We’re in mid January 1999 and Christmas is long gone and well behind us. The release schedules have woken up and been reactivated so there are some ‘new’ songs on tonight alongside some of the older hits that are still knocking about the charts which executive producer Chris Cowey doesn’t seem able to let go of. To that end, two of the first artists on tonight both featured in the last show. Indeed, they were the first two songs in that episode from seven days prior. As Men At Work once sang – “it’s just overkill”. Anyway, Kate Thornton is our host and we start with “End Of The Line” by the Honeyz. This was its third appearance on the show and this performance was just a repeat showing of the previous week’s. Having said that, it was a very hardy hit spending five weeks inside the Top 10 including the busy festive period when singles can get swept away in the Christmas rush. With nothing much else to say about this one, I looked to the internet for inspiration and found a piece online that talked about the purple outfits the group are wearing here which they also donned in the video. The article says:
“…the purple overcoats, which were low-key iconic in that they never permeated popular culture but remain a recognisable visual reference point within the Honeyz’ narrative.”
Paul Begaud – cantstopthepop.com – Dec 2020
Look, I’m no expert on the Honeyz so I should defer to Paul but, on the other hand, really?! Iconic?! They were purple overcoats not Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack dress!
The mid to late 90s fascination with the disco era of the Bee Gees was quite a thing. Seriously though, look at all of these hits that were either cover versions or featured samples of the Gibb brothers’ work around that period:
“How Deep Is Your Love” – Take That – 1996
“Words” – Boyzone – 1996
“Stayin’ Alive” – N-Trance – 1995
“We Trying To Stay Alive” – Wyvlef Jean – 1997
“Night Fever” – Adam Garcia – 1998
“More Than A Woman” – 911 – 1998
“Tragedy” – Steps – 1998
The trend continued apace in early 1999 with the highest chart entry of the week – “You Should Be…” by Blockster. This was a vehicle for DJ, producer and remixer Brandon Block whose career had seen him play all the ‘super clubs’ such as Up Yer Ronson, Ministry Of Sound and Republica. In 1999, he became a chart star with this reworking of the Bee Gees classic “You Should Be Dancing”. Given the glut of Bee Gees hits at the time, it doesn’t seem a very inventive concept but I guess he executed it pretty well. He’s the guy on the turntables (obviously) who looks a bit like TheApprentice reject, StrictlyComeDancing loser and JD Vance hanger on Thomas “Bosh” Skinner. However, for some of us non-dance heads, he is best known for this incident at the BRITS 2000…
Supposedly he was off his face and was convinced by the friends he was with that he had won an award and that he should go and collect it on stage. Ah, we’ve all been there. For instance, I was once on holiday in New York and found myself in a bar called The Slaughtered Lamb, a horror-themed bar in Greenwich Village. It had props like caged skeletons and werewolves. I’d had a few (OK, a lot!) and my friend Robin convinced me that the werewolf figure had blood dripping down its face and that I should report it to the bar staff. So I did. The woman behind the bar dismissed me like the fool I was whilst Robin and the rest of our group guffawed.
Anyway, Brandon Block seemed to learn from his public embarrassment and in 2009 agreed to take part in an anti-drugs campaign for the government. He followed that up by working with Blenheim the London drug and alcohol treatment service as a project worker and has also been employed by the NHS, working with people who have multiple complex needs. He currently works as a Stress Management and Goal Mapping Coach with people suffering from mental health issues.
Here’s that other hit that was on just last week from BryanAdams and MelanieC. I’ve got nothing left to say about “When You’re Gone” so I’m going to shamelessly pinch a story from a podcast I’ve discovered called the EightiesArchivePodcast. It’s basically two fellas talking about 80s music but not the obvious stuff. They interview people from back then who may or may not have had hit records and it’s actually very engaging mainly because of their enthusiasm for the period. So you might get say, Leigh Gorman from Bow Wow Wow who was brilliant or Richard Jobson of The Skids and The Armoury Show (again brilliant) or some bloke who used to be in Roman Holliday (not so brilliant). Anyway, in their latest show, one of the presenters told a tale of how he was working in the Our Price store in the Lakeside shopping centre in 1991 at Christmas when all the punters seemed to want to buy was “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen (rereleased after Freddie Mercury’s death and that year’s festive No 1) and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” by Bryan Adams. So fed up was the presenter with this situation that, fuelled by the bravado of youth (him and his mates thought they owned the shop), he started shouting at people that they didn’t have any more Bryan Adams singles. One customer took offence and said “You’re meant to be a record shop” to which the presenter replied “And you’re meant to have taste!” and flicked him the V’s! Scandalous behaviour that was witnessed by an Area Manager on a store visit which led to the presenter being sacked and quite right too. The moral of the story? Don’t disrespect Bryan Adams…nor flick the V’s at a customer when working in a shop.
A classic case of a record label indulging in careful release scheduling now. Ultra had bounded into the charts the previous year with their debut hit “Say You Do” landing at No 11. However, subsequent hits had seen diminishing returns at play so another big hit was required. The best way to do that? Release a single – “Rescue Me” – when it doesn’t take as many sales to get you up the higher end of the charts of course – early to mid January. Then you double down by copying the sound of somebody else’s recent huge hit – in this case Savage Garden – and bingo! Your boy band has a Top 10 single. Beware though. The effects of a reviving January hit will wear off fairly quickly and you’ll be left with that underlying cause of discomfort which is the absolute knowledge that your charges are, in fact, worthless crud and you’ll have to accept the truth that they are going nowhere. Which is exactly what happened to Ultra who were never seen nor hear from again after this hit. Hurray!
Oh this is just taking the piss now! Why is Chris Cowey showing a performance from four months ago of “Millennium” by Robbie Williams? I suggested in a recent post that the reason behind a repeat showing of him doing “No Regrets” was because he’s Robbie Williams and I stand by that given the decision to re-show this. Just as Jamie Theakston had eulogised about him in his intro the other week, so Kate Thornton bangs on about how everyone loves Robbie including her and her Mum! Cowey justifies the clip’s inclusion in the show by tying it to the fact that his second album “I’ve Been Expecting You” is at No 1 (which was true) but it does rather feel like it was shoe-horning it into the show. Anyway, I’m not about to comment on this one again so here’s what I wrote about it in the 18 Sep 1998 show:
What the Hell is this? Why was Cowey encouraging presenter Kate Thornton to engage with the artists ‘backstage’ in some horribly cringeworthy interactions (they don’t qualify as interviews) that weren’t funny, entertaining nor worthwhile. There have been numerous attempts to spice up the format over the years by conversing with the artists or sometimes just celebrity guests and I can’t think of one that has ever worked. Moving on…
And yet another 70s disco era song revived in the late 90s. At least this one wasn’t a Bee Gees tune. After Blockster earlier comes Da Click, a UK garage group on the FFRR label, who took Chic’s anthem “Good Times”, added a load of rapping all over it, interpolated the vocals from Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much”, called it “Good Rhymes” and had a No 14 hit with it. The words ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘feather’ and ‘macaroni’ come to mind. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It also wasn’t any good. I always got this lot confused with Da Hool who is a German DJ and producer. I think my confusion is understandable which is more than I can say about Da Click’s decision to record this rubbish. It gets worse. Two years later, one of Da Click’s number – DJ Pied Piper – was responsible for one of the worst No 1 records ever – the execrable 2-step garage ‘anthem’ “Do You Really Like It?”.
There have been a few very famous Justins in the world of music. Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Justin Hawkins of The Darkness but before all of them came simply Justin. Only 15 years old here, this kid became a name after appearing in a BBC TV show called TheFameGame which followed the hopes and aspirations of young people wanting to be stars. Off the back of it, Justin (Osuji) would have a small Top 40 hit with a cover of “This Boy” by The Beatles. The follow up was “Over You”, a nothing ballad with the most ridiculous opening lines ever given to a 15 year old boy to sing who sounds like his voice hasn’t broken yet…
“I′ve had many many setbacks, misendeavours in my life
But it’s never gotten to me, all that trouble and my strife”
Writer(s): Cody Miller, Justin Stokes, Laurel Tessa Mahoney, Miranda Leigh Berdahl, James Colter Schaffner, Zach Inmon Walker
“Many, many setbacks”? By the age of 15? Now, of course, some kids have had terrible lives by that point and witnessed some awful things but in the context of trying to sell a love song to a TV audience, it just doesn’t seem authentic. Thankfully I don’t remember “Over You” at all. The only one of his that springs to mind is a cover of “Let It Be Me” by The Everly Brothers in early 2000 which would be Justin’s last Top 40 hit. Although his original pop career would end there, Justin would reinvent himself as Sonny J Mason working as a singer-songwriter and producer, collaborating with the likes of Craig David, Sugababes and So Solid Crew whilst also releasing his own solo recordings.
Yes! Finally! A great track gets its just deserts! Although it maybe felt unexpected that Fat Boy Slim was at No 1, it probably shouldn’t have done. After all, “Praise You” wasn’t the first chart topper he’d been involved with. As part of The Housemartins, he’d just missed out on being the Christmas No 1 by a week in 1986 with “Caravan Of Love” and at the very start of the 90s, his Beats International vehicle rose to the summit with “Dub Be Good To Me”. Then, of course, his Fat Boy Slim persona had already delivered him two big hits in 1998 with “The Rockefeller Skank” and “Gangster Trippin” so the writing had been on the wall for us all to read. And yet I do recall being slightly taken aback that he’d done it again in 1999 despite the quality of the track.
I’m not going to list all the source material that Norman Cook sampled to create “Praise You” – all that information is available via a quick search of the internet and in any case, I don’t know any of the originals at all so I can’t see the point in referencing them. What I do know is that he created an almost perfect dance track that had that curious, undefinable quality of being able to cross over into the mainstream. How did he do it? Musical genius? Pure luck? Cosmic forces at work causing the stars to align? If the answer was that obvious we’d all be raiding our record collections and looking to put together a patchwork of sounds that shouldn’t go together but somehow do. Something else that shouldn’t have worked but did was the promo video. Yes, that one. Directed by and starring Spike Jonze, it had the effect upon first viewing of making the audience exclaim “What the f**k was that?” so amateurish and so bizarre looking was it. Its protagonists, the fictional Torrance Community Dance Group, essentially invented the ‘flash mob’ phenomenon when filming the chaotic dance routines unannounced at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles. Indeed so low were its production values (the whole thing only cost $800 to make) that MTV refuses to air it initially until Cook advised them that it was supposed to look like that. It would go on to win three MTV Video Music Awards making their initial stance look ludicrous.
A small gripe though, why did we only get to see it once? Yes, it only had a solitary week at the top of the charts but that didn’t stop Chris Cowey from allowing multiple repeats of previous No 1s which were now descending the charts. Was he worried about the quality of the video as well?
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Honeyz
End Of The Line
Nah
2
Blockster
You Should Be…
Negative
3
Bryan Adams / Melanie C
When You’re Gone
No
4
Ultra
Rescue Me
No thanks
5
Robbie Williams
Millennium
Nope
6
Da Click
Good Rhymes
I did not
7
Justin
Over You
Never happening
8
Fatboy Slim
Praise You
No but I had the album
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
So, TOTP 1999 repeats are go! It’s my last year of doing this – please be halfway decent! As we’re in early January, the charts are very static with few new releases meaning that this show is full of songs that have been on before. Familiarity is also in evidence with our host who is Jamie Theakston who is becoming as ubiquitous as Simon ‘Smug’ Mayo used to be back in the day.
We start with Bryan Adams and MelanieC with “When You’re Gone”. This single really had legs spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including three on the trot at No 6 which is its position this week. It’s continued to enjoy longevity in many forms long after the single finally dropped out of the charts via re-recordings and live performances. Adams returned to the song in 2005 for his compilation album “Anthology”, laying down a new version of it with Pamela Anderson of all people whilst Melanie C rejoined him in 2022 as they revisited the track for Adams’s “Classic Pt. II” album. Bryan frequently performs the song live as an acoustic number, usually plucking a member of the audience out to join him whilst Chisholm has also performed it during her concerts on a regular basis.
Theakston goes in for a bit of sexual innuendo in his intro to the next act. “If you’re one of the millions suffering from the flu then may I suggest the Theakston remedy. Stay in bed, snuggle up under your duvet and enjoy a healthy dose of the Honeyz” he chirps before doing his best Sid James impression by blowing out his cheeks. Yeah, knobhead. The Honeyz are back on the show for similar reasons as Bryan Adams/Melanie C – their hit “End Of The Line” is holding at No 9 having already peaked at No 5 in its first week in the chart. They were a bit like a prototype Sugababes weren’t they? Not that they shared a musical style but in terms of a revolving door policy when it came to their line up. Though there have only ever been four members to feature in a trio format, there is just one ever present in Célena Cherry. Of the other three, Heavenli Roberts has had five separate stints in the band, Naima Belkhiati two and Mariama Goodman three. The current lineup features Cherry, Roberts and Cherry’s sister Candace. Do you think they’ve…ahem…finally found the right combination?
