OK, we’re moving into a new era of TOTP with this particular edition. It’s taken a whole year but executive producer Ric Blaxill has finally turned his attention to the show’s logo, theme tune, titles and set. The much ridiculed ‘weather vane’ title graphics are gone and replaced by just seven seconds of some golden hued torsos indulging in vaguely musical activities involving a microphone and headphones and finally holding up a plaque with the new logo on it. It’s all very underwhelming. The logo itself was soft launched on the retro archive spin off show Top of the Pops 2 five months previously and is a much more basic design than its immediate predecessor with the ‘of’ and ‘the’ rather oddly highlighted within a blue box. As for the theme tune – “Red Hot Pop” composed by Erasure’s Vince Clarke – it’s main riff reminds me of something I can quite put my finger on…give me a moment…got it! The intro to “Rasputin” by Boney M! No really! It does! Blaxill hasn’t chucked everything out though. He’s retained the increasingly pointless artist to camera piece at the very top of the show (this week it’s Luther Vandross telling us Stingray like ‘not to go anywhere for the next half hour’) as well as the ‘golden mic’ presenter feature. As it’s a special week, he’s got a big name in to do the honours – it’s Kylie Minogue in a scorching hot, red latex dress! Blimey!

We hardly have time to take that image in before we’re into the first act though who are M People with “Open Your Heart”. This would turn out to be the band’s seventh in a run of eight consecutive Top 10 hits and was the second single release from their “Bizarre Fruit” album. Given those numbers, clearly the record buying public hadn’t had enough of the M People formula just yet though they were arguably teetering at the top of the hill named success and about to start coming down the other side.

“Open Your Heart” ticked all the usual boxes – perky backing, uplifting chorus, powerhouse Heather Small vocals, parping sax courtesy of Mike Pickering and yet I don’t remember this one at all which suggests to me that I, at least, was tiring of M People. Their next single release was “Search For The Hero” which would deviate from the template rather and remains one of their most well known tunes. Could it be that even the band themselves had got a little bored with their sound?

Ah, now then. It’s time for that weird period of 90s pop when there were a flurry of hits that were all based around a riff that went ‘nah, ne, ne, nah, ne, ne, ne, nah, ne’. This example comes from MN8 whose debut single “I’ve Got A Little Something For You” went all the way to No 2 and was the first of seven UK chart hits.

Off the top of my head there’s “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan which was a hit in the early Summer of 1995…

Then a year later the abysmal Peter Andre recycled the riff to score a No 1 no less (no really) with “Flava”…

There’s possibly more examples but anyway, back to MN8 who…erm…emanated from Surrey and comprised of KG, G-Man, Kule T and Dee Tails (I’ve no idea what there real names were but I bet they are along the lines of Kevin, Keith, Gordon and Dean). Coming on like Ultimate Kaos’ hormone filled, elder brothers (the six pack exposing strip in this performance was a bit gratuitous lads), this lot briefly threatened to be a big deal. Tour support slots with Boyzone, East 17 and even Janet Jackson only strengthened the notion. However, after their deal with Sony expired, the band concentrated on live shows and then took time out to decide what they wanted to do next. We weren’t talking a few weeks here though – the lads’ sabbatical is now at 25 years and counting. Apparently they did reconvene in 2013 to record an album that remains unreleased.

This inactivity hasn’t affected the band’s ego though. Also in 2013, G-Man declared in an interview on BBC1 Xtra of MN8’s legacy, “How are you going to write a story about the best acts of the past fifteen years and not mention us”. G-Man’s confidence clearly wasn’t matched by his ability to count – at the time of the interview, MN8 hadn’t released any new material for sixteen years. Ah.

Here’s another ‘Na-na-na-nah’ song and it’s a third outing on the show for the video for “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze next. Although there is an obvious emphasis on the word ‘Hotstepper’ given its appearance in the song’s title and chorus (it’s patois slang for someone on the run from the police), there’s also the reappearance later in the lyrics of a phrase that I only knew from Kris Kross and their 1992 hit “Jump”. I refer to ‘Mack Daddy’ (or is it ‘Daddy Mack’?). So what did this one mean? Well, apparently it’s another patois term and means ‘a conspicuously successful pimp’! Did Kris Kross’s parents know what they were rapping about?!

In the ocean of mainly sub standard dance tunes that was the UK Top 40 at this time, here’s a life buoy of a tune that I have a particular connection to. Scarlet were Cheryl Parker and Jo Youle who met at Wolfreton school in Hull. Now Hull, of course, is where I have been living for the past twenty years but that’s not the connection I was talking about (obvious though it is). No, it’s that my wife (who is also from Hull)…no, she doesn’t know Cheryl or Jo (that really would be obvious)…no, it’s that my wife had heard of them well before “Independent Love Song” was a hit.

I’m not sure where but she’d heard one of their early singles released on indie label Haven Records “Shine On Me Now” and liked it so much she asked me to try and find out about it/them what with me working in a record shop and all. Clearly my research skills weren’t up to the job as we don’t own that single. However, I did try honest. Look, here’s the note that I made of it in my Filofax (yes, I had one!).

Anyway, three years later, Scarlet were signed to WEA and their second major label single release (the first was “I Really Like The Idea” recorded with third member Joanne Fox who left before success hit) propelled them into the charts. And what a song! It swoops and soars, ebbs and flows and has an epic chorus. It stood out like a firework against the dark night sky to me. It really should have got higher up the charts than No 12. In fact, Scarlet should have had a much bigger career but they only had one more chart hit after “Independent Love Song” – the follow up single “I Wanna Be Free (To Be With Him)” which made it to No 21. They released two albums “Naked” and “Chemistry” – the former made No 59 whilst the latter disappeared without trace. Jo Youle is now chief executive of Missing Persons, a charity that gives support to those searching for lost loved ones whilst Cheryl Parker started SongwritersWorldwide, a website for new acts to find songs.

By the way, I finally found “Shine On Me Now” (if only YouTube had been around back then). A version of it appeared on “Naked” retitled as just “Shine”.

It’s time for Luther Vandross now who, as previously mentioned, did the message to camera piece at the top of the show earlier. He’s here to perform the latest single from his covers project “Songs” which had been a No 1 album and had already given him a Top 3 single courtesy of his duet with Mariah Carey on “Endless Love”. The track chosen as the follow up was “Always And Forever”. Nothing to do with the debut album of last week’s hosts Eternal* but a hit for Heatwave in 1977.

*The Eternal fall out story broke just after I’d published hence why I didn’t comment on it in the post

It’s a bit of a dirge to be fair and Luther’s straight down the middle version doesn’t do anything to alter my opinion. It was written by Rod Temperton who hailed from Cleethorpes (just down the East coast from Hull) who also wrote “Thriller”, “Off The Wall” and “Rock With You” for Michael Jackson! However, for me his masterpiece remains Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” which has one of the best intros ever…

I’ve been critical in the past of the live by satellite exclusive performances that TOTP promoted going all the way back to the 1991 ‘year zero’ reboot I believe. My main issue with them was that there wasn’t anything very…well…‘exclusive’ about them with the majority being filmed in empty theatres and concert venues (presumably in the middle of the night due to time differences) that could have been from anywhere and were certainly no better than a turn in the TOTP studio. I get that it was a way for the artist to appear on the show if they couldn’t be there in person due to touring or promotional commitments but surely these satellite slots weren’t even as good as an expensively produced video were they?

Well, I can’t accuse this particular satellite performance of being anaemic but I’m not sure it’s entertaining either. It’s just…well, bonkers. Beaming in from Japan, are REM performing “Crushed By Eyeliner” on a stage along with a crowd of extras some of whom are dancing on a podium. Having watched the official promo video, perhaps they are trying to recreate it on stage. Perhaps. But the three stooges in bear costumes?! What the f**k was that about? It all just smacks a bit of “look at us being so zany and subverting the mainstream”; so much so that rather than promote the single, it distracts from it. Still, Blaxill didn’t miss the chance to promote the TOTP brand by emblazoning the new logo on the arse of one of the bears!

“Crushed By Eyeliner” was the third single from the band’s “Monster” album and it was probably the last one of theirs that I took any real notice of. I kind of lost sight of REM after this. Their final two albums of the 90s – “New Adventures In Hi-Fi” and “Up” – passed me by completely. This track is still a winner though and its No 23 peak probably doesn’t do it justice.

“How many of you remember the original?” asks Kylie and the end of this next track. Me Kylie! Me! And it was better than this bastardised version! Back in 1982, Pigbag went all the way to No 3 with “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag”, an instrumental with a genuinely once heard never forgotten brass riff. The success and legacy of the track (its distinctive refrain was even adopted as a football terrace chant especially by QPR fans) meant though that Pigbag became one of those artists where the song became bigger than the band. In fairness, they did their best to make sure that fate didn’t become them when they pushed their post punk anarchist agenda by being escorted out of the TOTP studio after one of the band performed steaming drunk on a live show and swore at a BBC producer after the cameras stopped rolling. Pigbag split in 1983 but their hit refused to go away.

Fast forward to 1995 and here it is again remodelled by Perfecto Allstarz as “Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)”. Whereas Pigbag struggled to be known as a band and not a song, Perfecto Allstarz weren’t a band at all but rather a vehicle for Paul Oakenfold and his Perfecto brand. The trance DJ and record producer would dominate the 90s dance world and work with everyone from Moby to The Rolling Stones via his Perfecto remix team and record label. His remix of U2’s “Even Better Than The Real Thing” was the first time I heard the name Perfecto and a fine remix it was too. “Reach Up” though was awful. The original was a classic that I would argue couldn’t be improved upon and certainly not by adding a strangulated house style vocal imploring us to ‘Reach Up’ to it. And what was with the skeleton costumes? Maybe Blaxill had watched Live And Let Die that week and run with the idea…

I feel as if I should make more of a big deal of Celine Dion finally making it to No 1 with “Think Twice” after twelve weeks on the Top 40 including three consecutive at No 2 but seeing as it’s going to be the UK’s chart topper for the six more after this, I can’t really be bothered.

OK, this is new (sort of). Instead of playing out with the No 1 record we’ve got a preview of a new song that wasn’t even released until the Monday following this broadcast. Annie Lennox (or Annie Lenn-ox as Kylie curiously pronounces her surname) had been away from the charts for two years since the runaway success of her debut solo album “Diva” and with no sign of Eurythmics getting back together she moved onto a follow up. Nothing out of the ordinary there except that as her sophomore effort, she chose to record a set of cover versions. Wasn’t that the sort of thing an artist would do to fulfil a contractual obligation with a record company? Whatever reason was behind the decision, Annie chose to cover songs from the likes of Paul Simon, Bob Marley, Neil Young and, in an act of musical heresy, The Clash. Entitled “Medusa”, it received mixed reviews in the music press though just about everyone agreed that the lead single was actually rather good. Given the stellar names of the other artists whose work Annie covered, the choice of taking on obscure 80s act The Lover Speaks was straight out of left field. Or was it? The Lover Speaks were the duo David Freeman and Joseph Hughes who sent a demo tape to Dave Stewart of Eurythmics who signed them to his publishing house. He sent their demo to Chryssie Hynde who sent it to producer Jimmy Iovine who got them signed to A&M. You don’t even need all six steps of separation to draw a line back to Annie.

Now then, back in the Summer of 1986, big things were being predicted for The Lover Speaks. They were being touted as The Walker Brothers of the 80s and their debut single “No More ‘I Love You’s’” was attracting lots of airplay. I think I first heard it on the Gary Davies show on Radio 1 as he seemed to play it everyday and what a glorious thing it was. My friend Robin described it as “a poppy Cocteau Twins” and I think he’s spot on. A shimmering diamond of a song that was full of melody and drama that pulled at your heartstrings every time you heard it (well, mine at least). I was so impressed I bought their album but in truth, a bit like Annie’s “Medusa”, nothing else on it matched its quality. As with many a single that I adored in the 80s though, “No More ‘I Love You’s’” didn’t even make the Top 40 peaking at No 58.

Given all of this, despite Annie’s version not being anything near as good as the original, I was pleased when it became a huge hit peaking at No 2. A song that good deserved to be heard by a wider audience. I’d had similar thoughts back in 1987 when Alison Moyet released a very poor version of “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty”, a wonderful song which was originally released by Floy Joy also in 1986 and which also failed to become the huge hit it deserved to be when it peaked at a lowly No 85. And guess what? It turns out that The Lover Speaks collaborated with Alison on her album “Raindancing” from which “Weak In The Presence Of Beauty” came. Kevin Bacon’s got nothing on The Lover Speaks!

Now, as I recall, there was quite a bit of reaction to Annie’s performance on this TOTP but then I guess that’s what she wanted. I mean, you don’t take to the stage with four drag queen ballerinas by accident do you? Annie herself though is rather out there as well. The extravagant headwear that made her look like Minnie Mouse and the weird performing as if under duress when being buffeted by the ballerinas towards the end? All very strange but at least it made for a memorable appearance.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	M People	Open Your Heart	No
2	MN8	I’ve Got A Little Something For You	As if
3	Ini Kamoze	Here Comes The Hotstepper	No but I think my wife did
4	Scarlet	Independent Love Song	Call the fuzz! Where’s my copy of this gone?!
5	Luther Vandross	Always And Forever	Nope
6	REM	Crushed By Eyeliner	Nah
7	Perfecto Allstarz	Reach Up (Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag)	NO!
8	Celine Dion	Think Twice	I did not
9	Annie Lennox	No More ‘I Love You’s’	No but I had The Lover Speaks album with the original on

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/m001qp2q/top-of-the-pops-02021995