And so viewers, we reach the climax of our four part revisit to 1998. Seeing us out of our look back this week at the year where Bill Clinton lied like a rug about Monica Lewinsky and suckers for a love story everywhere weeped over Leo and Kate in “Titanic”, are a quintet of suitably cheese-tastic pop acts from this year who by all accounts were the biggest in their field, and one of them, rather like several others that year, was from Denmark, and that was the act who were the Marmite band of the year – Aqua. Chances are you were either jumping for joy upon hearing their Mattel bothering, plastic fantastic worldwide #1 smash “Barbie Girl” upon it’s release in November the previous year, or you were grinding your teeth in agony.

Still, it didn’t stop Lene, Rene, Claus and Soreen from topping the charts a further two times over the course of 1998 – first with their follow up single to “Barbie Girl”, February’s “Doctor Jones” (UK #1, video above), and then their rather good song from the soundtrack to Gwyneth Paltrow flick “Sliding Doors” – May’s “Turn Back Time” (UK #1), both of which were on debut album “Aquarium”. However, July’s “My Oh My” (UK #4) and November’s “Good Morning Sunshine” (UK #15) both failed to make the impact their predocessing chart toppers did, and after two more hits in 2000 with “Cartoon Heroes” (UK #6) and “Around The World” (UK #27) from their flop second album “Aquarius” the band appeared to fade from view. Or so they would have us believe, as they have since announced a reunion tour of Europe and the Far East, as well as a forthcoming greatest hits due out before this year’s end.

Brought to us by the father/son team of Bob and Chris Herbert, the same management team that were the first victims of girl power in the early days of the Spice Girls when aforementioned Spices walked out on them for their deal with Simon Fuller at 19 Management, Ritchie, J, Sean, Scott and Abs, otherwise known as Five, arrived on the popworld and filled in the big boyband spot left vacant at RCA/BMG Records by CBBC favourites North and South (who were dropped this year) with their eponymous, chart topping debut album in this year after a string of successful hits, which they repeatedly entered the top 5 with during 1998.

First, at the tail end of the previous year, was “Slam Dunk Da Funk” (UK #4, November 1997). Next was “When The Lights Go Out” (video above, UK #3, February 1998), swiftly followed by July’s “Got The Feeling” (UK #3), September’s Joan Jett sampling “Everybody Get Up” (UK #2) and November’s “Until The Time Is Through” (UK #2). However, like with All Saints, rumours of inter band strife continually dogged not only their public being, but also cemented their reputation as pop’s “bad guys”, something that would manifest further the following year after an alleged punch up with Westlife in a bar in Dublin.

However, this wasn’t the only drama surrounding Five – so too, was Ritchie’s relationship with a young lady who quickly became a hate figure for their target audience almost as quickly as she had become a figure of adulation (see her boo-ridden performance at that year’s Smash Hits Poll Winners Party for evidence). Hailing from Swindon, then ex-Sylvia Young graduate/former Smash Hits ad girl/Madonna devotee Billie Piper came out of nowhere to become the youngest female singer ever to top the UK charts with her debut #1 “Because We Want To” in July at the tender age of 15. Again, like Aqua, the song divided the nation – you either loved the playground chants of “Why you gotta play that song so loud?/BECAUSE WE WANT TO, BECAUSE WE WANT TO!” or you detested it with a passion.

However, the future Rose Tyler, assistant to Doctor Who, earned herself four more chart smashes off her debut top 20 album “Honey to the B” over the course of 1998 – October’s also chart topping “Girlfriend” (UK #1), December’s “She Wants You” (video above, UK #3, which was backed with a legendary cover of Wham’s “Last Christmas”), and finally, the album’s title track which also reached the top 3 the following March, and would then, thanks to recent chart rules about any song being eligible to chart if available for download, then creeped back into the chart in January last year at UK #17 thanks to a campaign by Chris Moyles’ breakfast show on BBC Radio 1 (for our overseas fans, that’s a bit of a big deal, depending on whether or not rasping beer bellies first thing in the morning are your thing or not.)

Girlbands and the world of clothes and fashion seemed to go ever more predominantly hand in hand in 1998. Whilst Posh Spice was tarting it up in a little Gucci dress, and All Saints were moodying it out in combats and Doc Martens, over in the corner marked “B*Witched” it was all about the denim for the four young girls from Ireland who set chart records over the course of 1998. Edele, Keavy (sisters of Boyzone’s Shane Lynch), Lindsay and Sinead saw their self dubbed brand of “Irish hip hop pop” take them to the top of the charts between May this year and March the following year a record four times.

