Living in the digital age is great isn’t it? Like most of us I suspect, I often find myself asking the question “How did we do [insert a commonplace task] before we had the internet?”. Life is so much easier now. Even as I type these words on my mobile phone, my wife is sat next to me turning off the TV with the remote control app on her mobile phone as she can’t be bothered to find the actual remote which has no doubt slipped down the side of the sofa again. These are the sort of everyday problems that technological advancements were created to solve. As for music consumption, we now have voice activated access to millions of songs thanks to platforms like Spotify and hardware like Amazon Echo Dot/Alexa.
Back in 1993, although the internet had been invented and the World Wide Web put into the public domain in that year, most of us didn’t have a clue what it was or how to access it. Some people who were keeping tabs on technology were, perhaps unsurprisingly given their own musical development, Depeche Mode. Three days before this TOTP aired, they were one of the first bands to utilise the internet to interact with fans in a Q&A session via AOL. As this was 1993, there were plenty of technical issues with many users (including the band themselves) not able to log onto the chat. To be fair though, our 2022 digital world isn’t trouble free either. Didn’t WhatsApp go down the other day?
Anyway, we’ll be seeing those early adopters of technology Depeche Mode later on in the show but we start with a band that we hadn’t seen in the charts for nigh on two years. The Wonder Stuff’s last Top 40 hit had been “Welcome To The Cheap Seats EP” in January of 1992 from their “Never Loved Elvis” album. Since then, I’m assuming that they had been recording their fourth studio album “Construction For The Modern Idiot”. It would be the band’s last for eleven years. The lead single from it was actually another EP. The “On The Ropes EP” would peak at No 10 and would be the band’s last ever time inside the Top 10. The only track from the EP to feature on the album was the title track performed here and I have to say that I don’t really recall it. Listening to it now though, it sounds like a much more out and out rock sound than their previous quirky, knockabout material like “Size Of A Cow” and the aforementioned “Welcome To The Cheap Seats” that made them mainstream chart stars. I think that was probably the right career move and the album made No 4 which was none too shabby but the end of the band (temporarily at least) was near. Two more Top 40 hits from the album would follow and that tour that host Tony Dortie mentions in his intro would be the band’s biggest ever including 78 dates but 1994 would see them split before, as Jarvis Cocker nearly sang, meeting up in the year 2000.
It’s those IT geeks Depeche Mode now with an EP of their own called “Condemnation”. The third single from their “Songs Of Faith And Devotion” album, the title track is a quite staggering piece of work which has me reaching for my handy book of superlatives. It’s a beautifully haunting and emotive song based around a powerful vocal from Dave Gahan with a clear and deliberate gospel feel to it. A truly striking and indeed staggering composition. Gahan is on record as saying it’s one of his favourite tracks by the band but due to his health/addiction problems, he stopped performing it live in 1994 and Martin Gore took over on vocal duties. This seems quite an apposite decision as “Condemnation” puts me in mind of their equally atmospheric ballad “Somebody” from 1984 that was also sung by Gore.
Tony Dortie invites us to try and work out what the video for “Condemnation” is all about in his intro so here’s my two pennies’ worth. There’s definitely a nod to The Wicker Man in there with Gahan being led by a cowl wearing throng to a destination of what appears to be bales of hay to meet with his lover to whom he is then shackled. Are they to be sacrificed Lord Summerisle style or is it some kind of pagan wedding ceremony? The sepia tint on the film adds to its unsettling feel. “Condemnation” peaked at No 9.
Talk about making a statement! Not only have M People racked up their third Top 10 hit of 1993 with “Moving On Up” but it’s gone in at No 4 thus making it their biggest ever hit after just one week of sales! The single would eventually…ahem…move on up to a high of No 2 paving the way for the release of the “Elegant Slumming” album that would achieve the same peak in the album chart and go three times platinum in the UK. M People were no longer a club phenomenon but bona fide, mainstream pop stars.
The track was back in the news recently when it was used as blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Prime Minister Liz Truss’s walk on music at the Tory Party Conference. I was listening to James O’Brien on LBC when he was the first to speak to the band’s founder Mike Pickering for his reaction. He wasn’t pleased…
The voice behind “Unfinished Sympathy” is next but I have to say it doesn’t sound in good nick here. There’s no doubting Shara Nelson’s vocal talents just from the evidence of that Massive Attack track alone so I can only assume she was feeling under the weather for this TOTP performance. Either that or she was distracted by trying to track the close up camera revolving around her but her singing on “One Goodbye In Ten” here doesn’t sound the best. Not that it’s a great litmus test of musical quality but if she’d have been auditioning for the X Factor, she’d have had Simon Cowell grimacing. Shame.
Now I know that Haddaway had more hits than just “What Is Love” but I couldn’t have told you what they were called let alone what they sounded like. However, if I’d given it a moment’s thought (but then again why would I spend any time considering Haddaway’s back catalogue?) then I would surely have come to the conclusion that the follow up to “What Is Love” would sound pretty similar. And so it does with “Life” recycling the annoying synth riff from its predecessor.
