BillyH

The United States were doing completely their own thing in the early noughties (urban/R&B, rap, 'nu metal' etc) - very few of what we'd call "dance" music from a European perspective made it big over there at the time. Two that did in 2000 were Eiffel 65's Blue (#6) and Alice Deejay's Better Off Alone (#25), but they were very much rarities and stood out for their novelty factor rather than credibility. Darude's 'Sandstorm' also charted over there, but it wasn't that big at the time - it only reached #83. Its use on various TV shows and sports events, plus infamous youtube memes, has increased its popularity over the years. Glancing at the year-end charts, the next really huge US dance hit - unless I'm missing any - is one that charted here in the autumn of 2002, so a while to wait. (Canada were slightly more in-tune with Europe , 'Better Off Alone' reached #2 and 'Blue' and 'Sandstorm' were both #1s)

They basically nicked someone else's idea, didn't they? Someone mashed up Madonna's vocals with the House of God beat - the one Black Legend used for The Trouble With Me (this being the peak of the early noughties mashup craze), and Madhouse cashed in on it by re-recording the entire thing and releasing it as theirs. They formed and split up in the space of a few months. I can't really listen to it without imagining the poor bloke who made the original, and wondering what he thought of someone's copy of his mashup being a massive #1 across the world...although I suppose Madonna herself was the real winner as she'd have got tons of royalties.

Yeah, not a great top ten...I've never been a huge fan of Round Round but it's certainly the biggest standout in the chart. Odd mix of those reaching the end of their chart careers (HearSay, H & Claire) with some newer faces, and the less said about that Like A Prayer cover the better. Full credit to Lasgo though for doing what many Europop acts only dream of, and actually cracking the UK for a while - four top 30 hits between 2002-04, 'Something' and 'Alone' going top ten. Especially impressive when you consider the UK was about a year behind the rest of the continent with the first two, third single 'Pray' catching up by being released roughly the same time as the rest of Europe.

Completely forgotten about N-Force! A shameless Cascada clone but a good example of the late noughties Clubland boom, and another act I saw live at the time :P Right By Your Side was their biggest 'hit' but nothing they released went top 75.

THE ALLLLCOHOL LOVES YOOOOOU WHILE TURNING YOUUU BLUUUUUEEE fZSMDaewz2A #9 in 1982!

The complete lack of Gigi D'Agostino action in the UK charts is something that will always mystify me, particularly as some of his hits came extremely close to being released - L'amour Toujours got cancelled at least twice, once in 2002 and again when AATW tried to release it sometime in the mid-noughties. I actually have the UK edition of the Bla Bla Bla single somewhere, a long-gone CD shop in Battersea were selling them off for 10p each in early 2008 along with tons of other lesser-known noughties dance tracks (Kontakt, Oceanlab, Warp Brothers etc) - they gave it another go in late 2002, but again promotion was virtually zero.

There did seem something of an effort in early-mid 2002 to finally release a ton of Eurohits that had been big around the continent over the last two to three years - Alizee, ATC, DJ Aligator, Lasgo, Milk Inc etc. Somehow Daddy DJ and La Passion missed out, the latter despite its Irish success. Agreed both would have been massive over here.

It was definitely sampled, I just roughly recreated it in Audacity in about five minutes :P Here's a quick youtube video I've just made showing Everyman become Salsoul Nugget: cVl35KCf_Bg M&S cut the "If you wanna..." from the second line, and joined it onto "...that the road would be paved all smooth and nice" and sped the whole thing up by about 20%, creating the nonsense line "If you wanna that the road would be paved all smooth and nice"...which in turn can sound like anything the listener wishes! EDIT: Yep, amazed to see How U Like Bass here - easily the most obscure track here so far, but I adore it as much as Operation Blade - always been a huge fan of that hard bassy techno sound that was briefly big chartwise in the early noughties! That 'WUB WUB WUB' of the bass also reminds me of some of the dubstep hits in about a decade's time... It is indeed the correct mix - my copy of this comes from a compilation called 'Big Club Hits', which was released in the UK later that same year. It also features the next dance #1.

1987 to 2003 are pretty flawless throughout, with particular emphasis on 1991-92 (rave's peak) and 1999-2003 (trance's peak). To narrow it down further, I'd probably start around August 1986 - the week Farley Jackmaster Funk's 'Love Can't Turn Around' first appears - up to around November 2003 or so.

I couldn't resist and had a look...HOLY YES, never thought I'd be seeing the next two songs here!! Looking forward to some "What?!" reactions but I love them both! (...and in the case of , I'm pretty sure it's the that charted here rather than the ) But back to 'Salsoul Nugget' for now - surprised to hear the woman in the video actually sang some of it, I assumed it was the usual case of sampling all the vocals and getting a model to lipsync the lot, but it looks like she did at least the verses - the opening few lines are Loleatta Holloway, and the looped chorus is cut and sped up from Double Exposure's Everyman...and it's actually a guy singing that bit! Check the start of Everyman to hear the original! Definitely a forgotten gem along with Chocolate Puma, I remember a music blog from the time suggesting it had underperformed somewhat and should have been a #1 in the way Don't Call Me Baby was. Could have easily been done it but #6 isn't bad going.

'Vogue' being outside the top ten hurts. Madonna's always been a bit hit & miss for me as an artist but from 1989 to 1990 everything she released was gold. Happy to see Like A Prayer doing so well though, if only they'd actually re-release the proper version that was a hit at the time!

Awardinary - Brilliant!! As someone whose iTunes library is mostly filled with songs from Now albums this would fill in a lot of gaps nicely! See this would be great, but even if you restricted it to major artists it still wouldn't probably get a release as a Now album of obscure songs would be seen as commercial suicide by the bigwig bosses. Here's an alternative Now That's What I Call The 1990s tracklisting, all the artists had #1 singles but picking the follow-ups less people know: CD1: 1. Sinead O'Connor - The Emperor's New Clothes 2. Beats International - Won't Talk About It 3. Adamski - The Space Jungle 4. Elton John - You Gotta Love Someone 5. Bombalurina - Seven Little Girls Sitting On The Back Seat 6. Vanilla Ice - Play That Funky Music 7. Enigma - Mea Culpa (Part II) 8. Queen - I'm Going Slightly Mad 9. The Simpsons - Deep Deep Trouble 10. Chesney Hawkes - I'm A Man Not A Boy 11. Cher - Love & Understanding 12. Color Me Badd - All 4 Love 13. Jason Donovan - Happy Together 14. Bryan Adams - Can't Stop This Thing We Started 15. Shakespear's Sister - I Don't Care 16. KWS - Rock Your Baby 17. Tasmin Archer - In Your Care 18. Boyz II Men - Motownphilly 19. Charles & Eddie - N.Y.C. (Can You Believe This City) 20. Whitney Houston - I'm Every Woman CD2: 1. 2 Unlimited - Tribal Dance 2. Ace of Base - Wheel of Fortune 3. UB40 - Higher Ground 4. Gabrielle - Going Nowhere 5. Culture Beat - Got To Get It 6. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - I'm Looking For The One (To Be With Me) 7. Meat Loaf - Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through 8. Chaka Demus & Pliers - Murder She Wrote 9. D:Ream - U R The Best Thing 10. Mariah Carey - Anytime You Need A Friend 11. Doop - Huckleberry Jam 12. Tony Di Bart - Do It 13. Stiltskin - Footsteps 14. Whigfield - Another Day 15. East 17 - Let It Rain 16. Rednex - Old Pop In An Oak 17. Celine Dion - Only One Road 18. The Outhere Brothers - La La La Hey Hey 19. Simply Red - Remembering The First Time 20. Coolio - Too Hot CD3 1. Babylon Zoo - Animal Army 2. Mark Morrison - Crazy 3. Gina G - I Belong To You 4. Deep Blue Something - Josey 5. White Town - Undressed 6. No Doubt - Spiderwebs 7. Chemical Brothers - Elektrobank 8. R Kelly - Gotham City 9. Olive - Outlaw 10. Usher - Nice And Slow 11. Run DMC vs Jason Nevins - It's Tricky 12. Manic Street Preachers - The Everlasting 13. All Saints - War Of Nerves 14. Spacedust - Let's Get Down 15. Armand Van Helden - Flowers 16. Martine McCutcheon - I've Got You 17. Lou Bega - I Got A Girl 18. Eiffel 65 - Move Your Body 19. Christina Aguilera - I Turn To You 20. Wamdue Project - You're The Reason

For Now 100 they could take one track from every album and create a massive 5CD compilation. If they wanted to stick to megahits only, no repeated artists (featured credits/later solo careers allowed) and generally being as unoriginal as possible, I can see it being something like this: CD1 1. Phil Collins - You Can't Hurry Love 2. Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Wanna Have Fun 3. Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go 4. Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters 5. Katrina & The Waves - Walking On Sunshine 6. Eurythmics - There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart) 7. Queen - A Kind of Magic 8. Communards - Don't Leave Me This Way 9. Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer 10. T'Pau - China In Your Hand 11. Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth 12. Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now 13. The Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) 14. INXS - Need You Tonight 15. Soul II Soul - Back To Life 16. Technotronic - Pump Up The Jam 17. Adamski - Killer 18. DNA feat. Suzanne Vega - Tom's Diner 19. The Source feat. Candi Staton - You Got The Love 20. Zoe - Sunshine on a Rainy Day CD2 1. Shakespear's Sister - Stay 2. CeCe Peniston - Finally 3. Charles & Eddie - Would I Lie To You? 4. Robin S - Show Me Love 5. Ace of Base - All That She Wants 6. Haddaway - What Is Love 7. Reel 2 Reel - I Like To Move It 8. CJ Lewis - Sweets For My Sweet 9. Whigfield - Saturday Night 10. N-Trance - Set You Free 11. Pulp - Common People 12. Blur - Country House 13. Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger 14. Spice Girls - Wannabe 15. Deep Blue Something - Breakfast At Tiffany's 16. No Doubt - Don't Speak 17. Hanson - MMMBop 18. Boyzone - Picture of You 19. Aqua - Barbie Girl 20. Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight CD3 1. Robbie Williams - Millennium 2. Cher - Believe 3. Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way 4. Britney Spears - Baby One More Time 5. Fragma - Toca's Miracle 6. Darude - Sandstorm 7. Melanie C - I Turn To You 8. Shaggy - It Wasn't Me 9. S Club 7 - Don't Stop Movin' 10. Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head 11. Ja Rule feat. Ashanti - Always On Time 12. Liberty X - Just A Little 13. Sugababes - Round Round 14. Nelly & Kelly - Dilemma 15. 50 Cent - In Da Club 16. Beyonce feat. Jay-Z - Crazy In Love 17. Kelis - Milkshake 18. Outkast - Hey Ya! 19. McFly - Obviously 20. Tony Christie - Is This The Way To Amarillo CD4 1. James Blunt - You're Beautiful 2. Coldplay - Fix You 3. Shayne Ward - That's My Goal 4. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy 5. Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars 6. The Fray - How To Save A Life 7. Amy Winehouse - Back To Black 8. Take That - Rule The World 9. Girls Aloud - Call The Shots 10. The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name 11. Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire 12. The Killers - Human 13. La Roux - In For The Kill 14. Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling 15. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 16. Usher feat. will.i.am - OMG 17. Katy Perry - Firework 18. Adele - Rolling In The Deep 19. LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem 20. Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris - We Found Love CD5 1. Gotye feat. Kimbra - Somebody That I Used To Know 2. Fun feat. Janelle Monae - We Are Young 3. Swedish House Mafia feat. John Newman - Don't You Worry Child 4. Bastille - Pompeii 5. Daft Punk - Get Lucky 6. Avicii - Wake Me Up 7. Pharrell Williams - Happy 8. Clean Bandit feat. Jess Glynne - Rather Be 9. Hozier - Take Me To Church 10. Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk 11. Major Lazer - Lean On 12. The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face 13. Justin Bieber - Sorry 14. Justin Timberlake - Can't Stop The Feeling 15. (Now 95 track) 16. (Now 96 track) 17. (Now 97 track) 18. (Now 98 track) 19. (Now 99 track) 20. (Now 100 track) ...although they could go completely the other way, and make a compilation with the most obscure song from every album - a sort of 'Now That's What I Call What?!' - but I doubt they'd be that original. Imagine the Mark Goodier voiceover..."SONIC SURFERS! FOOL BOONA! DJ Q AND MC BONEZ! And MANY more MASSIVE FLOPS!"

Could see New Kids on the Block dominating a few top tens in the first half of 1990, maybe even a Bieber style 1-2-3 at one point - by the time they reached the UK they'd been hitmakers in the States for a year, so all their hits to date were rush-released here over the next few months to catch up with the US schedule.

Actually yeah, looking at Touch Me's chart run it was clearly destined to be a huge hit so I probably underestimated its success. From the time I only remember the Steps track but presumably Touch Me was a major hit in clubs over the winter of 2000/01.

Rui Da Silva must have been a big shock to chart-watchers of the time, as the 'planned' #1 was surely It's The Way You Make Me Feel by Steps...but a few record stores sold copies a week early, charting it at #72 the week before and climbing to #2 the week Touch Me debuted at #1. Looking at how empty that chart is - one of the quietest weeks of the year - (#3) and (#13) look also to be attempts at high-charting dance hits sneaking in post-Christmas, Mauro at least getting the biggest UK hit of his career and a massive hit in Ireland, where it reached #2. A similar sales issue to Steps affected a dance #1 we'll be seeing in this thread in about a (past) year's time. As great as Touch Me is, I was hoping to see this at some point, #6 in the main chart and dance #3 behind Rui and Fragma: IksRDCMYnn8 (Safri Duo - Played A-Live (The Bongo Song)) Cheesy for some perhaps but I adore it, trancepop paradise!

This is hilarious, what the hell is up with his voice?! Waiting for him to start a coughing fit any moment. Can't work out if I like it or not? Can only assume he's going for the novelty/comedy song factor and am expecting a wacky video to go with it.

Interesting mix of UK #1s and (lots of) Eurohits that did nothing/weren't released here, and a few that eventually were UK hits but years later - Mauro Picotto's Komodo in 2001, DJ Aligator's The Whistle Song and ATC's Around the World in 2002, and a remixed version of The Underdog Project's Summer Jam a whopping three years later in 2003! And Gigi D'Agostino's La Passion which was randomly massive in Ireland but bafflingly not in the UK. is a fave of mine in that video, very Alice Deejay/DJ Quicksilver - surely that would have been a UK top ten had they bothered releasing it here?

I did wonder that, but nope - they just called themselves that as they're "open to everyone", in the way all the best clubs/raves are. They did end up working with Chuck D from Public Enemy for real though on follow-up Rock Da Funky Beats. This is one of my faves of theirs though, used to blast this out back around late 2004/early 2005: Not got much to say about No Good 4 Me...UK garage was never a massive sound for me, although I enjoyed some of the bassline tracks later in the decade. Plan B later used the same hook in one of his early singles.

KWS - Please Don't Go (1992) and Spacedust - Gym & Tonic (1998) are two tracks in the 90s thread that have similarly interesting stories. (edit: links now attached!)

LOVE this one and the story of it all always fascinated me - as gooddelta's already said, a remix of a remix - and has a crazy complicated journey from birth to release. Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically: * New Order release the song 'Confusion' in 1983 * In 1995, New Order release the album 'The Rest of New Order' featuring various remixes of their older songs. One of them is the Pump Panel Reconstruction Mix of 'Confusion' completely transforming the song into a ten minute acid techno banger * This remix was used in a memorable scene in the superhero movie 'Blade', released in the UK in November 1998. Demand for the song grew instantly from clubbers who'd seen it * Step forward Public Domain, a group of Scottish DJs who notice the demand for the 'Blade song' and begin playing it to huge reception in clubs, mixing in some sampled MC vocals from Public Enemy's Flavor Flav featuring the repeated line "Bass for your face, London!" (I know, bear with me) for added effect. What becomes 'Operation Blade' is born * Track is signed for commercial release, but in the same way as Black Legend's The Trouble With Me, the sampled vocals can't be cleared for commercial use and are re-recorded by soundalike Mallorca Lee. The new vocals change the main line to "Bass in the place, London", and a few other changes - "Yo Chuck (D), kick it to them, man" becoming "Public Domain, kicking it to you man" * Track is scheduled to be released in time for Christmas 2000, but at the same time two groups of German DJs - Warp Brothers and Aquagen - have presumably had exactly the same idea, and their song 'Phatt Bass' is released, using the same Blade/Pump Panel sample - the CD features two main mixes, the Warp Brothers mix and the Aquagen mix, but it's the Warp Brothers one that gets the main radio airplay. This is released in the same month in the UK causing something of a sample 'battle' - both singles have stickers on the front claiming their record is the 'original' Blade theme, with Phatt Bass going a step further with the words "ACCEPT NO IMITATIONS" on the front! * The Warp Brothers/Aquagen ended up charting first, presumably on import (#58 in November 2000), and on full release reached the top ten at #9, but it was Public Domain's more homegrown version that ended up the winner here, peaking at #5, a massive seller right through the season and climbing back into the top ten in early 2001 once all the Christmas songs were falling. I'm not sure of the full sales total but I know it's pretty huge, it got quite high in a countdown of dance songs from the noughties that one of the music channels showed a few years ago. Think that's all correct, and agreed that the 'drop' is similar to the big-room house of just over a decade later - although I'll listen to this over the likes of 'Animals' any day, a brilliant uplifting hard house tune.

It's quite an odd one, isn't it? In the radio edit the "slow bit" lasts for almost two of the four minutes, almost half the song - I remember some radio stations made their own various edits of it that cut most of the middle out and had the beat return quicker. I think it added to the uniqueness of the song, you can't imagine other major dance acts putting a massive slow bit into the middle of their club banger but I've always loved it, a big hands-in-the-air anthemic moment - needs to be played at the right moment of the night to work at its best though, otherwise the momentum's lost. I think N-Trance's 'Set You Free' wins for slow bits in the middle of dance songs though, that moment is a heart-stopper. - one of the biggest "What the HELL is this?!" moments I've ever had from a dance tune. Absolutely amazed how high it charted (#4!!) given how uncommercial it is, basically a two-second sample of Gary Numan's 'Cars' gone completely nuts with mad record scratching and weird noises over the top for eight minutes. It did get a fair bit of attention at the time though as I think Radio 1 played it a lot, and Armand was a major name by then.

This is another one I'd listen to on the radio in my early-mid teens, closing my eyes and dreaming of actually being in a real proper club with this playing :P Which I don't think has ever properly happened, I've heard bits of it but never the full thing with the long slow bit in the middle. Except at a friend's wedding once, where a baffled crowd cleared the dancefloor midway through the song and never returned...

One of my favourite remixes of all time dates from 2000, although I'm aware it's not to everyone's tastes and to those who grew up with the original might be somewhat horrifying: Full 12" mix as the radio edit cuts just too much out for my liking - go to 3:48 to skip the opening buildup. (just noticed on this that a couple words are randomly missing at 6:38 - wonder why? They're present and correct on both the radio edit and the Ministry of Sound 2000 Annual mix, maybe some kind of mixing error)

Just 2-9? Are they taken directly from vinyl/cassette or just based on the originals with songs lifted from various sources? I ask because the official Spotify playlists of the Now albums are all over the place, usually featuring all sorts of wrong mixes/edits compared to the original CDs. Taking Now 43 as a random example, Spotify's version has the wrong mix of ATB's 9pm and a couple of songs missing completely.