The Mike Flowers Pops

In 1995 Mike Flowers, born Mike Roberts, fronted his thirteen-piece ensemble the Sounds Superb Singers amid London’s resurgent lounge and cabaret scene. The group was commissioned to tape easy-listening renditions of current hits for a Radio One series. Their inaugural effort—an orchestral treatment of Oasis’s “Wonderwall”—caught the ear of Chris Evans, who spun it on his morning program while presenting it as the authentic recording. The track’s unexpected popularity propelled it to number two on the charts while the original Oasis single remained in the Top 40. Capitalizing on the moment, the Mike Flowers Pops appeared at multiple festivals, joined Gary Glitter as support on tour, and issued the 1996 album A Groovy Place. That collection contained further lounge interpretations of Björk’s “Venus as a Boy,” the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs,” Prince’s “1999,” and the Doors’ “Light My Fire”; the last of these was issued as the band’s second single and reached the Top 40. One original composition, “Freebase,” supplied the core for The Freebase Connection, a set of remixes credited to the Mike Flowers Pops meets Aphex Twin. A standalone version of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” and a contribution to the Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery soundtrack followed before the vogue for such covers subsided.