On 06/09/2025 at 15:32, Mack said:

The Bus Stop's version of 'Kung Fu Fighting', that should have never happened.

I actually like it (guilty pleasure) and prefer it to the original 70s song and the other 70s N-Trance and Clock covers! Weird there were two songs themed on Kung Fu in the charts in May 1998!

'Turn Back Time' is such a beautiful song, probably too good for them. I feel like it would be regarded as more of a classic if it wasn't by Aqua.

100%, it was such a swerve for them. The only 'Aqua' style bit is the middle eight breakdown (which I love), but the rest is like a timeless ballad that would be held in much higher esteem by critics if it didn't have the Aqua name slapped on it.

Vengaboys tried to pull the 'unexpected ballad' trick too with Forever As One, which was lovely but ultimately their lowest peaking single. So it's good that it all worked out well for Aqua as they could so easily have passed straight over it and gone with My Oh My third, or released Lollipop (Candyman) which was a big hit in other countries.

Aqua were generally underrated and dismissed because they were seen as novelty, and of course they were a lot of the time. Turn Back Time is one of my favourite songs ever. I also loved Good Morning Sunshine which they released Christmas 98.

Vengaboys really left it too late to try anything serious. Weren’t they on the way out when Forever As One was released? I seem to remember it was billed as a kind of farewell song?

Agreed on 'Turn Back Time' being a fantastic track. Gave it a play the other day and it still holds up.

My favourite Aqua track - My Oh My.

"Turn Back Time" is boring.

Forever As One is such a lovely song !!! Deserved more!

Cartoon Heroes is my top Aqua song.

21 hours ago, T Boy said:

Aqua were generally underrated and dismissed because they were seen as novelty, and of course they were a lot of the time. Turn Back Time is one of my favourite songs ever. I also loved Good Morning Sunshine which they released Christmas 98.

Vengaboys really left it too late to try anything serious. Weren’t they on the way out when Forever As One was released? I seem to remember it was billed as a kind of farewell song?

Yes, I suppose a lot of bands who made a big deal about splitting up (with a defined last singe) ended with a reflective ballad that was often atypical of their usual output - Vengaboys, Five, S Club (less so as they had the big Children In Need ballads).

Cartoon Heroes is top Aqua, they were always better than their image. Their recent cover of I Am What I Am is amazing, the definitive. Turn Back Time works well in the movie, and Barbie Girl gave me a hilarious karaoke moment when a young couple inverted the male-female roles to screeching effect.

I was never that fond of 'Cartoon Heroes', I think by that point as the amount of time they'd been gone for seemed like a while and it felt a bit passe and lame compared to their upbeat hits in 97/98.

'Around The World' was better though!

Apparently just in time for this thread (thanks to a PopJustice member although not Pop Music Activism), the UK radio edit of Stranded is now available to stream. It is only very slightly pitched up from the album version but it does make a difference to me, and reminds me of the same situation with Little Bit Of Lovin' by Kele Le Roc, where currently only a slightly slower album version is available.

Edited September 12Sep 12 by gooddelta

30TH MAY





An incredible week on the charts which results in no new entries in the top 10- practically unheard of outside of the Christmas/ New Year period, indeed you have to go back to W/E 11/02/1995 to find the last one, the highest new entry comes in at No 11 for Smashing pumpkins who had been in third place until Friday! So the deckchairs rearrange themselves but the surprise to everyone is that the new No 1 is the Tamperer Featuring Maya! “Feel It” has so far moved 3-4-3-5-2-1 and has sold an impressive 304,000 as it makes the top after shifting just 49,500 last week- a new low for the year. To find a track that hit the top spot for the first time after 6 weeks or more in the top 10 and dropped positions during that run, you’d have to go back to All saints at the beginning of the year. However it is the first song to have held every other position in the top 5 before making No 1 since Kenny Rogers "Lucille" in 1977.

The only other track to break the 40,000 mark was last week’s chart topping All Saints disc (appropriately enough) which slips 1-2 (46,000).

