Dru Hill 'These Are The Times'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

The multi-talented quartet Dru Hill are no stranger to success - they have racked up six No.1 singles in the States within just two years... 'These Are The Times' was co-written and co-produced by the legendary "hitmaker" Babyface.

Sadly the note doesn't elaborate on what the multiple talents of the members of Dru Hill might have been. This is one of the very few songs on Now 42 I don't really remember, and by far the biggest hit on here I could say that of. I do remember their previous hit 'How Deep Is Your Love' (not the Bee Gees song) but apart from that they were just background most of the time to me, their run of US hits not being fully replicated over here though this was their fifth Top 40 hit, not counting collaborations. They were a big RnB act just as that sort of music was starting to become mainstream here, and as I'd left school by this point I was rarely in touch with genre fans. I recall them more as a launchpad for lead singer Sisqo's solo career, and would not be able to name any other band members without looking it up - in fact I would have struggled to remember how many of them there were without that sleevenote.

As to the song itself, the fact that Babyface was involved really tells you all you need to know. It's the sort of bland, syrupy ballad that gives blandness a bad name, the sort of things Barry Manilow would reject as lacking grit. The closest we get to an exception is the rather odd lyric where they offer to "swallow you like Reese's Pieces", an analogy which may not have made sense to all the British audience. Their career faltered after this point on both sides of the Atlantic, though they released a comeback album in 2010 and according to their Wikipedia entry they also had their own reality TV show called Keith Sweat's Platinum House. You know your career's passed its prime when your TV show is named after somebody else.

Available on: Anthems R&B [Explicit]

911 'A Little Bit More'

Chart Peak: 1 [1 week]

YouTube

Dr. Hook's 1976 hit 'A Little Bit More' was given the 911 treatment in January '99 and gave the boys their first No1 single... Their current album is a collection of their favourite songs which, according to Jimmy "appeal not just to our fans, but also to music lovers who remember them first time around!"

We'll gloss over the implication in that quote that "911 fans" and "music lovers" were two separate groups of people, shall we? As I said last time, 911 were a band who had a certain charm so I find it hard to dislike them, but do also find it hard to persuade myself that much of their music is any good. By the time of this eleventh single, they (or at least the record company) were clearly desperate for a Number One single; there's an infamous story that when their cover of 'More Than A Woman' was at the top of the midweek charts, they posed for photos with a massive 1, only to be pipped at the post by Spacedust. Evidently somebody at Innocent thought the best thing to do was more covers, so we got a whole album of them and this addition to the barrage of Number One singles in early 1999. The sleeve of Now 42 takes no chances and shows them posing with Casper the Friendly Ghost instead.

Apparently, 'A Little Bit More' was already a cover when Dr Hook did it, having originally been recorded by its author Bobby Gosh. In any version though, it's a pretty hideous song, sounding more like an ode to date rape than the romantic anthem it was probably intended to be. It neither deserves nor gets a good performance from the boys, and the whole thing comes over as a box-ticking exercise. Although it succeeded in topping the chart, it was so late in their career that they had no momentum left, and this was the propenultimate single of their original career. Don't worry, there's a new album coming out in 2014.

Also appearing on: Now 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 43
Available on: There It Is

Roxette 'Wish I Could Fly'

Chart Peak: 11

YouTube

Their first release since 1995, Roxette make a welcome return with ballad 'Wish I Could Fly'... One of Europe's most successful bands, over the last ten years Per and Marie have had 18 UK Top 30 hits and sold over 40 million albums worldwide!

Actually, they'd spent one week on the Top 75 with 'June Afternoon' in, er, July 1996, but it was their first major hit in a good while and their last new one here too, though they're still going and released an album as recently as 2011. Like their compatriots Ace Of Base, they seem to have abruptly lost their audience in English-speaking countries - both of them were pretty big in the US for Swedes, but by this point Roxette had lost their record deal over there and this single came out as a one-off without the album even getting a release there.

