This week's Official UK Singles Chart
1 BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (Deep Blue Something)
It has taken well over six months and three weeks on this particular chart run but Deep Blue Something finally and deservedly advance to Number One with their debut hit single. They do so with a strong surge in sales at the end of a month which has seen a succession of close-run battles for the Number One slot. That battle could well continue over the next couple of weeks. In the current climate it is extremely rare for there to be so many upwardly mobile singles near the top of the charts but such is the situation at present with both B.B.E. and Donna Lewis still to fulfil their full potential and a number of strong new singles due for release in the next few weeks. Bear in mind as well that within a couple of months the Christmas rush will be starting.
6 IT'S ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW (Celine Dion)
Here is a lesson in how to ruin a deeply beautiful record. The album Original Sin was to be Jim Steinman's masterpiece. Recorded in 1989, it gathered together all the classic elements of his productions, musicians such as Eddie Martinez and Roy Bittan and singers such as Ellen Foley and Holly Sherwood. Four women collectively known as Pandora's Box singing the soundtrack to the Apocalypse. To this day it stands up as one of the great lost rock albums for the whole thing turned into an expensive folly and sank without trace. One of the highlights of the album was a typically epic ballad called It's All Coming Back To Me Now. Released as the lead single it had a video directed by Ken Russell and the support of places like Radio One which undoubtedly helped it to stagger to Number 51 in October 1989. It was a song was too good to be lost forever. Meanwhile many of the other songs from the album resurfaced as Meat Loaf tracks, Good Girls Go To Heaven and It Just Won't Quit featuring on Bat Out Of Hell II whilst he remade Original Sin on last year's 'Welcome To The Neighbourhood'.
Enter Celine Dion for whom It's All Coming Back... would appear to be ideally suited. Produced by Steinman, the track uses what sounds suspiciously like the same backing as the original and to all intents and purposes is identical to the original, save for one important point. Such a powerful song requires a phenomenal voice, something that Elaine Caswell on the original clearly possessed. Celine Dion, whilst having a fine voice herself is patently not up to the song and this single finds herself straining the very limit of her range, so much so that her normally subdued French accent breaks out to such an extent that she sounds like a continental club singer rather than an internationally successful popstar. Harsh words perhaps, especially for a single that has just shot in at Number 6 to become her third Top 10 hit of the year, but this is a cover version that is a pale shadow of an epic original and those of us who bought it first time round can only weep at the way this heartbreaking ballad has been taken to new heights in a vastly inferior version. Did I hear someone mention 'The Power Of Love'? [Yeah go play with yourself 1996 James, this would wind up as her biggest selling hit worldwide to that point].
7 LOUNGIN (LL Cool J)
For the whole of this year Ladies Love Cool James has been having the most commercially successful spell of his career. Two Top 20 hits in the shape of Hey Lover and Doin It and now this, a single which crashes straight into the Top 10 and instantly becomes his biggest hit ever, sailing past the single that looked like standing as his greatest ever chart hit, 1987's Number 8 I Need Love.
9 DANCE INTO THE LIGHT (Phil Collins)
It has been quite a year for Phil Collins, a messy and rather public split from his wife for a glamorous new girlfriend, the announcement that he has recorded his last tracks with Genesis, a new record deal and a new solo album to boot. He is one of the breed of 1980's superstars who these days needs only to make records when he feels like it but when he does so of course risks trading on his past popularity. Phil Collins the solo star has slipped in recent years, his last work being the rather pedestrian and introspective Both Sides from which the title track was the only sizeable hit, reaching Number 7 in October 1993. Aside from the last Genesis album the last really big smash hit he had was Another Day In Paradise way back in 1989. This new single is by no means a pop classic. It tries to be perky and upbeat but it still a bit too adult-orientated to be a massive success. It still becomes his 19th solo Top 20 hit but you can be sure that this will be the biggest hit from the album.
11 SUGAR IS SWEETER (CJ Bolland)
The title conjures up images of another middle of the road reggae singer treading a rather safe commercial path doesn't it? Forget all that, Sugar Is Sweeter follows pretty much the same path as B.B.E.s current hit single, an uptempo dance track charging straight into the charts.
13 OH WHAT A NIGHT (Clock)
The most remarkably static record on the chart at present continues its run, now having spent five weeks inside the Top 20, four of these at its current peak of Number 13, selling consistently but never in sufficient quantities to push it further up the charts. It still dies next to the original.
15 IF YOU REALLY CARED (Gabrielle)
The third hit of the year for Gabrielle, similar in tone to the last two, being a lilting ballad with a vague hint of Motown. Perhaps less immediate than tracks such as Give Me A Little More Time, it still charts well inside the Top 20 in contrast to her last release Forget About The World which disappointed many when it peaked at Number 23.
17 STATUESQUE (Sleeper)
Another hit for Lousie Wener et al who have been responsible already for two of the most memorable jangle-pop hits of the year. Statuesque follows the same format, a radio-friendly uptempo track that has a killer chorus, albeit one that you have to search for to find. It charts well in line with the other two hits Sale Of The Century and Nice Guy Eddie which both peaked at Number 10.
20 SINGLE (Everything But The Girl)
A further hit single from Walking Wounded for Ben and Tracy who are, as has been mentioned before, experiencing the most spectacular chart run of their long career. Never before now have they notched up chart hits with such spectacular consistency, this drum-n-bass inspired track managing at the same time to be both beautifully melancholic and yet strangely uplifting - just like Wrong and Walking Wounded and Missing and indeed the whole of the rest of the album.
22 LOST MYSELF (Longpigs)
The number of acts to have had four Top 40 hits during the course of the year always starts to grow as Autumn comes around, Longpigs joining Sting and Ocean Colour Scene with their fourth which sits just behind the Number 16 peak of On And On and She Said.
24 ARE YOU READY FOR SOME MORE (Reel 2 Real)
More manic ragga-inspired dance from Reel 2 Real with their second hit from their current chart run, following in the footsteps of Jazz It Up which reached Number 7 back in July.
25 FOOTSTEPS (Daniel O'Donnell)
A small climb for Daniel O'Donnell who thus defies speculation that this single would tumble out the chart as swiftly as it came. It proves that on the odd occasion when a single is released that appeals outside the tastes of the usual singles buying market you can never quite predict exactly what is going to happen to it.
32 THE BOY WITH THE X-RAY EYES (Babylon Zoo)
Somehow the sensation appears to have gone from Babylon Zoo. Jas Mann and company have fallen from the peak of being the phenomenon of the year and now seem to be merely chart also-rans. One problem has been the infrequency of their releases - this issue of the title track from the album is only their second single since Spaceman. Whilst it is clear the band will never have a million-selling smash like their debut the sheer energy of this track, their usual blend of glam-rock and industrial rock, suggests that their star isn't quite ready to vanish completely.
34 PLANETARY SIT-IN (Julian Cope)
A second hit single in the space of a few months from the bizarre mind of Julian Cope. The followup to I Come From Another Planet is actually one of the best tracks he has made in years and maybe deserves more than what is likely to be a brief appearance at the bottom end of this week's chart, matching exactly the peak of its predecessor.
