Hits 21 - 1999 (5): Shanks & Bigfoot, Baz Luhrmann, S Club 7

Episode Date: May 28, 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! Hope you're staying cool! And welcome to HITS21! The 90s where me, Rob? Me, a sensible tube of sunscreen. And me, melting! Are looking back at every single UK number one of the 1990s! email us at Hits21 podcast at gmail.com, thank you ever so much for joining us again. We are currently looking back at the year, 1999 and this week we'll be covering the period between the 23rd of May and the 19th of June. So a very short step through 1999 this week but that's because we're only doing three songs. Andy, the UK album charts as May becomes June. Actually this is pretty much this period 27 years ago.

So what were we listening to albums wise? I mean not very much new to be honest. We had um well we had other gold last week. which is again in at number one with another two weeks at the top, 18 times platinum just at the last time of recording and I've since looked into it. It looks like it's 31 times platinum

at this point, which is just... It's just loopy. It's just absolutely nuts. There's no other word for it, to be honest. I mean, there's plenty of words for it. I've used two right there. But, you know. Anyway, that is then toppled.

Avergold, one of the greatest, probably the greatest compilation album of all time in the conversation for one of the most satisfying albums of all time, full stop, is unseated by a worthy successor. It's by request by Boyzone, which went number one for two weeks and went six times platinum. That's six times platinum.

You heard that right. And then finishing off June, just at the end of this period, is Jim Iroquai with synchronized, spelled in an annoyingly incorrect way, which went number one for one week and went single platinum. So it sold. About 16% of what by request by Boyzone sold. Let that sit with you. All right then. In the news, David Such, the leader of the official Monster Ravian Looney Party,

who was better known by his nickname Screaming Lord Such, is found dead at his home in London. He was 58. And in world politics, the Kosovo war ends after eight years, as Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic agrees to withdraw, following months of NATO bombing and the deaths of almost 14,000 people. In football, Manchester United complete a European travel after winning the Premier League, the FA Cup by beating Newcastle 2-0 at Wembley Stadium and the Champions League after dramatically beaten by Munich 2-1 at the Camp Nu in Barcelona with those two goals

in injury time from Sheringham and Solshar. And in the aftermath, the team's manager Alex Ferguson is knighted, becoming Sir Alex Ferguson. And the 44th Eurovision Song Contest is held in Jerusalem. Sweden win the competition for the fourth time and on the 25th anniversary of Abba's victory in 1974. Make of that what you will. The winning song, Take Me to Your Heaven by Charlotte Nilsson, won by 17 points. The UK entry, Say It Again by Precious finished 12th. The number one films in the UK were Notting Hill and the matrix. So that's United winning the treble, Notting Hill,

and the Matrix. You better believe it's 1999, people. Ed, the US album charts. While we were busying ourselves with Eurovision, what were America looking at instead and ignoring Eurovision at the same time? They're gearing up to make movies across the board a little

bit greener after the Matrix. But aside from that, yeah, Ricky Martin, surprisingly, only hits the top spot on the album's charts for a single week, which is somewhat, you know, as I say, surprising. I mean, her skin may be

coloured mocha, but it sure isn't coloured platinum, which is a total contrivance as it did actually go platinum. Don't listen to me there. I'm really wonder about a woman whose skin is platinum colours. Like, I'm thinking like, you know, like the T1, not the T1,000,

the one from Terminator 3. That would be a very different song in here. Like, this woman is literally a robot. And then a burgeoning internet fandom suddenly has its buttons pressed. Anyway, I'm very warm. I'm going to just keep going to say that every time I say something slightly odd or not off-color today, which will be a lot. The Backstreet Boys, however, seize the top spot and sit there like Huffy evicted drama students all the way through till July. Last we'll see of these boys, I believe, in this little installment.

Which is a pity, actually, because I always did like larger than life off this album, but apparently didn't reach number one on either side of the Atlantic. Anyway, singles-wise, it's Ricky Martin again for our month, this time with Livelynne of Iloca, before a wild Jailo is spotted, seeing us through June with her debut single, If You Had My Love, which will go on to sell a million-plus copies. Depending on who you talk to, she was born to no pair of. in an abandoned tire, or she was born in the Disneyland castle to a king and a bucket of diamonds. Back to you, Rob.

All right then, so the first of three songs up this week is this. Okay, this is Sweet Like Chocolate by Shanks and Bigfoot. Released as the lead single from their debut studio album titled Swings and Roundabouts, Sweet Like Chocolate is Shanks and Bigfoot's first single to be released in the UK and their first to reach number one. However, as of 2026, it is their last. No. Sweet Like Chocolate went straight in at number one as a brand new entry. It stayed at number one for two weeks.

In its first week atop the charts, it sold 251. Thousand copies beating competition from Kiss Me by Sixpence Non the Richer. Say it again by precious. I Quit by Hepburn and Every Morning by Sugar Ray. And in week two, it sold 141,000 copies beating competition from Ulala by Wise Guys, canned heat by Jamiroquai and saltwater by Shikane. After two weeks at the top, sweet-like chocolate dropped one place to number two. It stayed inside the top 104, 17 weeks.

The single is currently officially certified, platinum in the UK. As of 2026, Andy, you can kick us off with Shanks and Bigfoot. This is a nifty little song, isn't it? And I do mean little, because it's extremely efficient, extremely tightly packed. I think it's amazing that even in the radio edit, which is three and a half minutes long, we don't get any lyrics until about a minute and five. And then in the following two minutes, it managed to pack in three verses and choruses and two lots of da-da-da-da. And then there's a 30-minute outro.

It's extremely economical with its time. and economical with it sound as well I remember really really liking this at the time and I think I probably just liked the video with loads of chocolate people walking around like home as land of chocolate but even though I really liked it at the time and it was really big at the time

I don't think I've ever actually sat and listened to it since it was out I mean maybe I have because I'm sure it was probably on one of the now albums from this year so I probably have sat and listened to it at some point but it really will have appeared maybe once or twice in the last nearly 30 years for me. So it was a huge way of nostalgia for me to come back and listen to this.

And I was right to like this at the time. Like I liked it for entirely different reasons, but this is just really cool. It's really well produced. I love the minimalism on it that like there are parts of this in the verses where it's just the vocals, the drums, and a tiny, tiny, almost imperceptibly slight bass synth that's just there just to keep a little bit of tone

and a little bit of harmony to this. But it's really, really, really. really deftly done. I think one thing that is really kind of baffled me in these later years of the 90s is that the late 90s and the early naughties seem like entirely different times that obviously they're different decades, but decades are arbitrary and it does not feel like a lot of the time that we are just weeks away from the likes of Groove Jeff, for example, or, I don't know, pure shores. It feels like we're in a totally different period. Like we're at the start of a different decade to the Nauties, not the end of the decade before.

