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GOODOriginally Posted by Slave
Yes, this is happening.
After the success () of 2000 - 2009, I have turned my attention to the decade in which I grew up and compiled a list of the 500 best singles released during that time. As before, I've only included singles which were first released between 1990 and 1999 - so Madonna's 'Crazy For You' re-release which peaked at #2 in 1991 is NOT included, but Sonique's 'It Feels So Good' IS because although it hit #1 in 2000, it was first released in 1998.
And somewhere along the line I will also include my top (?) 42 utterly BIZARRE singles of the decade, because looking through the charts week-by-week revealed that there really was some utter CRAP released - some of which probably made the top 500.
GOOD
And oh...
Oh HOW MANY YEARS
Is it NOW Maurice?
YAY!!!
FEARLESS FEMALE
REJOICE
*I'm reserving this post*
Moopy blogs & Moopy tweets
Stephen Gately - A beautiful man who is now the perfect angel. Forever young and never forgotten. R.I.P
500. Partners In Kryme - Turtle Power (Released: [B]1990, peak: #1)
Chart run: 4-1-1-1-1-3-12-16-30-44
I never really GOT the whole Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing - of course at school when it was really BIG I had to pretend that I also enjoyed jumping around karate chopping thin air when the truth is I just wanted to stand around posing in a yellow jumpsuit like April O'Neil. When the series made the jump to the big screen in 1990 it was accompanied by this track courtesy of Partners In Kryme. It was the hip hop duo's first single, and indeed their last to chart as well. In truth, whilst this is clearly lyrically quite NAFF, the song itself is quite dark for something primarily aimed at kids; the eerie synths and distorted vocals during the chorus are not exactly what you'd expect from this kind of movie tie-in. Despite spending a month at #1 in the UK, it's hard to know who this was really aimed at - unless you really love the franchise then I can't see it being THAT appealing, but equally if you love the franchise, this is hardly a soundtrack ANTHEM. Nonetheless, it's an interesting listen and one which sounds less dated than it should do 22 years later.
499. Steps - 5,6,7,8 (Released: 1997, UK peak: #14)
Chart run: 18-22-23-17-20-20-20-14-16-15-17-17-22-30-42-61-66
One thing that was GUARANTEED in the 1990s was any old minor craze would get at least one accompanying single attempting to capitalise on something, even if it was only in vogue for a matter of weeks. '5,6,7,8' duly arrived to the sound of a thousand overweight women stepping from side to side for an hour at their local community centre once a week - but to its credit this song has pretty much become synonymous with the line dancing "craze" and although this bears absolutely no relation to anything else that Steps ever recorded (nor is it an indication of the quality of their subsequent material), along with 'Tragedy' it remains a wedding disco staple - and how many acts can truly claim to have released two lowest-common-denominator singles which EVERYONE knows the dance routine to? '5,6,7,8' is, ironically, more of a group effort than almost any other Steps single - Lee takes the lead male vocal with a suitably dreadful rap, whilst Lisa Scott-Lee gets the only solo female line - "You're mine, you're MINE now BUBBA" proving to be a career HIGH. I wouldn't really listen to this out of choice these days, but I actually don't hate it when I stumble across it - and much as the group might have tried to disown the song, besides 'Heartbeat/Tragedy' it's still one of the best chart runs they ever had.
498. Malandra Burrows - Just This Side Of Love (Released: 1990, UK peak: #11)
Chart run: 44-29-15-11-14-17-34-53
Soap stars releasing singles has always been something that generally doesn't WORK in the UK, but this appears to be one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Malandra Burrows strikes me now as being something of a failed Myleene Klass/Carol Vorderman hybrid of the 90s - she clearly had intentions to do more than just her day job and made several appearances on light entertainment shows, usually performing cabaret covers of famous songs. 'Just This Side Of Love' was the only time that her success really transferred to another genre - albeit with a major helping hand after the song was featured in Emmerdale via a completely RIDICULOUS plot which involved Chris Tate writing the song whilst wooing Kathy Bates which resulted in the pair forming a group. Given the background to the track, it comes as no surprise that the song itself sounds VERY much like TV tie-in material - it's Casio keyboard a-go-go atop a ridiculously FLUFFY chorus with a particularly nasal sounding Malandra Burrows backed by some pseudo-gospel singers. It's not really hard to see how it became a hit, although it's equally not unsurprising that NO-ONE remembers it these days.