'Wish I Could Fly' benefits from a luxurious production, with those very 90s-sounding swooping string arrangements, and a big video with enough nudity to attract attention. Unfortunately the song doesn't really go anywhere, though it's a pleasant enough listen and one I like more now than at the time. The chorus oddly reminds me of a slowed-down version of Aswad's 'Shine' and it's not a million miles from their own 'It Must Have Been Love'.

Also appearing on: Now 15, 18, 20, 21, 23
Available on: Have A Nice Day

The Beautiful South 'How Long's A Tear Take To Dry?'

Chart Peak: 12

Muzu

Following in the footsteps of last year's smash hits 'Perfect Ten' and 'Dumb'. 'How Long's A Tear...' is their latest release - due on 8th March '99... The video for the track features a Scooby-Doo-style cartoon version of the band!

I don't normally bother to quote the part of these sleeve notes where they plug the album the track comes from, but this one is notably inaccurate, attributing the song to their 1990 album Choke - it's actually from 1998's Quench, although the single version is a shorter edit. In fact the version on Now 42 is edited still further, a clean version which cuts the second half of the exchange "Will you be my locksmith tonight?/Will I shite!" entirely. Other versions drop only the last word, if anything at all (in the video, the cartoon Jaqui Abbot's mouth is covered during that line).

As the quote above suggests, the lyric finds Paul Heaton on familiar territory, as one half of a bickering couple. It's one of the lighter examples in the catalogue though, feeling more like sparring than anger (though in the light of today's headlines it might not seem as amusing as it usually would). Heaton being Heaton he can't resist throwing "the flowers smell sweeter, the closer you are to the grave" into the chorus, though the fatalism is also brightened by the music which shows the influence of "rhythm consultant" Norman Cook. It's a funky track, driven by low electric piano and a flute lick vaguely reminiscent of Gil Scott-Heron's 'The Bottle'. Maybe closer to the music Heaton enjoys than what he's famous for making.

I was always fond of this one, although as my dad had the album and the B-sides weren't very interesting I never bought it. Enough people did for it to become their last Top 20 single, and maybe with hindsight their last real standout track, though they continued well into this century. 

Also appearing on: Now 15, 16, 18, 22, 27, 28, 32, 35, 36, 41
Available on: Solid Bronze - Great Hits

Terrorvision 'Tequila'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

Party anthem 'Tequila' was a No. 2 hit for Yorkshire band Terrorvision in January this year... A departure from their usual rock style, the single was given a funky re-working by dance outfit Mint Royale.

Yes, to be clear this is the Mint Royale Shot mix: the original version, produced by Edwyn Collins, features an excerpt from the Champs hit of the same title, so at least having a hit with the remix meant they kept all the publishing royalties. As I mentioned on their one previous appearance, Terrorvision had four Top 20 hits out of four from the Regular Urban Survivors album, so they must have been as disappointed as I was when they reappeared in 1998 with the Number 23 hit 'Josephine'. I bought it on pink vinyl, but not many other people did. On the other hand, I didn't buy this one and it went on to become the biggest hit of their career, so maybe it's my fault.

I've never drunk tequila in my life and indeed never been a big fan of drunkenness, so perhaps I wouldn't have liked the song so much had I not been kindly disposed to the people involved already. But as I mentioned before, Terrorvision were fun in a way that most hard-rock bands of the time weren't, and Tony Wright had proved himself an entertaining minor celebrity. Mint Royale had already come to my attention through their remix of Kenickie's 'I Would Fix You' (some fans suggested after 'Tequila' that the remix should have been the A-side) and their own single 'From Rusholme With Love' so I thought we were in good hands here. And they do succeed in making this song sound like a party, picking up the atmosphere and even leaving in some background chatter. What helps for me is that the song is about a man's love-hate relationship with the drink, in the tradition of old folk songs, rather than being a straightforward celebration. It's all very good-natured and whilst it has the same external problems as the previous track; it got overplayed and overshadowed the act's other work, I could never bring myself to dislike this.

