It’s the last day of February in 1997 and we’ve just had the BRIT Awards show which featured that Union Jack mini dress worn by Geri Halliwell when the Spice Girls performed at the event. It has come to be seen as an iconic moment in UK music history. At the 2010 BRIT Awards, it was voted the most memorable performance of the last 30 years. The dress itself was auctioned in 1998 at Sotheby’s with the winning bid of £41,320 becoming a Guinness World Record as the most money paid for an item of pop star clothing at auction. The design has been copied by many a fan attending various Pride events or Spice Girls concert. Let’s see if we can spot its influence on any of the artists in this particular episode of TOTP…
By the way, tonight’s host is footballer Ian Wright who is cutting his teeth on TOTP for his staggeringly long and full media career which he built for himself after he finally stopped kicking a ball for a living. The first act he introduces are the BeeGees who may not be wearing any Union Jack dresses but they did pick up an Outstanding Contribution Award at the BRITS earlier in the week. Whatever you thought of their music, you couldn’t deny their longevity and said award was deserved. Having released their first single in 1963, they scored their first UK hit in 1967 racking up a further eight hits (including two No 1s) before the decade ended. It would be the 70s though that would be their golden era and the period of their career that they are most remembered for with the disco explosion and SaturdayNightFever phenomenon. The 80s were a different story and one of complete extremes – they only released eight singles in total all of which except one failed to make the UK Top 40 but the one that did? Yep, it was a No 1.
And so to the 90s and although it certainly wasn’t up there with the 70s, the Gibb brothers were pretty consistent. Nine chart entries including four Top 5 hits of which “Alone” was the third. That’s not even counting the two cover versions in 1996 by Take That and Boyzone of “How Deep Is Your Love” and “Words” respectively that both went to No 1. Having blown smoke up their collective arses for a few sentences, I have to say that “Alone” tested my patience in terms of its listenability. It’s all a bit predictable and, dare I say it, indistinguishable from their other 90s hits. Even when they tried to shake things up by inserting some bagpipes into the track, it just really dated it. John Farnham* had done that 10 years before on “You’re The Voice”. The Bee Gees final UK Top 5 hit would follow in 1998 when they joined forces with Celine Dion on “Immortality”. Oh deep joy.
*Yes I also mentioned him in another recent post and no, I’m not obsessed with him!
A-ha! The first signs of the influence of the Union Jack dress are in evidence in this next performance by Republica as lead singer Saffron (real name Samantha Sprackling) chooses a Saint George’s Cross T-shirt to wear under her suit jacket. Republica were one of those curious cases where they definitely were not a one hit wonder and in any case, that hit wasn’t even the highest charting of their career but they were destined to be defined by it. “Ready To Go” is the track in question and it was originally released a year before this when it failed to make the Top 40. The 1996 version (often referred to as the Original UK Mix’) was vastly different to the one we would all grow to know with more of a dance sound to it. A piano motif existed where the hit version had guitars and it just had a lighter touch to it in general. The version that peaked at No 13 in our charts was a US remix that would ultimately become the one that was released to Europe second time around which had a much heavier sound and faster tempo making it more like a rock track than a dance anthem though I’m sure many did cut some rug to it. In fact, I bet it went down a storm in the indie discos of the time with much jumping up and down on the dance floor – I don’t think I would have been involved in this myself you understand; being 29 this year I was probably aging out of the club market.
The high octane thrill ride that was “Ready To Go” would lend itself to being the perfect soundtrack to the start of sports events. I believe Sunderland AFC used to run out to this track at their home matches back in the day. As for Republica, they looked like they might be the next big thing for a while with Saffron’s cheekbones and looks allied to a very commercial sound – a UK No Doubt possibly. However it wouldn’t last. Their final UK hit came in 1998 with the band’s fortunes being undone by a poorly received second album and record label Deconstruction going bust. They kind of remind me of a 90s version of Westworld of “Sonic Boom Boy” fame who similarly burnt brightly but briefly though Republica reformed in 2008 and are still a going concern today.
The two highest chart entries of the week are both huge dance tunes and we get both of them back to back starting with “Encore Une Fois” by Sash! This was all very confusing. The track’s title was French for “One more time” yet Sash! are a German DJ/production team. Not only that but it sounded very similar to “Insomnia” by Faithless so much so that Rollo considered his legal options for a while. A trance floor filler, it is almost entirely an instrumental track aside from the title being repeated by vocalist Sabine Ohmes plus her spoken word intro “Mesdames, Messieurs Le disc-jockey Sash! est de retour” which translates to “Ladies and gentlemen, DJ Sash! is back here”. Due to the lack of lyrics, if you watch the performance with the subtitles on, the following words flash on screen:
“Band plays an ambient house beat”
and…
“He plays a phrase again and again”
Bizarrely, that’s almost exactly what I was going to write as my review of the track!
As Ian Wright says, viewers might have had the second highest chart entry of the week in their collection already. “You Got The Love” by TheSourcefeaturingCandi Staton was originally a huge hit back in 1991 but was rereleased in 1997 as the ‘New Voyager Mix’ and was a hit all over again peaking one place higher than its 1991 counterpart at No 3. For what it’s worth I much prefer the original but I haven’t got the time nor the inclination to write about this one all over again so this is what I had to say about it when I reviewed the 1991 TOTP repeats in which it featured which numbered three – coincidentally, almost the same amount of times it was released:
Not wearing a Union Jack dress but definitely wearing her British influences on her sleeve was Cathy Dennis who is back in the charts with a cover of perhaps the quintessential English song – “Waterloo Sunset”. With The Kinks very much being talked about at the time as ‘The Godfathers of Britpop’, it must have seemed a sensible choice for Cathy to move away from the dance diva image that had made her name and remodel herself as a singer-songwriter, paying homage to the great Ray Davies and riding the zeitgeist at the same time. Or was it a much more cynical move? Cathy’s career was teetering on the edge and she needed a hit to revive it? We’ve seen that move so many times. Well, it’s true that the hits, whilst not having dried up completely, had certainly shrivelled in size. After debut album “Move To This” had achieved gold status, follow up “Into The Skyline” had not sustained after initial success and none of its singles had got any higher in the charts than No 23. Fast forward five years and third album “Am I The Kinda Girl?” would fail and flail its way to a lowly chart peak of No 78. Cathy’s cover of “Waterloo Sunset” did give her a No 11 hit (her highest position since 1991) but it was a temporary reprieve with the follow up single missing the Top 40 altogether. At this point, Cathy gave up on being a star in her own right and forged a hugely successful career writing songs for other people. A bit ironic then that her final hit was with a composition that wasn’t one of hers.
Cathy does a decent job of selling us “Waterloo Sunset” with this performance and, let’s be fair, convincing people they needed a version of this iconic song that wasn’t by The Kinks was not an easy sell. Her feather boa is a nice nod to the 60s as is her coy, daydreaming looks to the camera. Having her play a guitar gives me Sheryl Crow vibes which perhaps was intentional for her singer-songwriter ambitions.
And yet more evidence of the influence of that Geri Halliwell dress as Bush lead singer Gavin Rossdale is wearing a top with a Union Jack design on it. His British grunge band have finally bagged themselves a UK hit after breaking the US first as “Swallowed” has landed inside the Top 10. Rossdale, of course, was in a relationship with No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani at this point but they won’t have had a chance to spend any time together on this show as they weren’t in the studio simultaneously – the No Doubt performance we will see later is just a repeat of the one from last week. If they had met up, they could have worked on a mash up of their two hits – an ode to not talking whilst you’re eating called “Don’t Speak…Swallow”. I’ll get me coat.
Although he was about to enter that part of his career when he couldn’t guarantee himself a UK Top 40 hit with every release, having Prince (or The Artist as he was known back then) on TOTP inperson would still have been a big deal. It certainly was for host Ian Wright for whom he was his idol as he gushed in his intro. Although he hadn’t won anything at the BRITS (he’d been nominated for Best International Male Solo Artist), Prince/The Artist had performed the title track from his latest album “Emancipation” at the show. Whilst he was still in the country, he popped by the BBC’s flagship music show for a performance of his latest single “The Holy River”. Seeing as he didn’t play this one at the BRITS, I’m guessing that this TOTP appearance was very much scheduled – he knew he didn’t have to promote his latest single at the awards show as he had another UK TV slot already booked. We didn’t know it at the time but excluding the rerelease of “1999” in 1998, this single would be Prince’s final UK Top 40 hit in his lifetime. As such, I wish I had something nicer to say about it but it’s all style over substance. It’s a much more toned down, traditional pop/rock song than some of his more funk driven output but it never really goes anywhere – does it even have a chorus? He can call himself The Artistall he liked but it didn’t stop him from going all Prince-like at the end where he gives us a “Purple Rain”-esque guitar solo just for good measure. Ah, well. Thanks for all the memories Mr Nelson.
And this is where we came in as we return to the protagonist of the Union Jack dress story though Geri Halliwell doesn’t have it on tonight. In fact, she’s distinctly covered up this time leaving Victoria/Posh to wear a revealing outfit with an awful lot of décolletage on show. Yes, it’s time for an exclusive performance of their new single from the Spice Girls. As with Prince before them, they’d already done a turn at the BRITS though they were given a two song slot as we got “Wannabe” and “Who Do You Think You Are”. The latter formed a double A-side with the song on the show tonight – “Mama” – which would be the Comic Relief single for 1997. In a remarkably fortunate falling of dates (hmm…), Comic Relief day and Mothering Sunday were within five days of each other this year so with that double whammy of events, there was no way that this fourth Spice Girls single wasn’t going to No 1 and when it did, the group set a new record of all of their first four releases topping the chart. Have that Gerry and the Pacemakers, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Jivebunny and Robson & Jerome!
I have to admit that “Mama” always seemed a bit of a weak effort to me, sweet to the point of being sickly despite its noble sentiments (basically the girls admitting what cows they were to their Mums when they were growing up). I much preferred the sassy, uptempo “Who Do You Think You Are”. The Spice Girls juggernaut would roll on in 1997 albeit there would be a six month gap where they didn’t release anything before they were back with a new single and album, a second Christmas No 1 and even a film. Spice Girls overload is coming!
Even Ian Wright has picked up on the constant revolving door sequence of a new No 1 becoming a weekly event, so much so that he articulates his surprise that “Don’t Speak” by NoDoubt has managed a second week at the top of the charts in 1997. To me, it did have that feel of having gravitas to it that would enable more longevity than something like, I don’t know, Tori Amos or LL Cool J. If you examine the sales figures for those records in the week they were No 1, that view is kind of borne out. “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” and “Ain’t Nobody” both sold 80,000 copies in their first weeks which was enough to secure top spot for them both. “Don’t Speak” sold 195,000 copies in week one and followed that up with 140,000 copies in week two – both these figures were more than any No 1 single had sold since Christmas. Even in its third week, it sold 85,000 copies to hold on at No 1 – again more than Tori Amos and LL Cool J. However, it couldn’t stand up to the g-force of the Spice Girls single when that was released in March.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Bee Gees
Alone
I didn’t
2
Republica
Ready To Go
Liked it, didn’t buy it
3
Sash!
Encore Une Fois
Never
4
The Source featuring Candi Staton
You Got The Love
Negative
5
Cathy Dennis
Waterloo Sunset
No
6
Bush
Swallowed
No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
7
Prince aka The Artist
The Holy River
Nope
8
Spice Girls
Mama / Who Do You Think You Are
Nah
9
No Doubt
Don’t Speak
See 2 above
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.
A day after this TOTP aired, scientists at Roslin Institute, Midlothian announced the birth of a cloned sheep called Dolly seven months after the event. Dolly was named after country legend Dolly Parton apparently. Anyway, it’s kind of apt that this story about cloning was in the news back then because tonight’s show is co-hosted by Ant & Dec who in the early years of their career were subject to the claim that people couldn’t tell them apart! Ba dum tss! Alright, alright. It’s a poor start to the post from me. Things can only get better right? And no, that doesn’t mean D:Ream are on the show.
Things are looking up immediately though as the show is opened by James and one of their best known hits “She’s A Star”. As the caption says, this was the band’s first hit for three years and first new material since the double album project of “Laid” and “Wah Wah” in 1993 and 1994 respectively. In the meantime, there had been some significant events and shifts within the group. Firstly, guitarist Larry Gott had left to become a designer and spend more time with his family (although he still contributed to the writing and recording of 1997 album “Whiplash ”). Lead singer Tim Booth had wandered off to do a side project titled Booth and the Badman with Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti whilst the band’s manager Martine McDonagh resigned. The band also discovered that they owed a £250,000 tax bill. Against that background, they still had to keep delivering the goods and they duly did with the lead single from the aforementioned “Whiplash” album. “She’s A Star” is a monster of a tune – one of those that is familiar from the very first moment you hear it even though you know that can’t be possible. Superbly crafted with that huge, elongated chorus delivered by Booth’s falsetto vocals, for me though, it’s the bridge into that chorus which is the best part. The whole thing just soars – a complete anthem from the first note to the last. Now, some of the observant of you might say “Hang on, the last time you banged on about an elongated chorus it was slagging off Mark Owen for having one in his hit “Clemente” so what’s the difference, hypocrite?”. Well, I guess it’s that, to me (and it’s just my opinion) the chorus was all “Clementine” had whereas “She’s A Star” was a much more complete song hence my comment about the bridge part.
The fright masks and freaky wigs displayed on mannequins on stage with the band were from the cover of the single and were designed by a friend of Tim Booth’s and photographed for the artwork in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York. Is it me or do they look a bit like Sid Vicious and if so, presumably the photoshoot location was intentional given Sid’s history with that place? The video featured a young Keeley Hawes who would find fame in AshesToAshes, TippingThe Velvet and Spooks to name just a few TV series. She was also in the promo for Suede’s “Saturday Night” a performance of which we saw on TOTP just the other week. Sadly for Keeley, neither video were played on the show.
Who on earth is/was this?! DJ Kool? Seriously?! That was his stage name? DJ Kool?! I don’t remember him atall. What was his hit called? “Let Me Clear My Throat”?! Is this a wind up? Have I slipped through a time portal entered a parallel universe or something? None of this really happened did it?! Right, let me listen to the track…
…hang on! I do know this or at least I know the sample it’s based around. That’s “Hear The Drummer Get Wicked” by Chad Jackson. Except it isn’t as that track used a sample as well. So what’s the original sample? My research pointed me in the direction of this…
…but even that’s not the original which as far as I can tell is this…
Mystery solved. As for DJ Kool, what a load of old tripe. He displays a distinct lack of creativity in his choice of sample and then just shouts a load of disjointed, cliched phrases over it before descending into call and response, lowest common denominator behaviour. He even nicked the track’s title from a Beastie Boys song called “The New Style”. Thank heavens we never heard from him again because he was as welcome as…cough, cough, splutter, splutter…phlegm.
