The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
It’s “Missing”
by Everything But The Girl (Todd Terry Remix)
The saddest banger of all time.
Written by the saddest pop duo of all time.
With the saddest band backstory of all time. Well, almost. I mean – spoiler alert – the guy, Ben Watt, almost dies. And the girl, Tracey Thorn… don’t expect to see her smiling a lot.
Fortunately then, it started with a joke. I mean, it must’ve been a joke, right? That name?
Everything But The Girl took their name from the slogan of a furniture story in Hull.
Turner’s Furniture Store. It no longer exists.
“For your bedroom needs, we sell everything but the girl”, the slogan said, and it became so well-known they were able to shorten it to just “Everything But The Girl.”
Despite making it crystal clear that they did not actually sell girls, guys would still wander into Turner’s Furniture Store asking if they could buy a girl.
You better believe I have questions.
As you might expect from a duo who named themselves after an old furniture store with an equally antiquated sense of humour, Everything But The Girl were themselves a slightly old-fashioned kind of pop group:
Their first single had been a bossa nova cover of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day.” Back in the 80s, back before they became properly famous, Everything But The Girl played a lot of bossa nova.
Given that to the vast majority of the human race, Everything But The Girl are known as 90s one-hit-wonders, it may be surprising to learn just how much of an 80s band they had originally been. So 80s in fact that their debut album – Eden– had been reviewed in 1984, on a TV show called 8 Days A Week, by… wait for it…
George Michael and Morrissey!
George liked the single but thought the album dragged on a bit. Morrissey liked the album but not the single. Here’s the single:
It was a moderate hit. Everything But The Girl had a lot of moderate hits.
They were a cult act for neo-beatniks and sophisti-poppers in search of a sad Spandau Ballet; an unsexy Sade, a not-shit Simply Red. They had enough of a following that they were pretty much guaranteed to always get about halfway up the UK charts, if rarely very much further.
Even earlier than that, Tracey had been a member of – and sometimes sang in, although not very often, for she was rather shy and inflicted by stage fright – the Marine Girls.
Who appear to have been rather cheerier. I don’t think Tracey is singing on this one though. I think it’s their other singer, Alice Fox.
So… Everything But The Girl had formed in the 80s, and Ben and Tracey, pretty much instantly, became a couple.
Several sources:
Wikipedia for example: infer that their relationship was a secret.
That they never played up, or even announced that they were a couple until decades later, when they finally got married. I don’t know where they got that information from, because I’m pretty sure everybody knew.
A quick look through old newspaper clippings indicates that at least half of the profiles and reviews of the band in the 80s and 90s mentioned that they were “romantic as well as musical partners”, or “partners in life as well as in music”, or, if the journalist was feeling particularly poetic, “been making beautiful music together for years.”
Also, there’s photos such as this, from about the same time as “Missing.”
And one article, in 1996, even claimed that they had gotten divorced, which makes sense considering their song.
But this is not something that has ever been mentioned by any other publication, as far as I know.
So they were definitely a couple.
They even looked like a couple.
The same way people start to look like their pets.
So being a couple was definitely part of their image. As was… look, there’s no polite way to put this, so I’ll just farm it off to another critic – Ross Raihala, writing for The Forum in Fargo – who claimed that Tracey was “a bit of an ugly duckling” but this “further add(ed) poignancy to her tales of sorrow.”
By the mid-90s Tracey and Ben had lived a lot of tales of sorrow.
This is the point of the story where Ben almost dies – he could have been dead, he always was two steps ahead – of a scary sounding auto-immune disease called eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, which indeed appears to be as scary as it sounds.
You can read all about it in his book – Patient: The True Story Of A Rare Illness – featuring a cover that could only have been designed in 1996.
Even if you weren’t sure exactly what Ben’s condition was, or how to spell eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, it’s difficult to look at photos of the two during the 90s without coming to the conclusion that they were going through a lot.
Here’s Ben describing his eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis experience:
“What it involves is an over-responsive, hypersensitive immune system, which at a critical point in one’s life starts to no longer rationally respond to invasion, whether it’s virus, bacteria or allergy.
In my case, it was an allergy. My immune system just went crazy and started to attack my own body. It was a freakish, science-fiction sort of illness that caused a lot of destruction in my intestinal tissue before the doctors realized what was going on.”
Eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis also seems to involve losing a lot of weight. Whenever Ben takes off his shirt in the “Missing” video – and he does that so much, you’d think that he was Marky Mark – it’s a harrowing sight. You can count pretty much every one of his ribs.
Ben referred to his new body as “a Kate Moss physique.”
So this is the mood Ben and Tracey were in, when they released Amplified Heart in 1994, featuring the original version of “Missing,” a song so desolate – like a desert missing the rain – that not even the constant presence of woodblocks can cheer it up.
Even Todd Terry couldn’t cheer it up.
Even though, as one of the original innovators of house music, cheering people up was pretty much his whole job description. Todd Terry had been around for almost as long as Everything But The Girl, spinning wax in New York, working on so many remixes that his Discogs entry goes on for something like 30 pages.
Amongst house aficionados he’d a legend. Amongst everyone else he’d a name in parentheses on a one-hit wonder.
That’s sad. But not as sad as “Missing.”
Somehow the contrast between Todd Terry’s house beats and Tracey’s plaintive vocals made “Missing” sound even more desolate than the woodblocks version. And if you think that “like the deserts miss the rain” is the saddest lyric Tracey can come up with, you have underestimated just how far her woe can go.
It’s been years, but Tracey is still passing your door – hanging around your old address – even though you don’t live there anymore.
Tracey might be like a desert, but you are in “outer space”, an even more desolate environment, and the only place Tracey can conceive of you being, given that you have disappeared out of her life, all of a sudden, one day, without even saying goodbye. Or, when even that doesn’t seem to be a sufficient explanation: “could you be dead?”
Listening to “Missing” you have to wonder: what exactly did Tracey do to you to make you want to disappear yourself, change your whole identity, go into a witness protection program? This is some next level ghosting!
The video is just as sad, even during those moments when Ben keeps his shirt on.
There are few visuals quite as depressing as the sight of Tracey huddled on her couch, too distraught to even watch the soft-core sex tape on the TV.
And that’s when Everything But The Girl decided to become a dance act… of sorts, releasing a whole album of sad-dance tracks: Walking Wounded. The title not impossibly a reference to Ben’s health status. The album cover featuring the couple in a taxi – presumedly on the way to a rave, but still not looking as though they were expecting to have much fun.
With some Japanese characters in the corner, to make it look more futuristic.
Given that they had previously been an indie-band with jazz pretentions, Walking Wounded was a surprisingly successful attempt at creating a sad dance record. Even more surprisingly, Ben seems to have taken care of the beats himself – he was DJing at drum’n’bass nights in both London and New York at the time, so he knew what he was doing – despite having the members of Massive Attack on speed-dial.
The reason Everything But The Girl had the members of Massive Attack on speed-dial was because – at about the same time as “Missing” was blowing up on charts around the world:
Tracey appeared on one of their tracks:
“Protection:”
Singing about how she felt about Ben and his impossible to pronounce medical condition, (it’s a 9), and featuring in a video which makes living in a housing estate look like a puppet show (the video is a 10.)
After all of that: “that” being two sad dance-y hits in about as many months – it was almost inevitable that Tracey and Ben would decide that this was the sort of music they should be making. It was, after all 1995, and the pop world was reaching Peak-Trip-Hop.
On a single like “Single” for example they didn’t even need to change their sound too much. Tracey already sounded sadder than Portishead’s Beth Gibbons. All they had to do was replace their bossa nova bongos with some breakbeats.
Also, Ben may have figured out the secret to career longevity in the pop game:
“If you stand still for too long, people will start to gun you down for exactly what you do.
The kind of artists I like are those that do have a central core to their work, but who have the mental capability to adapt other forms to their sound, like Paul Simon or Prince.”
In the case of Everything But The Girl that central core was sad songs about deserts missing the rain. As long that they kept to that sad-girl core, it barely mattered if Tracey was singing to bongos or breakbeats.
“Missing (Todd Terry Remix)” is an 8.
Meanwhile, in Dancehall Land…
It’s “Boombastic”
by Shaggy
After that, I think you are going to be wanting some cheering up.
What you want is a Boombastic Fantastic Lover!!!
SHAGGY!!!!!
- AKA Mr Lover-Lover himself…
- AKA MR ROMAN…. TIC!!!!!
The very existence of Shaggy begs so many questions. Such as:
- Was that actually his voice?
