1998 Spice Girls: Goodbye

'Goodbye'? For now anyway - final single of Spice Girls Mk 1, 'Goodbye' is also a kiss off of sorts to the departing Geri who for the first time doesn't appear on the song at all. But such the backstage shenanigans add nothing to the light breeze of a tune that uses a soufflé of a soul mix to sell a lyric bristling with every "Look for the rainbow in every storm" 'message of hope cliché in the book that can never quite decide if it wants to be the Dunblane tribute it originally started out as or something else entirely. What that 'something else' might be is never made clear, but 'Goodbye' doesn't have the substance to hang around in my ears long enough for me to find out. Or want to really. Not their finest hour.

1998 B*Witched: To You I Belong

Like Aqua before them, B*Witched's third number one shifts its focus from the pure pop of previous to the more serious waters of a love ballad. 'Turn Back Time' though at least gave Lene Nystrømhad room to show her vocal prowess; on 'To You I Belong' lead Witch Edele Lynch's brute squawk of a voice is more cursed than blessed as it jerks its way around the melody line like a learner driver with no clutch control and a tankfull of kangaroo petrol. It's as torturous as its title; the noun/verb arrangement tries for a cheap plating of high brow sincerity the way a sixth form poet peppers their doggerel with 'thees' and 'thous', but the lazy nonsense of "Rain fell down, you were there. I cried for you when I hurt my hand" has all the class of grafitti on a lavatory wall. Paste in some generic stock footage of 'My Heart Will Go On' folky Irish bells and whistles and the result is a song I genuinely find unpleasant to listen to. "Beside the sea, when the waves broke, I drew a heart for you in the sand. In fields where streams turn to rivers, I ran to you, you were there" - my god, the only way is up from this mess.

1998 Cher: Believe

When Buffy (The Vampire Slayer) went away to Sunnydale College, she had suspicions that her roommate Kathy was....well, a bit evil. Turns out she (Kathy) was a hideous demon in human form, but what was it that first aroused Buffy's suspicions that something wasn't right? Mainly the fact she drove Buffy nuts by playing 'Believe' on autorepeat at an unreasonable volume. Is that a fair comment on the song I wonder? Maybe, maybe not - there's no doubt Cher's song has an almost supernatural power to crawl under certain skins. Lots of people hate it, and their hatred stems mainly from 'Believe's filtering of Cher's vocal through Auto Pitch software (not a vocoder as many thought) to give it a distinctive underwater wobble.

It kind of irritates me too to be fair - Cher's gutsy bellow was always distinctive enough by itself, yet without it here then Cher would clump over 'Believe's a dance gallop like a shire horse. Soft rock ballads yes, she's good at those, but there's not enough 'give' in her voice to bend around a dance track and it's the Auto Tune that coats her vocal with a playful sparkle (listen to the "It's so sad that you're leaving, it takes time to believe it") that rides the music like sunlight on water and 'makes' the song. But then by adding it, it does in part render Cher a remixed presence on her own single too. Ok, there's enough Cher-ness left not to leave her as anonymous as John Hurt under the Elephant Man prosthetics, but knowing that it is Cher means that 'Believe' becomes overly-reliant on that gimmick to hold my attention rather than the talents of the lady herself. And that doesn't seem right to me.

1998 Spacedust: Gym And Tonic

Now here's an odd one - 'Gym And Tonic' in its original incarnation was a dance track called 'Gym Tonic' by French DJ Christophe Le Friant (recording as Bob Sinclair) that benefitted from 1) a funked up production from Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter that was the bastard offspring of their own 'Revolution 909' and 'Da Funk', and 2) a certain renegade status born from illegally sampling Jane Fonda's voice from a workout video that meant the track could never be officially released. This remake from Brits Spacedust ditches Ms Fonda for a recording of an anonymous female barking out the routines and turns Bangalter's mix into generic compilation dance that's as flat as it's predictable. By consciously putting so much effort into distancing it from the original then improvements might be expected, but Spacedust in fact reduce 'Gym Tonic' to something that does actually sound like a direct lift from the soundtrack to a low budget workout video. Which means that whilst the novelty element remains intact, all sense of fun and mischief is crudely sawed out, taking any charm and appeal with it - who was buying this stuff?

1998 B*Witched: Rollercoaster/Billie: Girlfriend

The second number one for both acts and a neat coupling that provides a useful point of contrast. First up, 'Rollercoaster' is pretty much as their previous ‘C’est La Vie’ in its unassuming, 'my first pop group' trill, only over familiarity makes it less so this time round. Well that and the sheer lack of anything much going on behinds its eyes - from the phoned in, mid-tempo dance beat, the grotesque lyrics ("Today's the day, we're out to play and lost our way, it's always the same. Climbed the trees, swam the seven seas, we've grazed our knees and no-one's to blame") to the flat packed production and half assed dance shapes the girls throw in the video, everything about 'Rollercoaster' is undercooked, underdone and underwhelming - a plastic trinket from the cheapest Christmas cracker in the shop with nary a single highlight to evidence any craft or tender loving care and attention having gone into its creation. Somehow it managed to strike lucky, and good luck to it I guess, but not lucky enough to not fill me with the same levels of resentment usually only reserved for the unemployed, drug taking wife beater who scoops millions on the lottery. The one on the far right always gives me the creeps too.

