REWIND: The Prodigy - 'Poison'

It's time once again for me to pick my favourite song from those that entered the UK singles chart 20 years ago in 1995. This week's chart is from March 12 1995 and can be seen in full HEREEvery week a Twitter account called @ThisIsMyJam95 invites followers to pick their favourite new entry of the week, and I have decided to take it a step further by listening to ALL of the new entries before picking the best of the bunch.

Which means that every week I am faced with bad music and good music. This week's bad stuff: Prince's 'Purple Medley' is nothing more than a reductive splicing of hits, yet it still makes the number 33, while Janet Jackson's carefree yet annoying 'Whoops Now' comes in at number 10. American "hip house" duo The Outhere Brothers are possibly partly to blame for a future trend in dance/hip hop combinations with lyrics about "booties", and for that reason alone, hearing it will always irritate me.

A rather ill fitting combination of Neneh Cherry, Chrissie Hynde and Cher teamed up with Eric Clapton for the the overbaked emotion of 'Love Can Build A Bridge', which landed a number 5 position. It's not a terrible song, and the sentiment is nice, but the harder it tries to be an anthem, the flatter it falls. Even though hearing it so often annoyed me a lot at the time, Freak Power's 'Turn On Tune In Cop Out brings back great memories and lays on a pretty lazed groove. On the other hand I've never rated it as a song. The project was formed by trombonist Ashley Slater and Norman Cook, who contributed a house-flavoured remix of the track under his Pizzaman alias. The single gained a lot of exposure after being featured on a Levi's advert, and is this week's highest new entry at number 3.

The songs that did strike a positive chord with me begin with BT's wonderfully euphoric progressive house masterpiece 'Embrace The Sunshine' at 34, which comes with a magnificent 13 minute mix from Sasha. A version of the track can be found on BT's album 'Ima'. 49ers Feat Ann Marie Smith's number 31 club hit 'Rockin' My Body' was led by a very of-its-time mix by Capella, while on an American punk tip, Green Day's mischievious wanking anthem 'Longview' enters at 30. 10cc scored a number 29 entry with an acoustic rerecording of their classic 'I'm Not In Love', while Terrorvision's number 22 entry 'Some People Say' was one of the band's more reflective moments, and was lifted from the previous year's album 'How To Make Friends And Influence People'. I can actually remember buying a cassette copy of The Human League's sweet electro ballad 'One Man In My Heart', which comes in at number 18.

But the prize for new entry of the week goes to The Prodigy's vicious number 15 entry 'Poison', which has lost none of its brutal power two decades later. It was the fourth single from their awesome second album, 1994's 'Music for the Jilted Generation'. The drums on this track are samples from "It's a New Day" by Skull Snaps, "Amen Brother" by The Winstons, "Heavy Soul Slinger" by Bernard Purdie, and "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley, Your Tie's Caught" by Incredible Bongo Band. Fast forward to the present day, and The Prodigy's long awaited new album 'The Day Is My Enemy' comes out in just over a week's time on March 30...


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