Of the eight songs in this TOTP, four of them have been on the show before, some of them many times previously. The running order has the four ‘new’ hits sandwiched together in the middle, bookended by two repeated performances at either end of it. Was this some sort of shit sandwich in reverse technique being employed by executive producer Chris Cowey? Let’s see…

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that if a song had been on the show before it was necessarily shit in terms of its quality but rather that Cowey was shitting all over our expectations of being fed some new hits rather than those we were very familiar with.

Our host is Gail Porter and we start with…and this is truly ridiculous…Whitney Houston with “It’s Not Right But It’s OK”. Just..why Cowey? WHY?! Look, these are the facts about this one:

• TOTP appearances: Five
• No of repeats of original studio performance: Four
• Date of first appearance: 26 Feb 1999
• Weeks in Top 40: Twelve
• In every week but one after debuting at No 3, it moved down the charts.

Why was it on the show so often? Was it part of the contract between Whitney and her people and the BBC that if she did an in person performance that TOTP had to show it a certain amount of times like five maybe?

Right, let’s have a look at Phats & Small and their hit “Turn Around”. Here are their facts:

• Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
• No of consecutive appearances: Three (four over a five week period)
• Weeks in Top 10: Seven
• Chart run: 3 – 4 – 2 – 8 – 7 – 8 – 7

So three of those four appearances coincided with the single going back up the chart which seems justified but four times in five shows still seems like overkill to me. Maybe though I was/am just a dinosaur, a relic of a past time having been brought up on the Top 40 of the 80s which was much more sluggish and intransient, when songs would take weeks to move up the charts and instant, week one Top 3 hits were rare to non-existent. Record company practices had changed by the end of the 90s and maybe TOTP was just reacting accordingly to a new way of the charts operating. I’m not sure how regular a viewer of the show I was by 1999 so cannot recall being as frustrated as I am now with all these repeat performances but I wasn’t doing a write up of each show back then either. Oh it’s all relative isn’t it?

From two artists with prolific TOTP appearance stats to one whom I would have thought had a much better record but then, I could have sworn that Electronic had actually released more music than their discography tells me they have. From their debut in 1989, they released a total of eight singles and three albums. Is that a decent amount of material over a 10 year period? I’m not sure. Certainly that singles figure seems a tad on the low side and resulted in just six TOTP appearances over the course of their career. Back in 1991, not long after I’d started working at the Our Price store in Market Street, Manchester, the duo of Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr had released their eponymous debut album to critical appreciation and commercial success (it made No 2 in the album charts and sold a million copies worldwide). I recall their being such a buzz about the album which was magnified in Manchester obviously given the background of its two protagonists. There was even a demand for the import version of the album which included the single “Getting Away With It” which the UK version did not.

However, a gap of five years until the next album proved to be too long for that momentum to be maintained and sophomore effort “Raise The Pressure” was nowhere near as well received, neither commercially nor critically. By 1999, were they seen as, if not irrelevant, then as an anachronism? Too harsh? Maybe but the truth was that third album “Twisted Tenderness” spent just two weeks inside the Top 40 chart. Its lead single “Vivid” was…well…OK and that seems a damning description when you consider the quality of the cannon of work of Sumner and Marr. Was their heart not really in it anymore? That didn’t seem to be the case watching this performance and more specifically Sumner’s energetic-pogoing, arms-flailing, air-punching, woo hoo-ing antics. Maybe a decision to dissolve the project had already been made and he wanted to go out with a flourish? If so, we couldn’t have known that at the time but retrospectively we got the message.

Fancy a flamenco guitar themed dance anthem? No, nor do I but I haven’t got any choice as the author of this blog so you’re coming with me! According to Wikipedia, Ruff Driverz had six Top 40 hits. Six! I couldn’t have named one of them without looking at their discography but “La Musica” was the fifth of them and the second highest charting peaking at No 13. It was officially credited to Ruff Driverz presents Arrola but who was Arrola? Well, she was Katherine Ellis who came from a very performing arts background. Look at this from her Wikipedia page:

“…her mother Elizabeth was trained as an actress at the Royal Academy for dramatic art, her grandmother Joy was a violinist and pianist, and her great grandmother Elizabeth Haslam was a opera singer who won a competition at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893.”

Blimey! Katherine continued that lineage by becoming one of the go to vocalists in the UK house scene, working with the likes of Freemasons, Soul Avengerz and Cherrone. As for “La Musica”, I’m sure it was popular in the clubs but its repetitive “Di-O-Lo-Le-La” line didn’t make for a very engaging TOTP performance, even allowing for the distraction of the troupe of backing dancers. As for the ‘Arrola’ moniker, whoever thought it up was only one letter away from making a tit of themselves.