- Did he actually talk like that?
- A voice that it seems compulsory to describe as either “gravelly” or “gruff?”
And the answer is:
No.
The Shaggy voice is not Shaggy’s real voice (neither is Shaggy’s name his real name, which is Orville) It’s not even a real Jamaican accent. Not exactly. Do not go down to Jamaica and expect everyone to be sounding like Shaggy. Shaggy was not trying to sound Jamaican when he came up with the Shaggy accent:
Instead he was impersonating the drill instructors that he had to deal with when he was in the Marines.
Shaggy was in the Marines because he couldn’t find any other job, and also because he thought the uniform would help him get laid. He wasn’t aware that the Marines was supposed to be the most hardcore of the forces. He only found out when the drill instructors started screaming in his face.
Shaggy ended up being sent to fight Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War, which, as he remembers it:
“I mean, the war only went on for three days–the rest was just most of the guys sitting around playing cards.”
Only three days?
Clearly, the Republican Guard were no match for such a Boombastic Fantastic Fighter!
I don’t know about you, but I cannot for the life of me listen to Shaggy and think “oh, that’s totally supposed to be a drill sergeant.” It’s way too friendly for one thing. But now I want to find this drill instructor with the original Shaggy voice. I suspect, however, that it’s impossible.
Does the drill instructor even know?
Did he hear “Boombastic” on the radio and think, “Damn that Orville, I’m going to give him a hundred push ups!”
Shaggy first used that Shaggy voice on “Oh Carolina”, a cover of an old – as in from 1958 – Jamaican classic that had originally been produced by Prince Buster.
Once it became a hit, Shaggy sighed: “I’m faced with the situation that I’m gonna have to sing every song like that.” (“Oh Carolina” is an 8.)
Which, presumedly, is where “Boombastic” came in.
After finding himself with a big hit with that voice, Shaggy needed to invent a character to go along with it. Shaggy needed to invent Mr. Boombastic AKA Mr. Lover Lover AKA… you know the rest.
A lovable rogue of a character, who:
- Is smooth, just like the silk.
- Who’s soft and cuddly, hug him up like a quilt.
- Who’s just like a turtle coming out-a his shell.
- Who can take rejection – so you tell him go to hell.
Except in the charts.
Shaggy was determined that he would not be rejected in the charts. Not for Shaggy being consigned to the ranks of one-hit-wonderdom.
For that had been the fate of all the dancehall hit makers that had come before him:
- Ini Kamoze had been a One Hit Wonder with “Here Comes The Hotstepper.”
- Snow had been a One Hit Wonder with “Informer.”
And just in case a white Canadian singing dancehall wasn’t weird enough, there was an Indian dude from Birmingham, rapping in a Jamaican accent, calling himself Apache Indian, and he was a One Hit Wonder too!
His one hit was “Boom Shak-A-Lak.”
And I’m sure that for like 90% of you, if you remember “Boom Shak-A-Lak” at all – and you may not, as it was not a hit in America – you remember it being a Shaggy record.
I can’t help but feel that there’s a connection between the rise of Shaggy and the fall of Apache Indian, who was basically never heard from again. The world simply wasn’t big enough for two dancehall stars with novelty hits about “Boom” (“Boom Shak-A-Lak” is an 8.)
In avoiding the ‘One Hit Wonder’ tag, Shaggy was both hugely successful, and not so.
You can still find people who refer to Shaggy as a One Hit Wonder. Things get a little confusing however since they can’t seem to agree upon which of Shaggy’s multiple hits is his One Hit. Shaggy ought to be in the Guinness Book Of Records as The One Hit Wonder With The Most One Hits!
To avoid the indignity of being a One Hit Wonder, Shaggy needed to make sure that he was noticed.
And nothing guarantees that people will be paying attention more than starting your new video bursting down the door and announcing yourself “MISTER BOOM-BAS-TIC!!!!!”
Before solidifying your persona with some of the Shaggiest facial expressions ever Shagged:
And just in case that wasn’t enough, he resorted to the cheat-code for hit single supremacy in the 1990s – at least in the UK:
He licensed “Boombastic” for a Levi’s commercial.
