Hits 21 - 1999 (1): Chef, Steps, Fatboy Slim, 911

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Hits 21, the show that's taking a look back at every single UK #1 hit..You can follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hits21UKYou can email us: [e-mail] 21 DOES NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO ANY MUSIC USED IN THE EPISODES. USAGE OF ALL MUSIC USED IN THIS PODCAST FALLS UNDER SECTION 30(1) OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT 1988

Hi there, everyone, and welcome back to Hits21, the 90s where me, Rob, me, Andy, and me, Ed, are looking back at every single UK number one of the 1990s. Email us, it hits 21 podcast at gmail.com, Twitter us, it hits 21 UK. Thank you ever so much for joining us again. We are currently looking back at the year, and it's our first step into the year, 1999. And this week we'll be covering the period between the 1st of January, And the 23rd of January. Yes, 1999 is going to be a long year. The closer the millennium gets, the further away it feels.

Andy, in the first month of 99, how are the album charts doing? Well, at the end of 1998, we had George Michael at number one, with Ladies and Gentlemen, the Best of George Michael. And as I say that as a title, it sounds like I'm introducing the album, which is quite clever. That was at number one all the way through December and into most of January. as well. But we did have two that came in during this period. We had the return to number one of I've Been Expecting You by Robbie Williams.

Presumably that title is being said by the number one spot to the album, which meant number one for one week and went ten times platinum, all told. And then a little artist nobody's heard of that we'll never discuss again on the show called Fat Boy Slim, went number one for four weeks with You've Come a Long Way, Baby, which went triple platinum. It really did go a long way, baby. In the news, almost 2,000 people are killed when a 6.2 magnitude earthquake strikes in the center of Colombia. 45 people are killed by Serbian security forces in the Kosovan village of Rashak, and six international Olympic committee members are expelled following an inquiry into corruption.

In Europe, the Euro is launched in 11 countries, including Ireland, France and Spain. In America, the US co-execkel. Coast Guard intercepts 4,300 kilograms of cocaine on a ship headed for Houston, Texas, and the Denver Broncos win back-to-back Super Bowl titles, beating the Atlanta Falcons by 35 points to 19. In American TV news, the Sobrano's debuts on HBO as Family Guy debuts on Fox, while on British TV, Gimmy, Gimmy, begins on BBC 2, and Michael Parkinson accuses former footballer Ian Wright of displaying a careless attitude during episodes of his ITV talk show Friday nights all right.

I have to jump in and give a shout out to that Super Bowl that you just mentioned because that's memorably talked about in The Simpsons this year where they dubbed in the teams afterwards in the episode Sunday Cruddy Sunday because they didn't know who it was going to be the scene where they're discussing it in Moes and they go, I wonder if the Atlanta Falcons will beat the Denver Broncos. And it's just nice to hear that in real life. Family guy though. I mean, that really is almost a shock to hear at this point.

But yeah, it was 99, wasn't it? We are now entering the sort of the blazay non-committal shock value world of naughties comedy. Irreverence. Irreverence is all the rage now, yes. The films to hit the top of the UK box office during this period were as follows. Star Trek Insurrection, Meet Joe Black, Practical Magic and Shakespeare. in love. Ed, America. How are they nervously approaching the Y2K bug? Well, seemingly less nervous about approaching 1999 than we are, given that today's sort of batch

of singles we'll be covering, consist of two cover versions of 70s songs, a song in the style of a 1970s soul song, and a song built around a piano sample from a 1970s song. So anyway, 1999 in the States is a little bit different, well, at least for the first month. So Billboard 200 number one albums of January 1999, we have one more week of Garthbrook's lovely double live, like PTSD after emerging from a college hazing, before emerging into three weeks of blazing DMX with flesh of my flesh blood of my blood, which is

exactly as breezy as it sounds. Singles speaking of PTSD, Celine Dion and Olympic-like R. Kelly drift on Detritus for two further weeks. Maybe it's a good song I don't care.

Before, Brandy fails to get the drinking game rules right with have you ever forcing her to indulge in two weeks of self-abuse at the top because she's called brandy and that's a drink so she's drinking herself. No funeral, please.

I'll let myself out. Rob. All right then, so that means the first of four songs up this week is this. Two tablespoons of cinnamon two or three egg whites. I have a stick of butter.

Melt here Stick it all in a bowl, baby Stir it with a wet spoon Mix in a cup of flour You'll be in heaven soon Say everybody Have I seen my balls They're big and salty and brown

If you ever need a quick, pick me up Just stick my balls in your mouth Ooh, suck all my chocolate salted brown Stick them in your mouth and suck them Chocolate salted balls They're fatful of vitamins And good for you So suck my balls

Okay, this is Chocolate Salty Balls In brackets P.S. I love you By Chef Released as the lead single From the soundtrack album titled Chef Aid

The South Park album Chocolate Salty Balls is chef's first single To be released in the UK And his first to reach number one However, as of 2026, it is his last. Chocolate salty balls first entered the UK charts at number two, reaching number one during its second week.

It stayed at number one for one week! In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 320,000 copies in a week where there were no new entries or climbers in the top 10. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, chocolate salty balls fell two places to number three. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 104, 16 weeks. The song is currently officially certified platinum in the UK as of 2026.

And you can kick us off with Chef. How does one talk about chocolate salty balls? The song, that is. How does one do that? Because, I mean, I'm not going to attempt to critically analyze this in any way. at all because that would be missing the point. Like, it obviously isn't intended for that. This is categorized alongside, you know, fart noises, basically,

but for teenagers and for sort of tweens as well. Like, it's just, it's just juvenile shock humor assaulting the charts. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like, this falls in a list of songs that we've had on this show over the years that I may not love the song, but I love the song. that it happened, I love that it got to number one. Like, you know, a lot of the Nobly songs we talked about in the Northeast, stuff like Peter Kay's All-Star Band or, you know, Amarillo or whatever.

And like, I love that stuff like this can take over the chart after a very kind of worthy period we've gone through. The late 90s, has a lot of, you know, really good, really innovative stuff, 99. You know, less so. But this is an exciting time, I think, for pop music. So something like this, storming at number one. nearly take the Christmas number one off the farewell single from the Spice Girls.

