wet Wet's Goodnight Girl stays on top for the first two weeks, followed by (like the US, actually) the first of a few really long stints at number one. Former Bananarama Siobhan Fahey and ex Clapton/Robin Gibb/Alice Cooper associate Marcella Detroit formed Shakespears Sister (yes, that's the correct spelling) in 1988 but given how high profile their union was something about it hadn't clicked with record buyers, as You're History's #7 was followed by three singles that failed to break the top 50, including the first from second album Hormonally Yours, so called because both were pregnant during recording. Its second single, however... Co-written pseudonymously by Fahey's then-husband Dave Stewart, what really caught attention was the eyecatching Sophie Muller-directed video which the duo have claimed was banned in Germany for supposed Satanic imagery. It's also their only song that features more of Detroit's vocal than Fahey's, not least her hitting a Careyesque F6 register. It spent eight weeks at number one (Detroit: "after six weeks it was almost embarrassing"), reached #4 on the Hot 100 and kicked off a run of chart success. Unfortunately what it also reputedly kicked off was a schism between the pair, Fahey feeling sidelined by what she saw as an unrepresentative song, leading to a year of infighting and arguments coupled with Fahey having mental health struggles. Fahey actually announced their dissolution second hand at the 1993 Ivor Novello Awards, where Hormonally Yours won best album and which Detroit attended but Fahey sent a message via their publisher wishing Marcella "all the best for the future". Fahey recorded a third album under the name but it went unreleased until 2004; the pair didn't speak again for 25 years until Fahey reconnected, and they released a new EP and toured in 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCYaALgW80c

Delayed to the 21st, apparently.

Oh, also: "Wham!’s 1984 holiday standard “Last Christmas,” for instance, was a chart-topper in the UK when it was new" No it didn't, it stalled at 2 behind Do They Know It's Christmas? and only made the top last year.

World Of Twist feel like a band who've only had their full due in recent years, partly because Noel Gallagher has talked about their major influence on him. Their take on where guitars went next after Madchester definitely deserved more and some of them went on to do interesting things besides.

Meanwhile, in the UK... We Wet Wet's Goodnight Girl's second of four weeks at number one. Just as it looked like Kylie Minogue was out, she was dragged back in. Out, that is, of becoming another Stock Aitken Waterman act relying on covers, as the SexKylie era was put on hold for her Chairman Of The Board reworking, though they'd doubtless argue that #2 charted better than her image overhauling previous five singles and Let's Get To It, the album it was added to at short notice, was her first to fail to reach the top ten. In a year's time, after three singles that failed to reach the top ten and a number one Greatest Hits album, she would have moved on fully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyOnxPc1VdM At #21, actually falling from the previous week's #17 peak, Bjork makes her top 40 debut. It would reach Billboard Modern Rock Tracks #1 but the band would dissolve at the end of the year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5fAWpv_axs

Meanwhile, in the UK... 1992 is a weird chart year on both sides of the Atlantic. Here as with Billboard there's only twelve number ones all year, but unlike the Hot 100 list they all have multiple week runs at the top. The first new chart topper of the year is the second, but only self-penned, number one for Glasgow's blue eyed soulsters Wet Wet Wet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI_MBT0GQrQ I've astonished people on here before by mentioning that Kiss' best known song in the UK by some distance is 1987's Crazy Crazy Nights, which reached #65 on the Hot 100. In fact of their six UK top 40 singles none troubled Billboard's big list any higher than 64. Case in point, their cover with changed lyrics of Argent's 1973 UK #18 God Gave Rock And Roll To You from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey equalled that song's peak of #4 without making the US chart at all beyond #21 in Mainstream Rock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmEK64OkjA

