Official Charts Flashback 1993: Gabrielle – Dreams

Ever had a dream come true? 25 years ago this week, Hackney-born singer Gabrielle was realising the first of many dreams when as she ruled the Official Singles Chart for a third and final week with the summery anthem of hope, Dreams.

It was the debut release for Gabrielle – real name Louisa Gabrielle Bobb – and with her distinctive patch, an easy way to cover a medical condition rather than being theatrical, she was soon the mysterious singer everyone was talking about. After entering at Number 2 behind UB40's Elvis cover Can't Help Falling in Love, she gave them the boot and took up her Number 1 residency.

As was pretty common back then, Dreams had been knocking around in various guises for a while before its chart success. The original version featured the distinctive acoustic guitar riff from Tracy Chapman’s 1988 hit Fast Car, but the sample couldn’t be cleared for release, so it was removed from the single version, which would go on to sell just over 707,000 copies. Since we started counting in 2014, Dreams has managed over 12.2 million streams. We caught up with Gabrielle herself to talk about the hit song...

Hi Gabrielle! 25 years ago this week, Dreams was at Number 1 in the Official Singles Chart...

"I remember it so clearly! It went straight in at Number 2 and then the following week it knocked off UB40 from Number 1, who I love, so that was a bit surreal. I was told it was the highest charting debut for a debut single in chart history… how amazing is that?!”

It was, until Whigfield’s Saturday Night went one better than you the following year…

“Oh wow, I mean that was such a huge song, right? There was so much great music out at the time.”

25 years is a long time. Be honest with us, are you secretly sick to death of hearing and performing it?

“Honestly, never. I hear about some artist that don’t sing their old songs anymore, but that's not the case for me at all. Every show, I have to do the hits. The audience would kill me! I'm so proud of that song and I think it still sounds great today, if I do say so myself.”

You're right, it still sounds fresh, doesn’t it? It has a timeless quality to it.

"The production had everything to do with it. Even if you don’t hear my vocals on it, the track itself sounds amazing. And the fact that it still gets played to death, I mean how great is that?”

Do you remember how it came together? Did you and the label immediately know it was a hit?

“When I first wrote Dreams I had this blue diary that was my song book - Dreams started out as poem back in the day. I’d gone in the studio to do a song with a friend and the producers liked me and gave me the backing track to Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, so I went away and wrote lyrics around it from this poem.

"Looking back, I had no idea about the buzz around the song. People told me they liked it, but that was just one person’s opinion. I never know what a hit is, I just write the songs. Then the label said they thought it was a hit, but by this point we’d already released a bootleg of it, so I thought everyone who wanted it would have heard it. I had no idea it would go on to sell much more!”

The bootleg version featured the Tracy Chapman Far Car sample; are you glad in retrospect you were forced to re-work it for its single release?

“The bootleg version is still out there somewhere – I heard it recently and it still sounds great. It had to be re-produced because we couldn’t get sample clearance. It actually worked in our favour in the end, because lots of artists want 100% of the royalties if you’ve sample their track. This way, we didn’t have to shell out loads of money and I got to keep some in my pocket, which was great for me as I was only starting out. Although Fast Car is such an amazing track, it’s like that Dreams is my song – it’s my lyrics and my melody, so I love the way it ended up."

Dreams was a success around the world; what corners of the planet did promoting it take you to?

“I couldn’t have imagined the levels of interest the song generated. I wasn’t the traditional norm of what a female singer-songwriter looked like, wearing an eye patch for reasons that were necessary with a lazy eyelid, it was nice to be out there for people who thought they’d never have anyone like themselves on TV. I used to get letters from mothers who had kids that had to wear eye patches – it was okay to be different and wear it with pride. I used to have really low self-confidence, but I felt fierce and powerful with the eye patch - and I kinda liked that!" 

Well, there you have it.

Elsewhere in the Top 40, euro-banger What Is Love? from Haddaway, spent a second week at Number 2 and feminist anthem What's Going On?, by 4 Non Blondes, entered the Top 10 for the first time, at 8. 

Highest new entry was Michael Jackson, with Will You Be There, at 11 – a lot of quizzical song titles in the charts this wek – and other new songs included Levellers (12), Kim Wilde (16), AC/DC (23), Kenny Thomas (26), and Blur (34). Plus, making its very first appearance at 40 was a future summer anthem from Urban Cookie Collective – The Key The Secret would go on to spend six weeks in the Top 10, peaking at Number 2.

View the Official Singles Chart Top 100 from this week in 1993 here

Listen to the UK Top 40 from this week in 2002 on our streaming channels! Subscribe to our weekly Flashback playlist on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music.