497. Yell! - One Thing Leads To Another (Released: 1990, UK peak: #81)
Chart run: 81
The major success of this plinky-plonk SAW-produced track is that it manages to make Kylie Minogue's debut album, released two years earlier, sound positively groundbreaking. It's hard not to think that 'One Thing Leads To Another' wasn't originally intended for Yell! at all because the majority of the chorus is delivered by a faceless female vocalist whilst the duo themselves end up sounding like backing singers. As with other late 80s/early 90s SAW singles, this really is all about the naggingly catchy chorus which makes it totally worth sitting through the functional verses. It sounds awfully tinny these days, indeed I can't really imagine that it didn't at the TIME - but it's so clumsily charming that it's hard not to enjoy it. It clearly served no purpose in 1990, so it goes without saying that 22 years later it's hard to listen to it without thinking that pop music has come an awfully LONG way since.
496. Nicki French - Total Eclipse Of The Heart (Released: 1994, UK peak #5)
Chart run: 54-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-12-7-5-5-5-8-12-18-31-43-55-73
Billboard Hot 100 chart run: 88-78-72-59-41-33-16- 8-6-4-3-3-2-4-5-5-5-8-11-12-17-23-28-35-40-40-50
13 years after Bonnie Tyler's original topped the chart in the UK and America, 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' was BACK accompanied by a generic dance beat and distinctly LESS vocal. Nowadays I'm not really sure that anyone would touch this with a bargepole, but even though it didn't quite emulate Bonnie Tyler's success, Nicki French's version still reached the top 5 in both territories and pretty much gave her a guaranteed gig for life with worldwide gay pride PA's - who HASN'T seen her wheeled out on at least ONE occasion? It is what it is; not entirely pointless because the originally clearly was not suited to being played whilst gay men shoved poppers up their nose, but equally it IS very much a (big) step down from the original - nonetheless, this probably set the standard for power ballads getting a generic dance cover version by a faceless female singer as default to make them club friendly, something that still happens today. The only major difference being that they don't EVER bother the chart now, but I guess this was a bit of a novelty at the time.
Last edited by Slave; 26-02-2012 at 12:54 PM.
Nicki French got to No 2 in the US???
Good God!
I had no idea either. How funny
FEARLESS FEMALE
I recall it happening. It was quite bemusing, especially in a 1990s Billboard 100 when the biggest of Europop smashes would regularly fail to hit the highest reaches, despite being as well known... See Haddaway, probably THE MOST famous Europop hit in the USA only got to #11 and that was a relatively HUGE SMASH for the genre...
Even if the projected finishing date is somewhere mid-September 2014, this is going to be a jolly ride!I do hope the Number One is going to be slightly less of a wet blanket than the Snow Patrol track that topped your noughties list though. *Conner Reeves' "Earthbound" for #1*
If Yell! make an appearance, I hope fellow SAW no-mark male duo Shooting Party are to feature somewhere as well. They might never have troubled the UK Top 65, but their only album from 1990 (apparently only ever released posthumously on iTunes) has a few choons, in particular "Boys Cry" which has a killer chorus. Suspiciously absent from YouTube though!
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
Nicki French in 'loving mid-'90s Billboard executives long time' shock revelation
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
That's the great thing about a Slave countdownEven if the projected finishing date is somewhere mid-September 2014, this is going to be a jolly ride!