Five other singles peaked in the top five over these seven weeks but this is going on long enough as it is so I'll skip over Guns'n'Roses' version of Live And Let Die (#5), MC Hammer's ridiculous Addams Groove (#4) and East Side Beat's terrible Eurohouse cover of Christopher Cross' Ride Like The Wind (#3) if that's alright by you. Right Said Fred had all the makings of a one hit wonder. In the vast majority of countries, that's what they were. Hell, nostalgia here remembers them mostly as such, yet their first four singles made the top five. The second reached #3, with vocals by Jocelyn Brown going uncredited. I imagine she was used to that by now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y6u1gmEGWY Chicago's Kym Sims was a former advertising jingle singer who fell in with producer Steve 'Silk' Hurley, who famously had house's first UK number one in 1987. Her debut single reached #5 here and #38 at home, carrying on for one more top 20 single before going into songwriting with Hurley, where she co-penned CeCe Peniston's 1992 Hot 100 #15 and UK #10 Keep On Walkin'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuXNWI_fYSY Oh, room for one more - back in the first week of this period Smells Like Teen Spirit made it to #7. You don't need me to tell you about that, but you might do about the previous week's Top Of The Pops performance, recorded just after a revamp of the show had been put in place requiring artists to sing live over mimed backing. Kurt summarily decided to adapt a little, later claiming he was trying to impress Morrissey should he be watching. I do love how host Tony Dortie continues with his next link completely ignoring what's going on behind him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1khy9_E4h44

Three singles peaked at #2 in these weeks. Firstly in w/e 14th December and within a few hundred sales of becoming the Christmas number one, a song co-penned by Albert Hammond which has become a signature ballad for Diana Ross even though it never made the Hot 100 and only #37 on R&B Singles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdkU4MQBYKQ Business *really* picks up once we get to 1992, as in its first week the defining end, even though it wasn't technically, of the KLF journey. As usual elements date right back through their ambient LP Chill Out to the melody and some lyrics being on Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu's album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) - not to mention the self-mythologising of reusing the name, of course - with their plunderphonics nature referencing in it borrowing a riff from Voodoo Child (Slight Return). Intended as their big post-Stadium House Trilogy statement, a first attempt with an unknown different singer had failed when Jimmy Cauty came up with the idea of asking Tammy Wynette, Bill Drummond made the phone call and within days was on a plane to Nashville to record her vocal, understandably confused as she was by the content. Followers of KLF mythos and its connections to the Illuminatus! trilogy will note Stand By Your Man was released 23 years earlier. In the wake of the single's success - number one in 18 countries, #11 on the Hot 100 - the band were swamped with calls from faded stars wanting a KLF-backed career revival, which only hardened Drummond's dislike of the machinery of the pop industry. In a couple of months the story will see where that concluded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP5oHL3zBDg Talking of dance acts once seen as novelties but who quickly became countercultural crossover stars, The Prodigy's second single, better laying out Liam Howlett's breakbeat techno ambitions, was runner-up in the last of these weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY87o9IZXWg

Meanwhile, in the UK... Seven weeks? OK then. At least there wasn't much movement in the chart for the week between Christmas and the new year in those days; furthermore only two number ones cover the period, one of which (a cover duet) topped the Hot 100 in February 1992. The other was brought about by Freddie Mercury's death, Bohemian Rhapsody rushed out to add five more weeks at the top to the nine it had in 1975/76. It was a double A side with a Roger Taylor song already released as a non-charting single in the US alone, These Are The Days Of Our Lives, the video shot in May being Mercury's final public appearance, though as it had to be made in a rush due to Mercury's declining health a touring Brian May (whose Driven By You was at #6 in its first week at the top) had to be filmed separately and added in post-production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB4K0scMysc

Kemp wrote True about his unrequited love for/platonic friendship with Altered Images' Clare Grogan, which is understandable. The best Kemp-penned Spandau Ballet song is Musclebound, because it sounds like a Russian constructivist propaganda artwork invading jazz-funk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08M-9kHB_20

Meanwhile, in the UK... The next column subject completes its two weeks at number one. Altern-8 undermined the already commonplace idea of the faceless production goons with big-voiced singer. I mean, the duo *were* that, but deliberately, sporting chemical warfare suits and facemasks (ahead of their time, yadda yadda), giving most of their singles titles playing around with '8'/'ate' and dancing "like electrified monkeys" as one of the most hardworking of the rave live acts. Behind it all was a development of the May/Atkins/Saunderson Detriot techno sound into what would become known as breakbeat hardcore, all of which gave them a #3 debut single. Member Chris Peat standing in the 1992 General Election - he received 158 votes - was another eyecatching gimmick. The duo split in 1994 but other member Mark Archer revived the name in the early 00s and, because it's not just guitar bands who do this, has enjoyed a second live in old school hardcore nights. In 2013 Activ-8 was subject of a Christmas number one campaign, landing at #33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23dIXK-TEw

