We’ve got through the October TOTP repeats and the end of the year is finally appearing upon the horizon and not a moment too soon – 1998 has been a real slog. Our host is Kate Thornton who seems to have styled her hair on Billie’s barnet but more of her later. We start though with Alanis Morissette whose video for her hit “Thank U” we saw on the previous show. There was no way the BBC would have let her recreate her look from that promo what with her being naked and all so she’s gone for pigtails and…well…clothes for this appearance. I have to say that her song’s lyrics includes some of the most eloquent words ever to appear in a hit record. Look at these:
- Disillusionment
- Frailty
- Consequence
- Masochistic
- Divinity
- Unabashedly
However, my favourite lyric is “transparent dangling carrots” which could also be a description of those pigtails of hers. However, she then spoils it all by wailing the following in the outro…
Yeah, yeah
Oh, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh
Yeah, oh, oh, whoa
Yeah, no, oh, ohNo, oh, oh, oh
No, oh, no, oh
No, oh, no, no
No, oh
No, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh
OohSource: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Glen Ballard / Alanis Nadine Morissette
Thank U lyrics © Universal Music Corp., 1974 Music, Arlovol Music
Oh. And indeed no. Or yeah.
Ah, it’s the aforementioned Billie and she does indeed have hair that looks like Kate Thornton’s or is it the other way around? Billie is here to perform her former No 1 single “Girlfriend” and when I say former I mean literally about a month ago. So why is she back on the show now that she’s at No 10 in the charts? I can only assume it’s because her single has remained at No 10 for two consecutive weeks. “Do you have a minute?” Billie sings. No, not really. Not after all this time. I can’t give you one minute more. Sorry. Next!
If I thought Billie was in overkill territory, how do I describe the decision to feature “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” by Aerosmith again?! Excessive? Or just plain ridiculous? By my reckoning, this was its ninth week on the chart and it had just dropped from No 7 to No 8 having been as high as No 4 a month before. In terms of its appearances on TOTP, this was its fourth of five meaning yes, executive producer Chris Cowey wasn’t done with the song yet. Once more it’s that satellite performance that is shown presumably because of all the TOTP branding that can be seen all over the stage – Cowey was trying to sell the show into other territories around this time. As for our theme of female hairstyles, has any male rock star’s locks looked more like a woman’s than Steven Tyler?
What on earth is going on here?! Kate Thornton has just propositioned a young woman to go to bed with her! WTF?! Well, yes, precisely. It’s all to do with the next hit song in the show which is “Would You…?” by Touch And Go. The story behind this one is that Touch And Go were a jazz pop ensemble led by one David Lowe who would go on to forge a career composing music for television, radio and commercials including the theme tune to the BBC News and has worked on such shows as The One Show, Panorama, Cash In The Attic and Grand Designs. In 1998 though, he was behind this almost novelty single which took a Herb Alpert trumpet solo and added the flat toned voice of a woman speaking the lines “I’ve noticed you around / I find you very attractive / Would you go to bed with me?”, hence the intro from Kate Thornton. It’s all rather bizarre but the sort of strange curio that could often flummox the UK record buying public into shelling out its hard earned cash to purchase it. And buy it they did, 200,000 copies worth to send it to No 3. Designed to be the ultimate icebreaker for supposedly reserved and tongue-twisted types in nightclubs (surely not!), its lyrics were inspired by a 1978 psychological study. If that’s piqued your interest, then here’s @TOTPFacts with the story behind the statement:
Those results remind me of an interview with Paddy McGuinness who said of the game show Take Me Out which he presented that they had to have women picking a man as if it had been the other way round, all the men would have just kept their lights on permanently.
It might have escaped your attention with everything else going on in the world (it did mine) but just last month one Prakazrel Samuel Michel was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Well, put like that it might not ring any bells but what if I said Pras of hip hop group the Fugees was sent down on criminal conspiracy charges for alleged illegal donations to President Barack Obama 2012 presidential re-election campaign? Yep, that’s the attention grabbing headline. Back in 1998 though, Pras was onto his second solo hit after the hugely successful “Ghetto Superstar” (That Is What You Are)”. After interpolating “Islands In The Stream” for that track, he once again used some very familiar source material as the basis for “Blue Angels” by sampling “Grease” by Frankie Valli. For me, this didn’t work nearly as well as its predecessor. It just didn’t have that immediate hook that pulled in pop and rap fans alike. There’s some very verbose rapping going in which somehow manages to reference the Bosley character from the Charlie’s Angels TV series which must be a first. However, by the end, as so often happens with these rap performances on the show, it descends into the artist shouting “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care”. I bet Pras dreams of being so carefree in his current situation.
