1990 Cliff Richard: Saviour's Day

I'm not sure at what point the 'Cliff Richard Christmas Single' became something to watch out for every December, but I know that in some quarters of the nineties it was regarded as a tradition up there with holly and trees. After the po-faced, arms length jollity of 'Mistletoe And Wine', 'Savour's Day' at least has some fire in its belly and a purpose in its step as Cliff gives thanks to another year done. Though the word 'Christmas' is noticeably absent, there's no doubt what the message is here ("Life can be yours if you'll only stay. He is calling you, calling you"), but what could so easily have been heavy handed sermonising (yet again, Cliff's face on the cover doesn't look like he's in the mood to get the party started) is wrapped up in a good value hook that the song can never wait to return to and a "Raise your glasses drink to the King" refrain that would have eased the guilt of those loading up the boot with slabs of lager no end. Look, there's even some cod new age pipes to get the Pagans involved. It's hardly the first pop Christmas song I look forward to hearing, but at least it doesn't have me itching to ram my fingers in my ears the way his previous one always does. It doesn't cancel it out, but seeing as it's Christmas we'll call it a draw. For now anyway.

1990 Vanilla Ice: Ice Ice Baby

Perennial whipping boy of white faced rap, Vanilla Ice and his theme song come pre-loaded with such weight of critical bile and ridicule that you wonder how it ever dares to show its face in public anymore, even ironically. Not since those St Winifred's girls sang about their Grandma has a song been such the focus of a united and definitive front of 'THIS IS SHIT' criticism that dares rather than invites contradiction. To be fair, a white guy hi-jacking a black medium in such an outrageous and overwhelming manner (his 'To The Extreme' album sold over 11 million copies worldwide) was tailor made to knock noses out of joint, but since the acceptance of Eminem, the whole 'look at the white guy rapping' novelty has faded enormously, not least through the fact that Eminem does (did?) it so well. Maybe time then to pause and re-evaluate his forerunner's input into the genre.

What always appeals to me most about rap is the machine gun delivery of a good rhyme, the free flow of words that, from the mouth of the best artists, tumble and spark against each other like the notes of a John Coltrane riff. On this point, 'Ice Ice Baby' falls at the first. True it has words aplenty over its whole four minutes but they've no direction home - with all the spark of a wet match they file by in a series of crude cut and paste images of supposed self aggrandisement so vague in their slung-togetherness ("Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle, bum rush the speaker that booms. I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom") they could double as self put-downs. And to add injury to their insult, they're not delivered that well either - rather than rap, Ice instead talks quickly and in a voice with no inherent rhythm or passion that uses the 'Under Pressure' bassline as a metronomic clicktrack to keep it all staid. And yes, that sample DOES grab the attention early in its audacity but then soon lets go when nothing more is done with it until it becomes a crutch that withers and snaps.*

There's 'Yo' this and 'yo' that, DJ's to the left and gunshots to the right but it's all pose with no substance - 'Vanilla' is apt; this is to rap what Pat Boone's 'Long Tall Sally' was to Little Richard's original; a one time wild dog with its balls cut off only this time I don't hear the influence of a conservative establishment engineering a response to damp down the wilder excesses of der yoof or even a cheapjack cash in on black culture. No, on 'Ice Ice Baby' Vanilla is a genuine fan doing his best. The problem is it's just not good enough, but it's hardly his fault that 11 million people thought otherwise.

* Compare this with 'A Tribe Called Quest's 'Can I Kick It' that used Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side' bassline as a similar launch pad but then cut it free once orbit was achieved.

1990 The Righteous Brothers: Unchained Melody

Second time at the top for this and a visit that by itself is not without it's own irony - 'Unchained Melody' comes from the soundtrack of the long forgotten prison drama 'Unchained' whereas its new lease of life was down to Jerry Zucker's from beyond the grave rom-com 'Ghost'. But I can't begrudge it that - this Righteous Brothers version unfairly only managed to reach number 14 on its 1965 release yet it remains (for me anyway) the definitive article, totally eclipsing Jimmy Young's thin gruel hit version from ten years earlier.

What makes it better? After all, it all sounds so rote in its execution, but like watching the scene setting opening three minutes of Orson Welles' 'A Touch Of Evil', it's only when you analyse Welles' one unbroken shot that you appreciate there's genius at work here. Phil Spector, popular music's own Orson, supplies a production that winds in the slack by slowing the song from a Bolero to a heartbeat. And by knocking down his usual wall of sound there's acres of space for Bobby Hadfield to slow burn over centre stage (though credited to the Brothers, this is a solo vocal).