The whole #GravyDay thing is intensely baffling to those of us who have no idea about it (well, I hear it once a year because one BBC DJ makes a point of playing it annually, but apart from that) There's a theory in some circles that the US Christmas experience is rooted in the 1950s while the UK experience is based on the 1970s - a lot of the best remembered foods, TV specials and, yes, pop songs are from that decade. While, like everywhere else, Mariah and Wham! have taken over, two glam hits both released in 1973 still represent the festivities for many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpfHSqLXePI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJPc7esgvsA A poll last year actually named Fairytale Of New York as the most popular festive hit among Brits, but that's been discussed here often in the past. Outside the 1950s canon the only song not yet mentioned that rated highly was north-eastern blues-rock growler Chris Rea's 1986 single that only reached its #11 chart peak in 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSjq7x67kzM

My favourite of the many baffling things about Talk Talk is Tim Friese-Greene, essentially recruited to help Hollis down a less commercial path, had a year earlier been responsible for all but the vocals of this UK number one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRv4cdZxTdQ

And from your former colonial outpost, a happy, safe and peaceful Christmas to everybody. This is from 1993 but in personnel terms seems appropriate to where this is chronologically right now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKz-LVQ7Tcs

Meanwhile, in the UK... A new number one for two weeks which Tom will cover next Wednesday, if he's still working the holiday week. Straight off their first hit (see the last TNOCS) Deconstruction Records had a second (#5) with Merseyside duo Bassheads. The original white label featured samples of Once In A Lifetime, Pink Floyd's Is There Anybody Out There?, the Osmonds' Crazy Horses and Afrika Bambaataa's Just Get Up And Dance, all replaced with slightly different versions for the single. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1rUbfjogKc Meanwhile, down at #38, something was trying to stir. A boy band formed in the New Kids image, Take That were all over the pop press and TV as almost a stardom fait accompli, but actual record buyers weren't, um, buying it yet. This second single was followed by one that failed to make the top 40 at all, but by this time in 1992 things would start working out for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qoTyf5CksE

(UK #4, that is)

Six years later Rosie Gaines' diversion into house would reach #4 and Billboard Dance #6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWZrMwR7PR4

The house acts and collectives were really starting to show their chart-bound hands by now. K-Klass met at the famous Hacienda and settled in the north Welsh town of Wrexham. Remixing their second single as their third, it reached #3, the first big hit for house anthem specialists Deconstruction Records. They had two more top twenty singles but became busier as producers, including the Pet Shop Boys, and remixers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmhKOe4sx5s Deconstruction would become Kylie Minogue's home not too far down the line. For now she was still on PWL, being produced by Matt Stock and Pete Waterman, and duetting with also-ran Detroit R&B singer Keith Washington on one of her slushiest moments, reaching #4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSK71HZOTi4 And then there's the ever unfolding tale of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, because while the KLF story is between its commercial peak and spectacular end they resurrected their earlier Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu identity and reached #10 with an industrial techno track over which Drummond recites northern English town names. The original 1990 version actually featured Pete Wylie of Wah! - yes, even in this version they endlessly reworked themselves, adding part of the hymn Jerusalem to the end - and the remake was originally intended for The Black Room, their never completed hardcore album - that said, they do have one content drop of the five they promised in 2021 pending... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XLWEjN9eI

