1 Week at #1 [22/01/2000]
An unusual yet strangely portentous record holds the distinction of being the first new chart topper of the 00s. The 90s drew to a close to the underwhelming sound of Westlife and their typically bloodless covers of ABBA's 'I Have A Dream' (Pre-empting the massive ABBA revival which would occur at the end of the decade) and Terry Jacks' maudlin death fantasy 'Seasons In The Sun' which was given a particularly bizarre reading by the Westlife hit machine, they sound so chipper during the key change of this deathbed lyric that one suspects they either have a sly sense of irony, or that they didn't actually understand what they were singing about.
But enough about them, they have more than enough bona-fide 00s number ones for me to grind my axe against later. The Manic Street Preachers kicked off the decade with their second and to date final number one on the UK charts. Unlike the first (1998's If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next) this song does not seem to have endured as one of their most memorable hits. Indeed, as a casual fan of the band and an avowed chart watcher, even I had to remind myself how it actually went before writing this.
The reason for this is that it was released as a limited edition, deleted on the first week of release and not included on any MSP studio album until their Greatest Hits collection was released two years later. As a result their ever-loyal fanbase rushed out and bought it in large numbers and it bowed comfortably at #1, only to plummet out of the top forty within four weeks. (1-4-20-39-57)
The song itself was a bit of a break from the Manics increasingly MOR form, a guitar heavy and aggressive track which definitely didn't have the commercial appeal of their classic hits, but probably appeased their original fanbase who bemoaned their softening with age and multi-platinum record sales. Fanbase number ones were a bit of a rarity at the time, with single sales still fairly bouyant meaning a song needed at fair bit of mainstream appeal to claim the biggest selling CD of the week. Of course as single sales reached their nadir towards the middle of the decade, un-memorable 'fanbase' number ones became increasingly common, so the Manics were a little ahead of their time in that sense. (Although Iron Maiden and U2 are two acts who had managed it previously with similar limited release tactics).
Not a song likely to define the 00s for anybody, unless you were a really hardcore MSPs fan, but a nice enough oddity. Play this to 9/10 people and they won't have a clue what it is, let alone that it was a number one hit. I can't really remember hearing it on the radio much at the time, and I've never involuntarily heard it since.
As for the Manics themselves, this marked the beginning of the end of their multi-platinum heyday. Their 2001 album 'Know Your Enemy' spawned a few top ten hits but was something of a sales disappointment and after that they slipped quietly into middle aged fanbase comfort, typified by high opening chart positions and fast drops out of the top forty. In the dark sales days of 2004 and 2005 they scored a pair of #2 hits which lasted just two top forty weeks apiece! I couldn't hum either of them...
They did however achieve a surprise hit in 2007 with the infectious 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough', featuring a guest vocal by the gorgeous Nina Persson of Swedish hipsters The Cardigans, although it proved more of a last hoorah than a lasting comeback as nothing they've released subsequently has really done much.
5
Note: The number two record this week was another new entry, 'You Know What's Up' by Donnell Jones. A smooth RnB record, it is probably significantly better remembered than the number one, it lasted on the charts a fair bit longer, although Donnell himself never troubled the upper reaches of the charts again. It featured a rap by Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes of TLC, one of her final chart entries before her tragic death in a car accident in 2002.
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