For the first half of the track anyway - though Spector's savvy enough to fill the blanks with a wash of echo that highlights just how alone Bobby is, the simple slam of a drum at two minutes winds up the intensity as Hadfield's initially measured vocal goes wobbling off piste with increasing desperation until an anguished "I neeeeeeed your love" at 2:57 puts a crack in the bell of his tenor, bringing his frustration to the boil in a cry that wants to believe that stating something baldly enough will make it so.

But it doesn't, and he crashes to earth again, chaste in his emotion and still very much alone apart from an appeal to a God who may or may not be listening to make him happy. Performance art writ large maybe, but I never tire of listening to 'Unchained Melody' in the same way I never tire of watching Laurel and Hardy films; even though I know full well what's coming, it still manages to slow boil me unnoticed in its low heat like a frog in its saucepan. And who remembers the pottery now either?

1990 The Beautiful South: A Little Time

The Beautiful South have always walked a fine line for my affections. At times insufferably twee and/or worthy, there is at others a genuine edge of grit and subversion in their output that warrants a double take. This dichotomy was there from the start - I think the point I'm trying to make can be summed up from both their 'Song For Whoever' debut single, where a surface of sugar hid a lyric of withering cynicism, and debut album that originally came with a cover depicting a woman with a gun in her mouth, subsequently changed on complaint to a picture of two fluffy toys yet with both variations aptly managing to represent the music contained within.

When they walk the line dead centre they walk it well, but not so when they waver too much to one side. Which is what 'A Little Time' is prone to do through its own indecision. Essentially a dialogue between a couple with a relationship on the rocks, Dave Hemmingway's 'male' provides a laconic, 'it's not you it's me' vocal of tired resignation ("I need a little time, to think it over. I need a little space, just on my own") whilst Brianna Corrigan responds with stinging fire ("Funny how quick the milk turns sour, isn't it, isn't it.Your face has been looking like that for hours, hasn't it, hasn't it").

I confess I've always had a soft spot for songs with an internal call and response dialogue and I tend to see 'A Little Time' as a PG version of Tindersticks 18 rated 'Travelling Light' where Stuart Staple's in denial bravado is taken apart brick by brick by Carla Torgerson until he's reduced to a nothing but a shell. It's a satisfying conclusion and that's something 'A Little Time' doesn't have - the song's video brings it all to life but it also underlines the fact that 'A Little Time' is a random episode from a long running soap opera. The characters here have a back story history we're not aware of and a future we're not shown, but with the absence of either it tails off with a whimper, a book with the last page removed or left unwritten and it's a situation at odds with the song's own clipped, no fat brevity. The tension keeps it sour and interesting enough to make 'A Little Time' a good song, but it's not a great one and not one of their best.

1990 Maria McKee: Show Me Heaven

As far as music goes, I've always liked 'well kept secrets'. By that I mean an artist or band whose work I enjoy enormously but who has never found mainstream success. Like Maria McKee. In 1990 I'd long been a fan of her cowpunk band Lone Justice and the little diva's 1989 debut solo album still appears in any 'all time top ten' lists I compile. But whilst others are keen to bring their latest discoveries to the attention of a wider audience, I prefer to keep mine to myself, snobbish in my exclusivity (and probably too scared to cast my pearls before swine in case they don't grunt in approval). Sometimes though I have no say in the matter, a fluke hit or wider exposure can come from nowhere for the most spurious of reasons and so it was with a heavy heart I greeted the news that Maria would be singing the theme song to the new Tom Cruise movie about a racing car driver called Cole Trickle. I'd have probably felt less dismayed if she'd revealed she spent her weekends sealclubbing.

That's not to say I thought 'Show Me Heaven' was a nailed on hit, because I didn't. In fact I still can't see it - the song goes for a slow burn smoulder, but the wood here is too wet to catch a spark no matter how hard Maria's voice tries to rub two sticks together. Because although Maria may have insisted on re-writing the original lyrics, 'Show Me Heaven' remains a dirge that builds to a brick wall, a "Show me heaven, please" cry of inertia and dependency that's hard to sympathise with. Maria sounds suitably wrought throughout, but with a power ballad with no pay off to deliver her angst has nowhere to go and she's left floundering like a fish in the sun. It's only at the 2:13 "and it feeeeeels divine" mark does the real Maria break clear of the doldrums to run a shiver down the spine, but it's not enough to pick this up off the floor.