First was “C’est La Vie” (UK #1, May 1998), then Rollercoaster (video above, UK #1, September 1998), then the heartfelt “To You I Belong” (UK #1, December 1998) and finally, “Blame It On The Weatherman” (UK #1, March 1999), all of which were from their self titled debut album and all of which came accompanied with a different style of denim for each of their videos. However, by the time their ill fated, Afro-celt inspired second album, 1999′s “Awake and Breathe” was released, the denim had gone, as had the hits, and Westlife had overtaken their chart record by 7 UK #1 debuts. Proof the charm of the Irish really does (and occasionally doesn’t) work wonders viewers.

But meanwhile, fashion wasn’t high on the agenda at all of 1998′s other big new girlband, sisterly, jester hat and goggle wearing trio Cleo, Zainam and Yonah, otherwise known as favourites of Madonna, Cleopatra. First coming to industry attention after winning a talent contest at Notting Hill festival in 1995, bigwigs at Warner Music took notice and had soon signed the girls up to record a debut album, and then go onto sign a US deal on the aforementioned queen of pop’s now ex-record label, Maverick.

The first fruit of their labour from their debut, catchphrase titled UK top 20 album “Comin’ Atcha” was February’s “Cleopatra’s Theme” which hit the top 3, to then be followed by two more top tenners with “Life Ain’t Easy” (video above, UK #5, May 1998) and an inspired cover of Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” (UK #7, August 1998). However, in spite of a successful Monkees style TV show on ITV1 the following year, and after flopping with their fourth single, the following February’s “A Touch of Love” (UK #29) and their comeback single, “Come and Get Me” which hit a dismal UK #27 in July 2000, they were all but no more. They did however, reunite for ITV1′s reunion themed reality series “Hit Me Baby One More Time” in 2005, only to be beaten by the likes of Tony Hadley and Tiffany, who would go onto win the show.

And that, as they say viewers, is that. Starting soon will be the next four part Revisited, where we’ll be going back to the more recent past as we relive what was one of the best years for pop so far this century – 2005. Make sure you don’t miss this one, it’s gonna be huge.

Though coincidental, it is rather fitting that Britain’s best new girlband, The Saturdays, are releasing their second single, “Up”, on the very same day that 12 years ago, saw the girlband who were at the time the biggest thing on Planet Pop since Take That also release their second single. That girlband of course was the Spice Girls. After spending a seven week reign at the top of the UK charts that summer with their million selling, anthemic debut effort “Wannabe”, Spice fever was hitting the nation big time, and the rest of the world would soon follow.

Already a massive hit in Japan by the time it came out back home in the UK, Ginger, Posh, Baby, Sporty and Scary as they were now affectionately known thanks to then Top of the Pops magazine editor and future founder of Polydor’s pop division Fascination Records, Peter Loraine, were however already being written off by their detractors. In her 1999 autobiography “If Only”, Geri Halliwell said that, “After ‘Wannabe’, so many of our critics were saying that we were a lightning bolt that wouldn’t strike twice.”

But within the industry, there was confidence that there’d be another huge hit on the hands of the girls, and both Virgin Records, their label, and Simon Fuller, their then manager and future creator of the Pop Idol format and brains behind S Club 7′s staggering chart success. “Say You’ll Be There” was actually reaped with far more praise than “Wannabe” got as a single, with many praising the slick and sassy production courtesy of Steelworks’ Elliot Kennedy as what made the song that bit more enjoyable than the shouty, in yer face-ness of their debut. The song in fact was one of their earliest recorded songs, as it was their first for the album that had been recorded along with album track “Love Thing” shortly after leaving their original managers, Bob and Chris Herbert of Safe management.

The video for the song, which picked up a BRIT award for Best Video and nominated for a MTV EMA for Video of the Year the following year, is also often cited as being their best. Filmed out in the Mojave desert at the beginning of September that year, the girls, kitted out in PVC catsuits and with wild hair, all adopted kung fu alter egos in a video that made more than a passing nod to old B-movies like “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” as Geri played “Trixie Firecracker”, Melanie C played “Katrina High Kick”, Victoria played “Midnight Miss Suki”, Melanie B played “Blazin’ Bad Zula” and Emma played “Kung Fu Candy” as they tormented men in exchange for their cars.

