Kerri Ann – ‘Irreplaceable’

8 November 1998

When even U2, with ‘Sweetest Thing’, are upcycling a clunky B-side from their big-hat ’80s into a jaunty 1998 number one, you know there’s something in the air. Ironically for U2, if they weren’t already sick of irony by then, it was the very thing they had tried unsuccessfully to sell in 1997: pop! U2’s downfall was that their version of pop meant “ironic critique of consumerist society while dressed like the Village People sat inside a motorised lemon”, when in fact pop really just means a catchy tune. We’ll see in 1999 how a lot of different ’90s elements—US R&B, Euro-disco, French touch indie-tronica, UK teen boybands and girl groups, some new thing called “reality TV”—finally click together and kick off a golden age of chart pop. None of it involves anyone dressed like the Village People sat inside a motorised lemon.

It won’t involve Kerri Ann any further either, but it’s still interesting to see how new and homegrown R&B-tinted dance-pop like ‘Irreplaceable’ was now able to top our charts. Okay, not entirely new and homegrown: ‘Irreplaceable’ is a return to the Irish number one spot for a Waterman-less Stock and Aitken as producers, plus it was co-written by the co-writer of Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’. And let’s not be naive; Louis Walsh being her manager helped too – ‘Irreplaceable’ was promoted to the hilt, as was Kerri Ann’s previous single and no. 2 chart hit, the calypso-flavoured ‘Do You Love Me Boy?’ Still, so were lots of other singles, and they didn’t get to number one. I can’t imagine anyone being ride-or-die for ‘Irreplaceable’ or drafting their “‘Irreplaceable’ the pure pop masterpiece” article, but I can’t find anything to dislike actively about it either. Kerri Ann gets the job done; I’d sooner believe a chart-topping quorum of real people bought ‘Irreplaceable’ than some other Louis products popularly rumoured to lie in car-bootloads at the foot of the Cliffs of Moher.

While Kerri Ann was number one in Ireland in November 1998, that same month in America the debut single by another young female pop singer entered the US Billboard charts at a modest number 17. We’ll see that single here during 1999 and, truth be told, we’re still feeling and hearing its effects today: behold the awesome power of a catchy tune. But before that pop asteroid hits us, let’s let Kerri Ann have her time in the sun.