1990 The Steve Miller Band: The Joker

Another song to benefit from dubious exposure at the mercenary hands of a Levi's jeans ad campaign, 'The Joker' is a tune I seem to have known for about forever yet for most of that time I'd always assumed its title was either 'Space Cowboy' or 'Gangster Of Love'. Can't blame me for that, both are there in its opening "Some people call me the space cowboy yeah, some call me the gangster of love" and both titles appeared as songs in their own right on the 'Best Of The Steve Miller Band' album that I'd seen knocking around. It was only in 1990 and this number one that the scales fell, though my confusion would no doubt have given Miller a wry chuckle at my mistake; 'The Joker' is song as lighthearted autobiography and the namechecking of his own previous output is deliberate.

Casting himself as the eponymous grinning, sinning, smoking, joker, high on life and whatever he was toking, 'The Joker' to these ears is so achingly seventies and so achingly American post hippy burn-out as to border on parody. In it's good time shuffle and bounce I hear Matthew McConaughey's drug taking, high school girl loving (though old enough to know better-ing) 'David Wooderson' (from Richard Linklatter's own homage to the seventies 'Dazed And Confused') fronting Credence Clearwater Revival in an alternate universe.

Miller's casual drug taking and sexism ("You're the cutest thing that I ever did see I really love your peaches, want to shake your tree") may seem a tad objectionable and/or quaintly offensive to the more conservative, and maybe they are, but there's no malice or evil in his song ("I sure don't want to hurt no one") to raise it to the level of offence. Neither, to be honest, is there any indication that he'd give much of a shit what you thought anyway - 'The Joker' wasn't high art first time round in 1973, it's Miller poking fun at himself and encouraging his fanbase to join in with him at the altar of the Church of Slack, preferably with beer in hand. The recurring guitar wolf whistle is a joke too far maybe, but nobody here is taking anything too seriously and neither should we - it's a guilty pleasure, but not one you should be hanged for liking.

1990 Bombalurina: Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, television was a rather more staid affair than it is now. In those pre-VCR years it was still the main source of media based information and entertainment and, as such, it commanded a certain respect from all who participated in its delivery; the Queen's English was spoken, suits were worn and regional accents were rare in all programming from the news to children's programmes.

Timmy Mallet was one of the new breed of hyperactive children's presenter that emerged during the eighties, constantly hyperventilating on his own enthusiasm and punctuating his every announcement with some physical action that usually involved a large, inflatable mallet. And with his popularity at a high in 1990 via his morning 'Wacaday' show, a crossover single was as inevitable as pain following a gunshot wound.

“Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' is a cover of Bryan Hyland's 1960 original that celebrated the new bikini craze with a harmless slice of postcard humour. To try and contemporise, Mallet and his gang run it through a sequencer and tart it up with some dance ad-lib ("go on girl - ah yeah!") shapes that, when taken with the promotional video, hammer out all the wink by mistaking sexy for sleaze - Mallet is cast as a binocular toting peeping Tom trying to catch a glimpse of a pouting and worryingly young looking girl coyly hiding up parts of her body the titular bikini didn't cover while what look like a porn stars on a busman's holiday cavort around her. Annette Mills would not be so much spinning in her grave as drilling her way out through the bottom of it.

Surprisingly, for a man who made a career out of loud and obnoxious, Mallet handles the vocal remarkably faithfully to Hyland's own and his reserve lets out any fizz the music might have generated. Which wouldn't have been much - despite its best efforts at knees-up schoolyard anarchy, 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny' is not in the slightest bit sexy. Or fun. Or wanted really. Except by the sort of person who has a 'You don't have to be crazy to work here' sign on their desk at work. And they're welcome to it.

1990 Partners In Kryme: Turtle Power

By the time 1990 rolled around I was at an age by which I was meant to have put away childish things. I hadn't (and still haven't), but mass marketed, martial arts turtles wasn't something that generated any fondness on my part and the whole craze barely flickered my interest levels (save for an in-built pretension of feeling awfully smug that I could point out that, of the four, Donatello was named after a sculptor and not a painter).