This one, though, this really does feel like early Nauties starting to kick in. There's definitely a generous helping of Got to Get Through This by Daniel Bellingfield in this, I think. And there's quite a lot of, you know, I mean, all the kind of garage songs we covered really. So like, so like, so solid crew, 21 seconds, you know. There's a lot of that in this. So it's like, oh, I can sort of see how this is starting to link up to the early Nauties here. As different in era as it feels, there's definitely. definitely, you know, that drum rhythm and that style of production, we're starting to get there.

This is quite futuristic in a genuine sense that this is quite prophetic of where things go. So I think this is really nice. Like, it is extremely slight. It's just a nice idea executed really well. So it's quite hard for me to get too excited by it. But I say cool little bit of production that sounds fresh, that has this nice single-on quality. So there's something for the kids as well. That has a really cool music video to go with it.

and just really does everything extremely efficiently and makes pop music look extremely easy is the best thing I can say about it. Yeah, there's not much to complain about really. Like, there's not that much to it, but what there is is really kind of nice. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Yeah, I completely agree. Andy, I find this so fresh. Like, God, hearing that like two-step beat come in, you know,

this should have been the future for longer than it was, I think. You know, Two-Step and Garage kind of went into a decline around the time of, like, baby cakes. Baby Cakes was like the last hurrah, if you will, and then kind of disappeared from the charts completely in the mid-2000s, which was a shame, because after this, I think you get some amazing garage hits, and I wish it had stayed strong as a dominant stranding pop until people like Hannah Diamond and A.G. Cook had come along with, like, you know, stuff like that in the early 2010s, which, you know, that was, that was the next wave of that kind of stuff, but it was framed as a, as a revival, because a lot of the big players from the charts, like Craig David and Sweet

female latitude and Mike Skinner and the Artful Dodger and Ms. Dynamite and so solid crew and all that, you know, they've kind of graduated onto different things and the sound of the musical underground in London kind of shifted away and got a bit gentrified, which meant that by the time it came back, it was seen as like, oh, it's been away for a while and now it's come back, but only really is an alternative thing and Hannah Diamond has never really troubled the charts. Like, A.G. Cook mostly has, you know, because he's working a lot with Charlie XXX now, but, you know, So stuff like this, stuff like sweet light chocolate, it does give me mixed feelings upon hearing it because this was serious innovation, I think, in the mainstream here. Something appearing at the end of the 20th century that would surely set the template for the 21st.

And in the end, it did for a bit, but not for very long, you know, but the positive side is that I guess it does make this feel quite rare and special and sort of of its own kind. And, you know, like, Two Step and Garage, you know, they were very rarely this sweet. You know, baby cakes is the spiritual successive to this, but that's five years away. And again, talks about candy and food and all that stuff. And maybe represented it being a bit co-opted and a bit sanitised. Whereas, like, with this, you know, despite the kind of ostensible, superficial sweetness of it, you know, that first minute is quite dramatic and a bit scuzzy and a bit low-fi, that really low bit rate snare that sounds like you hear. it through water, that's perfect. This sounds like two guys in a flat, somewhere in Hackney or Elephant and Castle or, you know,

wherever, lining up a few beers in their home studio, maybe ordering in a couple of pizzas, turning on the old computer, sampler on one table, keyboard on the other, just kind of jamming until about 2 a.m. Maybe the neighbours complain at one point. You know, the way it carefully builds those like staccato strings that, yeah, basically followed, you know, that, well, I'd say we've got to get through this, follows basically the same rhythm, because this goes, dun dun dun dun and then got to get through this is boom boom boom so it's got that same kind of staccato off-kilter rhythmic kind of focus which a lot of two step and garrets did my favorite thing about two step and garage is just how many spaces between the beats that so many acts like that managed to find

just that and then there's all sorts of room to play around in um the way it carefully builds out from those strings adds in the percussion more melodic elements then the vocals come in after about a minute, Sharon Wolf, her name is. And when she comes in, I think, you know, that's the last factor for me that really turns this into like a really joyous and rewarding pop experience. It's like water gets poured over it all and you hear, you know, lovely sounds and then you clear your eyes a little bit. And it's like an oasis has appeared in front of you. You know, the sweet like chocolate, ah, you know, it's great. It's, you know, it's one of those hooks that even as a kid, just sort of implanted itself. And every now

and again when I'm doing something that has nothing to do with music for 20 or years now, it'll just appear like sweet like chocolate. The other thing, the other one that really stuck in my head for years, and I'd always forgotten the name of it, was drinking in LA by Bram Van 3,000, which I think was around this time as well. Yeah, it was 99. Yeah, that kind of trip-hoppy looped that bum bum bump bump bump bump but that stuck in my head for years and it's the same thing where you hear something

really really young so you're not really aware of it but the sound sticks anyway so you wouldn't be able to google anything you'd remembered in terms of its name you could only remember the vibe and you can't really google vibes but this is a vibe that i you know i would have googled a long long time ago and thankfully i you know found it again when i was in my teens and it was the same with brown van three thousand Yeah, I think this is great. I don't think it's perfect. But I do think it's fresh and I do think it's exciting. And it's just a shame that it didn't set the template for longer.

Ed? I think I had exactly the same experience with Brian Van Sant as Brand Van Van 3,000. Yeah, yeah. I'm getting Brian Van V,000, confused with the singer-songwriter, because Van Sant, and not the singer-songwriter. Scratch all of this. He's a filmmaker. That's Towns Van Sant.

Towns, yeah, yeah. It's very warm. It's very warm, Rob. Anyway, yeah, scratch all of that. Drinking in LA, I think that might have been the power of advertising, because around this time, even though the song had been knocking around a bit in America for a few years, as I understand it, it was used on a rolling rock advert, which was quite cool because it had that sort of of, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, playing as the backdrop.

But it was done from the perspective of someone walking through a series of late-night urban locales, if you remember, just occasionally pouring a bottle into just below the camera. So it's like from their vantage point. And yeah, everybody thought that and the song was incredibly cool. But nobody knew what it was, who it was by or what it was called. But it did stick around. Just like this. That was a clunky ass segue.

Yeah, it's very warm. It's very warm, Rob. So we're talking about Gus Van Sant. Yeah. This is, yeah, I know nothing about Two-Step, actually. but it is weird that you mentioned that baby cakes is part of that same genre. I didn't know that. But that kept kind of flashing into my head as that similar kind of clicky, deliberate artifice to it.

