funky's journey through the 90s (again, again)

funky

funky

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Hi mopsy friends, so I have this HOBBY, that started during the pandemic, where I went through all the old UK charts from the 80s and 90s to scour for songs I had forgotten about or missed the first time around, and fill in the gaps and maybe discover musical genres I had previously dismissed. It was a LOT of fun and so recently I decided to do it again, this time using the US charts as reference.

So I'm up to 1991 but I'm discovering so much GOOD SHIT that I've decided to pause and start documenting it here. Hoping it'll lead to good chat and more discoveries for us all, so please join in!

I'll be focusing on the US but also referring back to my playlists of the "new" songs and artists I discovered/re-explored during the pandemic with the UK.

Hoping to finish some time in 2034.
 
First up...

JANUARY 1990
Over in the US, soft rock is in peak takeover as the market transitions from hair metal but isn't quite ready for alternative yet. Phil Collins and Michael Bolton share the number one spot for the month. I noticed hair metal and stadium rock pretty much falls off a cliff in 1990 and is almost entirely eradicated by the end of 1991, but here at the start of the decade it's still rife.

My biggest discovery was that dance music was indeed quite a big thing as early as 1989. I always assumed that house music was underground in America and only a chart thing in Europe, but I've learnt that Black Box, Technotronic, Snap!, the KLF, and even some of the one hit wonders were all huge at this time. "Pump Up The Jam" actually peaks at #2 this month.

Also remembering that Soul II Soul were equally as huge and influential for a couple of years over there too, and a band I always saw as pivotal in the shift from 80s synthetic R&B to the smoother sounds of bedroom R&B, hip-hop soul and acid jazz of the 90s. I always saw them as the first mainstream act to combine hip-hop rhythmic samples with soulful melodies and the charts here are confirming that their influence was huge, given the spate of songs and artists that follow.

Discoveries:

This one was a pandemic discovery, but it charted in the US too and I was able to rediscover all over again:



(I also didn't know it was a Jean Carn disco cover from 1979)

Kym Mazelle was always someone I knew as she featured on a few house tracks in the late 90s (and a hit cover of "Young Hearts Run Free") but I wasn't familiar with her early house music. There's 2 albums on Spotify that I've explored, with a lot of overlap songs, a mix of house and R&B, with the crossover songs updated on the 1991 album, for example the original above track is on the 1989 album and the def mix track above is on the 1991. Not sure what the deal is, maybe the albums were aimed at different markets at the time. Both albums are worth a listen though.





Notable new entries:
January 6
86 — BLACK VELVET –•– Alannah Myles

January 13
87 — SACRIFICE –•– Elton John

January 20
37 — ESCAPADE –•– Janet Jackson
86 — SUMMER RAIN –•– Belinda Carlisle

January 27
55 — LOVE WILL LEAD YOU BACK –•– Taylor Dayne
82 — WALK ON BY –•– Sybil
86 — GET UP! (BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER) –•– Technotronic
89 — LET LOVE RULE –•– Lenny Kravitz

Easy to forget that Lenny Kravitz first charted in 1989! Also Sybil deserves a lot credit for being a pioneer in the 90s R&B sound. I had forgotten that "Don't Make Me Over" and her "Walk On By" cover are actually from a 1989 album and were both very different to her peers at the time who were focused on pop ballads, swing and freestyle.
 
I've found doing old TOTP repeats with @Tetris-Rock one of the great new joys and fixtures of this decade so far, although I first came in at around the end of 1991 so most of the first part of this will be more unfamiliar to me.
 
February 1990

The Paula Abdul mania continues as she stops the soft rock rot and steamrolls to #1 for THREE weeks (very rare at this period when there was so much pop competition) with "Opposites Attract". She's overtaken by her biggest competition at the time Janet Jackson, as "Escapade" gets her another #1.

Milli Vanilli still doing big business as they get 5th Top Ten with "All Or Nothing" (no idea) - a quick check at the timeline suggests that the scandal didn't occur until November of 1990, so they were still "successful singers" at this point :eyes:

It's only when you go through charts chronologically you realise how big some acts were, and Gloria Estefan really was one of the biggest stars in the US in the late 80s. This month "Here We Are" peaks at #6.