Next to a case of art imitating life imitating art or something as we have the song from a soundtrack to a film about a fictional mid 60s band who shoot to fame off the back of a hit song that actually becomes a hit in real life. The film is That ThingYouDo! and was the writing and directorial debut of Tom Hanks (whose name Ant & Dec manage to turn into a double entendre in their intro). The movie tells the story of TheWonders from Erie, Pennsylvania who win a local talent contest when their newly recruited drummer Guy speeds up the tempo of their self penned song and wins them a shot at the big time when they are picked up by major label Play-Tone Records. The film charts the band’s rise to prominence in parallel with their song rising the charts with each stage showing their fame getting bigger and bigger until they find themselves performing to the whole of America on TheHollywoodTelevisionShowcase. Inevitably, it all ends in disappointment with the band imploding though there is a happy ending.
At the time, I thought that Tom Hanks had also written the song “That Thing You Do!” but he didn’t (though he did contribute to two songs on the soundtrack album). That was written by Adam Schlesinger, one time member of Fountains Of Wayne about whom I know very little except the song “Stacy’s Mom” from 2003. Anyway, the title track is an exceptional example of a perfect pop song that would also fit easily into a 60s compilation album without anyone realising that it was written three decades later. It’s just as well that the song works as you get to hear it over and over in the film in various different performances and guises yet it’s a tribute to Schlesinger that you never tire of to – well, I don’t anyway. I think its ubiquity is rendered less dominant by the dedication of the actors who apparently spent weeks in rehearsal learning their instruments so that when it came to miming the song for the shooting of the film, they looked and played liked authentic musicians.
You might have guessed already that I am a fan of this film but then I am a sucker for a music based narrative which shows the progression from early beginnings to fame. Some of my favourite films and books include That’ll Be The Day and its sequel Stardust starring David Essex and the novel Espedair Street by Iain Banks which all fit into this category. Despite not being a massive commercial hit at the time, the film That Thing You Do! has become a bit of a cult hit with fans to the extent that in 2021, a Wonders Night was staged in Erie where the film was partially set with cast members attending and participating in a panel discussion, autograph session and auction. As a result of funds collected from the event, raised $25,500 for Notice Ability, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping students with dyslexia.
As for the song “That Thing You Do!”, it didn’t match the chart high of its fictional counterpart peaking at No 41 in America and No 22 in the UK. As for art imitating life imitating art, Tom Hanks established a film and television production company named Playtone based on the record label in the film and a music arm of the operation is actually called Playtone Records label. Playtone has had an exclusive television development deal with HBO since the company was formed. Playtone’s projects for HBO have won 46 Emmy Awards while garnering 113 Emmy Award nominations.
Unlikely chart heroes Space were really getting the hang of this pop star lark by 1997. “Dark Clouds” was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit all taken from their debut album “Spiders”. Although it’s made of much the same stuff as their previous hits, it’s perhaps a little more mellow than its predecessors. Actually, listening to it now for the first time in years, there’s something about it that is giving me Summer of 1983 vibes. Why would that be? Well, I think that it’s putting me in mind of “Long Hot Summer” by The Style Council. Can you hear it? No? You might have to wait for the dark clouds to drift away to reveal the sunshine.
This trend for rap artists remaking old hits around this time is becoming tedious. There was Coolio who topped the charts with a treatment of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” and just the other week we had LL Cool J at No 1 with his version of the old Rufus and Chaka Khan hit “Ain’t Nobody”. Now here was WarrenG who himself had already gone down that route with his take on Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” a few weeks prior. With that going to No 2, he clearly thought another attempt on going one better was justified using the same formula hence we got “I Shot The Sheriff”, the Bob Marley classic that Eric Clapton also had a hit with.
Picking up the protest song theme of the original, Warren G added some lyrics about police brutality and institutional racism. Sadly, despite this being 1997, these issues would continue to raise their ugly heads in the years to come both in America and the UK. The poignancy of the track didn’t make it any more listenable for me though with Warren’s flat vocals on the song’s title phrase especially off putting. Despite my reservations, the single would be a massive hit but it still missed out on a No 1 by a single place just like its predecessor.
And now to one of the most revered dance tracks of all time made by one of the most influential dance artists of all time. Despite the superlatives in that statement, Daft Punk weren’t that well known back in early 1997. Well, not to the non-dance heads in the mainstream like…well…me. That would all change with seminal track “Da Funk”. Having originally been released in a limited run pressing on 12” only via independent label Soma back in 1995, the track was reactivated after endorsement by The Chemical Brothers and Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale. A bidding war ensued between the majors with the French duo (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homer-Christo) signing with Virgin ultimately. Their new label were keen to rerelease “Da Funk” and with their backing and promotional budget, it would go Top 10. Combining house, funk and EDM, it had the music press salivating at its bass and beats. Even I could appreciate this one as being something special.
Its accompanying, Spike Jonze directed video was equally groundbreaking. The plot of Charles the Dog Boy with his leg in a cast and hobbling on a crutch around New York has the feel of an indie, art house short film. All very intriguing though I was left wondering if it was the best way to promote the single with the track low down in the mix to allow the characters in the video to speak their lines and interact. Having said that, it was certainly ahead of its time and must surely have been an influence on the 2024 Robbie Williams biopic Better Man which sees Williams portrayed as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee with no other characters in the movie reacting to his appearance (meant to portray his state of mind) just as in the “Da Funk” promo and its protagonist Charles.
From one Spike (Jonze) to another Spike (Dawbarn) as the latter is name checked by Ant & Dec alongside his band mates in their intro to 911. It’s not Spike that I’m focussing on here though but lead singer Lee Brennan as we return to the theme of Dolly the sheep and cloning. Look at Lee and then look at Dec. If they’re not a case of cloning then they were surely separated at birth! Anyway, Lee, Spike and Jimmy are here to perform their latest hit “The Day We Find Love” and what a wimpy, feeble track it was. However, the strategy of releasing a ballad around Valentine’s Day certainly paid off when it debuted at No 4, the band’s biggest chart hit to date at that point. Watching them perform it though, their stage choreography (especially from Spike and Jimmy!) seem incongruous to the song. All jerky arm movements and shrugging shoulders like someone shoved ice cubes down their back. “The Day We Find Love”? Nah, Give me “The Day We Caught The Train” any day.
It’s a seventh different No 1 in seven weeks as NoDoubt debut at the top of the charts with “Don’t Speak”. Now, as I recall, there was a huge buzz about this one due to its massive airplay – it was the most played song on American radio up to this point in 1997. I’m sure that a communication came from Our Price Head Office informing stores that due to unprecedented demand for the single, an unusually large order of initial stock of it had been placed for the chain. I don’t think we’d ever had anything like that from the company before. It would happen again the following year though when Britney Spears appeared from nowhere with her “…Baby One More Time” single. Anyway, back to No Doubt and I can’t say that they’d been on my radar despite working in a record shop and despite the fact that they’d already appeared in the UK Top 40 (albeit briefly) when their single “Just A Girl” spent one week at No 38 in October of 1996. However, we all knew about them a few months later when this monster track was unleashed. It would break the sequence of consecutive different UK No 1s by staying at the top for three weeks and would go on to be our seventh best selling single of the year. Actually, I would have thought it would have been higher. What was above it?
*checks list*
Ah, well. It was never going to top “Candle In The Wind ‘97” but “Barbie Girl” and The Teletubbies?! What was going on?! Anyway, “Don’t Speak” is a very accomplished rock/pop power ballad but not in the vein of something from Cher or Celine Dion. It had more credibility than anything by those two. Maybe it was the band’s ska punk beginnings or Gwen Stefani’s unconventional vocals that lent them that. However, the song’s success undoubtedly brought the band into the mainstream with parent album “Tragic Kingdom” selling 16 million copies worldwide. The success of “Don’t Speak” would usher in a rerelease for “Just A Girl” which would go Top 3 the second time around. For a while, No Doubt was the bomb. And then…well…as noted many a time before, a band with a female lead singer and an otherwise all male line up was always going to have its publicity centred around the vocalist and Stefani certainly was who the press were interested in. With her looks compared to Madonna’s and much attention paid to her midriff, tensions within the band were high but that’s a discussion for a future post.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
James
She’s A Star
No but I had the album
2
DJ Kool
Let Me Clear My Throat
No
3
The Wonders
That Thing You Do!
Great track but its a no
4
Space
Dark Clouds
Nah
5
Warren G
I Shot The Sheriff
Nope
6
Daft Punk
Da Funk
See 3 above
7
911
The Day We Find Love
Never
8
No Doubt
Don’t Speak
See 3 above
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.
It’s Valentine’s Day in 1997 so no doubt the charts (and therefore the TOTP running order) will be full of romantic love songs. Erm…no. Of the nine songs on tonight’s show, I’d say only one is an out and out slushy ballad. The rest…well, some are almost anti-love songs but we’ll get to them soon enough. The host tonight is doubtless the target of many a young girl’s romantic intentions in Peter Andre who, the last time he was the presenter, did a pretty good job it pains me to say. As for me, what was my Valentine’s Day like? Well, according to my diary, I was stressed out at work and my wife was away for the weekend in London so I spent it on my own in front of the TV which seems apt for this most unromantic of shows.
So, kicking us off are Mansun with the lead track from their “Five EP” called “She Makes My Nose Bleed”. Yeah, it’s not the most loved up song title ever and neither is its sound and thank god for that. Taken from their brilliant No 1 album “Attack Of The Grey Lantern”, this was 90s indie rock at its very best. They always sounded like they had such sonic power but that they hadn’t even got out of second gear yet and there was so much more under the bonnet. The day after this TOTP aired, I saw them on that tour with Suede that Peter Andre mentioned in Blackburn with my mate Steve. Given that their single was in the Top 10 at the time, I’m surprised that they were the support act. Presumably the tour had been booked loads earlier when their profile wasn’t as big but they were now contractually bound to complete it in the support slot? Later in this year I convinced another mate called Pete to buy “Attack Of The Grey Lantern” even though he wasn’t familiar with it promising him that it might take a little while to get into but that the pay off when he did would be worth it. He never did tell me if he liked it or not.
Now here’s a nice heartthrob singer for Valentine’s Day but his song isn’t a big ballad either. Mark Owen was possibly actively trying to shed that teen pin up status he’d acquired as part of Take That and be seen as a serious artist – he had written all but two tracks on his debut album “Green Man” after all. “Clementine” was the second single taken from that album and would peak at No 3, just as his debut single “Child” (which had been a big ballad) had done.
I recall that we sold out of the single in the Our Price I was working in during that first week of release. I don’t think it had been our fault per se – I think the initial quantities (the so called ‘scale out’) ordered in for us by the buying department at Head Office hadn’t been big enough. Maybe they’d been deceived by the poor sales performance of “Green Man” which had struggled to a chart peak of No 33. Consequently, perhaps they’d not banked on a second single taken from it charting so high. In fairness to the company buyers, they’d would prove to be ultimately right as Owen’s third single “I Am What I Am” (not that one) would flop when it peaked at No 29 – they’d just gone one single too early. Mark would subsequently be dropped by his label RCA. He wouldn’t reappear as a solo artist until 2003 when the aptly titled sophomore album “In Your Own Time” was released. I’d liked “Child” but “Clementine” seems a bit one dimensional – it was just all about that elongated chorus with the rest of it a bit pedestrian. More ‘Oh my, disappointing’ than ‘oh my darling’ Clementine.
Definitely not a slushy love song for Valentine’s Day was “Remember Me” by BlueBoy. I’m wondering if punters referred to it as “That song that goes ‘ging, gi-gi-gi-gi-ging’” when asking for it in their local record shops. I can’t recall if I was asked for it like that in the Our Price in Stockport but it’s quite possible. Other songs that people asked for not by their title would be “Gypsy Woman” by Crystal Waters (“that one that goes ‘la da dee, la da da’”) and “Song 2” by Blur (“it has a bit in it that goes ‘woo hoo!’”).
Ah, here’s the one and only slushy ballad on the show despite it being broadcast on Valentine’s Day. This was just shameless! OTT (not to be confused with the early 80s late night version of Tiswas) were another Irish boyband who clearly were modelled on Boyzone so much so that their debut hit was an Osmonds cover just as their predecessors’ had been. Talk about obvious! Whilst Ronan et al had taken on “Love Me For A Reason” which had been a chart topper in 1974, OTT went with “Let Me In”, a No 2 hit in the UK in 1973. You can’t tell me this wasn’t just cynically following a boy band blueprint step by step, detail by detail! Oh and look, they’re kitted out in that boyband cliché of all white outfits! They weren’t even that good looking were they? There’s one who seems to have modelled his hairstyle to match that of tonight’s host Peter Andre with those horrible greasy strands hanging down. How did their record label Epic think anyone would fall for this but they did! “Let Me In” would go to No 12 in the UK charts after being a No 2 hit in Ireland. This was the first of four hits they would manage over the next 12 months before Epic lost faith and dropped them. There’s five of them in this performance but one of them left the band at some point as there’s a line up of four on their album cover. Two of them did have interesting names – Niall O’Neill and Alan Mates who really should have had the nickname ‘Billy No’ but was known as ‘Adam’ within the band. They couldn’t sent even get nicknames right!
Next up is a track that fuses a hard rock guitar riff (courtesy of Van Halen), drum ‘n’ bass breakbeats, some reggae dub flourishes and a sample from a 1971 sci-fi film (TheAndromedaStrain) – yep, to quote Bon Jovi, this ain’t a love song either. ApolloFourForty’s biggest hit to this point had been the No 23 placing “Krupa” but “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Dub” would seem them crack the Top 10 for the first time. Now, this was never going to be my cup of tea but I can appreciate it for being experimental, pioneering and pushing the boundaries of dance music composition.
Unlike Orbital the other week, the track lent itself more to a ‘traditional’ performance if that’s the right word. I guess it is in that there a vocalist (of sorts) and a guitarist and a drummer (two drummers actually – very Adam and the Ants). Apparently, the guy on the mike is the frontman for 80s ‘grebo’ band Gaye Bikers On Acid but he’s giving me Alex Mann vibes in his Fluminense football shirt. Who’s Alex Mann? This guy of course…
We’ve seen three of the last four hits before on the show so I might have to skip through these without too much comment. What I will say is that two of the artists have amazing longevity. The first of those is Depeche Mode who when you consider had already been having hits for 16 years back in 1997 and are still going today in 2025…well, you don’t have to be a maths genius to work out how long they’ve been around for. Not bad for a band that started out as teen, synth pop stars in frilly shirts. However, if I hear the phrase “Barrel Of A Gun”, the song that comes to my mind isn’t from Depeche Mode but this…
I can’t help it, I’m a product of my era and the songs that we grew up with are the ones that stick in our heads. No, really. There’s been scientific studies conducted into it – it’s called the ‘reminiscence bump’ so it’s not my fault. Look it up if you don’t believe me. I’m not consciously choosing John Farnham over (this era of) Depeche Mode, it’s been psychologically engineered within me.
