Author: 80stastic

TOTP 08 NOV 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Welcome back to TOTP Rewind where we have yet another ‘golden mic’ guest presenter hosting the show and this one was a rather unusual choice in that he was from the world of sport. Starting in March 1994, there had only been two other sporting celebrities up to this point – Chris Eubank and Ian Wright. What made this guy even more of a left field choice was that he was a jockey. Now, I don’t follow the horses so I don’t know who the current crop of jockeys are or what there personalities are like but back in the day when I was growing up, they weren’t all over the TV apart from on race days. They certainly weren’t presenting the BBC’s premier pop music show. They were jockeys not disc jockeys. However, this particular guy broke the mould somewhat. It can only be Frankie Dettori that I’m talking about and indeed it is. Now back in November 1996, the diminutive Italian wasn’t a captain on A Question Of Sport (that didn’t happen until 2002 and he hadn’t been on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here (that hadn’t been invented yet) and he hadn’t been given the This Is Your Life treatment (1998). However, what he had done and was most famous for in 1996 was to have ridden all seven winners on British Festival of Racing Day at Ascot on the 28th September. That famous image of him jumping from his horse? Yeah, that was after he’d won the seventh race. Suddenly it seemed, everybody knew the name Frankie Dettori. It wasn’t just his sporting achievements that set him apart though. He had a ‘cheeky chappie’ persona and that winning accent that endeared him to people and I’m guessing it was those traits that persuaded executive producer Ric Blaxill to give him a shot at hosting his show. I mean, can you imagine Lester Piggott for example introducing the latest chart sounds on TOTP?!

Frankie is still a name today having appeared on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here just last year. His fame touched my life in a rather shameful incident a few years back. The tale goes like this. There was an old Italian guy who lived on our street who didn’t speak much English but who was very sociable and would try and engage everyone he saw in conversation. At some point his health started to fail him and he had to have an operation which incapacitated him but he still liked to sit in his front garden so he could talk to passers by. One day, on my way back from the shop, it was my turn for a chat as he’d spotted me and beckoned me over. He started to talk to me but after some initial pleasantries I was starting to struggle to understand what he was saying. I think he was telling me about his operation but then he went off in a direction that I couldn’t fathom at all. Not wishing to appear rude, I tried to indulge his need for company by just saying the first thing that came into my head that had a vague Italian connection. I pulled out Pavarotti, the Pope, Toto Schillaci and finally my mind settled on Frankie Dettori. I know – how condescending of me. What was I thinking? At least I wasn’t shouting at him. By this point, he was as lost as I was with our conversation and so I did the only thing left to do – bid him farewell, good health and left. I never had another conversation with him and after a while he stopped sitting in his garden. Finally his house went up for sale at which point he must have passed away. I still feel bad about our interaction that day. Wherever he is now, I hope he’s having better conversations than he had with me.

So anyway, back to matters at hand and what’s the deal with the direct to camera piece at the start of the show? More specifically, why do Boyzone seem to be on it every week? This time they share the slot with…horror of horrors…Mick Hucknall! Let’s not think about that for now though as we switch to a very smartly dressed Frankie Dettori whose first job is to introduce Gina G. He manages to get a racing term into his segue immediately – is this going to set the tone for the whole show? Gina is here to perform “I Belong To You” which is at its chart peak of No 6. However, the TOTP caption says that it’s her second Top 5 hit! I mean, you couldn’t have a bigger clue than the big figure six next to her name! And it was the single’s first week in the chart – it couldn’t have possibly been higher than No 6! And while we’re at it, her last single was a No 1 record so saying it went Top 5 is underselling it rather. Honestly caption person! You had one job! In 1998, B*Witched would rearrange the words of the title of Gina’s hit and take “To You I Belong” to No 1. I don’t think you could do that with “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” and remain grammatically correct if indeed that song title was grammatically correct in the first place.

And now for something completely different…so different in fact that the assembled studio audience don’t really know how to react to what they are witnessing. If the artist is a little bit out there then the chances are that said artist will be Björk. Seriously, watch this performance of “Possibly Maybe” and keep your eyes on the studio audience rather than Björk (she won’t like that). They look like they are completely nonplussed by the whole affair. You can actually see some of them thinking “When are Boyzone coming on?” or “Can’t Gina G do another song?”. To be fair to them, Björk’s song isn’t a natural toe-tapper so it would have been hard to know what an appropriate reaction to it was. Most opt for swaying along a bit which I guess is as good a response as any. I’ve come round to Björk a bit over the course of these TOTP repeats but “Possibly Maybe” is setting me back a bit. It’s just noise with some lyrics that have been described as melancholy though I would call them weird and miserable. References to joining a cult, car crashes, electric shocks and sucking your tongue as an act of remembrance are not for me.

Bizarrely, they were deemed a perfect fit for inclusion on an album for Childline that had just been released. Previous efforts by pop music to raise funds for the charity had been very conventional – that cover of The Beatles’ “With A Little Help From My Friends” by Wet Wet Wet in 1988 and a duet between Sonia and Big Fun in 1990 couldn’t have been more mainstream. However, in the era of Britpop, an approach with a bit more gravitas was deemed more suitable and so artists like Ocean Colour Scene, Menswear, Cast and Pulp whose “Different Class” artwork was co-opted for the album all contributed tracks. To be fair, the running order also featured Boyzone and Lighthouse Family but they were the exception rather than the rule. Even in that company though, “Possibly Maybe” feels an odd choice. Some artists did cover versions (Menswear did “Can’t Smile Without You” and These Animal Men offered “Wichita Lineman”) whilst a U2 / REM combo tackled the former’s “One”. But “Possibly Maybe”? It’s hardly an obvious choice for a charity album. The version on the Childline compilation was a remix by LFO but that was available on one of the three official Björk CD singles that were released so it’s not as if fans would have bought the Childline album for completist reasons. I shouldn’t really be criticising someone for supporting a charity should I? It just strikes me as an odd choice but maybe Björk was trying to fit in with the Britpop vibe. “Possibly Maybe”, “Definitely Maybe”? Funnily enough, Oasis didn’t contribute a track to the album.

I couldn’t understand a word of “1st Of Tha Month” by Bone Thugs–n–Harmony because they were rapping so fast so I rewatched it with subtitles on and guess what? I still couldn’t make head nor tail of what they were banging on about. Reading between the lines though, I think they’re using a load of drug references that I wasn’t familiar with and researching the track online, its title is a reference to when welfare checks were paid (getting your giro in our country). Interesting that they called it “1st Of Tha Month” and not “1st Of Da Month”. What’s the difference? I’m not sure but, as with Gina G, I’m not convinced either is grammatically correct.

When it comes to naming 90s boy bands, I’m not convinced that 911 trips of the tongue but if you check their chart stats they’re not too shabby. After small beginnings when their first two singles peaked at No 38 and No 21, this hit – “Don’t Make Me Wait” – began a run of ten consecutive Top 10 hits. Look at these chart positions:

10 – 4 – 3 – 3 – 5 – 4 – 10 – 2 – 1 – 3

Like I said, they stand up to scrutiny. I haven’t watched that Boybands Forever series on iPlayer yet so I don’t know what sort of review (if any) they get on there. Of course, selling a load of records is no guarantee of quality and 911, in my humble opinion, were not… how can I put this?…they are more quantity than quality. Oh alright, they were pants. Rubbish. Just no good. Their two biggest hits were predictably cover versions and there just didn’t seem to be much to them – a Dec from Ant & Dec lookalike as the singer and two backing dancers who you would have sworn had a sideline in being nightclub bouncers. Apparently those two had actually worked in a club but as dancers on The Hitman And Her TV show where Take That’s Howard Donald and Jason Orange had also been dancers. The 911 lads (Spike and Jimmy) thought they fancied a bit of that pop star lark and so formed a group with Dec Lee Brennan who had nearly had a football career with Carlisle United but was rejected due to being too small (something that never seemed to be a problem to Dec). Amazingly it worked as well and they weren’t made to wait as all those hits would be along soon.

So what connects 911 to legendary R&B producer Babyface? No he didn’t work with them (of course he didn’t) but he did collaborate with US pop/soul group Shalamar on this hit “This Is For The Lover In You” and which song did 911 release as their first single? Yep, “A Night To Remember” by Shalamar. They also recorded “There It Is” for their third album of cover versions. Blimey! I haven’t written so much about Shalamar in this blog for years! Not surprising really seeing as they hadn’t had a UK Top 40 hit since 1983. Suddenly though, 13 years later, they were back courtesy of Babyface and his reactivation of this track of theirs that was originally released back in 1981. I can’t say I knew it before and it obviously didn’t stick in my head the second time around as I don’t remember it at all but it did manage to reunite the three members of Shalamar (from its most famous line up). This exclusive satellite performance from Los Angeles was the first time they’d actually been in the same physical space together for over a decade (they’d recorded their backing vocals for the reworked track separately). Obviously, it wasn’t really my thing and the addition of LL Cool J on rapping duties want going to persuade me but my biggest disappointment was that we didn’t see Jeffrey Daniel perform his backslide/moonwalk steps.

In his intro to Babyface, Frankie Dettori pointed at his own fizzog and cheeky smile and he’s at it again when introducing this week’s ‘flashback‘ slot, telling us all that he was only a one year old when Slade were in the charts with “Coz I Luv You”. Yeah yeah Frankie, you were very fresh faced back in 1996 – weren’t we all? This was Slade’s first No 1 hit of six and also the first song to feature their misspelling gimmick. Their next six single releases all followed the same pattern. Am I right in thinking there was some criticism from schools in that the practice was encouraging poor spelling in children? Never mind that though – how did “Cum On Feel The Noize” get past the censors?

Like most people I’m guessing, if I think about Moby, his “Play” album comes to mind with all those singles released from it and their use in multiple films, TV shows and commercials. Or possibly his Twin Peaks inspired techno hit “Go”. I would never have come up with this awful noise called “Come On Baby” possibly because I don’t think it even made the Top 100 of the UK charts. Which raises the question, why was Moby granted a slot on the running order for this TOTP to promote it? The album it was from – “Animal Rights” – did nothing much in the charts so surely it wouldn’t have warranted being featured on the show and in any case, Boyzone occupied that slot this week. It’s billed as an ‘exclusive’ but that seems a bit over the top to describe Moby running around topless with ‘Porn Star’ daubed over his chest making a howling racket. It’s all a bit rum just like Moby’s song.

A howling racket Moby might have been but you couldn’t accuse him of being mainstream a category which the last three artists on tonight surely fall into. We start with Simply Red who had reached that point in their career where a Greatest Hits album was due and they duly delivered it in 1996, just in time for Christmas. Not cynical at all. Although the album went to No 1 and went six times platinum in the UK, for me, it slightly underperformed commercially. That statement sounds ridiculous given those numbers but if I give it the context that it was completely outsold by their studio albums “A New Flame” and “Stars” then maybe it carries a bit more weight. It was the eighth best selling album in the UK of 1996 but it was outsold by Celine Dion, Robson and Jerome and an album in “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” that had been released in October 1995.

Anyway, as was the trend, a new track was required to promote the album and “Angel”, a 1973 hit by Aretha Franklin, was chosen for that task. Covering Aretha might be seen as a heinous crime by some but I reckon Hucknall’s ego would have allowed him to back himself to take it on. Apparently the Fugees are uncredited contributors to his version which Hucknall acknowledges by shouting out “one time” midway through and almost chuckling to himself at his wit. He didn’t help himself sometimes did he? He must have been pleased with his treatment of “Angel” as the next Simply Red album called simply “Blue” included five cover versions. More Best Of albums followed including 2008’s “Simply Red 25: The Greatest Hits” which sold half the amount its 1996 counterpart. Maybe I did misjudge that album’s commercial performance after all.

And so to that album chart feature. In his intro, Frankie Dettori announces “It wasn’t much of a race in the album chart. These guys even beat The Beatles. No photograph. Boyzone!”. Frankie wasn’t wrong either. Boyzone had indeed gone straight in at No 1 with sophomore album “A Different Beat” whilst the much anticipated third volume of The Beatles Anthology project debuted at No 4. To celebrate, they are back on TOTP with a track from said album in the form of “Isn’t It A Wonder”. This syrupy ballad would eventually become the third single released from “A Different Beat” after “Words” and the title track both went to No 1. It just failed to make it a hat trick of chart toppers when it peaked at No 2. Watching this performance, I’m struck by how young they all look. Shane Lynch especially looks extremely fresh faced without all those horrible tattoos that were yet to be inked onto his neck. I’ve never understood that fashion but there are so many examples of it in the world of celebrity from Lynch to David Beckham to current Strictly contestant Pete Wicks. It just makes them look like they need a good wash to me.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Well not me personally you understand – I never bought any Robson & Jerome records but plenty of people did not once but twice. After the nation lost its collective head in 1995 over the two actors from the TV drama Soldier Soldier and delivered Robson Green and Jerome Flynn the best selling single of the year in the UK in the form of their cover of “Unchained Melody” and a six times platinum album, those not under the duo’s spell must have hoped it was a short lived aberration that we could all agree to never talk of again. RCA and Simon Cowell had other ideas and the two actors were back just in time for Christmas (and I thought Simply Red were cynical) with a new single and album, the latter, rather aptly, called “Take Two”. The song chosen for the lead single was Jimmy Ruffin’s excellent “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” which I think I would have been made aware of initially by the cover by Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone. That version was all about synths and 80s production which brought a different angle to the original soul classic. What I didn’t need was a sub par facsimile of it delivered by two actors thanks but that’s what we all got. In fact, what we actually got was a a triple threat of “What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted” alongside “Saturday Night At The Movies” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with all three tracks receiving equal billing – in effect a triple A-side. Apparently this was the first time this had ever happened. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times, shame on both of us.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Gina GI Belong To YouNo you didn’t
2BjörkPossibly MaybeI did not
3Bone Thugs-n-Harmony1st Of Tha MonthNegative
4911Don’t Make Me WaitNope
5BabyfaceThis Is For The Lover In YouNah
6SladeCos I Luv YouI was only three at the time so no
7MobyCome On BabyHell no!
8Simply RedAngelNo
9BoyzoneIsn’t It A WonderNot really no
10Robson & JeromeWhat Becomes Of The BrokenheartedAs if

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/p00fsvdz/top-of-the-pops-08111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 01 NOV 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Right, for this post there’ll be no mentions of football or my past drunken escapades like in recent weeks – it’ll just be all about the music and TOTP which is what this blog is meant to be all about after all. So let’s examine what was happening with the grand old show at this point in time. Well, it had been through a number of changes in 1996. An initially temporary but ultimately permanent move from Thursday to Friday was seismic enough but that was added to by the allocation of a new time slot to boot. The there was the whole relaunch of archive show TOTP2 which seems to hijack the parent programme to help with its promotion. We had the ‘flashback’ slot which featured a hit from (mainly) the corresponding week from years back plus the play out video was taken over directly by TOTP2 to preview an old clip that would be on that week’s show. It definitely felt as if the BBC’s iconic music show was being put out to pasture. Whether executive producer Ric Blaxill felt this as well or just thought it was time for a new career, he would bring about another huge change by leaving the show at the start of 1997. Yes, the Blaxill era was coming to an end. On the whole, I think he did a decent job of resurrecting TOTP after the ‘year zero’ revamp experiment ultimately failed. The ‘golden mic’ presenter idea worked for the most part and if nothing else, he consigned the dreadful Simon Mayo to history as a host. Inevitably, I think the ‘golden mic’ feature got used to promote other BBC programmes and projects. Falling into this category were the likes of Dennis Pennis (Paul Kaye), The Fast Show cast and in this week’s episode Julian Clary who had recovered from the fall out of his infamous appearance at the British Comedy Awards in 1993 where he made that joke about Norman Lamont to have his own BBC series All Rise For Julian Clary that was on air at this time.

