1991 Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody

A straight re-release following the death of Freddie Mercury on November 24, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' is the first time the same song has got to number one twice on separate occasions. From one angle the song remains the same and the write up from 1975 is as relevant here as it was then. Perhaps moreso - I wrote then that "'Bohemian Rhapsody' stands freakishly alone in the rock canon, a song that’s uniquely of itself and occupier of its own space" and this is no less evident now. "'Bohemian Rhapsody’ remains a curious proposition that has not been withered by age or repetition" (I wrote) and even now this most un-nineties of singles doesn't sound like a squatter in the charts. In fact, nestled up against Elton it sounds right at home. Overall though, I think it shows what an iconic and defining song it became for Queen both for the old fans in mourning and all the new ones not born in 1975 who'd been wowed by it at Live Aid. Nuff said really.

1991 George Michael And Elton John: Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me

A cover version/re-recording of Elton's own 1974 single, 'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' wasn't written as a duet and trying to cram it into that format strains the seams until they split. John's original was no wallflower in the angst stakes, but its piano led sparsity at least let in some warmth via some Beach Boys harmonies on the chorus. This take amplifies the soft rock bombast and gives it a going over with the drama brush but it only serves to abandon the intimacy of the lyric in the process. George honks the first verse, Elton honks the second then they swap alternate lines before coming together for a united honk of a finale blow-out - this isn't so much interpretation as a performance, an exhibition bout between two former prize fighters past their prime. The song and the performers inject a sense of gravitas and occasion whilst the 'all proceeds to charity' angle extends a hand of goodwill, but really.....'Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me' in this incarnation is a ornamental white elephant, cast in plaster and sat cumbersomely on a mantelpiece with its only visible purpose being to gather dust.

1991 Michael Jackson: Black Or White

The lead-off single from the new 'Dangerous' album, there's a lot to like about 'Black Or White' at first blush. For a start, the fake metal false opening has a smart wit that appeals, and the inherent anti-racist angle of the lyric has a socio-political edge not readily associated with Jackson. Dig deeper too and the bridge to the chorus ("Now I believe in miracles, and a miracle has happened tonight") has the jovial pop bounce call-back to early Jackson 5 recordings. That's the good stuff anyway, but this coin is top heavy and to flip it over reveals rather more that's....not so good.

For a song seemingly created with one eye and two feet on the dancefloor, 'Black Or White' is carried there by a guitar cranking out the limpest funk riff this side of Duran Duran. Instead of a gutsy strut, its looped crackle pervades the melody like a broadcast from a de-tuned radio - there but only barely and certainly not enough. And after a strong opening in general, there's a palpable feeling of deflation by about the two minute mark when you realise that this is all there is to it and its going to repeat it right to the end. Jackson throws in a rap to try and flavour the pot, but it's token and sounds it; 'Black Or White' borrows nothing from the genre nor attempts to meet it half way. In fact, 'Black Or White' is an apt title - in straddling straight white rock with black music styling, Jackson sounds like a man lost who would rather hedge his bets than follow any particular muse. The guiding hand of producer Quincy Jones would be sorely missed throughout the nineties and replacement Bill Bottrell's attempt here to turn Jackson into something approaching AOR was an early indication of how quality control would go walkies in his absence.

1991 Vic Reeves And The Wonder Stuff: Dizzy

A cover of Tommy Roe's 1969 hit by a nineties comedian in his pomp - while Vic Reeves was never one to shy away from bursting into song on his 'Big Night Out', entertainers from one sphere using their fame to indulge their pop star fantasies usually make for grisly results. But with all credit to Reeves he carries the song with the honest gusto of a true fan - not just of the song, but the medium it was operating in - belting out the lyric with the verve of a man who can't believe his luck. More than that, The Wonderstuff provide a groove with a clout sorely lacking in Roe's original to make this 'Dizzy' as chunky and satisfying as a Mars Bar, a slice of feel good that can be enjoyed in its own right even by those who didn't much care for 'the man with the stick'. And couple this with a James 'Sit Down' t shirt and you'll have all the exhibits you needed for a museum piece illustrating exactly what early nineties, pre-Britpop indie/student culture was all about.

