10September

Fifty people were arrested outside an arms fair at Farnborough airfield. Sixty were killed in a plane crash in Cambodia. The Ulster Unionists held talks with the catholic church. Clare Short was sent to Montserrat, showing the government's deep concern at the volcanic eruption, and hope that one might bury the other. Mister Blair talked with teachers and educationalists about ways to raise standards. The DTI announced plans to force companies to recognise trade unions. Rank announced plans to drag its Butlin's holiday camps into the 1950s.

The final series of Mastermind was won by Anne Ashurst. The 2004 Summer Crass Spectacular was awarded to Athens. Greg Rusedski was beaten by Pat Rafter in the final of the New Amsterdam Open. Martina Hingis beat Venus Williams in the ladies' final. Essex beat Warwickshire in the final of the One-Day Trophy. The deaths were announced of Mother Teresa, and of classical musician Georg Solti. Campaigning for the Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums was suspended for the week. The tabloid press was having one of its occasional flights of fantasy. A large funeral and procession took place in London.

It should be noted that most stores were closed until lunchtime on Saturday; some did not open all day. Sales were somewhat lower than usual.

Just seven new entries between 75 and 41. Arab Strap debuted at 74 with The girls of summer. The group was a critical favourite of the inkies, but their biggest hit, Here we go, could only make 48 in March 1998. Whoosh's eponymous single entered at 72. Jimmy Somerville brought his solo career to a quiet end, Dark sky peaked at 66. The former Bronski Beat frontsman had his biggest hit with the Communards in 1986, and his solo career gave two top ten hits in 1990 - You make me feel (mighty real) and To love somebody - and a top 20 hit in 1995. In the years since, Jimmy has had some measure of success in France. We remember nothing of Tilt's Places, in at 64, and remember T-shirt's cover of You sexy thing, in at 63, only for being the first of three versions of the song to chart before the end of the year. Stereolab had their final hit at 60 with Miss modular; they had had three minor hits in 1994, the biggest being Ping pong, a number 45 in July. New at 43 was Nine Inch Nails's The perfect drug, Trent's first hit since 1994.

1997 was a big year for singles sales, and one tactic that the record companies liked, particularly for acts popular with students, was to hold regular sales of back catalogue. Oasis had pioneered the promotion, staging four offers between summer 1995 and November 1996, and the Prodigy had had some success with a similar stunt in April 1996. Now it was the turn of the Manic Street Preachers' back catalogue, any three of the six singles originally pulled from the debut album for £6, or the lot for a tenner. To buy them individually would normally cost £4. The result: six entries between 55 and 41. To be exact: Love's sweet exile at 55, Slash and burn at 54, Stay beautiful at 52, Little baby nothing at 50, You love us at 49, and Motorcycle emptiness at 41. Had the Manics charted one place higher, they would have sold into the top 40 for at least one week in each year between 1996 and 2002.

Spoiling this run was 'N Sync, whose Tearing up my heart entered at 40. The follow-up, I want you back peaked at 62, and it wasn't until the songs were re-released in early 1999 that the group achieved any level of fame in the UK. Other new entries in the lower end included the third hit of the year for Eels, Your lucky day in hell made 35, and SWV's work with Puff Daddy, Someone, at 34. 1997's Mercury Music Prize had been won by Roni Size Reprazent, and their Heroes release entered at 31, mostly from people wondering what all the fuss was about. We had rather hoped the judging panel would find out before awarding the prize. Echo and the Bunnymen came in at 30 with I want to be there when you come, a stately tune that's rather been overlooked in their history.

A lot of old records were re-released this week, the phenomenon wasn't confined to the Manics' back catalogue. Cecille Peniston was having the third hit run of Finally, originally a number 29 hit in October 1991, then a number 2 hit during the 1992 election campaign, and now a number 26 hit in a rather pointless re-release. She'd have one more hit, a cover of Somebody else's guy, early in 1998. Boris Dlugosch put Hold your head up high in at 23, loosely based on Argent's top five hit from a quarter of a century earlier.

Another old record provided a group's first ever hit single, at number 21. Thirty years after their first album, Led Zeppelin finally released a single, Whole lotta love. CCS's version had been to number 13 in 1970, and Goldbug had put their mixture at number 3 in January 1996. It remains ver Zep's one and only single release, and we wonder if the mystique of never having released a single was really worth it.

More old records: Chicane's Offshore had been a rather decent dance-chill record at the very end of 1996, making number 14. It's now re-released, with some slightly superfluous vocals by Power Circle, and makes 17. The group would go on to greater things, Saltwater a number 6 hit in summer 1999, Don't give up a rather rubbish number 1 in March 2000. We reckon the original Offshore is still the best. Quite remarkably, Kavana was still having hits: Crazy chance owed a lot to Wax's 1987 hit Building a bridge to your heart, and had made number 35 on first release in May 1996. After the top ten successes of I can make you feel good and MFEO, it got re-released, and made number 16. He'd have another top twenty hit, Special kind of love, but then Ver Dumper beckoned, and we'd not see him again until he finished second on ITV's flop reality show Grease is the Word in 2007.

