I haven’t done this in a while but here is a quick retread of what this blog is about. I, a 52 year old middle aged man, am reviewing each of the TOTP repeats broadcast on BBC4 whilst also trying desperately to remember what I was up to 30 odd years ago when they were originally aired. I’ve been doing this for four years since the TOTP shows got up to 1983 and we are now into 1990! The years ’83 – ’89 are covered in my blog 80spop.wordpress.com whilst ’90 onwards will all feature in this blog. Why am I doing this? I ask myself this question constantly. I guess it’s not to discover ‘new’ music although there are often songs and acts that come up that I have forgotten about or never took any notice of in the first place. I can’t think of many though that have inspired me to delve into any deeper cuts by said acts and discover new musical frontiers. I guess I must just be a sucker for nostalgia and given the state of the current world, who wouldn’t want to escape to a different era for a while to pretend 2020 isn’t happening? Come on then, let’s flee back to 1990 – I’m 21 (soon to be 22) and with my whole life ahead of me…..
Up until this point, Kylie Minogue had pretty much always been regarded as a Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop puppet, singing and dancing and smiling along to their conveyor belt of formulaic songs that they seemed to have an endless supply of. And it had served her well. Her nine single releases with The Hit Factory had yielded four No 1s, four no 2s and a No 4. Not too shabby at all. However, by 1990, following in the footsteps of many other manufactured pop stars stretching all the way back to the 60s and The Monkees, Kylie wanted to be taken more seriously. “Better The Devil You Know” is undoubtedly the starting point for that journey into credibility. Acting like a ‘year zero’ marker, it appeared fully formed out of the changing rooms of pop and said in a confident tone “What do you think?”. After getting over the ‘wow!’ factor of this performance, I think I must have been taken aback at the accomplished sound that SAW had managed to come up with for Kylie. For let’s not forget, “Better The Devil You Know” is a SAW creation in its entirety from its writing through to its production. However, the parent album “Rhythm Of Love” was the first time that Kylie was allowed more creative freedom and resulted in working with producers other than SAW on four tacks that also resulted in credits as co-writer for her. However, the four singles that were taken from the album that really solidified this new era of Kylie were all SAW productions.
Kylie is nine days older than me so, just as I was about to turn 22 and facing up to those big life decisions of what to do next, she was also making some major life choices*. She had already left Neighbours and had starred in a much more gritty vehicle in the film The Delinquents, a coming of age romantic drama. More influential than any of this though was the fact that she was now dating INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. A lot has been made and written about the corrupting effect of wild man of rock Hutchence on little girl next door Kylie but I am of the opinion that Ms Minogue had more than enough about her to be making her own career and life choices. I’m sure Hutchence was an influence but let’s face it, “Better The Devil You Know” doesn’t sound like any INXS song I know.
Generally referred to as the ‘Sexy Kylie’ era of her career, certainly this release ushered in a change of image with the video for “Better The Devil You Know” featuring Kylie recreating the replicant chase scene from Bladerunner where Deckard guns down a see through mac clad Zhora and cavorting about in a black dress with the straps constantly falling down.
“Better The Devil You Know” would peak at No 2 (kept off the No 1 spot only by Adamski with “Killer”) but the album would not sell nearly as well as her first two long players. She would complete her contract with the PWL label in 1991 with the release of “Lets Get To It” before resurfacing in 1994 as ‘Dance Kylie’ with the release of her “Confide In Me” single on Mike Pickering’s Deconstruction label.
*Obviously we took very different career paths on the back of those decisions – my time as a gay icon is yet to happen I have to admit.
The Wonder Stuff up next with “Circle Square”. Miles Hunt and co had been making steady inroads into the business of being a chart act for a couple of years now. After their first chart breakthrough in 1988 with “It’s Yer Money I’m After Baby” which made No 40, the Stuffies had notched up a further three hit singles peaking at Nos 28, 19 and 33. “Circle Square” would continue that consolidation by topping out at No 20.
As far as I can work out, it wasn’t taken from their then current album “Hup” but rather was a stand alone single although it was included in the track listing on its 21st anniversary rerelease in 2010. I liked this and the lyric “I’ve been a long term disappointment to myself” has stuck with me these past 30 years like a personal statement (see also “I failed my own audition” from “Up Here In The North Of England” by The Icicle Works).
However the band would have to wait another year before becoming a massive commercial success when the release of their hit single “Size Of A Cow” propelled them into the Top 5 and parent album “Never Loved Elvis” into the Top 3. Their decision to hook up with Vic Reeves for a cover of Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy” in October of that year would grant them a bona fide chart topper. However, would that be the moment it all came right or the moment it all went wrong?
It’s the man known as Mantronix next alongside vocalist Wondress with a tune called “Take Your Time”. This was the follow up to their No 4 hit “Got To Have Your Love” and it did / does absolutely nothing for me. I’m not the world’s biggest electro-funk fan it has to be said but this sounds as convincing as a Boris Johnson promise.
Asked in a Smash Hits interview who he would rather go out with from a choice of Margaret Thatcher (!), Tanita Tikaram or Kylie, Kurtis Mantronix replied none of them on the basis that:
- Mrs Thatch had no compassion (fair point)
- Tanita was in a different frame of mind to him
- He didn’t know what Kylie looked like!
Hang on, you’re on the same TOTP show as her! Weren’t you watching her perform at the top of the show Kurtis? When pressed on this by his manager Chuck (“You didn’t see her yesterday at Top Of The Pops? She’s real cute man.”) Mantronix replied “No! You guys saw her. I was back in the dressing room. She has no sensuality.” Whaaat?! No sensuality?! Kylie?!
“Take Your Time” peaked at No 10.
Teen sensations New Kids On The Block are back with their latest offering “Cover Girl” and if you though their previous hits like “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” and “Hangin’ Tough” were drivel, then I advise you not to watch the video below. “Cover Girl” is bubble gum pop taken to a new saccharine low. Propelled by a Wurlitzer sounding organ backing and some of the dodgiest lyrics of all time, this one not only reeks but it stinks the place out. The video is just the band performing live to an adoring audience (didn’t they do the same thing for the “Hangin’ Tough” video?) with Donnie Wahlberg taking lead vocal duties and making a right arse of himself. He absolutely honks at some points in the song and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse he gets a pre-pubescent little girl on stage with him and sings to her that she’s his ‘cover girl”. Jeeze! Could he be anymore inappropriate?!
“Cover Girl” peaked at No 4 and be warned. New Kids On The Block are not yet done with 1990; not by a long chalk.
1990 didn’t just belong to New Kids On The Block though. Here are one of the year’s biggest break out stars Beats International back in the charts with “Won’t Talk About It”. Having hit on the perfect pop / dance formula with “Dub Be Good To Me”, could Norman Cook, Lindy Layton et al repeat the trick with this new track? I say new but it had already been released as a double A-side together with “Blame It On The Bassline” under the name of Norman Cook back in 1989. That version included Billy Bragg’s vocals alongside his guitar riff from “Levi Stubbs Tears”…
When reissued under the name of Beats International the following year, Lindy Layton and Lester Noel’s had laid down their vocals on the track instead and it sounded much more polished and chart friendly though not necessarily better in my book. To answer the question of whether they could repeat the success of “Dub Be Good To Me”, the answer was yes…and no. “Won’t Talk About It” was another chart hit and even made the Top 10 but its No 9 peak was nowhere near what its predecessor had achieved. It would also prove to be their last ever Top 40 entry before they eventually disbanded in 1992. Whilst Cook went onto massive success under various pseudonyms (most notably Fatboy Slim), Lindy Layton secured herself a solo career via a recording contract with Arista. Her first single was a cover of Janet Kaye’s “Silly Games” (which Kaye also featured on) and was a No 22 hit but it was a case of diminishing returns after that for future releases. Lindy is still in the music business as a song writer and co-runs house label Good Lucky Recordings.
I’m being absolutely tortured by the Michael Bolton appearances in these TOTP repeats. Here he is again with “How Can We Be Lovers”. I knew he would be coming up and that I’d have to confess my Bolton concert story at some point but I wasn’t planning on having to reference it so many times. Look, it was a long time ago and it wasn’t my idea OK?!
“How Can We Be Lovers” was written by Diane Warren and Desmond Child who between them have also penned the following soft rock ‘classics’:
- Cher – “Just Like Jesse James”
- Bon Jovi -“You Give Love A Bad Name”
- Bon Jovi – “Livin’ On A Prayer”
- Aerosmith – “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”
- Aerosmith – I Don’t Want Miss A Thing”
- Starship – Nothings’s Gonna Stop Us Now”
Depensing on your tastes, that’s either some track record or a charge list of crimes against music.
In 1991, when I was working at Our Price in the Market Street store in Manchester, Bolton released an album called “Time, Love And Tenderness” (the title track was written by the aforementioned Diane Warren) and the picture of him on the front cover looked remarkably like one of our Assistant Managers called Rob (if you ignored all that hair which Rob didn’t have). I’m guessing it wasn’t the most flattering thing anyone had ever said to him.
“Hold On” by En Vogue is the next song on tonight’s TOTP playlist. This was not only a No 2 hit in the US and a No 5 hit over here but also an award winning track picking up the R&B Single of the Year pot from Billboard and the Best Single by a Duo/Group title from Soul Train. Given those accolades, it’s fair to say that En Vogue very much paved the way for a slew of female R&B groups of the 90s including Brownstone, Jade, Destiny’s Child, SWV and TLC.
I could never really get on board with “Hold On” though. It really wasn’t my scene in 1990 (if indeed I had a scene) but I did go on to appreciate En Vogue more as the decade progressed with songs like “Free Your Mind” and “Whatta Man” expanding my musical horizons. Free your mind indeed.
It’s new No 1 time and as confidently predicted by Simon Mayo on last week’s show, it’s “Killer” by Adamski and Seal. It’s another studio performance and the ballet woman from the other week is back and is still doing her thing in the background. And I thought Howard Jones’s mime artist Jed was annoying!
I saw Seal live in the early 90s at the Manchester Apollo but I can’t recall much about it other than his voice was amazing. I’d forgotten that, following in the footsteps of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, his debut album was on the ZTT label and was produced by Trevor Horn. Apparently there are two versions of the album in circulation. One is a ‘premix’ version and the second and more common is the updated remix. According to Seal, the two versions exist because he and Trevor Horn had very little time to finish the first version (due to needing to get some single releases mixed and out into the market) and also because of never knowing when enough tinkering is enough or as Seal puts it “a bad habit that Trevor and myself share, the inability to let go” (thanks to http://futureloveparadise.co.uk/ for that quote).
Do you get the impression that I’m finding it easier to comment on Seal rather than Adamski?!
Despite the seemingly endless smorgasbord of dance tunes populating the charts in the 90s, there was also room for some hard rockin’ dudes and I don’t mean the established acts like Def Leppard and Whitesnake. No, these were new names that emerged within the new decade. Tearing up the Top 40 with their brand of hard but melodic rock were the likes of Little Angels, The Quireboys, Terrorvision and this lot Thunder who are back on the show with their new single “Backstreet Symphony”. This was the title track from their debut album, an album that would generate five Top 40 singles – not bad going although that statement is tempered by the fact that none of them actually made it into the Top 20. Even so, it was a pretty impressive start. With former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor producing it, the album was certified gold for shifting 100,000 units. However, in a piece on the band on rock journalist Dave Ling’s website, Thunder guitarist Luke Morley says of working with Taylor:
“He’d just say, ‘Do it louder and faster, and I’ll mix the drinks’”
Hmm. A genius at work no doubt.
I didn’t mind this track although I’d preferred their previous single, T-Rex rip off “Dirty Love”. One more thing, why is it that there always seems to be at least one member of these long haired rock bands that stands out by either having a short haircut or actually being bald?
“Backstreet Symphony” (the single) peaked at No 25.
For posterity’s sake, I include the chart run down below:
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| Order of appearance | Artist | Song | Did I Buy it? |
| 1 | Kylie Minogue | Better The Devil You Know | No but I think my wife has a Greatest Hits album with it on |
| 2 | The Wonder Stuff | Circle Square | Nope |
| 3 | Mantronix featuring Wondress | Take Your Time | I could take all day but I won’t change my mind about this – no |
| 4 | New Kids On The Block | Cover Girl | Away with your nonsense! |
| 5 | Beats International | Won’t Talk About It | No but my wife has their album with a version of it on |
| 6 | Michael Bolton | How Can We Be Lovers | NO! |
| 7 | En Vogue | Hold On | Nah |
| 8 | Adamski | Killer | No but I had the Seal album with his version of it on |
| 9 | Thunder | Backstreet Symphony | I did not |
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/m000q5l5/top-of-the-pops-10051990
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
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 