'Turtle Power' deserves kudos from the off for being the first genuine black artist rap single to get to number one. Yes there had been hints and traces of its influence previously, but this was the real deal. That it got there on the back of the hokum of a kids craze is no reason to sell it short either; in fact, I think it rather works in its favour. Rap in 1990 was still relatively off the UK's mainstream radar and carried a generation gap widening, parental disapproving hint of danger and rebellion; when, in 1991, James Cameron wanted to symbolise the pissy attitude and anti-authoritarianism of John Connor in 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day', he simply had him wear a Public Enemy T shirt. Job done. And so in being marketed directly to pre-teen schoolkids, 'Turtle Power' acted as a priming, 'My First Rap Record' introduction to a parent worrying genre in a way that the spin offs of 'The Wombling Song' and 'The Smurf Song' that the pre-teen schoolboy me owned did not.

Not that Partners In Kryme were Public Enemy or anything approaching, but the very medium of the message toughens it with a 'me against the world' attitude that any aspiring rebel without a cause could empathise with. "Since you were born you been willing and able to defeat the sneak, protect the weak, fight for rights and your freedom to speak" - there's positivity there, and though 'Turtle Power' may be flimsily generic compared to the best of the genre, I'm happy to thumb my nose at the purists (and my own good 1990 self) and acknowledge that it was never aimed at the gangstas or black power militants who had hijacked rap for their own ends but at young TMNT fans keen to buy into the macho, psuedo violence of their heroes as they rescue the girl and get the baddie. To that end it also ticks the box marked 'job done', and if any of its young fans went on to listen to the similarly martial arts inspired Wu Tang Clan then so much the better.

1990 Elton John: Sacrifice/Healing Hands

The first solo number one for Elton, 'Sacrifice' is a woozy affair that harks back to the syrup drip of a mid eighties slow dance ballad. Lacking the clean directness of his best work, John's vocal no longer chips out the melody and instead comes covered in a toffee falsetto that tries to wring every drip of emotion from Bernie Taupin's awkwardly obscure lyric of betrayal. But Elton John is no Bryan Ferry lounge lizard, and though as a mood piece it's a shorn of rawness passable wallow, as a song it's a dull and torpid entry into his back catalogue that, being a bona fide hit, would struggle to find a convenient setting on the live stage in amongst his better songs.*

'Healing Hands' is the flip side in name and deed. A gospel-ish number, it's closer to the crowd pleasing Elton stomps of the seventies with an unexpected key change leading into a roof raising chorus that's always a delight. But despite it's bonhomie, 'Healing Hands' has the air of a whole song built around of a few hummed bars of catchiness which it's always keen to return to. Which is apt, seeing as humming along is about the extent of personal involvement I'm prepared to give it.

* Actually, Elton's 'One Night Only - Greatest Hits Live' album has it preceding the equally dull and torpid 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight'. Fair enough, but coming in-between 'Crocodile Rock' and 'Bennie And The Jets' then both must have been akin to a sluice gate directing a wave of tedium over the audience marking a good point to go to the bar.

1990 EnglandNewOrder: World In Motion

I don't much like football. Never have done really. Kicking a ball around the park is one thing, but the level of fanaticism otherwise rational people can display in supporting 'their' team is not something I've never been totally sold on. Mystifying really. But as I've said before, if there's one thing that irritates more than football on the TV it's football in the charts. As far as I'm concerned, there's more than enough of the stuff elsewhere without it clogging all over the medium I love with some out of tune, terrace friendly singalong (which is why it was fairly easy for me to deal with the previous entry we've met in this niche genre).*

But - what a dilemma; I do like New Order. In fact, in 1990 I loved them to distraction, and for good reason - as a band, they were entering the new decade on the jetstream of an unbroken sequence of highly impressive album and single releases that served as a quality benchmark within the late eighties 'indie' scene. In fact, 'World In Motion' itself almost picks up where the previous year's loved up and blissed out 'Technique' album had left off. Almost, but not quite; whilst 'Technique' was an ecstasy fuelled, sun kissed rush of hedonism, 'World In Motion' and its leaden "express yourself' chanting sounds altogether more earthbound and boozy in comparison, which given its context is kind of understandable.

