There goes 1998. Not one of my favourite years neither personally nor musically. In the wider world, there were some seismic events but perhaps none more so than the Good Friday Agreement signed between the UK and Irish governments to bring about an end to the violence of The Troubles. A referendum on the agreement held in May received overwhelming support. In technology, the DVD format was released to the UK market. One of the first titles made available was Jumanji (the original version obviously) but uptake is small to begin with – only 6,000 units are sold by the end of the year. By Christmas 1999, we would have a sizeable offering of DVDs in the Our Price record store I was working in. Funny to think that it’s very much seen as an obsolete format in the streaming era. There were two stories that made headlines in the red tops and the music press. The first was the arrest of George Michael in a public toilet in LA on charges of lewd behaviour which would lead to the singer being outed for his sexuality. The second was the departure of Geri Halliwell from the Spice Girls which ultimately would usher in an end to the group’s imperial phase.
As we’ve touched on the subject, let’s get back to the music which is what this blog is about after all. As with most years, it was a right old mixed bag of styles and genres in the charts. Here’s the usual look at the Top 50 selling singles of ten year:
Best-selling singles
Pick the bones out of that. Well, the first thing I’ve noticed is that 40% of the Top 10 weren’t actually No 1s. Indeed, two of them only got as high as No 4 (Savage Garden) and No 7 (LeAnne Rimes). So how did they manage to end up in the list of the year’s end Top 10 sellers? Well, they stayed on the charts for months, selling steadily rather than spectacularly, treating their Top 40 journey as a marathon rather than a sprint and winning the race that way. They weren’t the only examples of singles with a prolonged chart life. “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith, “Dance The Night Away” by The Mavericks and still selling from 1997, “Angels” by Robbie Williams had similar trajectories. And there was me thinking singles were in and out of the charts within two weeks at this time! In fairness to me, that perception was based on factual evidence like this – of the first ten chart toppers of the year, only one of them spent more than a solitary week at No 1. This phenomenon would occur another 13 times throughout 1998. The only singles to ascend to the chart summit for more than two weeks were Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins (six weeks), “Three Lions ‘98” (three), “No Matter What” by Boyzone (three) and 1998’s best seller “Believe” by Cher. In fact, three of those were in the Top 4 best selling singles of the year. Looking at the make up of the rest of the Top 50, there are a few artists who have more than one entry:
- B*Witched (three)
- Spice Girls (three)
- Steps (three)
- All Saints (two)
- Billie (two)
- Savage Garden (two)
- Robbie Williams (two)
That’s over a third of the Top 50 being supplied by just seven acts. What does this tell us? I have no idea other than you’d probably describe them all as being of a mainstream pop flavour. T’was ever thus? A deeper dive into the Top 10 breaks down like this I would suggest:
- 4 x ballads (Spice Girls, LeAnne Rimes, Boyzone, Celine Dion)
- 1 x novelty hit (Chef)
- 1 x cheesy pop song (B*Witched)
- 2 x rap influenced tracks (Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins, Pras)
- 1 x dance/pop anthem (Cher)
- 1 x mainstream rock/pop hit (Savage Garden)
Probably nothing very left field in there except Run-D.M.C. and possibly Pras though I did once refer to the song his hit sampled as “Islands In The Mainstream” so middle of the road was it. Was this a case of the lowest common denominator striking again? What is noticeable is that despite the plethora of dance tunes in the charts this year, not many of them feature in the Top 50. I’d say…what…six are by what you would call out and out dance acts? Cornershop? “Brimful Of Asha” was a dance track but only because of the Norman Cook remix. I’m not sure they were a dance artist were they? I’d say it was a similar story for R&B/hip hop/rap artists in this year.
Looking at the Top 50 best selling albums chart of the year, it’s all very familiar with the majority of it made up of established or mainstream artists. The Corrs took the crown for selling more copies of their album “Talk On Corners” than anyone else with big hitters like George Michael, Madonna and Celine Dion all placing inside the Top 10. Special mention must go to Robbie Williams for having two albums in the mix at Nos 4 and 5. This was the point of no return for us and Robbie – he was here to stay. One of 1997’s biggest albums “Urban Hymns” maintained its strong sales for a second year to remain inside the Top 10 whilst Boyzone confounded the theory that boy bands couldn’t sell albums by coming in the bronze medal position with “Where We Belong”. Very unusually, a soundtrack album made the Top 10 and when I say ‘soundtrack’, I don’t mean a collection of pop songs that may or may not feature in a film briefly or over the credits. No, I mean a soundtrack album featuring the incidental music from the film. Said soundtrack was “Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture” by James Horner though the fact that it included Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” probably helped to increase its commercial chances. In the final analysis, I’d have to say there is no final analysis, at least not one which you could draw hard and fast conclusions from and certainly none that I could condense into this post. Make your own minds up I guess.