Shaggy was willing to do anything to avoid that one-hit-wonder status. The single artwork even included a note “As Featured In The Latest Levi’s Commercial”. (I’ll probably cover another Levi’s ad in a couple of months)
So “Boombastic” became a hit. An even bigger hit than “Oh Carolina.” And now Shaggy was definitely going to have to do every song in that voice. And have people look at him disappointedly if he didn’t speak to them in that voice.
Indeed, the Shaggy-voice would take on a life of its own.
Shaggy-prank calls becoming a feature on the BBC Radio 1 afternoon show. Once, they had Shaggy himself in the studio to help him get the accent right. There’s also a YouTube video out there of Shaggy rating Hollywood attempts at Jamaican accents.
Shaggy’s now the Jamaican accent guy. That’s the role he plays in the world. It must suck.
“Boombastic” is Shaggy’s defining masterpiece.
Given that the rest of his discography consists of a catchphrase/comic-skit and a bunch of unnecessary covers, that might not be saying an awful lot, but in the world of Shaggy hit singles, it’s rated as the best, the best you should get, nothing more, nothing less… a boombastic, fantastic, romantic (well, maybe not quite romantic…) banger! SHAGGY!!!
“Boombastic” is an 8.
Now, for an actual One Hit Wonder (outside of Europe and Japan anyway…)
Meanwhile, in Eurodance-Land…
It’s “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)”
by Scatman John
Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub
Yo da dub dub
Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub
Yo da dub dub
IT’S: THE SCATMAN!
Scatman had originally conquered the European charts in April 1995, the UK charts in May… some of you may have been going…
“Where’s my Scatman?!?! You inflicted the hellscape of “Cotton Eyed Joe” upon us?” But you’re not going to give The Scatman his due?
WHAT KIND OF POP MUSIC HISTORY COLUMN IS THIS?
Well, here he is:
John Scatman, the creator of the best, and then – when success got to his head and he started thinking he was Jesus, or at the very least Bono – the worst, Eurodance records of the decade!
So… who’s The Scatman?
He’s The Scatman!
John Scatman was a man with a stutter. But presumedly you already knew that.
A stutter that mysteriously, but seemingly due to the magical powers of scatting, disappeared whenever he sang. For John Scatman was also a scatter. That, you almost certainly did know.
What you may not have known however, was that Scatman was a jazz pianist of some renown.
Even given that the raters on RateYourMusic are the kind of pretentious snobs who would vote for an avant-garde jazz album above such classics as:
- The Pet Shop Boys Please
- Janet Jackson’s Control
- The Beastie Boys Licence To Ill
…All that suggest serious jazz-cat-cred. And yes, the album does feature scatting.
More curiously it also features lyrics that would end up on “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop).”
You know that whole “while you’re still sleepin’, the saints are still weepin’ ’cause things you call dead haven’t yet had the chance to be born” bit? That bit of “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” always seemed a little bit weird, didn’t it? In the middle of an already weird Eurodance smash?
It makes far more sense on an avant-garde jazz album (or at least it makes no less sense than anything else on the album)
(Oh, if you are looking for the album, it’s under Scatman’s boring birth name of John Larkin:)
But how did a 53-year-old jazz pianist – of some renown – from California manage to create one of the definitive Eurodance hits of all time? The ultimate in scoobie oobie doobie, scoobie doobie melodies?
Well I’m the Professor and all I can tell ya, is that the first step was to move to Berlin, Germany.
For Scatman had moved from California, where nobody cared about jazz anymore, to Berlin, where they kind of still did. Enough to get a decent paying live gig anyway, playing in plush hotels. Scatman also had a manager, who liked his scatting, and tried for years to get him a recording contract; a serious recording contract, on a jazz label.
The problem was, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, very few people in the world actually like scatting. The vast majority of people absolutely loathe scatting, and ridicule it every chance they get. So not only did Scatman have to deal with prejudice against stutterers – as he had ever since he was a child – he had to deal with prejudice against scatterers.
Then, one day, his manager had the idea of “scat-rap.” He apparently had this brain wave in 1986, so even once he’d had the idea, it took a while to actually happen. But eventually Scatman got signed and began to be groomed as the world’s least likely Eurodance star. Which meant that Scatman now had to write a song. But what should that song be about?
“I turned to my wife and said that I had to put this out there, because, if by some fluke it did become a hit and I had to do radio and TV, I wanted it to be known that I am a stutterer.
It was more or less for a self-serving purpose: to make it easier for me.”
