10May

So, back to 2005, and the Ukrainian installment of the Eurovision Song Contest. Two years on, it's clear that this wasn't one of the most memorable contests, and we'd be hard-pushed to hum more than a few of the tunes. Not that we could have hummed Touch my fire (Javine, UK) or Nobody hurt no-one (Natalia Podolskaya, Russia) even while the song was playing. The hosts sent a politically-correct song supporting their new president Yuschenko, while Turkey sent an infectious ethnic beat. Switzerland stole Vanilla Ninja from Estonia, Norway had the hard-rocking Wig Wam, and Moldova's debut entry was a drum-bashing granny.

Greece won the contest, and won it by a surprisingly large distance. Helena Paparizou performed a song that did nothing for us at the time, and that we still think is amongst the weakest winners of recent years. It's to Malta that we turn for the Song of the Contest, and to a familiar name. Chiara had already secured third place in 1998, just a handful of points behind the winning Israeli entry. Though she was all alone and almost motionless on stage, it felt as though the Maltese performer was filling the arena with her rich vocals. We didn't much like the sound of the winning song My number one; we're loving Angel's instead.

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Two Songs a Week

8May

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.

(More: An election to win, the two songs to chart three times in the 90s, Yog, and Lard - 1840 words)

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.

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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Two Songs a Week

3May

And so we come to the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest. It's remembered in the UK for the country's complete failure to score anything from any of the 25 other voting countries, but the BBC has failed to learn the lesson, and continued to send through rubbish performers singing stupid songs every year since. It's remembered in Turkey because they won, in Belgium because they nearly won, and in Russia because they sent Tatu. The biggest pop act of the time still managed to lose Eurovision, precisely because they hadn't bothered to rehearse. There were singing cats, Germans throwing shapes, Romanians with big disks, and Latvians advertising washing powder.

In seventh place that year came Poland. Keine grenzen - Zadnych granic, performed by Ich Troje, was sung in German, Polish, and Russian. Rather appropriate for a song that goes on about there being "no borders" in the new Europe. The Eastern bloc loved it, the west was a bit colder. We reckon that it deserved a bit more recognition, as one of the best songs from what is probably the strongest Eurovision ever.

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Two Songs a Week

30April

One of the more overlooked smooth soul records came in at 30, Nobody, performed by Keith Sweat and Athena Cage. It's an unlikely entry in Two Songs a Week, and we pick it primarily as an example of the sort of soul record that was popular in the late 1990s. Note the close harmonies, the understated (but clearly present) sexual overtones, and the complete absence of any rap. This record is barely ten years old; it sounds radically different from many songs nowadays.

(More: Irish intervention into the election, D:Ream, and two notorious kiddyfiddlers for the price of none. - 1825 words)

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Two Songs a Week

26April

The first in a short series (three or four weeks, no more) of songs from this century's Eurovision song contests. First, we go back to the first contest of the century, and probably one of the worst. The Parken in Copenhagen was a football stadium with a temporary roof over the top. It had about ten million people present, including Dr. Death and the Tooth Fairy. Now, we wouldn't normally give credence to the drunken ramblings of Terry Wogan, but he hit the nail on the head for the 2001 presenters. They were out of their league, and they presented the entire contest in rhyming couplets.

To add to the contest's problems, the winning song was singularly rubbish. Does anyone remember Dave and Tanar performing Everybody? Or Lindsay Dracass, who submitted the obligatory rubbish from Britain? It's not as though there wasn't some talent on display; one of the performers from the Greek entry would go on to win the whole shebang four years later, Muimy Troll and Skamp continue to have significant careers in the Baltics, and the Swedish entry got a sitcom named after them.

Languishing in fourth place was the French entry, performed by one of our favourite singers, Natasha St-Pier. As with all songs that require three or four listens to get, it didn't do as well at Eurovision as it deserved, but it has aged very well indeed. Far better than the hosts' patter.

And if anyone from Danmarks Radio is reading this, we understand that Mr. Wogan is scheduled to pass through your country en route to this year's competition in Helsinki. If you pass a retrospective law making it illegal to compare Danes to the Bride of Frankenstein, punishable by immediate deportation back home, we're not going to object.

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Two Songs a Week

19April

One from the department of Missing Things By A Week, then. The King's Singers is a male vocal group, originally founded at King's College Cambridge in 1965. Their repetoire tended to be contemporary popular music performed in six-part male vocals, but also included some more traditional choral works.