Before the Sugababes and their revolving door recruitment policy, there was Honeyz who set the mould for girl groups and continually changing line ups. However, I’ve talked about that story in all its detail before so I don’t propose to go through it all again. Suffice to say that, as Gail Porter comments, this was the first time for most of us seeing new member Mariama Goodman who had recently replaced Heavenli Abdi. The timing of Abdi’s departure was really off though coming as they were preparing to embark on a promotional campaign for the release of their third single “Love Of A Lifetime”. The original trio had already shot the video for the track including scenes with Abdi but her decision to quit after that shoot and before a promotional trip to Australia meant that the promo was now effectively redundant and so would have to be reshot. A temporary, second cut saw Heavenli heavily edited out of the video before a third was produced with shots of Goodman included. I wonder if the Honeyz management billed Abdi for all that re-shooting?

“Love Of A Lifetime” was more of the slick R&B/ pop sound we’d come to expect and duly returned another sizeable hit when it peaked at No 9. As far as I can ascertain, Abdi’s original vocals remained on the track and it wasn’t until follow up “Never Let You Down” that Goodman’s own singing featured. A fifth single from their album “Wonder No 8” appeared in early 2000 at which point Goodman promptly left the group to be replaced by a returning Abdi and the line up shenanigans began in earnest. Honeyz are still a going concern today operating as a trio of Célena Cherry, her sister Candace and Abdi (now known as Heavenli Roberts). In conclusion, I can’t say if they finally found the perfect line up and share a love of a lifetime or if the end of the line might still be in sight.

We’ve arrived at the final ‘new’ single of the show and it’s from Suede who we hadn’t seen nor heard of since August 1997 when “Filmstar” was released as the final single from their “Coming Up” album. In the interim time, Brett Anderson had developed a serious drug problem whilst keyboardist Neil Codling’s health was affected by chronic fatigue syndrome. As such, the environment for writing and recording a new album wasn’t ideal. Plus, there was a decision to be made about which direction the band should head musically. After divisive sophomore album “Dog Man Star” had drawn acclaim as a work of genius and criticism as one of the most pretentious albums ever recorded, a more mainstream sound was pursued with the glam-pop of “Coming Up” that furnished the band with five Top 10 singles. That run was continued by “Electricity”, the lead track from fourth album “Head Music”. However, subsequent singles released from it would form a picture of diminishing returns and indeed, Suede have not returned to the Top 10 since.

“Head Music” would top the charts but would spend just two weeks inside the Top 20 suggesting large early sales due to a sizeable fan base but a lack of crossover appeal. In terms of its sonic properties, it had a more electronic sound with producer Steve Osborne, who had worked with the Happy Mondays, imbuing it with a dance music vibe. As for “Electricity”, it sounded a bit more raw/garage-like to me than anything on “Coming Up” though some reviews heard a connection to “Trash”. It didn’t grab me I have to say and, as with Electronic earlier, left me a little underwhelmed but compared to some of the other rubbish in the charts, it was…well…electric but just on a lower wattage than before. Definitely not displaying low wattage was the visual effect of an electric charge coming from Brett’s microphone. Maybe it looked clever back in 1999 but it looks a bit naff in 2026.

Right, that confirms it. The fact that Westlife are clearly seen in the backstage area next to Gail Porter during the next segue and they haven’t even had a hit yet and won’t perform on the show for the very first time for another seven days is definitive proof that some of these performances were definitely not recorded the same week that the show was broadcast. This explains why the host is sometimes not seen in shot when doing the link and we just get a cutaway instead. Finally!

Right, rant over. We’re back to the repeated performances and we get TLC with “No Scrubs” again. Here are the details for this one:

• Total TOTP appearances: Four (this was the third)
• No of consecutive appearances: Two
• Weeks in Top 10: Eight
• Chart run: 7- 13 – 8 – 6 – 9 – 3 – 5 – 5 – 9

OK so, having cross-referenced its chart positions with the group’s TOTP performances, there does seem to be some clear, logical correlation with each appearance synchronised with a corresponding rise up the chart. That’s all fine but why did we have to have this satellite performance video every single time? Couldn’t we have had the promo video one time at least? After all, it did win the MTV Video Music Award For Best Group Video at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

Right, I can’t really complain about this repeat performance seeing as it is actually the No 1 single for the second week running. Yes, this week’s highest new entry from Suede (No 5) proved to be no serious competition in the end for Martine McCutcheon and her hit “Perfect Moment”. With a No 1 straight off the bat, the only way was down for Martine and she would never have that level of success again but that chart topper can never be taken away from her (even if it was a cover version).

One thing that was taken off her though was any potential return to EastEnders. Supposedly, Martine was not happy with her character Tiffany Mitchell being killed off by the writers to allow her to pursue her pop star ambitions as she would have liked the chance to return once her music-orientated spleen had been vented but they used to call that having your cake and eating it didn’t they?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Whitney Houston	It’s Not Right But It’s OK	No
2	Phats & Small	Turn Around	No thanks
3	Electronic	Vivid	I did not
4	Ruff Driverz presents Arrola	La Musica	Never
5	Honeyz	Love Of A Lifetime	Nah
6	Suede	Electricity	Negative
7	TLC	No Scrubs	Nope
8	Martine McCutcheon	Perfect Moment	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 agre

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rlpg/top-of-the-pops-23041999