Janet Jackson 'That's The Way Love Goes'

Chart Peak: 2
YouTube

International superstar Janet Jackson stormed back into the UK chart in May '93 with this cool, dance cut which peaked at No.2.

So, this song is by most definitions her biggest hit: it's the closest she's come to a solo Number One in Britain (she also peaked at 2 in a duet with Luther Vandross) and its eight weeks at the top of the US chart are a record not only for her but for her entire family. And yet I don't remember the song at all. As I've been saying all along, 1993 is a bit of a blank period for me, but I managed to forget it even in the time between originally listening to the tape and looking up the YouTube video yesterday. And I've forgotten how it goes again since then.

While I'm actually listening to it, this is a pretty enjoyable track, a typically slick Jam & Lewis production with the intriguing addition of backing vocals pitched down on the chorus. Jackson herself is in fine voice too, I must admit, and it slips down easy. A bit too easy, frankly. The only other problem is the forced "relaxed" video, which looks like it's been choreographed to within an inch of its life, and features a pre-fame Jennifer Lopez

That concludes Now 26, an album that hasn't been anywhere near as bad as I feared. In fact there's remarkably little crap on there, but rather a lot of mediocrity.

Also appearing on: Now 8, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49, 53 (with Beenie Man)
Available on: Janet

Go West 'Tracks Of My Tears'

Chart Peak: 16

YouTube

Go West are Peter Cox and Richard Drummie... They have been consistent hitmakers since 'We Close Our Eyes' in 1985 and this cover of the Smokey Robinson classic reached No. 16 in October 1993.

Well, if anyone ever asks you whether the same phrase appears as both a song title and the name of an act on the same Now album, here's your answer. Admittedly, it happens again on Now 27, but that's 'Doop' by Doop so it doesn't really count. I like the fact that 'Go West' is the second track on the album and Go West the band appear on the penultimate one.
"Consistent hitmakers" is one way of putting it. Or you could quote the notes to Now 1985 (released earlier in 1993 and supplied to me in the same cache of cassettes as this) which note that "'We Close Our Eyes', their first hit, is still their biggest to date". Either way, they were nearing the end of the road by this point, and this was their last new material for fifteen years, a doubtless contractually-obliged new track for a Greatest Hits album. It's not a bad version, to be fair, but it does sound exactly like you'd expect if you know the song, Peter Cox's voice and the approximate recording date. It feels soulless and pointless, and why would you ever choose to listen to this when you could listen to the original?


Also appearing on: Now 23
Available on: Greatest Hits

Lenny Kravitz 'Heaven Help'

Chart Peak: 20

YouTube

'Heaven Help' was Lenny's 3rd British hit single this year and multi-instrumentalist, producer, writer, singer and musical maverick previously charted with 'Are You Gonna Go My Way' and 'Believe'.

Here's a track I hadn't heard, or even heard of, until I was handed Now 26: it didn't cross my path at the time and I've done my best to avoid Lenny Kravitz since then. I'm sure he'll survive the revelation, but he's one of my least favourite musicians and I'm quite relieved that he so rarely shows up in the Now! series.
In fairness, of his three appearances this proves by far the least objectionable. It lacks his usual turgid rock riffing and is a fairly pretty ballad, though not a million miles away from Stevie Wonder's similarly-titled hit. Like that song, it comes from outside songwriters: in this case including Terry Britten, best-known for his work with that well-known musical maverick Cliff Richard. Still, Kravitz sings it pretty well.

Also appearing on: Now 24, 42
Available on: Are You Gonna Go My Way

Bjork and David Arnold 'Play Dead'

Chart Peak: 12

YouTube

'Play Dead', the haunting single featuring the vocals of ex-Sugarcube Bjork and the lush production of David Arnold, charted at No. 12 after just one week on release.

After that run of makeweights by people who can do better, it's rather a relief to come to one of the real classics on this album; we seem to get roughly one per side here. I don't actually remember the film Young Americans but Arnold's sweeping string melody was everywhere in the mid-1990s (it was also used in a car advert in 1995). Jah Wobble, incidentally, gets a co-writing credit alongside Arnold and Bjork for the bassline he composed and performed, making him the second ex-member of Public Image Limited to contribute prominently to Now 26.