Your usual bog-standard gay fare like Confide In Me is labelled a 0/10 moment while Ultra Naté's A New Kind of Medicine head straight for the Top 5
FEARLESS FEMALE
And of course I expect an appearance of EVERY Erasure single released in the '90s. With the possible exception of "Stay With Me".
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
Sure it is.
Top up, Sue?
That is a brilliant record
Top up, Sue?
This came on in the club on Friday and I've decided that Kylie CANNOT pull the song off video-wise. The sinister string backing requires Hannibal Lecter-esque facial expressions with a touch of regal aloofness and, although she's CLEARLY trying, she just is too NICE to pull it off.Your usual bog-standard gay fare like Confide In Me is labelled a 0/10 moment while Ultra Naté's A New Kind of Medicine head straight for the Top 5
Top up, Sue?
Confide In Me in a CLUB? What a HOOT.
It was THIS: http://www.moopy.org.uk/forums/showt...-Winners-Party
Madison and dUb were both NO SHOWS.
Top up, Sue?
In a promising move, I had my first MOMENT to '...Baby One More Time' last night. That should see it easily into the top 400
I never said I was going
A normal person must
Dismiss you with disgust
And weep for those who trusted you.
You have MAJOR pop learning difficulties Slave
FEARLESS FEMALE
It's something I've learned to (just about) cope with
That reminds me, I should have both those Dannii Minogue fridge magnets somewhere.I never said I was going
Top up, Sue?
No offence Eileen, but who wants Dannii Minogue fridge magnets anyway?
This is not 2008 anymore
FEARLESS FEMALE
I love the Confide In Me video. The fact that she's acting all sweet and girlish throughout it is a wonderful counterpoint to the slightly sinister nature of the song.
You've beaten me this time, Gadget
Top up, Sue?
Excuse me while I have my first moment to "Like a Prayer"
I'm finally starting to penetrate the work of dense abstract art that is Boney M.'s "Rasputin" myself.
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
Ooooh another Slave countdown
It's like you're screaming . . . and no one can hear;
you almost feel ashamed . . . that someone could be that important
My bad, M2M was your Number One, wasn't it? I suppose their closest nineties equivalent is Scarlet's "Independent Love Song". I could live with that.
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
Who knows whether we have any rice queens on Moopy but we certainly have some COUNTDOWN QUEENS!
FEARLESS FEMALE
I do LOVE a good COUNTDOWN.
Just call me TWICE NIGHTLY WHITELY.
Top up, Sue?
495. Five Star - Hot Love (Released: 1990, UK peak: #68)
Chart run: 68
Five Star's final appearance in the top 75, 'Hot Love' became their smallest hit although the group's chart fortunes had been fading rapidly since their commercial peak in 1986 and 1987 (in the space of 15 months they charted six top ten singles). The group's diminishing chart returns didn't stop them being signed to Epic Records after their departure from RCA, 'Hot Love' was the second single on their new label and (unsurprisingly given the title) continued their attempt to become more adult-orientated. Ignoring the obvious oddness of a group of siblings moaning and groaning whilst singing "You give me hot love and it's so good to me, hot love, and baby, no one satisfies me with hot love, baby", the song has a slinky CHARM about it - it doesn't have a massive hook, but the delivery and production is alluringly hypnotic. It was perhaps not the wisest choice for what really neded to be a career-saving single, but it's nowhere near as bad as the chart performance would suggest.