Meanwhile, in the UK... Vic Reeves' Dadaist take on retro light entertainment through his inexplicable series Big Night Out had made him a cult favourite, appearing on the NME cover earlier in this year - in fact we've already seen him in this feature as his cover of Born Free reached #6 earlier in 1991. The resultant album I Will Cure You has a remarkable personnel line-up, with production credits for both free jazz improv great Steve Beresford, who brought in several musicians from the scene, and the Human League's Phil Oakey. For his cover of Tommy Roe's 1969 #1 both here and in America - https://www.stereogum.com/2023331/the-number-ones-tommy-roes-dizzy/columns/the-number-ones/ - he'd initially contacted the Fall to be his backing band but only Mark E Smith was keen (this is according to Smith, by the way) so instead he went to the Wonder Stuff, at the peak of their own success. The result spent both these weeks at the top. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZzsi1y82Y8

Meanwhile, in the UK... Finally! After sixteen weeks, a period long enough to encompass the entire, #12-peaking chart run of Bryan Adams' follow-up single Can't Stop This Thing We've Started, Everything I Do (I Do It For You) is finally deposed. U2's second British number one was very different to the bought-in rootsiness of the first Desire, "the sound of four men chopping down The Joshua Tree" as Bono put it, which is presumably what confused America enough to stop it getting any higher than #61, if topping Modern Rock Tracks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDPenYIPtg Meanwhile a former punk and briefly member of 4AD band Ultra Vivid Scene remixed the B-side of his first single for his second, adding string samples from Angelo Badalamenti's Laura Palmer's Theme, a titular vocal from Daniel Ash's post-Bauhaus band Tones On Tail and a "yeah" from Jocelyn Brown, whereupon it surprisingly went to #10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o72NpKj0nxw And guitar-and-drum-machine provocative post-punk duo Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine wrote a song about child abuse and got it to #11, though not without attracting the attention of the Rolling Stones who sued over the stolen line in the chorus and got Jagger and Richards co-writing credits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV2pIWd58Mg

Falco has suggested that there's going to be a new Mclusky album next year.

I've mentioned a couple of times in the past where BBC Radio 1's Simon Mayo decided to start playing an old novelty record to see if it could be reissued and chart, with quite some success. He was at it again here, picking up on Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life from The Life Of Brian and sending it to #3. The B-side, pointedly, was I Bet You They Won't Play This Song On The Radio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UhHqcC6qu4 One place below was the theme song for the Rugby World Cup, adapted from both Holst's Jupiter and the patriotic hymn I Vow to Thee My Country, and sung by New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa. Because that's how we do things in this chart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3HxdyMxeEA Another wild stylistic jump into the final week and the last single to fall just the one place short of halting the Robin Hood monolith. Dutch Eurodance act 2 Unlimited were founded by Amsterdam-based Belgian producers Jean-Paul De Coster and Phil Wilde, led by rapper Ray Slijngaard and vocalist Anita Doth. That said, neither of them are on the UK single version of their debut, as the one line is sampled from The D.O.C.'s It's Funky Enough as part of an edit by Pete Waterman, whose PWL label licensed the single here. #38 on the Hot 100. Billboard's main chart wouldn't see them again, ours very much would. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPOmFUid3vA

Meanwhile, in the UK... Everything I Do (I Do It For You) weeks fourteen to sixteen. CAN IT EVER BE STOPPED? With two weeks at number two, the perestroika lighters-up anthem/conspiracy theory has sold a reputed 14 million copies worldwide but stalled at #4 on the Hot 100. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4RjJKxsamQ Another stadium-ready song dealing with current concerns lay at #6, Julian Lennon's environmental treatise was his third and last top 40 single, equalling the 1984 peak of Too Late For Goodbyes. George Harrison was invited to play the solo and while too busy for recording wrote some new riffs that regular sessioneer Steve Hunter played. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql1EnjVYrZM

Meanwhile, in the UK... Everything I Do (I Do It For You) week thirteen. At #6, a positive uplifting Eurodance hands-in-the-air anthem in the mode of You Got The Love. Rozalla Miller was born in Zambia, relocated to Zimbabwe where she had five number ones, then moved to London and became a club vocalist. Her big hit and sole top ten single (though four more reached the top 20) was one of those that got picked up by hordes of clubbers who'd heard it in Ibiza and Mallorca, going on to Hot 100 #37 the following year when she was support on Michael Jackson's Dangerous tour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqq7E0Sd84k

Which is ironic as that directly comes from the Illuminatus! Trilogy's Justified Ancients of Mummu, as do a lot of other KLF references (X Liberation Front, the number 23) A young Bill Drummond had worked on a theatrical staging of the whole Trilogy.