Next, a third hit on the spin that has been on the charts for weeks already. Why is Robbie Williams on the show performing “No Regrets” again? Well, because he’s Robbie Williams would seen to be the main criteria. Observe the sycophantic intro from Jamie Theakston – “It’s Rob’s world, we just live in it”. Notice he calls him Rob not Robbie. I think they were possibly ‘mates’ at this point on account of Williams dating Nicole Appleton and Theakston seeing her sister Natalie though I think the former relationship ended around this time. Executive producer Chris Cowey would argue that it’s because “No Regrets” was going up the charts and with a lack of new releases to showcase, this was perfectly legitimate and justified. The truth is though that after debuting at No 4, the single had not spent another week inside the Top 10. Yes, successive drops to Nos 14 and 19 had been countered by consecutive moves back up the charts to No 18 and this week’s position of No 16 but it was hardly a big seller at this time. This was surely just a case of trying to pad the show out with a big name wasn’t it? Theakston’s intro doubles down on this. Let me entertain you? Nah, I’m good thanks.
A new song! A rare new entry into the Top 40 in the first week of January! It comes courtesy of Alisha’sAttic whose chart career to this point has been a model of consistency. Their first five hits had all peaked at either Nos 12, 13 or 14. “Wish I Were You” would end that run by going no higher than No 29. More than that though, it was portentous, ushering in the end of their pop career. None of their subsequent singles were bigger hits than No 24 and their third album “The House We Built” failed to make the Top 40. So what happened? It’s a question as old as The Rolling Stones that if I knew the answer to, I’d be a music industry mogul. If I had to guess though, I’d say that musical tastes moved on and, despite their consistency, Alisha’s Attic hadn’t established a big enough foothold in the charts to ride the changes. Ultimately, I think that’s a shame as I quite liked their quirky pop songs. However, “Wish I Were You” wasn’t their best work. It’s a bit slight and insubstantial to the point that the middle eight is essentially the sisters singing “I, I, I, I…” over and over. We didn’t need another Jim Diamond thanks! Things worked out for Shelly and Karen though as both have gone on to form successful careers as songwriters for other artists. Having been and done the pop star thing, presumably they don’t wish they were those people anymore.
Right who’s this? Oh it’s that woman with the huge hair again, Alda. She had a hit in 1998 with “Real Good Time” and she’s back with the follow up “Girls Night Out” which sounds very similar to its predecessor. No, not ‘very similar’ – exactlythesame. As such, what else can I say about Alda who is originally from Iceland but relocated to London and now lives in…oh, this is just brilliant…High Barnet! This shizzle writes itself sometimes! What about her music you say? Well, it’s out and out pure pop confectionery – fine if that’s your flavour but too much of it would make you barf. Compared to her pop contemporaries like Robyn for example, she’s the cheap supermarket own brand equivalent of an M&S best seller – Home Bargains’ Claude The Caterpillar as opposed to M&S’s Colin The Caterpillar cake. No, not Claude The Caterpillar but Cuthbert because she’s more Aldi than Alda.
*I’ll get me coat*
Another new entry now and it’s from the LighthouseFamily. Now, I’ve defended this lot in the past on the basis that musical snobbery is wrong and that ridicule is nothing to be scared of but oh dear…this one…this one is just undeniably, irredeemably dreadful. Awful. Just no good.“Postcards From Heaven” was the title track from their second album and also the fifth single to be lifted (see what I did there?!) from it. That might explain why its peak of No 24 was the duo’s lowest chart position in a run of nine hits up to that point but I’m pretty sure it was because it was horseshit. It’s so insubstantial and slight and…dull. And it sounds just like all their other hits. Abject crap. Postcards from Heaven? More like delivery from the depths of Hell. Sorry guys but it turns out Adam Ant was wrong. Ridicule is something to be scared of.
Right, that’s your new tunes done with and so we’re back to the (very) familiar starting with a former (and indeed Christmas) No 1. Yes, the Spice Girls claimed the (then) coveted festive chart topper in 1998 with “Goodbye” and thereby became the first act to have three such consecutive hits since The Beatles in 1965. However it only stated stayed at the peak for one week hence the comment from Jamie Theakston about them getting on the wrong side of Chef’s “Salty Balls” as that was the record that deposed them. It was, in fact, the first No 1 single of 1999 but was not played on TOTP as an episode did not air the week of the 27th December 1998 to 2nd January 1999. So why didn’t “Salty Balls” feature on this particular show rather than “Goodbye”? Was it an issue with the lyrics? I mean, there’s a lot of innuendo in them but no actual swear words – I don’t think the single carried a Parental Advisory sticker did it? Whatever the reason, Chris Cowey chose not to go with Chef so we get a re-showing of a previous performance of “Goodbye”. As it turned out, this would be the group’s final TOTP appearance of the 90s and, therefore, also the last time I’ll be reviewing them in this blog. So, “Goodbye” indeed Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger and Posh. You came, you saw, you conquered – you spiced up our lives.
Who saw this coming? Steps at No 1? Seven weeks after it debuted at No 2, “Heartbeat/Tragedy” has risen to the top of the charts. It feels a bit like All Saints’ journey to No 1 with “Never Ever” which took weeks as well. Yes, its achievement was probably enabled by a lack of big new releases in the first week of January but still. In fairness, their last single “One For Sorrow” had peaked at No 2 and all three of their releases to this point had spent at least two months inside the Top 40 so maybe the clues had been there all along? “Heartbeat/Tragedy” took it to a new level though. Fifteen consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 including a month inside the Top 3 after it had relinquished the top spot – it was a chart monster.
In recognition of this success, we get a medley of the two tracks but it’s not a new performance but two separate appearances in the show cobbled together. Is it me or does it seem a bit of a shoddy edit? It’s not like when The Jam and Oasis were afforded two songs to celebrate their respective No 1s – the former’s “Town Called Malice” / “Precious” double A-side and the latter’s “Don’t Look Back In Anger” when they also performed their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” which was an extra track on the CD single. Still, it was hardly a tragedy was it? Better best forgotten.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Bryan Adams and Melanie C
When You’re Gone
Nah
2
Honeyz
End Of The Line
Negative
3
Robbie Williams
No Regrets
Didn’t happen
4
Alisha’s Attic
Wish I Were You
Nope
5
Alda
Girls Night Out
Never
6
Lighthouse Family
Postcards From Heaven
Good Lord no!
7
Spice Girls
Goodbye
No
8
Steps
Heartbeat / Tragedy
I did not
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
As Blur once sang, it’s the end of the century – well, nearly. We still have one year left of TOTP repeats to go before the new millennium and rather neatly, this will also be my final year of reviewing them. Nearly 10 years of writing this blog is is my limit and finishing in this year almost dovetails with my leaving working in record shops (again after nigh on 10 years) so it just feels like the time is right. Before I get to that point though, there are all of 1999’s shows to be watched, dissected and pronounced upon. So what can we expect from the final year of the 90s?
Well, away from music, 1999 saw the launch of the Euro currency. 27 years on, the UK is still sticking to its initial decision to remain with pound sterling. Just like in 2016, there were a spate of deaths of people from the world of showbiz. Dusty Springfield, Stanley Kubrick, Rod Hull and Ernie Wise all died within three weeks of each other in March. TV presenter Jill Dando was murdered on her doorstep the following month. On 30 December, George Harrison was stabbed by an intruder in his mansion home in Henley-on-Thames. He survived but within two years would be dead from lung cancer which had spread to his brain. In happier news, there’s a royal wedding as Prince Edward married Sophie Rhys-Jones but does anyone really remember it or care? Tracey Emin’s infamous MyBed sculpture was exhibited in the Tate Gallery. 15 years later it was sold at auction by Christie’s for £2.5 million.
In sport, Manchester United won the treble in May in dramatic fashion beating Bayern Munich in the Champions League final with two goals in injury time. A month later, they announced that they would not compete in the following season’s FA Cup competition in order to concentrate on the FIFA Club World Championship. The profile and stature of the FA Cup has been in decline ever since. As the year draws to an end, fears that the Y2K bug would bring about the end of the world surfaced but it all turnedout alright in the end as no planes fell out of the sky and traffic lights continued to function. Finally, Millennium celebrations were held across the country including the official opening of the Millennium Dome and the unveiling of the London Eye. The New Year’s Eve fireworks display were a bit of a damp squib though.
And so to musical trends. The time of the dominance of girl groups over boy bands seemed to be coming to an end with the latter reasserting their grip on the charts with American acts like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC battling it out with the UK’s Boyzone, Five and most terrifyingly of all, an emerging Westlife. By contrast, neither the Spice Girls nor All Saints even released a single in 1999. However, four of the original Spice Girls line up did have solo hits this year with Geri Halliwell having the most success with two No 1 singles closely followed by Mel C who scored a pair of No 4 hits. The new breed of instrument playing girl groups like Hepburn and Thunderbugs failed to fully gain support of the record buying public though.
Dance music was still about and this year, that ubiquity translated into some of the biggest selling singles of 1999 with the likes of Eiffel 65, ATB, Shanks And Bigfoot and Mr Oizo all securing places in the year end Top 10. Albums wise, it was all very safe yet again with Shania Twain, ABBA and The Corrs all having huge success. Only the likes of Fatboy Slim, Lauryn Hill and The Chemical Brothers seemed to put up much resistance to the tidal way of the mainstream.
As for me, I had a steady-ish year, staying put in the same record store for the whole 12 months (albeit with another change of manager) but as the new millennium approached, I was hatching plans to turn my back on all that and even Manchester which had been my home for nearly the whole decade…
There goes 1998. Not one of my favourite years neither personally nor musically. In the wider world, there were some seismic events but perhaps none more so than the Good Friday Agreement signed between the UK and Irish governments to bring about an end to the violence of The Troubles. A referendum on the agreement held in May received overwhelming support. In technology, the DVD format was released to the UK market. One of the first titles made available was Jumanji (the original version obviously) but uptake is small to begin with – only 6,000 units are sold by the end of the year. By Christmas 1999, we would have a sizeable offering of DVDs in the Our Price record store I was working in. Funny to think that it’s very much seen as an obsolete format in the streaming era. There were two stories that made headlines in the red tops and the music press. The first was the arrest of George Michael in a public toilet in LA on charges of lewd behaviour which would lead to the singer being outed for his sexuality. The second was the departure of Geri Halliwell from the Spice Girls which ultimately would usher in an end to the group’s imperial phase.
As we’ve touched on the subject, let’s get back to the music which is what this blog is about after all. As with most years, it was a right old mixed bag of styles and genres in the charts. Here’s the usual look at the Top 50 selling singles of ten year:
Pick the bones out of that. Well, the first thing I’ve noticed is that 40% of the Top 10 weren’t actually No 1s. Indeed, two of them only got as high as No 4 (Savage Garden) and No 7 (LeAnne Rimes). So how did they manage to end up in the list of the year’s end Top 10 sellers? Well, they stayed on the charts for months, selling steadily rather than spectacularly, treating their Top 40 journey as a marathon rather than a sprint and winning the race that way. They weren’t the only examples of singles with a prolonged chart life. “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith, “Dance The Night Away” by The Mavericks and still selling from 1997, “Angels” by Robbie Williams had similar trajectories. And there was me thinking singles were in and out of the charts within two weeks at this time! In fairness to me, that perception was based on factual evidence like this – of the first ten chart toppers of the year, only one of them spent more than a solitary week at No 1. This phenomenon would occur another 13 times throughout 1998. The only singles to ascend to the chart summit for more than two weeks were Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins (six weeks), “Three Lions ‘98” (three), “No Matter What” by Boyzone (three) and 1998’s best seller “Believe” by Cher. In fact, three of those were in the Top 4 best selling singles of the year. Looking at the make up of the rest of the Top 50, there are a few artists who have more than one entry:
B*Witched (three)
Spice Girls (three)
Steps (three)
All Saints (two)
Billie (two)
Savage Garden (two)
Robbie Williams (two)
That’s over a third of the Top 50 being supplied by just seven acts. What does this tell us? I have no idea other than you’d probably describe them all as being of a mainstream pop flavour. T’was ever thus? A deeper dive into the Top 10 breaks down like this I would suggest:
4 x ballads (Spice Girls, LeAnne Rimes, Boyzone, Celine Dion)
1 x novelty hit (Chef)
1 x cheesy pop song (B*Witched)
2 x rap influenced tracks (Run-D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins, Pras)
1 x dance/pop anthem (Cher)
1 x mainstream rock/pop hit (Savage Garden)
Probably nothing very left field in there except Run-D.M.C. and possibly Pras though I did once refer to the song his hit sampled as “Islands In The Mainstream” so middle of the road was it. Was this a case of the lowest common denominator striking again? What is noticeable is that despite the plethora of dance tunes in the charts this year, not many of them feature in the Top 50. I’d say…what…six are by what you would call out and out dance acts? Cornershop? “Brimful Of Asha” was a dance track but only because of the Norman Cook remix. I’m not sure they were a dance artist were they? I’d say it was a similar story for R&B/hip hop/rap artists in this year.
Looking at the Top 50 best selling albums chart of the year, it’s all very familiar with the majority of it made up of established or mainstream artists. The Corrs took the crown for selling more copies of their album “Talk On Corners” than anyone else with big hitters like George Michael, Madonna and Celine Dion all placing inside the Top 10. Special mention must go to Robbie Williams for having two albums in the mix at Nos 4 and 5. This was the point of no return for us and Robbie – he was here to stay. One of 1997’s biggest albums “Urban Hymns” maintained its strong sales for a second year to remain inside the Top 10 whilst Boyzone confounded the theory that boy bands couldn’t sell albums by coming in the bronze medal position with “Where We Belong”. Very unusually, a soundtrack album made the Top 10 and when I say ‘soundtrack’, I don’t mean a collection of pop songs that may or may not feature in a film briefly or over the credits. No, I mean a soundtrack album featuring the incidental music from the film. Said soundtrack was “Titanic: Music from the Motion Picture” by James Horner though the fact that it included Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” probably helped to increase its commercial chances. In the final analysis, I’d have to say there is no final analysis, at least not one which you could draw hard and fast conclusions from and certainly none that I could condense into this post. Make your own minds up I guess.