No! Mercy please! Not this lot again! Not a third time! What am I supposed to say about this Spanish guitar influenced Eurodance trash? NoMercy were the creation of Frank Farian who gave us Boney M and if you were a child growing up in the 70s then they were a huge presence in your fledgling years (it’s that ‘reminiscence bump’ again). However, he also gave us Milli Vanilli and their lip-syncing, deceiving ways and then this trio of berks and their single “Where Do You Go” so his strike rate wasn’t the best. What I wasn’t aware of before now was that a biopic of the Milli Vanilli story was made in 2023 called GirlYouKnowIt’sTrue but I guess it’s quite the story to be told – success followed by scandal followed by tragedy. I can’t imagine a film about the No Mercy story being made anytime soon.
There’s a lot to unpack with this next hit starting with who does the lead singer remind me of? I refer to Mark Oliver Everett aka ‘E’ who’d released two albums as a solo artist under that pseudonym in the early 90s before putting together the band Eels. It’ll come to me. Anyway, “Novocaine For The Soul” was the lead single from the band’s debut album “Beautiful Freak” and made the Top 10 in the UK straight off the bat. A great, quirky alt-rock song in the vein of Beck or Presidents Of The USA, it was a perfect antidote to all that generic dance crap in the charts at the time. What should have been a time of great excitement due to this success was tempered though by personal tragedy in Everett’s life. Having already suffered the trauma of finding his father, a prominent quantum physicist, dead at home when he was just 19, he then lost his sister to suicide and his mother to cancer between 1996 and 1998. Three years later, his flight attendant cousin was killed during the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001 when on the plane that was flown at the Pentagon. Everett seemed to process all this tragedy by writing songs – to date the Eels have released 17 studio albums!
Although the band’s line up has fluctuated over the years, Everett has remained the one constant presence, much like Mike Scott in The Waterboys or Matt Johnson in The The. Some of the names (or rather nicknames) of those other band members deserve some recognition. Look at these:
The Chet
Koool G Murder
P-Boo
Knuckles
Big/Krazy/Tiny/Honest/Upright/Royal Al
Butch
Take note OTT. That’s how you do nicknames! As for this performance, what was all that with the toy instruments all about? Apparently, they hadn’t told anyone they were going to smash them up at the end – was it meant to be a send up of The Who or someone like that? It wasn’t really working for me until they all did the little bow at the end which turned it from childish to comic.
Got it! ‘E’ reminds me of this guy. It’s E for Epithemiou!
U2 are, along with Depeche Mode, that other band with amazing longevity and this week, rather predictably what with being the biggest band in the world and all, at No 1. “Discothèque” is the song they gave them their third chart topper after “Desire” in 1988 and “The Fly” in 1991. It may have been the band’s third hit to get to the pinnacle but for the record buying public it was the sixth different No 1 single in as many weeks. Was it devaluing that achievement? It felt like it to me but then I was working from inside the trend in a record shop so was looking at it from a business perspective. Kind of sums up this Valentine’s Day show – all very business like with little romance in the air.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Mansun
She Makes My Nose Bleed
No but I had their album
2
Mark Owen
Clementine
Nah
3
Blue Boy
Remember Me
Yes – I bought the 12″ for my wife
4
OTT
Let Me In
No chance
5
Apollo Four Forty
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Dub
Nope
6
Depeche Mode
Barrel Of A Gun
I did not
7
No Mercy
Where Do You Go
Never
8
Eels
Novocaine For The Soul
No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
9
U2
Discothèque
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.
We’re in the midst of a huge run of ‘golden mic’ hosts in these TOTP repeats. So far in 1997, the only Radio 1 DJ to have presented the show is Nicky Campbell back at the start of January. Since then we’ve had Rhona Cameron, Phil Daniels, Noddy Holder and in the next three shows we’ll see Peter Andre, Ant & Dec and Ian Wright before Jo Whiley waves the flag for Radio 1 again on 7th March. For this week though we have Ardal O’Hanlon aka Father Douglas Maguire from FatherTed. A Christmas special for that show (the one with the lingerie department scene) had recently aired so Ardal’s profile was in the ascendancy at the time. His approach to hosting is to claim propriety for the charts for this week and therefore TOTP as well and he pulls it off successfully I think.
The opening act are TheSupernaturals who were a sort of nearly men of Britpop. Hailing from Scotland, they’d done the ‘paying their dues’ route of touring to create a fan base and independently releasing their early material until they were eventually picked up by major label Food in 1995. They then did a load more touring but not as headline act in their own tour but supporting the likes of Dodgy, Ash, Menswear, Sleeper, The Bluetones and in a rather unlikely move Tina Turner (must have been another support artist in after them surely?). Putting in the miles on the road paid off when their second single release “Lazy Lover” pierced the Top 40 peaking at No 34. The follow up was “The Day Before Yesterday’s Man” which was a nice play on words and an incredibly catchy bit of piano led but guitar based rock/pop. Despite this TOTP appearance though, it would only make No 25 in the charts. A re-release of their debut single “Smile” was deemed necessary to try and build on their first hit which it did but, despite being perhaps their best known tune, could only make it two places higher up the charts. Their album “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” did go Top 10 (just) but that would be the band’s commercial peak and it was a case of diminishing returns after that. Why weren’t they bigger than they were? Was it a case of bad timing with their arrival on the scene coming just as Britpop was burning out? Were they ahead of their time? They may not thank me for the comparison but were they a prototype Scouting For Girls? Or were they just always destined to be the bridesmaid and not the bride? For my part, I liked them and even bought their album though it was a few years after the event in a sale in a record shop in Madrid bizarrely whilst on holiday there.
After splitting in 2002, they reformed in 2012 and are still an ongoing entity today. If you think you don’t know or remember them, you might actually know some of their songs by osmosis as a number of them have been used to soundtrack advertising campaigns for the likes of Sky Movies, Arnold Clark Automobiles and Smile bank (guess which song they used for that one!). They’ve also featured in films and TV shows such as ShootingFish, Hollyoaks, Clarkson’sCarYears, FastFood and HomesUnderTheHammer. With such demand to licence their work, maybe they aren’t the nearly men I thought they were.
When you think of Michelle Gayle, who do you think of? Hattie Tavernier in EastEnders? Or perhaps as half of rap duo Fresh ‘n’ Fly from her time in Grange Hill? Or the rather accomplished singer that she turned out to be during her brief music career? It perhaps should be the latter as she probably doesn’t get the credit she deserves for the decent stab she made of it. Sure, her best known song “Sweetness” was a bit sleight and throwaway but it was bright, bubbly and fun. Some of her other hits weren’t your average soap star turned pop star fare; she was no Stefan Dennis! No, my impression is that she took it seriously and wanted to be taken seriously rather than giving this opportunity her existing fame had afforded her a whirl. And some of her songs were OK. Take this one – “Do You Know” – for example. It’s a smooth as silk, sleekly produced R&B/pop song that was perfect for daytime radio and Michelle co-wrote it.
So why didn’t her time as a pop star last longer? I think it was to do with the perception of her as a singles artists as opposed to one who could shift lots of albums. She clocked up seven chart hit singles (including two inside the Top 10) but her two studio albums failed to sell in copious amounts peaking at Nos 30 and 17. She was also unlucky with record company machinations. After leaving RCA after her second album she joined EMI but a third album she recorded the them was never released. There was then an attempted comeback in 2004 when another album went unreleased after her label folded. She has had better luck and more success after becoming an author and a return to acting but this time treading the boards at the theatre. In 2023, she made a surprise if very fleeting return to her pop star days by appearing on stage with Louise at a Shepherd’s Bush gig singing her hit “Sweetness”.
So how is Ardal doing? Not bad actually. He has resisted doing a turn in character as Father Dougal Maguire whilst sneaking in some FatherTed references (“we’ll be having an exclusive from the British band Bush who are huge in America but very small here”) and channeling the spirit of Dougal by projecting the image of a man who is nominally in charge of the show but who doesn’t really have any control or know what’s going on (“we’ll be having some music, some counting, young people screaming and here’s Michelle Gayle singing a song…”). In his segue for the next video, he doesn’t hold back in his distaste for the duo involved by saying he doesn’t know how they got into his charts and then appearing to have had headphones on for the duration of it when the track is over. To be fair to Ardal, he had a point. “I Finally Found Someone” by Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand was hardly down with the kids was it?
Taken from the soundtrack to Babs’s latest film TheMirrorHasTwoFaces (which I’ve never even heard of let alone seen), it’s perhaps what you would expect if you put these two together to record a song for a romantic comedy/drama – a big, rather overwrought ballad that ticks all the boxes of cinematic requirements. It wasn’t for me though Bry’s raspy rock voice does blend better than expected with the more refined tones of Babs. However, I’m not sure Adams is at his best when in the vicinity of movie soundtracks – often pilloried for that Robin Hood song, he was also part of the unholy trio that also included Rod Stewart and Sting that sicked up the bilious “All For One” from TheThreeMusketeers movie. “Have You Ever Really Lived A Woman?” from Don Juan DeMarco was similarly awful and then there’s this. Barbra and movies, on the other hand, are synonymous with each other. Tell me this though. How have I, in 2025 and at 56 years of age, only just noticed how she spells her name?!
And now for something completely different. I say completely different but, although the year had changed, the make up of the charts hadn’t as they were still home to multiple dance hits of which “Passion” by Amen! UK was just one of many. The correlation between banging tunes filling the dance floors and filling up the Top 40 was still dominant as the decade turned the final corner and headed for the finish. Who was buying these records in the shops? Was it club goers who wanted to recreate that top night they’d had last weekend in their living room? Was it DJs needing a track to complete their next set playlist? Most dance records of this time left me cold but I could appreciate their appeal and power in the setting of a nightclub but not so much being played at home. Maybe punters were practicing their dance moves in the safety of their homes before daring to present them to fellow club goers? Or maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about at all? Anyway, these are the facts for this one. The guy behind it was Irish DJ Paul Masterson who would go on to have more hits under the pseudonym of Yomanda and it was released on the painfully hip Deconstruction label reaching No 15 in the charts. It made No 40 when rereleased in 2003.
Another dance tune though this one is completely different to Amen!UK. Nuyorican Soul was a side project by American garage house producers ‘Little’ Louis Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez aka Masters at Work. This single – “Runaway” – was a fairly faithful cover of a 70s disco track by the Salsoul Orchestra featuring the vocals of Loleatta Holloway who supposedly is the most sampled female singer in popular music history (remember the whole Black Box/“Ride On Time” debacle?). Vega and Gonzalez didn’t sample Loleatta in their version though choosing instead to have Puerto Rican singersongwriter India do the actual heavy lifting vocally. Some 90s production values made the whole thing sound retro yet current and it was duly a hit going to No 24 in the UK Top 40 and No 1 in our Dance Chart.
After a rather oblique Father Ted reference earlier when he referred to Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand as “Lenny* and Petula Clarke”, Ardal O’Hanlon veers off into random-ville for his next link by name checking Toyah Wilcox, noting that it’s been 427 weeks since she’s been in the charts? That can’t be actually true can it? 427 weeks is what? Just over eight years. Right, I’m checking Toyah’s discography…
…Oh My God! He was nearly right. In fact, Ardal underestimated Toyah’s absence from the charts. Her last visit to the Top 40 was in May 1985 so a gap of nearly 12 years by this point! “Why can’t you be more like EnVogue?” he asks Toyah looking straight into the camera before we get the video for “Don’t Let Go (Love)” which is back up to No 5 this week. However, this would be the final time that the group would visit the UK Top 10. Good song as it is, it’s another of those tracks that has brackets in the title for no discernible reason. They don’t sing the word ‘love’ in the chorus – in fact, that word doesn’t appear in the lyrics at all (though ‘lovers’ does). For balance, Toyah wasn’t adverse to the use of brackets in her song titles. There’s “Be Loud, Be Proud (Be Heard)”, “Don’t Fall In Love (I Said)” and the marvellously ridiculous “Latex Messiah (Viva La Rebel In You)”.
*Recurring character Bishop Brennan’s first name was Leonard or Len as Father Dougal would call him much to his annoyance.
And here it is again. The problem for TOTP producers as to what to do with an almost instrumental dance hit. On this occasion it is The Orb with “Toxygene” and the decision on staging for their performance was to have the duo (Alex Paterson and Andy Hughes I think) each sit on a revolving mini platform tinkering with their keyboards and equipment set up. It looks ill-conceived at best and laughable at worst. What astonishes me is why the band themselves agreed to do it. Did they really think this was the best way to promote their single? Wasn’t there a video to go with it that could have been shown thereby killing two birds with one stone – a better showcase for the track and a solution for the show about how to stage it?
The track itself was supposed to be a remix of Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygène 8” from his “Oxygène 7–13” album though it doesn’t really sound anything like it at all which apparently Jarre wasn’t too happy about. I’ve wondered why there weren’t more uses of Jarre’s work in 90s dance tracks (there could well have been for all I know but this is the first I’ve come across) seeing as he was The Godfather of electronic, ambient and new-age sounds. There were people I knew at school who swore by him though it didn’t do much for me and my youthful pop sensibilities. Maybe Jarre’s reaction to The Orb’s treatment of “Oxygène 8” was a reason why there weren’t more samples of his work in existence.
Next an example of that curious phenomenon of when a UK artist is huge in America but can’t get arrested in their own country. In the 80s we had The Escape Club and Wang Chung. Bush were the 90s equivalent. Their debut album “Sixteen Stone” went Top 5 in the US but could only peak at No 42 over here. However, they finally broke through in the UK with the lead single from their second album “Razorblade Suitcase” which was called “Swallowed”. Listening to it now, it really does sound like a Nirvana tribute act, an accusation that was levelled at them constantly back then. I thought it was OK but I was never going to fall for them hook, line and sinker. I’m guessing though that their record company would hope that some female punters would do exactly that for lead singer Gavin Rossdale. They were out of luck if they did as he was going out with Gwen Stefani of No Doubt at the time and they would later be married for 13 years. No doubt we’ll be seeing…erm… No Doubt on these TOTP repeats very soon.
In the last post, I talked about “Walk On By” being one of the most recorded songs in history. However, “Ain’t Nobody” must be up there as well. Originally recorded by Rufus and Chaka Khan, it has also been recorded by Jaki Graham, Scooter, Richard X versus Liberty X and had been in the charts as recently as 1995 courtesy of Diana King. The there’s this version by LLCoolJ. Recorded for the soundtrack of the BeavisAndButt–HeadDoAmerica film, it was a somewhat surprising No 1 in my opinion. It wasn’t as big a hit anywhere else in the world (including the US apart from their Rap Chart) and I don’t recall the film being a big hit over here (though Wikipedia tells me it did good business in America) so I’m not quite sure why it proved so popular in the UK. LL Cool J’s next hit also came from a film soundtrack as he was one of the artists on “Hit ‘Em High (The Monstars’ Anthem)” from SpaceJam.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Supernaturals
The Day Before Yesterday’s Man
No but I had their album
2
Michelle Gayle
Do You Know
No
3
Bryan Adams and Barbra Streisand
I Finally Found Someone
Never
4
Amen! Uk
Passion
Not my bag
5
Nuyorican Soul featuring India
Runaway
Negative
6
En Vogue
Don’t Let Go (Love)
Nope
7
The Orb
Toxygene
I did not
8
Bush
Swallowed
No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
9
LL Cool J
Ain’t Nobody
Nah
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.
