Corden off

Time to pass off another lot of Wikipedia searching as original research in the name of an old chart, and as the World Cup is underway we might as well prove that not so long ago we had proper football songs. This is what was going on this week in 1990:

40 Diana Brown And Barrie K Sharpe - The Masterplan
Barrie K Sharpe! There's a pop name. Their Wiki - yes, they do - claims they were founding father and mother of acid jazz offshoot 'groundbeat', a term we expect Hipster Runoff to reallocate within weeks.

39 Dusty Springfield - Reputation
Mary O'Brien's last top 40 single, from her Pet Shop Boys-supported phase, although they didn't touch this track and almost half of the corresponding album was overseen by Dan 'Instant Replay' Hartman.

38 Maureen - Thinking Of You
Maureen! There's a pop name. Maureen Walsh, in fact, and unless it's the same one who now presents on BBC Radio Merseyside, which we very much doubt, the net has nothing about her. Very much post-Soul II Soul, though.

37 NWA - Express Yourself
"I don't smoke weed or assess cos it's known to give a brother brain damage" rapped Dr Dre, later to release The Chronic (cover based on rolling paper design) and 2001 (marijuana leaf design on cover)

36 Maxi Priest - Close To You

35 Beats International - Won't Talk About It
A song Norman Cook had recorded under his own name with old Housemartins-era mate Billy Bragg, perhaps halted at the time by the style Bragg chose to sing it in, re-recorded with dependable Lindy Layton. Still lost a shitload of money for Norm that he didn't recover until Levi's happened by four years later.

34 Gary Moore - Still Got The Blues (For You)

33 Paula Abdul With The Wild Pair - Opposites Attract
More commonly referred to as Abdul and MC Skat Kat, of course. Despite the longstanding rumour that this was MC Hammer it was the titular guest vocal duo, whose actual liking a smoke capacity remains unstated.

32 Guru Josh - Whose Law (Is It Anyway)
Criminal justice - no justice!

31 49ers - Girl To Girl

30 Sam Brown - Kissing Gate

29 New Kids On The Block - Cover Girl
Not quoted on Tonight.

28 Pop Will Eat Itself - Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina
Ah, now. As you'd expect there was plenty of football action lower down the list, including forgotten official songs - Scotland's Say It With Pride at 45, the Republic Of Ireland's Put 'Em Under Pressure at 94 - and a Pogues/Dubliners effort called Jack's Heroes at 64. But in 1990 we knew the value of a proper unofficial song, especially one from reformed grebos demanding the celebrated porn MP present the World Cup trophy, with postcard addressed to FIFA included to press their case.



27 Madonna - Vogue
Bananarama had done vogueing as the centrepiece of a video nearly two years earlier and the world didn't go mad then.

26 Michael Bolton - How Can We Be Lovers
The 41-100 portion of this chart is a fascinating slice of 1990 pop, containing as it does Northside, Frazier Chorus (and anyone who saw Martin Freeman's Who Do You Think You Are? will have been tickled to see their singer and his brother Tim's dream kitchen), the Darling Buds, Railway Children and World Party. And ...And That's Before Me Tea by Mr Food, whatever the hell that is. And at 53 one of our favourite ever single versions, the Karl Denver mix of Happy Mondays' Lazyitis, in which Shaun Ryder and the yodeller of yore appear to be singing to different tunes. Denver, just to put a tin lid on it, contracted pneumonia while making the video under a rain machine.

25 The B-52s - Roam

24 Jane Child - Don't Wanna Fall In Love
Sole hit from Canadian dance-pop singer with gothed up look and habit of connecting nose ring to earring via chain. That'd be classed as fetish wear now.

23 Black Box - Everybody Everybody
Martha Wash on vocals. No idea who 'sang' them on TOTP.

22 Bobby Brown - The Free Style Mega-Mix
The last days of the megamix were upon us.

21 Luciano Pavarotti - Nessun Dorma
A new entry this week, which is why we've chosen this week, and quickly up to number two. For full effect see this clip of the introduction to England v Colombia, the anticipatory atmosphere somewhat spoilt by Des spectacularly messing up his intro - in fact he says in his autobiography that he thought he'd be sacked for it, only to find out nobody back in Britain had commented on it.

20 D-Shake - Yaaah/Techno Trance

19 The Chimes - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Bono's supposed to be quite particular about covers of his songs, and especially dance covers - the Pet Shop Boys doing Where The Streets Have No Name was essentially a pisstake - but the given quote here is "at last someone's come along to sing it properly". Someone should have.

