Review
Fresh Hits ’96 arrived in the shops at the end of August, just three weeks after its rival Now That’s What I Call Music 34. The Hits compilation included seven crossover tracks [Peter Andre – Mysterious Girl, Louise – Naked, Livin’ Joy – Don’t Stop Movin’, Underworld – Born Slippy, Suede – Trash, Ocean Colour Scene – The Day We Caught The Train, Space – Female Of The Species]. The traditional four part format remained.
Part 1: A R&B heavy-hitter and #1 for five weeks [4+1], the Fugees’ cover of Killing Me Softly covers all bases. The Score take. Macarena fans can rejoice – the superior Los Del Rio rendition is present and correct. Mark Morrison’s Crazy comes with a decent bassline while Mysterious Girl writhes like a snake. Ant and Dec’s Better Watch Out is singalong pop with a retro [even for 1996] edge. There’s a weird early fade of the Tony Rich Project’s Nobody Knows followed by Toni Braxton’s moody blues You’re Makin’ Me High. Celine Dion and Simply Red bring out the tears on Because You Loved Me and We’re In This Together while Backstreet Boys drop a funky bomb on We’ve Got It Goin’ On.
“Thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming”
The official anthem of the England football team for the 1996 European Championship was Three Lions, written by Fantasy Football League presenters David Baddiel and Frank Skinner with music by the Lightning Seeds. The involvement of the latter – at the height of Britpop – meant that the song would have enduring and wide appeal. It had a pessimistic tone with the usual optimism set aside for the discussion of failure, particularly at the beginning with negative predictions from Alan Hansen, Jimmy Hill and Trevor Brooking. Hopes were raised on 18 June when England hammered Holland 4-1 in a display of total football with Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham scoring two apiece. And then dashed eight days later in a penalty shoot-out. Gareth Soutgate. Grey shirts. Germans again.
Part 2: Louise and the mighty sensuality of Naked. Hey Freedom! George Michael’s 1990 hit had just been covered by Robbie Williams and nabbed by the Now team. A 4:25 edit of the original. Also shorn were Livin’ Joy and D’Lacy’s wildstyle That Look – so old habits were creeping back. Meanwhile Everything But The Girl’s star continues to rise with the atmospheric drum and bass epic Walking Wounded. Eternal’s snappy Good Thing is followed by another Robert Miles epic, this time known as Fable. The dreamy X-Files cover by DJ Dado naturally follows; pity both tracks are faded prematurely. Meanwhile Alison Limerick’s strident Where Love Lives gets a ’96 rebirth courtesy of the Dancing Divas. Having it large are Apollo 440 and the percussive Krupa with Born Slippy to close.
Part 3: The Britpop section starts with A Design For Life, the Manic Street Preachers’ exquisite rant against class privilege. Ash’s lazy summer anthem Oh Yeah is followed by Kula Shaker’s underrated fuzz ‘n’ pedals ’60s throwback Tattva. These guys were hated by the cool kids. Sliding in are Suede and the searing ’70s glam of Trash. Check out its CD1 for the original Europe Is Our Playground, much better than the version on Sci-Fi Lullabies. Ocean Colour Scene pop up with The Day We Caught The Train while Sleeper nail it on the absolutely fabulous Sale Of The Century. While not an actual UK 45, Oasis’ made a video for album-closer Champagne Supernova and it got caned on radio and television. Lush’s renaissance continues with 500 (Shake Baby Shake), Space lay down the agreeable Female Of The Species. Do we need the grotesque Peaches by those Presidents?
Part 4: First up – 3T’s smooth 24/7 which betrays their talented musical heritage. Equally slinky is the Lighthouse Family’s Lifted; the 7″ is on Now That’s What I Call Music 33. M-Beat cracks on with Jamiroquai on the blunted Do You Know Where You’re Coming From. (Suge) Knight riders: Busta Rhymes Woo-Hah! coupled with Bone Thugs -N- Harmony sweetly delivered Crossroads. The R&B force is strong on SWV’s You’re The One and R Kelly’s restless I Can’t Sleep Baby (If I). There’s a rapid change of pace for the finale; the Divine Comedy’s sleazy and endlessly inventive Something For The Weekend. The opening track on the superb Casanova LP. The squib belongs to Robson and Jerome and their cloying Daydream Believer. Switch the order for maximum impact.
Favourite tracks
Sleeper – Sale Of The Century
Everything But The Girl – Walking Wounded
Fugees – Killing Me Softly
Divine Comedy – Something For The Weekend
Oasis – Champagne Supernova
Lest we forget
Baddiel and Skinner and Lightning Seeds – Three Lions
Missing tracks and other thoughts
Great fun but disappointing to see the edits creeping in. On the bench, warming up:
Alex Reece – Feel The Sunshine. The greening of jungle.
Collapsed Lung – Eat My Goal. Inspired by The Day Today.
Black Grape, Joe Strummer and Keith Allen – England’s Irie. Another football ditty.
