OK, so last week’s damp squib of a show was a bit of a false start to the new decade with loads of songs on we’d already seen and 1989’s Christmas No 1 still at the top of the tree. Let’s see if this week is any better and I can confirm already that there is a new No 1 but don’t get your hopes up….

This week’s presenter is Simon Mayo who appears to have gone for a “Faith” period George Michael look complete with leather jacket and shades. He does apologise for the wearing of sunglasses indoors at least – the ever unfunny Mike Read never saw the need to – stating that he looks like he’s gone five rounds with Mike Tyson without them and that he might show us later but there is no explanation as to what he had actually been up to….

…anyway, on with the tunes and …well this is odd. The opening act is also the same act that closed last week’s show. Has that ever happened before? The plot thickens as the act in question is FPI Project with their version of “Going Back To My Roots” and last week they performed without vocalist Sharon D Clarke for some reason but fast forward seven days and here she is miraculously. There must be a story behind this happening but I really can’t be arsed to look into it further.

This performance makes much more sense with Sharon taking centre stage as opposed to the two dancers who stood in for her last week. Unfortunately, the studio audience chant of “Woo! Yeah!” is still audible though. This was by no means the highlight of Sharon’s career by the way. Oh no. It turns out that she has had a very full and varied acting career on both TV and stage appearing in the likes of Dr Who, Holby City and Eastenders whilst also starring in the role of Killer Queen in the Queen jukebox musical We Will Rock You. However, the most pertinent thing she did in terms of this blog (which is about 90s music after all) was to be the vocalist for the huge 1991 dance floor hit “(I Wanna Give You) Devotion” by Nomad.

Back to Simon Mayo who regales us of a story from his youth about him and his 12″! Calm down, he was referring to the 12″ single of disco classic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester which he claims he queued up to buy in 1978. Hang on how old was he in 1978?

*checks Wikipedia entry*

Wow! he was 20! He must have been older than he looked in 1989 as he was 31 when this show was broadcast. Fair play although I didn’t like him making a point that it was the 12″ that he bought thereby suggesting that this gave him some extra cool points. I suppose it may have been for DJ-ing purposes but even so.

The reason for all this preamble is that the song is back in the charts courtesy of Jimmy Somerville‘s cover of it. Having just had a hit with his debut solo single “Comment Te Dire Adieu” (albeit assisted by June Miles-Kingston), Jimmy wasn’t hanging around and catapulted himself back into the Top 40 at the first available opportunity with a well chosen cover. Jimmy’s unique, soaring falsetto voice was perfect for this disco stomper and it was no surprise to me that it became his biggest solo hit peaking at No 5. It was also of course a huge club hit not that I was out dancing to it as I was unemployed and skint at the time with no money for cutting some rug down at the local nightspots in my hometown of Worcester where I was now re-ensconced.

It was included on his debut solo album “Read My Lips” which furnished another (smaller) hit in the title track. By the end of 1990, Jimmy had a massive selling album with his first greatest hits to include all his work with Bronski Beat, The Communards and solo called “The Singles Collection 1984/1990”. We sold buckets of that in my first Xmas at Our Price.

Back to Mayo who has adopted a peculiar one sleeve rolled up / one sleeve rolled down look with his leather jacket. Why Simon? Why? Anyway, the act he is introducing in this weird sartorial style are D-Mob with their fourth consecutive Top 20 single. Fourth! D-Mob had four hit singles?! Yes, yes they did. D-eal with it. The last time we saw Danny D was with Cathy Dennis who was on vocals for “C’mon and Get My Love” but this time he’s teamed up with someone called Nuff Juice for the track “Put Your Hands Together”. I’m assuming Mr Nuff and Mr Juice were the two guys up front (pretty sure that Danny D is on keytar) and I know nothing else about them. However, the guy doing all the rapping sounds like Gary Byrd the US radio DJ who had a Top 10 hit in the UK in 1983 with “The Crown” to me. It’s not him though is it?

To my ears, “Put Your Hands Together” sounded like the previous two singles (granted “We Call It Acieed” was a horse of a different colour completely) and therefore had very little interest for me. It would prove to be their last Top 20 hit although they did return to the Top 40 four years later with another Cathy Dennis fronted tune in “Why”.

Yet another dance tune next from the mysterious Mantronix with “Got To Have Your Love”. Now, I knew the name of these electro-funk hip-hopsters back then but as for what they sounded like….I’d have a better shot of explaining the latest government lockdown restrictions. Having listened back to this though it sounded very familiar. Well it was a No 4 hit so maybe it had lodged itself into my brain via general airplay back in the day and remained dormant and unaccessed for decades. And then I saw this tweet and realised the awful truth…

"Got To Have Your Love" was a hit again in 2002, when a cover by Liberty X peaked at no 2. https://t.co/eUD8XYwrvu #TOTP

— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 9, 2020

…yes I knew this song because of Popstars rejects Liberty X! To be fair to them, their No 1 single “Just A little” was a very decent R&B/pop crossover track whilst previous band member Kevin Simm bagged himself the gig as Wet Wet Wet’s lead singer after Marti Pellow absconded but still.

The Mantronix version of “Got To Have Your Love” peaked at No 4.

What…on…earth? Fish dressed in some sort of Uncle Sam outfit?! There are so many questions here but I’m not sure I actually sure that I want the answers. OK, first off, Fish had solo hits? Well he did, three of them in fact with “Big Wedge” being the second and biggest of them peaking at No 25. I swear I’ve never been aware of this song in my life before. Taken from the album “Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors” (no, not a pretentious title but a science fiction metaphor for disinformation apparently), “Big Wedge” is a shot across the bows of American capitalism and materialism hence Fish’s outfit which mirrors the image on the cover of the single.

As for the song’s sound, Fish seems to have cultivated a very 80s AOR sound here with its added brass bits courtesy of UK horn section The Kick Horns. Close your eyes (and who wouldn’t to avoid the sight of Fish here) and it could almost be Mike and the Mechanics up there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knxsqROLG5g

FIsh has also had an occasional sideline career as an actor appearing in shows such as The Bill, Rebus and Taggart but my favourite Fish role is as Derek Trout (see what they did there?) in The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rock Star. Fast forward to the 4 minute mark in the clip below for his portrayal of an off his rocker record producer…

Some indie goth rock to counteract all those dance tunes now from perennial doomsters The Mission with “Butterfly On A Wheel”. The Times editorial reference that Simon Mayo makes in his introduction was actually a comment made by one William Rees-Mogg (father of haunted pencil Jacob) in 1967 in reaction to the severity of sentences given to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for drug offences. That little footnote in the history of rock is far more interesting than the actual music on display here. For me, “Butterfly On A Wheel” is a drawn out, dullard of a song and about as interesting as listening to the aforementioned Jacob Rees- Mogg carping on endlessly about Brexit. However, the band’s fan base was big enough to send it all the way to No 12.

Deacon Blue are up next with “Queen of the New Year”. The fifth and final single from their “When The World Knows Your Name” album, this track was always going to be released strategically to coincide with the start of the new year (and indeed decade) but it’s a decent romp of a tune all the same. It fair rattles along before culminating in a break neck speed climax. Not sure about Ricky Ross’s Frank Spencer-ish headgear here though. Maybe he was having a bad hair day, quite possible judging by the tufts of a mullet visible at the back of his head. By contrast, Ricky’s wife and co vocalist Lorraine McIntosh looks amazing in her hat. Absolutely beautiful. Erm…moving on…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAzYfpGvt_E

…to the new No 1 “Hangin’ Tough” by New Kids On The Block – well I did tell you not to get your hopes up! The NKOTB phenomenon always seemed a strange happening to me. Quite why did it happen in the UK? I guess I can understand them being massive in the US being American and all but over here? Was there a gap in the teen market with the decline of Bros and Brother Beyond? Maybe. They weren’t even that good looking were they?

Thankfully the whole thing was very short lived and had pretty much blown itself out come the end of the year. By the time that grunge became a thing in 1991, the world had turned their back on the New Kids and they split within a couple of years before reforming in 2008. What is their legacy if indeed they have one? Paving the way for the likes of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC to make in roads into our charts come the mid point of the decade? The Wahlberg acting dynasty? I’m clutching at straws now.

At the show’s end, Simon Mayo finally removes his shades and reveals….a pair of closed eyes. Talk about an anti climax! No black eyes, no bruising…a case of someone trying to whip up some shameful self promotion about nothing I think.

The play out song is “Could Have Told You So” by Halo James. Hands up if you remember Halo James…

*blogger raises his hand*

…yeah I do actually. As I recall they had long been tipped to be the next big thing pop wise but they actually turned out to be a one hit wonder. I say ‘they’ as Halo James were a band and not a solo artist despite the attention that the lead singer Christian James received. Despite debut single “Wanted” having failed to make the charts, “Could Have Told You So” turned out to be prophetic when it came to predicting that it would be a hit as it soared to No 6 in the UK charts. I’m pretty sure that the band secured a front cover of Record Mirror magazine at the time with the publication simply repeating the single’s title as their headline so obvious did their success seem.

To me they seemed no better than the likes of Breathe in their sophisti- pop ambitions even though that particular genre had crashed and burned long before. “Could Have Told You So” was paint by numbers chart guaranteed. A movie star looking front man, catchy hook and slick production were ingredients that the UK record buying public felt powerless to resist. I mean, they had a pleasant enough sound but it was totally and utterly insubstantial. Such a brew couldn’t sustain and it didn’t and Halo James were over almost before they had begun, another in the long list of pop casualties.

For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiZd7iieNgM

Order of appearance	Artist	Song	Did I Buy it?
1	The FPI Project	Going Back To My Roots	Nope
2	Jimmy Somerville	You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)	No but I had that Singles Collection 1984/1990 Best Of album with it on
3	D-Mob featuring Nuff Juice	Put Your Hands Together	No
4	Mantronix	Got To Have Your Love	Definitely not
5	Fish	Big Wedge	I’d rather have a wedgie inflicted upon me
6	The Mission	Butterfly On A Wheel	Nah
7	Deacon Blue	Queen Of The New Year	Not the single but I had their album it was taken from
8	New Kids On The Block	Hangin’ Tough	No but I think my younger sister may have been into them and bought it
9	Halo James	Could Have Told You So	Could have told you No more like

Disclaimer

OK – here’s the thing – the TOTP episodes are only available on iPlayer for a limited amount of time so the link to the programme below only works for about another month so you’ll have to work fast if you want to catch the whole show.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000nfp1/top-of-the-pops-11011990

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.

Some bedtime reading?

https://michaelmouse1967.wixsite.com/smashhits-remembered/1990-issues