It seems to me that writing songs just generically called “Life” is a tricky challenge. Surely the subject matter is just too big?! Look at Haddaway’s lyrics here:
Life will never be the same, life is changing
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Dee Dee Halligan / Junior Torello
Life lyrics © Hanseatic Musikverlag Gmbh & Co Kg
What tosh. Still, it’s an improvement on Des’ree’s attempt with her 1998 single of the same name…
I don’t want to see a ghost, it’s a sight that I fear the most, I’d rather have a piece of toast
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Des’ree Weekes / Prince Sampson
Life lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Dear oh dear oh dear etc…
Excellent! Just the two Breakers this week means less writing for me and one of them was on last week so I’ve already commented on it. This shouldn’t take long and indeed why would anyone want to dwell on the first of them. Worlds Apart – remember them? They had four UK Top 40 singles of which their cover of Love Affair’s “Everlasting Love” was the second. None got any higher than No 15 and yet their bio on Wikipedia suggests that they were absolutely massive literally everywhere else in the world racking up global sales of ten million records. And get this – such was the demand for them that their licensed merchandise products totalled 138 in number including lamps, bubblegum and motorbikes! This can’t be true surely?! None of it makes any sense which is encapsulated by the very first line of that Wikipedia entry that says they are ‘an English multinational boy band of the 90s’. English and multinational? How does that work then? Well, I’m not going to delve into the subject of identity politics but…wait…are an English multinational boy band? They’re still in existence? My god they are. They split in 2002 but reformed in 2007 and are still a going concern. Their line up these days includes that bloke from Brother Beyond. This is all nonsense and is summed up perfectly by the fact that they recorded a song called “Arnold Schwarzenegger”. No really, look…
All I remember of them was that the buyers at Our Price head office ordered in loads of their album which would then sit behind the counter gathering dust for the rest of the decade. “Everlasting Love” peaked at No 20. Again I say dear oh dear oh dear etc..
Next the song that was on just last week and a quick check of the BBC4 schedule tells me is on the next show as well. Somebody at TOTP loved Belinda Carlisle and her “Big Scary Animal” single. After her studio performance last week, we get the promo video this time which seems to involve Belinda sat at the end of an enormous dinner table waiting for her date who arrives on a motorbike, spends ages trying to find the room she’s in before pushing her down a staircase on a chaise longue. Just…just…why?!
A new hit now from a new artist who would prove to be a one hit wonder but would go on to show that making quirky dance records wasn’t their only talent. Stakka Bo hailed from Sweden and brought us the No 13 hit “Here We Go” which shared its title with the first words of the chorus of that Belinda Carlisle hit from immediately before but that’s where the similarities ended. An artist who Stakka Bo did share similarities with though were Stereo MCs and they were duly made in the music press. Probably no bad thing at the time.
Stakka Bo were basically Johan Renck, a man whose later career would far outstrip his achievements in the world of pop. Right, this is actually quite weird. Me and my wife were late to the Breaking Bad party and so have been on catch up via Netflix for a while (we’re halfway through series 3 so no spoilers please!). We’d just finished watching another episode so I thought I’d do a bit more blogging and the first thing I saw when researching Stakka Bo was this:
What?! That’s quite the career change right there. He’s also produced pop videos for everyone from Madonna to Robbie Williams to Lana Del Ray. Renck obviously directed the promo for “Here We Go” as well. As for the song itself, I quite liked it with its flute flourishes and insanely catchy hooks. It was played to death on MTV which helped to break it in just about every territory. There was a follow up – the prophetically titled “Down The Drain” – but we don’t need to concern ourselves with that here. Renck looks like he might pop up in an episode of Only Fools And Horses here whilst his mate looks like a diabolical merging together of East 17’s Brian Harvey and Frank Spencer. Ah 1993 – what were we all thinking?
So big were Take That by this point that it seemed they were just about headlining every TOTP they were on. I mean, obviously there was the No 1 song on after them here but you get my drift. Their appearance on the show was always the top of the bill moment. Their latest single wasn’t even out for another four days after this TOTP aired. That single was “Relight My Fire” featuring that dreadful woman Lulu.
I don’t think I knew at the time that it was actually a Dan Hartman song with my knowledge of his oeuvre restricted to “Instant Replay” and “I Can Dream About You”. His original was released in 1980 with Loleatta Holloway (her again) doing the female vocals that Take That’s management dragged Lulu in for. As much as I dislike her, the introduction of Lulu halfway through the song does create quite the impact in the performance here as a counterpoint to all that spinning and twirling the lads were doing. The single would go straight in at No 1 once released making them only the second artist ever to have two consecutive singles do that with Slade being the first in 1973.
Culture Beat have gone from the top spot with the new incumbents being DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince with “Boom! Shake The Room”. Will Smith was already a well established star of TV due to his titular role in The Fresh Prince Of Bel–Air at this point which was about to start its fourth season in late September back in 1993. Within two years he would be starring in the film Bad Boys and his global stardom would be confirmed. Fast forward 29 years and Smith’s career is now in serious jeopardy after he shook the room at the Oscars by slapping Chris Rock. Boom!
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | The Wonder Stuff | On The Ropes EP | No |
| 2 | Depeche Mode | Condemnation EP | How did I not buy this?! |
| 3 | M People | Moving On Up | No but my wife had the album |
| 4 | Shara Nelson | One Goodbye In Ten | See 3 above |
| 5 | Haddaway | Life | Never |
| 6 | Worlds Apart | Everlasting Love | As if |
| 7 | Belinda Carlisle | Big Scary Animal | Nope |
| 8 | Stakka Bo | Here We Go | Nah |
| 9 | Take That and Lulu | Relight My Fire | I did not |
| 10 | DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince | Boom! Shake The Room | 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/m001d7qt/top-of-the-pops-23091993
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 