If it’s mid August then it must be the start of the new football season and 1993 was no different. I didn’t have high hopes for my beloved Chelsea for the 1993/94 season after the previous year’s bucketload of mid table mediocrity but on the day this TOTP aired, we signed Gavin Peacock for 1.2 million from Newcastle United which I was excited about. Gavin would prove to be an instant hit by scoring on his debut two days later. However, Chelsea lost the game and it would prove to be another season of highs and lows characterised by our getting to the FA Cup final for the first time in 24 years and then losing it 0-4. Crushing. I wonder how many highs and lows there’ll be in this TOTP?
We start with a massive low. What the Barney Rubble was going on here?! I thought we might have managed to get away with just a short glimpse of Green Jellÿ when they appeared in the Breakers with their first and biggest hit “Three Little Pigs”. No such luck as they have made themselves available to open this show with their new single “Anarchy In The UK”. Their take on the Sex Pistols’ punk classic is, as my friend Robin would say, like pissing from the roof of a multi story car park – wrong on so many levels.
First of all, don’t arse about with “Anarchy In The UK”. Whatever you may think of the Pistols’ debut single, you can’t deny its place in (punk) rock history. Secondly, if you are going to mess with it, at least retain Johnny Rotten’s iconic (albeit phonically incorrect) phrasing. It’s “I am an anti-Christ, I am an anar-kaist”. Who are you Mr Green Jellÿ to correct Johnny Rotten? Thirdly, this whole Flintstones thing had already been done before by The Screaming Blue Messiahs with their 1988 Top 30 hit “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”. Hardly original. Fourthly, the costumes. Obviously that’s meant to be Fred and Barney but who’s the third one meant to be? Bam-Bam? Just crap. Oh and was it really wise to accessorise Barney’s costume with a skinhead look and ‘Oi’ on the side of his head given some of the links to white nationalist groups like the National Front the movement was perceived to have. Finally, it had zero musical value but worse than that even, it wasn’t funny. At all.
Rather predictably the song would make it onto the soundtrack to the 1994 live action movie The Flintstones alongside that Screaming Blue Messiahs track and “(Meet) The Flintstones” by The B-52s who renamed themselves The BC-52s for the release. How we laughed.
Another low now as we return to that horrible sub genre of dance music, the reworking of pop songs as dance floor fillers. There was a lot of this sort of nonsense around this time from the likes of Undercover and Rage and now here was Sarah Washington with a danced up version of “I Will Always Love You”. What a nasty thing this was and totally unnecessary. Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton classic had been No 1 for ten weeks between Dec ‘92 and Feb ‘93. Did we really need to hear another version of it so soon?
Apparently we did as Sarah Washington’s version made No 12. She attempted to repeat the trick with her follow up, a dance version of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” but fortunately that didn’t make the Top 40. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of this movement as 1995 saw Nicki French go Top 5 with a danced up version of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”. Oh the horror.
It’s a hat-trick of lows as we get “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. I said last time this was on the show that it’s one of Billy’s worst ever compositions and I haven’t changed my mind in the meanwhile. Of course, that’s just my humble opinion and others may have a different take. Someone who definitely did was Peter from Spearfish, South Dakota who had this to say on the songfacts.com website:
I think God was really speaking to Billy Joel but Billy Joel decided to ignore God and it’s his own fault if he ends up in hell but you never know
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/billy-joel/the-river-of-dreams
Gulp! Well, Billy does include some biblical references in the song and he does consider himself an atheist so maybe those sorts of comments were always going to happen.
“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.
Dear God! I think we’ve hit the lowest of the lows as we encounter Bad Boys Inc. Inevitably, given the rise to the top of Take That, boy bands were springing up left, right and centre in the 90s. Bad Boys Inc were one of the first of these pretenders to cling onto their coat tails hitting immediately with debut single “Don’t Talk About Love”. The work of evil pop mastermind Ian Levine, who himself had produced Take That’s first three singles, they went down the same promotion route as Gary Barlow and co doing nightclub PAs to get their name out there. They also seemed to have adopted their dance moves and stage set up with the lead singer doing all the vocal lifting and the other three just…well…dancing. The song is the usual teeny bop by numbers fare but really they didn’t have anything to make them stand out and certainly nothing to rival Take That. They had one hit wonder written all over them and yet they notched up six chart hits in total including one Top 10! Even their name was terrible. Was it meant to channel some of that other boy band that were the actual rivals to Take That at the time East 17? Bad Boys Inc? Bad Boys Stink more like.
As Kevin Rowland once sang, “Let’s Get This Straight From The Start”. Yes, “Mr Vain” by Culture Beat does sound like Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. There are more similarities though. Both songs went to No 1 in the UK and both were made by German Eurodance acts. There always been a couple of things I never understood about “Mr. Vain” though. Who was ‘Mr. Raider’ as referenced in the lyrics and why does female vocalist Tania Evans insist on being called ‘Mr. Vain’?
Some Breakers now and we start with Ice Cube (an ice breaker?) and “Check Yo Self”. The man behind many of the lyrics on legendary NWA album “Straight Outta Compton”, Ice Cube had left the band acrimoniously in 1989 and was already onto his third solo album by this point. “The Predator” was a No 1 record in America selling 193,000 copies in its first week. This track was the third single to be released from it and gave Ice Cube his second consecutive UK Top 40 hit after “It Was A Good Day” when it peaked at No 36.
As host Tony Dortie says in his intro, the track heavily borrows from the mother of all rap tunes “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. Widely recognised as the song that took rap into the mainstream, its influence can also be found in work by artists like Genesis (the laugh in “Mama”) and Robbie Williams (the “it’s like a jungle” line in “Millennium”).