18 MC Tunes Vs 808 State - The Only Rhyme That Bites
Techno unit du jour and Mancunian scenester sample the theme from The Big Country for frantic moment of minor greatness. Later 808 State remix of UB40's One In Ten a real tester for those who compile themed song title lists.

17 Was (Not Was) - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone
Don and David only had four UK top 40 singles and three were tainted by the feel of novelty (this, Walk The Dinosaur and the Kim Basinger starring Shake Your Head), not exactly a fair return for the funk-disco beat poetry one-offs.

16 Talk Talk - It's My Life
The main criticism most had of the No Doubt cover was that it was a carbon copy. No it wasn't. Mark Hollis didn't slather this in instantly dated synth, for one thing. He's not female, for another.

15 Kylie Minogue - Better The Devil You Know
Approaching the end of Kylie's first imperial phase, a number two but only the weak cover of Give Me Just A Little More Time would do that for her while on PWL's books. More importantly it was while under the influence of Hutchence and thus the start of SexKylie. From here, a short but careful step to Bobby Gillespie and that video inspired by Barbarella.

14 En Vogue - Hold On
Still exist in their original line-up. See, can be done.

13 Snap! - Oops Up
Turbo B and everyone else take a very loose interpretation of the Gap Band's dancefloor rowing motion favourite.

12 Erasure - Star
Mute signatories, meaning a perennial, slightly annoying for such presence - they'd always get played - on the Chart Show Indie Chart.

11 The Adventures Of Stevie V - Dirty Cash
The 'band''s Wiki entry features one paragraph on them and seven on Dizzee Rascal. Despite the Bobby McGee's' surprise cameo in Dizzee's video we'd still take Stevie Vincent's original, mind.



10 Wilson Phillips - Hold On
Brian Wilson's daughters and that of John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas prove the old maxim about the not always beneficial filtering down of talent through a generation. "The trio performed at the 79th General Meeting of the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors in San Antonio, TX on May 5, 2010."

9 The Charlatans - The Only One I Know
Currently flogging chocolate, which makes you wonder how broke Tim Burgess is.

8 Don Pablo's Animals - Venus
Glorious one-hit wonder for the ages from Holland's own Shocking Blue given 1990 requisite house beats and James Brown Payback samples - yes, including that one - and loses the vocal. No purposing whatsoever.

7 Betty Boo - Doin' The Do
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. You'd be surprised how many people think Betty Boo is the title as well. Having been a Yazz to the Beatmasters to this point, it transpired the path to femme-rap notability ran with bobs and hotpants. Ahead: inspiring the Spice Girls' creation, marriage to Echo and the Bunnymen's manager, the better than its flop status and indeed very idea suggests WigWam project with Alex James and currently writing gigs for just about every British pop act of note.



6 Roxette - It Must Have Been Love
A song set on "a hard winter's day" is a hit in June. It's no Joyride.

5 Elton John - Sacrifice/Healing Hands
Elt's first proper solo number one, and a re-release at that. Between this and his next fresh release he got over his drug, alcohol and eating problems and had his new hair fitted.

4 Adamski - Killer
You can pretty much only get this now credited to Seal. Never mind that McCartney/Lennon business, this is what they should have been looking at.

3 Chad Jackson - Hear The Drummer (Get Wicked)
Let's groove on, cos it's time to move on. British DJ with mountain of samples, as per, and we recall this being used on a montage of the following summer's Ashes series, one of our three favourite BBC Sport montage musical selections ever along with the Sven-Goran Eriksson farewell set during the last World Cup to Broadcast's Come On Let's Go (like this one, never turned up on YouTube) and the 1991 Formula One review to Television's See No Evil (which did, but WMG had it muted)



2 New Kids On The Block - Step By Step
NKOTB's biggest selling single worldwide, featuring one of pop's standout "ooh baby"s.

1 Englandneworder - World In Motion



Apparently John Barnes did a couple of other things in his career too. For fullness, "The Squad: Peter Beardsley, John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne, Steve McMahon, Chris Waddle, Des Walker." According to all concerned, what they basically did, with a little prodding from former football song supremo Craig Johnston, is turn up with a couple of crates of finest ale, shout "express yourself!" and have a go at the bit that required a rap. Peter Beardsley rapping. Can you imagine? The B-side was, as these things occasionally are, called The B-Side and featured Keith Allen impersonating Barnes ("Apologies to the real footballer, David Bloomfield of the FA.") What nobody points out, as it's credited as a sample, is Kenneth Wolstenholme re-recorded his famous commentary for the intro and not only did it with all the wrong emphasis but got the words wrong - "some of the crowd are on the pitch" indeed. Shoot! magazine went to the recording of FAC293, when it was still called E For England, and because they didn't know better with the past history of such songs labelled it the worst football song ever.