Of course, it's still defiantly a New Order track, there's no doubt about that - the drum sequence/bass duels are unmistakeably the work of only one band, and Sumner's vocal intones the lyric with the same dispassion as he did on those perfect kisses and true faiths. "You can't be wrong, when something's good it's never gone": if the footie connection wasn't set out up front then a casual listener would be hard pressed to make the link until John Barnes starts up his tragi-comic rapping with the same grace and style he exhibited whenever he pulled on an England shirt.**

Yet without that link it's also weak New Order song, an identikit offering jerry built on the back of TV theme music written by the band's 'Other Two' contingent some two years previously. It's precisely that World Cup link that gives it the extra dimension it needed to appeal (which I'm happy to admit I don't really 'get') to its intended auidence and helped generate a lasting 'all together' sexiness in football presentation within and without the media that left the violence scarred eighties behind. Or perhaps it generated a new one too - hindsight appreciation suggests that 'World In Motion' kickstarted the early nineties Technicolor post politically correct era of the Loaded reading, lager swilling 'new lad' with Oasis just around the corner.

But as one era began, another ended; 'World In Motion' would be New Order's last release on the iconic Factory label and it would be three years until they released anything else. And what did follow later rarely scaled the heights of old. True, it remains a pleasure to see the words 'New Order' at the top of the charts, but it carries a whiff of the 'beginning of the end' in that I tend to view the placing as honorary, one based on a one-off fan base gee'd up by patriotic fervour rather than it being there on its own merits. Or to put it another way, it's not a song for me.


* That's not to say I dislike all football songs: I Ludicrous: 'Bring On The Substitute', Half Man Half Biscuit: 'The Referee's Alphabet' will forever and a day make me smile and I'll always have a soft spot for those that celebrate through satire rather than regional jingoism

** This comment was provided by someone apparently more knowledgeable than myself. I can say that I prefer it to Madonna's 'Vogue' 'rap' though.

1990 Adamski: Killer

For a brief period in the late eighties, Adam 'Adamski' Tinley seemed like the man from the future fallen to earth. A British Acid House pioneer, I hear a natural baton passing from the Hi NRG throb of 'I Feel Love' to the discordant frazzle of 'Killer'; to my mind it could be a PS to side two of Donna Summer's 'I Remember Yesterday' album, an example of the music we'll all be listening to in the future future.

For a dance track 'Killer' is a marionette with broken strings jerking to electric pulses that arc the beat from Tesla coils unseen. As a piece of music it's interesting enough to stand alone, though the vocal from Seal (and his own lyric) adds more than a ghost of emotion to the machine. Too much emotion perhaps - "Solitary brother, is there still a part of you that wants to live?"; while Donna Summer sounded seduced enough by the future on 'I Feel Love' to fall into and become one with its cybersex promise, Seal's vocal is a gatecrasher at his own party, forced to fight against Adamski's palette of sparking electronica to get his message across.* For a number one single that shifted half a million copies, 'Killer' still sounds remarkably off-kilter and underground, a genuine starting point for both the nineties as a musical decade and a long career of invention for Adamski within it. Pity then it was killed stone dead by the sheer awfulness of follow up single 'The Space Jungle' where the man crash landed and burned to a cinder. There was no coming back from that.

* Seal's vocal rests far more comfortably on his own, jag free 1991 re-recording. But in taming the peaks and troughs of the cardiograph to more of a flatline, it also tames 'Killer's unpredictability and vitality to produce a far less interesting song.

1990 Madonna: Vogue

After the celluloid misfires of 'Whos That Girl' and the curate's egg that was the 'Like A Prayer' album, 'Vogue' marked a handbrake turn by Ms Ciccone back to what she does best. By 1990 of course, Madonna was no stranger to self re-invention, but for my own part its all washed over me; I've never bought into any of the imagery and carefully orchestrated, career enhancing changes of style and my appreciation (or lack of) of her always rests on the single dimension of her musical output. And for a song that garners consistent praise from fans and critics alike, I have to confess no small degree of ambivalence toward 'Vogue'.

Saying that, I'm willing to suspend my suspicion and at least acknowledge what she's trying to do here; the problem is that this itself is not endearing and the fact that the concept and theme behind 'Vogue' itself borrowed heavily from Malcolm McLaren's 'Deep In Vogue' did/does nothing to bolster my opinion. Neither does the fact it was shoehorned onto the soundtrack of her then current 'Dick Tracy' movie and used heavily in its promotion despite originating independently from that project and not actually appearing in the film. Yet apart from all that, there was (and is) something deeply cynical about Madonna's deliberate attempt to align her own shining star with those of yesteryear and to set herself up as the logical conclusion to a line that runs from Bette Davis through to Marilyn Monroe (whose image Madonna was desperately trying to see staring back in the mirror at this time).