I’ve referred back to my diary again for inspiration for this post. You may remember that I rediscovered my 1996 one a while back but it carries on into 1997 and up to the month of May when I finally got fed up of it. It turns out that the day after this TOTP aired, we had a stocktake at the Our Price in Stockport where I was working. When I first joined the record retailer back in 1990, stocktakes were events that were talked about in legendary terms as to how long they took with tales of them going on well into the early hours of the morning. I would come to realise that this was the more experienced members of staff winding us newbies up. That’s not to say that they didn’t go on and on sometimes. This particular one wasn’t finished until 9.00 on a Saturday night. However, Stockport was a big store over two floors – one of the smaller shops in the area wouldn’t have taken half as long. There was a rumour once that one store completed its stocktake before it had even closed its doors and stopped trading for the day which seemed to undermine the point of the exercise to me. There were two different types of stocktake as I recall – a financial one and a unit count one. By 1997, the stock inventory had been computerised and so we had little mobile scanners to read the barcode and tell us exactly what we had in the store rather than just a number of CDs for example. These then had to be uploaded to the system once an area of the shop had been counted before they could be recalibrated and put to counting again. Someone had to be nominated to do that stock controller job who was normally a member of management so it could well have been me as Assistant Manager on this occasion. My diary tells me that we all trooped off to the pub once the stocktake was done as was tradition. Presumably all of the songs on this episode of TOTP will have been counted in that stocktake.
Tonight’s guest host is Slade legend Noddy Holder who had left the band five years previously and started on a radio and TV career – within two years he would be starring in ITV comedy/drama series The Grimleys. I served Noddy once in my early Our Price days and I was delighted that his credit card has the name N Holder emblazoned on it thinking that the ‘N’ referred to Noddy when in fact it was the initial of his actual name Neville. Doh! I’m guessing that apart from maybe a Greatest Hits CD, we wouldn’t have had any Slade albums in store to count at the stocktake.
We start tonight with Placebo and their hit “Nancy Boy”. During the course of my research on this one (I do do research – I can’t rely on my fading memory to come up with anecdotes constantly), I came across a rather sad story about the boy who was on the cover of Placebo’s debut album. His name is David Fox and he was just 12 years old when his cousin took a photo of him pulling a face one day. The next thing he knew, said cousin had licensed the photos to Placebo’s record label Virgin and his picture adorned the cover of the album, billboards, the sides of buses etc. Cool eh? Well no, actually. David suffered from bullying at school as a result of his fame and ended up being ostracised by his former mates. He eventually went through a number of different schools, didn’t take his GCSEs and ended up being unemployed. In 2012, it was reported that he was intending to sue the band for ruining his life and unpaid royalties. I’m not sure what the outcome was but a year later, he did appear on the ‘Identity Parade’ section of Never Mind The Buzzcocks pulling that same face so I’m guessing he didn’t feel as litigious as he once had. I hope he got an appearance fee at least.
Next up is perhaps the laziest and most obvious choice of single of the decade. Now I’m not a particular fan of Gabrielle but I can admire her longevity and the career that she has built off the back of what could have been one hit wonder status. After her debut hit “Dreams” shot to No 1 in 1993, there was a school of thought that said the only way from that peak was down but Gabrielle refused to conform to that stereotype and followed it with a clutch of charting singles and a Top 10 album in “Find Your Way”. An eponymous, sophomore album followed in 1996 which was certified platinum in the UK and the end of that year saw her rise to No 2 with her duet with East 17 of the Shai track “If You Ever”. Big props to her.
However, the decision by her (or more likely her record label) to then release a cover version of “Walk On By” lacked any integrity or creativity but was surely financially driven. I’m not sure if Noddy was right in what he said in his intro – that the song had been covered over 200 times – but it is surely one of the best known tunes of all time and it is certainly true that it had already been a hit a number of times before Gabrielle got to it. The original version of the Bacharach and David classic was recorded by Dionne Warwick in 1963 but since then it had been covered by Gloria Gaynor, The Stranglers, Average White Band and D-Train. Then, as recently as 1990, it had been a No 6 hit for American singer Sybil. Given all of this, did we really need another version of it courtesy of Gabrielle? This was a cynical, money for old rope move. Supposedly, the idea for her to record it came about when she’d performed it in an episode of TFIFriday on which she was a guest and which Bacharach was in the audience for. His seal of approval of Gabrielle’s version convinced record label Go!Beat to milk the cash cow that had been presented before them and wallop! It was back in the Top 10 again. Such was their desire to fleece the record buying public that it was added as an extra track (along with “If You Ever”) to her album which was rereleased. Money grabbing swines! It’s such an ordinary version of the song as well which added nothing to it at all to my ears. At least The Stranglers did something different with it.
Despite the expense of the recent festive period, January 1997 must have been a busy time for the country’s nightclubs if the UK Top 40 was any sort of gauge. The upper end of the chart was jam packed with dance tunes. Tori Amos and White Town had both been at No 1 whilst Lisa Stansfield and remix team The Dirty Rotten Scoundrels had taken the old Coldcut hit “People Hold On” to No 4. And the there was this – “Remember Me” by BlueBoy otherwise known as the ‘Ging Ginner’ song. Blue Boy was British DJ Alexis ‘Lex’ Blackmore who took a sample of a track called “Woman Of The Ghetto” by American jazz, blues and soul singer Marlena Shaw and ‘funked’ it up for want of a better word to create a memorable dance floor filler. A scat version of that sample of the original track formed the distinctive ‘ging gi-gi-gi-gi-ging’ hook. In my head, this got as high as those other dance hits I mentioned earlier but Wikipedia tells me that it peaked at No 8. Told you I had to do research and not rely on my memory!
My rediscovery of SkunkAnansie continues at pace. “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” was their fifth hit single in a twelve month period and I’ve pretty much liked them all despite only recalling “Weak” before rewatching the TOTP repeats that featured them. If the band could be said to have a gentler side then this was it. A less abrasive sound than some of their other songs albeit that Skin’s powerful vocals are still to the forefront and there’s a bit of wah-wah guitar in the middle eight.
Inevitably when you have such a striking looking female lead singer, she was always going to attract the most attention, a scenario we have seen numerous times in music history with bands such as Blondie, Toyah and No Doubt. However, in an interview with Kerrang! magazine in 2020, Skin made it clear that the reason that Skunk Anansie split in 2001 wasn’t because of any jealousy directed towards her by other members or that she felt that she had outgrown or become bigger than the band. No, she felt it was because she believed that they were about to make a bad album and that it would be harder to come back from a bad album than a break up so they chose the latter. She was proved to be right as they reformed in 2008 and are still together to this day though they have only released a few singles since their last full album in 2016 but they are touring in March and April this year.
NoMercy are back in the studio and having reviewed them and their hit “Where Do You Go” once already, I genuinely can’t think of anything else to say about them. Erm…erm…No Mercy…didn’t The Stranglers (who I mentioned earlier) have a hit called “No Mercy”?
*checks their discography *
Yes they did in 1984 – it reached No 37. Will that do? No, it won’t will it. Erm…well, the lead singer is called Marty Cintron who sounds like a character from ThisIsSpinalTap. Why was I talking about Spinal Tap the other day? Oh yes, here we go. This’ll do. I currently work as a front of house usher in a theatre and me and a colleague had to take some rubbish out after a show the other day but had to use a different route to the one we normally use to get to the bins as the foyer was unusually busy. Consequently, we had to get to them via the backstage area (you know where this is going don’t you?) and, not used to this part of the theatre, we got lost. We kept wandering around corridors that led us nowhere and at one point opened a door that had us on the pavement outside (but crucially with no access to the bin area). At this point, I said to my colleague (who is much, much younger than me – he’s just started University) “This is like that scene from Spinal Tap where they can’t find the stage at a gig and they wander backstage hopelessly lost. Obviously my colleague had no idea what I was talking about so I had to explain to him the concept of Spinal Tap. I’m so old! He probably doesn’t know who No Mercy are/were either but that’s understandable given that they were a bunch of no marks anyway.
The TOTP caption for the next video informs us that the artist concerned has not appeared live on the show for 11 years. Seeing as the artist is George Michael, and that this repeat is from 1997, does that mean that George hadn’t been on the show since his Wham! days? Possibly. Anyway, this promo is for the fourth single and the title track from his “Older” album. As the first two tracks lifted from it had both been No 1s and the third a No 2, was it conceivable that the No 3 peak of this one was seen as a disappointment? Surely not. The album had been out for eight months by this point and this was the fourth single to come from it so all in all, not a bad result I would have thought.
As for the song, it’s the sort of track that had become synonymous with George by this point in his career. The sort of track that could only be described by the word ‘mature’. George’s vocals are on point as ever, but for me, it’s all just a tad dull. Apparently the trumpet part in it was played by one Steve Sidwell – I’m assuming that isn’t the ex-Reading, Chelsea and Fulham midfielder. It was released as a double A-side with the Bonnie Raitt track ”I Can’t Make You Love Me” which I think I prefer as a song (especially Bonnie’s version). George didn’t stop at four singles being released from “Older” and a further two were put out with the final one – “You Have Been Loved” – hitting the shops a good 15 months after the album did. This matched the amount of singles released from his “Faith” album.
Rivalling George in the ‘not seen round these parts for a while’ stakes were Depeche Mode who Noddy Holder informs us hadn’t been live on TOTP since 1987! They were back now but a lot had happened in the intervening 10 years. Back then, the band had not long drawn a line under their synth pop era and gone all dark with the “Black Celebration” album and had continued in that vein with subsequent albums “Violator” and “Songs Of Faith And Devotion”. Both had been massively successful commercially with “Violator” in particular being seen as the band at the peak of their creative powers too. However, it was not all good news. The mammoth DevotionalTour had taken its toll on the whole group. Martin Gore had become a borderline alcoholic, Andy Fletcher (RIP) had a mental breakdown, Alan Wilder decided to leave the band after years of feeling unappreciated and then there was Dave Gahan. Battling a serious drug addiction and after a near fatal overdose when his heart stopped beating for two minutes, Gahan went into rehab. Struggling to get their lead singer to record any new material, Martin Gore had considered breaking up the band but relented and the resulting album “Ultra” would go to No 1 in the UK selling four million copies worldwide.
The lead single was “Barrel Of A Gun” which was another slab of industrial rock the likes of which they had forged the second part of their career on and conquered America with. It’s kind of odd seeing Martin Gore up there wielding a guitar rather than behind keyboards, a drummer on stage with them and, of course, no Alan Wilder anymore. I don’t remember this one though it would furnish the band with their highest chart position since “People Are People” in 1984 when it peaked at No 4.
Listening to it now, it puts me in mind of the soundtrack to late 90s Channel 4 comedy/drama series TheYoung Person’sGuideToBecomingARockStar. That might sound like heresy to the Depeche Mode faithful but have a listen to this…
Ok, the tempo’s much faster and the tune not as industrial sounding but the structure’s similar no? Just me then.
Blur are No 1 with “Beetlebum” but as was the way at this point in the decade, it would only be for one week until the next hyped, discounted single was released that would debut at the top of the charts. Although it was the only No 1 to come from their eponymous, fifth album, I’m willing to bet that it’s not the most well known track on the album. That would be the second single taken from it, the aptly named “Song 2” (it was given its name as a working title based on its position in the album’s running order and stuck). Its memorable “woo-hoo” refrain would strike a chord with the general public and lead to it being used in many a sports stadium and computer game soundtrack. We’ll no doubt be seeing “Song 2” on a future TOTP repeat in the not too distant future. And with that, the stocktake is complete – I’ve taken stock of everything.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Placebo
Nancy Boy
No but I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
2
Gabrielle
Walk On By
No, I walked on by it
3
Blue Boy
Remember Me
Yes on 12″ for my wife
4
Skunk Anansie
Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)
No but it is good
5
No Mercy
Where Do You Go
Never
6
George Michael
Older / I Can’t Make You Love Me
Nope
7
Depeche Mode
Barrel Of A Gun
No
8
Blur
Beetlebum
No but I had the album it came from
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.
Two days before this TOTP aired, Billy Mackenzie committed suicide and the world lost one of its truly unique voices. Like most people I’m guessing, I first became aware of Billy in 1982 when the band he formed with Alan Rankine, The Associates, burst into the charts with “Party Fears Two”. I didn’t realise that they’d been going for three years before that. All I knew was that they made the most beguilingly wonderful sound. They followed it up with the similarly marvellous “Club Country” and “18 Carat Love Affair” but the runaway success train got derailed by Rankine’s decision to leave the band. There would be no more new music from The Associates until 1985 when the album “Perhaps” was released. Although none of the singles release from it made the Top 40, they were still quality tunes especially the stunning “Breakfast”. Billy continued to write and record under The Associates banner until 1990 when he struck out as a solo artist. However, any further chart success would prove elusive. A couple of years after his death, his biography, TheGlamourChase, was published which I read and it was a fascinating book. Billy really was an original – one of my favourite anecdotes was when he was let go by his record label, he hailed a cab in London and travelled back to his home city of Dundee charging the fare back to the label. He is truly missed. The Associates are stated to have influenced the likes of Björk, U2 and Ladytron. I wonder if any of the acts on tonight will have left such a legacy?
Before proceeding, I should acknowledge that the host tonight is Phil Daniels who’d had a few connections with music down the years. From fronting new wave band The Cross to his iconic role as Jimmy Cooper in Quadrophenia to his cameo in Blur’s “Parklife”, Daniels was an almost logical choice of TOTP guest presenter. So first on tonight are…you have to be kidding me?! TheOuthereBrothers?!They were still having hits in 1997?! How and more importantly why?! You’ll remember this pointless duo from having consecutive No 1s in 1995 with “Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)” and “Boom Boom Boom” which were horrible, lowest common denominator, call and response chants. Their success was unexplainable to me but as we move into 1997 with these TOTP repeats, I was fairly sure that particular shameful episode in UK chart history was over. I was wrong, so sadly wrong. This final hit was called “Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole ‘Ole” (of course it was) and it was garbage. It just sounds like a load of drunks at a football match. Who the hell bought this?! No, seriously who?!
Legacyrating: Zero. Nothing. Nada.