Though no less an unabashed pop song aimed at a younger audience, 'Girlfriend' benefits immeasurably through following on from such a blank round. While the former dismays in its ‘been here before’ tack, what I like most about 'Girlfriend' is its sense of purpose and the individuality it carves out for itself. I've always got a soft spot for the wistful sighs that come from loving from afar, but Billie's direct "Do you have a girlfriend? You're looking real cool. Can I have your number?" is refreshingly upfront and its boldness makes me smile, particularly as I would never have had the guts to say the same to a girl at age 15. Which, I think, is the mainstay of its appeal - it couldn’t really be said that B*Witched 'perform' or provide any kind of 'interpretation' to 'Rollercoaster'; there's no depth to any of the raw material to offer up any dimension beyond one whereas Billie, in comparison, makes 'Girlfriend' an extension of her own persona. Granted, in doing so it's no less a manufactured or marketed commodity, but the dovetail between song and performer is seamless in presenting and maintaining the chirpy, girl next door image - why does she want to know if she can have his number? Because she wants to, that's why. And if he doesn’t want to know then there's enough of Billie on display here to guess that she'd just smile and move on. Add a chunky 'urban' production (that's admittedly more avenue than street) and it makes 'Girlfriend' classic pop for its times yet with an appeal that endures in a way 'Rollercoaster' quite simply has not and could never hope to.

1998 Melanie B featuring Missy Elliott: I Want You Back

Though first of the Spice Girls to notch up a solo number one, 'I Want You Back' is hardly one woman's work, even less so Mel B's. Being written, produced and co-sung by Missy Elliott, her presence is all over the song and adds the genuine hip hop edge that the Spice Girls dallied with but never fully embraced. Mel acquits herself well but relies heavily on her co-star's presence to fill the gaps between the sparse beats, a helping hand that leaves no doubt as to who's in charge here. Bandwagon jumping it might be, but at least this one had a fully qualified driver who knew the road; whilst not something from Elliott's top drawer, 'I Want You Back' is hardly barrel scrapings either, and despite the erratic, Russian roulette trigger pull of the rhythm, it's a far looser and carefree affair than virtually anything that came out under the Spice Girls banner.

1998 Robbie Williams: Millennium

Arguably arriving a year early, 'Millennium' glides in on the back of a John Barry sample (from 'You Only Live Twice'. The video carries on the James Bond imagery) that provides the updraft that elevates 'Millennium' out of the rut that Williams is content to take it. Without it, we're left with his grinding vocal scraping over a minimal drum pattern shuffling out a lurching song with the "Mil-Len-Ne-Umumum' chorus payoff itself delivered with the subtlety of a navvy laying bricks. Out of the rut maybe, but not enough to then fashion it into a silk purse; 'Millennium' is not half as much fun as that cover would have you believe. Boring even - it's that one good idea padded out into a crude and unlikeable comment on how tough and vacuous it is at the top ("live for liposuction and detox for your rent, overdose at Christmas and give it up for lent"), but it's ok because we're all going to die anyway. True enough Robbie, but I wouldn't want this playing at my funeral.

1998 All Saints: Bootie Call

After mixed fortunes from playing away, All Saints derive more success from this home game song that lives up to their urban, street wise image, even if they don't quite manage to knock the ball out of the park. For once, 'Bootie Call's skeletal hip hop stylings mixed with predatory sass and attitude puts clear water between them and those Spice Girls (surely the only reason for their existence) to deliver a song that crackles and steams with a grown up sexuality or at least the promise of it. An over reliance on some flat harmonising (never an All Saints virtue) threatens to send it skidding into a ditch, but the strength of the underlying song, quality of production and constant ear prick of 'telephone voice' samples maintain interest levels high enough to keep a firm grip on the wheel until it manages to complete the race with gas to spare, albeit sufficiently hamstrung so it doesn't come in first.

1998 Manic Street Preachers: If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

The boys from the Blackwood had come along way since their 1992 debut and its attendant ambitions of "make one album, sell 16 million copies of it, and then split up". Never happened of course, any of it (they're still an active band as I write), and by the time 1998 had rolled 'round the arrogance of youth had waned until their early fire smouldered in mainly their lyrics. 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next ' was the lead single from the 'eagerly awaited' follow up to 1996's ground zero breakthrough 'Everything Must Go' and, in effectively setting out under one roof all that was good and all that was bad about what the Manics had become, it's a single that splits me neatly in half to the extent that I could feasibly write two separate entries for it.

The first would deal with the song itself and my attendant disappointment (yet lack of surprise) at seeing a band once hell-bent on lobbing incendiary bombs both into and out of the medium reduced to peddling AOR to frustrated drive time warriors dying to 'do' a 'Falling Down' but too scared the boss would find out. The distortion of the Eno-like treatments that play it in promise discord, but 'If You Tolerate This' soon lapses into pedestrian shuffle and fist clench chorus that strives for the anthemic but gets lost on the way until James Bradfield's rising "will be next"s are the attempts of desperate relatives at CPR long after the doctor has called the patient dead. Bottom line; 'If You Tolerate This' is a good title in search of a song - the Manic's lyrics frequently painted their music into a corner with no neat or easy scans and rhymes and here too they're forced to walk clumsily straight through and leave behind messy footprints.

But then my second review would take a different tack, one that harked back to that 'good title'. 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next'; think about it. It resonates in a confrontational awkwardness that refuses to trip off the tongue which, as it was taken from a Republican propaganda poster from the Spanish Civil War, is unsurprising. What is surprising is being presented with a song concerning idealistic Welshmen heading abroad to fight Fascists in Spain at the tail end of a bland 1998 line up. It's like finding a copy of Guy Debord's 'Mémoire' and its sandpaper cover nestling amongst a shelf full of Dan Brown and Bridget Jones and slowly wearing them to shreds.* Lines like "So if I can shoot rabbits, then I can shoot fascists" (taken directly from contemporary sources) are startling enough in their own right, but barked out in the middle of the Boyzone's and the Billie's they ring like a clap of thunder and perform a shredding of their own in their demonstration of what other uses popular music can be put to outside of a general scene that had become terribly insular.