I know what you mean by seeing it kind of presaging that, you know, Hannah Diamond and PC music kind of thing in the 2010s. I can see that. And I think as a result, this has aged very well. well because it knows it's sickly, but it also knows it's cool, and it's got some very unique sonic ideas on its side. It's got a very odd production in the best possible way with these yeah, crunchy, clippy, deliberately fake drums, splatters. It's got kind of midi cellos that sounded even in 1999. They were obviously like VSTs, that they weren't even trying to be real instruments in real space. And these kind of fairy tale chimes that come up on the corner.

you sweet like chocolate and it's it knows what it is it's kind of skeletal and full of air but the cross between that that punchy monotone riff the sort of string riff and that's the sickly sweet vocals

makes it actually sound pretty big and hefty even though there were a lot of gaps in it which is a nice experience to have it's not overwhelming dynamically I do love, as you seem to, the way it builds up at the beginning. However, given its brief length, and especially given, as you mentioned, Andy, there's really nobody singing for the first minute. It does still, for my money, overplay that verse melody. Because although it has the kind of fake second hook where it sort of combines the string riff from the opening with the verse melody and just goes,

it is it is just the verse again and that is repeated many many many many times and I'm not actually asking for like a harmonically shifting middle-eight or anything I wouldn't even suit this even if it just had an even more stripped back sort of like an idiotic style like clanging solo or something I'd be like oh that's in a variety to see me through to the end this is a a banger, I'm happy now. But it does a lot with a little, but arguably a little too much

with a little. I think they could have mixed it up a tad, added a little bit more space. Yeah, it is a really interesting track, though, that has ultimately stood the test of time. Even if the music video does look like a 3D rendering

of the Bristol stool chart, I did laugh, when I was watching the video, I was like, Why is the Bristol stool chart on the bus behind her? But yeah, if anybody doesn't know what that is, Google it. Why does her foot keep disappearing? Was this not made in Hollywood? But we're going to be getting more of that with bloody blue people in a few weeks, aren't we?

Yes. Oh, yes. Okay, so, yeah, second song up this week is this. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 99, where... sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. A long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. No, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded.

But trust me, in 20 years, you look back at photos of yourself, and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, a kind that blindsides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Okay, this is Everybody's Free, in brackets, to Wear Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann. released as the lead single from his debut studio album titled Something for Everybody. Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen is Baz Luhrmann's first single to chart in the UK and his first to reach number one. However, as of 2026, it is his last.

Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen 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 206. 1000 copies beating competition from Hey Boy Hey Girl by Chemical Brothers and From the Heart by another level. After one week at the top, everybody's free to where sunscreen fell, two places to number three. It stayed inside the top 104, 20 weeks. The single is currently officially certified, platinum in the UK. As of 2026, Ed, you can lead us off with Baz Luhrmann, which is a real curveboard.

of a name to be thrown into the charts. Postmodernism, I think, had a purpose once. Most counter movements do. But by the time postmodernism became a kind of common cultural commodity, it became pretty much largely destructive in my eyes. Instead of questioning accepted meanings, you know, that societal, hegemonic negotiation of meaning, we began to distrust earnestness

and that certainly came into play around this era and certainly into what I will very broadly and crudely called the family guy epoch of the 2000s self-denial became cool I say we began to evade ourselves and I'm I'm very glad that folk got as tired as that of it as I did

through the naughties. And in the 2010s, well, you do, you know, bringing it back to PC music. You know, there is a degree of knowing commerce and like, you know, well, we know what we're doing here. We know this is product. There is also genuine joy in creation in those things.

And there's no guilt in actually digging them anymore. And I'm so, so pleased to have that. That cultural experience returned, at least fleetingly. These things are like the pendulum. know I find, but I'm glad it's here for now. I like this a lot, actually. Not ironically, I should say that. I think it's genuinely great as an experience.

My God, though, it has such a bizarre lineage this one. I assumed that this was a production project done in isolation from Bazlehrmann that they got, oh, wouldn't it be funny? or he happened to be in the neighbourhood or my nephew knows that Australian director, Baz Luhrman. Why don't we just put him in there? Wacky, wacky woo-woo. But no, it was kind of his instigation, this.

Because if I get this correctly, the musical part here is a remix of an orchestral reworking of a 1991 single by another artist. and this reworking was made for the 1997 Baz Luhrmann film Romeo and Juliet, but not in this version. And this has nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet in itself. And it has Bazlehrmann reading what sounds to be like a heartfelt sort of play,

some kind of mindful advice being put out there before that was even, palpably a cultural thing. But it turns out it's not his. It was Kurt Vonnegutts. And then it turned out, oh, no, it's not Kurt Vonnegut's. It's actually a 1997 newspaper column by Mary Schmick of the Chicago Tribune.

Or the Chicago Tribune, even. Yeah. So there's a lot of elements going on here to make this truly bizarre. Context is everything. If this is meant to be, ironic. It fails, at least for me. If it is meant to be earnest, I absolutely love it. I do kind of just wish it didn't use a director who is most famed, deserving or not, for being style over substance,

which is also not helped in a further degree of distance and obfuscation by the fact that he is an Australian film director reciting this in an American accent. So is any of this supposed to be taken straight up? Am I supposed to be tipping my cap to the veiled irony and the postmodern playfulness of it? Is it supposed to be like a layer of distance and plausible deniability? So if it seems embarrassing that they're expressing what I think to be very worthy sentiments, they can say, oh, it's just a joke, you know, it's taking the piss. I hope not, because as well as him taking ownership of someone else's words, valid words,

and what I feel to be wise words, he would then be cheapening them and reducing their meaning, turning them kind of into tinsel, which is what he's accused of a lot. Anyway, I gather, I do kind of wish that this was David Lynch. Yes, this would make so much sense, and I would love that so much, it would make so much sense for all his weirdness, with him being such an old-fashioned kind of straight up sort of swell guy,

I think that would make me cry a little bit in the best possible way. I do remember at the time this was seen as being a wacky novelty, like people like Sarah Cox on Radio One going, look at it, what was that? That's mad that is. Oh, sorry, Sarah, that was just awful. But it was so direct, so

straightforward, so very much what it is for a surprisingly long duration that people probably felt a little bit of uncomfortable in terms of embracing it. They didn't really know what to do with it. They often still don't when things are that direct. So I don't think they took it seriously. And yet all those other elements of distance and opacity that I mentioned before probably didn't help matters. But this is not only good rhetoric and good useful advice. It's really dynamic as an experience. It's sort of the backing stops and starts sympathetically to the message. And there's nothing really too blatant or gimmicky about the musical backing.

It is very unique. It makes me actually want to listen to that soundtrack a bit more closely because there's something very unusual going on there that kind of ties together sort of. of 70s Stevie Wonder with something a bit more ethereal, with something a bit more dancey. But it just works in this case. But yeah, I think my feelings about how this was taken, and how I think I as a 13-year-old was inclined to take it, kind of summed up from something I ripped earlier today off the Wikipedia article, which is an extract from an NME article of the time by someone called James Oldham. I don't give a fuck to find out any more about him after this. He describes it as remarkable and potentially nauseating. Talk about hedging your bets.