You know, that's really funny to me, and I think it's really humbling for the industry, it's a really good thing for the British music listening experience. Having something like this turn up is great, and also it's great because it makes parents uncomfortable, and that's the best thing in the world to happen to kids, is have something that you love

but that your parents frown upon. You know, it makes you feel rebellious without doing anything rebellious. You're just saying balls. You know, you're just talking about chocolate balls. that's all you're doing and it kind of just works on that level really

this is a bit of fun and it's not harming anyone and the kids can never laugh and you know the parents are sort of made to loosen up a bit and just let the kids enjoy it a bit really I think this is just kind of

a fun thing's happened to everybody really I like the conceit as well that you know they do actually make some effort to like pretend it's not just about testicles with the, you know, the thinnest veil possible with this recipe that chef's talking about for his chocolate salty balls. And, like, you know, I think for the very youngest people listening, that will have protected them somewhat. Only the very youngest, because I remember this at the time, and I knew what this was getting at.

I knew that people referred to balls as your testicles. You know, I got that. So only the very youngest would have been saved by that, really. But it's something, at least. It's not just totally crass. It's not just, like, blood out and gang material. not that Budhound gang are really bad either in my view. But anyway, yeah, it's, I mean, as a piece of music,

like, it's just kind of stupid and dumb, and there's nothing to it. And I'm not going to pretend that there's anything to it, really, just other than the laugh that it is. But it represents a subversive comedy show at its height, kids and teenagers getting to get one over on the adults and have a laugh with their music and make us all feel a bit uncomfortable.

And we get to sing about balls, which is great. how many songs ever have topped the chart and just openly talk about testicles. That's great. I will finish with, I had an idea this week that I never bothered to sketch out, but you can make a very good three-wave end diagram out of things that are chocolate,

things that are chocolate and salty, things that are just salty, things that are salty and balls, things that are just balls, and things that are chocolate balls. So, like, chocolate balls, you've got Maltese's, salty balls. You could argue you've got, like,

pickled onions, perhaps. And then chocolate and salty, salted caramel, chocolate salty balls, that, what's a thing that is chocolate, salty balls that isn't black testicles? I'm trying to complete that bend over, what a thing that's chocolate and salty and balls? The best I can come up with is like a lindol that's salted caramel, but I've already used salted caramel. So I'm going to put that to our listeners of, is there anything out there that genuinely is a chocolate, salty ball. Is this like the muse version of the song?

Unsaltable. Before we talk about chocolate salty balls, we mustn't forget that Mr. Hanky the Christmas poo walked so that chef could run. Yeah, of course. All the way to number one. Clearly the best tactic to get a number one from a novelty idea is to miss Christmas by a week

and then hope that loads of adult children and actual children spend their Christmas card money on your crude song. And that seems to be what's happened here. And, hey, you know what? I don't mind. I don't mind at all. I think there is an understanding here, established between Trey Parker, Rick Rubin and Isaac Hayes,

of what conventional and stereotypical sex music sounds like, of what people recognize as sex music, of what people believe about funk and disco, and of what people have come to understand about Barry White as well. And the kind of innuendo that people would pretend not to enjoy in public, but laugh at in private. And hey, at this point in his life, before all the Scientology stuff, Hayes was willing to make fun of himself.

He's a good sport here, commits to the character, delivers some of the stupidest lines with great gusto and force. I didn't know until just this week that Trey Parker is a musician as well. I thought, you know, with all the South Park and Book of Mormon stuff, I just thought he was the lyricist and he got other people to write the music, but no, it is him. That is the case for Book of Mormon. That is the case for Mormon.

So yeah, you know, all that stuff, it's been a nice surprise to find, I think, when I came back to this for basically the first time since high school, it was hilarious in high school and it's still mostly funny now. Mostly funny. I think the gag struggles a little bit to sustain itself after the first sort of go around. Once you clock onto it being a joke song about testicles, the jokes, you know, it's not exactly over, but, you know, it's like how many variations on this can you find until we get to the bit. that does always make me laugh just to you just burn my bows at the end of the third verse. I know I shouldn't laugh, but it never fails. But yeah, once the joke's done,

I kind of find myself looking at it as a disco and funk track and yeah, you know, it's all right. There's one of those. There's a clavinet in there. Not too much to write home about, but it is mostly a laugh. And above anything else in the song,

I think it's Hayes full commitment to the, ooh at the start of every chorus that makes me laugh the most and that's still there for the duration. So yeah, I think this can have just about a thumbs up from me. Ed, what about you for chocolate salty balls? What say you? Well, I think I have very little to add in this line. I think we're pretty much aligned here. Comedy songs are a tricky and subjective business. I tend to prefer character comedy and I think when most people actually would look and analyze at the stuff that sticks with them and creases them up,

I think most people probably do anyway. If you strip this away from its context, if you didn't know who chef was or South Park and you didn't know Matt Stone and Trey Parker's basic aesthetic, this is not a character-based song. And it is, you know, it might come across as kind of demeaning and, you know, of an entire genre and sort of, you know, you know, It leads somewhat cringially into the black lover man stereotype. Now, with the context, some of this is probably still true. But knowing the character of Schiff and knowing that Matt and Trey know that this is gross and stupid really does help. But I think what helps most, and you've kind of indicated this, Rob,

Isaac Hayes is 100% on board here. His kind of real full-bore, pretty much straight-ahead performance of this is, it kind of sells it. And the way that he is associated with these slow-building songs, like the intro to shaft, it makes it work. And it's basically the same joke three times. You know, it is basically too long for its own crass conceit. but just the way it postpones what everybody even you know you as both as listeners probably knew what was coming when he said hmm what's that smell sort of thing it's like it's like well yeah and you know it's gonna go and it just it takes so long doing it's somehow funny again and as you say it's like you just say it's like you just burn my balls

it's like oh god every time I'm like this is ridiculous this is like I feel like a three year old but it does make me laugh every single time. And yeah, I think his performance is such a lot of it. I mean, the version on the playlist I was listening to was a sound-alike version, and it dies a death when it is not Isaac Hayes doing it, I've got to say. But extra bit of credit for, yeah, you mentioned Rubin, the production on this, as on the rest of the album, is actually really sharp. It's got a lot of punch to it.

