STEPS – "Stomp"

So it’s not the Brothers Johnson song? Agh! Full on false memory syndrome.

#2 yeah me too, had it playing in my mind as clear as.

Somebody must have done a pop-lite version of the Bros’ J song, surely?

And the thing about ‘own brand’ stuff is as they’re designed to piggy back on the success of others and their design’s so close to something more memorable (fair bit of Chic, hint of Abba) they end up not having enough impact of their own to linger in the memory beyond the minute or two it takes to consume them. With the hook being the dance steps it means Steps are essentially ephemeral, meaning very little beyond the three and a bit minutes you might have found yourself dancing to. Probably wouldn’t even be remembered at the end of a night by most to be honest. The moment’s long gone now though, so this practically evaporates on contact.

Mind you, I’d probably more generous if Summer of Love had made it to the top, it’s a better embrace of the cheap and cheerful Steps ethos and it’s got more verve to it.

Cheap and cheerful and brightly coloured – Tom’s review says it all, really. Not substantive enough to be dislikeable, nor particularly memorable, and I daresay worse 70s disco pastiches have been constructed (though none come immediately to mind…)

I am reluctant to categorise Steps alongside the likes of Hot Chocolate or U2 as bands whose chart-toppers were not representative of them being them at the best that they could be, but really they did a far better job of ripping off Abba than trying to imitate Chic. (Curious, though, isn’t it, that it was this and “Tragedy” that got them to no 1. With five no 2s alongside them, it’s clear that the chance of release dates/seasonal singles markets played a large part in that)

But still, meh, really. 3 or 4

Wait, are they singing about “the spice of life”? You’ve gotta love the chutzpah… if not the song itself. 4 sounds about right.

Steps managed to rack up fourteen consecutive top ten singles (never charting lower than 6) and would probably have added to that had they not disbanded in 2001. Heartbeat/ Tragedy was obviously their biggest hit but their only other number one sneaked through in a quietish sales week. They did better songs like this and I think even hardcore Steps fan might be hard pressed to get both their chart toppers (they’d get one but not the other).

Far more interesting was what happened at number two that week. Two weeks previously Baha Men entered at number twelve with Who Let The Dogs Out. A week later it dropped to fourteen only to suddenly jump to the number two slot. In the year of the instant number one it was a rare example of a record suddenly catching fire after a few weeks under the radar. It was also a novelty record and a vile, misogynistic one at that. It was also the fourth biggest selling single of 2000.

#21 Of course we’d have been talking about The Way You Make Me Feel because it was deliberately released on New Year’s Day when no other records were, presumably as a cynical attempt to get another number one. Unfortunately some record shops couldn’t be bothered with sorting out their racks on New Year’s Day and put it on sale the week before, so it entered the chart at number 72 and then the following week climbed to number two, losing out presumably thanks to those stray sales the previous week.

It is a bloody great pop song, though. I remember they performed it at the end of the final episode of Live and Kicking later that year and, bloody awful show that was at the end, it was all rather nice.

#32 I believe it’s ‘get raw with the fever on the dancefloor’, no?

Here’s a song I’ve completely forgotten I used to like. As kids’ pop, it certainly did its job for me but listening with fresh ears doesn’t do it any favours. The production is fine enough and (leaving aside Chic for the moment) I still like the chorus, but the whole thing just feels awkwardly constructed. I particularly found the melody line stumbling around trying to find a sequence or rhythm to hold on to, but failing. I can’t feel like Steps themselves add much to the track either. 6 for nostalgia, 4 for being a good song, so I’ll compromise in the middle

I’ve been listening to this one quite a lot lately. Even though each element probably isn’t quite as good as the Chic ones – other perhaps than the vocals – they’re fairly close. The guitar’s decent, the bass does a job, the whole thing moves fine. The drums are I assume programmed, though I actually find it difficult to be sure of that – the record isn’t lacking all of the fluidity one gets from a good drummer like Tony Thompson.

My conclusion is that it doesn’t much matter, this is an excellent record in its own right. I think I gave it a 7 before, but I’d be moving up to an 8 now.

EDIT: wikipedia reckons that Stomp actually samples strings from Everybody Dance “with minor alterations in key and modulation” (how does that work?) – it seems unlikely they’d be so bold tbh, why not continue the subterfuge. Weirdly it also reckons that Manic Street Preachers have sampled it too.

I think this was the week that I thought that there would be a number 1 battle between Blur’s woeful Music Is My Radar (got to #10) and Fatboy Slim’s (even worse?) Sunset (Bird of Prey) (#9) and hadn’t realised that Steps had a new song out.

TL;DR – I was watching way too much MTV2 as an 18 year old

My first post on here. Stumbled across the website by accident!

Interestingly with this track, one of the Stomp songwriters, Rita Campbell, who had been a vocalist with the Brand New Heavies, had tried to have some success as a singer the same year Stomp was released.

She released a track called Warm Weather with DJ/producer Chris Bangs on the Incredible record label. It did get some airplay on radio and in clubs but the public wasn’t interested and it failed to chart in the UK Top 75 (No.76 to be precise).

So the charts were a bit fickle for her that year.

I actually went to see Steps in Nottingham just after lockdown and before the rest of their last tour fell apart due to Covid. It was honestly one of the best live shows I’ve seen!