The group has become one of the most enduring popular music franchises, and many of its performers have constructed decent careers afterwards. Nigel Short, for instance, set up the performance choir Tenebrae; Alastair Thompson moved into academia; and Brian Kay was the darling of Radio 3 until he was axed as part of the network's disastrous Siberian Winter atrophication of 2007.

For our sample track, it's back to 1975, and one of the relatively few singles the group ever released. It's also available on their 1980 album This is The King's Singers, and 2005's Colouring Book. The version of Life on Mars here was arranged and conducted by Chris Walker, produced by Bob Barratt, and written by David Jones.

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Two Songs a Week

17April

It is spring 1997, a specific moment in history, a moment when female celebrities who have tattoos and bolts through the tongue, who wear high heels and show off their knickers, hold a specific meaning for us. - William Leith

In at 7 came Shola Ama's cover of You might need somebody. If there's one song that perfectly encapsulates the warm and sunny spring of 1997, this is the tune. Ama's warm vocals brought an additional something to the Randy Crawford song, and it sold bucketloads. It'll be a fixture in these lists for some weeks to come. Ama is something of a one-year wonder, her 1999 follow-up didn't do much in the UK, though turned her into a large star in France. Does that make her the soul equivalent of Tina Arena? Perhaps. We should also note that the Young Mel B in the video clip to Mama, down at 15, was played by Sadie Ama, Shola's sister, and subsequently a singer in her own right.

(More: a blow-by-blow account of Hamilton and Hamilton versus Bell, the end of the Fugees, and Song 2 at 2.)

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Two Songs a Week

6April

Luscious Jackson came in at 25 with Naked eye, the group's only top 40 hit in the UK. The group made music from a particularly unusual place, somewhere between hip-hop, grunge, and the style that would eventually become known as emo. It was complex and full of life, exemplified by their hit single, two songs melded together so well that one cannot see the joins. There are other reasons why we like this song, but those would be for chums to know.

R Kelly won a three-way battle for the top, barely 800 sales ahead of Supergrass and 1500 over No Doubt. I believe I can fly became the first record to climb to the number one slot since Tori Amos twelve weeks before, the first to take three weeks to hit the summit since Deep Blue Something the previous September, and the first to make the top after falling since Céline Dion's Think twice at the start of 1995.

(More: No traffic on the M5, the big new band from Glasgow, and the April Fool's joke that fired an imagination - 1702 words)

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Two Songs a Week

2April

Horse (unofficial) was both one of the great lost talents and one of the great survivors of the late-80s Glasgow boom. The six-piece group was fronted by Horse McDonald, whose distinctive vocal style could be heard on their 1990 release Careful. Though a top 20 hit in their native Scotland, success south of the border was strictly limited, the single stalling at 52 on the nationals. It's a shame - McDonald's vocals show clear signs of the nodule-removing surgery she underwent just before recording this track, and it has a string arrangement from Anne Dudley. Following sustained success on the dancefloor - Sasha had mixed the tune in 1992, Brothers in Rhythm and James Wiltshire more recently - the group re-released their big near-miss, only to find it stalling at position 44. It was the biggest UK hit of their career, and the song remains one of the best never to quite make the national top 40. We've two versions for your consideration - the 1990 original, and James Wiltshire's Ambient Mix.

No move for No Doubt at 3, and the Spice Girls lose the top spot after three weeks. Taking over the top, though not set to open any television channels, are the Chemical Brothers, recording their second best-selling single in as many releases. Setting sun was the number one single in early October 1996, now Block rocking beats took over pole position. The group is still active, though has only released one album in the past five years, and can be relied upon to make at least one massive hit single from each album.

(More: meltdown in the Conservative party, lots of cheesy dance, and Mr. Imbruglia. 1759 words)

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Two Songs a Week

29March

Two years ago, the top web search returned the Imperial. Now, it returns pictures of a fresh-faced young man with a porcupine on his head.

Twins Bill and Tom Kaulitz were born in Leipzig in September 1989. At the age of 12, they formed the band Devilish with Magdeburg natives Gustav Schäfer and Georg Listing. They quickly outgrew the clubs of Saxony, and signed to Universal in 2003. The group's first major-label album, Schrei was released in autumn 2005, under their new name of Tokio Hotel. It appears that much of the songwriting was done by the hired hands Pat Benzner, David Jost, and Dave Roth - the Kaulitz brothers have joint credits on four of the twelve songs, with two others attributed to the group.

If the music's authenticity is questionable, the look of the group's members is not. Go on, just look at Bill Kaulitz, the lead singer who looks innocent and demure, but sings with dirt coursing through his veins. Tom - the guy with the dreadlocks - is quieter, just standing there and playing his guitar. The band's visual imagery is played out in their videos - a concert in a lake for debut hit Durch den Monson gave plenty of opportunity for wet t-shirt footage, and a house party for Schrei was typical of the image the band wants to project.