I've got a surprising amount of effort was put into that chef-aid album. It's a pretty shallow experience, but it is a, it is like being vomited at in the face by the late 90s. I just feel I should bring to attention some of the lineup on this. Yes. Having owned the cassette, having me and my brother got it for Christmas, 1998, oh my goodness, we were all over this, I tell you. We have.

DMX All Dirty Bastard Master P Jesus Mace Sean Puffy Coombs Little Kim And a surprisingly early appearance

Must be because Rick Rubin Was working with them On the debut System of a Down Are in there as well Yeah Wyclef Jean Elton John

For some reason Writing a specific self-pet A song spayed Especially for it he evidently saw the joke. Moose T, who are on the album with Horny, which we've already covered, and which there is a long skit at the beginning of the song and into part of the song that basically talks about how fucking awful the song is

and how they're only putting it on to drive up sales in Europe. What else have we got? Oh, we've also got Flea and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine on the same song for some reason, and Primus. I mean, this is an absolute snapshot. And if you can imagine what an album with those people on with good production sounds like, but kind of middling songs, you know what this is going to sound like. And you may gravitate towards it absolutely.

And in my case, just like walk away from it rather quickly, because, God damn it, it was a, it's a style of a substance exercise, but it is pretty stylish. Um, yeah. Oh, yes, the song. Sorry. Yeah, look, it's, for a, for a novelty comedy song about Bowls, it is about as good as that was ever going to be. So, um, kudos. And you know, there is another song about balls slash testicles, a comedy song from about 12 years after this, maybe 11 years after this, which was just my balls by your favorite Martian, which was the, you know, which was the, you know, spin-off of the YouTuber Ray William Johnson. It was his musical project. And the first song he ever put out under your favorite Martian was My Balls.

And it, oh my God, it's awful. It sounds it. I listened back this week, just to compare them. And, oh, goodness, God, girl, I know you left me, but there was something I forgot to show you. My balls?

Was it his balls? By any chance. Yeah. Yeah, the chorus is just, you ain't seen my balls. Oh, God, it's not even going for the D's nuts jokes. I would have understood that. That's higher tier. That's higher fruit, evidently.

I don't remember the YouTuber. Has he been cancelled? No, actually. Really? Good on him. Somehow, yes. A whole generation of early YouTubers seem to have been cancelled. Yeah.

Yeah, I used to love Ray William Johnson as well. As Equals 3 show introduced me to a lot of, memes back in the day. But yeah, no, he kind of, I don't know, he kind of fell out with his scriptwriters and kind of sold the channel and then tried this music thing and then the music thing kind of, I don't know, the music thing kind of got stolen from him somehow, the rights, there was a loads of, there were load of issues, but then he just kind of retreated into a corner of the internet and he just kind of stays there now with a small following.

He does enough to get by. He was in a film with R.J. Mitt, who was Walter Jr. in Breaking Bad. Yeah, he didn't do too badly for himself. A lot of it, it's kind of that kind of late 2000s, early 2010's kind of crack magazine, edgy humor for Chan adjacent kind of stuff. But he seems to have looked back at it and gone, well, you know, that was the time. But let's move on. All right then.

So, the second song up this week is this. Okay, this is Tragedy, AA-side with Heartbeat by Steps. released as the fourth single from the group's debut studio album titled Step 1. Tragedy, AA-side with Heartbeat is Step's fourth single to be released in the UK and their first to reach number 1. It's not their last number one overall, but it is their last number 1 of the 1990s. Tragedy with Heartbeat first entered the UK charts at number 2, reaching number 1 during its 8th week. It stayed at number 1 for one week. In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 98,000 copies beating competition from a re-entry of 1999 by Prince.

God, we are so witty in the UK. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, tragedy with heartbeat dropped one place to number three. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 104, 30 weeks. The song is currently officially certified two times platinum in the UK. As of 2026, Ed. Tragedy with Heartbeat. How are we feeling on both of these things? Well, I am rather a sizable appreciator of the BeeGs,

of their classic sort of disco and sort of soul era. I think the Gibbs, particularly Barra Gibb, magnificent pop craft people. And just, you know, love of my eyes. hate them. The voices are so idiosyncratic. I mean, nobody has sounded like that before or since, and it helps give them just a real character that cuts through one way or another. Now, that's kind of missing here. That's not to say this is a bad version of tragedy. It isn't. It's fine. It's got a little bit more sort of modern dance punch to it in the drums. There's a

couple of wibbly wobbly-wobbies in the intro. I personally do miss Barry Gibbs vocals. I don't think the vocals have much character to them here as a standalone version of a song that really hadn't... I think it had kind of fallen out of mainstream consciousness since the quote-unquote disco death of, you know, the DG's pretty much brought on, actually, with that album. So I hadn't heard this before at the time, and it was good.

It's a fun song, and it's a decent, if not particularly a magic. cover version. There's also the, on the other side, we've got heartbeat, have we not? Is it heartbeat? Is that what it's called? Yes. Yes. Not a cover of the Buddy Holly track.

But instead, it's, again, it's leaning into that Bejee's thing. Oddly, this is taken from the previous album, so it's not actually, wasn't part of the same sessions, I presume. But, yeah, it's odd. too complicated, I think, for what it's trying to do. It's got this sort of off-the-rack, overly loud dance percussion to bring it up to the current day. But it does kind of sound a bit like a meandering sort of cross between a 70s BG's ballad and a sort of musical theatre number in the verses that doesn't really suit the dance momentum. And as a result, the various

changes, an odd kind of metre of the colour. chorus. It doesn't really land. I usually love through written choruses and you know it's got some pretty changes and some good ideas, but it doesn't really ever seem to resolve properly. It just kind of moves around fairly prettily and then goes back to the kind of Andrew Lloyd Weber verses again. So I wish I liked it more, but on the whole the double A side is kind of, it's like, yeah, it doesn't exactly live up to the promise of their first hit, to be honest. For me, with this, this is the first song on this podcast where I think I can say, ah, this takes me back and really mean it.

