To the East, Whitewards

East 17 - Stay Another Day
(From some East 17 album; 1994)


The boys from the Walthamstow roofer's choir still singing shit like Nate, this song stays ringing out on Christmas day.

If there's a glaring omission from my 101 best non-Rap singles of the 1990s list then it's Britain's last great Christmas song here. Tony Mortimer pulling strings like Phil Spector, Brian Harvey as the missing link between Aaron Hall and Aled Jones, Terry Coldwell in Kool Moe Dee's Star Trek shades looking like an 80s B-Boy graffiti character, and the other lad whose name nobody can remember givin' it large with R&B hands of death. Okay, so it's #actually a pop precursor to Z-Ro & Trae's 1 Night with added church bells and a video which resembles the snow globe in Citizen Kane, but it kept Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You off the top of the U.K Top 40 singles chart in 1994. A Yuletide masterpiece which should be sung at Midnight Mass across the world.

From puffa jackets to jacket potatoes, the life of Brian Harvey. Fair play, though - my man was the British Bud "Grandmaster B" Bundy but he still cuffed Daniella Westbrook when she was fit.