We’re just about slap bang in the middle of 1991 here at TOTP Rewind and I have just had my 23rd birthday. I’ve been married for just over 8 months and am working at Our Price in Manchester (the Market Street store). Life has settled down into a routine after the huge changes of matrimony and moving to a new city. However, things are about to get a little nerve racking as around about this time (I could be wrong on the exact timings as its 30 years ago) the staff were all called into a early meeting one Saturday morning and we were told that the company were looking to sell the shop off. Oh shit! What did that mean? Was the company in trouble? What would happen to all us guys and gals that worked there? FFS! I’d not expected anything like this when we were told the Area Manager would be coming to inform us of something. I gullibly thought it would be about some new promotion or other (though why that would have required Area Manager’s input I don’t know).
From the little info that we were given that morning about potential redundancies, I had worked out that I might just be safe by virtue of having joined a week before the other Xmas temps that were kept on. It was a precarious position which could change at any moment but obviously there were people who I worked with in a worse position than me. However, our finances were threadbare and we were living month to month with just enough to pay the rent on our flat but precious little else to cover for anything going wrong that would have financial implications let alone a budget for a social life. As I remember this threat of store closure hung over us for sometime and obviously was all the staff could talk about for a while. It didn’t make for a happy atmosphere. In the end, the company couldn’t find a buyer and the decision was taken to keep the store trading which it did for another four years before it was finally sold off and became a travel agents (I think). For now though, these were scary times so I hope that the music in the charts and on TOTP would have given me a lift.
Tonight’s host is Jakki Brambles and she gives a strange intro to the first act on tonight.
“We have probably the only ever artist to score five Top 20 singles off her debut album and still got dropped by her record label. You can’t keep a good woman down, here’s Sonia…”
That all seemed a bit personal and unnecessary Jakki. A case of damning with faint praise even. It was true though. After becoming the first female UK artist to achieve five top 20 hit singles from one album, she did leave Chrysalis Records and moved on from Stock, Aitken and Waterman though the reason why doesn’t seem clear. Maybe she felt sidelined by Kylie and Jason? Anyway, Sonia proved to be more resilient than we might have suspected and returned to the charts with new record label IQ Records and a new single called “Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)”. Supposedly written for Diana Ross (it’s close to being exactly the same title as her 1981 cover of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers!), it was pinched for Sonia by her A&R man, one Simon Cowell. And guess what, it was a horrible Motown pastiche! What a surprise! Still, the UK’s pop fans decided that the hadn’t had enough of Sonia yet and sent it to No 10 in the charts. Have that Pete Waterman!
I was at Polytechnic with someone who was bit like Sonia, except that she didn’t have red hair, wasn’t Scouse and wasn’t annoying so nothing like her at all really!
They’ve messed round with the chart run down again! Why?! They’ve gone back to having it run along the bottom of the screen rolling news ticker style whilst a video plays. I’m sure they tried this at some point back in the 80s and gave it up as a bad job. I bet they went back to it to try and fit in more videos because they were worried about the competition provided by ITV’s The Chart Show. Jakki gamely tries to promote this new convention as “incredible value for money, two for the price of one. Yes, not only do we give you the sight and sound of Amy Grant, we also reveal in vision only, the UK Top 40”. What a crock of shit! Maybe the producers thought that the traditional countdown with the stills of the artists set against the TOTP theme tune was a bit old hat going into the 90s and so needed a revamp complete with that green screen presenter effect. Maybe it did look cutting edge back then but it looks awful now.
Anyway, as for Amy Grant, she was up to No 2 with “Baby Baby” although the TOTP graphics team have it down as a new entry. Maybe it was teething troubles with all this new technology? A more wholesome song and performer it would have been hard to imagine as Amy was ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’ whilst “Baby Baby” was inspired by her then six week old daughter Millie’s face. By way of contrast, we’ll be seeing a few songs about the sexual act and even masturbation later on. Ahem.
Nothing unsavoury here though as the squeaky clean Gloria Estefan brings us “Remember Me With Love”. I recall reading an article in the early 90s about an obsessive Madonna fan who bought anything and everything to do with Madge but when she released her “Erotica” album and that ‘Sex’ book with the nude photos and simulations of sexual acts…well, it was all to much for him and he turned his back on Madonna and instead turned his attentions to someone much purer. Yes, of course, he chose to devote himself to Gloria Estefan. Not that the dichotomy of pop stars and their sexual image hasn’t been around before this. There was Michael Jackson v Prince, The Beatles v The Rolling Stones and maybe even Paul McCartney v John Lennon?
“Remember Me With Love”peaked at No 22.