I'm not a fan of The B-52s but I was surprised to see them get a big hit that isn't called "Love Shack", with "Roam" peaking at #3 and sustaining a Top 10 place for quite a while. I also underestimated the success of Taylor Dane equivocal to the UK as she gets another big hit, peaking at #2 with "Love Will Lead You Back".

Also discovered that there was a spate of girl groups around this time that never really troubled the UK but were huge in the US for a short time - The Cover Girls and Seduction both hit the Top 10 this month, and both have songs coming later that were BIG discoveries for me, but not yet. See also: Klymaxx.

Discoveries:

Not a discovery, but this is probably one of my biggest turnarounds since childhood...



My pandemic project of the 80s filled in lots of gaps of 80s bands I would have been too young to appreciate, most notably Talk Talk, Tears For Fears, and Depeche Mode. I HATED "Enjoy The Silence" as a 12 year old, it was always on the telly and I found it so morose and dark. Obviously I've since saw sense.

I've discovered a lot of early hip-hop that weren't big hits in the UK thanks to these projects, and this is one of the biggest:



Also this was never a hit in the UK but it is SUCH A TUNE



My knowledge of Babyface was always background vocalist / producer in the early 90s and brief solo star in the late 90s, but actually he was a HUGE success in the US before then, in fact his biggest solo success was around this time, before his collaborations with TLC, Whitney, Toni and his massive impact on 90s popular music.

Finally, I don't know if I knew this already or if it just sounds like something else, or like a lot of other UK soft rock bands at the time like Deacon Blue, Texas, Simple Minds etc but I love this:



Notable new entries:

February 3
56 — KEEP IT TOGETHER –•– Madonna
71 — I WISH IT WOULD RAIN DOWN –•– Phil Collins
78 — ALL AROUND THE WORLD –•– Lisa Stansfield
93 — 1-2-3 –•– The Chimes

February 10
92 — HEART OF STONE –•– Cher

February 17
n/a

February 24
69 — HEARTBEAT –•– Seduction
84 — WILD WOMEN DO –•– Natalie Cole
91 — GOT TO HAVE YOUR LOVE –•– Mantronix Featuring Wondress

I had no idea "Keep It Together" was released in the US. It's quite fascinating seeing how the US/UK markets sometimes approach albums differently, even the biggest stars, in a time when they didn't have to worry about digital leaks and imports were a very niche thing. I believe they got this instead of "Dear Jessie"? I think they got the best end of the stick personally.

WHY is "Wild Women Do" still not on Spotify??? It's such an OUTRAGE!



"Got To Have Your Love" remains one of the greatest dance songs of ALL TIME. Literally, of all time. Mantronix, I discovered in later years and from finding other deeper cuts from them, are actually a hip-hop act, and a very influential one at that. They just happen to be better known for their dance tracks. And I'm OK with that. Plus they gave Liberty X a big hit, so there's that too.

The Chimes were a group that I discovered much later as they only really had one breakout hit in the UK - the cover of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", which is actually my favourite U2 song and yet I think I love the cover even more. I had no idea they had a couple of minor hits in the US too... they were shortlived with one album, but that album is AMAZING, and probably the first Soul II Soul influenced acts of the hundreds that would follow. Lead singer Pauline Henry went on to a brief solo career and we'll probably cover her later, if I ever get there.



Who is this Lisa Stansfield person with the strange accent? Going back and learning about Lisa's influence on American R&B is a fascinating thing... it's not outlandish to say that this was actually the biggest R&B song in America in 1990 (a lot later than we got it in the UK in fact). Because Lisa didn't have a long career in the US (she did have a handful of other hits, nothing as big as this) it became a running joke that a lot of people who listened to R&B in clubs and block parties assumed that Lisa was African-American. She's also notable for having one of the most raucously received performances at the infamous Apollo Theatre, were the audiences were known for booing you off the stage if they weren't feeling it, and it was a hot topic at the time given that she was white and British. It went a long way in solidifying this track as an R&B classic. GO LISA!

