Constantly writing reviews of these BBC4 repeats of TOTP for the past eight years has been quite a drain on the old creative juices. I mean, nobody would be interested in a list of songs with me denoting whether I liked them or not would they? I try to give each show some context about what else was happening in the world at the time of its broadcast or perhaps something from my own personal life (if I can remember!). On other occasions, I’ll try and hang the whole past around a theme (however tenuous it might be). Sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it can feel like I’m shoehorning stuff in that really has no place being there. And sometimes…well, sometimes everything just sort of dovetails together by delightful happenstance. This post is one of those. This is how it unfolds. The day after this TOTP aired, a brand new BBC sit com aired called Unfinished Business. Now, I never watched this nor have I even any memory of it but having read its Wikipedia entry, it didn’t sound like it was a laugh-fest. Anyway, what’s that got to do with TOTP? Well, apart from both shows being on the BBC and being broadcast within a day of each other, nothing. Except…our host tonight is Jamie Theakston who I was delighted to find out (when I was looking for a theme for this post) has presented a reality show on Netflix called Cheat: Unfinished Business with Amanda Holden. Is that it I hear you ask? No, one of the artists on this TOTP released an album in 1998 which was called “Unfinished Monkey Business”. And there’s more. The band who had the No 1 record this week, I would argue, are a perfect example of having unfinished business but more of that later.

We begin with half man, half washboard Peter Andre who I’m amazed to find was still having hits as late as 1998. “All Night, All Right”, as Jamie Theakston says, was based around a sample of 1978 hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie” which is familiar from my youth but if I’d been pushed to name who it was by, I would have come up with Earth, Wind & Fire rather than the correct answer of A Taste Of Honey. None of this affects the truth that Andre should have given up on his pop star notions long since. He did after one more hit in the 90s for a whole six years but, deciding he had unfinished business with the charts, relaunched himself after appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with the wretched “Insania”.

According to Wikipedia, “All Night, All Right” was a collaboration with Coolio on the album version of the track but with Warren G on the single release. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no sign of either rapper in this performance. What gives?*

*Oh, there’s Warren G! Two places below Andre at No 18 in the charts with “Prince Igor”!

It’s a hat-trick of consecutive appearances for the Lighthouse Family! Yes, the duo (they were a duo despite it all being about singer Tunde Baiyewu) have been on every TOTP of this new year so far with their hit “High”. In an attempt to keep things fresh though, executive producer Chris Cowey has come up with the idea of a stripped back, acoustic performance (witness Robbie Williams doing the same last week on his own third time on the show doing “Angels”). It was a decent shout I guess but maybe the better solution would have been to not have the same songs on every week? Certainly the TOTP community seemed to have had enough of this one judging by their online comments or were said comments triggered by who the artist was rather than how many times they’d been on the show? The usual accusations of being ‘bland’ and ‘vacuous’ were made – an almost obligatory event when discussing the Lighthouse Family it seems. I have to say that I certainly wasn’t a fan but would I have gone as far as to call them the Shitehouse Family? I don’t think so (even though I just did).

We have reached, what is for me, the point of peak Radiohead also known as the moment before they disappeared up their own arses musically speaking. If you are a Radiohead devotee and that offends you then I refer you to my disclaimer at the bottom of this post. Let’s not dwell on the negative though – “No Surprises” is possibly one of the most affecting songs on its first hearing you could ever imagine. Not many* tracks have that inherent emotive power that stirs something within you immediately but that’s how it was for me.

*And certainly not many featuring a glockenspiel!

The third single taken from the “OK Computer” album, it would also be the band’s final commercial release of the 90s and what a way to end their decade. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I couldn’t follow their musical path from this point onwards – I’d already drawn a line under my interest in them subconsciously prompted by the arrival of the new millennium.

Anyway, “No Surprises” was just magnificent – a simple lullaby on the one hand the melody of which was at complete odds with its lyrics that were a caustic indictment of modern life. It had a sense of distress about it, as if it was recorded under duress. Both these extremes of the song were portrayed visually. The lullaby narrative was turned into comedy gold by this scene from The Royle Family…

When “no surprises” by @radiohead plays on @XSManchester it reminds me of this from the royle family 💙 pic.twitter.com/yGpn0hExgp

— RACH / ♡ 🐝 (@rach_griff) December 30, 2019

Meanwhile, that theme of duress was captured by its striking video. Directed by Grant Gee, it depicted Thom Yorke in an astronaut type helmet that slowly filled with water as he sang the song’s lyrics that scrolled upwards, reflected in the helmet. Yorke has to lift his head above the water level to sing until he is fully submerged and then stays motionless for over a minute before the water is released and he completes the song. It was genuinely unnerving and took multiple takes before Yorke could complete it to everyone’s satisfaction.

Apparently, Gee was influenced in his vision for the video by the old Gerry Anderson science-fiction series UFO which featured aliens whose spacesuits had a helmet that was filled with a green liquid that they breathed rather than oxygen. That show scared the crap out of me as a very young kid.

