The Alternative Number Ones: The Charlatans’ “Weirdo”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

There was already a band called the Charlatans. There would have to be, right? Charlatan is about the most romantic synonym for liar that we have, and nobody was going to let that name sit on the table. The other Charlatans were good, too. They were a San Francisco band in the mid-'60s moment that garage rock turned psychedelic, and they had a fun look where they all dressed like riverboat gamblers. Their song "Codine" popped up on the Nuggets box set, and it's an absolute jam. Because of the San Francisco Charlatans, the '90s Charlatans will live forever in my head as "the Charlatans UK."

"The Charlatans UK" is one of those goofy-ass legal-compromise band names that always seem cheap and chintzy, like "the London Suede." But because I knew them as the Charlatans UK -- I might've even owned a T-shirt with the "UK" printed on it -- these Charlatans' Britishness has always been central to their identity, at least in my mind. These Charlatans managed to stay around for a very long time, bridging the gap between the Madchester moment and the Britpop era that followed.

On a certain level, the Charlatans -- they're still just the Charlatans over there -- will always be stars in Great Britain. In America, these Charlatans were just as much a passing fad as those other Charlatans, but they did land one immortal banger on American alt-rock radio in the early '90s. Unfortunately, that immortal banger is not the song that they took to #1 for a single week in 1992. Instead, the Charlatans' sole chart-topper is "Weirdo," which I don't remember at all. It's OK.

In the early '90s, the Charlatans -- I want to type the "UK" so bad -- could've safely been considered B-teamers in the Madchester scene, though they didn't actually come from Manchester. Instead, they come from the West Midlands, which I'm told is about halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. (Don't even bother correcting me if that's wrong; UK geography confuses me terribly.) The Charlatans got started in the late '80s. When their original singer quit, they recruited swaggering cutie-pie frontman Tim Burgess from the Electric Crayons, a local band that had already opened for them.

Other than Tim Burgess' Jagger-esque appearance, the Charlatans' main weapon was Hammond organ player Rob Collins, who wrote extremely cool swirly riffs that still sounded tough and direct. If acid house had never happened, the Charlatans probably would've done just fine as a vaguely retro rock band, taking cues from the Rolling Stones and from the Northern Soul dance scene that predated the UK's rave explosion by about a decade and a half.

But acid house did happen, and the Charlatans, like so many other young men in the late-'80s UK, had their minds blown by gobbling MDMA and dancing to loud, fast electronic beats in warehouses and fields. When the Second Summer Of Love swept across the UK, the Charlatans changed. Bassist Martin Blunt once said that they "suddenly sounded like the Spencer Davis Group on E" -- a better description than anything I could tell you. The band's manager released their shuffling 1990 debut single "Indian Rope" on his own label, and that was enough to get them signed to Situation Two, an offshoot of the big indie label Beggars Banquet. Once they got to Situation Two, the Charlatans released "The Only One I Know," the immortal banger mentioned above.

"The Only One I Know" might be the only Charlatans song you know. Like the Stone Roses' "Fools Gold," it's a glowing example of how that moment's traditional, '60s-leaning British rock bands got a shot in the arm from acid house. There's no drum-machine action on "The Only One I Know," but there's a fully locked-in rhythm section playing something funky enough to work as a breakbeat. Rob Collins goes nuts on the Hammond organ, playing squelchy spy-movie shit, while Tim Burgess sings about who-cares-what in a sassy, reverb-drenched snarl. When everything but the bass and drums drops out, you can hear that these guys could've been '60s mods. When everything else explodes, you can hear an entirely new thing happening. Even today, it's an exciting record.

In the UK, "The Only One I Know" was a top-10 pop hit, and the Charlatans' 1990 debut album Some Friendly reached #1. The Charlatans didn't generate the same kind of excitement over here, but Some Friendly did make it onto the album chart. American alternative radio was plenty amenable to that Madchester sound, and the Charlatans did just fine. "The Only One I Know" made it to #5 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. (It's a 9.) The band's hazier follow-up single "Then," another UK pop hit, reached #4. (It's a 6.) A couple of other tracks also made it onto the chart's lower reaches.