 
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Penelope said:
I've found doing old TOTP repeats with @Tetris-Rock one of the great new joys and fixtures of this decade so far, although I first came in at around the end of 1991 so most of the first part of this will be more unfamiliar to me.
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I very much want to treat it like the TOTP thread with blog style stuff but with more detail, so I hope people find some interesting takeouts the same way I did!
 
I've always been aware of Was That All It Was from the QaF soundtrack. I only popped the Kym Mazellle version on recently and frankly it's a 13/10.
 
AGinAg (38) said:
I've always been aware of Was That All It Was from the QaF soundtrack. I only popped the Kym Mazellle version on recently and frankly it's a 13/10.
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Did that featured the original track then?

I'd say that Kym remix is one of my favourite pandemic discoveries full stop. I hope I haven't peaked too soon.
 
I've just realised this is the US charts which were far more tedious. The stagnation in the mid/ late 90s were... obnoxious.
 
AGinAg (38) said:
I've just realised this is the US charts which were far more tedious. The stagnation in the mid/ late 90s were... obnoxious.
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But the beauty comes less from the chart movement and more from the deeper cuts that spend a week or two in the chart and disappear, so you might not even have known they existed. That's what put me on to so many new songs. Yes there are many interesting anomolies of tracks that were big in the US and not the UK (particularly R&B and Americana, so I appreciate that's more of a me thing) but club music was often a short lived success and so there's honestly so many deep cuts to mine through. Trust!
 
March 1990

#1s

ESCAPADE –•– Janet Jackson (3 weeks)
BLACK VELVET –•– Alannah Myles (2 weeks)

This reached #7 for 2 weeks and I don't know it, and I don't care for it. Sounds cheap and unfinished. I thought America was more discerning when it came to R&B...



Taylor Dane and Lisa Stansfield both climb into the Top 10.

Speaking of songs that sound like they were recorded on a Fisher Price microphone in someone's bedroom, what the fuck is this America?



This ended up being a fat fucking hit. The final recorded vocal is actually FLAT.

Technotronic score another Top 10 with "Get Up (Before The Night Is Over)"

Discoveries:

A decent pop tune reminiscent of Taylor Dane perhaps, but I don't think she did much beyond this. Actually reached #2 at the end of March for three weeks, but was kept from #1 by a certain Irish singer doing a Prince cover.



Tom Petty is someone who has grown on me with age. He actually massively influenced the Americana I was listening to in the late 90s, without realising that he had already done huge business with it between 1988 and 1993 (as well as being somewhat popular before and after that as well). Full Moon Fever is a GREAT album. "Free Fallin'" and "I Won't Back Down" are the big singles, but I'm hugely fond of this single from around this time:



Over to the UK were a pandemic discovery was Titiyo, who I knew from moopy and the spectacular Kleerup collaboration (and a wonderful collab with Eagle-Eye Cherry who I think is her half brother) but I didn't know her early work.



This album is great and IMO, way ahead of its time, unless Sweden was actively pushing a funkier pop sound that we didn't know about at this point, running in parallel to the UK Soul (II Soul) movement that was gaining traction. She did, I recently discovered, actually have a hit in the US, but not until 1991, more on that later.

Also in the UK, Innocence make their debut with "Natural Thing", starting off a run of great singles across 2 great albums. They're not particulary commercial sounding but they came at the right time, with a sound landing somewhere between the stripped back R&B of Soul II Soul and the new-age electronica of Enigma. Also a bit like a direct descendent of Sade - moody and jazzy. I was only really aware of them in passing but now a real fan and I have the first album on vinyl as part of my new record collection!



OK picking up from the last post about US girl groups, I have to cover this recent discovery, for a number of reasons.



More of a freestyle / pop vocal group, this song is NOT that and a bit of an album outlier, but it stood out for me. It's the first example I can think of (probably not but in my head) of a US act being inspired by the Soul II Soul sound of using drum loops over a pop/R&B vocal. Very big in the early 90s, very new in early 1990. Also - and I wonder if anyone else knew this because it kinda blew my mind - there are TWO big 90s samples here that I didn't even know until this year were samples... "There's Nothing I Won't Do" by JX and "Frisky" by FPI Project. Did you know this @AGinAg (38) ? @Sardonicus ? @jyxz ?