Best-selling albums
And TOTP? What happened with the grand old show in 1998? Well, executive producer Chris Cowey really had his feet under the table after replacing Ric Blaxill the previous year. After axing the ‘golden mic’ slot when he initially started, he added to his roster of presenters with Jamie Theakston and Kate Thornton although they essentially replaced the departing Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley. That wasn’t all though. On 1 May, a remixed version of the classic “Whole Lotta Love” theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. The times they were a-changing…or at least reverting to what they once were.
Hits That Never Were
As with 1997’s epilogue post, I struggled to find many candidates for this section. The charts positions beyond Nos 1 to 40 seemed to be populated by hits on their way down, re-entries of previous big hits or dance tunes I had no idea about. For what it’s worth, here are four of the few non-hits that I was familiar with.
Gomez – “Get Myself Arrested”
Released: Jun ‘98
Chart peak: No 45
As the end of the 90s loomed, Gomez were being talked up as one of the brightest new bands around off the back of their winning the Mercury Music Prize, beating out the overwhelming favourites The Verve. Their brand of Americana roots rock struck a chord with the music press generating the common reaction of ‘how could these young, white lads from Southport be able to make a sound that sounded so mature and American?’. Although not furnished with huge hit singles (the biggest, “Whippin’ Piccadilly”, only made No 35), their debut album “Bring It On” would make it to No 11. My wife was one of those that bought it and it certainly had something intriguing about it, an ability to draw you in with its discordant arrangements and structures. It shouldn’t really have worked but it somehow did.
Two Top 10 albums followed but by 2004’s “Split The Difference”, their popularity had tailed off and when their label Hut Recordings shut down, they asked parent company Virgin to be released from their contract. They are still together though haven’t released an album since 2011. The band’s Tom Gray is involved with the Broken Record campaign which has lobbied the government to regulate music streaming.
Grandad Roberts and his Son Elvis – “Meat Pie Sausage Roll”
Released: Jun ‘98
Chart peak: No 67
What?! Have I lost my mind by including this? Maybe. Musically, it’s utter tripe but then it was a novelty football song released to cash in on the 1998 World Cup so it was maybe supposed to be? It was supposed to be funny though, a state I think it achieved due to its creator, the rather marvellous Mancunian comedian Smug Roberts. I spent nearly the whole of the 90s living in Manchester, and as such, I first became aware of Smug on a night out at the legendary comedy venue the Frog and Bucket where he was the compere one night and he was hilarious. I recall one story he told about the differences in the viewers that Blue Peter attracted as opposed to its ITV counterpart Magpie which had me in stitches.
By the late 90s, he had a radio show on Key 103 which featured the character ‘Grandad Roberts’ and a jingle that referenced Oldham Athletic FC and the chant “Meat Pie, Sausage Roll, come on Oldham, gi’s a goal”. With a slight rewording and some extra lyrics, it was released as an England World Cup song. It was never going to outsell “Three Lions ‘98” nor “Vindaloo” but it was a nice alternative all the same and certainly better than all those other hateful sausage themed novelty songs inflicted on us by Ladbaby that somehow gave them five consecutive Christmas No 1s.
Smug Roberts would go on to appear in various TV shows and films including 24 Hour Party People, Cold Feet and the magnificent Looking For Eric in which his character tells a joke about two monkeys in a bath…
Billy Bragg & Wilco: “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”
Released: Nov ‘98
Chart Peak: No 89
Now this was an interesting concept. A project to put to music previously unheard lyrics by the legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie organised by his daughter Nora. OK, if that doesn’t float your boat then you have to at least admire a man who had a guitar with the slogan ‘this machine kills fascists’ on it. So why were Billy Bragg and Wilco the artists asked to be involved in this project? Well, Bragg had performed at a Woody Guthrie tribute in 1995 and with his political activism, social conscience and folk sensibilities, he was a natural fit. Billy then approached alt-country act Wilco whose links to traditional American folk made them an obvious choice. The collaboration resulted in the “Mermaid Avenue” album, which gave the world a whole load of new Woody Guthrie tracks with the time elapsed between the lyrics being written and the music composed in some cases being nigh on 60 years. I guess it was a bit too niche to be a huge seller but it did shift enough copies in the UK to be certified a silver disc.
