'Northern Star' is superb <3 my fave new entry across both those weeks.

Yeah, I agree love Northern Star. Mel C really was the most talented Spice Girl.

Also loved Alice Deejay’s Back In My Life. Great follow up.

I way prefer 'Back in My Life' to 'Better Off Alone' (although I already absolutely love that). Such a huge fave for me.

For God's sake, why was Cliff Richard selling in droves? Did people not have ears?!

I remember loving Lolly back in 1999/2000. Though I always thought Big Boys Don’t Cry was the main focus.

Also, the Atomic Kitten debut was a banger! Totally forgot about that one.

Cliff climbing to No.1 is a memory I prefer to supress...

Moving on, Alice Deejay had by far my favourite debut of the fortnight. I remember hearing that Back In My Life was going to premiere late one night on my local radio station so I stayed up all night to hear it and tape it, and I was absolutely stunned by it. That Eurodance riff and warm vocal was music to my 12-year-old ears, bringing a cozy nostalgic feeling for the dark winter period and I love that it did so well climbing the following week too. After releasing two of my favourite songs of 1999, I developed quite an obsession with Alice Deejay and even did a school project about them (!), shame they only released the one album.

Northern Star is a killer track from Melanie C, and a great course correction after Goin' Down to get the album to start selling, a beautiful single. Not so fond of the Boyzone ballad which was a bit of a damp squib to go out on. They could have called it a day after Comic Relief and let Ronan do his own thing properly (which he already was anyway), rather than releasing this and the other dud, You Needed Me.

I wasn't too keen on the Martine or Lolly double a-sides. Love Me is ok, I found Talking In Your Sleep to have very dated production for late 1999 and I struggled to get into it. I just found Lolly very twee and didn't really buy into any of her singles in a big way, and these two were each naff in their own right.

The following week I'm sure I would have been expecting Celine, Whitney and The Corrs all to go top ten. And they should have done, I love all three of those songs a lot. Not sure how they all faltered so badly, Celine's is up there with her very best, excellent Cheiron production with a powerful delivery, Whitney's is a great power ballad, and Radio is so beautiful and great storytelling, I don't understand how the lead single from Unplugged barely scraped the top 20 after all their recent success, maybe because it was a live track?

Re-Rewind was a great, classic debut from both Artful Dodger and Craig David, I'm quite sure I expected it to get to No.1 at the time and not be blocked by Cliff, gah. Communication is a pretty annoying track, indeed I used to wind up my family with it whenever the phone started ringing. Love that Jamie Theakston called the mobile phone 'the accessory of the 90s', where these days it's more of an extra limb than a mere accessory.

Right Now was a fab disco pop debut from Atomic Kitten, their first few singles were a lot of fun before Whole Again sent them off in another direction. There's a great gem on their debut album called Turn Me On in the same vein sonically that I'd have loved to have seen get a single release. Glad it managed to scrape into the top ten, and it's cool that even this late into the 90s we were seeing the arrival of some of the biggest stars of the 00s in Craig David and Atomic Kitten.

I really got in to Northern Star (song) in 2017 when I was on holiday in Canada. It came on one of my playlists and I hadn't heard it for 15+ years at that point and it really struck me.

Such a beautiful song.

Of the turn of the millennium DJs I prefer Mauro Picotto to Mario Piu, easy to get the names confused.

Re-Rewind is a good tune.

Edited June 7Jun 7 by TheSnake

It took me way too long to realise 'She's The One' was a cover!

'King of My Castle' is a great #1 'The Millennium Prayer' not so much... TOTP robbed of the iconically terrible green screen in the music video so far. I respect the story behind the song's success but musically it is unbelievably naff. Speaking of naff... I never need to hear that Glamma Kid version of 'Why' again!

Wow did not know Lolly had done a version of 'Rockin' Robin' *_* shocked this lore didn't make it into the Michael biopic I tell thee.

It was quite cool to watch back-to-back TOTP debuts for Craig David and Atomic Kitten on the relevant episode, knowing they both had bright futures ahead of them! What a garage classic 'Re-rewind' is.

The Nokia graphics for that Mario Piu performance

Northern Star the top track in the latest batch, though I think my fave was a Pet Shop Boys track around that time (of course!) which probably fell short of the top 10 when it dropped in 2000 - one of the greatest song titles of all time! - as New York City Boy had.

17 minutes ago, Popchartfreak said:

Northern Star the top track in the latest batch, though I think my fave was a Pet Shop Boys track around that time (of course!) which probably fell short of the top 10 when it dropped in 2000 - one of the greatest song titles of all time! - as New York City Boy had.

It's coming in a few weeks, and is in my top five PSB songs, so underrated.

I must admit that since last weeks episodes dropped, I’ve had Back In My Life on constant rotation - what an absolute BOP ❤️

Echoing how great Northern Star is. Love that album too.

Re-Wind is excellent too.

18TH DECEMBER




Christmas just got very interesting indeed! Confounding most expectations major releases by Enrique Iglesias, Lou Bega, and Thunderbugs all miss the top 40 and even new releases by Daniel O’Donnell, Tom Jones & Cerys Matthews, TLC and B*Witched all fall short of the top 10. To top all that Cliff Richard remains at No 1 and increases his sales for a fourth week in a row to an impressive 159,369 passing over the half million mark enough to make the YTD top 20. With the Christmas chart next week could this hang on- at three weeks he’s already equaled the record for most weeks at the top this year- sharing it with Ricky Martin and Eiffel 65. Incidentally Cliff's track is the first single to increase its sales three weeks in a row and top the 100,000 mark ine ach week since Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" almost exactly 4 years ago.

