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REDNEX – "Cotton Eye Joe"
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A few years ago I returned from a trip to Spain with a somewhat disreputable CD – Rice And Curry, by Dr Bombay, AKA Swedish Eurodance chameleon Jonny Jakobsen. Browned-up for this project, and singing songs like “SOS (The Tiger Took My Family)”[…]

Popular '94
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I’m glad to see the back of this year. As usual, I give songs a mark out of 10, you can too, and here’s where it all gets added up. What gets 6 or more from you?

Which Of These 1994 Number Ones Would You Give 6 Or More To?
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EAST 17 – "Stay Another Day"
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Does every Beatles need a Stones? East 17’s manager Tom Watkins may have come to think so. His group poked their noses into the charts before Take That, but found themselves defined against Gary and the boys, and showed every sign of revelling […]

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BABY D – "Let Me Be Your Fantasy"
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After a run of mostly charmless number ones, it’s easy to rate this record: its vigour; its momentum; its status as a memento of good times people were having not as a marker in an album sales plan; its simple reminder that away from the charts[…]

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PATO BANTON – "Baby Come Back"
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(This review was originally written as “UB40 ft PATO BANTON” not “PATO BANTON” which actually makes a material difference to my commentary – see “EDIT” section below)
So, the Friday before last was the day th[…]

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TAKE THAT – "Sure"
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A third album in as many years – for all that they were an honest phenomenon now, for all the still-spiralling popularity, Take That kept their workrate brutally high. Invisiblity is death in pop, and in the pre-net era visibility meant product[…]

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WHIGFIELD – "Saturday Night"
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DEE DEE NANANA!
“Saturday Night” has two big things going for it. The main thing is that it’s one of those iconically simple pop hits, like a “Louie Louie” for the Thomas Cook set. How can you tell when something is icon[…]

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WET WET WET – "Love Is All Around"
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I have as you might have noticed a kind of default setting for cover versions, amounting to “you can’t keep a good tune down”. Certain approaches are almost guaranteed to ruin tracks – think “advert pianos” –[…]

The Matter Of Britain
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The death that shocked me most that Spring wasn’t Kurt Cobain, or even Ayrton Senna. It was the passing of an owlish man in his 50s who people assumed – and hoped, in many cases – would be running the country before too long. Later on, John Smi[…]

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MANCHESTER UNITED FOOTBALL SQUAD – "Come On You Reds"
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As a football-shunning nipper in the 80s it seemed to me that an FA Cup Final song barged its way into the charts every year, swayed through the top ten full of song like a beery fan on a train carriage, and was gone. And looking at this Wikipedia pa[…]

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