Curiously, one of the copies of this song on YouTube has a comment describing it as "very emotional" - and yet it's really a song about the repression of emotion (thus the title). Apparently this is based on the lead character in the film, but it works well enough out of context anyway thanks to Bjork's admittedly screechy vocal, which seems to prove that she can't really keep it in. The single was a major breakthrough for her commercially, her first Top 20 single since the Sugarcubes (it was added to later pressings of her Debut album as well) but to me it's as much Arnold's show as hers, his gorgeous tune and arrangement being the building block. As it was presumably written before the lyric, it doesn't necessarily reflect its content, but taken together it's possible to hear the suggestion that emotion is a beautiful thing as well as a painful one.

Arnold's career has of course gone from strength to strength as much as Bjork's - perhaps even more so if you account for the number of people who've heard his soundtracks to James Bond and other films. He's had other chart hits too - most notably his collaboration with Propellerheads - but this is all we get of him in Now terms, unfortunately.


Bjork also appears on: Now 27, 35
Available on: Bjork - Greatest Hits

Lisa Stansfield 'So Natural'

Chart Peak: 15

YouTube

Rochdale's Lisa Stansfield first charted as featured vocalist on Coldcut's 'People Hold On' back in 1989... Solo hits such as 'All Around The World', 'Change' and 'In All The Right Places' have established has as one of our top female singers and 'So Natural' continued her success when it entered the chart at No. 15 on 17th October '93.

Funnily enough, I saw a copy of this single in a charity shop earlier today. I didn't buy it though, because it's not really as good as any of the other songs mentioned in that sleeve note. The opening title track of her third album is one of those records that it's hard to fault but even harder to enthuse about. Stansfield is in fine voice but there isn't really much for her to do with it and the song itself is painfully cliched. I'm sure the romantic sentiment is genuine enough - she did after all co-write the song with her husband - but there's not enough going on here and her career did seem to stumble at this point, despite her valiant efforts in the video - she must have been under that fountain for hours. She's another name to add to the list of acts poorly represented in the Now! series, unfortunately.

Also appearing on: Now 20
Available on: So Natural

Soul II Soul 'Wish'

Chart Peak: 24

YouTube

'Wish' is the new Soul II Soul single due for release on 25th October '93... Mainman Jazzie B, AKA Beresford Romeo, started the collective in the early 1980s and they have had numerous UK hits to date, such as 'Keep On Moving', 'Back To Life' and 'Joy'.

It's the second time SIIS have shown up on this blog, but unfortunately both mentions have been from this point in the mid-1990s. Their time at the centre of the musical universe had already elapsed and they'd drifted into a certain blandness. 'Wish' was the token new track from a singles collection and as such is perhaps not the track they worked hardest on, but although it's not unpleasant to listen to it does nothing to attract interest or retain it. Jazzie's rap sounds especially thrown in.

One little bit of trivia - the vocalist on this track is Melissa Bell, whose daughter Alexandra Burke went on to win X-Factor 15 years later and thus appears on a few Now! albums herself.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 18, 22, 31, 32
Available on: This Is... 1993

Lena Fiagbe 'Gotta Get It Right'

Chart Peak: 20

Muzu

Lena idolises Keith Richard, likes listening to Irish folk music and Public Enemy and doesn't want to be your "stereotypical black female singer"... 'Gotta Get It Right' is her first Top 30 hit. From CD/tape/LP Lyrically Yours.

As it turned out, the word "first" was a little overoptimistic, as this proved to be her only Top 40 appearance, though her record label (U2-affiliated Polygram imprint Mother) did at least release an album in 1994, though it seems to have ended up being called Visions rather than the title in this note. Anyway, her claims to atypicality (if that's a word) seem like protesting a little too much, but this is a pretty decent female-fronted soul track of the sort that record companies seemed only too keen to release around this time, even if the general public were slightly less keen to buy them: it's of a piece with moderately-sized hits by Carleen Anderson, Shara Nelson et al, none of whom became household names even if they should have.