Calling it a postmodern masterpiece that is half pistake, half soul-soothing brain massage, and all genius. A DIY pop landmark for the end of the self-help decade. And it's that last bit that I think sticks with me. As if to say, ha ha, goodbye, you know, kindly common sense

self-reflection. It's really no different from fucking being sold an exercise video. What a load of hippie shit. Bring in fucking, I don't know, family guy

in a load of superhero movies that appear to be embarrassed about being superhero movies. I don't fucking know. Anyway, what I love about this, going back to that, And what was such a charming surprise when I rediscovered it recently is that this isn't motivational.

It isn't like some cynical self-help video. It's mindful. And I know people, you know, will may roll their eyes a bit at that as an overuse term, but I don't think people quite get what it is. Like mindfulness as practice is a kind of common sense mental sorting exercise. You don't have to go at the top of the hill with a mantra and a bunch of fucking fruit. juice or some shit. It's very practical advice that, speaking for myself, is probably part of the reason why I'm still alive now and able to cope with shit. This feels like it's giving you the

why is this advice possible to prepare for an unpredictable world? And in many ways, that is advice anyone can give. But it feels the need to qualify it anyway, which is quite cute. And basically it boils down to like, don't fret about the unknown. And don't beat yourself up for the sake of should, where you should be, what should be expected to do. And embrace what you don't know. Embrace the fact that you don't. To very brutally paraphrase Aristotle, the most liberating thing you can learn, I believe, is that you don't know anything. and that can be both peaceful and exciting. It shouldn't be a chastening and disappointing thing.

It can be a letting go of a pretense and the beginning of an exciting embrasure of just the strand of life as it comes, which can suck, but you don't know that it will. It could be awesome, and you don't know that it will be or when that will happen. It's just because advice is simple,

doesn't mean it's simplistic. I think because it is advice, I think people are, you know, feel they're being talked down to a bit, but you've got to look at where it's coming from, how it's couched, whether it comes from a place of kindness or, you know, pant padding

based on someone's own status or experience. And being yourself and forging your path is a virtue that others can also benefit from as well as yourself. But being contrarian and off the beaten, for the sake of it and denying just basic common shared truths is it's just evading connection with other people ultimately and that's all we've fucking well got the best advice is often simple

as shit being too big for simple truths is not a mark of intelligence to my mind but kind of one of cowardice you're running away from embracing the simple truths this sounds so pretentious But anyway, I have got a point here. I'm pretty sure it's down here somewhere. Most pop lyrics are, if we cut it down to it, they don't have to be much, you know. But they are relatively broad and uninsightful, and I find them very difficult to grab onto. There are definitely exceptions to this. But this cuts through.

Admittedly, it's not conventional as a pop song. It's not really a pop song, is it? but it is very commercial and it's fun and it's immediate and you understand if not how to take what to take away from it you understand how to ingest it. Now if this track is a joke, I don't find it funny, but if it's for real and I choose to believe it is,

I really do like this rather a lot. Wow, yeah. I can't, yeah, I have to say, I have enjoyed everybody's free to wear sunscreen. I'll go into my review properly in a minute. But, yeah, even as I've enjoyed it and listened to it, I didn't expect us to get that. I wasn't sure what we would get out of it.

And now I'm really glad I made the executive decision a little while ago just to do three songs this week because I think, yeah, providing you the space for that, not worrying about there being a fourth song that we have to get through this week. I think that definitely provided you with the room just to work through what you were working. through there. It felt like you were sort of arriving at your point as you went as you sort of

went along there, you were realizing as you were talking. It was somewhat rhapsodic, as my old tutor once said. It's like, oh, it's not a good point, but it's kind of rapodic. Now, that's a good diplomatic word. Andy, everybody's free to wear sunscreen. How are we feeling? Yeah, wow. I mean, I can't hope to follow what I'd just said there, because that was really, like, very, very engaging to listen to. That was a really great piece. Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing it.

And I don't have any Aristotle quotes already. I'll just go with, you know, what is of course the greatest quote by Aristotle, which is dance like nobody's watching. Oh, yeah. I'm glad you both got the reference. The big of knowledge. Yeah.

I have a really interesting relationship with this one because, I mean, first of all, let's start with the obvious, which is how, in the name of hope, Holy fuck did this get to number one. I think of all the songs, perhaps, that we've ever covered on hits 21. This is the most absurd number one entry that we've ever had. And there are a minute, I mean, I say it a lot of how did this get to number one,

but usually it falls into one of a few broad categories. One of them is, this is so obscure. It's entirely forgotten, something like real to me by Brian McFadden. It's like, how did that get number one? Like, nobody knows this. song. And then there are others where it's like quality levels where it's like, you know, this is so extraordinarily bad. Did we all just lose our ears that week? You know, so like we will rock you by five. It's like how possibly did we as a nation decide that that was

the best thing on sale this week? And then there are others that come around every so often where it's like, well, this is so uncommercial. This is so like, this is such a hard sell that I can't believe that it was the highest selling thing in that week. And this, in that category, I think is definitely the strongest example we've ever had because it is a hard sell and for me personally I remember at the time you know it was I asked my parents about this because it was on an album I think it was on now 43 and I asked my dad like what's what's that what's that about and he's just like oh I don't know it's a bit strange I don't really understand it that's all anyone around me has ever said about it really which is like I don't know it's a bit unusual that isn't it like nobody really

seems to know. It has this mystique around it. And yeah, so I've never really come to any thoughts about it either, but I've never listened to it that often. And then, you know, I come to it now, and I've got my own sensibilities. And, you know, on paper, oh boy, does this have a lot of cards stacked against it?

You know, it's a spoken word treatise essentially on the human condition by a then popular, quite artsy, cool director of modernized Shakespeare plays and the likes of Moulon Rouge and stuff like that. And it's

seven minutes long and again is entirely, almost entirely I should say, spoken word. On paper, I should really hate this. This is like everything I don't like in my music. You know, overly lengthy, too talky, very pretentious

and it's made as a kind of vanity project, which no real pop star ever would have got the chance to do something like this. And all of those things are kind of true, but I love this. And I'm really like taking aback by how much I love it. And I think the key to why it works for me is actually, I think in order to love this, I have to entirely ignore that whole idea of this being a pastiche,

or this being tongue-in-cheek, you know, being a bit of apistic. Because I don't think, I agree with Ed. I think if that's the intent, it doesn't work on that level. at all. I think it works straightforwardly as text rather than subtext. And the thing that really makes it work for me is that this is almost entirely very genuinely good advice

that's worth listening to. I'm not an old person, but I wouldn't say I'm a young person either anymore. And I listen to this now and think, yeah, this is all like exactly what you want to be saying to young people who are starting out in life. This is such good advice. And it's not too philosophical, it's not pretentious, it's not abstract. It's a lot of it's quite practical. And even when it's quite philosophical, it's still doing so about tangible things, about like,

oh, well, you may be married to someone who's wealthy, but you never know when that will end. You know, it's only philosophical to a point, and largely it's about your outlook on life and how you should prioritize things in your life and how you should sort things into piles. And I listen to it and I think, this is really, really good advice. like if I'd listen to this and took this in, you know, this would have really set me on a good course. Not that I'm not on a good course, but it's just, it's just really good things to hear. And it's so kind. Like, again, all of it, every single piece of advice that's given in this is really warm and really kind and really non-judgmental.

