Popular '94

Peel list here:

1. Inspiral Carpets (Featuring Mark E Smith) – I Want You
2. The Fall – Hey Student
3. Veruca Salt – Seether
4. Elastica – Connection
5. Supergrass – Caught By The Fuzz
6. LSG – Hearts
7. Elastica – Waking Up
8. Portishead – Sour Times
9. Stereolab – Ping Pong
10. Done Lying Down – Just A Misdemeanour
11. H Foundation – Laika
12. Ash – Jack Names The Planets
13. Pulp – Do You Remember The First Time
14. Pavement – Range Life
15. Wedding Present – Swimming Pools Movie Stars
16. Sebadoh – Rebound
17. Hole – Miss World
18. Shellac – Crow
19. Madder Rose – The Car Song
20. Sleeper – Delicious
21. Pulp – Common People
22. Pavement – Gold Soundz
23. Pulp – Babies
24. Shellac – The Dog & Pony Show
25. Mazzy Star – Fade Into You
26. That Dog – One Summer Night
27. Nirvana – The Man Who Sold The World
28. Ash – Uncle Pat
29. Sabres Of Paradise – Wilmot
30. Wedding Present – Click Click
31. Orbital – Are We Here
32. Beck – Loser
33. Ash – Petrol
34. Pavement – Cut Your Hair
35. Madder Rose – Panic On
36. Salt Tank – Charged Up
37. Wedding Present – So Long Baby
38. The Fall – City Dweller
39. Wedding Present – Spangle
40. Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
41. The Fall – M5
42. Elastica – Line Up
43. Underworld – Dirty Epic
44. Nirvana – About A Girl
45. Hole – Doll Parts
46. R.O.C. – Girl With A Crooked Eye
47. Sonic Youth – Superstar
48. Sleeper – Swallow
49. Tuscadero – Angel In A Half Shirt
50. Transglobal Underground – Taal Zaman

That Peel list (including bonus anachronistic Common People) makes my heart swell in a way which is surely unconnected with my being 19 at the time.

weej @ 4 – My signoff about Voodoo Chile in 1970 crossed with your post but I guess it makes a similar point but for a different year/different generation. Look upon the pop singles charts for 1969-1971 and despair, but they were years in which a whole load of terrific and ground-breaking music was being made.

5 for me, the best since the annus mirabilis of 1990. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.

Doop, Whigfield, Baby D and East 17. For once my choices are almost identical with the main Popular audience, them being 4 out of the top 5 leaders in the poll so far.

1994 was a huge year of loss and change for both sides of my family. In March I was awoken in the night to be told my Grandad Peter had died, ironically while Mariah’s ‘Without You’ was #1. He was a huge fan of computers and technology, spending much of his life on amateur radio and would have loved to have seen the internet. My Great-Grandma died in the June, and on the other side, my Grandma Josephine in October on the same day ‘Baby Come Back’ hit the top. Apparently one of her favourite songs was Minnie Riperton’s ‘Loving You’ (#2 in 1975), which makes my every listen of it somewhat heartbreaking – not only were both her and my Grandma taken from the world too early, but from the same type of cancer.

Christmas and New Year was spent with both families together, sharing their losses and looking optimistically at the future. Happily I’d also gained two cousins that year, either side of the family, some welcome new life in a year of loss. Ending the year aged 6, I’d almost become immune from grief, with three family deaths and, out of all the Disney films to come out, ‘The Lion King’ at the cinema adding Mufasa to the list. I’ve had few major losses since, and as of writing my surviving grandparents are alive and well in their 70s.

It all means that even just seeing the year ‘1994’ written down is an odd, somewhat sad feeling for me, despite how young I was at the time. Roll on 1995 and indeed the rest of the 1990s, we’re getting closer and closer to a musical landscape that, for the most part, I remember!