It's a type of music that leaves me in a bit of a quandry: I often like it but keep feeling that I should love it and thus fall to unfairly harsh judgement. 'Gotta Get It Right' takes us nowhere we haven't been before, save for the reference to God in the chorus, but it's a very likeable number with a bit of a social conscience and over the few times I've listened to it for this post I've rather grown to like it. It hasn't left me desperate to hear more from her though, which may have been part of the problem for her career. I was curious enough to check whether she was still around though, and apparently she is.


Available on: Girls

Gabrielle 'Going Nowhere'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

'Going Nowhere' was Gabrielle's 2nd Top 10 hit of 1993... It reached No. 9 as the follow-up to the No.1 summer smash 'Dreams'.

I think they unwittingly give a bit too much away, in that sleeve note: it's hard to imagine this single making the Top 10 had it not been the follow-up to one of the biggest singles of the year. Of course many big Number one acts fail with subsequent releases, and I'm not saying this lacked hit potential anyway, it's just a bit underwhelming. As always, Gabrielle sings rather well, but as is frequently the case, she's not given much to work with. Once you've got over the mild joke of the title - she's actually saying she ain't going nowhere, it's a positive song - it's pleasant but forgettable and indeed forgotten. The Portishead remix is slightly more interesting but there's still not really enough to this.

Also appearing on: Now 25, 27, 33, 35 (with East 17), 36, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 58
Available on: Dreams Can Come True - Greatest Hits Volume 1

Take That 'Pray'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

Gary, Howard, Jason, Mark and Robbie have already had 4 massive hits in Britain year... 'Pray', a No.1 in July, was the biggest seller of them all.

They'd got off to a relatively slow start, by modern boyband standards, and had to wait until their ninth single to get to the top of the chart - but this was the start of a run of four consecutive Number Ones for them. It's the only representation in the Now! series of their second album Everything Changes, which proved to be the biggest seller of their original career. Like a lot of their catalogue, it was rarely heard between about 1994 and 2005, but has become a regular airplay favourite in more recent years. In truth, it's a good fit for commercial radio, a smoothly-produced song with a clear soul influence but no real grit to it. It lifts up in all the right places for a chorus, but as with a lot of Gary Barlow's compositions, I find it easier to nod at how well it's done than to be caught in any sort of passion about it, emotionally or rhythmically. It is clever that they thought to angle their musical style to appeal beyond the typical boyband audience and thus prolong their career but I'm more impressed than pleased.


Also appearing on: Now 22, 24, 29, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 78, 79
Available on: Everything Changes

Dina Carroll 'Don't Be A Stranger'

Chart Peak: 3

YouTube

Dina first charted as lead vocalist on the 1991 Quartz hit 'It's Too Late'... 'Don't Be A Stranger' is her 6th solo hit in the last 18 months and became the soul singer's biggest success yet when it entered the Top 10 on 17th October '93.

It might look like an exaggeration, but this really was the sixth hit single from her debut album, and the eighth if you include the two Quartz hits she sang on. By the end of 1993 she'd managed yet another hit with 'The Perfect Year', although it took three years for any more new material to emerge and her career seems never to have recovered. 'Don't Be A Stranger' is a big ballad to end all big ballads, with extra orchestral parts ladled on for this single version. In subject matter, it's not a million miles from 'Miss You Nights' by Cliff Richard, and whilst it's not quite that good it works pretty well, Carroll being a capable singer and wisely not overegging the song - after all, the protagonist is obviously lacking in self-confidence, hence the desparation to be welcomed and accepted by somebody, even for the wrong reason. It wouldn't make sense to be bellowing about that. For me, it's just a pity the music feels a little too tame and doesn't quite have that extra flourish that would make it more memorable.

Also appearing on: Now 24, 27, 35, 43
Available on: The World's Greatest Ballads

Jamiroquai 'Too Young To Die'

Chart Peak: 10

YouTube

Jamiroquai (pronounced "Jam-ear-oh-kwai) are fronted by Jay Kay and their music has been called "funk with a feeling and a meaning"... 'Too Young To Die', Top 10 in March, was the firstand biggest of 4 hits so far in 1993.

An alien who got their entire knowledge of pop music from Now! albums might come to the conclusion that Jamiroquai and Juliet Roberts were equally successful, as they appear on four albums each. For good or ill, that wasn't really the case, and Jay Kay and his combo were one of Britain's biggest musical exports for a decade or two. At this early stage in their career, though, they could still be described as up-and-coming, having paid their dues on the Acid Jazz scene (and indeed the label of the same name). Like a lot of their early material, 'Too Young To Die' is heavy on social comment and fear, protesting against the twin threats to human survival: nuclear wars and environmental devastation.

