The first one leaving for tonight was the Spice Girls' third overall single and their very first Christmas single, hitting number one spot in very late 1996. Impressively enough, the song sold around 209,000 on its very first day of release, 430,000 after being out for one week, and in the long run it crossed the eponymous one million mark, being their second single to do so, along with Wannabe.
According to the girls, the song was written with ms. Halliwell's developing love affair with the song's writer, Matt Rowe, in mind. Completely in line with the relatively graphic lyrics, the girls also advocate safe sex ('be a little bit wiser baby, put it on, put it on')
These 4 minutes and 4 seconds of pop music heaven contain all necessary elements to an very very good Spice Girls song (and an amazing Christmas single): it's sexy, smooth, elegant, romantic, but on top of everything simply put just ****ing amazing. 10/10.
After releasing their debut single I Know Where It's At in August earlier that year, the girls went along and recorded a second single for their album, this single was to be Never Ever. Receiving lots of positive reviews by critics upon its release, the song entered the UK charts at #3. Interestingly enough, it took 8 weeks and around 770,000 copies sold (a record by the way) before the track finally made the top spot.
Its succesful release in the UK and in Europe motivated their label to take it to the US, where it entered the charts at #13 and peaked at #4, becoming their first and only top ten hit in the US. The song's success did get the album to sell over one million copies in the US alone.
Up to this day, the song has sold around 1,3 million copies in the United Kingdom, and it used to be the best selling girlgroup single of all time there until a certain Spice song passed it thanks to a greater amount of recurrent sales.
The absolutely brilliant spoken-word intro sets the tone for one of the best ballads British pop has ever encountered. Absolutely amazing. 10/10. (The choreography in that TOTP performance was... unnecessary however...)
Just so everyone (well Subomie only ) knows: The Saints' last song left is Pure Shores, forming the top three together with Viva Forever and Wannabe!
So here we are. The official Bronze medal of this rate goes to a very amazing ballad. Originally planned to be released as a double A-side alongside Never Give Up On The Good Times in early May, its release was constantly delayed and ultimately Never Give Up was scrapped as it did actually feature Geri on lead vocals, unlike Viva Forever.
Despite being promoted very poorly, the song reached the top spot yet again on the UK charts, mainly because the hype surrounding Geri's departure catalysed its hype enormously. (She announced her departure on May 31 while the song was released on July 20.) The song had a cartoon-based video which actually did feature Geri's likeliness.
Now here I posted their very last performance as a fivepiece (well until that 2007 comeback no one cared about.) It fascinates me: their awkward dance moves, their change of clothes, the lack of camera shots on Geri... (who looks like she's about to attend her own career's funeral god damn)
Ofcourse this one's carrying kind of a bitter flavour but we can't deny it's an amazing pop ballad, can we? While 2 Become 1 was very sexy, this one's more hypnotizing, like it's carrying me right to pop heaven. 10/10.
This is a chance for some "Pure Shores" redemption after the blasphemy of jinzo's rate last summer.
And what kind of redemption is this! I can proudly declare that the winner by a landslide is the utterly brilliant Pure Shores by All Saints. From the very first moment, this song was the highest rated songs of all, and it remained in that very position until the end, taking a very clear victory over Spice Girls' Wannabe, which is almost as brilliant.
Two amazing pop songs. While the Spice Girls one is a masterpiece, full of brilliant hooks, playful lyrics and deliciously 90s productions, the All Saints delivered a wonderful midtempo electropop song with lush lyrics and amazing chorus as the cherry on top. No wonder the queen of queens Madonna wanted William Orbit to hand the track to her. Let's celebrate this utterly amazing winner by watching some more videos.
Thanks a lot to all the 17 people who sent in their ballots (such an accomplisment tbh, more than the Yesterdays their last album sales) and more so to the four (sometimes not so) amazing girl bands delivering us all this amazing pop music we on ATRL can do rates on!
Oh no, I missed the whole finale! I'm so sorry about that.
But a big fat YES at these flawless results! The three ultimate Spice jams in the top five? A well-deserved victory for "Pure Shores"? I'm so proud of us, ATRL! We did good this time. (Except for "Up" almost placing second. Y'all wrong for that.)
Thank you for an amazing rate, adrian! Your write-ups were hilarious and your hosting was perfection. I had such a blast with this one!