Politics and music have long walked hand in hand, but only rarely has the combination garnered mass appeal to the extent of producing a number one single. And while I'm never a fan of intellectual posturing for the sake of it, there's a passion behind this cause that, for me, will always ensure that, just as JK Rowling apologists are wont to claim 'At least it gets the kids reading', whatever the shortcomings of the song there's forever merit enough in 'If You Tolerate This' on the level that it (hopefully) generates a thinking and questioning of its own. Music as education - now that does appeal, and taken that way alone then the song's deficiencies become an irrelevance.

* Actually, with that subject matter, 'If You Tolerate' would have been right at home in eighties indieland alongside the likes of Easterhouse (who once wrote a song about Lenin's period of exile in Europe) and The Redskins - surely the only band to have ever written a song about the failure of the workers in the 1919 Berlin uprising to learn lessons from the Russian Revolution ('It Can Be Done') -"Look at Petrograd! Look at Barcelona! Fight against the land, fight against the land & the factory owners. Same fight today against another ruling class, learn a lesson from your past". Quite. No number ones here though.

1998 Boyzone: No Matter What

If you've ever wondered what you'd get if you crossed Andrew Lloyd Webber with Jim Steinman then look no further for the answer - as unlikely as it seems, in 1998 the pair collaborated on a musical version of the 1961 Hayley Mills vehicle 'Whistle Down The Wind'. Whilst I'm familiar with the film (a staple of Sunday afternoon TV in my childhood), I can't own up to knowing anything about the musical other than this song which, if it's typical of the whole, is example enough of Lloyd Webber's influence being sufficiently Borg-like to curb any rock star excesses and make even a Jim Steinman dance to his tune. Literally. Which is just as well - while Boyzone were never going to make a 'Bat Out Of Hell' sound convincing, they did know their way around a ballad.

After confessing that I don't know where the song falls within the narrative of the musical, I can report that the beauty of 'No Matter What' is that it doesn't matter; the 'me and you against the world' theme is drafted broadly enough to appeal to everyman. Not only that, with the ever irritating Ronan Keating sharing lead vocal duties, his tremulous over sincerity is tempered to give appeal to those with a Y chromosome too with no embarrassment. But then I'm guessing it would have anyway; despite still undeniably 'Boyzone', both Steinman and Lloyd Webber are savvy enough to ensure their song is the star turn here and the melody/lyrics are not sacrificed on the altar of boy band personality. Like the best show songs, it serves to give 'No Matter What' a solidity and presence and I'm guessing it will be the one song of Boyzone's that will endure.

1998 Spice Girls: Viva Forever

Now a fifth less spicy since the acrimonious departure of Geri Haliwell (whatever happened to "friendship never ends" eh?), 'Viva Forever' is a breathless, Latin flavoured ballad that showcases a more mature approach to girls’ craft. Well that's what I'd write if I was on their press release payroll anyway, and I'd almost believe it too, but for every sure step they take along that road 'Viva Forever' raises a leg and guffs a waft of dinner party cheesy listening that drags them back two more. I'm happy to own up to be carrying more baggage that your average Spice Girl fan, but for me 'Viva Forever' is a neat précis of that 'musical interlude' in countless seventies variety or comedy sketch shows that let the mums and dads in the audience catch their breath between the frivolity around it; when the last notes dies away, I half expect Ronnie Corbett to turn up and drone an anecdote from a comfy armchair.* Safe and comfy and middle of the road - that's 'Viva Forever' in a nutshell. Which isn't a great evil in itself, but the Spice Girls' manifesto promised so much more than this Brotherhood of Man wannabe.

* With no apologies at all to anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about.

1998 Jamiroquai: Deeper Underground

A uniquely British phenomenon, acid jazz was a fusion of funk and hip hop that updated sixties freakbeat for a nineties audience. A key figure of the movement, Jamiroquai cracked it's commercial appeal in a series of singles and albums that wore a mid seventies Stevie Wonder influence like a full body suit (which in turn managed to get up no small number of noses). Taken from the soundtrack of that year's big money revival of 'Godzilla', 'Deeper Underground' stands as a typical example of both Jamiroquai and the genre they were working in. To an extent anyway - the organ runs and bass loops of acid jazz were played to the feet, but 'Deeper Underground's two fist bash of a riff only invites a treacle walk shuffle that wouldn't have stretched the oversized lizard himself. Which may have suited as a film tie-in, but in its rampant desire to get in your face, it (ironically) takes acid jazz as overground as it ever got and made for a clunky stand alone single that's too weighted down with it's own self imposed limitations to groove along with the best the genre had to offer.

1998 Another Level: Freak Me

A cover version of Silk's 1993 US hit (it didn't chart in the UK), Brit boy band Another Level do everything with the song apart from live up to their name by cranking out a faithful reproduction, albeit on a photocopier running low on ink; this 'Freak Me' backtracks slightly from Keith Sweat's original smooth, soul groove to present a flatter, more urban dance edge. It's hardly major renovation though and once again wheels are studiously not being re-invented - by adding little of their own to the mix, Another Level also forget to add a point or purpose for anybody to want to listen to it over Silk's original. The "I wanna get freaky with you" bit that everybody remembers is still a baffling delight, but being just a copycat re-telling of someone else's punchline then charm is thin on the ground and, truth be told, I simply can't see the point of any of it

1998 Billie: Because We Want To

At fifteen years old, Billie Piper was a year too late to overtake Helen Shapiro's 1961 record of youngest female solo artist to have a UK number one ('You Don't Know') but nevertheless it's interesting to compare the two. Shapiro and her song provide an overcooked tale of angst with a stage school vocal that casts her as the world's oldest fourteen year old. By contrast, Billie sounds every one of her fifteen years with a voice, image and attitude of a would-be streetwise teen raging against the squares and their "Why you gotta play that song so loud?" moaning with her stock answer 'Because we want to' (I guess "Whatever" doesn't scan too well).