1991 U2: The Fly

"I was explaining to people the other night, but I might've got it a bit wrong – this is just the end of something for U2. And that's what we're playing these concerts – and we're throwing a party for ourselves and you. It's no big deal, it's just – we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again." So voiced Bono to a Dublin audience at the end of a live show in December 1989 to provide a 'Ziggy Stardust-like statement of dramatic intent (Bono was never one to miss a trick) that the things were going to change. And to initiate that change, the band, with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in tow, duly decamped to Berlin's Hansa Studios to record the next album. 'The Fly' was the first official release from those sessions.

A chunk of abrasive noise hitched to a lolloping industrial beat, the change was self evident; there were acres of space between 'The Fly' and their eighties output and my initial surprise at hearing 'the new U2 single' was genuine. Increased familiarity however reveals it to be more akin to U2 MK1 than the work of a 'different' band, albeit U2 MK1 as played underwater. And that deceit is down to the hand of Lanois - instead of their usual pitter patter, the guitars now gurgle and bubble over a drunken thump of a hip hop on crutches drum pattern while Bono's stretched, metallic vocal comes filtered through a snorkel tube as he phones home a soundbite lyric stuffed with observations about everything and nothing. In short, nothing really that the band hadn't already essayed in 1998 on 'Rattle And Hum's 'God Part 2'.

Ok, so at heart 'The Fly' doesn't shatter the U2 mould as much as it might lead you believe, but it does crack it, and the biggest crack comes via Bono's own doubletracked, low key falsetto ("Love...we shine like a burning star. We're falling from the sky") on the chorus that acts as counterpoint to his dominant rasp elsewhere; it sweetens the distortion to perhaps give the biggest indication that U2 had left the macho 'rock and roll' mythos of Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum behind to take a leap in the dark proper. I'm no fan of U2 and in truth the parent 'Achtung Baby' is one of the few albums of theirs I can listen to all the way through, but in saying that I've never found 'The Fly' to be one of its highlights. Once that trying just a bit too hard non-code has been cracked, then it quickly runs out of things to say, and the sound that remains does not reward repeated plays once the initial surprise has worn off. Interesting, but it would lead to better things.

1991 Bryan Adams: (Everything I Do) I Do It For You

Us Brits have always had time for a good power ballad. Chicago and Foreigner had hit number one in the preceding decades with power ballads par-excellence and 'Everything I Do' is a clear throwback that same genre; the gentle swell of eyes closed emotion, enough force to clench the fists and a bear hug of a chorus that reassures that love really is all you need - 'Everything I Do' ticks all these genre boxes with a thick red crayon. Job done. But none of that accounts for the phenomenal success the song enjoyed in 1991 - number one in over twenty countries with its greatest success here in the UK where it managed a record breaking 16 weeks straight at the top. That's equal to the weeks at number one in the USA and Adams' native Canada combined and beating the previous UK record of 'Rose Marie's eleven straight weeks in 1955.*

Which begs the question - why? I wasn't around in 1955 so Whitman's tally has always been just a statistic to me, but I WAS most definitely around in 1991. And even though my interest in chart music at that time was at a low ebb, this song was inescapable in its ubiquity to the extent that a red mist descended whenever I heard Adams' vocal pipe up. Which was often. Too often. I was literally sick of hearing it to the extent I walked out of a shop that had it playing on the tannoy. Enough was enough. But a lot of water has passed under a lot of bridges since then and my anger has cooled, not least because on reflection I realise I've barely heard the song played anywhere in the intervening years.

'Everything I Do' hasn't (to my knowledge anyway) passed into that revered 'classic rock' club whose members generate an automatic respect simply by virtue of their titles alone, and as a small contribution to the canon of social research I today asked a 1990 born, music fan colleague what Bryan Adams and 'Everything I Do' meant to him. After initially confusing him with Phil Collins, he confessed he'd never heard the song and greeted the 16 week statistic in the same non-plussed way I greet Slim Whitman's. And this is kind of interesting to me - why has something once so phenomenally successful now faded into the wallpaper? And why was it so successful in the first place?