Also appearing on: Now 33
Available on: Whales And Dolphins - The Best Of [Explicit]

The Divine Comedy 'National Express'

Chart Peak: 9

YouTube

If you've only just tuned into the wonderful world of the Divine Comedy, you might like to know that frontman Neil Hannon has friends in high places... After featuring on Robbie Williams' hit single 'No Regrets', he was invited to support him on tour - during which Robbie repayed the favour by proving live backing vocals on 'National Express'.

A cynical person might suspect that Robbie was so addicted to adulation from the crowd he even wanted to muscle in on the support band's set. But to be fair to the guy, it's hard to resist singing along to this song, one that was obviously held back to the third single from the album (which had been released back in August the previous year) because it was the big potential pop hit and could benefit from the quiet January charts, even at the expense of it not being released in the festival season. Never mind, we bought it anyway. Strangely for me, a man rarely reluctant to enter a record shop, I remember sending my brother out to buy the single. I remember specifically telling him to buy CD1, which features the radio edit, so as to reduce duplication. The edit (also featured here) is actually a bit brutal, with a rather abrupt fade just after the three-and-a-half minute mark. However, swearing fans will be pleased to note that it does leave in the word "arse", and I've never encountered a censored version: it's not the strongest swear word ever to appear on a Now album but it does seem to have been left on intentionally.

The song's jolly mood is a bit of an outlier on the Fin De Siecle album which, as the name and the monochrome cover suggest, is one of Hannon's darker albums, albeit that the social commentary is often buried by his typical ironic humour. And 'National Express' itself has signs of bitter experience: a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the joys of low-budget coach travel, you can imagine it's the product of many years when he couldn't afford to get between London and Northern Ireland any other way. In fact, it always seemed a high point of the album, more effective than some of the more obviously serious tracks which fall prey to pretentiousness, excessive length or simple factual errors. In fact, Hannon seems to have lost his way slightly at this point in his career - the success of the single and album got him a major label contract but he seemed uncomfortable with the fame, drifting through image and style changes and starting to lose his songwriting mojo a bit - I didn't like anything I heard from his last set, Bang Goes The Knighthood. This song too became a bit of a victim of its own success, becoming frustratingly overplayed and overshadowing the rest of the catalogue. I'm not sure I've totally got over how tired I got of this.

The third act out of four to collaborate with Tom Jones, too.

Also appearing on: Now 36
Available on: Fin de Siecle

The All Seeing I featuring Tony Christie 'Walk Like A Panther'

Chart Peak: 10

YouTube

For the year's wackiest collaboration so far, dance gurus The All Seeing I created something of a "Sheffield Tour-de-force" by enlisting the help of Jarvis Cocker and Tony Christie... It's almost 28 years since Tony made his first big impact on the UK charts with the No.2 hit 'I Did What I Did For Maria'.

Little would we have guessed then that Stereophonics and Tony Christie would go on to have their first (and only) Number One singles only a week apart in 2005. I certainly wouldn't have, because this record was the first time I'd ever heard of Tony Christie at all. That's not completely surprising since he hadn't charted in my lifetime, but he was evidently better-remembered in the North of England, and so Jarvis was called in to write some lyrics for him, apparently borrowing a title from an earlier Christie song - this version was initially known as 'Walk Like A Panther '98' until the release date was postponed to January 1999.

Cocker even took over the vocal for Top Of The Pops when Christie was unavailable (it sounds a bit odd when Christie's recorded backing vocal comes in over him). In many ways there's more Cocker than Christie in the song anyway. Whilst I now recognise the reference in the opening line "Marie has set up home with a man who's half my age...", Marie or Maria being the wife or girlfriend of the protagonist in many Christie songs, who else would write "your existence an insult/ and stains that are suspect cover your clothes"? It certainly wasn't the sort of thing Christie cut his teeth on and he doesn't quite seem to know how to sing it, though he seems game for a laugh and gives it a decent try. Nonetheless, without knowledge of the backstory I just couldn't get the song at all at the time, which seems rather a failing of it. I like it more now, though.

The All Seeing I also appear on: Now 39
Tony Christie also appears on: Now 60, 61
Available on: Pickled Eggs And Sherbet