gooddelta

Lovely song from Nelly Furtado but S Club 7 edge it just about.

Westlife - Swear It Again Rank: 5/10 Reason: Back to Westlife and this time their debut single, Swear It Again. Written by future mega successful songwriters Steve Mac and Wayne Hector, this is the kind of ballad that was everywhere in the UK music industry from late 1998 to about 2002 when the pop bubble as we knew it burst and a wind of change swept through the charts in 2003. A lot of boybands were pushing these lushly orchestrated, well produced ballads with sweeping strings, albeit moreso around Christmas (and it wasn't only boybands - acts ranging from Spice Girls to B*Witched and even Emilia all had their own stringy winter ballad hits). So the April release for Swear It Again was a bit different, and indeed releasing a ballad as a debut single was a bit unusual as they are not always that impactful to set up a new group, but Westlife (known previously as Westside before a name change) had been doing the schools and PA circuit since 1998 and the group - managed by Louis Walsh with some help from Ronan Keating (as a bit of a PR push I'm sure) - pushed Swear It Again first partly I suspect because it was proving popular on the road, plus it gave the opportunity for lots of swooning into the camera and to sell the band's look to a teen audience. I think this song was nice enough, it's a bit of a plod in places and a fairly unremarkable debut single but it was popular by its own merits, with two weeks at No.1 and has 181m streams on Spotify, and even made the top 20 in the US, so definitely made a lasting impact. The production is nice, and the track established early on the Shane lead vocal/Mark dramatic ramp up/middle eight format that pretty much all of their big hits had. So they settled straight into the groove they would largely stay in, and it was all perfectly fine and nice. But they had better hits to come than this.

Think I only heard Laura's debut and then lost track!

Ooh another 12, thanks Mattias. This has proven a very marmite entry which was completely expected tbf.

Thanks Julian for top marks, and great entry yourself too!

Ooh up first. I heard Blue Water playing at a relative’s house a while ago and was mesmerised by it! Thought it fit the long song theme well as it has a sonic switch up too and isn’t the same throughout. My 12 was such a great discovery, thanks to whoever sent it as I hadn’t heard it before.

True, from a chart watcher's perspective it was somewhat interesting to see how The Millennium Prayer behaved, but I do wish it could have been for any other song. Like you say, Better Off Alone was SO close to doing it in the summer, climbing in sales for weeks and under 500 copies adrift at its closest. Yes, Geri had a big ego at the time although her personality seems to have mellowed a lot these days, Emma has always been lovely it seems.

We need one of those sideways eyes reactions. Let’s just say the semi results were a riot and I’m looking forward to seeing these final results coming in.

Tomorrow evening is most likely looking at discussions, although not sure who is hosting.

Found this quite pointless indeed apart from the final 30 seconds, they could have gone harder with it throughout.

uhsting did.

Thanks very much for the votes in so far, I'm trialling a new scoreboard thing I've made for myself which I'm hoping should make life a bit easier in terms of cross checking etc so am testing it as I get votes in. Not compulsory if you are in a mega hurry, but if you are able to include the country names you are voting for in your voting PM (and not just song or artist titles), it would make life easier as means a lot less cross checking who sent what 🙏

Anyone tempted to make some odds? I must admit that the semis didn't tell me very much about how this is likely to go, but still, I obviously won't be making any!

I've always had a soft spot for Angel tbh, so going for that. But I appreciate the cover of Smooth Criminal, it worked surprisingly well in this genre.

I thought it would be your favourite UK No.1 of the year. Say You'll Be Mine would be high for me if it had got to No.1.

True although she had the X factor, to use a cliche. I really think the Spice Girls felt more boring as a group without her and not sure they'd have been half as big if she wasn't ever in the band. Each of them had their own strengths, and Geri's was her personality and charisma and ability to make the headlines (and get the band further into them). So it's not altogether surprising to me that she managed a string of hits when she was so good at the PR game and knew how to appeal to the public and be memorable, but that said the only single of hers I ever listen to out of choice is the one still to come later. Although I didn't mind Scream If You Wanna Go Faster too. Victoria was a bit underrated and underused, she wasn't a powerhouse like Mel C or as strong as Mel B and Emma vocally, but she had some lovely moments, like the middle eights on Viva Forever and Goodbye.

Yes, I don't really mind Westlife generally nowadays, and actively enjoyed the 2019 comeback hit Hello My Love. They have four appearances in this countdown and not all of them are very low, but this double a-side I wasn't overly fond of. The charts in late 1999 were absolutely packed full of variety and shock underperformances as everyone battled to have a say in the millennium charts, I just wish something more interesting had come out on top.

Geri Halliwell - Lift Me Up Rate: 5/10 Reason: It was coming up to Christmas and it was time for single number three, so as Jim pointed out in the 1998 thread, in the world of 90s and early 00s pop this meant it was time for a ballad. Geri went head to head with former band member Emma Bunton for No.1 - Emma teaming up with Tin Tin Out for a cover of What I Am. The much hyped chart battle saw Geri embark on a major press tour, and she even had a whirlwind romance with Chris Evans at this exact time which I'm sure was in no way connected. Geri won out with her second consecutive No.1, Lift Me Up, which is a dated but ok ballad with a very corny key change and the kind of chorus and production that could only have made No.1 in the late 90s. One thing I will say is that I enjoy the verses, where Geri sings more restrained, and some of the backing vocals almost make it sound like a Carpenters track (and this encouraged my Mum to buy the album as she enjoyed the track). In the video Geri meets some aliens in a broken down spaceship who she makes friends with which, for a kitsch ballad, was a very odd treatment. The track wasn't much of a hit elsewhere, but charted low down in a few countries.

I may have mostly recycled this post from the 2000 thread, but let's get it out of the way. Apparently I've softened to it since the summer as I rated it 3/10 in 2000. Westlife - I Have A Dream / Seasons In The Sun Rate: 4/10 Reason: I get why Westlife's management took the winter cover ballad route to get an easy Christmas No.1 (or so they thought, a certain prayer put up a good fight), but both of these sides are naff for me. They opened their career with three half decent original pop singles, looking back, so it was a shame to see them move very quickly into pedestrian cover territory. The ABBA cover is fine and has some nice festive touches to the production but it's very twee and not one of my favourite ABBA singles in the first place, and Seasons In The Sun (the original of which I like) I would rate even lower individually. Brian put it best himself when he said something along the lines of singing this track in turtleneck sweaters in the video, it felt like the label was trying to turn them into Val Doonican. For a band aimed so squarely at the teen market with their first few singles, it's alarming how quickly they moved on to trying to futureproof their career by shifting to much older audiences with kitsch releases like this. A very wet Christmas No.1 and end to the millennium unfortunately, but it could have been worse (Cliff was No.2).

Yes, in the first series I believe.

Sorry is great, the whole album was, although I too actually did prefer Put My Records On, which is such a soulful, smooth gem. It was great to see Madonna get two No.1s from the same album though. Even getting a top ten from Confessions Part 2 would be a dream (and unlikely, but if Kylie can do it then I won't completely rule it out).

I actually like Wonderland too, although often forget about it as it disappeared so quickly and didn't make it onto any compilations etc. The tides of pop really changed in late 1999, with B*Witched's underperformance too, things were becoming more Americanised imo and you had to adapt, like Steps quickly did with the Buzz singles, or disappear.

It's up to RAYE to release a Christmas remix and play the game. Where Is My Present remix please.

Sad really that Christmas week (and the weeks leading up to it) now have among the lowest sales of the year at the top. I do appreciate it takes a lot to pull people away from Christmas music in mid to late December, but surely somebody could manage 45k of a new release to take the Christmas No.1. Shame someone like Harry Styles doesn't surprise release a new album.

911 - A Little Bit More Rank: 4/10 Reason: Another boyband with another 70s country(-ish) cover, Lee, Spike and Jimmy first hit the charts in 1996 and unusually took three years to score their first (and only) No.1 single with A Little Bit More. They had hit the top five six times prior to this, and scored their previous biggest hit, More Than A Woman, a few months earlier but it lost out to Gym and Tonic by Spacedust. They capitalised on the weak January market with the release of A Little Bit More, a cover of the 1976 No.2 hit by Dr Hook, part of their covers album There It Is, and it did the trick, finally taking them to the top, but had a very poor chart run with only five weeks in the top 40. I've got a lot of time for this group, they all seem like genuinely nice guys and I once interviewed Jimmy for my blog, and he gave a very likeable and entertaining interview. They had done a PA at my primary school back in early 1998 when they had already got a few top five hits under their belt, so they were still doing the schools circuit and grafting in front of 200 kids even when they didn't really need to, and their first two chart hits they achieved on an independent label, before Virgin picked them up, so they really worked hard for their success. The trio did deserve to finally get a No.1 to their name but really this was one of their weakest singles and a fairly beige retread, so I guess familiarity and good timing took it there. Weirdly they commercially ran out of steam in this same year, achieving a No.3 hit with Private Number in May (which I loved actually, it was a far more inspired choice of cover than this), then missed the top 10 with the chirpy Wonderland in the autumn, and that was that. Shame, but pop had really moved on by this point, so it wasn't altogether surprising really. They are still a big deal in Vietnam, and their 2023 collaboration with recent Intervision winner Đức Phúc, I Do (itself a reworking of a 2013 album track by the band) has 28m streams combined on Spotify and 80m YouTube views, so good for them.