The two tracks I remember most from it are album opener “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and the single “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”. The latter is a great little song with Billy and Wilco giving musical expression to Guthrie’s words which reference the county he grew up in, the marvellously named, only-in-America Okfuskee. It was never going to be a hit in the UK in 1998 but the fact that it was even the tiniest footnote in the chart landscape was important in reminding us all that there was more music out there than the endless conveyor belt of generic dance tracks.
Jimmy Nail with Strange Fruit – “The Flame Still Burns”
Released: Nov ‘98
Chart peak: No 47
I do love a film about a fictional rock/pop group. Stardust, This Is Spinal Tap, The Rutles and That Thing You Do! all fall into that category. In 1998, we got Still Crazy to add to that list. The tale of reforming a 70s rock band called Strange Fruit (who were clearly modelled on Pink Floyd including their own Syd Barrett character), it starred Stephen Rea, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy (with what surely was the prototype for his rock star role in Love Actually) and Jimmy Nail. The film builds to a climax surrounding the performance of this track “The Flame Still Burns” at the Wisbech Festival, a Strange Fruit song that, if I recall the plot correctly, had gained almost mythical status for never having been performed live before. Now, I thought that it was an OK rock ballad that worked well in the film’s narrative but reading some of the comments attached to this YouTube clip, people who like it, love it with more than one person saying it had been used as a funeral song for a loved one. Wow! It received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song but lost out to “The Prayer” from Quest For Camelot. It was co-written by Squeeze’s Chris Difford who contributed numerous songs to the soundtrack.
I believe the film was well received critically but I’m not convinced that it did big numbers at the box office which may have contributed to the single failing to make the Top 40. Still, if you find yourself with time on your hands and looking for a film to watch, you could do worse than Still Crazy. It’s no This Is Spinal Tap (what is?) and “The Flame Still Burns” is no *insert your favourite Spinal Tap song here* but it’s an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.
Hits We Missed
Bernard Butler – “Not Alone”
Released: Mar ‘98
Chart peak: No 27
The first of two artists who in this section whom released debut albums this year which I still play to this day. We start with Bernard Butler who had clearly been around for years up to this point as Suede’s guitarist and then part of McAlmont & Butler so I guess I should qualify my opening remark about ‘debut albums’ as in the case of Bernard, his album “People Move On” clearly wasn’t the first time he been involved in a major release. However, it had taken him four years to put something out just under his own name since departing Suede in 1994. For me, it was worth the wait.
Comprising some fine tunes from the mighty “You Just Know” (which would be used to soundtrack Match of the Day’s ‘Goal of the Month’ competition) to the superbly crafted rock/pop of third single “A Change Of Heart” to the delicate, spare “You Light The Fire”, it’s full of winners. Perhaps my favourite track though is “Not Alone”. A just superb production with that opening Phil Spector-esque wall of sound intro building to the release of an epic track with a killer chorus. I’m a sucker for an obvious reference in a song so the emphasised guitar lick when Bernard sings “And I won’t need to show you my heart, cos all I need in my hands is an electric guitar” gets me every time. My abiding association with that song though is when I came to leave working in record shops and had applied for a job in the civil service. When I got the letter saying yay or nay, I decided to soundtrack the moment and put on “Not Alone”‘ so that dramatic intro finished just as I opened the envelope and read that I’d got the job. A silly little thing but sometimes they’re the most important.
The album would do well critically with generally positive reviews and commercially going silver for sales of 60,000 units. In 2022, “People Move On” was reissued as a four CD package with Bernard re-recording his vocals. I’ve listened to both versions and although the latter is not without merit, you can’t beat the original release in my book.
Travis – “More Than Us EP”
Released: Mar ‘98
Chart peak: No 16
For many, it may have seemed that Travis experienced overnight success in 1999 with the release of their album “The Man Who” which went to No 1 and would become the third best selling album of the year in the UK. However, that would be a misrepresentation of their rise to fame, riches and glory. Firstly, “The Man Who” took a while to catch fire commercially. It spent two weeks inside the Top 10 but the following five drifting down the charts before rising again to peak at No 1 three months after it was released. Secondly, the band had been in existence since 1990 (albeit under a different name for the first three years). Thirdly, “The Man Who” wasn’t their first album. That would be “Good Feeling” which came out in the September of ‘97 and was a reasonable commercial success peaking at No 9 and furnishing the band with five Top 40 singles. The last of these was the “More Than Us” EP which included two other tracks from the album – second single “All I Want To Do Is Rock” and album closer “Funny Thing”. We had a promo album sampler sent to the Our Price store where I was working which I signed out to myself once the actual album had been released and was so impressed by it that I ended up buying the complete said album. It’s a much more rock orientated sound the the follow up that really made their name and would perhaps dispel the preconceived perceptions of the band’s sound if listened to by the uninitiated. Perhaps.