Well first things first, I think a lot of its original popularity was down to its adaptability - in essence 'Everything I Do' is a sensible shoes re-make of Adams' own earlier 'Heaven' (courtesy of a sweet Michael Kamen arrangement). Adams might adopt the over sincere, throat scrape vocal of a poor man's Springsteen that's so beloved of the genre, but the music itself is far more sedate. Instead of overwrought, its explosions are controlled, muffled to the point of neuter; the drums don't thump, the power chords don't crash and even the guitar solo coughs politely before entering. No, 'Everything I Do' is not out to rock any boats and the light dusting of calming bland from producer 'Mutt' Lange serves to broaden its appeal wider than an arms aloft, lighter in hand stadium brigade; weddings, funerals, first dates or messy break-ups - 'Everything I Do' and its promise of a rosy eternity could soundtrack them all.

And ironically, I think that fact also plays a major part in why my mate had never heard of it - when all's said and done, there's nothing particularly remarkable or memorable about 'Everything I Do' to make its appeal want or be required to span twenty years. Solid without ever being spectacular, the piece could be a practical example from the 'How To Write AOR' manual that The KLF never got round to publishing. Co-writer Kamen always knew his way around a melody and he knocks off the rough edges inherent Adams' usual output, but I'm afraid the whole "Yeah I'd fight for you, I'd lie for you. Walk the wire for you, yeah I'd die for you" tone and bluster is a head on collision with the cliché truck and its only that extraordinary statistic that adds anything 'extra' to what would otherwise be just plain ordinary. 'Everything I Do' was a song out of time in 1991 and the passing of time has not provided it with a place to call its own to settle down in posterity.


* Frankie Laine's 'I Believe' managed a staggering 18 weeks at number one in 195, but they weren't consecutive - it was knocked down to number two twice and came back twice, a fact that's surely far more impressive than this 16 week run?

1991 Jason Donovan: Any Dream Will Do

No longer part of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman roster, 'Any Dream Will Do' is a song from a nineties revival of 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' at the London Palladium where Donovan played lead under Steven Pimlott's direction. A staple of school and amateur productions from the day it was written, this version takes no chances with the formula and plays it straight and true with Donovan himself (despite that leather jacket cover pose) acquiescing by abandoning any pop star touches to sing in bland character that doesn't try to be bigger than the song. 'Any Dream Will Do' always had a pretty melody underscored by those backing 'Ah ahhs' and this is no different. It veers close to an exaggerated Morecambe and Wise dance routine on the "A crash of drums, a flash of light. My golden coat flew out of sight" middle eight, but that's about as showbiz as it gets; the rest remains strictly draughty church hall and the song is allowed to stand or fall by itself. That it stands is not down to Donovan per se; this version is respectful enough for it to be anybody be up there singing, but its number one status surely is.

1991 Color Me Badd: I Wanna Sex You Up

Not the first boy band by any stretch, but in 'I Wanna Sex You Up' I can hear the origins of a certain breed of boy band that would pervade the nineties charts like knotweed. Like the recently deposed New Kids On The Block, Color Me Badd take their base sound from the street, but instead of stressing the macho posture in a radio friendly way, the sound is locked to a soulful loverman groove that would soon become ten-a-penny under cover of a newly defined R&B genre. And a groove is really all there is to this, a set of dodgy promises ("Just lay back, and enjoy the ride", "Let me light a candle so we can make it better, makin' love until we drown") that trundle along like bad foreplay waiting for a climax that never comes. 'I Wanna Sex You Up' is a one note pony of flat, would-be sensuality with a title whose constant repetition brings it close to harassment - guys, if it takes this much persuading then she's probably not interested. And even if she was, she's probably fallen asleep by now.

1991 Cher: The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)

A cover version of a 1964 Betty Everett original, Cher pulls out all the Cher stops with a wrecking ball of a vocal to pave over Everett's hesitant attempt at self assurance with a ballsy, cock sure enthusiasm that brokers no dissent. "Oh, Oh, Oh, hug him, squeeze him tight. To find out what you want to know" - Cher knows her way around a bloke and the maturity she brings could so easily have buried the simple naivety of the song under a welter of bombast. But this version has a chunky sing-along-ness that craves audience participation (those "Oh oh oh"'s could have been sampled from the party staple that is Lulu's 'Shout') with Cher herself happy to play Mein Host ("Oh NOOO, that's NOT the way, and you're NOT listening to all I say") to get things swinging. The world didn't need anther cover of 'The Shoop Shoop Song' in 1991, so give thanks that at least it got a decent one.

