Holy heck, it's top of the God pops

Today is Easter Sunday, which is an annual day of celebration for that time a chocolate egg fell from heaven and killed the Easter Bunny to forgive our sins.

The UK singles chart is a pretty godless place. A quick scan of the current top 40 singles chart and I can see songs about Dracula, swimming, dancing and loving each other, all of which sounds terribly non-Christian. Erm. Probably.

To celebrate the day Jesus rose from being cross and ascended to Heaven nightclub – I really need to brush up on my Bible knowledge – here are the ten most successful Jesus-themed songs in the UK singles chart.

Disclaimer: I looked up the words “Jesus” and “Christ” and didn’t go much beyond that, so if I’ve missed something, feel free to condemn me to all seven circles of hell. Oh and they're in order of chart success, so we'll be ending on a couple of number one smashes.

10 – Longpigs: Jesus Christ (number 61, 1995)

While there were more prominent proponents of the Sheffield’s Britpop scene, the ‘pigs were absolutely brilliant. Jesus Christ was full of their typical yearning and the lead singer looked a bit like a future Matt Smith. Their guitarist went on to be in Pulp and their original drummer used to play for Cabaret Voltaire, which makes them the most Sheffield band ever.

9 – Delirious: White Ribbon Day (number 41, 1997)

An obscure choice here, but this did precede a four-year run of top 40 singles for this Christian praise & worship outfit. White Ribbon Day is proper religious – there’s praying and the cross and hallelujah and all that kind of thing. The gospel truth is they sounded like U2 from the late 1980s, which ticked boxes for people that found 1990s U2 too MacPhisto-ish.

8 – Green Day: Jesus Of Suburbia (number 17, 2005)

“Everyone's so full of shit,” preaches Billie Joe Armstrong on this nine-minute epic beloved by Green Day fans. This is, apparently, Green Day doing a Bohemian Rhapsody,  and the track is split into five movements, like me after a bowel exam. I was never a massive ‘Day follower, but it feels like we need their agit-angst more than ever now. 

7 – Kanye West: Jesus Walks (number 16, 2004)

Before things went south for West, he made tracks full of braggadocio and brilliant beats. Jesus Walks was super militaristic, but this was okay in the mid-2000s because the US army had definitely never done anything bad ever. Ahem. These days West is just full of braggadocio and bullcrap. Shame because his College Dropout years were banging.

6 – Ash: Jesus Says (number 15, 1998)

The video for Jesus Says has the camera spinning around and around, like you’re inside a washing machine. The effect prompted protests from fans who complained of nausea, but they needn’t worry coz they could just pop their vom-splattered t-shirt into said washing machine. “God give me strength,” sing Ash on Jesus Says. Fair comment.

5 – Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus (number 13, 1989)

For far too long, I thought a Personal Jesus was a personalised Christ service in which He followed you around all day and made bitchy comments like ‘You look fat in that jumper’ and ‘That blusher’s far too gay’. Anyhoo, this is Depeche Mode at their peak, and it gave the impending 1990s permission to blend rock and synths and change music forever.

4 – Marilyn Manson: Personal Jesus (number 13, 2004)

For far too long, I thought a Personal Jesus was a– oh hold on, we’re already done this. I’d lost track of Marilyn Manson and where the allegations were up to, so I googled “is marilyn manson a wrong 'un” and Google’s AI bot responded by saying that the truth is “subjective”. So that’s settled then. I do not want Marilyn Manson to reach out and touch me.

3 – Morrissey: I Have Forgiven Jesus (number 10, 2004)

Oh holy hassocks of hell. Am I in some kind of purgatory? Is writing this blog post punishment for my multitude of sins? Here comes another person I would not to choose to be stuck in a lift with. I wouldn’t even follow behind him on the stairs. I much preferred Mozza when he was a lyricist and not a polemicist, although maybe he has always been both.

2 – Cliff Richard: Saviour’s Day (number 1, 1990)

Finally. A perfectly normal pop star. Cliff’s religious output is universally awful, and his triptych of Christian chart-toppers – Mistletoe And Wine, Saviour’s Day and The Millennium Prayer – have the same linear drop-off as the Godfather trilogy. Still, I’m glad Cliff exists. If he wasn’t around to be God’s representative in the pop charts, we’d have to choose Ye and that wouldn’t do at all.