For the chart completists, here’s the NME 50 singles of the year…

1. Blur: Girls & Boys
2. Oasis: Cigarettes & Alcohol
3. Oasis: Live Forever
4. Elastica: Connection
5. Sabres Of Paradise: The Theme
6. Beck: Loser
7. Supergrass: Caught By The Fuzz
8. Public Enemy: Give It Up
9. Oasis: Whatever
10. Beastie Boys: Sabotage
11. Goldie Presents Metalheads: Inner City Life
12. Blur: To The End
13. Oasis: Supersonic
14. Gene: Sleep Well Tonight
15. Whigfield: Saturday Night
16. Elastica: Line Up
17. The Stone Roses: Love Spreads
18. Blur: Parklife
19. Veruca Salt. Seether
20. Manic Street Preachers: Faster/Pcp
21. Tricky. Ponderosa
22. Wabren G: Regulate
23. Shampoo: Trouble
24. Dawn Penn: You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)
25. S*M*A*S*H: Lady Love Your Cunt
26. Suede: Stay Together
27. Dj Shadow’
28. Primal Scream: Jailbird
29. Urge Overkill: Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon
30. Madonna: Secret
31. S*M*A*S*H: Kill Somebody
32. Portishead: Sour Times
33. Bomb T H He Bass: Bug Powder Dust
34. Salt ‘N’ Pepa Featuring En Vogue: Whatta Man
35. Nick Cave: Do You Love Me?
36. Manic Street Preachers: She Is Suffering
37. Soundgarden: Black Hole Sun
38. Suede: The Wild Ones
39. Orbital: Impact Usa
40. Youssou N’dour And Neneh Cherry: 7 Seconds
41. The Grid: Swamp Thing
42. Renegade Soundd Wave: Renegade Sound Wave
43. Portishead: Dumb
44. Hole: Miss World
45. Rem: What’s The Frequency, Kenneth
46. Tricky! Aftermath
47. Jah Wobble & The Invaders Of The Heart: Becoming Moe Like God
48. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci: Merched
49. Gene: Be My Light, Be My Guide
50. Green Day: Welcome To Paradise

…and the Melody Maker top 20

1. Girls And Boys – Blur
2. Live Forever – Oasis
3. Aftermath – Tricky
4. Regulate – Warren G
5. Connection – Elastica
6. Sleep Well Tonight – Gene
7. Sour Times – Portishead
8. Sabotage – Beastie Boys
9. Ping Pong – Stereolab
10. Faster/Pcp – Manic Street Preachers
11. Your Ghost – Kristin Hersh
12. Supersonic – Oasis
13. Kathleen Ep – Tindersticks
14. I Can’t Imagine The World Without Me – Echobelly
15. Parklife – Blur
16. The Sisters Ep – Pulp
17. Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon – Urge Overkill
18. Loser – Beck
19. To The End – Blur
20. Cigarettes And Alcohol – Oasis

Canons are only good for firing; that’s language and logic as I use them.

I got the Elastica album on tape the Friday after it came out, along with The Bends and Moby’s Everything Is Wrong which came out the same week. Still have all of them (and they all play perfectly after 18 years; so much for the impermanence of cassettes!) and they’re all fab although I think the Moby one was my favourite at the time.

that was my favourite track on “Lovely”!

It was also on their “Early years” compilation, but in “Demo/early” form.. (The “Lovely” version had a properly scored indian orchestra, I believe made all the difference)

I remember finding “Lovely” as being one perfect pop album. Will have to dig *that* one out, too…

Here’s the top 50 singles of 1994 according to The Face (via http://www.rocklist.net)