1991 Chesney Hawkes: The One And Only

On a lads night out in a strange town at the end of the Nineties, we found ourselves in a bikers type pub where the clientele were getting a little rowdy. One of the barstaff, buoyed by a self importance that only minor authority can bring, strode over to try and calm things down. But alas, before he could open his mouth to utter a single "now then lads", the bikers broke off from their antics and sang "EYYYEEAAAAAAMM THE ONE AND ONNLLLLYYYYYY" as one while pointing at him before cackling with laughter afterwards. Yes, the unfortunate barman was the spit of Chesney Hawkes and after that spontaneous broadside any authority he thought he might have possessed trickled away like piss down a drain and he slunk back to the bar, tail between his legs. I think if he'd come out waving a samurai sword then that would have wilted too.

I suppose in hindsight it was quite fitting that Nick Kershaw's song should reach out across the decade to let the air out of his tyre; "For this job I'm the best man. And while this may be true, you are the one and only you" - 'The One And Only' is the ultimate pre-teen meow for the bedroom rebel who thinks he has a cause. "I am the one and only, nobody I'd rather be. I am the one and only, you can't take that away from me " - sung into a mirror while holding a hairbrush, it generates a defiant empowerment and confident self assertion that all to readily evaporates once foot is set into the real world. And as harsh as that may seem, I'm afraid I've always seen Mr Hawkes that way.

Pale of face and floppy of hair, Ches always looked like a milksop waiting for a stiff breeze to blow him over, even one provided by the mocking mouths of laughing bikers (I've not seen the 'Buddy's Song' film this is from so I can't vouch as to the character behind it). And to compliment, 'The One And Only' is a limp and sunlight starved footstamp of a tune. It might have a decent glam crunch on the chorus, but probably for the first time on these lists I've come across a song that just plain seems too young for me, and listening to it makes me feel like I've been caught browsing a copy of 'Just Seventeen' in the newsagents. Best put it back on the shelf and hurry on my way.

1991 Hale & Pace With The Stonkers: The Stonk

It was, I think, long defunct music monthly 'Select' that first branded comedy as 'the new rock and roll' sometime in the early nineties. With Alexie Sayle, Stewart Lee, Steve Coogan, Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci et al running riot though the media and the likes of Newman and Baddiel able to play Wembley stadium, they may have had a point. With what would previously have been considered 'underground' now very much overground, it doesn't need rose tinted spectacle to cast the early nineties as a comedic 'golden age'.

It wasn't lace in every window though, dear me no. Take Hale and Pace, a Cannon and Ball with attitude comedy duo who managed to churn out ten (TEN!!!) series for London Weekend Television between 1988-1998 with no apparent legacy save for a hazily remembered fluky tabloid hoo ha involving a cat in a microwave. It was pretty weak stuff all told and yet for some reason they were the bees knees in 1991, a name big enough to carry that year's Comic Relief single to number one.

Ah yes, Comic Relief; we've been here before of course, and regular readers will know that slack remains uncut regardless of any good intentions involved. After all, we know what the road to hell is paved with, and in presenting itself as promoting a fictitious dance craze a la 'The Twist', 'The Stonk' lays down enough tarmac to take us half way there all by itself.

Is it funny? Well not really - 'The Stonk' derives most of it's humour from the innate hilarity in loosely equating 'stonk' with 'bonk'. Or 'fuck', to be less mumsy about it (pardon my French, but let's call a spade a spade here). "But it's better little baby if you stonk with me". See? Except it's lazy, not funny; true the prime time, family friendly nature of its intended audience meant that the risqué had to be kept to a minimum, but in so doing the premise is diluted into nothing until all that remains is an endless stream of cheap gags ("Let's stonk, if you're skinny or if you're fat. Let's stonk, if you're on the way to wearing a hat") and a video full of gooning celebrities trying desperately to pretend we're all having a great time. Well some of them might well be, but I'm not - comedy the new rock and roll? 'The Stonk' isn't even the old type. No, what it is is a horrendously irritating three minutes of polite humour designed to appeal to a red nose wearing demographic who apparently only laugh one day a year and need a little something to prompt them from their comedy torpor. To Hades with the lot of them.

