After having last week off due to Glastonbury, we’re back with a double helping of BBC4 TOTP repeats to review. To be honest, I wouldn’t have said no to another week’s holiday. I’ve only just caught up and suddenly were off again! At least there’s only eight artists on the show this week as there aren’t any Breakers and, with one notable and entirely permissible exception, they’re all in the TOTP studio.
We start with Bizarre Inc with a track I don’t recall at all entitled “Took My Love”. As with previous hit “I’m Gonna Get You”, it features Angie Brown on vocals and was taken from their album “Energique”. Actually, I don’t remember the album either. I thought they were a singles band.
*checks Bizarre Inc discography*
Nope. I don’t recognise that album cover but then I probably didn’t sell many copies of it in the Rochdale Our Price I was working in as, despite the presence of three hit singles, it only got as high as No 41 in the charts. In fact, did any of the dance acts from this period have big selling albums? Did the likes of Altern 8, K-Klass, Felix, Shut Up And Dance, Rozalla, Kym Sims, U.S.U.R.A. etc translate their singles success into album sales? Check these stats out:
| Artist | Album | Chart peak |
| Altern 8 | Full On… Mask Hysteria | 11 |
| Felix | #1 | 26 |
| K-Klass | Universal | 73 |
| Kym Sims | Too Blind to See It | 39 |
| Rozalla | Everybody’s Free | 20 |
| Shut Up And Dance | Death Is Not the End | 38 |
| U.S.U.R.A. | Open Your Mind | Did not chart |
OK, it’s not an exhaustive list but all of these acts had decent sized hit singles in the proceeding twelve months to this point and I’d have to say I don’t see a massive crossover trend for the parent albums. Anyway, back to Bizarre Inc and I didn’t find this track anywhere near as effective as their previous hits. It followed the same formula but didn’t quite have the same immediate impact. Also, what was the deal with the synths on swings? Didn’t another dance act use this prop on the show recently? I’m sure they did but I’m not going back in the archives to check who it was. Just chalk it up to another failed attempt by the TOTP producers to make dance acts look visually interesting.
“Took My Love’ peaked at No 19.
From a single I don’t remember at all to one which always brings to mind early 1993 when I hear it these days. The repositioning and relaunch of Annie Lennox as a solo artist after Eurythmics went on a decade long sabbatical had gone as well as it could possibly have been expected to. Her debut solo album “Diva” went straight in at No 1 and furnished Annie with two Top 10 singles. Then, just nine days before this TOTP aired, it won a BRIT for Best British Album. Annie won another for Best British Female Artist. It was heady stuff but she still wasn’t finished.
“Love Song For A Vampire” was a track Annie recorded for the Francis Ford Coppola directed film Bram Stokers Dracula starring Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves. For me, it was easily the best thing about the film. I just couldn’t get past Keanu’s disastrous English accent or the odd way that Oldman glided around the set as Dracula. The sexual imagery seemed like it existed just to create a headline and the whole thing just felt like a big letdown and a missed opportunity to reboot the classic tale.
Annie’s song (no, not John Denver’s) though was a fine piece; with her vocals being hauntingly beautiful and yet unsettling at the same time. Its unusual structure helps to create that feeling of otherworldliness that resonates from it. It doesn’t have a chorus as such and is built around a constant, pressing synth refrain. The track wasn’t on “Diva” so not wishing to miss out on a chance to plug it again, her record label made it a double A-side with “Little Bird” which was from the album. It was “Love Song For A Vampire” though that got all the airplay and it was an enormous hit peaking at No 3.
For Annie’s turn here, it looks like the TOTP production team have been busy repurposing sets from previous performances by other artists. We saw those candles and burning torches just the other week when Sting was on and the dry ice coming from that little run of steps looks familiar as well though I can’t think who else used that as a prop. They’ve added a window behind Annie presumably for a vampire to fly through. Thankfully there are no fake bats anywhere to be seen on stage.
Of course, Annie’s song (still not John Denver) isn’t the only hit single to come from a film about vampires in the 90s…
The only act not in the studio tonight is Michael Jackson and in all honesty I don’t think the show can be criticised for not pulling off the coup of a personal appearance by the self styled King of Pop himself. Despite it being 1993, in true Jacko tradition, he’s still releasing songs from an album that came out two years ago. “Give In To Me” was the seventh single of nine in total to come from “Dangerous” and was released an astonishing fifteen months after the album. That didn’t seem to matter though as it scaled the UK charts all the way to No 2 (it wasn’t released as a single in the US).