Blimey! I thought we’d done with All About Eve back at the end of the 80s but here they are with yet another Top 40 single in “Farewell Mr. Sorrow”. Julianne Regan and co have one of the more bizarre chart histories going – 9 Top 40 singles but only one of them got any higher than No 29 which of course was the infamous “Martha’s Harbour” which peaked at No 10.
This one was their 8th consecutive chart hit and quite a pleasant little ditty it is too – most unlike a lot of their other work. It was taken from their third studio album “Touched By Jesus” which was their first recording without guitarist and sometime Mr Regan Tim Bricheno and it didn’t do nearly as well as their first two albums leading to the band leaving record label Vertigo and signing with MCA for their last album “Ultraviolet” by which time nobody was interested anymore. I always quite liked them though.
Some of that smut next with a band who Jakki Brambles tells us have never had a hit not even in their native Australia. Really Jakki? Is that actually true? We are of course talking about Divinyls and their hit “I Touch Myself” and handily, someone on Twitter has already checked this claim out and debunked it:
Oh dear Jakki. Anyway, this is that masturbation song which is obviously what it’s about. Or is it? Well, yes it is. Here singer Chrissy Amphlett from a 2013 Cosmopolitan interview:
“In a world where female sexuality and masturbation is still widely feared and demonized, we need to pay some major respect to the brave women who empower us. ‘I Touch Myself’ is not just a party song, but also an emboldened call-to-action. Amphlett reminded us that we are in control of our own bodies and pleasure, and there is no shame in that game.”
Well quite. Now I didn’t know this until a friend told me years after the event but “I Touch Myself” wasn’t the first song on the subject of female masturbation. No, that was Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” from 1984. Well, the lyrics are stacked with innuendo to be fair:
Do I want to go out with a lion’s roar
Huh, yea, I want to go south n get me some more
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine
They say I better stop – or I’ll go blind
Hey, hey – they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can’t stop messin’ with the danger zone
No, I won’t worry, and I won’t fret –
Ain’t no law against it yet
Gulp! So indecent was it deemed to be that it earned a place on the Parents Music Resource Center’s Filthy Fifteen list which led to the creation of the Parental Advisory sticker. Most of the songs on that list were by hard rock bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Oh and W.A.S.P. but then if you call a song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)” then what do you expect. Obviously the aforementioned Madonna was also on the list for 1985’s “Dress You Up” but that guy who was the obsessive fan who rejected her for Gloria Estefan must have missed that news story.
At the time, the name Lenny Kravitz was new to me but he had already released one album back in 1989 called “Let Love Rule” but it had completely passed me by. Fast forward two years and he was back with another collection of songs called “Mama Said” from which this single, “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” was taken. This was the second track to be lifted from the album after lead single “Always on the Run” had just missed out on being a hit by peaking at that most unfortunate of chart positions No 41. Its follow up though did the trick. Dripping with Motown and Philadelphia soul vibes, it went all the way to No 11 in the UK and just missed the top spot in the US where it peaked at No 2.
The album was pretty good too. How did I know? Well because around this time I was taking part in my first ever Our Price stocktake. I’d been warned about these mythical events that might go on until past midnight where all the staff took part and had to count at price point every single item in the shop. I’d warned my wife on the big day that I could well be home late but I think we were all done reasonably early at 9ish. Whilst counting, and possibly to stop us all gossiping about the impending shop closure, we were allowed to put music on the shop stereo and someone out on “Mama Said”. That album stayed on most of the night I think as we just kept pressing repeat so as not to waste time looking for/arguing over what the next album for playing should be and who got to choose it. I liked what I heard enough to buy the album and especially liked opening track “Fields Of Joy”:
A huge tune next as Massive Attack (now allowed to have the second word of their name included as the Gulf War had needed) return with “Safe From Harm”. After the mesmerising “Unfinished Sympathy”, surely they couldn’t pull another corker from out of their hat but yes they could. Inspired by the film Taxi Driver, this was equally as hypnotic as its predecessor with Shara Nelson’s vocals to the fore and rapping from 3D that managed that difficult feat of not being intrusive but understated and yet integral to the track.
Like “Unfinished Sympathy” and indeed the “Blue Lines’ album itself, “Safe From Harm” wasn’t as big a hit as you remember or indeed it deserved, peaking at just No 25.
Just when you thought they wouldn’t shoehorn in any Breakers this week, here they are with only *10 minutes of the show remaining. We start with Rod Stewart and “The Motown Song” which was the third single to be released from his “Vagabond Heart” album. This really did seem like money for old rope to me. He’s already done a version of “It Takes Two” with Tina Turner on that album and this seemed like more of the same corny, obvious shite. A bit like when The Rolling Stones finally released a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” in the mid 90s. As with “It Takes Two”, Rod collaborated with a legendary act in The Temptations for this one but even their presence couldn’t save it from being a steaming pool of pish.