When Some Friendly took off in the UK, the Charlatans suffered growing pains. They kicked guitarist Jon Baker out of the band and briefly considered replacing him with Noel Gallagher, someone who will appear in a later column, before instead hiring their tour van driver Mark Collins, who was not related to Rob. Bassist Martin Blunt had mental-health struggles. The band clashed with their label over which singles to promote and how much they should be promoted. When the band started work on their sophomore album with Flood, a producer who's already been in this column for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence," the vibes were not great.

Between 10th And 11th, the second Charlatans album, is the one with the bananas on the cover. In my years of flipping through used-CD bins, I came across the one with the bananas many, many times. For a '90s album to become a used-bin staple, it had to sell reasonably well and then show very little staying power, and Between 10th And 11th fits that description. The Charlatans did some heavy touring in the US, and I remember "The Only One I Know" staying in rotation on my local alt-rock station for a long time, so the band had a certain amount of goodwill directed their way. That goodwill was enough to sell a bunch of copies of Between 10th And 11th, and I guess it was enough to push "Weirdo" to #1 for a week, though I don't really remember ever hearing the song. But there's nothing all that special about Between 10th And 11th, so lots of people sold their copies back.

Critics weren't that excited about Between 10th And 11th, either. The Charlatans supposedly wanted to move on from the Madchester thing when they recorded it, and all their interview quotes suggest that they took themselves quite seriously. But nobody seemed to think much of the band's lyrics, and their grooves, while impressive, didn't have quite the same juice as they did on that first record. To my ears, "Weirdo" sounds too much like a groove in search of a song.

"Weirdo" opens with some very cool organ riffage from Rob Collins. When the bass and drums come in, the Charlatans don't quite sound like the Meters, but they do sound like a British band that's spent a decent amount of time listening to the Meters, so that's something. They crank out a fast, hip-swinging beat that reminds me of the kind of UK kitsch that big-beat producers like the Propellerheads would mine for sleek atmosphere in the late '90s. It's a fun, energetic piece of music that never develops into anything catchy enough to get stuck in my head. Unless I'm actively listening to "Weirdo," I couldn't tell you how the song sounds.

"Weirdo" is a song about being a weirdo, I guess? There were lots of '90s alternative songs about being kind of a chump -- "Loser," "Creep," things of that nature. But Tim Burgess doesn't sing that he's a werido. He sings that you're a weirdo: "Look at your ugly shame/ What are you talking for?" I genuinely don't know what he's talking about. That didn't always stop me from identifying with an opaque lyric that still sounded cool or evocative, but I don't get that from "Weirdo." I like Burgess' presence and his surly, slouchy delivery, but there's not enough melody to "Weirdo" for the song to really demand any attention. The best part of the track is Rob Collins' deeply impressive organ solo, and that's kind of the problem here. Everything sounds cool, but nothing fully connects.

The week that "Weirdo" reached #1 on the Modern Rock chart, fellow Madchester B-listers the Soup Dragons were sitting at #3 with "Divine Thing." I'm not sure whether I ever even heard "Weirdo" on my local alternative station, but I definitely heard "Divine Thing" all the fucking time. That was fine with me. "Divine Thing" is superficially pretty similar to "Weirdo," but the Soup Dragons' track has a fun, frisky sense of energy and a big, memorable power-pop hook. The Charlatans were going for something vaguely broody, while the Soup Dragons were shamelessly chasing hits. Neither track has really stuck around in the popular imagination, but I still have a ton of affection for "Divine Thing," which never got past #3. (It's a 9.) Those two songs being in the top three should give you a pretty good idea what kind of hold that Madchester sound had over American alternative radio, even in the aftermath of Nevermind.