494. Billy Ray Cyrus - Achy Breaky Heart (Released: 1992, UK peak: #3)
Chart run: 36-13-6-4-3-3-4-5-15-49
Billboard Hot 100 chart run: 83-47-24-18-12-12-8-8-7-6-4-4-4-6-9-9-12-16-20-25-30-36-40-35-44
Another 90s foray into the brief obsession with line-dancing, this one five years earlier than '5,6,7,8'. 'Achy Breaky Heart' began life as a song titled 'Don't Tell My Heart' and was recorded by country act The Marcy Brothers. They disbanded in 1991 and the song was picked to be Billy Ray Cyrus's debut single and remains by far his biggest hit. You know, I think common folklore would have you believe that this is MUCH worse than it actually is - true it's about as painfully clichéd as country music comes and has a definite whiff of a major label trying to create a commercial crossover track that will appeal to a mainstream audience rather than country music fans - I can see how that may be exasperating for fans of the genre, but essentially it succeeds in what it sets out to do and it IS incredibly catchy. Of course you would never choose to listen to it if you were hankering for some genuine country music, and I can fully imagine it grating with incessant overplay - but it had a fairly BRIEF chart run in the UK and you felt aggrieved by it at the time, just be thankful you weren't in America where it spent two and a half months in the top ten. It goes without saying that the next time Billy Ray Cyrus troubled popular culture was over a decade later when he landed a role in Hannah Montana alongside his daughter Miley Cyrus; something that for many people made 'Achy Breaky Heart' much the lesser of two evils.
493. Lutricia McNeal - Ain't That Just The Way (Released: 1997, UK peak: #6)
Chart run: 6-9-14-14-17-13-18-24-22-25-22-24-24-33-34-44-54-67
The first of three top ten singles for Lutricia McNeal, essentially the Anastacia of the 1990s: an American singer with a big voice who had little success in her own country but was more warmly received in Europe. Chart longevity wise, this was Lutricia McNeal's biggest hit although not necessarily her highest peaking (more on that later). Deceptively, 'Ain't That Just The Way' is great in passing; it's very accomplished at essentially being a Fugees-lite soulful R&B mid-tempo and sounds fittingly big-budget and glossy. But as I came to rank the songs and listened to it more intently, I felt that there's not actually a great deal to it - it was great radio fodder, it really works as a background accompaniment, but without distractions it doesn't really have a MOMENT - I spent 3 minutes waiting for it to really grab me and pull me in and that time never came. All the same, as a concept on paper the track should sound like a cheap pastiche of a style being done on a MUCH bigger scale elsewhere - to the songs credit it isn't, it's totally solid and assured for a debut single (in the UK at least) - I can quite see why it became such a big hit. The best, however, was yet to come.
492. Right Said Fred - Don't Talk Just Kiss (Released: 1991, UK peak: #3)
Chart run: 36-17-9-5-5-3-8-16-29-48-67
Generally I find the whole Right Said Fred act totally BIZARRE - I don't really get who were they aimed at and whether they were knowingly bad which made them good, or just plain AWFUL. Either way, the appeal of 'Don't Talk Just Kiss' is fairly straightforward - it's quite simply the most giddily uplifting little pop-dance track with additional vocals by Jocelyn Brown whose vocals rather entertainingly veer from a helium-esque to raspy black DIVA in a matter of seconds. It's hard to imagine that people would actually go and buy a track like this at any point in time - but evidently they did and it had a better chart run than you'd ever expect from listening back to it in 2012 - it even reached the Billboard Hot 100, albeit at a more meagre #76. Musically there's not really a great deal to analyse here, it's pretty much generic, budget throwaway pop-dance with a recycled beat and a catchy little hook; I just think it's an absolute JOY, a real mood-lifter and a song that just reeks of the early-90s. It's hard to imagine any other decade when a song like this could both have existed and been a top three hit at that!
