About This Time 30 Years Ago… It’s The Hits Of December-ish 1995!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet…

Noel Gallagher knew he had written a classic.

You can tell that Noel knew he’d written a classic because he kicked off Oasis’ classic (What’s The Story) Morning Glory album with it:

(Probably the most famous example of unnecessary use of parenthesis in an album title. for which the primary competition is probably David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Lynyrd Skynyrd’s (Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd), and Sigor Ros’ ( ) ).

“What?” you may be objecting. “Hang on there, guv’nor”:

That is true, but the first 12 seconds of Track 1, “Hello”, is just Noel strumming the chord progression to “Wonderwall”, as though it’s playing in the background on the radio, as if he knows that it will very soon be constantly playing in the background on the radio. Like he’s foreshadowing a world where everybody will constantly be strumming the chord progression to “Wonderwall.”

It’s as if he knows!

“Wonderwall” had not even been released before (What’s The Story) Morning Glory dropped. The single wouldn’t even be out for about a month. What a presumptuous thing to do; to start the album with a bait-and-switch, to get everybody going “wooo! it’s that “Wonderwall” song!!!”, when nobody even knows that “Wonderwall” song yet! Good thing it became a big hit, otherwise it could have been embarrassing.  

Then again, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is an album filled with presumptuousness, filled with moments to which the only rational response is “oh no, they didn’t!”

Such as ripping off John Lennon’s “Imagine” for “Don’t Look Back In Anger.”  

But you can’t tell me Noel didn’t write it that way so that people wouldn’t go “that fookin’ “Imagine” innit?” And then he goes, “gonna start a revolution from my bed, because they said the brains I got went to my head”, which is such an obvious John Lennon reference that you’d think John wrote it… and apparently he did! It was on a tape on which he was recording his memoirs.

And how about the “With A Little Help From My Friends” lift at the end of “She’s Electric”, considered at the time to be Oasis’ attempt at out-Blurring Blur? Although I’m increasingly beginning to suspect Noel was trying to write his own “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”

Although why anyone would want to do that, I can only wonder.

But none of that is as presumptuous as beginning your album with a taster of your immortal classic before the majority of the world has even heard it.

At that point the big song on (WTS)MG was either “Some Might Say” – which had given them their first Number One – or “Roll With It”, the song that lost them The Battle Of Britpop against Blur’s “Country House.” Two songs that nobody considers to be Oasis’ best. Nor Blur’s best for that matter. If it wasn’t for The Battle Of Britpop and all its surrounding hype and media attention it’s very likely that neither Blur nor Oasis would have gone Number One that week.

It all started when Oasis threw a party to celebrate “Some Might Say” going to Number One. Damon popped in, to say “well done”, because he’s a gentleman. But Liam comes over and gets in Damon’s face and goes “NUMBER FOOKIN’ ONE!!!!” Because he’s a lad.

After that, you’ve just got to start a feud.

Damon called Oasis “Oasis Quo”, which is funny. Liam called blur “Chas & Dave chimney sweep music”, which would probably be funnier if I knew who Chas & Dave were…

(…listens to Chas & Dave…)

…Liam might’ve been spot on, actually:

There was also that extremely unfortunate moment when Noel said he hoped Damon and Alex – bass player and future cheese-maker – would die of AIDS. Even Liam thought that was a step too far and apologized at the MTV Awards in Paris: 

“Sorry for what our kid said. It was out of order. He’s a twat.

I still think your album’s shit, though.”

What, you thought it was going to be a proper apology? That’s probably the closest thing to a proper apology that Liam has ever given!

That 12 seconds of “Wonderwall” at the very beginning of (WTS)MG may be Noel’s way of saying, “not so fast Damon… you may have won the battle, but we are going to win the war!”

Those 12 seconds of strumming – and bird noises, and possibly a car driving by – were actually recorded by Noel on top of a “massive ten-foot-high brick wall.” Why?

Noel Gallagher was nothing if not literal.