Rebellion with a small 'r', this is 'Girl Power' sharpened just enough to give it an edge, which Billie's girl next door persona keens further to wind up suburbia by virtue of her youth alone in a way that Ms Shapiro, moping into her hankies, couldn't possibly have entertained. Junior punk for rebels too young to have a cause, 'Because We Want To' is fun enough, but my enjoyment is tempered by the call and response work on "Why d'you always say what's on your mind? Because we want to! because we want to!" (etc) veering too close to Spice Girls 'Wannabe' for, if not litigation, then certainly comfort. That, and the fact I can never bear to see 'the kids' enjoying themselves of course.

1998 Baddiel & Skinner & Lightning Seeds: Three Lions '98

Another record of sorts - 'Three Lions 98' is the first (and only to date) example of a former number one hitting the top again after being re-recorded by the same artists. So what's changed? Well after 1996's European Championships, 1998 was World Cup year, and so with the 96 campaign not having gone as well for England as it might, there's a shift from the "Football's coming home" chant to one of "We still believe" (over an opening sample from the commentary of the penalty miss that knocked them out). Which is basically sums up 'Three Lions 98' to a tee - an updating by the (re) recognition and a re-affirmation of the eternal optimism of the England football fan with a sly tongue in cheek nod to the disappointments two years previously and adding them to the litany of woe. For the most part the song remains the same; the sample of the 96 fans chanting "Football's coming home" that pepper it show the high affection it holds so wheels don't need re-inventing and all concerned would have been fools to try. A further act of updating comes via the fresh production that injects more pop into its guts than present in the original, but I think the bottom line here is that there are two broad camps and you're opinion will be governed by which you pitch your tent in; the fans who would be happy to see it updated and re-released every time England embarked on some campaign or other, or the disinterested layman (like me) who, quite frankly, wouldn't.

1998 B*Witched: C'Est La Vie

I was sorely tempted to leave my review at that. Full stop. Conscience, however, got the better of me - I've set myself a brief to comment on these UK number one singles and that's what I'm going to do. Leaving it to somebody else is the easy option, even if, like in this case, it would be incredibly convenient (not least to let the mask slip to reveal someone else's face). Niven's novel is set in exact same late nineties, UK music scene I'm writing about now, and while he's not specifically talking about B*Witched (he's actually referring to a fictitious girl band called 'Songbirds'), he may as well be. I've pondered the question as to whether the charts are worse than they used to be and whether, like GCSE's, number ones are dumbing down? ARE they easier to 'get' than back in the good old days? DO they actually 'mean' anything anymore? I'm not going to re-hash previous musings here, let's stick to the facts - at the risk of giving out a 'spoiler', I can say that we are going to meet B*Witched four times before the decade is out. Each of the band's first four singles got to number one - an impressive feat in itself, but made more impressive by the fact that they went straight in at number one. With a bullet. All four of them. But rather than take my hat off in admiration, I've been scrolling back over the distance we've travelled and it's sobering to realise that no other artist - good, bad or ugly - have managed this. What's more sobering is the roll call of acts with no small amounts of fame and critical success who don't appear on these pages at all. Ever. And yet the first four singles from B*Witched got to number one. Straight in. With a bullet. So, ARE number ones dumbing down? DO they have meaning anymore? I have a view, but I'm going to save it for later. For now, try a little experiment for yourself - find somebody born at any time during the past twenty years and ask them how many B*Witched songs they can name (if you really want to push it, ask them to name one of the members). If my experience is anything to go by then you'll be lucky if they even remember them at all. Four number ones. Straight in. With a bullet. That's undeniable, something that will be recorded in the record books forever more. But these songs have not endured. Like an impressive Victorian pillar gravestone and monument, the person and memories behind the fact will like as not be lost to time with no legacy other than a set of statistics etched into a large chunk of marble that suggests they once had some importance. Someone was born, someone lived and someone died. A girl group released four singles and had four number ones. The dust blows forward and the dust blows back.

An all girl band from Dublin, if All Saints were the Spice Girls' bigger sisters, all left home and shacked up with boyfriends then B*Witched were their younger siblings, forever tagging along with an annoying 'me too' whine and decked out in pigtails and dribble. And with that in mind, 'C'est La Vie' is all sticky sugar and candy floss fresh off Willy Wonka's conveyer belt, shorn of edge and attitude and packaged by Oompah Loompahs as faceless as they are interchangeable. Because in truth it doesn’t matter who was 'in' B*witched - this is a music created by flipchart in a marketing department and approved by accountants. As long as the commodity boxes of 1) young 2) female 3) attractive in a girl next door type were ticked then job done.*

Such acts though were ten a penny by now and so to add a different spin to the pot add 4): Irish. Ah yes, Irish. This pop comes tinted green and seasoned with an Irish jig and reel to cement the 'individuality' of the product the way Geri Spice squeezing her arse into a Union Jack dress cemented hers, with an emphasis on their accents and some line dancing in the video to hammer it home. Is 'C'est La Vie' good pop? Sadly, no. It's a vacuous three minutes of lame double entendre ("I'll show you mine if you show me yours") and a lazy hook that makes no sense at all ("Say you will say you won't. Say you'll do what I don't. Say you're true, say to me c'est la vie") With nothing to love and nothing to hate, 'C'est La Vie; is musical feng shui that self servingly exists to soundtrack four young girls stepping up to the microphone to sing it in a whole that's as much of a functional product as a microwave ready meal. And just as tasteless.