Anyway, whatever the reason for his filling the slot (he’d make a joke out of that wouldn’t he?), Clary’s first job is to introduce a song called “Place Your Hands” which prompts the first wry smile of the night from Julian. Now the first line of Reef’s biggest ever hit is “place your hands on my hope” but if you have subtitles turned on in your settings whilst watching it on iPlayer (like I did), then they will tell you that the first line is “place your hands on my hole”! Just as well that isn’t the actual lyric – Julian would have had a field day. My crack about ‘filling the slot’ is tame in comparison. What? ‘My crack’? Oh that’s enough now! Just stop it! Let’s get back to the music please! Right – well, “Place Your Hands” was quite the rousing tune, combining a funk feel with some rock riffs, coming on like the UK’s answer to Red Hot Chili Peppers – singer Gary Stringer even had Anthony Kiedis style long hair. However, the bass player looked very un-rock ‘n’ roll with his glasses, sensible haircut and roll up sweater – at one point he seems to do a choreographed stroll on the spot akin to the famous walk like The Shadows used to do. I have to say though that I liked the song even the weird bit in the middle where Stringer takes an age to get out the line “ooh it’s a celebration”. Someone who hated it though was my work colleague Mike who really objected to Stringer’s vocal interjection of “Alright now” which he repeats through the song. I’m not sure why it irked him so much but irk him it did and made the whole ding unlistenable for him.

However, what I’ll always associate “Place Your Hands” with is the parody of it that they recorded as a jingle for a section in the show TFI Friday called ‘It’s Your Letters’…

Is there a better example of a dance act being a great singles artist but lousy at selling albums than Livin’ Joy? Between 1995 and 1997 they had five UK hit singles including a No 1, two that made the Top 10 and two that peaked inside the Top 20 with all of them featuring on their album “Don’t Stop Movin’” and yet said album would only spend two weeks on the charts peaking at No 41. Such statistics would take some explaining for a rock/pop artist and yet for a dance combo it seemed to be industry standard. Was it a case of punters identifying with the song not the singer? Possibly. Would a track that went down a storm in the clubs be all about the bpm rather than any attachment to the actual person singing it? Were dance artists not promoted in the same way as a pop group with less focus on their visual image and more on their sound? I don’t know – maybe I’m just talking b******s. For the record, “Follow The Rules” peaked at No 9 and spent and three weeks inside the Top 40.

Now like me, you may only be able to name one song by Alisha’s Attic without looking at their Wikipedia page but they actually had eight in total. I know – eight! “I Am, I Feel” was the first (which is the one I know) which peaked at No 14 and started a peculiar run of chart positions up until their last Top 40 entry in 2001. Look at these numbers:

14 – 12 – 12 – 12 – 13 – 29 – 34 – 24

Adding to that, their first two albums peaked at Nos 14 and 15. These girls weee nothing if not consistent. “Alisha Rules The World” was the first of that run of three consecutive No 12 hits and on first hearing seemed quite insubstantial and yet it stuck in my mind for hours afterwards. How did they do that? Maybe it was in their genes – they are the daughters of Brian Poole as in Brian Poole and The Tremeloes fame after all so perhaps they were always destined to be able to craft catchy tunes. Both sisters have gone onto have successful careers as songwriters – Shelley has worked with the likes of Janet Jackson, Boyzone and Westlife whilst Karen has written songs for all sorts of people including Sugababes, Kylie Minogue and Will Young. In 2021, she was honoured with the Best Music Creative Award at the Music Week Women In Music Awards. Together as Alisha’s Attic they received an Ivor Novello nomination for best lyrical and melodic composition. Meanwhile, Shelley extended the rock family tree by marrying Texas guitarist Ally McErlaine in 2001.

The careers of Madonna and Jimmy Nail had the rather unlikely habit of running into each other since the mid 80s when they both recorded a cover of the Rose Royce classic “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”. Nail took his version to No 3 in the UK off the back of his success in the role of Oz in ITV comedy/drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Madonna’s cover was in included on her 1984 album “Like A Virgin” and also made its way onto her 1995 ballads collection “Something To Remember”. They then crossed paths again on the film version of Evita with Madonna in the title role and Nail playing Argentine singer Agustín Magaldi. Finally, would you believe it, they’re on the same edition of TOTP though Madonna isn’t in the studio in person as Jimmy is. Madge’s appearance comes courtesy of the video for “You Must Love Me” from the Evita soundtrack whilst Nail is here to promote the soundtrack from his latest TV series Crocodile Shoes II but more of that later.

Nail’s role in Evita wasn’t the first time he’d played a character who had a connection to Argentina. The aforementioned Oz was shown working in the Falkland Islands at the start of the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet whilst episode eight of said series is based around Oz’s marriage to his wife Marjorie and is called Marjorie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore – I love a bit of intertextuality me.

Julian Clary almost crosses the line into Lamont territory in his next intro by saying that he’d been searching for the hero inside himself for ages but couldn’t find him. However, he did find a couple of lorry drivers. Ooh err and, indeed, missus. Ric Blaxill must have known what he was getting when he booked Julian for the gig so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Anyway, back to the music and after two consecutive chart hits, Space (or their label) decided that a rerelease of an earlier single that failed to make the grade was in order. “Neighbourhood” originally made No 56 on the UK charts in March of 1996, just a couple of months before their Top 40 breakthrough with “Female Of The Species”. The revisit to “Neighbourhood” would peak at No 11. It’s possibly my favourite tune of theirs just because it’s entrancing in a beguiling sort of way – I can’t help but be drawn to it even though I know it shouldn’t really work. It’s basically one of those ‘list’ songs which in this case is a roll call of residents of a fictional neighbourhood which was based upon the real life area of the Cantril Farm Estate that singer Tommy Scott grew up in. There’s just something very intriguing about the song’s sound, be it the twangy guitar punctuations or Mariachi style vibe that runs throughout it which gives it the feel of a spaghetti western soundtrack.

Then there’s the characters in the lyrics which reference transvestites, “big butch queens” and the “local vicar” who’s a “serial killer “. That last one puts me in mind of another song with a narrative about a vicar who isn’t all he seems to be…

As I write this, this week sees the 40th anniversary of the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and so it seems rather apt that the ‘flashback’ slot features one of its protagonists in all his mid 80s, big hair glory. Here’s what I had to say about “Freedom” by Wham! in my 80s blog…

TOTP 11 OCT 1984

In an era when singles could be in and out of the chart within a fortnight, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton was one of those hits that bucked the trend. It would spend 11 consecutive weeks inside the UK Top 5 peaking at No 2 on two separate occasions matching the high of her other big hit “Breathe Again”. I say ‘other’ big hit but she did have more than those two. Indeed, “You’re Makin’ Me High” had been as high as No 7 back in July but I don’t remember that one at all. There are a few other hits but “Un-Break My Heart” and “Breathe Again” are surely what Toni Braxton will be remembered for. Indeed, the former is also the title of a TV film biography made about the singer that premiered in 2016. I was genuinely shocked that she was considered a big enough name to receive that level of attention. Maybe I shouldn’t have been as “Un-Break My Heart” would spend 11 weeks at No 1 in America and has sold over two million copies over there whilst also going double platinum in the UK. Did I like it? Well, R&B ballads aren’t really my thing so I was fairly immune to its appeal but I can appreciate that Toni has a fine set of pipes and gives Whitney Houston a run for her money with her vocal performance with this type of track. If I recall correctly, there was also a dance version of the song which may have helped to extend its chart life, covering all bases as it were. Given its longevity in our Top 5, I’m guessing we’ll be seeing this one on a TOTP repeat coming soon so I’ll leave it there for now.

And so back to the aforementioned Jimmy Nail who is this week’s ’exclusive performance’ with the lead single from the soundtrack to Crocodile Shoes II called “Country Boy”. My mate Robin tipped me off that this was all kinds of wrong and that the last two syllables of the title of his song were redundant. Ouch! Is Robin right? Well, certainly the choice of stage costumes is a bit dodgy. What was with the schoolboy outfits and the fake black eye? Was it some sort of homage to AC/DC’s Angus Young? Was it something to do with the TV show? I’ve never watched either series but I’m guessing not seeing as it was about a Country & Western club singer who makes it big in Nashville. However, I don’t actually mind the song. It kind of reminds me of this by The Big Dish which is a great track…

The line about the “devil’s daughter” though always reminds me of another example of alliteration featuring El Diablo…

I’m on record in this blog as saying that there are worst things you could do with some free time on your hands than listen to Jimmy’s Best Of album called “The Nail File” (see what he did there?). There’s some decent tunes on there including three written by the wonderful Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout fame and you can’t go wrong with a bit of Paddy. Robin though will be relieved to know that this was Jimmy’s final ever UK Top 40 hit though he will be back on a TOTP repeat one last time soon for another performance of “Country Boy”. Leave those last two syllables alone Robin!

Now to a collaboration between two acts that came about by a circumstance of scheduling but which would give both artists one of their biggest ever hits (though not the biggest in either case). Booked to appear on the same French pop music show, East 17 and Gabrielle were asked to do a song together to fulfil a regular feature of said show and picked a track that had been massive in America but which had hardly registered over here. “If You Ever” had been a No 2 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for R&B quartet Shai in 1992 but audience reaction to the boys from Walthamstow and the girl from Hackney’s version was so positive that it was decided that they should record their own version together. The resulting track would make No 2 in the UK charts just falling short of matching the feat of both Gabrielle’s “Dreams” and East 17’s “Stay Another Day”. In the case of the latter, it was used to spearhead their Greatest Hits album that was released three days after this TOTP aired. Its release prompted stories that the bad were about to split which were vehemently denied but Brian Harvey would be sacked within months after a late night radio interview in which he admitted to taking the drug ecstasy. As for Gabrielle, “If You Ever” would become her fourth and biggest hit of 1996.

As with Toni Braxton earlier, the song was an R&B ballad that featured a flourish of Spanish guitar in the middle eight – it must have been a thing back then – and is actually better than I remember (though that’s not saying much). It’s billed as East 17 featuring Gabrielle though in truth it might as well have been promoted as Brian Harvey and Gabrielle as it’s basically a duet between the two. Tony Mortimer plays some keyboards in this performance whilst ‘the other two’ are relegated not only to doing some swaying and backing vocals but physically as well as they are positioned some distance behind Brian and Gabrielle on stage though you could probably make a case that this happened on pretty much every East 17 release. Also like “Un-Break My Heart”, “If You Ever” was also remarkably durable charts wise staying in the Top 10 for five consecutive weeks including three inside the Top 3. We’ll surely be seeing this one again as well.

It’s a second and final week at the top for “Say You’ll Be There” by the Spice Girls. Interestingly, the A&R people at Virgin had wanted this to be the debut single for the group instead of “Wannabe”. Their manager Simon Fuller agreed with the label with both of the opinion that it was a much cooler song but the group got their way and the rest is history. Would it have made any difference to the Spice Girls story if Virgin/Fuller had won out instead? I’m not sure and I guess we’ll never know but I’m thinking that the juggernaut of their success would have been “Too Much” to “Stop” (ahem).

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1ReefPlace Your HandsIt’s in the singles box – it’s a yes!
2Livin’ JoyFollow The RulesNegative
3Alisha’s AtticAlisha Rules The WorldI did not
4MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo I mustn’t
5SpaceNeighbourhoodNo but my wife had the album
6Wham!FreedomNo but we all had a Wham! Best Of didn’t we?
7Toni BraxtonUn-Break My HeartNah
8Jimmy NailCountry BoyNope
9East 17 / GabrielleIf You EverDidn’t happen
10Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereAnd 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/m0024zk8/top-of-the-pops-01111996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 25 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Three days before this TOTP aired, I travelled the short distance from Manchester to Bolton to see my beloved Chelsea play. They’d been drawn away to Bolton in the League Cup and my Wanderers supporting mate Steve invited me to go with him and his mates to watch the game. Predictably, we lost 2-1 after taking the lead and my hopes of seeing my team finally win a trophy were dealt a severe blow. This was supposed to be the new, exciting Chelsea of Ruud ‘sexy football’ Gullitt, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Di Matteo and yet we got turned over by rather less glamorous opponents. In short, to paraphrase a football saying, we couldn’t do it away on a cold Tuesday night at Bolton. I returned home a very disappointed man. But at least I returned home. Chelsea vice-chairman Matthew Harding had also been at the game and would lose his life in a helicopter crash on the way back to London. Harding had contributed huge amounts of money to the club helping to finance those exotic signings and also the redevelopment of the Chelsea ground. He also had a great relationship with the fans socialising with them at the games and in the pub. He was one of them rather than a faceless director. He also contributed £1 million to the Labour Party and the helicopter that went down had often been used by Tony Blair as leader of the party and prior to him becoming Prime Minister. In a parallel universe, the future of the whole country might have been different rather than just Chelsea Football Club’s. My wish to see my blue boys finally win something came true just six months later as they won the FA Cup at Wembley. Matthew Harding never lived to see that moment.

After a very sombre opening to this post, let’s get back to the music and hope for some uplifting tunes. Our hosts are Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley and we start with a bang via a cracking song from Suede. The second single from their No 1 album “Coming Up”, “Beautiful Ones”, for me, even surpassed previous hit “Trash” in terms of immediacy and…well…sparkle. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised as supposedly it was written by guitarist Richard Oakes purposely to be a chart success and was originally called “Dead Leg” after bass player Matt Osman threatened to give Oakes a dead leg if he couldn’t come up with a Top 10 hit. Presumably that particular punishment was not dispensed as the single peaked at No 8.

The performance here is a curious one. Keyboard player Neil Codling is out front for some reason, thumbs in his pockets, occasionally leaning into his mike to mouth a few lyrics. Why wasn’t he behind a synth or something as per usual? Weren’t there any keyboard parts in this track? Was he auditioning for Brett Anderson’s position in the band? As it turned out, Codling would actually take on a lot more of the vocals duties along with an increased input into song writing later in his Suede career. He left the band in 2001 due to chronic fatigue syndrome though he would return when they reconvened in 2010.

The lyric in “Beautiful Ones” about ‘your babies going crazy’ always puts me in mind of this scene from Swingers which was released in America a week before this TOTP was broadcast. “How long till you call your babies?”…

Next, we’re straight into one of the biggest dance tunes of the year, nay the decade…how about ever?! Steve Lamacq rather undermines my ardour by just referring to it as a “really cool track” but “Insomnia” by Faithless is surely more than that. A regular in all those ‘top club tunes’ polls by the likes of MTV Dance and Mixmag, it remains a timeless classic. Indeed, I have a friend in her late 70s and she loves Faithless!

Comprising of Maxi Jazz, Jamie Catto, Sister Bliss and Rollo (yes, Dido’s brother), they’d had two minor hit singles in 1995 with “Salva Ames (Save Me)” and the initial release of “Faithless” which had only made No 27 in the December as it got lost in the Christmas rush. March of 1996 saw another attempt on the charts but “Don’t Leave” could only make one week inside the Top 40 at No 34. Come the Autumn though, “Faithless” was rereleased and this time, it crashed into the charts at No 3 and easily topped the Dance Chart. Its subject matter struck a chord with clubbers who had trouble nodding off after a substance filled night of raving (or whatever it is clubbers did back then). The original album version is nine minutes long but it was edited down to three and a half for radio with the memorable keyboard riff being intended to sound like Underworld. Perhaps unusually for an album by a dance act, their album “Reverence” would go on to sell 300,000 copies in the UK and achieve platinum status and yet weirdly would get no higher in the charts than No 26. Where’s the justice in that? And I thought God was a DJ.

“You’re Gorgeous” by Babybird is up to No 6 on its way to a peak of No 3 which means a reshowing of their studio performance from the other week is required. I recall that when this came on the shop stereo in the Our Price in Stockport where I was working one busy Saturday afternoon, it happens to coincide with a group of ‘lads’ entering the shop and deciding to sing along at the top of their voices very badly. Saturdays were stressful enough in a record shop as it was and I could have done without this as well. I approached the group and asked them to pack it in but this only served to make them sing louder whilst eating their Greggs pasties and dripping flakes of pastry all over the floor (which was another bugbear of mine). Tossers.