1. Oasis – Live Forever
2. Warren G and Nate Dog – Regulate
3. Tricky – Aftermath
4. Oasis – Supersonic
5. Blur – Girls And Boys
6. Portishead – SourTimes
7. Pulp – Do You Remember The First Time?
8. Youssou N’Dour & Neneh Cherry – Seven Seconds
9. Portishead – Numb
10. Goldie presents Metalheads – Inner City Life
11. Beck – Loser
12. DJ Shadow/DJ Krush – Lost & Found/Kemuri
13. Oasis – Listen Up/Cigarettes And Alcohol
14. Stone Roses – Love Spreads
15 Oasis – Shaker maker
15. Sabres Of Paradise – Wilt
16. Craig Mack – Flava In Ya Ear
17. Beastie Boys – Sabotage
18. Barbara Tucker – Beautiful People
19. Elastica – Connection
20. Veruca Salt – Seethed
21. Roni Size – Music Box
22. Urban Species – Spiritual Love
23. X Project – Code Red
24. Symbol for The Artist formely …. – The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
25. Kylie Minogue – Confide In Me
26. Green Day – Basket Case
27. Blur – End Of The Century
28. Tom Jones – If I Only Knew
29. Dawn Penn – You Don’t Love Me
30. The Dust Brothers – Twentieth Century Sky EP
31. Stereolab – Ping Pong
32. Beastie Boys – Sureshot
33. Supergrass – Caught By The Fuzz
34. Shampoo – Trouble
35. Ahmad – Back In The Day
36. Sonic Youth/Redd Kross – Superstar/Yesterday Once More
37. Whigfield – Saturday Night
38. Kristin Hersh – Your Ghost
39. Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm
40. REM – What’s The Frequency Kenneth?
41. Pulp – Babies
42. Primal Scream – Rocks
43. Jhelisa – Friendly Pressure
44. Gloworm – Carry Me Home
45. E-Z Rollers – Believe
46. Lena Fiagbe – What’s It Like Be Beautiful?
47. Leviticus – The Burial
48. Red Snapper – The Swank EP
49. Aaliyah – Back And Forth

that’s quite an intriguing spread of genres and acts

7 – I realise it’s the label but personally I think MSP should be forced to subtitle all of their songs “(Epic)” in future

re:16 “Troublegum” was absolutely massive at my school. It’s the first album I ever heard where the songs segued into one another which intrigued me. Some of the best opening lines on any record – “With a face like this I won’t break any hearts”, “Masturbation saved my life”, “Heaven kicked you out. You wouldn’t wear a tie” and perhaps best of all “Here comes a girl with perfect teeth. I know she won’t be smiling at me.”

As for Elastica, few bands during this period were better on tv. Basically the camera loved Justine Frischmann. We’ve all heard a million times about Starman/Boy George/Roxy Music on TOTP but I would say Elasticas first appearance on the show had some effect on younger viewers understanding of androgynous beauty too. The difference was that Justines dark-eyed looks and deep voice made us appreciate such things from the other direction.
I was never that bothered wheter they sounded like Wire or the Strangers or whoever. I think they could have surpassed their influences if they had played their cards right.

Re: #12

“Bit crap, really, overall, that list of no 1s. Although if there is one thing to thank Wet Wet Wet for it for keeping the list relatively short, as most of what they kept off wasn’t markedly superior…”

No way, no way! Well, if I’m being cynical, the no 2s of that summer were a cod-reggae/hippy snorefest, but as UK Top 40 singles during their 15-week reign of [beyond] terror go, I’d much rather be talking about these 15 on Popular – that if it wasn’t for Marti’s mob and had the right press coverage, coulda been contenders:

1. The Grid – Swamp Thing – minimalist instrumental brilliance, like a modern Apache.

2. Manic Street Preachers – Faster – one of the best songs ever written. “Like hearing [..] a band [..] with guns to their heads, forced to condense everything they believed into one final four-minute edict” – Simon Price, that’s definitely our price.

3. Dawn Penn – You Don’t Love Me (No No No) – Hey UB40: *this* is reggae music!

4. Warren G feat. Nate Dogg – Regulate – Slick, sleazy and sublime appropriation of Michael McDonald’s I Keep Forgetting. One of the golden age of hip-hop’s last stands.

