Peter Andre 'Lonely'

Chart Peak: 6
YouTube

'Lonely' looks all set to become Peter Andre's 6th huge hit in the last 18 months... It follows his previous smashes 'Mysterious Girl', 'Flava', 'I Feel You', 'Natural' and 'All About Us'

Although this was technically from his third album release, there was certainly a bit of second-album syndrome for Peter Andre at this stage. Thanks to clever marketing he was still able to notch up the hit singles, but following up a Number One album with a Number 28 only a year later is the sort of thing that happens to indie bands caught out by a change in fashion, not chart-topping pop stars with impressive abs. 'Lonely' was the second single from the ill-fated Time, and whilst the album featured some rap-oriented guest stars in such of a more "mature" sound, this is stays in typical soppy ballad for the Christmas market territory. I probably haven't heard it since it dropped out of the Top 40 and I'm already struggling to remember it just a few minutes after replaying it; it's a strangely featureless vehicle for Andre's pseudo-Michael-Jackson vocal.

It's not surprising that after a couple more hits he effectively disappeared from pop until reality TV came calling. What happened next was more of a surprise.

Also appearing on: Now 34, 35, 36, 40, 57
Available on: Unconditional Peter Andre Love Songs

Peter Andre 'Natural'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

'Natural' shot stright into the UK chart at No. 6 on 2nd March '97... it followed the No.1 smash 'I Feel You' and became Peter's 4th big UK smash in just 9 months.

If he's no easier to take seriously than Mark Morrison, Andre is certainly more likeable; he seems to have better relationships with his hometown too, having been in Harrow only recently to assist a local charity. 14 years down the line, the title track of his first album is unlikely to be mistaken for a good record but neither is it as insultingly bad as Mark Morrison's effort.

It's watered-down makeweight RnB which clearly exists as an excuse to make a video of him with his shirt open; they even do the classic boyband shot where they get blown by the wind in loose white shirts, though I'm not sure who the other three guys are supposed to be. At least his attempts at seduction are a bit more consensual than Morrison's and the song has a sort of OK bassline.

Also appearing on: Peter Andre also appears on: Now 34, 35, 38, 40, 57
Available on: Natural (Eastwest Release)

Peter Andre 'Kiss The Girl'

Chart Peak:  9

YouTube

"Tipped to be Peter Andre's ninth Top 20 hit" said the sleevenotes, and they were right. If anyone tipped it to be a hit in America, though, they were wrong. I'd always understood this single as being related to the Disney film The Little Mermaid. And yet of course the film was released nine years before this, with an entirely different rendition of the song actually in the the movie itself. Andre's video includes scenes from the animation though, so it obviously was officially licensed, and it now seems to have found its way to a Disney-released compilation. Maybe there was a VHS release or something to promote.

Anyway, 'Mysterious Girl' notwithstanding, it's probably not very surprising that Andre plays down the calypso elements of the original arrangement in favour of a more conventional MOR arrangement that's supposed to show of his voice, which is in fairness OK. Well, better than some people's anyway. The whole thing seems like an effort relaunch his career at a more grown-up audience after the hip-hop-oriented second album underperformed a bit. But in a classic demonstration of the cruel, fast-moving pop market of 1998, even this Top 10 success wasn't enough to save his career and he was soon condemned to ex-popstar limbo. He didn't release another single until 2004, and that was a whole other story.

And that insight concludes the first disc of Now 40, which even more than I realised when I decided to write about it, comes over as one of the most woeful in the entire history of the series. And it's not only my age either, because I'd rate the equivalent sections of the volumes either side much higher. Tune in again in a few days to see whether Disc 2 can redeem the album at all.

Also appearing on: Now 35, 36, 28, 57
Available on: Ultimate Disney Princess

Peter Andre featuring Bubbler Ranx 'Mysterious Girl'

Chart Peak: 2 [53 in 1995]

YouTube

Well, there's no forgetting this one. Back when we first got cable TV and were able to watch phone-in video-request network The Box, this one seemed to crop up a lot, even though this was the time of the first release when it missed the Top 50. Perhaps people weren't requesting it for purely musical reasons, Andre's six-pack stomach apparently being a major attraction to some elements of the audience. My other great memory is my brother and I laughing at the intro that sounded like "Peter Andre, down with Bubbler Ranx and Simon Mayo": actually, it turns out not to sound much like that at all, but we laughed.

Anyway, back to the story. 'Mysterious Girl' was rereleased after Andre had cracked the Top 20 with 'Only One', and went on to become one of the big hits of Summer 1996, narrowly missing out on Number One and hanging around so long the record company ultimately deleted it to help out the follow-up. None of this should distract us from the fact that it's an awful record, a flimsy reggae-RnB hybrid full of lyric touches so lazy they're sometimes incomprehensible ("The tropical scent of you"?). It's typical for what it is, of course, but the fact that it hasn't been allowed to go away is frustrating. And, as I later discovered, Peter Andre is from my hometown, though he was at least raised on the other side of the world.


This track also appears on: Now 57

Peter Andre also appears on: Now 35, 36, 28, 40
Available on: Natural