There’s only three ‘new’ songs in this episode of TOTP so I’m going to have to try hard not to repeat myself in this post. Definitely not repeating himself is Gary Lineker who announced his retirement from playing football the day before this show aired. You never hear much about him these days do you? Ahem. Right, let’s get to it…
…and we start with what looks like a dance aerobics class. It’s actually a performance of “Rhythm Of The Night” by Corona but it involves an awful lot of kicks, knee lifts and lunges. I’m guessing the neon lights backdrop was to create a sense of night time/nightlife though I’m intrigued by the choice of the ‘Jazz Club’ one. Hardly seems in keeping with this Eurodance anthem does it? Louis Balfour would no doubt approve though.
Corona would have five more UK Top 40 hits including two inside the Top 10 but can anybody remember how any of them went? I’m willing to bet they sounded a lot like “Rhythm Of The Night” though.
With ex-EastEnder Sean Maguire having only just departed the charts after his recent hit single “Someone To Love” had turned him into a bona fide pop star, Michelle Gayle wasn’t waiting for a respectful amount of time to have passed before gatecrashing the charts herself faster than you can hum “doof, doof, de doof, doof, doof, doof”. Like Maguire, Michelle had left the soap from her role as Hattie Tavernier the previous Christmas but unlike Maguire, she’d already had a Top 40 hit a year earlier with debut single “Looking Up”. I’m not sure why her follow up “Sweetness” took so long to come out (EastEnders recording commitments maybe?) but it would prove worth the wait when it became her biggest hit peaking at No 4.
You could understand why. A breezy piece of R&B pop with a chorus that screamed ear worm, this was the peak of her music career. That’s not to say that she didn’t continue to have chart hits because she had another five though only one made the Top 10. “Sweetness” is surely her most well known track though. And let’s be fair, for an ex-EastEnder, its quality was maybe more than was expected – this was no “Anyone Can Fall In Love” or “Something Outa Nothing”. And yet Michelle, it seemed to me, never quite managed to shed her soap star past to the extent that people forgot about it and thought of her as a pop star first. Maybe the three years gap between albums didn’t help establish her credentials in the public consciousness? For whatever reason though, I have a soft spot for “Sweetness”, maybe because my wife liked it and that’s good enough for me.
Another ‘new’ song next though it has taken on a life of its own due to its origins. As with “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” before it, “Circle Of Life” was an Elton John composition for The Lion King film project and for me, was actually the better song. Maybe I’m biased as I’ve seen my son perform it as part of his musical theatre group live on stage but I think I’ve always had that opinion. So has Elton supposedly as he rarely plays “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in concert but “Circle Of Life” has become a staple of his live set. The Oscars committee didn’t agree with me and Elton though and awarded the gong for Best Original Song to “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in 1994 over “Circle Of Life”. I think the striking opening sung in Zulu helps to set it apart from its predecessor. If we’re talking about repeating ourselves though, surely there’s no more effective way of doing that than life within a circle?
So we’re back to the songs that have been on the show before with “We Are The Pigs” by Suede. However, somebody who hadn’t been on the show before was the band’s new guitarist Richard Oakes. With Bernard Butler having jumped ship a few weeks before, Oakes was drafted in as his replacement despite being only 17 at the time (he wasn’t 18 until 9 days after this TOTP aired) and that he’d been up against approximately 500 candidates for the job.
Now I think I might have a little personal insight into this story. I knew someone who was seeing Suede’s manager around this time and apparently Richard Oakes’ Mum was wanting quite a lot of input into her son’s career and this was becoming quite wearisome for said manager. To be fair to her, she was looking at the prospect of her 17 year old son plunging into the lifestyle of a famous indie rock band and all that entails so she was entitled to have some misgivings but apparently she was very forceful in getting her voice heard. Just to make us all feel ancient, I can reveal that Richard Oakes is now 46.
Incidentally, you don’t hear the word ‘swine’ used as an insult anymore do you? It was commonplace when my Dad was younger then I am now back in the 60s and 70s. Look at this for example:
It’s the last of the ‘new’ songs now and it’s by…Naomi Campbell?! The supermodel Naomi Campbell? I don’t remember this! When did this happen?! Well, September 1994 obviously but seriously, who remembers “Love And Tears”? You’re forgiven if you don’t as it only reached No 40 in the UK singles chart and the album it was taken from – “Baby Woman” – completely bombed over here. However, it was a huge success in Japan selling over one million copies there. The album was mocked and derided by our music press with its only legacy being the inspiration for the Naomi Awards, a parody of The Brit Awards; a musical equivalent of the Rotten Tomatoes employed by the film industry I guess. Run by music TV channel Music Choice, it named its award ceremony after Campbell whose contribution to the world of music were judged to be the gold standard for wretchedness. Seems a bit harsh. How bad was “Love And Tears” then?
*Watches TOTP performance*
Hmm. Well, my judgement would be that it’s as if AI had been around then and was asked to construct a soul/pop song and also to create one of the world’s most beautiful women to front it. There’s a bit of Kylie’s “Confide In Me” Eastern influences in the mix and is the melody reminiscent of “Proud” by Heather Small? It also kind of reminds me of the sound that would make All Saints famous a few years later but ultimately it’s a bit bland and without emotion. Coincidentally, the winner of the 2006 Worst British Solo Male Artist Naom Award was Lee Ryan of Blue who I’m pretty sure once recorded a track created by some song writing software as opposed to crafted by a person.
Campbell herself would cut a controversial figure in subsequent years with drug addiction problems, four convictions for assault and alleged contacts with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s all repeated songs from here on in starting with “Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)” by Cyndi Lauper.
Obviously a reworking of her debut hit from 1984, that original recording was actually inspired by another song. Here’s @TOTPFacts with the details:
Interesting. Not as interesting as this though. The sound that “Come On Eileen” was based around (and indeed the whole style of the “Too-Rye-Aye” era of Dexys) was pinched from the group that Kevin Rowland’s former band mate Kevin ‘Al’ Archer founded called Blue Ox Babes and this track “What Does Anybody Ever Think About” in particular:
It’s that Niagara Falls performance next by Bon Jovi. This was the definitive take on head producer Ric Blaxill’s vision for the live by satellite slot of taking artists out of empty concert halls and have them perform against landmark backdrops. As dramatic panoramas go, the crashing waters of Niagara Falls was hard to top. The darkness of the night time setting only added to the event. Big tick for Ric. “Always” was the single promoting the band’s first Best Of album “Cross Road” which would prove to be the biggest selling album of the year in the UK.
It’s not just a repeat but a three-peat for Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories and their hit “Stay (I Missed You)”. After being in a satellite segue the first time and then the official promo video second time around, Lisa has finally made it into the studio in person to complete a TOTP hat-trick. She always seemed to be in the same attire when on screen, that being black top, skirt and woolly tights. It put me in mind of Tanita Tikaram who wore similar outfits when making TV appearances early in her career. Maybe it was a thing with female singers with alliteration in their names – you might even say it was a “Good Tradition”. Ahem.
Whigfield remains at No 1 with “Saturday Night”. There was, of course, no chance of Wet Wet Wet mounting a fight back to reclaim the top spot as they had deleted “Love Is All Around” meaning no more copies were being pressed so there was no product to meet demand (even if it still existed). Unlike some dance tunes of the era, the person we saw performing the song did actually sing on the recording although Sannie Carlson admitted to not being that much of a singer and that they had to do over 20 takes at getting her vocals right and in the end had to splice the best bits together. Now that really is repeating yourself.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Corona | Rhythm Of The Night | No |
| 2 | Michelle Gayle | Sweetness | I did not |
| 3 | Elton John | Circle Of Life | Nah |
| 4 | Suede | We Are The Pigs | Negative |
| 5 | Naomi Campbell | Love And Tears | Never |
| 6 | Cyndi Lauper | Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun) | Nope |
| 7 | Bon Jovi | Always | Didn’t happen |
| 8 | Lisa Loeb And Nine Stories | Stay (I Missed You) | It’s a no from me |
| 9 | Whigfield | Saturday Night | 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/m001m15w/top-of-the-pops-22091994
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 