5. Corona – The Rhythm of the Night – again, one of the best songs ever written. And according to Twitter, it cured Tom’s winter flu.

6. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince – Summertime – if you don’t find some charm in this, you don’t have a soul. Or you’re a massive racist. Or have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

7. DJ Miko – What’s Up – obviously terrible, but a funny-as-hell “trolling” of 4 Non Blondes and the histrionics of Seattle-centric alternative rock. It’s what Kurt would have wanted. No, really. Who mentioned He-Man?

8. Maxx – No More (I Can’t Stand It) – one of Eurodance’s defining moments – synth line reminiscent of a distressed flute, garbled “ragga man” gibberish from a proto-Dappy, but despite itself, THAT strong female lead rave vocal in the chorus makes it kind of excellent.

9. Seal – Kiss from a Rose – nowhere near as cool as Killer, but a thing of melodic, genuinely soulful beauty.

10. Beastie Boys – Sabotage – The clue’s in the title, and had this been number 1, we wouldn’t be discussing a future baseball-capped, bearded bunny of disturbing origins.

11. Neneh Cherry and Youssou N’Dour – 7 Seconds – obviously Massive Attack clones have now milked this sound for all it’s worth, but my word! What atmosphere! What tasteful use of African vocals without resorting to cringeworthy world music package tour cliches! (No, I mean this, seriously.) Almost as upset about this missing out on the no. 1 spot as Buffalo Stance.

12. Blast – Crayzy Man – Chicago house, Detroit techno and Hacienda rave dynamics combine for an underrated club classic. A signpost to some of the more emotionally ambiguous club classics we’ll encounter on Popular very soon.

13. Ace of Base – Don’t Turn Around – much better than Aswad’s take on it, suits strait-laced Nordic gloom much better than gonzo British reggae.

14. Magic Affair – Omen III – more ridiculous Eurodance that’s difficult to take seriously and is less sonically inventive than Blink-182 but have you seen the size of that chorus? Have you seen its Mo Farah, blink and you’ll miss it pace? “Go where you want but don’t forget the old man” – should have been a Nirvana/Jesus Lizard-style division of labour with Pulp’s Help The Aged.

15. Veruca Salt – Seether – delighted to see the love for this on the many readers’ polls. OK, it didn’t break the top 40 but if you can get a crowd going like this at Glastonbury, you’ve got something right. Would have mentioned Black Hole Sun but find what inspired Nirvana – the Pixies, Husker Du, Sonic Youth sugar rush – much more exciting than Soundgarden, Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam who I once described as “The Calling with power chords.” But more on that later. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsQcB52V18

#31 well…I’d agree that Dawn Penn, Warren G and Corona were all superior bits of pop music, if no more and no less…and “7 Seconds” is indeed a classic (but Hush! We’ll have a chance to discuss the amazing Ms Cherry before too long)…but the Grid, IMO, did better earlier on (“Floatation”, even the more pure pop “A Beat Called Love”); and while the MSPs were indeed on top form at this time…it was all about THAT album, and the totality of the severity, the suffering, the extreme harshness of it all, which, balaclavas or no, didn’t really, really, translate to the 3-4 minute form demanded of the single (in which they really did excel at other stages of their career, both earlier and later)