Then to hammer the point home, 'Vogue' comes equipped with a genre/generation hopping rap that namechecks the illustrious company Madonna was seeking to keep in a shoehorned rhyme of sycophantic starspotting . Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth - all fine, but James Dean and Fred Astaire 'vogueing'? And Joe DiMaggio??? Surely only there to provide a convenient rhyme for "Monroe". "They had style, they had grace" - yes they did, but seeing as Madonna's career nadirs of the limp 'Erotica' album and borderline porn 'Sex' book where were just around the corner, it's an observation that provides irony aplenty - can you imagine Greta Garbo indulging in such blatant self mytholgising/promotion and cavorting naked with Vanilla Ice? In public? Exactly.

Which is why none of 'Vogue' ever really rings true; regardless of what she thinks, the artist on 'Vogue' is outside looking in, a commentator rather than a participant and the Kobal/Richee lite framing and portraiture of Madonna and her cronies in the video is akin to Elvis flashing his FBI badge to anybody who took the interest to look, too wrapped up in his own daze of self importance to realise that nobody is falling for it. For me, Madonna remains the trashy disco kid crawling from the wreckage of a string of equally trashy films.

Well that's Madonna, what of the song behind it all? Well 'Vogue' has a feet first house groove for sure, but Madonna's vocal wraps it in Formica to add a brittle, plastic edge of friction to its smooth glide as surely as rigamortis adds stiffness to a once living body. It's a passable hybrid mix and match of whatever Madonna thought were 'in' at that point in time , but it captures neither the glamour of the old or the shock of the new - 'Vogue' confirms that dance music is where Madonna operates best, but this isn't the best of that output, not by a long chalk.

1990 Snap!: The Power

I've always viewed the dance music scene of early nineties as akin to the late sixties and seventies psychedelic and punk movements - that is, a genre huge in the counterculture yet a rare visitor to the popular mainstream in anything other than a diluted, radio friendly format. A sweeping statement certainly but broadly accurate, and unlike the UK/US axis that dominated the music of those earlier genres, dance was far more cosmopolitan in its sources. The language barrier didn't present the usual hurdle of course - the music was the thing regardless of whether it came from Milan or Manchester, but what's interesting is the number of European players who managed to score decent hits with a memorable, English vocal single during these years but then failed to follow it up with anything worthwhile (or at all in some cases).

Haddaway - 'What is Love', Culture Beat - 'Mr Vain', 2 Unlimited - 'No Limits' et al - brash, loud and tacky; these tracks are not for everyone, I admit, but I can confess to sometimes enjoying them in the way that I sometimes enjoy the teaser trailer for a film that distils all the 'best bits' into three minutes of 'wow' excitement where the full length features turn out to be rubbish. In the same vein, the likes of Dr Alban were never going to be here for the long haul, but listening to the bite sized best take on the best he could do ('It's My Life') is always a pleasure of sorts.

German band Snap! were the exception that proves my own self defined rule - they managed two chart toppers. We'll come to their second in due course but for now I can say my strongest memory of 'The Power' comes via one of my rare forays to a local nightclub in 1991 where I passed comment (to myself, if memory serves) that I couldn't believe the DJ was still playing it. Perhaps I was being a tad harsh on the him in hindsight for playing a song barely twelve months old, yet there was obviously something about it that led me to think it was much older than it actually was or else had dated incredibly badly.

It's probably a bit of both all told; there's no doubt that parts of 'The Power' still leap out like a jack in the box (generally anything Penny Ford plays a part in) and parts that don't (generally all the parts where she doesn't). I think my main beef with all this both then and now is that for a dance track, 'The Power' is for the most part less a dervish under a strobe and more a pedestrian soft shoe shuffle that's not helped by the hardwire hobble of Turbo B's rapping; competent it may be, but it also clumps like a lumpen millstone where it should hip and hop with exuberance; "like the crack of the whip I snap attack" - if only Mr B, if only.

