Single File Retro

It is June. A band with their best days behind them are comfortably number one new entrants in the album chart. The singles chart sees an act which annoyed the hell out of many on television achieve massive crossover success ahead of a landmark new entry by one of Britain's biggest guitar bands. Yes, it's the top twenties from w/c 10th June 1995...

Singles

1 Unchained Melody/White Cliffs Of Dover - Robson & Jerome
Simon Cowell's doing, of course. Hard now to think they had three number ones from three singles, all insufferable in a way even Steve Brookstein could never be

2 Common People - Pulp
Second week at number two. I remember the radio premiere of this well, Lamacq wondering if this really was a new single in a white sleeve with just the title and a date written on

3 Scream - Michael & Janet Jackson
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth when this wasn't immediately chart topping, as I recall, and yes, you'll note the juxtaposition with who's immediately above Michael here. Still the highest new entry, as previewed a few weeks before simultaneously around the world, including on the Big Breakfast with everyone in the crew immediately declaring it a hit, record company heavies just out of shot and on Chris Evans' breakfast show. Until he decided he couldn't be arsed and shoved it forward half an hour, that is. Still the most expensive video ever made, although only number 20 on VH1's Most Famous Videos Ever countdown

4 (Everybody's Got To Learn Sometimes) I Need Your Love - Baby D
In those days the samples from the decade before last's MOR were attached to trance rather than obvious beats

5 Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop) - Scatman John
Jimmy Saville would be unhappy if the brackets were left off. Dead now, sadly. I always preferred Scatman's World

6 Guaglione - Perez 'Prez' Prado
Off the dancing fool Guinness advert, of course, as seen round about now in Eskimo form. Because it's cold, you see

7 This Ain't A Love Song - Bon Jovi
Sounded like one, though. One of three new singles off their Best Of, which is chancing it in anyone's terms

8 That Look In Your Eye - Ali Campbell
Proto-swingbeat UB40 side project with uncredited female singer who co-starred in the video and everything. Maybe she didn't want her parents to know

9 Reverend Black Grape - Black Grape
Tell kids today that three top 10 new entries was a remarkable feat at this time and they'd laugh. Papal libelling, "fucking tennis" playing Ryderese, noted by Danny Baker as a close vocal cousin to Grampa Simpson

10 Your Loving Arms - Billie Ray Martin
Superior Euro-house one hit wonder, kind of

11 Yes - McAlmont & Butler
"I couldn't tell it was until she started singing" quoth Evans upon accidentally crashing the vocal one morning. David McAlmont's vocal, yes. Far better than Refugees

12 Think Of You - Whigfield
Her third (and last) top 10 single, it's worth noting, from the oft-quoted as archetypal summer one hit wonder renamed after her music teacher

13 Surrender Your Love - Nightcrawlers
From the 'christ, I'd forgotten about them' file, Stringfellow-haired John Reid goes from MOR songwriter to club producer du jour for a bit

14 Right In The Night - Jam & Spoon featuring Plavka
Supposed names: Jam El Mar, Mark Spoon. And to think all those history lessons have faded from my brain but I can remember that

15 Swing Low Sweet Chariot - Ladysmith Black Mambazo Featuring China Black
Bet that credit didn't get on the Best Of sleevenotes. There was a rugby world cup on, you'll have guessed

16 A Whiter Shade Of Pale - Annie Lennox
You can guess how this went. From covers album Medusa, which also featured the Clash's Train In Vain. What the hell did that sound like?

17 Naked - Reef
Music to throw Sony MiniDiscs out of record company windows by

18 Dreamer - Livin' Joy
Former number one I used to take quite violently against for no good reason

19 Staying Out For The Summer - Dodgy
Flying camper van video antics ahoy for what they used to call pop from threesome chiefly remembered for rotund, life and soul of party, hat-sporting, Never Mind The Buzzcocks life pass holding drummer Math (now of the Electric Soft Parade, stylistic footnote fans)

20 This Is How We Do It - Montell Jordan
Did anyone else hear the 'Montell Jordan's dead' rumour a couple of years ago? Paul Is Dead is one thing, but...

Albums

1 Pulse - Pink Floyd
The only thing I know about this new entry is that there was a constantly flashing red bulb in the middle of the cover. Sit down now, Mr Thorgerson

2 Singles - Alison Moyet
Amenable Southend favourite surely due a renaissance soon, as long as Dawn French keeps out of her videos

3 Stanley Road - Paul Weller
Just last week reissued in tenth anniversary deluxe form, the boxy packaging making Peter Blake's artwork look even clumsier

4 The Colour Of My Love - Celine Dion
Easy to forget about Celine if you don't have one of those Gold stations that plays Think Twice every hour on the hour to hand, but her albums would regularly top 10m worldwide at this point

5 A Spanner In The Works - Rod Stewart
Rod's albums of new material have been pretty much interchangeable for 25 years now. Followed live album Unplugged...And Seated, worded like he was trying to impress us

6 Nobody Else - Take That
The last That album, of course, Back For Good on its final top 40 week over in the singles chart, 37 days away from 'I QUIT'

7 Grand Prix - Teenage Fanclub
Maconie's right when he calls this a great British guitar album for the ages, you know. Simtek F1 car on cover, melodies in collective hearts, McGee probably having his back turned to stare out Noel at the wrong moment

8 Natural Mystic - Bob Marley And The Wailers
David Baddiel considered putting Iron Lion Zion in Room 101, lest we forget

9 Picture This - Wet Wet Wet
Still in post-Love Is All Around clover, which lest we forget was the single immediately after their Greatest Hits. D'oh

10 No Need To Argue - Cranberries
When it's Dolores O'Riordan involved? This is the one that ruined them as a chart force, largely due to half-arsed lead single Salvation

11 Tuesday Night Music Club - Sheryl Crow
Apparently getting an entire city confused with a disco and/or country club. Much cheer recently when I discovered John Harris, like myself, thought it was a new direction for Jamiroquai when he first heard All I Wanna Do

12 The Complete Stone Roses - Stone Roses
I bet it wasn't. Not reforming at all now, largely because people didn't recognise John Squire's joke as a joke when they read it

13 Medusa - Annie Lennox
It also featured Marley's Waiting In Vain, which she should have done with the aforementioned as a medley

14 Blues For Greeny - Gary Moore
Laborious guitar virtuoso of a type you luckily don't get any more pays tribute to then still indisposed Peter Green

15 The Bends - Radiohead
Only ever reached number six on initial release before later climbing to 4, let the records show. Fake Plastic Trees was on its way out of the 40, meaning we were not far from Thom in the aqueous helmet as sneered at on Sky News (see Meeting People Is Easy)

16 Definitely Maybe - Oasis
Some Might Say had been a recent number one, at which this rocketed back up to number five after three quarters of a year. Props to Word magazine for their New Oasis Album Magic Pie Charts showing which tracks steal from where, apparently co-written by Robyn Hitchcock

17 Dummy - Portishead
New album this year. Yeah, we've all heard that one before

18 I Should Coco - Supergrass
This is a fertile area this week, isn't it? Yet to make number one as Alright was a month away, the much forgotten Lenny having just been and gone

19 PHUQ - The Wildhearts
Yes, yes. What did happen to Ginger? Don't answer that

20 Greatest Hits - Bruce Springsteen
Then, of course, Word go and devote four pages to a Broooce live review, not the first time they've done that either. Parklife was at 21 after more than a year while the country's 24th best selling LP that week, and tenth best selling four weeks earlier, was Pan Pipe Inspirations. Robson and Jerome, Pink Floyd and pan pipe albums. What was that about 1995 being the year Britpop swept all before it again?