One of the boys has been replaced (Robin Pors) but the Vengabus continues to roll on with a new Vengaboys album in the new year and a new single “Kiss (When The Sun Don’t Shine)”. It couldn’t hold on to the midweek No 2 position eventually falling behind The Artful Dodger’s “Re-Rewind” to enter at No 3 just 2,000 copies behind the 91,000 posted for the latter’s track. It looks like it will break the acts string of chart toppers which saw them score two chart toppers this year but they have sold well over a million copies in 1999 which is impressive nonetheless, and they become the first act from the Netherlands to score 5 consecutive top five singles in the UK.

William Orbit is naturally a name you’ll be familiar with thanks to the producers recent work with the likes of Madonna and Blur but he was an artist in his own right back to the late 80s. He was of course the man behind Bass-o-matic who scored a top 10 hit in 1990 with “Fascinating Rhythm” and then went on to score a minor #59 with “Water From A Vine Leaf” in 1993, his current project involves interpreting pieces of classical music into modern day dance music. The project first saw the light back in 1995 when it was released under the title of “Adagio” by Pieces In A Modern Style (another Orbit alias) but now Orbit becomes the artist in person and “Barber’s Adagio For Strings” gets a single release. The piece itself was written back in 1938 by Samuel Barber and is a piece you’ll doubtful know, Orbit will re-release the album under the title “Pieces In A Modern Style” next month- hope that all made sense! Anyway the single becomes a hit new at No 4 (77,000) though the single version is a remix by Ferry Corsten.

DJ Rob Webster is otherwise known as Progress who “presents” Boy Wunda on the dance track “Everybody” which essentially samples the orchestral introduction used on Madonna’s 1986 #1 track “Papa Don’t Preach” and turns it into a techno hit. It enters at No 7 (57,000) to become a surprise Christmas hit and shows how much Madonna’s star has risen again.

Canadian duo Len are brother and sister Mark and Sharon Costanzo whose first two albums gained a small following without much commercial success but their third album will certainly be different thanks to the fact that they have their first hit single. “Steal My Sunshine” was picked for inclusion in the soundtrack to the film “Go” and picked up airplay sufficient to turn into a US #9 hit last month and create buzz here in the UK where it now enters at No 8 (56,000), it samples Andrea True Connection’s “More More More” and was inspired by the call & response structure of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” according to the band.

The arrival of big hits means there is little room for Alice Deejay to progress and they reverse 4-5 (64,000) but do increase sales slightly, Wamdue Project continue to fade 3-6 (61,000), Boyzone fall 6-9 (53,000) and hats off to R Kelly who maintains his top flight status 7-10 (50,000) and will sell his 500,000th copy of “If I Could Turn Back The Hands Of Time” this week sometime.



So the race is on for the Christmas No 1 then, can anyone depose Cliff who is after all king of the Christmas chart topper? John Lennon, Steps, Westlife, and S Club 7 are all certainly going to give it a shot!


1- THE MILLENIUM PRAYER- Cliff Richard (159,369)
2- RE-REWIND THE CROWD SAY BO SELECTA- Artful Dodger (91,000)
3- KISS (WHEN THE SUN DON’T SHINE)- Vengaboys (89,000)
4- BARBER’S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS- William Orbit (77,000)
5- BACK IN MY LIFE- Alice Deejay (64,000)
6- KING OF MY CASTLE- Wamdue Project (61,000)
7- EVERYBODY- Progress Presents Wunda Boy (57,000)
8- STEAL MY SUNSHINE- Len (56,000)
9- EVERYDAY I LOVE YOU- Boyzone (53,000)
10- IF I COULD TURN BACK THE HANDS OF TIME- R Kelly (50,000)

only 1 show tonight and it is the last "regular" TOTP of the decade- the Christmas special 99 is on next week.

William Orbit <3 That was by far my favourite track at this time. Not a huge surprise as I’d loved Cafe Del Mar and this remix essentially copied the structure and finally took a song like this into the top 5

Bloodbath week! I remember tuning in and thinking, where are all those singles (Lou Bega, Thunderbugs, Enrique, also Bryan Adams). And then being stunned as the chart further revealed TLC outside the top 30, B*Witched not in the top ten...too many big releases trying to squeeze out before the end of the year/century/millennium and not enough space for them all.

The most surprising flop was probably Lou Bega, it was a hit around Europe, and sure it was a carbon copy of Mambo No.5, but when did that hurt anyone? ATB and Eiffel 65 both went top three with the similar follow-ups to their huge Eurohits. If it had peaked at, say, No.20, I might understand it more, and still be surprised at its flop, but No.55? How did that even happen.

Thunderbugs were the most robbed though, gah. And that derailed their career completely. I wish they'd held it to January and got a top 20 hit out of it in a lower sales period, it was a good song! It spent five weeks in the top 75, which was unusual for a pop song that missed the top 40, so it definitely had higher potential had they not released it that week.

Looks like we were in more of a dance mood with six dance songs in that top ten, highly unusual for December where there is ususally only a token one. Progress and Len really overperformed against the fierce competition that week (although the latter is great and a bit of a classic).

Steal My Sunshine a gem of an upbeat pop single, and sampling More More More never hurts!

I quite like that Vengaboys song. Not as good as the previous hits but still rather enjoyable.