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Meanwhile, in the UK... Fortunately, of the three singles that topped the British chart in these five weeks that for the first two, Color Me Badd's I Wanna Sex You Up, was dealt with on Wednesday and that which took over for this last week is the subject of the Tom column after next. Be prepared, this is the start of at least two weeks here of "yeah, it's still number one", and that envelopes the itself marathon spell it spent on top of the Hot 100. That still leaves two weeks in the middle. When Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice revived Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a run at the London Palladium they hit upon casting Jason Donovan in the lead, an experienced actor and successful singer who could hold a big tune but most notably able to bring young people in their endless hordes. With Donovan as lead for most of the second half of the year it was as huge a success as expected, a cast recording topping the album chart (in September) and the lead single doing likewise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfNMhu9wdl0 And so to cover nearly everything else that did well over that time. The peaks in the first two weeks are full of songs you'll know well enough - Amy Grant's Baby Baby at #2, Madonna's Holiday (a last ditch reissue as The Immaculate Collection wouldn't stop selling) #5, Shiny Happy People #6, Light My Fire (off the back of The Doors movie) #7. The highest peak in the third week is the first single and title track from Erasure's fifth album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LV75PMseU

Meanwhile, in the UK... We're into one of those interesting occasional chart moments when sexually reserved Brits get worked into a frenzy by a record explicitly about sex. Namely, I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd, which bettered its four weeks at Hot 100 #2 by spending three weeks atop the British chart, the year's tenth best selling single. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxu3pq319r0 Talking of brazen sexuality, the arguable peak of SexKylie is upon us. Still under the SAW banner - though DNA of Tom's Diner fame remixed it for the single version and added a rapper - Shocked got to #6, her second straight single to do so having seen the first eleven go no lower than 4, but the video, her TV appearances in PVC and suchlike and the mondegreen in the chorus means it's the best remembered of this phase. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwYB-DVS27k So what would you think Pixies' highest charting single of their lifetime* was? Monkey Gone To Heaven reached 60, Here Comes Your Man 54, Velouria did better with 28, but topping the lot was, at #27, unfortunately the start of the end. Here, have a live version from that year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJVLOkVQ88 (* Debaser reached #23 in 1997 when issued to promote the Death To The Pixies compilation)

Bob Stanley is also bringing out a prequel to Yeah Yeah Yeah, his incredible history of pop book, in May. https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/music-dance/signed-lets-do-it-the-birth-of-pop,bob-stanley-2369537082230

Meanwhile, in the UK... Four and five weeks at number one for Cher's The Shoop Shoop Song. At number two was Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee). Or Gypsy Woman (La Da Dee La Da Da). Or Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless). Come on, guys, stick to one. Crystal Waters was a jazz trained vocalist who met production team The Basement Boys, who by this point included one of the writers of Girl You Know It's True. Waters wrote the lyrics including the vocal hook herself, based on memories of someone she used to see busking, and even though "she's homeless" isn't even the part that people mostly remember Waters had it appended to the title for US release so people would listen to the lyrics. In the UK it came out under the first of those titles and debuted at #3, setting the record for the highest new entry position for a debut single until mid-1993. She would reach the UK top 40 eight more times until 2007, one a remix of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KztNIg4cvE A few weeks ago I commented about how Gulf War longing and hope for safety feels like a big part of why Oleta Adams' Get Here was such a big hit, and much the same must be said for singer-songwriter Beverley Craven, who toured with Bobby Womack before being recommended to Warners by Go West's manager. Her self-titled debut album had been released almost a year earlier to little attention but a reissue reached #3, the album taking off as a result and going double platinum. She won Best British Newcomer at the 1992 Brits and summarily never reached the top 30 again, though her second album made it to #4. After that she spent more time bringing up her children, successfully fought off breast cancer twice and still tours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeqPGXBzUn8

Imagine if Queen had had to have a gay mixed race African as singer.