So it is that a few singles lose popularity at retail but move up the charts, they include Lutricia McNeal 5-3 (38,000), The Mavericks who fly 8-4 (35,000) selling less than they did when they were at No 10 a fortnight ago, Steps 7-6 (31,000) to equal their best placement, The Corrs 10-8 (27,000) and LeAnn Rimes who is back in the top ten 12-9 (26,000) after 13 weeks of mowing between No 7 and No 12- it’s sold just over 400,000 in that time- remarkable.

The remainder of the top ten consist of fallers from Wyclef Jean 4-5 (34,000), Aqua 3-7 (29,000), and Cleopatra 6-10 (25,000).


1- FEEL IT- Tamperer Featuring Maya (49,500)
2- UNDER THE BRIDGE/ LADY MARMALADE- All Saints (46,000)
3- STRANDED- Lutricia McNeal (38,000)
4- DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY- Mavericks (35,000)
5- GONE TIL NOVEMBER- Wyclef Jean (34,000)
6- LAST THING ON MY MIND- Steps (31,000)
7- TURN BACK TIME- Aqua (29,000)
8- DREAMS- The Corrs (27,000)
9- HOW DO I LIVE- LeAnn Rimes (26,000)
10- LIFE AIN’T EASY- Cleopatra (25,000)

]

6TH JUNE

If last week was a dull chart week then this week is explosive as for only the second time in history the entire top 3 are new!

It’s a great week for the Irish, on the album charts Boyzone storm to No 1 and The Corrs hit a new peak at No 3 whilst on the singles chart the Irish answer to The Spice Girls, B*Witched, debut at No 1 with their first single “C’est La Vie”. The foursome only got signed last year and at 25,19, and 18 years old they are the youngest girl group to ever make the No 1 spot, the group contains twins Keavy and Edele Lynch sisters of Boyzone member Shane Lynch and now follow their brother to the top of the charts. With Boyzone at No 1 in the album charts it marks only the second time in chart history where siblings in different groups have topped each chart simultaneously, the other time was way back in 1968 when the Beatles were No 1 on the album front (“The White Album”) whilst The Scaffold had the biggest single in the land (“Lily The Pink”) allowing brothers Paul McCartney and Mike McGee to claim the double.

The song has been a staple on “The Box” and other music channels for the past month and debuts strongly on sales of 153,000 copies, almost as much as the No 2 and No 3 combined, and in a week which saw Geri leave the Spice Girls and put the future of the group in doubt could we have their successors ready and waiting?  it's also the first French titled chart topper since 1977 ("Chanson D'Amour").

So for just the second time in chart history the whole top 3 are new entries and entering at No 2 is a song which this week surges 23-1 in the US for singers Brandy & Monica (the 2nd highest climb to the top ever). Brandy’s previous best was “Sittin Up In My Room” (#30, 1996) whilst Monica only made No 22 with “Before You Walk Out Of Life” (1996) but both acts now do far better with “The Boy Is Mine” which sold 83,000 copies last week. Partially inspired by Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney’s 1982 #8 hit “The Girl Is Mine” it’s a tale of the girls fighting over the same man and was conceived while Brandy watched an episode of “Jerry Springer”. Recorded as a solo track the singer thought it might work better as a duet and cue a call to Monica who (if you believe the press) had a rivalry with her and this is the result.

Originally released last year by Mousse T, “Horny” was a minor club hit but didn’t dent the singles chart in part due to never being released here but just his native Germany, it’s now been remixed and credited to Mousse T Vs Hot N Juicy and crashes in at No 3 (72,000). Mousse is really DJ Mustafa Gundogdu and Hot N Juicy are duo Emma Langford and Nadine Richardson although the chorus is sung by Inaya Day.

The next Oasis? Well if you believe some in the press then Embrace are just that, fourth single “Come Back To What You Know” continues their ever bettering chart fortunes by debuting at No 6 (36,000). It will feature on the forthcoming debut album “”The Good Will Out” which is in shops in a few weeks.

