There seems to have been a clear decision by Executive Producer Chris Cowey to big up the recent BRIT Awards for this show, presumably to promote a connection between TOTP and what was then a huge brand. Indeed, the BRITS was enjoying a massive media presence in the mid to late 90s with controversy after controversy occurring. 1996 saw the Jarvis Cocker/Michael Jackson incident whilst 1997 gave us Geri Halliwell’s iconic Union Jack dress and her wardrobe malfunction. 1998 delivered another huge moment when Chumbawamba’s Danbert Nobacon poured a jug of water over Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott who was in the audience. Cowey didn’t seem to what to distance himself from such behaviour though and so the first three acts on tonight’s show are all BRIT winners. Our host is Jo Whiley and we start with the person named the best British Female Solo Artist gong Shola Ama. In all honesty and with the greatest respect to those nominated, it wasn’t packed with stellar names that year (I’m possibly doing Lisa Stansfield a disservice here) but you can only beat who’s in front of you as the saying goes. I never really understood all the fuss about Shola who undoubtedly could sing pretty well but was that enough? The fact that her most famous hit was a cover version which was pretty faithful to the original also undermined her credibility for me. Still, here she was with the title track of her debut album which was her fourth hit on the trot. “Much Love” was a competent R&B/soul number but I would have thought that you might need somebody who had a little more to them than that to be declared ‘The Best’. Sorry Shola. Much love and all that.
Our next BRIT winner are Stereophonics who collected the award for Best British Breakthrough Act beating the likes of All Saints (themselves two times winners on the night) and my personal faves Embrace. The award was presented by Jo Whiley (and actor Max Beesley) so there’s a nice sense of continuity with her introducing them on this TOTP. After three Top 40 hits in 1997, a rerelease of their debut single to cash in on their BRIT award success was always likely and so “Local Boy In The Photograph” would become the band’s then highest charting song when it peaked at No 14 having initially stalled at No 51. A fan favourite to this day, you can hear why as this is a mighty tune. Perfectly showcasing Kelly Jones’s knack for creating vignettes of small town life – this one with a tragic twist chronicling the suicide of a teenager from his youth – it’s powerful guitar sound supplies a driving intensity that is the perfect complement to its lyrics. Jones’s capacity for storytelling shouldn’t have been a surprise as he had pursued a parallel career as a scriptwriter, even sending off some of his creations to the BBC who recognised his potential by paying him enough to purchase his first computer. However, music was always Jones’s first love and when the band were signed there was no turning back. Word had got around about the Stereophonics.
Oh this is just silly now and clearly a case of opportunism. Having won BRIT Awards for British Single and British Video of the year for “Never Ever”, Chris Cowey couldn’t resist sneaking in one final appearance of All Saints performing the ubiquitous track to further that link between TOTP and the BRITS. What number was this now? Nine? I’ve lost count and have certainly lost my words to say anything more about this one other than it’s so shoehorned into the running order here that it doesn’t get an intro from Whiley (and just the briefest of mentions in the outro) and it’s just a re-showing of one of those other eight or so previous performances. What a swizz!
That’s the BRITS winners done with and so we move onto another new(ish) guitar band that appeared in the post-Britpop era. Hurricane #1 had their origins in shoegaze outfit Ride whose Andy Bell (yes, that Andy Bell, the latterly Oasis bass player) was the driving force behind them. Similar to Stereophonics, they’d also had a trio of minor hits the previous year but would begin 1998 with their biggest hit to date. “Only The Strongest Will Survive” was the title track of their second album and is a nifty little tune that puts me in mind of another lost 90s band The Lemon Trees. It’s actually a softer sound than I remembered them as having – maybe their band name was playing tricks with my mind. As I recall, they were tipped for great things but it never quite happened for them (despite being signed to Creation) after said second album failed to sell in any meaningful way and the band split up. They did reform in 2014 without Bell and have been prolific in releasing new material with four albums made in just eight years. As for Bell, after being in Oasis for ten years he followed Liam Gallagher into Beady Eye before concentrating on a solo career and doing soundtrack work. Then came that announcement on 24 August 2024…
There seemed to be something going on with TOTP and male guitar bands this week. After Stereophonics and Hurricane # 1 earlier, here comes another one and it doesn’t stop with The Lilys either but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yes, you read that right – The Lilys and no, I don’t remember them either. Despite having been around since 1988 and having a list of past band members to rival The Fall and The Waterboys, this No 16 hit “A Nanny In Manhattan” seems to be their only 15 minutes of fame in nigh on 40 years.
Within the show’s predilection for guitar bands this week, there appears to be a sub genre which is ‘guitar bands who had a song used in an advert’. What am I talking about? Well, Hurricane # 1 had “Only The Strongest Will Survive” used in an ad campaign for The Sun newspaper and The Lilys were the 1998 recipients of the Levi’s Jeans advert golden chalice although it proved to be more of the poisoned variety. The Washington DC band must have thought that the good times had arrived when their song was chosen to soundtrack the latest Levi’s advert directed by Roman Coppola but they couldn’t replicate the success of the likes of Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Freak Power*.
*Did you notice Jo Whiley pull a face when she name checked those bands in her intro? This from the woman who would present a show on the musical significance of The Teletubbies if it kept her on TV!