Meanwhile, in the UK... Week three of five at number one for Cher's The Shoop Shoop Song. Cathy Dennis had first come across the pop radar as vocalist on D-Mob's commercial house hit C'Mon And Get My Love, which reached #15 towards the end of 1989 and later #10 on the Hot 100. Even before that she had signed up with managerial svengali Simon Fuller for the start of a career long association, and he guided her solo material in a laser focused dance-pop direction. After a couple of flops Touch Me (All Night Long), a reworking of a 1984 track by Wish featuring Fonda Rae which she cannily rewrote some of the lyrics for thus claiming a writing credit, hit #5 and then #2 on Billboard. Unlike America, where Just Another Dream and Too Many Walls reached 9 and 8 respectively, Dennis never troubled the UK top ten again, though she did have three top 20 singles, the last a 1997 cover of Waterloo Sunset during a period where she went quasi-Britpop. Once her recording career ran aground she moved into writing full-time and that seemed to work out - Toxic, I Kissed A Girl, Can't Get You Out Of My Head (and Kylie's Come Into My World), Kelly Clarkson's Before Your Love, the fastest selling debut single in UK history for first Pop Idol winner Will Young, undervalued gems like Rachel Stevens' Sweet Dreams My LA Ex... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xiwxfxVUZA Wait, did I just invoke Britpop? That's both forced (on my part) and timely, as a band who were seen as baggy bandwagon chancers mostly getting publicity because of their doe-eyed singer and secretly expected to be old news within a year were having a top ten single moment, reaching #8 in this week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJzCYSdrHMI

Paul Young had never stopped recording since his heights but his appeal had become more selective. The unlikely figure that got him back into the top twenty, never mind top ten, after six years was behatted Italian blues-rocker Zucchero, who added Young to an overwrought English language re-recording of his 1987 song Senza Una Donna and got it to #4. That would be his last visit to that high a place but there were two more top 20 singles the next year and he still tours, releasing an album of soul covers produced by Arthur Baker in 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V69vs8JmXYM Bernard Sumner had, not for the first or last time, fallen out with the rest of New Order so decided to make a solo album. Not enjoying the process he called in Johnny Marr, a fellow admirer of Italo-house, and intended to make a series of white label recordings but when Neil Tennant heard and expressed an interest it was supergroup time. First single Getting Away With It reached #12 at the end of 1989, which earned them a Depeche Mode tour support by itself. After that the pair reasoned there was something in the commercial dance-rock crossover borrowing influence from each other's bands and made a whole album, the next single from which reached #8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7sVSSb2mU4

Meanwhile, in the UK... Cher's The Shoop Shoop Song spends its second week at the top. Time to complete the Stadium House Trilogy, not quite matching 3am Eternal's success but #2 behind a runaway number one was hardly bad. As always, Last Train To Trancentral had its roots in two earlier tracks, one from the Pure Trance series of 12"s themselves derived from the Chill Out album, the other from The White Room featuring Ricardo Da Force's rap and vocals by reggae musician Black Steel. This single was the Live From The Lost Continent mix, retaining the strings, chord progression and a sliver of the rap while sending the rest deep into the rave floor and spreading in references to the last two singles. Trancentral was the KLF's spiritual home, presumably next to Mu Mu Land, and more veraciously was the name of their recording studio, converted from a Victorian terraced house and location of both a squat and many weekend-long parties. Blue Man Group later used the song in the finale to their shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC_zffOenk8 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark had last made the top 40 four and a half years earlier, but then they hadn't released anything for three of those years after everybody but Andy McCluskey left. Continuing initially on his own, then with hired hands, the album Sugar Tax took a more overtly dance-pop turn and its first single, with schaffel/glitter rock drums and a lyrical nod to Sister Ray, reached #3, OMD's joint highest charter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMST3H69-Os

I mean, we've only just passed The Stonk. Two and a half years down the TNOCS line I'm going to have a real headache.