Ver Hotel's second album, Zimmer 483, was released earlier this year. Lead single Übers ende der Welt was promoted with a post-apocalyptic video, while the clip for Spring Nicht involves some very strange business in a car park.

We rather suspect that Tokio Hotel is filling a similar role to Evanescence - a group playing exquisitely manufactured commercial hard rock, fronted by a singer who half the audience wants to be, the other half wants to um, and these divisions are not on traditional gender lines.

Though possibly manufactured, and clearly formulaic, the group vies with Avril Lavigne for the honour of biggest teen sensation in the world at the moment. Sorry, McFly, but then sorry is not good enough. Tokio Hotel has exploded out of the German-speaking world to hit France, and plans to crack at the Anglosphere later this year, unless the Kaulitz twins are called up to the German army. We're enjoying the novelty while it lasts; by the end of the year, we could well be heartily sick of the group.

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Two Songs a Week

26March

Gina G's Fresh dropped four to 10, and new at 9 came the Pet Shop Boys' Red letter day. The fourth and final single from their Single:Bilingual album owed a certain debt to some recordings of Can't help falling in love, particularly a traditional-Irish version that did the rounds about ten years earlier. Red letter day would become interesting for other reasons, but we'll come to those next week.

If she'd run against the Spice Girls, holding at the top for a third week, it's certain that R. would have lost. So would Mr. Blair, for the Spices were sweeping all before them. In retrospect, this final week at the top marked the high water mark for Spicemania; an awful lot would change before their next chart hit in October.

(More from this week in 1997, including one of the worst puns ever 1520 words)

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Two Songs a Week

22March

Last Saturday, a week after the official deadline, the UK picked its song to lose at this year's Eurovision Song Contest. And when we say lose, we mean really lose, in a way that will make recent lack-of-achievement look like a positive victory.

Flying the flag, performed by Scooch And The Invisible Backing Vocalists, is quite the worst song that the UK has sent in living memory. It is rubbish. It is appalling. It is abysmal. It exemplifies everything that is wrong with the UK's approach to the world's biggest cultural festival.

Twelve years ago, back when the British entry was supervised by someone who actually cared about the concept, a number of stars tried to win. Deuce came close, and we suspect that they would have done a little better than the eventual UK winners, though perhaps not better than Secret Garden.

That was a decent song. Here, from the 2004 contest, is another song that is better than the UK's entry for this year.

And, yes, there are a couple of hidden shout-outs. One song carries the subliminal message, enjoy your trip, you've earned it. The other carries the not-so-subliminal message that we've extremely happy for you, and will be doing very good vibes and little Tweenie-dances the week-end after next.

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Two Songs a Week

19March

Fountains of Wayne began their chart career with Radiation vibe at number 32, but wouldn't break the top 20 until 2004. Symposium debuted at 25 with the rather brilliant Farewell to twilight - the group's three-single top 40 career would be done within six months, and that is a grade-1 shame. Fresh from the publicity surrounding their appearance on Brass Eye, Cake came in at 22 with The distance, their career highpoint; we never quite worked out why 2001's Short skirt long jacket wasn't larger than number 63.

Number 9 was The real thing, the big comeback hit single for Lisa Stansfield. She'd had her biggest hit single with All around the world in 1989, and 1991's All Woman album had spawned hit after hit after hit. The 1993 comeback had surprisingly flopped, and after just one hit single, the '97 return also ran out of steam. A shame.

(More: the top 75 dissected and set in context. And two songs to download! - 1477 words)

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Two Songs a Week

15March

Mister Nice Guy

Chart-watchers across Europe will be paying close attention to the new Danish singles listing to-morrow, for a piece of chart history looks set to be made. Since its first release at the beginning of 2005, Trine Dyrholm's song Avenuen (Mr Nice Guy) has been ever-present in the top 30 in Denmark. Though it took a couple of months to establish itself in the upper echelons of the slow-moving chart, Avenuen reached the top in June 2005, and stayed there. And stayed there some more. The country's biggest seller in 2005 retained its title in 2006, and managed to spend the majority of the year at number one.

It is actually quite difficult to figure out the attraction of the song on first listen, though it should become clear in time. There are some close harmonies, a rather nice DESH effect, some minor fifths and augmented sevenths, and that always sounds good to us. Whether we'd want this song - or any song - to spend a non-consecutive calendar year as the national best-seller is another matter.