In January 1997, Suede were in the middle of the most commercial era of their career. Their third album “Coming Up” had been out for about five months and they were promoting it hard with a tour and five singles taken from it. “Saturday Night” was the third of those and its release conformed to that well worn path of two fast ones followed by a slow one. A ballad written to glorify the beauty to be found in the everyday, it continued the band’s run of Top 10 hits by debuting at a very respectable No 6. Not bad for a third single from an album. As it’s a ballad, Brett Anderson is sat down on a chair for this performance – perhaps he took inspiration from this lyric from the song:
Today she’s been sat there, sat there in a black chair
I caught Suede on that aforementioned tour a few weeks after this TOTP appearance in Blackburn when they were supported by Mansun. That was a good gig.
Legacyrating: For a band that could have buckled under the weight of expectation of that ‘The most important band in Britain’ headline early in their career, Suede have sustained remarkably well. A solid 7/10
You know me, I’m a pop kid. R&B isn’t my go to choice on Spotify but if I had to choose an artist of that genre then En Vogue would be up there. It might be the harmonies or the genre-bending tunes like “Free Your Mind” but they just seemed to have an edge to them that made them stand out. “Don’t Let Go (Love)” was another such track. The word seductive’ doesn’t really cover this one. It’s a great track that would end up being the lead single from the group’s third album “EV3” although it was originally recorded for the soundtrack of the heist drama SetItOff . It would also usher in a huge change in the group’s line up as lead vocalist on this track Dawn Robinson decided to leave En Vogue to pursue a solo career rather than record “EV3”. That would trigger a host of changes personnel-wise that would make the band’s members timeline more bitty than “It Keeps Rainin’” singer Mr McLean. Despite all the comings and goings, En Vogue are still together to this day although they are now a trio and haven’t released any new material since the “Electric Cafe” album in 2018.
Legacyrating: They’ve had more US R&B No 1s than any other female group other than The Supremes but the revolving door line up policy undermines their reputation rather. 6/10
In music history, there haven’t been many Byrons have there? In fact, there haven’t been many Byrons full stop. The most famous one is surely Romantic poet Lord Byron but there’s also this bloke – Byron Stingily who not only ticks the Byron box but also the music one too. I’d forgotten about this guy but reading up on him revealed that he wasn’t alone in Byron world. Let’s start with the facts though. Stingily (another unusual name to be honest) hails from Chicago and was a prominent figure in the rise of house music that emanated from that city. Working with another house music legend, Marshall Jefferson, as producer they formed Ten City who you may remember from having a hit in 1989 with “That’s The Way Love Is”. And get this – one of the members of the band was called Byron as well! What are the chances! And…Stingily’s son* is called Byron Jnr! Maybe I was wrong about the paucity of people called Byron!
*Byron Jnr would become an American football player for the New York Giants in the position of offensive tackle (make your own jokes up!).
Anyway, branching out solo, Stingily’s first UK hit was “Get Up (Everybody)” which sampled disco legend Sylvester’s “Dance (Disco Heat)”. Incidentally, Byron would do a full blown cover of Sylvester’s finest moment “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” the following year. I’m sure “Get Up (Everybody)” meant something in Chicago House circles but the only thing I could remember about it before watching this TOTP repeat was the generic Manifesto Records cover it came in. Byron’s final UK chart entry was his own cover of that Ten City hit in 1999 and although he is still involved in music he is also a part time principal at a school in…yep…Chicago.
Legacyrating: I’m sure he remains a big name in the history of house music but, if I’m being stingy about Stingily, he doesn’t mean much to me 5/10
And now for something truly stomach churning. I remember the name Ginuwine (I think Phil Daniels mispronounces it in his intro as ‘Genuine’) but thank god I couldn’t recall how any of his music went because it’s god awful. The lyrics to his debut hit “Pony” are clearly just a metaphor for his penis. That’s it. That’s his angle. It’s schoolboy humour tripe. There’s lots of mentions of ‘riding’ his pony and the things he would do to some poor woman, juices flowing down thighs and lurking all over and through her until he reaches her stream. Oh god, I feel dirty just typing those words. It’s just horrific. All of this machismo bullshit was set to an R&B, bump’n’ grind backbeat while Ginuwine smooches about the stage exhorting the studio audience to make some noise. It’s genuinely disturbing. It’s clear though why this berk created an alter ego for himself as his real name is Elgin Baylor Lumpkin which sounds like a character from TheHobbit. And we thought Byron Stingily was unusual! Begone foul, three-legged warg!
Legacy rating: Do me a favour! 0/10
New U2 material was a huge deal back in 1997 so they were always going to get the big build up exclusive treatment on the show. However, despite “Discothèque” going to No 1, history has not been kind to it and, for many, it ultimately disappointed. Since the beginning of the 90s, U2 had been on a mission of reinvention starting with “Achtung Baby” and progressing via “Zooropa” so that by the time they arrived in 1997 and the “Pop” album, was it possible that we’d all had enough of it? Certainly, it was one of the band’s poorest performing albums commercially and Bono himself has voiced his dissatisfaction with it, with the band going so far as to re-record or remix tracks from it for their second Best Of compilation released in 2002.
It all sounds pretty damning but was lead single “Discothèque”really that bad? I think that I overestimated its potential when ordering the single for the Our Price store I was working in and was left with egg on my face and a huge overstock on the shelves. That probably informed my negative view of it. However, listening back to it, I can appreciate the song and what the band were trying to do with it. Sure, it was pushing the boundaries of what we expected from a U2 track but we had been primed for that by all those previous experimentations. Accusations of jumping on the bandwagon of the dominant and ubiquitous dance genre abounded but, on reflection, I think “Discothèque” manages to pull together a track that dared to both innovate and yet be commercially viable. As for the ‘mirrorball’ video, I like to think it showed the band retained the ability to send themselves up – The Village People indeed! The single would go straight in at No 1 but, as was the increasing trend, only for a single week until it was knocked off by the next ‘big’ release.
Legacyrating: Hard to knock a band who will have been in existence for 50 years next year. As for the song, I think it’s due a reappraisal. 8/10 for the band, 6/10 for the song
Asked to name two songs by Reef, this one, “Come Back Brighter”, would be my second pick after “Place Your Hands”. Asked to name three songs by Reef…forget it. Still, this was the point when they were starting to look like serious contenders for the title of heavyweight rockers. This was a second Top 10 hit in a row, both tracks coming from No 1 sophomore album “Glow”. It would be their commercial peak though. By the time third album “Rides” was released in 1999, that flush of success had dissipated rather and sold only a fifth of its predecessor and furnished just one hit single. What happened? I don’t know do I? If I knew the secret of what makes music popular, I’d have spent the 90s writing hit songs rather than selling them in a record shop. For me, “Come Back Brighter” wasn’t as immediate as “Place Your Hands” but it was a grower and did a decent job consolidating the band’s profile.
Legacyrating: Early promise didn’t turn into megastardom 5/10
White Town are No 1! You may not remember their name but their one and only hit was unforgettable. I say ‘their’ but White Town was really just one person – Jyoti Prakash Mishra – a British-Indian singer, musician and producer who came up with the global smash “Your Woman” before disappearing again – a true one hit wonder but what a hit! This was one of those tracks that, the first time you heard it, you couldn’t ignore, that made you say “what’s this?!”. Sampling a 1932 (1932!) song by Lew Stone and his Monseigneur Band featuring a vocal from South African-British crooner Al Bowlly*, it sounded ‘other’, ‘alien’ even, like it had come from a different planet. This was no “Spaceman” though – it didn’t deceive like Babylon Zoo had a year earlier. No, this was all killer all the way through. It wasn’t just about the beats though. The song had a subverted narrative with Mishra’s distorted, low-fi vocal delivering a story of a relationship mismatch from the point of view of the woman. It was clever stuff or at least it felt like it at the time.
*My only other reference point for Al Bowlly came early in my Our Price career when my colleague Justin announced at the end of the day that he was meeting a girl after work and that he’d been getting in the mood for his assignation by listening to Al Bowlly’s “Got A Date With An Angel”
Mishra had started by releasing his material on his own, self financed record label but when “Your Town” started getting airplay courtesy of Radio 1’s Mark Radcliffe, EMI came calling with a record deal and the rest is history. It wasn’t a good history though in terms of Mishra’s relationship with EMI. A committed Marxist, he was very outspoken about music industry practices and it would ultimately lead to White Town being dropped before the end of 1997. Mishra returned to releasing music on his own record label and is still active to this day.
Legacyrating: 8/10 for the song, 4/10 for the band
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
The Outhere Brothers
Let Me Hear You Say ‘Ole ‘Ole
F**k off!
2
Suede
Saturday Night
No but I had the album Coming Up
3
En Vogue
Don’t Let Go (Love)
Liked it, didn’t buy it
4
Byron Stingily
Get Up (Everybody)
Negative
5
Ginuwine
Pony
Never
6
U2
Discothèque
Nope
7
Reef
Come Back Brighter
Nah
8
White Town
Your Woman
No but maybe I should have
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.
The day before this TOTP aired, Chris Evans resigned from Radio 1 leaving his former employer with a huge breakfast show sized hole in their schedule. The tipping point for Evans was station controller Matthew Bannister’s refusal to grant him Fridays off from hosting the show so he could prepare for his Channel 4 programme TFI Friday. Bannister had already turned a blind eye to multiple misdemeanours pulled by Evans during the course of his tenure including turning up late for work, going on a 17 hour bender that only ended two hours before he was due on air and broadcasting tasteless, innuendo-laden jokes. Bannister had already doubled Evans’ holiday entitlement but his star’s continued demands couldn’t be met indefinitely and he finally refused. Evans ego was so out of control at this point that he couldn’t handle someone saying ‘no’ to him and flounced off in a strop being replaced by Mark and Lard. I wonder if there are any huge egos on tonight’s show?
Tonight’s host is Scottish comedian Rhona Cameron whom I’m guessing won’t have had any ideas above her station as she was very early on in her career and was probably very grateful for the opportunity of prime time TV exposure. In fact, if I think of Rhona Cameron, I think of her ‘Sometimes’ speech in the first ever series of I’mACelebrity…Get Me Out Of Here which was in 2002. I’m surprised then that she was on our screens as early as 1997. Her first job is to introduce the LightningSeeds who open the show with their latest single “Sugar Coated Icebergs”. Now, I do remember this one due to its peculiar title but I wasn’t sure how it went until I realised it was the same as all the other ones! Too harsh? Yes, of course it is and as I’ve said before in this blog, I don’t mind the Lightning Seeds at all but Ian Broudie (who always comes across as an unassuming guy and the polar opposite of Chris Evans) sure didn’t mind ploughing the same furrow over and over.
As the caption says, this one was written with Stephen Jones of Babybird and speculation was rife that it was about drugs. The lyrics about ‘sinking deep’ and ‘going under’ do kind of support that notion but the song’s bouncing, uplifting sound undermines that idea for me. One thing I did notice about it though was that its structure did seem to be changed to accommodate the lyrics rather. For example, in the first verse, the tempo is modified to allow the words ‘pointless’ and ‘coated’ to be worked in as the lines they are in don’t scan otherwise. Maybe that was Broudie’s way of trying to shake up the formula ever so slightly? “Sugar Coated Icebergs” would debut at its peak position of No 12 meaning that, excluding “Three Lions”, the Lightning Seeds still hadn’t ever had a Top 10 single despite having had double figures Top 40 hits. When it did come with their next single release which made No 8, it was with a cover version – “You Showed Me” by The Turtles. Still, “Three Lions” did go to No 1 three times in total and not many artists have that on their CV.
Now then, whether this was a case of egos out of control à la Chris Evans or not, what is true is that, just like the recently departed Radio 1 DJ, East17 were attracting plenty of press that wasn’t positive. Let’s try and get the timeline of events correct here. This TOTP was broadcast on Friday 17 January but the shows were traditionally recorded on the Wednesday so that would have been the 15th. Lead singer Brian Harvey did a radio interview on the Thursday morning (16th) in which he advocated the use of recreational drugs and divulged details of his own intake. All hell broke loose as the media got hold of the story and Harvey was roundly criticised – it was even brought up at Prime Minister’s Questions on the lunchtime when John Major condemned Harvey’s words. By the end of Thursday, with the controversy still raging, the rest of the band distanced themselves from Harvey’s comments and he, himself, apologised for what he had said. Come Friday, the other three members of the group effectively sacked Harvey for unacceptable behaviour and threatened to sue him for loss of potential earnings.
All of this occurred just hours after this TOTP performance so I wonder if we can pick up on any tension between the four guys on stage. Remember that there had been doubts about Harvey’s commitment in the weeks before this incident – he’d actually quit the band before Christmas before quickly changing his mind. Rhona Cameron adds to the strained relations by pondering whether the group would split up in her intro. Watching the appearance back, I notice that Harvey is kept well away from Tony Mortimer with whom he had a difficult relationship – I don’t think they look at each other once. Harvey, for his part, looks uneasy with his hands in his pockets for some of the time. There’s also a lot going on in the background with a multitude of other people on the stage including a guy with a weird percussion contraption. It’s as if they were deliberately placed there to deflect attention from the group. Ultimately it would be Mortimer who would leave the band with Harvey reinstated as they attempted a comeback as a rebranded E-17.
What’s that? The song? Oh yeah, almost forgot about that. It was called “Hey Child” and was taken from their “Around The World: The Journey So Far” Best Of album. I don’t remember it at all and listening to it now, it seems like a slight, pure pop ballad that wasn’t very representative of their sound. I guess you could say the same thing about their most famous song “Stay Another Day” but “Hey Child” seems especially twee whereas their Christmas No 1 has a bit more gravitas. It would fall from its debut at No 3 to No 15 the following week. Was that drop off typical of the life cycle of singles back then or was it linked to the furore the band found themselves enveloped in? I’m not sure but I think this may well be the last TOTP appearance of the original line up of East 17.
Following quickly in the footsteps of this week’s No 1 comes another dance remix of an earlier track this time from Lisa Stansfield. Having first appeared in the charts back in 1989 as guest vocalist on the Coldcut hit “People Hold On”, Rochdale’s second most famous resident had gone on to bag herself a stellar career as a solo artist complete with multi platinum selling albums and a No 1 single. Despite all her success, Lisa always struck me as a down to earth sort – more Gracie Fields than airs and graces and certainly no Chris Evans character.
By 1997, she was about to release her fourth album so as a precursor to that, a remix of that first hit was released as “People Hold On (The Bootleg Mixes)”. Behind the remix were Dan Bewick and Matt Frost known as the DirtyRotten Scoundrels whose treatment of the track took it to No 4 beating Coldcut’s chart peak by seven places. Unlike the Tori Amos remix though which totally restructured the original, this one just sounded like a poor man’s version of the 1989 hit to me. Even the video just features some recycled clips of promos for previous Stansfield hits rather than a brand new recording. It’s as if Lisa didn’t want anything to do with it. Whether she did or didn’t, her label Arista included it in that fourth album when it was released in the March as a bonus track. I guess it was just business at the end of the day and the music industry certainly had its share of dirty rotten scoundrels.