* And not that young either - despite the jailbait image, nobody here was under nineteen (Sinead O'Carroll was twenty five fergawdsake). All part of the packaged commodity I guess.

1998 B*Witched: C'Est La Vie

"Girl power. Do me a fucking favour. However, there's going to be a bunch of these whores having it away over the next couple of years. No question. One thing you learn when you're in the business of selling utter shite to the Great British Public is that there's really no bottom to where they'll go. Shit food, shit TV, shit bands, shit films, shit houses. There is absolutley no fucking bottom with this stuff. The shittier you can make it - a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of what was a shit idea in the first place - the more they'll eat it up with a fucking big spoon, from dawn till dusk, from now until the end of time".

John Niven - Kill Your Friends. Vintage. 2009

1998 The Tamperer featuring Maya: Feel It

It's interesting how quaintly quaint Italian house music now sounds in 1998. Based around a sample of The Jacksons 'Can You Feel It?', 'Feel It' doesn't do much thinking outside the genre box and serves up a dance by numbers track whose main point of interest is surely the "What she's gonna look like with a chimney on her?" refrain. It paints a comic book question mark over 'Feel It' and hooks the ear, but all comes kind of clear when you realise it's a metaphor for someone falling pregnant and that the whole song is a fling of bile from Maya against a rival who had a one night stand with her boyfriend and is still hanging around ("You got it on the side, a little one night thing"). But all's well that ends well because she's sure he wont find her quite so hot when he finds out she's with child. Well get her. Other than that bizarre scenario, the main selling point for me is the Jackson sample; every time it starts up I'm dying for it to launch into 'Can You Feel It?' proper, but it never does. Which means that 'Feel It' doesn't so much leave me wanting more as not give me anything in the first place. A bit dull all told.

1998 Aqua: Turn Back Time

The cover screams 'BUSINESS AS USUAL', but 'Turn Back Time' is like going to a Woody Allen film expecting to see 'Bananas' and getting 'September'. Gone is the novelty blast and bounce of old and in its place comes an electronic dirge that's always three notes away from finding a decent hook. As I've said before, I'm all for bands diversifying and spreading their wings, and in fairness 'Turn Back Time' does show that Lene Nystrømhad a decent(ish) enough voice under it all, but this stab at serious is the sound of a band floundering out of its depth with no direction home save the helping hand of the song being prominently featured in that year's Gwyneth Paltrow weepie 'Sliding Doors'. Other than mistake (that cover again) I can't think of any other reason for its success anyway.

1998 All Saints: Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade

A double A side of signature tunes from Labelle ('Lady Marmalade') and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers ('Under The Bridge') makes an odd choice of bedfellows for any act to cover in one bite without raising eyebrows and/or hackles, let alone a skinny all girl group from North London. Previously a counter culture, anti-anthem confessional of drug abuse for the lost and lonely, 'Under The Bridge' is neutered to an extent by the omission of the original last verse (that specifically deals with drug taking) which shifts emphasis slightly to cast the song in an everyman light of personal loss. Maybe, but whatever the intentions, it falls short; the harmonised "I don't ever wanna feel like I did that day" is broken on the wheel and cast as a requiem to a thousand bad hair days while the girls tut tut their way through the lyric at the inconvenience of it all. The recurring guitar riff tries to keep things scuzzy, but its nod to grimier origins is a halfway house too short. More misguided than brave in its ‘grown up Spice Girls’ attempt at street cred maybe, but trying to ‘pop’ this up was a bad mistake.

The party vibe of 'Lady Marmalade' should have made for a safer bet, but even en-masse these saints were never going to top Patti Labelle's sexy, sweat funk vocal (she wasn't the first to record it, but such was her performance that it's damn near definitive). So rather than try, the verses are simply re-written over a one louder groove to inject a more direct shot of the sort of sauce and raunch ("Do you fancy, ah, hitting the sack? That's my kitty cat") Patti could imply in this tale of New Orleans prostitutes by a simple growl. It almost does the job of compensating, but the girl's dead eyed vocals are formidably flat enough to not give an inch of a helping hand so the pot never comes to the boil - "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir"? No thanks ladies. It takes no small effort to spread yourself too thinly over just two songs, but this pairing is a triumph of ambition over talent that never pays off. The biggest surprise is that someone, somewhere must have imagined that it would.

1998 Boyzone: All That I Need

Mention 'Boyzone' to me and my mind wanders to a picture of a furrowed brow of worry and a face of studious intensity on a person too busy brooding to ever loosen up and crack a smile. Maybe that’s a bit harsh on my part (and probably a bit deluded too), but there’s no doubt it played at least a part of an image that, with the Irish charm of course, set them apart from the 'lads in a gang' antics of Take That. These boyz were their own men and, along with the 'smouldering glances' they were wont to give the camera in their videos, it helped give the band a semblance of maturity that added some friction to the Kinder Egg trinkets and cover versions they were called on to sing.