Given the song’s much misunderstood subject matter, another thing that springs to mind when I hear “You’re Gorgeous” is another even more unpleasant memory, that of a particularly harrowing episode of the crime drama Prime Suspect the plot of which revolved around a pornographer who murdered a young girl after convincing her that he was a fashion photographer. Bloody hell! Death, murder…this post is bloody miserable so far! Please let there be some joyful tunes coming up to lighten the mood…

Hmm. Future Sound Of London wasn’t really what I had in mind. Experimental, ambient soundscapes are all very well but I need something to cheer me up and “My Kingdom” just isn’t doing it for me. I mean, it’s an interesting sound I guess and the accompanying video was probably cutting edge at the time with its morphing graphics but it’s kind of leaving me cold when I need something to give me a nice warm, fuzzy feeling that tells me everything is going to be OK – there must be a huge demand for such music whatever form it might take given the current state of the world.

You have to hand it to those Future Sound Of London boys though – they were ahead of their time. The album this track was taken from (“Dead Cities”) was promoted by a tour called ‘the f**k rock ‘n’ roll tour’ that allowed them to play live events via ISDN without leaving a studio. This was in 1996, well before the dawn of the digital age we all live in now. Hell, the vast majority of us didn’t even have a very basic mobile phone back then. In 2024, the idea of being separated from our mobiles for even an hour can cause a meltdown amongst many of us – ‘a phone, a phone…my kingdom for a phone’. Ahem.

Hands up who knew that Gina G had more hits than just “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit”. OK. Keep your hands up if you can name any of them. I thought as much. You’d have to be a superfan to still have your hands in the air at this point. “I Belong To You” was the first of four further hits and it was almost identical to her Eurovision song. And why not? ‘If it’s not broken…’, ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’ and so on and so on…It would have made sense for her to go with an almost identical sound – anything other than that would have been folly. Gina surely wouldn’t have been expected to reinvent herself as a serious artist within months of only being known as a Eurovision entrant? If she’d returned with a big ballad would people have accepted it? I’m not sure. Repeating the formula certainly worked for Gina giving her a none too shabby chart peak of No 6. And there’s more…she would have a further three hits after and none of them were a remix of “Ooh Aah…Just A Little Bit” meaning that she never had to plead “Ooh aah…just a little hit…please”. Yeah, sorry about that.

This week’s ’Flashback’ slot features “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)” by Enya. I’m far too behind with this post to comment on this so here’s what I had to say about this one in a post from my 80s blog.

TOTP 24 NOV 1988

If it’s good enough for Enya, it’s certainly good enough for E–Motion. Look, I haven’t got the time nor inclination to review something that I commented on as recently as six months ago especially when it’s as big a heap of shit as “The Naughty North And The Sexy South”. Here’s my thoughts on this one from when it was originally a hit in the February of this year and peaked at No 20 (it was rereleased in the October peaking at No 17).

TOTP 01 FEB 1996

By 1996, Madonna’s career had reached the point it was always meant to reach – i.e. that she would play the part of Eva Perón in a film version of Evita. Rumours had been circulating for years that she was destined for this role and it finally came to be. A cinema version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber 1978 musical, its soundtrack was always likely to sell in bucketloads even before you added in the superstar factor that Madonna brought to the project. However, the song we all know from the musical – “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” – wasn’t the first one to be released from the project. No, the first track that we heard Madonna singing from Evita wasn’t from the original musical at all – it was a brand new composition written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to promote the film and to secure an Oscar nomination (it would go on to win the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song). “You Must Love Me” was that song but despite its recognition, it wasn’t the massive hit that many may have expected. It made No 10 in the UK, No 18 in America and didn’t top the chart anywhere in the world. It certainly sounded like a huge hit or rather it sounded like a Lloyd Webber/Rice song with trademark haunting melody and a huge string backing – in fact you could be forgiven for thinking that it had been part of the original musical soundtrack so seamlessly did it sit alongside those other songs from the 1978 West End production.

The video shown here is just a plug for the film really with clips from the movie interspersed with a heavily pregnant Madonna singing in a room with her bump hidden behind a piano. The film made $141 million at the box office against a budget of $55 million and received mixed reviews from the press with the main criticism being that it was a case of style over substance though the soundtrack was a redeeming factor. It received a total of 23 film award nominations winning 12 including one Oscar and three Golden Globes. I’ve still yet to watch it though my wife took her Mum to see it at the cinema and her review was that it was one of the loudest films she’d ever sat through.

Cast are back next with their biggest ever hit “Flying”. I was a bit sniffy about this song the last time I reviewed it which on reflection was possibly a tad unfair seeing as it crapped all over most of its chart contemporaries (yes, I’m looking at you E-Motion). Originally a non-album single, it was later included in the band’s 2004 compilation “The Collection” which must be one of the least comprehensive retrospectives ever given that it does not feature the hits “Alright”, “Sandstorm”, “Walkaway”, “Guiding Star” or “Beat Mama”. Presumably a licensing issue, I guess you get what you pay for – it was a budget range album that was ineligible for a UK Album Chart ranking. A definitive collection called “Cast: The Singles 1995-2017” was released on white vinyl in 2018 however.

The Spice Girls are straight in at No 1 with their second single “Say You’ll Be There”. It’s interesting that although it is the desert based, high-tech ninja warriors video that I immediately think of when I hear this song, TOTP did not once show that promo instead having the group in the studio every time (although I think one may have been a just a repeat of a previous appearance). Which raises the question how had I seen the promo at all? On The Chart Show? Maybe but that was on TV on Saturday mornings when I would have been at work most weeks. I can’t think of any other music shows from around that time? They weren’t such a big deal already that they’d made it onto national news programmes surely? However I had seen it, I wasn’t alone. One David Beckham, legend has it, was so taken with Posh Spice in her black PVC catsuit that he vowed there and that they would become a couple. And lo and behold, two became one…or something.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SuedeBeautiful OnesNo but I had the album
2FaithlessInsomniaI did not
3BabybirdYou’re GorgeousNope
4Future Sound Of LondonMy KingdomNever happening
5Gina GI Belong To YouYou didn’t belong to me though Gina – no
6EnyaOrinoco Flow (Sail Away)Nah
7E-MotionThe Naughty North And The Sexy SouthDefinitely not
8MadonnaYou Must Love MeNo
9CastFlyingNegative
10Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereAnd 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/m0024zk6/top-of-the-pops-25101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 18 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

You don’t hear much about him these days but for a while there as the 80s turned into the 90s, Nigel Kennedy was quite the big deal. Tearing up the classical music manual with his appearance, style and attitude, he challenged the predominant perception of what that art form was and who it was for and found himself catapulted into the mainstream by the success of his “Vivaldi: The Four Seasons” album which topped the classical music chart for over a year selling three million copies in the process. What with Kennedy and the extraordinary popularity of The Three Tenors off the back of Italia ‘90, classical music was suddenly accessible to the masses. Our Nige wasn’t to everyone’s taste though. In 1991, he was denounced by the then Controller of BBC Radio 3 John Drummond as being “a Liberace for the nineties”* who went on to criticise his “ludicrous”* clothes and mocked his accent as being “self invented”*. Kennedy responded calling Drummond “pompous”* and of “encouraging exclusivity”* within classical music.

*All quotes taken from Paul Kelso article: Kennedy hits back at arts elitism, The Guardian, Wed 30 August 2000

Whichever side of the argument you find yourself on, none of it explains what Kennedy was doing on our screens in 1996 presenting TOTP does it? Was his profile still so high a good five years on from his “Four Seasons” heyday? His Wikipedia page says that in 1992, he’d announced that he was leaving classical music and he made an album with the marvellous Stephen Duffy called “Music In Colours” which was interesting though I found Nigel’s bits fairly unlistenable. However, by the middle of the decade he’d returned to the work of international classical concerts and just a few months after this TOTP appearance, he received an award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music at the BRITS so maybe he was in the ascendancy again? Anyway, let’s see how he does in the role of presenter…

Straight off the bat, Kennedy (who just introduces himself as ‘Nigel’) weirds us all out with his hair. What. The. F**k.? He has an enormous, towering Mohican fin protruding from the top of his head! Is it real?! If it is, how much product did it take to get it to stand on end like that?! Back in my youth in the 80s, I had ‘big’ hair (didn’t we all?) and would get through cans of Cossack hairspray in the pursuit of trying to get my bonce to look like Morten Harket’s coiffured locks but this was next level stuff. Pure madness and that’s also a phrase that could describe what was happening with the opening act The Boo Radleys at this time. Having broken through to the mainstream with hit single “Wake Up Boo!” and No 1 album “Wake Up!”, the band allegedly decided that all this pop star stuff wasn’t really for them and so made a follow up album that would alienate all those Johnny-come-lately fans (of whom I was one) in the form of “C’mon Kids”. At least, that’s how the story goes but it’s been denied by lead singer Sice that the band deliberately recorded new material designed to kill their previous pop vibe.

I’d bought and been a big fan of the “Wake Up” album but somehow my interest in The Boo Radleys had waned by the time “C’mon Kids” came out and the only songs from it I know are the singles “What’s In The Box (See Whatcha Got)” and the title track. Those who had listened to it included the music press and they were mainly lukewarm in their reaction, with the main takeaway being that the band had committed commercial suicide. Certainly it didn’t sell any where near as much as its predecessor peaking at No 20 but I quite like the singles from it so maybe I should give it a chance nearly 30 years on from its release. After all, it does have some fans within the music industry – Nicky Wire of the Manic Street Preachers said he listened to little else for a year whilst Tom White of The Electric Soft Parade names it as his favourite album ever. Perhaps its greatest accolade though is that supposedly Radiohead went back to the drawing board after hearing it during the “OK Computer” sessions.

“C’mon Kids” the song is nothing like their most well known tune being much more of a harder sound with fuzzy, squalling guitars and an almost shouted vocal from Sice. Jangly, bouncing pop it wasn’t but then why should the band have been expected to come up with “Wale Up Boo! (Part II)”?! They would stay together for another album before the 90s were up before disbanding though some of the members reformed in 2020 and have released two albums of new material since.

I’ve got to comment on a Montell Jordan song that isn’t “This Is How We Do It”? Who knew he even had any other hits? Well, he did and this one is called “I Like” and was the third of five he had in the UK. Watching this back, I’m struck by how lacking in substance it is. There’s hardly anything to it at all which is not helping me in my struggle to find something to say about it. I guess I could mention the lyrics that are so hackneyed that Montell might as well have just called the song ‘Black Cab’ and be done with it. Hackneyed? Hackney? Hackney carriage? Oh please yourselves! Anyway, the lyrics are terrible – ‘lips’ are rhymed with ‘hips’ , ‘walk’ with ‘talk’ and Montell even says “You’re so sexy” at one point. Couldn’t he have just been happy with having the one hit that sustained? After all, “This Is How We Do It” has endured to the point that it’s currently being used to soundtrack a Deliveroo advert.

Kennedy fluffs his lines a bit next as he plugs TOTP2 by saying “By the way, you’ve got to check out this amazing unforeseen…unseen footage of the Stones on Top of the Pops 2”. Probably hard to check out something unforeseen but I’m being harsh on poor Nige, he was just nervous no doubt. And so he should have been, so we all should have been for Mark Morrison has returned with his third hit of the year “Trippin’” and if The Mack is back then that means only one thing – he’ll have his handcuffs with him! I could never understand the appeal of this guy – neither his music nor his image and judging by all his run ins with the law, he was hardly a stand up guy. In the lyrics to “Trippin’”, he starts referring to himself in the third person and there is no bigger indicator of being a massive prick than that! He would crank out another hit before the end of the calendar year called “Horny” and follow it up in 1997 with one called “Moan & Groan”. Delightful.

There follows a really strange segue where immediately after Mark Morrison finishes we just get the voice of Nigel Kennedy (he’s not seen at all) saying “And here is Celine…*big pause*…Dion” before the screen fades and the video for “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” starts playing. Why wasn’t he in shot and why the large pause? Maybe the camera couldn’t accommodate his huge Mohican hairstyle. Anyway, it is Celine Dion and unlike the other week when we got six minutes worth of the promo, mercifully we only get half that amount this time around. In an interview with the director Nigel Dick, he effused about what a hard worker Celine is and mentioned that he made her run across gravel barefoot for a scene five times until he was happy with the shot. Celine didn’t complain but came to the shoot the next day with her feet in bandages. Fair play to her though I would do the same just to never have to watch this video again.

Nigel is back with us visually now and asking the question why we’ve never seen the next artist on TV before despite them having sold 20 million records. Who is he talking about? It’s Bally Sagoo who I must admit to not being aware of despite this hit “Dil Cheez (My Heart…)” and despite working in a record shop at the time it was in the charts. Having read up on him, my embarrassment of not knowing who he is has multiplied as he really is a big deal. In his early days he was a DJ in Birmingham but he wasn’t spinning the latest chart sounds. No, he was creating his own mixtapes fusing together elements of Western music and hip hop with Indian music. He signed with local record label Oriental Star Agencies as an in house producer collaborating with the likes of Qawwali superstar Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan before signing to Sony Records in his own right. His reworking of an Asha Bhosle song would be played on Radio 1 making him the first Indian artist to achieve national mainstream radio airplay. He then released the album “Rising From The East” which would spend a week in the UK album chart and furnish two Top 40 singles including “Dil Cheez (My Heart)”. Having broken through the glass ceiling, he went stratospheric in terms of exposure by supporting Michael Jackson on the HIStory World Tour. From there he launched his own record label showcasing both his material and other new artists and in 2003 was honoured at the UK Asian Awards with the inaugural trophy for outstanding achievement (presented to him by the Spice Girls no less). His music can be found in films like Bend It Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding and he has diversified into areas such as film production, artist promotion and management, fashion and technology. Like I said, he’s quite the mover and shaker.

Back to Nigel’s original question about why we’d never seen Bally Sagoo on TV before, I guess it was because there had traditionally been so few UK hit singles that had an Asian influence and sound to them and if they weren’t chart hits the they wouldn’t have been on TOTP. There’s a few exceptions like “Ever So Lonely” by Monsoon in 1982 and are we counting “Im Nin’alu” by Israeli singer Ofra Haza from 1988? By the 90s things were starting to change with the likes of Apache Indian bringing Bhangramuffin to the Top 40 and in 1998, Cornershop took “Brimful Of Asha” to No 1. In these TOTP repeats, we’re not far off from Kula Shaker having a hit with a song sung entirely in Sanskrit in “Govinda”. More recently, there has been the rise of K-pop (which I know barely anything about) and of course the global phenomenon that was “Gangnam Style” by Psy. From the world of film, “Jai Ho” won an Oscar for Best Original Song after soundtracking that memorable dance sequence in Slumdog Millionaire. Finally, in 2023, Diljit Dosanjh became the first Punjabi artist to perform at the Coachella music festival. And I haven’t even mentioned Bollywood…

Nigel’s Mohican is starting to wilt under those studio lights and has flopped on one side. Also suffering a malfunction is the show’s running order as we don’t get to see the advertised ‘Flashback’ feature which was John Travolta and Olivia Newton John doing “Summer Nights” from Grease. Presumably it was cut for reasons of timing to fit in with BBC4’s Friday night schedule. So do I have to review this or not? Look, we all know this song and the film it comes from. I don’t need to make anymore comment on it do I? No I don’t.