1991 The Clash: Should I Stay Or Should I Go

There's a neat symmetry at work here between this and the Iron Maiden single to the point I kind of wish that the one had directly followed the other. I wrote (then) about my teenage love of heavy metal and that was true enough but before that conversion I had an intense flirtation with all things punk rock. Well, as intense as it could have been for a twelve year old - being too young to appreciate the Sex Pistols in their pomp, I was nevertheless fully aware that something was going on somewhere that was upsetting an awful lot of people. Punk did not move in my media circles - my idea of rebellion in music was John Travolta's leather jacket in 'Grease' until a move to the 'big school' in 1979 brought me into contact with people far more worldly wise than myself and through them I was exposed to Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash et al for the first time. And I loved it.

Punk proper of course was over by 1979, any of the main players still standing had refined their sound into something more palatable to the mainstream whilst the second front were lumped together as something called 'new wave', a genre which, to be honest, sounded fine to me back then too. In 1979 though The Clash released their 'London Calling' album. I bought the lead off title single and I got the album for Christmas. Pivotal? Yes indeed - I loved it then and I loved it now; hardly punk, but a four sided primer of everything good about rock and roll music played by a garage band with attitude to burn.

Even through the metal years I never let go of The Clash. Every album was bought religiously and their every move was followed. I was gutted when Mick Jones was sacked, outraged when Strummer simply replaced him with two journeymen to carry on business as usual and then gutted and slightly let down when they finally called it a day. After all that you'd think I'd be as pleased to see them at number one as much as I was pleased to see Iron Maiden a few weeks earlier. But I wasn't. And for a lot of reasons.

For a start, 'Bring Your Daughter' was a new single from a band still very much a going concern - 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' was a re-issue of a 1982 single that only reached number 17 first time round. In a throwback to one of the more depressing campaigns of the eighties, and following the path of faux nostalgia blazed by 'The Joker', a fresh set of legs were grafted onto the dead horse of 'Should I Stay' via its use in a Levi's jeans commercial, a fact that by itself should be enough to stop traffic. The appending of the Levi's tag to The Clash logo on the cover and the advert link of the pool eight ball in a way that suggest The Clash always styled themselves that way should have caused a multiple pile up.

Just who was scratching whose back here? Time was I used to believe that there was no such thing as a 'bad' picture of The Clash (surely one of the most photogenic bands in popular music), but if that is the case then this is the exception that proves the rule. Or to be more precise, it's the context that makes it so bad. An Athena poster pose of studious cool, rebellion and guitars topped off by a cigarette at a jaunty James Dean angle whilst in the background the band en-bloc whips up a storm on stage.

Depressing enough in its own rock and roll cliché without the implication that it can all be bought from TopShop for the price of a pair of jeans (I can't tell what brand Mick is in fact wearing there). Taken as a package, it annoys. It annoys in its reduction of The Clash to a marketing commodity, it annoys in its acquiescence to a media that once would not have dared go near them and it annoys in its compliance to a stereotypical rock and roll image minted in an America they once claimed to have been so bored with. But these are not the only reasons I'm not keen on this.

"It was just a good rocking song, our attempt at writing a classic" explained Mick Jones, and true enough 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' aims for a cock of the walk strut of attitude; amongst the bold and innovative multiculturalism of parent album 'Combat Rock' it stood out as a throwback to the past they were otherwise hurtling away from. It wasn't needed either - The Clash's own back catalogue was already stuffed full with unselfconscious homages to this elusive 'authenticity' that didn't rely on a dumb as fuck half speed, stop start riff rip off of Chuck Berry's 'School Days' or a jolly, sham Sham 69 musical chairs double speed middle eight to deliver a 'classic'.

Rare I suppose to see a band falling on their arse through not believing their own hype, but in chasing it's own unspecified heroes around a blank map of Americana, 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' winds up as that famous headless chicken, constantly running into a brick wall in its struggle to get anywhere. Strummer's Spanish vocal counterlines add some forced flavour, but they add no dimension to the flat plain that the song inhabits - even U2's 'Desire', an attempt at the same exercise, had a sense of gutsy urgency about it.

