My Birthday Number Ones (1992 - 2001)

Here we are in the 90s, the time when super divas roamed the earth. It is also another decade in which an artist scored two number ones on my birthday. Who do you think? Is it one of THEM? Time to find out.

1992: Shakespears Sister - Stay

I absolutely love this, and the video must be in my personal top three (it was directed by Sophie Muller). Just wonderful stuff. This stayed at number one for 8 weeks.

1993: 2 Unlimited - No Limit

"No no lyrics" - but this slice of Eurodance was the best-selling European song of 1993, and clearly popular in the UK too, as it reached number one. I sneakily quite liked it too.

1994: Mariah Carey - Without You
The first of the super divas reigning supreme (Embedding disabled by request). Mariah takes the 1970 Badfinger song to number one again, and stays there for a whole month. Although it is possibly the most covered song of the last forty years, Badfinger themselves never released it as a single, not seeing its potential.

1994: D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better

Maria was preceded as number one by D:Ream's biggest hit. The song achieved immortality as the theme tune to Tony Blair and New Labour's successful 1997 Election campaign.

1995: Celine Dion - Think Twice

. . . and the second super diva hoves into view. Celine's voice is of course incredible but this is surely a very poor choice of song: desperately cloying, sentimental, and obvious. I actually can't remember this at all; it must have passed me by completely in 1995.

1996: Babylon Zoo - Spaceman

A bit of an oddity, this: although it held the record for the most number of records sold in the first week of release, and stayed number one for a month. Jas Mann seems to have had bad luck with contracts which slowed down his subsequent career. Nice, very memorable debut though.

1996: Oasis - Dont Look Back In Anger

My 1996 birthday week saw Oasis's iconic song claim the number one spot, and mark out space for mid-nineties Britpop.

1997: No Doubt - Dont Speak

No Doubt's biggest international hit, featuring Gwen Stefani's stunning performance.

1998: Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On

And here it is folks - Celine Dion's second outing in my birthday charts, singing the theme from THAT film. She was number one until the 22nd February, and on that day was superseded by:

1998: Cornershop - Brimful Of Asha

Cornershop reached number 60 in 1997 with this song, but Fatboy Slim's remix took them to number one in February 1998.

1999: Britney Spears - Baby One More Time
Britney's stunning iconic debut video is disabled by request. A brilliant pop song, and one of the highest selling singles in the UK ever, it has already been covered by a multitude of artists, notably by Travis.

2000: All Saints - Pure Shores

The theme to the movie The Beach starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and witten by William Orbit and Shaznay Lewis, this was the first single off All Saints' second album (and one of the UK's best sellers of 2000). I remember the group single handedly made combat trousers fashionable in the late nineties.

2001: Atomic Kitten - Whole Again

Aww, poor Atomic Kitten! This was their real-life "save me" song, as Virgin Records wanted to drop them and were persuaded to release one more single. This was it. The record company was unwilling to plough any money into the video (hence the obvious cheapness), and finally, Kerry Katona dropped out of the band just days before the song charted, on account of her pregnancy. Well done in spite of everything!

So that's it for this decade, the last in this series coming up tomorrow.