A random one - never been a big Stones fan, but I've recently become a fan of this:



Didn't stand out at all when I was doing the UK charts, but it did when I started doing the US charts, for some reason.

Notable new entries:

March 3

71 — LAMBADA –•– Kaoma
73 — A FACE IN THE CROWD –•– Tom Petty
92 — WHATCHA GONNA DO WITH MY LOVIN’ –•– Inner City

March 10

92 — HAVE A HEART –•– Bonnie Raitt
95 — EXPRESSION –•– Salt n Pepa
96 — ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG AT HEART –•– Tears For Fears

March 17

63 — NOTHING COMPARES 2 U –•– Sinead O’Connor
74 — HOLD ON –•– Wilson Phillips

March 24

90 — I COME OFF –•– Young MC
94 — PRECIOUS LOVE –•– Jody Watley

March 31

57 — ALL I WANNA DO IS MAKE LOVE TO YOU –•– Heart
88 — GETTING AWAY WITH IT –•– Electronic
96 — READY OR NOT –•– After 7

So it turns out that Inner City are an American band (what?) but they only had 2 minor hits with Good Life and the above "Watcha Gonna Do" (although they did have 4 dance #1s, thanks for the cover Wikipedia), despite EIGHTEEN (18!) Top 75 hits in the UK. This is where being young and not that embedded in music makes a difference, I thought they only had about 4 hits. As it happens, "Watcha Gonna Do" is my favourite of theirs, as much as I love - and cannot ignore the influence of - "Big Fun" and "Good Life". Turns out also that Watcha Gonna Do is also a cover, which I only found either by doing this or reading it in one of those "did you know this was a cover" threads on moopy.

"Have A Heart" marked the kick off point for a spectacular career revival for Bonnie Raitt, one of the biggest comebacks in pop history in fact. Although the song only went to #42 in the US, the album Nick Of Time ended up going 5x platinum (and the follow up album Luck Of The Draw was even bigger), winning multiple grammies and cementing her as an American legend.

That Seeds Of Love album by Tears For Fears is bloody brilliant, I have since discovered. I loved the title track as a kid but actually ALL the singles are great, and the album as a whole, including this epic masterpiece featuring a then unknown Oleta Adams:



I knew nothing about Young MC other than the big single "Bust A Move" and him being an early hip-hop pioneer, but the US charts introduced me to some follow up singles, inluding the above track, but the real discovery was in this rare remix which thankfully was on Spotify, and I haven't stopped playing for three months now...



After 7 are a pre-Boyz II Men R&B band, one of the early emerging acts of the swing/90s R&B scene that didn't do much in the UK, but had more success in America and I'm looking forward to diving into them and many of their peers. There's a lot of gloopy ballads but I'm learning that if you dig for the funky stuff, there's some real gems, including this track from them,which has to be considered quite influential now

https://open.spotify.com/track/1TYt5etb427hvOod3EKJA5?si=5d4e3ea8cb63493c
 
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I think that Tommy Page song might have had something to do with New Kids On The Block - it certainly sounds like part of their SHITE OEUVRE from the Spotify preview
 
Oh I just went on to Wiki to see if he had any success in the UK (he hadn't, only said song reached #53 and nothing else) but apparently he died of suicide age 46 :(
 
Sardonicus said:
I think that Tommy Page song might have had something to do with New Kids On The Block - it certainly sounds like part of their SHITE OEUVRE from the Spotify preview
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Yeah they are singing on the background and they took him on tour
 
April 1990

#1s:

LOVE WILL LEAD YOU BACK –•– Taylor Dayne (1 week)
I’LL BE YOUR EVERYTHING –•– Tommy Page (1 week)
NOTHING COMPARES 2 U –•– Sinead O’Connor (4 weeks into May)

Lisa Stansfield continues her climb and peaks at #3. She actually went to #1 on the R&B charts, the first white British woman to do so. She remained in the Top 10 for most of April and May.

I didn't know Kiss were still a thing into as far as 1990 but they reached #8 with "Forever" - so weird to see them in a chart with Technotronic and Salt n Pepa...