1 – George Michael: Jesus To A Child (number 1, 1996)

You’ve got to have faith, and you’ve got to have this caramel-smooth cheese-fest from king George. Without telling anyone, George Michael donated the royalties from Jesus To A Child to the ChildLine charity. That makes this paeon to a lost lover the most Christian track in this list.

Not much electronic music in this list. Jeez, get it together Jesus.

Further Fats: Delirious' bid for number one: the rock delusion? (2010)

Further Fats: Warning! Dinosaurs are taking over the UK album chart! (2021)

What was the best 1990 UK number one single?

1990 was a big music year for me. I was 16 going on 17, blossoming from a snot-nosed teenage misery into a slightly older snot-nosed teenage misery.

This mean I have OPINIONS about chart hits in 1990. That's OPINIONS in capital letters. In fact, I'm pretty sure I could grade all of 1990's UK number one singles without much thought at all.

Let's do it. A first-draft blog post, no editing, no research (apart from getting the list from Wikipedia). What were the best UK number one singles from 1990?

Let's go through every dang one of them. Firstly, we have Band Aid II's Do They Know It's Christmas? Bros and Sonia? Pretty terrible, although not as embarrassing as the third one in 2004. Then there was New Kids on the Block's Hangin' Tough, which sounded as tough as a floppy curtains fringe (which hadn't quite hit the mainstream just yet). A bad start to the year. 

Then we have a half-decent run of number one singles. Kylie Minogue turning into a career artist with Tears on My Pillow, a weeping Sinéad O'Connor being iconic on the Prince-penned Nothing Compares 2 U, and Norman Cook foreshadowing his 1990s dance music dominance on Beats International's Dub Be Good to Me. Let's put Sinead and Beats into the top tier, which I will discuss at the end of this blog post.

Remember, this is all first reactions. Looking through the list, typing these words, zero post-editing.

Ah, now here comes Snap!'s The Power, a strange, angular block-party jam with Turbo B looking like a president or something (pictured). I hated this track when it came out: so strange and discordant. I was wrong, of course. This genius track goes straight through to the top tier.

Madonna's Vogue was a huge hit, but it was no Like A Prayer. Adamski's Killer rocked my world in so many ways, and despite a pretty ropy album, this goes through to the top tier, as does England New Order's World in Motion which is the only acceptable football song alongside that crowd-chanty Pop Will Eat Itself track. 

From June onwards, it's a pretty rough run of number ones. Elton John's Sacrifice was the one where he started giving all his royalties to charity. Then came the novelty hits: Partners in Kryme's Turtle Power, which taught kids about the names of classical painters, and Bombalurina's Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini - Timmy Mallett later became a painter himself and has a website called Mallett's Pallet. No joke.

Is it one T or two Ts for Mallett? No time to check: this is all first-draft.

Those novelty hits were bad, but nowhere near as bad as The Steve Miller Band's The Joker, which is one of the worst singles of all time. I'm getting upset just thinking about it. Was this the one with the guitar wolf-whistle? I want this song to die.

This next bunch of number ones, taking us from September through to November, I kind of respect, but they're not for me. Maria McKee's Show Me Heaven is an undoubted tune, The Beautiful South's twee A Little Time has its own charm, and The Righteous Brothers rerelease of Unchained Melody was a chance to revisit one of history's greatest anthems. My mum loved that one. No top tier for any of these, though. 

That leaves us with Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, only really good for karaoke, and Cliff Richard's Christmas number one Saviour's Day, which I don't think even God would listen to.

So that's the year. Most of the good stuff was in the first half of 1990. Now let's visit the top tier choices, and sort them into some kind of order. We had weepy Sinead and Norman's Beats International and angular Snap! and Adamski's Killer and New Order's football fun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can grade this lot without much thought.

The bestest UK number one singles from 1990, as decided on the spot by me.