Chart peaks at 2, 3 and 4 in the second week, to be dealt with in order. Another near miss at stopping the Adams runaway train, Salt-n-Pepa's safe sex anthem was also #13 on Hot 100. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydrtF45-y-g Merseyside-originating techno-pop outfit Oceanic, fronted by the huge voice of Jorinde Williams, looked like they could either be a one-hit wonder or career overachievers. Actually they were neither, reaching the top 30 twice more after their one big hit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSkXLOi51nI And then there's the chart reliability of Erasure, ending a run of six top five singles out of eight by interpolating part of I Will Survive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygLy02y7_n8

Meanwhile, in the UK... Everything I Do (I Do It For You) weeks eleven and twelve. Another hot live dance act debut single, another earcatching sample, another big hit. Jez Willis and Tim Garbutt, met as promoters and DJs, formed Utah Saints, and their debut samples Annie Lennox's wordless vocals from Eurythmics' There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) and Gwen Guthrie's Ain't Nothin' Goin' On But The Rent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFP5hqVOzN8

Meanwhile, in the UK... Everything I Do (I Do It For You) week ten. Zoë Pollock was the aspirant singer partner of Youth, the former Killing Joke bassist who had become an in-demand producer and had been the musical half of Blue Pearl whose Naked In The Rain had been a big hit in 1990. Sunshine On A Rainy Day had reached #53 around the same time but a remix by another future in-demand producer, Mark 'Spike' Stent, sent it to #4. Follow-up Lightning charted at 37 later in the year but the album flopped and she disappeared from pop view, occasionally rearing her head with experiments in US rock, folk and latterly spirituality, being a shamanic healing practitioner and owner of a retreat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPOXhIlAy4g

It's a shame "Taylor's Version" caught on as the post-ironic suffix and not "features backing vocals by Phoebe Bridgers".

6th February, which may as well be some time in the Cretaceous period.

Four singles reached the top five in the UK charts from 10th to 24th August but three of them were US number ones, in December, January and February. (Does that make sense?) The latter of those is worth noting because it fell short of its Hot 100 peak as it shook its little tush at number two for five weeks. Not a record, remarkably. The last week of Adams conformatism, w/e 7th September, saw another three reach the top five - one debut hit at #3 by what would be one of the biggest bands of the decade, one at #4 by one of the biggest solo artists of the modern age, and one at #5 that's ridiculous. In descending order... Former piano prodigy Liam Howlett had taken to low level rave DJing in his hometown of Braintree when enthusiast Keith Flint was given a mixtape by him that had some of his own bedroom compositions on one side, made on a Moog Prodigy analogue synth. Flint suggested that he should start playing them out and he and friend Leeroy Thornhill would be his dancers, and furthermore suggested other friend Keith Palmer manage them on the basis that he'd been involved in the reggae scene. Instead Palmer, reusing his reggae soundsystem ID Maxim Reality, started MCing over the music. Once they had some momentum XL Recordings signed them to a four single contract. The first, Charly, sampled a well known child safety PSA into hardcore techno, which not only took off in clubs and then the charts but inspired a range of singles over the next year or two sampling children's themes that became known as "toytown techno", some more successful than others, rarely actually good. The dance specialist magazines hated them for dumbing down the evolving invention of rave. It would in time turn out they weren't the end of anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSTBFZ-To2E Meanwhile in a somewhat more expensive studio in Minnesota Prince was cutting together ideas from Lovesexy's Glam Slam, Graffiti Bridge's Love Machine and Get Off, a B-side from the latter album's single New Power Generation. A whole lot of new lyrics, ideas and contributors later, and a last minute addition to the Diamonds And Pearls album, the first single as Prince and the New Power Generation (Billboard #21) was ready to scandalise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f4BwQFF-Os And at #5... oh. One of those, I'm afraid. Among the personnel of BBC Radio 1's 1980s daytime DJ roster Steve Wright was attuned to a very particular style of irreverent zoo format-style DJ, with an in-studio "possee" and a cast of characters played by production team members. One of those was a Schwarzenegger parody portrayed by his producer Richard Easter, who off the back of Terminator 2 wrote (in two hours) and produced tribute spoof I'll Be Back. With support from Wright's show it reached #5. Wright is still on BBC radio while Easter now writes scripts for game shows, including the spiel for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, a show which has turned up here more than once in the past. They should have released their own novelty record, it'd have been number one forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsSRE5wl6ew

