8May

John Major visited all corners of the country in an attempt to preserve the United bit of the United Kingdom. A Labour press conference featuring Gordon Brown in London and Tony Blair in Nottingham failed when the two could not talk to each other. Mr. Blair went on to claim that there were 24 hours to save the N.H.S.

Michael Portillo, ex-MP

The election result was a Labour landslide, the party was returned with an overall majority of 179. Toby Blair went around the block a few times so that he could say at 5.13, a new dawn has broken with the sun rising behind him. Five women were appointed to cabinet posts, a record. Various ministers - Gordon Brown at Finance, David Blunkett at Education, Mo Mowlam at Northern Ireland, Harriet Harman at Social Security - claimed that their territory would be at the heart of the new administration. John Major went on to spend his first day out of office at The Oval cricket ground. Michael Heseltine ruled himself out of the Conservative party leader after suffering further chest pains.

Further IRA bomb devices were found near the M25; the motorway remained open while the disposal experts were working. A third of young people confirmed that they have used illegal drugs. There was a row at Charles de Gaulle airport when British Airways and Algerian Airways opened up at adjacent desks. At an election rally in Grenoble, former European Commission president Jacques Delors was attacked with custard pies and firecrackers. Hundreds of Rwandan refugees were flown out of Zaire; peace talks between President Mobutu and Laurent Kabila ended in an agreement to hand over power to an elected successor. Loyalist inmates occupied part of the Maze prison. Hereford fell out of the Football League after drawing 1:1 against Brighton. The death was announced of Hughie Green.

The United Kingdom won the Eurovision Song Contest; Love shine a light performed by Katrina and the Waves beat Ireland into second place. Portugal and Norway failed to score. St Helens won the rugby challenge cup, and Garry Kasparov beat the chess computer Deep Blue. Scheduling masterstroke of the week was to air Dish and Dishonesty at 9.24 on Thursday night, and the Election Night Armistice, including the final sighting of the Armistice Dianas. Top television show Wanted returned for its second (and, so far, final) series.

that */!*?! D Ream song again (5.23.15)

This is the second of five charts we heard nothing of during 1997.

New entries into the bottom end of the chart. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (66), the multi-artist Feverpitch ep (65), LSG (63), Tilt (61) and Human Nature (44) we remember nothing about. Bis (64) we do recall, though not that Everybody thinks that they're going was a single. Feeder's second hit single, Cement, made 53. Dreadzone had had their one hit with Little Britain in early 1996; their new re-working of Earth angel could only make 51. UK Eurovision entry Love shine a light had a very quiet release, in at 50. Fountains of Wayne came in at 42 with Sink to the bottom, about their average performance. Tricky had Slump of the Week, dropping 46 places, but there was a 41-place drop for Kenickie, and sixteen other records fell 20 places or more, including James at 39.

Another huge fall - though only 18 places - for That */!*?! D Ream Song Again, only making number 37 second week out. It joined the Stone Roses Fools' gold in the very short list of songs that were top 40 hits in three different runs during the 1990s; the Roses' song would be re-released in 1999 and have a fourth top 40 run. First of eighteen (count 'em!) new entries at 35 for Tin Tin Out - Dance with me featured the vocal extensions of Tony Hadley. thus doing six places better than his 1992 solo career. Still with massive falls, U2's Staring at the sun had gone 3-17-34, and Notorious BIG had gone 10-32.

New at 31, Jay-Zed's Ain't no playa. In at 30, Prefab Sprout's A prisoner of the past - the first single off Paddy Macaloon's forthcoming Andromeda Heights album, in turn his first work for seven years. It's also his last hit single, at least to the present day. Hurricane #1 came in at 29 with Step into my world; the song will be re-released in six months and just scrape into the top 20. 3 Colours Red came in at 28 with Pure, their third hit single of the year, and it's still only the start of May! Second single for Nuyorican Soul, this time featuring Jocelyn Brown; It's alright, I feel it! was in at 26. We've recently bought the album, after finding it discounted to £3.

Songs we don't remember: Goodfellaz's Sugar honey ice tea came in at 25, Gene's Where are they now? at 22, and Brainbug's Nightmare dropped from 11 to 24. Paul McCartney's albums had been rather predictable in recent years - the first single will just go into the top 20, a couple of other singles will go lower. So it was for 1997, and Young boy came in at number 19. In an utterly useless fact, Fab Macca Whacky Thumbs Aloft! has released ten singles since 1993; they have peaked at 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 41, 42 and 45.

Republica (second week) and Robbie Williams (third) fall out of the top ten. Dru Hill come in at 16 with In my bed, another song we don't recall hearing. Story of the week belonged to Mansun, whose Six ep was in at 15. Lead single Taxloss featured a video clip filmed at Liverpool-street station, when the band threw £20,000 in used notes about during morning rush hour. Though the group was briefly arrested, they got a remarkable video, and a quality single that's fallen deep into the memory hole.

Antan Dec were promoting the third-best show on Channel 4 that week, behind one-joke wonder Fluke and the sublime second series of Wanted. Their new single, Falling, came in at a perfectly-normal 14. Blackstreet slipped four to 13. The Foo Fighters entered at 12 with Monkey wrench, the first single off their second album. Red 5 entered at 11 with I love you ... stop!, a song that is perhaps remembered only for inspiring a very long-running Marc Riley catchphrase.

Carry on! The 911 fall from 3 to 10 in their second week; it's the sixth week in the top 10 for DJ Quicksilver, and he's down from 5 to 9. Last week's number one from Michael Jackson is down to number 8, the fastest fall from the top since Iron Maiden in early 1991, and the fifth record so far this year to drop from number 1 out of the top five entirely. Shola Ama dropped just one place to number 7 - three of her opening four weeks had been at this position. In at 6 was Jamiroquai's Alright, the third top ten hit in nine months. R Kelly had been elected in Bolton West, but her single dipped from 2 to 5, just as it had done on 30 March. No move at number 4 for the Cardigans.

Three new entries into the top three? That's never happened before! First of them is from the Seahorses, the post-Stone Roses band featuring John Squire. It's not entirely unreasonable to describe Love is the law in terms of the Roses - it's epic, recognisable, and intensely tuneful without quite having a properly hummable hook. The group fell apart somewhat more quickly than it had been put together, and their 1998 festival appearances turned out to be their swansong. A second album was recorded, but never released.

For George Michael, Star people '97 - a re-recording of a track from his Older album - was the second of three number 2 singles in a row. We didn't see the attraction of the song at the time, and it still passes us by.

So Gary Barlow has his second consecutive number one single, with Love won't wait coming in at the top. Though he was the only decent song-writer in Take That, Barlow had turned to some even greater talents - Madonna and Shep Pettibone. They'd written this song as a rock ballad for the thirty-eight-year-old mother of one's 1994 album Bedtime Stories, but it was eventually discarded. Madge's song was in the vein of Deeper and deeper, but Barlow sped the song up, trimmed some repetition, and brought out (or put in) a few notes from the chorus of Borderline. It had been eight months since Barlow's first single, during which time Robbie Williams had had a brace of number 2s, and Mark Owen a pair of 3s. Gary had now had ten number one singles from his past 11 releases, and - like his bandmates - had 13 consecutive top three singles.

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