This week in 1994
1 Stay Another Day East 17
2 Let Me Be Your Fantasy Baby D
3 We Have All The Time In The World Louis Armstrong
4 Crocodile Shoes Jimmy Nail
5 All I Want For Christmas Is You Mariah Carey
6 Another Night (MC Sar &) The Real McCoy
7 Baby Come Back Pato Banton
8 Love Spreads Stone Roses
9 Think Twice Celin Dion
10 Love Me For A Reason Boyzone
It’s now unthinkable that a song would hit number one in early December and stay there over Christmas, but just over two decades ago that was the fate of East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’. Not written as a Christmas song, the track from the pen of the band’s Tony Mortimer had Christmas bells added towards the end to cash in on the festive market. East 17’s biggest hit, ‘Stay Another Day’ was the Christmas number one of 1994 in both the UK and Ireland and a chart-topping hit in Sweden and Denmark early the following year. It has now sold almost a million copies and is a Christmas airplay favourite, with most listeners unaware that Mortimer wrote the song about the suicide of his brother Ollie. In 2012 he told the NME: ‘I’d grown up with the other guys in the band, so they knew it was about him, though it wasn’t something I told anyone about until people started asking about it in interviews.’