Ice Ice Baby in music history this week

As we enter the first week of December and Leighton Buzz Radio launches it’s Christmas music mix, there’s a hint of festivity in the air, and time to look back at what happened in this week for music way back when.

by Laura Polkinghorne

By Rick Marshall – Too Cold… Too Cold…, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67344439

Keeping with the snowy theme, on 1^st December 1990, Vanilla Ice was number one with ‘Ice Ice Baby’. The song then stayed at the top spot for four weeks! The track sampled the bass from Queen and David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’, which was also a number 1 hit when it was released. ‘Ice Ice Baby’ was so popular it changed from the B-side to the A-side to the rapper’s cover of ‘Play That Funky Music’.

On 1^st December 2008, Wham was awarded the top seasonal song by The Performing Arts Society, above Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’  and The Pogues song ‘Fairytale of New York’. The Wham song from 1984 had been the most played festive track from December 2003 – 2008.

In 1944, on 1^st December, Charlie Grima was born. He was to become the drummer for glam rock band Wizzard. Who of course performed the famous Christmas hit ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’, released in 1973. Despite being a popular Christmas themes, with is appropriately themed winter music video, it never reached higher than number four on the charts.

The Monkees’ album called ‘Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones ltd’ went to number one on the album chart on 2^nd December 1967. It sold over a million copies!

Fast forward nearly 40 years and Take That had topped both the singles and album charts in the UK, at the same time, on 3^rd December 2006. The single was ‘Patience’ and had remained at the top spot for two weeks, while their album ‘Beautiful World’ was a new entry.

Finally, on 4^th December 1982, the number one spot on the UK singles chart belonged to The Jam with their song ‘Beat Surrender. It would be their final song before they spilt up and the group’s fourth UK number one. Lead vocalist Paul Weller would then go onto form a new band, the ‘Style Council’.