The One-Hit Wonders – The 90s Part 10.

This is a group who only had one hit single, but it is now considered to be a classic, and there is a rather interesting story behind it. Nobody really seemed to know who Stardust were at the time that their single was released, but it turned out that they were a French production group, when there were plenty of them on the chart, and one of them was also in Daft Punk, before he turned into a robot.

Such was the anticipation for “Music Sounds Better With You” (which sampled a Chaka Khan song), an imported version made the lower end of the chart for three weeks. When this was officially released in this country in August 1998, this reached no. 2, and many people were disappointed by how narrowly this missed out on being a worthy chart-topper (doesn’t that always seem to be how it goes). But I still remember some curious things about this one.

On the penultimate edition of The Chart Show on ITV (which didn’t use the official chart), this did reach Number One. But there was one problem. The video wasn’t ready yet, so they decided to show this accompanied by various graphics that they had used going all the way back to 1986, which was rather surprising, and much to the delight of some viewers, this was a rather clever way to solve the situation and seemed a suitable ending.

The video did finally start to appear on the TV, and coincidentally featured some The Chart Show-style graphics itself. Stardust would go on to have no further hits in the UK, and they’re not to be confused with British knock-off Spacedust. At the end of 1998, there was a brief and rather bizarre fad (even by the standards of pop music where things go in and out of fashion rather quickly) for putting dance music to old aerobics records.

“Gym And Tonic” did get to Number One though, although sales slumped when people realised that this wasn’t the follow-up single by Stardust. This definitely didn’t go platinum. But unlike that one that is mostly forgotten now, “Music Sounds Better With You” is considered to be one of the greatest dance singles of its era by many, and even now it stills brings back those memories of a late-90s summer.

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