Even Staxx's Joy, new at 14, was not new, having made 25 in September 1993. We did have a new entry at 12 from N-Tyce, the original all-female pop-soul band. They'd already had a number 20 in June hit with Hey DJ, and now We come to party caught the mood of a radio playlist that couldn't be more mawkish if they played wall-to-wall wallpaper. This was the group's biggest hit; two more top 20 hits in early 1998 weren't enough to save them from the chop.

Some big falls from last week's top ten: Radiohead, rather predictably, go 8-29; Ginuwine moves 10-24; Ocean Colour Scene slump 5-20; Gala goes 9-13; and DJ Quicksilver drops 7-11. New at 10 comes Finley Quaye's Even after all. It's his second hit, but his one and only week in the top ten. Tina Moore bounces back up two places to 9, as Never gonna let you go became the acceptable face of mawk for the clubbers. Mariah Cantsing dropped from 3 to 8, much to everyone's relief. Cast had their sixth top ten hit in a row as the sombre Live the dream entered at 7. Yes, it did rank highly on the old mawk-o-meter, but it's a pretty darned good song, and deserves better than to be a footnote in the group's history.

All Saints confirmed their position as the pre-eminent all-female pop-soul group as I know where it's at moved 4-6, making way for Puff Daddy's I'll be missing you, back up one to 5, and completing a run of appearances at each of numbers 1-6. Mind the mawk. After that, three songs that were refreshingly upbeat: Hanson did a grand job of Following That, Where's the love was the release after Mmmbop, didn't have a quirky video, and landed at a perfectly respectable number 4. Chumbawumba's Tubthumping was down one at 3, Will Smith's Men in black dropped a place to 2. The Verve had the new number one, The drugs don't work moving straight in at the top. It's a sad song, for a sad week.

This week's interesting bit wasn't the sales, but the airplay. Upbeat songs found themselves yanked off the playlist faster than a speeding car along a riverbank. Will Smith dropped from the UK's most played record to number 24, Chumbawumba plummeted from number 2 all the way out of the top 100, something to do with upbeat drinking songs by ardent republicans becoming politically incorrect to a tremendous degree. The other big loser was Meredith Brooks, dropping away from 4 to somewhere in the 70s - apparently, a song called Bitch is also very un-PC. Hanson didn't experience airplay gains on release week - in these days, some large stations only playlisted a record when it was in the stores - and Dario G dropped like a stone, losing a Network Chart place. They're out in two weeks.

The gainers from all this? Toni Braxton did well, Unbreak my heart was a staple of the MOR service on local radio which lasted until about Tuesday lunchtime, and re-entered the Network Chart at 40. The M People did annoyingly well, Just for you rose from 26 to 18, though how much of this was due to commercial radio's love for cheap soul is not known. George Michael suddenly found that the B-side to his new single, You have been loved, was far more popular than the nominal A-side, The strangest thing; the record advanced 31-26.

The big gainer in terms of airplay was Elton John. Until the mid-80s, Elton was guaranteed a hit each year; after Nikita and Wrap her up, that magic touch deserted him. Of twelve releases between 1986 and 1989, just two broke the top 40. Of course, this was a mere blip in his long career, and after he scored a first solo number one in 1990 with Sacrifice / Healing hands, he would have at least one top 15 hit each year afterwards. Work on The Lion King had introduced him to a new audience, and expectations were high for the first single off his new album.

When it emerged in late August, Something about the way you look tonight didn't disappoint. The video clip, all purples and oranges, could only be made in 1997. It was an orchestral love song, similar in topic to Chris de Bergh's 1986 smash Lady in red, but infinitely less naff in its execution. Where de Bergh was creepy, John was celebratory; where de Bergh went down the scale, John rose up. Where de Bergh's song was simple to the point of charmless, John's was complex to the point of simplicity. For example, there's a fanfare in the song's opening two bars. It sets the tempo and key for the entire song, and elements of it recur throughout the chorus. We don't hear that motif again in full until Elton reaches the chorus line, Takes my breath away, fully 100 seconds in. Then this fanfare gets transposed down, slightly shorn of the joy, and takes us from the chorus back to the second verse. It's a simple verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-exit song, made almost impossibly complex by the orchestration - guitars arpeggiate, a choir emerges, and then they all fade away. That he makes it sound so completely effortless is a tribute to Elton and his songwriter, Bernie Taupin.

In its early weeks, the song had performed well at radio, making the top 50 airplay in the last week of August, two clear weeks before it would be in the stores. Great things were in prospect: a top ten hit looked certain, maybe top five because there's set to be a quiet week or two in late September before the Spices return, and this smells of Crossover Hit. This week, it rose sufficiently to appear in the Network Chart at number 32.

During the week, Elton had accepted an invitation to play at a funeral taking place in London, and put new words to an old song. Candle in the wind had been Elton's one hit in his late-80s drought, a live version had gone to number 5 in early 1988. The original and live versions were combined for airplay detection purposes, and were all over the ILR stations, giving the song a position at number 30 on the Network Chart.

Thirty and thirty two. What do they make?

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