491. 21st Century Girls - 21st Century Girls (Released: 1999, UK peak: #16)
Chart run: 16-31-46-73
Many acts have forged success as the anti-movement to a popular singer/group/genre - Avril Lavigne was the anti-Britney Spears, East 17 were the anti-Take That, indie music was the anti-pop, electro-pop was the anti-indie...you get the idea. 21st Century Girls were clearly brainstormed to try and mobilise a movement of (real) music fans who had been left agog at the success of the Spice Girls and bubblegum pop. Looking back now the idea was probably a bit ahead of its time - not least because looking back at the latter half of the 90s, you realise that the charts really were wall-to-wall with a slew of songs which generally ranged from great to AMAZING. This really wasn't one of them, however - don't get me wrong, '21st Century Girls' isn't without merit, but you couldn't seriously pretend that it's anything more than a song equally as manufactured as the material it's supposed to stand against, the only difference being it's laced with synthetic guitars rather than squelchy keyboards and synths. Not one of the 21st Century Girls looks like a genuine rock star - my favourite is the drummer who looks like she's just finished a shift at Topshop and hasn't had time to change, although the ginger guitarist who opts to play by clutching the instrument and shaking it from side to side runs her a close second. Lyrically the song seems to spend more time trying to slip in pop culture references than actually making a POINT:
Posh SPICE
Stand BACK
Cool J
We RAP
Take a DIVE
Ce-LIIINE
We're comin' AT YA
'Cause you know that WE ARE...
And yet, for all the (many) misfires of '21st Century Girls', I think the chorus is really good - it might well be auto-tuned to within an inch of its life, but it IS catchy and memorable enough that despite a mediocre #16 peak (an immediate death knell in those halcyon days where anything less than #1 was a flop) during a time where songs were flooding the charts week after week, it's stuck in my memory - and given the faceless nature of the group and the rather DULL video, I can only conclude that it's down to the music itself. 21st Century Girls really were surplus to requirements though - Hepburn had released 'I Quit' just a few weeks earlier to more substantial success and the Thunderbugs would follow into the charts a few months later with the far superior 'Friends Forever'. It's one of pop music's little ironies that despite the assertion of their debut single, 21st Century Girls never actually made it to the 21st century at all...
Slave, do you REALLY listen to "Achy Breaky Heart" AT ALL on any casual basis?
It actually might be my least favorite song of its genre.
I had a brief revival during the Hannah Montana FURORE. Prior to that it was just "one of those songs" that I'd heard at one point or another but never really took the time to investigate Billy Ray - there was no NEED, it was almost completely novelty in the UK, whereas he at least strung together a few country hits in America.
490. Jimmy Ray - Are You Jimmy Ray? (Released: 1997, UK peak: #13)
Chart run: 13-26-26-45-67
Billboard Hot 100 chart run: 26-20-17-13-15-16-18-20-31-31-41-55-57-62-66-78-83-96
A song that emerged during that period where every popular music concept (irrespective of how GOOD it was) resulted in a record deal. I guess the starting selling point with Jimmy Ray was going to be his image with the modern take on Elvis - but musically he really had little in common with the rock and roll artists he cited as his inspiration. 'Are You Jimmy Ray?' starts with about six seconds of guitar strumming and then becomes a slightly odd twangy R&B-lite track - it throws just about everything into the mix which suggests the record label brief was never THAT clear in the first place. The video features Jimmy Ray playing his guitar along to the pop beat, a group of cowgirls with glittery pom-poms and two girls dressed as sports cheerleaders - it literally looks like the video crew turned up to the shoot and had to use the leftovers from about five different videos. The chorus is so silly that it becomes inadvertently good, as Jimmy Ray recites a list of other Ray's: "Are you Johnny Ray? Are you Slim Ray? Are you Fay Wray? Who wants to know? Who wants to know? Are you Sting Ray? Are you Nick Ray? Are you Jimmy Ray? Who wants to know? Who wants to know 'bout me?" - I can only presume the title of the song was penned before the actual lyrics because surely for this sort of thing to work, the other names have to be REALLY well known - most of them are vague at BEST. In essence though it achieves what it sets out to do because melodically it DOES work and it's stupidly catchy. The first few times I heard the song, I remember just finding it a bit weird, but I think I actually appreciate it more now than I did back then. It's firmly on pop music's C-list, despite setting it's sights much higher. The weird thing is this was actually quite a BIG hit in America - something that I don't think translated to the UK at all (it charted here first, but the follow-up 'Goin' To Vegas' flopped at #49). Indeed, One Direction's recent #28 start on the Billboard Hot 100 was the best for a UK act with their debut single since this very song - many pop acts came and went towards the end of the 90s, but few one-hit wonders were a transatlantic chart phenomenon quite as BRIEFLY and now so utterly forgotten as 'Are You Jimmy Ray?'