Given how all-conquering Oasis appeared at their peak, it’s a little odd that they repeatedly seemed to lose – to repeatedly come second place – in the battles that mattered. Not just the Battle Of Britpop but the Battle To Get “Wonderwall” to Number One.

For “Wonderwall”, quite famously, did not go to Number One in the UK.

It lost out to…

As if Oasis’ plundering of the Beatles wasn’t retro and backwards looking enough, British record buyers decided that they wanted to listen to a cheesy cover of a song that was a decade older!!!

I only know of Robson and Jerome by reputation, and that one of them would end up in Game Of Thrones. I’m pretty sure neither their records, nor the soap opera in which they starred – Soldier, Soldier – was ever broadcast in Australia.

So let’s see if it’s as bad as I’ve been told:

That might actually be worse.

“If we’re gonna get rid of Phil Collins and Sting” Noel once said. “Junk food music, McDonald’s music– we’ve got to get in the charts and stamp ‘em out.” That’s the spirit! And yet you couldn’t stamp out Robson and Jerome.

Noel also failed in his ultimate goal:

Don’t feel too sad about it, Noel. Nobody else has Phil Collins’ head in their fridge either.

(What’s The Story) Morning Glory sounds like a blockbuster, which isn’t something you can usually say about a British indie band.

Having managed to bulldoze their way into the charts with their first album, (WTS)MG is the sound of a band reveling in the fact that they have everyone’s attention, confident that every second bedsit in Britain would soon own a copy of their album, and deciding that it was their duty to ensure that every song was a hearty pub singalong.

Since everybody in Britain was about to be singing along to the hits he wrote, Noel decided that it was only fair that would get to sing one of them.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it was a stand-off over which song Liam didn’t think was shit.

 According to Noel: “we were doing the backing track and our Liam goes “I’m not singing on that.” We were like “Why not?” He’s like “it’s fookin’ stupid man, it’s fookin’ reggae music.” So I said, “why don’t you go off to the chippie then.”

Now, “Wonderwall” is an undeniable classic. You don’t get to be the subject of so many memes if you are not a classic.

It maybeeeeeee the only song in the history of everything to be identifiable by its first word alone. Try it:

And whilst there’s an off chance they’ll pick “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins, I feel confident that 99% of people will instantly know it’s “Wonderwall.”

But I’ve never quite loved it, and I think it’s because of the drums. Not that there’s anything wrong with the drums.

He also thought it was clever how they don’t come in until Liam sings “backbeat the word is on the street”, which I guess is Noel’s subtle way of saying “LET THE BEAT DROP!!!!” But “Wonderwall” is a camp-fire sing-a-long and the drums just get in the way and clutter it up.

You should never get in the way of a camp-fire sing-a-long.

So, Blur won The Battle Of Britpop. Or at least they managed to outsell Oasis on one very specific week.

But did they win the all-important Readers Polls?

Most importantly they took out the top two places for the Loudmouth Of The Year award! Damon Albarn “won” most Cretinous, Useless, Negligible Tosser Of The Year.

Damon also “won” Git Of The Year in the NME Reader’s Poll, where Oasis also won Best Band, Best Album and Best Single, and Liam, rather unlikely, won Most Desirable Human Being. It’s understandable really why Blur might’ve started having second thoughts about this whole Britpop thing.

“I Believe” won Worst Record (NME) and Most Irritating Record (Melody Maker). I’m not going to argue with that.

“Wonderwall” is a 9.

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Meanwhile, in West Coast Land… 

“Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail?” asked Mariah – channelling the Tom Tom Club – at about the same time.

Well, if you are Tupac, you jump into Death Row Records, jump onto a Dr. Dre track, and make the biggest dancefloor filler, not only of your own personal – and tragically short – career, but arguably of the entire decade!!

Although “California Love” is an immortal banger, that’s not the reason why Tupac t-shirts, posters, tattoos and murals outnumber those of virtually every other rapper (the possible exception being Biggie).