But sort of, you know, it's often saying, I see why you might not want to do this. And I see why you might want to be a bit harsher to yourself than this. But don't. It's okay. It's all going to be okay. like don't be so hard on yourself like so many of the things that it says are couched in you know don't be too nasty to yourself you know like it's got that kind of other side to it where it's like well you know use your body as much as you want but don't use it if you don't want to or you know

don't be too soft on yourself but don't berate yourself either you know like be ambitious but don't pressure yourself like there is real value and real kindness and real heart and sort of being said here, there's a sincerity that makes you feel very safe and makes you feel like this is someone who is worth listening to. And that piece that's taken from, that written piece, I think is just really, really great. It's really essential reading, to be honest. And I think that the fact that it uses that, that it's not silly. It's not, you know, kippy-dippy, you know, kind of abstract feng shui kind of stuff. It's stuff that, like Ed says, you could use for mindfulness that you think, right, it's about centering yourself in the here and now and think about,

what can I actually control on what will make me happy? What can add to my pile of good things and what can remove itself from my pile of bad things? The simplicity in so much of what it says as well, where I love that some of them, they tend to come, it's just good sentence structure, they tend to come after quite long sentences, and then it's just something like travel, you know, just that. Like, just something really straightforward. And I think that's great. Pretty much the only bit I don't like that, because I think almost all of it's got no wealth barrier, it's got no class barrier, no intelligence, intelligence barrier and no pressure to it. I just don't like the live in New York for a bit,

live in California for a bit, because people, you know, can't always choose to do that. That's basically it. But I think the actual spoken word piece is just wonderful to listen to. It really like sits and makes it, it captures my attention and makes me feel like I'm in this kind of liminal space where like sort of like I'm being spoken to by God or something, reassuring me that I'm sort of on the right track and that it's okay, you don't have to be so hard on yourself. So I think it's really life affirming and I think I do understand why this was popular but I just don't understand how it got there in the first place to be honest I don't think it's perfect despite the fact that I don't think it's too long at all and that to me you know a song that's over seven minutes usually I

would have real questions to ask about that I don't think it's too long at all I just don't think the vocals the um the sung choruses are necessary I think I think they really sap the momentum I agree both times that happened I found myself thinking I just want to get back to to I want to get back to the spoken word piece. I just want to get back to it. It doesn't need those vocals at all. I think that was a kind of like, Great Gig in the Sky kind of touch that they're going for there,

like just to kind of break it up a bit, but just not necessary to me at all. So I think it's close to a masterpiece, to be honest, and it's really, really struck me. And definitely has sort of left me thinking about things. And you know what? A lot of what it says in the song, that's kind of what I believe.

That's kind of what I've been doing. nice to hear that. And it feels like a gentle arm around your shoulder that just gives you reassurance. And there is a lot of sneering at self-help and there is a lot of sneering at stuff like this. And, you know, people assuming that it's trite or, you know, whatever, you know, like anyone can tell you that. But I will say, if you're in a position in life where you don't need to hear any of this stuff, then good for you. You're very, very lucky. There are plenty of us out there who need to hear these kind of things. You need to be told, yeah, do this, do that. you're doing quite well in life.

And, you know, in this area, you might want to look a bit harder. People need this kind of stuff. Self-help is successful because people want it, people need it, people use it, people feel a benefit from it. It's a valid market. So don't turn your nose up at things. And when something like this exists and is popular, it's because people are getting actual value from it.

So that whole argument of how it's just trite and it's just silly. You know, I can just dismiss that straight away by saying, well, it's just self-evidence. You know, people really get something from it. this. So I totally ignore the irony side of it. I take this as sincere and take this as at face value. And in that sense, I think it's extremely wholesome, extremely worthwhile, a great use of seven minutes. And other than a few unnecessary bits, mostly with the song vocals, I think this is really something very, very special and so different to anything else that we've ever covered that it will really kind of bloom-in-harching the memory for me. What a wonderful thing to have

had at number one. You covered a load of things that I'm like, oh, bugger, I wish I'd said that. But no, beautiful. Cheers. No, just, yeah, just really, really enjoyed listening to this. I don't like this as much as YouTube, but I do enjoy it. This is a curious one. I think not being exposed to this at the time by any metric, really, I don't remember this at all from being four and five years old, and sort of having to wait until I was about 25 to hear it has probably spared me the years I could have spent becoming a bit irritated by it. Because I've read some very harsh and stern criticism of this. But as much as I can see where those people are coming from,

they think that it is too ironic to be truly sincere and too much of a play thing and an experiment to be felt deep inside. I don't share the same animosity. And I'm not sure I totally agree. I think, you know, being in a frothy era of pop as we are, coming off the back of Bozoin and Westlife last week, having something like this dropped into my lap and being told that it's a number one single,

was it a bit of a nice surprise, to be honest, something that lacks any obvious or clear structure that's literally just an essay, but yet by this writer, Mary Schmitt, you know, being read over light, down-tempo lounge stuff for five or seven minutes, depending on the version you get to, that's being done by the guy

coming off the back of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet and is currently working on Mulan Rouge, like it's a very interested and odd combination of things and definitely not the kind of formula that you would expect for a number one single. So there's that angle. I think though, with all that information digested, I feel like I've only really seen people have two reactions and one of the reactions is, oh my God, what? That sounds ridiculous. No. Or they go, oh, well, that sounds curious. Let's see what that's like. And then from there, think your relationship with the song can kind of be set in. In a weird way, this feels a bit like a continuation of the success that White Town had, where, you know, it became an early example

of like a viral hit where it got passed around chat rooms and eventually made its way to the radio and TV and became sort of a novelty hit sort of by word of mouth and here we are, you know, and I don't mind that kind of chart journey for something like this, you know, again, if the self-awareness and the slight irony of the original essay maybe rubs you the wrong way or if you find that the song places far too much importance and seriousness on itself on what may just be a thought experiment and maybe misses the irony in its own material if that's the way that you feel i could understand that but i don't know i think there are moments in this where the advice given out is pretty trustworthy and yeah like you two said provides a decent framework

that i think if anybody was to genuinely set their life value or their life values by by this i don't think they do too badly i think you know it provides you a few get-out clauses in places, I think, for basically every bit of advice that it gives, which I'm not sure if that's part of a joke or if that's just kind of making the point that, like, look, maybe don't live your life in one direction or another.

