Popular musician Jools Holland, two Millennium Dome organisers, and the Director of the English National Opera had the unenviable task last December of choosing the musical item that would play out the century in the Dome.
The shortlist included rock group Queen's 'We are the Champions' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody'; 'All You Need is Love' (The Beatles); 'Imagine' (John Lennon); 'Millennium' (Robbie Williams); 'Don't Look Back in Anger' (Oasis); 'Disco 2000' (Pulp), and 'It's Only Rock and Roll' (The Rolling Stones). The list made an interesting epitaph for the last 1,000 years, ranging from Robbie Williams's pessimism - 'We got stars directing our fate' and Lennon's bleak homilies - 'Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try', to the music of Queen, described by critic Rosie Lane as 'an optimistic and truly British anthem in every sense'. I suppose that looking at the current headlines - everything from Chechnya to Gary Glitter - I would have to go along with Williams and Lennon, if I didn't have other points of reference. In the end, 'All You Need is Love' filled the vast spaces of the Dome, and as a secular anthem for a secular age it could have been worse. While it was all going on, somebody stole a Cezanne from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; there's probably a moral there somewhere.
Religious anthem
On the other hand, Sir Cliff Richard's religious anthem, the Millennium Prayer (the Lord's Prayer set to the tune of Auld Lang Syne), did badly after its run at the Number 1 spot before Christmas. It was an impressive career achievement by a distinguished musician; in December, Cliff was reminding his fans that a Top Ten record in 2000 would mean he'd had Top Ten hits in six decades. He had hoped the record would become 'a millennial anthem for the nation', but it was not to be. Displaced by Westlife at the Christmas Number 1 spot, the Millennium Prayer didn't make the shortlist for the big moment in the Dome.