It's a well Kay has visited many times over the years but rarely to greater effect than this. My cynical side suggests that this is at least partly because he wasn't yet rich enough to afford a collection of Lamborghinis, and partly because repetition inevitably dulled the impact of the message; but I think this is one of the band's greatest successes in musical terms as well. Of course, they actually were a band at this stage, but even so the focus was very much on Kay and his voice and dance moves; I don't think he's ever sung better than this, even if he does sound a bit too much in love with himself during the scat sections. It's not a terribly original composition either, sounding suspiciously like a Stevie Wonder outtake, but at least it sounds like one from a time when Stevie had decent material to reject. It slips down easy, even if I can't bring myself to seek out the 10-minute version from the 12" single.


Also appearing on: Now 26, 44, 50
Available on: High Times - The Singles 1992 - 2006

Juliet Roberts 'Free Love'

Chart Peak: 25

YouTube [remix]

Former Working Week lead singer Juliet Roberts follows the dance smash 'Caught In The Middle' with the re-release of the storming 'Free Love' on 25th October '93.

It's been a while since this has happened, but I've struck out at trying to find the original version of this track on YouTube: it is available on Spotify, if that's of any use to you. Fortunately I had the cassette to refer to. This is the second of four consecutive Now! appearances for her, despite the underwhelming chart performance of most of the songs involved. Roberts has spent much of her career as a backing singer and without wishing to sound unkind it almost feels like she is one here as well. Maybe I'm just tired but I struggle to even pay attention to this song, let alone find things to say about it. I'm going to be generous and suggest that it might make more sense in a club, but at home it's sadly featureless.

Also appearing on: Now 25, 27. 28
Available on: Original Hits - Nineties [Explicit]

Captain Hollywood Project 'More And More'

Chart Peak: 23

YouTube

Due for release in Britain on 25th October '93, 'More And More' has already been a hit in America and many more European countries... It is penned by the writers of the No.1 smash 'Mr Vain' and is destined to give the former Twenty 4 Seven man Captain Hollywood his first UK hit. 

He was a real captain you know, an American solider who'd been stationed in Germany. Like many of his colleagues, he gravitated towards the music business, first finding fame as a dancer and choreographer before he became a pop star, guesting with the aforementioned Twenty 4 Seven on a series of major hits in mainland Europe, including the UK smash 'I Can't Stand It'. His first solo hit places his rapping alongside a hook sung by one Nina Gerhard. Like many Eurodance hits, it aims for slightly woolly social commentary, although unlike almost all of them it was a bigger hit in the UK (where it peaked at 17) than in the UK. This pales into significance compared to its success in Germany, where it was one of the biggest sellers of all time.   I'm rather at a loss to understand why - there's nothing I can actually say is wrong with this record, but it seems devoid of distinguishing features and hard to react to in any way.

Available on: Love Is Not Sex

Urban Cookie Collective 'Feels Like Heaven'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

'Feels Like Heaven', due for release on 1st November '93, is the follow-up to the No. 2 smash 'The Key, The Secret'... Urban Cookie Collective is masterminded by producer Rohan Heath.

At the time, this was a comparably-sized hit to their first, but posterity has seemed less impressed with it, and indeed I don't think I'd ever heard it before. Unconnected to the Fiction Factory song, this is probably forgotten mostly because it's so similar to their first hit (and most of their others). Since 'The Key, The Secret' never managed to appear on a Now album on any of its chart runs, I might as well admit that I've never fully understood why it's so widely considered a classic of the genre: I don't not like it, but I've never thought it anything exceptional. So whilst I don't think this song is really any worse, I can't get too excited about it either. If you do like it but find it too long, why not try the slightly shorter edit available on this compilation album.

As an extra bonus, how about the drum and bass version of 'Champagne Supernova' that Noel Gallagher allegedly stopped them releasing? You're welcome.