Maybe your life is about trying to find balance, and it's about, you know, instead of going all out, instead of, you know, put on as much sun cream as you want, don't do that in moderation, but then the rest of it is sort of like, look, that's backed up by science and by data, so do that. of this next stuff can't really be quantified. It's just stuff I've learned. Well, as I say, there are no conclusions. It carefully couches it in that sort of...

I don't know if any irony was intended, but I mean, you know, the original author was very careful to lay out the fact that it's like, look, this isn't empirical stuff. I'm not basically telling you anything that's like a strict ABC guide to doing things. But a lot of it is just basically accepting that there are no conclusions. It's basically telling us what we already know, but that it's okay to actually fall back into these things of like, we don't know. Who knows?

Maybe that will work. Maybe it won't. This is the same way that every single creature in the universe has existed since the beginning of time. Why are we so, why are we trying to battle this? Yeah, I found some of the, the heavier and meaner criticism a little bit, I don't know,

a little bit strange, I could appreciate people being maybe put off by the form that the content is delivered in, but the content itself just seemed like, kind of, yeah, kind of balanced, universally accepted things. For some reason, yeah, it ended up being credited to Kurt Vonnegut

for ages, which means that people maybe did deem it as kind of, you know, if they're giving credit to him, you know, a very established author and a very, you know, acclaimed author and a figure that everybody really loved, you know, then, you know, people clearly did see some kind of philosophical message that was worth hearing in it, you know, it did make me question whether, you know, some people maybe didn't hear the final line of the song at the time, because

I feel like one of the things I really like about this is that right at the end, it just says advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it as a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. And I think that there is that thing that comes in at the end, where it's like, well, look, I have given you all of this advice, but also at the same time, like, I am just a person. You know, I do think it works on a lot of levels,

and I do think it is deeply, I do think it's more complex than a lot of its naysayers and detractors seem to think. And as you can sort of tell, I've had a hard time working out exactly how much the song buys into its sincerity or its irony and the angle that we're meant to take away. But I've settled on thinking that it is ultimately kind of both.

Like I think you're meant to approach it like a modern religious person would. Were you to, you know, if you were a modern religious person where you employ in your life the pieces of advice from your sacred text that matter to you. And you can just ignore the rest. You can accept that they were books written several thousand years ago by men who lived in different times in different countries in different classes and all.

all that stuff. Some of their lessons are worth it and other bits of their lessons maybe aren't. I kind of wish a female voice actor have been chosen to perform this because I think it would suit a motherly tone over the voice actor that we do have and maybe getting Mary Schmitt in might have maybe found a better balance because it's

her material and so maybe she would have found a better way to deliver it, but I don't know. There's something interesting about this and I also think it reminded me a little bit of like plundafonicky stuff like the avalanches or maybe even Buffalo gals or that Desi Derrata from the 70s, you know, that kind of, you know,

there's a bit of a spoken word bit that's advice mixed with spirituality, then a vocal, then, you know, that, you know, we're all children of the universe, that kind of thing. Or, you know, there's also part of me thinking that this would play over footage of, like, a genocide in an Adam Curtis documentary so that, like, Adam Curtis could hammer home the tragedy of a massacre by juxtaposing it against all this peaceful and spiritual, you know, one love, one universe kind of thing. But like, those are all the kinds of images that came to my mind. And that's normally a good sign that I actually really enjoyed something.

If those are the kinds of images that come to my head, you know, stuff I already like, stuff I already, you know, that evoke deep feelings in me. And so, yeah, it isn't going to end up in the vault for me, but it is only just missing. It is only just missing. And maybe with more time, maybe with more time it may have done. And maybe if I had heard it back in the day

instead of only about five years ago or six years ago for the first time, maybe I would have had a deeper connection with it over time. But I think, yeah, reading a lot of the criticism of this just made me think like, I think you'll be in a bit mean. I think you'll being a bit uncharitable for what this is.

And yeah, who knew that the guy that made Moulin Rouge and Australia and the Great Gatsby and all of those films that I really, really struggle with this is the thing of his that I would like the most. Yeah, in some ways that is part of the struggle. I think because it is someone who is, you know,

certainly from the less complimentary critics regarded as being, you know, bring me your legends and I will turn them into, you know, tinsel. I'll turn them into, you know, very, very flashy decoration, which is a simplification. I'm 100% sure, but there is that aspect that hangs over this, nonetheless. It is interesting. I just, you know, I've realized we've spent a long time on this, but hey, if we're going to spend a while on any song this week, this is probably the one,

and I use the word song loosely, I did not know that that wasn't the end of the original piece. And that, I'm glad you inserted the final part there, because it's interesting. Looking at it, I'm like, oh, well, it does, initially you might say, well, it does seem to, you know, detract from what she's saying and the rest of it and say all of this is worthless. But yeah, I think you're right. Rob, she's not saying that. She's just saying, you know, I don't know. I don't know any of this, but she says that at the beginning. So it's almost like a bookend.

But I think it's super interesting that Basilemon chose to cut that bit out and instead have some vocals to extend the song at the end. So it's like, I don't want to win this on the bad note. It's almost like he wanted it to be taken literally and straight up. If he really wanted to have his cake and eat it and be seen as super clever, he would have just sort of done like a record scrap skip moment at the end and just said, all advice is bullshit. You know, watch Australia.

That would be very, very family guy epoch of him now, wouldn't it? Yeah. Anyway, let's... What a lovely weird thing to rediscover anyway. Yes. And now a song, the sincerity of the message at least could not probably not be questioned. It's this. Okay, this is Bring It All Back by S Club 7.

Released as the lead single from the group's debut studio album titled S Club, Bring It All Back is S Club 7's first single to chart in the UK and their first to reach number one. It's not S Club 7's last number one, but it is their last number one of the 1990s. Bring It All Back 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 190,000 copies beating competition from Beautiful Stranger by Madonna and Doodar by cartoons. When it was knocked off the top of the charts, Bring It All Back, dropped one place to number two. It stayed inside the top 104's 16 weeks.