To keep the Berry references, 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' is The Clash's 'My Ding A Ling', the runt of an otherwise flawless litter that by its inexplicable popularity has tarnished the brand by virtually becoming the brand. Fair enough, it always sounded written specifically to generate crossover appeal, and the fact it took ten years before that appeal registered isn't really relevant - safe and smug, it's remains a poor Clash song. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now, and galling too that a disagreement over a last minute lyric change to the original caused Strummer and Jones to fall out and hasten the end of the band.

1991 The Simpsons: Do The Bartman

Rather like those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons are a cultural phenomena that I never really got into. I'm not sure why - in 1991 the hype and merchandise was everywhere and unavoidable, but the cynic in me saw it more as self generated promotion for the fledging Sky TV service, a 2look at what you're missing" message that gave a hard sell for the only place you could see the show. Less exclusive these days, I've since watched many episodes yet although I've enjoyed them all, I've never felt the urge to plough through those box sets disc by disc.

So maybe that's why I see 'Do The Bartman' as a strange sort of single. Reputedly written by Michael Jackson, it's not a comedy song about The Simpsons - rather, it's a fourth wall breaking, first person rap by Bart Simpson, the idea presumably being that the kindergarten Eminem had popped into Springfield recording studio and cut it. It's also remarkably unforgiving in its wordy narrative - if you were a regular viewer then fine, but the non scene setting lyric required a familiarity with the show to bring it to life ("Til Lisa starts blowin' her damn saxophone"). Yet even then the absence of any of The Simpson's trademark one liners (or jokes at all), means there's nothing about 'Do The Bartman' that rewards repeated plays - any goodwill is derived from knowing it's Bart Simpson singing along to a brittle groove that twangs like a plastic ruler plucked against the edge of a desk. If you're a fan of the show then you'll probably enjoy, but if you don't then this is going to leave you colder than a dead fish.

1991 The KLF featuring The Children Of The Revolution: 3 A.M. Eternal

There was always a lot more to The KLF than just the music. Wikipedia's lengthy entry on the band has a separate heading called 'Themes' with four sub-headings 'Illuminatus', 'Promotion', 'Trancentral, eternity, sheep' and 'Ceremonies and journeys'. I can say up-front that I don't intend to go into any of this here, partly because you can read it for yourselves if you want but mainly because....well, because I just never bought into any of it. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were veterans of the popular music scene by 1991 and knew exactly how to wind it up from within with situationist acts of unpredictable anarchy and mischief that kept the media busy but which by and large passed me by.

The first time I heard this in 1991, I couldn't help but think that I'd heard it before. I had of course - '3am Eternal' was originally a 1988 trance dance piece by band re-worked as song two of their 1991 'stadium house' trilogy,( the other two were 'What Time Is Love' and 'Last Train To Trancentral') but my familiarity stemmed from closer than that. A couple of months in fact - by basing a ramped up version around Ricardo Da Force's raps and the sample of Maxine Harvey's original vocal floating the title over the down time in-between then '3am Eternal' borrows heavily from 'The Power'. And as well as that, I can hear shades of Yazz's 1988 Acid House hit "Stand Up For Your Love Rights" bubbling just under its surface too.

Is that any surprise? Probably not - Drummond and Caughty had already published their book ' The Manual (How to Have a Number One The Easy Way)' and to my mind this was its philosophy made practice and an excuse for me not to trust them - why go to the trouble when you can re-tool your own song with someone else's accessories? Yet that's not to accuse '3am Eternal' of out and out plagiarism; what The KLF bring to this particular party is a self styled 'stadium house' makeover, a pre-Prodigy attack that blended acid house with the catch all appeal of a pop/rock sensibility whose appreciation didn't require a viewpoint on dead sheep or burning a million pounds in cash. '3am Eternal' doesn't require much of a viewpoint at all really; from the machine gun opening its brash dumbness marks it out as the weakest of the trilogy, yet now shorn of the cultural baggage its classic pop sensibilities ("KLF is gonna rock you"!) are allowed to shine through, making sure '3am Eternal' hasn't dated in the same way that their absence on the Snap! or Yazz tracks have.