You know, we're finally in the territory now of me having actual memories of these songs and their accompanying music videos and everything that was happening around them. Because when I was first learning about pop, my five favorite acts were, The Spice Girls, Billy Piper, Bewitched, S Club 7 in a little bit. And here they are now, Steps. And I remember at the time, steps were. selling a VHS tape with five of their music videos on them because obviously in the days before YouTube and even in the days before our family had more than five channels on our TV, you know,

you just have to wait for them to come on top of the pops or hope to catch them in Dixon's window or something like that. You know, so I had the videos for these two songs plus one for sorrow, last thing on my mind of five, six, seven, eight. And it was interspersed with all these other things as well, like pictures of them as children, Lee going to the gym, Claire cooking something, Faye putting on her makeup, H, running a unicycle, Lisa, doing something, and I think I drove my parents only slightly insane by playing it over and over and over again.

God, the pop industry just doesn't work in the same way anymore, does it? Probably for the best, but God, you know, these guys would have gone through several auditions that have landed the gig, moved to London, got paid very little while they were recording the music, then the music would take off, so it was time to do the videos, the VHS, the European tour, the pre-arranged TV spots, the fan meet and greets, more music.

You know, it was a proper 24-hour job for them in those days. And after about three full years of that, their managers made a million, the group have made a million, but split five ways. And then they have to spend the rest of their lives appearing on reality TV in order to pay for houses they bought when they were at number one. And this week, I looked up how much that VHS tape costs. 62 pounds on Amazon, if anybody wants it. It's a good job.

The whole thing is on Daily Motion for free. the fact that I can remember these probably means I'm going to be slightly more forgiving of the whole operation although I will say you know heartbeat I don't think it's too bad it's chintzy and it's cheap

especially on the mastering and mix inside of things that horrendous fucking synth bass noise that comes in at the end of every other measure and they just stop pissing around with it and they're like boo voo voo yeah it sounds like a I don't know a noise that would be used

by the editors of like a really terrible sitcom to transition from one scene to the next as the transition wipe goes like a like a DJ scratched like a jit like that and then the the next scene starts the baffling way that Fay Toza pronounces the word palm it's well palm oh dear but I'll be damned if there aren't some lovely moments in heartbeat you know there are a gorgeous unexpected harmonic turns there's a nice sense of ebb and flow they employ H quite well in the second half of the song in sort of like the Mel C ad lib role you know there's enough going on I think and the same kind of goes for tragedy like you

know the cover okay it's a bit subtext jumping to text but you know that they put some decent effort into a you know a more 90s friendly interpretation of the material they just speed it up that tiny little bit they add a bit more umph to the rhythm section they get something decent out of it you know I prefer the BG's version I think it just contains more restraint and nuance that the Steps version deliberately obliterates, but I've never had a problem with Steps version of tragedy, really. I think Steps were a group. Coming along now, they were a group that really benefited from the Spice Girls

coming first and having the success, because, you know, the Spice Girls had shown pretty definitively that you could still do the kind of factory line production house, very managed late 90s kind of pop at, but use it as a cover almost to sneak in little, you know, clever little pop songs with detailed writing and, you know, Pete Waterman's been watching and his sense that this is his chance to get back to the top and, you know, he has a good run with them for a bit and it probably plays a part in him being back on ITV about two or three years from now

with Pop Idol and, you know, it's Pete Waterman's first number one since Tears on My Pillow. So he's back in the big time, you know, I think all the constant comparisons to Abba sort of do them no favors because Abba were so much better, but steps, you know, that they were all right. the public liked them. This was pretty good. And it's a shame we only really get to discuss them once, really, in the 90s. I feel like they're a much bigger deal

than this podcast makes them seem. I feel like they had several number two hits, and they're probably going to have two or three entries at Borns are runner up at the end of the end of the year. But yeah, not bad. I don't think steps are too bad at all. Definitely cheap on the surface,

but lots of, well, I say lots of, there were maybe three likable persons, personalities and H was two of them. Oh, I don't know. I think you'd be in an unfair to at least one person there. I think H, Claire and Faye were all fine, weren't they? Yeah, they're all, yeah, yeah, yeah, Claire, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're fine, yeah, I don't, yeah. But, no, I was just going to say, when I said their, you know, their first hit, I was referring to number ones with one for sorrow, and I was forgetting that 5, 6, 7, 8 was the first actual

hit quote and quote. And looking at it, Peter number 14, that's one of their most remembered. It was, to be further, I don't know why that is, because even at the time, it was really big, like as big as this. It was. It was. It's not, it's not, it wasn't a sleeper hit. It was genuinely really big at the time. It just must have spread it out over several weeks or something, yeah. Yeah, it's got multi-million streams, which is not at all surprising, actually. You don't actually need to go very far to have multi-million streams these days. really, but I did neglect to mention the fact that, yeah, I

think doing their own material, well, if you get my drift, on heartbeat, I do think the vocals are given a bit more space to shine. There is more character, and I think the vocals are actually pretty good on that, whereas I do find them a little bit flat on tragedy.

These are really big ones to me. Tragedy is a really, really big one for me, because Steps were one of my first real loves when I was younger. I was six going on seven, at this time and I was just enraptured by steps, I must say for my sins, my favourite

was Lisa at the time, I don't know why, quickly it turned into H as I realised that there was something about H that I might have in common as the years went by, but I love steps, absolutely loved them, and tragedy, because it had those famous dance moves in the chorus,

I would learn the dance moves to all of the songs, but tragedy was the one that people like kind of knew it was the most well-known ones. So at family parties and stuff, I would lead people in performances of tragedy. Like, I'd stand at the front, get them all behind me doing the things with the heads and stuff.

And because of that, it's become this huge meme in my family, even my extended family, who think that tragedy is like my song. It's like my biggest song ever. And it's not. It wasn't even my favorite step song. My favorite step songs would have been

probably best forgotten and won for sorrow, both of which I still think are genuinely really good, actually. But tragedy had that cut through, and like people wanted to learn dance, so I ended up doing it so much. And yeah, it still haunts me to this day where whenever I'm at a party with that sign of the family, someone will ask for tragedy and get me to do the moves for everyone. And I've accepted my fate. It's fine. There are worse fates in the world. But I do think that this is a really good choice for them as a cover, because I think all you have to do

to make this not an imitation of the Beesies, quite frankly, is just have a woman singing it. And immediately, you're not trying to sound like the Bee Gees because their voice is so much a part of what they do. And I think, giving it 90s production, speeding up the tempo just a little bit, adding some sort of kind of tension-building sections of the bit and the ha-ha-ha-ha-at the end, the whole melodramatic music video with walking down the aisle and turning it into a kind of, like a sort of telenovela scene, almost. You know, I think it really tends it to something else that it wasn't before.

it's a really make it their own. I think it's fair enough for it to be considered their signature song. And I actually think this is superior to the BeeGs, really. I think as much as I love the BeeGs, and I really do love Beegis. Like I love the whole Saturday Night Feather era and all of that. But I don't think tragedy is really their finest. I don't think it suits them as well as some of their other material. And I think it suits steps like a glove.