“More Than Us” though isn’t a rock song but a delicate, thoughtful and yet resilient ballad that has the ability to transport. Many comments online in support of the track talk of the listener being taken to another place, detached from reality for a few blissful minutes. That’s the power and importance of music right there. Unfairly, Travis have been dismissed as a band by many on the unwarranted grounds of being bland or inoffensive and perhaps even worse, a poor man’s Coldplay – is that the ultimate insult given their own not always favourable public perception? Music writer Wyndham Wallace even made a documentary about why he doesn’t like Travis called Almost Fashionable in which he joined the band on tour to see if they could change his mind about them. I should probably seek it out to seen if they did. I truly hope so.
Embrace – “Come Back To What You Know”
Released: May ‘98
Chart peak: No 6
Now for that second artist whose debut album I keep returning to. Embrace are probably the band I have seen live the most in my life – maybe five or six times – and yet I wasn’t in from the start with them. Despite working in a record shop, I somehow missed their first three EPs despite the fact that all three charted with “All You Good Good People” even going Top 10. I certainly hadn’t been aware of the initial release of the latter on independent label Fierce Panda in early 1997. All I knew was that people were talking them up as the next Oasis, a comparison which now seems unfair as well as inaccurate. However, I finally got on board with “Come Back To What You Know” which took them to a then career high of No 6. There’s a lot going on in this track. Yes, it’s anthemic with a huge production (apparently producer Youth tussled with the band for ages about how it should sound) but it also has an unusual rhythm to it. It almost stutters in places, unsure of where to go next before letting the chorus off the leash. Even then though, the chorus seems to undulate in an unorthodox way yet somehow resolves itself with a truly memorable hook. Like I say, there’s a lot going on there.
Parent album “The Good Will Out” debuted at No 1 going gold on its first day of release and there’s so many fine tracks on there (14 in all) but I think my absolute favourite is “That’s All Changed Forever” which gets me every time. After an eight year hiatus, they returned in 2014 with an eponymously titled album and have released two more since with rumours of album No 9 due in 2026. Come back to what you know indeed.
Drugstore featuring Thom Yorke – “El Presidente”
Released: Apr ‘98
Chart peak: No 20
Here’s a great forgotten 90s hit. Drugstore are led by Brazilian singer-songwriter and bassist Isabel Monteiro and have been together for over 30 years minus the odd hiatus and have released four albums in that time (not prolific then) but their only hit and therefore most famous song was this very cinematic track featuring Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on shared vocals. Written about former socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende, it’s a heady mix of sounds with Monteiro’s vocals almost Cerys Matthews like in places whilst the atmospheric slow building intro makes for an eerie but effective opening. I use the word ‘cinematic’ deliberately as the band’s music has featured on four movie soundtrack albums whilst also appearing in the TV series This Life and Teachers. As for the Thom Yorke cameo, I’m assuming that transpired from Drugstore supporting Radiohead earlier in their career. It was an inspired collaboration with Yorke’s plaintive vocals the perfect accompaniment. Supposedly, the band are still active though they haven’t released anything for 15 years and Monteiro has now returned to her home country of Brazil.
Theaudience – “A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed”
Released: May ‘98
Chart peak: No 27
Long before she assumed near national treasure status as the queen of the kitchen disco, Sophie Ellis Bextor was the lead singer of an aspiring post-Britpop band called theaudience (not sure that formatting worked) As I recall, there was quite the buzz about them which seemed, in retrospect, to be based on not much. One album and two medium sized Top 40 singles was all they managed before they were dropped by their label Mercury after they had rejected the demoes for a second album. Having said that, I quite liked this track, the first of those two hits not least because I thought its title was interesting and maybe even clever. Of course, there was a school of thought that said we didn’t need another female lead singer-led indie guitar band after a plethora of during the Britpop era like Sleeper, Echobelly and Elastica but such was the star quality surrounding Ellis Bextor that the music press couldn’t help themselves but give them column inches.