Speaking of S&P, they're still trying to break through after the "one hit wonder" of "Push It" in 1987 which actually 'only' reached #19 in the US which is a shock. In fact their trajectory early on was very different to the UK, with different choices of singles being released at very different times, and the UK had already had 2 top ten hits at this point with "Push It" and "Twist And Shout" (which didn't chart at all in America). They're up to #33 with "Expression" by the end of April.

Cher's big comeback start to stall a touch as "Heart Of Stone" 'only' peaks at #20.

Some unknown girl group called Wilson Phillips is climbing up the charts with their debut single "Hold On" - by the end of the month they had reached #16 and still climbing.

Discoveries:

Not so much a new discovery, but more an education of the importance of this track:



Mr Fingers is a psuedonym of Larry Heard, one of the original Godfathers of house music, and it's only when you go back and discover music chronologically you realise the significance of certain songs and artists. This deep house groove sounds like Ibiza music from the late 90s, but this vinyl was first pressed way back in 1986. It had a revival in 1990 thanks to the commercialisation of dance music, but in all the conversations about the first this and first that, this track is sometimes regarded as the first EVER deep house record. There's also a track called "Mystery Of Love" from 1985 which is debated as an even earlier deep house record, but either way, they're both from Mr Larry Heard.

This is going to come up a lot in 1990 but here's another Soul II Soul-inspired club track which I do not recall from the time:



Oleta Adams might be best (only?) known for "Get Here", but fresh from her brief stint with Tears For Fears in 1989 she managed solo album and this is a gorgeous UK R&B track that pre-dates Gabrielle, Des'ree et al.



Hey I love this basic pop song!



I do remember this vaguely, but had a revival with it. There was lots of this post new romantics / blue eyed soul out at the time (the yanks call it "sophisti-pop"!) like Johnny Hates Jazz, Prefab Sprout, Scritti Polliti and Aztec Camera. This was coming to the end of it and the only acts that really made it through the trend were Wet Wet Wet and Simply Red really. Very marmite but I love a lot of it.

Notable new entries:

April 7

45 — ALRIGHT –•– Janet Jackson
52 — POISON –•– Bell Biv Devoe
67 — IT MUST HAVE BEEN LOVE –•– Roxette
70 — SAVE ME –•– Fleetwood Mac
78 — OYE MI CANTO (HEAR MY VOICE) –•– Gloria Estefan
97 — YOU MAKE ME FEEL (MIGHTY REAL) –•– Jimmy Somerville

April 14

39 — VOGUE –•– Madonna
94 — GET A LIFE –•– Soul II Soul
95 — DUB BE GOOD TO ME –•– Beats International
96 — ENJOY THE SILENCE –•– Depeche Mode

April 21

94 — PICTURES OF YOU –•– The Cure

April 28

27 — U CAN’T TOUCH THIS –•– M.C. Hammer
78 — THAT’S THE WAY OF THE WORLD –•– D-Mob (with Cathy Dennis)

Janet Jackson was just unbeatable at this time, just playing revolving doors with tracks from the Rhythm Nation album- she was either vying for #1 or coming in a with a big new entry. Madonna's "Vogue" enters even higher and a new entry in the Top 40 was almost unheard of at this time. It felt growing up that Madonna's "eras" were quite far apart but this was released just a month after the LAP campaign released its final single.

Beats International were just an act I would never expect to have done well in the US. Especially with that song which had been a huge hit for American R&B group SOS Band just 6 years prior. I suppose the huge success in Europe was good momentum for them.

Interesting trivia about MC Hammer- despite "U Can't Touch This" being one of the biggest singles of 1990, it didn't go #1 in either US or UK (#8 and #3 respectively) which I wouldn't have put money on. In fact two follow up singles charted higher in the US. It still went 4x platinum though so must have hung around a while.
 
funky said:
Interesting trivia about MC Hammer- despite "U Can't Touch This" being one of the biggest singles of 1990, it didn't go #1 in either US or UK (#8 and #3 respectively) which I wouldn't have put money on. In fact two follow up singles charted higher in the US. It still went 4x platinum though so must have hung around a while.
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U can't touch this was commercially released only as a 12" maxi-single in the US, that's why. Most of the singles sales back then were from cassettes, not even cds. It peaked at #2 on airplay but only #18 on sales. It didn't even go gold; that 4x platinum must be recent, thanks to streaming. It peaked at #1 on Radio & Records, the second most important charts after Billboard, that were more heavily based on airplay and popularity.

