8 June 1994
— Tom "Bunny" Patterson-Frith
Please note that this is an unofficial entry. I have no idea what was Single of the Fortnight Best New Single in this issue of ver Hits and, indeed, this will be all too common as scanned copies being posted online gets harder and harder to come by. As a result, I am suspending 1994 posts on this blog until more become available. For now, I will be re-publishing and editing (and, in some cases, re-writing) older entries from 1983 and onwards. I would have stopped a week ago but I thought that going on hiatus with a reggae cover of "Baby I Love Your Way" seemed like a lame way to finish up. It's possible that "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry was the actual SOTF BNS in the June 8 edition of Smash Hits but that will not be revealed until it gets uploaded — assuming it ever does. I don't hold out much hope, however: in the six years I've been keeping this blog going, I've only ever managed to guess one critical fave (which happened to be Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill"). But hey, I'm due! Plus, what kind of fool would go for something other than this mesmerizing ode to racial harmony? It's not like Hits writers and guest reviewers have screwed up before, is it?
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During the summer of 1994, I visited the UK for the first time since the end of our year there five years earlier. I was seventeen and had to spend the first couple weeks with my parents as we drove around Scotland and the north of England before heading back down to Essex where I stayed with my friend Neil. It was a nice trip but I was at an age in which I wasn't keen to spend this much time with them. I wanted to talk to girls but they were always around (plus I was a total chicken shit but that's hardly relevant here). I sometimes wanted to be alone but I couldn't shake them.
One thing that seemed to work in my favour was that they were either unable or unwilling to listen to anything other than Radio 1. We didn't have it on all the time but it played enough for a number of songs to make an impression on me. The final day of our road trip took us from King's Lynn (don't ask) to Billericay with a stop around Constable Country. It was a beautiful day as we drove through East Anglia and the Radio 1 Roadshow they were broadcasting suited the mood perfectly. I happily sang along to old favourites like The Wonder Stuff's "Dizzy" and Deacon Blue's "Wages Day" and enjoyed current hits from the likes of The Grid (see below), Blur and East 17. 1994 may not have had the best weather (though it wasn't bad on the whole) but it was teeming with shine pop hits. Even lightweight fare from China Black and
One thing that I neglected to go into in last week's post was one of the subtler differences between the UK singles charts in 1991 and 1994. As I have already gone into, there were a pair of dominant power ballads from films that took control of the charts top spot for months on end which any same person would have eventually gotten sick of. In the case of Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You", it shared the Top 40 during its sixteen weeks on top with a hundred and forty-two other hits while the charts managed to stuff about one hundred and sixty-nine records as pretenders to Wet Wet Wet's immovable "Love Is All Around" — and in one fewer week to boot. While a few Top 10 smashes enjoyed prolonged residencies, the mid-nineties kicked off a period of one and done minor hits, the sort of singles which would debut at a spot like thirty-four or thirty-seven before falling out the following week.
A new entry at number forty for the week of June 19, 1994 may well have seemed like a one and done hit. Senegal's Youssou N'Dour had been a star in much of Africa and in France but the closest he'd ever come to a UK hit was with Peter Gabriel in 1989 with "Shakin' the Tree". So for him to even crack the lowest spot on the Top 40 was something of an achievement. That said, this would not have been encouraging for guest Neneh Cherry. Had "7 Seconds" tumbled down to, say, number sixty-seven the following week, it would've no doubt rivaled the likes of The Jam's "In the City", Dexys Midnight Runners' "Dance Stance" and The Breeders "Cannonball" as the greatest song to peak at the bottom of the hit parade.
Yet, fade away it didn't, even though it would have an unconventionally slow path towards its eventual peak position. The week after its debut it would modestly climb to number thirty-five before dropping down a spot seven days later. Your typical minor chart hit dies upon dropping down but this wasn't Then it shot up ten places to number twenty-six before moving up an additional two where it would be stalled for a fortnight — and then it kept on climbing, albeit only gradually.
How did this happen? I figured that it struggled to find airtime until a chance booking on Top of the Pops saved it but Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry wouldn't appear on TOTP until the end of August by which time "7 Seconds" was a legitimate hit and on the cusp of the Top 10. There may have been other TV spots that aided its cause but if this did occur we aren't to know now since there's no record of them on Wikipedia. Most likely is that "7 Seconds" gradually caught on due to word-of-mouth while being held back somewhat by its overall dour sound — not to mention the glum black and white video that accompanied it. The Radio 1 Roadshow we listened to as we drove through Suffolk didn't have room for such a record. Neither did the pub jukeboxes which we spinning Take That's "Love Ain't Here Anymore" and, to be sure, "Love Is All Around".
And while we're on the subject, Wet Wet Wet's megahit seemed to be everyone's favourite song but the sentiment wouldn't last. Whereas the lengthy chart sojourn of "7 Seconds" only seemed to endear people more towards it. Somehow or other it managed to creep up on enough of the British public that it wouldn't be out of the Top 40 until the middle of October and it wound up on plenty of year end best of lists.
One of the keys to its success has to have been its wide-ranging appeal. With a mood not unlike Sting's magnificent "Shape of My Heart" and Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia", it was profound in a way that would catch the ears of Baby Boomers who otherwise wouldn't have cared about the team up of a little-known Senegalese singer and a Swedish hip hop star. Yet it maintained a cool factor comparable to Beck or Bjork. The song's dreaminess even placed it alongside ambient hits of the day by Engima and Deep Forest. Plus, it's easy for there to be something for everyone when you've got such an exquisite song to work with. It may not have soundtracked a nice fin de siecle summer but its very inability to do so may well be why it has refused to go away ever since.
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Also (Possibly) Released This Fortnight
The Grid: "Swamp Thing"
Another candidate for single of the year, The Grid seemed to get caught in that very brief fad for countrifying Eurodance music. While "Swamp Thing" was on its way up the charts it was joined by "Everybody Gonfi-Gon" by Italian act Two Cowboys. Things exploded a few months later with the massively overplayed Rednex smash "Cotton Eye Joe". Unlike those two, however, The Grid deftly avoided novelty song hell. Whether the late Roger Dinsdale played the banjo throughout or if he was just sampled it really doesn't matter: either way, it still sounds as fantastic as it did thirty years ago. How convenient that this Tom "Bunny" Patterson-Frith got to review two of the finest singles of the entire decade in one go!
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