I think they really make the most of this. So yeah, that's a huge sums up for me. And although it's not my favorite one ever, it is a song that people, until the generation above me have all left this world, it will still be haunting me. So, yeah, it will be within my life for many years still to come. As for heartbeat, really nice. It's not as good as a tragedy,

but this is another one that was massive for me. The ridiculous attempts to make this a Christmas song, even at the time, even when I was six years old, I was not here for that. And it was a bit baffont to me through the naughties when people were trying to make this, like, one of the Christmas classics, when it just isn't.

There's nothing Christmas about it at all. Just came out around Christmas and has a snowy music video. Nope. Absolutely not. Didn't work for S Club. We've never had a dream come true. It doesn't work for this either. I think it's a nice song, though.

I really like that. There's two songs this week, actually. This is one of them, where the nicest thing that happens in the song is when they move from major to minor, the same chord. And in this one, it's the... When it comes your way,

just that little drop as it moves from major to minor, which is really nice. It's a sort of unexpected little bit of tension that's added to that chorus. Seems surprisingly sincere for a double A side for Christmas like this. I think it has more work put into it than really like they need to.

If you look at some of the other double A size you've had, like remember the Road to Mandalay? You know, and I remember Whitecliffs of Dover by Robson and Jerome? You know, there's far more been put into this than it really needed to be. And that's something about steps that I will say is that they were real workhorses. They put out a lot of songs. all of them with unique dance moves. They did a lot of tours, they did a lot of extra work.

They, you know, certainly set the tone for bands that followed, like S Club, but they really did kind of earn their fame. They worked very, very hard. And I have a lot of respect for them. I think they really kind of did something for kids my age, you know, who really could engage with them and learn the songs, who they had really interested in music videos, there was five of them, all who had quite identifiable different personalities

to some extent, not as much as that's club. Yeah, I'd look back on them with quite a lot of fondness, to be honest. And in November last year, my sister, I must say she talked me into this. I didn't really want to go, but she talked me into going to the Steps musical here and now with her, which was pretty good, to be honest. I quite enjoyed it. It was, again, better than it really needed to be. But it was very funny because while I was there, I saw several Liverpool gaze from when I was

like 17 who I used to talk to online, all at this Steps musical. And it's like, well, that's obviously a core gay millennial experience. It's like someone put up the bat signal. Steps musical, all assemble. It's very, very funny. So, yeah, I think they have a special place in the heart of quite a lot of people my age. And rightly so. And tragedy is a really, really good advert for them.

But yeah, there's a few songs that are better than it. But this is really good. I like it, yeah. never get to discuss steps again on this podcast. I just want to confess that for a very brief period in 2002, I thought Claire from Steps and the woman who played Cam Lawson in Tracy Beaker were the same person. Cam was Tracy Beaker's foster mum. They had the same haircut, same hair color, same facial structure. I thought that after Steps had finished that that's what Claire had had gone to do. Turns out Claire Richards and Lisa Coleman are not the same person. And I found this out in

about 2003. I've got one like that. My mum decided to just play a prank on me that around this exact time, the Venga Boys were massive this summer. And one of them looked just a tiny bit like one of my friend's mums.

They just both had a perm, basically. And my mom convinced me that she was one of the Venger Boys that was her job. Like she'd drop her sawed off at school, my friend, and then she'd go off to do Venger Boys music videos. And I believed her.

And I was saying to my friend, like, is your mom one of her finger boys? Why doesn't she tell people? Like, that's really cool. She made a right wally out of me, my mom. Jesus. She made me look her right now. These are stories about you when you were very young and it's very understandable.

My one that people are just like, is there something wrong with you? Is there something wrong with you? Is when I watched the film The Departed in, I think, my 20s? Do you remember the celebrated almost apologetically at the time, Scorsese film that now. nobody really remembers. Except for its use of flip-top phones.

Yeah. I've forgotten that. But it did have Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio in it. Oh, that's difficult that. And to be honest, I mean, yeah, I've had people say, oh, well, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg, I can see that.

But Leonardo DiCaprio, really? But I'm like, look, they all have quite big, fleshy faces with not very deep-set eyes. and a lot of flesh around the eyes. They're handsome boys. I don't mean to be putting them down like this. It's just to say why I might be mixing them up. But to be quite honest,

I thought I'd worked down what was happening in the film and that there were flashbacks going on and they were trying to differentiate between the modern scenes and the flashbacks by one of them having a beard. And it turns out they were just... Honestly, I was like, it turns out there were just different characters played by different.

people. It is cruel to put those three actors all in the film together. You're taking the Mick by the way. I think you're somewhat, you're somewhat validated there, Ed. I mean, you put Jesse Plemons in there and you're totally fucked. My sister can't tell the difference between Steve Martin and Leslie Nielsen. We noticed it because I used to love the naked gun films and I also, for some reason, used to love the film cheaper by the dozen. And she told me like five years ago, like we had a conversation where I had to tell her that those weren't the same actor. And then she looked them both up and she's like,

what? These are different people. And she really won't believe me that Steve Marlon Leslie Nielsen. There's only ever been one middle-aged American with grey hair. There's only allowed to be one. She said to me, she said to me, surely they're different people. I said, yes, they are different people and stop calling you, surely. Yay.