The 90s brought us some truly awful dance artists and tracks and this lot certainly fall into that category. Anybody remember NoMercy? They were a Latin American trio who were discovered by Frank Farian, the man who gave us 70s disco- cheesemakers Boney M and 80s pop blaggers Milli Vanilli. And now he was back with an act for the 90s, whether we wanted them or not. I was definitely of the latter opinion but enough people were of the former to send their hit “Where Do You Go” to No 2 in the UK. Yet again, the British record buying public had showed us that they could not be trusted with the nation’s reputation.
The song was built around the drumbeat from the Todd Terry remix of Everything But The Girl’s “Missing” (which they had already covered for their first single) but with some Spanish guitar flourishes, a line from that 60s hit by Peter Sarstedt and a shout-a-long chorus that wouldn’t have been out of place on an Outhere Brothers hit. What a remarkably talented bunch this lot were – and I thought Milli Vanilli were chancers! Like a floater that won’t flush away, the single lingered around the Top 40 for 14 weeks, 9 of them inside the Top 10 stinking the place out. No Mercy? NO! MERCY! FOR PITY’S SAKE MERCY!
Next to one of the most surprising comebacks of the decade. Hands up who had Texas down for scoring the fifth best selling album of the year?
*scans virtual room*
No you bloody didn’t! This was a band who’d only ever had one Top 10 hit eight years before and who last two albums had been, if not totally ignored, then studiously avoided. Nobody had them down for a Top 3 hit single at the start of 1997. So how did they do it? Well, they softened their sound it seemed to me. There was a big difference between the slide guitar licks and pounding backbeat of “I Don’t Want A Lover” and the smooth, radio friendly sound of “Say What You Want”. Their second biggest hit to this point had been a cover of Al Green’s “Tired Of Being Alone” so maybe they took inspiration from that when it came to writing songs for their fourth studio album “White On Blonde” although clearly its title was influenced by Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde”. Its lead single though was more Marvin Gaye than Zimmerman.
There was another factor in its chart success other than the way it sounded and it was to do with that man Chris Evans again. One of the last things he did before leaving Radio 1 was to champion “Say What You Want”. Given his reach at time via his breakfast show and TFIFriday, this was no small endorsement. However, I don’t think that lead singer and face of the band Sharleen Spiteri is similar to Evans in the ego stakes. Indeed, I once heard her say in an interview that she never has the lyrics to the band’s songs including in the sleeve notes as she encourages people to hear what they want to hear even if that means misinterpreting the actual words. That doesn’t sound like someone who has a ‘me, me, me‘ attitude. Texas would become one of the biggest selling artists of the late 90s and beyond. “White On Blonde” alone would shift 4 million units and generate five hit singles. Say what you want about the band but they had remarkable staying power and commitment to never give up.
Here’s someone with an ego that outdoes even Chris Evans. To be fair to Madonna, how could you not when you were* one of the most famous people on the planet? Was recording “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” on her bucket list do you think? I’m pretty sure playing the role of Eva Peron in Evita was a lifetime ambition. We’d all been waiting for this song to be released from the soundtrack to the 1996 film after a new composition written specifically for it (“You Must Love Me”) had been the lead single. Maybe it was held back for the Christmas market with her record company thinking it had a shot at being the festive chart topper? When it did finally arrive, it debuted at No 3 before slipping down the charts but it’s on this TOTP as it had gone back up the charts from No 10 to No 5 presumably due to the film being released to UK cinemas.
*the use of ‘were’ was deliberate
There was another reason though and that was the release of the dance remix of the track. A dance remix you say? Of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”? Who knew? Well, not me and I was working in a record shop at the time so either I never sold a copy of it or I’ve completely forgotten about it. Either is possible. Want to hear it? Yeah you do…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I just didn’t get why the Backstreet Boys were so popular. I accept that I was in the minority in this opinion; their huge sales here and in America can’t be argued with and even the press had a lot of nice things to say about them but I thought they were tosh. Were they good looking (surely a pre-requisite for a boy band)? Not so you’d notice apart from maybe the blonde one. Were their songs any good? Look, I know the answer to that is going to be subjective but they sounded so pedestrian to me. Take “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” for example. It’s just a constant, one paced backbeat throughout that never goes anywhere. And why the need for the brackets in the title? Look, I know they didn’t write the song so they had no input into that particular decision but not writing your own material isn’t a tick in the plus column. Maybe they’ll liven up a bit when we get to their later hits. I won’t hold my breath though.
Now here’s a great song from a band who enjoyed massive success in the latter part of the decade but this track – “Nancy Boy” – is the only one of theirs that is permanently deposited in my brain bank. Placebo had already released four singles up to this point but their only Top 40 success thus far had been No 30 hit “Teenage Angst”. However, they had come to the attention of one David Bowie who invited the band to open for him on some live dates in 1996 and subsequently to perform at his 50th birthday celebration at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The endorsement of such a legendary figure couldn’t help but raise their profile and “Nancy Boy” duly became a No 4 smash when released in early 1997.
A jagged, brooding and bruising song, it was also very sexual in its nature and according to lead singer Brian Molko, had been written to “capture a kind of drug induced sexual rush”. Perhaps not the standard message behind a big hit when the charts were populated by the likes of Backstreet Boys, No Mercy and Madonna singing Andrew Lloyd Webber songs. I guess though that Placebo weren’t your average band. Molko’s androgynous image in particular (which was similar to Jas Mann’s from Babylon Zoo) attracted attention (not all of it welcome) as they sort to rebel against the laddishness of Britpop culture. Talking of which, I always assumed Placebo were a US band but they formed in London and Molko was born in Belgium though his father was American.
In an interesting parallel with the storm engulfing East 17 at the time, Molko would give an interview to Kerrang magazine in this year where he said the only drug on the planet he hadn’t tried was heroin before later admitting he’d had that too. I don’t recall nationwide outrage to that confession like Harvey’s interview generated but then maybe the two incidents aren’t comparable. East 17, for all their ‘street’ claims were still a boy band and boy bands weren’t meant to behave in the way Harvey had admitted to. Molko was openly bisexual and had a counter culture image. Was it a case of dismissing him as ‘other’ and therefore anything he did or said would be perceived within those preconceptions? Whatever the truth, we’ll be seeing much more of Placebo in future TOTP repeats.
Tori Amos is No 1 with “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” although really all the plaudits should have gone to Armand van Helden as the remixer responsible for this creation. Interestingly, the other dance remix in the charts featured on this show earlier does give equal billing to the remix team and the original artist as “People Hold On” is credited to Lisa Stansfield versus the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Was this a case of record label interference or that theme that we started the post with – artist ego?
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Lightning Seeds
Sugar Coated Icebergs
Nope
2
East 17
Hey Child
I did not
3
Lisa Stansfield versus the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
People Hold On
Nah
4
No Mercy
Where Do You Go
Hell no
5
Texas
Say What You Want
No but I had a promo copy of the album
6
Madonna
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina
Negative
7
Backstreet Boys
Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)
Never
8
Placebo
Nancy Boy
No but I think I had it on one of those Best Album Ever compilations
9
Tori Amos
Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)
Liked it, didn’t buy it
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.
And here we go again. I’m beginning my ninth year of blogging about TOTP and 1997 will be the fifteenth (!) year I’ve covered. I’ve committed to carrying on until I’ve completed 1999 so I reckon that’s another 18 months of blogging. The things I do for you people! So, new year, new songs as the majority of the hits in this show we haven’t seen performed before in these BBC4 repeats. However, the opening act I’ve only just talked about in my ‘1996 – the epilogue’ post when I discussed their song “Punka” so not great planning on my behalf. Anyway, this single – “In Your Car” – gave Kenickie their first Top 40 hit – no doubt some canny early January release scheduling helped it get there. It’s a decent track if a little basic – the slightly repetitive ‘yeah, yeah’ chorus being an obvious example. Lyrically, it comes over like an updated version of “Leader Of The Pack” but without the tragic ending with the narrative driven by the band shouting out questions to lead singer Lauren Laverne about how she got a lift off some bloke she knew. Yeah, it’s a bit slight but it had enough punk- pop chops to propel it along nicely. It would prove to be their biggest hit when it peaked at No 24. Why weren’t Kenickie bigger? Was it a case of the right stuff at the wrong time? Maybe they were intelligent enough to understand that the music industry was cutthroat and shallow and they ultimately wanted no part of it? Perhaps. What we do know is that they broke up in 1998 just two albums into their career.
As if Peter Andre wasn’t bad enough, here was the UK’s answer to the oiled up, walking six pack. After the demise of Take That the year before, pop puppet master Nigel Martyn-Smith looked to a solo act to get the teenage girls screaming and the cash registers ringing again. Anthony Gerard Kavanagh of Moston, Greater Manchester aka Kavana was the lucky (?) recipient of Martin-Smith’s focus whose backing garnered two minor UK hits in 1996 and a support slot on the Boyzone tour. However, to breakthrough the chart glass ceiling into the upper echelons of the Top 10 was going to require something else and, of course, that meant a cover version. The track chosen was “I Can Make You Feel Good” which was a No 7 hit in 1982 for Shalamar. It was a good choice, a super smooth R&B/pop number that was recent enough to not sound out of place in the 90s but also long enough ago for many a pop fan to potentially not realise that it was a cover and associate it purely with the new artist. Kavana delivers a pretty faithful version but then a radically different take on it wasn’t what was required here. It needed to be a bigger hit than he’d ever had and that was achieved when it missed equalling the original’s chart peak by just one place. Job done.
Having said all of that, I could never quite work out the appeal of Kavana. Yeah, he had pretty boy looks and that floppy, mid 90s hair but what else? I didn’t see enough star quality in him to think he would be anything more than a fleeting presence in the UK charts and yet he hung around for the rest of the decade racking up eight Top 40 hits including two Top 10s. I could see him as part of a five-piece boy band but out on his own? Not for me. In 2013, Kavana did become a member of a group when he joined forces with Dane Bowers of Another Level, Gareth Gates, Adam Rickitt and Kenzie from Blazin’ Squad to form 5th Story as part of the ITV show TheBigReunion. One of the songs they recorded? Yep, “I Can Make You Feel Good”.
Next to a track that would become one of the oddest No 1s of the decade. “ProfessionalWidow” was a No 20 hit for Tori Amos in the Summer of 1996 when it was paired with “Hey Jupiter” as a double A-side. The third single from her “Boys For Pele” album, it was in and out of the UK Top 40 within three weeks so it was quite likely that, like me, you may have missed it at the time. However, it took a further six weeks to depart the Top 100 and then it reappeared in the November for another two months never getting higher than No 86. What was all that about? Well, the version released in the UK and Europe was a remix by American house DJ and producer Armand Van Helden and it was radically different to the original album version. I’m guessing that it was the 12” format that included the full 8 minutes long ‘Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’ mix’ that was picking up those latterly sales as DJs played it in the clubs of the UK. Such was the continued buzz about the track that another release was planned by label EastWest but this time they went full on promoting the dance remix and not sharing the bill with another song. And so it came to pass that the track was reissued at the start of 1997 and retitled as “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)”. This time, released during the post Christmas sales lull, it would debut at No 2 before moving to the top of the charts for one week seven days later.
As I said, the remix didn’t sound anything like the original album version (it did get a release in America alongside the remix) which was typical Tori fare with a tortured vocal and a slow, shuffling tempo that bore no resemblance to the dance release at all. Having listened to the original, it has some appeal but then I have to admit to quite liking Tori’s quirky style anyway.
However, Armand Van Helden’s treatment does rather blow it out of the water. He basically cut it up and stuck it back together to produce something completely different yet standout; like a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces in all the wrong places but fitting together to create something wonderfully abstract and arresting. You certainly couldn’t ignore “Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)” as it leapt out at you from the radio or your stereo. Undoubtedly Tori’s biggest UK hit though she’s hardly on it at at all. Like I said, all a bit odd really.
Right, who’s next? Runrig? Really?! I can’t think of anything to say about this lot! What? The song they’re doing – “The Greatest Flame” – has not only been a hit before but the band have performed on TOTP before?! What? When? May 1993? Right. That’s that sorted then. Here’s what I had to say about it back then. I’m sure my opinion won’t have changed. By the way, it was rereleased to promote the band’s Best Of compilation called “Long Distance” if you were wondering though I doubt you were.
Next up a hit that would have caused the TOTP producers a couple of staging problems I would have thought. Firstly, because it’s a dance act (surely nobody would quibble with me about my description of Orbital as such) and secondly because their hit was called “Satan”. Well, fortunately, an official video had been made for the single for the show to play but unfortunately it was no more than Phil and Paul Hartnoll (who were Orbital) stood miming behind some synths so basically what was effectively a studio performance with all the aforementioned incumbent visual issues on display. Yes, they were wearing some natty eyewear with lights on and there was a bit of black and white film footage thrown into the mix like a submarine and some snarling dogs but it was essentially two bald blokes banging away at some keyboards. The second issue would have been the track’s intro which went:
Daddy, yes, son Wha-what does-what does regret mean? Well, son, a funny thing about regret is That it’s better to regret something you have done Than regret something you haven’t done By the way, if you see your mom this weekend You shouldn’t tell her…
The word ‘Satan’ was said almost demonically and repeated on a loop to make it especially disturbing. The fix for the show was relatively easy though – just edit out the intro which they duly did. As with Tori Amos before, I’m sure its chart placing of No 3 was at least partly enabled by its early January release date and also like “Professional Widow”, it had already been a small hit before. Originally released as a track on the “III” EP in 1991, it had peaked at No 31. Six years on, it was repackaged as “Satan Live” with two of the three versions released over three CD singles having been taken from live gigs in New York and the V96 festival in Chelmsford. 1997 would be Orbital’s most commercially successful year as the follow up – “The Saint” taken from the soundtrack to the film of the same name starring Val Kilmer – also peaked at No 3.
Tonight’s host by the way is Nicky Campbell who rather undoes the work of the producers who edited out the “Satan Live” intro by doing a passable impression of Ian Paisley shouting at the studio audience to “Repent! Repent your sins now!”. Hmm. Anyway, next up is a band who had become a model of consistency when it came to racking up chart hits. “Easy” was the tenth Top 40 single for Terrorvision in just over three years. Clearly the Bradford rockers had built up a sizeable, loyal fan base over this period who would buy anything the band put out – “Easy” was the fourth single taken from their album “Regular Urban Survivors” and yet it only just missed debuting inside the Top 10.
I have to say that this isn’t one of theirs that I’m familiar with and on first hearing it seems rather underwhelming and pedestrian. However, forget Orbital earlier as this is where there must have been some dark forces at work as after just one play, it was still in my head hours later. What black magic was this?! We’re still two years away from their chart peak though. All together now…”That’s the curse of Tequila, it makes me happy…”.