Next up is a song that I definitely know but I may have struggled to name the artist behind it. Without looking it up or watching this TOTP repeat, I might have come up with Another Level but I think I would have been confusing “Freak Me” with this song which is “No Diggity” by Blackstreet. Oh, hang on. The album it was taken from was called “Another Level”? Ah well, then my mistake is perhaps forgivable. Perhaps not though as this track was an American No 1 and was the single that knocked “Macarena” off the top of the charts after it had been there for nine weeks. It’s yet another R&B number on this particular show following Montell Jordan and Mark Morrison earlier and also features Dr.Dre (nearly forgot about him) and Queen Pen. It’s come to be recognised as perhaps the definitive New Jack Swing song thanks to the creative input of Blackstreet founder member and lead vocalist Teddy Riley, the man credited with creating the genre. Did I like it? Not really though its title and hook have remained with me all these years. Apparently ‘no diggity’ means ‘no doubt’ but sadly for Nigel Kennedy, he fluffs his lines again and repeats the word ‘diggity’ for no reason and is left with ‘no dignity’.

After the huge success of “Three Lions” with Baddiel and Skinner over the Summer of football, it was back to the day job for Ian Broudie and the Lightning Seeds with another knockabout bit of pop fluff to promote. It may have seemed like an age ago but their last non-football related single had been “Ready Or Not” which had been released way back in February. It was the lead track from the “Dizzy Heights” album but that would not appear until the November after the recording of it was delayed to allow Broudie to concentrate on the “Three Lions” project so effectively “What If” became the lead single.

I have to say it’s not one of their strongest songs (despite being co-written by the wonderful and much missed Terry Hall) and the performance of it here demonstrates that Broudie is not the owner of the most powerful voice in pop. It actually reminds me of something else which I think is this by Sean Maguire and that’s not a good thing by the way…

By strange pop coincidence, there was actually a Lightning Seeds song in the Top 40 in this very week which went under the radar. The cover of “All I Want” from their first album by Susanna Hoffs is actually rather lovely and was at No 32 in the UK Top 40 at the time of this Lightning Seeds performance.

Having not heard it in ages, I’d forgotten what a good song “6 Underground” by Sneaker Pimps is. Pigeonholed in the music press as a cross between Portishead and Garbage, they looked to have the world at their feet but they never seems to be able to go beyond that first flush of success with their debut album “Becoming X”. Maybe it was all the remixes that the band had done of “6 Underground” that seemed to keep them anchored in those initial recordings (there was even an official remix album released called “Becoming Remixed” as a companion piece to their debut). Or maybe it was that the track “6 Underground” wouldn’t go away. After its 1996 chart run, it was rereleased the following year off the back of being included on the soundtrack to The Saint film and peaked at No 9, six places higher then its first foray into the Top 40. That second strata of success and that of follow up “Spin Spin Sugar” was enough evidence for a rerelease of the album which included new artwork and the inclusion of what many saw as the definitive version of “6 Underground” by Nellee Hooper. Then there was the two years of touring in support of the album when they opened for Blur and Neneh Cherry and played with Tricky and Lamb securing the perception of them as a trip hop band. All of this delayed the release of second album “Splinter” until 1999 when musical tastes had moved on and momentum was lost.

However, the biggest event that determined the band’s path was surely when lead singer Kelli Ali was told by fellow band members Chris Corner and Liam Howe that her vocals would not suit their new direction and she was fired from the line up before the recording of “Splinter”. This led to them being dropped by their label Virgin and they would never recapture the level of those early glories. They would go on a decade long hiatus before rebooting the band in 2016 and last released an album in 2021.

After the demise of Take That earlier in the year, the positioning of Boyzone as the UK’s next premier boyband was a foregone conclusion. They’d already spent two years coming up on the rails with a collection of hits that had peaked at Nos 2, 3 and 4 but their first chart topper had proved elusive. With those cheeky Manc scamps out of the way, there was no stopping them. Add to that the fact that they’d returned to the trusted strategy of releasing a cover version and the deal was not so much as sealed as cemented shut. “Words” by the Bee Gees was the song to do it for them and I recall it selling and selling and then selling some more in the Our Price store where I worked. We may have even come perilously close to selling out of it (an unspeakable crime for a record shop). When they released the follow up “A Different Beat”, I was determined not to be in that situation again so ordered in a load of the single. Despite also going to No 1, it failed to sell in anywhere near the quantities of “Words” and we were left with massive overstock. The fickle gods of pop music had farted in my face once again.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1The Boo RadleysC’Mon KidsNegative
2Montell JordanI LikeI disliked
3Mark MorrisonTrippin’Nah
4Celine DionIt’s All Coming Back To Me NowAs if
5Bally SagooDil Cheez (My Heart…)Nope
6John Travolta and Olivia Newton John Summer NightsNo
7BlackstreetNo DiggityI did not
8Lightning SeedsWhat IfNah
9Sneaker Pimps6 UndergroundLiked it, didn’t buy it
10BoyzoneWordsNever

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/m0024s0d/top-of-the-pops-18101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 11 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

Writing two of these blog posts a week can be quite a drain on the well of creativity. Consequently, I have returned to my 1996 diary for inspiration and it’s certainly thrown a memory up though not one that I’m very proud of. Two days after this TOTP aired, I was out in Manchester with my wife and a coupe of friends. The plan was to have a few drinks and then go to Chinatown first and then for a meal. And we did do all of that so what was the problem? Well, unfortunately I imbibed a few too many alcoholic beverages along the way and by the time I sat down to eat in the Yang Sing restaurant I was completely plastered, off my face, hammered. That would have been bad enough but here’s the real kicker and this was unbelievable. The table next to us had noticed my inebriated state and had engaged in conversation with us along the lines of “dearie me, is he alright?”. In an attempt to prove that I was indeed OK and more than that, not drunk at all, I proceeded to tell them that I had to be at work early the next day as I worked in the Our Price in Stockport and we were having our Christmas merchandising, signage and decorations installed. Back in those days, the company employed outside contractors to come in and do all that sort of stuff. By the end of my time at Our Price, I’m pretty sure the staff were expected to do all that sort of thing. Now we get to the really weird bit. One of the women on the next table the informs me that she works for the company putting up the merchandising and is doing the Stockport store tomorrow. Excellent! So literally in a few hours time when no doubt I will feel as rough as a badger’s arse, I’ll be opening the shop doors to the woman next to me who has witnessed me completely destroyed by drink. So, not embarrassing at all then. My diary doesn’t record what happened at work on the Monday other than it was a quiet day presumably meaning I was hung over and hiding in the stockroom away from the counter and other human beings. I wonder if this TOTP has anyone on it to match my level of humiliation?

Nothing embarrassing about opening act Manic Street Preachers who are in the studio to perform their new single “Kevin Carter”. The third track lifted from their “Everything Must Go” album, it was also their third Top 10 hit on the spin. To give this achievement some context, their previous 13 singles had given them just one. This really was phoenix from the flames stuff given that the band had suffered the loss of main lyricist Richey Edwards. Having said that, “Kevin Carter” was one of the songs demoed for Edwards before his disappearance and which he wrote the lyrics for about the titular Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist who took his own life in 1994 haunted by the images of famine and death that he had taken in Sudan.

It’s a very spiky track with a rhythm that judders and skitters about and not the strongest chorus but then there’s the middle eight trumpet solo by drummer Sean Moore which is actually quite exquisite. I guess it would have been difficult logistically to have him play the solo and be on the drums simultaneously in this performance. Such a striking piece of music was it that it was used as the theme music to the ITV Wales current affairs show Wales This Week. No, really. See…

Ooh now, here’s something that’s truly mortifying! What in the world was this all about?! Well, it’s the obligatory dance tune on tonight’s show and it arrives courtesy of Jeremy Healy & Amos. Jeremy, of course, started his music career as a member of Haysi Fantayzee but went on to carve out a diverse career as a superstar DJ and musical director for fashion house Victoria’s Secret and labels launched by the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Gwen Stefani. Amos was that bloke from Emmerdale who ran the Woolpack pub. No, of course he wasn’t but he might have well have been for all the information I can find out about Healy’s partner in crime and let’s have it right, “Stamp!” was a crime of music. This track is all over the place. There’s some record decks scratching, funk style bass lines, some de rigueur dream trance keyboards flourishes and some repeated spoken word Spanish all in the mix. And then there’s the performance which is absolutely bonkers. I guess it’s trying to reflect the mishmash of styles on display with flamenco dancers, a ludicrously moustachioed man on bongos and in the centre of it all is Jeremy Healy gurning away and generally making a total prat of himself. There’s very little online about this hit – Healy’s Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it at all – and quite right too as we should all try and expunge it from our memories. A total embarrassment.

With their repertoire of sardonic, social commentary yet beautifully crafted songs, I don’t think The Beautiful South could be accused of being a national embarrassment. Indeed, Paul Heaton is more of a national treasure. He even offered to nationalise his songs so that every time they are played on radio the state would receive the royalties revenue and could use it to improve living standards. Predictably, the Conservative government of the time refused his generous offer of a gift to the British public.

One of those songs that would have been included in his proposal was “Rotterdam (Or Anywhere)” the lead single from fifth studio album “Blue Is The Colour”. Perhaps one of their most well known songs and one of their biggest hits (it peaked at No 5), it was inspired by the lack of a welcome Paul Heaton received in a snooty bar in Rotterdam which he perceived didn’t want ‘his type’ as part of their clientele. Paul has refuted the idea that it’s a criticism of Rotterdam itself but more of the type of people who consider themselves the beautiful elite whom you see everywhere. Heaton’s experience of this just happened to be in a bar in Rotterdam. There’s something about its barbed lyrics with its references to Liverpool, Rome and pickled people that appealed to the nation. Interesting to note that Heaton is happy to completely take a back seat in this performance and hand all the vocals to Jacqui Abbott. As of a 2020 interview in The Guardian, neither the band nor the duo of Jacqui and Heaton have ever played “Rotterdam” live in that city nor Rome but it always goes down well in Liverpool and anywhere in Ireland for the line “gargoyles dipped long in Irish stout”. It has also taken on a life of its own as a football chant with the chorus being adopted by home fans to taunt their away counterparts with “insert name of opposition get battered everywhere they go”. I must tell my football obsessed son where that chant comes from.

Next up are a band whose name I remember but as for their hits, I couldn’t name you a one. Apparently Damage were marketed as being the British 3T despite the fact that there were five of them (the clue was in the name guys – bit embarrassing) and despite my inability to name any of them, they would rack up nine UK Top 40 hits including four Top Tenners. This really was a boom time for British R&B/pop artists what with the likes of Eternal, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle representing the women of the genre and MN8, Mark Morrison and Ultimate Kaos showing up for the men (well, boys in the case of Ultimate Kaos). It makes me wonder how there was room for another such act in Damage but their run of hits proves that there was. “Love II Love” was their breakthrough hit and its title has left me wondering if it was inspired by another UK R&B artist, that of Soul II Soul. Anyway, it doesn’t do much for me although the video is at least diverting with the band as puppets being controlled by a mean alien lady. The only other thing to delay us here is to mention that lead singer Jade Jones has been in a relationship with Emma Bunton since 1998 finally marrying her in 2021. The Spice Girls are on later but this can’t be where they met as it was Damage’s promo video that we saw on the show and not the real thing in the studio.

Now I wouldn’t call this next hit embarrassing, not at all. However, despite it being the artist’s biggest ever hit, it’s also one of their weakest to my ears. “Flying” by Cast was a standalone single presumably recorded and released to plug the gap between their debut and sophomore album that wasn’t released until April of 1997. It’s not that it’s an awful song (and I don’t recall having this opinion of it at the time) but there really isn’t much to it. It’s very repetitive – the chorus is also its intro with its lyric sung four times over – and said lyrics are so basic and uninspiring that they sound like they took about the same amount of time to come up with as the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng infamous and disastrous mini budget (now that was something that was truly shameful). Look at these:

It’s like flying through the air, you can make it if you dare

You live your life without a care, you know that love is everywhere

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: John T. Williams
Flying lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group

I mean, come on. Was that the best John Power could do? I don’t think so. To be fair to him, I saw Cast live this year as part of a three band open air show along with Embrace and Ocean Colour Scene. We arrived late halfway through the set and only caught a bit of “Flying” which they were playing as we entered the venue but I have to admit it sounded better live.

This week’s ’flashback’ section features Madonna and “True Blue” which was No 1 in the corresponding week ten years previously. Here’s the post from my 80s blog in which I discussed it:

TOTP 09 OCT 1986

Next up is the most misunderstood song since Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”. Babybird was basically a vehicle for songwriter Stephen Jones who had been churning out hundreds of lo-fi demos in his Nottingham flat without being signed to a major label until Echo Records (a division of the Chrysalis Group) offered him a deal. His first single release for them “Goodnight” was a No 28 hit spending just two weeks in the charts but it was second single “You’re Gorgeous” that would become the song that he would forever be remembered for. On first hearing, it may have seemed like a full blown, lush ballad but first impressions can be deceiving. I can’t recall the specific realisation that I (and so many others) must have had that not everything was as it seemed here but clearly the lyrics of the verses were at odds with that joyful chorus. The tale of a sleazy photographer manipulating his model with promises of magazine covers, it was a brilliant example of subverting the established love song narrative. And yet so many people didn’t get it. Even today, if you check out the comments on YouTube against its promo video you’ll find people saying that their Mums used to sing it to them when they were little or that the song makes the commentator’s spirit feel lighter or that the song has such fun, happy vibes. Should those people be embarrassed or is it a case of ignorance is bliss? Who am I to tell people how to consume or enjoy a song?

And for the third time in the TOTP studio we have Donna Lewis performing “I Love You Always Forever”. Seriously? What is there left for me to say about this one? Or should I be the one who’s embarrassed with my lack of creativity? OK, I’m just going to fling some stuff out there and see if any of it sticks or resonates…

  1. The song was inspired by the H.W.Bates 1962 novel Love For Lydia with the lyric of the chorus being lifted directly from the book.
  2. It was originally entitled “Lydia” but Lewis was talked into renaming it by her record label due to there being no reference to a ‘Lydia’ lyrics. Could it also have been to do with the fact that there was already a song out there called “Lydia” by Dean Friedman?
  3. It spent nine weeks at No 2 sat behind Los Del Rio’s “Macarena”. Surely the Ultravox/ Joe Dolce moment of the 90s?
  4. Despite not toppling Los Del Rio’s hit, “I Love You Always Forever” completely trounced it in the airplay chart being heard by 100 million radio listeners in one week compared to 19 million for “Macarena”.

That do ya?

Was this the moment that we all knew that the Spice Girls were here to stay? After the runaway success of almost novelty hit “Wannabe”, the decision on how to follow it up was always going to be crucial. Would they carry on into the extremes of bubblegum pop or go in an altogether different direction? I guess there two ways of reacting to “Say You’ll Be There”:

  1. It was a super smooth and slick pop/dance number with a dash of R&B that was so prevalent and popular around this time. Therefore it showed a maturity to the group that was not apparent in “Wannabe” and was a wise career move aimed at longevity.
  2. It was a safe and boring decision to jump on that pop/dance bandwagon and shows that the surprise of their debut hit had been sacrificed for guaranteed further success.

I’m not embarrassed to say that I was of opinion No 1. It was super radio friendly and the way that they divided up the vocal parts between the five of them promoted that gang mentality and also allowed for fans to pick out a favourite Spice Girl.