1991 Queen: Innuendo

Back in the early eighties and the days of Betamax VCR's, one of the few videos we had in the house was the original 'Queen's Greatest Hits' (the one with the Snowdon cover). And not exactly being spoiled for choice I used to watch it over and over again. Which is maybe why the songs on it are as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice. And yet it's interesting to note that for an act best known as a singles band, only one of them ('Bohemian Rhapsody') actually got to number one.

It's interesting too that this, their second number one, is not that familiar to me at all. Is it familiar to your average Queen fan? I don't know, but it doesn't strike me as the first thing that anybody would reach for when they 'fancied a bit of Queen' - for a band renowned for a knowing level of camp humour and self parody, 'Innuendo' is remarkably humour free. At six minutes thirty seconds it's also rather long. That's not to say that Queen have never done long and humour free before, because they have, but 'Innuendo' manages to trump all previous examples by coming across as the moment when the friendly vicar stops being cosy and jokey and starts preaching about Jesus in earnest. The initiated don't bat an eyelid, the rest of us start to fidget.

I see 'Innuendo' as Queen laying down a marker to remind the world that they are a serious rock act, and in so doing they go back to basics. Influences are obvious - the weight of the bombast and slight Eastern swing recall Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir', the flamenco led interlude recalls The Doors' 'Spanish Caravan' whilst the juxtaposition of the two (there's an operatic section too) is nod to their own 'Bohemian Rhapsody', a sly wink to acknowledge what it was that made them famous in the first place. And to compliment the music's aura of Armageddon dread, Mercury howls and blusters his message of perseverance with the voice of a man battling superior forces against his control ("Till the mountains crumble into the plain, oh yes we'll keep on trying").

Does it work? Well there's no doubt that like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' ,'Innuendo', is a monolith of a song that realises it epic ambitions through sheer force; if it's playing then it's a hard song to ignore. As I intimated in my opening paragraph though, there's very little about it six plus minutes that's memorable enough to linger afterwards - not the lyrics, not the riffs and not the solos. In playing it straight, there's nothing to parody, nothing to slacken the jaw just a faceless batter of prog metal styling that leaves precious little in its wake and it's bludgeon induces the concussion of the mugging victim who can remember no details of their attacker.

But then again maybe it's just me - maybe this un-Queen like song of Queen songs is a side dish too far for my own sensibilities; it wouldn't have been at home on my old video at all and, frankly, it makes me fidget. But I think on a more objective level, whilst I'll never castigate any band for trying something different, 'Innuendo' and its attempt at a 'classic rock' sound is more than one step backwards to a past era that Queen and their audacity always stood apart from. And it suffers accordingly.

1991 Enigma: Sadness Part One

As if to banish the nasty and brutish metal of Iron Maiden, Enigma's mood piece of soft synths and chanting provided as near as dammit a polar opposite number one from their racket that, if nothing else, showed just what an eclectic bunch the British record buying public still were. An early memory of 'Sadness' was of the execrable Simon Bates enthusing on his radio show about how different, innovative and other worldly it all was, but the fact I wouldn't trust Bates' views on the colour of orange juice notwithstanding, 'Sadness' to me sounded like a radio friendly version of the more esoteric end of the late eighties 4AD catalogue that I was then listening to. Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Wolfgang Press and, perhaps most tellingly, the 'Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares' series had long since sewn up the European Gothic and Baroque drum machines and sequencer mix market, albeit never in such a blatantly soft soap way as this.

As a piece of music (and from the cover in), 'Sadness' goes out of its way to present itself as an artefact of depth and mystery (it's original German title is 'Sadeness' and the music was meant to question the sexual deviance of the Marquis de Sade no less), but in so doing it promises a level of substance it never makes good on and its own blend of those gothic influences, Gregorian chants and French language styling have all the mystery of a Scooby Doo ghost. Us Brits wouldn't have given two hoots about those de Sade references and all that monking anyway and were happy to take it at face value, and that's fine - Sadness/Sadeness/Whatever. But for as far as Bates and his otherworldly-ness goes, there's no suspension of belief here that convinces me that 'Sadness' is broadcasting from another time or another place. Because whilst I can lose myself in a track like the Cocteau's 'Persephone', for the whole length of 'Sadness' I'm always conscious that it's just chief Enigma-ist Michael Cretu going 'Wooooo' under a bedsheet. It's not something I hate, but I don't have a whole lot of use for it either; too busy for eyes closed in the bath ambience, too slouchy to dance to 'Sadness' stands like a marble statue - a decent enough piece in its own right but a pain in the arse if you've got nowhere to put it. And I don't I'm afraid.