Also appearing on: Now 27
Available on: The Very Best Of

Apache Indian 'Boom Shack-A-Lak'

Chart Peak: 5 [as lead track of the Nuff Vibes EP]

YouTube

Apache Indian, the young rapper from Birmingham, has become a superstar in the British Asian communities in the last 12 months... 'Boom Shack-A-Lak' was his first Top 5 smash in August '93.

Though his chart career was a relatively short one, with all his Top 40 hits between 1993 and 1995, the self-styled bhangramuffin Steven Kapur nonetheless has his place in pop history as one of the remarkably few acts from Britain's Asian communities to achieve mainstream success for any length of time. There are pages and pages to be written about the persistent absence of bhangra and other British Asian music from the charts and from most radio stations, despite its obvious popularity, but that's beyond our scope here. One obvious advantage Mr Indian had, at least in a 1993 context, was the cross-cultural nature of his music; clearly picking up on the sounds of the streets in the West Midlands, he blended elements of Indian classical and popular music with American rap and the reggae sounds that were everywhere that summer.

The lascivious but cheeky approach of 'Boom Shack-A-Lack' is particularly reminiscent of Shaggy, who'd had his first UK hit earlier that year with 'Oh Carolina', at the head of the nation's first all-ragga Top 3. As such the song lacks the political overtones of some of his material, but it's a good party track and one with enough appeal and memorability to have been used almost endlessly in adverts and movies. Whilst this and the last track aren't often compared, one thing they do have in common is their personality, rather a contrast from some of the more faceless dance tracks around this time. However, there's no excuse for playing air guitar like that in your video.

Available on: The Best Of

Leftfield Lydon 'Open Up'

Chart Peak: 13

YouTube

Leftfield are producers Neil Barnes and Paul Daley... John Lydon was once a Sex Pistol called Johnny Rotton and this combo have combined to devastating effect on the pulsating 'Open Up' due for release 1st November '93 from the forthcoming Leftfield album.

As it turned out, that Leftfield album wasn't forthcoming until 1995, though at least it was widely held to be worth the wait. Nothing else on there quite managed the same impact as this collaboration though, in retrospect something of a milestone on the path towards the embrace of harder-edged dance by the rock audience. With hindsight, they were perhaps lucky to catch Lydon at the right moment on his trajectory from supposed threat to society towards the irritating ginger-haired Peter Hitchens substitute who appeared on Question Time last week. OK, he was already irritating - that was his raison d'etre after all - but at this time he still had some musical credibility from the Public Image Ltd days, and yet with that band's career effectively over (until the last couple of years anyway) so he still had something to prove. For possibly the last time in his musical career he sounds truly vital, his aggressive but cartoonish performance exactly what the pounding backing track needed; this may be why the two members of Leftfield style themselves as members of a rock band in the accompanying video, even though the recording is entirely electronic as far as I can tell.

I try not to mention things like this too often on here, as it feels like the factual equivalent of a cheap laugh, but this is longer ago now than 'Anarchy In The UK' was at the time, and another way to read that video is as an attempt to stake dance music's claim as the true successor of punk. That may or may not be true (and may or may not be a good thing, of course) but it's certainly a ball the Prodigy picked up and ran with a couple of years later - indeed it's quite extraordinary how much of their imagery (particularly circa 'Firestarter') seems to start here. Leftfield themselves went in a different direction, though, clearly recognising that they couldn't hope to better this in the same style. However, the claim you sometimes read that Lydon's chant of "burn Hollywood burn" coincided with the LA riots is patently untrue by 18 months - it's possible that he may have written the lyric in response to the riots, though.

Incidentally, when the Leftism album finally arrived, it contained an intermediate edit of the song, somewhere between the radio edit and the full 12" version. The short version that features here isn't available as a download, but it can be found on the best-of CD A Final Hit.

Available on: Leftism

The Goodmen 'Give It Up'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

'Give It Up' has been in the chart since August... It originally peaked at No. 23 but re-entered the Top 30 on 17th October '93 - This dance anthem has been described as "Latin drum madness meets Trooping The Colour meets a holiday session in Ibiza".

