Blue 'U Make Me Wanna'

Chart Peak: 4
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In March 2003, 'U Make Me Wanna' became Blue's 7th successive Top 5 hit and the 3rd smash from their 2nd album... It follows a great February when Duncan, Antony, Lee and Simon won the "Best Pop Act" award at the Brits.

Rather as with Atomic Kitten, most people probably remember that Blue existed; indeed the front page of my local paper this week is an advert for Lee Ryan's appearance in pantomime at the Beck Theatre, Hayes. However, many if not most of their hits have vanished from public consciousness over the years and in all honesty some of them aren't very memorable. 'U Make Me Wanna' has the particular disadvantage of a title almost as generic as the band's own name: it's possible that they chose the spelling to distinguish this from Usher's 'You Make Me Wanna...' although they didn't do the same for other hits like 'One Love' or 'Guilty'.

The song itself is no more distinctive, the sort of watered-down two-step that was massive at the start of the century, complete with those double-timed vocals everyone seemed to be doing and some generic loverman lyrics. Effectively, it's pseudo-Craig David. It's not actually any good, obviously, although it reaches a low-point when Antony Costa uses the phrase "make sweet love" without apparent irony. Poor even for them.

Also appearing on: Now 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59
Available on: Best Of Blue

Blue 'If You Come Back'

Chart Peak: 1 (1 week)

YouTube

London lads Duncan James, Anthony Costa [sic], Lee Ryan & Simon Webb are the members of 2001's hottest new R&B/pop sensation Blue... The band's first single 'All Rise' made an unprecedented debut at no4 while follow-up, 'Too Close' gave the boys their first no1 - their "crazy and exciting" year looks set to continue with the release of the hotly-tipped 'If You Come Back' in November.

I thought I should probably reproduce all that to give you some context for a song that already seems rather forgotten: it's probably the least-remembered of their three chart-topping singles, although it happens to have been the only one ever to make a Now album. But then almost all their hits seem to have dropped off the radar surprisingly fast, which is presumably why their attempts to reunite and make a comeback seem to have been going on longer than their original career did. It's probably also why it's so rare to go into a charity shop that doesn't have at least one copy of their debut album in it. Even the band's name is generic and of course unoriginal - they were unsuccessfully sued by the identically-named act who had a Top 20 hit in the Seventies with 'Gonna Capture Your Heart'.

'If You Come Back' is the only one of those three Number One singles that wasn't a cover version, althoughit wasn't written by the band themselves either. It's straight out of the boyband sausage factory (one of the people who did write it was an ex-member of 911) and betrays nothing of the "street" sounds of a lot of their songs. Which is no bad thing, really, because that was usually quite cringeworthy, but then again it doesn't sound like anything else either, it's just totally inert.

As for that comeback, well at time of writing their years of circling around Eurovision have finally paid off and they're representing "us" in Germany this year. Unfortunately, the song won't be about a lovely horse.


Also appearing on: Now 49, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59
Available on: All Rise