And TOTP? What happened with the grand old show in 1998? Well, executive producer Chris Cowey really had his feet under the table after replacing Ric Blaxill the previous year. After axing the ‘golden mic’ slot when he initially started, he added to his roster of presenters with Jamie Theakston and Kate Thornton although they essentially replaced the departing Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley. That wasn’t all though. On 1 May, a remixed version of the classic “Whole Lotta Love” theme tune previously used in the 1970s was introduced, accompanied by a new 1960s-inspired logo and title sequence. The times they were a-changing…or at least reverting to what they once were.
Hits That Never Were
As with 1997’s epilogue post, I struggled to find many candidates for this section. The charts positions beyond Nos 1 to 40 seemed to be populated by hits on their way down, re-entries of previous big hits or dance tunes I had no idea about. For what it’s worth, here are four of the few non-hits that I was familiar with.
Gomez – “Get Myself Arrested”
Released: Jun ‘98
Chart peak: No 45
As the end of the 90s loomed, Gomez were being talked up as one of the brightest new bands around off the back of their winning the Mercury Music Prize, beating out the overwhelming favourites The Verve. Their brand of Americana roots rock struck a chord with the music press generating the common reaction of ‘how could these young, white lads from Southport be able to make a sound that sounded so mature and American?’. Although not furnished with huge hit singles (the biggest, “Whippin’ Piccadilly”, only made No 35), their debut album “Bring It On” would make it to No 11. My wife was one of those that bought it and it certainly had something intriguing about it, an ability to draw you in with its discordant arrangements and structures. It shouldn’t really have worked but it somehow did.
Two Top 10 albums followed but by 2004’s “Split The Difference”, their popularity had tailed off and when their label Hut Recordings shut down, they asked parent company Virgin to be released from their contract. They are still together though haven’t released an album since 2011. The band’s Tom Gray is involved with the Broken Record campaign which has lobbied the government to regulate music streaming.
Grandad Roberts and his Son Elvis – “Meat Pie Sausage Roll”
Released: Jun ‘98
Chart peak: No 67
What?! Have I lost my mind by including this? Maybe. Musically, it’s utter tripe but then it was a novelty football song released to cash in on the 1998 World Cup so it was maybe supposed to be? It was supposed to be funny though, a state I think it achieved due to its creator, the rather marvellous Mancunian comedian Smug Roberts. I spent nearly the whole of the 90s living in Manchester, and as such, I first became aware of Smug on a night out at the legendary comedy venue the Frog and Bucket where he was the compere one night and he was hilarious. I recall one story he told about the differences in the viewers that Blue Peter attracted as opposed to its ITV counterpart Magpie which had me in stitches.
By the late 90s, he had a radio show on Key 103 which featured the character ‘Grandad Roberts’ and a jingle that referenced Oldham Athletic FC and the chant “Meat Pie, Sausage Roll, come on Oldham, gi’s a goal”. With a slight rewording and some extra lyrics, it was released as an England World Cup song. It was never going to outsell “Three Lions ‘98” nor “Vindaloo” but it was a nice alternative all the same and certainly better than all those other hateful sausage themed novelty songs inflicted on us by Ladbaby that somehow gave them five consecutive Christmas No 1s.
Smug Roberts would go on to appear in various TV shows and films including 24 Hour Party People, ColdFeet and the magnificent Looking For Eric in which his character tells a joke about two monkeys in a bath…
Billy Bragg & Wilco: “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”
Released: Nov ‘98
Chart Peak: No 89
Now this was an interesting concept. A project to put to music previously unheard lyrics by the legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie organised by his daughter Nora. OK, if that doesn’t float your boat then you have to at least admire a man who had a guitar with the slogan ‘this machine kills fascists’ on it. So why were Billy Bragg and Wilco the artists asked to be involved in this project? Well, Bragg had performed at a Woody Guthrie tribute in 1995 and with his political activism, social conscience and folk sensibilities, he was a natural fit. Billy then approached alt-country act Wilco whose links to traditional American folk made them an obvious choice. The collaboration resulted in the “Mermaid Avenue” album, which gave the world a whole load of new Woody Guthrie tracks with the time elapsed between the lyrics being written and the music composed in some cases being nigh on 60 years. I guess it was a bit too niche to be a huge seller but it did shift enough copies in the UK to be certified a silver disc.
The two tracks I remember most from it are album opener “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and the single “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”. The latter is a great little song with Billy and Wilco giving musical expression to Guthrie’s words which reference the county he grew up in, the marvellously named, only-in-America Okfuskee. It was never going to be a hit in the UK in 1998 but the fact that it was even the tiniest footnote in the chart landscape was important in reminding us all that there was more music out there than the endless conveyor belt of generic dance tracks.
Jimmy Nail with Strange Fruit – “The Flame Still Burns”
Released: Nov ‘98
Chart peak: No 47
I do love a film about a fictional rock/pop group. Stardust, This Is Spinal Tap, The Rutles and That Thing You Do! all fall into that category. In 1998, we got Still Crazy to add to that list. The tale of reforming a 70s rock band called Strange Fruit (who were clearly modelled on Pink Floyd including their own Syd Barrett character), it starred Stephen Rea, Billy Connolly, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy (with what surely was the prototype for his rock star role in LoveActually) and Jimmy Nail. The film builds to a climax surrounding the performance of this track “The Flame Still Burns” at the Wisbech Festival, a Strange Fruit song that, if I recall the plot correctly, had gained almost mythical status for never having been performed live before. Now, I thought that it was an OK rock ballad that worked well in the film’s narrative but reading some of the comments attached to this YouTube clip, people who like it, love it with more than one person saying it had been used as a funeral song for a loved one. Wow! It received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song but lost out to “The Prayer” from Quest For Camelot. It was co-written by Squeeze’s Chris Difford who contributed numerous songs to the soundtrack.
I believe the film was well received critically but I’m not convinced that it did big numbers at the box office which may have contributed to the single failing to make the Top 40. Still, if you find yourself with time on your hands and looking for a film to watch, you could do worse than StillCrazy. It’s no ThisIsSpinalTap (what is?) and “The Flame Still Burns” is no *insert your favourite Spinal Tap song here* but it’s an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half.
Hits We Missed
Bernard Butler – “Not Alone”
Released: Mar ‘98
Chart peak: No 27
The first of two artists who in this section whom released debut albums this year which I still play to this day. We start with Bernard Butler who had clearly been around for years up to this point as Suede’s guitarist and then part of McAlmont & Butler so I guess I should qualify my opening remark about ‘debut albums’ as in the case of Bernard, his album “People Move On” clearly wasn’t the first time he been involved in a major release. However, it had taken him four years to put something out just under his own name since departing Suede in 1994. For me, it was worth the wait.
Comprising some fine tunes from the mighty “You Just Know” (which would be used to soundtrack Match of the Day’s ‘Goal of the Month’ competition) to the superbly crafted rock/pop of third single “A Change Of Heart” to the delicate, spare “You Light The Fire”, it’s full of winners. Perhaps my favourite track though is “Not Alone”. A just superb production with that opening Phil Spector-esque wall of sound intro building to the release of an epic track with a killer chorus. I’m a sucker for an obvious reference in a song so the emphasised guitar lick when Bernard sings “And I won’t need to show you my heart, cos all I need in my hands is an electric guitar” gets me every time. My abiding association with that song though is when I came to leave working in record shops and had applied for a job in the civil service. When I got the letter saying yay or nay, I decided to soundtrack the moment and put on “Not Alone”‘ so that dramatic intro finished just as I opened the envelope and read that I’d got the job. A silly little thing but sometimes they’re the most important.
The album would do well critically with generally positive reviews and commercially going silver for sales of 60,000 units. In 2022, “People Move On” was reissued as a four CD package with Bernard re-recording his vocals. I’ve listened to both versions and although the latter is not without merit, you can’t beat the original release in my book.
Travis – “More Than Us EP”
Released: Mar ‘98
Chart peak: No 16
For many, it may have seemed that Travis experienced overnight success in 1999 with the release of their album “The Man Who” which went to No 1 and would become the third best selling album of the year in the UK. However, that would be a misrepresentation of their rise to fame, riches and glory. Firstly, “The Man Who” took a while to catch fire commercially. It spent two weeks inside the Top 10 but the following five drifting down the charts before rising again to peak at No 1 three months after it was released. Secondly, the band had been in existence since 1990 (albeit under a different name for the first three years). Thirdly, “The Man Who” wasn’t their first album. That would be “Good Feeling” which came out in the September of ‘97 and was a reasonable commercial success peaking at No 9 and furnishing the band with five Top 40 singles. The last of these was the “More Than Us” EP which included two other tracks from the album – second single “All I Want To Do Is Rock” and album closer “Funny Thing”. We had a promo album sampler sent to the Our Price store where I was working which I signed out to myself once the actual album had been released and was so impressed by it that I ended up buying the complete said album. It’s a much more rock orientated sound the the follow up that really made their name and would perhaps dispel the preconceived perceptions of the band’s sound if listened to by the uninitiated. Perhaps.
“More Than Us” though isn’t a rock song but a delicate, thoughtful and yet resilient ballad that has the ability to transport. Many comments online in support of the track talk of the listener being taken to another place, detached from reality for a few blissful minutes. That’s the power and importance of music right there. Unfairly, Travis have been dismissed as a band by many on the unwarranted grounds of being bland or inoffensive and perhaps even worse, a poor man’s Coldplay – is that the ultimate insult given their own not always favourable public perception? Music writer Wyndham Wallace even made a documentary about why he doesn’t like Travis called Almost Fashionable in which he joined the band on tour to see if they could change his mind about them. I should probably seek it out to seen if they did. I truly hope so.
Embrace – “Come Back To What You Know”
Released: May ‘98
Chart peak: No 6
Now for that second artist whose debut album I keep returning to. Embrace are probably the band I have seen live the most in my life – maybe five or six times – and yet I wasn’t in from the start with them. Despite working in a record shop, I somehow missed their first three EPs despite the fact that all three charted with “All You Good Good People” even going Top 10. I certainly hadn’t been aware of the initial release of the latter on independent label Fierce Panda in early 1997. All I knew was that people were talking them up as the next Oasis, a comparison which now seems unfair as well as inaccurate. However, I finally got on board with “Come Back To What You Know” which took them to a then career high of No 6. There’s a lot going on in this track. Yes, it’s anthemic with a huge production (apparently producer Youth tussled with the band for ages about how it should sound) but it also has an unusual rhythm to it. It almost stutters in places, unsure of where to go next before letting the chorus off the leash. Even then though, the chorus seems to undulate in an unorthodox way yet somehow resolves itself with a truly memorable hook. Like I say, there’s a lot going on there.
Parent album “The Good Will Out” debuted at No 1 going gold on its first day of release and there’s so many fine tracks on there (14 in all) but I think my absolute favourite is “That’s All Changed Forever” which gets me every time. After an eight year hiatus, they returned in 2014 with an eponymously titled album and have released two more since with rumours of album No 9 due in 2026. Come back to what you know indeed.
Drugstore featuring Thom Yorke – “El Presidente”
Released: Apr ‘98
Chart peak: No 20
Here’s a great forgotten 90s hit. Drugstore are led by Brazilian singer-songwriter and bassist Isabel Monteiro and have been together for over 30 years minus the odd hiatus and have released four albums in that time (not prolific then) but their only hit and therefore most famous song was this very cinematic track featuring Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on shared vocals. Written about former socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende, it’s a heady mix of sounds with Monteiro’s vocals almost Cerys Matthews like in places whilst the atmospheric slow building intro makes for an eerie but effective opening. I use the word ‘cinematic’ deliberately as the band’s music has featured on four movie soundtrack albums whilst also appearing in the TV series ThisLife and Teachers. As for the Thom Yorke cameo, I’m assuming that transpired from Drugstore supporting Radiohead earlier in their career. It was an inspired collaboration with Yorke’s plaintive vocals the perfect accompaniment. Supposedly, the band are still active though they haven’t released anything for 15 years and Monteiro has now returned to her home country of Brazil.
Theaudience – “A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed”
Released: May ‘98
Chart peak: No 27
Long before she assumed near national treasure status as the queen of the kitchen disco, Sophie Ellis Bextor was the lead singer of an aspiring post-Britpop band called theaudience (not sure that formatting worked) As I recall, there was quite the buzz about them which seemed, in retrospect, to be based on not much. One album and two medium sized Top 40 singles was all they managed before they were dropped by their label Mercury after they had rejected the demoes for a second album. Having said that, I quite liked this track, the first of those two hits not least because I thought its title was interesting and maybe even clever. Of course, there was a school of thought that said we didn’t need another female lead singer-led indie guitar band after a plethora of during the Britpop era like Sleeper, Echobelly and Elastica but such was the star quality surrounding Ellis Bextor that the music press couldn’t help themselves but give them column inches.
The track itself is melodic and not without charm and had the added bite of the line “and we all sing the same fucking song” although the expletive was changed for ‘stupid’ in the version released to radio. I think the song’s quality is confirmed by the fact that it could be recorded as a French language acoustic version (which was included as an extra track on the CD single) and also re-recorded with an orchestral arrangement for Ellis Bextor’s greatest hits compilation “The Song Diaries” in 2019. Sophie would embark on a further music career that took in a No 1 with Spiller in “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” and the ubiquitous “Murder On The Dancefloor”. With all that success, I wonder if she would ever consider herself a pessimist?
Morcheeba – “Part Of The Process”
Released: Aug ‘98
Chart peak: No 38
Morcheeba’s Wikipedia entry lists their sound as spanning genres including trip hop, electronica, R&B and downtempo (whatever that is) so they were unlikely to be on my radar. However, fortunately for me, they were on my wife’s who bought their album “Big Calm” which went double platinum in the UK. Despite that success and a further three gold selling albums, the band have a surprisingly small amount of hit singles – just the three Top 40 entries with none of them getting higher than No 34. “Part Of The Process” was their second biggest chart hit but its peak of No 38 was unfathomable – it really should have been a bigger hit. Just like Drugstore, it’s opening is very filmic conjuring up images of spaghetti westerns before channeling Beck’s slacker anthem “Loser”. A country slide guitar ushers in the pleasantly catchy chorus, a theme which is repeated in the middle eight. It really is quite marvellous in an understated kind of way. The Jason And The Argonauts style video is fun too. The band are still together having released their most recent album in 2025, though the partnership of brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey was dissolved when the former left in 2014.
Their Season In The Sun
Aaron Carter
A tragic tale of too much fame coming to someone at too young an age. Little brother of Nick of the Backstreet Boys, Aaron had three UK Top 40 hits and a Top 20 album in 1998. Coming in like a 90s Little Jimmy Osmond (and just as annoying), his cover of “Surfin’ USA” by the Beach Boys was both excruciating and excrement. His fame and success would continue into the new Millennium in America but we’d had our fill of him by then thankfully. After filing for bankruptcy in 2013 over unpaid taxes relating to his late 90s wealth, he died in 2022 aged just 34 by accidental drowning after inhaling difluoroethane and taking alprazolam (Xanax).
Will Mellor
Before going on to roles in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, White Van Man and Mr Bates vs The Post Office, actor Will Mellor was Jambo in Hollyoaks. Deciding that he could do a Jason Donovan and go from soap star to pop star, he left the Chester set soap and made the move to the recording studio. Sadly, his venture was more Nick Berry than Jason. His cover of Leo Sayer’s “When I Need You” took him straight into the Top 5 emboldening him so much that he decided to saunter down to the Merseyway shopping centre in Stockport one Saturday afternoon and wonder around the Our Price store I was working in whilst all the time wearing sunglasses but clearly hoping to be recognised. Berk! A second single failed to make the Top 20 and that was it for Will the pop star. He seems to have gotten over his folly of youth and comes across as a decent bloke these days from what I’ve seen of him.
Cleopatra
Three Top 5 hits with your first three singles released and a sliver album is quite the feat, especially when you are a trio with a combined age of 47. Yes, the three Higgins sisters were all just teenagers when they were thrust into the limelight in 1998 and courted by no less a name than Madonna who signed them to her Maverick label. Support slots on the Spice Girls tour and their own TV show followed before performing at the Vatican Christmas Carol Concert by request of Pope John Paul II. It couldn’t last though and their second album was never released in the UK. The trio split in 2001 but have reformed numerous times over the years but are currently inactive.
B*Witched
Yes, they had more hits post 1998 including a fourth consecutive No 1 single but second album syndrome seemed to take hold with sophomore effort “Awake And Breathe” not selling even half the amount of copies that its predecessor did. A third album failed to appear and the band were dropped by their record label Sony in 2001 before splitting in 2002. They reformed in 2012 and are still performing live mainly on the nostalgia circuit but are scheduled for an unlikely appearance in May this year in the cathedral of my home city of Worcester.
Last Words
Goodbye 1998 and good riddance. Seriously, this was not a good year and reviewing these TOTP repeats has been a chore. A pain. A drag. A solid drag in fact. I have little hopes that 1999 will be any better sadly. Judging by my posts, I don’t seem to have bought much music in this year despite working in a record shop
Personally, I had a very difficult time in 1998 succumbing to an episode of poor mental health that laid me low with five weeks off work. The silver lining was that my return to work involved a change of store which worked out really well. In other news, my beloved Chelsea won two trophies this year. TWO! I could only have dreamt of such things as a young boy growing up supporting a club with a procession of hopelessly average and, on occasion, downright poor football teams. So not everything was awful then. Maybe 1999 will turn out to be better than I remember…
It’s the week before Christmas in 1998 and all eyes are on the race to be that year’s festive No 1. Well, mine were as I was working in the Our Price store in Altrincham so focussing on the late December dash up the charts was kind of part of the job. Now, the Top 20 countdown featured in this episode wasn’t the Christmas chart. That would be announced in the TOTP Christmas show* that aired on BBC2 on the big day itself so whoever was No 1 in this particular episode knew that they only had to hang on for seven days to take the title.
*I’m not reviewing the Christmas show as that was basically a rundown of the biggest selling singles of the year which no doubt I will have already reviewed potentially multiple times. The only ‘new’ songs were Denise van Outen and Johnny Vaughan doing a cover of “Especially For You” and a Christmas song from Jane McDonald – yeah, I think I’m doing us all a favour by skipping those two.
So who were the contenders? Let’s take a look…
Our host is Jayne Middlemiss who seems to have chopped some locks off although in the Christmas show she has longer hair so either they were extensions or they filmed that before this show? Anyway, with the greatest respect, I don’t think the opening act were in the running for the festive No 1 spot although one of their number had come very close to one 12 years prior*. In fact, The Beautiful South had a chart topper to their name – 1990’s “A Little Time” – and actually had come very close to another with their last single “Perfect 10” but I stand by my stance that they were never really in the running for the big Christmas prize. “Dumb”, the follow up to “Perfect 10”, was such a downbeat tune that it seemed an odd choice for a single at any time of the year but at Christmas time? Very strange. I’m a bit of a fan of Paul Heaton and his various musical incarnations but this is not one of my favourites of his. It seems quite repetitive and more concerned with its musicality than a tune. It’s still knocks spots off most of the crud in the charts this year though. “Dumb” peaked at No 16.
*The Housemartins were bumped off the No 1 spot at the death when the rerelease of Jackie Wilson’s “Reet Petite” claimed the festive chart topper over “Caravan Of Love” in 1986.
Oh blimey! This has come around quicker than I was expecting. Time to bring out the *SPOILER ALERT!* sign. The 1998 Christmas No 1 is suddenly upon us. Tear up those betting slips anybody who doubted the continuing pull of the Spice Girls as “Goodbye” beats off all competition to give the group three consecutive festive winners, the first time this has been achieved since The Beatles did it between 1963 and 1965. Despite the trauma of losing Geri Halliwell from their line up and the fall out of that, they ended the year as they began it at No 1. Obviously given its title, conclusions were leapt to that it was about Halliwell and it turned out that was true but that wasn’t the whole story. It was originally written whilst Geri was still in the group about the ending of a non-specific relationship but was rewritten following her departure to be specifically about her. A genuine outpouring of emotion or cynical manipulation of a situation to enrich the organisation? You decide. There was, of course, another reading of that title – that it was valedictory and heralded the end of the Spice Girls. That wasn’t quite true, there was another album and one last No 1 single but what was undeniable was that it drew a line under the first phase* of the group. They would not release any more material in the 90s. For me personally, this was the end of the Spice Girls story. However, they will be back for one more TOTP appearance in the next BBC4 repeat so their 90s story is not quite done yet.
*I’m not splitting hairs about first and second phases of the group pre and post Geri. I’m referring to the different phases when they were a recording artist and just a nostalgia reunion touring entity.
Another all girl group now as the Honeyz follow up their debut hit “Finally Found” with another Top 5 smash in “End Of The Line”. Another smooth soul sound, this was also an accomplished ballad that ebbed and flowed, swooped and soared – I could imagine Whitney Houston singing it, especially the “I deserve some damn respect” line. Did it ever gave a shot at being the Christmas No 1? No, I don’t think so – Honeyz weren’t established enough to take on the likes of the Spice Girls what with “End Of The Line” being only their second single. Curiously, despite racking up five Top 10 singles straight off the bat, I’m not sure they ever did fully establish themselves. Parent album to all those hits – “Wonder No 8” – never really achieved massive sales peaking at No 33. To this day, it remains the group’s only album release.
To a group now who did have a UK No 1 to their name but that was five years prior and their latest offering in 1998 was surely destined never to be enshrined in the annals of festive chart toppers. “Always Have, Always Will” was undoubtedly prime Christmas party playlist fodder with its blatant Motown rip off sound but Ace Of Base were never more than big outsiders at the bookies. Indeed, back in 1993 despite “All That She Wants” riding high in the charts, I think you would have got long odds on them being consistent hitmakers throughout the rest of the 90s but here they were with their eleventh UK Top 40 single. Obviously, the Motown samples are to the fore but it also sounds like that Eurovision song Sonia did also in 1993 or even this from the first Nativity…
One of the band appears to be missing from this performance – the blonde singer who I believe is the sister of the Anni-Frid lookalike on vocals here. Where was she then? Maybe this Motown pastiche was too shameful even for her? Certainly some of the 60s style dancing in the studio audience – were they planted dancers like in the good old days? – was embarrassing.
Having had three Top 10 hits to this point, Lutricia McNeal, not surprisingly, threw her hat into the ring for a tilt at the Christmas No 1 by releasing a ballad. Well, it was traditional. “The Greatest Love You’ll Never Know” certainly had the title of something that the aforementioned Whitney Houston might have recorded but its sound was very nondescript. It wasn’t in with a sniff of being the season’s best seller. Maybe Lutricia (or her record label) knew this and so, to increase its chances of success, made it a double A-side with a cover of classic Christmas hit – “When A Child Is Born” made famous by Johnny Mathis. After having heard that version dozens of times in the run up to Christmas 2025, I wasn’t likely to seek out Lutricia’s take on it but I did wonder if she did the cringey spoken word bit towards the end? And talking of the end, this would be McNeal’s final ever hit (and presumably TOTP appearance). Sadly, her legacy remains that although I remember her name, it’s because of the unusual nature of that moniker rather than her music.
Here’s another female solo artist with their eyes on the Christmas prize but, unlike Lutricia McNeal, she didn’t go with a smoochy ballad but instead stuck rigidly to the dance/pop formula that had already brought her two No 1 singles from her first two releases. I speak of Billie who, like another act we will see tonight, had ambitions of making it three chart toppers out of three. “She Wants You” didn’t break any new ground other than that of not sticking to the tried and tested strategy of releasing two fast tracks and one slow one at the outset of your pop career. Perversely, Billie would release a slower number with her fourth single “Honey To The Bee”.
However, just as Lutricia did, Billie backed up her song with a cover of a previous festive hit (Wham!’s “Last Christmas” in this case) as one of the extra tracks on the CD single. Again, I haven’t sought out Billie’s version and have no intention of doing so but I do wonder if she would have been better off releasing “Honey To The Bee” for Christmas instead. Finally, why are there eight (EIGHT!) male dancers behind her all dressed in their own casual clothes? Not very professional looking is it?
Right, this next one had zero chance of being No 1 for Christmas. Despite all their album sales, the fact is that REM were not prolific when it came to huge hit singles. Of their 22 UK chart entries to this point, only six made the Top 10 and within those, only one breached the Top 5. Added to that, I don’t think they were still in their imperial phase by 1998 so they were unlikely to suddenly release a universal festive tune that would capture the mainstream market and catapult them to the top of the charts. The last time they’d had such a transformative hit was…”Shiny Happy People”? Anyway, the band’s December 1998 hit was “Lotus” the chief lyric of which – “I ate the lotus” – was never going to be a Christmas classic. As with The Beautiful South, it really isn’t their best work but it’s still a decent tune. A big Christmas hit though? No. Actually, and I’m probably in a minority of one with this, but I believe there is an REM Christmas song though I don’t really understand why I think this. I refer to “Find The River” which was the sixth and final single from “Automatic For The People” and the least successful of those six. So why am I banging in about it? Well, it was released two days before December kicked in so there’s that and it somehow channels a Wintery theme which clearly anchors it as a Christmas song. In my head anyway.
And so we arrive at this week’s No 1. The occupants of said position would surely have fancied themselves as front runners to be the Christmas chart topper no? Erm…no. Not this year. I think that the opposition in the form of the Spice Girls was always going to be too strong and so a choice had to be made for/by B*Witched. Did they chance their arm(s) by going head to head with Sporty, Posh, Scary and Baby or did they, to use a golfing term, ‘lay up’ by releasing their single “To You I Belong” a week earlier thus avoiding a confrontation with “Goodbye” and simultaneously bagging their third consecutive No 1? It was a simple decision in the end. Lead singer Edele Lynch’s intro to this appearance of “This is our third No 1 on Top of the Pops. Thanks a million to everyone out there” seems to confirm that everyone involved was happy with the decision and its outcome.