489. Peter Andre - Kiss The Girl (Released: 1998, UK peak: #9)
Chart run: 9-24-39-48-67
Sometimes you just can't be too fussy when compiling these countdowns - The Little Mermaid is the movie cited as the one that really marked Disney's renaissance, a period of renewed success for the company that truly peaked during the 1990s. Whilst a retail release for the subsequent soundtrack songs became standard (and yes, they are all in here somewhere), 'Kiss The Girl' was not afforded the same treatment and thus to date Peter Andre's recording for the cinema re-release of the movie remains the only version of the song to have charted in the UK. The decision to recruit him for this soundtrack seems somewhat out of touch for a company that typically thrives on recruiting current fads to re-record songs (Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey doing ‘A Whole New World’ for example). True, Peter Andre was coming off the back of a string of top ten hits through 1996 and 1997, but his previous single ‘All Night All Right’ had peaked at #16 and it definitely felt like he was reaching the end of his shelf-life by the time ‘Kiss The Girl’ was released – indeed it ended up being his last charting single until ‘Mysterious Girl’ reappeared at #1 in 2004. In all fairness, there isn’t much about this version of the song to take much offence to – it’s expectedly glossy and gloopy; I couldn’t in all honesty tolerate Peter Andre’s voice for an entire album, he has quite a nasal, whiny tone – but for the purposes of this song it’s adequate (though I really can’t believe there was no-one more high-profile available given Disney’s success during the decade), and either way it’s still at the very worst an average version of a classic song; albeit not the best from The Little Mermaid - that would be ‘Part Of Your World’. This certainly would not be my preferred version of ‘Kiss The Girl’ should I ever wish to listen to the song, but in any form its still well worthy of inclusion.
488. Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...) (Released: 1999, UK peak: #1)
Chart run: 74-40-33-31-1-1-2-2-4-5-9-15-22-28-37-42-55-61-65
Billboard Hot 100 chart run: 63-35-16-11-6-4-4-5-5-4-4-3-3-4-4-8-13-18-32-35-32-42
Lou Bega’s revival of ‘Mambo No. 5’ (the instrumental originally having been recorded and released in 1949 by Pérez Prado) is one of those songs that you only needed to hear once to know it was going straight to #1. It was timed perfectly - the UK was going through a bit of a world music phase, with ‘Mi Chico Latino’ and ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ having both topped the charts recently before it; the single was also released right at the end of August having no doubt been a family disco party staple throughout Europe for the summer holidays (such thoughts make me shudder nowadays). Of COURSE it's an absolute novelty which pretty much negates the need to ever voluntarily listen to it - but objectively speaking I DON'T hate this song. You just can't argue with the sample, it's used really well (I still can't help doing a bit of a hip shuffle to the "OooooWAH!" *record scratch* bits) and even when the song looks like it's about to turn into a 'Cha Cha Slide'-esque "I'll speak the dance routine and you do it" annoyance with the "Take one step left and one step right, one to the front and one to the side..." section, it's barely started before it totally abandons the idea. Whether you can tolerate 'Mambo No. 5' or not, there is absolutely no denying the staying power that it's had - as an actual song I would have said that the only place you'd really hear it these days is at kids parties, but I suspect it was totally superseded in that context by Bob The Builder's version which also reached #1 just two years later. But the instrumental still seems to be omnipresent - ‘Mambo No. 5’ is so over-familiar now that it’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t pop up in at least one television sound bed every week. It's been the soundtrack for Channel 4's cricket coverage, it's been parodied, it's been used in adverts for pretty much any inanimate object and it's guaranteed to be played at LEAST once in any budget ITV1 documentary about delinquent British holidaymakers. Whilst the European success of this single was a given, it IS something of a surprise to see that it was such a big hit in America as late as 1999 - indeed, the success of 'Mambo No. 5' there saw Lou Bega's album 'A Little Bit Of Mambo' peak at #3 and spend seven (!) weeks in the top ten, racking up a further 23 in the top 50. Even the UK didn't go THAT crazy for him - it peaked at #50 here, dropping out of the chart after two weeks.
