Review
The third volume of Hits ’93 was released on 2 August. It contained 22 tracks, two more than Hits ’93 – Volume 2 which itself had 20 compared to the 18 on Hits ’93 – Volume 1. Inevitably such cramming meant that something had to give as half of the songs are edited. There was some overlap with Now Dance ’93 [Sister Sledge] while six of the 22 “hot summer hits” were shared with rival Now That’s What I Call Music 25 which was released at the same time [4 Non Blondes, Kim Wilde, Dannii Minogue, Inner Circle, Robin S and Oui 3]. And the competition to win a CD walkman was still running. . .
Lord have mercy: Take That debuted at #1 with the gospel-tinged Pray; video shot in the beautiful world of Mexico. Air, fire, earth and water. 4 Non Blondes continues the religious theme with the uplifting What’s Up. Scream it from the top of your lungs as Heather Small makes One Night in A Heaven one of M People’s most spiritual numbers. The Cellar Bar flashbacks continue with Haddaway’s pleading What Is Love, truly one of eurodance’s most glorious moments. Sadly after such a strong opening quartet the stinker inevitably comes with Kim Wilde’s cheesy If I Can’t Have You. The madmen and women return on Snap’s groove-building Do You See The Light (Looking For).
Jack to the max with Jade and the breezy R&B of I Wanna Love You. Take it slow and low with Lisa Stansfield’s beautiful ballad In All The Right Places. It was a popular wedding song that year. Another one was I Will Always Love You but not the pumping Sarah Washington remake. Thankfully Dannii Minogue pops up at the right time with the bouncing optimism of This Is It. To the dancehall mobile next with Inner Circle’s Sweat and Bitty McLean’s It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes). Then there’s Ali and Frazier’s highly commended cover of Uptown Top Ranking which was made famous by Althea and Donna in 1977. And Robin S piles on the mixed messages with the enigmatic Luv 4 Luv.
Rohan Heath’s CV: member of A Guy Called Gerald, worked with Together and supported the Happy Mondays. The Key, The Secret with Diane Charlemagne on vocals was a simple yet effective dance smash. Black Box hang on with Rockin’ To The Music but the magic is fading while Stan’s Suntan sounds like an amateur Right Said Fred. However Oui 3’s freestyle funk of Break From The Old Routine and Sister Sledge’s brutal disco deluxe Thinking Of You are welcome jams. Evolution are logically positioned next; their cover of Chic’s Everybody Dance is a quality tribute. The final pair are somewhat manic; Maxima featuring Lily with the furious Ibiza and Dr Alban’s tampax techno of It’s My Life.
Favourite tracks
Haddaway – What Is Love
Oui 3 – Break From The Old Routine
Urban Cookie Collective – The Key, The Secret
Lest we forget
Ali and Frazier – Uptown Top Ranking
Missing tracks and other thoughts
A 20 song CD would have been a much better idea. Including Dr Alban was a bad move. Here’s three more tracks that were rocking my world back in the early summer of 1993:
A-ha – Dark Is The Night. Moody magnificence from their career high Memorial Beach.
Whitney Houston – Run To You. A lesser light from The Bodyguard.
Billy Joel – River Of Dreams. Old but young.
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Yes, it’s a mystery why It’s My Life featured on there. Without that, they could have included all the other tracks in unedited format. Interestingly, One Night In Heaven and Do You See The Light are in edited form on here and these edits are used on Now 26, Now 1993, Now Dance ’93 etc. Ashley Abram took them from this compilation.
Interesting – hadn’t made the connection re those two. Makes sense given the timelines.
I always thought “Its My Life” came out in either late 1992 or early 1993 so was quite suprised to read on here that it was on this volume. Do you have any idea when it would have been released here in the UK?
Hi Martin, It’s My Life is an October 1992 smash. This Hits volume came out on 2 August 1993.
Once again thanks for that helpful info Paul.
Shows that the track is completely out of place being on this volume.
The Wikipedia entry for the album bizarrely suggests it was included because it appeared in a tampon advert in the summer of 1993. If that was Telstar’s reasoning then I’d be rather amazed! I suspect it was simply because it was a BMG track.
Haha – that’s a possibility (watched a lot of telly that summer) but probably the reason you mention Andrew…
Not sure if this has ever happened before or since, but there are two different covers for this release. The first is the pic on this blog. The second mentions Robin S, Urban Cookie Collective, Bitty McLean and Sarah Washington instead of Kim Wilde, Snap and Lisa Stansfield and the Hits 93 is coloured white. This was presumably done as these tracks had climbed up the chart and were very current big hits (2 of them certainly), so this needed to be advertised. I can’t remember exactly how long it took for the 2nd cover to appear, 3 weeks at least from memory.
It would be interesting to find out how long before release a compilation is finalised and recorded. 3 weeks before this was released, Bitty McLean had just entered the chart, while Urban Cookie Collective had spent a few uninspiring weeks climbing from a new entry at no.40. I guess neither were expected to do that well when the album was first compiled, hence their more lowly track placings.
Wow – thanks for that Andrew, that’s something I was not aware of. Unusual for the Hits team to do a second pressing like that. I believe the lead-in time is generally between three and four weeks.
Hi Paul, talking of second pressings, here’s a curious one for you. Energy Rush Xtermin8. There are two pressings of this compilation. The first pressing, by Nimbus is 29 seconds longer than the second pressing, by Mayking. The Nimbus edition has virtually perfect copies of all of the tracks with silence between them and is worth picking up just for that. The Mayking version removes this silence and so the tracks are all around a second or two shorter. I can only presume the wrong master was pressed originally!
Never got that far with Energy Rush but surprising to read – and certainly worth buying to get a properly mastered copy
Thinking about the Happy Mondays track on Now 17, the unedited 7″ version of “One Night In Heaven” is something of a rarity on CD. The CD single only featured the full length Master Mix. Telstar’s edited version appears on virtually every compilation out there, though Dino included this on Dance Massive and it appears to be an edited version of the album version.
It’s one of their best singles – certainly one of my favourites. I got the Renaissance box but not got much chance to play it yet.