Needless to say, it caught on with the public once more, and the single gave the girls their second UK chart topper by the time the following Sunday rolled round. In the space of a month the single would go onto sell in excess of 400,000 copies in the UK alone, and then another 300,000 by the year’s end, making it the 4th biggest selling single of that year, just a couple of positions behind “Wannabe” which was the second biggest selling of that year with sales of just over a million copies. It all stood up in good stead for their debut album, “Spice”, which upon it’s release a few weeks after “Say You’ll Be There” also thundered to the top of the charts and spent no less than two months at the top of the UK album chart. It’s true to say then, that after this single, Britain was well and truly about to become Spiced up.

Today’s “On This Day” post sees us celebrate the life and career of Keisha Buchanan, one of the founding and still only original member of Sugababes, one of Britain’s most successful and acclaimed female pop acts of the 21st century, who turns 24 today.

Born Keisha Kerreece Fayeanne Buchanan on 30th September 1984 in Kingsbury, North London, she has a family background of a Jamaican mother and Scottish father, and is also cousins with Simon Webbe, formerly of chart topping boyband Blue, and is also good friends with X Factor winner Leona Lewis, who she met her current boyfriend of two years through. She has been singing from a young age – in fact, since she met and became friends with fellow founding Sugababe Mutya Buena at her local primary school. A few years later, when both were aged 13, they met the band’s other original member, Siobhan Donaghy (aged 12 at the time), at a party and Sugababes were formed, taking their name from Keisha’s school nickname of ‘Sugar baby’ (so dubbed because of her love of sweets).

In 1998, they signed their first record deal whilst still only 13 and 14, with London Records, at the time home to All Saints, and began working on their debut album, “One Touch” with acclaimed producer Cameron McVey, who had also worked on All Saints’ debut album from the same year and that album’s biggest hit single, “Never Ever”. The record surfaced two years later in 2000, reaching the top 30 in the album chart and spawning four top 40 hits, the biggest of which being the debut single, “Overload” (video above), which entered at #6 in September of that year and was nominated for Best British Single at the following February’s BRIT Awards.

In 2001 however, due to poor sales of the album, the group were not only dropped by London Records but also lost Siobhan, who exited the group by excusing herself quietly from promotion in the Far East. She was then replaced by Liverpudlian and original Atomic Kitten member Heidi Range a month later, and the girls were resigned, this time to Universal Island, and began work on a second album that would help take them to greater heights. Released in 2002, “Angels With Dirty Faces” was critically acclaimed by many, including publications like Q magazine who said that the beauty of them as a group was that “they sounded like Asbo angels whilst remaining sassily confident and mature beyond their years.”

This time however, they were greeted with greater commercial success, achieving two UK #1′s with the Gary Numan sampling cover of Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” (produced by Richard X, TOTP performance above) and “Round Round” (produced by Brian Higgins and Xenomania). Following award wins at the Q awards, Smash Hits awards and BRITs and a sold out theatre tour, the girls would continue to break more boundaries in 2003, performing at Later With Jools Holland, the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, and releasing their third album “Three” and another chart topper, “Hole In The Head” (CD:UK performance below).

It was on this album that Keisha would co-write her first song without involvement of the other members of the band. Her track, “Whatever Makes You Happy”, was, she says, “a personal track that I wrote about the fickleness of the industry…particularly in light of Pop Idol and stuff like that, yeah.” It’s track 2 on the album and is held in high regard in fan circles as one of their best album tracks to date. However, in spite of all the success, rumours still circulated in the press that the girls weren’t getting along, and apparently that they came to blows over, of all things, Britney Spears’ “Toxic” before a gig in Dublin in 2004 that was then promptly cancelled minutes before they went on stage.

Adding fuel to this press construed belief was the fact of Mutya then falling pregnant with her first child, who was to then be born in the spring of 2005. Needless to say, the girls feverently denied all talks of inter band strife, and rose above it all with the release of their fourth album, “Taller In More Ways” in September 2005, and it’s lead single, “Push The Button” (co-written by TLC hitmaker Dallas Austin, Popworld performance above), which went on to be one of the biggest singles of the year, topping the charts in numerous countries (including the UK, where it stayed at the summit for nearly a month) and winning them another Best Single nod at the BRITs in 2006. However, by this point, Mutya had abruptly left the band to look after her daughter, again fuelling speculation over their relationship with one another.