As for the song itself, unlike Billie, B*Witched did follow the ‘two fast then a slow one’ template as “To You I Belong” was nothing like its predecessors. A ballad with a definite Irish feel to it (is that a flute in the mix?), it actually sounds like it was written to hopefully duplicate the success of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” title which it has more than a passing resemblance. I always found it quite weak and so adjusting its release date to ensure a record breaking* No 1 was a sensible choice.
*With this hit, B*Witched became the first Irish band to have three consecutive No 1 singles.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Beautiful South
Dumb
Not for me
2
Spice Girls
Goodbye
No
3
Honeyz
End Of The Line
Nah
4
Ace Of Base
Always Have, Always Will
Never have, never will
5
Lutricia McNeal
The Greatest Love You’ll Never Know
Never
6
Billie
She Wants You
I did not
7
REM
Lotus
Nope
8
B*Witched
To You I Belong
No you didn’t
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
As I write this sat on a train on the 27th December, Christmas has been and gone for another year but there were still two weeks to go at the point this TOTP aired back in 1998. After a period of poor mental health resulting in five weeks off work, I was back in a record shop as Christmas approached just as I had been for the previous eight years. However, this time I was in the Our Price store in Altrincham having been transferred there as part of the plan to phase me back into work. The last three festive periods I’d been in Stockport, a much larger store with its own set of particular challenges. Altrincham was a much smaller unit and I’d already worked a Christmas there five years prior which I’d enjoyed so it was a good decision by area management to install me there. The manager was a guy called Scott who was from down south originally but had relocated ‘oop north’ and though I didn’t know him at all, he would prove to be a very important person in helping me to re-establish myself at work and recover from my mental health issues. Scott presumably wouldn’t have chosen to go into a busy Christmas with an Assistant Manager who had suffered from such problems but he was never anything less than supportive and encouraging. He took the role of being shop manager very seriously and would always wear a collar and tie to work which I’d never witnessed before but it helped to establish the standards he wanted for the shop. My re-integration wasn’t just about Scott though, the whole team at Altrincham were pretty easy to work with. First example, as I sat nervously in the staff room with Scott on that first morning back, a lovely colleague called Suzanne popped her head around the door and offered to make me a cup of tea and it was at that moment when I believed that everything was going to be OK after all.
Well, that’s enough recollections of my private life. Let’s get to the music and we start with a man having the biggest hit of his life up to this point. Jay-Z may be one of the biggest hip-hop artists of all time but back in 1998, certainly in the UK, he just had a collection of middling hits that were all collaborations with other artists to his name. Suddenly, with the release of the lead single from his third studio album, Beyoncé’s fella was debuting at No 2 in our charts. “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” was an unlikely hit, or rather, its source material was not an obvious choice. When my son was younger he loved to watch the film Annie (either the original or remake) and I’ve also seen a few theatre productions of it during the course of my job as an usher so I know the songs in it quite well including “It’s The Hard Knock Life”. I’m guessing that Jay-Z was also familiar with it but, unlike me, he had the vision to incorporate it into a massive hip-hop hit. So invested was he that 16 years later, he was a co-producer on that aforementioned movie remake.
Whenever I hear this song, I am reminded of a nice pun that I read about a footballer playing for my beloved Chelsea at the time. His name was Gus Poyet and he’d picked up an injury playing in the Boxing Day fixture which would rule him out for the next ten matches. The headline in the official Chelsea Magazine reporting on this news? ‘It’s a hard knock life for Gus’. Lovely stuff.
There’s no doubt that songwriters are influenced by either their peers or heroes. Many a story exists where an artist admits that when writing one of their hits, they were actually trying to copy a song like…*fill in your desired choice of song*. For example, when writing “Up The Junction”, Squeeze’s Chris Difford admitted he wanted the song’s title to only be sung in the final line just like “Virginia Plain” by Roxy Music. The next hit on this TOTP was another such song written in the style of another. The title of “The Everlasting” was devised by Manic Street Preachers lyricist Nicky Wire as a deliberate attempt to come up with a song with the same naming format as Blur’s “The Universal” or Joy Division’s “The Eternal”. In the end, he borrowed the title from a poem by his brother Patrick Jones. Well, tick that box but what other boxes were checked by this song? Sweeping strings? Check! Melancholy tone? Check! Slowly building anthem? Check! Commercially successful? Well, yes check but with caveats. By debuting at a peak of No 11, it ended a run of five singles that went Top 10 and as a follow up to their previous hit “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” which gave them their first chart topper then I guess maybe it was a disappointment? In truth though, the album had been in the shops for three months by this point so sales of that were bound to affect subsequently released tracks from it. All of the above makes me wonder quite why it took that amount of time to release a follow up single? Three months seems like a long time though I haven’t done any research into release schedules to be fair.
Fancy an unlikely duet? This TOTP has you covered as we are offered Bryan Adams and Melanie C with “When You’re Gone”. I say unlikely as, at this point, the only Spice Girl to have dipped her toe in the waters of a solo career was Mel B who’d released one solitary single on her own (albeit a No 1). Despite having left the organisation, Geri Halliwell was still five months away from releasing her first solo single. In other words, the era of Spice Girls operating outside of the group had yet to take hold. Within a couple of years, all five members would have solo careers of varying levels of success but in late 1998, routinely seeing any one of these household names out there on there own was not an everyday occurrence. Melanie C, who would come out of the traps fast with two No 4s and two No1s in her first four solo singles, had a trial run when she teamed up with ‘The Groover from Vancouver’ on this second track released from the latter’s “On A Day Like Today” album.
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement as the single’s peak of No 3 not only helped to establish the idea of Melanie C as an artist in her own right but it also furnished Adams with his biggest UK hit since his collaboration with Rod Stewart and Sting on “All For Love” from TheThreeMusketeers soundtrack. You could hear why. A slick, uptempo, radio friendly, soft rock track with a swirling organ accompaniment and some clever lyrical pacing (“even food don’t taste that good”) creating organic hooks. However, given the general perception that Mel C was in possession of the best vocals within the Spice Girls, I’m not sure that her voice is on point all the time here. Originally, Bryan wanted to record the song with Sheryl Crow but when she failed to take him up on his offer, a chance meeting with Miss Chisholm in a hotel lift in Los Angeles led to him giving the job to the Spice Girl. I think I would have preferred Sheryl to have had a go at it if I’m honest. The single proved to be extremely hardy spending ten consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 bumping around between No 5 and No 8 and not leaving the Top 40 for nearly four months.
One of those songs now that would highlight the out of kilter-ness (that’s a word right?) that sometimes exists between the UK and the US. Brandy was fast on her way to becoming a superstar around this time. Not only did she have the starring role in hit US sitcom Moesha but her singing career was also in full ascendancy off the back of her huge smash “The Boy Is Mine” with Monica which was the second best selling song of 1998 in America. Indeed, it had also been a big hit on these shores going to No 2 and being our own 18th best selling single of the year. She’d followed that with “Top Of The World” in the UK which again made No 2 but was nowhere near as big a seller as its predecessor. Her record label Atlantic chose not to release that track in the US and instead opted for the Dianne Warren penned “Have You Ever?”. Atlantic seemed to know what they were doing when this track followed “The Boy Is Mine” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When released in the UK though, it stalled at No 13, spending just five weeks in total in the lower reaches of the Top 40. So why the commercial differences on display here? Was it a cultural thing? I have no idea but take my lead from the young woman in the studio audience of Brandy’s performance here who is stood to the left of the screen with her arms permanently crossed, half-heartedly swaying as if to say “Is this it?”. To be fair to her, it does sound like a filler track for a Toni Braxton album.
Not that I’ve given this much thought before but the release history of LeAnn Rimes is a bit of a mess. OK, it’s not something most people would care about (and if not for writing this blog neither would I) but it is all over the place. In the UK, we’d never heard of LeAnn until she recorded that song from ConAir which would become the hit with the most longevity by becoming our sixth best selling single of the year despite never getting higher than No 7 (six seven!). Albums wise, she’d already released four studio albums to that point none of which had done anything over here. Then came “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” which didn’t originally include “How Do I Live” but which was added for the UK release thereby sending it to No 11. Two tracks that were always on the album and which were lumped together as a double A-side as the follow up to “How Do I Live” were “Looking Through Your Eyes” and “Commitment” but that single would only spend a solitary week at No 38 in the UK Top 40, unable to compete with the extraordinary ongoing sales of its predecessor which was still in the charts. Once it finally tailed off enough to allow for another single to be released, LeAnn’s record label went back to the title track of her third (but major label debut) album “Blue” that had come out two and a half years prior! Sensing this would be another big hit, they added it to “Sittin’ On Top Of The World” as an extra track just as they had done with “How Do I Live”. Keeping up? Good. However, “Blue” would debut at a chart peak of No 23 then spending three weeks at the outer reaches of our Top 40 before departing.
The song itself was originally recorded in 1958 by Bill Mack who I thought was the washed up rock singer from LoveActually who ends up having a Christmas No 1 but who was in reality an American songwriter, country artist and DJ. A very retro country & western song featuring a slide guitar, it’s been covered many times including famously by Patsy Cline and, of course, by Rimes when she was just 11 on her second studio album “All That” released independently. She re-recorded the track when she was 13 for the “Blue” album but apparently it’s the earlier version that was released for some reason. See, I told you it’s all a mess.
What was it with 1998 and Swedish pop acts? The UK charts were full of them in this year with hits from the likes of Robyn, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Ace Of Base and The Cardigans. Then came Emilia and her song “Big Big World”. Discovered by Lars Anderson, son of ABBA manager Stig Anderson, Emilia hit the ground running when her debut single went to No 1 in eight countries and made No 5 in the UK. What sounded like a very simple song with an almost nursery rhyme quality to it, was actually based on a classical piece of music – ‘Peasant Cantata’ by Johann Sebastian Bach. This made for a second big hit this year to channel the German composer after Sweetbox’s “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” which sampled ‘Air on the G String’. It would prove to be Emilia’s only success in this country but it did allow many a lazy music journalist (and our host Jamie Theakston) to bang on about it being ‘a big, big hit’. It’s very much a ‘marmite’ song I think – you either loved it or hated it (I was in the latter category) which might account for my perception that you don’t hear it much on the radio these days. Emilia continued releasing music into the new millennium and tried out to be the Swedish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009 but failed to make the grade. Similarly, her lyrics to “Big Big World” wouldn’t have passed any exams – look at this shocking use of tenses:
But I do do feel That I do do will Miss you much Miss you much
If it’s 1998, it must be time for another Robbie Williams hit. “No Regrets” was his fourth of the year and his least likeable to my ears. I don’t know why I could never get along with it but it just never pushed any buttons for me. It’s all very well constructed and all that but it just lacks that pop sensibility. Was it too worthy? Too overly earnest? Enough people liked it to send it to No 4 so maybe I was missing the point or something? Maybe, I was too overly concerned with the deliberately dramatic ending that I could never get along with? Robbie should have gone straight to “Strong” for his follow up to “Millennium” rather than mess about with “No Regrets” in my humble opinion but having said that, when he did release it a the third single from the album, it also made No 4 so maybe Robbie had no regrets on that score.
It’s the seventh and final week at the top for Cher with “Believe”. It was quite a remarkable feat given that its parent album had also been out for nearly two months and had itself gone double platinum. The follow up to “Believe” taken from the album was “Strong Enough”, an almost carbon copy of its predecessor and that got to No 5 over here. The UK really couldn’t get enough of Cher’s late 90s sound.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Jay-Z
Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)
No
2
Manic Street Preachers
The Everlasting
Nope
3
Bryan Adams / Melanie C
When You’re Gone
Nah
4
Brandy
Have You Ever?
Negative
5
LeAnn Rimes
Blue
Not for me
6
Emilia
Big Big World
Never
7
Robbie Williams
No Regrets
No thanks
8
Cher
Believe
I did not
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
We’ve entered December, the month of Christmas, time off work* and office parties talking of which, our presenter, Kate Thornton, looks like she’s come dressed for the party season-in a sparkly red dress and crimped hair. I wonder if any of the tunes on this show might have soundtracked some office parties that festive season.
*I only got Christmas Day off this year as the record shop chain I was working for (Our Price) introduced Boxing Day opening for the first time. Bah and indeed, humbug!
As it’s Christmas, we start with a ballad. Not just any ballad mind but a boy band ballad. Yes, just seven days after Five threw their hats into the ring for a huge hit with a big love song, so did Boyzone. I have to admit that I can’t place “I Love The Way You Love Me” at all but if I had to, it would be in the bin. A country-tinged ballad, it redefines the word ‘cynical’ meaning that it’s an ‘ickle’ song that it was a ‘sin’ to record. Oh alright, it’s not that bad but it’s not that good either is it? Again like Five, the vocal heavy lifting is done by just two of the five members of the band but then that was pretty much always the case with Boyzone – did any of the other three that weren’t Ronan or Stephen ever get a solo spot? I don’t think so, not on the hits anyway. And yet it went straight in at No 2 and but for the Cher phenomenon would have been another No 1 for them. Two and a half years on from the initial demise of Take That, you’d have to say that the five Irish lads had taken their opportunity to be the UK’s biggest boy band. In that period, of the eight singles which they released, four went to No 2 and four went to No 1. They loved the way you loved them.
Would it have made an office party playlist? Unlikely but maybe it could have soundtracked an illicit snog by the photocopier.
