*In the voice of Ron Manager*

“Ah the 90s. What a decade! Marvellous wasn’t it? Britpop! Blur! Oasis! Boybands! Girl Power! Cool Britannia wasn’t it? Eh?”

Actually, as I’ve discovered by reviewing every 90s TOTP repeat broadcast by BBC4, it wasn’t all that. I mean, yes it was all those things but the nostalgia I had for the 90s was out of sync with the quality of music it offered up. With every passing year that I reviewed, I tried to convince myself that the next one must be better but I have to say that on most occasions I was disappointed. I’m not going to go into a forensic examination of every year here as I have neither the time nor the inclination but suffice to say that there were multiple definable movements and trends that shaped the decade. Here’s a very quick and sketchy run through of some of them…

We began the 90s with a continuation of the ‘Madchester’ phenomenon and the ‘baggy’ sound and fashion from 1989 but that would soon peter out as America grunge rock and bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam dominated the music press front pages. Competing alongside that genre for attention were ‘Shoegaze’ acts like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Curve and whilst their influence was significant, their sales were not.

Instead, the Top 40 was being flooded by rave culture and its various forms. The Prodigy (their early stuff), Altern-8 and Shut Up And Dance were chart residents all of a sudden. Then there were The KLF and The Shamen. Both scored No 1 hits (and more) with their own hybrid sound, the former by blending dance beats with roaring electric guitars and arena-sized crowd samples and the latter via techno pulses mixed with rave-pop synths. As we moved towards the middle of the decade, the dreaded Eurodance sound found its way into our charts with acts like Snap!, 2 Unlimited, Culture Beat and Ace Of Base bagging themselves No 1 records.

With the suicide of Kurt Cobain in 1994, we were told that grunge rock was also officially dead and it was replaced by something much closer to home. Britpop was its name and guitar-driven bands celebrating working-class Britishness and retro-rock influences was its game. Blur, Oasis Suede and Pulp were its Big Four protagonists but it was those first two bands that were the nucleus of the movement when it went supernova in 1995 with The Battle Of Britpop’. For a while, Britpop was everywhere and everything but its legacy isn’t caked in glory with most bands who carried the label at the time now denying that they were ever part of it. Maybe in another 20 years it will be more fondly remembered. The transition to a post-Britpop era would see the emergence of big hitters like Radiohead, Travis and latterly Coldplay and Muse but the late 90s also saw the utter domination of electronic dance music with the Big Beat genre taking centre stage via artists such as Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim though other dance flavours were available.

Pop music was hardly made extinct in the face of the dance onslaught though. However, it was a much more pure pop than we’d been used to in the 80s for example. This was mainly due to the rise of the boyband of which there were literally dozens of examples throughout the decade though the unholy trinity of Take That, Boyzone and Westlife were the most successful. Not that the boys had it all their own way with the rise of the Spice Girls in 1996 and their ‘girl power’ slogan causing mania and sales that easily rivalled their male counterparts. As the decade ended, those boy bands and girl groups morphed into a boy/girl hybrid with Steps and S Club 7 rising to prominence. Mention must also be made of one of the most unlikely but enduring stars to emerge from the 90s. Not many had Robbie Williams down as a future solo superstar after the first coming of Take That ended but he is still a name in 2026.

Right at the end of the decade came shiny new pop superstars from America in the diminutive forms of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and country crossover sensation Shania Twain. What a time to be alive! At least we were alive though. The biggest selling hit of the decade (and indeed of all time) was Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind 1997” following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales who died in a car crash in Paris.

As for the music industry itself, the 90s would see the CD format dominate the market as punters felt the need to repurchase their favourite albums that they’d originally bought on vinyl back in the day thereby creating a genius revenue stream for record companies. The devil’s greatest trick was convincing us to buy albums that we already owned again. Indeed, vinyl (records in old money) had virtually disappeared from high street music chains by the end of the decade. Who had a vinyl revival on their music industry bingo card for the 2020s? How the world turns.

However, just when we thought that CD was the ultimate format and the only one we would ever need, the end of the 90s saw the arrival of Napster and peer to peer file sharing ushering in the world of digital downloads and platform streaming. The changes in how we consume music over the last 25 years or so has been akin to the effect of the Industrial Revolution.

But what about TOTP? After all, it’s been the foundation stone for this blog. The grand old show went through many changes in the 90s, some cosmetic, others more structural and none were more structural than the 1991 ‘year zero’ revamp that incoming executive producer Stanley Appel enacted. Perceived as being out of touch after being in existence for 27 years at this point, TOTP was literally given the Changing Rooms treatment with new presenters, theme tune, title sequence and logo whilst the whole show was uprooted from its BBC Television Centre home to the BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood. Perhaps the biggest change was the separation of the show from Radio 1 with the rotating roster of the station’s DJs as presenters completely ditched and replaced by some unknown young bucks. The changes were unpopular though and within a year all but two of the new presenters were jettisoned.