The single is currently officially certified platinum in the UK. As of 2026, here we go. One of those weird things about this era of pop as well, where S Club 7 were actually a bunch of actors on a TV show before they were a pop group. I wonder if Nigel Lithgow was listening. So Andy, S Club 7. Yeah, I mean, it should be me to it,

but anyone who's been listening to our show for a long time knows that, well, I won't speak for Ed, because he hasn't had a chance to cover them yet, but that we are all pretty much big fans, or at least very fond of S Club 7, as an idea at the very least. and Miami 7 is a very nice, fun, a little bit of Kim Fuller writing

with some very nice characters in it. As a debut single, I mean, we've just had everybody's free to wear sunscreen, which is, you know, so weird. And this is the opposite of weird, isn't it? If you honest, this is extremely straight down the line, fun and friendly 1999 bubble gun pop. And in that sense, it succeeds absolutely.

You know, it succeeds in its goals just as much as Bazelan did. which I think is a sentence nobody's really said about S Club 7 before. This really is 1999 to me this because it's one of the years I remember one of the first years

sorry I should say that I actually remember because anything before 1990, I remember a bit of a blur but 1999 is pretty solid in my memory and that's especially that summer of 1999 where a lot of these songs were out and certainly a lot of the songs next week

were out. very vivid in my head and this is it really is just symbolic of all here it seems like a sort of permanent summer is going on that everything's super smiling and happy and I do think there's something to that smiling happy vibe that all three

songs this week if we are to take everybody's three as sincere all three songs this week are very positive very sweet very nice very optimistic and I do think that was generally the feeling around 1999 with the millennium coming up and a lot of cheery happy pop music, it was just a nice time to be alive, to be honest. And I think this

really kind of gets that feeling. And I think there was not really any other time before or after this that you could get away with quite this level of Tui, happy friendly, you know, sunshine lollipops and rainbows kind of sound, to be honest. But it kind of meets the moment and kind of proves that it's real, to be honest, where people getting on board with them so much. And, you know, they would have many more uber cheesy songs. But I don't think any of them really hit quite as spot on as this. And they only really become relevant again when they have Don't Stop Moving, which is them, you know, becoming authentic and becoming cool.

But I don't think there's that much to say about this other than that, like, I like that they didn't start with S Club Party, that they wanted us to have this as a kind of aperitif first where we get, you know, we're like, who are they? I like this. That was fun. Let's watch that TV show. And then you get S Club Party that's like, that's the hey, hey, where the monkeys. You know, that's their kind of big branding exercise that they do.

I like that they just start with an actual song before they nakedly become the business objects that they are. But, yeah, it's fun, it's catchy, it has nice messages to it. Almost everyone in the band, I think, gets a few lines here and there and get to, like, visibly sing them in the video. And it's a great companion piece to the TV show. And it just has that feeling to me of endless summer that I associate with 1999.

So it brings back happy memories. for me this. And to that extent, it serves its purpose because I don't think I'm alone at all in associating this with very happy, very positive, very light memories. What you said there about 1999 had basically being an endless summer is something I felt looking ahead at the list, because basically all of the songs that we cover from this point are like, we're either, you know, going to Abitha, or we're just back from Ibiza, or we're just going on an all-inclusive holiday to Mayorka, or we're just back from on an all-inclusive holiday in Mayorka. All of the songs are either Latin or dance or Mediterranean in some way.

There was something about that year. There was. I don't know what it was. I think maybe it's a combination of actors that maybe we had a lot of nice weather or something, that we were right off the back of Kul Britannia, you know, the whole wave ridden by Spice Girls and the rejuvenation of James Bond and also, you know, the blur government coming in, which seemed to as a nation, cheer us all up for at least a little while

and the millennium being right around the corner and it just felt like a very positive time there was something about this year and especially that summer where it just seemed like a month's long party and I've spoken to other people about here who've said the saying that they remember 1989 as being like a very special

kind of moment in time for some reason yeah it's really I'm really happy that I remember it because there was something about that year yeah Ed, S Club 7, how are we feeling? Well, if I may, for a moment, paraphrase the structuralist thinker and music critic, Theodore Adorno, it's party time at Coldland. No, that is very harsh.

It's just a bit of fun. It's very warm. God, I hate Adorno. Sorry. No, God, so do I. I just wanted to do a little pompous intro. I had to write about it for years when I did my music. degree and certainly in my masses I just think he talks absolutely

bollocks and he needs to touch some grass so sorry yeah I mean is it party time at coldland Adorno I'm not sure it is you body denying twerp anyway yeah it's fun this track so from what Adorno may have said it is I think a little bit too squeaky in its realisation and it's not it's no don't stop moving But to my eyes, what is, that would be an easy-peasy vault. But yes, I've, you know, that was long before my time on the show. Sorry, in my head, I've just gone, Don't stop moving is an easy-peasy vault.

Dare we say, don't stop moving to the Ed Club before. I rest my case. What are we talking about? Right, okay. Yeah, it's a really solid bit of sort of Jackson 5-ish pop. If steps are going for Haber, these are very much going for the Jackson 5 connection. I very much like the glistando up to the key change at the end, you know. I've complained about it before.

It's a bit of an obvious touch in some of these things when you run out of ideas. You just pump it up a couple of steps. But she goes, uh, it's almost proto-Kaiser chiefs except completely. It's proto-glee. They would do that all the time. I don't know if there's something with Simon. Fuller and some of the songwriters and Glead, there's any DNA in common there,

but it became a very common way of realizing a key change. And you're right that this is one of the earlier examples I can think of of doing that. I'm unfortunately not too aware of the Glee Sander, at least not yet. So I thought I was just a bit of a nifty way of disguising a very obvious kind of move. But yeah, it is fun. It is squeaky.

It is a bit supermarket. And all of that, like, move your bath stuff is, oh, to say it's obtrusive, is it, is an understatement. Oh, bless, they've just really, they've not quite found the balance yet. It's all a bit too up. It's all a bit too primary colour and, you know, let's play in the Wendy House. And I think their best stuff was just a little bit, you know, I know, I know they've marketed towards kids, but it was just a little bit more light and shade to it than that. and you know

I don't have that much to say on this one but it's good isn't it it's fun it's well crafted and it's well performed it's just it feels a little bit shallow compared to some of their latest stuff

I know that seems to be not talking about as Club 7 as much stuff being incredibly kind to it I do agree I'd like most of my kindness has been you know quite well more than quite

it's been extremely heavily based in nostalgia and I think I think the point about them being too child friendly and too siftly sweet. I think it's true and I do think that like in the moments where they let themselves show a little bit of maturity and a little bit of emotional complexity, I think they really come to life. I'm not even talking about Don't Stop Moving. I think the song two in a million is really, really nice and it's the right kind of balance where it's still very sweet and

it's still very chart friendly and still very kid friendly. But it has some nuance to it. And when they use it in Miami 7 for a breakup song, like a sort of happy breakup song, like a I will always love you type breakup. I think that works really, really well. So they do have moments, even in the very earliest days, where they get the balance right. This doesn't. I agree with you on that. Yeah. To be fair, I mean, most of the rest of the stuff I've heard, they at least sound like, you know, tweens or teenagers, that kind of thing. Whereas this does sound a bit like, you know, nursery teachers, you know what I mean? Oh, what's in that book? And that's not really a vibe that they had anywhere else, as far as I'm aware. Yeah, it does feel a bit happy and, you know,

definitely. Ah, hello, my childhood. Nice to really have you here now, my childhood. To start with on this, listening to it right after everybody's free to wear sunscreen made me realize that both songs are essentially the same in terms of their lyrical content. It's just advice pop. One is set to moody background tempo, moody background down tempo stuff, and the other is set to bright poppy kids' TV music.