Just like this really - an original song, 'All That I Need' is the familiar, soft shoe, slow dance shuffle that tip toes around Ronan Keating's vocal without ever breaking into the sort of sweat that would get in his way and spoil the furrowed-ness. With the surface class of a designer label knock off from a market stall rail, 'All That I Need' hangs together with just enough robustness of fabric and strength of thread to give it shape and to get it home. But from the avalanche of cliché's ("I was lost and alone, trying to grow, making my way down that long winding road") to a main melody lifted straight from Richard Marx's 1989 hit 'Right Here Waiting' and picked out on a nylon guitar, there's nothing here that's going to survive the boil wash of repeated listens intact before it's packed off to Oxfam in a recycling sack. On whose selves, incidentally, I saw a copy this very day. And when Richard Marx is used as a benchmark, then such paucity of ambition deserves no better fate.*

* Funnily enough, one of his CDs was in the rack too. Sic vita est boyz.

1998 Run DMC Vs Jason Nevins: It's Like That

I get awfully confused over schools sometimes. Old school, new school, whatever school - it's all rock and roll to me. I'm still trying to get used to the 'old school' tag that's now attached to the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands I loved as a lad, and as for 'Nu Metal', don't get me started. In hip hop circles, Run DMC are regarded as 'old school', an act from back in the day before the beefs, bling and the nasty took over. Originally released in 1983, 'It's Like That' was an early example of rap gaining a social conscience with its checklist of social ills ("Unemployment at a record highs. People coming, people going, people born to die") squared on each verse by the "It's like that, and that's the way it is" hook and completed by an underlying message of self respect and self improvement ("If you really think about it times aren't that bad. The one that flexes with successes will make you glad. Stop playing start praying, you won't be sad").

"Bad", "Mad", "Sad" - if the rhymes are cruder then the beats are cruder (when compared with the slick modern hip hop productions of The Neptunes or Dr Dre anyway), but being 'old school' then these are less criticisms and more a statement/description of a pioneering band laying down the foundations for a brand new genre through with a piledriving force that had subtlety as the last thing on its mind. To say otherwise is to criticise Robert Johnson for not using Dolby to reduce the hiss on the tapes. Fast forward fifteen years and DJ Jason Nevin's remix takes a broad brush to the rough edges that applies a bass heavy beat that ‘updates’ it nineties dance style.

While Run DMC's earlier Aerosmith cover/collaboration on 'Walk This Way' was a genre bending, door kicking genuine crossover, don't let the Vs in the title here fool you; 'It's Like That' is no battle for supremacy and this is remix is every bit a dusting down as 'MMMbop' or 'Brimful Of Asha' were, with Nevin leading the track exactly where he wants it to go. Which in this case is to turn 'old school' hip hop into poor man's hip hop by going for the lowest common denominator in a way I'm not comfortable with.

On the two latter songs, Cook and The Dust Brothers took something already contemporary and made it more so in a way that, even if you didn't believe was an improvement, certainly didn't lessen the original in any way. They could do that because neither track in its original form or context defined anything much beyond an artistic statement from either band. But lest we forget, the 'old school of 'It's Like That' was once so 'now'' it must have hurt, and hearing it converted into the standard 'now' dumph dumph dumph passing car thump for a quick buck strikes me as a ‘Greedo shoots first’ scenario – a re-writing of history and an imagination free tampering of the song's legacy that's not required and which fills me with the same dread as that 'electronically processed for stereo' warning that used to appear on re-issues of mono recordings. Enjoy if for what it is by all means, but don’t let it overshadow what ‘It’s Like That’ once was. Because it deserves better than that.

1998 Madonna: Frozen

Though a fixture on these pages during the eighties, it's been quiet on the Madonna front of late. Top ten singles have been plentiful in the meantime, but it's been eight years since her last number one, a long time between hits for any dance/pop act. Why? Well any number of reasons could be offered up for debate, but I'm happy to put it down to a series of weak singles and weaker albums where an eye off the ball Madonna moved away from what she does best (i.e. dance music) to firstly flog a more overtly sexual image in seemingly a Cnut type attempt to deny the passing of time before a handbrake turn into the much coveted lead role in the 1997 film version of 'Evita'. Either way, there wasn't a lot of fun to be had for the average fan.

There's not much fun in 'Frozen' either; lead single from the heavily trailed 'Ray Of Light' album, the whole was hyped as a re-boot and relaunching of the Madonna brand to slip it into something more serious, and from the opening bars even the casual listener could tell a change was in the air. Not so much in terms of the music I think - much of 'Frozen' has too much precedent in 'Like A Prayer' before the beats started rolling for this to be completely virgin territory, but in Madonna herself. Never a convincing balladeer on past releases, the vocal lessons undertaken as part of her work on of 'Evita' have paid off and she delivers 'Frozen' with a hands off, measured maturity as the one time 'boy toy' tries to melt the heart of a man who doesn't care.

Is it surprising to report that a song called 'Frozen' sounds cold and distant? Not really - being deliberately more Sunday morning than Saturday night was part of the package, but what is surprising is how badly William Orbit's once famed production has dated; what once was hailed as fresh and innovative now only serves as a distraction. The cold burn Eastern string flourishes and rain on tin drum shuffle still create and maintain an atmospheric drive, but Orbit's trademark echo drenched percussive skitter and bursts now bleep like cashed in and tacked on trip hop throwbacks in a song which would in any case shimmer in its own cool frigidity without them.

Frigid? That's not something you can say about too much of Madonna's work and the asexual longing of her vocal is a move away from the norm for an artist not averse to lacing her output with rampant sexuality. Neither siren, flirt, tease or predator 'Frozen' is Madonna painted as vulnerable, an older, wiser being with the understanding that, unlike the cocksure "I've had to work much harder than this, for something I want don't try to resist me. Open your heart to me, baby" on 1986's 'Open Your Heart', love is isn't an asset any material girl can demand. Hindsight has shown that the maturity didn't last and Ms Ciccone would soon revert to type in releasing inconsequential albums ('American Life' anyone?) and wiggling her arse to let sex sell her product. 'Frozen' , however, remains an impressive statement from the 'new' Madonna for as long as she lasted, and in the final analysis it will be as indicative of her talent as anything in her catalogue.