Fortunately for Scatman, his stuttering and his scat was the same thing; it was all part of the same inspirational origin story of how he was able to accept his stutter, and through accepting his stutter, learn to accept himself.
“I had to find some other way to speak, I found that I could speak a lot easier and say a lot more through playing music, through singing, through playing the piano. I found that it was safe to talk that way… stuttering has turned from a handicap into an asset.”
This makes it sound as though Scatman would be trying to have a conversation, start to stutter, and then suddenly break out into a scat to cover it up, which hardly feels like a positive experience for anyone involved.
Quite what the jazz community thought of all of this, I am unable to say.
I can tell you that Scatman’s World: The Album didn’t win the DownBeat Album Of The Year award, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t give him the cover. Which is a pity, because when live, Scatman could transform “Scatman” into a jazz-funk-fusion fest!! It went off!
The stuttering community on the other hand? I can tell you that they LOVED HIM!!
It’s a sad indictment of society that there are very few famous stutterers. So once Scatman became pretty much the most famous stutterer in the world, the stutterer community kind of went a bit crazy about him.
He was the keynote speaker at the Annual Convention of the National Stuttering Project. “I hope you’ve got a few hours” he joked.
Scatman won the Annie Glenn Award from the National Association of Communicative Disorders in 1996. He was interviewed by “Advance for Speech Pathologists and Audiologists Magazine.” He entered the National Stuttering Association Hall Of Fame in 2000. Unfortunately by then he had died, of lung cancer.
By the time “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” dropped, Scatman was proud of his stutter. But he hadn’t always been. Back before he embraced his stutter, Scatman had been in some dark, drug-fuelled places, struggling to deal with his stuttering shame. The existence of support networks for stutterers helped him out of the darkness. Also, God. Or, as he often phrased it, “Creation.”
Here’s Scatman speaking in that “Advance for Speech Pathologists and Audiologists Magazine” interview:
“My greatest problem in my childhood is now my greatest asset. I’m trying to tell the kids today that Creation gave us all problems for a purpose, and that your biggest problems contain a source of strength to not only step over those problems, but all our other problems as well.”
Scatman talked like this a lot. Here he is talking to MTV Europe.
“If we didn’t have problems we couldn’t grow and change and become the human beings that Creation intended us to be. I think that Creation intends us all to be happy. I think Creation intends us all to be whole. And good. And to try to communicate communication… the world is waiting for the sunrise, and I think it’s coming. I think between the forest, and the oceans, and the pollution and the hole in the ozone, and all of this stuff, right now is the greatest time for a human being to be alive on the face of the Earth, because even the politicians now have to do something about it, don’t we fellas? We have to implement a change, somehow. We’re gonna have to stop eating away at the Earth or else the Earth is gonna EAT US!!! HEAVY! PROFOUND! But TRUE!!”
Wow, that paragraph ended up in a far different place than I was expecting when it began.
That kind of thinking might end with a utopia, but it might also lead to the nightmare that was “Scatman’s World.”
For, having found himself playing the role of liberator of one very specific group of oppressed people – jazz singers with silly moustaches – Scatman got it in his head that he had been put on Earth to liberate all oppressed peoples, everywhere, and deliver them unto the promised land. Or planet.
Scatman’s World features such poetry as:
“Scatman, fat man, black and white and brown man
Tell me ’bout the color of your SOUL”
And let’s not forget the immortal:
“I want to be a human being, not a human doing”
Get me that on a t-shirt!
I jest. Do not get me that on a t-shirt.
Scatman’s World is an embarrassing case of a One Hit Wonder experiencing delusions that they are The Second Coming.
That, or it was all a joke. A joke with an expensive looking video. But no, Scatman sounds way too earnest for this to be all a joke. When Scatman pronounces “my intention is prevention of the lie, yeah”, he’s being serious about this. He thinks he’s onto something.
(Scatman’s World is a 2, and it would be a 1 if not for the existence of “Song Of Scatland”, a song that makes Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” – “what about the elephants? Have we lost their trust?” – sound like Rage Against The Machine – a song whose verses do not contain a single rhyme, a song so irredeemable even Europe rejected it)
Sample lyrics:
“The society of Scatland is composed of
Very loving caring people who have
Never even heard of political corruption
Class distinction, war and all the
Other stuff that goes on in the world of Earth people.”
“The world of Earth people”?!?!?