But still, the girls powered on through as usual, recruiting new member Amelle Berrabah in December 2005, releasing their first single with her, “Red Dress” (another Xenomania production, Album Chart Show performance above) in March 2006, before then providing support for Take That on their massive comeback arena tour that summer. This does of course mean that in the current line up, Keisha is now the only original member of Sugababes. However, she went on the record in a ITV2 documentary in December 2006, saying “I still intend to carry on making and releasing music under Sugababes”, thus ruling out rumours of her possible departure. She also added that “As far as I’m concerned this is the line up that people will see when we reunite in 10 years time. Someone once said to us that if the world was going to end tomorrow then they’d want to be standing next to us so that we didn’t change line up again!”

And so to today then. After two more hit albums – their greatest hits album, “Overloaded: The Singles Collection” in 2006 and “Change” last year – latter of which providing another big #1 single in “About You Now” (produced by Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, T4 on the Beach performance above) – the girls are now in their 10th year since signing their first record deal, a feat that Keisha said in an interview this week she was extremely proud of and she said had felt like a journey. And the journey continues this week and the next, with the release of their new single, “Girls” (which has shot to #8 on downloads alone this week) and their 6th studio album “Catfights and Spotlights”, out on 20th October. And here, we hope, is to many more years together for Sugababes and more success for Keisha.

The Basics:

ARTIST: Matt Willis

ALBUM: Don’t Let It Go To Waste

LABEL: Mercury

RELEASED: 20th November 2006

HIGHEST UK ALBUM CHART POSTION: #67

CERTIFICATION: Gold (100,000 copies+)

PRODUCER(S): The Collective/Jason Perry/Julian Emery

RECORDED: August 2005 – January 2006

SINGLES: Up All Night (UK #7, May 2006), Hey Kid (UK #11, September 2006), Don’t Let It Go To Waste (UK #17, November 2006)

A year on from Busted’s much publicized and sudden announcement of a split, the former members of the chart topping, BRIT award winning punk pop trio were all experiencing various degrees of success, the majority of them being middling – main quitee Charlie Simpson was still struggling for recognition with post-hardcore outfit Fightstar, while the band’s main pensmith James Bourne appeared to be heading the same way Gary Barlow went after Take That when his new band Son of Dork, who despite an initial burst of success with two top 10 hits and a gold album, were far from experiencing the “Ticket Outta Loserville” their debut single claimed and instead remained the butt of the music industry’s jokes long after their demise.

It did therefore seem as if all hopes were resting on Matt Willis to be the most successful solo venture of Busted. Largely because A) he was the last one to do it, and B) he was more often than not referred to as the band’s most likeable member whilst James flounced about with a weird Transatlantic twang talking about the brilliance of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and how much he wanted a DeLorean and Charlie just seemed to stand there, not saying much and looking moody with his infamous caterpillar-esque eyebrows.

Though his solo debut didn’t surface until nearly 18 months after the split, in some ways it was regarded by many of it’s fans as a smart move. Matt could have rather easily come out off the back of the split, it has to be said, with the kind of album that James did with Son of Dork on “Welcome to Loserville”, which was basically an unsuccessful hybrid of Busted had they made a third album and Bowling For Soup/New Found Glory, but rather luckily for us, he didn’t. In a weird way, the time spent in between the split and releasing his debut solo offering was to be what A) influenced it and B) made it such an interesting, ground breaking pop album.

Out of all of Busted, Matt was the one that it appeared to hit the worst. In an interview for Popjustice in May 2006, he recounted of his experiences of how he went into rehab for drinking problems as he was “upsetting everyone…and before I knew it…I was there, actually being driven to the gates, and I was like ‘S***, I instantly regret this decision! I wish I hadn’t said that!’” Needless to say, it was the metaphorical kick up the butt that he needed to get out there and prove his worth as a solo artist. Jetting out to Ireland’s famous Grouse Lodge studios at the start of summer 2005, he began recording and writing a “kind of mad, Van Halen “Jump” type stadium pop album” with former “A” frontman Jason Perry’s writing team The Collective, who’d also go on to co-write and produce hit albums and singles for Matt’s good friends McFly as well as Andrea Corr and Sugababes.