This next one literally only exists for me on this 30 seconds clip. I can’t recall it at all from 1993 and I can’t find anything much about the act online in 2022. To be fair, their name doesn’t aid an internet search – what did I expect to find if I put Ali And Frazier into Google? Whoever they were/are, their song was a cover of the Althea And Donna 1978 classic “Uptown Top Ranking”. Not a straight cover though you understand. This was 1993 so they ragga-fied it with a rap and tried to update the sound by including that horrible sax parp from recent No 1 “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. There’s also a hint of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” by KC And The Sunshine Band. Just…why?
Like Althea and Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking” was Ali and Frazier’s only hit when it peaked at No 33. Unlike Althea and Donna, nobody remembers the musical version of Ali and Frazier.
Whatever you may think of Jay Kay, he was ahead of his time when it came to green issues. He was the funk version of Julian “Salt Water” Lennon. “Emergency On Planet Earth” was the title track of Jamiroquai’s debut album and also the third track to be released from it as a single. Sonically, it was very much in the same vein as it’s two predecessors but somehow I think I liked it better than those other tracks. The sci-fi themed video stands up pretty well although it’s dated by the inclusion of a public pay phone.
This would be the last time we’d see Jamiroquai for a whole year bar a re-release of debut flop single “When You Gonna Learn”. When they did return, it was with “Space Cowboy” which sounded the same as everything else they’d released.
Talking of debut singles being re-released, here’s “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” by Spin Doctors. Originally out in October of 1992, it made No 17 on the US charts but it wasn’t released over here until “Two Princes” had been a hit. I’d forgotten what a nifty tune this is. Some great slap bass playing and a searing guitar riff make for a great groove (man!). It should have been a bigger hit than its No 23 peak.
Songwriter and lead vocalist Chris Barron was initially subjected to accusations of misogyny due to the song’s lyrics (the opening line is “It’s been a whole lot easier since the bitch left town”) with many assuming it was written about an ex-girlfriend but it was actually about a toxic relationship with his stepmother. “The song is really about life being short so we should all be nice to one other” he told Sky magazine in an interview.
The track would turn up on Sesame Street in 1995 as “Little Miss Count Along”. There’s no bigger accolade.
Finally! A song on a ragga tip in 1993 that I didn’t mind! I refer to Apache Indian and his song “Boom Shack-A-Lak” which was a track from his “Nuff Vibes EP”. Inevitably, people made comparisons with it and Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” and Apache Indian (real name Steven Kapur) himself references this in the BBC documentary Top Of The Pops – The Story Of 1993. He admits that he was influenced by the likes of the Shaggy, Chaka Demus and Pliers etc who were releasing reggae style songs with a 60s pop twist to them and so thought he’d have a brash at that himself. His breakthrough hit from earlier in the year “Arranged Marriage” had been nothing like “Boom Shack-A-Lak” (a made up word with a similar meaning to ‘Wagwan’ Kapur says in the documentary) with its Bhangra rhythms and instrumentation but he could see where the money trail was going and duly followed.
Cautious not to appear to be treading on his buddy Shaggy’s toes, he played him the track and just about asked his permission to release it. Being the magnanimous fellow he is, Shaggy wasn’t at all bothered that Kapur appeared to be “nicking his shit” (to quote Shaggy) and the rest was history. Easily Apache Indian’s biggest hit, it went to No 5 in the UK and has been used extensively in film such as the Dumb And Dumber movies and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (surely they should have used a song by Shaggy?!). It sounds like it should have been included in one of the Austin Powers movies but as far as I can tell it wasn’t used.
I’m guessing hopes were high in the offices of Aswad and Yazz’s record labels for the rejuvenating powers of this cover version of Ace’s “How Long”. With both artists’ careers in need of a shot in the arm, surely a reggaed-up take on an airplay classic would do the trick? ‘No!’ was the resounding answer from the record buying public as despite this TOTP appearance, it got no higher than its peak this week of No 31. Yazz looks pretty different to her “The Only Way Is Up” heyday with her short peroxide blonde cut replaced by a longer hairdo tied up at the back. When she went to get that short crop, her hairdresser looked at her cascading tresses and said ‘How long?’. I’ll get me coat.
Take That are dethroned at the top of the charts as Freddie Mercury takes over with “Living On My Own”. I just didn’t get this. To me, it’s a nothing song that probably deserved no more than its chart high of No 50 when originally released in 1985. OK, you could make a case for a surge in record sales when an artist dies but in Freddie’s case that was back in 1991, one year and 263 days before this song made it to No 1. There had already been two Freddie solo singles released posthumously and neither got anywhere near the top of the charts so why this one? Was it to do with the No More Brothers remix? Well, whatever the record had, it would turn out to be the last ever entry for Freddie as a solo artist in the UK Top 40 singles chart.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Green Jellÿ | Anarchy In The UK | Never! |
| 2 | Sarah Washington | I Will Always Love You | No chance |
| 3 | Billy Joel | River Of Dreams | Not likely |
| 4 | Bad Boys Inc | Don’t Talk About Love | NO! |
| 5 | Culture Beat | Mr. Vain | I did not |
| 6 | Ice Cube | Check Yo Self | No |
| 7 | Ali And Frazier | Uptown Top Ranking | I’d rather get punched in the face |
| 8 | Jamiroquai | Emergency On Planet Earth | No but my wife had the album |
| 9 | Spin Doctors | Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong | No but maybe I should have |
| 10 | Apache Indian | Boom Shack-A-Lak | It was fun but no |
| 11 | Aswad / Yazz | How Long | Too long – no |
| 12 | Freddie Mercury | Living On My Own | And no |
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/m001cjqv/top-of-the-pops-12081993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 