As I write this, it’s Glastonbury weekend of which I’ve watched the following artists:

• Shed Seven – not bad but Rick Witter introducing them as a 90s band rather dates them
• Alanis Morissette – good vocal but she was clearly very nervous
• The 1975 – just insufferable
• Pulp – reliably excellent
• Noah Kahan – a favourite of my teenage son and fast becoming one of mine too
• Olivia Rodrigo – better than expected

However, I don’t think anything I’ve seen this weekend can rival Radiohead’s 1997 Glastonbury set which featured “No Surprises”…

Now, here’s some business that is definitely being finished – the dreadful business of OTT that is, who are on to their final UK chart hit and I’m guessing (please!) their last ever TOTP appearance. Their valedictory song is – surprise, surprise – not another cover version but a serviceable pop ditty aimed squarely at capturing the hearts of teenage girls across the land called “The Story Of Love”. Two of their previous three hits had been with other people’s material but this one could easily have been a Boyzone single. Well, they did seem to be copying their fellow Irish lads at every turn so I guess it makes sense to have a hit that was indiscernible from one of theirs. OTT really were second rate in the boy band stakes though. Apparently Asia went mad for them but over here, they never once even made the Top 10. The story of love? Nah, this was more a tale of tosh. Utter guff. OTT were over and OUT!

And now to that artist whose album featured the words ‘unfinished business’ in its title. Since the messy demise of the Stone Roses in 1996, we’d seen John Squire rise from the ashes with The Seahorses, Mani join Primal Scream and not much else. Suddenly though, frontman Ian Brown was back and throwing his hat into the solo career ring. His debut album was titled “Unfinished Monkey Business” and its lead single was “My Star”. Basically a Brown tirade against the expenditure on and reasoning behind the space race, the Mission Control type voices and sound effects put me in mind not of space exploration though but of CB Radios and trucking and that song “Convoy” from the mid 70s by C.W. McCall. Funny how the mind works isn’t it? I recall quite liking this at the time but on reflection, there doesn’t seem to be much to it other than more than a passing resemblance to this rather good track by The Jam…

Anyway, I guess we’d better address the elephant in the room…what was going on with all those eggs?! There’s a man playing a set of them like they’re a percussion instrument and then Brown himself lobs some at the image of him at the back of the stage. The only explanation I can find is that Brown wanted an organic sound effect for the production on the track and so the sound of an egg being cracked into a frying pan was inserted into the mix. Truth or myth? Who knows? What I do know is that it was quite the comeback given the place Brown found himself in after the Roses imploded after a catastrophic performance at Glastonbury in 1996. It was the very antithesis of the aforementioned appearance by Radiohead at the festival a year later. Having said that, given his ex-band’s fanbase, perhaps a hit was almost guaranteed regardless of its quality but its lo-fi sound had some appeal I guess. It was certainly a far cry from the huge expense of the production on the last Stone Roses album “Second Coming” – apparently Brown financed the recording of “Unfinished Monkey Business” himself and it was partly recorded at his home studio.

Looking at Brown’s discography, I’m slightly taken aback at how many hits he’s had under his own steam although he was part of the reformed classic Stone Roses line up in 2011 proving that the four members had some unfinished business with each other. Said business seems to have finally been dealt with as in September 2019, John Squire confirmed in an interview with The Guardian that the Stone Roses had disbanded.

It’s the world’s favourite boy band according to host Jamie Theakston next – Backstreet Boys. Oh dear Lord. I’m not sure I have anything nor want to say anything about this lot at this juncture. They were just so dull and grim. Look, here are the facts…”All I Have To Give” was their eighth consecutive UK hit of which six went Top 5. It was another wimpy ballad that was written and produced by Full Force who collaborated with Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam back in 1985 on “I Wonder If I Take You Home” (I’m sure they’re famous for much more but that’s all I know of them). Apparently the track allowed Backstreet Boy Howie D to do some lead vocals as his voice wasn’t suited to the more pop orientated hits they’d had up to this point. I wonder if Howie had threatened to take his ball home if he wasn’t given his chance? OK, enough of this! My puns are almost as bad as their song!

Oasis are No 1 with “All Around The World” and just like Radiohead before them, this would be their last release of the 90s. Also like Radiohead, it could be seen as a watershed moment. Not only was it the final release on Creation before the label folded but was the last to feature original members Bonehead and Guigsy. This week there’s another intro courtesy of Noel explaining that the band are still in America touring so we get the video rather than a studio appearance. If anyone was in any doubt as to the influence of The Beatles on Oasis and Noel in particular then one watch of this promo surely resolved that. The Yellow Submarine vibe is not so much prevalent as a direct steal.

Now, as fortune would have it, I write this as we enter the week of the first Oasis reunion gigs – yes, the much heralded concerts are nearly here and it will be interesting to see/hear what shape the band are in after sixteen years away. After all the hype, anticipation and negative publicity surrounding dynamic ticket pricing, it’s surely the music that matters right? Well, there is no new music of course – the much speculated and indeed leaked set list won’t have anything we haven’t heard before in it but is that what the hordes would have wanted anyway? I’m not part of the horde by the way. I didn’t feel the need to spend hours virtually queuing for tickets – I saw them in 1996 when they played Maine Road, Manchester when they were at the height of their powers and popularity and felt no pull to revisit the band nearly 30 years later. The band (or more pertinently Noel) clearly don’t feel the same and so we get to the ‘unfinished business’ bit. The reasons behind the Oasis reunion tour have been widely speculated. Did Noel and Liam genuinely want to rebuild their tattered relationship? Was it all about nostalgia and reliving that feeling of when the band could do no wrong? Or is it purely about the money? I think I’m plumping for the last option.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Peter Andre	All Night, All Right	As if
2	Lighthouse Family	High	No
3	Radiohead	No Surprises	No but I had OK Computer
4	OTT	The Story Of Love	Nah
5	Ian Brown	My Star	Nope
6	Backstreet Boys	All I Have To Give	Never
7	Oasis	All Around The World	No but I had a promo of the Be Here Now album

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/m002dt1y/top-of-the-pops-23011998?seriesId=unsliced