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)

The Pet Shop Boys and Madonna: Into The Minimal Groove

Not that I haven't got a life or anything, but I have spent many hours searching for the perfect Pet Shop Boys mashup.

You remember mashups. Songs that have been cut-and-shut together, like a Mini Metro welded to a Transit Van: totally unofficial, sometimes ugly, potential death trap.

I think I have found the perfect PSB mashup, and it comes from the bottom drawer of their back catalogue. Into The Minimal Groove mixes Minimal (Tocadisco's Sunday At Space Remix) with Madonna's Into The Groove.

Whoever did this spent a lot of time working on Madge's vocals. They work brilliantly over a track that likes to take its time: it's full of surprises.

And like my dodgy cover version of Carly Rae Jepson, they've kept the title hook until much later in the track - it's five minutes before Madonna says "get into the groove", and even then it almost passes by unnoticed. A deliberate trick to neutralise the original track to make something new and interesting.

I can't stop listening to it. You could say.... ahem... [steps closer to microphone] that I have very much got into its groove.

There's a video of sorts, which you can watch here.

World Book Day: music books I have read and should have read

This World Book Day piece on the Official Charts website reminds me that I haven't read as many music biographies as I should have done.

I remember reading Chuck D's Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality twenty years ago and thinking he talked a lot about making money. And I tried to read Morrissey's List of the Lost before firing out this status update on Facebook:

"Morrissey's novel. I read some of it yesterday. You know how sometimes people write like teenagers with no knowledge of the well-worn amateur mistakes a lot of beginner writers make? The kind of adverb-strewn purple prose on which we look back and blush, with the sentences all imprecise and confused because when we were young that's how our minds worked? Morrissey should aim to get to that level before putting out another book."

A friend once gifted me John Lennon's nonsensical books, and I really value them. And I've probably read more histories of rave than is wise for one person. I inhale almost anything Underworld-related. Oh and I used to read the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles even though it was just lists.

The problem is when you're buying a musician's book, it could be coffee table dribble with glossy but anodyne photographs, or some kind of ego trip from a lyricist who thinks they can write something other than lyrics.

Or if you're Madonna, just a load of people having sex all over the pages and everything sticking together. Yeeps.

The most interesting one in those Official Charts picks is Stormzy's Rise Up, which launches his #Merky Books imprint that's dedicated to encouraging young writers with submission opportunities and internships. He's a good chap, that Stormzy.

As for my should-read pile, I should read How Music Works by David Byrne. I need to get my hands on that Beastie Boys Book that came out before Christmas. And I'd read a right-riveting biography of Kate Bush, if there's one knocking about.

Further Fats: The Herberts between my Hardys and Heller (2006)

Further Fats: I Am Dogboy - Underworld's new book already pleases me no end (2016)

Buyer beware: this man's an idiot

When I tell people the first ever single I bought was S'Express, I tend to take on a Ready Brek glow of musical authority. Theme From S'Express is considered to be one of the greatest acid house songs.

On seven inch single too. How switched on am I?

Except, one thing you need to understand about my early record-buying habits is this: I consistently waddled into the record shop, drooled over the cool bands... and walked out with the wrong single.

The S'Express single I own is Hey Music Lover, a track that no-one gives a flying sausage about.

I make the mistake with Madonna too. I should own Holiday or Material Girl, but alas a solitary copy of Like A Prayer sits on the edges of my music collection like a religious freak trying to wheedle her way into the cool kids group.

Adam Ant? Yeah, I own an Adam Ant single. In fact, I'm adamant that I am. What I refuse to tell you is that it was Room At The Top, which was released exactly seven hundred years, nine months and three days after he was respectable.

Feast your eyes on my Bananarama 7". Don't look too hard at the cover though, because it's their horrific collaboration with LaNaNeeNeeNooNoo.

And so it goes on. The Wonder Stuff? Dizzy. Band Aid? The second one in 1989. Soul II Soul? The one that wasn't Back To Life.

I hope you're not making the same errors and cluttering your mp3 collection with the likes of Boom Boom Pow, something other than Windowlicker, or anything by Basshunter that's not Now You're Gone.

I'm only telling you all this to save you from yourself, you know.

Trying my best to live a funky sound: I don't wanna put nobody down

The 45rpm record was 60 years old last week. See if you can guess which of these cute triplets was my first ever 7" single purchase:

(a) S'Express (pictured) - Hey Music Lover

(b) Madonna - Like A Prayer

(c) Bananarama and La Na Nee Nee Noo Noo -Help!

I can hear your reasoning. "Fats is the coolest guy on the interwebs but a little on the wrong side of wrong, so it seems logical that he would buy the S'Express hit that nobody remembers. But he's as gay as a lampshade, so the Madonna thing makes sense. Then again, he hates the Beatles, so the Help! travesty seems like a logical choice."

I'm sure if you nip down to Sifter's Records, Mr Sifter will recall that happy day 20 years ago when, yes, I bought all three. Don't tell anyone, please.

Here's a little video in which a Generic Factory Man shows us how 7" singles are made. Basically, they're big floppy CDs wrapped in cling film which are then banged with a hammer by a man with a microscope.