1991 Iron Maiden: Bring Your Daughter...To The Slaughter

I may have intimated at various points over our past thirty year journey that I was a big metal fan in my early teens. Lest any ambiguity remain at this point, let me clarify - I WAS A BIG METAL FAN IN MY EARLY TEENS. And why not - the early eighties were a golden era for the genre; the 'New Wave Of British Heavy Metal' was in full swing and, apart from giving voice to a new breed, it provided a medium for a crew of disparate, older guitar acts to tap into for a well deserved late day pay day. Whitesnake, Saxon, AC/DC, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Kiss, Scorpions, Motorhead, Venom - all were united under a single banner woven from denim and leather.

Yet despite its popularity, us metaller's were still looked on as outsiders, a vaguely troubling subgroup that stood a breed apart from the more media friendly new romantics and their kin. Media? HA! The media didn't have much truck with metal - Tommy Vance's Friday radio show, the odd Top Of The Pops appearance and that was your lot. In fact, one of the highlights of those years was a 1980 episode of TOTP that had Saxon miming to 'Wheels Of Steel' and Judas Priest miming to 'Living After Midnight'. And all in the space of twenty minutes. Such events did not come round too often.

To the above list of bands you can add Iron Maiden. The archetypical NWOBHM act, Maiden's first two albums were a permanent fixture on my stereo. Still are really; loud and raw, they mixed the aggression of punk with the live free, us against the world ethos of metal with an added political edge all to rare in this field (Margaret Thatcher appeared on the sleeve of two of their singles, and don't forget who Eddie was meant to be burying that axe into on the 'Killers' cover'). Yes they were ridiculous, but there was enough danger about their songs about murderers and rapists and the tough nut frontman who sang them that suggested you'd best not say it to their faces. Golden years indeed, but they didn't last. 1982's 'The Number Of The Beast' might have taken the band global, but it walked a fine line with me and by the time of its 1983 follow up 'Piece Of Mind', Metallica and Anthrax had arrived and I lost interest completely in their 'new found niche of casting 'Boy's Own' tales in workaday prog metal.

And yet that did not mean I didn't glean tremendous satisfaction from seeing 'Bring Your Daughter....To The Slaughter' take the first number one spot of 1991. Rock songs in pole position are rarity enough lord only knows, but this was the first time a bona fide metal track had stormed the barricades. That it wasn't one of Maiden's better singles (in fact, it's one their weakest) mattered not a jot - like seeing a dog walking on two legs, first comments shouldn't be that it's not doing it very well, but to marvel that it's able to do it at all. Seeing Bruce and the boys delivering the country's most bought song was a blow against the vague, undefined 'them' that my younger self was never able to strike, and it gave voice to a million teenage dirtbags still playing air guitar in their bedrooms.

But after all that, I suppose I should say a few words about the actual song itself. Well it's Maiden by numbers, a 'humorous' title of schlock dragged out to song length. The drums pound, the bass gallops and the guitars squeal while Bruce Dickinson's vibrato goes into overdrive on the chorus like an aural fist attacking a speedball. All usual elements in fact, all present and correct to shake the bones until they crack on a ketchup for blood, Ghost Train ride of pantomime horror. And yet for all that 'Bring Your Daughter' is unremarkable and rather dull.

"So get down on your knees honey, assume an attitude. You just pray that I'll be waiting, cos you know I'm coming soon" - lazy Spinal Tap references wait in the wings and I'd like to think I have more class than to stoop to them, but there isn't much more than casual cliché about it all; 'Bring Your Daughter' is construction manual metal, written by checklist and played by rote. Sure it's loud, but it's uninspiring and it's unengaging and it gives rather too much ammunition to those who sneer that metal is dumb as a stump music played by poor white trash for poor white trash. As pantomime rock 'Bring Your Daughter' is fine, but I know from experience that Maiden as a band and metal as a genre could do so much better. But still, number one eh?