How do we remember Texas? For being dull. Matthew Horton thinks he wants to speak up for them. Let's see how he gets on.

Texas surfaced in the popular conscious in 1989, a brief lost weekend in pop. Somewhere between the oleaginous Thatcherite plastic soul period and the marquee-sized denim wonder years, there was a landgrab for authenticity. Despite a rather buff sound, Deacon Blue were a reaction to smug tastefulness, hoping to trade on their working class R&B to find something real. Del Amitri wanted to be bearded bluesmen (with a Top 10 hit, please). Late-period Aztec Camera were trying to recast classic soul tropes as polished, CD-age AOR. Perhaps it was a Scottish thing. Perhaps those Levi's ads had a profound effect on blue-collar towns north of the border, nurturing serious youths who found pristine denim and floppy hair expressed their grit and soulfulness. At any rate, the mood infused the home nations.

Ready-packed for this earnest new world, Texas turned up on The Chart Show, shot in weathered black and white with a curious (and floppy-fringed, and denim-clad) tomboy declaring she didn't want a lover. It had a vague whisper of catchiness, but was mainly sold as a slice of earthy sophistication. Not a bad record, hardly inspirational – one for saloon car drivers and teenagers trying to find something that might prove they'd outgrown Bros. In the end, I Don't Want A Lover would be Texas's only hit of substance for some years, their only calling card until a significant cover of Al Green's Tired Of Being Alone in 1992.

That cover was a Top 20 glitch as albums two and three came and went with few sales worthy of mention. A band in decline, Texas regrouped in 1997, with single Say What You Want hitching a glorious ride on that Tired Of Being Alone riff all the way to the Top 3. De facto leader Johnny McElhone had rediscovered his old Altered Images/Hipsway mojo, bringing studied cool to the purest pop, and in Sharleen Spiteri’s, well, altered image he had the sultry, self-assured foil to bring the new music to life. Authenticity was no longer the watchword – in the career-mending Say What You Want and ensuing, sterling singles Halo and Black Eyed Boy, Texas were cherry-picking Southern soul, power pop and Motown styles – but the results revealed a confident band surpassing the ersatz. Album White On Blonde (check the impeccable reference) went platinum six times over, and 1999 follow-up The Hush consolidated the hold, the melody threshold equally high on singles In Our Lifetime and When We Are Together. Every generation needs a pop-rock crossover act shifting serious units in the name of quality and distinction, sidestepping the mundane with songs that bite into the public psyche.

It’s fair to say Texas ran out of steam after two No.1 albums, holding their hands up with a third chart-topper, 2000’s Greatest Hits. A couple of water-treaders followed, along with a solo turn from Spiteri (including a grumpily received covers set), but there’s a promise of more Texas to come next year. No reason to expect much from that, yet – for a few years in the second half of the 90s – they exploited the music scene’s lack of post-Britpop focus to become our own Fleetwood Mac. It might lack visceral thrills, but a commitment to good songs could never be boring.