A ‘forgotten’ single next or at least one that isn’t well remembered I suspect. “War Of Nerves” by All Saints anyone? The fifth and final track lifted from their debut eponymous album, it was presumably released just so the fans had something to buy at Christmas. Or was it, as we saw recently with the example of James releasing a remix of “Sit Down”, just an attempt to revitalise sales of an album which had already been in the shops for more than a year? Either way, its peak of No 7 was a long way short of the success of their previous three singles which all topped the charts. Was that down to the fact that so many people had already bought the album or was it just that the song wasn’t that strong? I think probably the former as, although “War Of Nerves” is understated, it does have a quiet power and definite charm. Maybe it worked better as an album track? Certainly the performance here is very laid back and not at all pushy nor forward with the group all sat on a sofa or a plush chair possibly due to Melanie Blatt’s baby bump as prefaced by Kate Thornton in her intro. However, if any of us thought that the All Saints bubble had burst with the smaller hit that “War Of Nerves” gave the group, we would all be proved wrong and then some when their next release – “Pure Shores” – was their fourth No 1 hit.
Would it have made an office party playlist? Doubtful. More likely “Never Ever” or “Lady Marmalade” might have got a spin.
Did anyone else watch AllyMcBeal back in the day? For a while there it as quite the TV sensation. Winning a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy in its first two seasons, the legal comedy-drama TV series starring Calista Flockhart was seen as groundbreaking in its use of surreal running gags and its uptake of one of the very first internet memes ‘The Dancing Baby’.
My wife and I enjoyed the show at the time but I don’t think we watched it much after those first two series when the ratings started to fall away. Anyway, as well as internet memes, the show heavily featured a soundtrack that was provided by the previously unknown Vonda Shepherd. OK, not completely unknown as she’d had a hit in 1987 in America with “Can’t We Try”, a duet with Dan Hill of “Sometimes When We Touch” fame. In the UK though, zip, nothing, nada. Then came the AllyMcBeal break. “Searchin’ My Soul” was the theme tune and would be the single released from the soundtrack album but Shepherd was more than just a one track pony. She recorded the whole album though, in fairness, most were cover versions of pop standards. She even bagged herself a regular cameo spot on the show as the resident singer at the bar the show’s protagonists would often find themselves visiting (usually at the end of each episode). Here’s the thing though. Despite the fact that I used to watch AllyMcBeal in its early years, I don’t recognise its theme tune at all. How can that be? Yes, it was never played in full on the show but even so.
However, I definitely remember something quite specific about this whole AllyMcBeal era. The Our Price shop where I was working would sometimes receive promo copies of forthcoming albums to play in store and plug ahead of the release date. We received one such promo for the AllyMcBeal soundtrack. It wasn’t the whole album just a sampler with maybe half a dozen songs on it. We hadn’t really played it that much and it was just knocking about near the shop stereo. Anyway, a customer came in and she was desperate to buy the music from AllyMcBeal, her favourite TV show. I explained that neither the album nor the single had been released yet. However, I suddenly remembered that promo CD. Now, in theory, such promo material should only be signed out to staff but the poor woman was desperate to go home with something and as I’m a generous type of guy, I said I would ask the manager if it could be signed out to her. In return, I asked if she could make a donation into one of our charity boxes. Everyone’s a winner! Except…the manager was dead against the idea despite my protestations that it might inspire customer loyalty. In the end, he relented but made me feel like I was out of order for even suggesting such a thing. This was the manager who I just couldn’t get along with and who was a protagonist in my deteriorating mental health. He had a problem with trying to do a customer a small favour yet I’d witnessed some of his practices that were undoubtedly not squeaky clean including flouting health and safety rules when it came to his staff. As before, I won’t mention his name but let’s just say he went be getting a Christmas card from me anytime soon.
Would it have made an office party playlist?Probably not well known enough even despite AllyMcBeal.
“So which one’s your favourite?” asks Kate Thornton at the end of the next performance which is “Tragedy” by Steps. Clare Richards always seemed to be the vocal focal point of the group but personally, I always had a soft spot for Faye Tozer – can’t think why (ahem). I couldn’t really be doing with the two blokes and that just leaves Lisa Scott-Lee. Have I ever told you my incredibly tenuous connection story to Lisa Scott-Lee? I once worked with someone who was friends with someone who was related to Lisa! Said relative worked in McDonalds at the time which seemed light years away from the life Scott-Lee was living and I always wondered if her relation held any feelings of jealousy towards her? Anyway, apparently she’s the best member of Steps and here’s why…
Would it have made an office party playlist? Most definitely.
Faithless are up next with a second single lifted from their “Sunday 8PM” album. Not quite as impactful as “God Is A DJ”, “Take The Long Way Home” nevertheless adheres to the their usual sonic blueprint of a dominant portentous, ominous sound punctuated by Maxi Jazz’s almost spoken word vocals and those fleeting, shuffling beats. If the track’s title sounds familiar, like me, you may be thinking of that song by Supertramp from their “Breakfast In America” album. It got me thinking what Faithless would have done with a cover version of “Take The Long Way Home” as opposed to their own composition so I asked AI. This is what it said:
“If Faithless covered Supertramp’s “Take the Long Way Home,” it would likely transform the classic rock ballad into an anthemic, pulsing electronic track, blending Maxi Jazz’s soulful vocals with Sister Bliss’s sweeping synths and Rollo Armstrong’s beats, creating a euphoric dancefloor version full of spiritual depth, contrasting the original’s wistful melancholy with rave energy, akin to their own hits like “Insomnia” but with Supertramp’s narrative heart…Ultimately, a Faithless cover would flip the Supertramp classic from a reflective, almost sad, acoustic-driven song into a hands-in-the-air, communal dance anthem”.
Hmm. It’s not really telling me anything I couldn’t have thought up or written myself. In fact, it doesn’t really say anything at all other than generic guff. It did do it in seconds though whereas I seem to be taking longer and longer to write these reviews. I guess AI isn’t distracted by cups of tea or mince pies like I am. Or is it?
Would it have made an office party playlist? Not mainstream enough I would have thought but probably caused some dance floor action in a club setting.
After tempting Madonna into the TOTP studio for only the second time in 14 years, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t going to show Madge’s performance of her latest hit “The Power Of Goodbye/Little Star” there just once. Inevitably, it would get re-shown two weeks on and, as that first performance was an ‘exclusive’ a fortnight ahead of the single’s release, Cowey even had the added rationality for featuring it again as it had only just entered the charts at No 6. A canny move by the Mackem TV producer. Kate Thornton rather over eggs her intro by saying “This next lady’s sold over 100 million albums but she still likes to drop into TOTP”. Two in person appointments within a 14 year period would suggest the opposite Kate.
Would it have made an office party playlist? No chance. Far too slow a track. “Holiday” on the other hand…
A grinning Will Smith appearing on screen with a message for his UK fans whilst introducing the video for his latest hit seemed to be a regular event around this time. Here he was again with a segue into “Miami”, his third Top 3 hit of the year. Taken from his “Big Willie Style” album, it was yet again a pop/R&B/rap track based around a retro hit. After borrowing from Sister Sledge and Bill Withers/Grover Washington Jr previously, Smith turned to the 1979 smash “And The Beat Goes On” by The Whispers this time. You’d have to say that the writing team behind those hits were right on the money when it came to nailing their commercial appeal. The formula would continue to be applied into 1999 with a further brace of No 2 hits built around samples from the likes of The Clash, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five and Stevie Wonder.
Would it have made an office party playlist? Yeah, maybe.
It’s six weeks out of seven in the top spot for Cher with “Believe”. Keeping the challenge of Boyzone at arms length this time around, the sales of her hit were showing no signs of slowing down. Could she manage to hold on to not only have the biggest selling single in the UK that year but also the Christmas No 1? History shows that she didn’t with *SPOILER ALERT* the Spice Girls securing their third consecutive Yuletide topper but “Believe”’s chart position of No 4 in Christmas week, over two months on from its debut showed how much hold it still had on the record buying public.
Would it have made an office party playlist? Absolutely!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Boyzone
I Love The Way You Love Me
Never
2
All Saints
Wart Of Nerves
No but I think my wife and the album
3
Vonda Shepherd
Searchin’ My Soul
Nope
4
Steps
Tragedy / Heartbeat
No
5
Faithless
Take The Long Way Home
Nah
6
Madonna
The Power Of Goodbye/Little Star
See 2 above
7
Will Smith
Miami
I did not
8
Cher
Believe
And no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
After featuring nine songs in the last TOTP, we’re down to seven this time though six of them are new to charts (sort of). Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with that ‘start of’ hit which is from Steps. The reason for it’s unclear categorisation is that whilst “Heartbeat” hasn’t been on the show previously, it wasn’t actually a new chart hit being the other track to their double A-side single alongside their cover of “Tragedy” which we saw on the previous programme. Now, I said in the last post that I didn’t think that I’d ever heard “Heartbeat” before such was the ubiquity of “Tragedy” and I stand by that statement having listened to it today. There’s no bells ringing (even though it’s Christmas time) and I’m rather glad there aren’t as it’s a sickly, saccharine pop ballad that cloys but leaves no cultural nor sonic sustenance whatsoever. It’s literally like a musical form of candy floss. Surely punters weren’t buying the single for this track but purely for “Tragedy”?
“Cor! It’s the Corrs!” or so Jayne Middlemiss in her intro would have us believe that’s what the male population would be saying at this point. Bit sexist that isn’t it Jayne? Well, it was the time of lad culture and Jayne herself had spent time as a glamour model early in her career so maybe all that informed her comments. Or maybe she was just reading the lines written in a script (presumably by a man). Let’s not tie ourselves up in knots about all that. On with the music and “So Young” was the third hit on the trot for The Corrs this year. Written by violinist Sharon about her parents and the notion that no matter how old they got, they seemed to her to be forever young in spirit and outlook. All this talk of ageing and youth got me thinking about who are the eldest and youngest Corrs and the order of the ages in the middle. So how about a festive game of ‘Guess the age of the Corrs’? I’ll start. I’m going:
*Before you all accuse me of ageism and misogyny, I’m sure they are all still beautiful and absolutely agree that age should have no bearing on perceptions of attractiveness. I was trying to make a point about the passing of youth and how time marches on but I’m regretting saying any of it now. Let’s move on quickly…
…to the Vengaboys! NOOO!!! We can’t have reached that time already. 1998 you really have been a pile of steaming shite and this is the little twist on the turd after it’s been curled out. Too graphic? I care not a jot when it comes to this lot. Which despicable people were responsible for this utter crapola? I’ll tell you who – a couple of Dutch producers who went by the aliases Danski (real name Dennis van den Driesschen) and Delmundo (Wessel Dietrich van Diepen) who threw (according to the official Vengaboys website) impromptu and illegal beach parties from their worn out school bus in the early 90s. Deciding to grow their operation, they recruited some singers and dancers to spice up their DJ sets and then took it a massive step further by deciding to form a record label and produce records. With that concept established, the task of fronting said records would fall to those dancers and singers they had already recruited. After a couple of minor hits in their own country, they went truly international with the release of “Up & Down” which was a Top 10 hit all around Europe and topped the US Dance Club Play chart.
This whole thing has given me some strong 2 Unlimited vibes. The Dutch duo began their run of hits with the track “Get Ready For This”, the single edit of which was essentially an instrumental with the occasional shout out thrown in which many (me included) thought would make them one hit wonders. They made mugs of us though by proceeding to have a run of 14 Top 40 singles including that No 1. Similarly, the Vengaboys, for all the world, looked like being a one-off, almost novelty act with “Up & Down” the lyrics of which consisted of the words ‘up’, ‘and’, ‘down’, and ‘woo!’. Just like 2 Unlimited though, they would follow it with a string of hit singles (including two No 1s) between 1998 and 2001. All of which means we’ve only just scratched the surface of the crust of the Vengaboys planet of which we will all become inhabitants (willing or not) until the end of the 90s.
Ah that explains it! Here’s @TOTPFacts with the reason why there’s only seven songs on this repeat:
Edited out here: the Celine Dion and R Kelly duet “I’m Your Angel”, which was at its number 3 peak. #TOTP
Moving on very quickly we find Sash! with yet another hit in “Move Mania”. This was the trio’s* sixth consecutive UK hit but the first not to debut at either No 2 or No 3 when it made its chart entry at No 8.
*Yes, Jayne Middlemiss, Sash was a three man production team not a single person and certainly not an “international man of mystery” as you describe them in your intro.
In their continual conveyer belt of guest vocalists, for this release they have teamed up with Shannon who had a couple of hits in the mid 80s notably with “Let The Music Play” though she also featured on Todd Terry’s 1997 Top 20 hit “It’s Over Love”. Maybe it’s the Shannon effect but “Move Mania” sounds very retro to me by which I mean retro even in 1998. It’s all very frantic, frenetic and furious – dare I say like an 80s Hi-NRG track? Maybe I’m reaching a bit there but it didn’t have the same feel as some of the other Sash! hits to this point. Although the hits certainly didn’t dry up after this slight downturn in chart fortunes for “Move Mania”, they didn’t sustain at that previous high level either with only one of their subsequent six UK entries making it to No 2, the mention of which allows me to trot out this well worn fact about Sash! – they remain the act with the most No 2 hits (five) without ever having a No 1. In the dark times that we currently live in, this bit of pop trivia somehow gives me the slightest slither of hope for the world.