…although, curiously, from your list, it’s “The Omen III” that really sticks out. Quite wonderful, as well as ridiculous. Euro-disco meets the Clockwork Orange. Manic, such an inventive and powerful use of the main riff…and a purposeful and genuinely creative use of stock elements of this type of music (the “winding down” of the drum machine at the end, e.g.) – the nearest soulmates (though the autocorrect to “schoolmates” almost does the job, too) this record had was “Feel What You Want” by Kristina W, which was gloriously severe; and some of the work of the Tyrrel Corporation, who’d done a decent job of exploring menace, despair and mild degradation over keyboards and a drum machine a couple of years earlier. Part 90s Euro disco-pop; part quasi-totalitarian menace: had Poyushchye Vmeste followed this model a decade later (best known in the English-speaking world for “You Must Be Like Putin”, but with a whole album of tacky, over-the-top, inappropriately poppy tracks with bouncy tunes, and driving beats and lyrics sung cheerily about topics like alcoholism (“If Not For Beer”) , abortion (“Little Wonder (Inside You)”, parliamentary democracy (“My Deputy”), civic pride (“My City”) family relationships..and so on accessible to Russophones) perhaps they might have gone on to bigger things, and to have become genuinely scary, rather than merely tacky, and cast aside as such.The Magic Affair track was really rather extraordinary: horror-show cartoon horror, perhaps.

But this is by no means the only year where no 1s are less interesting than that which bubbles away beneath the surface…

You’d expect it to be true every year! Since we’re talking 1 record vs 39 (or 29 in earlier days).

I wonder how often the #1 is the best record in the Top 40. At one point I thought of adding a “Best record in the Top 40” field on Popular, in fact, but decided it would be a distraction.

But it WOULD be a distraction! Tho the basic point is valid…

Ah, there’s one in 1995 that I consider a serious contender for the title of “worst (and most unworthy) number 1…EVER” . Which given the competition is saying something.

I’ve been cooling my heels here lately too, because not many of these number ones do much for me. I’ve even rejected my earlier score of 6 for Chaka Demus & Pliers so I could go for a curmudgeonly “None of Them”: take that, 1994!

Meanwhile, it was a year chock full of Blur’s finest, Radiohead’s new lease of life, top-notch Suede and Pulp and other things I love still. Not to mention a very fine album (in its US incarnation for me, especially) by a band dear to our hearts. So, come back, 1994, all is forgiven.

Re #32: Thanks Billy! Be My Lover is indeed a classic of its genre. Sometimes I’ll listen to Eurodance compilations that walk the line between genius and stab-yourself-in-the-ears horror, but that cuts through all the junk (perhaps including the worrying next number 1) like a knife through butter. Just don’t imagine it in the Bristolian accent, in turn it makes me imagine Ian Holloway in eyeliner. I’d been drinking so I was scraping the barrel a tiny bit for great summer 1994 records, but anything’s better than Wet Wet Wet for 15 weeks. By around August, weren’t people consciously buying it as a troll? Surely nobody in their right mind can love Four Weddings and a Funeral THAT much.

#44 Moderately (but only moderately) astonished by your VICIOUS SLATING of “Vincent” as I was (and noting a certain hint of grade inflation of late…), but…if the record I have in mind is one you can bring yourself to like, I would be most surprised, but should it be so, then I greatly look forward to reading your justification (and also Marcello’s take on it, should that be forthcoming)….

(For my part…there are at least two, possibly to some extent three, 1995 no 1s I may be prepared to conjure up a defence for in the anticipated thrust of negative opinion, too)

What about the ennui? Have we lost their trust?

*exit pursued by a bunny*

Re: #31 (self-critical here!) I’ll trade DJ Miko for a certain bunny who we’ll be talking about no less than 8 (in Grandstand-ese, EIGHT) times. It’s also, despite it being “far too smelly” for the band in question, refreshing as traditional lemonade, and what Kurt would have wanted. Then again, maybe, I don’t really wanna know.

Re: #33 Thank you, Chelovek. That is phenomenal. Omen III was the highlight of this already wonderful album of my childhood:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Now-Dance-Summer-94/release/666712

I’m a sucker for the totalitarian* theatrics of the acts you mentioned, so will have a look at Poyushchye Vmeste et al. I guess the Manics’ Holy Bible-era uniforms** naturally sway my attention to all things Russian..

* In a musical way!
** In an unambiguously heterosexual way, but oh god, James’s mullet back then… if I wasn’t married already to my Japanese hologram wife