'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 Sunday at 18:173 days 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 ❤️