“California Love” is not separate however from the narrative that largely defined him in the 90s, that as a major figure – and ultimately a pawn – in the East Coast-West Coast rap war, in which Tupac was a soldier for the West Coast. It’s ironic then that Tupac was born in Harlem, and spent most of his youth in Baltimore.

Probably no mother is more central to a pop star’s legend as Afeni Shakur. and not only because he wrote a rap about her.

She was a single mother, addicted to crack… or as Tupac put it…

Even though you was a crack fiend, Mama

You always was a Black queen, Mama

But in her youth Afeni Shakur had been somebody!

Together, the Panther 21 were charged with 200 acts of conspiracy, including plans to blow up – and getting as far as planting the dynamite – two police stations and a Board Of Education office. Pregnant with Tupac during the trial, and despite possessing zero legal qualifications – and despite facing 300-years in jail – Afeni acted as her own defence and managed to prove that much of the plotting was done by three undercover policemen. And so they were acquitted.

As Tupac liked to put it: “my embryo was in prison.”

But he wasn’t Tupac yet, he was Lesane Parish Crooks.

He didn’t get the name Tupac until he was one, when Afeni decided to name him after the last Incan ruler, who had risen up against the Spanish Conquistador. Or as Tupac put it: 

“I think the tribal breakdown means “intelligent warrior.” He’s a deep dude.

If I go to South America they gonna love me, I’m telling you.”

Being the son of a legendary Black Panther was a source of much pride for young Pac.

He also wrote teenage poetry, like “Can U C The Pride in The Panther”. He signed off “Future Freedom Fighter.” That’s cute.

Tupac eventually moved to the West Coast, just outside of San Francisco, in 1988, and soon got a job as roadie and back-up dancer for novelty-rap-posse The Digital Underground.

He didn’t get to rap on the classics “Doowatchyalike” or “The Humpty Dance”, but he did get a verse on whatever this mess was… not the most dignified introductions to public consciousness for a Greatest Rapper Alive but we all have to start somewhere. It also proved that Pac, whilst he’d become a legend for more political and philosophical musings, knew how to party.

It was about this time that Tupac started getting familiar with the inside of a courtroom. It started in 1991 when he was stopped for jaywalking and ended up having his head slammed into the ground by two police officers. Tupac tried to sue them for $10 million but ended up settling for $34,000. It also triggered Tupac’s baldness.

Tupac’s legal problems are so exhausting to read about that I wonder if he himself had trouble keeping track. I imagine every meeting with his lawyer went something like this.

“So, about your case…”
“Which one?”

“The one involving guns.”
“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

“The one involving cops…”
“I’m still not quite getting it”

But the jail time that Tupac was referencing in his opening lines of “California Love” – “Out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreamin’” – had nothing to do with guns or cops and everything to do with sexual abuse in his hotel room (I mean he was charged with illegal possession of a firearm, but he didn’t go to jail for it). Although it appears that Tupac didn’t assault the woman himself, his friends did whilst he wandered off into the next room to have a nap. What a guy!

About a year later, in the same week that he would be convicted for sexual abuse, Tupac was in the studio, trying to record a hit to pay for his legal bills, when he was shot in the head! A bullet also passed through his balls.

When he saw Biggie outside as he was being carried out on a stretcher, Tupac gave Biggie the finger. That was on November 30th 1994. A couple of days later – on the 3rd of December – he discharged himself out of hospital, against his doctor’s advice, and went straight to the courtroom hear the verdict for his sexual-abuse trial.

Tupac spent less than a year behind bars – the hardest part was apparently dealing with his marijuana dependency, but on the upside, he managed to catch up on his reading – before Suge Knight, CEO of Death Row Records turned up and offered to pay the $1.4 million bail, in exchange for Tupac promising to record three albums with Death Row.

Tupac was previously on Interscope, which owned Death Row, and they were happy to let him move to their subsidiary.

So Tupac walked out of jail in New York and headed straight to Los Angeles. Tupac stepped on the scene and he heard hoochies screamin’. But Pac ignored those hoochies and headed straight to  the studio where Dr. Dre was working on a bomb beat called “California Love.” A beat based on an old song by…

(Hang on, that can’t be right…)

Joe Cocker?