“The people of Scatland speak in Scatish
Scatish is a language not quite like a leprechaun”
“Scatish is a language not quite like a leprechaun?!?!”
Clearly there’s an extremely thin line between life-affirming genius and so-bad-it’s-hurting-my-ears-and-yet-I-can’t-look-away, and Scatman crossed that line in record time. Nothing however can take anything away from the feeling of pure joy that “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” delivers.
“Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was an inspirational origin story, of how one man, a man with a stutter, could accept his stutter, embrace his stutter, defeat the odds and score a worldwide hit in a genre he had no business performing in. Even without the inspirational message of “if the Scatman can do it, so can you”, 1995 did not deliver a single lyric anywhere near as fun to shout out as “BA-DA-BA-DA-BA-BE BOP BOP BODDA BOPE!!!!”
“Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” is a 10!!
Oh – and there is a biography, and very possibly a biopic, coming out soon. I am so pumped.
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Presenting the official It’s The Hits Of September-ish 1995 Spotify playlist!
Featuring Moloko, Sneaker Pimps, Faithless, Groove Armada… and Everything But The Girl of course, it’s a very indie-flavoured-dance-music-for-sad-people 90s party playlist!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BlYPQCc4jfAaP0Fl81C5s?si=00d28f0f647246a5
And for all your Scatman and other Eurodance needs… here’s From “Scatman” to “Mr Vain.”
Featuring Dr. Alban, La Bouche, 2 Unlimited, Urban Cookie Collective… and the Scatman himself, it’s a very cheesy Eurodance 90s party playlist!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UQ2FRlusInP3DwekHCkbk?si=710b342808e14b00
Until this point the stereotypical image of the Everything But The Girl fan was an introverted, miserable student, alone in a bedsit, wearing clothes they bought from Oxfam (a charity selling second hand clothes). A very unexpected left turn into trendiness and dancefloor fillers. A 9 for me.
Shaggy’s career does feel like a series of one hit wonders. Oh Carolina couldn’t have sounded anymore like a one hit wonder if it tried. Two years later Mr Boombastic had exactly the same one off vibe. Fast forward a few years and ditto for It Wasn’t Me. Then he ruined it by having a fourth UK #1 with Angel which stands out by not standing out and being mostly forgotten about. Oh Carolina and Mr Boombastic are far superior to anything else he did; both 9s.
Scatman John is still entertaining the kids now. My daughter was introduced to it a few years ago in Primary School music lessons. It went down a lot better than The Beatles; Blackbird. The nuances and message of Blackbird no match amongst the 8 year olds for the funny singing and banging euro dance of the Scatman.
Scatman John isn’t technically a one hit wonder here. Scatman’s World reached #10, despite the madness DJPD describes. Though I’m pretty sure no one other than me and a handful of other chart nerds remember it.
Same for Apache Indian, not quite the one hit wonder with 5 top 40 hits. I know this as I had his debut #16 hit; Arranged Marriage on cassette single. In hindsight he was a weird mix of second generation Indian from Birmingham borrowing from ragga/reggae. He described his sound as Bhangramuffin. Arranged Marriage went big on bhangra musically but with the lyrical phrasing borrowing heavily from Jamaica delivered in an accent that wavered all over the place. It sounded like nothing else in the charts in 1993.
https://youtu.be/9zhzwQLfurA?feature=shared
On the country side of the tracks, Pam Tillis (daughter of country legend Mel Tillis) was riding high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT3CFr3SUAU
Mel Tillis is the only other famous stutterer that comes to mind.
I would suggest that Mel Tillis is, in fact, not famous. Neither is Randy Bachman’s brother Gary, whose stutter inspired the song “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”.
There’s Michael Palin’s Ken from A Fish Called Wanda though.
I’m sorry, I just can’t get past the fact that George Michael and Morrissey hosted a show together. It feels wrong and it’s bothering me.
Well they were more guest stars than hosts per se… here they are talking about Joy Division (George appears to like them more than Morrissey does)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj3HOklzUTo
That Scatman song wasn’t a U.S. hit so it’s news to me. “Boombastic” was, but I always associated Shaggy more with his later work with Janet Jackson and the CD with “It Wasn’t Me” and “Angel.” Out of the three, “Missing” has the most impact, and I’d give it a 9 (even a 10 if I’m in the right mood).