Yes, to-morrow's Danish chart should see Avenuen spend it's 52nd week (yes, one complete year) at the number one position. This feat has never before been achieved in any European chart; indeed, Trine has left Elton John's record of 45 weeks at number one in Canada for dead.

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Two Songs a Week

12March

What was it you wanted?

Debuting at 11 was Monaco, the side-project of Peter Hook while New Order was on a break. They only released the one album, and people only remember the one single, but what a wonderful single it was. What do you want from me? sounded like the right kind of 60s nostalgia, all sha-la-las and major chords.

(More: BBC4 be damned. This was the real 1997, and no DOG top left 985 words)

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Two Songs a Week

8March

Okay, we were going to put a certain song in this slot, but it turns out that we're a week off in our calculations, so that'll be a week hence. Instead, a highlight from It All Comes To This, the most recent album by Scala and the Kolacny Brothers. It's their take on Enjoy the silence, the old Depeche Mode song. We reckon it imbues the song with a sense of mysticism, a sense of wonder that's only hinted at in the original.

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Two Songs a Week

27February

Two Songs a Week: Goers, Ready!

Remember Republica? Saffron of the bright red hair, loud braying voice, and songs that were ubiquitous because they were so damned catchy. Ready to go had just missed the top 40 in spring 1996, but was re-promoted heavily in the opening months of the following year, and turned into the tremendous hit it always deserved to be, entering at number 13. Follow-up Drop dead gorgeous would make the top ten barely a couple of months later, but the group rather lost their way afterwards; From rush hour with love barely scraped the top 20 in autumn 1998, the second album Speed Ballads was a grade 1 flop, and the group split.

(More from the 1997 chart 841 words)

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Two Songs a Week

22February

Anyone can hit number one in Finland, where they seem to have a different chart-topper every week. Though it does help to be performing heavy metal, or ten million beat-per-minute dance. Last week's successor to the likes of Lordi, Iron Maiden, and Nightwish was -- er, a Polish actress with a song from a German musical.

Natalia Avelon is the lead performer in the German touring production of Das Wilde Leben. The show is a summary of the life of Uschi Obermaier, feted as the first groupie in Germany during the 1960s. Inevitably, the show contains songs of the era, including a cover of the Nancy Sinatra number Summer wine. For no adequately explored reason, it's been recorded with Ville Valo, the scarily-eyed lead singer with Finnish metallers HIM.

The songs has been released as a single in Germany, and was only held off the top spot by the powerhouses of Nelly Furtado and Tokio Hotel. Neither of these massive stars has a single out in Finland, so the coast was clear for Avelon and Valo to spend their seven days at the summit, before being swept aside by Ensiferum, a Viking / folk metal band.

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Two Songs a Week

20February

(That chart countdown in full - 998 words)

There were two One Week Wonders this week in 1997, acts spending their only seven days in the UK top 40. Joining Alfonzo was Bennet, with a song that we've never quite managed to place. Is it a clever spoof on the observational lyrics of the Britpop era? Was it made by a bunch of chancers who wanted to see just how desperate a record label was for a hit? Or was it a reaction to one of the longest-running and most well-remembered advertising campaigns of the era? Here's a fansite to help you decide. Whichever way, the song is not available to buy through legal download services, nor available through illegal download services. So, dubbed from cassette tape no less, we proudly present Bennet's one and only hit, My mum has gone to Iceland.

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Two Songs a Week

15February

If there's one common thread in most of the songs Radio 1 failed to play, at least before the liberalisation of the Beerling and Bannister eras, it was sex. We've already spoken about George Michael, but the heyday of the ban was in the early years of Radio 1. There was a good reason not to play such dreck as Max Romeo's Wet dream and Ivor Biggun's Winker's song (Misprint), the reason being that these records were atrocious musically. But when such arguable classics as the Stones' Let's spend the night together and Donna Summer's Love to love you are completely removed from the playlist, it's clear that the BBC is not basing its judgements entirely on musical merit.

(It gets round to Je t'aime eventually - 556 words)

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Two Songs a Week

13February

Ten years ago, pyramid schemes threatened the government of Albania, John Fashanu was being tried in the Grobbelgaate (©WSC 1994) case, the president of Ecuador was deemed incompetent, Lennox Lewis beat Oliver McCall in strange and distressing circumstances, and after being rescued from almost certain death in the Antarctic Ocean when his yacht capsized, Tony Bullimore is dragooned into appearing on the National Lottery draw show with Dale Winton.