Dre wanted “California Love” for himself, because who wouldn’t?

He’d written and recorded a couple of extra rap verses and was ready to go. But having spent more than a million dollars getting him out of jail, Tupac was too big to fail.

Death Row needed a coronation, they needed an instant hit. Preferably an instant hit with a title that could be weaponized in the East Coast-West Coast rap feud – the fires of which Suge Knight was doing everything he could do to ignite, mostly by throwing verbal shots at Puff Duddy – one that featured our heroes saying “West Coast” I don’t know how many times!

The suburb of Inglewood got itself a slogan: if the one thing that I know about California is they know how to party, then the one thing I know about Inglewood is that they are always up to no good (that is literally the only thing that I know about Inglewood)

Other than his opening boast that he’s out of jail, Pac’s verse is largely a list of all the ways California is different from everywhere else, or at least everywhere East. In California they riot – the L.A. Riots had not been that long ago – not rally (none of that peace rally stuff). But other than that, the cultural identifiers are kind of lame:

This doesn’t feel unique to California. Nonetheless that’s the moment Dr. Dre decides to interject, confirming that Tupac tells the truth: “that’s riiiight.”

Just as exciting as Tupac and the bomb beat from Dre – and very possibly more so – is Roger Troutman – terrible last name – from the electro-funk group, Zapp, a band that sounded just as 80s as their name suggests they would. Seriously, is there anything more 80s than a song called “Computer Love”?

Roger might be the best thing about “California Love.”

Particularly since there are multiple Roger Troutmans, all singing at once; an entire menagerie of robots nattering at each other. It’s simultaneously retro and futuristic, the perfect soundtrack for a video set in a post-Apocalyptic Max Max-like universe (the concept for which came from Jada Pinkett Smith who Tupac had a crush on back when they went to high school together).

Roger might be the best thing on “California Love”, but everybody sounds triumphant.

Tupac sounds as though he’s just stepped out of jail, because, as we have established, he had. If Dr. Dre is feeling put out about having his hit taken away from him, you can’t hear it. Or at least he doesn’t sound any more gruff and grumpy than usual. After all, he gets to be the Master Of Ceremonies, both welcoming everybody to the wild, wild west, and doing most of the city shout-outs at the end.

After all, he’s the one who made the bomb beat, the track that hits your eardrum like a slug to your chest… because even though “California Love” is the kind of jam that can be played at weddings, that doesn’t mean you can’t sneak in a gun violence metaphor or two.

If it wasn’t already the state where you never find a dancefloor empty, “California Love” ensured that an empty dancefloor was something that you never need see again. It’s a tribute to the power of the song that this is true, even if the dancefloor is not located in California.

“California Love” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in Zing! Boom! Land…

Shhhh.Don’t tell anyone.

But Björk was from the future.

She must’ve been. There’s no other possible explanation.

She used to say things like “So record companies, you won’t need them, and you won’t need media because of Internet.” And she was saying this in 1994, when people were still getting their heads around what the Internet meant.

Mind you, Björk also said things like, “If I want to think about having sex with 87 peacocks I can and it’s not crime, but in reality they might not be up for it, you know?”

Björk Post album had a song called “The Modern Things”, in which all the modern things, like cars and such, have always existed, they’ve just been waiting in a mountain, for the right moment, listening to the irritating noises of dinosaurs… and sure, it’s probably the worst song on Post, but it just shows how Björk thinks about stuff.

And how Björk thinks about stuff was a matter of much fascination in the middle of the 90s.

• So many stupid questions about Iceland and elves.
• So many stupid questions about who would win a fight between her and Kylie.
• So many questions asking her why she is so weird, and whether everyone in Iceland is as weird as she was.

You might think that leaving your home country and suddenly being treated like an alien would have been a bit of culture shock for Björk, but by the time she left Iceland she was used to it; people in Iceland used to treat her like she was different as well.

According to her mother: 

But at least in Iceland people didn’t tell Björk that she looked like an elf. That must’ve been nice.