Do you know, Ed, the other night when I was going to bed, BBC One was on, and the 2001 Ridley Scott, is it Ridley Scott? the 2001 Planet of the Apes on Tim Burton sorry Tim Burton oh yeah

Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes and obviously Mark Wahlberg is in that and he came onto the screen and I honestly went in my head is that Matt Damon oh god always

what film is this is that Matt Damon but no it was Mark Wahlberg if you were to name me a film that either of them were in it would take me a minute which one of them is it like this is a great game show

Matt or Mark can I do this sometime I mean to be honest I always think my only real reference point that helps me is that I don't think Matt Damon would do a line delivery as bad as the, uh, no,

ma'am, no, that Mark Wolbach doesn't happen. I'm like, yeah, he's the, yeah, it's like if you can't,

if you, if you can't get Leo, you get Matt, you can get Mark. That's it. And if you're Martin's score, Sasey, you can get all three.

Yeah, confused the shit out of one person. All right, so the third song up this week is this. We've come a long, long way to give lives and they have to celebrate you, baby. All right, this is Praise You by Fat Boy Slim. Released as the third single from his second studio album titled, You've Come a Long Way, Baby. Praise You is Fat Boy Slim's seventh single to be released in. the UK and his first to reach number one. However, as a 2026, it is his last. Praise you went straight in at number one as a brand new entry. It stayed at number one for one week. In its first and only week

atop the charts, it sold 81,000 copies, beating competition from You Should Be by Blockbuster, Rescue Me by Ultra, and up to the wild style by Porn Kings. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, praise you, fell three places to number four. By the time it was done on the charts, it had been inside the top 104. 14 weeks. The song is currently officially certified two times platinum in the UK. As of 20 to 26, Andy kick us off with slim fat boy. Well, this was another thing that my mom and dad used to laugh at me for because for the longest time, I say the longest time. It feels like a long time. It feels like a long time. all the time when you're a kid but I used to sing this like I like to praise you like a shell

I had no idea what that meant it was one of my mispronunciations that was famous equally alongside my misproneration of baby one more time where I used to say my lonely nurse is killing me like a sort of nurse ratchet scenario going on there yeah but I love this I mean I just love that boy slim this this particular era of him at least I love this album I love brimple of ash when we discussed that which of course was his remix as well. I just think it's so fresh sounding, it's so full of things that you just want to get up

and dance to. It's got such smart instrumentation with that piano at the bottom but also with the bim-bib-bib-bib-bib-bib-bhobobobobu bough stuff going on over the top. Some really, really great drum and bass influences to it as well. It's just such a great pop package. Pretty much the only

thing that I don't... that I sort of detract from it is that I think there's just not enough incident in it. It's not enough stuff that develops throughout. I think it comes in relatively quickly with all of its goods and they're very, very good stuff, but

it sort of loses my interest. This is one of those songs that I love, but I will probably skip it after about two minutes. And I think that's probably my main criticism of quite a lot of Fat Boyslam stuff to be honest. Like with right here right now, weapon of choice, I would definitely say that about all that kind of stuff to be honest.

But I just think production wise, this is just amazing. This is like sort of the sound of the late 90s to me this. And totally my jam. I don't have a huge amount to say about it. This is one of those songs where all I really have to say is like, this is just really, really good. This is just really,

really good. I really like this. Music video as well, another very memorable music video this week where we've got that CCTV footage from a shopping mall, which is just a really like interesting thing to go with. Like it's really kind of low res and really almost doesn't match the song, but

it creates this weird otherworldly vibe to it where you just sort of you feel like you stumbled on a video nasty or something, you just don't really understand what you're watching. And at the time, it used to sort of scare me a bit because the music, to me as a six-year-old was so odd with that voice being quite a, you know,

a quirky sound and the instrumentation being really wild, match with that video with this kind of silhouette figure doing lots of break dancing. It was just a really odd little combination of things, and that's really good. You should be challenging people

from an early age. So this is another song that came along with just the right time for me. And yeah, I really, just another one that stuck with me completely, I really, really appreciate Fat Boy Sillam, and I love this. And I don't really have much else to say. This is just really great. If it developed a bit more throughout, this would be an easy 10 for me. As it is, it's just a nine, but it's a really strong nine.

Yeah, this is great. Love this. Yeah, I think this is great too. I'll be honest, I thought I had more to write down, but I think this is one of those where I don't really have to explain it. You know, it's one of those where, as a collective group, we Brits, we have decided that this is great. We know why it's great every time we hear it on the radio, which is a lot, because as a nation, we have decided it's great. And it sort of ends up being its own pitch.

You know, Fat Boy Slim by this stage had managed to become known not just as an emerging name in the big beat scene, which I had no concept of when I was five or six. But as a five or six year old, I knew that, like, he wasn't a dance artist in any particular style or genre. but I kind of knew him for his use of whenever I heard a song on the radio that had like what I later understood to be, you know, really heavily cut up and precise and messed around with samples, I knew that was him, you know, it didn't matter if it was the Rockefeller skank or Gangster Tripping or as we'll get to later this year with Born to Runner Up right here, right now. And with this, obviously, he sounded like a bit of a master at work.

And, you know, in retrospect, for a very brief time, he kind of was the British Grandmaster Flash or a DJ premiere or something, you know, he just knew how to bend, twist, and build samples into these smorgas boards, you know, of borderline like plundafonic joy. You know, a group like The Avalanche is, having a top 10 album in the UK and landing two top 20 singles in the year 2000,

probably had something to do with Norman warming up British radios and British listeners to the idea of a song being built entirely out of things that already exist. You know, the vocal line from Camille Yarbrough, that was recorded in 1975, that the piano line, which just comes from like a recorded

improvisational jam session for some forgotten audio documentary from the 70s. You know, they sound like they should have never been a part in the universe. And in the end, it's about what Norman can do with those samples to sustain this song for four minutes,

based on those samples finally finding each other in the chaos of the cosmos. And he bloody mad. He manages it, doesn't he? You know, he does this, I think, by kind of letting the samples run free on their own at first, kind of loosely, like their free range samples, for a bit anyway, before ultimately cutting and splicing and exploiting them like he always does, and like we do with free range chickens. But never in a way that feels like he's treading over old ground. You know, of the four big singles he did in the late 90s, I think this is the one that's the most laid back, the most tuneful, perhaps therefore the one most likely to reach number one. But I am completely. completely fine with that. I think that this is a really, really lovely hit. I wish it had been right here right now, which to this day still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up just from here in the opening 10 seconds. This doesn't give me that rush of anticipation and nostalgia that right here right now does, but this is a worthy companion piece to that. And a different kind of