It’s another single that’s straight in at No 1 now as The Chemical Brothers top the charts in week one with “Setting Sun”. Working in a record shop, I was aware of Manchester duo Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands via my much hipper than me work colleagues – they had especially liked their debut album “Exit Planet Dust” which was a shop stereo favourite. However, perhaps like many, I didn’t really take that much notice of them until this single the publicity surrounding which was substantially heightened by the presence of the record of one Noel Gallagher. How much the Oasis man’s association affected sales we may never know but regardless, his input helped forge a spectacular dance tune that even I could get on board with. By all measurable criteria, I should have hated this. After all, “Higher State Of Consciousness” by Josh Wink hadn’t so much set my teeth on edge as trigger a full blown nervous breakdown in me every time I heard it and “Setting Sun” wasn’t a million miles away from that with its sprawling, squealing cacophony of sounds that metaphorically slammed you to the wall and kept you pinned there for the duration when it came on. Whether it was the presence of Noel I’m not sure but this track seemed to have more…what?…structure to it? Those sniffy elements of the music press would laud it as the best thing Gallagher ever did which makes for a good line but is a bit embarrassing on their behalf.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Manic Street PreachersKevin CarterNo but I had the album
2Jeremy Healy & AmosStamp!As if
3The Beautiful SouthRotterdam (Or Anywhere)No but I must have had it on something
4DamageLove II LoveDefinitely not
5CastFlyingNah
6MadonnaTrue BlueNope
7BabybirdYou’re GorgeousNegative
8Donna LewisI Love You Always ForeverI did not
9Spice GirlsSay You’ll Be ThereI can’t because I wasn’t – no
10The Chemical Brothers Setting SunAnd 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/m0024s0b/top-of-the-pops-11101996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 04 OCT 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

We are well into the Autumn of 1996 here at TOTP Rewind as we enter the month of October and big changes are afoot. No, I don’t mean the show’s new opening titles but rather the fact that Manchester City have just appointed a new manager – Steve Coppell replaced Alan Ball two days after this TOTP aired. This was big news where I worked in the Our Price store in Stockport where many of my colleagues were City fans. Coppell had done wonders over two separate stints at Crystal Palace and big things were expected of him but his reign would last just 33 days and 6 matches after which he quit stating that the pressure of the job was to big for him. What I remember most of this time was that in those 33 days, the Man City calendar for 1997 came out and had a team photo on the cover with Coppell front and centre. The calendar company and the club must have been so pissed off. What were the chances? With Stockport not being far from Manchester, we stocked the calendar and decided we would try and hide the recently resigned Coppell’s face with the price sticker to try and make it seem like it wasn’t an already out of date product which, let’s be fair, is not a good look for a calendar. Anyway, I wonder if there are any artists on this show that had a similarly short career in pop music?

Our host is ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ (that’s was his official name around this time) who looked like he might have a potential career in the media if the whole rock star thing didn’t work out. To be fair to him, his appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks was very good and indicated that a projected media career wasn’t so fanciful. He starts his shift by introducing Sleeper and their latest hit “Statuesque”. The fourth and final single released from “The It Girl” album, it also drew a line under their most successful period. By the time that third album “Pleased To Meet You” came out in the Autumn of 1997, Britpop was in its last vestiges and with no zeitgeist to ride, reaction to it was cool with neither of the singles taken from it making the Top 20. For now though, it was success as usual. “Statuesque” was very much in the same style as its predecessors from the album and secured a No 17 chart peak and a third hit for the band in this calendar year. However, the winning formula of the music wasn’t translating into a ring of confidence when it came to Louise Wener’s stage presence. I’ve said it before but she does look a bit uncomfortable up there in terms of knowing what to do with herself when not singing into the mike. She just sort of shuffles about, swinging her arms and flicking her hair. They could have at least given her a guitar to strum.

Rivalling ‘Tony from Terrorvision’s’ profile at this time, Louise would appear on the Vic Reeves/Bob Mortimer TV game show Shooting Stars in December of this year. Actually, the pair would mirror each other’s extra curricular TV appearances with Wener also appearing on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in 1997 having already presented TOTP six months prior to Tony’s slot here. All of this must have only highlighted the gulf of recognition between Louise and the rest of her band mates whose anonymity was seized upon by the music press who referred to them as “Sleeperblokes”. They took it in good spirits though even having T-shirts produced for them to wear with the phrase on the front.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Burnt brightly but briefly in their heyday but were saved from a higher score by reforming in 2017

We’re still in the ‘techno bollocks’ stage of Everything But The Girl’s career and I still can’t get in board with it. “Single” was the third single taken from the “Walking Wounded” album that had seen them take a more electronica direction following the huge success of the Todd Terry remix of “Missing”. This track, like its predecessors from this era, just sounds a bit ‘meh’ to me (for want of a better word). If I’d been out at a club on an all nighter and I’d made it back home in the early hours and wanted some comedown music to chill out to as the sun came up, then maybe “Single” would be a good choice in that scenario but as I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I’ve been in that situation…

I had wondered if “Single” was a clever marketing ploy as per the one used by Public Image Ltd back in 1986 when they released an album called “Album” (the CD version of it was called “Compact Disc” and the cassette format “Cassette”). Its lead single was a song called “Rise” but was packaged as being called “Single”. Sadly, Everything But The Girl’s song was just about being single, as in not in a relationship. Miserabilists.

Steve Coppell-ometer: A very low score for Ben and Tracey who recorded under the Everything But The Girl banner between 1982 and 2000 before resurrecting it in 2021 and releasing the “Fuse” album in 2023. They have also been in a relationship with each other for decades finally marrying in 2009. So they didn’t really know anything about being single did they?

It’s another female lead vocal now. Having gone from a band to a duo we now get a solo artist. Gabrielle’s career might have gone another way after her debut single “Dreams” went to No 1 in 1993. She could have been a classic one hit wonder but a series of follow up hits ranging in size from minor to middling to mighty meant that her time as a pop star would carry on until the present day. “If You Really Cared” was one of those middling sized hits I would suggest, peaking at No 15. It strikes me as typical Gabrielle fare, smooth R&B pop, very radio friendly (some of the guitar parts put me in mind of “You’re The Best Thing” by The Style Council) though not likely to last long in the memory. There’s only really the aforementioned “Dreams” plus “Rise” and “Out Of Reach” from her back catalogue that I could tell you how they went.

There is something else to say about this song though and it’s this: why did Gabrielle put out a single so close to the scheduled release of her duet with East 17? Everyone clearly knew it was in the pipeline as ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ describes her as the drinking partner of the boys from Walthamstow and the TOTP caption says ‘Soon releasing duet with East 17’. “If You Really Cared” was made available in the shops on 23 September whilst “If You Ever” came out on 21 October. Was that really an advisable strategy and whilst we’re at it, having the titles of both singles start with the word “If” – would they not have been slightly confusing for punters and indeed record shop staff?

Steve Coppell-ometer: Hardly a blip on its radar which is understandable given she’s been a recording artist for over 30 years

Things I know about LL Cool J:

  1. He’s a rapper non
  2. He had a hit in the 80s called “I Need Love”
  3. He’s also an actor (though I couldn’t name any of the films he’s been in)
  4. The name LL Cool J stands for Ladies Love Cool James
  5. Erm…that’s it

Clearly that list doesn’t include this hit “Loungin’” so this must have passed me by despite going to No 7 in our charts. So back in the day, did the word loungin’ mean something other than relaxing (probably) on a sofa? Was it a forerunner of Netflix and chill? Well, the online urban dictionary gives a definition of:

“The act of a girl lying across a guy’s chest with her head on his shoulder. Usually undertaken while on a sofa watching a film.”

Frodrick Frankenstein February 4, 2009

Hmm. Kind of a Netflix and chill vibe then. “Loungin’” would the first of a run of five UK Top 10 hits for LL Cool J including a No 1 with his version of “Ain’t Nobody” for the Beavis and Butt–Head Do America soundtrack. Well, there’s something to look forward to then. Ahem.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Cool James hardly registers a flicker with a career stretching into five decades

This week’s ’flashback’ section features a very famous TOTP performance – it’s Rod Stewart doing “Maggie May”. Yeah, that one with a very hirsute John Peel miming the mandolin. Apparently Rod was told he couldn’t have a non musician up there with him but he insisted on Peel being part of the performance with the latter having to guarantee the Musicians’ Union that he hadn’t received payment for the privilege. The TOTP cameramen were instructed not to focus on Peel but Rod got wind of this and so indulged in some horseplay in and around the DJ so that he would be caught in shot on camera. The performance as a whole is a riot of ill discipline with The Two Ronnies Laine and Wood disappearing off stage mid song meaning that they missed their miming cues whilst scrambling back to their original positions. Sadly in this clip, we don’t get to see the infamous scenes of Rod, Wood and Laine kicking a football about on stage as the song finishes.

“Maggie May” was Stewart’s first solo No 1 and has become perhaps his most enduring song though my first awareness of him would be via his 1975 No 1 “Sailing” which my Mum and Dad liked. They weren’t the only ones. Apparently ex-footballer turned pundit Alan Shearer replied “Sailing by Rod Stewart” when asked by then Blackburn Rovers team mate Graeme Le Saux to name his favourite song ever. Shearer would have been in his early to mid 20s at that point! Le Saux, who is two years older than Shearer and was all about the likes of Jamiroquai at the time, was (perhaps rightly) flabbergasted.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Are you mad?! Rod’s 80 in January and still going strong

There are only nine songs on this TOTP as opposed to what has become the standard ten and I can only assume that was to allow the show to feature the six minutes long video of Celine Dion performing “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. As ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ says, “it goes on and on and on…”. The way that the decks were cleared to accommodate it is similar to the special treatment reserved for a Michael Jackson video exclusive – I know she was shifting some units but really?! You don’t have to listen to the song for long to realise it’s a Jim Steinman composition – legend has it that his on/off pal Meatloaf wanted to record it but Steinman told him to hang fire and he could have it for “Bat Out Of Hell 3” but then gave it to Celine to record. Also unimpressed by that decision was one Elaine Caswell, singer with all female group Pandora’s Box who Steinman put together in the 80s and who first recorded “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”. Apparently, the original recording just had her vocals removed and Dion’s added over the top. Elaine was so upset that she couldn’t bear to be in the room if Celine’s version came on the radio. Supposedly Caswell collapsed five times whilst laying down the track in the studio. It is not known whether it was due to physical exhaustion from all that overwrought singing or that the rancid stench of the song overpowered her senses causing her to faint.

As for the video that TOTP executive producer Ric Blaxill seems to have made such a fuss over, it’s all very derivative with a “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” promo vibe detectable and substantial nods to the movie Ghost and even to The Rocky Horror Picture Show* present. Celine emotes all over the place and the whole thing feels like it wasn’t really worth all that bother. “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” would take Celine to No 3 in the UK and No 2 in the US. All of this and we haven’t even got anywhere near that Titanic song yet…

*That bit where the ghost of her dead lover drives his motorbike in the house reminds me of Eddie riding his round and round the stairs before he is ultimately despatched by Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an ice pick. Eddie was, of course, played by Meatloaf.

Steve Coppell-meter: Nothing doing here. Despite health issues, Celine still has the desire to record and perform live. She completed an eight year residency in Las Vegas in 2019.

On and on and on…do you think ‘Tony from Terrorvision’ knew that as well as poking fun at Celine Dion that he was also referencing a song by the next artist. Longpigs would rack up four chart hits in 1996 – “On And On” was the second of them peaking at No 16. This one though – “Lost Myself” – was the fourth and final single to make the Top 40 for them in that calendar year. I thought I didn’t know this one but I did remember it when I watched this performance back – the hook of lead singer Crispin Hunt pausing momentarily between the words ‘live’ and ‘by’ in the lyric “to live by myself I’m far too weak” was very arresting and immediately rang a bell. It did strike me as unusual that there were two bands in the charts at this time with lead singers with very similar and… well…let’s have it right, quite posh sounding names in Crispin Hunt from Longpigs and Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker. Still, what’s in a name. I mean, I couldn’t tell you if that’s a Barbie or a Sindy doll strapped to Hunt’s microphone. Actually, what was that about?

Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally an artist who shows up on it. Longpigs were only in existence for seven years and bar one minor chart entry in 1999, all their hits came in this year.

As in the previous two years, Boyzone (now elevated to being the UK’s premier boy band after the demise of Take That earlier in 1996) looked to that old chestnut of a cover version to secure themselves a massive hit. Having taken both “Love Me For A Reason” by The Osmonds and “Father And Son” by Cat Stevens to a chart peak of No 2, the band’s decision to record a version of “Words” by the Bee Gees would reward them with their first UK chart topper. Sound logic but was it all becoming just a little bit cynical? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least another two covers that they released as singles in Tracy Chapman’s “Baby Can I Hold You” and Billy Ocean’s “When The Going Gets Tough” (the second one was for Comic Relief at least) so it’s a concept they weren’t done with yet.

“Words” was originally a No 8 in 1968 for the Bee Gees and you can see why Boyzone (or their management) chose it. A wistful, weary ballad that suited Ronan Keating’s wistful, weary voice perfectly and of course, it had that Gibb Brothers stardust that so many other artists had found themselves sprinkled with when covering a Bee Gees song. The lads seem a bit overdressed here in all that stuffy clobber of large coats, scarves and ties – they must have been sweltering under those studio lights. What do they care for what I’m writing about them though? It’s only words.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Nothing registering here. The lads would carry on until 2000 and then again from 2007 to 2019.

And so to the No 1 and it’s “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something and what a divisive chart topper it was. Literally the worst song ever for some online commenters, it was also undoubtedly popular at least briefly. Where do I stand on it? Well, I certainly wouldn’t describe it as the worst song ever but is it a great track? Probably not. However, look it up on YouTube and there are so many videos of people having a go at playing the song – it seems to be quite the busker’s favourite and if the mark of a song is how many times it’s been played then, at least that’s one thing it’s got.

Steve Coppell-ometer: Finally a massive score on this. They came, they saw, they conquered… and then they disappeared having spent as many weeks inside the Top 10 as Coppell had games in charge of Manchester City – six.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1 SleeperStatuesqueDecent song but no
2Everything But The GirlSingleNot happening
3GabrielleIf You Really CaredNope
4LL Cool JLoungin’Negative
5Rod StewartMaggie MayNo but my parents liked it
6Celine DionIt’s All Coming Back To Me NowNever
7LongpigsLost MyselfI did not
8BoyzoneWordsNah
9Deep Blue SomethingBreakfast At Tiffany’sNo

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/m0024hpb/top-of-the-pops-04101996?seriesId=unsliced

Cannot

TOTP 27 SEP 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

If last week’s TOTP was all about the mainstream, this time the focus seems to be on repeat appearances. 60% of the songs in this show we have already seen/heard before, some as recently as the previous week. Some of this is down to those pesky ‘exclusive’ performances for singles that weren’t actually available to buy in the shops yet. Once released, they would then debut in the charts thus earning themselves another TOTP airing. Maybe that was fine back in the day but it doesn’t help this blogger 28 years later who has to find something else to write about a song that he’s only just reviewed!

One thing that is new is the host. Comedian Harry Hill is still very much a name in 2024 and part of the country’s psyche and comedy fabric but how well known was he back in 1996? Well, he’d won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival in 1992 but that’s not always a guarantee of a long career. He did have a Radio 4 show called Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner that ran for four series but in terms of being on TV, he was hardly omnipresent. A six episode conversion of his radio show to BBC2 ran from October to December in 1994 and he also appeared on the rebooted Friday Night Live (retitled Saturday Night Live) show in 1996 but as part of an ensemble of comedians. He didn’t get his own show until the following year so I’m guessing that, at the time of this TOTP, he was on his way up but had yet to fully arrive.

His first job is to introduce opening act Skunk Anansie with “All I Want” which is one of those ‘repeat’ performances I mentioned. Harry’s voice sounds a bit croaky after a toot on his bugle to start the show and it seems to be catching as Skin’s live vocal sounds a bit rough as well. She does get it together for most of the song though her yelping in the chorus does sound slightly demonic at times. At one point, she jumps into the studio audience but it all falls a bit flat as clearly a spot of crowd surfing would have breached BBC health and safety rules so she just jumps up and down instead next to a bloke in a cap who it seems now thinks that he is Skin’s best friend. I said the first time I reviewed this that it sounds like the band had just rewritten “Weak” but I’m actually quite liking getting reacquainted with “All I Want”.

I have to say that the 1996 version of Harry Hill doesn’t look any younger than he does today. Perhaps it might be more polite to say he doesn’t look any older than he did 18 years ago. Anyway, I like his segue into the next act which is “But now, I am Donna Lewis and here is the news…”. Excellent word play there that even Huey himself would have approved of (in fact, he’d have probably appreciated the publicity back in 1996).

As for Donna, “I Love You Always Forever” is up to No 9 on its way to a high of No 5 for two weeks before a protracted climb down the charts. As the 25 years anniversary of her hit approached, plans to celebrate it were put on hold when Donna was diagnosed with breast cancer and took time out for treatment and surgery. Having come out the other side, Donna’s most recent album “Rooms With A View” includes songs that tell the tale of her experience and she is now an ambassador for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer charity. Sadly, the aforementioned Huey Lewis has also had his own health issues in later life announcing in 2018 that he has hearing loss as a result of Ménière’s disease.

It’s a hat-trick of songs that have been on before as The Bluetones are in the studio for the second consecutive week to perform “Marblehead Johnson”. My research tells me that there is a Britpop tribute band called Marblehead – the original and ultimate Britpop experience who are named after the Bluetones tune. Playing a repertoire of songs by the likes of Pulp, Blur, Oasis, Supergrass and, of course, The Bluetones, they have been the support act for Space, Icicle Works and indeed Bluetones singer Mark Morriss. Is it just me or does that sound ever so slightly like a case of overkill? Imagine this scenario. You’re going to see Morriss live who was keeping his career going by playing solo gigs and who no doubt will have performed some Bluetones songs as part of the set but before you get to him, you’ve already watched a band called Marblehead play some Britpop songs presumably including some by The Bluetones. I’ve used the word ‘Bluetones’ seven times alone in this paragraph which suggests a certain level of excess don’t you think?

Time now for the obligatory dance tune on the show and this week it’s from B.B.E. This lot were from France and were exponents of the short-lived dream trance boom that rose to prominence in the mid 90s off the back of its poster boy Robert Miles and his massive hit “Children”. I say short lived but it might be still a going concern for all I know but I’m guessing it isn’t. “7 Days And One Week” was their biggest hit of five but to me, and I’ve said this before, it just sounds like speeded up Jean Michel Jarre. I know I don’t know my Goa from my Balearics so I’m probably missing all sorts of nuances but my limited dance knowledge leaves me with only primitive ways of expressing my thoughts about it. Maybe that’s OK though as Wikipedia informs me that dance trance is considered to be the first and most primitive derivative of the progressive house movement. Presumably dance trance isn’t a thing anymore then. Oh well.

After the obligatory dance tune comes the obligatory satellite performance and this one, by coincidence, is from Barcelona. Why by coincidence? Well, in a recent post, I wrote about how I’d been to Barcelona back in early September 1996 and had really enjoyed it despite a case of Montezuma’s revenge making my flight back home uncomfortable. In his intro to Metallica, Harry Hill tells us how he went to Barcelona once but was chased around his room by a gibbon. It shouldn’t be a funny line but somehow it is mainly because the word ‘gibbon’ is inherently an amusing word – just the sound of it. Hill’s genius is that he knows this and so what should just be a completely random and nonsensical statement is loaded with humour. He follows that up by juxtaposing an old sit com phrase (“Mr Humphreys? Are you free?” – “I’m free!”) with the most unlikely and unconnected subject – in this case a hard rock band – to subvert their image and generate a laugh. Well, I thought it was funny anyway, even 28 years later and accepting the accusations of an outdated depiction of a gay man.

Enough of Harry though, what about the music? Well, Metallica aren’t exactly my first choice to ask Alexa to play but I actually quite enjoyed listening to “Hero Of The Day”. It was much more melodic than I was expecting but in a grandstanding, epic sort of way. So that’s two Metallica songs I could ask Alexa to play talking into account “Enter Sandman” as well.

The ‘flashback’ feature rewinds 10 years where we find The Communards at No 1 in the corresponding week in 1986 with “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. It was the best selling single of that year in the UK and spent four weeks at No 1.

As such, I spent a lot of time reviewing it in my 1980s blog so I don’t propose to go through it all again. If you want to read what I said about it, here’s a link to my first post to include it below:

TOTP 04 SEP 1986

I’ve said it many times before (possibly every time she’s featured in these reviews) but Dina Carroll had a peculiar pop star career. An early spark with Quartz and that Carol King cover followed by a slow burner of a solo career that suddenly burst into flames with her massive hits “Don’t Be A Stranger” and “The Perfect Year” before burning out over the next three years as ill health and record label problems delayed her releasing any new material. In 1996, the flame was relit in dramatic fashion as comeback single “Escaping” went to No 3. Only Tom Hanks rubbing two sticks together in Castaway is a bigger firestarter shock. And then, just as quickly as the fire was ablaze, a big bucket of water was thrown over it and it was out again never to be resuscitated. She remains one of pop’s biggest enigmas.

From 1996 to 1997, Ocean Colour Scene were riding their own personal crest of a wave. Seven hit singles (of which six went Top 10) and two platinum selling albums were achieved during those two years – the tide was definitely in for the Brummie lads who formed in 1989 from the flotsam and jetsam of two earlier bands The Boys and Fanatics breaking up. “The Circle” was the fourth and final hit to be taken from their “Moseley Shoals” album and would peak at No 6.

The single included a live cover version of “Day Tripper” by The Beatles as one of the extra tracks on the second CD single which was especially notable for it featuring Liam and Noel Gallagher who joined the band on stage at the time of recording. Could this have helped the single’s sales by convincing Oasis fans to purchase it for that extra track? I guess you could make the argument that Oasis fans might have bought it anyway given that Ocean Colour Scene were very much seen as part of the whole Britpop explosion anyway. The fact that Liam and Noel had been having numerous bust-ups at the time prompting Oasis split rumours maybe added to the clamour for anything that could be purchased that featured them.

I saw Ocean Colour Scene back in August this year and they played “Daytripper” as part of their set. I had either forgotten or didn’t know about it being on “The Circle” single and just thought “oh, they’re doing a Beatles cover” but a quick check of the setlist.fm website shows that they’ve been playing it live for years.

Wait…what?! There was a reunion of The Power Station?! When did this happen? Well, 1996 obviously but my point is that this must have totally passed me by back then despite my working in a record shop at the time as I have zero recall of any of it. Perhaps a more pertinent question would be “why did this happen?”. Over a decade since the band’s first album, why stage a comeback then? Apparently, it was a reconvening of the original line up of Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson, John Taylor and Andy Taylor although John had to withdraw from the project due to personal issues before any material was actually recorded and he was replaced by Chic’s Bernard Edwards.

Back in 1985, The Power Station had been a side project during a break in Duran Duran’s schedule that turned into a full blown band complete with a hit album and singles both sides of the pond. There was even a cameo for the band in an episode of Miami Vice but Palmer left before a tour of America that saw him replaced by Michael Des Barres who was the guy on vocals when The Power Station played Live Aid.

Despite Palmer’s departure leaving a sour taste in the mouth and led to accusations of unprofessionalism, it didn’t stop him returning for this second coming that produced a sophomore album called “Living In Fear” and this single “She Can Rock It”. However, the band’s second era was not successful with the album stiffing and the single peaking at No 63 in the UK. Perhaps it was always doomed without the support of Duran mania which was still in full flow back in 1985. Or maybe the album just wasn’t very good? I can only judge “She Can Rock It” as I’ve never heard the album but that track seems to be a very retro rock sound (even back then) with stolen guitar riffs and dumb ass lyrics like “What good’s a rock without a roll, it’s a sorry lookin’ donut if it doesn’t have a hole”. It’s all a bit sad really as I love Robert Palmer’s voice but this doesn’t do anything for his legacy which brings me to a second reason why the whole project is a bit sad although really the correct word is ‘melancholic’…the number of people attached to The Power Station who are no longer with us. Palmer and Tony Thompson died within weeks of each other in 2003 whilst Bernard Edwards left us in April of 1996 before this TOTP appearance. Talking of TOTP appearances, I wonder when Andy Taylor was last on the show before this?

P.S. Just as with Ocean Colour Scene, The Power Station story featured a Beatles cover as “Taxman” was the final track on “Living In Fear”.

Harry Hill is back with us to introduce the Top 10 countdown or as he calls it, “Who’s got the biggest feet?”. I do love Harry. The Fugees are still No 1 with “Ready Or Not” and this week we get a live performance of the track from Detroit. I have to say, it sounds a bit all over the place and, for me, doesn’t translate well to the stage. They’ll be back later in 1996 with their cover of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry”.

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Skunk AnansieAll I WantIt’s a no from me
2Donna LewisI Love You Always ForeverDidn’t happen
3The BluetonesMarblehead JohnsonNo
4B.B.E.7 Days And One WeekNever
5MetallicaHero Of The DayNah
6The CommunardsDon’t Leave Me This WayDon’t think I did
7Dina CarrollEscapingNegative
8Ocean Colour SceneThe CircleNope
9The Power StationShe Can Rock ItI did not
10FugeesReady Or NotNo but my wife had the 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/m0024hp8/top-of-the-pops-27091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 20 SEP 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

We’re nearly three quarters of the way through these BBC4 TOTP repeats from 1996 and I have to say this is one of the most mainstream episodes yet. When I say ‘mainstream’, I am of course, referring to the music. Despite its pre-watershed time slot, the show hadn’t shied away from showcasing some of the more niche hits of the day even when the staging of said hits (take your pick from the many dance sub-genres of the day) was problematic. Hell, they’d even had the Sex Pistols on the other week, the very scourge of the mainstream back in the day. However, whether by fault or design, this week saw a more conventional roster of acts on the show. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this week’s host – Tony Mortimer of East 17 – was mainstream or not.

We kick off with Belinda Carlisle – a mainstream stalwart if ever there was. The success of “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” that catapulted her to solo stardom was already eight years in the past by this point and the hits had long since dried up for her in the US. Over here though, she retained a loyal following and had continued to maintain a chart presence throughout those years even if her numbers weren’t always as high as in those early days. Indeed, before 1996, she hadn’t had a Top 10 hit in this country since 1990 when “(We Want) The Same Thing” made No 6. Since then, it had generally been a case of diminishing returns for both her singles and albums. Only 1992’s Best Of collection had really produced massive sales.

However, the release of the “A Woman & A Man” album had generated two consecutive Top 10 hits for her. Following “In Too Deep” in July of this year came “Always Breaking My Heart” which peaked at No 8. The album didn’t sell significantly more copies than any of her other 90s studio albums so maybe the success of its singles was just down to a change in the way singles were being released and promoted by record companies by this point in the decade. I’m pretty sure first week of release discounting was a standard practice by now which would account for why singles were debuting in the charts at their peak position before sliding away. This was true of many a hit, not just Belinda’s. The fact that “Always Breaking My Heart” was a bit of a duffer only adds substance to this theory. Despite being written by Per Gessle of Roxette (was there a more mainstream band ever?) who certainly knew his way around a catchy pop hit, it’s a pretty weak effort. Is it just me or does Belinda’s outfit here make her look like a high powered business person rather than a pop/rock star?

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Definitely the former

Next is surely one of the most mainstream songs of this or any year and as is the way with many a mainstream hit, loads of people bought it at the time but its legacy is one of disownment. “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something will be at No 1 soon enough but try finding someone who admits to having bought it. Talking of disowning, there seems to be a concerted belief by some people online that the song was originally recorded by US indie rockers Gin Blossoms and that the Deep Blue Something version is, in fact, a cover. Quite where or why this rumour started I don’t know but there doesn’t seem to be any truth in it whatsoever. So widespread is its reach though that the band put on their Myspace page back in the day for readers not to request “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” as it’s not their song.

The film of the same title was, of course, based on a book by Truman Capote who once featured on the cover of a single by The Smiths – “The Boy With A Thorn In His Side” – which, incidentally, could be how Deep Blue Something feel about their hit. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might be allowing myself to believe that they were behind the rumour trying to rid themselves of the albatross around their necks such is the bad rap their hit gets.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Despite the Gin Blossoms fake connection, it’s undeniably mainstream

If I thought the first two artists on this show were mainstream, I might need to create a whole new category for the Lighthouse Family – ‘super mainstream’ or ‘mainstream extreme’ maybe? “Goodbye Heartbreak” was the duo’s third consecutive hit after the reactivated tracks “Lifted” and “Ocean Drive” finally did the business for them and it was very much in the same mould as its predecessors. Some might even say “exactly the same as…”. I’ve not given this lot much grief in previous posts for fear of accusations of musical snobbery but was their whole album like this? I’ve never heard it in its entirety – I might as well have asked my Our Price colleagues of the day to play the audiobook of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as the Lighthouse Family on the shop stereo – so I’m not really qualified to judge. However, if it is, I’m not sure I would have made it through to the end. Change the record! No, literally change the record.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Mainstream extreme

Unlike Belinda Carlisle earlier, the next artist looks every inch the pop/rock star in this satellite performance. Sheryl Crow’s future career as such though was by no means guaranteed at this point. Sure, she’d had a massive hit in 1994 on both sides of the ocean with “All I Wanna Do” and her debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” had won three Grammys in 1995 but it had been written with a collective of other musicians (the titular Tuesday Music Club) prompting accusations that Crow was just the attractive face of the group, the image but not the talent. As such, she was desperate to prove her musical credentials with her follow up, eponymous album. Lead single “If It Makes You Happy” was a huge step in that direction straight off the bat. I’ve said before that the mark of a good song is if it can be performed in a variety of different styles and still sound convincing in each of them. Well, apparently Sheryl tried a number of different genres for this track including country, punk, funk and even as a David Lynch style soundtrack piece. However, it worked best as the growling, prowling, rasping rock track it turned out to be. It would go Top 10 in both the US and the UK but interestingly, the only country it topped the charts was Canada which may explain why this performance came from Vancouver. Perhaps, Sheryl was on promotional duties over there at the time? Its chart success was Crow’s biggest since the aforementioned “All I Wanna Do” and would provide the platform for her career to carry on its upward trajectory, paving the way for her sophomore album to go three times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Hmm. Difficult one this. If huge sales make you mainstream then Sheryl Crow undoubtedly was. However, she always seemed a little more gritty than that to me

A quick word on Tony Mortimer before we proceed – he seems more lacking in energy and charm than I would have imagined. Quite dull actually. Liven up a bit Tony! Maybe the only straight up dance tune on the show tonight will get him going? Ah, not this one though. Apparently, “Oh What A Night” by Clock attracted a fair amount of derision even back in 1996 presumably for being an atrocious take on The Four Seasons mid 70s classic. Singer Lorna Saunders is now a legal secretary and was once on Never Mind The Buzzcocks as part of the identity parade feature. I don’t know if either team managed to spot her but she was once mistaken by Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay for 2 Unlimited’s Anita Doth! Doh!

Mainstream or Indie Theme? The most horrible and tacky form of mainstream

The ‘flashback’ feature is still with us and this week we are treated to “Prince Charming” by Adam And The Ants. I’m not sure that Adam is given the credit and respect that he deserves sometimes. He managed to combine originality (yes, I know there was a definite Malcolm McLaren influence at some point but still) with massive sales and a memorable image – that’s quite some plate spinning going on there. I think even his most commercial numbers like this one still stand up. The second and final No 1 for Adam And The Ants before the main man went solo, it retains the power to take me right back to the early 80s over 40 years hence every time I hear it. The natural successor to the dandy highwayman of “Stand And Deliver”, it’s actually quite basic in its nature with a few lyrics repeated over and over but the style and panache of the visuals of the video make it into something quite outlandishly striking. Ah yes, that video with the cameo of Diana Dors as the fairy godmother is a once seen never forgotten experience.