The track itself is melodic and not without charm and had the added bite of the line “and we all sing the same fucking song” although the expletive was changed for ‘stupid’ in the version released to radio. I think the song’s quality is confirmed by the fact that it could be recorded as a French language acoustic version (which was included as an extra track on the CD single) and also re-recorded with an orchestral arrangement for Ellis Bextor’s greatest hits compilation “The Song Diaries” in 2019. Sophie would embark on a further music career that took in a No 1 with Spiller in “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” and the ubiquitous “Murder On The Dancefloor”. With all that success, I wonder if she would ever consider herself a pessimist?
Morcheeba – “Part Of The Process”
Released: Aug ‘98
Chart peak: No 38
Morcheeba’s Wikipedia entry lists their sound as spanning genres including trip hop, electronica, R&B and downtempo (whatever that is) so they were unlikely to be on my radar. However, fortunately for me, they were on my wife’s who bought their album “Big Calm” which went double platinum in the UK. Despite that success and a further three gold selling albums, the band have a surprisingly small amount of hit singles – just the three Top 40 entries with none of them getting higher than No 34. “Part Of The Process” was their second biggest chart hit but its peak of No 38 was unfathomable – it really should have been a bigger hit. Just like Drugstore, it’s opening is very filmic conjuring up images of spaghetti westerns before channeling Beck’s slacker anthem “Loser”. A country slide guitar ushers in the pleasantly catchy chorus, a theme which is repeated in the middle eight. It really is quite marvellous in an understated kind of way. The Jason And The Argonauts style video is fun too. The band are still together having released their most recent album in 2025, though the partnership of brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey was dissolved when the former left in 2014.
Their Season In The Sun
Aaron Carter
A tragic tale of too much fame coming to someone at too young an age. Little brother of Nick of the Backstreet Boys, Aaron had three UK Top 40 hits and a Top 20 album in 1998. Coming in like a 90s Little Jimmy Osmond (and just as annoying), his cover of “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys was both excruciating and excrement. His fame and success would continue into the new Millennium in America but we’d had our fill of him by then thankfully. After filing for bankruptcy in 2013 over unpaid taxes relating to his late 90s wealth, he died in 2022 aged just 34 by accidental drowning after inhaling difluoroethane and taking alprazolam (Xanax).
Will Mellor
Before going on to roles in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, White Van Man and Mr Bates vs The Post Office, actor Will Mellor was Jambo in Hollyoaks. Deciding that he could do a Jason Donovan and go from soap star to pop star, he left the Chester set soap and made the move to the recording studio. Sadly, his venture was more Nick Berry than Jason. His cover of Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You” took him straight into the Top 5 emboldening him so much that he decided to saunter down to the Merseyway shopping centre in Stockport one Saturday afternoon and wonder around the Our Price store I was working in whilst all the time wearing sunglasses but clearly hoping to be recognised. Berk! A second single failed to make the Top 20 and that was it for Will the pop star. He seems to have gotten over his folly of youth and comes across as a decent bloke these days from what I’ve seen of him.
Cleopatra
Three Top 5 hits with your first three singles released and a sliver album is quite the feat, especially when you are a trio with a combined age of 47. Yes, the three Higgins sisters were all just teenagers when they were thrust into the limelight in 1998 and courted by no less a name than Madonna who signed them to her Maverick label. Support slots on the Spice Girls tour and their own TV show followed before performing at the Vatican Christmas Carol Concert by request of Pope John Paul II. It couldn’t last though and their second album was never released in the UK. The trio split in 2001 but have reformed numerous times over the years but are currently inactive.
B*Witched
Yes, they had more hits post 1998 including a fourth consecutive No 1 single but second album syndrome seemed to take hold with sophomore effort “Awake And Breathe” not selling even half the amount of copies that its predecessor did. A third album failed to appear and the band were dropped by their record label Sony in 2001 before splitting in 2002. They reformed in 2012 and are still performing live mainly on the nostalgia circuit but are scheduled for an unlikely appearance in May this year in the cathedral of my home city of Worcester.
Last Words
Goodbye 1998 and good riddance. Seriously, this was not a good year and reviewing these TOTP repeats has been a chore. A pain. A drag. A solid drag in fact. I have little hopes that 1999 will be any better sadly. Judging by my posts, I don’t seem to have bought much music in this year despite working in a record shop
Personally, I had a very difficult time in 1998 succumbing to an episode of poor mental health that laid me low with five weeks off work. The silver lining was that my return to work involved a change of store which worked out really well. In other news, my beloved Chelsea won two trophies this year. TWO! I could only have dreamt of such things as a young boy growing up supporting a club with a procession of hopelessly average and, on occasion, downright poor football teams. So not everything was awful then. Maybe 1999 will turn out to be better than I remember…
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 