Panjabi MC Mundian To Bach Ke'

Chart Peak: 5
YouTube

'Mundian To Bach Ke'apparently translates as 'Beware Of The Boys' - Panjabi MC took Indian instruments, rhythms and voices and combined them with the theme from TV's Knightrider to fuse a unique sound on this single.

To be slightly more precise, he used a song written and sung by Labh Janjua (who is in the small print of the credits) and some sources suggest that the Knight Rider sample is via the Busta Rhymes hit 'Turn It Up/Fire It Up'. In fact, what I found most remarkable was that when I first heard the record I didn't immediately think of David Hasselhof. Obviously, that's a good thing in itself but it shows this was a good use of a sample, providing familiarity - which doubtless helped this song to cross over to Western markets - and a beat without sounding too obvious.

The track is of recognisably  British origin, not only because Panjabi MC himself is from Coventry but because it has clear roots in the UK-invented Bhangra sound. Despite or because of this it was originally just an album track in 1998, and only really caught on when a German record company picked it up several years later. As the song's popularity spread around Europe it finally made its way to the UK chart in 2003 and even attracted the attention of Jay-Z who added a rap to appeal to the US market. By this time it coincided with a fashion for Asian beats in RnB music though not for the first or last time hopes of a persistent mainstream breakthrough for this style were dashed. Still, it was an enjoyable track and a deserved hit. I bought my own copy the following year in the closing-down sale at my local branch of Virgin, which turned out to be a sign of things to come.

Available on: Panjabi MC The Album

Bellini 'Samba Di Janeiro'

Chart Peak: 8
YouTube

Bellini are a multi-cultural group of singers and dancers... Their massive Euro hit 'Samba De Janeiro' was a Top 10 smash in Britain in September '97

Notwithstanding what I said in the Ricky Martin post yesterday, songs aimed directly at the dance market are a slight exception to Britain's shunning of foreign-language hits, though of course there aren't many words in this song and none that will be unfamiliar to most Anglophones. Even so, you'll notice that it didn't chart here until September which I think is quite a while after it came out elsewhere; it is of course especially late to release a song called 'Samba of January'.

Wikipedia describes this as a "football based hit" although it's hard to see any connection beyond the fact that it's Brazilian in inspiration and Brazilians are quite good at football. Still, some YouTube commenters have suggested that it would have been a better theme song for the 2014 World Cup than the Pitbull/Jennifer Lopez tie-up that got the official nod, and indeed I'd have tended to agree were the track not 17 years old by then. Inevitably the track was opportunistically re-issued this summer anyway.

Despite its Latin American sound though, the track actually originates from another successful soccer nation: the founding members were three German producers lurking behind the dancers and vocalists. Though the Bellini name never troubled the UK chart again, the same trio regrouped under the more Germanic name Paffendorf, scoring a hit here in 2002 with the rather belated Tarantino pastiche 'Be Cool'. So there's nothing "authentic" about this track, if you believe in such notions, but it's an energetic throwaway with a tactfully short radio edit (two-and-a-half minutes). Probably works better dropped among several similar tracks though, and despite the title December might not be the best time to be listening to it either.

Also appearing on: Now 52 [as Paffendorf]
Available on: Brasil!

Ladysmith Black Mambazo 'Inkanyezi Nezazi (The Star And The Wiseman)'

Chart Peak: 63 [33 in 1997]

YouTube

Featured in a popular Heinz TV commercial, the haunting accapella strains of 'Inkanyezi Nezazi' made Ladysmith Black Mambazo a household name during the course of 1998. The South African group are also well-known for their collaboration with Paul Simon on the acclaimed Graceland album.

Quick quiz question for you - with which other act contributing to Now 42 did Ladysmith Black Mambazo collaborate on a hit single in 1999? Answer later in this post.
It's obviously not uncommon for a track that appears on a Now album to be a less-than-massive chart hit, although in most cases it's a track released as a single very close to the release date of the compilation, suggesting that bigger sales were expected at time of going to press. This single, however, was re-released in the summer of 1998, before even Now 40 was released, putting this into the smaller category of knowingly-included minor hits. Oddly, that 1998 release was a package of remixes on A&M's dance imprint AM:PM, although this doesn't seem the sort of song that would lend itself to club airplay even with non-vocal parts added.

Presumably the track shows up here in respect of the big sales of a best-of compilation at Christmas 1998, and it's not surprising for a song that's sold albums rather than singles to make an appearance. It still feels incredibly out of place here, though, so culturally distant is it from the typical sound of the British chart. It's not just that they're not singing in English, but the very structure of the song is alien and there are only vocals - but not only singing, the choir use all manner of voice music, with hums and percussive clicks. Whilst I've no grasp of what the song's about (I'm guessing a star and a wiseman are involved somewhere) it's a pleasant listen and a nice change, though I can't fathom what it has to do with baked beans, a food I haven't liked for decades. It's hard to imagine what people who bought this album for Armand Van Helden or the Cartoons would have made of it either.