With a sales increase of a whopping 40% to 68,000 last weeks No 1 from The Tamperer retreats 1-4 and must count itself very unlucky indeed, and the other former chart topper in the top 10 from All Saints dips 2-5 (38,000) and crosses the 300,000 mark at the same time.

The Mavericks drop 4-7 (32,000) narrowly ahead of Lutricia NcNeal 3-8 (31,000) and Steps 6-9 (29,000). LeAnn Rimes rounds us off falling 9-10 (25,000) with her album debuting at No 11 which is actually the follow up LP to the one that contains the single!

1- C’EST LA VIE- B*Witched (153,000)
2- THE BOY IS MINE- Brandy & Monica (83,000)
3- HORNY- Mousse T Vs Hot N Juicy (72,000)
4- FEEL IT- The Tamperer Featuring Maya (68,000)
5- UNDER THE BRIDGE/ LADY MARMALADE- All Saints (38,000)
6- COME BACK TO WHAT YOU KNOW- Embrace (36,000)
7- DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY- Mavericks (32,000)
8- STRANDED- Lutricia McNeal (31,000)
9- LAST THING ON MY MIND- Steps (29,000)
10- HOW DO I LIVE- LeAnn Rimes (25,000)

Weird to have no new entries at all in the top ten on that first week! Did a lot of songs underperform against expectation or was it just a release schedule lull for some reason? Nice that it let Stranded reach the top three though ❤️

If only Brandy and Monica or Mousse T had gone a week earlier! Both excellent records that deserved No.1 (especially the timeless The Boy Is Mine) but C'est La Vie is such a great pop track - for me this signalled the very peak of the bubblegum pop boom, there's just no way this song (or Rollercoaster) would have been No.1 a couple of years earlier, or later - at least with that really playful production style it has! It really captured the colourful fun that the public craved in 1998. How bizarre to see Feel It fall to No.4 with such a big sales increase that week.

Chart music was really starting to creep into my daily life at this point - I remember some kids at school asked me if I'd heard of B*Witched and I said 'yes the 60s comedy, why's that?', to which people laughed as clearly I was out of the loop then.

And then with Horny I remember thinking it was called Honey for ages and didn't get the lyric and asked my family to explain the meaning to me 🙃

It's even more of a shame that All Saints denied Madonna, knowing they returned there eventually anyway!

That B*Witched song was truly everywhere at the time, even as a kid who wasn't following music and the charts yet.

Be warned next week at least five football songs on the two shows.

5 become 4. Bye Geri.

On 05/09/2025 at 19:50, gooddelta said:

A couple of UK Eurovision entrants next to each other on the second show - Imaani with another fantastic performance and then Daz Sampson on the Bus Stop song - who would represent us eight years later.

I caught up on last week's TOTP episodes this morning, made this observation in my head and predicted that you would as well when I entered this thread *.*

That Bus Stop version of 'Kung Fu Fighting' was executed just like one of those N-Trance covers.

Speaking of soundalikes... also outside the top 10, I'd never heard the N.Y.C.C. cover of 'Fight For Your Right (To Party)' until today on TOTP. It sounded like they were capitalising on the success of 'It's Like That' with its hip house sound.

Good to see 'Feel It' at #1 now! It would've been annoying if it had missed the boat and was denied behind a returning All Saints, with such a close gap. I knew it was a chart topper but never realised it spent five additional weeks in the top 5 before getting there.

'The Boy Is Mine' is my highlight of all the new entries since I last commented by far

'C'est La Vie' is not my cup of tea but I have good memories associated as it was on the pre-show playlist for Spice Girls at Wembley and the crowd went nuts

Agreed about NYCC. You can guarantee that every long-running No.1 will have a few soundalikes coming along within a couple of months, the intro is nearly the same.

Nice to see Robyn again on the first show in her mini first UK chart career before the second wind.

Viva Forever is such an excellent track, although they exposed themselves a bit with the pre-recorded advance performance seeing as Geri had already left when this episode was aired!