Björk went through all these stupid interviews like a trooper.

She was oh so quiet. She was oh so still… at least until that one time in Bangkok when she finally snapped and attacked a reporter that had been bugging Björk and her son, Sindri, for weeks. WOW! BAM!!! ZING-BOOM!!! etc the news story for which I will now embed, in case you’ve never seen it, because:

1. It probably doubled the exposure of “It’s Oh So Quiet”, since what news programme could resist making a “blow a fuse” joke, and,
2. And to share the titbit that the reporter was then offered an advertisement contract for a hairspray company: “‘I get battered by pop stars all the time but I use this hairspray and it keeps my hair in place!” Björk thought she should do it.

Given that she was from the future, it was always came as a bit of a surprise when Björk would, right in the middle of her first two albums, decide to cover some extremely old songs. Songs like “Like Someone In Love” off of Debut, a song written in 1944. Bing Crosby had a hit with it.

These covers of old songs weren’t just a surprise for the fans. It seemed to be a surprise for Björk herself: “In a way it was against my principles to do an old cover version because I’m so anti-retro.”

But also “It’s Oh So Quiet” was undeniably from the past, it was also so very, very 1990s:

It was after all, a song that very was quiet, AND THEN IT’S LOUD, and then it’s quiet again, AND THEN IT’S LOUD!!!!

There were a lot of songs like that in the 90s. You thought The Pixies or Nirvana invented the first it’s soft AND THEN IT’S LOUD and then it’s soft again AND THEN IT’S LOUD AGAIN trick?

I’d always assumed that “It’s Oh So Quiet” was from a musical because… well, just listen to it. Also because Betty Hutton did start in Hollywood musicals, most notably “Annie Get Your Gun”, and that was just the year before (also because, in a few short years, Björk would appear in her own musical!) But no, “It’s Oh So Quiet” was just a record. And not even a hit. Not even an A-side. It was a B-side.

And actually, Betty’s version was also a cover. The original was a German song from a year or two earlier, but was pretty soon given English lyrics. Betty, for whatever reason, instead of singing “this guy is gorg” (short for gorgeous, obvs) sings “this guy is George.” Was that a mistake? Surely that wasn’t the actual lyric?

Betty’s version of “It’s Oh So Quiet!” was such a non-hit that it’s a wonder Björk ever found out about it.

Guy was her keyboardist. He had previously been the co-writer of Seal’s “Crazy”, good prep for working with Björk methinks.

It may have been a joke, but Björk seemed to truly love the song. 

“Isn’t that the best song you’ve heard for five years?” she’d ask, and listening to her sing it, she sounds as though she’s having the time of her life! The bit where she growls “RIOT!” is a riot. The bits where she goes “shhh” almost sound like a giggle. When Björk screams out “WOW! BAM!!”, you can tell that she means it. She once said,

“I’m obsessed with extremes” 

“I hate the fact that I’m meant to be this very gentle feminine creature who therefore can’t be rude or like punk music.” 

“It’s Oh So Quiet” is a song of extremes. A song about extremes.

Extremes of feelings. Extremes of the human experience. It’s a song about the things that make life worth living.

Björk has said that the best part of “It’s Oh So Quiet” is the video.

Either way she’s probably right, but the song is a lot of fun too. A lot of the reason “It’s Oh So Quiet” is so fun comes down to Björk and the force of her personality. The fact that she is clearly living in the moment and relishing it. Nobody has ever sounded like they were having so much fun as Björk does every time she goes “WOW! BAM!!!” “It’s Oh So Quiet” may not be her own song, but Björk fills it with her own life philosophy, her own lust for life, her own boundless enthusiasm about absolutely everything (Absolutely everything? Well not quite, Bjork can’t deal with bread, it’s just too boring)

Look, I guess it’s probably a sad state of affairs that “It’s Oh So Quiet” is the highest charting Björk song –

But I can’t get mad at it for that. Getting mad at a song for being too much fun is not the Björk way.

“It’s Oh So Quiet” is an 8.

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