And No more lies is a great song! Believe it or not it played a mayor role in rap music being more mainstream, who knew, but that's another story.
 
Alla said:
U can't touch this was commercially released only as a 12" maxi-single in the US, that's why. Most of the singles sales back then were from cassettes, not even cds. It peaked at #2 on airplay but only #18 on sales. It didn't even go gold; that 4x platinum must be recent, thanks to streaming. It peaked at #1 on Radio & Records, the second most important charts after Billboard, that were more heavily based on airplay and popularity.
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That clears that up thanks. I wonder why though, was his success unexpected? You could argue a case for yes, his previous album did nothing. And I don't think this was the era when singles were often 'airplay only' was it - that was more mid/late 90s?
 
funky said:
That clears that up thanks. I wonder why though, was his success unexpected? You could argue a case for yes, his previous album did nothing. And I don't think this was the era when singles were often 'airplay only' was it - that was more mid/late 90s?
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I guess they were trying to push the sales of the album? It was #1 for 21 weeks and sold zillions of copies. Yes, airplay only hits that were never commercially released as a single in the US became more and more popular in the second half of the 90s, they were very rare in the early 90s: Do the Bartman and Janet's State of the world were big airplay only hits, but not many more. Random pointless fact (that maybe there is no way to check, but it is): only 1 of the 100 most played songs in 1992 in the US wasn't released as a single. Michael Bolton's Steel Bars. In a few years it was a very different story.
 
Alla said:
Do the Bartman and Janet's State of the world were big airplay only hits, but not many more.
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I can understand "State Of The World" being released as airplay only, as there'd already been a zillion hits from the album, but I don't get why "Do The Bartman" wasn't given a commercial single release?

There must have been demand for it (it reached number 1 in the UK when "The Simpsons" was a satellite only programme) & surely they didn’t think people would choose to shell out for the entire ALBUM instead? :D
 
But the album WAS a big seller in the US, wasn't it? And in a country where songs were commonly used as promotional tools for an album rather than necessarily being concerned about them being hits in their own right (and could still chart well anyway due to airplay), I understand it. No doubt more money was made from launching the album straight into the Christmas market to hyped up people who had no other way of owning the single, than from 'lost' single sales.
 
Greedy labels putting money before the chart geeks’ enjoyment of a busy singles chart!

Maybe this explains why the charts really slowed down in the middle of the decade as @AGinAg (38) said… there just weren’t as many singles being released!

My first thought when following the US Hot 100 around 1990 was how fast they were moving. We’d been talking on moopy not so long ago about “Missing” by EBTG having a hit in 1996, and it hung around for about a year!
 
@funky, you may find this interesting

billboardchartrewind.wordpress.com

The Complete List of Airplay Only Hits for 1987-1998

The Entire List Of Airplay Only Songs That Never Made It On the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Here it is! Every airplay song that did not enter on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart. That’s righ…
billboardchartrewind.wordpress.com billboardchartrewind.wordpress.com

It also supports @Alla's point about airplay only hits being a lot more prevalent later in the '90s.
 
KC 🦋 said:
How active was Roxette in the 90s? I'm a fan of everything I've heard from them.
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Their success in the US was much bigger than I initially thought, even though it was relatively short lived; I thought they had just struck gold with the 2 big ballads and then a couple of other tracks on the back of it, but no, they had serious success for about 4-5 years of consistent hits, some of them absolutely huge. And in Europe their success went into the late 90s, albeit with a degree of diminishing returns, but they would have made a pretty penny in that decade of activity for sure.

From Spotify:

739m It Must Have Been Love
468m Listen To Your Heart
375m The Look
195m Spending My Time
137m Fading Like A Flower
117m How Do You Do!

There's a good 10 years separating the earliest and latest of those singles, I think.
 
Surprised that the once ubiquitous "Joyride" is not amongst their top Spotify songs.
 