example of what Norman Cook was probably briefly the best in the world at, even if I'm not massively sentimental over this, I still think it is a great number one. Ed, how about you for praise you? I think there are more lyrics in this song than I have words in my notes. So I do echo your sentiments in every way, really. Maybe a little more muted. But yeah, effectively, it's, my only criticisms are that I feel the song is too long to justify that the material. material it's working with. But it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a air of almost, you know, it's got an air of the cult, it, doesn't it? And it just adds a lovely, extra nuance and wrinkle to the song, which is very straightforward and it's just its texture and it's fun, but it's not tremendously substantial. And I think basically I've split the difference so it kind of

just gets into the vault. But it is, it is just always a pleasure to hear. As you say, Rob, those two disparate samples coming together because there's some expert crate digging going on there to put those together. When you read, you know, what the sources of those are, they were so bloody obscure. I mean, I don't know about them now, to be honest. I've not seen a documentary about it. I've had no fucking clue where to start. But yeah, it's really good. It's stood the test of time. As you say, it's been, you know, we've decided as a nation that this gets the automatic pass. It becomes part of our cultural landscape and part of our cultural ambiance. All right, so the fourth and final song this week is this.

Okay, this is A Little Bit More by 9-1-1. Released as the second single from the group's third studio album titled, There It Is. A Little Bit More is 9-1, 11th single to be released in the UK and their first to reach number one. However, as of 2026, it is their last. The single is a cover of the song originally recorded by Dr. Hook, which reached number two in 1976. A little bit more went straight in at number one as a brand new entry. It stayed at number one for one week! In its first and only week atop the charts, it sold 75,000 copies beating competition from

I Want You for Myself by another level. More than this by Emmy, Cassius 99 by Cassius and What Like a Panther by All Seeing Eye. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, a little bit more fell five places to number six. By the time it was done on the charts, hit a bit inside the top 104, 11 weeks. The song is currently officially certified silver in the UK. As of 2026, Andy, I'm going to ask you a question. Do you have any notes on this at all? I don't ever have notes

just of inside baseball there but I do have things to say, yes. Say those notes. If you have many of them. First of all, what an unfortunate band name. How do you think they felt when the towers fell?

They're British. They're British as well. Why do they name themselves after the emergency services dial code for the States? Oh, it was a cheap way of giving them American allure to make them seem like backstreet boys and failing, I think. But I'll throw a lot of complaints at 911 But one thing that I won't have said against them

Is that they had any foreknowledge of the September 11th attacks And I think that's very, very unfortunate for them That their entire existence just had to stop Because of geopolitics Just, I know that's not the reason they split up But like, if they had kept going, what would they have done? They couldn't have called themselves 911 Like, Jesus Christ, that was unfortunate

I wonder what would happen if they ever got back together But not change the name of the emergency services number in America, just because of the 9-11 disaster, though. No, but it makes them sound like a sort of shock metal band or something. No one's going to... You can't just be called. You can't just be called 9-11 as a pop band, can you? Like, it's ridiculous.

But, yeah, I feel really sorry for them with that, to be honest. Like, when they realised what date it was, they must have been like, oh, fuck sake. Anyway, that aside. I think this is a good choice of song for a late 90s boy band that's going for the hormonal tween market shall we call it, a very familiar market

for both boy bands and girl bands and because of that feels quite cynical and saccharine because it is. But it's still a nice song choice for them. This is the second song where I think the best thing in the song is a major to minor change that if you think I love

where it just moves from the previous chord into the minor chord. It's just a nice little turn, gives it a little bit more emotional depth. And there's not much depth to this, to be honest. I do like the idea where it's like, oh, I'll just, you know, I'll just shower you with affection. Like, I'll always love you more and more every day. I love you. I love you.

You know, the kind of thing that Bo Burnham was lampooning in his song Repeat Stuff, which is a parody of boy band songs that go for the heartstrings like this. and he was primarily skewer in stuff like One Direction and five seconds of somewhere, but this is equally equitable to that, that this is still the cynical, you know, oh, I love you so much, you know, nobody knows how much I love you. And it reached its peak in the early tens with absolutely diabolically manipulative garbage, like little things by One Direction, which if we ever get around to cover in that, I'm going to be given that a minus score because it's so horrible in its manipulation.

This is just like an early precastor of that kind of thing really where it's like, yeah, you and me were going to be together and I'm going to show you how much I love you every day if you just buy my single That's all you have to do is just buy that little single And it's still tacky and horrible But at least the song is like basically fine But yeah, nothing else to say really

Alright cover It's a bit cynical They're named after 9-11 and that's my notes. Ed, what about you? Do you have a little on a little bit more? Or do you have a lot? Oh, I have next to nothing, to be honest.

That'd be a better name for them, next to nothing. Yeah. Well, actually, they were going to change their name to Pentagon, but that turned out to be ill-advised as well. Yeah, I didn't know this was a cover. It's interesting, though, before you told me that before the show, Rob, I put his 70s, the flavour of the week. This kind of reminds me.

of something like how can you mend a broken heart, that sort of slightly sloppy, turgid, slow era of the Bee Gees from the early 70s. And I partly say that because that's another song where the chorus starts off really promisingly and then kind of turns really pat and sing along at the end. And it's like, ugh. And it all has that kind of feel.

It does sound fine. To be honest, it sounds perfectly acceptable, into a late 90s boy band setting, as you say, Andy. But God damn it, I mean, his voice is awful. I'm sorry to whoever it is,

but you did get a fair run out of it with your inflammatory named band. That's not a word. But he just, somehow, the fairly generous register seems a little bit low for him, so there's a bit of fry going on there. And he's really

nasally as well, which I know was more acceptable in those things, but maybe me doing this kind of illustrates that it never should have been acceptable in boy band singles in the first place. But yeah, it's all just a bit naff and a bit

pat. They don't add any character to it. It sounds very sort of producty. However, I don't like anything I've heard by nine... Oh God, nine 9-11.