487. 911 - Private Number (Released: 1999, UK peak: #3)
Chart run: 3-9-23-38-50-65-71
911's career really passed me by for the most part - I do remember a girl at school being utterly OBSESSED with them and I didn't get it, not least because they weren't remotely appealing to a hormonal pubescent male compared to other boybands of the time. In some respects though they were quite forward-thinking (in the most backward sense); their first two albums were relatively unspectacular pop albums typical of the time - full of gloopy ballads and hi-NRG uptempos. Their singles consistently hit the top ten but they never felt anything other than also-rans; perhaps sensing that the bubblegum pop market was saturated, their third album 'There It Is' was a covers collection, featuring their take on songs like Rose Royce's 'I Wanna Get Next To You', The Style Council's 'You're The Best Thing' and of course the Bee Gees' 'More Than A Woman' which gave 911 their first and only #1 single. 'Private Number' originally reached #8 in 1968 when performed by Judy Clay and William Bell - this update is invariably whited up and recruits Natalie Jordan to sing the female sections (there was also a version featuring Fann Wong in her place) - though she doesn't even get a feature credit. Fans of the original will find this completely unnecessary of course, but I think it's quite a good track to cover since it's suitably melodramatic and stirring (complete with moody video featuring angsty glances to the camera galore) but the original is not so well known that you wouldn't be able to find an audience that didn't know it. There is no escaping that this sounds terribly dated in 2012 (which is ironic because the original still sounds great), I didn't really notice at the time that the vocals are paper thin and almost completely void of emotion hence it being fairly low in the countdown. I wouldn't necessarily skip it if it popped up on iTunes, but I had almost completely forgotten about it for the majority of the past decade. It's still worth a spin, but whilst the original is definitely an overlooked classic, this version...not so much.
486. Black Box - Fantasy (Released: 1990, UK peak: #5)
Chart run: 21-9-5-6-6-10-20-33-35-39-56
A cover of the 1978 Earth, Wind & Fire #14 hit, Black Box's take on 'Fantasy' significantly outperformed the original despite it not being massively different structurally - save for Martha Wash now delivering the vocals and more polished production (as would be inevitable some 12 years later). I suppose the major difference was that this was released fairly early on in Earth, Wind & Fire's career (it was their second single in fact), coming some time before their well-known HITS. On the other hand, Black Box had scored a massive #1 the previous year with 'Ride On Time' and followed it up earlier in 1990 with 'I Don't Know Anybody Else', which reached #4. There was definitely a stronger ground to launch the song from - although 'Fantasy' still marks a change of pace for them; unlike their earlier uptempo Italo house efforts, this song is more subtle and mid-tempo - it certainly didn't have the added edge of being a guaranteed dancefloor filler. That said, it works REALLY well (even the rather bizarre pan pipe interlude mid-track) as an understated classy, cool number - it's not a song that I think would immediately GRAB people so in a sense I can see why it initially underperformed, but the Black Box version feels like the finished version, a true realisation of everything that the original wasn't QUITE.
How do you even KNOW Hot Love by Five Star? I've never heard you talk about them before and they don't really strike me as a Slave sort of act. I actually quite like them and I've NEVER HEARD IT.
Sounds suspiciously like a relative of Faloola Chong!
This thread is liable for making me buy RSF's "Don't Talk Just Kiss" (as well as their 1996 Belgium-only Top 20 hit "Living on a Dream") on iTunes. Damn you Slave for making my music collection even trashier than it already is!
Hey go get the doctor
Doctor came too late...
Sorry VoR, I didn't know I had to run everything in my iTunes library past you first
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