1998 Cornershop: Brimful Of Asha

As I've mentioned before, I personally lost interest in what was at number one in the charts sometime during the late eighties. My tastes then were such that I knew whatever was there wasn't going to be to my liking so why should I care? Any interest or knowledge was in passing only when snippets of information broke through my firewall of disinterest to register with me.

Which is how I learned that Cornershop were at number one - a chanced glance at the top forty listing in a music paper. That snippet got through, and it got through like a chainsaw through jelly. 'They can't call themselves that' I thought, 'there's already a band called Cornershop doing the rounds'. I should know; I briefly dallied with them in the early nineties when their 'In The Days Of Ford Cortina' EP appeared on the same label (Wiiija) as Huggy Bear and their rough and ready sound and multi-racial line-up somehow got them lumped them in with the UK Riot Grrrl movement. Briefly anyway.

Rough and ready? I'll say - I saw that Cornershop 'play' live in 1993 where they delivered a thirty minute set of discord and noise that ended when the Asian guitarist walked off stage leaving his instrument propped up against an amplifier where it protested with the loudest and most unholy feedback racket I've ever heard. It was a fitting end to the show. Whereas punk made a virtue out of not being able to 'play' their instruments properly, they at least filled the gaps with imagination and having something to say. At that concert, Cornershop had neither, and so when I found out that 'this' Cornershop were the same band as 'that' one, I almost fell off my chair in surprise.

So what had changed? Well nothing really. And everything; boasting the same Anglo/Asian line-up and influences, 'Brimful Of Asha' is a joyous celebration of Bollywood and, in particular, the titular celluloid backing singer extraordinaire Asha Bhosie. Like 'MMMbop' before it, 'Brimful Of Asha' was originally released the year before its success (it got to number 60 in 1997) but which was then picked up and dusted down with a dancey makeover, in this case by Norman Cook. Which in itself could be a convenient 'explanation' for its success - all credit due to the remixer and nothing to do with those Cornershop boys after all. But that would be unfair and untrue; Cook can't claim all the credit here.

Although Cook's input is quite obviously using the same workout The Dust Brothers gave Hanson as its template, most of the raw materials that form the backbone were there to begin with. Tune, chunky guitar riff and the hook of the chorus - these were all Cornershop's and carry over from the original. Cook's main contribution is to paint a (wider) smile on the song's face by picking out the inner groove that lay just below the surface and uncoiling it. His remix greases the wheels to make the song slide across the dancefloor by tweaking the speed upwards to shake off the cobwebs and relegating the guitar line to a supporting part beneath a funky drummer rhythm and an in your face handclap beat; the quality of the underlying song is recognised and this baby isn't thrown out with the bathwater.

True, the 'message' of the original is partly lost in the conversion to dance (which also takes some of the bite out of the band's name), but I can live with that - Cook plies it with just enough drink to make it the tipsy life and soul rather than pouring it neat from the bottle until it's overpowered and/or dragged into generic caricature. And through his deft touch, 'Brimful Of Asha' becomes an early dose of midsummer street party wrapped in the sound of good times (though even after all this time, Cornershop at number one takes some getting used to - next entry, Crispy Ambulance. Perhaps not - that's being too silly.)

1998 Celine Dion: My Heart Will Go On

Recording a love song for the soundtrack of a nineties blockbuster must have provided better financial returns than owning a goose that laid golden eggs daily. It was a big business. Bryan Adams, Whitney Houston et al had already had a go and banked the rewards and now for James Cameron's 'Titanic', Celine Dion gamely steps up to claim her slice of the same pie. Such is the obviousness of the artist/song pairing that, in hindsight, it's difficult to believe that she needed to be strong-armed into recording 'My Heart Will Go On'. As far as I can see she was nothing less than a shoe-in; the soundtrack to a tragedy that was literally a matter of life and death needed a classy touch to add the necessary respect and sense of occasion to make it work. And Celine Dion is nothing if not classy.

Who else was there? Pop divas like Maria Carey would carry way too much genre baggage to be able to even pull off Celine's pose on the cover, let alone deliver the song with any believability. But then it's precisely the prim starchiness Dion brings to the table that freezes 'My Heart Will Go On' until it leaves me colder than the iceberg the ship hit. Ms Dion runs through the "Love can touch us one time and last for a lifetime. And never let go till we're gone" doggerel with the intense disinterest of one practising their scales, and the otherworldly dislocation of her vocal means I've never been sure if she's singing from the point of view of the living or the dead. Which means 'My Heart Will Go On' never settles into something beefy I can identify with.

That's not to lay all the blame at Dion's feet; 'My Heart Will Go On' by itself is less a song and more a sketchbook of mood pieces and motifs stitched together by a whiny Irish whistle (to help sell it to the American market that lapped up The Corrs and The Cranberries) in a piece with a terrific middle, but no discernable beginning or end. Neither is any of it particularly nautically related and, without the accompanying visuals of Kate and Leo or some rolling waves to illustrate and punctuate the orchestral and vocal swells, then 'My Heart Will Go On' struggles to solidify or find resonance in isolation and slowly flatlines into forgettable inconsequence.