The Charlatans filmed their "Weirdo" video with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" director Samuel Bayer, and it's got that early-'90s alternative glow to it, but it's definitely no "Teen Spirit." Instead, it's just a standard-issue black-and-white clip. Tim Burgess looks striking pretty, but he's still upstaged by a dalmatian and a muscly dancer. Bayer also directed the clip for follow-up single "I Don't Want To See The Sights," which peaked at #13 on the Modern Rock chart.

Between 10th And 11th turned out to be a textbook sophomore-slump record. The album charted way lower than its predecessor in both the US and the UK, and the band had all kinds of problems after that. In 1992, Rob Collins was jailed for armed robbery. The story was that he'd been waiting for a friend outside a liquor store without realizing that this friend was in fact robbing that store at gunpoint. Collins pleaded down and spent a few months in prison. The Charlatans made the Modern Rock chart one more time, when "Can't Get Out Of Bed," the lead single from their 1994 album Up To Our Hips, peaked at #6. (It's a 7.)

That's basically the end of the Charlatans' story in the US, but things were very different in the UK. Back home, the relatively soulful and straightforward Up To Our Hips was a commercial bounce-back, and it effectively moved the Charlatans out of the dance-rock moment that spawned them. The band's self-titled fourth album took them back to #1 in the UK, and Oasis booked the Charlatans to open their gigantic, historic 1996 Knebworth shows. Three weeks before those shows, Rob Collins went out drunk driving with no seatbelt, and he died in a car crash. The Charlatans brought in Primal Scream's Martin Duffy as a replacement, and they still played Knebworth.

Before Rob Collins' death, the Charlatans were already working on their next album, 1997's Tellin' Stories. Upon its release, that LP became another #1 hit in the UK. Lead single "One To Another" is an absolutely towering monster with some of the same thundering breakbeat groove that the Chemical Brothers were bringing to a different rave-rock crossover moment. (There was a kindship between the Chemical Brothers and the Charlatans. The Chems remixed a couple of Charlatans tracks in the mid-'90s, and they sampled the Charlatans' "Patrol" on their great 1999 track "The Sunshine Underground.") America should've gone nuts for "One To Another" like it was another "The Only One I Know." That didn't happen; we totally slept on the track. In the UK, however, "One To Another" made it to #3; it's still the Charlatans' biggest pop hit over there.

In the UK, the Charlatans kept making decent-sized hits into the mid-'00s, and they're still together now, even after drummer Jon Brookes died of a brain tumor in 2010. As I write this, the most recent Charlatans record is 2017's Different Days. In 2022, they opened a huge Manchester stadium show for Liam Gallagher, and I could easily see them getting added to the bill for some of next year's ultra-hyped Oasis reunion shows. Last year, the Charlatans toured America with their British contemporaries Ride, and they played Between 10th And 11th in full every night. I can't really figure out why anyone would want them to do that, but I'm not a Charlatan or a tour promoter, so what do I know?

The Charlatans have had a long and twisty history, and they'll probably be able to continue playing British festivals until the rising ocean swallows their homeland. Over here, though, they'll always be best-known for "The Only One I Know" and for that "UK" that they had stapled onto their name. My friend Chris Hall, who is extremely not British, used to say that he wanted to start a band called the Beatles UK, and that joke could not exist without the Charlatans.

Chris' "Beatles UK" bit has been stuck in my head for more than 20 years. Not "Weirdo," though. I am still in the process of writing this column, and I've already forgotten almost everything about "Weirdo." I don't even dislike the song; it just has a way of evaporating, leaving no trace in my brain. In the context of a column that tackles a whole lot of everlasting generational anthems, it's almost refreshing to consider the legacy of a track that has virtually no legacy at all.

GRADE: 5/10

BONUS BEATS: "Weirdo" made it to #19 on the UK pop charts, and the band got a chance to lip-sync the track on Top Of The Pops. Here's that performance: