Cliff Richard, Enigma, INXS, Jive Bunny, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, MC Hammer, Snap!, Status Quo, The Carpenters, Vanilla Ice

TOTP 20 DEC 1990

Posted on by 80stastic

Xmas 1990 is upon us meaning that we are just days away from finding out that year’s festive No 1 record. This also means that there is precious little time for record companies to stimulate enough sales to get their particular act to the coveted top spot. Activity is frenzied and to paraphrase David Bowie, you can almost see the record pluggers sliding down chimneys.

As for me, I’m working my first Xmas at Our Price and am just longing for some time off after day after day of huge queues of customers all needing serving. Back then, Our Price still had what must now been seen as an archaic ‘masterbag’ system where the contents of a CD, tape, VHS etc were kept filed behind the counter with just the empty case on the racks. This meant serving someone could be quite labour intensive as you had to go and find what they wanted behind the scenes first. If you were on the counter all day, it felt like a long shift.

Added to this was the impending pressure that all the temps felt which was who (if any of us) would be kept on after Xmas was over. As it stood, I had nothing lined up work wise if I wasn’t kept on and we had the rent on our flat to make. My wife was also in temporary employment at a toy shop but we knew that was definitely ending as the store was to close after Xmas. This was proper adult stuff. It came to pass that I did end up being offered a permanent job by the store manager whist I was out for a drink one night in the achingly trendy Dry bar with my wife one evening. I think it was the first time we’d been in there as we were skint most of the time. The manager (Greg) happened to be there as well and he just sidled up to me and said did I want to stay on after Xmas. I immediately accepted and that was that. The biggest phew of all time (or at least it felt like it)! Was it just a case of serendipity that secured my employment (and our rent)? That I just happened to be in the right bar at the right time? I guess I’ll never know now but I will always be grateful to Greg. It turned out that only a couple of us got permanent jobs so the relief was even bigger once this became apparent.

Back to the music though and we start with “Mary Had A Little Boy” by Snap! The fourth and final single to be lifted from their “World Power” album, it extended their run of Top 10 singles by peaking at No 8. Although superficially based around the Mary Had A Little Lamb nursery rhyme, there’s not actually much of the source material on display save for the chorus the lyrics of which paraphrase its opening couple of stanzas. The rest of it seems to be about Turbo B working up the courage to chat up the titular Mary. It’s all pretty nasty stuff as well with him rapping about Mary’s ‘fantasy body’ and describing himself as a ‘ruthless chiller’ and a ‘ladies killer’. Was there a more objectionable pop star this year than this guy? Oh yeah, there was Timmy Mallett of course but even he wasn’t sure about this track, describing it in Smash Hits (as the guest singles reviewer) as sounding “as though they’re scraping the barrel by doing what is basically a nursery rhyme.” Having your music dissed by Timmy Mallett? Ouch!

Three songs now that were all Breakers on the previous show starting with The Carpenters and (They Long To Be) Close To You”. Although their songs are instantly recognisable to us, I hadn’t checked out their chart history before nor realised quite how many of their songs had actually been hits over here. I was thinking it would resemble Barry Manilow who, for all his fame, only ever had one Top 10 record in the UK. Not so Richard and Karen. Although not as successful as in the US where they had three No 1 singles, a haul of seven Top Tenners (of which two were No 2 hits) in this country is pretty impressive.

Oscar Wilde famously said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and that is true of many a music artist. Perhaps the biggest indication of your standing is if you are so well respected that you have your own tribute album. The Carpenters achieved this in 1994 when “If I Were A Carpenter” appeared featuring covers of their songs by artists including Sheryl Crow, The Cranberries and Sonic Youth. This one was my favourite though…
 

Some INXS now as “Disappear” does the very opposite by climbing three places to No 21. This was peak INXS in many ways, consolidating on the staggering commercial success of “Kick” by pretty much repeating the formula and thereby keeping the record company and fans alike happy. This was pre-grunge and before the mainstream emergence of Nirvana that overnight seemed to make every other contemporary rock band irrelevant. Things were pretty sweet in the band’s world. Michael Hutchence even had a nice, steady girlfriend in Kylie Minogue. 

In a review of “Disappear” on the songmeanings.com site, there is a comment by a user that says the song sounds like the theme tune to a kids TV show called Super WHY!. OK then, lets’s see if there’s anything in this….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkDe5ZMy72E

…no, that claim is just utter nonsense.

Enigma now and there’s no disputing it that “Sadness (Part 1)” is going to be massive as it rises from No 27 to No 6 in one week prompting ideas of it even being No 1 for Xmas. It didn’t quite achieve that but it did rise to the top spot eventually in the New Year for one week whilst spending an impressive seven whole weeks in the Top 10. I have to admit that I thought it was at No 1 for much longer than that. This Gregorian chant inspired piece of ambient, new age pop (if there is such a genre) was soon seen as a massive cash cow by Virgin records who proceeded to flood the market with a series of ‘mood’ music compilations, the most successful of which was “Pure Moods” featuring artists like Vangelis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Enya and, of course, Enigma. Included in the comments on YouTube for the video to “Sadness (Part 1)” was this lovely little observation:

If you’re here because you remember this from the Pure Moods CD as a kid – I regret to inform you your parents definitely were banging to this song

Dear me! Thankfully this statement does not apply to me. I must stop reading these user comments!

Oh, I neglected to mention that the host for this one is Bruno Brookes who displays some shocking musical ignorance by declaring “The 80s return and remember this film…” before introducing the “Grease Megamix”.The 80s Bruno? The pissing 80s?! Are you out of your mind?! Grease came out in 1978 you cretin! It was based on a musical that opened in 1971 depicting life in a US High School in the 50s – what on earth is 80s about Grease?! What’s that?! Bruno also says it was mixed by Pete Waterman so maybe he was referring to him? No, not having that. Let me listen to his intro again…
 
…no he’s clearly referring to the film Grease. Just unforgivable. Oh and on checking , it wasn’t remixed by Pete Waterman but by Phil Harding and Ian Curnow of PWL.
 
Enough of Brookes and his inaccuracies though. Why were John Travolta and Olivia Newton John back in the charts in 1990? It was to celebrate / promote the release of the film on home video. OK, that makes sense but why, if it’s a megamix, does it only feature one song? The actual record featured three songs from the soundtrack ( “Summer Nights” /  “You’re The One That I Want” / “Greased Lightnin'”) but TOTP just showed “Summer Nights”. I’m guessing it was a timing issue as the full megamix is 4:46 in length so maybe they just showed the end of it which happened to be solely  “Summer Nights”? It does look odd I have to admit. 
 
“Grease Megamix” peaked at No 3. Xmas party anyone? 

 

 
Back to the songs we’ve already seen now as MC Hammer brings us “Pray”. Taken from his album “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em” which went diamond (note, not platinum but diamond) in the US. Now either I didn’t know or I had erased from my memory but in conjunction with the album, there was a film imaginatively entitled Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie. Ye Gods! I looked it up on IMDB and the storyline is listed as:
 
MC Hammer returns to his hometown and, with the help of some funky tunes, defeats a druglord who is using kids to traffic his stuff.
 
WTF?! That sounds…no, I’ve got no words. And of course, you know what’s coming next…user reviews! Yes, I had to go there again didn’t I? Now these reviews were either deeply ironic or deeply insane. I’m not sure which. Here’s one…
 
“This movie is clearly about the epic, nay, cosmic struggle of good and evil, that films like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now can’t even begin to address. Even though Hammer is a rapper, and generally that would be a bad thing, this film depicts him as the sword of justice fighting the evil drug dealers of Oakland with his “posse”. Hammer plays dual roles in this film: one as himself (i.e. MC Hammer) and another as the Reverend Pressure who is known for his jaw dropping performances. This leitmotif is similar to the star turns of Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall in films like “Coming to America” where they play multiple characters – except that Hammer is clearly better. This film also has a really important message: say yes to Jesus and Hammer, no to drugs and violence. I cannot imagine a film that does a better job of capturing the essence of the nineties, except perhaps Cool As Ice. Sadly, however, this film was overlooked by the Academy.”
 
Wow! A lot to unpack there but basically Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em: The Movie is better than Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now according to somebody called cindi0724. Not only that but it can only be eclipsed by the film Cool As Ice which of course was Vanilla Ice’s acting debut. Starting to see a theme in cindi0724’s thinking yet? I like the way she notes that the film was ‘overlooked by the Academy’. Overlooked?! Completely disregarded and ignored and with good reason more like. 
 
Want to hear another review? Here’s someone called Pilgurn’s take on MC Hammer’s film:
 
“Without a doubt sending out an inspiring message to the youth of all our great cities around the globe. Just to free your legs and to dance and rap your way through disputes and even into a girls heart. Absolutely fantastic bombastic, watch it any time you wanna get jiggy.”
 
As a mantra for life, it’s hard to argue against freeing your legs and dancing and rapping your way through disputes isn’t it? 
 
“Pray” peaked at No 8. 

After the “Grease Megamix”, we now get another 50s inspired medley, this time courtesy of Status Quo. Unlike Enigma who took 26 years to record “Sadeness (Part II)”, the Quo only took 80 days to release “The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)” as the follow up to Part I. To put this in context, Michael Palin managed to circumnavigate the world in 80 days back in 1989 whilst it took Rick, Francis and co the same amount of time to come up with some money for old rope, Jive Bunny style medley bullshit. Quite the achievement. 
 
Following Part 1’s formula to the letter, this was some rock ‘n’ roll standards from the likes of Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry all cobbled together but unlike Jive Bunny  – and this was the band’s crucial differential  – they were all recorded live. There was even a a small sketch of a rabbit on the record sleeve to make the point. You weren’t fooling anybody boys – this was unmitigated shite. Even so, their army of fans still bought enough of it to send it to No 16 in the charts proving you can actually fool all of the people all of the time if they are Quo fans.  
 

 

OK so this was the last TOTP to be broadcast before the Xmas Day show (which I won’t be reviewing as there’s nothing in there that I haven’t already passed comment on) but when did we actually find out the Xmas No 1 for 1990? Well, it was officially announced on Sunday 23rd December 1990 meaning the chart run down featured in this programme did NOT tell us who it was. All of which was just as well for Cliff Richard as he was only at No 2 by this point with “Saviour’s Day”. Was it this this TOTP performance that ensured he got enough last minute sales to get over the line? Possibly. We know that he also did The Des O’Connor Show in the run up to Xmas which Andy, the singles buyer at the Our Price store where I was working, put great stock in and predicted it would win Cliff the race.

Aside from being his 13th No 1 record, “Saviour’s Day” was also the single that meant that he was the first recording artist to achieve a chart topper in five different decades – a fact that was much trumpeted at the time I recall. He would only last one week at the top due to some dastardly, cunning ploy by Iron Maiden to manipulate the singles sales in the slowest week of the year after the Xmas rush but that’s all for a future post. 

 
Close but no cigar time for Vanilla Ice as “Ice Ice Baby” will fall just short of becoming the Xmas No 1 by one week despite it spending its fourth week at the top here. He would follow up that single’s success by releasing a cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” in the new year which would make the Top 10 but it was all down hill from then on in with no subsequent releases even making the Top 20 over here….until that Jedward mash up thing in 2010 but let’s not go there again. 
 

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

Inevitably after two megamix singles already on the show, we end with the most famous medley transgressors of them all. “The Crazy Party Mixes” was the seventh (!) hit for Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers who couldn’t resist the lure of Xmas and just had to release a festive party single to delight us all. It was taken from an album called “It’s Party Time” (of course it was) and, like all their releases, it was hateful. 
 

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM5pmNpxCxw

Order of appearance

Artist

Song

Did I Buy it?

1

Snap!

Mary Had A Little Boy

Nope

2

The Carpenters

They Long To Be (Close To You)

No but we all have a Carpenters Greatest Hits CD don’t we?

3

INXS

Disappear

Not the single but I have it on something somewhere I think

4

Enigma

Sadness (Part 1)

No

5

John Travolta and Olivia Newton John

Grease Megamix

Negative

6

MC Hammer

Pray

Nah

7

Status Quo

The Anniversary Waltz (Part II)

Are you joking me?

8

Cliff Richard

Saviour’s Day

Hell no!

9

Vanilla Ice

Ice Ice baby

No No baby

10

Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers

The Crazy Party Mixes

And once again Hell no!

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/m000v4b8/top-of-the-pops-20121990

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?

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