Cher – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore. Can’t wait to hear her do Tilt.
A Pop Fan's Dream 
Another excellent entry in the Hits Mark II series. The alternative look at summer ’96.
Mark Morrison’s career continue to rise with Crazy:
Alison Limerick finally cracks the Top 10 courtesy of the Dancin’ Divaz:
The Manic Street Preachers also come up trumps with probably their second most famous song after If You Tolerate This.
Lighthouse Family, a Newcastle-based act consisting of a Nigerian and a London lad. They too also make it with Lifted, 12 months after it’s original release:
M-Beat and Jamiroquai join forces in Do You Know Where You’re Coming From?. By the time this compilation album we talk about here came out, the latters would come be coming up with an “ace up their sleeve” in the form of their best-known LP and the singles plucked out of it…
De’Lacy follows up Hideaway with the equally stomping That Look:
The Fugees were an act that seemed to be everywhere that year, thanks to Killing Me Softly (originally by Roberta Flack) and Ready or Not:
Another of the highpoints of George Michael’s career was Freedom. I too thought it a but funny that a six-year old song would feature on this album:
Great De’Lacy track too. Nice picks!
The fade job on Nobody Knows is awful if memory serves. It was the equivalent of someone basically turning the volume down from 5 to 1 in a couple of seconds. Shoddy treatment for one of the great songs of the year.
Awful. The proper radio edit is on The ’97 Brit Awards.
Do either of you have a view on this compilation – http://www.discogs.com/Various-Pure-Hits-97/release/5430157
Not part of the Hits series at the time but somebody has added to the list on the Hits series Wikipedia entry with a footnote
“Pure Hits 97 was not a part of the main Hits series at the time, but rather the final installment of the Hits 93/94 era devised by Telstar and BMG”.
and another comment “BMG and Telstar went on to release Pure Hits 97 in 1997 which was (spiritually) a sequel to the Hits ’93 and Hits ’94 series to due to its very similar cover artwork”.
So – part of main series or not? I’m leaning towards NO.
But that still has the Telstar Hits logo…
It does – but was released a couple of weeks before Fresh Hits ’97. Plus there’s a lot of track repetition. My view is that Telstar [who were no longer involved in the Hits series] decided to cash in on the brand using their previous involvement as a lever. I’ll still be reviewing Pure Hits ’97 but it will fall into the type 2 category [see About].
Also – Hits 50 would not be the series’ 50th release if Pure Hits ’97 was part of the canon.
I’d say that “Hits” album is a bit like the “complimentary” original Now Anniversary albums (93, 94, 95).
BMG and Telstar didn’t release Pure Hits 97. That was Telstar and Universal. Telstar released a shoddy Hits Album 1997 earlier in the year, probably cashing in on the success of Global/Warner/Sony’s attempts, with a load of tracks from indy labels. Pure Hits 97, as far as I’m aware, was the first release of the Telstar/Universal allience and this new partnership gave Telstar a new birth (now called Telstar TV). For a short while there were 3 different combos producing the mainstream compilations. Once Universal bought out Polygram, they ditched Telstar and worked with EMI/Virgin on the Nows, understandable really.
I struggle to think of Hits/New Hits/Big Hits etc as part of the Hits Album series. That died in 1991 when Arthurworrey ballsed up that double album. This was a new idea from Nic Moran (for me a very clever guy and in tune in the compilation market). I wonder what might have happened had Moran had Ashley Abrams job?
Thanks very much Andrew. That Wikipedia entry has since been edited. I definitely don’t consider it part of the series but do think that the others you mention deserve to be there. Notwithstanding the direction it went in. Agree the 13 mess-up – the partial mixing a disaster.
Nic Moran instead of Ashley Abram – now that’s something to consider.
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Hi Paul, thought I’d give this a revisit. In terms of tracks, it’s one of the strongest in the series. I can see the editing has been mentioned briefly, but I work it out that 14 of the 22 tracks on disc 1 have been truncated, roughly 5 minutes’ worth of music gone. Weirdly there’s 2 minutes of running time still left. On disc 2 Lighthouse Family and SWV get the early fade treatment yet there’s an extended version of M-Beat’s classic tune. Also, if you listen right at the end of every track, the audio just drops off. I think there’s also been a bit of bass added to the EQ – De’Lacy’s The Look sounds quite heavy and ponderous compared to the cd single. Curiously, Dance Tip 2000 contains the same edit but not the same EQ.
This was Sony’s first attempt at the new Hits series; Moran and Global compiled Hits and New Hits 96, which were almost flawless. They should have ditched the second Robson & Jerome track and moved either Toni Braxton or Eternal to the RnB section on disc 2. There wouldn’t have been any need to edit anything then. Frankly, Telstar would have been embarrassed by some of the editing on this. Sadly, the butchering of Born Slippy reappears time after time on other compilations.
Hi Andrew
Thanks very much for the info – quite a few fades! Fair point re ditching Robson and Jerome – would have worked much better then.