All eyes turn then to Ford to save the day which she does with a ferocious gospel belt of a hook - "I've got the power!" - and by god we believe her, yet while she's a live wire plugged directly into the national grid, the rest of 'The Power' chugs along behind powered by Poundland batteries. Luckily, her hook is a strong one and it marks the difference between fishing all day and landing a monster trout right at the end and fishing all day without a nibble. Which is what 'The Power' would have been without it: la-di-da run of the mill and totally unmemorable.

1990 Beats International: Dub Be Good To Me

A mash up of sorts - 'Dub Be Good To Me' takes its melody line from the SOS Band ('Just Be Good To Me'), it's bassline from The Clash ('Guns Of Brixton') adds some Morricone for flavour ('The Harmonica Man') and opens with (I think) the first genuine rap to reach number one in the UK (lifted from Johnny Dynell's 1983 'Jam Hot'). And it all gels quite nicely thank you as ex Housemartin, pre Fatboy Slim Norman Cook lassos these disparate elements into a single of immense crossover appeal: Dub Be Good To Me' skanks with the throb and controlled menace of the streets tempered with the joy of making music to escape them.

And if that description seems a bit colourful, then its reflected in my own contemporary appreciation of the song as a gritty white man's hip hop that (in much the way that the Rolling Stones covering 'Little Red Rooster' did to the blues) presents the genre for a wider, homegrown audience without patronising the source or reducing it to cartoon. More than that, it was a hammer blow that helped break down my (then) aversion to all things rap and dance.

Lindy Layton plays no small part in its success; while she can't really sing for toffee, her piggy backing directly on Mary Davis's original SOS Band vocal to the point of imitation makes her strained, one syllable at a time huff and puff ("that, I'm, waste, ing, time, with, you") bounce like a hardball between the spaces left by Simenon's bass. It makes the "Just be good to me" sound more of a warning than a plea, and by coming across like the girl next door she adds an extra layer of urban credibility to a piece that could have so easily have descended into a lumbering novelty. Because one thing 'Dub Be Good To Me' does not do is lumber; it's as lithe as a rattlesnake sans spine (watch Layton in the video, she can't keep still) but at the same time comes layered with a rootsy bark that keeps tough a release that I don't think Cook, in any of his disparate guises, has never bettered.

1990 Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U

In 1990, your writer was gainfully employed as an injection moulding technician working a continental shift system in a Japanese owned factory; not the worst job he's ever had, but top three. After a particularly tiresome nightshift I was driving home in the early hours with the radio on when the DJ announced he was about to play 'the new Sinead O'Connor single'. I knew of O'Connor from a previous single ('Mandinka') I'd liked enough to buy its parent album ('The Lion And The Cobra') which I liked rather less - the work of an enthusiastic Patti Smith wannabe aiming higher than her talent would allow her to reach, I thought. So I wasn't expecting much from my radio that morning. And yet from as the opening bars gave way to O'Connor's vocal it caught and pulled me into its swirl like a paper boat in a whirlpool. At the one minute mark when the Linn drum almost apologised for the anti-climax of its entry, I pulled over into a layby to listen properly.

And my initial reaction remains the source of my overall impression of 'Nothing Compares 2 U'; if there's one thing it demands of the listener, it's that they listen. Because there's not much else to be done but listen to O'Connor take a can opener to her psyche in the aftermath of a relationship gone wrong with a genuine sense of instability in grief that scored a dead centre bullseye with me long before I'd seen the celebrated twin tears in the accompanying video. Yet as personal as she makes it, the lyric isn't hers - 'Nothing Compares 2 U' was written by Prince and originally recorded by his offshoot band The Family who serve it up with doilies on a platter of multi-layered, tri-partite vocals, cod dramatic bursts of synth gasps and an overly fussy saxophone riff that all carbon date its 1985 origins as surely as if it pulled up in a DeLorean. And yes, like the blight that afflicts most eighties AOR productions, they also make for a detached, emotionless and dryly impersonal listen, like hearing an overly loud drunk confiding with a nonplussed mate one table over in the pub. Yet although O'Connor's delivery managed to stop me in my tracks, in reality she's singing her song to no-one but herself; the lyric remains an open letter to the departed, but it's clear that as far as this relationship goes they're nowhere in earshot and O'Connor is railing at her own demons - "It's been seven hours and fifteen days": a statement of cold fact from The Family, but I bet Sinead would be able to count off the minutes and seconds too if you'd asked her, such is the intensity of her grief.