The aftermath of ‘The Battle of Britpop’ saw Blur in disarray despite having secured their first No 1 single as a result of it. Oasis did not accept the status of losers and their powers were certainly not vanquished in the skirmish. The sales of “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” went supernova with the band cast in the role of working class heroes whilst Blur were casually dismissed as spurious, middle class chancers. The band retreated not just to lick their wounds but also from each other. It would take a letter from guitarist Graham Coxon to Damon Albarn outlining the direction that he wanted the band to go in to get the disparate members to reconvene. Having rejected all things American after a disastrous US tour in ‘92 and an aversion to grunge rock that informed second and third albums “Modern Life Is Rubbish” and “Parklife”, the new direction championed by Coxon was exemplified by American artists like indie, lo-fi rock band Pavement and the genre straddling Beck. It may seem like quite the turnaround but Coxon is/was well known for his spare and brittle musical tendencies.
The first result of this new direction was the lead single from the band’s fifth and eponymous album – “Beetlebum”. It was about as far away from the likes of “Country House” as could be – if they were British sitcoms then the former would be Mrs Brown’sBoys and the latter TheOffice. The drastic change of style had their record label fearing the worst for the band’s commercial fortunes and I have to admit to not being sure about the track myself initially. It seemed slow and ponderous and lacking in structure – there was no bridge from the verse to the chorus; it was almost like it was two separate songs glued together. Like Terrorvision’s “Easy” earlier though, it was a grower, an insidious ear-worm burrowing its way into your brain. Their label should have had more faith in their charges as “Beetlebum” would go straight in at No 1 when finally released a whole ten days after this performance showing the size and loyalty of their fan base. It was also a prime example of the way the charts were heading. At the time, it set a then record for a No 1 single spending the least amount of time inside the Top 40 – just three weeks in total at positions 1, 7 and 29 then out. The writing was on the wall – for the charts not Blur.
For various reasons, this is the first time I’ve commented on the No 1 which wasn’t just any chart topper of course but the Christmas No 1. On reflection, the third single by the Spice Girls was always going to be the best selling hit of the festive period though I’m sure, at the time, the bookies would have had lots of runners and riders in the race. After two uptempo songs, the traditional route of the third being a ballad was followed and “2 Become 1” was certainly that. A lush, smooth production that could have made for a sound that was a tad too sugary, it managed to avoid that trap by working a safe sex message into the lyrics. The memorable video that’s set in Times Square, New York was actually recorded over three thousand miles away in a studio in Old Compton Street, London – it was all just green screen trickery. I always thought that the cover of the single looked a bit cheap and nasty I have to say. The image of the group used surely wasn’t the best that came out of that particular photo session?
Anyway, 1997 would see the Spice Girls juggernaut continue at a pace with a further three No 1 singles (including a second consecutive Christmas one) and another multi-platinum selling album. These TOTP repeats are nowhere near done with Ginger, Posh, Baby, Scary and Sporty yet.
Order of appearance
Artist
Title
Did I buy it?
1
Kenickie
In Your Car
Nope
2
Kavana
I Can Make You Feel Good
Never
3
Tori Amos
Professional Widow (It’s Got To Be Big)
Liked it, didn’t buy it
4
Runrig
The Greatest Flame
As if
5
Orbital
Satan Live
No
6
Terrorvision
Easy
Negative
7
Blur
Beetlebum
No but I had the album with it on
8
Spice Girls
2 Become 1
Nah
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.
1997 was quite the year on reflection. Look at this lot:
We had a General Election which ushered in a new government after 18 years of Tory rule (that was a good day!).
We had a new terrestrial television channel (the first new one since the launch of Channel 4 in November 1982) unimaginatively named Channel 5.
The UK transferred sovereignty over Hong Kong, the largest remaining British colony, to the People’s Republic of China as the 99 years lease on the territory had formally ended (I was in China just weeks before the event).
The first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published.
Overshadowing all of this though was the death of Diana, Princess of Wales which caused many of the UK (and indeed the worlds) population to temporarily lose their minds in grief over a person most had never met. That event would have consequences for the world of music with Elton John’s reworking of “Candle In The Wind” which was sung at Diane’s funeral becoming the biggest selling UK single ever and shifting 33 million copies worldwide when it was released. It continues to hold that record to this day.
There was another event that would impact the music industry though not in such a sombre way. This was the year that The Teletubbies first aired and would become a ratings sensation. The success of the show triggered multiple merchandising lines to be made available to cash in on its popularity one of which was the Teletubbies single “Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh!” much would become the fifth biggest selling hit of the year! Did we learn nothing for the Mr Blobby fiasco of 1993?!
Talking of singles, it was another bumper year for the sales of the format – from the 22nd of June right through to the end of the year, every single No 1 record sold at least 100,000 copies a week. As with the previous year, 24 singles topped the chart, double the amount we saw just five years prior in 1992. As for albums, there was stellar anticipation of the release of Oasis’s third album “Be Here Now”. Despite its initial sales and being the best selling album of the year in the UK, it would ultimately sell around a third of the units of “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” and its legacy and reputation is of a lumpen creation that killed the legend of Oasis. Yeah, that’s definitely it…maybe. If Noel and Liam were at a crossroads career wise, the Spice Girls were motoring on in top gear with two albums in the year end Top 5. One of the most critically revered albums of the decade (and perhaps of all time) was released this year as “OK Computer” by Radiohead came into our lives. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year was the renaissance of Texas who would eclipse all their previous success with the album “White On Blonde”. Elsewhere in music, just one day after Labour’s General Election victory was confirmed, the UK won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time since 1981. Yes, the winning artist was led by an American singer but that was no reason not to celebrate the achievement.
As for me, 1997 would also be a memorable year. My beloved Chelsea would finally win something capturing the FA Cup in the May which was also the month I went to China to see my mate Rob who was living out there. It was quite a time! It wasn’t all excitement though. Work-wise, there was an unsettling period of disruption at the Our Price store where I was employed when our manager Pete left and on a personal level, I started to experience some mental health issues that would see me ultimately leave the Stockport branch forever but that’s all to come in the future…erm…the past. Oh, you know what I mean!
That’s 1996 done and dusted. What were we to make of it and was it worth revisiting in quite the depth that both myself via this blog and BBC4 via their TOTP repeats schedule did? Possibly not but I’m nothing if not a completist! So, what was wrong (or right depending on your point of view) with 1996? Well, let’s use the admittedly blunt tool of sales to give us an overview of what was going on. Starting with the best selling albums of the year, on first inspection it would seem that it was a case of business as usual with established artists such as Simply Red, Celine Dion and the returning George Michael all in the Top 10. Then there was the decidedly mainstream like Robson & Jerome repeating their commercial phenomenon of the previous year. Talking of phenomenons, the biggest new artist of the year was surely the Spice Girls who were No 3 in the year end chart. Could a case be made to say that they were mainstream as well? Maybe though there was a world of difference between what they and the two Soldier Soldier actors were peddling. It’s an interesting question – what makes you a mainstream artist? Look at who had the best selling album of the year – Alanis Morissette. Was she mainstream just because loads and loads of people bought her album? I don’t think there’s anything mainstream about a track like “You Oughta Know”.
Just behind her at No 2 was an album that occupied that same position in 1995 – “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis. It says much about their popularity that their album could sell so many copies in two consecutive years. Did this mean that Britpop was still in the ascendancy? Well, there is a theory that the movement ended when Oasis’s third album “Be Here Now” was released and that didn’t happen until 1997 so by that criteria it was certainly still a going concern in this year. However, there is no other artist that would be considered to be Britpop in the albums Top 10 (though Ocean Colour Scene made a splash by finishing in 11th). Further down the chart came Kula Shaker at a respectable No 16 and Pulp’s “Different Class” still going well at No 19 though despite their Lazarus style return, Manic Street Preachers’ most commercial album yet “Everything Must Go” was only No 20. For me, not enough evidence that Britpop was as strong a force as it was in 1995 when it peaked around the Blur v Oasis chart battle.
Indeed, many of the other artists in the list of bestsellers were either music royalty (Tina Turner, Bryan Adams, Michael Jackson, Rod Stewart) or very established artists (M People, Boyzone, Jamiroquai). There were a surprisingly high number of albums in the Top 50 that had actually been released in 1995 which suggests a certain amount of stagnation though there were some debut albums in there as well from the likes of Cast, Ash and Space. Unbelievably, there were two entries for The Smurfs (WTF?!) though pleasingly only seven albums on the end of year chart were Best Ofs. Finally mention must go to an act who carved out their own little niche for themselves this year as Fugees bagged the seventh best selling album of 1996 thanks in no small part to that single…
OK, so let’s talk singles. Fugees claimed the year’s biggest hit with “Killing Me Softly” – quite the feat for an R&B artist whose only other UK chart hit had been the No 21 single “Fu-Gee-La”. The rest of the Top 10 belonged to Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty whose first three singles occupied the Nos 2, 4 and 10 positions. Babylon Zoo were the latest beneficiaries of soundtracking a Levi’s advert as “Spaceman” landed at No 3 whilst Mark Morrison came in at a No 5 with the ubiquitous “Return Of The Mack”. Only two non No 1s made the Top 10 – the execrable Peter Andre and dream house poster boy Robert Miles. Gina G became the first Eurovision chart topper since Nicole in 1982 and Baddiel & Skinner with the Lightning Seeds saw Euro 96 fever put them at No 7 with the very first incarnation of “Three Lions”. Pick the bones out of that lot! Out of the whole year end Top 50, I bought precisely three and only one of them was actually for me with the other two being for other people. The majority of Nos 11 to 50 could be classified as mainstream (there’s that word again) or at the very least daytime radio friendly with honourable exceptions being both chart toppers from The Prodigy, Underworld’s “Born Slippy” and “Faithless” by Insomnia. What does all this mean? Possibly what we already knew. You can’t rely on sales numbers alone to work out musical trends.
And what of TOTP? 1996 saw changes that would herald the beginning of the end for the grand old show. The BBC’s coverage of the Euros football tournament saw its weekly music programme temporarily shifted from its traditional Thursday night slot to a Friday. However, somewhere along the line, someone high up took the decision to keep it there after Euro ‘96 had finished. It would prove to be a catastrophic choice for the show’s future. This was compounded by the subsequent shifting of its 7.00 start time to 7.30 meaning it was up against Coronation Street on ITV which aired at exactly the same time. Who thought that was a good idea?! It was as if there was a deliberate plan within the corridors of the Beeb to deliberately kill the show off. 1997 would see the end of Ric Blaxill’s tenure as executive producer who was replaced by Chris Cowey but that’s all for future posts. In 1996, TOTP was in a state of transition and the outlook was far from certain.
Hits That Never Were
Whipping Boy – “When We Were Young”
Released: Feb ’96
Chart Peak: No 46
When having a three way What’sApp chat with my mates Robin and Steve once, the subject of who was our favourite Irish band of all time came up. The usual names were chucked about by me and Steve like U2, The Boomtown Rats, The Undertones, The Pogues, Westlife (joking!) until Robin threw a name into the hat that I’d never heard of before – Whipping Boy. So I looked them up on Spotify and this track was their most streamed at the time so I checked it out and I’m glad I did. They were kind of like a prototype, early era Stereophonics both in terms of their storytelling lyrics and sonically. Their lead singer was one Fearghal McKee whose name sounds like the love child of the ex lead singer of The Undertones and the “Show Me Heaven” No 1 artist and ex-Lone Justice vocalist (who share their own real life connection actually but that’s a whole other story). McKee was prone to cutting himself onstage with broken glass so maybe they were more like Manic Street Preachers than the Stereophonics? Whipping Boy split in 1998 after second album “Heartroom” earned critical acclaim but few sales and they were dropped by record label Columbia.
Crush – “Jellyhead”
Released: Feb ’96
Chart Peak: No 50
PJ & Duncan (or Ant & Dec if you prefer) weren’t the only duo to emerge from Byker Grove. Oh no. There was also a female trio called Byker Grooove (no really!) who even had a minor hit with a single called “Love Your Sexy…!!” which reached No 48. That was enough success to convince label Telstar to give the girls another go but with a tweak. Byker Grooove wasn’t going to cut it as a name so the rather uninspired Crush was chosen. A bigger change though was that the trio became a duo after Vicky Taylor left the project. This left Jayni Hoy and subsequent actor and presenter Donna Air to carry the Geordie flag with the single “Jellyhead”. Now, it really should have been crap and maybe it is but it was also a stunningly catchy pop tune that I really thought was going to be a hit. Its lyrics were almost like an updated version of “I’d Rather Jack” by The Reynolds Girls name checking Bros and The Prodigy but unlike those Stock, Aitken and Waterman pop starlets, Crush couldn’t even achieve the status of one hit wonders. After “Jellyhead” peaked at No 50, follow up “Luv’d Up” could only make No 45 and that was it for the whole project. However, there was one female member of the Byker Grove cast who would secure themselves not one, not two, not three but four UK Top 40 hit singles – Emmy-Kate Montrose, the bassist with Sunderland pop-punk four piece Kenickie appeared in the series under her real name of Emma Jackson.
Kenickie – “Punka”
Released: Sep ’96
Chart Peak: No 43
Talking of whom…If you think of Sunderland what immediately comes to mind? The 1973 FA Cup winning team? Maybe. The River Wear? Possibly. What about music though? How many bands can you name that came out of Sunderland? The list isn’t long nor does it spring to mind easily. I’m not putting the place down by the way. I will always have a fondness for Sunderland having spent three years there as a student in the 80s and it’s also where I met my wife. I don’t remember much about the local music scene though. There must have been one I guess. Think man! Well, there’s the glorious Martin Stephenson (with and without The Daintees) who should be a national treasure but still doesn’t have widespread recognition. The Toy Dolls of “Nellie The Elephant” fame came from there as did that other novelty record outfit A Tribe Of Toffs. I’m not sure either are a winning endorsement of the place though. Dave Stewart is a Mackem but you don’t really associate Eurythmics with Sunderland do you? In later years there have been bands like Field Mice and The Futureheads but what about the 90s? The only act I can think of who flew the *city’s banner was Kenickie.
*Yes, Sunderland is a city
Named after their favourite character from Grease, this post-punk four piece (including a very young Lauren Laverne) turned down an offer of a deal from Alan McGee of Creation Records before signing to EMIDisc and releasing “Punka”. A scratchy, raw sounding track that thrashed around a nursery rhyme hook complete with a chorus of children shouting its title, it only missed the Top 40 by three places. However, that was enough to create a buzz about the band and despite follow up single “Millionaire Sweeper” also missing out, they finally broke through in January of 1997 with third release “In Your Car” making it to No 24 and earning them a slot on TOTP. “Punka” itself would earn itself another shot at it duly became a bona fide Top 40 hit (albeit a minor one when it peaked at No 38). After two albums, the band split but their Wikipedia entry says that they influenced end of the decade all girl groups like Hepburn and Thunderbugs. I’m not sure that’s really the legacy that they would have wanted. Lauren Laverne would leave the music industry behind switching careers to become a TV and radio presenter. She currently hosts Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 and The One Show on BBC1.