Listening to “A Nanny In Manhattan”, I’m not surprised. What a racket! I know I’m a very middle aged man now but even 27 years ago I would have hated this if I’d been aware of it. Their Wikipedia page says that they earned a reputation for copying the styles of other artists down the years but I’m not sure who they were trying to sound like here. A shite version of The Strokes three years before they were a thing? Frontman Kurt Heasley seems to think he’s in The Byrds whilst the bass player has cultivated the type of facial hair that was last seen on Mr. Claypole in Rentaghost. I think I’d rather watch Dobbin the pantomime horse curl one out on stage. Gadzooks!
French electronic music was a bit of a thing around this time. First we had Daft Punk and before the end of the decade Cassius arrived. In between them came Air. The duo of Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin delivered their ‘Best Albums of the 90s’ list featuring “Moon Safari” collection three weeks before they’d even released a single from it which was surely the wrong way round in terms of promotion. Or maybe it wasn’t as “Sexy Boy” gave them a No 13 hit straight off the bat and what a classy track it was. All slinky rhythms and vocoder vocals, it brought sensual dance music to the charts. The problem here though was how to promote it as Dunckel and Godin, by their own admissions, weren’t classic pin up material (see box out below) but, in a bold move, they resisted the temptation to get some male models in to be the titular “sexy boys” and just fronted it out themselves with a pair of keyboards and a band of slacker dudes behind them. Bravo chaps!
“Moon Safari” would be a huge hit in the UK going double platinum with 600,000 sales (one of which was to my wife) whilst Air would enjoy a career of success, critical acclaim and longevity. How though, did I manage to think they were singing “sexy body” for years?
It’s time for that final male guitar band on the show and is it just me or is Jo Whiley’s intro to them a bit odd? She refers to The Bluetones as “one of our brightest hopes for ‘98”. What’s wrong with that you might ask? Well, on the one hand…nothing. Having been one of the breakout stars of 1996 with platinum selling, No 1 album “Expecting To Fly”, much would have been anticipated of their sophomore album “Return To The Last Chance Saloon”. And yet…the phrase “brightest hopes for…” suggests a brand new artist doesn’t it? Not one that is pretty well established already no? Well, semantics aside, sadly for the band, Jo’s hopes were dashed and their album title proved to be prophetic as it underperformed significantly compared to its predecessor and although lead single “Solomon Bites The Worm” would debut at No 10, it would be the last of their four consecutive Top 10 hits and indeed last ever. Although on first hearing it advances at you all robust and angular with that twangy guitar rift, it seems to be all posturing and no substance to me. There’s not much to it although Wikipedia informs me it is based upon the English nursery rhyme “Solomon Grundy” which reads:
Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
This is the end
Of Solomon GrundyJames Orchard Halliwell, 1842
“Solomon Bites The Worm” apes those words and structure about the cradle to the grave concept but to be honest, there’s another song that does that much better…
The Bluetones would release two more singles from the album to diminishing returns but would return in 2000 with perhaps their best song “Keep The Home Fires Burning” and are still a touring entity to this day.
Right, what on earth was going on here. Why was a song that had been in the charts solidly for three months including seven weeks in the Top 20 only just appearing on TOTP when it had peaked and was going down the charts? Seriously, what happened here? Was this actually the first time that Lutricia McNeal had been on the show? Why was she not on in late November/early December ‘97 when “Ain’t That Just The Way” debuted inside the Top 10? Even if Lutricia wasn’t available in person (it was a hit all over Europe so she may have been on promotional duties) why wasn’t the video shown? Explain yourself Chris Cowey!*
*I’m not counting the fact that it was used to soundtrack the Top 20 countdown for a minute or so one week
Anyway, “Ain’t That Just The Way” was originally a 1975 B-side to Barbi Benton’s single “The Reverend Bob” (and featured in an episode of TV series McCloud!) but it was reactivated by Lutricia two decades later to launch her solo career after being the singer with Swedish rap duo Rob’n’Raz. It transcends both the dance and pop markets with its beats and singalong chorus which might explain its wide appeal and ability to hang around the charts for so long. Or maybe I’m just talking crap. Lutricia will be back in the charts again in a few weeks with another hit “Stranded” which, like its predecessor, would also hang around for months. Wonder if Chris Cowey will allow that one on the show?
We have arrived at one of the biggest selling hits of the decade – “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion which, of course, was from the film Titanic. What to say about this monster hit? Well, it was a No 1 in just about every country in every territory and sold 18 million copies worldwide. It’s racked up 728 million streams in the US. It won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, four Grammys…like the song itself, it goes on and on. However, the comment I’d most like to make about it is that it’s dreadful. Awful. Horrible. The only saving grace in all these facts about its commercial success is that it wasn’t actually the best selling single of 1998 in the UK. That was…well, we’ll come to that in a future post. That and the fact that somehow it was only No 1 over here for two non-consecutive weeks although it did spend nine weeks on the trot inside the Top 3. And that’s all I’m saying about it at this time. Unlike Celine’s heart, I won’t go on.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Shola Ama | Much Love | Negative |
| 2 | Stereophonics | Local Boy In The Photograph | No but I had the album |
| 3 | All Saints | Never Ever | No |
| 4 | Hurricane #1 | Only The Strongest Will Survive | Nah |
| 5 | The Lilys | A Nanny In Manhattan | Hell no |
| 6 | Air | Sexy Boy | No but my wife had the album |
| 7 | The Bluetones | Solomon Bites The Worm | I did not |
| 8 | Lutricia McNeal | Ain’t That Just The Way | Nope |
| 9 | Celine Dion | My Heart Will Go On | 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/m002g805/top-of-the-pops-20021998?seriesId=unsliced
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 