Eagle-Eye Cherry 'Save Tonight'

Chart Peak: 6

YouTube

I suppose we should give them some credit for resisting the temptation to sequence Eagle-Eye Cherry next to Don Henley.

For a while this song was as ubiquitous as Eagle-Eye himself is in the famous video. It was a huge radio hit, did pretty well as a single and shifted a decent number of albums for him (the memorable name might have helped with that I suppose). In this country at least it set a bar of success he's barely come close to since, barring the immediate follow-up (which had this on the B-side anyway). By any measurement I apply to it, it's a good record: assured, well-produced, well-sung, catchy and not overlong. So I'm at something of a loss to explain why I've never really been able to warm to it. 

Also appearing on: Now 41
Available on: Desireless

The Mavericks 'Dance The Night Away'

Chart Peak: 4

YouTube

And so 1998 resumes, albeit with a record that has a distinctly retro flavour.

I have two key memories of this track. The first time I ever heard it was at the end of an episode of Top Of The Pops 2 where it was touted as a big US hit soon to cross over to the UK (in fact it doesn't seem to have made the Hot 100, so there presumably wasn't a commercial single release over there) and I took an instant dislike to it, not helped by the fact that the prediction was pretty accurate and that this became yet another of the evidently-much-larger-than-I-remembered number of singles to peak higher than they entered in 1998, which felt like cheating in those days. As a record that appealed far beyond typical single-buyers it managed a longer than average chart run, lasting no fewer than 16 weeks in the Top 40.

The other memory I have is from several years later, when I went to a works do in an out-of-town concrete golf clubhouse with a disturbingly low ceiling. When the DJ played this, two ladies who were obviously regulars made their way to the dancefloor and looked like they were having the time of their lives. From that point onwards I've found myself warming to it somewhat. Maybe part of this is just because I've got older, and doubtless another part of it is just that I only hear it much more rarely now. But I do find it genuinely easier to appreciate this in the lighter-hearted sprit in which it was intended even if it's not something I'd have chosen to listen to.

Incidentally, it's a long time since I'd watched that video in full, and I hadn't previously appreciated how bad the miming was. I don't know whether that was intentional; maybe if they filmed it in a real supermarket they had to wait until 3 in the morning to do it.

Available on: The Mavericks Collection

Don Henley 'The Boys Of Summer'

Chart Peak: 12 (12 in 1985)

YouTube

If you can cast your mind back to last month, you might remember that the first disc of this album kicks off with a 1990 remix of material from 1978. So obviously they'd want to contrast this with something fresh and new from 1998 itself at the top of Disc 2...

Oh.

I would have said that I couldn't remember why this was re-released, but in fact what I remember was that even in 1998 nobody could really understand why. It didn't seem to tie in with anything particular, apart from the fact that it was actually the summer (as opposed to the original release in January 1985)... but then again this song isn't really set in summer is it? All the references to the season seem to be nostalgic.

In fact this is one song I thought I could probably have done without re-listening, but in keeping with the spirit of the project I thought I'd better. And it did shed a small amount of light; I'd always thought it slightly odd that a record made by a drummer was so bland rhythmically, but he seems to have tried to fix it by adding a lot of extra cymbals in the middle section. It's to little avail, though, as the finished article has a stilted quality that means even the whiny quality in Henley's vocal doesn't make him sound very engaged with his own  material.

I'm mature enough now to realise that there might be some traces of a good song in there somewhere, but it seems fitting that he managed to inspire possibly the most lukewarm Amazon customer review ever, or that the boy who plays his younger self in the video grew up into a member of AOR American Idol spin-off band Daughtry.

Available on: The Very Best Of

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

Sparkle Featuring R.Kelly 'Be Careful'

Chart Peak: 7

YouTube

In addition to his many hits as an artist, R.Kelly has had second and third careers as producer and songwriter for various other stars. The most famous of his protegees was surely teen star Aaliyah, but for a moment Sparkle (not to be confused with Sparklehorse, or Twinkle) seemed to be on the verge of similar success. Although it wasn't eligible for the official Hot 100 chart in the US due to the absence of a commercially-available single, 'Be Careful' performed well on airplay charts, and the parent album reached the Top 3 over there. It didn't last long though, due to a falling-out between the two of them.

Maybe it's all prefigured in the song itself, which features a female protagonist (voiced by Sparkle) bemoaning her useless man and threatening that she might leave, followed by the man (Kelly) claiming that she needs to make sure he doesn't leave her. And, er, that's it, with only two verses and two choruses in the five minutes of the song: both characters ask "let me finish" but there's plenty of space left over for both of them to do so. It's tempting to try and draw conclusions about Kelly himself from the lyrics here, but perhaps that's going a bit far. Still I think the best thing about this is the chunk of Curtis Mayfield's 'Pusherman' that plays early in the video.

R Kelly also appears on: Now 28, 29, 30, 37, 41, 44, 51, 55, 59
Available on: Lifestyles - Urban Groove

Janet Jackson 'I Get Lonely (TNT Remix edition)'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

At the time, I seem to remember seeing the video for the original version of this track, and probably hearing that on the chart rundowns too. Indeed, I don't think I'd ever encountered this mix before, but presumably it was popular enough somewhere to get the nod here. Mind you, although I remember this record existing it didn't make very much of an impact on me at the time and it seems a bit forgotten now: it peaked only one chart position lower than the previous year's 'Together Again', but it lasted less than half as long on the chart. This seemed like the tail-end of the era when a new Janet Jackson album seemed like an event, though she did indeed have several hits after this.

Coming back now one thing I can definitely say for this mix (by Blackstreet) is that it's something of an improvement over the slightly dated (for 1998, I mean) Jam & Lewis production. Better still, Teddy Riley has for once resisted the temptation to smother it all with vocoders. The song itself, co-written by the producers with Jackson and her soon-to-be-ex-husband, is less impressive. But then it's not exactly my scene and in this company it actually feels quite likeable. Anyway, I was never fond of 'Together Again'.

Also appearing on: Now 8, 26, 38, 39, 41, 49, 53 (with Beenie Man)
Available on: The Best [original version?]

K-Ci & JoJo 'All My Life'

Chart Peak: 8

YouTube

Potassium Chloride & JoJo McCann, as my brother used to call them, were in fact the "Jo" and "Ci" from Jodeci, a group I remember being very popular in the Harrow area but by present day standards not that big nationally (they never managed a Top 10 hit or got onto a Now album as a group). This was originally announced as a spin-off project, but possibly because it got to Number One in America the band haven't done anything together in twelve years and counting.

'All My Life' is a predictably slushy ballad, adorned by a sample from Frank Sinatra's vastly superior 'PS I Love You'. It's dedicated to one of their daughters, but song and video hedge their bets enough to make it suitable for weddings and all other occasions. I remember this as another one that seemed to clog up the Top 40 forever, but it was only ten weeks, which doesn't seem so long by today's standards. I was never keen on anything I heard by Jodeci, but this feels even more watered down.

Available on: Love Always