Meanwhile, in the UK... In January 1987 the Church of England's special envoy Terry Waite travelled to Beirut to negotiate with Islamic Jihad over British hostages they were holding, and was promptly taken hostage himself. He was released on 18th November 1991, and the joke going round was that his first words on emerging from captivity were "is Bryan Adams still number one?" As Tom mentions, Everything I Do had a record sixteen week run at the top of the UK chart. We are pretty literally in the middle of that, its last week at the summit of the Hot 100 being its ninth here. As a result, I've got quite a lot to get through here... The first week Adams did the double was also the first record that came close to ending the run. Now That We've Found Love was a Gamble & Huff song originally recorded by the O'Jays in 1973 that reggae outfit Third World had taken to #10 in 1978. New York's Heavy D & the Boyz had almost stalled in 1990 after dancer T-Roy died in a fall - Pete Rock & CL Smooth's They Reminisce Over You is a tribute - and their subsequent album Peaceful Journey was intended in his honor. The Teddy Riley produced single sampled the Third World version taking it in a hip-house direction, had Aaron Hall from Guy sing the chorus and went top ten across Europe and #11 on Billboard. The group would only reach the UK top 30 once more; Heavy D would appear on Michael Jackson's Jam, sing the themes to In Living Color and MADtv, recommend Sean Combs for his first music business job, act in The Cider House Rules, develop Soul For Real and die of a pulmonary embolism likely stemming from deep vein thrombosis in November 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNEgUPKxk7A Clivilles and Cole's Music Factory, who had already reached #3 with Gonna Make You Sweat, once again hired Freedom Williams and reached #4 both here and on the Hot 100. The Arsenio Hall Show was never broadcast in the UK, or at least nowhere that many would have seen it, so we had no idea what the reference was, we just liked the hooks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2ayWcJfxo Onto week beginning 3rd August, where two bands were busy repositioning themselves, one being Extreme's deservedly earned 2/10 More Than Words at #2. The Shamen had begun as an Aberdeen based psychedelically inclined C86 indie band - their first name was Alone Again Or - but co-frontman and co-writer Colin Angus discovered house early on and the band started experimenting with techno beats and sampling. That proved too much for the other singer, who quit leaving Angus to take over full time on vocals and bring in new musical foil Will Sinnott, whose background ranged from folk to kosmiche improvisation but now had similar ideas. They moved to London and plunged fully into the rave scene come 1989, picking up rapper/DJ/producer Mr C and becoming a huge live club act. In May 1991 they went to Tenerife to film a video for new single Move Any Mountain, a remixed version of 1990 single Pro>Gen. It was during some time off that Sinnott drowned while swimming. Angus decided to keep the band going, released the single and saw it become their first top ten hit, reaching #4 as well as #38 on the Hot 100. At the same they released Progeny, an album comprising 19 remixes plus 16 isolated tracks of the samples and beats used, which itself made #23. 1992 would be their year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PthnTuzKU3o

I thought leaving the tonal whiplash as it was would be funnier.

So I don't remember EMF being compared to New Kids, but by the end of 1990 when Unbelievable charted in the UK there was a sense that a lot of post-janglepop indie bands were selling their guitars and buying turntables, buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator because they want to make a Yazz (And The Plastic Population) record. A few months earlier we'd had Candy Flip, a loved-up duo who'd gone straight from rehearsal room to charts via the Shoom floor with a blissed-out cover of Strawberry Fields Forever with added Funky Drummer. Unbelievable was a shock to the system and Neil Tennant supposedly called them the new Sex Pistols but it quickly became clear that's about all they had, though in time honoured fashion they won a lot of the press over with "rock'n'roll behaviour", including the late bassist Zac Foley reputedly having a foreskin so large he could fit large fruit inside. It didn't last for several reasons - chart buyers had increasing amounts of Eurohouse to gorge on, New Order and Factory Records imploded, rave went in a very strange direction for a little while (partly due to the Prodigy, whose first single will be in the next UK feature) and then 1992 and all that implied for guitars happened.