And the answer to that question? B*Witched. They made the Top 20 together with 'I Shall Be There' in December.

Also appearing on: Now 31 [with China Black]
Available on: Ultimate Collection

Jimmy Somerville featuring June Miles-Kingston 'Comment Te Dire Adieu'

Chart Peak: 14

YouTube

After a successful spell as lead singer with Bronski Beat ('Smalltown Boy', 'Why?' etc.) and then the Communards ('Don't Leave Me This Way', 'Never Can Say Goodbye' etc.), Jimmy looks to France for inspration on his solo debut - due for release on 30th October 1989.

Yes, that's yer actual French you know, although interestingly enough the song was originally written in English and had been a US hit for Vera Lynn of all people. It was given a French lyric by Serge Gainsbourg (which I think is his only contribution to the Now series, unless anyone knows different?) and recorded in that form by Francoise Hardy, which is presumably the version Somerville would have known; nonetheless, it seems that he may have been making a point by recording the song in a language other than English, with its attendant commercial disadvantages for the UK market.

Surprisingly for Gainsbourg, the lyric isn't obviously rude, barring any innuendo detectable only to native speakers. It's notable for the many "ex" rhymes - including references to Kleenex and Pyrex; you can take the song out of English, but you can't take the English out of the song. I quite like that image of a Pyrex heart, impervious to warmth, actually. Anyway, the song isn't best-suited to a duet performance, but Somerville and Miles-Kingston sound like they're having a lot of fun (and look like it in the video too, but if they're pretending to be French shouldn't the car be left-hand-drive?). The dancey production doesn't exactly have the sophisticated air of Hardy's version though and the finished article hovers dangerously between entertainment and in-joke.

Also appearing on: Now 17, 18, 31
Available on: Read My Lips

Sacred Spirit 'Yeha-Noha (Wishes Of Happiness And Prosperity)'

Chart Peak: 37

YouTube

Sacred Spirit's Chants And Dances Of The Native American Indians project has already been hugely successful in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and New Zealand... This 'Yeha-Noha' single is due for re-release on 30/10/95. From CD/tape "Chants And Dances Of The Native Americans".

Side two starts with another of those tracks that seems a little out of place, although admittedly, it'd be hard to fit it in anywhere on this or just about any Now album. People who write the history of pop in the mid-1990s tend to stick to a certain template: Britpop (of which more soon, BTW), Girl Power, various forms of dance, hip-hop etc. What tends not to get mentioned so often is the whole wave of music like this (mentioned so little that there doesn't seem to be a name for it) that sold by the bucketload, albeit mostly in the album market as you can see by the peak of this single. And this was its second chart run, after it had barely scraped the Top 75 in the spring; in the meantime it had been the Number One single in France for six weeks, which may tell you something about the openness of the UK pop market to foreign languages.

For whatever reason, maybe traced back even to Paul Simon in the 1980s, this seemed to be a time when producers from the Western world (Germany, in this case) seemed on the lookout for "ethnic" sounds to weave with modern-day pop production. Obviously, the source material for this is the music of the people we British were learning to call Native Americans (they were still Red Indians when I was at primary school), and this particular track features a Navajo elder singing a version of a creation myth. I remember having a bit of a WTF reaction when I heard this on the Top 40 countdown and I'm still not sure what to make of it now, really, musically or even sociopolitically. There's a part of me that always wants to condemn this kind of record as patronising, and producer Claus Zundel doesn't exactly help matters by using the psuedonym The Fearsome Brave. But perhaps that's more a reflection of my own predjudices. Either way, I'm not a particular fan of the Western elements of this record either, but the whole thing is so far off what I'd normally choose to listen to that I feel oddly unqualified to pronounce on whether it's good or not, only that I personally don't enjoy it.

Available on: Sacred Spirit Vol.1: Chants & Dances of the Native Americans

Los Lobos 'La Bamba'

Chart Peak: 1 (3 weeks)

Google video

(All the clips on YouTube seem to be people playing it on Guitar Hero. Or, er, tennis players singing it.)

Anyway, I think this song confused me at the time, because I couldn't understand the words - even at the age of nine I still must have been grappling with the concept of foreign languages, because I was English. Presumably children in Switzerland or Wales get to grips with the idea a bit sooner. Funnily enough, even when I did figure out that they were real words, just not English ones, I never made any effort to find out what they meant, although I sometimes made up my own.

Anyway, where was I? The most striking thing about this record now, considering that it was recorded for a biopic of somebody who died in 1959, is how eighties it sounds. Not in the same way that Kajagoogoo sound eighties, obviously, but the way it's recorded is very 1987 to 21st-century ears. It's a complaint I often seem to find myself making when listening to this album, but it's a bit of a distraction and seems to come at the expense of any energy in the music. I wouldn't have said so in 1987, but I'd rather be listening to original fifties rock n roll.

Available on: Wolf Tracks: The Best of Los Lobos