I don't like anything I've heard about 9-11 either, if I'm honest. I think it's mostly bad. 9-11-2 was not super, but yeah, I don't hate them like boys, though. And the reason I say that is, even though this is their third album, the singer does sound like a young lad who's been, you know, people say, oh no, he's got a good voice, you should go up, you should sing, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, do anything. The song started. If you go up and he's just got this kind of deer in the headlight sort of 14-year-old thing to it,

that just it all sounds a bit sort of a bit awkward and a bit cheap and a bit karaoke. And oddly gives it a bit more charm than Boyzone, who sound very calculated and producty and like they want to suck all of the money and aesthetic expectations out of romantic fantasists. and they did it very fucking well and then Westlife picked up the slack on that one. Bloody hell, did I mention

that I think Boys Own a total and otter shite I might have mentioned. I might have hinted in my prior commentary. Yeah, I mean, I don't have any real dislike of 9-1-1, to be honest, I have a void of any opinions about them. But, I mean, even if I didn't like them,

it would be nothing compared to Boyzone. Like, Jesus Christ, these last few years of our show are really, awoken something in me that like there are some leaders of totalitarian regimes I like more than boys own to be honest like Jesus Christ oh they do something to me that's not good yeah it's I mean to a lot of people which makes me hate them all the more but yeah no this is oh god I mean look most of this conversation has been about 9-11 what does that say about this forgettable late 90s boy band single.

I've realised while looking at my notes that my notes aren't really notes about my opinion. They're more just a kind of a summation of this bit of their Wikipedia page but in my language. This song was released in 1999. It is three minutes in length.

Citation needed. Fourth rate UK boy band is struggling for a number one hit and a bit more exposure. They've tried a run of original numbers and they've had a few top 10 hits, but it's not really clicked fully for them. they pivot to being a covers band and get their biggest hit yet with more than a woman, but it's still only a B-True contender. So they wait till January, put out a weepy,

bag of number one, and that's then pretty much done after this point. Thanks and good night, nothing to say, nothing to think either. And then I did complain about the name of the act, a British act, naming themselves after the American Emergency Services number. Then I say, who cares? The answer is probably more boring than anything we could imagine to be. so that's my little bit on a little bit more. It's just one of those where like as soon as it starts, I'm just like, oh, fucking, fine. Exactly. I just have to sit with you for four minutes.

I'll do the perfunctory thing on the podcast and then we can forget you ever happen to me. Oddly, though. I mean, compared to the ones we were covering on B-True for 1998, I think this would actually be above average in that list. and that just shows how utterly wretched the UK boy band scene had become by this period. I know. They don't have a fucking clue what to do with any of them,

except maybe five. But, like, the girl groups are all putting forward, like, decent things, and all the boy groups are just sort of like, oh, we'll just copy what Louis Walsh is doing. And, oh, great, fucking brilliant. That's never laid anybody down a dark path, like, copying what Louis Walsh is doing. Pure cynicism.

Yeah, fucking brilliant. Nothing else. Yeah. No, it's such a shame. Yeah, come on, boys, get your act together. I mean, we know that they sort of kind of do, but also don't, and also just kind of wait around for take that to come back as a man band until One Direction turn up, and then it's all right for a bit,

with a bit of One Direction, but not all of them, and... And then the idea of boy groups and girl groups just kind of goes away anyway from the charts. It's all soloists now, really, these days, or collaborations. We love a collab. We love a collab and how the word feet has been, and the abbreviation, feet dot, has been fully, fully removed and replaced by the X, just the letter X for some reason. Maybe X is cooler.

Andy, chocolate salty balls, tragedy and heartbeat, praise you, and a little bit more. How we're feeling? I was just about to ask you doing all right over there, Rob. that last little monologue Right, okay Well, if I liked Chef's song more than I do It might have been chocolate vaulty balls

Nice one Oh yeah, I've been waiting at all show to say that one But no, it's just fine It's just staying in the middle It would be a tragedy If I put steps in the pie hole Which I'm not going to do I'm in fact going to put it in the vault

it's going in the vault, yes. It means too much to me to not vault it. Sorry, it's a, it's a seventh-thetical one. And as for Fat Boy Slim song, I really do like to praise it. I'm going to praise it like I should, and the way I should praise it is to put it in the vault. So that's what I'm going to do. Let's go in the vault.

And as for 9-1-1-well, it's staying where it is. I don't think it's that bad. It's staying where it is. Ed. Chef, Steps, Fat Boy Slim, and 9. That's a dinner party, isn't it? Just keep away from the boring end of a table.

Yeah, I know they're called that, but they're not that interesting. Yeah, in terms of early days, kid-oriented fad riding, by the way, when I typed fad riding into my phone, it also corrected it to dad riding. What's dad riding? I can tell you if you want. Well, yes, but I didn't realize it was part of common parlance that my phone would correct it. But yet, chef is considerably better than you do the bartmans of the world. It's character, tone and genre appropriate for one. But nonetheless, and just to be perfectly real,

it is a four-minute song about sucking balls. So I'm not going to put it into the vault today. I wouldn't put fucking Mozart's lick my balls in there either, just because it's Mozart. It is an amazing piece of work though. Mozart's licking my balls. It's ahead of its time. Well, definitely.

Please think of a clever pun we can put there about ahead and then we can get Rob to edit this down and it'll sound great. No? Okay. All right then. Well, for the heartbeat and tragedy, AA side, it's one steps forward, one steps back. God, damn it.

My God, 11 o'clock last night, me, Troy Harder. So no movement there. basically is the implication. Is fat boy slim fucking in heaven? Fucking in, fucking in, fucking in heaven. Is fat boy slim fucking in heaven? Yeah, just by that swing. And finally, call 911 because I have the shit.

And I don't like the song either. So that's been pie-hold. Is that something that you called 911 for? It was late. It was late and I was tired. I just think, you know, there's always a lot of campaigns out there about not wasting the emergency services time. Don't call the ambience if you've got the shirts kit. It was dysentery. Just pretend it was dysentery and let's move on, all right.

As for me, chocolate salty balls, that's going nowhere. Tragedy and heartbeats a little step up, but again, not quite enough of vault material for me. Praise you is, though. Praise you sneaking into the vault. out and a little bit more is sneaking into the pie hole. Just about when we return, next week we will be continuing our journey through 1999. We will see you for it. Bye, bye, bye now. Bye now.

Bye-bye.