Indeed, his tales of drunken upsets and failed attempts at rehab made for some of the most wildly incongrous songs on the album – on “Luxury” for example, he talks about how “They tell me I’m angry/Don’t need their bull**** therapy/Don’t need no excuse/I’ve got my own issues” and on “Up All Night”, he talks of his confusion of the “names to all the faces of the places I’ve been going lately”. Angry, vitriolic and full of energy, the critics were quick to take their hat off to Matt’s album, praising it’s maturity and inventiveness. So why then, did it all go wrong commercially for an album that was a hit with the critics? Well, even we’re not quite sure to this very day viewers. Either way, despite a strong top 10 start with “Up All Night” (video above), when the follow up and single that was initially planned to be his debut, “Hey Kid” could only scrape to #11 in September 2006, penny counters at his record label, Mercury, made the imbecilic move of pushing the album’s release back until November, possibly as some sort of muted reaction to Matt’s offhand comment before performing the track at V Festival that summer.

As a kind of attempt to salvage interest further for the album, Matt was to end up appearing on (and then winning) that year’s series of “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!”, but it ultimately didn’t work for either single or album of the same name. “No one cares about my music sadly,” he said at the time. “The whole point of me going on there was to drum up interest for my music, but all everyone wants to talk about is what my Buschtucker trial was like.” Criminally, Matt was then dropped a year later and is now, after marrying long time other half and MTV VJ Emma Griffiths, finding steady work as a presenter on various shows for UK satellite channel ITV2.

Our advice if you happen upon this album in a bargain bin somewhere then viewers? Get it. Never has an album given such an autobiographical snapshot of a popstar’s life that ultimately makes it personal as much as it is captivating. Even though he’s vowed never to go solo again, Matt should be congratulated on the music he made in his time as a solo artist.

Popcomments rating: 9.7 out of 10.

Download: “Up All Night”, “Hey Kid”, “Luxury”, “Who You Gonna Run To”.

So, hope you all enjoyed our launch post yesterday viewers. We now have the first of our “On This Day In…” posts. These posts see us hop aboard our imaginary pop time machine to find out what was happening on a given day at a given time in pop history – who was being born, who was being launched, who was releasing a significant single/album etc. And today, on this very day 6 years ago in 2003, one former S Club 7 beauty and general baton of pop goodness, Rachel Stevens, was emerging into the spotlight with her debut solo single “Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex” (video below).

The story of the song starts where S Club came to their untimely end in May earlier that year after a movie, greatest hits and *sniffle/blub* final #2 single with “Say Goodbye/Love Ain’t Gonna Wait For You”. Rachel was almost immediately signed back up to Polydor and Simon Fuller’s 19 Management stable as a solo artist, and sort of rush embarked on recording what would be her first solo album, “Funky Dory”, which also celebrates it’s 6th anniversary as an original release next week (it was repackaged twice to reach final sales of a quarter of a million copies in the UK alone following the cringey #26 chart showing for it’s title track, the second time round it included new cover artwork and the addition of her 2004 Richard X helmed mega hit “Some Girls” and the less interesting but otherwise well executed cover of “More, More, More”).

In a interview for the Sunday Times in February 2005, she admits at the time that, “I wish I’d taken a bit more time with it in some ways. But then, I’m kind of a control freak like that. I have to know what I’m doing and where I’m at so to speak.” A Latin tinged pop number with flashes of electronic synths, “L.A. Ex” actually started life in sessions for Britney Spears’ fourth studio album, “In The Zone”. It’s writer, Cathy Dennis (Can’t Get You Out Of My Head/About You Now and Never Had A Dream Come True for Rachel when she was in S Club) wrote it as a response to Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River”, which had been percieved to be a response to his much publicized break up with the Spears. The lyrics Dennis had in mind for retaliation included lines such as “What planet are you from?/Accused me of things that I’ve never done/Listen to you carrying on/Cheating in another love song”.

Britney however, deciding to rise above it all in the far inferior “Everytime”, rejected it, and when presented to Rachel, she knew that “it had to be the first single, cos’ it was still pop, but it was, erm, pop with a difference I think.” Rachel went about her launch with a world exclusive first performance of the track on Top of the Pops (see above) and a headline grabbing cover shoot for Arena magazine in a barely there leather kilt and elbow length leather gloves (and it certainly wasn’t to be the last time in her solo career that she frolicked about in gloves either).