And taking it even further from The Family's version, there's a sombre sparseness to the funereal pace of O'Connor's arrangement that doubles the running time and generates a mood of critical self awareness that wouldn't have been too out of place amongst the confessional primal screams on John Lennon's 'Plastic Ono Band' album; O'Connor's voice takes centre stage and the music hangs warily in the background waiting to catch her should she fall. And fall she does - her honesty was fine when she was counting the virtues of the single life ("Since you been gone I can do whatever I want, I can see whomever I choose"), but by close there's the acknowledgement of a space that won't be filled by eating in "fancy restaurants" and then a falling away of pride on "I know that living with you baby was sometimes hard, but I'm willing to give it another try" where it all gets too much and her voice breaks off key and off tune and the words and syllables tumble into each other as inarticulate sounds of pain, their meaning now forgotten. Intense, yet it's neither corn nor pantomime - what's gone before has laid groundwork enough to allow that, when the facade of strength tumbles to the ground, the sincerity of what remains is beyond question.

Because there's more to her sincerity than that I think - when I made the comparison earlier with the Lennon's album I was thinking particularly of its closing track 'My Mummy's Dead' ("My mummy's dead. I can't explain. So much pain"). O'Connor herself is on record as saying that her tears in that video weren't staged but came spontaneously at the "All the flowers that you planted, mama, in the back yard. All died when you went away" line as she remembered the abusive relationship with her own mother, a heartache that, if true, spills over into her vocal too. But I'm not going to presume as to second guess what was going through O'Connor's mind in the studio, and in truth it doesn't matter anyway - 'Nothing Compares 2 U' remains a bare nerve of a single; O'Connor climbing beneath it's surface, shoveling out the garbage and investing the bare husk with a personal emotional impact that Prince probably never even realised existed within his own throwaway tune. I've consistently argued throughout the decades that a good cover version should add something to the song so that it identifies with the covering artist to make it unique to them rather than a lazy carbon copy. On 'Nothing Compares 2 U' O'Connor does that and more. The Family's version was little known prior to this, but even had it been a major hit I believe there's no doubt that 'Nothing Compares 2 U' would still have been regarded as O'Connor's song in exactly the same way it is now. A stunning achievement.

1990 Kylie Minogue: Tears On My Pillow

Another cover version, though not of the 1975 Johnny Nash hit of the same name - this 'Tears On My Pillow' is a 1958 doo wop tune originally recorded by Little Anthony & The Imperials and in a way that charms with an understated innocence. Taken from the soundtrack of Kylie's fifties based starring vehicle 'The Delinquents', Ms Minogue's take plays up those period roots by kitting it out in gaudy fifties fancy dress saxophone honks and "do do do dooo" harmonies while the lady herself goes at the lyric the way a Saturday night drunk goes at a kebab. "You don't remember ME!", "I'd gladly take you BACK!": Kylie hammers the words with the subtlety of a tourettes sufferer learning a foreign language by rote but her honk is a Bruce Lee five finger death punch that kills it stone dead. Can't lay all the blame at her feet though; by mistaking noise for emotion, 'Tears On My Pillow' sets to sea in a sieve from the off so it's no surprise it sinks under the rollers long before it loses sight of the shore. A mess, frankly.

1990 New Kids On The Block: Hanging Tough

More counter cultural tourism from Maurice Starr - 'Hanging Tough' skims the vapours off the contemporary hip hop scene and offers them up to a white homeboy fanbase in a safe package that's to the genuine article as Sunny Delight is to freshly squeezed orange juice. And to make sure it hits as wide an audience as possible, a poodle metal guitar solo squawks out an attempt to do what Eddie Van Halen did for Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'. Except it's cack handed and horrible.

This is 'Eau De Hip Hop', an approximation of the source that aims for a middle class, parent friendly hybrid of over and underground that offends no-one. The New Kids cop an attitude with some "Don't cross our paths cause you're gonna get stopped" posturing, but the mid eighties synth farts that power it have all the menace of Curly Sue and no-one is any doubt that these clean cut B Boys would turn into mummy's boys at the first hint of trouble. If it were otherwise, then it wouldn't be at number one. Not in 1990 anyway.

'Hanging Tough' would work far better as parody if it had any humour about it, but it doesn't. On the contrary, the consumerist hack work and bastardisation of the verve, originality and attitude of its influence is never less than depressing. Quite depressing.