REWIND: Morrissey - 'Boxers'

A Twitter account called @ThisIsMyJam1995 chronicles the 1995 UK singles chart, week by week as it happened. and asks followers to pick their favorite new entry when the new chart is published every Sunday. For some reason I forgot to play along last week, so I had some catching up to do last night. This week's chart is from January 28 1995. In the 'bad' pile, we have Queensryche's eastern-flavoured rock number 'I Am I' at 40. At 39, E.V.E's 'Good Life' was a slinky but disposable RnB number that was backed with a rather good Dancing Divaz remix which slighly brought to mind the Inner City house classic of the same name, while at 35, Vanessa Mae's '' features some skillful musicianship but some weak production, As well as Jimmy Somerville's predictably awful 'Heartbeat' at 28, Let Loose's number 13 entry 'One Night Stand' dealt in relentless mediocrity, and Jodeci's number 20 'Cry For You' sounds like one long outro and comes littered with lots of intolerable vocal acrobatics.

Aside from those, there were plenty of good things elsewhere in the Top 40... DJ Scott's happy hardcore-flavoured 'Do You Wanna Party?' was at 36, Tricky's magnificent 'Overcome' at 34, and 'If Life Is Like A Lovebank, I Want An Overdraft' by The Wildhearts and its Pogues-esque B side 'Geordie In Wonderland' sat at number 31. Soundgraden provided some impressive grunge rock with the number 24 'Fell On Black Days', and at number 11, MC Sar And The Real McCoy's 'Run Away' was very of its time: a lively helping of Euro dance complete with questionable rapping that I have something of a soft spot for. 'She's A River' may not have been the best song Simple Minds ever released, but it still sounds pretty good 20 years after it earned them a number 9 hit. I can remember buying t on cassette from WH Smith in Swindon, at the same time I finally bought myself a proper copy of 'Parklife'. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but it definitely came from the reduced shelf, so I'm guessing it was about 29p. Green Day's pop-punk classic 'Basket Case' was the week's highest new entry at number 7, and despite having heard it a million times, it still sounds great. A re-release of Bob Seger's 1978 classic 'We've Got Tonight' provides my favorite new entry at 32, but since it was in fact from 1978 and not 1995 I will have to go with the song sitting at number 23. 'Boxers' was released to promote Morrissey's tour of the same name, and wasn't featured on 1994's 'Vauxhall And I' or the follow-up 'Southpaw Grammar', but was later included on the 'World Of Morrissey' compilation.