Jackson’s profile was higher than usual though even by his phenomenal standards at this time owing to the recent broadcast of his Oprah Winfrey interview that host Tony Dortie references in his intro. Maybe that helped shift a few units. I’m sure the tabloids would have been full of comment about Jacko’s explanation of his ever whitening skin which we now know was due to a condition called vitiligo and nothing to do with deliberate skin bleaching. Nobody was buying it at the time though (his explanation not his single).
As for the song itself, it just sounded like a rehash of previous hit “Dirty Diana” from the “Bad” album to me. As if to confirm my opinion, the CD single came with “Dirty Diana” as an extra track along with another song that included a heavy metal guitar solo in “Beat It” from “Thriller”. That came courtesy of Eddie Van Halen whereas the solo on “Give In To Me” was the work of Slash from the aforementioned Guns N’ Roses. As with previous single “Heal The World”, the 7” came in a poster bag sleeve. I hated those things! Such a faff to put back together if you dared to open it up to look at the poster.
The ubiquitous Dina Carroll next who seemed to be on the show every other week around this time. Having released three singles in 1992, none of which got any higher than No 26, Dina was back on the chart trail in 1993 with a song called “This Time”. Nothing to do with the Bryan Adams song of the same name nor indeed the England World Cup squad of 1982’s ditty ( I would have liked to have heard Dina tackle that one!), this was another slushy sounding ballad just like previous single “So Close”. It could just as easily have been sung by the likes of Eternal.
I’ve said it before but why were her record label A&M pissing about with these nice but average tracks when they could have just released “Don’t Be A Stranger”. The album had just come out but they didn’t release the ace up their sleeve until nine months later. I’ve never worked in marketing nor promotions but the strategy behind Dina’s release schedule still leaves me baffled.
“This Time” peaked at No 23 thereby becoming Dina’s worst performing single at the time. Even then, A&M didn’t turn to “Don’t Be A Stranger”, instead opting for the uptempo “Express” as the next single. You deserve a big, Johnny Rotten style raspberry for that A&M!
We arrive now at one of the names that I will always associate with 1993 though the artist concerned has gone onto successes way past those twelve months. I speak, of course, of Shaggy or as I think of him, one of the three ‘S’s – the unholy trinity of Snow, Shabba Ranks and his good self. Now when I was growing up, the name Shaggy only meant one thing – Scooby Doo’s best mate. Not in 1993 though. Shaggy was a chart sensation with his ragga / dancehall take on obscure ska song “Oh Carolina”. With samples of James Brown and the Peter Gunn theme thrown into the mix alongside Shaggy’s gruff vocals, it sounded fresh and new in 1993 despite actually having quite the retro roots.
Needless to say, I didn’t like it. I couldn’t be doing with all that growling, wind-it-up, raggamuffin ‘toasting’ Shaggy did although the song was as catchy as hell. In his defence, I would say that if I had to choose (with a gun to my head), I found Shaggy to be the most tolerable of the three ‘S’s. My Dad taught me as a kid that the three ‘S’s referred to your daily ablutions routine – shit, shower and shave. If I had to associate those with the musical three ‘S’s of 1993, I think I’d go:
- Shit – Shabba Ranks (because he is/was)
- Shower – Shaggy (because you felt dirty after listening to his record)
- Shave – Snow (because he looked like he needed one to get rid of his bum fluff)
Back to “Oh Carolina” though and I always thought that it sounded like Shaggy was singing “yer arse” in the chorus. You know that bit is immediately after the words “Oh Carolina”? There. The actual lyrics are “Prowl off, jump and prance” but if you watch The Story of 1993 video on iPlayer, Shaggy suggests that him and his mates in their youth used to sing an expletive in there when listening to the original by the Folkes Brothers.
A success all around Europe, “Oh Carolina” was nowhere bigger than in the UK where it went to No 1 so we’ll be seeing it again soon and for that reason I’ll leave the Shaggy discussion there for now.
Here comes another young female solo artist who was a big deal for a short while in the 90s but who, like Dina Carroll before her, didn’t quite manage to sustain a career of longevity. Tasmin Archer scored one of the biggest hits of 1992 with her No 1 single “Sleeping Satellite” but, of course, that’s a double edged sword. Yeah, the initial success is great but how do you follow it up? If your next single doesn’t go to No 1 as well, it’s deemed to be a failure and you’re all washed up already. Even if you manage to repeat the trick and bag another chart topper, it only prolongs the eventual fall. Look at the case of Frankie Goes To Hollywood – three No 1 singles straight off the bat. A phenomenon. Then the fourth only goes to No 2 and the band are immediately written off as being down the dumper.