If anything, the animated video for it makes it even more corny. Made by the same company responsible for “Dear Jessie” by Madonna, it features some ‘hilarious’ comic mishaps befalling cartoon versions of stars like Vanilla Ice (who gets buried under a truckload of ice cubes) and Sinéad O’Connor (who slips while shaving her head and has to wear plasters over the resulting nicks). Like I said, hilarious. Rod himself appears in the video both in human and cartoon form of which the latter looks more like him than the real thing.
“The Motown Song” made No 10 both in the UK and US singles charts.
*Plus the repeat edited out a video of “Light My Fire” by The Doors for copyright reasons.
Some funk/glam/metal rock or something next as Extreme make their first appearance on the show. Despite having been around since 1985, I’d certainly never heard of this lot before but suddenly there was huge interest in them thanks to their “Get The Funk Out” single. This energetic workout of a track was getting a lot of airplay on MTV (I think) and suddenly we were getting lots of enquiries about their second album “Extreme II: Pornograffitti” from which the single was taken. That title caused quite bit of confusion with many people (me included) thinking the band were actually called Extreme II. It didn’t help that Extreme II was what a member of staff had written on the master bag for the band’s name. The record company (and this seemed to happen a lot in 1991) immediately withdrew the album which had been out nearly a while year by this point so that they could re-release it later on when the single had peaked with some extra advertising for it.
Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt was getting a lot of press attention at the time not just as the latest guitar noodling prodigy but also as a bit of a heartthrob. To be fair, their lead singer (and normally the visual focus of a band) lead singer Gary Cherone was a bit more….erm…awkward looking. The album would spawn another four UK Top 40 singles including the the soft rock ballad “More Than Words” that made No 2 over here and No 1 in the US. For a while, Extreme looked like they could be the next big rock act.
I could see why Midler had chosen to record it. It was in the same ball park as her recent US No 1 “Wind Beneath My Wings” and indeed scored her a No 2 hit in there home country. In the UK, it would peak at No 6.
Some more filth now as we get “People Are Still Having Sex” by LaTour. This was like “Kissing With Confidence” by Will Powers meets “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis. It originally included the lyric ‘This AIDS thing’s not working’ but was changed to ‘This safe thing’s not working’ to ensure it got some radio play.
I couldn’t really be doing with this at all – the track that is not sex per se. It just seemed sensationalist for the sake of getting some press. It was a minor hit globally peaking at No 15 in the UK.
And to round off this episode of smut and obscenity, the No 1 record is still “I Wanna Sex You Up” by Color Me Badd. So that’s two records with ‘sex’ in the title and one about masturbation on the same show. Mary Whitehouse must have been apoplectic. Just to crank up the sex-o-meter, the band are in the studio in person! Everything about this performance is so wrong. From the suits to the dancing (the three lads at the back seem to be doing ‘ring a ring a roses’ at one point) to the actual song.
Despite their success, Smash Hits magazine only had Color Me Badd on their front cover once throughout the whole of 1991. In comparison, Chesney Hawkes was on three times as was Dannii Minogue. Even The Farm, Philip Schofield and those twin sisters from Neighbours got a front cover!
The play out video is “Monkey Business” by Skid Row. I get really confused by all these metal bands. Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, Megadeth… I couldn’t really tell you the difference between any of them. To differentiate this lot from the pack, their lead singer called himself Sebastian Bach though his real name is Sebastian Philip Bierk. The latter seems more appropriate.
Normally I include the chart rundown here but due to the new format, there is no clip I can include. Sorry.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Sonia | Only Fools (Never Fall In Love) | Only a fool would have bought this |
| 2 | Amy Grant | Baby Baby | No but my wife liked it |
| 3 | Gloria Estefan | Remember Me With Love | Nah |
| 4 | All About Eve | Farewell Mr. Sorrow | I did not |
| 5 | Divinyls | I Touch Myself | Thought I might have but the singles box says no |
| 6 | Lenny Kravitz | It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over | No but I had the album |
| 7 | Massive Attack | Safe From Harm | See 6 above |
| 8 | Rod Stewart | The Motown Song | No thanks |
| 9 | Extreme | Get The Funk Out | Not the single but I have it on something I think |
| 10 | Bette Midler | From A Distance | Nope |
| 11 | LaTour | People Are Still Having Sex | No |
| 12 | Color Me Badd | I Wanna Sex You Up | I should coco |
| 13 | Skid Row | Monkey Business | I’d rather watch a monkey defecate |
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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000yhc0/top-of-the-pops-13061991
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 