I had a lot of fun this week where I have taken the instrumental to sunscreen before reading out the lyrics to this one in a very slow, deadpan, pitch-down voice and you'll hear that in about five or ten minutes when the episode finishes. But that's where the similarities do sort of end, because where one is background stuff

for kind of a corporate presentation sort of thing in terms of its vibe, a bit like Enigma, way back when S-Clubs is literally the theme tune to a kid's TV show. and boy can you tell I've been talking a lot recently about this era of pop being particularly

frothy suitable for little CDs barely any bass presence everything's up top and designed for the CD players of the time after the Spice Girls this is definitely a bit of a step down for Simon Fuller in terms of the acts that he managed but I don't know

S Club they've always been alright for my money I was obsessed with them as a very small child and a lot of their other stuff is, you know, it's in my memory, I suppose, but that doesn't mean that a lot of their stuff isn't kind of mixed for me these days, but with their big singles, I think they hit a decent mark, and I think this is another one of those decent marks.

It's not a winner by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a loser for me either. It does feel like the kind of music they play to soothe me after having a lobotomy or electroshock or something, it does feel a bit like they've ingested a mainlined Prozac to the point where a normal human body probably couldn't cope with it. The boys get basically nothing to do and it sounds a bit cheap and cheerful, but this does have a similar appeal to lots of songs we've had on here down the years

where you can overlook a real, a lack of emotional resonance, shall we say, because the writing is just about strong enough, I think. You know, it establishes a mood, stays in that mood for the first verse, but then it nicely shifts down a little into a different gear for the pre-chorus. kind of, don't you know, it's true what they say. You know, it just leans on it a bit so that it can then resolve by coming back to the chorus, and it runs around that a couple of times. Great. There's a nice Motown-ish sound to this. Admittedly, Motown sound via some kind of plug-and-play keyboard from like Hasbro Play School. But, you know, it's there, it's present. It is, I want you back,

but with all the kind of detail rubbed out and kind of simplified a bit, it's one of a few times, though, that we've come across one of the writers, Elliot Kennedy, who did say you'll be there for the Spice Girls, everything changes for Take That, when you're gone for Brian Adams and Mel C, picture of you for Bozoin. So like, you know, is an experienced pair of hands,

you can tell, it doesn't do anything to surprise me or delight me anymore, but it doesn't do anything to bother me or upset me either. The key change feels a little awkward at first, but I think once it settles into that keychain, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, of course, it should go up like this because it's for a kids' TV show. And it sounds like it should, you know, it sounds like this is the point where it should be

arriving at. So yeah, I'm fine with this. You know, I'm totally all right with it. I think it is completely fine. Not, not vault material for me, really. The only one that is vault for vault material for me this week is sweet like chocolate, shanks and bigfoot. So Ed, yeah, sweet like chocolate. Everybody's free to wear sunscreen and bring it. or back where we're standing on all of those? It's sweet like chocolate, perhaps, but it doesn't quite have the ravishing length of a good high cocoa tasting chocolate.

It's more sweet-like milker or something, which is, you know, it's nice, it's nice, but it's not quite enough to my mind to reach the Pop Pantheon pantry we call the vault. Everyone's free to wear sunscreen is a delightfully weird thing, as I mentioned in, painful detail, I'll take it at face value and put it in my vault, alongside 5D by the birds and

life of surprises by Prefap Sprout, and the subsidised pile of incense and matcher that I presumably stick up my bum haul. As for Bring It All Back, I like the way Sclob thinks, but I feel they yet to fully bloom. I mean, this is a little bit pastel-coloured and crechey for my liking. It also, you know, it does harm it somewhat that I was well, far more outside

the target audience at the time than you folks were, but yeah, they'd get there. And this is still a decent song. It's very well-constructed. It's very upbeat, very catchy, very memorable, but it needs a little more jaggedness to break through into that there. vault. Andy, shanks and bigfoot, Baz Luhrmann and S Club 7.

Well, I mean, first of all that fuss made about bozoing, but I mean, Sclob, that's a fucking top draw comedy, that. I'm having that forever. That's brilliant. So I'm not going to do my usual puns because I don't want to just do it in a slightly different way this week, which is that this is a triple balter for me. This is that rarest thing that I'm vaulted all through this week. Because, I mean, Maybe I'm being slightly kind to slob there and potentially slightly kind to the other two as well. I don't think any of them are like absolute knockouts, but I think they're all in their own way, very sweet and really capture what is an extremely fondly remembered year for me. I think, as I've said, you know, 1999, as far as I'm concerned, was an extremely nice year to live through.

It was a really nice time to be alive. and I think I was particularly lucky to be a child during those times and to be able to look through the world with a child's eyes at the time that this atmosphere was like almost tangible in the air it was such a kind of positive party atmosphere and I think all three of these songs represent that kind of wholesomeness that kindness, that sense of fun and sense of joy that was around at the time all three of them really made me feel like I'm back in 99

again and so they all fit their purpose they all do it in three different ways and they're all great songs in their own way. So it's a triple vault for me, and what a lovely time this episode has been. Yeah. So when we come back next time, we'll be continuing our journey through the last year of the 1990s,

and to play you out is my very fun... Well, I had a lot of fun making it. I don't know if it'll be fun to listen to, but yeah, it's this mash-up slash remix of everybody's free to wear sunscreen and bring it all back, so have fun with that, and we'll see you next time.

And I'm going to unofficially title it. Everybody's free to West's Glob screen. Right now, you'll miss us when we're gone. Don't stop. Never give up. Hold your head high and reach the top. Let the world see what you have got. Bring it all back to you.

Hold on to what you try to be. Your individuality. When the world is on your shoulders, just smile and let it go. If people try to put you down, just walk on by, don't turn around. You only have to answer to yourself. Don't you know it's true what they say

that life, it ain't easy, but your time is coming around. So don't you stop trying. Try not to worry about a thing. Enjoy the good times love can bring. Keep it all inside you. Gotta let the feelings show. Imagination is the key,

because you are your own destiny. You should never be lonely when time is on your side. Don't stop. Never give up. Hold your head high and reach the top. Let the world see what you have got. Bring it all back to you.