Billy Bragg – “Upfield”
Released: Aug ’96
Chart Peak: No 46
By 1996, it had been five years since Billy Bragg’s last album “Don’t Try This At Home” which had gone Top 10 and furnished him with the hit single “Sexuality”. Why the gap? Well, Billy became a father in 1993 and so took time out to concentrate on his family. He would return in this year with the album “William Bloke” (a pun on the name of 18th century poet William Blake). With songs written about how his life had changed and with an eye on his approaching 40s, it was perhaps a more reflective piece of work than his overtly political 1980s albums. However, the only single released from it was “Upfield” which was an uptempo, joyous number that passed me by at the time but which I discovered when I bought Billy’s 2003’s retrospective album “Must I Paint You A Picture?”. It deserved better than its No 46 chart peak. Billy would spend the rest of the 90s working with American alt-country rockers Wilco on the “Mermaid Avenue” project putting music to previously unheard lyrics by folk artist Woody Guthrie which I quite liked especially the tracks “Walt Whitman’s Niece” and “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”.
Hits We Missed
Nick Heyward – “Rollerblade”
Released: Jan ’97
Chart Peak: No 37
I said in my review of 1995 that I would no doubt talk about this single in the ‘TOTP 1996 – the epilogue’ post and I’m nothing if not a man of my word. To be honest, given my lifelong loyalty to Nick, it was never in doubt. A whole twelve years after his last Top 40 entry came “Rollerblade”, the second and final single from his marvellous “Tangled” album. A high-tempo, dash through a hook laden tune, it clocked in at under three minutes – I’m not sure if that aided or hindered its airplay chances. No doubt its early January release date in the traditional lull period after Christmas helped it to glide into the upper end of the Top 40 albeit just for one week. Whilst I was delighted to see Nick back in the charts, I couldn’t help thinking he’d missed a trick in not releasing “Believe In Me” from the album instead which I thought was a surefire winner for a hit given the era of Britpop that it had been recorded in. I guess we’ll never know if I was right.
Nick would return in 1998 with the similarly excellent album “The Apple Bed” on the Creation label (see…there’s that Britpop connection again). With the exception of two albums in collaboration with actors Greg Ellis and India Dupree, he wouldn’t have another album out until the wondrous “Woodland Echoes” in 2017. If you’ve never heard it, do yourself a favour and get on Spotify and give it a go. Nick has spent the last couple of years reactivating Haircut 100 who even released their first single for over 40 years – “The Unloving Plum” – which topped The Heritage Chart. I saw them live at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and York Barbican in 2023 and to further prove my Nick credentials, pretty much the only CDs left in my possession after a clear out purge this year? Yep, you guessed it.
The Wannadies – “You & Me Song”
Released: Apr ’96
Chart Peak: No 18
One of just three Top 40 entries for Swedish indie rockers The Wannadies, “You And Me Song” is surely their best known. Originally released in August 1995, it barely limped into the Top 100. However, its inclusion on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann’s film Romeo+Juliet and the latter’s subsequent success (it grossed $147.6 million against a budget of $14.5 million) raised its profile and warranted it a second shot at the chart in 1996. This time it would break into the Top 20 peaking at No 18. Curiously, the rerelease changed the title of the song from “You And Me Song” to “You & Me Song” – not sure why. Maybe it was talking its lead from Baz Lurhmanm who renamed Shakespeare’s original tale of RomeoAndJuliet as Romeo + Juliet?
My wife liked this at the time but wasn’t sure who it was by so tried to explain it to me so I could identify it. Not an unreasonable request what with me working in a record shop and all. Somehow though, I managed to be incredibly dumb that day and despite her describing it as that song that goes “you and me always and forever” I assured her that there was no such song only to come back to her a couple of minutes later after a lightbulb moment and say “Oh, do you mean “You and Me Song” by The Wannadies? She still brings it nearly 30 years later when I’m being particularly obtuse.
Gene – “Fighting Fit”
Released: Nov ’96
Chart Peak: No 22
I have to admit that there have been times during my life when I’ve been completely out of touch with what would have been described as “trendy” when I was growing up but which would come to be labelled the “zeitgeist”. The Smiths back in 1983 when I was 15 should have been a band that I fell in love with. I was absolutely ripe for their sound and Morrissey’s otherness should have appealed to my teenage angst and yet I ignored them for years before seeing the light (that never goes out). Fast forward to 1989 and along came the Stone Roses and I was a mere 21 year old with my whole life in front of me. Surely I would fall for their swagger and profile as the leaders of the ‘Madchester’ movement? Nope. I somehow got distracted by their songs always seeming to have the word ‘stone’ in them. I would later see the error of my ways and even ended up working alongside their original bass player, the much missed Pete Garner.
And then there was Gene. Why I dropped the ball with this lot when I was actually working in a record shop at the time beggars belief. Ten Top 40 singles and two Top 10 albums and I ignored the lot. My mate Robin certainly didn’t though. Not only was he a big Smiths fan when I wasn’t but he embraced Gene fully to the point that they would become his favourite band ever. To be fair, he might have had a head start on me as his interest in them was surely kindled by all the music press comparisons between them and his other heroes and indeed between lead singer Martin Rossiter and Morrissey. It still doesn’t answer the question though of how I failed to hear their music whilst working in a record shop. Can I blame my work colleagues who clearly weren’t interested in Gene either? I think that’s a stretch. Anyway, “Fighting Fit” was the fifth of those ten hits and the lead single from their second studio album “Drawn To The Deep End”. It’s a driving, indie rock stomper that lulls the listener in with a tinkling, gentle intro before the drums kick in and we’re off on a four minute, high octane, daredevil, wall of death ride before being deposited safely back to the ground with a false ending and a repeat of the intro as the outro. Genuinely thrilling stuff!
Mansun – “Stripper Vicar”
Released: Sep ’96
Chart Peak: No 19
As with The Boo Radleys, Mansun were a band that I only really got into for one album but that one album, their debut “Attack Of The Grey Lantern”, was a real winner. It took me a while to get into it via a promo CD that we had at the Our Price where I was working but the payoff when I got there was beautiful. Initially written as a concept album around the idea of a village of characters of dubious morals with The Grey Lantern as a superhero figure come to sort them all out, it would get to No 1 in the UK. Frontman Paul Draper admits that he ran out of steam when it came to finishing the album in the form of its original concept and so described it as “half a concept album – a ‘con’ album”. A similar thing happened to Paul Weller and The Jam’s “Setting Sons” album. “Stripper Vicar” was the lead track from an EP entitled “Three” and there’s a lot going on in it, like there’s three different songs in there all striving to be heard. It all comes together as a driving, indie tune that tells the tale of its titular character whose was a vicar by day but a stripper by night. The wordplay in the lyrics – rhyming “plastic scouser” with “plastic trousers” and “suspended” with “suspenders” – shouldn’t really work but somehow does magnificently.
I caught Mansun live in 1997 supporting Suede at a gig in Blackburn and they were great. Somebody I worked with once had been at university with some of the band and said they were always destined for success. Everyone around them knew it. Eventually I did too.
Super Furry Animals – “Something 4 The Weekend”
Released: Jul ’96
Chart Peak: No 18
The 90s was quite a time for Welsh bands. Sure the 80s gave us The Alarm and to a lesser extent The Darling Buds but the following decade saw a host of groups making their mark. Manic Street Preachers, Stereophonics, Catatonia, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and this lot – Super Furry Animals whose TOTP debut on the BBC4 repeats we missed due to (I think) one of the show’s ‘Meet a Pop Star’ competition winners going on to doing something unpalatable in their personal life in later years. That was unfortunate as their hit “Something 4 The Weekend” was quite the tune.
Unlike the first two names in that list above, SFA started their career singing Welsh language songs and unlike the aforementioned Kenickie, did sign with Creation records when offered a deal by Alan McGee and it was him who encouraged them to sing in English. In fact, the band had already made that decision for themselves but their strong Welsh accents bewildered McGee into believing they were still singing in their native tongue. The Welsh media gave the band some criticism for this but it turned them into chart stars when they hit the Top 40 with just their second single “God! Show Me Magic”. Its follow up “Something 4 The Weekend” did even better making the Top 20 becoming part of a curious footnote in pop history when it was in the charts at the same time as The Divine Comedy’s hit of the same name. Well, almost. The Furries replaced the word ‘for’ with the number ‘4’ for the single release of the track (the album version was called “Something For The Weekend”).
Ah yes, that debut album. It was called “Fuzzy Logic” but it wasn’t its title that intrigued us all at the Our Price store in Stockport where I was working. No, it wasn’t the cover art which was a montage of images of the same man in a number of different disguises and looks. Now none of us realised that they were all of Welsh drug dealer turned raconteur Howard Marks because we were all hung up on the notion that the image at the top in red and yellow was of our manager, the aforementioned late, great and much missed Pete Garner in his early years. Even Pete himself was convinced it was him! So why was Howard Marks on the cover of the album? Apparently the band’s lead vocalist Gruff Rhys had an association with Marks having invited him down to the recording sessions for “Fuzzy Logic” at the Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire. The link goes further though. In the film of his life called Mr Nice, Marks was portrayed by actor Rhys Ifans who had once been a member of Super Furry Animals.
As for the band’s sound, it could claim to be hard to categorise though many a music journalist would try and shoehorn them into the Britpop movement or the Welsh equivalent Cool Cymru. My best attempt to describe it would be an eclectic mix of styles including 60s psychedelia, indie rock, glam rock and 90s dance that created a truly imaginative noise. “Something 4 The Weekend” was a prime example of this though I think my favourite of theirs might well be the marvellously titled “Juxtaposed With U”.
My Life Story – “12 Reasons Why I Love Her”
Released: Aug ’96
Chart Peak: No 32
Here’s another song that I didn’t cotton onto at the time but which I’ve since discovered in later life. Now, I thought My Life Story came along much later than this but according to their Wikipedia page they formed in 1984! They didn’t experience chart success though until the mid 90s when they got caught up with the coming of Britpop and they clocked up six Top 40 singles though none of them got any higher than No 27.
The first of those was “Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her” and it’s a quite extraordinary song. Essentially a list of things that the protagonist loves about the object of his affection, it’s kind of like the Britpop version of “Twelve Days Of Christmas”. I’m going on a lot about Britpop which is probably unfair to My Life Story who, if they were part of that scene, were in their own little corner of it. Yes, lead singer Jake Shillingford’s vocals wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a track by Menswear or maybe Rialto but My Life Story weren’t your identikit Britpop outfit. For a start, there were twelve members in their line up at one point and the sound that they made was often nearer to that of a chamber orchestra than a rock/pop band. Listen to those descending strings on “12 Reasons Why I Love Her”! It took me a few listens to place them but they sound very similar to “The Tunnel Of Love”, the 1983 No 10 single by Fun Boy Three. In a way, they had more in common with French chanson singer Jacques Brel than Britpop or maybe Marc Almond covering Jacques Brel at least. Or The Walker Brothers? OK, I’m reaching a bit now but you kind of get my drift. My Life Story disbanded in 2000 but there have been various reunions since and they released their fifth studio album in February 2024.
Their Season In The Sun
Fugees
Though they had been around since the turn of the decade, 1996 was undoubtedly the year when Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel went stratospheric. Their album “The Score” would ultimately sell 22 million copies worldwide and provide them with huge hit singles in “Killing Me Softly”, “Ready Or Not” and “No Woman, No Cry”. At the height of their fame and success though, they split. Why? My research suggests that one of the reasons was that Lauryn and Wyclef had an affair with the former misleading the latter into believing he was the father of her child when in fact it was Bob Marley’s son Rohan. Well, it makes a change from musical differences I guess.
All three members would go on to have successful solo careers with the Fugees reforming for a reunion tour before splitting again. Another reunion was announced in 2021 to celebrate 25 years since “The Score” was released but the promised tour dates have been cancelled not one time, not two times but three times so far with the latest cancellation coming just three days before the tour was due to start in August 2024. Ready or not? It would seem not.
Upside Down
One of the most manufactured boy bands ever, these also rans even had a documentary made about their formation informing their publicity machine and they still couldn’t get any higher than No 11 in the charts. That said, they did manage four hit singles in the calendar year but it was a case of diminishing returns and even that well worn strategy of releasing a cover version (Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”) couldn’t save them. They weren’t helped by their record label (which had gambled everything on their act being successful) going bankrupt but the decision to relaunch with the worst band name ever in the history of band names – Orange Orange – was criminal.
Babylon Zoo
One massive hit then (almost) nothing. It’s a much told music industry story but perhaps what is best remembered about Jas Mann and his pop vehicle Babylon Zoo was the deception that his song “Spaceman” pulled on the record buying public. That Levi’s advert which only used the speeded up vocals of the intro and outro that created the impression that the whole track was like that led to many a punter being disappointed once they got home and played the single to discover it was essentially a hoary, old rock song. That didn’t stop it becoming the third biggest selling hit of the year in the UK mind. Following it up proved impossible and a couple of minor hits was never going to establish Babylon Zoo as long term contenders. At least their final chart foray had an element of self knowledge – “All The Money’s Gone”.
Alanis Morissette
Against the odds, the biggest selling album of 1996 in the UK was a huge slow burner having debuted on the chart at No 76 in the August of the previous year. The story of “Jagged Little Pill” which included eleven weeks at No 1 and 3 million sales in the UK alone is all the more remarkable because it came from a Canadian solo female artist that most of us had never heard of before. It took nearly six months for it to rise to the UK Top 10 and then spent nearly a year inside it once it got there. Inevitably, following it up was always going to be difficult and 1998’s “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” duly failed to match its predecessor’s heights only managing a tenth of “Jagged Little Pill”’s sales. Alanis has continued to record new material though with her most recent album being released in 2022.
Mark Morrison
With a gold selling album and No 1 single both titled “Return Of The Mack” in this year, Leicester’s Mark Morrison was never bigger than in 1996. Sure he had a few hits after then but it was those 12 months that saw him rise to fame as he clocked up three more Top 10 hits in the wake of his chart topper. It would seem though that he couldn’t handle his celebrity as his personal life spiralled with the R&B artist facing a number of criminal charges including bringing a firearm aboard an airliner, affray, kidnapping and paying a lookalike to complete his community service sentence. He still has some presence in the music world though it mainly seems to be due to adverts by McDonalds and Burger King featuring his most famous track for obvious reasons.
Last Words
So, 1996 – was it any good? Like most years it was a curate’s egg. Some good, a lot of bad and a fair sprinkling of utter tosh. Sadly, I don’t think the remaining years of the decade will prove to be any different. The charts were becoming increasingly manipulated by record company marketing strategies to maximise first week sales. This resulted in 24 different No 1 singles this year, the most since 1980 with an increasing trend for records debuting at No 1 and then falling away. This would only increase for here on in. As for me, I’d completed my second year at Our Price Stockport and things were pretty stable. 1997 would see changes to my work life and things start to unravel with my mental health. Some of the posts for that year might be difficult to write…
TOTP Rewind - the 90s 