(The ten year old chart review - 708 words)

For the chosen track, we go back to position 32, and a pop-disco version of Sometimes when we touch. James Masterton, whose Dotmusic commentary is still to the sales chart as some claim the Week is to British game shows, reckons the Dan Hill original (from 1977, fact fiends) is the best song ever recorded. Here at The Snow in the Summer, we prefer the phrase, one of the best, but that's small beer. The song is infinitely better than the sloppy mush that comes out around this time of year, not least because it's a bit honest.

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Two Songs a Week

8February

Before the recent ignoring of Iron Maiden, we have to go back almost twenty years to find the last top 5 single never played on the Radio 1 Top 40. It came from an unlikely source.

George Michael had risen to fame with Andrew Ridgeley in the group Wham!. They first hit the top 10 in late 1982, on a contract with Interscope that paid them about one new penny for each album they sold. It took until 1984 to get themselves out of that one. From the group's first release on EMI - Wake me up before you go-go to their last - The edge of heaven, every Wham! single would either be a UK number one, or sell a million copies. The same was true for George Michael's two solo releases, in 1984 and 1986. Eventually, there were no more frontiers for Wham! to crack - they'd conquered the states, they'd played in Red China. Just about the only thing they hadn't done was topple the xilkband Zorgon on the planet Pxyri, and that was only because Simon Napier Bell had yet to invent cold fusion rocket travel.

So, shorn of Andrew, what was George's next solo challenge? The Faith album, a bridge between the candy pop of his early career and the serious singer-songwriter that George wanted to be. Perhaps the best way to break out of the lightweight image would be to release a single that Radio 1 would fall over itself to ban. So, step forward June 1987's I want your sex. Here was a pretty decent funk groove, with Yog shouting about how good it was to have sex as part of a loving relationship.

Of course, the biggest pop star on the planet suggesting that there was something more racy in life than a cup of milky cocoa was sufficient to rouse the immoral majority to action. Mrs. Mary Whitewash voiced her disapproval, Anthony Beaumont-Dark had an opinion, and Radio 1's controller Johnny Beergut decided that his station wouldn't play the record before 9pm. So, no plays on the Top 40, a show that resolutely finished at 7pm.

However, this all happened so long ago that Radio 1 was still playing music on a Saturday evening. Remember that as a concept? The Saturday DJ was a hip young swinger, who was happy to set aside his own moral stance in order to play the record that he couldn't normally play. And, a year or so later, he and producer Ric Blaxill would cut out the rubbish parts, take the good bits of the record, and use it as a bed for his On This Day In History segment. Whatever happened to that Simon Mayo chap, anyway?

Two Songs a Week

6February

The Orb were Alex Paterson, Youth, and other electronica geniuses who usually appeared for an odd track or album. Slowing down the frantic pace of house music, and adding in some weird-ass synthwork. And more than a little dash of art - the group's 1992 single Blue room was just two seconds under the 40-minute maximum allowed by the chart rules then in effect. (It's worth noting that the release would have been relegated to the Budget Album chart from July 1998, returning to the singles list in January 2006.) On Top of the Pops, the group hired a couple of people to play chess; they were rewarded with a number one album, albeit one that's amongst the smallest-selling best-sellers of all time.

Little fluffy clouds, a mixture of Steve Reich's music and vocals from Rickie Lee Jones, was a top 10 hit when re-released in 1993. Though they didn't do much that was memorable in the mid-90s, that changed with Toxygene, the lead single from their third album proper. Paterson and co are still recording, on independent labels.

Two Songs a Week

1February

A number of new entries were casually ignored by Jay Kay and Or Joel when they took over Radio 1's chart show during 2005. We have to go back to 2002 to find the last concerted banning of records, when a clearly pissed-off Scott Mills hosted the Easter Sunday chart. No space for two of that week's top ten, the fastest climber, or one of the new entries.

Only once in recent years has the top 40 been entirely abandoned. Following three deaths in a traffic accident in France one evening in August 1997, Radio 1 determined that it would scrap the scheduled broadcast of the chart, and replace it with some ambient muzak. Station controller Matthew Bannister said in the behind-the-scenes book The Nation's Favourite that no-one complained. The phrase he's looking for is no complaints reached my desk, because some were made.

That week's chart featured three songs that be gone a week later - the Cardigans' Your new cuckoo, Hurricane #1's Chain reaction, and Gina G's Gimme some love. None of these tunes were ever played on the chart show. This was the final week on chart for both Gina G and Living Joy, and was the last appearance for Wet Wet Wet until their short-lived comeback in 2004.

Two Songs a Week