Who the heck is / was Beertje Van Beers? Why? Because she’s hosting this TOTP and I, for one, haven’t a clue as to why. Hang on, she’s not the singer with Technohead of “I Wanna Be A Hippy” fame is she?

*checks internet*

No, I don’t think so. I’ll have to do some more research.

*checks internet again*

Well, it seems I wasn’t the only person confused but inevitably someone had the answer…

Here's why. pic.twitter.com/99IkVj3W6V

— Andrew ✈ (@ker_fuffle) June 21, 2024

Right so basically she was Bis in presenter form? Anyway, the first artist tonight are The Wildhearts who were a favourite of TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill according to the tweet above which seems to accuse him of employing some favouritism when it came to the running order. Is that fair? Well, let’s look at the evidence. The Wildhearts were no strangers to the charts having had five UK Top 40 hits to this point though only one had made it into the Top 20. This single – “Sick Of Drugs” – would become their biggest when it peaked at No 14 so they were on an upwards trajectory which would add weight to the claim that a place on TOTP was justified. The counter argument would be that those chart positions were inflated by the band being shoe horned onto the show and benefiting from the exposure. Where lies the truth? I think I’ll leave (literally) the final word on this to the band’s lead singer Ginger who says at the end of the performance “If you wanna hear the rest of the song go and buy the single”. The full track clocks in at 4:43 in length but this TOTP performance is about 2:30 long. I think Ginger’s frustration at being cut short suggests the band were not in receipt of preferential treatment from Ric Blaxill.

Now to another artist who wasn’t revelling in huge hit singles. However, she was positively ripping it up when it came to albums sales. Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” had been in UK charts since August of 1995. However, it didn’t make it into the Top 10 until January of the following year. That slow burn was possibly due to the fact that it hadn’t furnished any massive hits with the three singles taken from it up to that point having peaked at Nos 22, 24 and 26. Respectable but not the kind of numbers to propel an album into the stratosphere. However, playing the long game would prove to be a much more successful strategy ultimately. Word of mouth promotion and an organic growth of the album would see it spend 41 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 once it had got there with 11 of them at No 1. This was quite the phenomenon. Compare that to say Babylon Zoo’s album which crashed into the chart at No 6 off the back of the enormous “Spaceman” single but which was out of the Top 40 within a month, never to be seen again. With sales of “Jagged Little Pill” showing no signs of tailing off, a fourth single was released from it and this one would not only be the second highest charting of the six ultimately take from it but also the most infamous of them.

“Ironic” is a great tune based around a simple yet effective narrative but unfortunately for Alanis, her choice of title for the song didn’t match what she was singing about. Much cultural analysis has gone into dissecting the lyrics of “Ironic” and pointing out that the scenarios depicted in the song are not examples of irony but rather just bad luck. Such criticism opened the song up to parody, the king of which, “Weird Al” Yankovic, was always going to join in the pile on which he duly did with his song “Word Crimes”. Perhaps the most famous take down of it though came courtesy of Irish comedian Ed Byrne:

Ed made a career for himself out of that skit! Had we all noticed the irony of a lack of irony in a song about irony back in 1996 though? If we did, I don’t remember it. That Ed Byrne clip came from a Channel 4 show broadcast in 1999. In fairness to Alanis, she took it all on the chin and even extracted the piss out of herself in this updated performance of the song on The Late Late Show With James Corden in 2015:

Time to check in on how Bertje Van Beers doing as host? Well, she’s enthusiastic, I’ll give her that. Perhaps ever so slightly the wrong side of annoying? Maybe. Her next link is for a live by satellite performance by Presidents Of The United States Of America and their biggest hit “Peaches”. This is a great left field song which, like “Ironic” before it, created a bit of discussion about its lyrics. Unlike “Ironic”, said discussion was of a much baser nature. Now I just thought this was a quirky song about a guy who liked to eat peaches. However, there is a school of thought that it’s actually about eating something altogether different. I’ll say no more than that.

Lead singer Chris Ballew though says it was inspired by overhearing a homeless man walk past him muttering “I’m moving to the country, I’m gonna eat a lot of peaches” over and over. Apparently that line could have been inspired by a song by John Prine called “Spanish Pipedream”…

Blow up your TV, throw away your paper

Go to the country, build you a home

Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches

Try an’ find Jesus on your own

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Jeffrey Bradford Kent / John Prine
Spanish Pipedream lyrics © Walden Music, Inc.