And that slither of hope is extinguished immediately by this next hit. Not another Latin flavoured dance track! How many times have we seen this sort of thing during these late 90s TOTP repeats? Here’s just a few I can think of:
Dario G – “Carnaval De Paris”
Echobeatz – “Mas Que Nada”
Ricky Martin – “(Un Dos Tres) Maria”
Bellini – “Samba De Janeiro”
That’s was surely more than enough of that kind of thing no? No, it wasn’t apparently as here were Ruff Driverz and their flamenco inspired track “Dreaming”. Officially, this was credited as being ‘Ruff Driverz Presents Arrola’ who was the vocalist who has worked with loads of dance acts (sometimes under her real name of Katherine Ellis) including 4-2 The Floor, Eruption and Utah Saints amongst many others. Similar to Sash! and the Vengaboys earlier, the people behind the hit were a DJ/Production team who in this case consisted of Brad Carter and Chris Brown whom for some reason thought that it what the charts needed, as Christmas approached mind, was a flamenco themed hit that surely would have been more suited to a Summer release. As ever though, what did I know as it debuted at No 10 becoming, in the process, the seventh new hit to chart inside the Top 10 that week. What a time to be alive!
After coming up with a true banger with their last single “Everybody Get Up”, Five have resorted to the usual marketing trick of releasing a slushy ballad just in time for Christmas. “Until The Time Is Through” is almost mechanical in its construction, adhering to the accepted boy band blueprint at every turn. Perhaps in an attempt to mix things up a bit, they’ve settled on a rather odd performance for this TOTP appearance. As Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro, the vocals on this one are handled by Richie and Scott presumably because it was their turn with Abz and J having taken the lead on rapping duties on “Everybody Get Up” – poor old Sean never seems to get a go in the spotlight.
Anyway, with those two situated at the front of the stage, the other three are sat right at the back on chairs. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea on paper but the optics of it look a bit odd. They never move once from their seated position which created the impression that they’re rather disinterested in what was happening in front of them. There’s something a bit ‘three wise monkeys’ about them with Abz sat with his chair back to front, J with it the right way around and Sean with his angled to one side. Was that deliberate? You know what would have livened things up? If they’d played a game of musical chairs whilst performing. That would have been a first and created a talking point! As it is, the only talking that happens is right at the very end when J turns to Sean and appears to say something to him. I wonder what he said? “Thank God that’s over”? “I could have sung that better than those two”? “Last one to the BBC bar gets the drinks in”?
It’s a fifth week at the top for Cher and “Believe”. What else is there to say about this one? I’ve covered its chart and sales data, the auto tuned vocals, its awards…what else is there? OK, how about who wrote it? Originally it was a demo worked up by Brian Higgins in 1990 who would gain fame via his Xenomania production team who wrote hits for Sugababes, S Club 7, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays. Higgins couldn’t get any interest in the track (apparently Saint Etienne were one of the artists offered it who turned it down) but he submitted it to Warners chairman Rob Dickins after a chance meeting. Dickins thought it was terrible but had a great chorus and so he employed two more songwriters (Steve Torch and Paul Barry) to work on it. Cher herself added some lyrics but did not get a writing credit though three other names did alongside Higgins, Torch and Barry. Cher admitted in 2023 that she regretted not asking for a songwriter’s credit. With worldwide sales of 11 million, I’m not surprised.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Steps
Heartbeat / Tragedy
No
2
The Corrs
So Young
Nope
3
Vengaboys
Up & Down
NOOOO!
4
Sash! / Shannon
Move Mania
I did not
5
Ruff Driverz
Dreaming
Nah
6
Five
Until The Time Is Through
Never
7
Cher
Believe
Negative
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
Those pesky BBC4 programmers have slipped an extra TOTP repeat into the schedule this week meaning I have three shows to review rather than the usual two. I think it’s to make up for the fact that they only showed one last week due to the snooker coverage and so, in order to get the 1998 shows to sync with 2025 real time, they’ve had to go with three this week. As if that wasn’t enough, this one features nine instead of the standard eight acts. I’ll never get all my Christmas shopping done at this rate!
Anyway, our host is the increasingly annoying Jamie Theakston and we start with a repeat showing of last week’s performance by the now trio of East 17/E-17 and their hit “Each Time”. With a debut chart position of No 2 and a solid second week of sales sustaining it in the Top 5, this single looked like it would foreshadow a new period of success for the group after the recent negative publicity surrounding Brian Harvey’s ‘drug interview’ and the trauma of chief songwriter Tony Mortimer’s departure. It would prove to be a false dawn though as the poor chart showing of parent album “Resurrection” indicated that there wasn’t a big appetite within their fanbase for a slimmed down version of the band with a new R&B direction and a truncated name. Subsequently, the group were dropped by their label Telstar Records in 1999. Bizarrely, the album would be released by Demon Music Group in 2013 but retitled as “Greatest” despite not actually being a collection of their biggest hits and also ignoring the fact that there were already four Best Of albums in existence by this point. Crucially though, none of those albums contained the word ‘greatest’ in their title. What a shady practice.
2025 Update: It was reported in the press this week that songwriter Tony Mortimer earns about £97,000 in royalties each year from “Stay Another Day”. What a Christmas pension pot!
What was it about the mid to late 90s and Bee Gees cover versions? Take That, Boyzone, N-Trance, Adam Garcia and 911 all had hits with their treatments of classic songs by the brothers Gibb and now here were Steps adding their name to that list with their take on “Tragedy”. As with the 911’s cover of “More Than A Woman”, this was taken from a Bee Gees tribute album but was released as a double A-side with a track called “Heartbeat” from the group’s debut album “Step One” (it would also appear as the first single on their follow up “Steptacular”). I’m sure I can’t be the only person who could genuinely claim to have never heard “Heartbeat” possibly because you couldn’t escape from “Tragedy”. This single just sold and sold and sold and then the next day it would do the same all over again. It would spend a whopping 23 weeks on the UK Top 40 and 15 consecutively inside the Top 10 including (after a wait of two months) one at No 1. It sold more than all their previous three singles put together and was surely the piece of concrete evidence that Steps were going to be around for quite some time.
So why did the nation go barmy for the Steps version of “Tragedy”? Well, it was a tightly produced and faithful-to-the-original cover of a dance classic which helped and maybe the younger elements of their fanbase didn’t even know it wasn’t a Steps original but I think what really propelled it to its commercial heights was the dance that went with it. Involving hand gestures that framed the face, shoulder twists and arm raises, it maybe wasn’t as iconic as vogueing as popularised by Madonna but it was up there. It looks pretty impressive in this performance anyway. I reckon we’ll see loads of this one in future repeats so I’ll leave it there for now.
2025 Update: Steps performed at Blackpool recently as the musical interlude for Strictly Come Dancing to promote the opening of the Steps musical.
Despite being released originally in 1989 and again in 1991, come 1998 the story of “Sit Down” by James still had another chapter to be written in the form of a remix and yet another release. The rather unimaginatively titled “Sit Down ‘98” was commissioned by the band’s label Mercury to help re-promote sales of their first “Best Of” album (which had hit the shops in the March) in the run up to Christmas. As far as I can tell though, this version never actually made it onto said Best Of nor was there a rerelease of it with the ‘98 remix added onto the track listing. It was what was known as a standalone single. Wouldn’t it have been better just to rerelease the hit version of “Sit Down” from 1991 if Mercury wanted to associate it with the Best Of album? I’m guessing that wouldn’t have been creative enough for Tim Booth though and so we got an Apollo 440 mix of the classic track which probably made sense at the time given their high profile and whilst their treatment of “Sit Down” is interesting, it does lose some of its charm in the process it seems to me. It would appear not to have stood the test of time either. Do you ever hear it played on the radio instead of the hit version? Nor did it have the desired effect of re-energising the Best Of album’s sales. As far as I can tell, it spent the whole of November and December skirting around between Nos 75 to 60 in the charts. Could you say the whole idea was ridiculous and touched by madness? Only if you’re trying to squeeze in some pathetically obvious “Sit Down” references to finish this bit off like I am.
2025 Update: In an unexpected turn of events there’s another Strictly Come Dancing story – I’ve just seen “Sit Down” performed by James on the results show. It wasn’t the ‘98 remix obviously but just like in 1998, the band have a new Best Of album out to promote called “Nothing But Love: The Definitive Best Of”.
I’ve checked and this is the fifth time “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith has been on the show over a period of just under three months. FIVE times in THREE months! Those two numbers are remarkable! Firstly that a hit that never got higher than No 4 could be on that many times but secondly that it was in the charts for that long! Actually, I should be more precise with that chart figure – it spent nine consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 and 18 (EIGHTEEN!) on the Top 40 in total. This week it was at No 8 but, given that this was the fourth time of seeing that satellite concert performance, were there not any other songs in the Top 40 that could have taken its place in the running order? Hang on, I’ll check…
…well, Marilyn Manson was a new entry at No 12 but maybe he was seen as not a safe enough choice. Further down the chart there are the likes of Tina Cousins, Karen Ramirez and Air but I think I would like to have seen the song at No 39 get a look in – “All I Want” by Puressence. That was never going to happen though.
2025 Update: A collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud topped the album charts just a week or so ago thus becoming the band’s first ever UK No 1 album some 38 years after their chart debut. Quite extraordinary.
I was right in what I said in the last post! There is someone from the Fugees on the show every week! After Wyclef Jean last time, we get Pras in this TOTP. In fact, Pras was also on with Wyclef Jean alongside Queen in that appearance seven days prior so the show really was full of Fugees around this time. “Blue Angels” is the track that Pras is promoting and although it features a sample from Frankie Valli’s “Grease”, there’s another film that is mentioned in the lyrics that caught my attention, one that I’d never heard of before but which seems to have been quite the influence on many a hip hop artist. 1984’s BeatStreet was set in South Bronx with a plot surrounding the hip-hop lives of a pair of brothers and their group of friends. Now I’ve never heard of nor come across this film before but it had a cultural reach I would never have imagined. In Germany for example, which was still divided into East and West at this point, it had a particularly seismic impact. Released in the former to supposedly highlight the evils of capitalism, it instead promoted the more visual images of hip-hop and ushered in an emerging scene there. The film has been name checked in tracks by the likes of The Notorious B.I.G., Jay Electronica and AZ.
Now clearly, a white 16 year old living in Worcester in the West Midlands at the time of its release (that’ll be me) was never going to be its target audience but the fact that it bypassed me completely is surprising. I mean, I was aware of the breakdancing phenomenon at least if only via the hits of Break Machine. Did it not get UK distribution? Maybe not. Still, it’s opened my eyes a little. This blog was never meant to be educational but I seem to be learning about things I was never aware of as a by product of it.
2025 Update: In November this year, Pras was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in an alleged criminal conspiracy re: the illegal transfer of funds into the Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign.
The first of three new hits now starting with Robbie Williams who made a rather cringeworthy cameo appearance during the James performance earlier trying to convince us all that he was a rock god axeman. After his first No 1 single “Millennium” earlier in the year, presumably hopes were high that he would repeat the trick with follow up “No Regrets”. However, it would debut and peak at No 4 when it was eventually released ten days after this TOTP performance. Why didn’t it go straight to the top of the charts when many press reviews had picked it out as one of the strongest tracks on parent album “I’ve Been Expecting You”? The answer possibly lies with that old issue of timing. Said album had already been out for a month by the time “No Regrets” made it into the shops so perhaps punters who might have shelled out for the single had already bought the album and didn’t feel the need to buy both? Perhaps anticipating that outcome, was that why record label Chrysalis made the single a double A-side with Robbie’s version of “Antmusic” by Adam And The Ants making up the other track? Wait, Williams did a version of “Antmusic”? I don’t recall this! I have to check this out…
…Oh dear God! That’s horrible! Just awful! What was he thinking?! What was Adam Ant thinking letting him butcher it?! Anyway, back to “No Regrets” and I have to say I never really liked it that much. It didn’t have the quirky charm of “Millennium” and always struck me as a bit miserable to be honest. Maybe its source material of his time in Take That meant it was inevitably going to create a less than joyful sound given how it ended and that it was all a bit raw at the time. The overly dramatic ending when Robbie says “Guess the love we once had is officially – dead!” always seems a bit…well…overly dramatic to me, like it was trying too hard. The third single from the album released in March 1999 – “Strong” – was a much more radio friendly, pop track that maybe should have been the song to follow up “Millennium” it always seemed to me. By comparison, “No Regrets” sounded like an album track. Just my opinion of course – I could have it completely wrong but I have no regrets about sharing it.
2025 Update: And now another Yungblud story! This week the singer revealed that he had received a letter of support from Robbie Williams after admitting to mental health struggles.
Blimey! This is a bit of a thing! Madonna on TOTP inperson! Seriously, this hardly ever happened. I checked the wonderful Top Of The Pops Archive website which gives a breakdown of appearances by every artist and this is as only the fourth time ever that she was in the studio over a fifteen year period (not including repeats of performances in things like year end specials or anniversary shows). How had executive producer Chris Cowey managed to pull this coup off? For the record, her previous appearances had been performing “Holiday” and “Like A Virgin” (the one with the pink wig) in 1984 and “You’ll See” in 1995 but here she was again to promote the fourth single of her “Ray Of Light” album called “The Power Of Good-Bye”. As with Robbie Williams before her, this was actually a double A-side with the other track being “Little Star”, another song from the album but I only recall “The Power Of Good-Bye” being played on the radio. It’s essentially a ballad though one that sounded nothing like a traditional slow song with acoustic guitars, strings and almost hypnotic electronic beats. This was the William Orbit effect coming into play again as it had done across the whole of the album which he co-produced and which almost redefined how a pop song could sound.