In the last blog post, I asked the question of whether you could actually dance to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. In the case of “Prince Charming”, Adam’s right hand man Marco Pirroni actually admits that it was a track that was difficult to dance to and so the arm-crossing choreography featured in the video was devised in order that it would be able to be played in clubs and discos. The whole package remains quite stunning. Adam And The Ants were almost untouchable for two years at the start of the decade but it couldn’t last and despite a No 1 straight out of the traps as a solo artist with “Goody Two Shoes”, by the end of 1982, Adam was already starting to show signs of decline when his third solo single “Desperate But Not Serious” stalled at No 33. “Puss ‘n Boots” saw a brief rally the following year but his time as the country’s No 1 pop star was almost at an end. Despite turning 70 literally the other day, Adam is still touring though he had to cancel his Autumn 2024 dates due to ill health.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Huge popularity aside, Adam was always outside of the mainstream for me from his punk roots to his unique and enduring style

After a very subdued intro from Tony Mortimer we get The Bluetones and “Marblehead Johnson”. This was their third hit of 1996 and was a standalone single that presumably was intended to keep the band’s momentum going following the success of their No 1 album “Expecting To Fly” and No 2 single “Slight Return”. I’ve got to be honest, it’s not as good as I remembered it. In fact, it’s a bit dull. It sounds like it’s always on the cusp of kicking into life and then just meanders off somewhere for a bit of noodling.

Its title reminds me of the Warren Zevon song “Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner” which I once played by mistake in the Our Price I was working in as it came on after “Werewolves Of London” which was the track I’d originally chosen. It was quickly taken off by the manager as its subject matter of a Norwegian mercenary fighting in the Nigerian Civil War and having his head blown off was deemed inappropriate. Mine’s not a great story I admit but then listening to “Marblehead Johnson” is hardly a scintillating experience.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? My initial reaction is the latter but then in 1996, had Britpop become the mainstream?

And so we arrive at the ultimate in mainstream music, the arch purveyor of prosaic pop, patron saint of the unremarkable, Mr Middle of the Road himself…it’s Phil Collins.

Poor old Phil. We really have had it in for him for quite some time. Does he deserve it? Depends which side of the fence you stand I guess. Some people must like his music given the amount of records he’s sold and yet he’s become a byword for naff. It’s not just his music that can offend though, it’s also…well…him. Accusations of smugness, ubiquity, tax avoidance and of ending his marriage by fax (the last one has always been strenuously denied by Collins and it is generally accepted to not be true) abounded. Maybe it all affected him as his 90s output was nowhere near as commercially successful as that of his 80s heyday. That’s not to say they didn’t sell at all – 1993’s “Both Sides” went double platinum but that didn’t match any of his 80s albums sales and indeed was nowhere near the twelve times platinum status of 1989’s “…But Seriously”. By 1996, the malaise seemed to have set in permanently. “Dance Into The Light” the album would only sell 100,000 copies (gold status) in the UK with its title track lead single peaking at No 9. Let’s be honest, even if you were a mega Phil fan, this comeback track must have been a disappointment. Some cod-reggae groove, Caribbean horn section and some truly shonky lyrics about South Africa coming out of apartheid (?). It’s a bit of a stinker and surely one of his least remembered hits.

Phil embarked on a phase of writing for Disney soundtracks after the “Dance Into The Light” project before returning in 2002 with seventh studio album “Testify” which only reached No 15 in the charts. The last album to do anywhere near the numbers of his glory years was, of course, a Best Of collection in 1998, – the first official one of his career – called “…Hits” which topped the charts and went six times platinum in the UK alone.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Do you really have to ask?

The Fugees are the UK No 1 with “Ready Or Not”, their second song to top our charts in 1996 following “Killing Me Softly”. I don’t think you could really label the trio as mainstream despite those huge sales figures evidencing their commercial crossover, not when you consider their legacy which lasted much longer than their career. Sure, there are many accolades that talk about them bringing hip-hop into the mainstream but that didn’t make them mainstream artists – I don’t think that’s what they wanted to be either. They were innovators whose creativity struck a commercial seam of gold. Sometimes the right people get lucky I guess.

Mainstream or Indie Theme? Indie definitely

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Belinda CarlisleAlways Breaking My HeartNah
2Deep Blue SomethingBreakfast At Tiffany’sNope
3Lighthouse FamilyGoodbye HeartbreakNegative
4Sheryl CrowIf It Make You HappyNo but I had her Best Of with it on
5ClockOh What A NightNever
6Adam And The AntsPrince CharmingNo but I think my younger sister had the album
7The BluetonesMarblehead JohnsonI did not
8Phil CollinsDance Into The LightWhat do you think?
9FugeesReady Or NotNot

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/m002497z/top-of-the-pops-20091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 13 SEP 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

I’ve been waiting for this one to come up. Anyone for Pennis? Yes, it’s the episode hosted by fictional character Dennis Pennis aka comedian and actor Paul Kaye. You must remember this guy. He came to prominence on BBC2’s The Sunday Show* in which his Pennis creation had a regular slot posing as a reporter and attending celebrity events such as film premieres and asking them baffling questions.

*Bizarrely, the show was also a launch pad for another comedian with a very similar name – Peter Kay. What were the chances?!

Armed with an image meant to make him stand out from the crowd – red hair, loud clothes, thick glasses and an American accent – he was a comedy anarchist, a construct presumably informed by Kaye’s own punk background. As the popularity of his character grew, he was afforded his own two part special called Very Important Pennis filmed on location at film festivals in Cannes, Hollywood and Venice which had aired only a month or so before this TOTP. Consequently, his profile was very high and presumably why he was booked for the gig of hosting the BBC’s flagship music show. I really liked him though he riled the other authentic showbiz reporters who were trying to do their job but it couldn’t last as he became too well known and his intended ‘victims’ too aware of him. The character was killed off in 1997 in a video only release called Dennis Pennis RIP: Too Rude To Live though Kaye did resurrect him to introduce The Prodigy on stage at Glastonbury the same year. I’m hoping for a lot from him in this TOTP. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappoint…

We start with a band and a song that I only finished writing about yesterday in my last post – it’s Rocket From The Crypt with rocket “On A Rope”. The first thing I’m noticing is that they’ve stuck with those horrible glittery shirts again for this second performance. Was it their trademark like ABC and gold lamé suits back in 1982? Not many can pull off such an item of clothing and pull them off they should have though I’m not sure I would have been prepared for what was underneath especially in the case of the sideburns wearing lead singer. Was their version of ‘Bez’ with them last time? His main purpose seems to be to jump about the stage like he’s sat on an ants nest. Get in the shower mate for some quick relief – don’t forget your soap…on a rope. Ahem.

Pennis Putdown: “This band came straight in this week at 12. Unfortunately the building didn’t open until 5 so they’ve been hanging around the car park for hours” – Not bad 6/10

If it’s the mid 90s, then you can’t get through an episode of TOTP without having to endure yet another dance tune by some faceless DJ types fronted by a female singer in a PVC outfit. This week was no exception so here comes Stretch & Vern present “Maddog” with “I’m Alive”. Wikipedia tells me that this lot were Stretch Silvester and Jules Vern (real names Stuart Collins and Julian Peake) who were on the FFRR label whose A&R was run by one Pete Tong. Quite who “Maddog” was I haven’t been able to ascertain. The sample their tune was based around didn’t need any research to identify though with it being instantly recognisable as “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire. It’s all very frenetic with the speeded up vocal adding to the intensity and that proved to be attractive to UK record buyers as it topped the dance chart and made No 6 in the national Top 40. It sounds very early 90s to me listening back to it now but then what do I know about dance music. Apparently, one of the PVC clad women is actress Jaime Murray who is best known for starring in BBC crime drama Hustle. I didn’t know that before either.

Pennis Putdown: “Coming up on the show we’ve got exclusives from Skunk Anansie and Deep Blue Something plus a brand new No 1 from Peter Andrex with a song that goes on and on and on” – Clever enough pun though clearly couldn’t come up with anything for Stretch & Vern Present “Maddog” 5/10

What is it with this post and people called Kay? After name checking Peter Kay and Paul Kaye we now have Jay Kay of Jamiroquai although Dennis Pennis just refers to him as if his name is Jamiroquai (that was the band of course) in his intro. Despite having already peaked at its debut chart position of No 3 and started descending the charts, they are granted another outing to the show as “Virtual Insanity” is holding for a second week at No 5 so not technically breaking any TOTP appearance rules. This exposure wouldn’t stop it slipping again in the following chart but did afford it one final week in the Top 10.

Pennis Putdown: “Jamiroquai? Love him or hate him, you gotta love him! Or HATE him! He takes environmental issues seriously. He makes music by recycling classic funk records. This song is no exception. Take it away. AWAY!” – Wickedly barbed 7/10

How do you follow up a hit that would prove to be the biggest selling of the year in the UK? Well, if you’re the Fugees then you come up with another No 1 record that was also a million seller* and would forge your reputation as the new creative light of East Coast rap.

*It couldn’t quite replicate the sales of “Killing Me Softly” which sold 1.8 million copies in the UK. “Ready Or Not” would shift 1.2 million units and be our 24th best selling single of 1996.

“Ready Or Not” has come to be regarded as a defining moment in hip-hop for its blending of rap with soulful singing and inspired use of samples (albeit said samples hadn’t been copyright cleared at the time leading to threatened litigation and an out of court settlement). The vision of Lauryn Hill to see how a song by ambient, new age superstar Enya could be used as the basis for a Fugees track was…well…visionary. She wasn’t finished there though using a song by 70s Philly soul group The Delfonics to create that hypnotic chorus. Even that wasn’t the end of the band displaying their influences. They also manage to sneak in a reference to the Nas hit “If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)” which Hill had featured on and which itself borrowed heavily from the Kurtis Blow tune of the same name AND a lyric from Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier”. There’s a lot going on in this song!

And yet, there was even more going on in the video which cost a reputed $1.3 million to produce making it one of the most expensive promos ever filmed at the time with only the likes of those by Guns N’ Roses and Michael Jackson above it. Even 28 years later, it is still the 32nd most expensive video ever made. The reason for its high costs was presumably all the helicopters, explosions, sharks, chase scenes and a submarine that it features. It really was quite epic, especially given the period it was made in.

The purpose of the song was to be a shot across the bows at gangsta rap and its attendant culture helping to make “Ready Or Not” be named by The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll in 2018. Former US President Barack Obama has named it as his favourite song ever. Given all of this, I really thought it must have gone straight in at No 1 here but its inevitable ascent to the top was ludicrously delayed for a week by a jumped up, muscle man from Australia with a washboard stomach peddling some wishy washy R&B crud. Come on Pennis – give him both barrels when the time comes!

Pennis Putdown: “What a video, man. More like a Fugee film really” – Even Pennis couldn’t find fault with the Fugees 0/10

Skunk Anansie are one of those bands who I was aware of during the 90s and had a decent idea of the type of music they played but I can still to this day only name one of their songs – that being “Weak”. One of the reasons for this state of affairs might be that their albums seemed to always come with Parental Advisory stickers on them meaning we couldn’t play them in the Our Price I worked in. That was certainly the case with their second album “Stoosh” and I recall having to tell at least one member of staff to take it off the shop stereo. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have worried so much and not been so draconian about it but as Assistant Manager, it was potentially me in the firing line if we got complaints.

The lead single from “Stoosh” was “All I Want” which sounds as if the band just rewrote “Weak” if I’m honest. That’s not a bad thing as I really liked “Weak” but just an observation. Lead singer Skin does her usual intimidating performance, looking threateningly down the camera and leaping about all over the stage including standing erect on the drum kit at one point. She really did have quite the striking image – a bit like Grace Jones in that you’re not sure that she isn’t really an alien descended to Earth in human form. “All I Want” would peak at No 14, the band’s then highest chart position and the third highest of their career in total.

Pennis Putdown: “Now, some bands are very appropriately named. Skunk Anansie are a classic example. They’re black, they’re white and their music really stinks” – Bit obvious but very well executed 7/10

It’s that dastardly ‘flashback’ feature now that has extended the show’s length by four minutes or so which presumably explains why it was now starting at 7.25pm rather than 7.30pm during this particular era of the show’s history. Having had its day and time of broadcast changed and its channel switched from BBC 1 to BBC2, the show was in a state of flux from which it would ultimately never recover. Being reminded of its past glories in the form of this ‘new’ slot maybe wasn’t the wisest idea on reflection. Tonight its spotlight shines on ABBA and perhaps their most famous song “Dancing Queen”. Indeed it is widely considered to be one of the best pop songs by anyone ever thanks to its catchy hooks and feelings of euphoria it promotes.

However, can you actually dance to “Dancing Queen”? I don’t mean the choreographed routine in the Mama Mia! film but rather just if it was played at a wedding disco or such like? Aren’t its bpm not quite right for cutting some rug? Look at Agnetha and Anni-Frid in the video – they’re just sort of swaying about or doing the nerd shuffle. Sacrilege? Possibly. Its accolades include being ranked No 2 in Billboard’s 2023 list of The 500 Best Pop Songs and was the inspiration* for Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army” and Blondie’s “Dreaming” and similar to Barack Obama and “Ready Or Not”, is the favourite song ever of Republican Party party nominee for the 2008 US Presidential Election where he was beaten by…yep…Barack Obama.

*”SOS” was the inspiration behind “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols but that’s another story altogether.

Pennis Putdown: “Like most good Swedish video footage I’ve seen, the men have beards and the women are clean shaven” – Lowers the tone a bit but what did I expect from Dennis Pennis? 6/10

Way Out West – both a Laurel and Hardy film and a 90s purveyor of dance music – I know which one I prefer and it’s not option two. This lot were Jody Wisternoff and Nick Warren who met in a Bristol record shop and teamed up to do remixes for other people before signing to Deconstruction Records as an artist in their own right. “The Gift” was by far their biggest hit peaking at No 15 on the national chart and No 2 on the specialist dance chart. It featured the vocals of Joanna Law who’d had a minor hit in 1990 with a version of Roberta Flack’s most well known hit “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”. Said version was sampled for “The Gift” though I don’t personally think it’s that obvious. As with Stretch & Vern earlier, it all sounds a bit early 90s and fairly dull with the same lyric repeated over and over. It probably made more sense on a dance floor if you were under the influence of something rather than on TOTP. Probably.

Pennis Putdown: “Now Way Out West featuring Joanna Law – classic yuppie hangover music. It’s called “The Gift” – appropriate cos no-one’s likely to buy it” – First line is better than the second so 6/10

After her last appearance on the show, Donna Lewis seemed to divide opinion among those watching the BBC4 repeat. I wrote in my post reviewing that show that her hit “I Love You Always Forever” had a timeless quality and was light and joyful and seemed to bring hope to a world that so often seemed dark. On reflection that seems slightly over the top – I should maybe have gone with something along the lines of it being a fluffy, soothing punctuation mark in the long narrative of the day. However, other people went online to say how much they hated it and that it was a whole lot of nothing. It’s a game of opinions as they say and anyway, we’re all just pissing in the wind – as Frank Zappa once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Pennis Putdown: “They say Donna Lewis is gonna be a one hit wonder. Sounds optimistic to me.” – Cutting and personal; a solid insult 7/10

Here’s another song that split opinion but I think it may have been a case of musical snobbery causing the division as the music press hated it but the UK record buying public loved it enough to send it to No 1. Deep Blue Something were a bunch of good ol’ boys from Texas (well, they were pretty young actually) whose members included brothers Todd and Toby Pipes who sound like they should be a firm of plumbers in Trumpton. Their song “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” clearly stole its title from the Audrey Hepburn film of the same name though apparently the inspiration for it came from another of her films – Roman Holiday. It was the tale of a couple on the verge of breaking up due to no longer having anything in common only to realise that they both sort of liked the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s and so maybe they should stay together. As the foundation for a full blown romantic relationship, it’s pretty unstable you’d have to say. And random. Imagine you’re in the scenario of tying to salvage your relationship and when trying to think of a reason to stay together, you delve into the darkness and come up with the title of a film you both quite liked. Not that you share the same values, have a similar sense of humour, enjoy each other’s company…no, you both have a fondness for a specific Audrey Hepburn film. Never mind it being a flimsy foundation for a relationship, it’s a pretty ludicrous basis for a song.

And yet…and yet it was as catchy as hell with some nifty guitar work and a memorable chorus. It was also very daytime radio friendly which must have helped. Even so, its rise to the top did seem unlikely and I was surprised at its level of success. The band weren’t the prettiest of boys either. I recall a friend said at the time that their six year old daughter liked it but he mistakenly believed it was a new song by Lloyd Cole And The Commotions. I’m not sure that I can hear their sound in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”. However, it does kind of make me think of “I’ll Be There For You” by The Rembrandts who’d been in the charts recently and I can imagine it being the theme tune for a Friends type show. Deep Blue Something would annoyingly have one further minor hit (“Josey” made No 27) thus spoiling their status as perfect one hit wonders – one chart topper and then nothing.

Pennis Putdown: “When most people think of the title “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, they think of an Audrey Hepburn film. This song is unlikely to change that unfortunately” – Nice line but it’s his facial expression at the end that is the real kicker. So dismissive 8/10

This a joke right?! How the hell did we give Peter Andre a No 1 record and such a terrible one to boot. Any hopes that he might just disappear after his god awful hit “Mysterious Girl” disintegrated when he returned with “Flava”. This wasn’t so much a follow up as a follow through, a honking stinker of a song. Well, I say song but it was more of an identikit exercise in putting together all the bits of previously successful hits and seeing if you could just recycle them. It’s built around that awful parping riff used by the likes of Montell Jordan, MN8 and the Backstreet Boys and then proceeds to name check artists such as Dr. Dre and Bobby Brown who presumably would have thought Andre was a joke. And he was/is. Just to absolutely hammer home his lack of creativity, he even throws in a lyric about the Mack being back, like we hadn’t heard that line enough in 1996 already.

Despite all the fuss and promotion of Andre’s pecs and six pack, he keeps them hidden most of the time under a huge leather jacket which must have stank under those hot studio lights. The occasional glimpses of his body that he allowed the studio audience are met with predictable screams. Weren’t we better than this?

Pennis Putdown: “Peter Andrex is finding it virtually impossible these days to sell records in Europe due to the ban on British beef but in the UK, the kids are mad for it and its my pleasure to announce that Peter Andrex is top for the poops!” – It was topical (the EU had imposed a worldwide ban on exports of British beef in 1996) but the last line is weak 5/10

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1Rocket From The CryptOn A RopeNever happened
2Stretch & Vern present “Maddog”I’m AliveNo
3JamiroquaiVirtual InsanityIt’s a no from me
4FugeesReady Or NotNo but my wife had the album
5Skunk AnansieAll I WantNegative
6ABBADancing QueenNo but we all have a copy of ABBA Gold don’t we?
7Way Out WestThe GiftI did not
8Donna LewisI Love You Always ForeverNah
9Deep Blue SomethingBreakfast At Tiffany’sNope
10Peter AndreFlavaNOOOOOOO!!!!

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/m002497x/top-of-the-pops-13091996?seriesId=unsliced

TOTP 06 SEP 1996

Posted on by 80stastic

It’s early September of 1996 and I’m on holiday in Barcelona. I loved it though I did get a case of Montezuma’s revenge the day before we were due to go back which made for a very uncomfortable flight home I can tell you. Sticking with that theme, although I really enjoyed Barcelona, a friend who visited there after me hated it saying that he’d rather go on holiday in his own toilet bowl. What has any of this to do with TOTP? Nothing really though I wonder how many shit songs we might get in this particular show?

Our host for tonight is Julia Carling (remember her?) and we start with a group that my mate Robin once described as a ‘joke band’ so I presume he thought they were a big pile of poo though I think that’s a harsh description. Space were certainly idiosyncratic and they may not have been to your taste but I don’t think they can be dismissed out of hand as complete shite. After securing themselves a bona fide hit in “Female Of The Species”, the scouse band were back with a follow up in “Me And You Versus The World”. As with its predecessor, it wasn’t your conventional pop song with Tommy Scott’s grainy vocals telling a Bonnie and Clyde type story in which the protagonist admits he’s “just a joke” (maybe Robin was right after all!) before a rather grizzly end is revealed. Scott channels his inner Victoria Wood when he gets the line “a tin of baked beans and a Woman’s Weekly” into the lyrics. The single would debut at No 9 providing the band with their first Top 10 hit. Space were in full launch mode. Who was laughing now?

Hit or Shit? I’m going hit with this one

Now this, this is a complete scandal. How on earth were Clock allowed to do this?! Well, presumably they got copyright clearance from the original artist but it’s still a disgrace. Having decided the only way to score major hits with their yucky brand of Eurodance was to cover previous hit records and polish them into turds, they’d already sprinkled flecks of shit onto “Axel F” and “Whoomph! (There It Is)”. Harold Faltermeyer and Tag Team were one thing but Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were sacrosanct! How dare they take their 1976 UK and US No 1 “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)” and give it the shitty stick treatment! They even had the temerity to rename their version as “Oh What A Night” (unless that was a stipulation of being granted permission to cover it – maybe they couldn’t use the song’s original title?). I mean, you just can’t improve upon the original, you can only make it worse so why try? Were they hoping to appeal to young record buyers who may not know The Four Seasons original? It’s just wrong on every level and yet somehow it was a hit spending four non consecutive weeks at No 13 unluckily for us.

I have to admit to being a bit biased in my denigration of Clock here as I do love Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I’ve seen Jersey Boys and, in my current job working in a theatre, have seen a couple of tribute acts all of which I’ve enjoyed. As such, this Clock nonsense really offends. They weren’t finished here though going on to cover the likes of Hot Chocolate, KC and the Sunshine Band and The Jacksons.

Hit or Shit? A massive, steaming turd

Next up are Kula Shaker with their No 2 hit “Hey Dude”. I discussed this one in quite some depth in a previous post so I don’t propose to say an awful lot more this time around. However, what I did discover in my research for it is that the band’s keyboard player Jay Darlington was a touring member of Oasis from 2002 until their 2009 break up. So, will he have had the call from Noel and Liam for the 2025 reunion tour and if he has, will he be allowed to go as he is currently back with Kula Shaker? When he was with Oasis, due to his long hair and beard, he was often introduced by Noel as “The Shroud”, “Gandalf” or even “Jesus Christ” leaving to the crowd chanting “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”. Never mind Noel and Liam giving him a call, maybe Donald Trump* might reach out to Darlington. What an endorsement that would be!

*For any avoidance of doubt, I despise Trump.

Hit or Shit? Definite tune this one!

What on God’s green earth…? If I thought we’d reached a nadir with Clock, I hadn’t bargained on the sodding Smurfs making a comeback. People of a certain age (i.e. me) will have strong childhood memories of The Smurfs not least because of the ridiculous single “The Smurf Song” spending six consecutive weeks at No 2 in the UK charts during the long, hot Summer of 1978. That bloke with the long flowing beard? No, not Jay Darlington! Yep – Father Abraham (no, not the biblical patriarch but Dutch singer-songwriter Pierre Kartner). He had a bowler hat as well I seem to remember. Anyway, we finally came to our senses as a nation about The Smurfs (though there were two minor follow up hits as well) and left it all behind us after 1978 but across the rest of Europe they never went away and so, in 1996, EMI deemed it was time for their return to our shores (and ears) courtesy of “The Smurfs Go Pop” album which spent 12 consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 of our charts over the Summer and Autumn of that year. Similar to the Clock concept earlier, The Smurfs (or whoever had the licensing rights to them) took modern day hit tracks and smurfed them up with high octane vocals that were enough to give you a migraine. And we thought Pinky and Perky* were bad enough!

*In fairness, I recall there being a Pinky and Perky record in our house when I was a tiny child and presumably the infant version of me loved it.

Brilliantly, they tried to get permission to do covers of some Oasis songs but Noel Gallagher wasn’t having any of it. In the end, the songs covered were fairly awful including “Mr Blobby”, “Cotton Eye Joe”, “Saturday Night” and “No Limit”. However, the single chosen for release was their take on Technohead’s recent gabber hit “I Wanna Be A Hippy”. Clearly, a brand aimed at young children couldn’t feature any references to drugs as the original did so they were all stripped out and replaced with the tale of a small dog and retitled as “I’ve Got A Little Puppy”. A happy hardcore version of The Smurfs sounds appalling and yet the single, as with the album, was a huge hit peaking at No 4. Who the f**k was buying it?! Working in Our Price, I must have sold it to punters many times over but I can’t actually recall doing it. Perfectly for the theme of this post, the lyrics included the refrain “pooper, pooper scooper!”.

Hit or Shit? A huge pile of dog poo

Here’s a curious thing – when an artist’s biggest hit is also one of their least known. I speak of Dina Carroll and her comeback single “Escaping”. I use the word ‘comeback’ as we hadn’t seen her for nigh on three years since her annus mirabilis in 1993 saw her become one of the breakout stars of that year. Four hit singles and a four times platinum selling debut album in “So Close” saw her named Best Female Artist at the following year’s BRIT awards. She was set for superstardom and then just seemed to vanish. Health issues and record label contractual problems caused a lengthy delay to her releasing any new material and so it was not until 1996 that she returned to the charts with “Escaping”. Despite this debuting at No 3 making it her joint highest charting single alongside “Don’t Be A Stranger”, I had real trouble recalling how this one went. That may be a common experience – when was the last time you heard it on the radio? Once I’d re- listened to it, it did sound faintly familiar but I do recall being surprised at how high it had gone into the charts back in 1996 given her low profile for the previous three years. The album it was taken from “Human Nature” also did well going to No 2 and achieving platinum sales status though its predecessor sold four times as many copies.

A mixture of an hereditary bone condition that affected her ears, bad luck (a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son Of A Preacher Man” was aborted due to Dusty’s untimely death) and more record label and management wrangling meant that Dina never did release a third album and drifted away from the music industry come the new millennium. She seems an almost forgotten figure somehow which strikes me as unfair I have to say.

Hit or Shit? Hmm. Difficult one this. “Escaping” is pleasant but not exactly memorable but then it was her joint biggest hit. Is this an “all fart, no shit” scenario?

What the heck?! What’s going on here? Why is “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, a No 1 record in 1981, on TOTP in 1996? Well, this show was the first of ten that had a start time of 7.25pm. So? Here’s @TOTPFacts to take up the story…

Hmm. I think Blaxill was hoping against hope with that idea. In reality, it was probably just to further plug the return of TOTP2 that Julia Carling mentions at the song’s end. As my TOTP blog only dates back to the 1983 repeats, I’ve never properly discussed “Tainted Love” before but do I really need to go into the backstory on this one? Actually, there is a little bit of its origin that ties in nicely with this post. After becoming aware of the song due to its Northern Soul profile, Soft Cell decided to insert it into their live set. The song it replaced? “The Night” by the aforementioned Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. For years it was known as the biggest selling single of 1981 in the UK until the Official Charts Company recalculated the data in 2021 and gave that title to “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League. “And I’ve lost my light” indeed.

Hit or Shit? For years it was one of those unlistenable tracks for me that you can’t hear anymore because it’s been so overplayed. However, it has recently become more acceptable to my ears again and is definitely a hit!

This next one comes charged with emotion for the band performing it. Less than two months before this appearance, Rob Collins, keyboard player for The Charlatans, died in a car crash aged just 33 on his way back to the studios where the band were recording their fifth album “Tellin’ Stories”. Despite the devastating loss, the band decided to carry on and completed the album with Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy drafted in to cover the keyboard parts. “One To Another” was its lead single coming out a good eight months before the album. I remarked in a recent post about how there seemed to be a trend around this time for huge time gaps between lead singles and its parent album being released quoting the examples of Paul Weller and Shed Seven. In the case of The Charlatans though, the loss of Collins more than explains the delay. The band had supported Oasis at their giant Knebworth gigs in the August and just weeks after Collins had died so maybe “One To Another” was released when it was as a tribute to their departed band mate? Perhaps there was also one eye on capitalising on the huge media profile those Oasis dates had generated?

Either way, the single was a banger, a huge, barrelling sound with groovy riffs aplenty. As Julia Carling said in her intro, it was their highest charting single ever when it crashed in at No 3. Interesting to note that there’s not much camera time given to Martin Duffy* on keyboards here. Could that have been at the request of the band who would have wanted to be respectful to Collins’s memory and not make it look like he’d just been effortlessly replaced?

*Tragically Duffy would also die young aged just 55 in 2022.

Hit or Shit? Huge tune this. Definite hit.

From the sublime to the ridiculous – it’s time for Los Del Rio again. Is it time to talk about the dance that went with the “Macarena”? I guess we have to at some point. I don’t propose to give a breakdown of the various moves – go online and find them yourselves if you want a refresher. However, what’s more interesting is the psychology behind why people would want to do it. In 2015, Oxford University published research into collective, synchronised dancing and found that the practice raised tolerance levels, fostered connectedness and friendship and broke down barriers promoting a feeling of togetherness. So there was some benefit to this ludicrous song. It’s still musical excrement though.

Hit or Shit? Definitely shit

And so to Rockets From The Crypt – a one hit wonder but one which I do actually remember. American punk rockers hailing from San Diego, their singular chart entry was “On A Rope” which would peak at No 12 in the UK charts. What stands out most in my memory about this one was that it was released as three different CD singles in cardboard slip covers. As I was working for Our Price, and, as we were not yet displaying stock live on the shop floor, you had to be really careful to get the correct disc from the filing behind the counter. Some of my more rock leaning colleagues were quite into this one but it didn’t do much for me I have to say. It was all a bit repetitive and certainly these days, aged 56, I would say it was too loud. It’s crap getting old isn’t it?

Hit or Shit? Is there a category for the non committed as I really couldn’t give a shit

It’s the last week at the top for the Spice Girls and “Wannabe”. Its success must have exceeded everything that record label Virgin could possibly have imagined for the debut release from a brand new act. It’s interesting to note that although the UK remained enamoured by them for the duration of their career (the first part of it at least) with nine of their first ten singles topping our charts, “Wannabe” was the only one to go to No 1 across the board in every territory globally.

The early copies of the single had a cover which doesn’t actually say Spice Girls on it but rather just ‘Spice’ with images of the individual members depicted within the lettering of the word. I think some of my colleagues were confused by this and actually just wrote ‘Spice’ as the artist name on the master bag for the filing system we used. It’s hard now to imagine a world where we didn’t know the name Spice Girls.

Hit or Shit? Sales phenomenon not withstanding, it was still a bit shit

The play out video is “How Bizarre” by OMC. By my reckoning, this is its fourth appearance on the show and therefore I have nothing left to say about it. Literally nothing. OK, OK…I’ll think of something. How about this? In 2002, “How Bizarre” was ranked at No 71 on the 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders show hosted by William Shatner. That’s William Shatner. Shatner. Shat-ner. The theme of this post? Oh forget it.

Hit or Shit? My wife bought this so I fell duty bound to say ‘hit’

Order of appearanceArtistTitleDid I buy it?
1SpaceMe And You Versus The WorldNo but my wife had their album
2ClockOh What A NightNO!
3Kula ShakerHey DudeNo but I had a promo copy of their album
4The SmurfsI’ve Got A Little PuppyAre you mad?
5Dina CarrollEscapingNah
6Soft CellTainted LoveI did not
7The CharlatansOne To AnotherNo but I had it on their Best Of album Melting Pot
8Los Del RioMacarenaNever
9Rockets From The CryptOn A RopeNope
10Spice GirlsWannabeNegative
11OMCHow BizarreNo but my wife did

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/m00241bt/top-of-the-pops-06091996?seriesId=unsliced