After then spawning a short lived dance craze involving some Cat’s cradle-esque ribbons and a few pouty looking girls, “L.A. Ex” then leapt into the UK charts at #2, just behind Black Eyed Peas’ peace anthem “Where is the Love” and went onto become one of the biggest selling and most recognised tracks of the year with 10 weeks on the chart and sales in excess of 200,000 copies, plus nominations for “L.A. Ex” at Record of the Year and the BRITs 2004 for Best British Single, where it lost out to Westlife and Dido respectively. Here’s to hope against hope then, that Rachel will return with new material off the back of her appearance on the brand new series of Strictly Come Dancing that gets going this Saturday.

However, whilst the Britpop bubble was bursting on the likes of Sleeper and er, Menswear, it was far from bursting on Wales’ finest, Manic Street Preachers. In September of this year they returned with their fifth album and follow up to their fourth album “Everything Must Go”. Produced with Mike Hedges, the BRIT Award winning “This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours” topped the album charts in this year, and so too, did it’s lead single, “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next”, a song about the Spanish Civil War with lyrics that were far from typical of anything that was topping the charts before it in that year, such as the line “So if I can shoot rabbits/I can shoot facists”. Interesting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree, but it was actually one of their biggest airplay successes to follow “A Design For Life” from 1996, and quite rightly, when it remains one of their best singles to this day.

It’s funny how everything comes full circle though. Just like today in 2008, when Alphabeat, Annie and a few others are dominating our charts, North Eastern Europe was proving to be a founder of numerous chart acts over the course of 1998 (as we’ll see over the next few days with another group of Swedes and one group of Danes). Aside from a young Swede by the name of Robyn – you may be aware of her viewers – there was another Swede making his way into our charts, and that was brother of Neneh, Eagle Eye Cherry. Appearing from quite literally nowhere, the acoustic led ditty “Save Tonight” was a long stayer in the charts over the summer of 1998, reaching a #3 peak and being followed by the release of his debut album “Desireless” (which hit the top 20) and the follow up single, “Falling in Love Again” which reached #7 in November. Sadly no video to embed here as those eegots at SonyBMG’s YouTube channel have prevented me from doing so.

As already mentioned, the Spiceworld was falling apart at the seams after Geri’s much publicized departure during a break before the American leg of their world tour in late May 1998. Though the Spices were to gain two more chart toppers in this year – “Viva Forever” in late July and the festive pole position with their tribute to Geri, “Goodbye” – it was now the turn of the band largely seen as their rivals, All Saints, to break through. By the time the end of the year rolled round, their self titled debut album was one of the top 10 selling albums in the UK for 1998 – far exceeding further sales of “Spice” and “Spiceworld” in the UK put together. Helping it along was a string of fantastic #1′s – “Never Ever”, “Under The Bridge” and “Bootie Call”, as well as this soulful number, “War of Nerves”, which featured that rare thing in a song from All Saints’ first era together as a band, a co-write from the group’s tabloid tagged “party animals” Nicole and Natalie Appleton. Believed to be the group’s response to the life and death of Princess Diana, the track reached #7 in early November 1998.

It was rather quiet on the soulful Brit girl front in this year – Shola Ama took an unprecedented amount of time off, and Beverley Knight was still struggling to make herself a hit at the time in spite of a Mercury Prize nod for her debut album “Prodigal Sista”. It was better news, however, for Des’ree, who after about a trillion re-releases of her Vauxhall ad soundtracking “You Gotta Be” returned with her second top 20 album “Supernatural”, biggest hit off it being “Life”, which reached #7 in July of this year, followed by “What’s Your Sign” reaching #14 in October. However, listeners of BBC 6Music voted it as the song with the worst lyrics in music history recently, winning lyric being the immortal “I’m afraid of a ghost/It’s the sight that I fear most/I’d rather have a piece of toast/And watch the evening news”.

It was in this year also, that a trend developed for sampling old songs on quite amazing and completely new records. Cases in point extending out to The Groove Generation sampling Leo Sayer’s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing”, Bus Stop sampling Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting”, and The Tamperer, courtesy of vocals from former Broadway actress and singer Maya, first sampling Jackson 5′s “Can You Feel It” on their chart topping “Feel It” in May this year, and then sampling Madonna’s “Material Girl” on the follow up that, bar the Manics, had one of the best long song titles of the year – “If You Buy This Record, Your Life Will Be Better”, which reached #4 in early November. Their next hit after that, “Hammer to the Heart” beat Madonna by approximately 5 years in April 2000 when it sampled ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme”.

Next Sunday, we continue our look back at 1998, including our first look back at when Irish pop experienced a renaissance of sorts in the charts.