Given that piece of history, poor Tasmin was really up against it. Many may have thought that she didn’t give herself a decent chance by choosing a follow up single that dealt with the subject of child abuse and includes the radio unfriendly line ‘son of a bitch, you broke my heart’ in the lyrics. That view though assumes songwriting to be a commercial transaction – write an unchallenging, catchy tune, get a hit. Tasmin chose another path, the path of songwriting as an art. It was a brave choice and one that didn’t bring in the sales but which should have sustained her credibility as a serious recoding artist. I’m not sure it did.
The song in question was “In Your Care”, written from the point of view of a child experiencing abuse. It was angry in tone and delivery with Tasmin spitting out the ‘son of a bitch’ line. The first time you heard it, the moment was genuinely arresting. Another unusual decision was for a new artist to allow their second ever release to be a charity single but that’s just what Tasmin did with the profits from it going to Childline. You couldn’t argue that it’s subject matter wasn’t on point but was it too much for record buyers? After all, previous Childline singles had been much more jolly Beatles covers by the likes of Wet Wet Wet and Tom Jones. The latter had only just been in the charts the other week back then so maybe there was even a case of charity fatigue?
To try and signpost the gravity of the single, the TOTP producers have put a grainy, black and white picture effect at the beginning and end of the performance. I’m not sure it really makes its point. Still, nice to see a double bass on the show.
“In Your Care” peaked at No 16.
Has anyone, anywhere ever referred to Bryan Ferry as ‘The Guvnor’ before as host Tony Dortie does here in his intro? ‘The Guvnor’?! This is Bryan Ferry we’re talking about Tony! Not Viz comic mobster Big Vern, not self styled hard man footballer Paul Ince who actually went by the nickname of ‘The Guvnor’. It’s Bryan f*****g Ferry Dortie! He studied fine art at Newcastle University, he’s the archetypal lounge lizard, one of the most stylish rock stars of all time. You make him sound like Grouty from Porridge, the top dog feared by his fellow inmates who intimidates even the prison wardens. Dear God!
Anyway, rant over. Ferry is on the show to plug his new single, a cover of the Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “I Put A Spell On You”, the lead single from his latest album “Taxi”. This was Bryan’s first album since 1987’s “Bête Noire” though there had been a compilation album in between called “The Ultimate Collection” which had given him a hit single in the form of the rereleased “Let’s Stick Together”. As with much of his 70s solo output, “Taxi” was essentially a covers album (the very last track is a Ferry original) that actually did pretty well going to No 2 in the charts and achieving gold sales status. I remember being mildly surprised at its success as it seemed an anomaly in a musical landscape dominated by dance music but then, as we saw earlier, albums by dance acts never sold that well. As well this single, the album included tracks by the likes of Lou Reed, Carole King and a version of the Christian hymn “Amazing Grace”. I think I may have had a promo copy of the album though I’ve no idea where it is now.
The staging of the performance here is suitably pretentious for a Ferry production with dancers strutting about pointlessly while Bry tinkles the ivories on the piano. Is that Gail Ann Dorsey up there with him on bass? I think it is – well you can’t deny the class she brings to the proceedings I guess.
Although much of his back catalogue is outstanding, this does sound a bit dreary on reflection. It managed a chart high of No 18 but if you want a different (and in my opinion superior) take on the track, here’s the aforementioned Annie Lennox…
Those cheeky rascals 2 Unlimited are still ripping up the charts with their lowest common denominator dance anthem “No Limit”. It really was amazing how this lot managed to have so many hits (fourteen in the UK!) when their songs were so flimsy. There really is not a lot of flesh on the bones of “No Limit” but that didn’t seem to matter to the masses who sent it to No 1 for a whole five weeks!
They’ve got a couple of masked up dancers in for this performance and the one on the right looks oddly familiar. Oh, I’ve got it. The smaller monster in this clip from 70s sci-fi show Space 1999 – dead ringer…
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Bizarre Inc | Took My Love | Nope |
| 2 | Annie Lennox | Love Song For A Vampire / Little Bird | No but wife had the Diva album with Little Bird on it |
| 3 | Michael Jackson | Give In To Me | Nah |
| 4 | Dina Carroll | This Time | No |
| 5 | Shaggy | Oh Carolina | Didn’t do it for me – no |
| 6 | Tasmin Archer | In Your Care | Great song but it’s not in the singles box |
| 7 | Bryan Ferry | I Put A Spell On You | No but I had that promo copy of the album. No idea where it is now |
| 8 | 2 Unlimited | No Limit | Never! |
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/m0018s7m/top-of-the-pops-25021993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 