The On-U Sound System were a dub collective based in the fertile underground scene of Bristol, from where we've already seen the influence via Neneh Cherry and Unfinished Sympathy, this formed around prolific producer Adrian Sherwood. One of his main sidemen was Gary Clail, who had been releasing singles through their On-U label since 1985. Taking increasing influence from the new dance music and increasing social conscience, his sole top 30 single was bass-quaking dub house featuring a sample from Billy Graham revoiced by Clail when permission was refused. Soon becoming the theme for influential BBC new music show Snub TV, Human Nature reached #10 in the first week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Qg73_lK1A At #6 in the second week covered, welcome Britain's top light entertainer. The hyper-postmodern surrealist comedy of the Channel 4 series Vic Reeves' Big Night Out had earned the workshy fop alter ego of Jim Moir a huge cult following and then, with the aid of supporter Jools Holland, a record deal - he'd been in several bands in his youth, including very briefly the influential early industrial act Test Dept, and included semi-crooned covers and originals in his shows. I won't let the album that emerged lie, because there's a bigger hit to come from it and the contributor list is remarkable, but the first single was a cover of the Matt Monro showstopper from the 1966 movie of the same name. The music is shrouded in mystery as nobody is officially credited with it and the listed producers don't exist but it's thought Robyn Hitchcock and Squeeze collaborator Andy Metcalfe with members of Swing Out Sister were responsble. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbhTAnHVObQ

Meanwhile, in the UK... Chesney Hawkes' The One And Only stayed on top for its fifth week before being toppled by another song from a film that was about to spend five week atop. Cher's retitled version of Betty Everett's 1964 Cashbox R&B chart #1 and Linda Lewis' disco cover 1975 UK #6 It's In His Kiss, made for her movie Mermaids which was released this month in the UK (six months after America) with its Ryder and Ricci throwback video must have struck a chord somewhere as it didn't get past #33 on Billboard. The single was produced by Peter Asher, formerly half of Peter & Gordon, whose A World Without Love was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic largely through being written by Lennon and McCartney as Paul was dating his actress sister Jane; later he discovered and managed James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCpKQjqb8Y4

From the previews it looks like more than one video doesn't embed at once, which would affect TNOCS (if making it a lot quicker to scroll through)

Most households couldn't see the Simpsons in 1991 - it was on Sky satellite channel alone and didn't make it to the BBC until 1996 - but Bartmania had already given them a number one with Do The Bartman so a follow-up from The Simpsons Sing The Blues was required, written by Matt Groening and DJ Jazzy Jeff and reaching #7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVusSqEzVHY We already had one Minogue but she was showing signs of having her own ideas and career plan, so the backup was required. Kylie's younger sister Dannii had actually been the more famous at first in Australia as a child soap actress and then star of the self-defining Young Talent Time, but it's hard not to think her being signed in 1989 to the same label that initially picked up Kylie (Mushroom Records) wasn't driven by the existing familial success. Debut single Love And Kisses, part produced by Danny D from acid house moral panic progenitors D-Mob, got to #8 so it clearly worked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znZm90a88HU

Meanwhile, in the UK... A fourth week at number one for Chesney Hawkes' The One And Only. Madonna's Immaculate Collection had been as big a hit as hoped - biggest selling album of 1990, eventually over three and a half million sales, longest stay at number one for a solo female until 21 - so the other new song apart from Justify My Love being released as a single seemed natural especially after radio picked up on it, reaching #3. Not, I suspect, that Madonna though the same, as it's not on the later compilation Celebration and the video was a cut and paste deal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPV8pBMINU The Wonder Stuff formed in the West Midlands hotbed of a lot of ragged, dance-aware guitar bands and had had a number of top 40 singles since 1988. Their top ten breakthrough, reaching #5, was the jaunty stylings of The Size Of A Cow, the first single from the album Never Loved Elvis that alongside a huge standalone single to come would make 1991 their year in some ways. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFwyuXXijS0

Although it didn't chart In These Shoes? is probably among her best known songs now, and was doubtless helped elsewhere by Bette Midler covering it, where it seems to have become a favorite among her most fervent fans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7JubI_BM0A Going back a tiny bit, Maccoll actually offered Walking Down Madison to Alison Moyet, who thought it didn't suit what she was doing at the time but eventually did it at a tribute concert in 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji5Bwp7O9v8

As Tom mentions, the vocal members variously did a whole lot of backing vocal work. Here's the two Jimmys on a late period Madness slow burner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJFMYoz4Uuw Chandler and Chambers are on Kirsty Maccoll's surprisingly effective take on hip-hop (co-written by Johnny Marr) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ploIlurVZ8 And all three contributed to the velvet glove/iron fist of a Microdisney album track, but not before stopping the session in anger at Cathal Coughlan's lyrics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni0QM4PWWQk