1998 Aqua: Dr Jones

Second number one from a band that seem to come stamped with a 'One Hit Wonder' hallmark, 'Dr Jones' doesn't have the (admittedly tenuous) virtue of satire of 'Barbie Girl', but then it has little of the irritation either, save for René Dif's deadpan vocal interruptions (that always give Aqua the feel of a pre-school Sugarcubes).* But it's all part of the fun eh? Which is what Aqua were all about. There's an inbuilt good humour to 'Dr Jones' that steers it away from the shores of annoyance and puts a smile on my face. Because for all it's simplicity, there's a keen eyed craft at work here no less than there was on (for example) 'Sugar Sugar'. Oh yes, I'm well aware that it's easy enough to dismiss both with one wave of the same hand, but I'm happy to accept 'Dr Jones' for what it is; good pop.

* Though the video did try to get another gimmick going by tying in the titular 'Dr' with Indiana Jones. Which gave new meaning to the word 'tenuous'.

1998 Usher: You Make Me Wanna

First number one from another self styled 'King of R&B', 'You Make Me Wanna' is not the usual generic groove of urban smoothness but is instead driven by a sparser hiss of hi hat percussion and clipped rhythm that's a constant finger poke in the ribs to keep your attention. So far, so different, and yet in common with modern R&B as a whole, there's a robotic building block structure to the song suggestive of something constructed in layers at a mixing desk instead of organically grown from a jam session. That's not a criticism per se, but while there's not a rough edge in sight, there's not a lot of soul either. To be fair, maybe that's my 'fault'; Usher isn't 'speaking' to me either within the genre (which I'm not too fussed on anyway) or within the context of the song itself - 'You Make Me Wanna' sees our man telling a third party that she's the sort of gal he'd consider leaving his woman for. Which isn't the best chat up line I've ever heard and it chucks a bucket of dirty water over the waxed gloss of the whole to leave rather cheap and tacky sheen. Wonder if it worked?

1998 Oasis: All Around The World

Back on 'D'You Know What I Mean?' I passed comment on Oasis resorting to re-heating their own ideas in a stewed song that rambled on far longer than it needed to. I think I might have been a bit premature though and I've been tempted to go back and re-write that entry in the same way (I suppose) the person who said World War One was 'the war to end all wars' must have wished he'd kept his mouth shut too; 'All Around The World' takes the flaws of that former song and trumps them by the power of ....ooh….about ten.

Although apparently pre-dating both, 'All Around The World' lifts and recycles the least interesting bits from 'Wonderwall' and (in particular) 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and then overloads them with the zeal of an over-enthusiastic kid slotting too many tools and non standard extras onto the Buckaroo mule just to see what the happens. The end result? Instead of bucking them off with a deft kick, the poor beast collapses under their weight and lies waiting for the bullet in the head to put it out of its misery.

'All Around The World' could use one of those bullets between the eyes too; at almost ten minutes long, it simply does not know when to stop. And it doesn't stop because it doesn't have to - with Oasis in their pomp and gorging on their own majesty then why should it? Never mind that two thirds of flab could easily be lopped from that running time with no discernible loss of anything, this was the 'greatest songwriter of his generation' at his peak and so I'm guessing that nobody was too minded to give a 'Wooah there cowboy' pull on the reins to curtail the director's cut of one louder, multi-key change march of sound that relentlessly climbs an Escher staircase to nowhere. What did I say? 'Prog rock without the progression'? Right.

It doesn't help that Oasis measure their own progression by referencing an all too obvious inspiration - 'All Around The World' wears its Beatles (circa 'Magical Mystery Tour' era) influences not on its sleeve but on foot square, day-glo inked placards hammered crudely onto its face and chest with six inch nails. I mean, what have we got? A 'la la la' 'Hey Jude' coda, backwards masked guitar drones, an orchestra doing bits of business here, there and everywhere while Liam shouts it all down with his best 'I Am The Walrus' Lennon impression. In case that wasn't enough, it came with a 'Yellow Submarine' aping video that even featured a yellow submarine. These boys were shameless.

But each component part of the song is not there to round the song out to completeness with some George Martin-like magic filling but because 'All Around The World' abhors a vacuum and every space had to have something/anything shoehorned in from the stack 'em high bargain basement of noise. Shits, however, are clearly not being given to quality control and the surface aura of experimentation becomes the one eyed obsession of the boy racer adding spot lamps, rear spoilers sports exhaust and full body kit to a one litre Ford Fiesta, blissfully unaware that he’s building a four wheeled dog's dinner of taste free ridiculousness. I feel the same about 'All Around The World'. I can't fault its ambition, but in execution the band are pushy parents co-ercing an unwilling B side into a career as an anthem when all it wants to do is be clapped along to around a campfire. In their efforts, they only create a louder, longer, less interesting and lumpen song that pisses all over any spark of fire that early Oasis crackled with.

1998 All Saints: Never Ever

An older, more streetwise, camouflage clad girl band, All Saints offered wide appeal to not only the Spice Girls' fans bigger sisters, but their old enough to know better father's as well. The maturity was reflected in the music too; 'Never Ever' opens with a spoken word intro that drips with all the melodrama of the Shangri Las' 'Past, Present And Future'. The girls clearly know their heritage and it sets us up for a ride of intensity, but then it blows its potential by settling into a stock R&B groove that's little more than 'Too Much' with flexed muscles and a better production. All of which makes 'Never Ever' a victory of style over substance; like the 'adult cover' versions of Harry Potter books designed to spare the blushes of grown up readers on trains, 'Never Ever' has the sheen of dramatic sophistication on top, but underneath it's just another glass of frothy pop (albeit Coca Cola proper rather than a cheap supermarket brand).