27 June 1999
ATB? ‘9 PM (Till I Come)’? Oh, it’s that Ibiza trance-house track with the twiddly, wibbly instrumental hook. I remember hearing that distinctive hook everywhere, but I’m surprised to see that it spent a whole four weeks at number one in Ireland, longer than ‘No Scrubs’ and ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’ combined. That said, I also remember how Ministry of Sound, Ibiza, superstar DJs and other similar dance-trance stuff was huge in 1999; two of my then-housemates even popped over to Creamfields that summer. I’m sure all the lads had it pumping on their car stereos too.
Apart from that hook, what else is there to ‘9 PM (Till I Come)’? Very little. It does the EDM build and drop, but nearly every dance record was doing that by then. The vocal chorus is just a breathy monotone of the title bit in brackets. The trance vibe at least gives it an agreeable lightness and spaciousness. Can a fairly low-key dance track really top the charts for a whole month purely on the strength of one (admittedly catchy) instrumental hook repeated ad nauseum? Apparently so.