For me, one of the more surprising success stories of 1998 was Another Level. Yes, you could argue that although we’d had loads of boy bands in the UK during the 90s, we hadn’t had many with an R’n’B slant so maybe there was a gap in the market? On the other hand, there had been many a US R’n’B boy band in our charts and, indeed, we had one British example of the genre in Damage so was there room for another one? There proved to be at least another level needed on the UK R’n’B boy band car park and it was taken by…erm…those Another Level boys. Having already had two big hits this year (including the No 1 “Freak Me” no less), a third was always on the cards and so, just in time for the Christmas market, a ballad was released. Cynical? Maybe. Guaranteed sales? Certainly. Having said that, “Guess I Was A Fool” only spent four weeks on the Top 40 and just one inside the Top 10. Maybe that was because we’d seen the likes of this track all before done much better by groups like Boyz II Men whom Another Level seemed to be doing their best impression of here. A handful of hits would follow in 1999 for the AL boys but the game was up by the new millennium as they failed to progress to the next level (I’ll stop now).
The era of M People is nearly through but unlike the near title of that book by Edgar Rice Burroughs and subsequent 1977 film, I don’t think it has been a case of ‘The M People That Time Forgot’ (ahem). Nineteen charting singles in seven years plus three Top 3 albums is a pretty decent legacy to leave behind. Sure, not every one of those nineteen hits was a top drawer banger (anyone for their cover of “Itchycoo Park”? Thought not) but some of them were the most memorable hits of the whole decade. I’m thinking “One Night In Heaven”, “Moving On Up”, “Search For The Hero” etc but by the end of their run, some of the hits didn’t quite match up to their predecessors. Take “Testify” for example. Released as a new track to promote their first Best Of album, it’s not terrible but it’s not terrific either. My sixteen year old son would describe it as “meh” or “mid” I’m sure. I’m not sure that the title being a legal term and all is particularly suitable for a ballad or maybe it is. After all, a couple getting married to prove their love to each other also creates a legal contract in law between them. Maybe I’m just remembering it being used by Smash Hits magazine to describe the likes of Billy Idol pulling a fist clench move in concert and describing it as “testifying on stage”. “Testify” was the 18th of those 19 hits peaking at No 12 meaning that there might just be one final appearance for the group to come.
P. S. Whilst we’re talking about women’s hairstyles (as we were), mention must go to Heather Small and her various (mostly towering) looks that she has spotted down the years. Quite remarkable.
Cher is No 1 for a second week of seven with “Believe”. So, I guess we should address the issue of her vocals. Much was made in the press at the time that it was due to a vocoder which was a reasonable claim given its previous usage in music production. As far back as 1969, Sly and the Family Stone used it on a song on the album “Strand!” before electronic pioneers Kraftwerk took up the mantle alongside experimental jazz fusionist Herbie Hancock. Come the 90s, French electronic music duo Daft Punk consistently used the vocoder in their work so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch that it could feature on a global smash albeit from an unlikely source in Cher. However, that wasn’t actually true. The vocal effect had been achieved using the extreme settings of Antares Autotune, pitch correction software designed to correct sharp or flat notes in vocal performances. Keen to keep their technological discovery to themselves, the produces made the vocoder claim. However, the manual for subsequent releases of the software refer to that use of it as ‘The Cher Effect’.
After last weeks host Jamie Theakston referred to Cher as being no spring chicken but remaining a game old bird (or something like that), Kate Thornton doubles down on the ageist remarks by pointing out that the singer (no stranger to a variety of hairstyles herself down the years) was still two years older than her Mum. Was there meant to be a compliment in there Kate? If so, I’m not sure that there was.
| Order of appearance | Artist | Title | Did I buy it? |
| 1 | Alanis Morissette | Thank U | No |
| 2 | Billie | Girlfriend | It’s a no |
| 3 | Aerosmith | I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing | I did not |
| 4 | Touch And Go | Would You…?” | No thanks |
| 5 | Pras | Blue Angels | Nope |
| 6 | Another Level | Guess I Was A Fool | Never |
| 7 | M People | Testify | Nah |
| 8 | Cher | Believe | 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/m002ms9d/top-of-the-pops-06111998
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 
I did warn you about 1998!
I went to school with a boy we all called “Alanis” due to his long black hair and striking similarity to the Canadian chanteuse. Alas, have googled him five minutes ago, he’s got a very sensible haircut in the photo on his company’s website and works as a Planning consultant in Birmingham. Not very rock and roll!
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He’s not really sticking it to the man Essor!
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