Meanwhile, in the UK... In a sentence (if amended after this one) that you'll be reading a lot in this feature over the next few entries, no change at number one for the subject of the next column. Between 1989 and 1995 twelve of Guns'n'Roses' fourteen singles reached the top ten, a remarkable run of success. Their highest charting original was the one from Terminator 2, which pre-dated Appetite For Destruction, and peaked at #3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVzcQ4_khsM

Yes, now you mention it, it does. But he tries again regardless in late 1992 with something even wilder.

As for the last week, the single at #3 was still there a week later and I'll save it for Monday as otherwise I'd have nothing else to write about, but there's two very interesting records below it. Incognito were an offshoot of briefly successful jazz-funk outfit Light Of The World who would become the commercial crossover trailblazers for the scene stewing together funk, soul and hip-hop that became known as Acid Jazz. Always There was originally a 1976 single by jazz fusionist Ronnie Laws that Side Effect took into the Billboard Dance Club top 20 a year later. Jocelyn Brown had been a prolific studio vocalist whose clients included Chic, the Salsoul Orchestra, Cerrone and - yes! - Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes. She then sang backup for Bette Midler and Culture Club and had a 1984 UK #14 and Billboard R&B chart #2 with Somebody Else's Guy. A year after a line from her Love's Gonna Get You was sampled as the hook in Snap!'s The Power, and by now based in London, her addition to Incognito's stewing sound took it to #6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKDZsCcvG1k Cola Boy was a recondite Japanese bedroom producer who got his name after selling off his collection of antique Coca-Cola bottles in order to fund the making of his debut single... no, no he wasn't. But that was the story put about by Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne, who were inspired by the sound and structure of contemporary Euro-house into making something slightly off-centre in the same style. They knew they couldn't put it out under their established act's name nor retain Sarah Cracknell's demo vocals for contractual reasons, so after it took off as a white label Cracknell suggested her friend Janey Lee Grace, a former Wham! backing singer (and now regular on BBC radio), as the new singer; Stanley's musician friend Andrew Midgley became its public face as it reached #8. There was a second single, the Suzi Quatro-sampling He Is Cola, but it flopped and the project was quietly put to bed. Bitterly ironic, however, that both this and a much later dance track with Cracknell guest vocals both outdid the parent band's highest placed single. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1oyorCEDo0

So to w/e 6th July, where the highest peak is #10 for a Hot 100 #4 and another example of big gregarious bubblegum rock giving someone a solitary UK hit, a tradition that started some time around Rush Hour and stretches right the way to Stacey's Mom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv-34w8kGPM There's an argument that neo-soul is as much a British invention as American, with Sade and the smooth side of jazz-funk that became known as sophisti-pop developing the sound before, say, Terence Trent D'Arby had got going. The likes of Soul II Soul and Lisa Stansfield continued in their own ways but one man whose influence outdoes his firework-like chart career is classically trained Londoner Omar Lye-Fook. His album of the same title, with a fresh out of Soul II Soul Caron Wheeler on backing vocals, had actually been released in 1990 but a sleeper reputation build led to a major label signing and its soft bubbling title track reaching #14. His second album, the bluntly titled Music, likewise reached the album chart top 20 and two 1997 singles sneaked into the top 40 but he remained/remains more of a name to drop than a commercial force, despite appearing on a charity group number one many, many years down the line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pqoQP7WlV4 I don't know if the same influence can ever be attached to Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine but their big riffs, samples, drum machine and cynical socio-political, black humoured wordplay-laced lyrics made Jim Bob and Fruitbat huge live draws and gave them eleven top 40 singles, the first being a takedown of intimidatory slum landlords that made #23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQXRsshaZk8