BillyH

09/10/99: Macy Gray - I Try WEQ0l_m3Xm0 An instant classic hits the top immediately by one of the newest and most distinctive voices in pop, 30 year old Macy comes from Ohio but oddly has to wait until early next year for this track to be released in her home country. Based on its strength here already it looks like a worldwide hit is assured, wonderfully melodic and how epic is that husky voice. One of those tracks that says #1 the moment you first hear it, it's impossible to imagine a universe where it charted it, say, #10 instead - thank the British public for their sense. Best bit is when she totally loses it at the end and screams out the final couple of choruses in euphoric joy.

02/10/99: S Club 7 - S Club Party -X0EjwF8o0g Simon Fuller breathes a sigh of relief as after being narrowly beaten in the summer by a spoken-word lecture about sunscreen, his new rivals to superstar Steps get at least one #1. And what a sugary upbeat one it is, as Tina, Paul, Rachel, Jo, Hannah, Bradley and Jon (god, that many?) wanna show us how there ain't no party like a S Club party. To be honest after perhaps the most killer chorus since Britney's Baby One More Time, the verses tend to awkwardly meander around until everyone can throw their hands up in their air and shout "S CLUBBBBB!" again in the choruses. And a keychange! I love a keychange. Now they've got that important #1 they find themselves in the same situation to the Thunderbugs as the attempt to make them into a lasting pop act of the new century begins. But no matter what their fate in the near future, watch the kids of today grow up and start ironically dancing to this in student discos in ten years time, in a similar way they do to the likes of Chesney Hawkes today. You can bet on it.

25/09/99: Paul Johnson - Get Get Down dCe6e23yIT8 A dance track but for once not trance, Dutch or even German, but - gasp - American?! Yep, amongst all the rock and urban R&B over there, dance music does have a small if loyal following in the states, although the closest dance has come to #1 on their Billboard Hot 100 in recent times is 'Believe' for a month in March. Stepping over the likes of Los Del Rio's 'Macarena' (1996) and Ace of Base's 'The Sign' (1994), you've got to go way back to early 1991, and two weeks of C&C Music Factory's 'Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)' to find the previous #1 in their charts anything close to what we'd call dance music, perhaps Londonbeat and PM Dawn that year as maybes. It's a situation that is unlikely to change anytime soon as you can hardly imagine someone like R Kelly or Puff Daddy being seen dead attempting to rap or croon over pounding Eurotrance beats, but we do have at least DJ Paul Johnson from Chicago, who DJs in a wheelchair after an accidental gunshot in the 80s. Already much attention has been made from its sheer repetitiveness, consisting as it does of the word 'Get' 52 times and 'Down' a stonking 246. But bloody hell is it catchy, using just a handful of notes to carry it through and you *try* getting it out your head after the first listen. For those tiring of trance after its recent #1 domination, this'll be a much better listen, one either to bop to or chill out with a cool drink to.

I thought '2012' would be the start of a few songs all about that year given how big the Mayan apocalypse story was, but that really ended up being the only one. The last time I heard it was a few minutes into a house party on January 1st 2012 and never since!

What are your favourite and least favourite editons of the Now series? I'm gonna list five of my best and five of my worst, starting with the classics (in chronological order): 1. Now 34 (Summer '96) for its mix of class Britpop and some of the decade's best dance tracks 2. Now 42 (Early '99) for soundtracking the Spring I first massively got into chart music, so many memories of The Box music channel and primary school on there - all the Nows that year could qualify really 3. Now 55 (Summer '03) The heatwave! Play this album and I'm back to being 14 and that incredible year's summer weather, one that warms me up even on the coldest winter nights 4. Now 69 (Early '08) for having barely any duds at all, tons of late teenage anthems and forgotten classics here 5. Now 79 (Summer '11) The music of a ton of club nights I used to frequent in what was a brilliant summer for me, when dubstep was king and about the last time that EDM-heavy sound still felt comparatively fresh And five comparative letdowns: 1. Now 23 (Late '92) which is far before my time, but save for a few great songs there's way too many old ones and re-issues on here that make a bit of a mockery of the album 2. Now 60 (Early '05) for trying its best but being a bit of a crap time for the charts with falling sales and including some dinosaur acts like Geri, Robbie, Atomic Kitten and Daniel Bedingfield, all of which were once good but by now had past their peak and felt like a different era entirely 3. Now 63 (Early '06) for being a similar story to 60, featuring the likes of Chico and Friday Hill and the best track on it is a 21 year old Dead or Alive song 4. Now 75 (Early '10) just being weirdly underwhelming in an otherwise brilliant run of the 70 series, all the best tracks from that time are either on Now 74 or 76 so this one awkwardly falls in the middle 5. Now 85 (Summer '13) but perhaps just a sign I'm probably getting a bit old, for just two truly brilliant tracks - 'I Love It' and 'So Good To Me' - and a lot of bland dross, including those first five irritatingly overplayed tracks of Disc 1. Thankfully I have completely lost my taste in music as this summer's Now 88 is slightly better. Obviously not everyone's going to agree with those but as usual it's just my opinion :P

18/09/99: Thunderbugs - Friends Forever 3u_0hzDwz1Q And thank GOD for new girl group Thunderbugs who finally bring guitars back kicking and screaming to the number 1 list. With the Spice Girls on what may forever remain a hiatus, All Saints hard at work on their second album and B*Witched on the cusp of reaching theirs, they briefly have a monopoly as the only girl group this side of the Atlantic releasing new material. And they have a gimmick - they play their own instruments. All in their mid-twenties (old in today's Britney and Billie generation of teen stars) and hoping to be a modern-day Bangles for the 90s, this really isn't anything new and indeed could have been released a decade earlier, but if they're blessed with enough hit songs up their sleeves they could well emerge being one of the key acts to watch as we move into the year 2000 - just as long as groups like All Saints don't come back with any singles so killer that it relegates Thunderbugs to the almost-rans. But their early marketing push has at least paid off for now and Stef, Nicky, Brigitte and Jane start their career at least with the biggest-selling single in the country this week. Remember those names.

11/09/99: Agnelli & Nelson - Everyday Y-le1F3WwCY Even I'm starting to want something a bit different now but you can't doubt the quality of the music. Bar a one-off week for Sixpence None the Richer back in May, it has now been a extremely long time since anything remotely rock or even acoustic has hit the top of the charts - the days of Blur and a reformed Blondie reaching #1 now seem far away. But then look back at the last five years and it's Britpop, Britpop, Britpop all the way - the public are voting with their £1.99 CD purchases and saying no more rock as we end the decade that brought us Oasis, Pulp and Mike Flowers Pops, it's time to start as we began with raved-up euphoria. Both Agnelli & Nelson are not quite as exotic as they first appear and instead hail from nearby Northern Ireland, and they already made a big splash back in 1998 with one of the first 'trance' tracks as we know it today, El Nino. As the last of summer's sunshine fades this Ibiza favourite gets a September release and you can imagine even they were surprised on Sunday evening when Mark Goodier announced it as this week's #1, if on a small margin and likely to drop fast as October's chill nears. Nothing particularly new here, following the 'Carte Blanche' blueprint of slowing everything down in the middle and slowly building up to a final frenzy at the end, but again it suits the Ibizan clubbers perfectly with a vocal mix at least this time existing for radio play. The original instrumental is definitely where it's at though.

04/09/99: Ayla - Ayla BLWxdub9-2Q Rock is dead. So proclaim several newspaper and magazine articles as we move into the autumn as thousands return from Ibiza and eagerly start snapping up every club track they can at their local music store, providing them with magical if hazy memories of their Spanish party hols. The likes of Travis and other so called 'post-Britpop' acts may be gaining the most critical acclaim but single sellers they are not, causing a huge genre difference between the singles and album charts as an act on one will almost certain not top the charts on the other. You can't imagine, for example, an Ayla album reaching #1. What this track is and who made it is quite a confusing one. 'Ayla' himself is German DJ Ingo Kunzi, and dates right back in its original form to the mid-90s. The most famous and renowned version is perhaps the DJ Taucher mix which features on the CD single, but not as the lead track - that goes to a beefed-up-for-1999 Veracocha remix, meaning our friend Ferry has, ridiculously, his fourth #1 of the year if only just as a remixer this time. Which means you've got two different groups of people buying the single - those who've heard the Veracocha version in recent months and know that as "their" Ayla, and those who've been dancing to Taucher's for the best part of three years, finally seeing it for sale after perhaps not even knowing the name of the purely instrumental track before. All contribute to trance continuing to wrestle its arms around the UK Singles Chart and refuse to let go - and with many, many more post-Ibiza anthems lined up for release through September, the party's not over yet.

That was a great week as I don't think many expected Forget You to beat Shame to the top - I got mega sick of Forget You over about the next six months but it's good to listen to it again now, it majorly defined that autumn for me. Also the last ever song I bought on CD single as I couldn't decide which version I preferred and the CD had them both, before they basically became impossible to buy in stores. ...is it really bad I absolutely adored Miami 2 Ibiza? It sounded incredible in clubs and had seen Tinie Tempah go from the slightly irritating dude on 'Pass Out' to the slightly less-irritating guy on 'Written In The Stars' to being part of some SHM brilliance. Now there's about five hundred identical-sounding songs out there but it and 'One' stood out a hell of a lot more at the time.

31/07/99: Alice Deejay - Better Off Alone (5 weeks) lHjNmyzrVvM If there was any doubt before, this five-week run absolutely confirms 1999 as the year of trance. Looking ahead to the year 2000 it's difficult to know how this musical scene can progress from here - either the beats are just gonna get harder, the melodies more complex and many more trance anthems topping the charts are yet to come, or perhaps we've peaked as soon as we've began and the next big craze will have overtaken it. For now there is nothing to be worried about and again it's the Dutch - yet not, for once, Ferry Corsten - who command the #1 spot with this simple but brill trance-pop ditty. In today's chart-high-then-fall climate it's quite refreshing to see something actually increase its sales week-on-week, a few steps down the power of Gouryella but it equally screams summer in shedloads, containing minimal repeated lyrics and an almost irritatingly-catchy instrumental hook that bleeps its way through the song. It's remained at #1 for the whole of August, must *surely* not be the last we've heard of DJ Jurgen and vocalist Judith Anna Pronk and when in years to come they start having 1990s nostalgia nights you can bet this'll be up there with the likes of Rhythm is a Dancer, Children and all the other modern classics.

Ha thanks, looking ahead to 2000 I'll probably do that too - fun to rewrite history so drastically :P 10/07/99: Gouryella - Gouryella (3 weeks) briVKxMcU0c He's back! And again he is simply unstoppable as a third of Ferry's aliases hit the top this time joined by fellow rising Dutch DJ Tiesto. Put simply they've made perhaps the most summery, heat-drenched dance anthem ever made to the point where I don't think I've ever heard any song sound so *perfect* in hot temperatures. To get three number 1s in a year - totalling eleven weeks - is an astonishing achievement, although sadly it probably won't show up in the record books as he's been under a different name each time. Pity poor Steps who come a close #2 with Love's Got A Hold On My Heart.

It's kinda sad how all my late 2000s musical icons of my late teens/very early twenties have constantly flopped on their comebacks - back then I was a huge fan of Mika, Alphabeat, Sam Sparro, Hot Chip, and probably La Roux most of all, absolutely none of which made it into the next decade with a truly big-selling single. Indeed I was amazed - and delighted - when Katy B had a #5 out of nowhere earlier this year, one of my 2010-11 equivalents, but she seems to have been an exception. It's making me already feel old at 25 and wondering who in the current charts will still be relevant even in a couple of years!

03/07/99: ATB - 9pm (Til I Come) fmGQMmtXAF0 July's begun, the sun's out and trance makes a triumphant return with German DJ André Tanneberger's Europe-wide hit, charting here in its special new 'Sequential One' remix for the UK. Featuring a distinctive bendy guitar sound and not much else, the simple production sounds great in the midsummer heat. Quite a few more trance anthems are coming up over the rest of the summer, and with Ibiza proving a huge draw for a clubbing holiday this could be the start of a run to rival the eight weeks of Ferry Corsten-mania in the spring.

12/06/99: Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free To Wear Sunscreen (3 weeks) sTJ7AzBIJoI A three-week run for the most wonderfully bizarre song since Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker', barely anything more than a spoken-word lecture over a steadily intensifying Soul II Soul-style chilled dance beat, indeed this sounds so 1990 it could have easily been a hit at the very start of the decade too. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes this such a great listen - the "lyrics", if cheesy, actually manage to speak to everyone and make you feel a hell of a lot better with yourself by the end of the five minutes. It's one to listen to should you ever feel down in the dumps with life. Pity though the poor Chemical Brothers who miss out by a handful of copies with 'Hey Boy Hey Girl', with other close shaves for new Steps clones S Club 7 and the Vengaboys.

05/06/99: Chicane - Saltwater zCGWP1j-62s Back to dance but definitely not as heavy as the Ferry double bill of April and May, this instead is a stunning track using the wispy vocals of Maire Brennan, combining Clannad's 'Theme From Harry's Game' to a strong dance beat. The best club anthems are those that work as both chillouts in your own home and rave-ups on packed darkened dancefloors, and this combined with huge crossover appeal has guaranteed its shoot up to the top of the charts.

29/05/99: Sixpence None the Richer - Kiss Me 8N-qO3sPMjc And relax. You could almost hear the sigh of relief as eight continuous weeks of pounding, loud Dutch madness makes way for some gentle American pop. 'Kiss Me' has been a radio monster over recent weeks and could well end up topping the yearly airplay charts at this rate, also used in various trailers and movies in recent times. A good song by itself, the fact that it's dethroned the last two dance stompers makes it sound even better and a perfect alternative to the current trance explosion. It's the first #1 for the Texan group and perhaps not the last.

15/05/99: Veracocha - Carte Blanche (2 weeks) LZSnoaLWCVU After six weeks of Ferry Corsten, the only track that's been able to knock it off the top is...Ferry Corsten, in another of his guises now at least joined by Vincent de Moor this time. Not since John Lennon in 1981 has an artist knocked *himself* off number 1, and Lennon wasn't even alive to see it when he did. While it doesn't have as strong a beat as Out of the Blue, the melody is perhaps even more heartbreakingly emotional, and contains a glorious breakdown in the middle where everything fades out except a single piano, only to explode back into life with synth-heavy euphoria. It's difficult to imagine what Ferry's feeling right now having basically conquered the country with his sound, DJs everywhere trying to create tracks at this level. And the trance craze of 1999 is now making the papers, most people over the age of 35 absolutely hating it and blaming it on a collapse of musical taste, indeed a couple of internet chart bloggers have stopped in disgust at recent weeks at the so-called "crap" at the top of the charts at the expense of the likes of more credible rock acts. It is a mad, glorious time to be following the musical scene right now and this surely is the start of the 21st century right here. Both Out of the Blue and Carte Blanche are so complex, so multi-layered, it's difficult to imagine just how music can ever get any better than this. And we're not even in the year 2000 yet.

03/04/99: System F - Out of the Blue (6 weeks) Qgx_V0So0qk What did I tell you. But even I never anticipated this. It was on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show when 'Out of the Blue' received one of its first plays, and suddenly the phone-lines were jammed with people asking what this mystery instrumental track was. Plays increased, the video started getting major airplay on The Box (always good for international hits) and what could have been a minor top 15 hit has, out of nowhere, captured the attention of the entire country. Six weeks at #1 is the longest in ages, and is such a ridiculously breathtaking track it's difficult to know what can come along and knock it off. It relegates almost every dance track before to sounding like a Steps B-side, so game-changing it is. I cannot remember a time when something so above and beyond any dance track released to date has appeared out of nowhere high in the charts like this - perhaps 'Charly' in 1991 or even Pump Up The Volume four years earlier. The title tells the story - out of the blue the British public have fallen in love with it, giving the obscure DJ behind the track (Ferry Corsten, remember the name) unexpected celeb status. It blasts from every teenage car stereo, pounds from every house party, and prompted an already memorable Top of the Pops performance which threatened to turn Elstree Studios into an illegal rave on the verge of getting shut down by police, Ferry standing behind a prop set of turntables blasting out the track to a mental BBC audience to the point where even Jamie Theakston looked a bit terrified as he linked in and out of it. For the first time since rave-mania overtook the country in 1991-92, we have a new musical scene that shows no signs of going away anytime soon and this for now is the world-class trance anthem. Wouldn't be surprised if Pete Waterman is hurriedly remixing the next Steps album to sound like this.

27/03/99: B*Witched - Blame It On The Weatherman HTwiK8z2m_Y B*Witched sneak in a week but I can't imagine for long, as looking at Monday's forthcoming releases the week-ending 3rd April may well be one of the most incredible charts of our lifetime. The contenders include new Scandinavian group the Cartoons, a returning Billie Piper, Sash, a pop-rock stomper from the New Radicals, R&B group TLC with perhaps a future classic in the form of 'No Scrubs', Des'Ree returning for a *third* try at 'You Gotta Be', and a yellow furry puppet who headbangs in a Levi jeans advert. And not forgetting Aphex Twin who's track 'Windowlicker' is perhaps not quite commercial enough for a #1 but still should go top 20 at least. However there's another contender that might upset everything based on its pre-orders and hype from overseas, we'll see in seven days time. For now in a quiet week Pete Waterman passes the #1 to Louis Walsh, and B*Witched at least do it with surely their best track to date, a wonderfully classy number about all that bloody rain in the skies, timed neatly for the inevitable April showers we'll be getting soon. Simple, nothing groundbreaking, but a nice three-minutes of your time.

20/03/99: Steps - Better Best Forgotten c_0k84qbwwk From the sublime to the Lisa Scott-Liculous, but one in a funny way a #1 just as deserved as Blur last week. 'Heartbeat/Tragedy' not being #1 over Christmas and New Year seemed a huge shame given the track joined Wham's 'Last Christmas' as a rare million-selling #2, the behemoths of Cher, Bryan/Melanie and even Chef stopping it any time it got close. Credit then for this difficult follow-up giving them at least one presence on the list of 1999's top hits. Steps have their many detractors, not least from those who remember Pete Waterman's domination on the charts in the late 80s and worried this is the start of it all happening again (thankfully in today's divided musical scene, one producer owning the chart would never happen today) but my god does he know how to write a tune, this gaining extra points by not even being a cover for once and a Waterman original. H, Lisa, Claire, Faye and the other one seem a good-natured, family-friendly lot in an increasingly sexualised pop scene, and their songs can be enjoyed by the smallest of kids to the dodderiest of pensioners as well as going down a storm in gay clubs. They deserve all their success and their close friendships are clearly genuine for all to see.

Also credit to 9th June 2012 for this stupidly epic top 3: 1. Rudimental - Feel The Love 2. Fun. - We Are Young 3. Loreen - Euphoria EDIT, Ha, beaten to it :P

Week-ending 3rd April 1999 is the best chart ever ever ever EVER. It holds a special significance for me as it coincides with getting 'The Box' music channel that Easter and absolutely falling in love with every single song in the chart. You've got mega-nostalgic manufactured kid-pop that ten-year-old me loved, all time post-Britpop classics, some stonking trance tunes...and Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker' which is still to this day impossible to categorise in anything! http://www.officialcharts.com/archive-chart/_/1/1999-04-03/

Another song briefly big only to completely disappear from everyone's memory after a few months with Start Without You - amazingly it even held on for two weeks at #1. I always liked it but you're right, it is a really bizarre mix of c.2010 cutting-edge electropop and children's nursery rhyme. But the weirdness of it is what I think both made it work to be a #1 but also hindered it to catch on to a wider audience in the long run, hence its vanishing from public consciousness since. For The First Time is nice if unspectacular, typical end-of-indie era track when we'd heard way too much of this before going back about six years by now. Looking back you can almost predict rock's brief disappearance from the charts around the early 2010s as this sort of Coldplay style stadium pop-rock sounded really tired by then. In a musical era hinting at the future with the likes of Katy On A Mission and I Need Air, FTFT sounds too much like it belongs in the previous decade, maybe around 2006 when you couldn't move for songs like it.

06/03/99: Blur - Tender (2 weeks) SaHrqKKFnSA But yet as big a popstar young Britney is, when a track like this is released it is impossible to ignore. These are, indeed, the same irritating lads who were shouting at us about park life in cockney accents just four or five years ago at the peak of Britpop, a phase which in today's Spice Girl/Robbie/Britney (too soon?) age already feels like a lifetime ago. Two years ago they tried a messier, lo-fi sound and got big with Beetlebum and Woo-Hoo, sorry 'Song 2' as no one calls it. Now they have changed again into a post-Britpop, Thom Yorke-influenced downtempo style with a track that has already been called a 'Hey Jude' for the 90s. It would have been something of a sick joke had this been stopped by Britney - or even a returning Whitney - to #1, and to rock fans' relief it's outsold everything for two weeks running. At seven minutes, thirty-nine seconds (cut down a little for the video) it's one of the longest ever chart-toppers yet every one is a joy, a deceptively simple song featuring just a few repeated segments yet one by halfway through the song you don't ever want to end. Already thoughts go to this summer's Glastonbury, where annoyingly Blur aren't headlining this year - they did during last year's mudbath - because if they were you can honestly imagine the whole crowd singing along to every word of this as the sun sets. A beautiful vision that won't be realised this year but perhaps in the future if they survive the next century.

27/02/99: Britney Spears - Baby One More Time C-u5WLJ9Yk4 Well, fair to say everyone saw this coming. In case you've been hiding in a small cave for the last few weeks, Britney Spears has been launched onto us as the new Princess of pop music. Not since Kylie Minogue - who hasn't had a #1 in years and is perhaps unlikely ever to again - has a young female star had so much hype and publicity on her arrival, go into any HMV/Virgin/Our Price/MVC/Woolworths/any other music store ever and you will have seen dozens of CDs of her debut single stacked up for all to see, tune into any radio station and you'll no doubt have heard this at least twice in the space of a few hours. Dressed as a rather provocative-looking schoolgirl in the video for extra shock and awe (she has only recently turned seventeen years old), it has effortlessly shot to #1 in pretty much every country in the world. Chances are people are buying copies as you're reading this. And despite all the irritating hype and open-mouths over her skimpy clothing, the song is absolute pop brilliance. Like 'Believe', you know the moment you hear it you're listening to a song that will be stuck in both our minds - and dare I say, culture - forever. From the opening chords, her opening "Oh baby baby"s, right up to that chorus - my *god*, that chorus - I can barely even concentrate on these words I type as all I can think of is this song. Over and over again. Kids have a new role model, male teens have a new crush and most adults have someone to grumble over at the state of modern music. Britney is here, and for the next few months at least she ain't going away. What, you haven't listened to it yet? Turn on the radio, now. Turn on any music channel, turn on anything. Listen and enjoy. And one more time...