Come with us back to a time when the CD single was king and when pop dominated the charts with this week’s edition of The Story of Pop: 1998. This week: four girls from Ireland make it a hattrick as the competition hots up for the festive season…
- Artist: B*Witched
- Song: To You I Belong
- Released: 07/12/1998
- Writers / Producers: B*Witched / Ray “Madman” Hedges / Martin Brannigan
- Highest UK Chart Position: #1
- Weeks on Chart: 15
It seems strange to say it, purely because it became so commonplace in the decade that followed, but the idea of a brand new and unknown act coming straight in at the top from nowhere with their first release – or two – was actually still a relatively new phenomenon that only really emerged at the tail end of the 90s.
Before the CD single boom, it was still largely the case that you entered lower down the chart and climbed to the top. So being one of the first acts after the Spice Girls to achieve such huge early success with their singles, meant B*Witched naturally had more sets of eyes watching them with every single they subsequently released.
Speaking on a BBC Top of the Pops documentary in 2022, Edele Lynch said “It was crazy to think that because we had a number one with “C’est La Vie” and a number one with “Rollercoaster“, now we had set ourselves something that people were gonna expect us to have a number one record. So now the pressure started to mount a little.”
And if there was ever a bad time to start feeling that pressure, it was in the run up to easily the biggest chart of the whole year: the Christmas chart. It was arguably a wise decision for Epic Records to throw the girls’ name into the hat as competitors for the festive crown; especially after their wildly successful 1998.
And their third single just so happened to be timed extremely well for the start of twinkly lights and cold nights. Because yes, even a band as sprightly and double denim clad as B*Witched were still had to follow the notional pop band rule book of releasing a ballad for your third effort.
Of their eventual tally of chart toppers however, it’s fair to say that “To You I Belong” seems to have been overlooked in their canon; some of it because it was neither their first two or their record breaking fourth, “Blame It On The Weatherman” that arrived in March the following year.
And some of it is undoubtedly because visually, it goes the whole Christmas-y hog, which is evident even on the single cover alone, with the girls all wearing faux fur lined denim with winter woolies (and Keavy Lynch donning an adorable beanie hat) whilst posing in what you would imagine the inside of a snowflake to look like, but which is also expanded on further in the video, as they sing and sway through a series of gently shapeshifting Narnia-esque wintry landscapes. Put simply, it thus means it’s a single you wouldn’t necessarily turn to listening to out of choice in say, the middle of July.
But even with the single having everything and the pigs in blankets thrown at it, thankfully it more than stands up on its own with those trimmings absent, utilising trad Irish instrumentation in the form of tin whistle, of the kind that sounded like it could have been lifted from the Titanic score (surely no coincidence given the huge success of that in this year).
Whilst sounding lyrically like a love song, it was actually written for their parents: “Rain fell down, you were there / I cried for you when I hurt my hand / Storm a-rushing in, wind was howling / I called for you, you were there / Whenever dark turns to night / And all the dreams sing their song / In the daylight, forever / To you I belong”.
In many ways, with its gentle rhythm track and affectionate lyrics to their families, it was like their “2 Become 1” crossed with “Mama”. One thing that did strike us listening to it again for this blog was how well they all harmonised on it as well, which is something that often gets overlooked where discussion around B*Witched is concerned.
Released just one week before the Christmas chart on 7th December 1998, in a very busy release schedule that, for the first time ever, put them up against Billie Piper – who had until that point matched their success with almost mirror precision – “To You I Belong” comprehensively bought to an end the seven week run of Cher’s “Believe” and gave B*Witched their third consecutive number one hit, with first week sales of 150,000 copies.
It thus meant B*Witched were not only the seventh artist in chart history to hit the top with their first three singles, they were the first to do so consecutively, and were the only artist apart from All Saints to achieve as many as three number one hits inside the year, and with total single sales of over 1.72 million were far and away the biggest selling girl group of the year. Alas, their magic didn’t prove strong enough to stay on top for the big day itself – but that’s another story for next week…
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The Niche Reference 