So there’s that but there’s also a second part to the inspiration for the song also from Ballew who recounts going to the house of a girl he fancied whilst under the influence of recreational drugs, finding her not at home and so waiting for her sat under a peach tree, having an hallucinogenic experience whilst crushing fallen peaches in his hands. I think I’ll choose to go with Ballew’s story as to what the song’s about. Not everyone agrees though. Here’s Captain D from Cincinnati on the Songfacts.com website:

I’m a pervert so I thought it was sexual too

Well, I guess the Captain is honest at least. The Presidents Of The USA would have two more UK hits before disbanding in 1997. “Peaches” remains their signature hit though. Such was its renown that it even permeated our culture to the point that the character of Hank from King Of The Hill knew it:

Everything But The Girl have finally moved on from “Missing” after it stayed in the charts for six months but they weren’t leaving their new direction behind them. “Walking Wounded” (both the single and album) saw the duo continue to embrace dance beats and in particular those of a drum and bass variety that were ripping up the nation’s dance floors and starting to enter the mainstream. Whilst their repositioning of themselves as a dance act no doubt won them some new admirers, I wasn’t one of them. I’d grown up with the Ben and Tracey era of “Each And Everyone” and the wonderful “Baby, The Stars Shine Bright” album, not this electronica, trip-hop material. I just couldn’t get into it. Sure, I could appreciate “Missing” for its musicality that could see it be effective as both an acoustic ballad and dance anthem but did I want to hear an Everything But The Girl album that went further than that? No thanks. The record buying public disagreed with me of course sending the album to No 4 and a platinum certification selling three times as many copies as predecessor “Amplified Heart”. However, it could be argued that this new direction only brought short term gains. Follow up album “Temperamental” continued the dance experiment but received a lukewarm reception and sales. Appearing in 1999, it would be the last Everything But The Girl album for nearly a quarter of a decade with the band’s output becoming mired in a haze of Best Of compilations and collections. Their legacy deserved better.

After a terrible decade so far in terms of his legal battle with Sony over the fairness of his recording contract, 1996 was turning out to be a splendid year for George Michael. Sure, he’d had two No 1s (a duet with Elton John and his version of “Somebody To Love” from The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert) but he lost that litigation with the court wholly rejecting his claims of restraint of trade. However, when Sony sold his contract to Virgin in 1995, he was able to resume his career and he did so in some style. “Jesus To A Child” gave him his first truly solo UK No 1 since 1986’s “A Different Corner” and he followed it with a second chart topper in “Fastlove”. Based around an interpolation of Patrice Rushen’s 1982 hit “Forget Me Nots”, it was a stark contrast from the haunting balladry of its predecessor, a funk-based number celebrating one night stands over committed relationships. The track had a very sophisticated, highly polished production sound to it with the saxophone part played by Andy Hamilton who was responsible for the memorable saxophone break in Duran Duran’s “Rio”. Somehow, the BBC censors missed George singing the line “all that bullshit conversation” at the start of the song.

The B-side was a funked up but slowed down version of “I’m Your Man” showing that George hadn’t totally turned his back on his rich pop past. Although it’s hard to beat the effervescence of the Wham! original, the ‘96 remake is definitely worth a listen:

The song’s futuristic video gave George the opportunity to have a dig at Sony re: the aforementioned court case with one of the promo’s dancers wearing a set of headphones displaying the word ‘FONY’ in the style of the Sony corporate logo. That didn’t stop it from being nominated for three MTV Music Video Awards winning the one for International Viewer’ Choice. Watching it back now, it seems to draw inspiration from the film Logan’s Run, in particular the scene where Logan meets Jessica on ‘the circuit’, the tinder of 2274:

As with a few artists, I kind of lost touch with The Cranberries after a while. I’d enjoyed their early hits and had been to see them live in October of 1994 I think but by 1996, they’d definitely slipped off my radar. “Salvation” was the lead single from their third album “To The Faithful Departed” and was definitely more in the vein of “Zombie” than “Linger”. It would become their joint biggest hit when it peaked at No 13 which seems an awfully low bar for a band that turned out a few cracking hits. I guess they were more of an albums band?