May 1990

#1s

NOTHING COMPARES 2 U –•– Sinead O’Connor (4 weeks)
VOGUE –•– Madonna (3 weeks into June)

I've been trying to ignore this random track by Calloway but it keeps climbing, peaking at #2 in early May:



An R&B group that sounds more like, for the time, a soft rock pop song from Huey Lewis or Hall & Oates. Certainly very dated for the R&B scene of the time which had moved onto swing and house music, which doesn't really explain why it was such a monster hit. I don't recall this at all and I don't think it was a UK hit.

I thought Heart were over at this point but they climb to #2 with this and based on their chart performance, this must be one of their biggest selling hits at the time...



That Wilson Phillips song keeps climbing, now into the Top 10, maybe they're on to something.

Bell Biv Devoe also hit the Top Ten with the smash "Poison" - at the peak of the New Jack Swing era. Their career was odd though; they were absolutely fooking massive for about 5 minutes with this album, but were unable to replicate it into the 90s and were overtaken by a number of other acts.

Over in the UK, things were generally more interesting at the time as Europe was fully embracing the UK Soul explosion, European house music, the Madchester scene and psychadelic dance-pop. May alone saw Soul II Soul, The Family Stand, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, The Farm, Black Box, Adamski, Betty Boo and Kylie creating an altogether more colourful chart picture. It would last well into the begining of 1992 when things started to shift again.

Discoveries:

Released in 1989, this track got a commercial release on the back of Madonna's monster hit...



It's surprising there weren't more direct hits lifted from the New York ballroom scene, but dance music was moving so fast at the time. Malcom McLaren's resume is surely the most bizarre in music history - he started off as the manager to the New York Dolls and then the Sex Pistols and spent the 80s exploring various music scenes and trends, brushing shoulders with Boy George, Adam Ant and others. He put his name to various songs too, including this.

I have no memory of this despite being a big fan of Belinda Carlisle's first album stuff and following her run as singles as featured on various NOW/compilation albums at the time.



There's already 3 big singles from this album ("Leave A Light On", "Runaway Horses" and "We Want The Same Thing") but don't recall this at all. It's lovely.

Back to Kym Mazelle and another minor hit that was overlooked -



She never had the same success as Adeva or Alison Limerick clearly, but she deserves credit for being as much an innovator for diva house or handbag house; these tracks were all a good 5 years before that scene peaked.

Notable new entries (US):

May 5

61 — HOLD ON –•– En Vogue

May 12

81 — THE POWER –•– Snap
86 — SHAKE –•– Andrew Ridgeley
95 — JEALOUS AGAIN –•– Black Crowes

May 19

87 — PURE –•– Lightning Seeds
94 — NICK OF TIME –•– Bonnie Raitt
96 — KING OF WISHFUL THINKING –•– Go West

May 26

27 — STEP BY STEP –•– New Kids On The Block
81 — YOU CAN’T DENY IT –•– Lisa Stansfield

So May 1990 saw the debut of one of the greatest girl groups of all time... According those chart records, En Vogue hit big right out of the gate with "Hold On" and it didn't take them long at all to climb to #2 in the summer. Interestingly they didn't really sustain it with the 2 follow up singles being quite disappointing (indeed they felt like a one hit wonder at the time) and it wouldn't be until "My Love" in 1992 was also a massive success that they were able to establish themselves as a true R&B force of the 90s.

Andrew Ridgely had a hit single??

Also the debut of US Rock Group The Black Crowes who felt like an anomoly during this wild shift from hair metal to alternative rock that was about to take place. They're grouped in as part of this new wave of US Rock music that dominated the 90s, but they were not grunge or alternative and much closer to The Rolling Stones sonically, with heavy traditionalal R&B influences. I'm a big fan and they were nominated for the Rock Hall this year.

The Lightning Seeds had a hit in the US?!

That's a BIG new entry for NKOTB. Has any group grown so big so quickly and collapsed so quickly in such a short period of time?
 
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You could not escape Roxette here. They were huge at our school dances
 
Oh and I forgot to mention, that "You Can't Deny It" track from Lisa Stansfield was a US-only release as they were clearly intent on pushing her as a R&B singer rather than a pop/dance singer as it was in Europe.

It worked, as the single reached #14, and gave her a second R&B #1, that was 2 for 2. She even got a THIRD R&B #1 with "All Woman" the following year which is crazy!
 
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