5. Snap!: The Power 

4. England New Order: World In Motion

3. Beats International: Dub Be Good To Me

2. Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U 

1. Adamski's Killer 

There you have it. Killer was easily the winner: it gave me permission to become my own bedroom-based keyboard wizard. To live my life the way I wanted to be-ee-ee-eee, yeah! I hope I didn't make too many mistakes in this entirely unedited blog post. We should do this again: 1991, maybe. *hits publish*

Further Fats: The Designers Republic vs B12 Records: are the 1990s dead? (2007)

Further Fats: The doctor (Adamski) will see you now (2018)

Prince and the old power generation: how TAFKATAFKAP's 20TEN doesn't make me LOL

So Prince has given away his new album via a newspaper whilst pronouncing a death sentence on the internet, that great enemy of old-school journalism?

Nice. The Daily Mirror has shoe-horned plenty of pre-release publicity into its rag, one example of which was an "interview" by Peter Willis which reaffirmed by belief that all old rock stars need euthanising, or at the very least, pickling alive.

It's not Willis that got me riled per se. An associate editor (or whatever he is) is bound to toe the newspaper's grubby little line. This is the same man who once followed orders to post a story claiming Michael Jackson thought he might catch Aids from the Blarney Stone.

But that didn't stop me going paisly purple with rage as I read his "rare insight" that proferred no insight other than, yes, TAFKATAFKAP is loopier than the symbol that used to represent him.

Prince, says Willis, is "a living legend who has sold more than 100 million albums over 30 years." Point of order: I doubt he's at the 100 million mark yet; if you know the figure, do leave a comment below. A few years ago, he had notched up 80 million sales, which means he is outsold by many including Cher, Chicago and Julio Iglesias.

Stratospheric

While we're on sales, his 2006 album 3121 sold only 80,000 copies, while his follow-ups have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. It's hardly stratospheric. Oh, plus the few million more given free with newspapers and now lying in the billion-tonne pile of unrecycled plastic clogging up our planet.

Sorry, dwarfman, I'm filling your head with numbers, and that can't be good for you.

He is a legend, but he is a legend frozen in time. His last three albums have garnered an average Pitchfork review of 5.2, so I'm seriously doubtful it's a "return to his early blistering form which captivated millions of fans around the world".

I might be wrong: I haven't let the album soil my ears yet. It could be his best album for 23 years, putting his comeback "on a par with Elvis reinventing himself in Las Vegas in 1968." Not my words: I hope Tony Parsons' review was in no way biased.

He has now released 19 consecutive singles (Prince, not Tony) without hitting the UK top 40. The run of failure is even longer in the US. Compare that with the culturally-reviled Cliff Richard whose singles still consistently chart well. Where are your fans, Prince?

Captivated

Ah yes, the fans, the millions of captivated fans mentioned in Willis' piece.

Unofficial fan site Prince.org has less than 4,000 active members. As for his official sites, Prince's history is checkered. You'll already know about the Webby award preceding the closure of his New Power Generation Music Club. But do you remember his paid membership site LotusFlow3r which was, by all accounts, enough to make a dove cry?

These says, he has no official website. In short, it's not the internet that is over: it is Prince's love for his fans.

The short lilac duke will do well from this album, no doubt because of the hype from impotent bloggers such as myself. But before you reach for any one of the dozens of files already on Rapidshare for this "newspaper-only" album, think on this...

Here's a man who declared "all these computers and digital gadgets are no good", instead placing his trust in the purital worldview of an autocratic organisation that abuses its members. He consistently refused to answer Peter Willis' questions and at one point even grabs his wrist to stop him writing. Man of the people, Mr Rogers Nelson.

Hard-line

And you should see his documentary collection. Does Prince truly buy into the hard-line evangelical Christian view about Hurricane Katrina being the fault of a sinful America? It's alluded to - only just - in the Daily Mirror interview, but for some reason, Willis doesn't push him on it. Oh... wait... um...

He needs to be asked these questions because that kind of pop despot personality weirdness belongs to a wacko-Jacko land that has no place in our new-power internet world of shallow-and-wide fanship, that fabled world of tweety democracy that offers few all-dominating cultural heroes (and when it does, they're quickly stamped out, euthanised and, indeed, pickled).

One last guilty thought about Prince, who is no doubt scanning this on his Google reader whilst chucking quietly at his anti-internet public persona. I do feel quite bad. A closed-minded electronic music blogger slagging off the symbolian sexmuppet? It's like shooting fish in barrel.

Sorry about that, but to be honest, you harpooned yourself, you paisley berk.