Featuring Dolores O’Riordan stomping all over the track with a strident vocal and almost shouted chorus, “Salvation” was seen as an anti-drug song though Dolores herself described it more as anti anything that took control of you. Sadly for her, she was unable to live by the lyrics of her song and was found dead in 2018 in a hotel room in Mayfair, London with the inquest ruling that she had died by accidental drowning following sedation by alcoholic intoxication.

Here’s something unusual – a controversial Michael Jackson single. I jest of course. Jacko’s whole life (and death) was surrounded by controversy. However, “They Don’t Care About Us” was certainly up there for generating a storm of headlines. The fourth single taken from the “HIStory: Past, Present And Future, Book 1” album, it attracted unwanted (by Jackson) attention both for its lyrics and video. The former were accused of being anti-Semitic with its use of the phrases “Jew me” and “Kike me” which Jackson strenuously denied and, indeed, agreed to re-record the track for subsequent copies of the album with the offending phrases replaced with “sue me” and “strike me”. In the end though, they were just covered up with some abstract noises – you can hear said sounds in the video shown on this TOTP.

The video was filmed in a favela or ghetto in Rio de Janeiro and caused concern for their Secretary of State for Industry, Commerce and Tourism who was worried showing the poverty in the area would adversely affect tourism and Rio’s bid to host the 2004 Olympics. A judge banned the filming of the video but a counter injunction saw it go ahead. Some supported Jackson’s claim of highlighting the poverty in the area whilst others criticised his production team for negotiating with local drug dealers for permission to film in the favela. It’s interesting to note that we only get about 2:20 of the video shown here where in the past TOTP have devoted huge sections of their half hour to showcasing a Jacko exclusive. Could they have been put off by the negative press? As for the song itself, its samba beat and chant like chorus actually make it stand out for me within Jackson’s catalogue – was the “hooo-aaargh” shout halfway through the song and attempted by Beerjte Van Beers in her intro the impetus for Leigh Francis to choose Jackson for one of his outlandish Bo’ Selecta! characters?

The caption accompanying this performance by The Cure says that they haven’t been on TOTP since April 1990. That can’t be right can it? They’d had five Top 40 hits since then. Didn’t any of those justify an appearance on the show? Anyway, “The 13th” was the lead single from the “Wild Mood Swings” album and well, I’m sorry but it’s awful. The Cure do Mariachi? No thanks.

The album was not well received by fans or the music press and it was the band’s poorest selling for 12 years. Even Robert Smith himself has said that he was disappointed with it – maybe he should have taken more heed of the lyric he sang in “The 13th” of “I just know this is a big mistake”. I recall that we didn’t sell many at all in the Our Price where I was working at the time. Though they would never regain their commercial edge, the band are still together and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 which gave us this marvellous Robert Smith moment…

Mark Morrison has completed his slow slither up to the No 1 position with “Return Of The Mack”. It’s taken six weeks to get there which was an eternity in 1996 when we were used to singles debuting in the top spot in week one. True to his dubious character, he sidles up to Beertje Van Beers at the end of his performance and drags her away with him as the credits roll. Maybe this was cooked up between the pair of them pre-show but even if it was, it looks terrible especially through 2024 eyes.

For the first time in a while, we have a play out video of a current chart hit rather than a clip from the archives to promote TOTP2. In this case, we get a football song but not that one. Yes, in 1996 if your single about the beautiful game wasn’t called “Three Lions” then it was destined to be forgotten. Who remembers “Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)” by The 1996 Manchester United FA Cup Squad? Well, you might if you’re a United fan I guess but when it’s not as memorable as the odious “Come On You Reds” from 1994, then you know the game is up. For the record, it was a horrible Reel 2 Real facsimile which is never a good thing.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wildhearts	Sick Of Drugs	Negative
2	Alanis Morissette	Ironic	No but I had the Jagged Little Pill album
3	Presidents Of The United States Of America	Peaches	No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
4	Everything But The Girl	Walking Wounded	Didn’t happen
5	George Michael	Fastlove	Nope
6	The Cranberries	Salvation	It’s a no from me
7	Michael Jackson	They Don’t Care About Us	I did not
8	The Cure	The 13th	Nah
9	Mark Morrison	Return Of The Mack	No
10	The 1996 Manchester United FA Cup Squad	Move Move Move (The Red Tribe)	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/m0020crt/top-of-the-pops-18041996?seriesId=unsliced