As for the performance here, Madge has sleek, shiny black hair (almost a negative of that pink wig) and a sheer black outfit but, despite the sombre appearance, you can see that, in 1998, she still retained the presence of one of the most famous people on the planet with those in the studio audience stretching out their hands just to get a touch of her as if she was a deity with life healing properties. I can’t shake the feeling that she has been totally usurped by Taylor Swift in the present day. At the end she still had the grace and humility to say thank you and touch some of those aforementioned outstretched hands. They were simpler times for us all back then.
2025 Update: Just a day ago, Madonna was pictured with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie for first time since their divorce in 2008 when they both attended the latest art show of their son Rocco in London.
After a string of medium sized hits to this point, the Stereophonics suddenly exploded with the release of “The Bartender And The Thief” which debuted at No 3. The lead single from sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails”, it’s a high-octane, relentlessly driving rock track that barely draws breath at any point but which has enough melodic hooks to make the trip totally worth it.
Written by Kelly Jones after an observation in a bar in New Zealand whilst waiting for a plane, it expresses the idea that the bartender must see multiple different characters and their changing moods as they transcend from sober to drunk during the course of their shift. Its success would help propel the album to the top of the charts and nearly two million sales in the UK. Four more hits from it would follow including two further Top 5 placings – Stereophonics were officially big news. As with their debut album “Word Gets Around”, I seem to recall playing “Performance And Cocktails” lots in the Our Price store where I was working, so much so that my wife would scratch that itch for me by buying it me for Christmas that year. The ApocalypseNow themed video for “The Bartender And The Thief” reminded me of a long night with school mates watching that film at one of their houses when I was 17. You can read that particular story here if you feel so inclined…
2025 Update: The band are currently on tour playing a number of Arena dates in December.
Cher is No 1 again with “Believe” for a fourth of seven weeks. This run at the top really wasn’t the norm back then. Only Run D.M.C. vs Jason Nevins and “It’s Like That” could rival it in 1998 which had six weeks at the top. At the time of this chart, “Believe” was only the fifth single in two years to have spent more than three consecutive weeks at No 1 which just goes to show the power it was wielding over the record buying public.
2025 Update: Cher has denied rumours she is ready to marry her boyfriend who is 40 years younger than her ahead of her 80th birthday next year. And who is her boyfriend? The aforementioned rapper AZ. Sometimes the planets just align and the blog writes itself!
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
East 17
Each Time
Negative
2
Steps
Tragedy / Heartbeat
I did not
3
James
Sit Down ’98
No but I had that first Best Of album
4
Aerosmith
I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
Nah
5
Pras
Blue Angels
Nope
6
Robbie Williams
No Regrets
No
7
Madonna
The Power Of Good-Bye
No but my wife had the album
8
Stereophonics
The Bartender And The Thief
No but I had the album
9
Cher
Believe
And no
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
That’s not Kate Thornton! She may have similar hair but it isn’t Kate. And it’s certainly not Jayne Middlemiss so who’s this on hosting duties for this particular TOTP? Well, it was Katy Hill (she does tell us that’s her name right at the very start of the show to be fair) and she was a Blue Peter presenter who went on to appear on kids Saturday morning show Live&Kicking. Was executive producer Chris Cowey auditioning her to become part of the roster of regular presenters? If so she can’t have passed as this was her one and only TOTP gig. Was she trying to diversify? I guess Blue Peter wasn’t known for regularly featuring pop artists. In fact, did they ever have any chart acts on? A quick search of the internet doesn’t reveal many. In terms of actual performances, we have McFly, Ed Sheeran and Olly Murs but there doesn’t appear to be many names from back in the day though I could be wrong. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight’s show could ever have been on BluePeter?
We start with TouchAndGo and their salacious hit “Would You…?”. The guy behind the record, one David Lowe produced and mixed the single in his modest recording studio on the western slopes of the Malvern Hills, not far from my hometown of Worcester. There’s another tenuous link between me and “Would You…?” though. Lowe had an ongoing association with Oval Records which was run by Charlie Gillett the British radio presenter, musicologist and writer. Lowe came up with the concept of Touch And Go in collaboration with Gillett who was always on the look out for unconventional music apparently. What’s any of this got to do with me? There is the tiniest of connections. In the mid 90s, I signed up for a further education course on 50s music. After the course had finished, all us students went for a drink and at said gathering, one of the attendees told us that he had been to school with Charlie Gillett who had been a very quiet lad who’d never spoken of his passion for music (especially rock ‘n’ roll) and so when he went onto have his illustrious career in that field, it had been a total shock to his schoolmates and peers. And that is my Touch And Go/Charlie Gillett story.
When Madonna got rare permission from Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA to use a sample from “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” for her global smash “Hung Up”, it was only the third time such a request had been granted by the Swedish superstars. However, back in 1998, Madge herself was the recipient of an application to use one of her own songs in somebody else’s hit. According to Wikipedia, her agreement toallow“MaterialGirl” to be sampled for “If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)” by TheTampererfeaturingMaya was the first time she had ceded to such a petition. However, I wish she hadn’t. Whereas Madonna’s “Hung Up” was a great song making brilliant use of the ABBA source material, The Tamperer’s effort was a horrible noise with the melody from “Material Girl” just plonked incongruously into the mix of a track that had barely anything about it at all. In fact, it was so simple – it’s ‘hook’ was a stuttering cry of “f-f-f-f-f-f-fabulous” – it could have been a blueprint for all those hits by the Vengaboys. Has there ever been a more inappropriately named hit?
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? Featuring the lyric “I got a party in my pants”? No chance.
Whilst we all know who Will Smith is (one of the most famous people on the planet I would surmise), how many of us are instantly familiar with the name Tatyana Ali? Well, if you’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place, she was a regular member of the cast of TheFreshPrinceOfBel–Air alongside Smith playing his young cousin Ashley Banks. After the show ended in 1996, Smith supposedly stepped up his efforts to get Ali to consider a career in music (in some of the later episodes of the show, her character had been involved in storylines that required her to sing). The culmination of Smith’s prompting was that Ali joined the roster of artists on Michael Jackson’s record label MJJ Music with an album called “Kiss The Sky” being released. The album underperformed and Ali was eventually let go from the label but it did leave us with three hit singles, the first of which was “Daydreamin’”. Peaking at a perhaps surprising high of No 6, to me, it was a decent attempt at sounding like Janet Jackson and no more. Inevitably, there would be a release that featured Will Smith which would come with the next single “Boy You Knock Me Out” which would eclipse the chart high of its predecessor by going to No 3. She returned the favour by adding vocals to a track on Smith’s “Willennium” album but would never release another album of her own, instead returning to her acting career and adding her support to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? Oh, I think so. Ali had a pretty clean living image and her song was praised for its lack of references to sex and violence.
In the course of the nearly nine years of writing this blog, I’ve witnessed many an artist just repeat the formula of their debut hit by releasing something very similar. However, Eagle-Eye Cherry took that strategy to a new level by coming up with an almost facsimile of that first success. “Falling In Love Again” sounds so similar to “Save Tonight” that I checked to see if the guitar chord structures he employed were the same in both and they damn near were. Look at this:
Save Tonight: Am – F – C – G
Falling In Love Again: Am – C – G
I’m not saying it’s not a pleasant sound but that does seem to be taking the piss rather. His sister never took such liberties with her audience I don’t think.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? Quite possibly. I think he would have met the required levels of safeness.
Like most people I’m guessing, all I knew of Faith Evans was her part in the gigantic 1997 No 1 record “I’ll Be Missing You” alongside Puff Daddy. However, there was more to her than that. She’d already had her own US platinum selling album called simply “Faith” and contributed a track to the soundtrack for WaitingToExhale. After the death of her partner – the rapper Notorious B.I.G. – she re continued her solo career in 1998 with the album “Keep The Faith”*. The lead single from it was “Love Like This”, an out and out R&B track built around a Chic loop (weren’t they all?) that did well in all the urban charts and in the US Billboard Hot 100 but curiously failed to become a huge hit over here peaking at No 24 in our national chart. Indeed, she was bested by the improbable occurrence of another Faith in the Top 40 at the same time – Faith Hill whose “This Kiss” topped even Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” for unlikely song words by managing to get the phrases “ centrifugal motion”, “perpetual bliss” and “pivotal moment” into its lyrics.
*The use of her name and its derivatives would be a theme Evans would keep coming back to. Subsequent album titles included “Faithfully”, “A Faithful Christmas” and “Something About Faith”.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? Married to the ultimate gangsta rapper who was murdered in a drive by shooting and an association with Puff Daddy/P Diddy/ Sean Combs and all his baggage? Never happening.
It’s the return of East17 next or rather E-17 as the group rebranded themselves in the wake of various bust ups, negative press coverage and even a question raised about them in the House Of Commons. The fall out from Brian Harvey’s disastrous radio interview in 1997 where he endorsed the taking of the drug ecstasy claiming “it can make you a better person”, would have an everlasting effect on the group putting in motion line up changes that would become the norm in subsequent years. Harvey was initially sacked by the rest of the band but was reinstated the following year after chief songwriter Tony Mortimer himself left due to irreconcilable creative differences. The three piece vowed to carry on, bagged themselves a new record deal with Telstar and released their first new material as E-17 with the single “Each Time”. Although this entered the charts at No 2, I don’t recall hearing it at all at the time. Were they suffering an image backlash in the form of an airplay embargo? Anyway, I think I knew it was meant to be a new direction for the band with more of an emphasis on the ubiquitous R&B sound. As such, I was never that interested in actually listening to “Each Time” but now that I have, it’s not as bad as I’d feared. Quite tuneful in fact. It’s maybe a shame that this new path for the group was never given more time to play out. Sadly, that never happened as despite a No 2 position for the single, the parent album “Resurrection” never even made the Top 40 and they were left to sign off their chart career with a No 12 hit called “Betcha Can’t Wait” in 1999 and that was it. East 17 are still going (after a fashion) but with just one original member (Terry Coldwell) still in the line up. They may not be having hits anymore but they’ll always get some work at Christmas thanks to “Stay Another Day”.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? What with all those negative drug taking headlines and their ‘bad boy’ image, it was surely never on the cards unless it was to light a candle on the Christmas Advent Crown whilst singing that song. They’d have probably set fire to it anyway. Oh no, that was John Noakes wasn’t it?
Is it me or did there seem to be someone from the Fugees on the show or in the charts every week at this point? In October we had Lauryn Hill with “Doo Wop (That Thing)” riding high inside The Top 5 and just seven days prior to this, Pras dropped in to the TOTP studio to perform “Blue Angels”. This week it was the turn of Wyclef Jean but he wasn’t on his own. No, he’s got the aforementioned Pras with him alongside someone called FreeMarie who is a rapper and nothing to do with the 70s rock band who had hits with “Alright Now”, “Wishing Well” and “My Brother Jake”. There was, however, a different rock band involved in Wyclef’s hit which, once you know its title is “Another One Bites The Dust”, means that you instantly know who I’m talking about. Apparently the Queen fanbase were none too pleased about this classic track by their favourite band being hijacked by Wyclef for inclusion on the soundtrack of the film SmallSoldiers and I can sort of understand why. He basically took the original track and just (c)rapped all over it. Not especially creative nor indeed respectful. Also not respectful was Wyclef Jean’s video message which introduces the video we see here when he says “ C’mon Freddie Mercury, where you at?”, a line he also repeats in the actual track. Well Wyclef mate, he’d been dead for seven years so I’m not sure why you were expecting to see him! This whole project just felt all wrong from initial conception to its bad execution but it didn’t stop the sometime Fugee from doing loads more subsequent collaborations with the likes of Bono, Tom Jones, Mary J. Blige, Missy Elliott and even The Rock.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? No, I don’t think he would have been a natural fit.
Cher reigns supreme at the top of the charts with “Believe” for a third straight week of seven. This really was a transformative hit not only for Cher for whom it marked a massive uptick in her commercial fortunes after the disappointment of her last album “It’s A Man’s World” but also for the wider music world. The fact that Cher was 52 years old at the time meant that middle aged female artists suddenly had licence to show that this wasn’t a one-off and would follow in her footsteps with the likes of Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper all releasing albums that were of a dance music flavour.
WouldtheyhaveeverappearedonBluePeter? I think Blue Peter might not have been a big enough show for Cher. A bit beneath her. Still, she may have won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording with “Believe” but she hasn’t got a Blue Peter badge I’ll wager.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Touch And Go
Would You…?
No, I wouldn’t and indeed didn’t
2
The Tamperer featuring Maya
If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)
Hell no
3
Tatyana Ali
Daydreamin’
No thanks
4
Eagle-Eye Cherry
Falling In Love Again
Nope
5
Faith Evans
Love Like This
Nah
6
East 17 or (E-17 if you prefer)
Each Time
No
7
Wyclef Jean / Pras / Free Marie / Queen
Another One Bites The Dust
Never
8
Cher
Believe
I did not
Disclaimer
I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).
All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 