Meanwhile, in the UK... Chesney Hawkes' The One And Only spent its third of five weeks at the top. The Waterboys' The Whole Of The Moon was originally released on 1985's This Is The Sea, where it had already been their chart breakthrough reaching #26. Mike Scott always thought it deserved more, or at least the band deserved sales to match their critical reputation, so had it re-released when a Best Of was due and sure enough it soared to #3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBW8Vnp8BzU

Morrissey has entered the chat Morrissey has been hit by a double decker bus

By 1991 James were an unconventional stadium-worthy act awaiting their unconventional stadium-worthy hit. That wouldn't be the 1989 single Sit Down, as near eight minute tracks inspired by Doris Lessing and Patti Smith tend not to be. However, having been caught in the Madchester wave they reworked and remixed the track, released a four minute version and watched it reach #2, sitting behind Chesney Hawkes for three weeks. A long, strange chart career was born, and they're still playing the big spaces to this day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPNw_2h0CnU The Bee Gees were undergoing one of their periodical rediscoveries so decided to take on some modern dance production techniques for nineteenth album High Civilization. The lead single Secret Love, which bears more than a passing melodic resemblance to Chain Reaction, the hit they wrote five years earlier for Diana Ross, reached #5 but wasn't even released in America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVseOSFTGAw

The Pet Shop Boys decided it was time to take Bono down a peg or two, turning "a mythic rock song into a stomping disco record". In fact Where The Streets Have No Name (#4 in the first week) was a medley, turning into a version of Can't Take My Eyes Off You inspired by Boystown Gang's disco version, released as a double A side pointedly with How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?, a track from Behaviour about a self-preening and insincere pop star, though Neil Tennant has indicated the target was more Wendy James of Transvision Vamp. U2 in response issued a statement reading "what have we done to deserve this?" Tennant later said he and Bono had patched things up after meeting at an Elton John party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt2j79pca7c Down at #16 was the only top 40 showing for Banderas, a duo of Caroline Buckley and Sally Herbert, both former Communards, feayuring both Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on guitar and Stephen Hague producing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56LVUjK7Sz8

Meanwhile, in the UK... Buddy's Song was what would now we called a Young Adult Fiction novel, one of a series about a young teenager with estranged parents and a career criminal father. Author Nigel Hinton was friends with Roger Daltrey and was able with the backing of the Who's manager to get it made into a film, starring Daltrey and a group of low level UK TV names which despite its low budget came some distance from making its money back. And yet one of the songs written for and performed within it spent five weeks at number one. Chesney Hawkes' father Chip had been in the Tremeloes, who had two UK number ones and were B or C lister British Invaders, a cover of Silence Is Golden reaching Hot 100 #11. Scouted for the lead role in the film, he was given a song written and co-produced by Nik Kershaw (US peak Wouldn't It Be Good, #46 in 1984) very much in his style. It caught on unexpectedly, though the nineteen year old's looks helped, reaching #10 on the Hot 100. It was a sucess he would never match, follow-up I'm A Man Not A Boy stalling at #27 and never reaching the top 40 again, Hawkes slipping into a life of reality shows and minor singles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvMsp7s78Do

I'd never heard *of* One More Try, by the way, unsurprising as it got to #97 here.

Meanwhile, in the UK... Another one of *those*, I'm afraid. Although they appeared in three episodes of The Young Ones Gareth Hale and Norman Pace were very much at the mainstream end of comedy double acts, having by this stage had three out of an eventual ten seasons of their sketch show. With the Comic Relief charity's biannual televised fundraiser coming around again and with the pair often utilising self-penned comedy songs and spoofs they were the choice for the year's tie-in single, with backing including Brian May on guitar, keyboards and production plus input from, according to the sleevenotes, Tommy Iommi, David Gilmour, Nick Lowe, Cozy Powell, Roger Taylor and, er, Rowan Atkinson. A single week on top did the business that needed doing, I guess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwfFFM-d6wk Greatness abounds elsewhere in this chart, with Losing My Religion in the first of three weeks at #19 and Been Caught Stealing briefly popping by at #34. That may not be something said of Rhythm Of My Heart, originally recorded by Dutch singer René Shuman, picked up on by Rod Stewart for his seventeenth (and penultimate) top five single, reaching #3 and Hot 100 #5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmljreTAgYI

The Gulf War let to some upheaval amongst the music industry. A leaked list revealed 67 songs banned from BBC radio for its duration - including I Shot The Sheriff, Love Is A Battlefield and Back In The USSR - the KLF's number one 3am Eternal had machine gun effects edited out of its intro, Bomb The Bass reverted to releasing under Tim Simenon's name, and Massive Attack were officially credited as Massive for one single, which inevitably was their first big hit, reaching #13. Luckily people remember the song a lot better than they do the temporary artist name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWmrfgj0MZI

Meanwhile, in the UK... In their active lifespan The Clash had never reached the top ten, London Calling falling one place short. However, as we've seen over the last few virtual years one should never underestimate the power of Levi's advertising. Having rejected approaches from advertisers for years, when the jeans company's partner agency called Mick Jones, who wrote the song (but he says despite speculation not about Joe Strummer or Ellen Foley), he approved the request reasoning that Levi's were part of rock culture. Furthermore he only allowed the reissue on condition that it was officially a double A-side with Rush by his own band BAD II (Big Audio Dynamite with the entire rest of the lineup changed), though obviously nobody noticed that part during its two weeks at the top even when it was Billboard Modern Rock #1 for four weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN1WwnEDWAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8zs898lr4

20th Century, even.

I mean, she could have done this to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biafu215fUg The last UK number one of the 21st Century there.

I read it as trying to give a score to The Star Spangled Banner itself.

Meanwhile, in the UK... Do The Bartman spends weeks two and three at the top. Tom has often talked about how certain records become big hits by a fluke of timing, maybe chiming with a major event or national mood. Here's a prime example by Oleta Adams. Having been discovered by Tears For Fears singing in a Kansas City hotel bar and being invited to join them for The Seeds Of Love album and tour, Adams had been signed as a solo artist to the same label, Fontana, and Roland Orzabal co-produced her debut solo album Circle Of One. Released in May 1990, two singles had flopped but a cover of Brenda Russell's 1988 album title track Get Here soared to #4 in the first week of these two and then #5 on the Hot 100. The January 1991 release is surely a flashing indicator as to why, a song about longing and hoping for safe, quick return released as the first Gulf War began. Adams never hit the UK top twenty or the main US chart again but is still around, releasing her most recent album in 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkmC6RrPmfI In the second week Madonna's Crazy For You reached number two. Wait, what? Yep, the Qsound remix, masterminded by Shep Pettibone for The Immaculate Collection, was issued and matched its 1985 UK peak, one below its US position. Meanwhile, two places below... Tom, again, has written about how weird the background to some big hits is, whether through the idiosyncracies of local DJs or a whole load of balls falling just right. Only one, however, was commissioned as a triumphalist backing by songwriting team The Source to a documentary video about a 900lbs man losing weight. The video was never released and Candi Staton returned to the gospel music she'd gone into after her Young Hearts Run Free-driven disco success ran dry, having got involved with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's ministries. Simon Harris, the producer and remixer whose Bass (How Low Can You Go) reached #12 in 1988, had discovered the track as far back as 1986 and got it licenced by the club label StreetSounds. Years later Eren Abdullah at London's Solaris club bootlegged it with Frankie Knuckles/Jamie Principle's house standard Your Love, DJ Jon Truelove remixed it for his own label and the result reached #4. Staton was if nothing else surprised, having completely forgotten about it until being informed of its success. This is by far not the last time the top end of the chart would find room for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovsH0r-kna4

Surfing Magazines aren't by a wide distance the best act featuring vocals by an ex-member of Slow Club to have released their second album on 22nd October. NO I WILL NOT SHUT UP ABOUT EVERY US SITE IGNORING SELF ESTEEM.

Joy Crookes' first EP came out in 2017. Celeste won the two biggest honors a new British act can get, BBC Sound Of (the year) and Rising Star Brit Award, in 2019.

While we're here, imagine hearing this on the chart rundown radio show at #29 with no prior knowledge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdHS1sbV5xw

Acid house crossovers were far from dead yet. Nomad were the brainchild of Damon Rochefort - see what he did with the name? - and their second single reached #2 and topped the Billboard Dance chart. They wouldn't trouble the top ten again and Rochefort later retrained as a TV scriptwriter, so far writing more than 200 episodes of the legendary soap Coronation Street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x45BtoJpoks There was something in the air, as so soon after Enigma another ethnographic ambient new age act had a big surprise hit. Praise, two workaday musicians and a former Stock Aitken & Waterman backing singer plus Spandau Ballet's hitmaking producer Richard James Burgess, got onto a Fiat advert, leading to their second and only charting single being remixed by George Michael's cousin Andros Georgiou and reaching #4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fg4zV43AhU We're very definitely into the SexKylie era now, and while the next single will be its height What Do I Have To Do is the connisseur's choice, a #6 that's still in her live setlist to this day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxJm_Sy2aw

Meanwhile, in the UK... Another week on top for the KLF's 3am Eternal - which had the machine gun effect in the intro edited off due to the Gulf War - followed by one of those number ones that comes about as a result of a kid-friendly media craze. Given its status these days it's hard to recall that initially because of Bartmania the Simpsons was seen as bringing lowbrow/idiotic degeneracy to television through Bart and his T-shirt ready catchphrases, so when Michael Jackson suggested he write, produce and sing backing vocals on a Bart-centric song for the prospective cash-in album The Simpsons Sing The Blues it stood to reason that here was an opportunity to harness the whole anti-role model "Underachiever And Proud Of It" idea that so many took at face value, though due to his Epic deal (the Simpsons were going to... Geffen!) he couldn't be credited. That it spent three weeks at number one was remarkable enough as it was only showing on the pay channel Sky One, not making it to the BBC until 1996. If you knew nothing about the series you'd think from this that it was a lot more about jazz saxophone than it was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc8foK41qmo

Not the Smiths, but have you ever tried it with this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVtf9tg9fxQ

Same here, where it reached #60 in the UK. Their highest charting single here was When Your Ex Wants You Back reached #52 in 1984, comfortably outdoing its Hot 100 peak. With radio support it could have made headway but Radio 1 was starting to make uncertain steps into embracing club culture.

This is a busy top ten. I would never have put money on 2 In A Room's Wiggle It charting lower on Billboard (#15) than 3am Eternal, but I would have put everything on them never recreating the success of Wiggle It. WE INVENTED HIP-HOUSE, never forget that. The whole butts thing, that's definitely imported. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVzYH8xA02w If the guard is changing, it's time to say goodbye to Rick Astley as a singles chart force. Having supposedly escaped from a tour bus at the end of the campaign for his second album under Stock Aitken & Waterman, he had RCA buy him out of his PWL contract, grew his hair, adopted white soul man tailoring and announced his new music would be more "mature". The album Free featured Elton John on piano on two tracks, the single Cry For Help was co-written by Rob Fisher, of Naked Eyes, Climie Fisher and hating gravel. It reached #7, Free #9 and until his post-Rickrolling nostalgia regeneration from 2016 onwards that would be the last either top ten saw of him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2xel6q0yao The Smiths' highest singles chart placing is #8 - exactly the same peak as a record that samples Johnny Marr's guitar from How Soon Is Now? reached. Soho were chiefly twin sisters Jacqueline and Pauline Cuff; Hippy Chick reached #2 on Billboard Hot Dance Club Play and that was their only significant chart activity anywhere though they continued throughout the rest of the decade and appeared on the soundtrack of the first Scream film with a cover of the Icicle Works' Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILaTgQBKRbE

Meanwhile, in the UK... Two very different number ones over this fortnight. The first was six and a half minutes long, because when you're Queen you can do that. Innuendo was clearly intended as a new Bohemian Rhapsody in its shapeshifting sections, operatic interlude and prog leanings - Yes' Steve Howe plays flamenco guitar on it, the only other musician ever to play guitar on a Queen song - and was given blanket coverage as such at the time, ensuring it became their first number one since Under Pressure ten years earlier, but not only do few regard it as among their classics these days but there are far more famous tracks on the album of the same name that, at least under their own steam before Freddie passed, weren't anything like as big commercially - The Show Must Go On, These Are The Days Of Our Lives, I'm Going Slightly Mad. It's also just occurred to me that they all, if sometimes obliquely, refer to Mercury's health when it was being covered up publicly. Anyway, Innuendo the single had just the one week at the top and didn't make the Hot 100 at all. It would be their last top ten single of Freddie's life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2N0TkfrQhY If you're looking for a sound and band that defined British pop in 1991 in many ways it was in the act that displaced them. 3am Eternal was another track that began life as part of the KLF's Pure Trance series before being heavily reworked for the Stadium House trilogy as the Live at the S.S.L. version (Solid State Logic being the model of their mixing desk), full of big rave keyboard motifs, self-mythologising, sampled crowd noise, vocals by soul great PP Arnold and the debut on rap of the late Ricardo da Force. Two weeks at number one, #5 on the Hot 100, Drummond and Cauty were suddenly, somehow unstoppable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDsCeC6f0zc Until they stopped it. Jumping ahead in the story a bit here, but for the subcultural hell of it, at the end of that year a re-recording was made featuring the grindcore band Extreme Noise Terror. Intended to be played on the Christmas Top Of The Pops until the BBC got cold feet, it was instead saved for a limited edition 7" and the biggest beanfeast of the year, the Brit Awards, where they won Best Band (and sent a motorcycle courier to pick up the trophy before burying it in a field near Stonehenge) The other stories about that night are legion involving dead sheep and Bill Drummond considering cutting his hand off onstage, but just the performance complete with Bill Drummond firing blanks over the audience's heads was shown as-live on prime time BBC1 with next to nobody outside the awards staff aware they were about to do this. The voice you hear at the end is Scott Piering, their publicist and regular speaking voice on their records, announcing "the KLF have now left the music business". Three months later they announced their retirement and deletion of their back catalogue, never to officially return. (Until it started appearing on streaming services this year, that is) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGNz0IW8vQw

Meanwhile, in the UK... A single week number one here too, and one with technically two titles - Sadeness (Part 1) by Enigma was issued as Sadness (Part 1) in Britain for... spelling reasons? Given the track is inspired by the sexual desires of the Marquis de Sade maybe they didn't want the censorious press and radio heads looking too closely into it. Enigma was the concept of Germany-based Romanian musician and producer Michael Cretu, who got his start playing keyboard on Boney M records and after more than a decade of making and working on music conceived the idea of bringing together new age electronic floatiness and what was then known as 'world music' into a mystical whole. So: a number one in fourteen countries and Billboard #5 based on a French libertine, featuring Gregorian chant vocals in Latin, with additional French lyrics ASMR'd by German pop singer Sandra, hugely successful in mainland Europe and more directly Cretu's then-wife. Reportedly the fastest selling single in German history, it's essentially the downtempo ne plus ultra. There were two second parts, one called Mea Culpa released in 1991 that didn't make the UK top 50 and an actual Sadeness (Part 2) in 2006. Frank Peterson, one of the co-producers of the record, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in 2009 claiming his work was being used illegally but it seems to have got nowhere, maybe because someone quietly informed him that Capella Antiqua München, the German choir sampled on the record, had sued him and his colleagues in 1994 for using their work without permission. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F9DxYhqmKw We will see Enigma in the charts again down the line - they claim 70 million worldwide record sales - but not as much as we'll see Sealhenri Samuel, though not as often as you'd think as he only had three UK top ten singles and one of those was a reworking of Killer, the rave anthem he'd hopped on and made an enormous crossover hit. Having fallen out with Adamski over his initial lack of credit he signed to ZTT, handed production over to Trevor Horn and saw his self-titled debut album reach number one and win the Best Album Brit Award, the first single peaking at UK #2 and Hot 100 #7. Doesn't this sound oddly like some of the work William Orbit would do at the other end of the decade? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fc67yQsPqQ

Meanwhile, in the UK... There are many things that can be said about Iron Maiden, but one is they definitely knew how to exploit the first week sales market for the benefit of their fanbase before the majors caught on to the possibility in a big way over the years ahead. Off the back of five singles that had charted no lower than #6, almost all in their first week, the traditionally quiet first weeks of the new year were an ideal target for a brand new song. Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter - and how people loved that this knocked Cliff Richard's none more Christian Saviour's Day off the top - was originally a Bruce Dickinson solo track for the soundtrack of Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, where it had won the Razzie for Worst Original Song. Iron Maiden reclaimed it, reworked it, released it on Christmas Eve (the day after the official Christmas chart was published) and despite minimal radio play here we are, two weeks as their first and only number one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0J7XnbUN5o