Not entirely sure who said that, but it's not a bad description of the atmosphere of this track, which does indeed make interesting use of the drum loop sampled from an old Sergio Mendes track. There's little else to it, other than some synth pad and the repeated shout of the title, presumably there mainly so the track could have a name. That's both a strength, in that there's sort of concentrated punchy quality to the track, and a weakness in that it gets a little bit boring after the first couple of minutes. In fact, I find myself in the rare position of being able to say that the Simply Red version is better, as Mick Hucknall marginally improved this by adding words and a bit more melody to create his only Number One single, 'Fairground'. Unfortunately, he tried the same trick later with less impressive results. Still, Zki and Dobre went on to make some pretty annoying records themselves, so they can't complain. 

Available on: House Masters - Chocolate Puma

Culture Beat 'Mr Vain'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)

YouTube

This huge Euro hit originated from Germany... Featuring vocalist Tania Evans, 'Mr Vain' exploded onto the UK chart and raced to No. 1 in August '93.

This single does have a minor place in history as the first UK Number One single (at least since the 1950s) not to be available on 7" vinyl - it topped the charts on CD, 12" and cassette sales only. That's probably the most important thing about this, but it's one of the better Eurodance hits of the era in my opinion, as the thumping nature of the music gels with the character sketch of Mr Vain himself, as portrayed by rapper Jay Supreme. In fact, though, it's female singer Tania Evans who does most of the running, as if she's trapped by her own attraction to Vain, even as she knows she shouldn't be near him. Don't we all know blokes like that?


On a complete side-note, I rather like the fact that the compilation I've linked to below sandwiches The Wedding Present between C&C Music Factory and Curiosity. 

Also appearing on: Now 27
Available on: The Pop Years 1992 - 1993

2 Unlimited 'Maximum Overdrive'

Chart Peak: 15

YouTube

The Dutch twosome have had 7 consecutive British hit singles in the last 2 years... Their latest, 'Maximum Overdrive', is due for release on 8th November '93.

And from a relatively big Eurodance act to the undoubted superstars of the genre, and by far Britain's favourite album act in the form. Unfortunately, whilst the fact that they were releasing a fourth single off their second LP is something of an achievement, this song does have "fourth release" written all over it. In fact, the title is probably more apt than they realised, since an overdrive in engineering terms is a gear in a vehicle's transmission that allows it to cruise along with minimum effort, and this record feels like they're going through the motions. Throughout there are moments that recall other 2Unlimited tracks, but this only heightens the sense that it'd be more fun listening to them than this. Even the video looks cheap and half-baked, with early-Star-Trek-esque camera shaking.

Also appearing on: Now 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28

Haddaway 'What Is Love?'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Nestor Haddaway was born on the island of Tobago in the Caribbean, grew up in Chicago and then moved to Germany in 1987... This rave/pop/techno/soul fusion, 'What Is Love?', is one of 1993's biggest sellers and peaked at No. 2 back in the summer.

One of the more successful Eurodance acts, Haddaway managed a decent run of hits even in the sceptical UK, and perhaps more impressively this song was a US Top 20 hit (and I'm pretty sure that was before they started using it on Saturday Night Live). 'What Is Love?' even returned to the Top 100 last year after being used in a TV commercial. 

This isn't quite the fascinating cross-cultural fusion promised in the sleevenote, but it does seem to have more heft to it than a lot of hits in this style. Haddaway himself seems a pretty good singer hemmed in by the limits of the genre, and the whole thing is dated but kind of fun. Had I heard this as often as most people seemed to in 1993, though, I would surely have tired of it. 

Also appearing on: Now 28
Available on: The Album

Capalla 'U Got 2 Let The Music'

Chart Peak: 2
YouTube

Cappella is the creation of Italian Gianfranco Bortolotti... 'U Got 2 Let The Music', which rocketed on the chart at No. 7 on 17th October 93, is the group's 4th UK Top 30 hit and follows 'U Got 2 Know' which made No. 6 in April.

As you've probably noticed, imaginative song titles weren't a strong point of Cappella, and neither indeed were creative lyrics. The biggest of their many hits has little actual content beyond informing us that we must let the music control our feet, although it's unclear what fate might befall us should we fail to heed this advice.

It's a perfectly serviceable bit of dance music, not the sort of thing that appeals much to me but I can see that whoever actually made this record knew what they were doing, though any connection to the people in the video is coincidental.

Also appearing on: Now 24, 27, 28
Available on: Pump Up The Jam