By 1994, there was a new executive producer in Ric Blaxill who initially reinstated a quartet of Radio 1 DJs to anchor the show before introducing a ‘golden mic’ feature where celebrity guest hosts were recruited from the worlds of music, comedy and showbiz. Blaxill also expanded the use of satellite performances that his predecessor Appel had introduced leading to some spectacular settings (notably Bon Jovi at Niagara Falls) and some decidedly ordinary ones with many an artist performing in an empty theatre or sometimes just a room albeit said room or theatre was in another country. None of this though was as significant as a change that appeared innocuous initially but which would usher in the start of TOTP’s permanent decline. On 14 June 1996, originally at 7 pm, but then shifted to 7.30 pm, the show was moved from its traditional Thursday night slot to a Friday, a change which placed the programme up against Coronation Street on ITV. Originally made due to a scheduling clash with the Euro ‘96 football tournament, it would prove to be a catastrophic decision. It wouldn’t stop there with the grand old show subsequently changing channel from BBC1 to BBC2. It seemed TOTP was no longer a priority for the Beeb.

Another new era for the show began in 1997 when Blaxill was replaced as executive producer by Chris Cowey who arrived from the North-East having worked on music shows The White Room and The Tube. Bringing a ‘back to basics’ approach with him, Cowey reintroduced a remixed version of the classic “Whole Lotta Love” theme tune and a 60s inspired new logo design and title sequence. He also did away with the ‘golden mic’ slot and brought in his own presenters from youth TV including Jayne Middlemiss, Jamie Theakston and Gail Porter. He also farted about with the running order and repeated performances we’d already seen despite the record going down the charts. Albeit there were the mitigating circumstances of the revolving door that was the No 1 single come the end of the decade, I didn’t enjoy Cowey’s reign over the programme. He would keep that role until 2003 when he was replaced by Andi Peters. I won’t have to comment on any of that period of the show’s history which is fortunate as it is generally acknowledged as its death knell and most importantly I won’t have to tell my Andi Peters story. I’ll leave it at that.

Talking of me though, how was my 90s? I think the word I would use is ‘seminal’. I started the decade by getting married to my long term girlfriend and we are still together 36 years later. Best decision ever. After marrying we moved to Manchester where we stayed until 2000. We loved Manchester and always will but it could be a hard place to live and after 10 years we moved to York (I’m still not sure why) before settling in my wife’s home city of Hull.

Apart from a few temporary jobs in 1990, I spent the whole of the decade working for record chain Our Price. I didn’t realise it at the time but, in hindsight, that would prove to be the best job ever though it didn’t always feel like it and there were some tough moments along the way. The job had changed significantly during that time. When I started as a green Christmas temp, you could still smoke when not on the counter and there was an early morning rush within those who liked a fag to bag a spot in the processing area where you could spend the day puffing away and having a constant brew on the go. There must have been about 30 staff in total working in the Market Street store in Manchester in the Christmas of 1990. By the time of my last festive trading period, no store had staff numbers like that even allowing for the fact that Market Street was one of the biggest in the area. By 1995, it had gone (myself and my manager were the last Our Price staff on site when it closed down for good). Two years into my time at Our Price, I was promoted to Assistant Manager (I never made the step up to manager except for an intermediate period in between permanent appointments) and for a while I bumped around many a store in the North West region. I think this timeline is correct:

• Market Street Manchester
• Rochdale (promoted to AM)
• Stockport
• Altrincham
• Market Street, Manchester (again!)
• Piccadilly, Manchester
• Market Street, Manchester (again!)
• Stockport (again!)
• Altrincham (again!)

I worked with loads of different people most of whom were way cooler than me and what were considered my mainstream music tastes but with a few notable exceptions, I’d like to think I got along with most people. The product we worked with was exciting and there were perks along the way like staff discount, getting on record company guest lists for gigs and the odd album playback event. The weekend working was a ball ache especially when Sunday trading came in but it made weekends off all the sweeter. I was 22 when I arrived in Manchester and started working for Our Price and 31 when I left both the city and the company. As I said earlier, seminal years. Was there a favourite one? Perhaps 1991 when we had settled into Manchester and I’d been made permanent at work after starting as a Christmas temp. We had very little money and lived in a tiny studio flat in Longsight but looking back, they were great days and helped to bond us and form the people my wife and I grew into. A favourite year musically? I’m not sure I could pick one. Not because there were so many but because not one really stood out for consistent quality.

And that’s just about it for my run through of the 90s and ultimately for my time as a TOTP blogger. To those of you who took even the briefest of time to look at any of my posts, I am eternally humbled. For those who stuck with me down the years (you know who you are), I am forever grateful. It’s been emotional. Thank you and goodbye.